corner view~warmth

She was raised in a world of seasons that whirled and spun through time, always craving the warmth.

Her favorite season was summer, for with it brought her July birthday, and the sunshine. Summer was a time of freedom from routine, a time to be outside under the trees, behold the colorful flowers her mother had planted in gardens all over their property, practice her cartwheels and handsprings safely on the soft grass beneath her feet.  There were cherries and berries to pick, pies to make, and the children's hands were always stained and sticky, their faces smiling.

On those summer mornings all the dolls would come outside along with beds, clothes, buggies.  She and her sister would create an entire world under the canopy of trees. There they would play make believe and chatter amongst themselves, dressing their babies, feeding them, putting them to sleep. Their husbands, Johnny and Roy, were firefighters, always working; it was a logical profession and suited them just fine.

Their mother would pack the children a lunch, crush ice and put it in a red plaid thermos with sweet berry juice, let them eat outside on a blanket.  Somehow these picnics were so much more special than meals indoors.

It wasn't until dusk that all the dolls would be carted in, in a little red wagon, and stored in the basement in a large brown trunk until the next play day.

How magical that time was, when imagination would determine the movement of an entire day.
    
She was so happy, this little girl, with her built in best friend sister, and she would fall asleep at night listening to crickets outside her window, dreaming of a life she would one day create.

corner view~impression

Evening boat dock, Alexandria Bay, Virginia, 1992

oil pastel on paper

There was a time in my life when I made art all the time.  Like when I made the drawing above.  I was single, living in Old Towne Alexandria then and could walk to the water's edge from my apartment.  I often did this at night when the weather was warm.  There were street musicians, family with strollers, live music, buzzing restaurants.  I would bring my sketchbook with me wherever I went.  I carried a large bag to fit it in.

My artmaking started in childhood and lasted into my twenties.  I became an art therapist after completing my masters degree, which I did right after college.  I worked in a psychiatric hospital full time as an art therapist.  I did several groups a week, they lasted about two hours.  There was a big art room full of great supplies on our unit.  While the patients created art in the first hour, relaxing music playing in the background, I often painted with them.  It was just a part of my daily life.

Now I carry a smaller purse and I don't even have a sketchbook.  I bought one this summer, but it sits on my desk, crisp, clean, still new.  I am trying to break through the resistance.  I don't know how to get back there to daily artmaking.  I have been painting some.  I feel like I don't have the free time to get myself into that creative space.  I do have some free time in the week, but it's hard for me to get there.  But every time I take the time I enjoy it so much.
   

 Laura Howard and artist me, 1992.  

Laura made such an impression on me.  She was my friend.  We worked at the hospital together.  She was a nursing staff member.  She had a great sense of humor and a fierce sense of loyalty.  She was really intelligent, but totally approachable to staff and patients alike.  Some people are solid.  They are who they are and they never change.  Laura is one such friend.  To this day she is a fan of me and my entire family.  I miss her.  How lucky we are to find the friends we do on our life's path.

life lessons

This is Skylar's webshow -- in this episode she addresses bullying.   

I was harassed in high school my first year by a group of troubled girls who were my age.  I am not kidding, one of the girls' fathers was in prison, and I went to a really good high school!  These mean girls were from the city.  I was a small town country girl.  I never did anything to them, they just started picking on me.  I told an adult but it didn't help, in fact it made it a little worse.   They were pretty scary to me.  There was this older girl in my school (Becky) who was on my gymnastics team and she got word of what was happening.   Becky was also a city girl.   She had a few choice words with the bully leader.  Let's just say those awful girls never even looked at me, let alone spoke to me ever again, and two were soon kicked out of our school, due to their own self destructive behavior.   The rest of my time in high school was much better.

Becky was my hero.  Thank you Becky!!

My daughter was teased and mistreated by some girls and accused of being -- are you ready? -- too happy.  Now she is in a school where there is zero tolerance for this type of behavior and she is loved by her friends for who she is.  For the most part the kids treat each other with respect, despite their differences.

Have your kids experienced being bullied?    

corner view~hindsight

 21 years ago, as an art therapy intern

We have all heard the expression, hindsight is 20/20.  If we could look back on our lives and the choices we made and where those choices have led us, would we change anything?

Or are all of the choices we made the perfect choices that have led us to where we are?

Certainly we make mistakes.  I am not talking about foolishness.  I am talking about major forks in the road.  Do I attend this college or that one?  Do I take this job offer or look for another?  Do I move across the country or stay put?  Do I move my family to this new place?  I remember a point in my young adulthood where I was distinctly aware of the fact that my life choice would lead me down a path, and how it was frightening because I so wanted to do the right thing.  

Years later I asked a wise person's advice to guide me when I was faced with another huge life decision.  He told me, God guides you where you are.  I was hoping for something more concrete.  He repeated he same thing.

God guides you where you are.

So much of life is based on making somewhat blind decisions and trusting fate.  Otherwise we would be able to see our future.  We can only do our best with the information we have, knowing some things will make more sense in time. 

corner view~something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

Our wedding was a mixture of tradition and yet a unique creation.  I wore pearls and had a veil.  I carried flowers, as did my sister, who was my maid of honor.  We wrote our vows.  We read from the Bible and we read from Rumi.  We had lots of live music.  Our best friend officiated, and, of course, we were married in a garden.

I found this info on the internet.  I learned something this CV.  Our title phrase was taken from an old saying.

Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue
And a silver sixpence in her shoe.

Here is the explanation, slightly paraphrased by yours truly.

A sixpence is a coin that was minted in Britain from 1551 to 1967. It was made of silver and worth six pennies.  The wedding tradition is English, and many sources say that it began in the Victorian era.

Each item in this poem represents a good-luck token for the bride. If she carries all of them on her wedding day, her marriage will be happy. "Something old" symbolizes continuity with the bride's family and the past. "Something new" means optimism and hope for the bride's new life ahead. "Something borrowed" is usually an item from a happily married friend or family member, whose good fortune in marriage is supposed to carry over to the new bride. The borrowed item also reminds the bride that she can depend on her friends and family.  I love this part.

As for the colorful item, blue has been connected to weddings for centuries. In ancient Rome, brides wore blue to symbolize love, modesty, and fidelity. Christianity has long dressed the Virgin Mary in blue, so purity was associated with the color. Before the late 19th century, blue was a popular color for wedding gowns, as evidenced in proverbs like, "Marry in blue, lover be true."

A silver sixpence in the bride's shoe represents wealth and financial security. It may date back to a Scottish custom of a groom putting a silver coin under his foot for good luck. For optimum fortune, the sixpence should be in the left shoe.

This summer we will celebrate our seventeen year anniversary.  This is a perfect valentine's day topic.  Happy Valentine's Day G.

college

One of the happiest times in my life were my college days.  Saint Mary's College.  Funny, recently my mom and I were talking and she reminded me how homesick I was at first.  I had forgotten.  But I was homesick that first year, even with my brother a college junior at a university across the street.  This was before the days of email and Skype, cell phones and free long distance, when contact meant a hand written letter, or an expensive long distance phone call.

 

However I quickly became acclimated to college life, making new friends, going to dances, football games, and getting into art.  I joined the gymnastics club.  I found a favorite road to take long bike rides.  I took interesting classes.  By my sophomore year I had decided to major in art.

I had always loved art as a kid and teen.  I had taken classes in those days but nothing was like the total immersion into the life of an artist that happened in college.  My professors were real artists, all of them.  There was a gallery on campus that I worked in, learing to hang paintings and display sculptures.  I studied drawing, ceramics, fibers, photography, sculpture, and printmaking.  A couple of hours away was the big city of Chicago with the Art Institute, galleries, and funky cool people...all very new to my small town girl eyes.  

I met one of my very best friends in college.  I just talked to her today, over twenty years later.   What a blessing Janel is in my life.  We have been through boyfriends, break ups, living together in college and afterwards, first jobs, weddings, pregnancies, births, and now raising children...

Last summer Gary, my father and I left Miller Beach one day and drove the kids to South Bend, Indiana, where we visited my college campus.  I had not been back since graduation.  We walked around and went inside three of the four dorms I lived in.  We toured the athletic center and the art building.  Although there are some new buildings, it is pretty much the same.  It was wonderful being there after so many years.   

Then we drove across the street to the University of Notre Dame and my father toured us around.  I have many fond memories there.  When my brother was a student we would visit, have meals together, talk on the phone (with a cord, remember them?)  My brother had nice friends who were fun, he lived with a large group of guys, including a football player, Steve Beuerlein, who eventually went pro.  My senior year of college the Notre Dame football team won the national championship, which was very exciting.  The games were magical, the school spirit there unparalleled anything I had experienced before or since.  

It was a really fantastic day.  Thanks Dad!

i've started up again

We remodeled a room last year.  We replaced the carpet with wood laminate floors and hung several mirrors, side by side, for dancing.  It is a large room that leads to our pool, where I have my desk, and we have the only TV in the house, some rockers, a comfy couch. I imagined this would be a place for the kids to sing and dance and act.  They do a little bit filming there.  But the room isn't really being used for its intended purpose.  The kids do their dancing and singing upstairs where the piano and drums and microphones are.  Although I do love the new floors I have felt a little bad about not using the room for its original purpose. 

But a couple of weeks ago I realized that the room was an art room.  Just a different kind.  It's MY art room.

Duh.

Over the years I have dreamed of an art room with cement floors and a sink, and convinced myself that it's the only way to truly make the type of messes I tend to make when making art. And I have been so immersed in parenting that I have forgotten how important it is to live life as the artist that I am.  I have spent only a few days in the last ten years doing something I used to love so much, painting.   I have justified that writing, photography, and blogging is enough for me.

Duh.

And so I began setting my studio up a couple of weeks ago, since we have been home.  Without cement floors, or a sink.  Sharing the space with many other family activities.  And two days ago, I made my first piece of art with various papers, oil pastels, pieces of magazine, scissors, and a glue stick.  After an hour of fun and layering and working with colors I came up with the image pictured above.   The next day I made another drawing, an anthropomorphic cut out figure with oil pastels, on a used brown paper bag.

I remember in art school when people would make mixed media images like this and the professors would call them drawings and I would think that was so cool.  Because I had always thought of drawings as lined images made with pencil or pen on paper.

But actually, drawings can be much more.

I feel like I have a little bit of art school still with me.  I feel like a college kid again, only a bit wiser.  This rebirth makes me so happy I am bursting at the seams.  I can hardly wait to make more.

corner view~indispensable

acrylic painting, 1992

Creativity is indispensable.  Absolutely necessary.  That's what I see as I visit your blogs.  So many artists, expressing themselves in word and image.   

Sometimes for me creativity comes in the form of cooking, garden or house design, photography, painting furniture.  Years ago, in art school, it came in the form of ceramics, bookmaking, drawing, metal sculpture.

Sometimes creativity comes in the form of painting for the sake of the pure joy of painting.  It has been a long time since I painted.  Seven years I think.

I'll get back there.

Today I was talking to my husband about how appreciative I am that he supports me in my creative pursuits.  Perhaps it is because he himself is an artist, a songwriter.  He understands.  Perhaps it is because he likes what I make.  Perhaps it is because he appreciates the magic of paintings.  He will spend hours in an art gallery, sometimes longer than I will want to stay.

Whatever the reason I am lucky.

Because I live in a house where if I spend the day wearing ripped, paint splattered jeans, blaring music, making art, paint in my hair, losing track of time, oblivious to the rest of the cares of the world with a bit of a wild look in my eyes...

...well, my husband thinks it's the coolest thing in the world.

corner view~time

Where does the time go?  What happened to the 20-year-old me?  How will our children change as they become adults?  What a trip it is to become older.  And what a blessing time brings.  Wisdom.  Patience.  Understanding.  Reflection.  New experiences.  Surprises.  Change. 

These are the time-related questions and thoughts I find myself contemplating these days.  The older I get, the less I realize that I know for certain. 

I think my husband described time well in his song, New Life:

"Time is an illusion
But it still feels too short to me"

CV lesson of the day for me, and maybe you!  Seize the moment.  Seize the day.  Love the time you have to experience the gift of your life.  And happy Wednesday, April 6th, 2011.

corner view~anything goes

I made this painting a few years ago, after a ten year hiatus from painting.  I woke up one morning with Shawn still a baby and decided if I didn't paint then, I might never paint again.  Later when Shawn was taking a nap, I grabbed our art supplies, and I included my girls that day along with our babysitter, Annie.  They each made their own paintings, and we all had so much fun.  

This painting came from that day.  I worked in warm colors, which was new for me.  

I really love how it turned out, like a rosebud waiting to blossom, but beautiful as it is.  Isn't that the goal?  To be happy with the process of our lives, and enjoy every stage, including the rosebud stages?

It is for me.

This painting was then chosen to be in a book about artists who are also poets.  I also had some poetry published.  I will share one of the poems, written about our son when he was a baby.

First Boy

My wondrous child

with bright red wavy hair

resembles the great grandfather

he never knew-

who tinkered and built

gadgets of all sorts.

"A man needs a workbench"

was his motto.

This boy is on a mission.

Just today,

he unloaded the dishwasher,

drawers and all,

pulled a painting off the wall,

and joyously dumped

a box of three hundred toothpicks

on the kitchen floor.

Someday he will learn

from his grandfather

how to repair a door hinge,

refinish an antique,

grow a green lawn.

He may build a rock path, a fence,

and maybe, just maybe,

fix something for me.

This is the book.

Thanks to Ninja, for this idea.  Next week's theme is "taking a different perspective" and it comes from Dana.  And please feel free to leave me ideas for more corner views.  I like to include you all in this, if possible.   

corner view~pondering

This theme came from the lovely Juniper.

2003 Remember these days?

Lately I have been reflecting on the power of patience and the blessing of time.  It's good to look at where we have been, and where we are now.  It's good to note growth.

And it's exciting to imagine what's to come!

Seven years ago we welcomed our third baby.  We were getting ready to move 3000 miles, the house was a constant disaster, and I felt overwhelmed with the messiness of the house and the daunting task of such a massive change.

Now these three children help with laundry, cooking, and washing cars.  Sky is our babysitter when we go out.  No one is in diapers anymore!  And I, thank you very much, have gotten more relaxed about a messy house.  But I still love it when it is picked up best.  And luckily it doesn't get as crazy as it was in the above photo.

Next week's theme is "famous," and it comes from Don.

reflections on dawn and my daughters

I met her when I was eleven.  The minute she saw me she said to herself, I want to be her friend.  I found this out years later.  She was new to our town and our school, St. Joseph's.  I had been there since first grade.  It was seventh grade, not the easiest time to enter a new social scene.  We became best friends that year, wearing our hair in pig tails, which seventh graders did in the 70's in the U.S.   

By high school Dawn and I were inseparable in our blue polyester Catholic school uniforms, kneesocks hovering below our knobby knees, brown leather tie "school" shoes, a new pair each year, worn all year.  We were on the cheerleading squad and the swim team, we did theater shows together.  We slept at each others' homes almost every weekend, and I loved helping her clean out her closet.  (Don't ask, I'm a little odd.) We laughed and joked and traded clothes.  She admired my art talent and I admired her big heart, her confidence, and how she treated old people.  I want to be more like her, I decided, and I started to.  Knowing her really changed me. 

We stayed in touch as the years went on and we were in separate colleges, visiting in the summers, talking on the phone, writing letters (remember letters)?  When we graduated from college I was finished first so I went to see her at the University of Virginia, where she starred in a play.  I whistled so loud at curtain call.  Years later we both went on to graduate school.  I moved to California and got married.  Dawn was there at my wedding, helping set up behind the scenes.  She was at the birth of my first child, driving through what would normally be close to three hours of traffic in 1 1/2 hours.  Never hit a red light.  Remarkable.

Now fast forward all these years.  We both are married with three kids.  Our kids have spent time pretty much every summer together since they were very young, so they are like cousins.  They really love each other.  They live 6000 miles away.  Dawn and I always talked of raising our families in the same place.  We got close a couple of times, but it never worked out. 

I saw Dawn this summer, and she and her three boys spent a few days and nights with us.  I miss Dawn.  I miss having a close girl friend in my daily life.  I miss having someone I can have fun with doing anything, even going to the hardware store we are talking and laughing all the while, which we managed to do this summer on a three hour getaway while Gary watched ALL SIX KIDS.  Thanks G.   

This is the photo of our kids having a "tantrum" when it was time to say goodbye.

I realized something recently.  My girls are now 11 and 14.  Annabel is the age I was when I met Dawn.  Sky is the age I was when we really became close.

My girls at at such great ages.  They are silly like Dawn and I were as girls.  When I see them interact now I constantly remember myself at their ages.  The girls and I have been having so much fun, laughing our heads off this week.  They are growing up, but still silly.

This makes me miss Dawn a little less.  It's almost like having her here.

corner view~me

The me I was fourteen years ago.  A new mother with a five day old babe in my arms, me crying everytime Gary sang "Sky's Lullaby," a song he still hasn't recorded, although it is one of my favorites.  Me: a wife for one year.  I always dreamed of being married to someone who could sit at a piano and sing with me.

The years have passed and in the busy-ness of raising three kids I spent ten years not painting, something I used to spend hours doing every free Saturday I had when I was young and single and free. Until one day in 2003 I sat down by golly and painted something entirely new, something in reds and yellows, something I never would have created in my twenties.  I have moved many times since that photo was taken with Gary and baby Sky at the Steinway, and now we have a new piano, a Bosendorfer, I know how to grow food, there is the Internet and Youtube and Facebook and email, but I still have some of those paintbrushes from my younger days.  And I am going to pull them out when we get home.

Somehow I have come to be the me that I am today.  I am finally taking singing lessons.  "If not now, when?" I have to ask.

And a few days ago I took the kids to the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria, where I lived in my twenties -- a place I took for granted when I was a young thing.   We walked through the halls surrounded by working artists, we looked at large colorful abstract paintings, one of a kind handmade sweaters and belts, bottle cap pendants, shiny glazed pottery, and in that hour I found myself, and I remembered oh yeah, I am an artist.  I don't care if what I make pleases anyone.  I just need to make things again.

Me now.  More relaxed, happier, certainly wiser.  Sometimes I feel the inklings of what it will be to be an old lady.  But I am still a girl at heart.  And soon I will be an artist again.

p.s. This video is what my creative energy has gone into in the last month.  Song is "A Whisper Can Change the World."  We did have a team, but I gave input.

corner view~vending machines

This was a hard one for me.  I rarely see vending machines where I live.  I couldn't think of anywhere to take any photos.  Then I remembered a vending machine from my history, so I will share with you a memory:

Growing up in a small town in rural upstate New York, I attended the big Catholic all girls high school, with several hundred young women, called Our Lady of Mercy.  The school was housed in an ancient building, on a very pretty campus where the town met the city.  We shared Mercy with the nuns that lived at the motherhouse, which was actually connected to the school.

In the school there was a long hallway near the main office where all of the guidance counselors' offices were, and halfway down this hallway was a chapel.  We attended masses there infrequently, maybe only a few in my four years there.  But they were memorable.  A hushed quiet reverence came over you the moment you walked into the chapel, which was always kept dimly lit.

Down that hallway next to the chapel there was a very old elevator with round push buttons.  It went up several floors.   This was opposed to the stairs we all climbed in school to get from the basement all the way up three levels to the fourth floor.  But this elevator was for the nuns only, to get to the motherhouse.

One time I went up in that elevator.  I was with a teacher -- a nun I think, a younger one I was close to.  We went to visit an elderly nun, her friend I suppose, someone who was possibly sick.  We brought something to her.  I wish I could remember the details, but at fifteen I was too self occupied to notice.  All I remember is the feeling of respect I felt at being asked to come, and the awareness that students were not normally allowed in the elevator, and certainly not on the fifth floor.  I glimpsed into the tiny rooms, all with a small bed, nightstand, and a single image hanging on the wall.  Probably the Sacred Heart, or the Virgin Mary.  I dared not stare although I so wanted to go in and look around a room.

And I remember the silence.  In the long hallway we walked down we saw a few tiny old ladies in full black habits, shuffling along, some with canes.  They all nodded at me and the sister I was with, but spoke no words.  Growing up in a large family, I had never heard silence like that until then.  Silence where people were choosing not to speak, for spiritual reasons.   

One of the greatest things about our school was that it was really old, with intricate woodwork, beautiful furniture in a parlor room at the front of the motherhouse (I got to go in there once too), and a marble statue of the Virgin Mary.  We also had these underground tunnels that we walked through to get to a whole other part of the building, heating vents exposed and all.  The cafeteria was also on the basement floor.

Next to the cafeteria there were the vending machines.  Two or three of them.  There was no candy.  Just chips, and soda as I recall, and bottled water.  And one of the only machines like it I have ever seen before or since.  An apple machine.  I'm sure it was an antique.

It was a large metal machine with four windows for four apples, some red, some green.  The apples cost a quarter back then.  You had to push a large metal round button.  I can still hear the sound of the apple falling, right before I would reach for it.  Many a time I ate apples to keep me going after late play practice, or gymnastics practice, or softball practice, waiting at five o'clock for my parents to come pick me up.  I don't know how, but the apples were never bruised, always shiny and perfect.  I imagined a sweet old nun hand picking the apples every morning.  There were many nuns there that were so kind to and loved us girls, that this was totally possible.  They were everywhere, many of them not teachers, always looking after us like mother hens.

There was also a school store run by Sr. Bonaventure.  She was a tough math teacher with a soft spot as well.  Some girls helped her run it, I mean she was about a million years old.  It was open in the early mornings, and they sold school supplies and candy.  Everything was under a dollar back then.  I remember how cute she was making change, like she was giving you so much money back, because to her ten cents was TEN cents.

The one thing that we got from Mercy that I didn't realize until now, as I write this, was an opportunity to have relationships with so many old women of our grandmothers generation, and older.  Many of our teachers were in their seventies, some in their eighties.  What this fostered in me (besides a few good inside jokes) was a love and respect and understanding of the pace of older people.  

I never once bought candy from Sr. Bonaventure's store, perhaps an unconscious vow I took after my brother had been recently diagnosed with diabetes.  It seemed wrong to have candy in school, although I never minded for the other girls.  I was happy with my daily apple.  

I wonder, how much can you get for a quarter today?   And what lessons will our children get from their relationships with teachers in their lives?

I went back to this school a few years ago.  By then my sweet, loving fifth grade teacher was the principal.  And my eighth grade teacher also taught there.  They both gave me huge hugs, calling me by my childhood nickname "Tree."  It was a very warm and happy feeling to return there.  I hadn't been there since I graduated.  I ran into some of my old teachers and walked all around the inside of the school, visited the gym, the art room, the campus, reminiscing in my mind.  What struck me was how many happy memories I had, of a place that had been a second home to me for so many years, even though at the time there was plenty of drama and even some severe bullying, and I seriously wanted to transfer to the public school after my first year there.  Good thing I didn't.

So all of these thoughts come to mind when I thought about vending machines.  And how both of my daughters are home schooling.  They never want to go to regular school, certainly not high school mom!  I wonder, will they miss out on things?  Or will the opportunities they get in their unique situation be better for them?

I have wanted so many things for my kids, exactly like I had them.  I see now that that was a bit naive, and also idealistic.  They are living a different life than I did, it is a different time in history.  I grew up with four distinct seasons, they are growing up in the tropics and yearn to be able to play in snow just once.  The woods were my backyard -- for them it's the beach.  I went to and loved school for the most part.  My daughters are home schooled and very happy.  Plus, I tell myself, plenty of kids get into good colleges who are home schooled.

And, as my dear friend recently said to me.  It is all part of God's plan for them.  They are happy.  So don't worry.

So there you have it.  Apples and vending machines and a few of my thoughts and memories.

To see more interpretations of this topic (vending machines, believe it or not after reading my blog) from people around the world go to the sidebar at my friend, Jane's blog.

Scroll down two posts if you want to be considered for a music giveaway, and please leave a comment there.  Wednesday is the last day to enter comments.

a lifetime ago

My husband and I were married and lived in northern California for the beginning of our life together.  This was back in the days when I really lived as an artist.  I created things for our home, painting shelves, redoing furniture, painting flower pots, fashioning garden trellises...

I had been to college and had studied fine arts, mainly pottery and metal sculpture.  Forward five years...and my favorite form of expression as a new wife, and then a new mother, was mosaics.  I was self taught.

When we got our first home, the bathroom was in bad shape.  So we hired Rolf, and he laid new flooring.  He told me to pick some tile I liked to put over the bathtub.  I looked and looked.  The only stuff I really liked was very expensive, imported from Italy.

Then I got the idea to do a mosaic myself.  I gathered free samples of tiles, broke them in pieces with a hammer, and since I ended up with many blues and greens, decided to create an underwater scene.

It was so much fun.

Next thing I knew I was going nuts, mosaic-ing everything in sight.  I did this to the front wall of the house.

The house was unique.  Made to resemble a Shaker barn, we were told by the previous owners.  It was a great house.

corner view~coffee companion

I don't drink coffee.  I did in college a few times, but it made me feel strange.  So I stopped.  I do drink tea.

Eleven years ago when our middle daughter was an infant, my husband came home from grocery shopping and told me he had found us a babysitter.  I was a bit skeptical, rarely having left the kids with anyone.  But when I met Annie, I liked her so much that we decided to give her a shot.  She had no experience with babies but I didn't care.  "That can be taught," I thought.  It was her heart that was most important. 

Annie was a violinist and college student.  The timing was perfect for her to take on a part time job with us because she had injured her shoulder playing her instrument and she was unable to work the cash register.  It was so long ago that Annie first came to help at our home in California, and I was in a blur as a mom of a baby and a 2 1/2 year old.  I don't remember much except for that Annie was a huge help when she came, the kids adored her and she quickly became part of the family.  She was a quick study.

Eventually we moved to the tropics.  But every year we would find a way to work Annie into our schedule.  She babysat for us many summers back in California where we would visit.  Then she began to travel with us.  We were always so grateful to have the help.

When I was in my 20's I lived with a family while I attended graduate school in Washington, D.C.  They had two young children and I helped them part time in exchange for my room and board.  It was a great arrangement.  I remember when I became a mother, 3000 miles from my family, with just a few friends, I thought to myself, "I need a Theresa."

I had found my Theresa in Annie.

A few years ago Annie had a few months of free time.  Her lease was up in one place and she was getting ready to travel home to see her family, in her native, Iowa.  So we arranged for her to come live with us for a few months.  The only problem was that we didn't have room for her.  No problem, we decided.  We live in warm weather.  So we pitched a large tent in the backyard, put a comfy full sized bed in there, gave her a shelf for her clothes, ran an extension cord for power, a small lamp, and Annie became our tent daughter.

Traveling with someone is different from having someone live with you for a few months.  But we knew it would be fine.  It was Annie.  Yeah it was a tent.  Yeah she had to deal with kids most of the time, even when she was "off," there was a noisy house.  Yeah she had to sleep on the couch a few times when we had heavy rainstorms.  Yeah she had to share a bathroom with the kids.  But it was Annie.

Annie is my "coffee companion."  But remember I drink tea.  Well, Annie introduced me to chai.  Believe it or not, I first had chai just a few years ago.  It was the stuff in the box, concentrated, with sugar.

"You're gonna love this T," she said.  "You're gonna get addicted to this T," she said.  "You're gonna kill me," she said. 

She fixed me a cup, complete with a little milk.  Oh my.  She was right.  Then I got to blame her for getting me hooked.  My little coffee companion.

Now Annie doesn't live with us anymore.  :(  I am good.  I only drink chai as a treat.  I couldn't handle sugar daily.  But whenever Annie and I are together now we always go out for chai.  In airports.  In malls.  To Starbucks.  Or anywhere that serves it.  And we sit and talk and laugh and never run out of things to say.  After all, she's Annie.

Annie is married now.  She married a man from Bali.  While she was our tent daughter the first time (it went so well we did it a couple of years later), she was saving up to travel to Bali.  I remember thinking, "Why is a young lady from Iowa so interested in going to Bali?"  But she was really driven.  And after going the first time she began to learn the language, and then she got a scholarship to study the language intensively.  And she began to play Gamelan music, her shoulder injury was better.

So you see she was being led to the man that she married.  Half way around the world.

Sometimes life is like that.  And guess what?  She got a full scholarship to a graduate school in the same state where we live.

2007

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corner view~wisdom from an elder

My grandfather was a kindhearted, happy, giving man that everyone loved.  He was always patient and caring with all people he interacted with, and I never saw him lose his temper.  I was blessed to spend a lot of quality time with him as a child.  What I remember about him most was that he was always laughing and making jokes.  He had white hair when I knew him, but as a boy he had bright red, curly hair, "so thick you couldn't get a comb through it," he would always tell me.  I think he related to me because I too have red hair.

He played the trumpet, often accompanying my grandmother while she played the piano.  

Grandpa, as we called him, made friends with everyone.  He was forever helping people in need, and loved hard work.  Many a tree was trimmed, many a driveway plowed, many a field mowed due to his generous spirit.  He lived in the country in a rural neighborhood, and took it upon himself to take care of all of the open space in this neighborhood.  In the winter he would take us into the woods and we would pick ground pine that he would make into beautiful wreaths.  In the summer we picked wild berries for hours, our arms and legs covered to protect us from the prickers.  Each summer I spent a week by myself with him and my grandmother, and after supper every night we would take a walk.  We would be out for an hour or two, until twilight, as so many neighbors would come to say hello to their neighbor, "Bob."  He was the most popular person in the neighborhood.

"Look at this girl turn a cartwheel," he used to brag.  Sometimes he even asked me to do it in stores, or parking lots.  I was always happy to oblige.

Grandpa didn't discriminate much with friends, and some of them were more colorful than others.  He had a knack for making friends with people with the strangest names.

Flick Haley
Mike Ice
Uni Gagen
Clarence Kinyon
Timothy Splitfinger
Turd Willager
Ferman Sweetapple

The wisdom he imparted was by example.  However he did have a few classic sayings that we heard many times growing up.

*Money is like manure.  It's no good unless you spread it around.
*It's good to get together with family for awhile and have happy times.  It doesn't cost anything to laugh.
*A bottle of beer is okay once in awhile but you don't have to drink the whole case.
*If you listen to your mother you'll be all right.  If you don't you won't.
*Do you live to eat, or eat to live?
*That woman hates beer more than the devil hates holy water.
*It doesn't cost anything to be nice.

The most important lesson he taught me was to be happy and enjoy life.

Thank you Jane, for giving me the opportunity to choose this week's corner view.  For more wisdom from elders all over the world, go to the sidebar here.

I want to welcome my other daughter, Annabel, to corner view.  She's 11. Check out her post today.

Also please check back this Thursday, as I will be doing a surprise giveaway.  My first.

my oldest friend

There is nothing like a friend who has known you your entire life. This is Kathy. We were next door neighbors since we were as young as I can remember. We played together - swimming, dolls, doing craft projects, playing four square and tennis in the street, having dinner at each others' house. She was my neighbor until we both went to college. She recently moved to a town next to my parents'. She has four children, and this summer we got to visit with them. The kids had a blast hanging out in their fort, riding scooters to get ice cream in the nearby village, watching the boats on the Erie canal. It rained, it was sunny, it was a glorious typical east coast summer day. Kathy sent me home with a jar of her homemade raspberry jam. Love you Kath!

Kathy, her husband Nick and Joseph, Sarah, John and Daniel

the Marks and DiSalvo kids

10 fellows road

This is the house I grew up in. It is now owned by a Chinese family who owns the only Chinese restaurant in town. You can't get a good photograph from the front, because the trees are too large now. These are trees my father planted many years ago. I took the kids on a ride down memory lane, through my old town. There are more houses, bigger malls, and certainly more people living there. But many things remain the same...

The goose lady is still there, or at least one of her relatives, or a person who bought her house and has the same hobby of keeping pigeons. Why do people keep pigeons? Well the house is no different. This was a half mile walk from our house. Whenever we walked by her geese would come after us and hiss. We learned to hiss back.

Our address was 10 Fellows Road. A friendly name

for a street. Much happier than Stoney Lonesome!

farmhouse down the street

barn on our street

The infamous Furman hill, where I used to ride my bike when I wanted a good workout. I took the kids to the very top and came to the house of Wayne Bortle, a boy who had so many siblings, that he was an uncle at 12 years old! His house hasn't changed at all.