The STUFF Sisters

Days of Abstraction

I think it is human nature to believe that you can understand other people. We seek to “know” people. We are constantly making assumptions about others. “She is….” “He is….”

I am a visual person. For me, it is like I begin to paint a portrait of a person, and I add paint strokes to the image as I learn more about them. I hope to define or decode them and bring them into focus.

But I am always looking at my imaginary paintings and feeling like I am missing something. I wish could put my finger on what I missed. It is terribly confusing to discover that my imagination has led me astray – to discover my portraits are not accurate.

Maybe this is why I am drawn to abstract art. It strips the imagery completely away, and only focuses on feeling, emotion, essence, and even the void.

Some days I am more comfortable with abstraction. I am able to be less critical. I am more open. My mind is free. I am able to avoid assumptions.

A day of abstraction often helps me see what is really there.

Texture and Time

Earlier this week, I attended a morning get-together with several women. There was coffee served, but, since I don’t drink coffee, I feel funny saying, “I had coffee” or, “I went to a coffee”. Enough with the digression. Time for the story….

This little get-together was relaxing and low key. There were no raised voices, no preening or positioning. Just a handful of women visiting about their children and the school year ahead. The conversation generally involved the whole group, and we all got to hear the longer versions of each other’s concerns, plans and dreams. I liked that part very much. We gravitated toward the family room after the intial round of beverages were poured. I chose to sit in a chair that proved to be fantastically comfortable, and, after the rain started to fall, I kept to myself the desire to tell our hostess that I would be staying for naptime.

I found myself, as we were all talking, mesmerized by the texture of the upholstery on my chair. It was the same upholstery on every chair and sofa in the room, and I hope my friend doesn’t blame her beloved dogs for the possible “wear and tear” on the corner I covertly fondled. The cotton fabric had a weave to it that didn’t follow the pattern of the bold stripes, and it held me in its sway.

rain on sand — Rain pattern left on sand.

Our hostess has a divine sense of style, and what set the room off for me – beyond the tooth of the upholstery – were the magnificent conch shell resting triumphantly on the low table in front of us all and the small basket of collected shells at my elbow.

Just last month on vacation, I took my camera to the beach every day. Initially, I was on a mission to capture sunsets and to not let details get away from me, as I’m prone to do. As I edited and curated my photos on the computer, what stuck out over the many days were the textures we found on the beach and in the water. Every day, the beach ignites in me the desire to stay even longer than the day before. I never want to miss a thing, and I never want to leave.

I spent almost an hour one evening trying to capture the amazing foam near the shore. In the fading light, it was an effort in futility. However, the texture of the sand under the water ended up being as exciting to me as the foam.

Texture can awaken me visually. However, if touching is the truest form of remembrance, I’ve got memories to last a lifetime.

Sloane

july 30 sunset — The sunset on July 30th. Anna Maria Island.

p.s. All of these pictures were taken on Anna Maria Island this summer. I wrote a blog a while back about sunsets and their strange allure. See it here.

Bittersweet

Tomorrow morning my daughter will start first grade. Tonight she took her own shower, cleared her own plate, picked out her outfit for her first day of school, and even remembered to brush her teeth. I tucked her into bed with a book and her new kitten. After I kissed her goodnight, she said, “Mom, don’t forget to set my alarm.” I set her alarm and kissed her one last time and quietly left the room.

I then stood outside the door and let the tears fall.

I believe that I never truly understood the meaning of bittersweet until I had a child. Now I hope my life is filled with an endless amount of these moments.

Baby in Chicken Costume — Halloween 2006

The Past as Present

I have been coming to the beach in Florida on average once a year for 9 years. I’m lucky. I have firsthand knowledge of the healing powers of the surf and the sun. I can feel it on my skin and in my soul.

Hunting for shells is a part of life on the island we visit. It juts out from the southern tip of Tampa Bay and collects some real doozies from the Gulf of Mexico. I have the patience for looking for shells, and I find the work cathartic. But I’m not good at it. I have been laughed at for what I bring back and what I find beautiful, but it rolls off of me and I care little. Shelling is a private endeavor, and others need not really know too much.

I have excelled at acting like Madame Cousteau as my son – once little and now not so much – brings me his bounty from the sea. I ooh and ahh and am truly transfixed by his luck in the shallows and on the sand. (Many years ago, I saw a comic in The New Yorker of a young Jacques at the beach. It showed his mother in a beach chair absolutely surrounded by sea life, shells and rocks. The artist had her saying something sweet and alarmingly funny – I have forgotten it, but the image has stuck with me as my son has aged.) This past week, he has brought me miniature wonders and large treasures.

And yesterday – just yesterday! – I realized why I’m not the greatest shell collector. Well, not the greatest collector of perfect shells…why I am drawn to all the shells that are imperfect and broken and damaged. The realization had me looking up from the “shell dump” my son and I were digging in and looking toward the incredible sinking sun as I caught my breath. It had come catapulting through time to strike me straight in the heart.

When I was in the 4th grade, my parents moved us from Des Moines to Kansas City. It was a wee bit hard to join a class mid-year and fit in. Well, I didn’t actually fit in for several more years. I was not chosen for kickball or dodgeball teams. I was not waved over to join a group at a lunch table. I was not picked first for spelling bees or vocabulary teams. It was tough. I was the new kid.

It was well into my 5th grade year when I met the young woman who has remained my best friend to this day. And even then, when she fell in gym and broke her forearm, I was blamed by others because I was near her and fell at the same time. I felt like I was the odd duck and the 5th wheel. I just knew I was imperfect in my classmates’ eyes – broken in some way I could not see in the mirror – and it left me a bit damaged for several years.

This brings us back to the beach and the bounty I carry away and into my home. I have jars on a high shelf in a guest room that house my treasures. I used to be a bit more anal retentive, putting dates and locations on the inside of the lids, but now I mix and match my catches. I will occasionally bring a jar down and place it on my dresser for a few weeks so I can marvel at the different shapes. I can admit to liking the pristine pieces that look like they were purchased at a gift shop, but I mix them liberally with the majority of what I own – odd shells, barnacled shells, broken shells, cracked shells, tips and fragments.

Today I found the shells you see, in the surf up-island from our beach chairs. I dug them out of the sand and clear water, looked at them briefly, and silently told myself to throw them back. They were still been held together by membrane, and one side was barnacled and off-colored, but the other side was nearly perfect and barnacle free. I held it for over a minute while contemplating how these two halves could still be together in the rough and tumble of the sea. One was perfect and one was not. Then, because I knew tossing would damage them, I laid them back gently on the sand in the shallows and walked away.

Ten minutes later, my son joined me where I sat after I had left the flats, and he showed me his many amazing shells, one of which was the pair I had placed back in the sea.

Oui, Madame était très contente.

Sloane

Special note: a “shell dump” is a phrase my sister Casey coined years ago to distinguish regular beach from a section that had a lot of shells collected in it at the last high tide.

Translation: Yes, Madame was very happy.

Summer Blues

I am on “re-entry” from vacation. I was missing the bright blues of Florida today. I found them cheering me along from all over the store. Here are few.

: Summer blues surround me at work.

Almost Stupid

I almost walked right into a grand tour down memory lane. Almost.

While our 14 year old son is off traipsing around Paris, I decided to travel right into the grand abyss that is his closet. It was packed to the gills with old costumes, rolled posters, too-small shoes, last year’s jeans, and his “keepsafe” boxes. That’s where I was almost stupid. Almost.

When he was young and still learning the finer points of the English language, he heard me mentioning his keepsake boxes. To be precise, what he heard – but not what I said – was KEEPSAFE boxes. He will still ask me to put things away in his keepsafe boxes. I have never corrected him, and I doubt I ever will. It’s just too precious to me, and there needs to be some thread to him that ties me to his babyhood.

Back to the closet. Right on top, in the uppermost keepsafe box, was the Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit I bought him in 1997 for my stepsister’s wedding. I went a little crazy in the weeks before the wedding and purchased this amazing ensemble at Saks Fifth Avenue. It’s a pima cotton placketed blouse and a navy blue velvet jumper with button closures. No tacky snaps here!! I finished it all off with white socks and leather Buster Brown ankle shoes. He was 8 months old, and that night his feet never touched the ground. He was held by many and pandered to all night. He was as happy all evening as he is in this picture.

In the box, right under this fashion statement, is the outfit we took him home from the hospital in. I can’t say what else is in that box – or the boxes it was resting on – because I stopped right there. I felt the big cry coming on, and I waltzed right around it. I went back to sorting and dusting and cleaning and ignored the memories waiting in those boxes.

I guess that, because I only have one child, I will not need to remind myself to not go cleaning out the closets of an almost high schooler while they are away. It is a treacherous and slippery slope if you are not properly prepared.

I should, however, remind myself that drying my eyes with the cotton rag in my hands that is coated in lemon Pledge and dust bunnies is almost stupid. Almost.

Happy

I am on vacation. It is day two on the beach. And my incredible little girl presented me with the gift of a lifetime. I was hanging out in the waves and she was running, playing and creating in the sand. I often find her lost in her imagination, talking with herself, and building elaborate stories. So, today I assumed she was scripting a play all her own. An hour later, she came to the water’s edge and said, “Mom, come see what I made.”

This is what she presented to me.

There is no greater gift than knowing your child is happy.

The Bean with her sand art — The Bean with her art.

Another Milestone

I don’t remember graduating from the 8th grade. I attended what used to be called junior high school. It was a 2 year program steeped in hormone control. The curriculum included the usual: math, English, science, home economics, gym, foreign language, etc. It also had its fair share of angst, peer pressure and love triangles. All of this was finished off with mood swings and tears – joy and sadness were indiscernable.

Now, all these years later, the center of my universe is graduating from the 8th grade. His 11 years at the same school ended with 3 years in middle school. He has had a fabulous time figuring his young self out in an atmosphere of care and concern. He’s been challenged educationally and emotionally. He has witnessed the best in his friends and the worst in himself. The reverse is true as well.

And I’m the one that can’t stop crying. Every day this week has had at least one event in it that is a “last” for either my son, me or our family. He’s not just leaving his friends, I’m leaving my friends. These are men and women – all parents! – that were standing there with me 11 years ago when we sent our 3-year-olds into what seemed like a huge adventure.

I’m crying for what seems like no apparrent reason. I’m clinging to girlfriends in parking lots. I’m re-visiting the past and watching time fly. I’m holding on to moments, hoping they never end.

Sounds like junior high all over again. This time, however, I have a steady boyfriend to hold hands with who says he’ll love me forever.

Sloane

Today I Feel Like Dreaming

I just got back to work from a luncheon for the Women’s Employment Network. And, I don’t want to work. I just want to walk around in the sunshine aimlessly and dream. About what you ask?

Everything. The world, my daughter, my life, the coast at dusk, falling in love again, the taste of homemade fried chicken, skinny dipping after dark, driving across the country, walking across Europe, a first kiss, a giant hug, laughing until I snort, renting an over-the-water cottage in Fiji, the smell of kids covered in Coppertone in the summer…you know just dreaming.

Some days I don’t think to dream. It just doesn’t occur to me. (One of the big disappointments of being an adult.) But today, thanks to a room full of inspiration, I want dream.

Silence

One evening last winter – not the one that ended yesterday when the sun rose in its glory, but the winter of 2009-2010 – I was sitting in my darkened office at STUFF. I like working at night when the store is closed and the lights are off. I turn on just one task light over my desk, and I attack the minutia of retail. To say I was diligently working on the brain-numbing details of inventory would actually be correct. I was so close to finishing that task, and I had come in after the store was closed to have total silence and full reign.

Then the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, “Your husband says you’re working very hard, but I want you to come and have drinks with me at the girl’s night I just threw together.” I hemmed, I hawed, I bandied about the “I’m so close to finishing and I really need to work because I’m a self-employed business woman and this is what we do” speech. It fell on deaf ears, and I was in my car a few minutes later heading to exactly where the beckoning had sprung from.

My friend Missy had pulled together a wonderful group of women that evening. She says she “threw” it together, but it really seemed to have come together as if by magic. The women I met that night were a mixed bunch to me. Some I knew by name and some I met that night for the first time, but one woman was in the nether region between the those two. She was a dear friend to Missy. She and I had been introduced numerous times at Bar Natasha, and I had seen her perform professionally on many stages in Kansas City. But that night, we talked – about kids and husbands and friends and commitments and responsibility. She is someone you don’t forget easily – her eye contact very focused, her laughter extremely contagious, and her singing voice coming from her whole body, not just her lungs.

And today, while I was sitting in my fully lit office, the phone rang. Missy told me that her dear friend Karen had died very early this morning. The cancer that had re-visited her body – and this time aggressively – had won. I was speechless for a minute. Missy and I continued to talk, and we re-confirmed with each other our deep hatred for cancer. Many other things were said, like “I love you” and “Take care”. Then we hung up and went back to doing. Doing things. Tasks. Work.

There was a silencing in my universe today of a voice I will never hear again. I can fill that silence with peace. I can fill that silence with hope. I can fill that silence with friendship.

I will do all of those things after I live in that silence for a bit longer.

Sloane

I grabbed this photo from Missy’s facebook page without her permission. She’ll forgive me.