The STUFF Sisters - Uncategorized

New Digs

The beginning of the school year does not bring on the deep desire to sniff crayons or markers. It does not make me yearn for sweaters and boots. I don’t even want the cooler weather to drop down too soon. Around our house, it simply means Mama’s got the bug to move furniture.

Last year it was the excitement and sadness of converting the young man’s room from a bunk bed setup into a double-twin-bed lounging paradise. We got him some new furniture on this site. It was a day fraught with tears for what seemed like the true end to the “kid” room and therefore childhood. At least that’s what I manifested it into.

This year – two days before the first day of school – the golden child’s desk moved from the kitchen to the room we labeled years ago “the playroom” due to its housing all the games, the toys and the air hockey table. His desk had been in the kitchen since the second grade when he and I started sharing a computer. The computer and he faced the wall so I could easily see the screen from any vantage point in the kitchen. Not on my watch was he going to accidentally dance with porn! No way!

a boy and his desk — The boy and his new desk.

The domino effect of house re-arranging is that it gave me the opportunity to tweak a few more things that needed change. It just stands to reason that, if he and I are no longer sharing a computer and a desk, we should both get new digs. So this boy’s mama moved a desk into her dressing room, and all has been bliss. I am safely nestled into the second floor of the house with a window for taking in Hyde Park vistas and with seashells on the sill for moral support. Right now I’m loving the sleekness of the desk surface, but I know that will change.

My move from the epicenter – our kitchen – is providing me with much-needed clarity for the writing I’ve been yearning to do. I am able to leave the hubbub after dinner and enter a little silence – which I still love to have pierced by my baby boy as he attacks his mountain of homework.

Sloane

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.

Rare Behavior

Casey and I look at so many things in the course of our work. Things. Stuff. And lots of it….

Casey and I look at so many things in the course of our work. Things. Stuff. And lots of it. We meet with artists and view their pieces. We look at catalogues. We look at websites. We get PILES of mail every day with beautiful photos of lovely things. Lovely things I’d love to own and also share with our customers. That’s how being a retailer works: you like it, you offer it to others.

When I saw these in Town & Country magazine my heart zinged. So many things about these amazing earrings stand in direct opposition to my “personal purchasing restrictions”. Like I have never heard of this artist. And I’m pretty sure the pieces are produced in quantities of more than one (and I am a one-of-a-kind girl). Plus, I’m a “clip” girl and these reek of “pierced”.

But I may exhibit rare behavior and hunt these suckers down and see just what I can’t afford!!

Sloane

Simple

Taking my daughter to see the Statue of Libertyfor the first time in 2009.

I have been thinking a lot about freedom lately. I am struck with how it complicates our world, our lives, and our beliefs.

For the last couple of weeks, freedom has been on my mind. I volunteered to work on an event for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called The Art of Expression. I mean, what could be simpler for me than celebrating the right to create art? Look at what I do for a living, how I live, who I choose to have in my life…simple right? Not so much.

It – freedom, that is – kept popping up everywhere I turned. It’s like that old phenomenon that when you buy a red car all of sudden you see a million red cars on the road. I chose to work on an event about freedom, and – presto – freedom is all over my roads.

It was on Facebook when I logged on each morning, a constant feed of posts about anything and everything people wanted to voice. It was at breakfast, lunch and dinner conversations. It was at the baseball game. It was at a bar when a guy talking to me got mad and stomped off because he found out I didn’t share his political views. It was at a party with girlfriends where we talked about kids, love, life, sex and our bodies.

I spent a bunch of time thinking about people that use hatred to spread propaganda and resort to violence and killing. I was shamed to realize how often I was willing to jeopardize my own freedom in wanting my government to control and stop these people.

Freedom wasn’t letting me get much sleep.

I thought about being a woman in America in 2011. Boy howdy, that got the freedom ball rolling.

It’s everywhere – freedom, lack of freedom, struggles for freedom, and limits on freedom. Make it stop. My mind was racing, my passion was running hot, John Lennon was rockin’ my iPod, my soap box was getting a new coat of paint. I am woman, hear me roar!

And then, last night, I stoked up my first fall fire in my fire pit. I sat for hours mesmerized by the flame. I fell into a fire trance. And there was freedom, dancing around my mind again. But, somewhere in that hour and burning in those flames, the realization that freedom isn’t the least bit complicated came to me. Freedom – itself – is as simple as simple gets.

When I wake in the morning, my eyes open as simply and naturally as our bodies were designed to work. It is the steps I make after leaving my bed that complicate everything.

Freedom is designed to open simply and naturally. It’s the steps we choose to take with it that makes it so damned complicated.

Casey

Raging Feminism

First, a few statistics. I am 45 years old. I have been married to the same man for 24 years. I have one child. I own my home. I co-own a small business with my sister. I am Caucasian. I finished “some college” but did not obtain a degree. I am an active community volunteer and currently serve on several governing and advisory boards. I am happy.

I sat in a public auditorium the other evening and, after arriving late, tried to settle in after a long and varied day to absorb four women’s words. They all chose great stories to share, and their answers during the Q&A were heartfelt and well received.

But I found myself making notes on paper – a questionnaire I had been handed upon arrival became my notebook – about what had brought me to that room. These women spoke eloquently and from many perspectives that were different from my own. In the end, the questionnaire was not fit to be turned in. This morning I re-visited my notes and noticed that my emotions ran to thankfulness to the woman who was older than me for forging a path, to hopefulness because the woman who was younger than me had much to teach me, and I delight that the women who were right near my age were finding themselves coming into their own.

The symposium was an intergenerational conversation about work and life. It was presented by Women, Girls, Ladies in conjunction with the UMKC Women’s Center and the UMKC Women’s Council. I figured it would be worth my time, given that I was a woman, a girl, and a lady, and I had a life and I

Raging Feminists — My niece and my mom several years ago. Both are raging feminists.

worked. Perfect fit, right?

More than perfect. My time in the auditorium reminded me that I had been raised by a woman – my mother – who is a raging feminist and that I had been deeply molded by two women – my grandmothers – who would have never admitted to being feminists in any form. These women gave me their best and let me catch glimpses of their worst. What shakes me to my core is that I never think about being a feminist myself because I really don’t have to very much. It is ingrained in me to believe that women can do anything and be anything. I have visual memories of the comics at the back of Ms Magazine that reminded me as a teenager to make more of myself than the boys around me and to insist on more than 69 cents to their dollar earned. I have been a hand in raising a child whose biggest argument at school to date – including middle school!! – is the one he waged about there not being “boy colors” or “girl colors” in art class when he was ribbed for pink being a favorite color that he used without fear in his work.

The phrase “Been there, have the T-shirt” could not be truer about my feminism. My family has recycled through two generations the NARAL T-shirts, the National Women’s Political Caucus T-shirts, and the Planned Parenthood T-shirts, and we have all treasured the posters, magnets and bumper stickers from the past. They remind us that “A woman’s place is in the house … and the senate”; that “War is not healthy for children and other living things” and that a female newborn is a “baby woman”.

This week I am co-chairing an event for the American Civil Liberties Union in my hometown. It’s going to be a wondrous evening full of amazing art and talented people. The ACLU will always need funding to continue their work protecting all of our civil liberties. I don’t work in those trenches every day, but I am thankful for those that do. Every issue women face – every obstacle they overcome – was and is a civil liberty issue. It wasn’t very long ago that women couldn’t vote, that women couldn’t own property, and that women had very little control over their bodies and its intended freedoms.

If you asked me if I was feminist, I wouldn’t deny it, nor would I immediately embrace it. To me, the true feminists are those women who changed the world as we know it in the 1970s, not me. I can vote, own things, and speak openly with my doctor. I just get to be me … a raging feminist.

Sloane