Grandmothers – Page 85

How will I know?

Posted on May 13, 2018by sue boardman

I watch a fair amount of HGTV.

I like the fix up a house for a family kind of shows rather than the flip options or the chain sawing through Alaska sagas.

We’ve been, as you may have suspected, playing HGTV at our house lately.

We’re making progress. Quite a bit, actually.

There’s room to paint and quilt and write.

A big chunk of our kitchen is rearranged according to the way we actually eat these days.

There’s even a table for gathering our beloveds around art and food, games and stories.

Somebody asked me, the other day, how I would know when we were done.

There are two answers to that.

The first is that we probably won’t be done. It really isn’t in me. Life keeps changing.

The second is that when I can sit in my fabulous new red chair with my feet up and a cup of tea, not feeling like I need to leap up and fix something, we’ll be pretty close for now.

When Luther gets up the nerve to hang out in the new family room, we’ll be right on target.

For the moment, Container Store loves me. Amazon is enthusiastic as well.

Shelves. Little plastic drawers in every size and shape. Rug pads. A shower curtain, even.

Better yet, though, is Kudzu.

Our local vintage and collectible place. Two book cases and an awesome library cart have followed me home recently, all from the budget department.

There’s even room around here in case a miracle happens and I buy another book or two.

It being Mothers’ Day, I can’t help but wonder what my mom would think.

Horrified comes to mind.

We don’t have “living room” furniture. Or “dining room” furniture, the way I grew up.

Nothing matches.

We have drapes but I’m going to have them cut off to the same length as the bottom of the windows.

The rugs, and pads, are to make the dogs comfy. (It takes up less room than a zillion dog beds!)

Vacuuming is a whole other issue!

And yet, with a lot of help, we are getting closer and closer to what we need.

The sheets are clean.

The towels are folded into the linen closet. (Which way needs a paint job!)

Tomorrow I’ll start paint-sketching the Talisman canvas.

There’s really good left-over soup in the fridge.

And parsley to plant in the morning.

Lots of this would seem weird to Mom.

And yet, somewhere deep inside, I think she might get it.

I hope so.

For now, though, a new pair of walking shoes. It’s a paint thing!

Blessings for moms of all sorts who remember and are remembered on this day, and Happy Birthday, dear Kelly!

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

Practice What You Preach!

Posted on May 10, 2018by sue boardman

Well, it’s one of those days.

Bill is running late.

Dinner is still cooking.

Sarah has a hotspot.

(Let’s don’t mention the do-nut thing!)

The “Do Not Disturb” signs on the doors have, shall we say, not worked too well today.

The paintings have been more than a bit chatty.

And the portions of my person that my beloved physical therapist refers to as quads are not in a good mood.

If you were to call me up and tell me your version of this story, I’d gently suggest that you take a deep breath or two, fix a cup of tea, and let it go.

Tomorrow will come.

It will still be Spring…at least where most of you are.

We won’t have starved.

Well, if you’re reading this, probably not. We’ll keep working on the rest tomorrow.

I’m squirting the dog with the colloidal silver stuff.

The bones from tonight’s chicken will turn into more food for tomorrow.

I’m making bigger signs for the doors.

And sleeping.

I hope.

Some days all we can do is practice what we preach.

This has been one of those.

There are, in all of our lives, days when those little Monopoly cards come in handy. This is one.

At the moment I’m just crossing my fingers that the whole chicken in the Instant Pot thing works!

I’ll keep you posted.

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

Uncle Epictetus

Posted on May 6, 2018by sue boardman

You know how most families have an eccentric aunt or uncle who is the keeper of the oral traditions?

Even the ones that everyone else would argue never happened?

In my family, it was my Aunt Em. She was my Gramma Elsie’s older sister.

(How much older is a matter of considerable debate!)

Aunt Em was full of stories. Many of them Elsie wished she wouldn’t tell, though we heard them pretty often growing up.

Today, though, I want to tell you about Great, great, great, great…Uncle Epictetus, even though you may have heard about him before.

He’s one of those uncles that you adopted because your family needed him, even though nobody you know ever met him.

Uncle Epictetus lived a long time ago. In fact, he passed on in about 135 C.E.

Born a slave, he grew up to become a Greek philosopher.

(As I mentioned recently, in my opinion Philosophy is a pretty hard thing to wrap your head around!)

If you look him up on-line, you’ll find that there are stone carvings of him, complete with curly hair and a beard.

I’d be kind of surprised if Hallmark has an Epictetus holiday, but if they did, in our house it would be this weekend.

You see, we’ve been pretty caught up in the, “do what you have to do” part of Uncle Epictetus’ saying, which was, ironically, one of my first painting projects, quite a while ago.

More stuff to sort and furniture to move and wires to hook up, all so I can come closer to being the artist and teacher I long to be.

I’ve dreamed and sketched and pondered but, in my world, I have to feel these things, so Bill and I have to shove this here and pull that there and wait until the sun goes down to figure out where I’m going to need more lights.

We’re making progress.

The dogs are having panic attacks.

I keep trying to explain that furniture moves but dogs stay. Treats help.

It’s all going to be ok.

Right now, most of my house looks like a combination of an antique store and a library that exploded.

And, in the midst of the sorting and toting, I keep stopping to check on a couple of friends who are having weekends no mammas/grammas should have.

Then I sit and feel the space and check the reach to my journals and the recycling basket.

We’re making progress.

I haven’t had a nap today.

Or painted even a drop. (Except in my head.)

There are lots of things that would be easier than this.

But I have said to myself what I would be and it’s time to do what I have to do.

I wish Uncle Epictetus were here to tell my girls that story.

I guess it’s my job now.

It might be your job, too.

Contemplations Grandmothers

A Holy Thing

Posted on April 25, 2018by sue boardman

You may recall, if you’ve been hanging out for a while, that I went to Hungary in the winter of 1989. Six students and one of our professors from Columbia Theological Seminary in an Eastern bloc nation where none of us spoke the language, eating pig jello and waiting for our toes to actually freeze.

Mine very nearly did!

The memories and the things I learned that I never imagined on that trip tend to bubble up for me when things are shifting in my world.

This is one of those times.

I don’t recall seeing any Legos in Hungary but I think my current adventure with making new things out of old and shifting bits and pieces of what is into what is about to be have had me wandering, in my imagination, through those days again.

Today, I was sorting bookshelves.

This is a monumental undertaking in my family.

I started with two of the six-foot tall IKEA variety in the room formerly known as the living room.

Mostly foodie stuff and professional things… worship and counseling.

And writing books. Lots of those.

A couple of boxes for things that can be stashed in the basement and things that can be passed onto other homes. More than a bit of dust.

Suddenly, there I was in Hungary. I didn’t remember exactly where we were, except that, by pushing a couple of buttons on my phone, I found out!

The University of Jewish Studies is in Budapest and was established in 1877.

What I did remember was that it was the only rabbinical seminary in the Eastern bloc to survive World War II.

Also that it was cold.

We could still see damage from bombs to the building.

All the students were men, which made restroom issues a challenge for the three women in our group. Let’s just say there was a moment when I feared I had broken every ritual purity law ever written!

The thing I’ll never forget, though, is the library.

We weren’t allowed to enter but I stood in the hall for a couple of hours, awed by the experience.

Our guide explained that they had no books printed since the war, which made a bit more sense when I realized that this was part of the reason we’d all packed as many bibles as we could fit into our luggage. (We might have forgotten to bring some of them home.)

The students removed their shoes before entering the library.

Removed their shoes in a building with no heat to stand, as it were, on holy ground.

And the silence that seeped out of that place literally vibrated with the wisdom of the ages.

So it is, I suspect, no real surprise that I didn’t get rid of too many books today.

Miracles of marks on paper, spreading stories and questions from hand to hand around more and more of the world.

Shoes off, though probably for other reasons as well.

There are a few diet books, cloaked in misplaced optimism, and a few more dusty but really sexy volumes full of bread and pasta we rarely eat these days.

(I’m still working on the food thing but those are pretty clearly on the list of things somebody else can use more than I will.)

Anne Lamott stays, of course. And SARK. Buechner and Brueggemann. Jean Houston. Kaffe Fasset. Alice Waters and Alice Walker. Shiloh Sophia. The guy from The French Laundry whose name I can never remember. A very cool book of symbols compiled by somebody named Taschen.

And four new friends, pictured above.

I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, make yourself a cup of tea and spend some time with paper and ink.

And a small child or two if you have any handy.

It is a holy thing.

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

A Changing World

Posted on April 18, 2018by sue boardman

Yesterday was hectic. All the usual things, plus a big dog food delivery complete with lots of time hanging out in the freezer, a really helpful conversation with a friend, and — drum roll, please — my Muse painting, my inspiration toward my own best self, now has hair!

I suppose you had to be there, but, trust me, it’s been quite a bumpy journey so far.

I’m celebrating.

She has bio-photons, too. And one of these days she’ll be camera-ready!

Finally, though, the time for feet up and Chopped arrived.

Somewhere between my Facebook farming and a cup of hot water with lemon, I think the contestant chefs were cooking with something called cricket Bolognese, which seemed to involve actual bugs.

The next thing I remember noticing was an ad for some technical college.

You’ve probably seen it. The young cartoon mother works and works until all of her co-workers have been replaced by machines.

Of course, the day arrives when she, too, is made, as the Brits would say, redundant.

Off she goes to learn Information Technology and we viewers are left to assume that she and her family live happily ever after.

I hope so.

Here’s what struck me, though.

The tagline on the ad is “Reinventing yourself for a changing world.”

I can relate.

Somehow, though, this particular Grammy seems to be headed in a different direction.

(Which is probably just as well when it comes to natural skill sets!)

Having developed just enough talent to text my kids and squeeze blog posts out of my laptop, I’m spending most of my time growing leafy green things, boiling bones, and learning the ancient arts of essential oils and putting paint on canvas.

There’s more to it than that, though.

There’s the vital notion of intention.

When I garden and cook I am acting, enormous though it may seem, out of the intention of healing the planet and those with whom I share it.

When I paint, I am acting out of the intention to learn about myself and what it means to heal and be human and create.

(It’s probably about other things, too, but I’m new at this and still working on the big concepts!)

This learning isn’t about gold stars on my permanent record.

It’s about my two girls who are growing up in this world. And your kids. And my neighbors’ kids. And kids in places that have had five new names since I took geography in the 7th grade.

It’s about justice and community.

And the radish I had for lunch yesterday. Just picked. Tiny. Ruby red. Crisp. Peppery. Real.

I’m not saying that all the old ways were good and the new ways are bad.

I am suggesting that we’ve wandered too far from some of what matters.

Perhaps we might intend together to wander back a bit.

For now, another radish or two for lunch and a chapter of Alice Waters’ fabulous new book, Coming to My Senses…the making of a counterculture cook.

Then, more paint. Apparently the Muse wants earrings!

Contemplations Grandmothers

Luther and Philosophy 201

Posted on April 15, 2018by sue boardman

For those of you who have joined us more recently, let’s start today with a bit of history after Wednesday’s post about having another go at philosophy.

Luther is our most recent Newfoundland rescue. In addition to Sarah and Phoebe, he makes three in residence, for a total of about 350 pounds of dog. Much of it hair.

In the 14 months this big guy has been with us, he has become one of my greatest teachers.

Luther came from a puppy mill in Michigan. He was estimated to be between two and three years old at the time.

Clearly, it was not a healthy existence.

The poor guy was terribly thin. He had scraggly, patchy hair, poorly developed eyesight, and, to add to the indignity of all that, had just been neutered.

Beyond those challenges, he was terrified. Of people. Noises. Cars.

Did I say noises?

Basically, he was terrified of everything.

The therapist-type in me who is conversant in the DSM-5 realized quickly that he was frequently dissociative which means that anything or anyone new triggered his only survival strategy… literally trying to disappear into the floor.

To say that he is a whole different dog these days is the understatement of several centuries!

He loves everybody and is always ready to join the wave of dog-ness that washes over people at our door.

He rides happily in the car and is thrilled to go to Camp. He even wags all over when the Vet comes to visit.

Sometimes I forget how far he’s come.

Like when I’m tired and pissed at him for not quite having figured out “No”, which happened, as you may recall, just this week.

Tonight I got a huge reminder of all the ways his spirit continues to triumph despite all he’s been through.

Tonight, he let me trim his ears. With scissors!

To say that Luther’s been reluctant to come on board with the notion of grooming is yet another huge understatement.

We’ve taken it slow. Microscopically slow.

Petting was a first start. Touching his toes and ears. Hugging.

Eventually, we got to brushing. Along his spine only, at first. Slowly. Oh, so slowly we made it to towels, which are still an if-fy proposition some days.

His ears have remained the big issue. We’re talking lots of dog with lots of hair on the inside of his ears where it causes lots of trouble.

Perhaps it was the phase of the moon, but tonight he was ready.

We got one ear all cleaned up and the second (far worse) one about 75% done. I’m talking scissors and everything!

The ironic thing is that I almost didn’t try.

I was going to be happy with just some general brushing and bonding, complete with a small truckload of dehydrated beef liver treats.

Instead, we even got a bit of hair trimmed around the edge of the ear leather. He’s in no danger of winning Westminster but he doesn’t look nearly so much like his mama dresses him funny.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I went for it tonight.

I am, too!

It kind of reminds me of Dave’s first hair cut.

I suspect it has something to do with a recent Zoom meeting that reminded me of the theory that virtually all human choices are made out of either fear or some variation on love/passion/enthusiasm.

I’m trying hard to choose love.

I’m also hoping Luther and I are both going to sleep better tonight.

He looks pretty tired right now. After all, teaching is hard work!

Maybe next week we’ll work on the philosophy thing some more. And the second ear.

Many things are possible!

Contemplations Grandmothers

Ready For Another Go!

Posted on April 11, 2018by sue boardman

I took a course in Philosophy once.

Thirty years or so ago.

I wanted to love it.

Our professor loved it and I thought him a miracle of wisdom and kindliness.

I wanted to know what he knew. To glimpse what he loved.

In that moment, though, I did not love philosophy.

My mind, raised as it had been by mostly modernist world views, wondered alternately how we as humans could have been in a place when we did not know this or that and how we might ever have questioned thus or so.

In my defense, I was also consumed at the time with the seemingly more urgent matters of baby Greek, putting groceries on the table, and a document we Presbyterian types refer to as the Book of Order.

Lately, I have begun to expect that the mere mortal intellects among us cease to be philosophical somewhere around the age of four or five and, if we are lucky, find ourselves ready for another go at it somewhere on the far side of fifty.

Which might suggest that we wonder a bit about the usefulness of conventional American Kindergarten and many of the survival skills we take for granted in our world, though that is, perhaps, an issue for a different day.

Another professor of mine said much the same thing when he called to us to be poets. If you don’t know Walter Brueggemann, there’s an episode of The West Wing that covers this nicely. I think it’s the one about the late night flight to Portland.

In any event, I found myself in a philosophical mode this morning.

I started out pissed.

Actually, I started out tired but, in my experience, tired often leads to pissed.

In this case, the immediate cause appeared to be Luther.

The same Luther who went out, with the four-footed girls, for his last stroll around the back forty about 11:00 last night.

I knew, when he barked at precisely 6:45 this morning, that he had no urgent personal needs. He simply wanted to go lay outside on the cool, damp ground and feel the world come alive.

Now, I’m not opposed to such a wish, in principle. On this particular morning, though, it coincided with a long night full of two paintings clamoring for my attention and nowhere near enough sleep.

Luther, however, has not yet developed a neurological circuit for, “I’ve heard your message and the answer is, ‘No.'”

I caved, reluctantly, justified by the other relevant factor that Bill’s shoulder hurts and he hadn’t slept well either.

About 20 minutes and a brief visit to my paintings later, I sat curled under a favorite quilt in my magic chair with a steaming cup of lemon water in my hands, listening to the birds sing the garden awake.

All the while, I fumed.

“Rotten, no-good dog! When is he going to learn?”

“He’s never going to learn if I keep caving in.”

“How am I supposed to get anything done today if I lost another hour’s worth of sleep?”

Feel free to fill in some more blanks, if you like. You get the drift.

Suddenly, though, I heard two of the more philosophical voices in my current universe warming up in my head.

“Expectations are the root of suffering,” said Qigong master, Chunyi Lin.

And, with a throaty California sort of accent, “In this moment, nothing is wrong,” from actor, author, and teacher, Samantha Bennett.

Frankly, it’s taken me a while to get on board with Chunyi. And, at the risk of plunking a detour in the midst of your own philosophical journey, I’m going to leave you with that one to chew on in your own way.

Sam has been a bit easier for me to wrap my head around.

It has a lot to do with here and now. And with a bit of relief from the shoulda-woulda-coulda routine that calls us to the past or the future, neither of which is actually happening.

Except in the sense that it’s really all kind of the same and Dave was right about time!

That, however, is a bit ambitious for morning, so I decided to notice, at least for a moment, that I was warm and safe. There were crows playing in the garden and roses peeking through the dawn. My world was filled with the happy scent of lemon. And there were three big dogs snoring gently at my feet.

All of whom I love.

Usually.

When I took my glasses off and squinted just so, I could almost see Ben grinning.