What Will Be Left Behind

For the past twenty years, when I turned onto my street at night, the singular yellow street light on a very long block marked my driveway (and a fire hydrant).  It seemed like a little blessing as if I somehow deserved a special welcome home light.  As I prepare to put my home on the market this spring, I have been intentionally watching for the lovely things that I have been gifted by this home and which I shall miss.     

Chives, my little cat, sunning on the old stool that I use when I prune the grape arbor.

The spring exuberance of the hens and chicks in the early morning light.

The popping open of the Oriental poppies.  When the big green buds come close to bursting, one can pull the green sheath open just the tiniest amount and the flower will burst out with a whoosh.

I shall miss the little pathway that leads to the stream.  The willow becomes so dense at times, that the way is obscured.  I have sent my company out to the table by the stream with them balancing their dinner plates and they have returned plates still in hand - discouraged at being lost in such a small yard. 

I will miss that big old willow by the stream.  From the house, I love watching it wave in the wind and once a hot air balloon scraped across its top.  My daughter learned to climb it with tree climbing gear and visiting children and I would swing out over the water by sitting in its little metal swing.  

The stream.  Its gurgle has been a satisfying backdrop to hours of weeding, the movement of the hammock and the labor of picking raspberries. When I bought the house, ever so long ago, the six letter word "stream" in the ad was the singular motive for looking at the house.   As I move away to my cabin, where I can hear the river, I will know that a portion of that river's water will tumble by this lovely old house and yard.  I could send the house notes of fond remembrance on the currents.  

I shall miss the strawberry bed and strawberry rhubarb pie.

Maybe I shall even miss the mowing.  It is my weekly forty minutes of aerobic exercise.  I suppose the I could offer the new owners mowing services.  Maybe.

Los Angeles Revisited Just-In-Time

Tulips at Descanso Gardens

When I lived in San Diego, I thought of L.A. as if it were a highway, not a city.  I actually didn’t visit it often, but it always seemed like we spent as much time creeping on various highways as we did for whatever event we were planning to attend.  

Japanese Gardens at Descanso

An Eared Grebe in the Descanso Pond

I recently returned from a second visit to see my friend, Art.  Both times he has helped dispel my earlier impression.  The timing was perfect with their spring ahead of ours.  We visited the gardens at Descanso to see tulips and flowering trees, hiked into a canyon at Devil’s Punchbowl and wandered under a wisteria bush that covers two backyards and is only open one day a year. 

Trees Growing from Rocks in Devil's Punchbowl

Snow on the high hills above the canyon we hiked down into at Devil's Punchbowl.

A Small Portion of the 220 ton Wisteria!

We listened to a good band called “Pure Bathing Culture” at a club.  We spent three hours at a Korean spa for senior’s day and ate good food like potato and cilantro tacos and grilled Brussels sprouts with lemon and a cream chipotle sauce. 

 We spent very little time on highways, but even that was exciting.  On our way to the desert, dozens of Corvettes and Porsches raced past us at speeds of over a hundred miles-per-hour.  (We later saw a few of them pulled over on an off-ramp by the highway patrol.)  And we followed one humorous city bus.

Put L.A. and its nearby destinations on your list.  It is really gorgeous.  You just need a good guide - like Art.

A Beautiful Shade

As the evening darkness has begun to recede and I won’t be needing artificial light quite so early, it has occurred to me that I shall miss the beauty of entering a darkened room and turning on a light with a beautiful shade. 

I have taken a few of my favorite lamps up to the cabin.  Without ambient city light or the long summer sun, the cabin sits in deep black of winter nights.  On a moonless night at the cabin, I turned out every light before leaving.  Upon stepping onto the porch and locking the door behind me, I realized that I could not see the first of seven steps or even my car twenty feet away.  After that, I left a small porch light burning.  Arriving in the dark, the singular light welcomed me back.  I’m beginning to contemplate my alternatives for inexpensive lighting including long burning candles and LED bulbs. 

One of my oldest shades, a paper one with hand painted flowers, got a tear last year.  I removed it from the fixture to examine it for repairs and then set it on the floor beside the couch.  I later managed to clumsily step-on it leaving a gaping hole in the backside.  I am using it again at the cabin but have located a replacement shade, minus the flowers.  I’ll have to paint those myself.  I hope they will come out being beautiful.    

My Inheritance

Mrs. Benge and Mrs. Jones were salvagers in that time when women - talking with pins in their mouths - spoke of challenging feats of threading eyes and attaching zipper feet.  (Really, when you think of it, these were tasks worthy of fairy tale stature.)  Their daughters, granddaughters or nieces – almost always the girls - sat at their feet playing while absorbing the lessons of economy. With the wolf at the door, the last dollar spent, women – the ones who collected buttons - could hold the fabric of their family’s dignity together by rummaging through their collections of buttons and transforming old clothes into new. 

My Aunt Lucille was such a child.  I know because she was a good seamstress and in my inheritance, she gave me a large collection of buttons.   She told me that they had belonged to her mother, Mrs. Jones, and to her mother’s good friend, Mrs. Benge.

I sew.  Not anything like my fore-bearers could, but I can sew a straight seam, put up a hem or replace lost buttons.  My sewing box was at first just a tin and then after my inheritance arrived, I got an old metal box with handles.  My little tin could fit inside.  Eventually, I replaced that box with a double foldout wooden one that I purchased for two dollars at a Seattle yard sale.  Being bigger, it became a jumble over the years.  I’ve been meaning to straighten it out. 

I like being able to find the right color of thread, safety pins (love them) and needles and, of course, just the right button.  

Maybe now I will sew a little row of tiny buttons made of abalone shells on the window curtain (an old twenty-year project) or make a purse with my leather needle and use that huge black and white button to close it.   If, however, I get to neither project, I plan to will the buttons to someone in my family of the next generation.  And maybe they will also get the wooden sewing box with its button-like black knobs.

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Eleven Photos (2015) + One (2016)

Sandy River, OR

Joseph, OR

Bonneville Sturgeon Ponds, OR

Biggest Sunflower in My Yard

Last Grape Harvest

Fall Tree on Mill Creek Road

Leaf in the Cabin's Spring-Fed Pond

Palouse Hills and Hay Stack, WA

Hwy. 26, WA

Chioggia Beets

Reflection of a Painting

Fingers in Honey

Today I was thinking about some wonderful photos that I never posted last year when I got so busy.  Hope that you enjoy these, especially that first one.  The dad was drinking his beer and the little boy was either rowing or fishing.  Summer at its best!  

The Reappearance of a Cookie Jar

As a child, my mother’s cookie jar sat on the kitchen counter in our cement-block house in Reno, Nevada.  The jar wasn’t often full, but frequently enough for me to associate its curvaceous green shape and hand-painted flowers with chocolate chip cookies.  After my mom and dad passed away, the cookie jar came into my possession.  By then, the jar’s original lid had been broken and replaced with a dark and ugly wooden one. The replacement top gave the cookie jar a depressed appearance as if it was an old man who had found an ill-fitting hat on the street and wore it because it was all he had. I put the jar away.  Eventually, I located a matching lid, but by then our kitchen had been painted in hemlock green and the color clashed with the cookie jar.  I returned it to its cupboard.

Last week as I stored an infrequently used coffee maker up in a high cabinet, the cookie jar caught my attention.  I realized that its color would match the clock in my other kitchen.  Within a couple of hours, the jar had been moved to my cabin.  With the clock above it seeming to say time for cookies, the jar, looking as if it had changed into a Hawaiian shirt, appeared cheeky against the red wall.  

I’ve been thinking about those things (like cookie jars) and those people in my life that I have loved.  A good part of my years I ricocheted back and forth across the country.  I’d make friends and family ties, or acquire treasures.  And then, circumstances or chaos (often of my own making) would require another move or house or job and once again friends or family would become intermittent connections in the form of letters, rare phone calls or even rarer visits.  Possessions would be boxed, displayed and re-boxed. 

On occasion, I will use painting as a way to think about what I want to say in my writing.  I just finished painting the one above representing a timeline of my life and the friends and family I have known. 

When I traveled for seven months I visited people from every time period of my life.  For example, my high school friend Bob (actually we were also in kindergarten together) is one of those people who came back into my life.  He and his lovely wife, Kristin, visited last summer and gave me that green round clock that now calls out the hour of cookies.  In the painting above, Bob is represented as a friend from my Reno High School days (school colors: blue and gold).  The purple blue shape fans out at the top, representing the wide relationship that has occurred in the last couple of years.  Kristin is the white circle in the middle of his shape.     

I appreciate that cookie jars and humans have the capacity to sustain connections across time.  Sometimes their communication becoming a thin line of simply knowing that they exist and at other times being expressed in long holiday letters or cross-country visits.    

(Each yellow circle in my painting represents myself, as I grew bigger and older and, at times, wiser.)    

Some lives have ended, like Gary’s (purple for his high school color and for pancreatic cancer).  

As I move to the little cabin, I will leave some possessions behind, but the ones that I keep, like the cookie jar, will keep reminding me of where I came from and who was in my life at the time.      

For now, my clock is saying time for cookies.  I think that the first batch should be chocolate chip in remembrance of my mom.     

Libraries

Magazine Room at the Whitman College Library

On occasion, the room was deserted.  Even as a child I was acutely aware of rooms devoid of adults and chattering kids.  Those were the times when I could pull a book from the shelves, any book, sit on the floor and wander off into fairytale worlds.  Eventually, my mom would return from shopping and retrieve my sister and me from the tall wooden stacks in the pink stucco public library.  I would always carry home a small pile of books to read in the solitude of my home.

Whitman College students have not returned yet, so last week when I found myself only a block away, I made a small detour in my route. I crossed campus from the parking lot and entered the front door of the library, taking an immediate left into the light-filled magazine room.  When I worked nearby at the childcare center, I would catch myself making the promise that upon retirement, I would visit the library often.  I think about it, but haven’t yet gone as frequently as I would like to go.

 

One Section of the Magazine Rack at the Whitman Library

I appreciate paper clips, rocks, a cat’s purr, clean underwear and libraries.  Even busy libraries suit me.  I find it pleasing that in an era when it seemed that books might become passé new libraries are being built.  Stunning ones. 

Entrance to Montreal's Reserve Book Room

Art Exhibit in Montreal's Library

View from Seattle's Main Branch Library

Hallway in Seattle's Main Library 

In November, I was in Vancouver, Washington visiting a friend and had the opportunity to go to a new library.  On a Friday evening, every floor was humming with people.  The children’s area was packed- a great combination of play area with visually appealing displays of books.  It wasn’t the quiet room of my childhood library, but I think that I would have found books anyway.  The words up the lobby wall were inspiring enough.  I can imagine a small child looking up at those huge incomprehensible letters in code and wishing to be able to decipher them.   

 

Walla of Words- Looking Up to the Ceiling

The Whitman Library remained quiet my entire stay.  I left without a stack of books.  But in my head, my brain was still busy shelving new ideas, old words and gratitude for libraries.