Laundry Line Divine

Today is my Mom’s birthday.

It is a heavenly day here in the Berks.
My guests are drifting GB.
Roger, my cherished jester is coming over tonight play with our Germans.

Tender song here to keep you each close today.

Great bawdy posts to follow.
Just had to tell you how much you thrill me, here on the Line.

Celebrating the near ones and the far…but never, ever so far.

Love,
S

As you may have noticed, I have been quiet these last 2 weeks. I was in New York City, just a brief 2 ½ hours from my desk and a whole lifetime away. Long ago, in one of my favorite books by Mark Helprin “Winter’s Tale” he described the transition that his characters took from Manhattan to upstate to the region of wild nature and gigantic beauty, as a metaphysical happening, where engulfed by mist over ice they would escape the snares of city life and find themselves tucked in to verdant hills and windy peaks. I think of his words, or the feeling I gathered from those words which I read on West 25th street in NYC, jammed up next to the plaster ceiling on my loft bed, and how true they are.

When I leave my home here, my kids and my husband all capable of days apart from me, though heartstrings twang with missing over time, I drive off either to the train or the Taconic Highway. The train route takes me through a green valley peppered with farms and cleft by Bash Bish Waterfall at Taconic State Park. I almost always see a red fox as I drive and lots of red tail hawks. Once on the train the mists clear the closer I get to Manhattan, flying past long stretches of bogs and watery places before we get to the canyons of apartment buildings.
If I drive the Taconic, the mists last longer. That road was built by the CCC in the 1930s and is a beautiful curvaceous ride, especially appealing to my husband who loves to drive as if he is in an ad for fast cars. It is a sensual road closed in by trees and occasional rocky outcroppings, often edged by deer in the grass and more hawks troll the woods all the way south until I reach Westchester and the spell of the city begins to take hold.

There is magic for me, traveling in either direction.

I was in New York for a weekend of Mastery with the School of the Womanly Arts. I have been associated with the SWA for 5 years now. This session finds me assisting in the leadership of the women who lead small groups within the student body. I am the Fluffer of the Big Sisters. I love to fluff. Fluffing women means I get to listen for how to love women, just exactly where they are and praise them as they take their next steps to greatness. The students run the gamut from full time Moms like me to high-powered executives of companies that operate systems for the state of California. I am honored to be in a place where women are pledging their troth to expanding their footprint of beauty on this planet. We talk about the Divine Feminine and about Courtesans at the SWA. We are a group of women interested in authentic transformation by regular and daily applications of Pleasure, from the sacred to the mundane and back again.

Then, I took part in the Blog World conference that was part of the Book Expo at the Javits Center in NYC. Thanks to my writing coach, Stephanie Gunning of
Abundant Words, I took the plunge in to a bigger world of writers. What a wonderful thrill it was to browse the stalls of publishing houses and hear the buzz of booksellers. I walked with my pal from One Woman’s Eye Joanne Tombrakos and we handed our cards to anyone we thought would be potential publishers for our soon to be published books. We spent the bulk of the day in blog sessions with great speakers like Lori Randall Stradtman, Jodi Beck and Michael Margolis,
Tamsen McMahon and Srinivas Rao. Bloggers are a happy lot of varied people. I was inspired by the interest in each other’s work and the atmosphere of mutual support among the bloggers.

Then, on Wednesday, I presented FeMail as part of the Museum of Motherhood’s conference on Mothering at Marymount Manhattan College on East 71st Street in Manhattan. I listened to another group on bloggers, who happen to be mothers and marketing executives. You will hear more about them as I write this month. I struck up a mutual crush with Lindsey Reed Maines of rockandrollmama.com. She was among the women I led through a short session of making mail art for the Museum of Motherhood archives. You can stop over at www.femailart.com to see what we made. Just not today, I will let you know when that page will be up.

The day with MOM at Marymount was thrilling. Besides finally meeting Joy Rose of MOM, I got to be with Laura Tropp, head of women’s studies at MMM and many of her students. I was honored to listen to Dr. Phyllis Chesler speak about her work as a feminist and researcher in the field of women, mothering and politics. She is a vastly well-written and exciting woman, with a heart that opens as she speaks about her own family, her son and all she has learned as a mother who is a feminist and passionate educator.

I spent the afternoon with a small group of women, including Amy Simon looking at Ali Smith’s photographs and talking. Well, talking and crying. We all shared our stories about being artists and mothers and the challenges of modeling to our children and to the young women we spent the day with, drawn to expressing ourselves, stymied by success and an ever present awareness that there is so much to be done. Passionate to do it well and have our work seen in the world. I was thrilled to meet Ali. You may recall her video here : http://laundrylinedivine.com/982/momma-love-and-my-mamafesto/

What I thought about as I drove back north on Thursday to kids with soccer schedules and laundry, tomatoes and seeds to plant was how very fortunate I am to have the appetite to be in the world. I love to connect with other people about my work, about my perspective. And I love to listen to others. That interchange of ideas and views about life and the world is what draws me forward. It is why I read. Why I love to dance. Why poetry moves me so. It is why I started my life in theatre so long ago in The Pied Piper of Hamelin at Potowatomie Park in Chicago.

Whether or not Laundry Line Divine becomes a book that you will see on every women’s arm next year, I know that the gifts in the journey towards those printed pages are these connections to other women deciding to live their lives differently, to live out loud and be the beacon for another woman who is convinced that there is more to life than one straight role.

And like the drive to Manhattan, this journey of motherhood is full of misty patches and boggy sections, thrilling vistas and tearful passages. I know no other thing than to just continue, to put my pen to paper, my glue stick to postcard, my lips to your cheek and say, Yes. Yes. Go on, your voice, your unique voice is required here in this conversation of life.

Thank you for listening.
Yours, Suzi

Here’s me and Mom in 1990. We are sitting in a tree stump. That is reflection on my chin and cheeks. I am so happy to be with Mom.

I have quite a story for you about me, mothering and an apron.

Come back next week, dear cherished readers, especially you Marilyn,

and I will tell it to you.

First, I gotta go to Miami with the School of the Womanly Arts.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone.

Hugs, S

Hmmm?

On a day like today, with the groans of making room for my 15 year old to spread his wings…with Mother’s Day on the rise and mine lives in a nursing home…with the press of time, panting at my calves salivating…I take a walk.
I talk to my Mom as I walk. This is what I saw.
What do you do?