Seattle, Portland and the gift of friends

After San Diego, Coty and I went to Seattle.  Ah, Seattle - this city and its environs and so beautiful.  All the water - the Puget Sound, the lakes, the rivers - and of course, the mountains - the Olympic range to the east and Mt. Ranier, such a majestic backdrop to the city (when you can see it ; )

We visited the Arboretum and, upon the strong recommendation of a friend here, the Japanese Gardens (thanks, Joy).  We went to the Ballard Locks and Gas Works Park and later in the visit, I got to go to the Museum of History and Industry.  We went to the top of Mt. Erie for the views and hiked near Deception Pass and Rosario Beach.  We spent a lovely day in La Conner and watched boats and seals in the Skagit River from our lunch restaurant deck.

Coty left after a couple of days to fly to Indonesia but I stayed for a nice long visit ...

As much as there is to see and do in Seattle, though, this trip was not mostly about seeing the sights.  It was about seeing my friends.  My oldest friend and one of my newest.

In the ninth grade, we were the new girls.  I had moved from Atlanta and she from Philadelphia. We went to a play with our English class and hit it off.  Then we were in the school play together, she the sophisticated northern girl, me the hillbilly hick.  Fitting.  The other morning when I came downstairs to her beautiful kitchen that looks out across the fields to a snow capped mountain, I told her I'd done the math.  We've been friends for 43 years.

I know how rare it is in this day and age to have a friend who's known you for so long.  One who knows your history and your family, who you love even more now than ever, a friend that you laugh with just as much as you did when you were teenagers, a friend that prays for you, and remembers birthdays and significant dates.  Such a friendship is a gift. A treasure.

And then, I got on a bus and rode for three and a half hours to Portland where I finally met, face to face, a friend that I've known via the internet for a long time.  A few people that I told about my trip thought it was a bit odd that I was going to meet and stay in the home of a person I had only known online and through a few handwritten cards.  Someone told me I was brave.  Others were curious.  It didn't feel odd or scary to me.  It was more like a Julia and Avis moment, I told someone.  We've corresponded at length and deeply for a long time and it was time to meet in person.  I was going to the Pacific Northwest anyway.  Why not take a trip to Portland and sit face to face with this dear friend, to fill in the colors of the line drawing of our friendship.

And so we met - on a city street, as I got off the bus.  There she was with her youngest son and we hugged and went to breakfast and shopped for books. A street poet wrote a poem for us. Then we drove the 45 minutes or so to her home among the trees and it felt just. right.

We talked and talked over coffee and tea, we cooked together knowing that we share such similar thoughts and tastes about food, we walked in the woods and along a trail that was familiar to me because I've seen pictures from this place for years.  The rain came in the night, the pellet stove warmed, the ducks quacked, the cat crawled on my lap.  This friendship, too, is such a gift.  This woman, a treasure to me.

Sitting here, thinking about these friends who are physically far away but oh, so near in my heart makes me miss them, makes me wish they were closer, makes me wish we could just drop over for coffee or share a meal together, but, dadgummit, there's a whole, big country in between.  Why do we have to be so far apart!  Ah, well - let me be glad this morning.  I'll not bemoan the distance, but give thanks that I've been given the sweet gift of deep friendship, two times over out there in the Pacific Northwest.  Looking forward to my next trip some future day and urging them both to come soon to North Carolina!

Creative, generous friends

I have some very creative, generous friends.  Carla, who makes beautiful jewelry and mixed media journals,  agreed to make a necklace for me.  The ceramic beads she's using (pictured below) came from Kazuri Beads, in Kenya.

Waaaaay back in 1981, when Coty and I had first moved to Nairobi, we visited the workshops of Kazuri and watched women roll, shape, and paint the beads.  I still have two necklaces that I bought at that time.

This new necklace that Carla is making has special connections - it reminds me of a time and place that holds many fond memories, and it makes me think of my very dear friend, who is creating a work of art that I will treasure.

 
When Carla gets her blog up and running, I'll let you know.  You would enjoy seeing her work.

Thanks, sweet friend, for all the ways you encourage and inspire.

"Simple Aliveness"

"Things have changed greatly and still are changing, can they change much more? ...

And yet I wonder sometimes whether we are progressing.  In my childhood days life was different, in many ways, we were slower, still we had a good and happy life, I think, people enjoyed life more in their way, at least they seemed to be happier, they don't take time to be happy nowadays."   

-Grandma Moses from her autobiography, published in 1952 (she was then 92)

Hoosick Falls in Winter, painted in 1944

Phillips Collection

"For all who suffer from what might be called living strain - and many do complain about the malady - a few minutes' exposure to the presence of Grandma Moses is powerful therapy.  On Tuesday this ninety-three-year-old lady made one of her rare trips from her up-state home in Eagle Bridge, NY, to appear at the annual Herald Tribune Forum.  Some said that she stole the show.  Others were impressed with her astonishing vitality, her mental alertness, her humor, simplicity, graciousness, enjoyment of the occasion, and so on.  The plain fact is, everybody felt reinvigorated while in her presence. ...

While many distinguished persons were appearing before the Forum, a little old lady of ninety-three stepped into their midst and endeared herself to all by her simple aliveness ..."

-New York Herald Tribune, October 22, 1953

This part of the country, this area of eastern New York, just near the Vermont border, is sometimes called Grandma Moses Country.   She began painting here when she was in her late 70's.  She lived to be 101.

I've driven these roads over the last four weeks - over the pass from Bennington looking down across snowy hillsides and rolling pastures toward the ice rimmed Hoosick River, passing old farms with their colonial era houses (white, with dark green shutters, very like my own house in North Carolina!) and red barns and weathered out buildings.  I've watched the colors of the sky change with the weather, brilliant azure on clear days with the sun casting long, undulating shadows across the snow, and gunmetal gray on days when the sun barely manages to pierce the overspreading haze of low, snow-laden clouds.  I've listened to the train that follows tracks right along the Hoosick and watched it slow to a crawl through the village, little boys waiting on the sidewalk to cross the tracks, counting the cars as they waved their arms and stamped their feet to keep warm.  I've noticed birches and sugar maples and old, old oaks.

On a beautiful walk in the woods and then over tea with Mary in front of the woodstove, I felt the sweetness of simple aliveness.  I think a few minutes exposure to the presence of my dear friend is pretty powerful therapy.  She doesn't paint, but she walks and knows the woods and trees and especially the birds, and hand feeds the chickadees as they follow her around the yard and down the driveway.  Anybody that comes to visit can hold out a hand with sunflower seeds and it's not long before a chickadee alights to snatch a seed. That's enough to reinvigorate anybody!

Driving home down the mountain late in the afternoon, the beauty caught me and held me. I imagined Grandma Moses looking at scenes so much like the one spread out in front of me.  The low rounded mountains, the foreground dotted with farm houses and fields and woods, and a winding river. I could understood her love of this place.  I'm very glad she picked up her brushes at 78 and started to paint.


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I'm also grateful to Alicia Paulson for mentioning this book, a used copy of which I promptly purchased and have just finished reading.

My Golden Ones

I love that here on the edge of eastern NY, in sight of the Green Mountains of Vermont, Erin and Luke are again living close to our home of 13 years (1989-2002, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts). It's easy to have a three state day here!

I have old friends here, good friends, moms who drank tea with me when we had babes in arms, friends that kept me sane when we were trying to feed, clothe, homeschool, raise our small people.  My friends are grandmothers now, like me.  It is sweet to get to this place ... meaning both this physical locale and this spot in life.  I rarely, if ever, thought about being a grandmother back in those days, but here we are, and I'm glad to be here with Mary and Gail.

Mary and I go for walks.  I drive down the hill to Seifert's Estate Auction House and Antique Store on the corner.  The light turns green and I pass the Big Moose Deli, which is what I would call "Vermont tacky,"(although it's in NY state), the house on the corner that was a tavern in colonial days, the tiny post office and volunteer fire station, and then two and a half miles of snow covered, stubble studded cornfields, old barns, and scattered houses, and around the bend by the river, and there I park.  The cows in the Green Dairy barn are eating their hay, two cats lie sunning in the dead grass on the south facing road bank.  Mary and I meet and walk down Indian Massacre Road.  This morning she pointed out the geese and ducks on an ice floe in the river, a red tail hawk, a white-throated sparrow behind the sumac, and further along, a pileated woodpecker.  Walks with Mary always include observing the birds.

From our walk last week, along a woods road, tracking ...

Gail and I always drink tea.  We talk about our children, who were buddies when they were younger and I learn more about her art work.  We took a watercolor class together long ago - must be about 20 years ago now - from a local artist.  I dabbled a bit, gave it up, and moved on to yarn and fabric.  Gail stayed with the paints and after a long, hard battle with cancer, she's painting again.  In December and January, she had her first exhibit in the local library.  I went to see her paintings yesterday and I felt so glad for her.

I looked up the words from that old song and found some I'd never heard.  They are appropos ...

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,
Friendship never knows decay.

I had no idea when I'd see my friends again after Erin and Luke moved to Montana. But with their return to the area and an extended time here helping Erin after Levi's birth, it has come far sooner than I expected!

Serendipitous grace to share time these special days in January with my golden ones.

Our Make Welcome Christmas party ... LOTS of pictures!

The Make Welcome women came to my house yesterday for our last sewing class of the year and a Christmas party.

 I rearranged furniture in my studio to make room to set up five (!!!) sewing machines,

baked sugar cookies and mixed up icing for cookie decorating.

And then they came!  The room was a beehive of activity - sewing tote bags, diaper changing pads, and making fabric flowers.

Lots of helping happened ...

Sang finished her first project - a pieced diaper changing pad.  (sorry the color's not so great in this picture).

San Aye finished her pieced changing pad, too.  And then we discovered that this sweet lady that I've really come to love, who has such a struggle with the machine at times ...



...does exquisite hand embroidery!  I wish you could really see the detail of these fine stitches.  She gave these pillowcases that she embroidered to Julia and me.  What was a gift we will both treasure!  And I can't wait for her to teach the rest of us how to do these unique herringbone stitches.  So much we can all learn from each other.

Meanwhile in the big room, Julia and Jenny were keeping the kids busy and happy ...

making cotton ball sheep...

decorating cookies 

(Everytime I asked Cadie to show me her cookie, 

she held it right up in front of her face!)

Luke had a great time entertaining baby David Thang, who has grown sooooo much!

Ruth, who just turned 2,  is a little artist.

 Finally, we all gathered around the table.  The women decorated some cookies, too.  We drank tea and coffee and talked and laughed ...

 and Julia shared some special Christmas traditions 

and we read verses about the birth of Jesus in Burmese.

Sure do love these ladies.  

I won't see most of them again til February, and I will miss them

but I'm excited to be heading to NY at the beginning of the year for ... 

Grandbaby #2!

Quilt paparazzi

That's what Kay, Amber and I were today.  We spent this entire glorious fall day at the Ozment farm taking pictures of sari quilts.  Tonight I am bone tired!  That's a lot of work, people.  But also a whole, whole lot of fun.  

Lots of moving props around, climbing up and down step ladders, unfolding and refolding quilts, arranging pillows, cowboy boots, nightstands, lamps, candles, flowers, plants, chairs, dolls, lanterns, books, and more as we styled the shots.

I loved working with Kay, Amber, and Chandra.  Each woman brought her personality, creative flair, and design sense to the day.

We've got more to do tomorrow, but after today we have a better understanding of our setting, lighting, and shot possibilities.

Kay styling a shot

The wind picked up so we had to use clothespins to hold the quilt on the bed.

Lots of up and down steplaadders.

Our system for keeping quilts organized - finished quilts in the front, quilts yet to shoot in the back.

Love my d-i-l, Kay.  She's a trip!

It was a great day, y'all.