20th Century Woman

Christmas is over.  We have celebrated the new year at 3 different parties.  For one of the best, check out www.artisanwineclub.com/ .  My poor plants are again being watered, and the birds are getting regular replenishment of seed and suet.  I am tapping sentences into the computer.  Life is back to normal.

When I started to write this my family was discussing the making of a “chocolate log”.  This is a thing found in British grocery stores at Christmas time that some of my British family (mostly the children) prefer to the traditional Christmas pudding.  They were trying to come up with an acceptable imitation using Betty Crocker cake mix.  My American granddaughter, Bridget, who is something of a gourmet cook, was going to bake it.  Disputes arose over the inclusion of jam or whipped cream.  There was a general outcry against jam, and one strong objection to whipped cream:  a British granddaughter followed me to my studio where I went looking for a chess set: “She’s going to put whipped cream in it.  I HATE whipped cream.”

Three British and 2 American grandchildren were here.  The rest of my 12 grandchildren celebrated Christmas in other parts of the world.  Daughter 1, Lawyer Daughter, Lawyer Daughter’s husband and Jerry’s son were here as well.  The rest of my children and children-in-law celebrated Christmas in other parts of the world.  I kept counting how many would sit down to Christmas dinner.  I thought 9.  But it might be perhaps 10 or 11.

The rush to Christmas began with the arrival of the British grandchildren.  My actor grandson (British) was not feeling well when he arrived.  As time went by he felt worse.  He had a sore throat.  Then a fever.  And a headache.  And then he became nauseated.  It was a classic case of swine flu.  We postponed a visit from his older brother (who lives in Seattle) with wife and 3 month old baby.  Daughter 1 spent the night putting cold compresses on her son’s brow and dosing him with fever reducers; then she 1 drove down to Mt. Vernon to pick up her 2 daughters who had been staying with their aunt, Lawyer Daughter.

Just as Daughter 1 was leaving Jerry popped his head in the door and said: “All the toilets (there are 5 of them, including duplex and studio) are stopped up.”  This meant a stoppage in the main drain or lower.  “Don’t run any water or use any drain,” he said. He spent most of the day crawling around under the house while I wrapped presents above.  I felt calm and confident.  The day we were married he had said to me: “You’ll never have to call a plumber again.”  After a while I noticed that he was digging up the patio pavers over the opening to the septic tank.

I went out and watched as he lifted the cover from the opening to the septic tank.

“Yuck,” I said, “Is it supposed to look like that?”

“Just about,” he replied, and then pointed to the input pipe.  There was a cylindrical thing that looked a lot like a roll of dirty toilet paper.  He poked it with a hoe to dislodge it, and the pipe spurted into the tank.

“Go inside and flush the toilet in the new bathroom,” he commanded.  Then he told me to flush the other toilets at intervals.  I did, and went back out.  “It’s okay,” he said, “here come a lot of turds.”

A short time later Daughter 1 arrived with the 2 granddaughters.

The elder was a red-head the last time I saw her and the younger was blond.  Now the red-head is blond and the blond is a dark brunette. Both are gorgeous, hair color notwithstanding.

Actor grandson continued feverish, but at least we could flush.

The next day Jerry and I took the ferry and went to town to shop for Christmas dinner and a few last-minute presents.  Jerry hates to shop, so I suggested that he drop me at Macy’s while he went to Home Depot.

I said, “Pick me up at this door in 45 minutes.”

Macy’s was almost deserted and I quickly bought 4 daughter presents and made it to the door on time.  Fifteen minutes later I heard a lot of police and ambulance sirens in the distance and Jerry was nowhere in sight.  He had forgotten his cell phone but it isn’t much use anyhow, since he can’t hear it ring.  After a while I called Daughter 1 at home with her feverish son.  “Have you heard anything from Jerry?” I asked.  No was the answer.  Another 15 minutes passed.   I began to imagine a heart attack, or perhaps an automobile accident.  I felt deserted and helpless.  I called Daughter 1 again and asked her what I should do.  She said, “Wait a bit longer, and if he doesn’t come I’ll come in to get you.”

It took another half hour for him to realize that he had been waiting for me at the wrong door.

Next we went to Costco to pick up prescriptions and stock up on food.  There was a long wait at the pharmacy.  The store was packed with people.  I chatted with an island neighbor, Dave Harmony, who was also waiting for pills.  I commented that there were no crowds at Macy’s.  He said he had been in Target and it was mobbed.  We agreed that people were shopping the discount stores.

Later I told my family that there were good buys to be had in Macy’s.

Jerry frowned, “It has too many doors,” he said.

Actor son recovered and his brother came from Seattle with wife and baby son on the 23rd.  We had a pre-Christmas dinner with them.  Something in the unusual bustle scared the normally peaceful baby, and he set to screaming in a way that scared his parents.  When that crisis passed we had a fine meal of roast lamb.  We were 9 at the table that night.

On Christmas eve everyone, except Jerry, Jerry’s son and me, went to church in Bellingham.  Most of those who went are not believers, but Lawyer daughter is a devout Catholic and she was the mover of the expedition.  The others enjoy the excitement and pageantry of the Christmas service.  In order for all 7 of them to go in one car they put the seats in our van.  Jerry supervised the installation of the seats, despite the fact that he had enjoyed quite a lot of wine.  He got a bit muddled and thought they were all going home.  After they drove off he said to me, “Why did they go in the van and leave all these cars here?  Won’t they need their cars?”

On Christmas morning the presents of 3 families were under the tree.  They made a sort of mountain.  It took about 4 hours to get them all opened, one by one.

We ended up with 13 for Christmas dinner.  There were 11 family and 2 guests.  I got stressed with the preparations; dinner was an hour late on the table.  But it was good.  Roast beef is our family tradition.  I made Yorkshire pudding, as I had done for the roast lamb dinner.  My vegetarian granddaughter loves Yorkshire pudding, so we make 2 versions, one with meat drippings, and one with olive oil.  Both are good.

I realized that our vegetarian was disappointed not to have the nut roast I had promised to make.  I had assembled the ingredients but ran out of time.  Actor grandson, with the help of his mother, pitched in and put together the nut roast for his sister.  It turned out to be really good.

The next day, Boxing Day to the Brits, Daughter 1 made pizza entirely from scratch, for everyone’s special taste.

The final feast of the holidays came on the 2 nd of January.  The Seattle group came; this time with baby’s other grandfather, a pleasant, friendly man from Argentina who spoke no English.  Lawyer Daughter’s 18 year old son was with us for the first time, since he had spent Christmas with his father in Los Angeles.  The baby was the center of attention.  He smiled and played and never cried.

We were 4 generations.  We were all together with love and stress.  There were little vexations.  There were some hurt feelings and some tears.  There was a lot to laugh about and a lot to admire.  I was tired, tired, tired by the time the new year came and went.

Jerry and I had the perspective of age.  We could comprehend the stages of life we were watching, because once we had been there.  There a the baby and young parents; mothers of middle years, soon to have empty nests; young adults – fledglings leaving the nests and, yes, teen-agers from 12 to 18.  Would I like to be young again?  Yes, if I had the vigor and possibilities of youth.  But I wish, as well, to have the smidgen of wisdom that I have acquired over the years.

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

For the past month I have been taking a painting class.  I don’t think of myself as a painter.  I went to art school when I was 50, and I majored in printmaking.

I love printmaking.  I love the process.  I love carving the image into wood or linoleum, or scratching it into the wax of an etching plate or scratching it directly into the copper itself.  Sometimes I love the accidental results –  unintended consequences of transferring ink from plate to paper.  Printmaking is full of surprises and delights.

But painting is fun too, and it involves a lot less paraphernalia.  It’s highly portable, and can be done in a corner if necessary.  For many months now my studio has been occupied either as storage or as a place to set up saws and sawhorses for construction.

My painting class at the local community college consists of 9 ladies, mostly of a certain age, and one old guy.   The teacher, Lorna Libert, is great.  She is a free spirit, spontaneous, cheerful, friendly, intelligent and pretty.  I love her work.

It is bold and funny and full of life and drama.  It is color and light and energy and thick luscious paint.  I wish I could own one of her paintings but they cost a lot.  Perhaps one day I will afford a small one.  Most of them are quite large. Spend some time looking at her work at http://www.lornalibert.com/

Lorna begins each class with a short demonstration, and I always learn something – either something new or something I had forgotten and need to be reminded of.  I want to learn to stop painting little timid paintings and paint big bold ones like Lorna.

A couple of weeks ago she was explaining how to get distance in one’s paintings.  In her usual energetic, bubbly way she was demonstrating starting a painting of Mt. Baker, which is a good distance away.  She flourished the brush, tossed her long blond hair out of her face, and giggled a bit as she said, “Okay, here’s Mt. Baker.”

Then she stopped, and said, “Oh, I just remembered! I dreamt about Mt. Baker last night.  You know how you dream and forget, and all of a sudden the dream comes back to you?  Well, I dreamed that Mt. Baker blew up!  I was painting it with a group of other people, and all of a sudden, it blew up.  It was gone, just gone.”  She stopped, and we were all silent and surprised.

Then I asked, “Were you sad that it was gone?”

“Yes,” she said, after thinking a minute, “I was very sad.  I thought, now we won’t have Mt. Baker to paint anymore.”

Once, long ago, I dreamt that the moon blew up.  I had recently separated from my second husband, a man I loved despite his many egregious faults.  I dreamt I was looking at a bright full moon, high in the sky, and suddenly it blew up.  It vanished.  The sky was empty.  In my dream I was overcome with an agonizing feeling of loss.  Never to see the moon again seemed unbearably painful.

As I painted that day in class I thought about the pattern of our dreams.  I suppose that the dream world, like the waking world, is specific to the species, and for humans at least, specific to time and place.  My world is very different form the world of a nineteenth century desert nomad.  But the world of a field mouse or a whale is one I can hardly begin to imagine. Do other animals dream?  Is their world incorporated into their dreams as ours is?

If Jerry and I wake up early we often turn on the radio news.  For both of us this can mean an extra hour of sleep, because the news is as good as a sleeping potion.  We are quickly off to the land of dreams, dreams that weave in jumbled, distorted news stories.   I can trace daytime happenings or troubles in fantastic nighttime dream narratives.

Other dreams, though, could have a more ancient or primeval origin.  There might be some primitive pattern of brain work that conjures dreams of cataclysmic explosions.  I am reading Annals of the Former World by John McPhee.  He explains the origin of rocks and mountains with a history of life embedded in them.  It is a story of long periods of calm slow change in the earth’s surface punctuated by great catastrophes and sudden upheavals.  Life flourishes and proliferates and then is lost in terrible disasters that obliterate up to 90 percent of all the species existing at the time.

I wonder whether DNA could code some primordial record of its own history.  Do some of our dreams remind us of the long, sometimes attenuated but never broken chain of life? Or is this all nonsense?

I go back to painting the Lummi Island church.  Within the church are other stories of origins.

I think the painting needs something in the foreground.  I remember that there used to be a belligerent pheasant patrolling the road that passes the church.  He attacked everyone who walked by, I suppose to protect his hen and nest which must have been in the vicinity.  One day a dog ate him.  Only feathers and bones remained for a while.  I missed the pheasant.  It was a lot less exciting to walk past the church when he was gone.

I thought the attack pheasant would do well in the foreground of my painting, so I put him there.

And I thought the explosion dreams must be about loss.  Had Lorna lost a dog she loved?  Had she sold a favorite painting?

My painting looks kind of like a dream.  Perhaps it will still exist when I am gone.  Perhaps a descendent of mine who isn’t yet born will say to someone else who will exist then, “My great, great grandmother painted that old church. I wonder why she put a pheasant in the picture.”

The Lummi Island Church