Scared Straight?

During the past five or six years of my life I've given quite a bit of thought to my feelings about faith, beliefs...the spiritual side. Somehow I find it easier to list what I don't believe than to find a personal core belief that is reflected in any organized religious philosophy.

I was raised Lutheran...but questions I asked way back during the two years spent in church classes prior to first communion left me feeling unsatisfied and searching for something else. An elective class taken as a freshman in college, The History of Religion, was an eye opening experience for me. Discovering that other established faiths had "stories" and "beliefs" sounding very close to "our" faith-based traditions helped me start to realize the similarities we share instead of focusing on any "one true way".

After marriage, while raising our children and moving around the country we tried Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches. Our daughter went to a Friends school for two years. In Milwaukee we belonged to the Unitarian Universalist Society for about six years....but eventually came to realize that even this very open, free thinking congregation just didn't "fit" us.

Reading the book The Faith Club written by three women....an Episcopalian, a Jew and a Muslim was fascinating. Again...so many shared traditions just under a different name,

I guess these thoughts are front and center in my brain right now because of so many of the billboards we've seen on the highway as we drive through Arkansas. Most do not seem to be professionally done...but they certainly are large and fairly SHOUT their message as we drive by. "WARNING! Prepare to meet your GOD!" "If you die today, are you ready to meet GOD?" and my favorite so far "Use the rod on thy children to save their life!" ( I guess grammar doesn't always count.)

Well I guess I will just continue to ponder my life....and my spirituality as I age. Not quite sure is the authors of the signs along the highway really feel they can scare someone into believing as they do...but I can tell them it won't be me.

Snirt Season

The only reason I might like to wish for a LITTLE more snow is to cover up all our lovely snirt. But then again, maybe the piles of snirt are a sign of approaching spring? One interesting thing is as the   snirt begins to melt it forms fascinating shapes - mini-caverns and holes. I can almost imagine mini-people exploring.

As we move south-ish (trying to outrun another Polar Vortex!)  snirt piles are getting smaller. We see more bare earth....brown, beige, yellowish, grey...but at least not white! There is beauty in the stark end-of-winter views we see out the RV's window. Farm fields are grey/brown with the left-over stubble of last year's crop. Some fresh red barns peek through barren trees....followed by a neighboring barn so aged and grey it looks like the next good wind would take it down. Still...there is a kind of proud beauty there.

It's been a windy day and we noticed some birds taking off into the wind...flapping their wings double time but making slow progress. Others take off with the wind, lift their wings and just soar.....taking the easy way home.

So we are NOT camping tonight since the temperature forecast calls for 12 degrees plus windchill. So it's motel time for us and for Fenway. Maybe tomorrow.....or not.

(And for those who may not know, snow+dirt=snirt.)

:-)

Memories Take Shape

I volunteer for the hospice where I used to work - as a Memory Bear Maker. This is a very special project that I started for the Wisconsin office when I took my position as Volunteer Services Manager and by the time I retired we'd made well over 1,000 bears. I don't know what the count is now!

The bears are offered to our hospice families in memory of their loved one…they get to choose mom's favorite t-shirt, or dad's favorite sweatshirt, or a sibling's soft bathrobe and we volunteers turn this special garment into a special bear.

The bears give families something to hug if they need to - something to look at that hopefully provides comforting memories.

I love making the bears. And even though this is a very simple four-piece pattern, each bear is unique. The fabric is different for each bear so each bear takes on a personality of its own.

As I sew I think about the family that requested their bear(s) and some of the thank you notes we get in return are so very special.

I know what a Memory Bear can do….just by sitting on someone's bed, or on top of a dresser, or in a place of honor in the living room. Bears bring smiles, bears bring tears, bears bring comfort. Bring on the bears!

So Let's Add Some Ice on Top - Just for Fun

Yesterday was almost spring-like - somewhere around 30 degrees with a beautiful blue sky. Wow - you could almost smell the earth. Mother Nature can be such a tease.

Today we are getting freezing rain/sleet and maybe more snow. Our sidewalk is a sheet of slip 'n slide. What fun. Sky is grey, trees are bending in the wind….today the weather basically stinks.

Oh - and wind gusts up to 50 mph starting tonight.

Sigh.

A Slightly Different Lense

My book club just discussed We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. It was a fascinating read and a spirited discussion.

I don't want to really describe the book because doing so would be a real "spoiler" for anyone who wants to read it - and I highly recommend it! But much of the discussion last week had to do with memories and childhood and which childhood memories are real and which are "filtered" by time in some way. And why do members of the same family remember the same event so differently?

Some of our conversation, and the book, have been spinning around in my head all week. And then I had a fun visit with my sister and brother-in-law over the weekend and was again struck by some of our memories being a little "different".  My one book club friend (who has a much larger family with several siblings) says when she is with her brothers and sisters and they're reminiscing she sometimes thinks "did we grow up in the same family!?"

I think it's pretty natural to remember things our own way - we are each individuals, different personalities, each growing up at a certain "place" in the family (youngest, oldest, middle, after-thought). And we experience the past our own way - if something happened when I was sixteen I will "see" it differently than my sister might - she would have been eight at the time. So neither memory is "wrong" - just our own. It can make for some pretty funny conversations.

Growing up we were close to our two cousins, and we spent a lot of time together. One cousin close to my age, and the other closer to my sister. When I get back together with my "closest" cousin she and I will laugh that our younger siblings have completely different memories of some things that are very clear to us oldsters.

There was a quote on page 247 of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves that I found fascinating. (Partly because I was a psychology major in college I guess.) The author says: "...I wasn't shaking because of anything happening now or anything that might happen next. I was completely buried in the unremembered, much disputed, fantasyland of the past.

Sigmund Freud has suggested that we have no early childhood memories at all. What we have instead are false memories aroused later and more pertinent to this later perspective than to the original events. Sometimes in matters of great emotion, one representation, retaining all the original intensity, comes to replace another, which is then discarded and forgotten. The new representation is called a screen memory. A screen memory is a compromise between remembering something painful and defending yourself against that very remembering."

So was the author saying we all "reinterpret" our past?? Does my "screen" make my memories "wrong"? Hmmmm…..I don't know just how many of Freud's theories are still accepted but this one does sort of strike a cord for me. Maybe screens can be helpful….filtering isn't all bad. Nice to remember the good times and maybe filter some of the not-so-good. (Have to ask my two kids what filters they have in place - or never mind, I probably don't want to know.)

Anyway - book club was terrific last week, as was my visit with my sister - and I'm still pondering some of the things we discussed. I guess that's one of the best results of gathering with friends/family who have unique perspectives and comments to contribute to the conversation.

Competition for Victoria's Secret?

I belong to a quilt guild in Oak Creek and we are planning our semi-annual show for this October. The show gives members a chance to show off what they've accomplished over the past two years. Big quilts, small quilts, wall hangings, bed quilts, new quilters, seasoned quilters - we all get to see our work hanging and invite the public to come and share.

Needless to say the show is always colorful and each show features a "challenge" project of some kind. This year's show, Strips 'n Stitches, will feature a very unique challenge and one that should give our members a chance to be really creative! The title of the challenge is a play on the show's name. If a member wants to enter the challenge they can choose a woman's undergarment and embellish it as much as they want. The challenge, Quilting Foundations should be a lot of fun.

My entry is finished and …..Spring is Busting Out All Over. (Wishful thinking!)

Can't wait to see what others do for the October show. Victoria's Secret - watch out….Oak Creek's Wandering Foot Quilt Guild members are exceptionally creative!

Fifteen + Years in the Making ….. or Never Give Up

I started this project while living in New Castle, DE. That was before living on our sailboat for two years - so that means I started this quilt probably about 1998?? It was a block-of-the-month quilt - I ordered it from a shop in Pennsylvania They would send me one chicken block and all the fabric needed to create it each month. The big rooster in the center block was the last to arrive.

The concept was that you would have time each month to finish one block and then be excited to receive the next. Many quilters cut out each piece and hand appliquéd them to the background fabric. I'm not a hand appliqué-er so mine were cut and fused to the fabric. Much easier and faster and I knew it was the only way I'd ever have this quilt.

I assembled the entire top, added the batting and blocks of color for the backing, pinned the layers together - and then I started to hand quilt it. I did enjoy (at that point) hand quilting….so was making good progress. Then we made the big move - sold the house and moved aboard our sailboat for two years. The quilt went into storage at my mother-in-law's house. When we came back we moved to an apartment in Milwaukee, I went to work full-time and basically stopped hand quilting. So the project remained folded and unfinished. I would take it out to look at it every once in awhile, with good intentions, then think "nah"….and roll it back up again.

When we moved from the apartment to our house in Bayview I did hang the unfinished project on a rod in the basement play/sewing area. It brightened the room and it was fun to look at. I continued to ignore the fact that it was half-quilted and half-pinned.

A few weeks ago a group of my quilting friends came to the house for our every-other-month gathering. This is a small group organized to inspire each other to think outside the box, help each other solve problems and cheer each other on to try new things. Of course we all marched down to see my quilting area. When I showed them the chicken quilt and explained why it would never be finished (no more hand quilting for me!) they all said "just finish it by machine!" Hmmmmmm……now why didn't I think of that???

The next day the quilt came off the wall - I worked on the machine quilting for two days, the border over a weekend and there it was - finished! The quilt still happily hangs in my basement sewing area - but it's DONE! And I challenge anyone (at least if they look from a distance) to see that it is half hand and half machine stitching.

So what's the lesson here? "Slow and steady wins the race?" (No.) "Think outside the box?" (Yes.) "Good things come to those who wait?" (Maybe.) "Some things take time? (For sure.) "Never give up?" (YES!) "Count on your friends?" (YES) All I know is that this quilt now makes me happy every time I see it instead of sort of making me "sad" that it would never be finished.

So thank you to my quilting friends - for helping me to look at this project from a new angle. :-)

Russia….Finland and Poland???

I'm having fun with this blog-thing. Gives me a chance to ponder a few things, share a few things….not really important things….just what's rattling around in my brain and makes me think or wonder.

And now I wonder about some of the people "out there" who've somehow found me. I know I've shared the site with my friends on Facebook and some email buddies but how did eight people in Germany, three in the United Kingdom, and one each in Russia, Finland and Poland "find" me??!!

It's a mystery to me - but also kind of fun. I don't write anything that I don't want to share - so it doesn't bother me that my little blog is starting to spread across the blogosphere (or whatever it's called). But it is curious! Who is sharing with who?? How did I end up with an international "audience"?

Hello out there.

:-)

One Cold Day at a Time…..Getting Through a Wisconsin Winter

Polar vortex, wind chill, below zero temps - what an interesting winter this has been. Much of the country is suffering more than we are - states simply not prepared to face the ice and snow. No equipment, no salt - what a mess. I watch the news to see highways closed - or dozens of cars and trucks stopped after slamming into each other - whole cities with no power because ice build-up snapped the lines.

One of the "frustrations" for us is that we seem to get another few inches every few days - so back out to shovel and use the snow blower trying to keep our sidewalks clear. We live next to a school so with the kids and parents coming and going they really appreciate a clear path. Dave just wishes that we'd have one big snowfall and just get it over with.

So here in Milwaukee I put on an extra layer and go on about life as we know it in the winter. I don't mind the cold so much as the wind - it cuts right through you. On really windy/cold days I just hibernate. Lucky to enjoy reading, quilting and now making snowmen! Or snow gals - depending on your point of view.

A friend taught me how to assemble these sweet things - and just having one sitting on my window sill to catch the sunlight makes me smile. I'll keep her up through February and then hope that the snow goes away. This bunch is going off to share with friends at my book club meeting - to spread a little winter cheer.

As Judy told me when she taught me to make these, once you start you never look at a glass bottle the same way again. A jar of jelly, the ketchup bottle, salad dressing - perfect for snowmen. Hurry, let's finish the bottle of Amaretto that's been in the cabinet for years - the shape is wonderful! I may make another dozen or two before I'm done….who knows. It helps to pass the time on another cold Wisconsin winter day.

 

Tears While Dusting

46 years of housework – wonder just how many times I’ve run the vacuum, loaded a washing machine, cooked a meal, done the dishes, swept a sidewalk, dusted the furniture? Since we’ve lived in four apartments and nine houses and raised two children the numbers are probably mind-boggling. 

Most of this activity is pretty automatic at this point and some weeks some of it doesn’t get done at all. Now it’s just the two of us (and one small dog) in a small house. Retirement gives me the option to skip a few things if I feel like doing something else.

But, after we put away the holiday decorations this year it was definitely time for a good cleaning. So out came the vacuum and the dust rag. I turned on the radio and began to make my way through each room.

And then the sadness “hit”. Amazing how grief can creep up on you – even after several years. Both of our moms died a few years ago and we think of them often and fondly. Certain triggers will bring a smile or a comment or a lump in the throat. (They always loved sharing the holidays!)

But today, dusting, for me it was a bit more. In our living room is a desk – the first nice piece of furniture that my mom got when she married my father – it’s “battle scarred” with scratches and the leather top is dry – but it sits in our front window and I am usually seated there at some point during the day. In our bedroom is a small settee- one that Dave remembers was in his mom and dad’s bedroom. He and his little brother would run in on Saturday morning to sit there as their sleepy parents woke to start the day.

There are other small things – a painting over Dave’s desk, a wooden angel hanging over the dining room window, a bronze elephant standing on the floor by the fireplace, one of my mom’s small oil paintings of a scene in Sweden, the ceramic frog spoon holder on my stove, the orange Swedish horse on the bookshelf, a beautiful mirror in our entryway, a coffee cup that states “Love Me I’m Swedish” in the kitchen cupboard, the  sterling silver coffee scoop we use every morning to brew a pot.

All of these things could have gone in a garage sale as we settled our mom’s estates – but instead they came home with us. And today while I dusted the tears filled my eyes. Why? I don’t know – just the moment I guess…..just a tug on the heartstrings….a remembering. 

Grief is funny, lasting, hits you at odd moments. But I guess that’s also a healing thing. If I didn’t have any tears to shed that might indicate that the two small holes in my heart have healed over completely….and that will never happen.

So I’ll dust these items, or take them out of the dishwasher, or vacuum around them, or sit on/at them and remember… and usually I’ll smile.

Well Maybe Just a Little More Pretty - Remembering How to Enjoy the Cold

It's still winter in Wisconsin - it's still cold - it's still snowing. I think we have another four plus inches on the ground and expect more below zero temps this week. It's so cold that the snow is powder - it's lightweight stuff. Coating the trees, covering the sidewalks (again), blowing across the roads….but not good packing for snow balls or snowmen.

We spent the past few days with good friends who live outside of Madison. Planned to stay one night but sort of got "snowed in" so stayed two - and it was fun. Our friends introduced us to snow shoe-ing - a lovely way to get outside and DO something in spite of the cold. The woods behind their home are lovely in the snow - grey/brown/white…..quiet. A different kind of beauty than you see in the warmer months - but the beauty is out there…if you take the time to look.

The fresh show glistened, birds swarmed the backyard feeders, animal tracks dotted off every-which-way into the trees. There was very little noise as we shoe-ed through the snow. Cheeks got cold, but the exercise felt good - a reminder of some of the outdoor things we used to enjoy during the winter.

I went out by myself on Sunday morning before leaving to drive back home. On my own I was surrounded by silence - except for the crunching noise my snow shoes made as I walked along the track from yesterday. Today's sky was blue so there was a new beauty to enjoy.  We had a terrific few days with good friends - conversation, laughter, reading, napping, eating, dominoes, a movie on TV. And we re-discovered a nicer winter….one we'd almost forgotten. Yes, today Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow - so six more weeks until spring. No real surprise there. And I can't say I really welcome more cold and more snow, but I think tomorrow's plans will include a trip to a sporting goods store. Might as well enjoy it.