Life is a Mosaic

Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study.  Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life.  ~Henry L. Doherty

Have you ever had the experience of learning something new that sort of takes over your brain - your thinking patterns or how you actually see things?

For example:
My mother once told me that when she was learning how to sew, she actually sewed her dreams. She sewed peoples faces as she stood talking to them. She sewed the landscape of southern Illinois. In other words, she saw everything as pieces of fabric stitched together.
Can you imagine? You're looking someone square in the eye and all you can see are the stitches that are holding their baby blues in place?
We laughed so hard, but I actually understood what she was saying.

She shared that story with me when I was in high school and taking the mandatory typing class (which I hated and skipped most of the time, because - and I quote - "I am never going to be any one's secretary. I'm going to be an actress. I will never need this skill."). This was, of course, long before computers, cell phones and tablets. I had mentioned to Mom that learning how to type was driving me crazy, not only because I inherently hated it and what it stood for in my mind, but also because I typed everything out in my head; every single thing I said and was said to me, every sentence uttered on television and every song on the radio - it all had to be typed out in my mind before I could actually process it. It drove me crazy.

The same thing happened to me when I was learning how to decorate cakes. I had taken a Wilton cake decorating class back in the mid-1970s - before covering a cake in fondant was the norm. We used actual colored frosting, and everything I looked at was smeared in buttercream. I'm not kidding. From people's faces to the beautiful Fort Lauderdale Beach, it all presented a cake decorating opportunity. It was a much sweeter picture than looking at Frankenstein's head, don't you think? Still it was very distracting when I'd try to have a conversation with someone.

Believe it or not, I'm experiencing it all over, again. I've been working on a mosaic to donate to a local homeless center for an auction folks there are planning. They asked nine local and well-known artists  - and me - to re-purpose some items picked out from the center's thrift store. I laughed when they asked me to "join the fun," because I'm far from being an artist. But I love a challenge and, frankly, I prefer to be as busy as possible. So, I said, "Sure!"

I decided on the two-drawer night stand to update, and possibly make a buffet

platter using the chandelier. We'll see.

I picked out a two-drawer night stand, thinking all I'd do would be to repaint it. But I soon decided that I'd cover the top of it in a mosaic.
Now, be sure you understand this - I have never made a mosaic, and I'm no artist.

I started off sanding and repainting the nightstand, then drew my pattern on a piece of paper the same size as the top of it. I transferred my pattern to the wood top, cracked up some pieces of colored glass (supplied by a very good friend) and began gluing them in place (using Liquid Nails).

It started to take shape and that's when the "trouble" began. I'm sure it will stop in a few days, but right now, everything I look at is a mosaic. I can't look at anything without wondering what it would look like as a pattern for a mosaic or if it would make a good surface for one. I close my eyes and see a mosaic. Ha!

(By the way...once all the glass pieces were glued down, I grouted the top of the nightstand with sandless pre-made grout available at any home improvement store. I wiped off the excess and waited a day or two for it to completely dry. Then I cleaned all of the glass and sealed the grout.)

Back in high school, when I couldn't get the crazy keyboard off my mind, Mom convinced me that my problem of typing everything out in my head would soon go away and I'd be left with a skill that I'd use - even if I wasn't someone else's secretary. She convinced me to see it through; that deep down I knew it was the right thing to do to continue getting good grades. I guessed that, in other words, I really did care and wanted to be the best I could be, no matter what the subject was. She must have been right, because although I did skip at least 60-percent of my typing classes (truly, at least 60-percent), I still made straight As. (Not sure if that meant I was brilliant or if the teacher was stupid.)

The same held true for cake decorating. After weeks and weeks of imagining everything I looked at covered in frosting, I finally got past that. I wasn't half-bad at cake decorating; creating my sister's wedding cake (which to me was such an honor), as well as many others throughout the years.

I'm still not an artist, certainly no Italo Botti. But I am enjoying this new art form/craft and actually hope to have the time to do more. (I'm hoping I can bid on my beautiful nightstand.)

Lesson learned: Life is a mosaic of pleasure and pain. Grief is an interval between two moments of joy, and I'm beginning to see that second moment. Also, you're never too old to learn something new...now on to the chandelier makeover.

 

 

Love you, Mom. 

A 30-Day Slide into the Big Six-Oh!

Mother was a prudent woman. As a child growing up in a very frugal home, nothing went to waste.

There was a drawer in our kitchen that housed the dish towels and the used and folded pieces of aluminum foil (something that, for some reason, really bothered me, so I vowed there would be no small pieces of foil being saved in my home - ever.)
She rarely purchased "store-bought cookies," but if a recipe she was using called for just the yolk of an egg, then Mom saved the white until she had the time to make meringue. Then she'd put small spoon fulls of the meringue on top of saltine crackers, broil them for just a minute and that would be our afternoon treat. The opposite was also true of the yolk. If that was left over, she'd fry it up, put it between two pieces of bread, smother it in ketchup and send it to school with me as my lunch. Just plain horrible.
If she had any icing left over from one of her famous cakes, she'd smear it over a graham cracker, put another graham cracker over that and - voilà! - we'd have her version of sandwich cookies.

For the sake of being thrifty, my birthday was celebrated with my father's (I was born the day before his birthday), and since it was so close to Halloween, the decorations were never ordinary birthday hats and balloons - they were orange and black things that could be used, again, for Halloween.

So, although after living with us for more than 10-years she grew to understand my antics and - I think - oftentimes enjoyed them, I'm not sure how she'd take this whole idea of celebrating my birthday for 30-days. (Which, by the way, ends tomorrow.)

I'm not fond of the idea of turning 60. Yes, I know how lucky I am to be on this side of the ground, and yes, I know how blessed I am to have family and friends surrounding me everyday. But this is the year I've faced my mortality, and - well - you know.
So I came up with this fabulous idea of celebrating the slide into 60 for the 30-days prior. What fun it's been.

My dream of a husband has gone out of his way to think of me everyday for the past 29-days, bringing me everything from a package of Pop Rocks to a giant pumpkin that's so large and heavy I can't lift it to renting a limousine so my girl friends and I could go on a Girls' Night Out and more.

I'm not so sure Mother would approve of the expenditure; she'd have probably lifted an eyebrow. But, I also can't say that I care or that I'm regretful for the exuberance my husband has shown or even the over-indulgence of the past month. One thing I do know, Mom celebrated my birthday every year with just as much love in her heart for me as I have in mine for her. So maybe she would have enjoyed this, as well. Maybe she wouldn't have seen it as being wasteful.

I faintly remember my husband and some friends having a dinner party for me on my birthday last year -- just three weeks after Mother had passed away. But I was in a state of not being able to think for myself, and if you held a gun to my head today, I wouldn't be able to tell you who was there.

This year, things are different. I'm working hard to embrace my age, embrace the changes in my life, and embrace the memories. With that in mind, the countdown to turning 60 has actually been a year-long journey. It's not just been fun things that either I've done for myself or that my husband has done for me - it's been about the time we've spent together, talking, laughing and appreciating one another.

While my mother's extreme frugal ways did not rub off on me, some of her talent and her love for family did.

"Mother, thank you for having me. I miss sending you flowers on this day. Happy birthday!"
 

It's over - The last of the firsts

I was reading the Sports section of the newspaper the other day -- okay, not really reading it, but noticed a headline about a high school football game -- and it reminded me of when my son was in high school.
He didn't play football.
But he did play percussion in the marching band, specifically the snare - and his schedule was every bit as grueling as any player's on that football team.
I was a band parent - and every bit as loyal to my drummer as the mother who runs onto the field when her son the quarterback isn't properly guarded by the center.
Don't even try to come between a mother and her son. Right?

My husband and I didn't miss a single game or other performance of our Marching Jaguars. That Friday night ritual was a habit we enjoyed for four-years, and in the course of those years, we naturally became friends with many other band parent geeks.
At the first game at the start of my son's senior year, I turned to one of the other senior band member mothers (who was as emotional as I) and looked into her eyes - both of us crying - and said, "This is the last first game of the season we'll ever have."
We both laughed, knowing how silly that sounded, but also knowing how true it was.

It seems I've been faced with similar dilemmas ever since.
When my son went to college, I thought, "There won't be anymore first days of school. I won't be there for any of his firsts in college - his first all-nighter, his first hangover, his first induction into a fraternity."
When my father passed away, I experienced my first time not having someone to answer my every question. Growing up, and well into adulthood, my father answered all of my questions. No matter what it was, he always had an answer for everything. I never heard him say, "I don't know."
This past year, I have faced a multitude of firsts: the first time my birthday went by without even a phone call to or from my mother; my first holidays as an orphan; my first medical situation without her to talk to for strength; my first, my first, my first.
Of course, I'm not alone. Everyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one so dear has had to also experience all of the firsts that come with that first year.

But the good news is, they were all the last first times!
The unknown of all those firsts is now known. 

My friend who took me to lunch on the beach only weeks after Mother passed away, saw a person in need, hugged her with conversation, undivided time and sympathy - and she spoke the truth. She promised that I'd get through it, and although I didn't believe her at the time, I did make it through to the other side --- the last of all those firsts is now over. It feels like the time passed in the blink of an eye, yet it also feels like an eternity.

But the bottom line is that I did make it, and I never lost sight of how blessed I am, not even for a moment.