REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Goodbye Washington, For Now

I am writing this post from Tully's Coffee at Gate A9 in SEATAC Airport. My flight to L.A. leaves in 45 minutes. I always leave Washington with such mixed emotions, but I am so ready to hug and kiss my daughter who is picking me up at LAX, and then Cookie. Tomorrow I'll be by to kiss Henry and Fritz and their parents.

Speaking of kissing, when my sis Betty and I kissed goodbye this morning when the shuttle came, we both had tears in our eyes. How I wish we lived closer together, but what a champ she is at 85 years old. 

More later on Shipwreck Beads in Lacey, WA, where my sis and I spent a few hours yesterday. Lordy, lordy. What an incredible experience that was! 

Time for a quick pee and off to my gate. L.A., here I come.

So the Gods Shake Us From Our Sleep -- Mary Oliver

Gratitude comes in many forms, but almost always it is about the little things we simply take for granted.

For instance, who would think that watching an 85-year-old woman playing a slot machine in a casino would seem so sacred? But, it did to me yesterday. I know there are cultural stereotypes about elderly people frequenting the casinos, but when it is my sister doing it, it tickles me to the tips of my toes. Her late husband loved Vegas and Reno and she was a good egg and went right along with him all those years. Not a gambler by nature, she limits herself to $20 a visit about four times a year--on a penny machine at a local Indian casino. She drove us there, we had a humongous buffet, and then spent a lot of time together at home chatting--and watching yet another movie. Gran Torino. 

My mind immediately turned to Mary Oliver this morning. Being on vacation and undistracted by "have tos" at home and work, make me appreciate everything so acutely. Here's Mary Oliver telling it like it is. 

Gratitude

What did you notice?

 The dew snail;

the low-flying sparrow;

the bat, on the wind, in the dark;

big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;

the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;

the sweet-hungry ants;

the uproar of mice in the empty house;

the tin music of the cricket’s body;

the blouse of the goldenrod.

 What did you hear?

 The thrush greeting the morning;

the little bluebirds in their hot box;

the salty talk of the wren,

then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

What did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;

the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;

the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the

    pale green wand;

at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid

    beauty of the flowers;

then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

 What astonished you?

 The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

 What would you like to see again?

 My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,

    her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her

    recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her

    sturdy legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

 What was most tender?

 Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;

the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;

the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;

the tall, blank banks of sand;

the clam, clamped down.

 What was most wonderful?

 The sea, and its wide shoulders;

the sea and its triangles;

the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

 What did you think was happening?

The green breast of the hummingbird;

the eye of the pond;

the wet face of the lily;

the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;

the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;

the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve

  of the first snow—

--so the gods shake us from our sleep.

SoulCollage®: Feminine Freedom

In my SoulCollage® cards, I often find myself working in certain colors much more than others. Many of my cards are purple, although I personally don't wear purple often. The other colors I use a lot are red and black together. 

I'm not a color analyst or symbolist, at least not consciously. I find purple to be a mysterious color, but I know this color often connotes both nobility and spirituality. To me it has always meant freedom.

Using SoulCollage terminology, I am the one who often feels stifled, shy, railed in, particularly about my body--largely because of my own fears and more recently because of the limitations of age. I was the one who was always chosen last for sports teams and sat in the corner at dances because I was simply terrorized I'd be discovered as a klutz. I am the one who always needed a drink or two to really relax enough in public to dance decently. My husband and I often danced; he was a great dancer but I was too self-conscious. I am the one, when newly separated and divorced more than two decades ago, would turn up the stereo at home blasting my favorite rock music and dance until I dropped--alone. I found freedom in the dancing--and I haven't done that for a long, long time. 

I am the one who then loved Mariane Athey-Levy's Movement Expression and used to attend her Santa Monica Friday evening classes in the 1990s. The dance studio was darkened and people of every age gathered and we moved, each in our own rhythm, getting used to our bodies. And then I discovered Gabrielle Roth's method, which I assume Movement Expression came from. I often danced to my video of "Sweat Your Prayers." But, I am also one who tires of the discipline of such classes and Santa Monica was so far. And dancing alone at home gets old after a while.

And now I am the one who hasn't danced in ever so long, alone or in a ballroom or studio. I am the one who feels sad that I have reverted to the woman who is no longer at home in my body.

I remember leading a Progoff National Intensive Journal workshop long ago where "Dialogue With the Body" was one of the exercises. When people read back, I was so deeply moved, but I particularly remember a woman in a wheelchair who wrote about the dancer she once had been. 

I'm not even going to ask this card a question because I just want to prop it up next to my journal and next week I'll see where it leads me. It is really pulling at me and I'm just too weary right now to be insightful.

Elin A. Vanderlip: A Palos Verdes Legend Still Larger Than Life

If you live in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, you have probably heard the surname Vanderlip. Financier Frank A. Vanderlip bought 16,000 acres of undeveloped land on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1913 with the dream of creating a community not unlike the Italian Riviera. In 1924 he built his own home, Villa Narcissa, and that’s where his son Kelvin’s widow, Elin Brekke Vanderlip lives to this day. She turned 90 last weekend. 

Mrs. Vanderlip also released a book his past year about her life and the history of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. It is called “Eccentric, Obstinate and Fabulous” and on Sunday, June 14, we had a tea in her honor, as well as a discussion and book signing at the historic Malaga Cove Library. She has indeed had a very colorful life and her memory for names and places are still sharp as ever. 

I was photographing the event for the Malaga Cove Library to put on our Friends of the Library weblog, but following are a few photos of her.

Daily Breeze columnist John Bogert wrote a wonderful article about Mrs. Vanderlip’s birthday party on Tuesday, June 9, which you can read at “Age hasn’t reduced RVP woman’s stature.” You can also see photos of Mrs. Vanderlip and her home, Villa Narcissa, by Daily Breeze photographer Brad Graverson in his online Capture Gallery.  They are well worth looking at. Her home is a landmark high above Portuguese Bend and you can get the feeling of it by clicking above.

Though I am not and will never be a local legend, it's nice sometimes rubbing elbows with those who are. 

Some Peopl Have Real Proble

Today I attended the 60 year reunion for graduates of the school I work for and it gave me a lot of food for thought. It was also a delightful experience. Part of today's festivities was a campus tour and the school is very different now than it was in 1948 and 1949. At the end we visited the old dining halls (still the cafeteria and a common meeting room) and the Upper School art show was still hanging. I've got a glare on this photo, but I studied it for a long time. If you click on it, the photo will embiggen so you can see some of the images the students placed.

Anne Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea Still Relevant Today

Only those of us who are a "certain age" probably recall air pioneers Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In my growing up years, however, both of them were household words. My dad worked in the aircraft industry and the kidnapping and subsequent murder of their first child in 1932 was a piece of history every American who lived in those times knew about. 

In 1955 Anne wrote Gift From the Sea--and in 1955 I graduated from high school, but I was too young to appreciate this book then. I never read it seriously until the early 1970s when I was raising three young children and wondering if I would ever have any private time again; the book really helped me clarify myself, motherhood, marriage and my relationships with others. I reread it periodically; I have a paperback, underlined, grungy to the max, from 1965. I often give this book to young women just entering the middle years of marriage. 

So, I was delighted when my book club chose this book for today. My book club is an unusual one; it was started by several young women as a spin off from my school's formation of The Friends of the Library in the mid-1990s. When I partially retired, I was invited to join. I am the oldest woman in the group. Today was a walk through the 1950s with several women dressing the part; all the snacks were '50s appropriate, and the beverages were served in those metal tumblers we all used then. The moderator had checked out several 1950s cultural books and we heard the highlights of those years, including the top literature of that decade. Another woman had done research on Anne and gave us the timeline of her life. Then we launched into the book. 

If you haven't read it, Anne shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life is relevant to men and women at any stage of life, but I suppose mostly women.

I was delighted to find an old NPR All Things Considered interview with Anne's youngest daughter Reeve after her mom's death in 2001 which was deeply touching to me. Half of my book is underlined, but in the section called Oyster, she writes about long-term marriages. This passage has stayed with me:

I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. it is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional...

But is it the permanent symbol of marriage? Should it -- any more than the double-sunrise shell -- last forever? The tide of life recedes. The house, with its bulging sleeping porches and sheds, begins little by little to empty. The children go away to school and then to marriage and lives of their own... What is one to do -- die of atrophy in an outstripped form? Or move on to another form, other experiences?

Married 27 years, divorced 23 years, I still mourn the idealism of what I thought marriage was. I still wonder if I just moved on to another form, or if I had been more patient, our problems would have ultimately resolved. But--I don't dwell on this a lot. I've had such a wonderful life, but a very different life than I had expected.

Gift From the Sea was written well over 50 years ago, but all of us in book group today were amazed at how relevant the book still is today. 

Somewhere Over the Rainbow in Redondo Beach

I It rained yesterday, most of today, and rain is predicted for tomorrow. We need the rain badly and (knock on wood) so far this year my house has held tight without leaks. It should after all the fixes and upgrades I've done every time a leak would spring up. 

At sunset, the rain stopped for a while and I literally ran outside with the camera because I could see a rainbow out my bedroom window. When I was younger, it seemed like I saw rainbows often, but never as often in the city as I did out in the boonies. When you see all the phone and electric lines (we are not underground yet in my eclectic neighborhood), it takes a little (but only a little) of the rainbow magic away. 

I did manage to duck out to a close estate sale today  which had gotten hit so hard with the rain as they had about half of everything out on the back lawn and couldn't tarp it fast enough. I saw one lady buy a totally soaking wet 12 x 12' berber carpet, which it took two men to carry to her car. Such a deal! I got some arts and crafts odds and ends and felt my usual sadness knowing that his woman's life had ended or narrowed down. 

The rest of the day and evening I have spent researching and creating the February issue of my Macintosh user's group newsletter. 

Cookie, who is still perky, does not like rain and has had two accidents in the house today. And wouldn't you know that I'm hosting my Mac group's core group in the morning. After I hit post, I'm off to prepare the living room for company. It will be a good day to have a fire, however. As for Cookie, she will go out shortly for a walk, like it or not. 

So, above is my version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." And below is Doris Day's version at YouTube. I could have placed Judy Garland's really famous version, but I loved this one because of all the nostalgia photos. How in the heck does time pass so quickly?

os.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was Oprah's pick of the month book in the July O Magazine but I just got around to renting it from the library. It’s rare I give a five star rating to a book on GoodReads, but Edgar Sawtelle captivated me. The book is long but I stayed up a few nights past 3 a.m. I was initially drawn to it because it is about dogs and the almost mystical connection between people and dogs.

This is what Oprah’s review said in O Magazine:  “A CLASSIC IN THE MAKING: Whether you read for the beauty of language or for the intricacies of plot, you will easily fall in love with David Wroblewski’s generous, almost transcendentally lovely debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. This is a tale set in rural Wisconsin in the first half of the 20th century, on a farm where the Sawtelles raise a fictional breed of dog. The dogs function like spirits in Shakespeare, or the chorus in Greek tragedy: They color the text with larger meaning yet remain tangibly real, deeply believable as dogs. Edgar is the mute boy who raises them, a mesmerizing fictional hero, primitive and wise. There are passages of language here ("A pair of does sprang over the fence on the north side of the field-two leaps each, nonchalant, long-sustained, falling earthward only as an afterthought...") that make you pause and read again with luxuriant pleasure. Wroblewski's plot is dynamic – page by page compelling – and classical, evoking Hamlet, Antigone, Electra, and Orestes, as Edgar tries to avenge his father's death and his paternal uncle's new place in the affections of his mother. The scope of this book, its psychological insight and lyrical mastery, make it one of the best novels of the year, and a perfect, comforting joy of a book for summer.”

It’s a good winter book, too, by the way. I guarantee you will be mesmerized. Need to be convinced? Read this New York Times review. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dog Whisperer Shares Her Santa List

After I got home from our annual dinner the volunteers at Malaga Cove Library host for the library staff, I tried to take some photos of Cookie and myself. I'm never very successful with balancing the camera for a self-photo and then reaching out to press the button, but this one intrigued me. I'm using it on a holiday newsletter I'm trying to compose in Pages. 

OK, I've whispered to Cookie that she can tell the family to go to my Wish List on Amazon as I have a few things there. What is surprising me is that I really don't want or need anything tangible this year. 

Cookie, on the other hand, whispered to me that she would like a pig's hoof and the rotisserie chicken soup from Costco to go with her dog food. She has become a very finicky eater and is quite thin, so I do buy this yummy soup just for her to mix with her senior dog food. 

How I wish she could jump up on the bed and cuddle with me which she was able to do until about three months ago. By the way, see that ring on my finger? It was my paternal grandmother's wedding ring and my daughter and son-in-law got it repaired and enlarged for me three years ago. Now that was an unexpected gift that I wear permanently on my right hand. I swear that I'm getting more and more sentimental as the years pass. 

Missing My Mom After 40 Years

My mother, Emily Ann Huxtable Streur, died 40 years ago today and to be honest, I wasn't conscious of that date until I sat down to write in my journal this afternoon. I glued an old photo of her in the journal just to say I loved her and when I wrote the date, I realized the significance. By the way, my doctor has always told me that we may not think we remember memorable dates, but the unconscious mind always knows. 

This whole past year my parents have been frequently on my mind and they appear in many of my dreams. As we grow older, if we have a belief that we are ultimately reunited with our soul group after death, there comes an almost primal "knowing" that the time is growing closer when we'll meet again face-to-face, or however all that works. 

This past week I have been working with this image of my mom, taken when she was about 16-years-old, because I black gessoed my former image of Gloria Swanson in this frame, and intended to place mom there instead. My first few tries didn't work. It was when I put a piece of antique netting over mom's image that I felt this piece was done. It is hanging next to my parents' wedding photo on the wall near the foot of my bed. I'm awfully sentimental, I know. 

How I miss this dear, dear woman whose genes I have. I also have her nurturing aspects and sense of humor. No one could hug like she could. What I didn't inherit was her occasional rage when she was pushed too far and felt trapped. My personality takes anger and turns it inward.

I was with my mother when she unexpectedly died right after preparing our noon-time early Christmas dinner at her home. She was only 71 and had not been feeling well; at Thanksgiving time she said she had completed all her hand-made gifts to make sure they were ready early. My husband and our young family all went out to Little Rock, CA where they lived in a rather remote area to celebrate an early holiday. Tony was less than a year old and in his portacrib sleeping when mom started to feel really badly. Ray took Joe and Christy, who were six and five, out to the wash to hike when we realized a crisis was at hand. I've relived the details of her final hour and our inability to get help for her in time way too many times over the years. My guilt and subsequent depression were to overcome me four months after her death and I was hospitalized for three months in a deep depression, the first of two really dark periods in my life. Needless to say, I've long ago forgiven myself and my late dad for not reacting quicker. The emergency room resident doc, who coincidentally had purchased our old house, was on rotation in the hospital where mom's body was taken. He said it would not have mattered if we had gotten her there sooner. 

At this point in time I've largely forgotten the "bad" times of growing up with mom and dad and the even harder times of illnesses and death. Largely I recall the good times and laugh hard sometimes recalling how I got my hackles up as an adolescent and how right on they were when they disciplined me. 

Several years ago I participated in an Ancestor Deck card exchange and this was the card I made for mom.

On the back side of the card, I wrote the following:

My Mother

Emily Ann  Huxtable Streur

Born Oct. 11, 1898 – Died Dec. 14, 1968

Married at 18 to Allyn Streur

Mother of five daughters and at her death, grandmother to 10.

She tatted, quilted, sewed, she grew strawberries and raspberries to make extra money, and was one of the hardest hands-on workers I ever knew.

She swore like a trooper, hugged you deliciously until you squeaked, and made the best pea soup, cinnamon rolls, biscuits, pot roast, and oatmeal raisin cookies in the world.

She had a temper that was fearsome, but she had a greater capacity to love than anyone I ever knew. 

So, mom, I dedicate this blog entry to you. I believe we choose our parents and travel in our soul groups again and again. I'm just so grateful to have been your daughter.