Balancing Act

Once upon a time I started this blog to figure out grandparenting. I didn't fall naturally into the role. It's been a struggle, but then why shouldn't it be, as I've been rather circumspect even in early childhood.

We spend at least a month on the West Coast escaping winter weather in the Northeast, and helping our grandchildren who have two full time working parents. The challenge for me is to find a balance between feeling fulfilled, helpful, productive, creative and connected. Being here means that I see the grandkids and their parents every day, but I have no adult relationships outside the family. I am not in my home climate surrounded by my "stuff" either.

The situation makes me aware of how relationship dependent I am. I wilt when I don't get a daily dose of connections. I once was told I needed to learn how to fill myself up, not depend on others for my well being. I'm ever curious about this. Does this mean that I have an addiction, that I need to disconnect myself in order to learn to be more self-sufficient?

Two of my oldest friends and artists go inward to their art when they feel vulnerable. Is this a strategy I could adopt? I have indeed tried this and in past years have had long term projects that kept me invigorated intellectually and creatively.

Another part of me thinks, What else is there besides relationships, caring for others, connecting?

Meanwhile, every day has some sparkle, some beauty, some awe. Spending time outside every day and hearing the birds, observing the surrounding exotic plant life, connecting even with strangers is rewarding.

I managed to create a new hat yesterday from scraps of cashmere and few baubles and beads. I finished knitting one mitten for a certain family member. Lydia Davis's short stories are brood-worthy before sleep.

Zach was home sick today and we played many a game of Parcheesi, Crazy Eights, and Mancala.

The best I can do at this point is continue to live into the question, over and over, trying to figure out this one lifetime I have to serve others and to fulfill myself.

'Tis the Season

It's the season for giving and receiving and I think I've finally gotten the hang of how to be at ease with both. It wasn't always so. For example, my mother used to love giving me fresh white Carters underpants as a holiday gift. Instead of being grateful for these lovely soft white panties, I was ungrateful and wished I was given something I really wanted.

I was not a good gift recipient. I wished and wished to receive things I wanted rather than things others wanted me to have. Looking back now, I think how lovely it was to have a mother who would annually refresh my supply of undies so I wasn't stuck with greying or yellowing, holey and stained ones.

My friend Karen gave me a good talking to, when I was into my fifth decade. So many birthdays and Christmases gone by, and finally I was ready to learn. She explained that gifts are not about wish fulfillment, nor about need. They are EXTRAS. It is the recipient's job to see the beauty in each choice, to accept it graciously and lovingly and honor the donor for remembering us.

When my daughter got married, she did not have a registry like so many people do these days. In her opinion, having people choose for her was more of an honor, more exciting and more thoughtful than just fulfilling someone's wish list. Carefully she integrated each gift into her household and life. I was impressed and wished to be like her. I needed to grow and change in this area.

My dear departed Maggie was another fabulous gift recipient. What a pleasure it was to give to her! Everything she received left her breathless. She responded as the most innocent child to each gift, as if it were amazing and the most delightful thing she could imagine.

I think that if she had received those undies from my mom, she would have taken them to her cheek and rubbed them softly with her eyes closing, declaring them utterly soft and pristine. She would have made my mother feel as if she knew JUST what she needed.

Slowly I have adapted. I can't say that I have turned around completely. Often people choose what they themselves would like, rather than what the recipient would like. If I had read the cards right, I would have given Mom white undies too!

Giving gifts has become easier for me too. I don't strive to find the absolute perfect gift for everyone nor try to determine what they want and shop endlessly for it. Instead I do my best and take real pleasure thinking of the THEM that I know and choosing accordingly.

My friend, Margaret, likes to recollect early Christmases with her hard-working, single parent mom. The last week for Christmas they would take a paltry sum of money out on the town and choose small thoughtful gifts for everyone on their list. Margaret recalls how little money was spent and how much pleasure gained, year after year.

It isn't that wish lists are wrong or bad, that registries are either. I actually appreciate them at times. I like to be able to choose when to use them and when not to, which of course I can! and I keep a wish list myself for those who like using them. It's just that my expectations are different now.

I'd like to say, Do yourself a favor and don't sweat it this season. Have fun. Enjoy underspending and cavorting through fun merchandise for gifts. You could probably do a fair job by just gong to the hardware store!

Or follow the advice of Karen's childhood neighbors, the Harpers - Everyone gets one thing they need, one thing they want and one surprise. What a great rule for parents to follow. Keep the expectations low and the kids will ultimately be happier. They'll still get gifts from relatives which are extras.

When you open your own gifts, try to behave as a child who is underprivileged and is thrilled with anything at all. That's my hard won advice.

Small Town Cheer-Up

I've been in a bit of a funk for a couple of days, but we needn't go into that here. Instead, let me tell you how I got cheered up by going out into our teeny tiny town center.

First I went to the library to return a book. Not that I needed anything more to read, but just in case there was something irresistible, I spun the tower of New Purchases. I found two quirky titles that I thought would amuse an internet friend, so I took their photos.

The previous night, I had read her blog, MothersOfBrothers, about how annoyed she is with the overuse of the word "annoying." Here was the perfect book for her!

Who doesn't love our lovable library? With it's huge orientals, antique table and chairs, lovely view of the lake, and entertaining librarian, one always feels at home here. In the basement, the end of a week long used book sale was culminating in the famous Dollar a Bag sale. Yes, I managed to fill a bag with what seem to be treasures and here I am reading them this evening. Mostly children's books, prized for their illustrations, I am drooling, sorting them out for each granchild, saving some, selling some. Thank you master used book sale guru, Jane! She had saved many jewels just for me.
Next stop: Gen'l Store. I needed traditional chocolate chips. Though there were none of the exact type I wanted, the ever-pleasing owner, Julie, said she'd share some from her own personal kitchen stash. She got her giant bag and siphoned off two cups worth for me. Gee! How fabulous was that?

Did you know our Gen'l Store sells hunting sweaters for DOGS? YES! Julie and Ian the owners aim to please!

Last of all, as I prepared to drive out into traffic, waiting for an opportune moment, a Mini passed and waved to me; I waved back. It was my FIRST EVER MINI WAVE!

Homeward bound, I felt immensely better and recovered from my funk.

Barkcloth Treasure!

Off on a jaunt with local friends, I thought it unlikely that I would find any new additions for my textile collection. We weren't in the vicinity of flea markets or large quantities of used vintage items and there was little time to browse leisurely among vendors. One store did have a sizable collection of linens, almost entirely tatted hankies, or embroidered napkins and damask tablecloths. But there was one exception and I found it - this long bark cloth table runner of a park scene.

Sweethearts are holding hands on a park bench, a nanny with a halo pushes a baby in a perambulator with a halo while a terrier watches them pass by. The tidy village from which they come adorns the foreground, with gingerbread Victorian houses, evergreen and deciduous trees.
On the other half a band concert is playing next to an equestrian statue, a crowd gathered wearing capes and berets, full skirts and suits. A soldier leans casually on a tree, while the ice cream man sells Italian ices to parched villagers.

I love my new treasure! I purchased it as an investment to sell, but all too quickly I am falling in love...

Finally Broke Down

The handkerchiefs in the NEW Handkerchief Collection are unbearably beautiful, therefore I haven't been able to bring myself to use them. They're stored in a box that was my grandfather's; a grandfather I met only a handful of times before he died in 1949.

But today I impulsively grabbed a matching-my-vest Jeanne Miller one and stuffed it in my pocket for my run. Wowzers! I LOVED having it. I must have used it a dozen times, when usually I'd employ a disgusting method I won't describe.

Collecting...

Basically I don't understand the point of collecting. I've definitely done it myself, even though I don't get it. Somehow it seems stupid. materialistic. greedy. What's the point? and what do you do with the stuff? The money spent could always be put to much better use.

But boy, once I get interested in certain items, I get obsessed with amassing more. I have to admit this has all occurred in later years, the deep empty nest years. I notice that there are a lot of silver haired collectors.

One of my first collections was sterling silver and turquoise insect pins, mostly vintage from Mexico. EBay has made collecting much easier. That's never how I get my first collection item, but I can't resist seeing what is out there, once something starts. This must also be indicative of retirement years. I HAVE THE TIME.


Some more of my collections have been Japanese postcards after an exhibit at the Boston MFA, huipiles from Guatemala to wear when I thought I was fat (not very), and the biggest of all, TERRIERS as anyone who knows me, knows I am a huge Terrierist. All because of Fenway, my little Welsh Terrier and Nipper, my childhood Scottish Terrier.


During an attic cleaning for a community yard sale this weekend, I found quite a spate of mid sized stuffed terriers. I decided to sell them on eBay to support my newest collection, Hankies, or Handkerchiefs. Sixteen lots on eBay all ready to go. It was a massive amount of work, to photgraph them, measure them, describe them, acquire boxes for them, packing materials and bags to place them in, weigh them for postage and measure boxes, and then list them. They're ready to hit the auction block tonight.

Bully pulled my heartstrings years ago, even though he is not a terrier. Look at that face! Who could resist? Not me. But it's time for him to come out of hiding in the attic and find a new home.


What about this little face? Her chest is ripped and she can barely stand, but maybe someone will take her in, based on her expression, and give her some TLC.
All the way from Japan, came this dynamic duo. I couldn't bear to separate them so listed them together, maybe as cousins?
And these charming French kitties are priceless. (probably NOT) One of them has a music box that still works in her chest! Again, would I split up these two? NEVER.
Foxy is surely a Steiff but without i.d. His pose is so classic, so perfect. He is as naughty at they come (the way I like them) and ready to bite into an electrician's pants, one who is trying to drill and work at our house. (Did Fenway do that? YES.)

Now on to the latest collection, my motivation for selling the critters: HANKIES! I have acquired a few.
This is a limited edition Pucci which he made as a Christmas card for friends and associates. It was not disclosed as such when I bid on it and I was the only bidder. That was because the person listing it said it had "Italian or some other language on it," and didn't realize who or what it was. I didn't bid knowingly, just thought it was charming, appealing and cheap. Only days later did the writing click with me and I checked it against a Pucci scarf I have - Yip, the signature matched - Emilio- throughout. This is my best buy so far.
Second best is this zodiac hankie done by Tammis Keefe. She is a highly sought after designer who was popular in the fifties. She died at age 47 in the early sixties and her work is very desirable, not to mention thoroughly whimsical. I want MORE, but her pieces are expensive. This one was inexpensive and again, I was the only bidder. It's heavenly.
Jeanne Miller has done some traditional and then some whimsical work. This one I might have overpaid for because I love the graphics, but it DOES have quite a few pinholes in it.
Most of Ann McCann's work is not that appealing to me, but I fell in love with this one. The drawing is child like and near genius to me. I can't classify the figures - angels? Doesn't matter, they're cute, cute, cute. I have no interest in lace or hearts or flowers or serious themes.
Faith Austin is a little too traditional for my taste, but this one pleased me because of the googly eyed fish. And it's brand new with attached label.
Lastly my favorite of all, which I could not resist and paid a whopping $33. Ants dancing in the rain under colorful mushrooms? PLEASE! I'm all yours, Jean Hanau. French NOT Japanese as one would expect these days.

Can any reader think of a single justification for collecting? If so, please respond.

The Card-Making Workshop

My friend, Jenny, is taking a bit of time off from her career to regroup and think about what comes next for her. She is an educator, but also an artist and explorer of visual horizons. I invited her to come to a retreat at our house and to choose a workshop for playing together. She chose card-making and I dragged out materials that had lain around the shanty for years, unused though beloved. We both had the idea that we would make a birthday card edition to use over the next year.

We worked over the span of three days, one of them rainy when we didn't even set foot outside. Jenny was at one end of the table and I was at the other, with all the materials piled between us. There were nature samples (pressed flowers, leaves and ferns), rubber stamps and stamp pads in a few colors, hand-painted fabric swatches, paint samples from Home Depot. Mixing and matching, gluing and stamping, we worked happily while conversing about life.
In the end, we were astonished that we BOTH had exactly 21 cards!
In 1968 I attended Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. In the weaving studio, I heard a woman say that crafts were just the background for her, while she accomplished her main goal of getting to know other women. That revelation has proved true for me to this day, these 43 years later.

Sugar Hill

Our anniversary came at the time of a family wedding this year, so we took ourselves on a late trip to the White Mountains. Sugar Hill to be exact. Sugar Hill is the center of maple sugaring country in New Hampshire. Every time I have been there, I've found it enchanting. I'll tell you that part of the charm is Polly's Pancake Parlor. There's no place like it and I didn't even take a photo! We indulged in breakfast AND lunch on Saturday, and did NOT skip the local bacon. Polly's pancakes are the best in the land, reputedly, and no one who reviews for Yelp questions this. They're whole grain with OF COURSE real maple syrup. Worth a trip JUST FOR POLLYS in my opinion. Check out their website and you may be planning a trip to NH soon!

Of course there are the mountains which are awesome and make for great hikes. Hikers are very friendly people; we felt like kindred spirits with everyone along the paths. Our ONLY hikes this year, we definitely felt out of shape. We did 10 miles in TWO days and should have been able to do that much in one day. As an excuse, I'll say that half of those miles were straight up, but let's face it: the other half were straight down.

We hiked the Kinsman Ridge Trail and Mt. Pemigewasset, both highly recommended by these oldsters.
Staying at the Sugar Hill Inn was a great treat too. Furnished simply with antiques and quilts, it is not fancy (our room, at least, which admittedly was the least expensive), it was very much to our liking. KATY, the resident Bassett Hound-Australian Shepherd was quite the character. The chef has won awards, but we didn't have dinner there. One of the snacks put out in the afternoon, however, was miso seared marlin and was that a treat! Imagine that as a snack. And I was expecting cookies!
On the Gale River we spied the tallest, largest Great Blue Heron we'd ever seen. She flew away before I could get a close-up.
Wildlife? I'm always hoping to see a bear, but I don't think I'd like it if I did. I imagined what we would do in the event of a sighting; stand tall together, wave our hands over our heads and make lots of loud noises. Instead I saw this log that reminded me of a crocodile!
We also saw a great movie, The Double Hour, at the Bethlehem Colonial Theatre, where they serve brewers yeast with popcorn, just like our theatre here in Waterville, ME, AND provide blankets to keep you warm as I assume there is no heat. The Double Hour was a romance, film noir AND thriller, that kept us on the edge of our seats from start to finish. in Italian with subtitles. I say Don't Miss It.

Project Boxes

There was another project day on Leadbetter Rd. recently. Two grandmothers went at it with tissue paper, old children's book illustrations, scraps of this and that and a new found medium called Mod Podge. That turns out to be a sort of glue and varnish that holds stuff, like ephemera, together on a surface. I decided to try out using Trader Joes coffee canisters of which I had only two, and a shoe box which had been sent to me by the other grandmother on my birthday a couple of weeks ago.


As I worked I had very little patience and a lot of drive to get the project done as quickly as possible. I doubt that I'll ever do this again. BUT, I was pleased with the results. They looked pretty colorful and the Mod Podge definitely worked in creating a glaze over the whole "design." Design? It was so haphazard, I can't really claim to have had the foresight which the word design implies.

Filling the boxes is what counts for the kids, and the boxes are FULL! (of surprises)

That Provincetown Light

Jil, Sophie and I make good playmates. We absorbed the light of the day on the beach in Truro and then fell into the sunset in Provincetown Harbor. There is nowhere else with light like there is at the tippy end of Cape Cod, where it p0urs in from all directions. No wonder Mary Oliver makes her home here.

Thanks to Home Depot's palette of paint chips and Framer's Workshop's constant supply of mat board middles, we had free materials. We all worked on getting the light onto our boards and were happily engrossed for several hours.


Jil magnificently captured her view of the water that magical evening we all were together. How she kept those colors in her mind, I don't know, but.... WOW!

Hat Bags

Just had to share my hat bags for recently made hats. Maybe I'll include lavendar sachets in them. Heck, I don't even know what I'll do with them yet, but I like all the marketing details.

More on Grandparenting

Stress may be a pejorative word, but in yin/yang terms it's absence does not serve us well as creatures on this earth. Coping keeps us our brains healthy, our adaptive skills tuned up and our youthfulness zipping along. In decades past, I have fantasized about leading a relaxing life, doing what I want without the stress of meeting unpleasant and unwanted demands. Naive. I'm a slow learner.

What I'm accepting more in my sixties is the beauty of such demands. In my retirement, I have fewer things to cope with than ever. Back when I was a youngster, a mother with two small children, I observed a young woman during the summer, reading in a bikini under an umbrella to her heart's content. I looked wistfully at her, remembering my pre-child-rearing days, and thought how nice it would be to sit and read peacefully. Oooh, Heaven.

Fast forward many decades and I have had the time to resume this heavenly activity. But guess what? It hasn't been nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be back when I didn't have that leisure time. In fact, there are new nagging discontents that have seeped into my old brain.

My friend, Audrey, told me about her audiologist whom she respects greatly. He said when the time comes, he plans to live in a group situation with others his age. Seeing many patients he has observed that the folks who live alone/with a partner seem to deteriorate mentally faster than the people who are forced to interact with others regularly, forced to negotiate, compromise, problem solve.

We get a great deal of pleasure from our grandchildren...and they exhaust us. One day while caring for the two boys aged five and three, I was overwhelmed with sleepiness. Dexter was napping but Zach was wide awake. I told Z that I was going to rest for a minute on the couch. When I awoke only moments later he was gone. When I found him he had gotten into wet paint and was trying to remove it from his clothes and body. He was covered. A midday bath cured all, but it was clear that resting was not an activity to partake of when the boys are awake.

Grandchildren and grandparents are a perfect match. We don't like being rushed and we have endless time to learn together. If we can keep up, I think this is a great way to combine leisure time and a good amount of stress. No wonder extended families have worked so well over the centuries.

Hats, hats, hats

It took a bit of effort to get all the materials back out without Susy here. I couldn't justify using our living space either, when I have such a fine workshop. But it was easier to spread out over three tables when Susy and I were working together. It's almost as if my workroom is only good for storage as I hardly work there lately.




Indigo blue is Susy's current favorite color and she was dying to cut into the sweater that came closest to that. She made a headband for one thing and a mohawk for a tomato red hat for another. I used it for a sort of cloche, shown here. I love a bit of lime green with so many other colors.


This all white hat feels like a sleeping cap. It's long and drapey and ultra soft. I added some sparkles to make it like a wintry day with sun on the snow.


Joyce was a really good sport to do some modeling with me. She didn't need any help deciding how to wear this almost military shape.
I sewed shiny beads on the snake character between buttons from a child's sweater.
Really this is my favorite of all because of the densely soft, matted heather green panel with attached saffron mini prayer rug.
For our local library's fund raising silent auction, I fashioned these two Wayne Maine hats, male and female. We'll see if there are any bidders.