+ Her Barefoot Heart
The body is a sensing instrument of consciousness.
Without the body and the mind, the trees couldn’t see themselves.
Usually we think that we are looking at a tree,
but the tree is looking at itself through us.
Without this instrument,
the tree doesn’t get to see itself.
We are the sensing instruments of the Divine.
– Adyashanti
In Our Own Language 4:24
Nancy, my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, draws.
I, the woman who flat-out loves her, stitch.
Happy New Year from Jeanne and Nancy
Every New Year’s Day, my Grandmother would finish breakfast, get lunch on to cook, then take her seat in the chair underneath the telephone. She’d pull out the baby blue zippered 3-ring binder that held all sorts of important information, turn to the curled-up page where she’d written all the family phone numbers, and put her finger beside the name at the top. Carefully, making sure she got the number right, she dialed one number after another.
“Hello?” answered the receiving party.
“Hello. Is this 1-9-7-6?” Grandmother would ask, clamping her hand over her mouth so the person on the other end would take her seriously.
“No,” they’d say, thinking she was referring to a phone number, “this is 5321.”
“Oh yes, it is so 1976,” she’d say, “check the calendar,” her laughter erupting as she slammed down the phone. She’d take a few deep, satisfied breaths to collect herself before dialing the next number on the list.
New Year’s Day is the only day my grandmother ever turned prankster, and she wore that year-turned-telephone number prank slap out. Today, ignoring caller id because that’s not important to the memory, my cousin Stacy and I race to call each other on New Year’s Day, asking simply, “Is this 2-0-1-6?”, laugh, and hang up.
Happy New Year, y’all. I hope you’ve had your black eyed peas and turnip greens and pork cause there’s no need in tempting fate. But listen here: whatever resolutions you make, whatever resolutions you break, may 2016 hold delight around every turn. May you laugh more than you cry. And may you never question – or let anyone else question – your worthiness.
Now let’s get on out there and have ourselves a big time, why don’t we.
~~~
Doesn’t matter what day of the year it is, Nancy and I continue doing what we do . . .
Nancy draws:
And I stitch:
And we watch to see where that carries us.
There’s the joy of becoming reacquainted with the sewing machine that was a gift from The Engineer on our first Christmas some 42 years ago, paid for with winnings from two radio contests. And the joy of using that sewing machine to make gifts – four long, skinny quilts to grace the holiday tables of my children, my mother, and my brother. The joy of (re)learning that while I like learning new techniques from others, I do not like following patterns. Makes me scratchy, irritable.
There’s the joy of having a roof that holds under the constant onslaught of viscous thunderstorms and torrential rains. The joy of watching the flood waters stop four steps short of coming into the house.
There’s the joy of tissues with lotion woven in. Of Mother mixing me up some of Mama Helen’s special cough syrup that uses only 3 ingredients: Maker’s Mark, lemon juice, and honey. The joy of a text that comes from my daughter while I’m in the doctor’s waiting room promising to take care of me while the antibiotics do their job.
But neither the raging weather or the raging sinus infection dampened the joy of being with family. The joy of hearing my daughter sing at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. The joy of hearing how the younger generations intend to get after the future while swapping stories from the past that give roots and clues. The joy of laughter and camaraderie that become our heritage and history.
I took the Storm-at-Sea to enjoy the joy of stitching . . . but I didn’t get much joy done on that front.
The ARC
last Friday . . .
Jeanne: Do you want to ride in the convertible?
Nancy: Yes.
Jeanne: Do you want to spend the night with us at the hotel?
Nancy: Yes.
Jeanne: Do you want to go shopping?
Nancy: SHOPPING!!!!!!
[I took that as a yes.]
Jeanne: Do you want to walk on the beach?
Nancy: [crickets] [Nancy does not like to walk.]
Jeanne: Do you want to look at the ocean?
Nancy: It’s green!!!
We went down to visit Nancy this weekend.
She didn’t know we were coming.
There were rides in the convertible
a spend-the-night in the hotel on Saturday night
shopping
and time spent looking at the ocean
the lacy, green ocean.
There was also drawing
of course.
86 drawings made at school since our visit in late October
and 46 drawings made in the hotel room.
The two batches make up
In Our Own Language 18.
132 drawings.
Note the color choices
the use of negative space
the border
the movement.
She continues to make this shape
a vessel, I call it.
It will play a prominent role
when I begin to stitch these.
In Our Own Language 4:22
Right now,
I’m still stitching
In Our Own Language 4.
Yes, four.
~~~~~~~
Nancy, my developmentally disabled sister-in-law draws.
I, the woman who flat-out loves her, stitch her drawings.
I am bad to rescue cloths stitched by other women.
I like to give them new life,
sometimes by using them,
sometimes by completing them,
sometimes by giving them a place of honor in a new piece.
It makes me sad to see
handwork
in a thrift shop.
Overlooked.
Set aside.
Left behind.
I can do something about that,
and I do.
And have fun doing it, too.
You know my fondness for quilts,
so you can imagine how excited
and horrified,
in equal measure,
I was to find this quilt
in the bin at the thrift shop.
At $1.29 per pound,
The Engineer and I calculate it set us back $3.57.
A story is already brewing
starring the quilt,
and projects have already been sketched
starring the dresses.
My fingers itch to get started.
Everything here is hand stitched.
The transportation quilt measures 62″ x 78″
and the red and white quilt top is 78.5″ x 90″.
This is gonna’ be fun!
I made this for my son, Kipp
to tell the story of the time his dad and I took him to Sliding Rock, NC.
I call it Elixir.
It’s made from the sleeve to a jacket I never got around to finishing,
representing the shoulder he used to lay his head on to cry
or to sleep.
The arms that once cradled and rocked him.
It’s reversible, this sleeve,
going inside out
just the way he continues to turn my heart inside out.
The border fabric reminds me of Georgia’s red clay,
parched in Kipp’s birth month of August,
cracked like the back of an old man’s neck.
The driftwood came from our falls here in NC,
the rock is a piece of granite from Georgia,
perhaps from the same quarry where his Granddaddy once worked.
Not only did The Engineer cook so I could keep stitching,
he helped me figure out how to hang it,
and found the driftwood,
so we both signed the label.
It is one of my favorite memories,
this story of resilience
and determination
and a fun day spent together.
There will be more stories,
some perhaps saved in stitch,
because next year I add Grandmother to my resume.
But don’t call me that.
Help me come up with a name that’s much, much more flavorful.
Something tarty, perhaps.
This time of year is hard for me.
The expectations.
The disappointments.
The memories.
The losses.
Most years I manage to peel myself out of bed,
put one foot in front of the other,
and turn up the perkiness factor
so I don’t drag others down.
But that requires more reserves of energy
than I can muster this year.
So I’ve tucked into the studio to stitch.
Cloth and thread in my hand
comforts me
and restores my soul.
In tenth grade, my world geography teacher Mr. Holloman, a rather odd-looking man who wore brown shoes and brown pants with a brown belt came to my desk one day before class. He knelt down, leaned in close, and quietly said, “I’ve been thinking about this. You know what your problem is? You have created high standards for your life, and you think, do, and live by those high standards.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s wrong with having high standards to live by?”
“The problem,” he continued, “is that you expect other people to live by high standards, too. That’s always going to cause you a world of hurt and pain.”
I believe we retain certain fragments of life like this brief, unsolicited exchange because there’s something important in them that will serve us well to decipher. I still don’t have this one figured out, and trust me: it was a l-o-n-g time ago when I sat in the tenth grade World Geography class seat beside the window in that upper hall classroom.
The questions plague me to this day. I want a nice, tidy package, a story that comes with a ribbon of wisdom and epiphany and moral lesson. I long for this to be a life-changing, unexpected happening that set my life on a different course entirely. Maybe one of those important contracts I made in a former life that I forgot all about when I was born.
Mr. Holloman didn’t say that I expect others to live up to MY high standards – is that significant?
Is it good or bad that I don’t expect others to live up to my high standards but to develop their own high standards?
He said I expect others to have and live by their own high standards, and I still wonder: what’s wrong with that?
Goethe observed that people live up to your expectations of them, a touchstone that served me and my special needs students well. I recognized that each one of my sixteen fourth graders had significant learning and behavior challenges, but I still expected them to behave and perform according to certain high – and often individualized – standards. They could walk the short distance to the lunchroom without talking, for example. They could be kind to each other and look out for each other. They could tell the truth. They could be quiet while somebody else was talking. They could try to do the math, even when it wasn’t the part of their brain that lit up with joy and ease. Did I do them a disservice by harboring these expectations?
I had high standards and expectations for my chiclets, and I think I would’ve been less than a good mother had I left them to run willy-nilly and hope they developed some high standards to call their own . . . right?
I do, however, know that I have (on more than one occasion, I’m embarrassed to tell you) expected (or at least strongly hoped) (maybe even prayed) that Certain Others would live up to my standards and definitions of integrity, trustworthiness, reliability, self-sufficiency, and such. And quite frankly, it has definitely caused me pain when they didn’t. And when I’m especially tired, I’d go so far as to say that the world would be a better place if they did live up to my high standards. Is it wrong of me to impose my standards on others?
I know it’s human nature to make up stories to explain pretty near everything that becomes part of our life, but so far, I’ve got nothing on this other than the story of what happened. In our 42 years of togetherness, The Engineer has often cautioned me that on occasion I make too much of things, and while I’m usually not even in half agreement with him on that (though I do afford him the freedom to let his brain think such notions) (bless his heart), I reluctantly wonder if he might be right about this particular moment in time. Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill. All these years later, it’s about the best I’ve got.
Communion 3
a series of visual and non-representational descriptions
of what it’s like to have a conversation with Nancy
Her mother raised her to be afraid of the water, thinking it would keep her from drowning in the creek that ran behind their house. (Sometimes mothers get love and safety all mixed up.) As an adult, she spent one week every summer at the beach, never staying at a motel with a pool and never wading into the ocean over her knees. When the Medford Manor pool was built, she dropped her children off every morning on her way to work, brought them lunch on her lunch hour, and picked them up on the way home from work, having them sit on one of the quilts her mother made spread over the backseat to protect her car’s interior from chlorine-laden swimsuits. She made sure every one of her children learned to swim.
One day she woke up in her fifth decade and decided she wanted to learn to swim, so she did what any woman does when she’s ready to grow fins:
1. She designed a swimming pool.
2. She found a place for it in the yard.
3. She hired a contractor.
4. She found a swimming instructor willing to travel.
5. She bought a cute, flattering swimsuit.
6. She hired the swimming instructor who was willing to travel.
And I want you to know that in less than two months, I attended my mother’s first swim recital. Can you imagine being taught to be terrified of the water as a young child then learning to swim – of your own initiative – some 50 years later? That right there is why Ada Ballard Hewell, my mother, is a Pink Galoshes Woman. (She’s the tall one in the above photo, and the pint-sized one wearing the obviously out-grown, handed-down swimsuit? That’s me, her favorite daughter.)
Pink Galoshes Portrait: Ada Ballard Hewell
17″ x 21″
cut-up discarded clothing, cheesecloth, seed pearls, embroidery floss
photo transferred to fabric
hand stitched
Oh, and those other words on her Pink Galoshes Portrait – gardening, entertaining, reading, socializing, learning, cooking – those are other things she’s good at.
~~~~~~~
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The Daily Dahlia . . .
in a beautiful mug created by my friend Sorrow
~~~~~~~
Once upon a decade, I did some freelance graphic design for the local board of education. I reported directly to the Superintendent – a man I liked immensely – and got to do things I enjoyed. Like marketing, for example. Making the system, schools, individuals put their best side forward on paper just made me love going to the computer. One of my favorite projects was the in-house newsletter the Superintendent suggested we create and publish each month, highlighting all the varied wonderful things schools, staff, and students were doing. It was, by all accounts, a smashing success as people enjoyed putting their best foot forward to all the other schools in the county.
Things were rolling along swell . . . until a new Director of Marketing was hired. She was young and you had only to spend two minutes with her to know that she felt she had something to prove. Her attitude reeked of step-aside-and-let-the-girl-with-the-title-show-you-how-it’s-done. She took an immediate dislike to me, along with anybody else who had been there before her and whose job description overlapped hers in any way, big or small.
Br’er Jeanne, she lay low.
You know the type: to the Superintendent, she was Miss Cheerful Optimism. A real can-do, rah-rah kind of girl. Behind the Superintendent’s back, she shot daggers and glares and stuck her proverbial foot out to trip you up at any and every opportunity.
Needless to say, she did not make friends easily.
And Br’er Jeanne, she continued to lay low.
Fortunately for me, I was only in the office about once a month and I continued to report directly to the Superintendent, not her. The Superintendent asked me to show up weekly to help her learn the ropes . . . something I did not tell her because with her attitude, I didn’t see any way that was going to do anything good. You know what I mean?
So Br’er Jeanne, she just showed up weekly to see if there was anything she could do, and continued to lay low.
One day, Miss Director of Marketing informed me that she’d scheduled a meeting with the Superintendent, me, and herself. From her smug demeanor, it was obvious she had a plan to get me fired.
Br’er Jeanne, she lay low.
We sat at the small table in the Superintendent’s office, and the Superintendent asked her to start, since she was the one who requested the meeting. She started out with little nit-picking things, all delivered with a lot of batting of her eyes and a broad smile.
Br’er Jeanne, she lay low and took notes to look attentive.
Then in an unexpected turn of events, Miss Director of Marketing suggested that we do away with that “ridiculously frivolous and unnecessary in-house newsletter.”
Now Br’er Jeanne, she lay really low, somehow stifling a smile and forcing herself to stay focused on Miss DOM without so much as a sideways glance at the Superintendent.
“Nobody likes it,” Miss DOM informed the Superintendent. “It’s a big waste of time and money that we could surely put to better use somewhere else. I’ve never heard of an in-house newsletter that reports only good and positive things. Oh, I’m sure it was a good idea at the time Jeanne suggested it, but now, well, like I said, it’s just an extravagant waste of time and money.” And with that, Miss DOM shot me a quick smarmy got-you-now smile just before directing her gaze back to the Superintendent.
Br’er Jeanne, she lay low . . . and also turned her gaze to the Superintendent.
The Superintendent smiled like he was kind of enjoying himself, paused a beat, then said, “The in-house good news newsletter was not Jeanne’s idea, it was mine.”
Br’er Jeanne had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing out loud . . . but still she lay low.
The meeting ended shortly after that when Miss DOM remembered that she had a Very Important Phone Call to return. She left, and we somehow let the door close behind her, the Superintendent and I, before we cut loose in that kind of laughter that’s just downright good for the soul. Despite Miss DOM’s horrendous attitude, behavior, and intentions, our laughter wasn’t malicious or self-righteous. It was just plain ole’ delighted guffawing cause we both knew that it’s not often you get to see somebody hang themselves instead of the person they were gunning for.
~~~~~~~
In Our Own Language 4:20
Nancy (my developmentally disabled sister-in-law) draws.
I (the woman who flat-out loves her) stitch.
~~~~~~~
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This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
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