Laundry Line Divine

“The Mother’s Day that means something, the Mother’s Day that is not a duty but a real holiday, is about the perfect mother. It is about the mother before she becomes the human being, when she is still the center of our universe, when we are very young.
They are not long, the days of construction paper and gilded rigatoni. That’s why we save those things so relentlessly, why the sisterhood of motherhood, those of us who can instantly make friends with a stranger by discussing colic and orthodonture, have as our coat of arms a sheet of small handprints executed in finger paint.”

Anna Quindlen

There have been posts on Face book of the gifts women have received on Mother’s Day. My friend Nichole’s daughter drew her mother in anime. Another friend’s kids ordered in Chinese food. My daughter promised me an hour of her day in the garden, which she promptly delivered, then went inside to bake a cake. My son, well, his box of Whitman Chocolates came with a card he has yet to sign. But he enjoyed regaling us with the story of the CVS clerk who was berating every single guy in line with a card or box of candy on the morning of Mother’s Day. The few…the happy few…the “band of brothers” there in line with Hallmark in their hands.

I don’t have any actual gilded rigatoni, but I do have this.

And until I get that card from Ben, I do have this.

I have been dipping in to my friend, ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ author, Michelle Gillett’s book A Celebration of Motherhood and there, found this quote by Anna Quindlen, who herself has a new book out. You can read a lively interview of Anna written by her son, who is a writer for Barnes and Noble. This quote, about the coat of arms for mothers made of small handprints, highlights what I have been up to all spring.

My daughter is about to graduate the 8th grade from her Waldorf grade school. There, this step in a child’s educational journey is celebrated with more pomp and a bit more circumstance. Her class has been together since first grade, with the same class teacher, a unique quality of Waldorf education. The pomp comes with a recognition of the closing of this groups’ time together, and the circumstance celebrates their next steps.

I am on the yearbook committee. Pouring over the equivalent of ‘gilded rigatoni’, over discs of photos delivered by parents too busy to sort them, which means I get to see their versions of events, the back of their kids heads as they squirm away from their parent’s camera views. It is as Anna says, this ubiquitous and ordinary, universal and tender experience, which you memorialize by saving the random and intentional tributes made for you by your offspring. ( The more I write here, the more I am hoping Ben writes something in that Mother’s Day card.)

In the bigger world there have been some poignant tributes to mothers. Proctor and Gamble offer this one. President Obama, this one.

I espouse further gratitude for our mothers in an effort to stir appreciation for what the women around you are up to. Whether or not yourself are a parent, we are all sons and daughters and have the capacity to enrich our lives by appreciating what was or was not done for us by our mothers.

Don’t stop with your gratitudes. I promise, they will open a door for you.
Here are mine for today:

Gratitudes for my Mom:

1. I am grateful she sent me to a Lutheran grade school in Chicago where I could meet friends I still love to this day, with common affection for Fritos and for violets at Easter.
2. I am grateful that Mom read so much as an individual and to us.
3. I am grateful for the house she bought after being divorced from my Dad and all the effort she put in to creating a haven for my sisters and me.
4. I am grateful for all the things she saved of mine, like all my alphabet pages from Bethesda Lutheran School.
5. I am grateful for the miles she drove to bring us back to Chicago, after we’d moved north to the U.P., to visit our relatives.
6. I am grateful for the love she cultivated with my Dad’s family, especially my Aunts and Uncles.
7. I am grateful my Mom was so stylish as a young woman, that she had this sort of mysterious past of which we know little.
8. I am grateful for her preparations for us, when we arrived home from somewhere, she’d be in the kitchen preparing a meal.
9. I am grateful for the sound of her singing ‘Turaluralura”.
10. I am grateful for the way she set the table, with a centerpiece and candle, no matter where we were eating.

Last week, when Ben was feeling overwhelmed and tired, I knew it was time to stir up some pudding. My Mom was a stove-top pudding person and I have carried that forward. Alana Chernila’s recipe in The Homemade Pantry is where I started last week. In the middle of making dinner, this recipe keeps you at the stove stirring, which means everyone else has to set the table and wait while you serve it in ramekins.Please don’t be put off by those dark bits of unmelted cocoa. In the face of not having all the right ingredients, I always add my own flourishes to recipes, which sometimes yield less than photogenic results, but believe me this pudding is perfect.

It is worth the effort, every stir is a prayer for ease, confidence, integrity and joy.
May you be happy(Stir) May you be well(Stir) May you be safe. (Stir) May you be peaceful and at ease. (Stir) and there it is, ready for dessert.

If I can offer my teen agers anything these days, it is comfort.

How about you?
What is in your ‘gilded rigatoni’ stash about your mother?
xo,
S

“…And keep working. Laziness and disdain
are not devotions. Your effort
will bring a result.”

Rumi

Feeling a result about to hatch like an egg.
This Friday evening, ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes: An Evening of Mothers Reading to Others’ premieres at 7pm in The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.

Have you seen Leah Piken Kolidas’ ‘Out’ blog post?
Click on this picture to read her post.

I am filled with gratitude for everyone who has believed in me and supported my writing, my art and my mothering.
They are inextricably linked.

Here is my Wordle of the week, with words by Kathy Drue, one of my blogging sisters.

Here is a poster for ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’.

Time for dinner.
Sending you love from the snowy snowy Berkshires.
Love,
S

I have sold a few things door to door in my lifetime. Girl Scout cookies won me a few awards and once drove my mother to near distraction when the 300 boxes I sold one fall arrived and I had lost the order form. I had a good memory of my customers, which allayed any fear that we would end up having to eat Thin Mints for the winter.

I also sold potholders, the cotton loopy kind, made on a metal frame that kills your fingertips but turns out sturdy blocks of colorful protection for your favorite cook. I made a bunch of them in 1966 because I had to. There was a book I wanted more than anything and so, I peddled my wares across the alleyway on Wolcott Avenue to the other apartment dwellers in Chicago and earned enough to buy my own ‘Red Letter Edition’ of the Bible, the St. James version. Having that, I could tell what exactly Jesus said because all those words were in red. Nice and clear.

I was a student at Bethesda Lutheran School, a small parochial school connected to a Lutheran church. I was born in to a very Lutheran family. Very, because my maternal Grandfather was a Lutheran minister in DeKalb, Illinois and my father had converted to Lutheranism when he married my Mom. My childhood was full of violets and lilies at Easter, hymns sung in German or English, riding in the back of my Grandfathers’ car with my Grandma sitting in front of me with her fox stole peering at me over her shoulder on the way to church.

Attending a small school on a quiet street was a sweet spot for a kid in Chicago. I was only there through fourth grade, so I did not form lasting relationships with any of my friends. Twenty five years ago, my sister Becky and I wandered over to Bethesda to find there had been a reunion of the grade schoolers, but we Banks girls could not be found to invite. I let that period of my life float off in to the coastal waters of memory, far from the active part of my life, which is full of people and activity.

Until last night. I was browsing Face book, being the social networking author that I am, commenting on friends’ posts and reading things. I like Face book. I use it for personal and professional purposes. I have met many really wonderful people there. Four years ago when Diana Finch, a literary agent, instructed me to ‘build my author platform’, I scowled at the idea of making a Face book page for Laundry Line Divine. Now, I quite enjoy sharing interesting articles there, hearing from my followers and dropping photos by like little love notes to the people I interact with there. I can surely see how one could get lost in the ether of Face book. But, for me, I pick and choose or, as in the case of last night, get picked and chosen.

There was a personal message from a Geri Miller. Now, I know all my Face book friends, but this name did not at first ring a bell. I did once, know a Geri Miller, but she had faded from my life like my other Bethesda Lutherans with her startling blue eyes and crazy hair.

But, in fact, it was this very Geri Miller, who had moved away from Bethesda the same year I did, 1968. Neither of us can explain exactly why this move happened in our families. My parents had an apartment close to Loyola University and that Christmas a rock was tossed through our living room window, purely by chance I believe, because we were not at all associated with any University students. I did sell a good deal of Girl Scout cookies from my red wagon at the campus center, now that I think of it, but I am sure no Thin Mint eater would toss a rock through a window.

No, this was my own Geri Miller. And she found me on Face book on Sunday night, but the story is way cooler than that.
Last summer, Geri was in Marquette, Michigan at a memorial gathering for a dear friend of hers who had died 2 years ago. Geri was sitting around a fire on the shores of Lake Superior with friends talking about the interesting people to emerge from the Upper Peninsula.

Her friends run an online business called www.MiUpperhand.com. While talking over wine and warmth, the group turned to talking about Lake Superior Spirit, who, you close readers will recognize as my dear Kathy Drue’s site.

Now, the Universe has been reminding me of how plentiful my life is. I have been lately very inspired by my work and the projects I am developing for Laundry Line Divine. The momentum I feel today is borne of hours and days of doodling, talking, meditating and living my stand as a woman of value. I am so very grateful for all the ways the Universe supports my family and me. My husband could write his own chapter on this topic, but that is his story, not mine. This gift, of all these paths crossing there by the waters of Gitchegumee, came unexpectedly.

So, there on the shores of Lake Superior, my friend from 4th grade, Geri, surrounded by her friends honoring Dr. Louise Bourgault clicks on to the web to Lake Superior Spiritand she sees my guest post. Geri is not sure she knows me then, she wonders if this could be the Suzi she knew from Chicago all those years ago. Days bring her back home in Minocqua, Wisconsin, where Geri’s Mom shows her our grade school photos and sure enough, Geri knows it is me.

So, for whatever reason, she writes to me this past Sunday. As we unravel the paths our families took and our own journeys as young women out in to the world, fueled by the Holy Ghost and assorted other things, we discovered that my own Dr. James Rapport, my theatre professor and life long friend, recruited this close college friend of Geri’s, the recently deceased Dr. Bourgault, to NMU. Daddy Bear, who himself passed away this past August, in Marquette. We discover that Geri had become friends with Dr. Rapport and his amazing wife Karlyn Rapport. We discover that though we had parted at the end of fourth grade at Bethesda Lutheran, we remained somehow tethered.

Geri went through high school with my second cousin.

This all may not seem so far fetched to you readers.
But, these people, Geri and my second cousin Sally, who I knew briefly through my Grandmother, and who I have not seen nor heard of in 40 or so years, we have not known each other as adults.

So, it seems that one of my life passions, connecting, happens without my own conscious intention. Through my development of my manifesto, of which that post on Lake Superior Spirit is an important element- because you must know where you are from in order to move forward with any viable and sparkling motion- that post last July found it’s way to my dear Geri, who, by virtue of Face book, found me.

Here she is.

Then, after we peed ourselves silly with the fact that she knows Daddy Bear, and went to school with my second cousin, I mention that I have long pined away for Linda Schmidt, with whom I formed a rock band in her basement with Laura Tucker. We sang a song I wrote called “Hey Mr. Mailman, Got a Letter from my Love?” Did I mention my life long love of all things postal? Geri connects me to Linda.

Now, Linda, Geri and I have been heating up the waves on Face book, laughing about the boys Geri punched out on the playground and how I used to upchuck fairly frequently and how Linda was terrified of our favorite teacher, who had a terrible accident with the new chin-up bar in our gym that year in fourth grade and my Mom had to be our substitute teacher. I still remember holding Mrs. Finzer’s purse for her in the bathroom as she wretched in pain. I loved her. She wore the coolest clothes and pointy sunglasses and I just loved her. I don’t know why.

I guess I love her now because she is part of what has kept me connected to Geri, who connected with my second cousin in Northern Wisconsin and then with my mentor, Daddy Bear, who connected with Marquette and then with Lake Superior Spirit and then, finally with me. As my Mom would say, ‘will wonders never cease?’

I think Geri looks exactly like the title character named Twig, from Elizabeth Orton Jones’ book. My kids loved this book and I always had a sense of familiarity with Twig as I read that story to them over and over again. The illustrations are just like the back alleys of Chicago where we spent our early childhoods, playing ‘Seven-Up’ and tag.

You just never know. Someone shows up, carrying the wonder of her own life and the people and places she has loved and they are so similar if not the same as mine.

I do bark at my son to get off of Face book. I will not sell much door to door anymore.
And, I will sew these memories around my heart because there is nothing casual about the way the Universe works. I am grateful for Geri penetrating the ether to find me. I am thrilled to see Linda’s smile again. I am impressed by how fast the three of us can stir up a little trouble posting about the kids we once knew, and may in fact, know again.

I hope this week of family and holiday, or no family and no holiday, but still a week in which gratitude can play a part, I hope this week is good for you. I hope you recognize the value of reaching out to someone you feel pulled towards. You can never imagine your good fortune at peering in to the face of someone as scalliwaggishly brilliant as Geri and getting to know her again. What a joy.

All my love to you my readers of Laundry Line Divine.
I am so thankful that you stop your day and read me here.
This story could so easily be yours.
There are people who’s lives you change ever single day, just by smiling like Linda does, all sparkly and wonderful.
Thank you for reading me.
Thank you for loving your life.
Happy Thanksgiving,
S

It is Easter Sunday night.
Before I tuck in, I wanted to stop here at the Laundry Line, just to make sure all was well before I turned off the light.

I noticed that I have had 600 comments, as of a few minutes ago.
Immediately, I knew it was time to write my V post about Verisimilitude in honor of all of you readers who bravely comment here on the Line.
You give me the honor, here in this web universe, of feeling real- like a location- a gathering place-your comments create a sense of concrete tangible something happening here at www.laundrylinedivine.com.

So, all 600 of you, I thank you for bestowing upon the Laundry Line this verisimilitude.

All is well here, as Miss Clavel used to proclaim as she turned out the lights on Madeleine and her French schoolmates.

With much love and gratitude to you each,
S