pomegranatesandpaper

Guess What We're Doing This Weekend. . .

See ya Sunday!

Journeys

Granny Pom was laid to rest today in a beautiful cemetery in a plot on the edge of a woods, underneath a very old oak tree and in front of a stand of plump pine trees that will provide a windbreak for the birds all winter. We drove in a procession through a vivid autumnal landscape, past weathered century-old granite monuments, and across a stone bridge to reach her final resting place. After the minister said the final prayers, we stepped up one by one and placed red and pink roses on her casket. As the cold wind blew the petals of the flowers across the lawn, I reminded myself that we were laying to rest only the frail and battered shell that had held her spirit hostage for so long.

As I looked around at small knot of  family members at gravesite, I was sharply reminded that our large, extended family has become concentrated in number by both death and distance. Mr. Pom grew up with just himself and his mom and it took some getting used to on his part to get used to my large, boisterous clan of sisters and parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, and cousins galore.  Now as we stood with him, I hoped that he could no longer distinguish etween "my" relatives and "his" and that all he saw was the family of love and compassion that had held him and his mom in their embrace for the past 3 decades.

We are fine if a little fragile. The children are working through their grief in stages. The girls made two amazing display boards with photos of their grandmother from her early years until now. Mystery Man gave the eulogy today and spoke with warmth and humor about his grandmother, and had us alternatively weeping and laughing with him. 

I turned to the kitchen. Chopping and dicing and roasting and boiling are fine ways to relieve the mind of the burden of thinking and feeling. The knots in the stomach loosen as butternut squash is roasted with brown sugar and butter, a pork roast receives a tender rub of barbecue spices, apples saute with honey, and a stock pot bubbles with a chicken, carrots, celery, and sprigs of thyme and rosemary from the garden.

Mr. Pom is very, very tired and if I had the wherewithal, I'd whisk us all away to a tropical island for about a month. He still has so many details to wind up, paperwork to file, bills to settle, and her apartment to dismantle. The minutiae of a long life, a well-lived life, fills a huge space. We are left with a lot of busy-ness that preoccupies and adds to his weariness.

The emptiness will not begin to work its way in yet. I think it will begin for him on the first night home from work, when 8:00 rolls around and he just settles in to relax before the fire and watch a ballgame, and for the first time the phone does not ring. I know he will miss her interruption and wonder as he wishes the phone would ring once more, just how life sped by so quickly that he is now just the parent, and a child no more. 

Go Tell It On the Mountain

Your messages of love and comfort have meant so much to all of us at this very sad time.

We've spent our time alternately sitting together and crying and drinking tea and looking at photos and then running from place to place, taking care of all the details that are necessary to observe the rituals that attend the journey from this life. 

Your messages really are like hugs to all of us and give us the chance to remember to breathe, to relax, and to rest.

I thought I'd share with you all a very comforting experience I had today.

I went to work for half the day to clean up my desk in preparation for being out the rest of the week.

I had told my manager about Granny,  but I hadn't told my unit yet as i was trying to get my work done without spending all morning discussing what happened.

One of my paras came over to me and asked me to sign a stip. She is the most "professional" of all my paras - extremely hardworking, punctual, incredible work ethic - and very private. She rarely if ever is seen hanging over a cubicle chatting and even when she had her own family health issues, she held them close to her vest.  I don't think I'd ever told her that Granny was sick or had had surgery.

So when she came over to me and asked me to sign a stip and shyly told me that she had a dream about me on Saturday night, I was surprised.  I kept working on my computer and laughed - well, what was I doing I asked her, expecting some crazy boss being a bitch scenario.

She told me that she and I were walking on the campus of St. John's, her alma mater. In front of us was a mountain, but not just any mountain, she said. It was a huge, gorgeous mountain unlike anything she'd ever seen before. It was  beautiful but it had no greenery on it. It was radiant and was glowing like it was made of crystal.

The mountain  was huge, she said, it went up and up and up and we couldn't see the top of it because it went,well, her voice faltered and she became a little embarrassed, because it went  up to heaven. Her voice trailed off and she shrugged her shoulders.

I stopped typing and just stared at her. And then  I burst into tears.
Oh,  B., I said, my mother in law died Saturday evening!

We  stared at each other.  Well, she said, now you know what the dream meant.

Needless to say, it was hard to get back to work after that.

I asked her if she often had prescient dreams and she said yes, but she doesn't always know what they are about. She has to wait to find out what they mean and whom they involve.

There are so many unexplained mysteries in the world.

 I'm just glad to know that Granny made it up the mountain.

GRANNY POM

1928 -  2008

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I'd Rather Be Blogging

Has anyone ever noticed that "meme" is just 2 me's?

I am full of such erudite observations these days.

I always wonder who started a meme, so I decided to start one myself:

Animal:        picking up Nov. 1st/my office mates when pizza served

Vegetable:    Escarole wilting in the fridge drawer/my brain

Mineral:        B-12 I keep forgetting to take/make up that sticks in crow's feet

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Yes, my internets, I'm sorry to say that's all I have. Pathetic, I know.

My job, which I took specifically 6 years ago because it was presented as a law job with regular hours, has turned into The Monster That Eats My Life. 

Meetings, overnights, more meetings, weekends, overtime, emails, phone calls, and then...some trials. Few tribulations, though.

Plus, my digi died so pics as far back as the Cape are waiting to be uploaded.

Keep the faith, I'll be back!

Miss you all!!!

Mrs. Pom

Home Companion

I learned to my dismay this week that Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion  may cease publication after the Christmas issue. The press release says they are seeking a new publishing partner. I don't care why or what sound or unsound business decision it was, I just know it was a lousy decision by the holding company because it was my favorite shelter magazine from when i was a young wife and mom and I had every issue once upon a time.

So before they disappear or become collector's items, I got hold of a stack of old issues (I got rid of mine when we jettisoned lots of "stuff" during our multiple cross country moves. Silly  me!)  They've been in their package waiting for me to play with them,  but it was a brutal work week.

(As you've noticed, I haven't written a word about Art Is, but I am, I yam!)

With a rare alignment of the planets, I was home alone for an hour or two today and sister # 5 came over to borrow some jewelry and so we made coffee and pulled out the back issues.  We both agreed that somewhere along the way, we'd lost the sense of what the magazine once was. Maybe it had become too slick, too decorator-driven and traditional, and perhaps that led to its demise, but probably it just was the cruelties of the publishing world.

We greeted certain issues and articles like old friends. You would have cracked up to hear us.

Remember August was the artist studio issues??

Handpainted fireplaces - I am SO doing that tomorrow!

And then I'm lining all my bookcases with dictionary pages....bringing in all the wicker from the porch and painting it all black....finding wooden or papier mache letters to paint and hang in all the rooms....picking a quote to letter on the wall up the staircase....and slipcovering EVERYTHING in remnants.   

AND:

Just how MANY houses did Mary Engelbreit own??

You get the gist.

We both agreed that somewhere along the way we had decided that we had outgrown The Look, that we needed Less Stuff, that we were more into a minimalist, contemporary look, and that we were So Wrong. We are hauling out all our stuff, acquiring more stuff, going back to the cheery colors we love, and stenciling, hand painting, and crafting every room in the house.

Thank you, thank you, Mary, for showing us the beauty of mismatched, cheery, cherries, homespun, hand-painted, yellow, green, and red all the time in all the rooms, American pottery, vintage suitcases, collections of marbles,  and artist studios, and collage quilts, and chairs slipcovered in 5 different remnants, and most of all reminding us over and over that Life is just a Chair of Bowlies.

The Artful Life

I am overwhelmed and humbled by all your messages of support and understanding. To say I think I hit a nerve with my readers would be an understatement. Women, and that's basically who my readers are, are feeling the stress of this economic chaos at a very intimate and soul-searching level.

Too dramatic? It's not. We can put our hands over our ears and shout, "La, la, la, I don't want to hear it," but we still feel it through our nerve-endings. We intuitively know that the repercussions from this will land some of us outside the safety nets that we have assumed would always be there to catch us.

When I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and worry about the mortgage, the home equity loan, the college loans, my husband's health, my health, my children's health, the security of my job and his, and the opportunities that await my graduating kids, when I worry about whether we're crazy to get a new puppy when if disaster strikes, it will be one more heartbreak to consider when our lives are up-ended, I take comfort in knowing that you, and you, and you are all staring into that infinite darkness with me. I am warmed by your spirits, by your outreach, and by your longings.

And I know that after a sleepless night, that you are rising as I do, pulling back the covers and standing up with a throbbing head and making the lunches, and driving the kids to school, and getting to work on time with dress and make up, and going about your day with professionalism and caring, and coming home to pour a glass of wine and prepare a meal, and just be with your loved ones. I know that you and I are taking our calcium, remembering to walk at lunch, to pick up the dry cleaning, and to schedule the dental hygenist appointments. We are not weeping or staring off into space or waiting to win the lottery. We rise, we go to work, we come home, and we try to sleep. We eat a little too much, pour too many glasses of wine, sneak a little chocolate, succumb to buying yet one more book though we promised not to, and guiltily settle in to watch Ghost Hunters for a blissfully mindless evening. 

And we know and uncomfortably shift our position with the knowledge that there is always food in our pantry, that our kids want for very little, that in our closet are shoes for all weather, and coats for all seasons. We remain aware and humbled that no one has ever held a food drive for us, that each person has their own bed and perhaps their own rooms, that our doctor is a phone call away, and that most of the time, our medical needs are paid for by our very expensive but very accessible health insurance.

And when we say we are worried and scared, we do so from our dry, unflooded homes, after a full meal, and the knowledge that our babies never lay in feeding stations with distended bellies, too lethargic to wipe away the flies that settle on their eyelids.

We are supremely aware and uncomfortable that we consider that we have computers and internet access and the luxury of time to write on a blog and a camera to take pictures of our lovely things, and our creative pursuits, and our warm friends.

And we may even be a little smug that we didn't let our job skills go stale or our resumes lapse and we made it through college and perhaps advanced degrees, and we've always realized the necessity of working, and we've become inured to the boredom and tedium, and perhaps even a little jealous of those who fly by the seat of their pants.

And for all of you nodding your head in agreement or violently wanting to tell me to shove off, I have only these words to offer, the words that you sent to me, and I have distilled from all your comments, and from my weekend teaching creativity, and it this:

Live an artful life

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What does this mean - what if you don't have an artful bone in your body? I'm not talking about Art with a capital A, Art-practiced-in-a-studio, I am talking about this:

  

Demand more from your destiny

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Grab, wrestle, and squeeze what you can out of your life and shape it into what you want, what you need, and what satisfies you.

No one is going to give you permission. You must do this for yourself

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You have the right to be happy.
You have the right to time to yourself.
You have the right to enrich your life.

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You even have the right to be selfish

I said it: there. I have voiced the one thing that no woman, and certainly no Mommy, is allowed to even think let alone say:

You even have the right to be selfish

 I am even going going to take back what I said above:  I am giving you permission to be selfish, if that's what it takes to allow yourself to wrestle some time and space to be the person you thought you would be at 18 years old.

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It's not that hard. It's really not. You are still there, under the wraps of crows feet, fallen arches, sagging boobs, dyed hair, depleted bank accounts, a minivan, a soccer schedule, a mortgage, and the needs of other people that control your every mood. You have the right to say Me First! I'm doing this! I'm going here! I am carving this afternoon out for me! I am going to

write it

draw it

paint it

decorate it

run it

swim it

hike it

yoga it

read it

play it

toss it

even......

BUY IT!

You have the need and the right to be creative

Whatever else happens to you in your lifetime,
no one has tyranny over your soul
but
yourself.
 
No matter what adversity awaits you, no matter what person or thing you believe control of the circumstances of your life, there will always remain a deep and intimate part of you that can never be taken away and that will always remain your authentic self.

No one can ever take that from you.

Who I Am Or What Happens When I Am Alone In a Hotel Room For One Night

All of this world economic despair has only fueled my usual obsessive anxieties. Nothing interesting to talk about: In short, I worry about everything. Mainly at about 3:30 a.m.  That is usually when I am paralyzed with fear and vow to never do anything again that costs money if only God will let us survive this.

I used to be the same way about losing weight. My first thought on opening my eyes in the morning was: I must lose this weight. Not eat. Get healthy. Today. Or die.

So now that I got that out of the way, I've shifted the obsession to my old second place runner up: long term fiscal sanity.

Obsessed and ruminating over an enormous amount of fearful things, and guilt, oh, please yes, the guilt, at 5:00 a.m.

A few hours later, caffeine coursing through my veins and working at top speed, I am deep into plans to move away, to quit my job, mr. Pom's job, move to the Cape, get a few more dogs, live by the water, write, paint, read.  And feel frustrated that I can't do it tomorrow.

A dozen times a day, I think that the way out is to write a book that will be a best seller.

But on what topic - one of the 4 novels in progress? A new novel? A non-fiction memoir on our crazy life in the 90's? No, wait, a creativity/inspirational book for middle aged women artists? I will write two hours each night. Or wake up two hours earlier and do it every day. Lunch is half hour, but I could write then.

All of the above rely heavily on Oprah figuring into this.

So confusing. So ....I do nothing.

Gosh, when am I going to paint my own calendars and sell them? Maybe I should start by actually painting one canvas for one month....Or at least I should pick out what I am going to paint for each one. All acrylics? Mixed media? Encaustic? On wood? Canvas? I need to buy canvases - 12 or maybe 24 in case I screw up,

What I should really do is a series of portraits like the self portrait I  did for Cate's new book (more about that later). Or pets. I am good at painting pets.
But I want to get back to textiles. I love the work on Spirit Cloth. Maybe very small pieces that I could carry around and actually finish?

Why aren't I applying to teach. Next year, I am going to use ALL my personal time for teaching. I have to write for applications, do class samples, get them  in on time. Then, as I teach, I can start writing art books and the teaching will help me boost sales. Yeah, but after talking to other artists, I know that the only way to make money at these gigs is to vend and I need time to make stuff and how would I possibly fit that in with real work, teaching, and travel, and - what to make?

 If I could get all that together, I'd be on my way to multiple income streams and I could quit or maybe just work of counsel or per diem.....

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A dozen times a day, I tell ya. A dozen times a day.

I can't apologize for it. It's who I am. I'll never change. I'll never stop scheming and dreaming.

It's just who I am.

Is it any wonder I feel like I don't fit in anywhere?

Sew Dear

'Tis the season to sew!

I don't know what it is about Fall, but it drives me into a frenzy of nesting and I am itching, itching I tell you to drag out the sewing machine, tearing apart my studio to find the bobbins, and sew up about a dozen projects that I haven't touched since last Fall.

I'm almost, almost ready to start. The last few weeks have been rough. Work has ratcheted up a huge notch. I have to take some online in-house courses (10!!) and I can only concentrate on them at night. Plus, the artwork and essay for CPS was due, and I had to get my class kits and lesson plans ready for Art Is, which is this weekend.

I am so excited to get to Art Is. Sallianne and Ellen have created one of the most imaginative and creative weekend retreats I've ever been to.  There will be fabulous classes, tiara-making, a Pie Prom, auctions, benefits, Art Girlz, and vendors galore, including my sweet friend, Terri Ventura. I am so looking forward to a girly weekend of art making and fun!

When I get back I have some special projects ready to go. I am redoing the drapes I made for the dining room and making drapes for the French doors to the porch. I have plans for making gorgeous place mats like I saw in a froo-froo French store over the weekend.

And I have a big art project in store for my dining room - and my Christmas card.

Plus we have to rearrange a few things in our kitchen and dining room to get ready for Brewster, like bring the new rug upstairs to our bedroom and replace it for now with a durable Sisal. (We ain't no fools - been there done that).

All in all, the Poms are busy as life goes on. Granny Pom is not doing well and we are making plans for her long term care. Our prayers continue that the doctors be guided to provide her with the most effective pain control and that she be granted peaceful days. 

I guess what I am saying is that while we are busy going through the motions and holding at bay the overwhelming sadness we are feeling, we are genuinely happy and grateful for all that this time of year brings and we are continuing to pray that life resolves in the most positive ways.

Puppies Week 4

Mr. Pom just went through a major panic attack about getting the new dog.  He was after all the first person in the family to express that he missed having a dog and then he started looking at dogs online.

Once The Teen and I got on board, he took a back seat and started to slide back on his desire to get one. About a week ago, it finally hit home that we were doing this again and he decided that gee, a clean house and yard with no dog hair or poop + quiet no-barking household + being able to leave the house at a moment's notice and not make elaborate plans or lock ups for a dog = no stress and lots of happiness.

But don't worry!

It was just a crucible of sorts and now, now, the dear man has not only accepted our adopting the yellow male pup from the Lear X Sarah litter (note how groovy breeder jargony we've become) but when presented with the opportunity to adopt Sarah herself next summer - he jumped on it and practically pressed my fingers on the "send" key when we got the email.

So come next summer, we will have a 9 month old yellow male lab and a 2.5 year old black female lab. Mother and son!

We still don't know which one we're getting, but somehow i think it's gonna be that big boy staring right into the camera!

It's hard to tell from this photo, but their fur is all wet from nursing.

Mr. Pom does say that The Teen and I have pretty much lost our doggie minds. We vacillate between talking about the dog like it's our new baby, or expecting the dog to walk and talk like Brian from Family Guy.

All I know is if this dog thinks it's going to Brown, he'd better plan on a scholarship.

Fall into Autumn

After my last post, I wanted to reassure everyone that we are, in fact, enjoying the season and that I am not just riding around in the dark looking in windows and stalking the people who bought my family's house. At least not every day.

(These poor people bought our family home fair and square and could not be nicer about it, and  when we trick and treat, they even invite us in,  and yet, we curse the ground they walk on. A long story having to do with them removing like butchers the graceful wooden benches that were on either side of the front door, the benches in which we'd carved our initials, and the benches that created the Dutch profile of the house. And I know they chopped them up before throwing them in the trash  because I drove past the house every trash day for two years and I still haven't seen them. And they enclosed the gorgeous, huge screened porch and made it into a TV room. With one window.)

( Caution:  Never invite the old owners into your house on Halloween  unless you don't mind a grown woman sobbing in your living room when she sees  your old fireplace which was the setting for all the wedding pictures of herself and her sisters and then you have to try to get rid of the crying woman while your kids are running around in costumes and you are trying to hand out Tootsie Rolls. I'm just saying. )

And, believe it or not, I haven't even been to the cemetery since last fall, since I prefer to celebrate the life than remember the death, at least on usual days when I do not allow myself to succumb to seasonal depression, mother in law stress,  overwork, and undereating.

The thing about losing 120 pounds is that you also lose the ability to self-medicate your black moods, unless you cross-addict to oh, say, alcohol, shopping or gambling, which I have managed to avoid, unless you count, and I hope you can't, the number of triple venti skim cappuccinos I am sucking down at an alarming rate (and never take a look at my Amazon account - tho they are all used books.)

Mr. Pom is tolerant, but after a year of post-gastric bypass living, he has learned how to control my manic or depressed moods. When he tires of my 1) whining, or 2) my coffee breath, he just uncorks some cabernet and waves it under my nose. When I say, okay, but just a sip, he liberally pours me a glass and smiles knowing that after a few sips, the alcohol will shoot right out of my shot glass-sized stomach right into my intestines, and I will start to giggle, then my eyes will cross, words slur, and soon be sound asleep, leaving him free to enjoy the ballgame without me bugging him every 5 minutes to run to Starbucks for a nightcap.

Alcohol has actually been an interesting experience since I had the surgery. Before then, I spent a lifetime wondering why people drink as my only reaction was that my scalp itched, my face flushed, my stomach hurt, had to lie down. And that was a good reaction. (I actually do better with mixed drinks.I can get a little buzz from vodka or gin, but wine is just a sedative. Or was.)

So yesterday afternoon, after a particularly depressing visit at the nursing home with Granny Pom, we jumped in the car and took off into the wilds of northern Westchester. We drove through ritzy Waccabuc and wondered how many of the mansions were in foreclosure, and then found a quilt store and a gorgeous yarn store in Ridgefield, CT. We then ate dinner at a little bistro, at the fashionable dining hour of 5:00. I was starving and it was opened. I said, sure, I'll have a glass of Chardonnay, and sipped very slowly. 

I sipped a little more. They brought out fried calamari. ( I always get Mr. Pom to order the fried calamari, which I swear I will share, and he always falls for it until I stop eating after three bites and he has to stuff himself.) It was very tender, but I noticed it was rather greasy, so I stopped, and good thing I did because the wine, which I thought I was handling very well, hit me with a rush and mixed with that breaded squid and I started to get a little dizzy.....

So, the evening ended early, which was just as well because we were an hour from home and were about to go into Balducci's and spend a fortune on little gourmet edibles that we really didn't need. (Especially since I had bought little gourmet edibles on Friday and forgot them in my office fridge.)

Today, we did another depressing nursing home visit, and then I made chicken soup and a loin  of pork in tomato sauce. I then dragged Mr. Pom to Lord & Taylor's after reassurring him a thousand times that we in fact did have a coupon for 20 % off.

We then had a little thing in the car because I started yelling that yes, yes, the coupon expires on WEDNESDAY IT DOESN'T START ON WEDNESDAY EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE A COUPON THAT DOES START ON WEDNESDAY.

And then he got really pissed off a little upset that I was yelling and when I explained it was because he never listens to me and bought tickets to see BLINDNESS instead of GHOST TOWN (what? he says. I thought you said he sees ghosts? Yes, he SEES ghosts. He's not BLIND and SEES ghosts!)

So I had to force him to buy a jacket by explaining over and over that it was 30% off and we had a 20% off coupon, so it was 50% off, even though the saleswoman insisted that it was 20% off AFTER the 30% off, so it was really only 40 45 48 (I can't do the math). At that point he was over being pissed off understanding that he caused me to yell and watched me try on about 50 coats, none of which I liked, so I'm doomed to wear a denim jacket all winter.

For some reason, though, as soon as we got home, Mr. Pom went to the kitchen and opened up a bottle of Pino Pinto Pinto Pinot Grigio Noir and gave me a glass just when i started tringt to right this post and noe i an tindingt myselg vyrry fujjy ad lughing  at medelf bt i gta go slp now se ya murrow....

Woodsmoke & Firelight

It's the sky that arrests me  in the waning hours. A great, dark swath of cloud bisects the pearly gray and a skein of geese trail across the seam, suturing it like sashiko stitches.

The earth is pulling the blankets up, silently ushering in evenings that extinguish the damask landscape in a somber frame.

I don't mind this seasonal transition. I find myself instinctually shifting from the porch to my bed, groping for the chenille throw to place across my feet as I settle in for the evening.

It is said that the veil between heaven and earth is thinnest at this time of year. I feel it in my heart as I drive home in the dusk. Skirting round the neighborhood where I grew up, I am drawn into the fall of my childhood and drive up the street to see if the chestnut tree by the island is still there but it is too dark to see if the pods are scattered across the lawns. I remember piles of acorns in my best friend's yard and afternoons spent carving a fallen branch with plastic knives and kitchen spoons. Past the ballfields at the college is the grassy hill where we used to stash our bikes and climb up and come down with armfuls of giant sugar pinecones that we brought home for our mothers to spray with glitter for the holidays. 

This season gets under my fingernails. I smell the earth, loamy and gritty and beginning to decay. The damp, chilled air calls for the first heat to be turned on in the car. Every house looks welcoming with windows yellow-lit and cozy with summer gardens gone frowzy. I imagine vegetable soup for dinner and the fire lit and make a mental note to pick up fresh candlesticks for the dining room.

And then I am pierced with memory and shudder with longing for those whose shades seem to pass through me as  drive the city streets in parallel universes of present and past.

I know where they all are, tucked in neatly in their plots, not more than a mile from my house they sleep their well-earned peace. But how I would like to shake the stiffness from their limbs and pry open their eyes and feed their mouths once again with cups of tea and a martini neat and a plate of home baked cookies and a jar of peanuts that slides out from under the chair when I sit back to watch TV.

Instead, I can only go home and turn on the lights and draw the drapes and pour a glass of wine and wonder what imprint I am leaving in the silver gelatin  of a lifetime.