Mother's Day Revisted

This year Mother's Day was a quiet day. My mom seemed happy...she usually is these days. We spoke for a little while. She drifted in and out of the conversation. She told me she loved me, her "first born", and I told her I love her, too. My daughter and her family moved to another state recently, so we spoke on the phone as well. Quiet...too quiet...and the mind wanders. It kind of meanders back in time to other Mother's Days. Whether those recollections are true or not, they are real. What is reality, after all? We each have our own version.

I went online for a while. There I found a trilogy of poems written as a tribute to a friend's mom soon after she died. One of them hit home that day. I was missing my mom, the old mom who drove me crazy more often than not. I was missing my daughter, now a mom herself, who also drove me crazy for a while...it's in the genes. That poem floated through my mind. In it was the love and pain that only a mother and child experience. It would not let go of me, so I did what I do when things get stuck in my brain. I made art with it. A meandering book...kind of a fold-out puzzle of a book. Relationships are puzzles. The pieces fit together somehow, but not as you might expect. Even so, it is a whole entity no matter how you look at it...forward, backward, upside down or right side up...there it is.

My back was giving me a hard time. It hurt so much I had difficulty walking after a while, so I had to sit and rest it. It's funny how your body makes you pay attention when you choose to ignore what's good for you. Those nasty panic attacks were not going away, either. The last thing I wanted to do was think, ya know what I mean? Resting in bed with The Kindly Ones was not helping. I dove into my mini book creation...measuring, snipping, painting and lettering for hours. What a joy it was! When it was complete, I called Scott to tell him I was sending something by snail mail. Off it went on its journey and did arrive safe and sound.

Now, a week later, my back is still killing me. My brain is still having the occasional short circuit. My feet still get a tad numb if I'm up and about too long. My dear friend, Helen, who has known me for about thirty years, observed the correlation between my back pain and my brain pain. She reminded me how they seem to feed on each other. She also reminded me of how happy I felt while making art. Guess that's pretty straight forward.

Sometimes we carry things inside us that seem too heavy a burden. Just when we think we are handling it, we stumble. It's not because we're weak. The bump in the road is a safety bump, meant to slow us down for a reason. Best pay attention and rest a while. Smell the daisies, watch the clouds or make some art. The weight shifts as the mind does.

On The Edge

There's a full moon tonight. It's been a windy day so the night sky is very clear. Not everything else is, but the feeling that a good change is in the air uplifts my spirit. I've been dreaming a lot lately. That is, I remember my dreams, at least bits and pieces of them, on awakening. The strange and positive thing is my brother, Chris and my dad have been in these dreams. Nothing dramatic occurred, just day to day stuff, but we all seemed quite happy. There was a huge gardenia bush in one dream...Chris had one growing in his backyard in Davis so it made sense.

Today I went grocery shopping and found a gorgeous gardenia plant in with the Easter lilies and hyacinths. It is now in residence in my sunny bedroom...sequestered from Elliot, that plant-eating feline menace. Whenever I look at it, I smile. It's the small things that mean the most when I reminisce. So, when I remember a loved one it is usually with a smile. We stay connected and that allows us to make even more connections. Love is like that...the more you give, the more you get.

Coincidentally, Christine just texted me commenting how beautiful the moon looks tonight. Yes, indeed!

One Summer Night

There must have been forty kids on the street where I grew up. We never had a play date. You just walked out the door and there they were. All ages were represented. Usually one of the older kids had a younger sibling in tow. It was just the way things were. My house and my best friend's house were separated by the Lowen house. Our parents emigrated from Flatbush, Brooklyn to the wild and woolly outskirts of Bellerose, Queens. Because we bordered Nassau County our post office was New Hyde Park. We would straddle the county line and tell each other we could be in two places at one time.

During the summer very few of us went to camp. There may have been a week or two when we left the block for a vacation out on the East End or upstate, but for the most part we stayed local. After chores we had the day to ourselves. Bicycles were our mode of transportation. On occasion we would travel to Bar Beach for the day, but that's another story.

We had a small pool in our yard as did my best friend, Eileen. It was fun to splash around on a steamy summer night. There was no air-conditioning, just huge fans to move the humid air over you. My brothers had a fan the size of an airplane propeller in the front window of their room. The hum was our introduction to white noise, though at the time we had no idea what that was. We left the doors to our bedrooms open. We were on the honor system for the duration of the dog days. That fan sucked the heat out and kept the air moving. My sister, Jane, and I slept upside down on our beds so the breeze would fan our faces until sleep took over. I usually drove her crazy by listening to my transistor radio, stuffed under my pillow. "I can still hear it!" Heh!






The real special occasions occurred on movie nights. Eileen's dad, Charlie, was a projectionist. One of his many jobs was to set up the movies for in flight viewing on TWA. He was able to bring some of them home for our viewing pleasure. Once the sun went down the lawn chairs came out. We hung a big white sheet on the side of the house. Then we spread blankets on the lawn for the babies and little ones. We popped massive amounts of popcorn, mixed up the Kool-Ade and distributed the goods. Uncle Charlie charged admission...we had to pick up a rock and put it in a pile...he was cleaning the yard. After that formality we grabbed a seat and the show began.

One summer night the moon was a crescent in the sky. The air was heavy. There had been a thundershower earlier in the afternoon. The clean sharp scent of ozone still persisted. The stars were there, too. Movie night was a go and that night the feature was The Alamo! John Wayne and Richard Boone, not to be confused with Daniel Boone. The backyard was packed with children and adults. We had paid our stony dues. The popcorn was buttered and the Kool-Ade was cool. The movie began as scheduled. Even the little guys were mesmerized. John Wayne had that effect on us in those days. We liked our heroes bigger than life, but human. No superpowers needed for The Duke. After the movie, no one wanted to go home. The younger ones played 'remember the Alamo!' We helped clean up the mess and escaped to hang out with the Prendamano brothers down the block and listen to some music...always music. There were many movie nights and many more music nights. It was good place to be. It's a good place to visit in my mind sometimes.




One Summer Night~The Danleers....sigh...