Happy, Slow Days

I see my childhood through sunny, sepia-tinted eyes. When I'm tempted to think my rose-colored glasses are delusional, I only have to remember how, at my thirteenth birthday, I cried because I didn't want to grow up. With a Daddy who was a fun, giant kid and a Mama who kept the home fires burning, my siblings and I had a secure and sweet place to rest and work in. And we did work, always, but also were allowed much freedom to play and simply be. My sister reminded me of our blissful summers recently. When school let out, there was no feeling like the sun-filled happiness that filled our days. Daddy was our softball coach. He worked our team hard, like we weren't little kids...but everyone loved him to pieces, because he loved all of us. He expected Melanie and I to work harder than our peers, never allowing us special favor because we were the coach's kids. I learned to love the joy of plowing through, gaining skills and overcoming my weaknesses. Then the thrill of winning... they don't let kids win or lose these days. "Everybody's a winner" -- so winning means nothing. Losing, disappointment and the word "No" have been verboten in the raising of too many modern children's lives. The thrill of victory is sweet, when you've known the trials of defeat. Let your kids know the highs and lows of life early. They will learn to appreciate pride of ownership.

We also had to help out around the house...to weed the garden, scrub bathrooms, wash dishes, join in with whatever our folks were doing. Ours was not a Disney childhood. We did get to go to Six Flags once, when our uncle from Illinois came down and paid our way. We savored every second of it, because we were unused to those kinds of things. We weren't destitute...we had enough to eat and clean clothes to wear, but in today's economy we would have been considered poor. When people say, "You just can't afford to raise kids with one income these days." That's not our problem. It's that most of us have gotten accustomed to our toys and our luxuries. Of that, I am guilty too. It is easy to get used to all the goodies and our perspective has changed on what is considered "poor."         Harking back, however, I believe that what made those times sweet, besides the mercies of God, was the way we were unplugged. 

I remember childish afternoons, after lunch, when we laid in the grass and ended up taking a nap with a kitten curled up next to us. Long hours of hiking through woods, picking blackberries, biting into bittersweet wild muscadines. Climbing trees, languishing on branches and staring into azure skies for what seemed days. Watching the slow, dizzy march of a praying mantis as he makes his way across a leaf. Fireflies lighting up the yard, steamy, thick air rising like a cloud. The ice cream truck chiming and Daddy handing out quarters. Neighborhood kids all piling into a ditch full of mud after a summer rain. No one's face was in a phone or device. Children lived outside (it was too hot to stay inside, with no air conditioning), wasting time yet taking time to contemplate all the spaces between the moments. It was slow, simple, timeless. Not everyone gets to experience a happy childhood, and I think these days it takes a lot of intentionality and resolve to raise your children differently than how everybody else is doing it. But oh, how priceless the payoff. 

Blue Is The Color of My Mind

I asked God to send me art jobs. Real estate has taken over my life these last few years and my art studio sits languishing at the back of our house, except on the days when grandchildren visit. We have it set up so that there is a pint-sized French easel for them, little aprons for all, and each child has their own watercolor set. There are paper towels and water containers, brushes in special holders...it's my favorite thing to do with them. Young children don't care if their work is museum-worthy. They just love to create. If we adults could hark back to those pell-mell days where we just dove in without a care...we could also find more joy in our days. We're all so serious about making a mistake or messing something up. How about we just throw back our heads laughing and squiggle all over the pages?

I got a request, weeks ago, to restore the art on an antique light fixture. This particular client has a unique shop in Buckhead, a hole in the wall that has been there for many years. He restores all kinds of metal objects and light fixtures, a craft that few know. He has sent me unusual requests in years past...a teeny, tiny oval cartouche from a cup that had to be repainted (it was a picture of a woman, no bigger than the nail on my pinky)...a silver candleabra that looked like silvered branches, he wanted me to make it look like real wood... things like that! This time, it was a smoked-up light fixture that had been through, guess, a fire. It had Asian-inspired artwork on it that was to be re-done with fresh paint. It had to be just the right color to match the old fixture. I did arduous research on colors and paints. It needed to be able to withstand heat from lightbulbs, once it was put back together. I trekked to Atlanta and back, to Hobby Lobby and Michael's to gather materials. There was a specific blue that had to be found. I am the color queen. There's no point in buying pre-mixed colors in those little bottles. Just give me your basic blue, yellow, red and white and I'll mix up my own colors. So for this project I was confident and sat down to paint, after prepping all my surfaces. Pride goeth before the fall. I started with basic blue, then Pthalo blue, Payne's Grey then ultramarine. No manner of mixing was producing the color I needed. I went back to the craft stores and bought everything approximating blue, yes, in those little bottles. I covertly snuck in the store and left with bags of them, my tail tucked between my legs. The wailing and gnashing of teeth began anew, when nothing worked. No one was home when I said aloud, "God, please help me!" I flopped back in my chair and stared out the window. Then I ogled my dining room walls, the most recently painted room in the house. I love this new color, which so happens to be Sherwin Williams Color of the Year for 2020 (there was something good that came out of that unmentionable year) -- Naval SW6244. Not navel like your belly button. Naval like the Navy.  I even recovered all the chairs and commissioned 10-foot drapes for the windows with that gorgeous blue in them. After all my blue experimentation, I suddenly realized I was staring at possibly The One for my project. I dashed into my studio and yanked out a can of Naval, stirred it up and dipped a little artist brush in there and smeared it on a ceramic dish. Behold! It was right here all the time! It took me a week to finish, in between my day job and meals and my daily episode of HGTV and my evening interludes with Ken. In fits and starts and lots of Booyah moments when I actually hunkered down to paint, the finished product emerged. I did a happy dance and sent pics to the client. When he conferred with his client and told me they were thrilled, I varnished the whole lot and laid down on the floor and cried.

There's no drama here at all...

Plowing Through

Oh the ironies... I was exposed to someone with the 'Rona last week, so now I'm sequestered all up in here. I've made a wing of the house into my 10-day abode. The dog and cat have taken over my bed, since Ken is "next door" and won't kick them out. It's going to be a shock when I move back in with the hubs and they can't nest up with me. Speaking of dogs, my sister has a litter of new puppies....they are my Australian Shepherd Sadie's grandchildren. I think Sadie, in her old age, could use a puppy friend. She could teach the new dog all the rules and it would do her good to have a buddy, besides me. Trouble is, I don't even want to ask Papa Bear about it. He might just murder me. In reality, I am actually constantly amazed, through these 38 years of marriage, how truly wonderful he is  and how he just wants me to be happy. Sometimes I wonder when he's gonna wake up and notice how difficult I am and decide to high-tail it out of here. There is a God.

Like I said last week, I think we should all dwell on the idea of puppies, kittens, baby chicks, new stuff... Muse on those daffodil bulbs that are sitting underneath the ground right now, waiting for March to appear. I'm going to prune my monster fig tree this weekend -- it's taking over the house and yard, so it needs to be humbled a bit. Maybe that's what is happening to us. We've gotten a little too big for our britches and now it's time for some pruning. Some fertilizer. Some root-building. Then when our "spring" arrives, we'll be ready to grow. That fertilizer though, it can get mighty stinky...

 

Oh Baby It's Cold Outside

I was chilly, my toes just wouldn't warm up, and I kept bumping up the heat. I finally reached for the scrumptious pullover that I got at the Sam's Club for $9.41, a shopping miracle. Little 3-year-old Addison reached over last night, felt it and said, "Comfy cozy." Exactly. Before long, I was warm as toast and the world was right. Upon waking too early this morning, I stretched myself into believing I should go ahead and get my lazy self to the gym. By 7:00 I was back home, dressed and eating breakfast, had listened to two great podcasts on the role of God's sovereignty and suffering, and then Mozart's Concerto in C at least three times. I'd go back to bed, but I'm on a roll. Maybe I'll actually get my list done today.

I wrapped my cold fingers around my Miami Starbucks mug that I stole from one of my sons, the spicy, cinnamony smell of Dragon Spice Chai Tea wafting up. I indulge myself in big boxes of this tea because it's something I actually like, even though it doesn't involve sugar or honey. I used to put gobs of sweeteners in my beverages, helping lead to my near insulin-incarceration. I didn't just drink coffee, I wolfed down something more like brownies in my cup. All that yummy, so blissful every morning, but was it really? Delight on the front end, misery on the flip side. If I hadn't helped myself to so much "comfort," I could've found equilibrium or the notion of moderation. As it is, I'm now paying back for all the heaps of indiscretion I coddled. But it's okay. I could still be stuffing down doughnuts and crumpets with my extravagantly-embellished coffee if I wanted to, but I'm not. There are so many other kinds of comfort to be found when you can actually get yourself out of the chair. In the mornings, I get on my poor old knees and say, "God, I can't do this. But You can." Mercifully, He is my help and my stay.

My dear neighbor Jackie, who lives in Alaska most of the year, says that it's colder in Georgia than in Anchorage, because of the blustery, wet humidity. I believe her. We slog through weird winters, where it will act like spring for a day or two and then plunge into wet, ungodly, shrieking wintertide for a week until we can't take it any more. We pray for an early spring. The Winter Solstice, shortest day of the year, sneaks by on December 21st and then we breathe a sigh of relief as Christmas rises and peaks. New Year's Eve and Day rush on through and then we get back to our slogging. But Easter's in sight over the horizon and all hope is not lost. Folks that aren't from here and have endured terrible winters with snow, ice and multiple clothing layers think that we are very silly with our whining about the cold. But have you experienced a front porch in the Deep South, with lemonade and a neighbor dropping by? Or a segue to the Panhandle with a stroll through white sand and then the plunge into seaglass water? I know we're supposed to enjoy all the moments, but I'm laboring for daffodils, bunnies, and a new grandbaby (#9) coming in the Spring. To every thing there is a season, turn, turn, turn...