Laundry Line Divine

Catherine

As I look back on what I have written,
I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.
Katherine Peterson

Yup.
She is right.

The blog series running here within Laundry Line Divine called ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ was initially inspired by my desire to create opportunities to share stories of mothering and creativity with other women.

I thought it seemed like a good enough reason to invite other women to share. Now, I have women sending me posts at a rate of about 6 a week, at least. This sets my head spinning. The depth and beauty of the posts, all different, all savory with the piquant flavors of raising children and sweetened by those very experiences which in turn, raise us.

Half her life ago now, age seven

I know there are readers of the Laundry Line who do not have children. This blog series is not exclusive to mothers, it just invites them specifically, because as a culture, unless we are talking about products- and there is history here- read about the advertising campaigns of the 1950s designed to make Rosie the Riveter want to return home and stay home- the voices of mothers have not been given equal value in our culture.

Women artists, creators, inventors and innovators are seeking equality. We have been at this for generations. As a writer and artist who is a full time Mom, I am sharing my stories and invite you to share yours. I have room for you here, whether you are creating books, like my dear friend Joanne Tombrakos or creating peace with your four children, like Dr. Deborah Gilboa.

I am getting more relaxed about these video blogs. My son has been watching them, offering me only a small amount of scorn. I can tell there is a bit of pride in him, proud of me, surprised by me a bit. This is his third week with a broken leg, at home in bed and he has graduated from literate infant to literate toddler. Yesterday, he successfully used his crutches. Today, he is exhausted by the effort.

Ben when he was eleven

Like the time I see it is taking him to recover from his skiing accident, so is my ability to move this ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ project ahead. It is every bit a part of me, as my visual work or my parenting and equally susceptible to interruption. This post has taken me hours to write. I cannot move this work any faster than I can move my son and his 25-pound casted left leg. He is the living expression of ‘One Step at a Time’.

Ben racing 2011

Catherine, my girl, has been eternally patient these weeks and just a little cranky. I have been looking at this photograph of her, comparing her black eyeliner gaze to the wonderment of this child.

By Bonnie Nordoff

Catherine in Miami

Raising children takes time. And those children take time.
As a mother, I have offered my time, a coursing vein of O-positive blood for the life force of my children to quicken and stand independent, away from me. Women do this with all the work we create, infusing our projects with our life force. The meals we plan, our matrix of thought or the vivid arenas of relationship all require our time, our currency of aliveness.
‘If only I had more time’.

How would you answer this question today?
If only you had more time?

If only I had more time? I would share this post with you. Honor Tina Fey for her hilarious and truthful prayer for her daughter and then jump over to my art table and forget the rest of the world exists for a while.

Here is Tina Fey’s prayer for her daughter. You can find Tina’s book BossyPants at your local bookstore. Read this before you run over there because, well, it is snowing here today, life is full of surprises and a little bit of humor makes it all worthwhile.

Love,
S

Tina Fey’s The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor
Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the
creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her
grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her
When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean,
swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform,
crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting
on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on
large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels,
roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of
Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,”
and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where
she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get
outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m
asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the
sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and
be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a
Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day –
And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled
invective of her peers
And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V:
Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of
Hollister,Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in
front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord,
That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M.,
all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is
leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off
her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude
will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental
Note to call me. And she will forget.
But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

Life is scary.

No fooling.

Things happen.
Shit.
Broken legs.
Dropped stitches.
Missed planes.
Car accidents.
Death.
Uprisings.

I know it.
I know you have it all going on in your life, just as I do in mine.
And, up on that banner across the top of this website it reads: “Laundry Line Divine: Seeing and Celebrating the Sacred in Daily Life”.

I guess I better put my money where my mouth is.

This week has been harrowing for the Baum family.
Today we celebrated one week from a hellish day at Albany Medical Center. Last Sunday we spent the day helping our 17 year old traverse the agony of a broken leg in a temporary splint, numerous transfers from bed to gurney and back again for x-rays and cat-scans and the long minutes of waiting for the swelling of his left shin to go down.
It was not an easy day.

But, time has passed.

The week has turned to February. The sky is lighter at 5 pm so I can ice skate at twilight. I scared the crap out of myself today. Let’s say I am still a little jumpy. Iced lakes make a sound not unlike a whale singing below the ocean surface- this deep, resonant twanging. Skating over glassy ice in the moonlight, velvet lavender ice sparkling then- BWOOOONNNNNG. The majestic sound of ice layers forming and the pressure changing across the inner surface of the ice booms across the sublime scene. I knew I would not fall in the water. To a lake skater, this sound is good.

But to an uber-alert Mom who has returned to infant style vigilance when every sound emitted from my son’s bedroom is a possible cry for assistance, I leapt out of my skin.

I let my heart slow down. I have felt the steady beat of my heart so much this week. I felt it race as I nearly hit the Ortho Resident for humiliating my suffering son by telling him to “man up”. I felt my heart then. Holding my son’s head as he screamed in pain as they put him in that first splint. I felt my heart then. Cuddling Ben today as he hugged me close to thank me for restocking his snack tray, I felt my heart then, too.
At the lake’s edge, I watched the moon shimmer.
I breathed gratitude for being alive.
And I headed home to write to you.

We are celebrating creativity in these early months of 2012. This is my work in the world. The Blog Series for ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ has 5 posts queued up for this week as more women step up to share their stories. I am so glad Linda Jackson, Sherry Collier, Shari Simpson, Kelly DiNorcia, and Lissa Rankin have posted.

It is not easy to rustle up the time or the appetite to do something other than parent when your arms are wrapped up in meals and care. Wiping and rinsing and brushing and peeling, hanging and sorting and folding and driving and running and debating and arguing and settling and admonishing and reminding and leading and modeling and paring and steeping and sweetening and badgering and cosseting and lacing and racing all just sucks up the hours and who the heck has time to thread the sewing needle anyway?

Legions of women before us out of sheer necessity, spent hours creating things for themselves and their families from materials they may have grown or raised, creating things that would comfort, clothe or cover their children and spouses.

This week’s ‘Out’ blog post by Linda Jackson reveals her connection to her mother and generations of women who have handled fiber. The thread of inventing beauty and utility connects all Linda’s diverse passions.

These antique textiles are from a show I saw at the Chicago Art Institute two weeks ago.

I have carried around this quote for years from Jennie June, a well known American needle worker who said this in 1880:

The little worktables of women’s
fingers, are the playground of
women’s fancies, and their
knitting needless are the
fairy-wands by which they
transform a whole room in to
a spirit isle of dreams.

I want to have an authentic conversation about mothering and creativity. According to Jan Phillips in her extraordinary book No Ordinary Time

“ If someone doesn’t go first, how will authentic conversations ever get started?”

I know it is fun to recall the hours I spent frosting Christmas cookies with my kids. We have all had those wondrous moments creating things with our children. But what I am calling out for here is what is birthed from the deeper places in your soul, the works that cry out to you in the middle of the night.
On one particular needy afternoon this week, Ben could not go for more than 20 minutes or so without me being near him. Pain, distraction, discomfort, warmth, drink- he just needed my company through it all.

I knew this was a temporary state of affairs. I will not be wiping my son’s chin for more than a few more days as he gets stronger and more confident in this new way of being. But, I was torn from my desk; from the slim momentum I had gained in stringing one thought after another. And I was angry.

I could not vent this on him. I would not even leak it to him. But it reminded me of the days, months and years of my early mothering in which this was the case twenty-four seven, even when I had child-care and a supportive husband. I still had to be back on time. I could not slip the yoke of responsibility from my neck permanently.

Mothers have fear that they will never, ever think a complete thought again. You get interrupted. You get distracted. You forget. One of the gifts of this week with Ben and re-entry into such demanding parenting is this thought: With young children, or in my case, time soaking teen agers, a mother has thoughts, but they are erased by distraction, stress, weary brains and bodies. You fear the worst, that you will forget the thread of that magic equation and you do in fact, lose it. How could you possibly hold on to it with the noise of your life diluting your essence?

This is where any connection to creativity comes as saving grace.

Your creativity is the string upon which the jewels of your authentic essence are strung. Your insiders story from the front lines of mothering- that soul food- is what we are able to serve through our acts of creativity.

I don’t wish this week of my life on anyone. I am aware that things could have been so much worse. I am thankful with every breath a prayer that we will all recuperate from this time and perhaps are stronger for it. We certainly will know each other better.

But, I would not exchange this chance of being intimately close to my son again. I am so very sorry he has to suffer this pain, this major time-out of his junior year in high school. And I will press in to my heart these moments of humor borne in vulnerability, of rousing joy at simple progress and the quiet peace of him healing under our care.

I could not have done this without my cell level mission that is Laundry Line Divine. I do see and celebrate the sacred in daily living.
In the ordinary and mundane.
In ambulances and emergency rooms.
On ice slicked evenings with the moon at my toes.

Write on.
Love, S

This snowless winter has not failed to pile drifts of inertia around my legs.
I want to crawl back in to bed on these gray mornings.
Hibernation. I hear my dear friend Anne Davin tell me January is time to hibernate.
I am healthy. I am well. I am not depressed.
I have taken stock of the past year.
I have stored the seeds of my desires for this New Year, this new year of the dragon-though for me it feels like the year of the squirrel. I host visions of a petite gray furred creature encircled in a nest of oak leaves, sleeping out the windy days in a high treetop.

Knowing that I had work to do today, that napping was an option, I took the morning more slowly than usual. I did not jump on to my computer. I let myself stay in my jammies. Thursdays are my art day. My husband and I have arranged ourselves around this day being the one day of the week where phone calls, appointments, music lessons, SAT prep class arrangements, pizza runs for late night paper writers, laundry duties and all the rest are handled by him. We have a life that has room for this. Jonathan’s office is in our attic. He is very disciplined when it comes to time, so, for one day a week, he makes this work.
When I say Jonathan is my hero, you now know just what I mean.

It came to me this quiet morning that I could treat myself as I would treat my best friend. No hurrying. No pressure to produce. Lots of tea.

I sat in my red chair by the window. This is the place where I write early in the morning, where I conduct my long phone calls, where the dome of silence is almost visible, where I can look out over our yard at crow’s eye level. My red chair is my crow’s-nest on my ship of dreams. There I sat and read this by Jan Phillips as the steel ceilinged morning passed me by.

“…I remember that I owe my creative spirit all the time and tenderness I would give my dearest beloved. One is as precious as the other.”

Now, at the later end of this day where rain has begun to fall, lowering the moods of the skiers in my household, I have risen to the occasion of some creating today. My Arthouse Sketchbook project is coming together. Here is one of the pages I have prepared to write in to. The title, which was given to me, is ‘Forks and Spoons’.
I cannot get away from the ordinary things that make our lives extraordinary. I love that.

What sustains me on days like today, where the momentum of all my projects stills and the energy that is my normal operating speed has slowed by winter grabbing my ankles and thickening blood, is this comfort. Being tender with myself today has made it possible to show up here with you and ask:

What sustains you?
What is it you would do for your best friend today?
Could you possibly do that very thing for yourself?

I listened to a recorded call while I worked at my art table. Sage Levine of Women on Purpose interviewed
Reverend Deborah Johnson about intentional living.
Rev. Johnson said this:

God has given you custody of you.

I have taken custody of myself today. I am my very own best friend.
And, I am taking me to bed.

Tell me more.
What sustains you in the bleak mid-winter?

Thank you for being here,
All my love,
S

PS There are some wonderful things happening on Out of the Mouths of Babes.
Tomorrow, Sherry Collier’s post goes up. Monday, Linda Jackson’s post arrives.
Next week, more amazing women will appear. You are encouraged to visit the blog and comment. Let these long gray days be filled with inspiration from other women.

PPS. If you want to read an absolutely beautiful piece on the power of women’s friendships, read this. Thank you Emily Rapp.