Don’t start what you can’t finish.  I know.  Currently, I am in the throes of three sewing projects, and not feeling particularly earnest about any of them, because…I’ve invested myself in all of them.  The butter spread thin over too much bread.  I bought this jacket at a thrift store, and decided once it was home that it looked matronly on me.   I’ll whack off sleeves and collar, and make it into a vest Bohemian and Blowsy.  But now, it’s late night—definitely not an ideal time for sewing.  So I’ll talk about Opera.  A natural turn in conversation.

In some company, I have been embarrassed to admit that I like opera (the music).  It is ridiculed by little boys and old men alike, bemoaned by most little girls, and  avoided scrupulously by many women.  Teenagers consider its strains to be sheer torture.  But I like it, I do.  Today, as I was driving and listening to one ebullient song whose name I don’t know (I dubbed it “The Three Men in A Bathtub Song”), I thought for awhile on the perplexities of taste: why some people love opera, and some people hate it.  Here is what I think. [continue reading…]

Some days, I am queen of The House of Chaos.  A figurehead, really.  Even—even on occasion— a lame duck.  Queen Lame Duck.  My children listen politely as I outline terms and conditions and parameters and guidelines, and as I elaborate on appropriate protocol, and then… they do their own thing, under advisement.   I’ve adjusted to this, mostly.  Recognizing that not every moment has to be controlled by me, and that when a particular moment is important, I can find ways to influence (that doesn’t mean I always do; it just means I’m aware of the possibilities).

There are plenty of occasions when I feel a little crazy. It is bewildering and frustrating to Frank to live in this house sometimes.  The other night, worried that one of the kids might have changed the thermostat upstairs, he got out of bed to check.  It was well past ten, maybe even eleven (lately, he leaves for work when he’s in town at 6:45 am).  He came back down, got back into bed, and said to me,  “Every single one of your children is awake and out of bed upstairs, Lynaea”.  “They are?” I said, pretending incredulity.  “what are they all doing?”  “They are all laughing in Michaelyn and Maurya’s room, ” he said.  There was a long silence between us while I considered.  “What are they laughing about?”  I finally asked.  “Well, apparently Ezra hid in Michaelyn and Maurya’s closet, and when they went to bed, he jumped out and scared them.  They made such a ruckus that Meisha and Nora came running to see what was up, and now they’re all in there laughing hysterically,” he replied.   I could no longer contain my own laughter.  Frank chuckled. [continue reading…]

Ah, look at both my daughters’ hands.  Looking at them, I remember a day, when Michaelyn was a toddler, that my mother and sisters and I were sitting together round her kitchen table.  I looked at my mother’s hands, and then at my own.  Mom noticed, and told us about a time when she was a very young mother, at her baby’s funeral (my little brother Michael died just a few hours after he was born).  An elderly lady approached her after the service, and took both her smooth young hands in her own knotty wrinkled ones.  She looked at them, and said to my mother, “Once, my hands looked just like yours”.  She may have said other things; that is all Mom remembers.  She didn’t say whether she was comforted by the elderly lady’s words or not (so typical of my Mom, those little mysteries). [continue reading…]

I am writing from the far side of a minor life altering event: my hard drive crashed.  I lost work and photos that were important to me (and yes, I can see clearly now the wisdom of more frequent backups).  This is the second time I will write an “Intervals” entry.  I wish I could remember all the things I wrote the first time (a memoir of a visit from a friend, comments on cousins).  My laptop crashed in the midst of saving it.

I am also writing in the midst of a nauseated fever.  Really weird; this is a replay of an illness I had a few weeks ago (around the time of the crash).  I wonder if the repetition is significant somehow.  A friend told me once that he believed deja vu’s (my own word choice) were about second chances.   Opportunities to learn what was missed the first time around.  I like that concept.  [continue reading…]

I created a new page on my website called “Projects”.  Last week, I sewed and sewed and sewed, and the first pictures on that page are the product of my frenzy.  I will post all sorts of things there.  I would like to post things done by friends, too.  It is a photo album of sorts.

Also, I updated my “Gallery” page, posting a few new paintings that I’ve done this spring.  The picture here is a close-up of one of those paintings in progress.  No one liked the brown dress or the pink background, so the finished painting has an entirely different look.  The mermaids that I painted (inspired by Meisha’s drawings) are at the end with the other illustration studies.

Maurya as Garage Sale Fodder Barbie for Halloween.

Maurya is reading “Sense and Sensibility”, by Jane Austen, and proud of it.  She tells me about passages she likes while we’re driving together.  Today I told her about how Molly and the Virginian debate Jane Austen in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian”.   The Virginian wasn’t as impressed with Jane Austen as Maurya is, preferring Shakespeare’s perspicuity to what he decided was Austenian insipidness.  The debate itself is striking; the Virginian is an unlearned cowboy, while Molly is educated and articulate.  I told Maurya about how Wister makes the Virginian just a little superior in his perfection to the heroine.  “So she has character flaws, but he doesn’t?” Maurya was incredulous.  That’s right, I told her.  While she’s the ideal woman (for an ideal man), she has a few endearing character flaws, while everything about him is endearing, and none of it is flawed.  He’s a diamond in the rough, but still a diamond.  “ Ugh!  Doesn’t that make you mad?”  she asked.  “Oh yeah, I say.  Yep, it does.  Wister’s implication is infuriating!  That even the best woman isn’t quite as good as the best man.  Nevertheless, Maurya.  Nevertheless, you’ll love the Virginian. You will; you can’t help it.  He’ll ruin you for life; there is no such thing in the wide wide world as a Virginian.   [continue reading…]

I spoke of black licorice, and it is relevant for sure today.  Every day, even every hour, is packed with a thousand experiences, a thousand thoughts, a thousand journeys, a thousand feelings.  Some we choose to share, some we keep close to our hearts and share with no one.

This has been my day.  I had meant to keep almost all of it to myself, to speak figuratively, using black licorice as an oblique symbol.  Since I am liking black licorice lately.

One feeling, one experience, is begging for a little more press.

I have a friend.  I love my friend, maybe because she loved me first.  She is so sick that her life hangs in the balance.

This friend, though she was ill long before I moved here, would often drop by the house and check on me during construction, when the guys had all left and I was working alone.  Walking up my unfinished stairs took a lot out of her.  We’d chat, and she was so consistent in her visits, I couldn’t doubt her sincere offering of friendship.  When I was finishing our pine floors, she sat in the hallway just outside the rooms I was working in, amidst the awful fumes, and we talked about our childhoods and our own children and our husbands while I worked.  I was so comforted by that, so touched that she sat and talked with me.  She remained consistent in her friendship in the months after.  Who would not love that?

We would sometimes talk about her health, and I understood that it was compromised, and that someday, she would need surgery in order to survive.  This weekend, I was surprised and beyond concerned to learn that she’d been hospitalized.  The anticipated surgery is scheduled.  It is in a matter of days, and it’s very risky.  Her recuperation will take months.  So sudden, even though I’d always known about the possibility.  It is a little surreal, talking with her now (she’s home from the hospital til the night before the surgery).  She’s focusing on her children, their upcoming homework and soccer games and dental appointments and formals.   I’m not sure what I would focus on if I were her.  As her friend, I focus on the moments I’m with her.  Wanting them to be good, wanting them to be helpful somehow.

Another friend called today.  I thought I’d keep all my moments and thoughts and feelings close to my heart, but she said “Tell me”, and so I did.  It was a relief to cry, to say things out loud, to be heard.  I was surprised: the release was so sudden and so easy, and I’d been holding some things so tightly to myself for so long.  Surprised, but very grateful.  I so need friends.  Who doesn’t?

Thank you, friends (all of you).  I love you.