Working on Part 2

I'm here. I've been painting, getting the house ready to go back onto the market. (Oh joy, oh rapture.) AND I have been working on Part 2. I think I have to break it into two parts. It would seem that I am rambling.

Wait. Control your surprise. I went off on a Portugal tangent. Then I meandered into some other thing about traveling alone and how freeing it is. Clearly I was a tad too free as I wrote. I found some pictures I took.

What I need to say is that nothing is wrong. Not even remotely. Just busy being my butterfly-attention-span Jetty.

Did I tell you all how I got my nickname? When I was about three or four, I could run around UNDER the dining room table, as well as tearing in circles through the dining room, into the kitchen, around the fridge and washing machine, into the living room, PAST the 9000 foot long couch, sharp left through the arch, back into the dining room, quick tour of the den, back under the table, and do the circle in the opposite direction.

There was a cereal called Sugar Jets, and in the commercial a little girl would put her arms out and run around going, "I'm jet-propelled!"  I thought that sounded nice, so that is what I would shout while I did this.

I was a charming child. Easy on my mom. My dad watched me one day, and I was beginning my fourth or fifth tour of duty, from out of the sky came the long arms of GOD and I swooped up to the ceiling, squealing. My father brought me down to his Old Spice chest and said, "Slow down, Jetty, slow down.  The world will keep spinning fast even if you don't."

And that was that. I was Jet and Jetty from then on...

SIDEBAR...

Part 2 of Runaways to Redbank still doesn't say much, if anything about Red Bank. I simply TOLD everyone I was headed to Red Bank when I left home--either from PA or CT.

It's more about West Long Branch, where there was a wonderful, long boardwalk that had a row of those marvelous old places--a diner, arcade, fudge and candy type store, and gee-gaw place.  All of the places were boarded up the last time I went there. I had lost my brother by then and was feeling rather lost.

Here is a picture and a poem I wrote back then.

I'm not going to include the poem!

It DOES express something of what women over fifty often feel, when the beauty men found so irresistible has nearly disappeared, blurred by wrinkles, weight, and, in my case, the debilitating spinal disease that had taken hole.   But, you know what? I just don't feel all that BAD.

I love this picture, though, with my clogs all alone there. I was free, unencumbered, and just beginning to find my eye, to realize that I HAD an eye for art.  I had so little confidence seven years ago.

So. Dave. Does this answer your question for now? I love to ramble, but there are limits.  I have mentioned to a couple of friends a comment made by you and someone else, picturing me or some other woman onstage, telling my tales. The woman who followed your comment imagined that I must use my hands when I speak.

Two days ago I was telling my best friend some ridiculous story and forgot, when I got to the climax, that I was holding my coffee cup... I'll leave it at that. I DO use my  hands. When I was in high school, I was in the drama club.

AGAIN with the control your shock.  I played Katrin in Mother Courage and Her Children by Brecht! Our new, very young drama adviser had seen that we had done only plays like "Corliss Archer Goes to the Prom," "The Mouse that Roared," and "Mousetrap." He told us that the play WAS a real stretch, but he wanted the seniors to have a real acting experience. I tried for Mother Courage, but got the mute who dies. He said, "Trust me. Challenging as I know it will be for you to shut up, you will steal the show."

I learned to tell a story without words from him. I never did learn to shut up, though. I'll be back!

Deliverance, in more ways than one...

I ran away from home when I was forty: the spring after my husband took off, my daughter went into treatment, and my sister had a nervous breakdown. Those things are bad enough, but I think it was when the hundred year old oak fell in the middle of the night about six months after the man was gone that I'd had enough. I was wakened by the sounds and sights that looked like the start of ET. Men sounds, shoes through brush and shaking flashlights. At dawn I looked out my office window and saw nothing but branches.

Inside I felt nothing but overwhelmed and weighted down.

That was it.

I'd longed to see Monticello ever since I'd seen something about the place in Smithsonian. I longed for an adventure that was all my own, so I decided that May Day — also my dad's birthday — was the time for a trip. I would go to Longwood Gardens, then wind down toward the south and through the Blue Ridge Mountains. I got the maps and made reservations in Pennsylvania and in Virginia. I planned no further than that.

On April 30, early in the morning, I simply left. There are no words for the feeling of reaching the Delaware Gap without an agenda of any kind. I went the long way and wound down along the river, among the wild forsythia. I had never seen the shrub as it had been intended--a fountain of gold in a clearing. Enormous, tangled, latest growth waving in the breeze.

That first night, I reached the little roadside motel with an unaccustomed peace, and a strange sense of something close to fear. For more than a decade I had been bending to the needs of one person or another. My family for the last twelve, and a friend before that. I had lived in other people's homes until I married--and when I had a home with him, there was always compromise or some small or large tug of war.

That night I realized that, for the first time in my life, I could simply choose my own course, including where to eat. The fact that I found this somewhat disturbing made me smile. A decision just for me? There was no "Oh, whatever you would like, dear. That's fine." No making do.

No excuses. Rats.

No one to blame should the choice prove less than good! I really hated that.

What I was about to find out, though, was that I didn't hate it at all; in fact, the freedom to choose suddenly meant that I was happy with the simple fact that the choices were all mine. Had the trip ended there, it would have been useful.

Fortunately, it didn't. I ate at my first "family style" restaurant — an all you can eat buffet where we sat at trestle tables. Tables for twenty and everyone together. It was ideal for a lone travel and a family promptly adopted me. I played with a three-year-old and a little girl no more than six. They sat on either side of me and we had important conversations about ducks, a toad, and some book about a bear.

I had the remote in the hotel. Need I say more than that?

I'm an early riser, and there were lawn chairs beside each front door, so I took a cup of the motel coffee and settled in the chair to simply watch. The view was simply to the other side of the street, but that side held a six foot embankment with a field above, and perhaps a buggy would go by, just as they went by my friend's cabin outside Lewisburg. That is a settling, calming sight for me. And you just never know what you'll see if you simply watch. It was just after dawn, and the mists were eerily rising from the field. I wasn't sure why, since the day was cloudless and dry.

Then I saw him.

The Paul Bunyan of farming. An Amish man, no more than twenty, tall, muscled, shirtless. Overalled, with gleaming arms, blond hair beneath a straw hat, sticking to the back of his neck. Eyes that were a focused blue that even at this distance, pierced the mist. (At least to my line of sight they did.) Six Percherons strained and heaved before his plough. Looming, sudden giants, emerging from the mists, prehistoric breath hanging in the morning air. The smell of new-turned earth and the sounds of the straining horses, left me breathless.

Or perhaps it was the young man. I'd been alone for months...

May Day, May Day...

For some reason I was really hungry for breakfast down the road.

I was off for Longwood Gardens before 9:00, just an hour's drive from the hotel. I had my cane, but mostly used it as a baton for the morning, as I wandered a hillside of heath and heather, through daffodils and tulips and marvelous early spring plantings. The place should be named "Gardeners' Heaven," but that's okay. I spoke to no one. I bought nothing. I had a backpack with lunch that I'd bought at the restaurant near "home." (When I travel, wherever I sleep becomes home.) I had a towel to sit on and a book to read, and a journal in which to sketch or write. I felt light, young ... happy. Freedom felt sweet, and it occurred to me that being single had a great deal to commend it.

Funny. I suddenly remembered that I had never had a desire to be married; I had wanted kids. When my husband pursued me, I was tired from surgeries and pain. I had nowhere to go. It occurred to me that I had not given him my whole heart at any time. In fact, at that moment in the gardens, I was happier than I had been throughout most, if not quite all, of my marriage. This made me sad; it made me sad for him more than me.

I went to bed that night annoyed with myself. I awoke that Sunday angry and grumpy and ready to be nasty. I'd gotten up early — Maybe my Mythic Ploughsman would be there! No. Not a good start and I nearly slammed the door when I went inside, just remembering in time that there were two rooms on either side.

This was not the way to approach the next five or six hour drive! I was headed for Charlottesville, VA. It would not be at all acceptable to travel like that. I had discovered earlier that I'd forgotten my camera, so I had about ten of those orange cardboard cameras they gave us way back then. Three of them were panoramic view cameras, and took up a little more room. I was in such a bad mood that even this was making me angry and I sort of threw my clothes into the suitcase, rather than packing and wondered why nothing closed.

An hour later, I had showered and decided to wear my prettiest sundress-black, with lilies on it, my cool little shoes, and to wear make up. Sometimes putting on a mask lets me assume an attitude of happiness. Sometimes the assumption sinks in and it seemed worth a try. It worked.

I hit the Blue Ridge highway early, and thought that I would take one of the several numbered routes that cut across the mountains to reach the highway south to the city. What could go wrong with a numbered route? Half an hour into the drive the road became dirt and one lane...

Every stereotype I had ever seen of "mountain" people came into my pathetic brain. I laughed at myself, but they stuck. Half an hour later, after passing just two houses, each, YES, lined with old bottles, bits of metal, and even an old bathtub, I was more than a little scared. There were no pulloffs. I could not tell how much further the road would go, nor how long it would take. It wasn't that I was afraid the car would break down, so much as how would I back up if a car came the other way at all? Well, one did. Somehow, though, we managed to inch by one another, doing a dangerous, but careful weave, adjusting, each of us to the furthest edge of our road. We stopped a moment, because we each saw the other was not from Virginia.

"How far have you come?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. Forever. Or maybe about forty-five minutes."

"Same here. About half an hour or so, though, it gets wider and paved. You?"

He shook his head. "Dirt all the way. Nice pull off though haflway along. Good luck. You got enough gas?"

"Plenty. You?"

"Yup."

I felt a little better, and drove along. Sure enough, there was a very generous pull off and I parked the car and got out. And to my left, across the road, was the most beautiful river view I had ever seen. I was so nervous, I'd never noticed the climb to this point. I looked over a cliff to a mountainside covered with pinks, purples and whites of wild rhodedendrons. And there, before the far ridge of, yes, blue mountains, was the Shenandoah River. There were honey bees all around me, but, for perhaps the first time in my life, I was oblivious. I rooted around in my trunk and got out the panoramic camera, as well as my little normal one.

I began to snap pictures. I must have taken a whole roll of normal sized pictures, and I snapped six panoramic, then started back to the car.

There was a loud sound of brush breaking and I stopped cold, in the middle of the road, heart pounding, more afraid than I'd ever been. A bear?

From the woods appeared, rather than emerged, a man about six foot three — my husband's size. Flame red hair and a staff easily a foot taller than he. An army shirt with the sleeves cut off, ripped off filthy jeans, and large muscled arms as glistening as my Mythic Man's. A gap showed between his brown teeth as he slowly grinned at me.

I think I saw bugs hopping on his head. The stench was overwhelming. And in my head, a familiar banjo theme, despite all my best intentions ...

PART II coming Soon--sorry. Have a chance to be with friends Sunday. That trumps blogs!

Tree peonies & Irises

A friend of mine came into the house for her art play session and said, "Your flowers-forgive me--they are girlie flowers in the best sense. They scream 'Look at me, I am a flower and I've visible from outer space!"

To which, in all my erudition, I replied, "Well, DUH! Ya think?"

You can tell I am a writer, I know. But, hey, this is why I specifically planted those two plants. When I remember to expose the iris korms nice and early, I am rewarded with spectacular results — the kind really needed by any instant gratification junkie who is trying to learn the rewards of patience. I've dead-headed thirty blossoms and there remain twelve fresh blooms today — the last, but that's okay. The tree peonies, a new addition of just three years, are beginning to hit their stride. BOTH had five blossoms the size of breakfast plates. (I'm old. This is a plate between dessert plates and dinner plates.) At this stage of growth, the effect is sort of silly--all blossom, no foliage. Afterward, now that the petals lie in profusion on the mulch, the sight of the foliage of deeply cut leaves branching from one "trunk" is beautiful.

The point is that I have always overbought annuals in May. Now? I am so fully satiated by the spectacle of delicacy and boldness, that I hold off. These two plants just saved me about $75.

I expected a report from the space shuttles, but no. I cannot believe that those circling toward Bradley field don't tip down to have a look at the intensity of red and blue. Nope. Oh, well. The nightly news' loss is of no consequence. When the iris pass, the regular peonies--a ten foot, low hedge of them--will be off and running.

I can look down from my office, or out from my studio and drink them in. The gratitude for lessons taught by grandmother, my mother, and my oldest friend make me tear up. I did not know I was a gardener, until we moved into this home nineteen years ago, to a place of lawn and one forsythia hedge and not one single other shrub or flower anywhere. Now an island of viburnum, red maple, rhodies, mountain laurel, andromeda, azalea, run the sweep of the fifty foot ranch wing of the house, sheltering the windows from a neighborhood of eyes that DO intrude. There is an alcove of shade, where one can sit unseen from the street, and look back toward the house, to the flowers and other ornamentals. It is a spot of quiet and coolness. I dug every bed, planted every tree and bush and flower myself, largely unassisted.

I have a robin the size of Pittsburgh, who lands not ten feet from me when I mulch or weed. He squawks at me after ten minutes, eager for me to leave the upturned worms for his lunch. He is insistent. I ignore him for a bit because I LIKE my worms. Eventually, I decide he deserves a meal, and I let him at it--for a bit.

I have had two weeks to drive into my driveway and laugh at my ostentatious, unruly, marvelous mass of blossoms. Soon I'll have another.

And now that I have work and it looks as if I may just be able to count on being here for TWO more years, not one? Well, I may plan another bed of future instant gratification. That phrase may seem like an oxymoron, but so is an impatient gardener. I think the NEED for annuals is for the learning process. Oh. Mind you, I'll get some for the little fill in places, but I will be more reasoned in the quantity.

Not in the brightness, however. I will need them for August, before sedum and chrysanthemum have their sway. After the ludicrous lilies have passed and their jester-ruffs have wilted, leaving pathetic stalk behind. I'll need my begonias and alyssum, petunias and coleus, lobelia and snapdragons. The punctuation marks of profusion filling in the blanks, letting me know that my legs still work well enough. My life is rich enough.

It is hard to remember how I hated to help my mother dig holes and plant. How silly I said it all was, all the while I marveled at the ten foot bank of rock garden that sloped up to our home. I remember the iris among the rocks. The daisies and pinks. Pockets of petunias tumbling into masses of something with foliage as dark as New Hampshire pine forest green. I would stand transfixed, yet insist I did not care for gardens... until I had no gardens to see. Until my mother was gone, the cottage was gone, and I grew tired of the sameness of apartment life.

I am a gardener and I never knew it. I am an artist and denied it for years. What a gift to discover such things as I moved through middle age. What will I discover by 65? I don't know, but suddenly, pain notwithstanding, this aging stuff seems a bit less scary than I thought.

All Things in Moderation--even Fear?

I have to start with saying that I realize I'm mistaken. My blog has been read, and it is more encouraging than I knew. Thank you. I'll let the rest of this entry stand largely unedited, however...

My very first blog, that no one has read, mentioned that desperation can force us to go after what we want. Maybe it's fear, too. Most of the time fear has paralyzed me. Why, this time, it galvanized me makes little sense to me. Perhaps over-analyzing would be a waste of effort. Regardless, I seem to have done what I needed to get the word about my new business, Paint, Paper & Pens. I have had inquiries after just a week of having one ad and a bunch of flyers on tables.

Furthermore, the inquiries sound as if the women are excited about what amounts to playing with art. Playing. Not hardcore, serious art lessons. I'm going to have water-based paints, glue, good quality tissue paper, and treated water color paper as the backing surface. I'll be helping people quite simply to lose their fear of "doing it wrong." At least, I hope I'll be doing that. My idea of success, from the personal angle? If people laughed and lost a fear of exploration, and if people choose to go on and take "real" art lessons. Financially? I want, one day, to pay my bills doing this work and writing again for universities.

I never thought that, with the credentials of writing for Stanford and for Northeastern, that I would not be able to write for other colleges or universities. The economy is what it is. If I were to be honest, here, I have to say that perhaps I have not always written the proper inquiries either. I'm too informal sometimes. That being said, I miss the writing and stimulation of learning something brand new every week.

Still, I have not allowed myself to go all out with my own creativity in more than a decade. Like millions of women and men, I have deferred what mattered most to me inside for what I thought I should do. We women like to think men always do what they want. Bunk. They may claim offices in a home so we wind up working in the dining room... and if they want the garage, they claim it. I ask you, though, how many men, if what they want to play with is art, allow themselves to do that? Look at the painting classes in night schools and community colleges. In our culture, it isn't particularly acceptable for them in most areas of the country. It should be. Blogs let us throw those thoughts out into the universe.

In my case, there seems to be little chance even a random pair of eyes will see. (WRONG) Yet I write. I am trying to think before I write and say only what I feel no problem with the world's seeing--regardless of whether or not they really do.

I am terrified of what I am doing because there's no net. I have no safety net. I won't let my son be that--I'm too young and so is he. I feel I need to have another twenty years of independence, for his sake as well as my own. Conducting workshops will make me explore my own abilities again. The prep work already has. I had forgotten that I do interesting pen and ink sketches. I had forgotten that I am even good at that! I will at last have the space to spread out and finish two paintings I'd forgotten I'd even started, let alone that I liked them. I will charge a quarter in my workshops for every self-deprecating comment, and I wonder whether I may be putting more quarters in than anyone else.

I'm starting the business, though! For real. I have cleared the studio space. I have a couple of enrollees who are not people I know. AND, I have my own blog started. I hope I'll figure out what to do with this in a more constructive way, but for now, I simply write. I tell the virtual world how happy I am for the first time since I moved away from my home state for two years, to Central PA, a beautiful, artistically vibrant area of our country. I began a solitary adventure then and found what it was to be part of a community, instead. Now I start on a journey to create a community here, and I'm doing it all on my own. Life is good; it is scary, but it is good.

From the ground up

I am starting over for about the fifteenth time in my life. I could say this is a bad thing, but that would be a lie. The truth is that I'm excited--perhaps more than I have ever been. Being nearly penniless and having a physical condition that precludes "normal" employment are forcing me to do what I've always wanted.

Bummer.

I'm a boomer and I'm feeling new again, and I'm wondering whether there is a world of boomers outther who are reinventing our rusty revolutionary voices. I hope so. For now, I simply hope to use this blog to draw a few people to my business, sure, but to draw more to a virtual community of people who are tired of feeling that our culture has sapped us of our creative joy.

No, I'm NOT talking about touching base with our inner child. I'm talking about being a kid. An all out kid. About playing with paint. Dragging out the building toys. Just getting out a sketch pad. Gardening without a plan. Playing ping pong. My niece and I play Monopoly that never ends. We give each other more money when someone's about to lose, so that the game won't end. It drives her dad NUTS.

I am reinventing myself at fifty-seven. I am making peace with the lumps and bumps and wrinkles and surprises in the mirror. I am decidedly annoyed at the attitudes I run into that tell me I am all through and unhirable. Well, then, I'll hire myself... again.

I have been a writer for twenty years, writing for universities, for nonprofits. So perhaps I'll try writing for myself. I have been to dozens of creativity workshops and memoir workshops, and writing seminars, and computer refresher courses.

Its' time I put to use what I've learned and began running some of my own workshops, dared to create the sort of community I long for, along the lines of an old-fashioned salon. Creative people who want a place to play and to explore. We'll see.

This blog can be a place to start without having to be too specific, but where I can develop the plan and launch it. Perhaps it can draw other people who are reinventing themselves as well.