There are circles of love all around us.
I am so glad to be somewhere on the edge of this one...
I love you, Miss Kelly.
More soon.
Amanda
Monday, November 12, 2012
Say nice things to me
Just when I think that nothing can delight me or leave me dazzled, something like this appears in my life. Everyone tells me that the children (now adults, with wide circles of love and life around them) are my best legacy and at moments like this - I can believe it.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Paris 2013
watercolor and graphite
Summer is almost over. I can feel it in the air. Yes, yesterday the high was near 90 degrees, and the humidity still hovers high as well, but the light of early morning is changing. And there is a little breeze now and then that lets me know: Summer is almost over.
I went to France this summer - part work, part pleasure. One week in Normandy and one week in Paris, and as is always the case when I am in Europe, it was not enough time. I thought of you so often as I walked and wandered, looked and listened. Traveling alone is not a hardship for me - in fact, I quite like it. There is something about the utter lack of responsibility, the knowledge that I care for nothing and no one except that moment - here, now. I carry so much less; and perhaps, in truth, I like the language barrier - it keeps things simpler. Because I can ask for a baguette, read a menu, say Je regrette, please, thank you, bonjour, and a few other things that keep me from starving or getting painfully lost, I find myself liking the limited conversations.
Well chosen words play such an important role in my work: negotiating with colleagues and funders, writing letters and making phone calls to donors, working with ideas. The limit set for me in a country where I understand only a fraction of what is said around me (and have no expectation of saying anything more useful than where is the toilette) is a relief from the daily strain. And there is how little I carry...how few clothes I actually need...how light a paint brush, palette, and watercolor block feel in my backpack...how long a day becomes when you stop to draw and paint on the side of a hill or in a sidewalk cafe long after the coffee cup is empty.
Of course, I think Paris is particularly wonderful because of the art. After I make that first investment in a Museum Pass and a Metro card, every door opens freely and I can come and go as I please. So a day in and out of the Louvre, another visit to D'Orsay, and so many hours in the gardens at the Rodin. I give myself time to see these best examples, these extraordinary works, and then settle down somewhere and step into the stream with all these art-makers, expatriates, and foreigners. Day after day. It feels so familiar. The impulse to capture, to articulate, to address all this beauty without words, but with images makes so much sense to me. It makes me happy.
On this trip, every time I stopped to paint, a mother and child would join me. The child would watch. The mother would sit down. The child would move closer. The mother would ask if I mind the watching, and of course, I say no. And then, in broken English and broken French, somehow, we would have the same conversation: My daughter loves to draw. I hope she will continue. It is a pleasure no one can take from you once you begin. I bought her papers and pens. She loves her crayons. He likes to draw buildings. She likes to draw flowers. This happened every day.
On the last afternoon, I sat in the gardens at the Rodin Museum and in my meager way attempted to draw the sculptures that circle the reflecting pool in the back of the garden. They are typical Rodin with extended muscles and oversized hands, odd postures of strength and gestures of despair. The little girl next to me was trying as well. Her mother said she was frustrated with herself, unable to get the likeness. I showed her my drawings and told her that she must continue.
"The only difference between your drawings and mine, and my drawings and his," I said, "is time. Monsieur Rodin drew and sculpted for so many more hours than we have. You must simply continue. You must look and draw, draw and look, day after day."
The little one spoke quickly now, to her mother, deeply concerned. Her mother translated the idea if not the words.
"She says she is worried about talent. Worried that she has none."
I told her that we can never control talent - it is like the breeze...some days have it, others do not. But we can learn to continue and find the joy in doing what we love.
Rumi said:
Let the beauty we love
be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the ground.
& in another place:
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Perhaps that is it - in drawing, I am drawn. I let myself be drawn. And when I travel it is a little easier to give myself this gift: time to draw and time to be drawn.
So I admit it now, I love Paris and drawing on the curve of a road in Montmartre. Seeing the city and myself through these line drawings and watercolors. Sitting alone as the tourists pass by and the children pause to look and the day moves along. I love the way it feels to do nothing but draw, look, draw, pray. In my own way, I am kneeling to kiss the ground...
Oh how I wish we had taken a hundred trips together, Miss Kelly. I am forever grateful for the one grand adventure we shared in England. So many memories flood in...what a good time we had in our daily tour of small churches and pubs, watching the next storm clouds move in, telling such good stories, and searching through the book of English cities to confirm where we were and learn a little of each town's unique history. What a wonderful time we had and yes, what a wonderful time I had in France this summer.
Thinking of you, as the summer ends here...and sending you endless love.
We must talk soon.
Yours, of course,
Amanda
Monday, February 13, 2012
February 13, 2012
As I write this, I realize it has been twenty years since Mother died. Patricia Jane Holden. Pat. P.J.. P. Mother. My second mother, of course. She was, as you know all too well, only 62. But for me, the sadness of that weighs more heavily as time passes. I am 55. She was so young.
What a wealth of memories flow in. The yellow Cadillac, the wheelchair, the pearls, the smell of her cheeks. Erno Lazlo, Neutrogena, Youth Dew, and Maybelline compact powder. Swans in the backyard. Salmon loaf and endless dieting fads. What words to describe her? My God, she was strong and beautiful and difficult and fun and then what? Gone. Needlework and sewing. I sew because of her ... and I try to be ready because of her. She was always ready for me when I arrived. Dressed, pressed, polished. Do you remember it this way? She was always ready when we arrived?
In the year of so before she died, she cleaned out all her drawers and her closets, leaving everything pressed and folded neatly, hung in order. She dreamed of white hallways, passageways through Scandinavian white and blue rooms. Until at the end, she could rest in the guest room bed, in her white cotton nightgown, wait, sleep, rest, morphine for pain, sleep, and then gone.
She told a wonderful story about being in the Five&Dime in Connecticut, circling, looking, when a little girl, maybe five years old, approached her. She said the little girl watched her for sometime before mustering the courage to say, "You can't walk, can you?" Mother shook her head and softly smiled (I know exactly how it must have looked). Suddenly tears in the little girl's eyes, and, "Oh, no. You can't talk either?" Mother spoke, assured her she could talk and all is well again. The child's mom apologized. Mother reassured again.
She was remarkable. A seamstress. A reader. A church-goer early and then again late in life. A hostess. A stepmother. A grandmother. And yes, of course, a friend to me. A best friend to you.
Twenty years. Where has the time gone from this long ago to now? If I could see her again, what would I tell her? What stories of children, the grandchildren, of life and work and art and all? She was a rare thing...poised and carrying the burdens of her polio, of her loves and losses so quietly. It was only on her death bed that she told of the shadow pains - certain positions that would snap her into profound immobilizing pain. Closely followed by what she wanted for my life: a big life, full, and long. Travel. Go back to school. Read. Write. Paint. Laugh. She said, "You are among the happiest people I have ever know...." I didn't understand what she meant, or rather, I didn't see what she was telling me about her own disappointments.
After she died, her sister told me that when she recovered from polio, the doctors informed the family that the life expectancy for polio victims was short. Maybe twenty years. Aunt Sallie said that she was never expected to live much beyond forty and that for most, such predictions held true. She encouraged me not to grieve too long because she had been given another twenty years, good and happy years. She told me this as we sorted through her closets making piles for the Nearly New Shop. And it was then, that day, that the first bottle of Youth Dew, half empty, came to my house. One soft, green, cotton sweater - from the Limited? - came too, and it smelled of her - the remnant of her, that mix of perfume and powder. I kept the sweater for a long time, and wore it often, refusing to wash it, carrying the hope it would keep her near by. I still wear only Youth Dew.
I miss her. Even now. All these years later.
I sew because of her. And I cook because of her. And I wash my face with care and try to live up to the legacy of her. I play gin and solitaire because of her, scrabble, and word games. Mahjong, too. And I drink a little bourbon now and then too. I make Pavlova on New Years Eve because of her - although that is another story - and I ache for organized closets. I try to be ready, clean, soft, put together, smelling good, laughing easily, because of her. In her way, she taught me to carry sorrow lightly. After all, what did I know of suffering?
It would be wrong, unfair and inaccurate to say that every memory of her is this simple and joyful. She could be difficult, sometimes quick to judge, a bit moody. But this is no surprise - she was my stepmother after all and the burden of that role . . . I can only imagine. And of course, she was married to my father, after all, and he was his own brand of difficult . . . a blessing and a burden. But together they were a force - myth-makers, opinionated, truth-tellers, and she was his peacemaker. No easy task. She must have grown so weary of dinner parties that turned into battlegrounds. Of his need to be right and her need of him. She must have wondered when Robin and I would finally love her, thank her for the role she played in our salvation. She must have longed for a life where she could do more for herself - clean the top shelf of cabinets, reach the hat boxes, walk to the store. Always seated, always dependent on others, always expected to be welcoming and ready.
At the very end, she said, "It has been a wonderful ride." That word: ride - a ride, not a walk in the park, a ride in her chair. If I am lucky, I will say the same sort of thing to my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren - oh what a wonderful ride.
Sometime I catch myself saying, and knowing it is true, I am the luckiest woman in the world. Blessed beyond measure. Children and grandchildren. A partner who adores me - and better still - who I adore. (Should that be whom? Whom I adore? Mother would know). So many lives . . . as daughter, child, mother, Northerner, Southerner, straight, queer, outsider, insider, friend and acquaintance, and always landing on my feet - just barely, like those gymnasts at the Oylmpics, feet together and still standing. What a ride. There is so much grace in my life...and I wish I could show her.
Isn't this what heaven - or at least the dream of heaven - is for? The chance to see, again, to talk again, to show and to know again. I think she would be pleased, boiling a pot of water for a cup of tea, splitting Little Debbie Cookies to share.
If there is a heaven, one room looks like her kitchen in Bronxville. The table is set. Glasses of wine. A roast chicken stuffed with oranges and onion cooling on the table. I arrive and they are there - Mother and Dad. We sit down together and have an eternity of stories - plucking chicken from the bone with our fingers, tearing bits of bread. We tell all the stories again, with nothing but gratitude. I describe what they missed. They remind on what I have forgotten. We discover all that we never knew. Everyone we have ever known joins us sooner or later. And in that hour that lasts forever we know only love...only forgiveness...and gratitude.
I think this is all I want - to live in such a manner that there is always time at the table, room for one more story, always a place for memory, for history and for futures we can barely imagine. This is the legacy I want to leave - long hours of memory, punctuated by books, by music, by paintings, interrupted by annotations to our stories, new meanings, new parsing and glossing and then, new dreams, new hopes, a bright and true future that belongs not to me.
This is true: We do not own the legacy we leave. It is the last cumulative gift to the future, built and rebuilt, torn down and recast. It is the gift of hope, I suppose, rooted in memory, spun with sorrow, illuminated with joy.
I love you, Miss Kelly - and hope you will forgive the self-indulgence of this...just remembering what I can - so little of so much.
Yours, always
Amanda
Sunday, December 4, 2011
4 December 2011
So more than four months have passed since I wrote to you (August-September-October-November-and yes, now it is December!). What happened? Life.
It is worth noting here that life, as in my Life, should always be capitalized. And maybe it should be in all caps, because it is BIG. And it is complex - more like a city than a farm, more like a corporation than a small business. And inside the complexity there are categories. I sometimes think of them as silos in a field...very tall and very full. And this fall, everyone of them - each for a different reason - filled up and overflowed and left me with more questions than answers, more work than there was time in which to do it, more obligations than opportunities, and more to do than any one person can possibly accomplish. In other words, it really was a fall - and in many ways, as I think about it, I let myself fall behind on some of the things that matter most. Like you. .
It started with the annual fundraising gala at the Museum. Now it is true that I can plan a small party without too much trouble, but a party with tickets for 250 people, that's another thing all together. We did it - a team of volunteers, my staff, and I, but WOW, it left me tired (and grateful, and pleased, etc. etc. [all those truisms]) and tired. I am not complaining, because I do love the Museum, but I met the tent people at 8 am and left with my team at almost 2 am the next morning after cleaning up the catering tent and breaking down the decorations. Its my job. But, it was a lot of work.
Five days after that, my mother fell and broke her arm - in two places. I was in Atlanta, in a meeting with a potential donor, when my phone started to ping. Three, then four, then five times. When the meeting was over and I checked my texts to find that Kirsten (who is an amazing texter!) had sent me messages...one after another...and one not meant for me at all. Message 1: Your mom fell. Everything is okay. Call me when you can. Message 2: At the hospital now, an ambulance came for her. Message 3: Amanda's mom fell...and then a blow by blow description of when, where, how, etc. (clearly this was not meant for me). Message 4: Please ignore that last message, baby, I was writing to my sister. Message 5: Please call.
So I did, and then I rearranged my flights and headed back to Durham and straight to the hospital. We waited for another five hours - Mom had been there for five hours before I got there - as the doctors took X-rays, then a CAT scan - to make sure there was no concussion and no sign of stroke. Then a specialist was concerned about something compromised in her wrist, something he saw in the X-rays - "She might need surgery" - then an MRI to make sure that there was no deeper damage. By the time I got there her black eye was a true shiner and I noticed that she wasn't really sure how long she had been there, wasn't really tracking that I had been in Atlanta, thought that she could just go home. Can I go home now? And asked me about my day at least five times.
Between the mild concussion and the serious break and the fact that she claimed that she had not tripped over anything, "I just fell - you know, one minute you are standing up and the next minute you are on the floor. It happens to everyone." Between all of this - the doctors determined that she should not be living alone until her arm healed. "If you fall again, Ms. Bradford, you could do serious damage."
And of course, she didn't remember that she had fallen already. Three times in the last six months. So, I agreed to let her and the dog come to stay with us. I agreed is a little more active and directive than I was, actually. In truth the sentence should read: So Mom and Tasha (the dog) moved into our Life. And with them, all the strains you can imagine.
At the same time, the workmen arrived - and over the same seven or eight weeks, we got a new roof, new skylights in the studio, new windows, new gutters, a door and new windows from the dining room to a new deck, the goats came and cleared out the back yard, six pine trees were removed, the goats came again. The front steps were repaired, new posts and railings, and we went to doctor and physical therapy appointments and stopped to get M&Ms every day (one of my mother's secret passions) and I worked full time (although mostly remotely).
Is it Halloween yet? Not quite.
At work: a board meeting and grants and a major publication to complete. A team to manage and a million dollars to raise.
The final weeks with Mom were the hardest. I helped her get her bills under control and we talked endlessly about what "assisted living" actually means. We cleared out and cleaned her house a bit - not enough for my needs, but enough for hers, I guess. We took her car in to be repaired - the brakes were nearly gone and all the fluids were down, then got it inspected and the tags renewed. Carted her back and forth to her part time job. Bought her walker and cane - not that she will use them with any regularity, but the doctor's insist and she says she understands, but then wanders off without either one.
Is it Thanksgiving yet? Almost.
All of this and more work, more grants, more deadlines, major and minor doctors' appointments for Kirsten, the grandchildren on the weekends, another trip to Atlanta, and another to NYC. And Christmas is coming.
It is hard to imagine doing anything more than I have done - but I should have called you. and I should have called others, too. You know, I have a really bad habit of turning inward during hard times. Of focusing down, making lists, and just trying to get through. You are not the only one I haven't called. I have been in that survival mode that I think I learned in my childhood - when there was almost always a crisis in motion or one looming on the horizon. I pull in. Close ranks. Try to get through. I have hardly seen anyone who hasn't come to see me. And I have hardly picked up the phone except to answer it when it rings. One can only do so much....or at least that is what I tell myself.
No excuses.
This is what I wanted to tell you - I miss you. And I will come to see you...and I hope you are okay, despite my ridiculous silence. When shall we talk? Might I come and spend my birthday with you? I think that is what I would like to do... Oh there is so much to tell..about the fall and all that fell through the cracks when my mother fell. It is almost Christmas, and I find myself remembering times in Connecticut, in the little house on Walker Brook when you were there and Mother and Dad. When I was young and you were my age now...oh how fondly I hold those memories.
I love you, Miss Kelly - and I am so sorry for my silence. If you could only hear how often I think of you - daily...quietly...quickly and then some new distraction or demand.
No excuses.
Only true apologies and abiding affection.
Amanda
.
It is worth noting here that life, as in my Life, should always be capitalized. And maybe it should be in all caps, because it is BIG. And it is complex - more like a city than a farm, more like a corporation than a small business. And inside the complexity there are categories. I sometimes think of them as silos in a field...very tall and very full. And this fall, everyone of them - each for a different reason - filled up and overflowed and left me with more questions than answers, more work than there was time in which to do it, more obligations than opportunities, and more to do than any one person can possibly accomplish. In other words, it really was a fall - and in many ways, as I think about it, I let myself fall behind on some of the things that matter most. Like you. .
It started with the annual fundraising gala at the Museum. Now it is true that I can plan a small party without too much trouble, but a party with tickets for 250 people, that's another thing all together. We did it - a team of volunteers, my staff, and I, but WOW, it left me tired (and grateful, and pleased, etc. etc. [all those truisms]) and tired. I am not complaining, because I do love the Museum, but I met the tent people at 8 am and left with my team at almost 2 am the next morning after cleaning up the catering tent and breaking down the decorations. Its my job. But, it was a lot of work.
Five days after that, my mother fell and broke her arm - in two places. I was in Atlanta, in a meeting with a potential donor, when my phone started to ping. Three, then four, then five times. When the meeting was over and I checked my texts to find that Kirsten (who is an amazing texter!) had sent me messages...one after another...and one not meant for me at all. Message 1: Your mom fell. Everything is okay. Call me when you can. Message 2: At the hospital now, an ambulance came for her. Message 3: Amanda's mom fell...and then a blow by blow description of when, where, how, etc. (clearly this was not meant for me). Message 4: Please ignore that last message, baby, I was writing to my sister. Message 5: Please call.
So I did, and then I rearranged my flights and headed back to Durham and straight to the hospital. We waited for another five hours - Mom had been there for five hours before I got there - as the doctors took X-rays, then a CAT scan - to make sure there was no concussion and no sign of stroke. Then a specialist was concerned about something compromised in her wrist, something he saw in the X-rays - "She might need surgery" - then an MRI to make sure that there was no deeper damage. By the time I got there her black eye was a true shiner and I noticed that she wasn't really sure how long she had been there, wasn't really tracking that I had been in Atlanta, thought that she could just go home. Can I go home now? And asked me about my day at least five times.
Between the mild concussion and the serious break and the fact that she claimed that she had not tripped over anything, "I just fell - you know, one minute you are standing up and the next minute you are on the floor. It happens to everyone." Between all of this - the doctors determined that she should not be living alone until her arm healed. "If you fall again, Ms. Bradford, you could do serious damage."
And of course, she didn't remember that she had fallen already. Three times in the last six months. So, I agreed to let her and the dog come to stay with us. I agreed is a little more active and directive than I was, actually. In truth the sentence should read: So Mom and Tasha (the dog) moved into our Life. And with them, all the strains you can imagine.
At the same time, the workmen arrived - and over the same seven or eight weeks, we got a new roof, new skylights in the studio, new windows, new gutters, a door and new windows from the dining room to a new deck, the goats came and cleared out the back yard, six pine trees were removed, the goats came again. The front steps were repaired, new posts and railings, and we went to doctor and physical therapy appointments and stopped to get M&Ms every day (one of my mother's secret passions) and I worked full time (although mostly remotely).
Is it Halloween yet? Not quite.
At work: a board meeting and grants and a major publication to complete. A team to manage and a million dollars to raise.
The final weeks with Mom were the hardest. I helped her get her bills under control and we talked endlessly about what "assisted living" actually means. We cleared out and cleaned her house a bit - not enough for my needs, but enough for hers, I guess. We took her car in to be repaired - the brakes were nearly gone and all the fluids were down, then got it inspected and the tags renewed. Carted her back and forth to her part time job. Bought her walker and cane - not that she will use them with any regularity, but the doctor's insist and she says she understands, but then wanders off without either one.
Is it Thanksgiving yet? Almost.
All of this and more work, more grants, more deadlines, major and minor doctors' appointments for Kirsten, the grandchildren on the weekends, another trip to Atlanta, and another to NYC. And Christmas is coming.
It is hard to imagine doing anything more than I have done - but I should have called you. and I should have called others, too. You know, I have a really bad habit of turning inward during hard times. Of focusing down, making lists, and just trying to get through. You are not the only one I haven't called. I have been in that survival mode that I think I learned in my childhood - when there was almost always a crisis in motion or one looming on the horizon. I pull in. Close ranks. Try to get through. I have hardly seen anyone who hasn't come to see me. And I have hardly picked up the phone except to answer it when it rings. One can only do so much....or at least that is what I tell myself.
No excuses.
This is what I wanted to tell you - I miss you. And I will come to see you...and I hope you are okay, despite my ridiculous silence. When shall we talk? Might I come and spend my birthday with you? I think that is what I would like to do... Oh there is so much to tell..about the fall and all that fell through the cracks when my mother fell. It is almost Christmas, and I find myself remembering times in Connecticut, in the little house on Walker Brook when you were there and Mother and Dad. When I was young and you were my age now...oh how fondly I hold those memories.
I love you, Miss Kelly - and I am so sorry for my silence. If you could only hear how often I think of you - daily...quietly...quickly and then some new distraction or demand.
No excuses.
Only true apologies and abiding affection.
Amanda
.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
7 August 2011
I have always loved letters, correspondence that comes by what is now called "snail mail." I like the time it takes to travel distances, the time it takes to tear open the envelope, notice the post date, and wonder about its contents. I like the way it all feels in my hand - and increasingly, given that we live in an age of virtual and virtually instant communications, these letters are more precious than ever.
Lately, as part of some ill-defined on-going art project, I find myself illustrating envelopes. This is not new. I have been doing it for a very long time...now and then. It started (I think) with a letter I sent to an author I admired and has continued over the years. Most of the time I illuminate letters sent to me - but once in a while I will add a mini painting to a letter I will send. It slows down the mailing...but it gives me a little time to think, to consider, and to send (I hope) a blessing. When I find myself painting an envelope I have received, whether a letter or junk mail, I think about the sender - saying a prayer, and asking a blessing for every hand that touched it - from the sender to the mail carrier. Each has a life. Each has a set of joys and sorrows to carry.
It doesn't take long to make these illuminations - but in those few minutes, I have a chance to remember. To bless. To say yes and thank you.
I wish I were more faithful in my correspondence and my illustrated envelopes because when I practice this process and make another illuminated envelope, I realize again how connected we are. A string of lives, hand to hand, like one long relay race passing the letter/baton from one to another until it reaches the finish line.
When I was younger, I used to say that when I was (finally) an old woman, I would be one of those little old ladies who writes letters every day. I imagined writing thank you notes to local heroes, letters to my senators and our president and the young person who bags my groceries at the Kroger. I write a lot of thank you notes at work. But I no longer write the long letters I once wrote - and even this blog lags for weeks at a time. Why? The instant gratification of Facebook? Cellphones? Email? Maybe. I worry about this - at least a little. There is no paper archive for my Facebook account...no written records for the way Emily and Will can make me laugh. Oh, the times they are a changing...
But when I got my thank you from India, when I finished illuminating the envelope, I wondered when I would write the next letter...when would I take the time? And the weeks pass... I wonder, without letters, what archive will exist for each of us? Oh, I know, every tweet is archived in the Library of Congress. And, I have heard it said that once you post something on the web it lives forever. But, I know it isn't true. Pages are lost, links are broken, and then what?
Just this month, Kirsten and her sisters are pouring through a series of letters written by their father and mother in the early stages of their courtship and marriage. More than 60 years later they are transported to another time and place. They hear in these letters the voice of the father they knew so well - and the suggestion of the man they could never have known.
Without "hard copy," what will be lost? I keep thinking about 8-track tapes and reel to reel, VHS and Blu-Ray. Are we catching it all? Sure. Of course we are. But you know, I still hope I will become the little old lady who writes letters. And I hope that I will paint the envelopes and add sufficient postage and send them off into the relay of blessings.
Thinking of you more than you can know...
And, of course, loving you even more.
Amanda
Monday, June 20, 2011
20 June 2011
Art Card #70
Wow! Nothing like the first heat waves of summer in the Carolinas to make you forget every good thought you ever had - every good intention - every high and lofty ideal! When suddenly it is a 100 degrees, nothing matters much but survival.
I think this was the first real insight I had about life in the South. In the first couple of years that I lived here, friends would come to visit from New England and wonder aloud and with fairly palpable disdain why everyone in the South is so slow! Slow moving, slow talking, and slow. In the same time period, when I went back up north to visit, I watched everyone and wondered why they were all moving so fast! And that's when it hit me. In the North, in the frozen cold, you will die if you don't scurry and hurry and bustle through the cold. In the South, in the blazing heat, you will die if you don't slow down! And sure enough, when this heat hit, I slowed down, way down. It probably doesn't help that the AC in my car is out, and I cannot bring myself to pay more than $1000 dollars to have it fixed. On the 12 mile drive home from work, I say things like: this heat is good for you, Amanda. Just drink a little more water. All this while the temperature gauge tells me it is 98 at 5:50 p.m. I tell myself these things, but I am not convinced. By the time I get home, I am totally, as they say, fried!
I generally write to you in the evenings or on soft Sundays. But for the past six weeks, I have been so busy at work and at home (ridiculously busy) and knowing that if I don't slow down, I will die in the heat, I made the decision to do less...more a consequence of my heat fatigue than a true decision. But still, worth noting. So the evenings have included a lot more television than normal: you would be amazed at what I know about America's next Top Chef, America's next Top Model, and the inner life of the characters on Glee. Oh, and of course, I balance all this out with a little Masterpiece Theater once a week and a few movies....
Did you see The King's Speech!?! Loved it.
This heat, this fatigue, and this stimulating array of TV shows have combined with the end of the fiscal year demands at work, impending budget woes for the coming year, and a million other slow motion things to leave me stymied, or sullen, or something. If nothing else...embarrassingly silent, I am barely keeping my journal...or rather, my journal has turned into a long list of what I will do when fall comes! But today, I am turning over a new leaf. A summer leaf on the eve of summer....
According to Examiner.com: "This year the summer solstice occurs on June 21 at 17 hours 16 minutes coordinated universal time (1:16 PM EDT)."
Only 20 hours of spring left and it will be official - Summer. And yes, I promise, I will continue to write to you during the hot three months ahead.
All is well here. The grand-babies are amazing, children seem to be thriving - although I imagine Emily and Will without air conditioning during heat waves in NYC and I nearly swoon (Do I sound as much like an old southern matriarch as I think I do?) - Kirsten is hanging in there, managing her pain as best she can. We celebrated our fifteenth anniversary a few days ago. Time flies. Maybe the summer will fly by too.
You know, its funny, but among all my memories of childhood summers, I hold the ones in Michigan most dear. The lakes and the river, the air, how late the sun sets, and even the crazy May Flies (or were they June bugs? swirling around the street lights). In all these memories, Belle Isle is there...the Greenhouse, the horses, my father in his MG. The day my mom, my sister, and I rode our bikes over the long hot bridge. This was when I was very small - I hadn't even learned how to coast! We moved so much that there are other summer places to recall, but I remember Detroit. I remember the long steps up to the front door of the Detroit Institute of Art. I remember the color of the sky before it rained. That strange blush of green across the clouds. Here, when it is really hot in June, July, and August, the blue sky turns white with nary a cloud in sight. But I remember the clouds, high and bright white.
Hope you are well, and bright, and fair.. I will write more very soon (this silence has been too long - and too deep). And I will do my best (dammit) to enjoy the summer.
I love you, Miss Kelly - so much.
Amanda
Saturday, May 7, 2011
7 May 2011
Art Card 110
That prompted a fairly amazing post by our Emily on her tumblr site in which she said:
I admit, there is something touching for me lately in thinking of living in the place where my parents and grandparents lived… that is, at least lived for a while. I’d wager we also have always been a bit nomadic at heart, these bloodlines of mine. But place, this romantic question of place, it comes back to me. What would it feel like to live in the place where my (recent) ancestors lived and struggled and grew up and loved — to not live in diaspora, as I often feel like I do now? It’s been an interesting urge to chew on, new and unexpected. It’ll be 10 years in Brooklyn for me come this Fall. Maybe this urge for Detroit is just another manifestation of my restless heart, draped in longings for a stability I’ve already worked hard to make happen? And if I was going to move away from Brooklyn to, ostensibly, have this feeling of connection with the other generations of my family, why wouldn’t I move back to North Carolina where my living family currently is? But there, that option feels completely different — the romance of the notion is more clearly delimited by the familiar, unromantic work I know would await me there.
Funny that. Maybe that’s what romance is about — the mystery of a compelling other, and all the things you don’t know (yet). It’s a dangerous, if occasionally useful, sentiment. I’m not packing my bags for my mother’s Michigan tonight… but, yes, I still might dream about it.
With some surprise, I read Mayor Bloomberg's statement about Immigration Law and the future of Detroit. He said, and I quote directly from http://www.nbcnewyork.com:
"If I were the federal government ... assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together," Bloomberg said, "you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit
and live there for five or 10 years."
Detroit has lost 25 percent of its citizens since the last census and
Bloomberg said his immigration idea can revive the city
where they would "start businesses, take jobs, whatever."
"You would populate Detroit overnight because half the world wants to come here ...
You can use something like immigration policy
-- at no cost to the federal government --
to fix a lot of the problems that we have."
Wow!
What makes all of this interesting is that I looked at job postings the other day - no intention at all of moving, but more to see what the market for museum professionals looks like around the country - and one of the interesting positions was at the Detroit Contemporary Art Museum. I was, to say the least, smitten. A part of me wanted to apply, to get the job, to pack my bags and my little (actually not so little) family and move back to Michigan. Or rather, to move back to Detroit, which, at least in my memory, is its own country.
I started thinking - remembering - our home on Parker Street in Indian Village, walking to the A & P, playing down by the Detroit River. A frenzied flight of ideas took me round Woodward and down Jefferson and over the Belle Isle Bridge, into the greenhouse, up the steps of the Detroit Institute of Art, back down to the Ambassador Bridge...all over and around the seat of my childhood. I know that I will never come back to Detroit to live. But, I do swirl around her in my dreams. There is something about that childhood vista: the land of my opportunity and my loss that still calls to me.
This morning, I looked online at properties for sale in that old neighborhood, and it made my heart ache a bit. One crazy fantasy was a vacation home back in the middle of it all...but my life is not arranged for such things.
I think what touched me, or astounded and surprised me, about Bloomberg's comment is only this: Detroit will rise again, one way or the other, I am certain. And in my heart, I suspect it may well be what he blithely calls immigrants - speaking of these "others" from around the world and around the nation. That makes sense for Detroit and for America for that matter. That is how we started, that is how we will continue. Immigration and migration have shaped our national history from the beginning, bringing ideas and innovation, arts and industry, small businesses and backyard gardens. The ebb and flow of people is precisely what made Detroit such a fabulous city for so long. Love and hope rooted in the possibility of economic opportunity, affordable housing, outstanding public schools, and shared values, dreams of realizing the American dream of life, liberty, and that elusive pursuit of happiness.
If I were a younger woman, if I were not so tied to this place now, if I were able to move my whole family, if, if, if only...then maybe I would declare myself an immigrant and move back to my homeland. For now, I will stay here and invest in this foreign Southern landscape...be the immigrant from the North, from Michigan, from Detroit.
And as I told Emily - maybe it is time for a road trip this summer....
Always loving you (and always loving Detroit)
Amanda
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