Oct 9, 2015
I have always been pro-choice and pro-abortion. Having a baby transforms a woman’s life, and abortion is often the best solution to an unwanted pregnancy. I have participated in a few demonstrations about abortion rights.
I am ambivalent about the value of demonstrations. But the latest outrageous attacks on Planned Parenthood have really pissed me off, and when I see a notice on Facebook that the anti-abortionists are picketing our local affiliate (which doesn’t provide abortions), I decide to join the counter-protest.
Planned Parenthood in Gainesville
The event is at 9am on a Saturday in August. I arrive at 8:50 and nobody’s there. ‘Shit,’ I think. ‘What if the Anti’s show up and I’m the only Pro? I gotta have a sign.’ I had thought Someone Else, as in ‘let someone else do it,’ would bring signs.
I park at Office Depot, across the street from Planned Parenthood, to buy supplies. Three SUV’s pull in, two with out-of-state license plates. I read the bumper stickers: They’re all about Jesus. Probably not my allies.
In the store I buy a giant foam board and a pack of six colored Sharpies on sale for three bucks. I’ll move my car to a shady spot and make my sign. Oh. The foam board doesn’t fit in my car. I lay it on the sidewalk in the blazing sun and open the Sharpies. They’re super-fine, and barely make a mark. I go back into Office Depot to exchange them for jumbos. Can’t leave the foam board outside where the Anti’s might steal it. (I don’t think they’re all as righteous as their signs and prayers imply). I take it inside with me and ask the clerk to keep an eye on it.
I need to write something brief, visible, and to the point. Support Planned Parenthood? I Support Choice? Both too fuzzy. Support Abortion Rights. That’s what I write, in black block letters . Fill them in with black zigzags, crossed over with red zigzags. I’m pleased – it’s very visible, if a little crooked.
I cross Tenth Avenue, holding the sign so drivers can see. I cringe a little at expressing myself publicly. What if somebody doesn’t like me? I lift the sign higher and feel good, if self-conscious. As I cross Thirteenth Street I see about twenty-five people. I recognize some from Occupy Gainesville, and see that old chestnut, the coat hanger sign. I’m greatly relieved – I won’t be just one crazy old lady in muumuu, big hat, and sunglasses. A little farther down the sidewalk are four or five Anti’s with signs. Oh boy, we outnumber them.
image:rackjite.com
It doesn’t last. Within half an hour, a few more Pro’s have arrived, and maybe sixty Anti’s. Most of the Anti’s line up across the street, in the shade, while two small groups split off and stand on either side of us in the merciless sun.
The day is a cloudless ninety degrees. I’m perfectly attired in my big straw hat and breezy muumuu with no underwear, and I have a water bottle full of minted iced tea. But sweat runs down my face and all down my torso.
ready for action
I see a lot of familiar faces. Sharon, who used to be head of Planned Parenthood. She was a leader in Voices for Choice in 1988, when Gov. Martinez responded to the Supreme Court’s Webster decision by proposing many restrictions on abortion, and women around the state organized to fight him off. Shirley, who’s now working to save Payne’s Prairie from an even loonier governor. Linda, who put out the call on Facebook for the demonstration. She was a volunteer at the domestic violence shelter when I was president of the board, and stood in angry solidarity with staff against the board when we hired a new director in a process they felt excluded them. Joe, who founded the Civic Media Center, hub of radical and progressive action in Gainesville. And wonderful Zot, tireless advocate for the homeless, currently working with the residents of Dignity Village. It feels good to see them all, to feel connected to my 35-year history in Gainesville, to know we’ve all kept on keeping on.
And it feels good to see a lot of young women with hand-made signs like mine – one says “My Choice and No Regrets.” She hadn’t heard about the demonstrations, but tells me that when she drove past she had to make a sign and join in.
image: Shirley Lasseter
Oh my, the signs. Many are too tiny or cluttered to read. On their side we have “Aborted 2nd Trimester embryo” with a large bright red photo of an embryo. On our side we have a very neatly lettered sign that says, “Every ____________ deserves health care.” In the space is an odd pink object, like a child’s stuffed animal. I can’t tell if it’s a pig or some kind of Pokemon character. Across the street is a well-lettered sign, easy to read: “Men Regret Lost Fatherhood.” I can’t help it, all I can think is ‘Tough shit.’
It’s a uterus. Image: Helen Strain
It all takes me back, though I’ve only been an occasional demonstrator. On both sides you have your Aggressive Protesters, who yell at each other. “Baby-killer.” “Religious fascist.” They like to get up close in each others’ faces and make all sorts of accusations.
image: bostonglobe.com
I’ve never liked the hateful ones. I can’t stand self-righteous closed minds. I’m too deeply imbued with “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” from my mother. And I’m a great believer in ‘You catch more flies with honey…’
image: pitara.com
Finally, I don’t think any of us can say or do anything that will change each others’ minds. By definition, protesters are among the more opinionated people about any particular cause. In fact, I have to wonder why we do it. For me, this time I was just fed up, so I wanted to speak up. And perhaps waving signs at passing drivers will call attention to the issue, and remind them that, over fifty years after Roe v Wade, it still matters.
One woman comes along our line holding a truly beautiful 3-month-old baby – one of those plump, bald, round-headed ones. She looks at each of our signs and asks if she may give us a hug. At first I think she’s pro-choice, but soon realize she’s an Anti. I give her a hug anyway, and whisper, “I don’t want to interfere, but PLEASE put something on that baby’s head. The sun is brutal.” She thanks me and goes on down the line, hugging whoever is willing. Then she puts the baby in its stroller, covers it with a cloth, and leaves it in the sun. She sets up a folding chair for herself and begins saying Hail Mary’s and other prayers to the Virgin.
Get that baby out of the sun! image:havebabywilltravel.com
Meanwhile I, and several others, are becoming increasingly distressed about the baby in the stroller. “Please put the stroller in the shade,” say Polite Protesters. “That’s child abuse.” “You don’t give a shit about babies.” “I raised three children and I’d never do that.” “Fuck Jesus Christ,” says Aggressive Protester.
Finally someone calls the police to report the baking baby situation. When the police car arrives, the mother promptly pulls out her breast and begins nursing, leading Aggressive Protestor to say, “Oh right, stick in the nipple when the cops come.”
image: coolmompicks.com
The police officer walks along the lines on both sides of the street and
ensures that nobody’s blocking the sidewalk or trespassing on property, and then approaches the mother. He speaks to her for awhile, and then leaves, suggesting that she put the stroller in the shade. As he passes me I hear him say into his radio, “The baby is breathing, its heart rate is normal and it shows no signs of distress.” The mother switches from praying to singing, in a very pretty voice, though I can’t make out the song.
Sharon says they want a couple of “point people” to talk to TV 20 when they arrive. They have Erica, from Wild Iris Books. Will I do it too? Of course I will – the old warhorse smells the cannon smoke and is chomping at the bit. Or something like that. As we wait, I think of what I want to say.
image: benjaminhale.tumblr
We had planned to leave at eleven, but we wait in the sun till 11:40. Then the organizers (a loose term) say they don’t think TV 20 is coming, and Joe of the Civic Media Center says it’s just as well because it would publicize their big crowd, and we gratefully gather our stuff and leave. I’m pleased to see the Anti’s trooping into the Office Depot parking lot with their signs too.
Here’s what I planned to say: “The anti-choice people have been relentless and very well-organized, and statute by statute, case by case, have eroded our right to abortion, and also succeeded in making people think abortion is shameful. I’m 68, and I had an abortion in my early thirties, and again in my early forties. Both were complicated decisions, which no one else could have or should have made for me, and I’ve never regretted either one.”
The constitutional right to privacy is the legal underpinning of abortion rights. But thanks to years of effort and propaganda by anti-abortion forces, privacy has become shame.
Katha Pollitt calls for everyone who has had an abortion, or participated in an abortion as a father or friend, to tell their story. “…[T]oo many pro-choice people are way too quiet…Nearly one in three women will have had at least one abortion by the time she reaches menopause. Why don’t we hear more from them?…It’s not that they think they did something wrong: A recent study …finds that more than 95 percent of women felt the abortion was the right decision, both immediately after the procedure and three years later. They’ve been shamed into silence by stigma.” (NY Times, August 5,2015)
It’s been fun to write a light-hearted story, complete with illustrations, about all us earnest people on both sides of the street. But I don’t take this issue lightly. I was 41, and deeply involved with Voices for Choice in the fight against the Webster decision. I was driving to Tallahassee for a meeting, when I suddenly realized, in the way you do, that all the tiny signs – sleepiness, a missed period, a rash – meant I was pregnant. In the next couple of weeks I weighed many factors, including a boyfriend who didn’t want a child. It brought home to me the absurdity, the outrageousness, of a bunch of legislators or anyone else presuming to interfere in my choice of whether to have a baby. This is truly a decision that belongs to the pregnant woman, and whomever she chooses to involve.
I don’t think we need to tell our full stories. Why a woman has an abortion is entirely her business. She doesn’t have to justify it to anyone. But maybe if everyone who has had an abortion acknowledged it openly the stigma would fade. Your mother, your sister, your Catholic girlfriend, your fundamentalist boss – any one of them is likely to have had an abortion. I’m not brave enough to go on Facebook with it; I’m afraid I’d drown in ugliness. But at least I will say so here.
__________________
To read a very moving, anti-abortion and pro-choice essay by a wonderful writer, click here. click
Sep 11, 2015
As I write this post, my self-imposed deadline looms three days away: September 11, a date fraught and ominous. I could try writing about All That, but instead I wanted to think about deadlines.
I began this blog four years ago, posting every week. So afraid was I that I would miss a deadline that I wrote five posts in advance, to have a cushion, before I went online. I was glad I did. Mastering Typepad, the blog host, took a couple of weeks, with many inquiries to customer service.
I have always given myself a deadline and announced it at the end of each post. Deadlines make you accountable to someone else. Without one, it’s hard to persist. My novel, for instance, has no one waiting for it. The sheer momentum of the story, the eagerness to see what happens next, the delight in seeing what I’ve written the day before – when these fail me, there’s nothing left but discipline and desire, and sometimes both disappear.
This summer all the air went out of my balloon, and for the first time I missed my blog deadline. I offered myself both reasons and excuses.
image:businessinsider.com
First, I went off to my fiftieth high school reunion. The weekend was rich with material. Between meals and parades and long conversations, the blog easily wrote itself. Then I lost my notebook on the trip home.
I could have recreated the piece, but upon reflection, I decided my thoughts were too snarky. This was an elite boys’ school that in 1974 had swallowed up Abbot Academy, the girls’ boarding school I attended and loved.
Draper Hall, Abbot Academy
On the first night of the reunion I was taken unexpectedly by white-hot rage, but the next morning, I calmed down and realized the 68-year-old men in their tie-dyed reunion t-shirts were not to blame for the loss of my alma mater.*
image: Tom Hafkenschiel
My reluctance to offend trumped my need for self-expression. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, my mother told me, seriously hampering my development as a writer.
Second, two of my friends died this summer. Neither death was unexpected, but still…
image: Time.com
And finally, minor injuries and illnesses, combined with a complicated family trip, provided flimsy but effective excuses for procrastination.
Once our travels were over, I made several false starts, but none of the ideas caught fire, and I let them fizzle out. In the end, a month after the missed deadline, I posted the following apology: ‘To anyone who breathlessly awaits my monthly promised posts – I’m sorry…. I will be back by the end of August.’ The minute I wrote this, I felt confident again. It was a great relief. I was still a writer; I would be back. I immediately started writing, and posted my next piece on August 14.
I checked Thesaurus.com for a synonym for deadline, to avoid the tedious repetition of the word,and found exactly nothing. The closest they came was “time limit,” which is not the same thing, and lacks intensity. The Online Etymology Dictionary speculates that the word, first used in 1920, may have derived from the practice of Captain Henry Wirz, the notorious Civil War prison commander of Andersonville, who ordered guards to shoot any prisoner who crossed an imaginary line twenty feet or so inside the stockade.
Andersonville prison image:georgiaencyclopedia.org
No one shoots a writer who misses a deadline. Instead she enters a strange state of listlessness. There’s no reason to start a piece on any particular day, and the days keep going by, filled with brooding and laundry. I’ve tried the ‘Write every day, regardless’ approach, and it works, but I keep letting go of it.
The Brooding Girl image: Jean-Baptiste-Camille-Corot.org
FILLING MY DAYS
A Labor Day weekend plagued by adolescent angst has me in low spirits, and even with only three days to deadline I fiddled around on Facebook and played three games of Free Cell before beginning to write. As you can tell, I also zipped back to the internet, avoiding writing by consulting dictionary and thesaurus, but at least that provided some material, and I didn’t linger.
Goddamn Free Cell
I can’t say I am happy when I am writing, but I am certainly happiest when I have written. Writing makes me happy, and deadlines make me write.
*Alma mater: I wrote these words and thought, Oh! It means mother of my soul – how poetic, how true. But it doesn’t. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it means bountiful mother. Mrs. De, our fierce and peculiar Latin teacher at Abbot, would be ashamed of me.
Aug 14, 2015
I’ve been retired for 13 years. But I still have days when, sitting reading the paper, I think “Yeehaw and hallelujah, I don’t have to go to the office.” This is what a more sophisticated writer might call a frisson.
Yeehaw and hallelujah! image:chroniclelive.co.uk
With Amanda at camp, Joe and I took a road trip – two days with my sister in Chapel Hill click, two with Ed and Lisa in the Smoky Mountains, and two with Sue and Max in Atlanta. Ed has been retired since June, Sue has been retired six months, Max has been retired several years. So the trip gave me a chance to, among other things, ponder the puzzle of retirement.
Joe in the Smokies -pondering retirement?
Many people can’t afford to retire. Others think they can only retire if they have enough to continue living in the style to which they have become accustomed, or by which they have been trapped.
Trapped? image:dailymail.co.uk
Free? image:hgtv.com
Some people love their work and never want to retire; some dream of retirement all their working life. Often they have a list of all the things they want to do when they retire. My list was short. I wanted to write, garden, learn to play the piano, and get a dog. Six weeks after I retired I developed tendonitis, and couldn’t play the piano, garden, or write. I got the dog click. When the tendonitis was gone, I returned to writing and gardening and gave up on the piano.
Gathering dust image:sweetlilmzmia.co
Generally writers don’t retire, though they may write less, or change their genre. In very old age, Donald Hall switched from poetry to prose click. Alice Munro keeps announcing her retirement, and then comes out with more stories. She claimed she couldn’t write fiction anymore because of her failing memory, but several years later she had another brilliant book.
Munro the Magnificent image:therumpus.net
In the first few months after retirement, people fritter away the time. All our working lives we’ve dreamed of free time, and at first it’s every bit as blissful as our dreams. A friend sat on the couch each day and watched the birds in her back yard. I read old notebooks and letters.
image:birdorable.com
image:dreamstime.com
New retirees putter. Many begin with a long-postponed house project. I cleared out my bookcases.
Maybe I need to do it again
But thirty years of remunerated work, of dancing to someone else’s tune, leave their mark on the soul. With no schedule and lots of idle time, retirement can begin to feel empty rather than free. We lie on the couch, eating and feeling worthless.click click
Then we start making lists and plans for tasks and travel. We start, at least, an exercise program. We wonder where we might put our talents to use. For me, retirement meant giving up committees. No more collaboration and compromise. From now on, my work would be my own, no need for consultation or permission. I dusted off my No Bird to take care of all the requests that came in when people realized I had retired click. I was already part of the HOME Van, but I loved most of that work. It is an anarchic organization, and I never had to attend a staff meeting.
image:powerpointforpreachers.blogspot.com
For a few years my retirement was what I had planned. Lots of writing, some travel, playing with friends, exercise programs that I often complied with. But as we all know, when people plan, the gods laugh. They may send illness, or death of a loved one. In my case, the goddess laughed and I found myself raising a child.
Hestia the hearth goddess laughed at me. image:theoi.com
So Fortune and I filled up my time. I had a mini-retirement when the HOME Van stopped doing drive-outs click. I was bereft, and wondered how I could find another work as wonderful as that. But I was surprised by how much time I gained – I realized I had been putting in at least a full day a week. So I puttered again, and postponed looking for other work, and then Arupa called and asked if I’d help with the food pantry one day a week. That is great fun – meeting people in small numbers and visiting with Arupa in between customers. And no eggs to boil or soup-makers to coordinate.
After long experience with retirement, and spells of thinking about it all, I offer the following advice to people entering retirement: Allow yourself to flounder for a while, and relish the emptiness. When you’re ready to fill it, minimize the gottas and oughtas, increase the wannas, and enjoy good health and loved ones as long as they remain.
*“Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.” – Leah Jackson
Jun 5, 2015
My friend Sandra, mentrix in all things writerly, is a great proponent of writing retreats. She spent six weeks at Yaddo, and has just started a month at Studios of Key West, where she has solitary time and space to dig deep and bring forth wonderful work. click These are both coveted creative retreats, complete with fellowships that provide rent and more. But when Sandra doesn’t have a fellowship, she sometimes hauls herself off alone to a state park or a Cedar Key motel to burrow into her work.
KISSIMMEE STATE PRAIRIE, A PARK WHERE SANDRA CAVORTS WITH THE MUSE
I have always thought these self-made retreats were a wonderful idea, but until recently I didn’t feel free to abandon Joe for a week on his own with Amanda. Now that she is fairly self-regulating and insists she has no need of us except as chauffeurs and food sources, I have gained a lot of freedom. But I still had to figure out where to go.
DOCK AT CEDAR KEY
Cedar Key doesn’t appeal to me for more than a day – surely somewhere there is shade in Cedar Key, but I’ve never seen it. My friend Sue has a cabin at Murder Creek in the Oconee National Forest in Georgia, but it’s a six-hour drive, and maybe a little too isolated. click The prospect of being completely alone with my thoughts and the blank page, nothing but woods around me, was daunting.
Then another friend, Mary Anne, told me of the Cross Creek Lodge, across from the Yearling Restaurant, and a mile up the road from the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings homestead, where Mary Anne is a docent. It’s a tiny motel right on Cross Creek, owned for several generations by the Palmeter family, and mostly used by bass fishermen. The price was $65 a night. And when I called to reserve a room, Gary Palmeter told me that Harry Crews used to come there to write. I would be surrounded by writer ghosts.
When my dream publishing house rejected my first novel last fall, the publisher generously gave me a long and insightful critique. Since my second novel is currently on submission, and my fourth novel, my work in progress for the last eight years, was comatose, I decided to take novel #1 to Cross Creek to begin my revisions.
In the weeks before my retreat I was very excited and very scared. Getting away from daily life and troubles is always appealing. The lodge had no Wifi and very limited TV, excellent conditions for creativity. But what if I holed up in Cross Creek and didn’t do anything but watch TV and eat cookies? What if I got scared of the solitude and spent my days driving the back roads, goofing around in the antique stores in Micanopy? What if my four days weren’t PRODUCTIVE? click I had the solid reassurance of an already thoroughly polished manuscript, and useful ideas for revisions. But my doubts were almost as high as my hopes.
I made my packing list. Clothes: mostly muumuus. Gear: notebook, laptop, and flash drive. Entertainment: Jane Gardam on my Kindle, sheet music and voice warm-ups, and a hat in progress in my crochet bag. Food: Cheeses, bread, salad greens, salad dressing, tomatoes and fruit. A half a bottle of single malt in memory of my brother Dickie. click
I was elated as I drove the green and sunny road to Cross Creek. The Lodge was just over the bridge. There were eight cinder block motel units attached to a block house, and several mobile homes around the property where family members live. I was greeted by one large black dog, very friendly, and one tiny dog, very fierce. I knocked on the Palmeter’s door, and was welcomed warmly by Glory and Randy, who gave me the key, and told me to knock anytime if I needed anything.
The room was simple: a bed, small kitchen table, a kitchen sink, microwave and mini-fridge, a few dishes, salt, pepper, condiments, tea and coffee, a rocking chair and TV, a bathroom with a shower. I unpacked all my things and made the room my home.
I’m an early-morning writer, so my only ambition for the first day was to read over the publisher’s critique and let it percolate overnight. I went for an hour’s walk, and then took a glass of single malt out to the concrete deck overlooking the Creek. I sat in a grimy Adirondack chair sipping my whiskey, thinking of Dickie, who would have blessed this enterprise, and of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Harry Crews, both of them more experienced writers (and drinkers) than I.
RAWLINGS CREWS
It was late afternoon and I faced west, the sun just above the trees, the mosquitoes not yet active. Cypress trees and cypress knees, a squat palm tree with its spiky trunk. Butterflies, dragonflies, a lizard threatening me with his bulging red neck. Four men in two small boats with trolling motors. They smiled and waved; I lifted my glass. The creek swelled and rolled in the wake, and then was still, dark tannic water mirroring the leaning cypress. Peepers and croakers and birds sang for sunset. I heard the splash of mullet jumping, but always looked too late to see anything but the spreading rings in the water.
CROSS CREEK – PAINTING BY KATE BARNES
I ate my supper in front of The News Hour, read for awhile, and went to sleep early. I always sleep long and soundly when I’m away from home, so I didn’t wake till 6 on Thursday. I tried drinking my coffee on the deck, but it was mosquito prime time, and I fled. I settled down at the kitchen table and worked a solid five hours, going through the manuscript and making a to do list, ideas hatching and flying around.
It was about the same each of the three days – work, lunch, a long walk, a nap, dinner, some reading, some crocheting, early to bed. One night I had dinner at the Yearling, where the best food is fried. I ate in the bar, reading some Jane Gardam, thinking about not much, listening to the middle-aged local crowd tease and gossip. Friday I went into Gainesville for my singing lesson, bought bandaids and bug spray, and picked up a pulled pork dinner at Pearl’s in Micanopy, which sufficed for Friday dinner and Saturday lunch. Saturday night I celebrated with a bloody Mary and fried green tomatoes at The Yearling.
FRIED GREEN TOMATOES (AND GATOR TAIL)
At home I do well to work for two hours straight. I wrote novels #1 and #2 in forty-five minute bits each morning. Now I had worked five steady hours for three days, and put in three hours before I checked out Sunday morning. And the magic of retreat continued – I finished all the revising and new writing in about two weeks at home. The new draft is resting until I have sufficiently forgotten it to read it fresh. Meanwhile…
I puttered around with blog work and some other things. Then my friend Nancy told me about a cabin on Lake Swan, outside Melrose, that was only $39 a night. Novel #4, which has three 100-page beginnings going in three different directions, was calling. I love this novel, connected as it is to my mother, but it’s been a real challenge. So five weeks after I returned from Cross Creek I was off to Lake Swan.
This retreat was much like the previous one. I had a larger room with big ceiling fans, a DVD player instead of a TV. There was a lovely shallow lake to swim in after I finished work. I had a bottle of icy cold, really bad white wine instead of the single malt, and I could sit with a glass and watch the sunset over the lake. Melrose was two miles away. I had gloppy Italian food at Betty’s Pizza, and excellent meatloaf with mashed potatoes at the Melrose Café. The art galleries were closed till the weekend, but I went into a junk shop and bought two fifty cent books.
SUNSET AT LAKE SWAN
Despite the success of my first retreat, I was even more scared this time. It’s one thing to revise an existing manuscript, with all sorts of material ready to inspire you. It’s another to stare into the void, to write from nothing. But I knew which version of the fourth novel I was going to go with, and I had a file with one-sentence sketches for the next few chapters. So I dove in.
I wrote four or five hours each of the next three days and by the time I was done had written almost forty pages. This time I was absolutely exhausted; new creation really takes it out of you. But again the momentum continued when I returned home – I’ve written almost every day, sixteen pages in two weeks. As soon as I finish this blog post, I’ll be back at it.
In these two retreats I began to practice the persistence I’ve tried to master for many years: moving on through the dead spots, writing even as my thoughts seem to spin and go nowhere. I have high hopes for finishing the fourth novel. It’s very exciting, because I have only the dimmest ideas of what I will see along the road to the end. There are few states more miserable than living with a dead novel, few more exhilarating than working on one that has come alive again.
WHAT’S UP THE ROAD?
I am very lucky to have Joe, who enthusiastically supports my writing, and is happy to handle the home front while I run away. When I returned from Lake Swan he said, “You might want to do this twice a year.” I haven’t told him yet that I’m thinking of every three months.
May 7, 2015
Neophilia. The word was coined by my sister Luli. With two more letters it could be something rather ghastly, but as it stands it simply means loving novelty.
Every few years I discover a new creative passion. I pursue it with fervor, but never develop any great skill. I love learning something new, and I love producing a physical object. My work, whether lawyer or teacher or mother, always consisted primarily of ideas and people.
I like to create something concrete (or butter) source:iowastatefair.org
It began with crochet. When I was 28, my friend Saralu and I drove from Jacksonville to Lakeland for a cram course before the two-day nightmare that was the Florida bar exam. We had packed frozen soups,stews, and a crockpot, cheese and fruit, cookies and wine.
The cram course consisted of long lectures and written summaries of the entire body of common and Florida law, each subject – torts, contracts, trusts and estates, etc, crammed in a tiny font on both sides of laminated pages. They were dense as a Claxton fruit cake, though less digestible. Every evening we returned to our motel room with heads buzzing – fee simple with remainder, statute of frauds, the mailbox rule, equitable estoppel.
After supper we poured wine, opened the cookies and sat on our beds, diligently memorizing the incomprehensible for about fifteen minutes.Then Sara unpacked her yarn and taught me to crochet. In three nights I had made half a shawl. In the next few months I had made shawls for my friend Sue, my sister Luli, and both my sisters-in law. That took care of Christmas.
For several years I entertained myself with yarn. I made a sweater for my son in brown, black and rust. He was five, young enough that he didn’t mind wearing it. I made a couple of lace shawls in a fan pattern. I invented my own granny square, a sunburst in brown, beige and yellow, and made an afghan for my boyfriend. Unfortunately I joined colors by simply weaving them in, as recommended by the crochet book, rather than knotting them. In a few years, the whole huge thing was beginning to unravel. Then I tried my hand at knitting. I bought expensive wool in lavender, pale pink, and deep cherry red, and made the front and back of a gorgeous sweater. Alas, I lost interest before I got to the sleeves, and I never finished it.
I took drawing classes. I learned to stare and stare, looking for lines and shapes and shifting shades of color. I drew a pair of shoes, a paper bag, and my masterpiece, a pair of hands holding a baby’s tiny feet, drawn from a photograph. I spent hours on Sunday afternoons, totally absorbed, leaning over the table, focusing so intently the sweat rolled down my face. I did lightning sketches at a Saturday morning drawing group, where $5 bought a couple of hours with a model. I carried a small sketchbook everywhere. I drew people in airports and animals in Africa. I realized that drawing from photos was easiest – the image already reduced to two dimensions – so I drew many earnest talking heads on McNeil-Lehrer.
I enjoyed the sketches, but it took hours to draw a full picture. I searched my craft closet while I wrote this post, and found the big brown portfolio from my drawing class. The pictures were dated March and April, 2002, before Amanda was born. Even though she usually lived with her mother in the early years, big blocks of empty time became less available after Amanda.
I gave up copying the world and began doodling my inner visions with colored markers. This was great fun, frequently fueled by marijuana. It resulted in many strange images on greeting card stock, often phallic or uterine or both. My all-time favorite is an anxious-looking multicolored bird pursued by little turd-y haystacks, a perfect depiction of aspects of my life.
I took another class, and discovered the joy of collage. For eight weeks I worked on a huge naked goddess, with flames for hair and a rainbow of flowers above her head. The crowning touch was interchangeable merkins* in different colors – thread tangled up and stiffened with glue, attached to her mons veneris with velcro.
She has been in the closet for many years, and when I took her out I still loved the suggestion of musculature in her disproportionate limbs. I could only find one merkin, a purple one that has faded to a boring brown. I don’t want her anymore, and I was planning to throw her away if I could figure out how to put her out by the curb without horrifying the neighbors. But Luli begged me to send her to North Carolina. So I shall veil her in newspaper and take her to Fed Ex. It will be Luli’s last 70th birthday gift.
Goddess of Flowers and Fire
After this tremendous project my ambition shrank to a more manageable size and I began making greeting cards. Collage is very slow, or maybe I am very slow, and a single greeting card takes me several hours.
I love my collaged cards so much that I can’t bear to send them away; I have several waiting for an occasion worthy of their splendor. However, I did send one to Michelle Obama. It was a strange-looking woman, rather fat, resplendently attired with a belt and brooch, wielding a peppermint-striped cane. I wrote a gushing message expressing my great admiration, told her the card was inspired by her fashion sense (belt and brooch), suggested that Malia and Sasha might enjoy guessing the source of each scrap in the picture, and enclosed an answer key. I received no reply, nor did the Secret Service pay a call.
I made the card for Mrs. Obama when I was recuperating from my second knee replacement, shortly after Obama’s first inauguration. Recuperation entails a lot of time on the sofa, painful physical therapy, and frequent hydrocodone. Most of my creative work is not inspired by drugs, but when it is, it is truly…inspired.
I
Painting T-shirts was my passion for a while. I made one with hippos for my brother-in-law’s fortieth birthday. I made two with large birds, one nibbling strawberries from the crew neck, the other with baby birds peeping from the pocket. These were for my older brother Don and his wife Doris, who wore them all over China, looking very pleased and completely ridiculous. I drew a strange grinning face in black marker on a gray shirt for Luli. I liked it so much that I made one for myself in color labeled, “Grandma.” I used the same design on a dress for 3-year-old Amanda, with the caption: “I’m with Grandma.” It helped people match black toddler and white guardian, prevented them from saying, “Where’s your mother,” at playgrounds.
I have recently returned to crochet, and made about nine hats for homeless people. Several groups of women in Gainesville make hats for the homeless, and the HOME Van used to display them on a clothesline in the trunk of Nancy’s car – a wonderful assortment of styles and colors, all hand-crafted. It was a treat to see people shopping for their favorite, and an even bigger treat when somebody chose one of mine. Now that HOME Van driveouts are, alas, no more, I can donate my hats to the clothes closet at Grace Marketplace, which Nancy and her pals have set up as an elegant boutique.
Hats and stole (to keep the Feminist Grandma warm as she works)
To my surprise, digging into my craft closet to find my old work depressed me. I had been celebrating creative play. Now I was surrounded by abandoned pursuits, and suddenly Oughts and Shoulds and You Never Stick to Anything echoed around me. Apparently I’m not good enough unless I’m a great writer, drawer, singer, crocheter, and shoe and fabric painter. Perhaps I wouldn’t mind this nagging work ethic so much if it resulted in great achievement.
Every dabbler needs a craft closet
I am not worthy of the name of amateur. An amateur is one who loves passionately, who devotes herself to her art or craft. I am a dilletante, a dabbler. I have many brief, passionate romances, like a bee going from flower to flower, producing mongrel honey.
But damn it, I’m retired. Why can’t I just have fun? Consider the lilies of the field. Why should I have to toil and spin all my waking hours? I don’t suppose my goofy painted shoes click and t-shirts are quite as splendid as good old Solomon’s array, but they please me. Someday I may be sufficiently sane to acknowledge that is enough.
* Merkin: artificial pubic hair. “According to “The Oxford Companion to the Body,” the custom of wearing merkins dates from mid-15c., was associated with prostitutes, and was to disguise a want of pubic hair, shaved off either to exterminate body lice or evidence of venereal disease.” source: Dictionary.com
May 7, 2015
I was itching to get working in the garden, but I had three weeks of the Gainesville respiratory crud in March and April. Still, without any help from me, everything's green, and flowers are getting started. First, the volunteers:
Wild petunias, really a lovely pale blue, pop up everywhere.
So does spiderwort, aka dayflower 
I know, it's just a weed – Spanish needle
And finally, mimosa – a skinny tree that leans from my woods into the yard every spring, with fragrant flowers that make you think peaches and oranges got cozy over the winter.
Next, the planted garden:
Drift roses – fragrant, thorny, and trouble-free (except I have to keep cutting them back)
These berries will soon be blue and sweet.
Lipstick plant and I-can't-remember-its name. I'm not even sure I like these two, but they're so happy where they are I can't bear to pull them up.
Milkweed's almost open – and I've seen 2 monarchs flying around waiting.
And here's my Simpson's Stopper, aka twinberry, blooming this year for the first time, with a licorice-vanilla scent (though the internet claims it's nutmeg-y) (And also said it will reach 20 feet – uh oh, I thought it was a shrub!)
Everything's coming up zinnias – my first time planting from seed – I've planted two kinds of zinnias, two kinds of basil, and a spring garden mix. Oh boy, can't wait! (Yes, I know I have to thin them.)
