When my sister and I were young, one afternoon around Memorial Day we would help our grandmother load mason jars of peonies and black-eyed susans, roses and sweet peas into my mother’s car and go to the cemetery. There, along with my brother, we would lay on our bellies and watch the fish in the […]
Today I went to the hospital. I work there on Fridays. I am an artist-in-residence. I go from treatment room to treatment room, offering materials for small art projects and, upon occasion, a listening ear. Today’s patient was a cheerful woman , serene even as the nurse tried vein after vein, looking for one that […]
Mondays I have a half hour between dropping off son the elder and teaching my first class. Not far from my Monday teaching assignment is a church with a labyrinth. Tucked into the L of the church, the labyrinth is open to trees and street on the other two sides. It is gravel with small […]
A few weeks ago the family and I went to a festival. At a booth that sold crystal sun catchers, we chose beads and crystals and stood watching as the vendor tapped and twisted, chatting all the while. It is a small ornament, two tiny teardrop crystals and an amethyst bead. Husband hung it from […]
It rained cats and dogs this weekend; the lightning and sound of falling water woke me in the wee hours. When I opened my eyes next, it was just becoming light. As I came awake, I became aware of a gentle pressure against my hip. Our black cat had curled himself into the small of […]
This weekend I watched Jacques Tati’s “Mon Oncle”. Son the elder and his film buff friend floated in and out of the room. “Mon Oncle” revisits the character of “Monsieur Hulot Goes on Holiday.” Still the hapless bumbler from the earlier film, in “Mon Oncle” Monsieur Hulot takes us into his sister’s family. Ostensibly poking […]
Yesterday was May 1st, May Day,and the fairies came to our street. They made small mussy-tussies out of construction paper, stickers, and ribbon. They filled these with flowers from our yard: white lobelia, tiny, pale pink roses, white and purple violets from the north side of the house. And in the early morning, just barely […]
Yesterday a friend and I made jam. She had steeped the strawberries overnight in sugar and rose geranium leaves. I slit open the green husks of cardamon pods and emptied the fragrant black seeds into her white ceramic mortar, crushing and cracking them with the pestle. She put a judicious amount of the cardamon into […]
This weekend I got up early and headed out in my car. The morning was cool – a cold front had blown in during the night – and gray. Turning on to the street at the end of my block, I startled a heron sitting in the middle of the road. It took flight, its […]
Leaving the first of two galleries I visited last week, I paused on the landing to look out over the neighboring field. The stair to the third-floor gallery was on the outside of the building. Afraid of heights, I averted my eyes to avoid looking through the metal lattice-work to the ground below. Instead, I […]