very moment

My previous post is an example of how writing can shift even as you are looking at it, how it can cause you to suddenly see what you were unable to see until that very moment. 
The original post was called 'liquid embroidery' and I thought  I wanted to talk about that. I realized though, that what I really wanted to tell you, was how liquid embroidery reminded me of my in-laws. It reminded me of how they always worked together. How they shared the weight of daily life.
After changing my post, I changed the title to 'collaboration' because that is where the joy is for me now.
Not just in remembering the complimenting lives of my in-laws, but in the happiness I am feeling to be completing something started by someone else.

collaboration

Do you remember liquid embroidery? That's what it was called anyway. Artex was a well known brand. It was pretty popular in the seventies. Maybe even earlier. 

My mother-in-law loved liquid embroidery. She had a big metal tin filled to the brim with every possible shade of paint. They looked like tiny toothpaste tubes. I think the colors were sometimes blended with an emery stick. The ballpoint tip made it easier to create fine detail than a paint brush in an inexperienced hand.

My husband's parents made quilts for each of their eight children. Clusters and bouquets and bunches of flowers were painted onto white fabric blocks which were sashed with white or green. I think they were filled with wool and then hand quilted in a giant frame. My in-laws worked together on this project. They always worked together. They cooked and cleaned and gardened together, their tasks intertwined. He cut the chicken into pieces and she fried it, he vacuumed and she wiped and washed. He punched the bread dough and she shaped the loaves. Their daily lives were filled with the comfort of routine. I was just in my very early twenties then, but I felt a wistful yearning when I observed them together. I still feel that way when I remember.

My sister unearthed a treasure on one of her thrift shop forays; a stack of twelve large quilt blocks. Each one has a different butterfly and cluster of flowers, all liquid embroidered by some artistic soul a few decades past.

My in-laws would have applauded.

They are so beautifully painted.

When my sister whipped them out of her suitcase for my admiration, I gasped.

I thought at first, that I would sash them up in green and quilt all over, but I realize now that they deserve something more. 

They deserve some attention to detail. 

Some appreciation of the original artists care. 

A collaboration.

matters of the heart

The smiling lad is my father. The length of his hair and the style of his boots makes me wonder if perhaps the picture was taken when he was home on leave. His army rucksack on the steps clinches it though.
He is sitting on the front steps, happily at work repairing a leather shoe.
Wedding shoes.
My parents married when he was home on leave in 1945.
It is such a joyous picture to me;
My young father, safely home and filled with hopes and dreams.
It is a joyous picture to me for another reason too.
My father is sitting on the heavy, hewn steps of my grandparents home.
It was my grandfather who felled the trees and shaped them into great steps at the entry to his home; the home my mother grew up in.
The dinner gong too was the work of his hands and it summoned more than one generation of children from wood and hillside, the forest echoing with its ringing.
And the cobble stones at my father's feet were grandpa's; practical and beautiful. Isn't it wonderful when practical things are beautiful?
My grandfather was a resourceful and creative man. A man of deep sensibilities.
He liked my father, his future son-in-law.
He welcomed him like a son.
They had matters of the heart in common.

and our dad

We used to holiday with our children.
Our little Volkswagen Rabbit would be packed to the rafters with camping gear and our daughters would scramble into the back seat over mounds of bedding and jackets. They always seemed wedged in like after thoughts, poor things, when really, it was all for them that we went. It was fun though.
Getting out of the car at our eventual campsite was like hatching from an egg, or like some strange time lapse; door hurled wide, the back hatch as well, and an endless stream of gear unfolding and unfurling and filling up the available space.
Getting there really was half the fun, as long as we made the ferry connections.
Even the wait at the terminal had its charms. Comics would emerge from the cache of back seat goods, snacks too, and windows would roll down.
People watching can be pretty entertaining too and we would all hunker down for the duration, somehow content and eager at the same time.
I remember one summer morning  at the ferry terminal, waiting with all of the other cars, line after endless line. As yet another cluster of teenage loveliness drifted past the car window, a man in the next aisle could contain himself no longer. He hooted and leered and lolled out his car window.
My young daughters exchanged glances in the backseat.
"And OUR Dad watches birds," said one to the other.

the aim of art

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Aristotole

congratulations always

Yesterday it became official.
My husband is now a Library and Information Technician with a Systems Technology concentration.
I know this for a fact because I was there when a host of enrobed students marched in to Pomp and Circumstance and he was one of them.
He was wearing that strange hat that all graduates wear. Not as strange as the Doctors on the platform but still an odd fashion statement. The tassel dangling in front of their eyes I get though. It must be there to symbolize a goal, always just inches away but ever before your eyes, sort of like a carrot before a pony. At least that's how I see it.
Being a student is never easy and being an older student changes that fact not a whit.
Hard work is hard work.
Discipline takes discipline.
Balance is...... well, impossible for the student. Sacrifice and focus hold sway.
But, he made it.
He hung in there.
We all did.
And the reward at the end is something I never expected.
I knew I would feel relief.
And pride. He made the Deans List.
I knew I would feel jealous.
But I never knew I would feel this sense of newness; this sense of surprise.
I wasn't sure at first what I was feeling and then I knew.
I am seeing my husband through a new window, framed by his accomplishment.
I am recognizing something within my husband that Brian Minter, the University Chancellor referred to in his address to the graduates. He said that there is one thing that will allow you to rise above the ordinary and that one thing is passion. Find and pursue passion he urged.
I am feeling so happy that my husband has stirred up the passion that lies deep within.
I looked up the word congratulations and it means to take joy in the success and good fortune of another.
Congratulations always my dear.

that alone

Do the Eighties live on in some corner of your house?
Do you have any evidence laying around that prove you were there?
I moved a few years ago and there is almost no power greater than a move to cause you to evaluate your possessions decade by decade and make rash and ruthless judgement calls.
There are always a few things that slip in under the wire though.
It can be hard to explain to others why you have kept them.
I used to paint on wood.
Almost everybody did.
The country craze was so appealing.
Especially to those of us who already had a love affair with wooden things.
This trio of wooden bears made the cut.
I like to think of them as The Three Bears before Goldilocks.
Don't they look relaxed and happy?
I think that alone should elevate them to the timeless category.