Catch What You Can

Years ago, I discovered one of the most remote yet inhabited places in the entire world…or the world as I’d seen it up till then. Seward, Alaska - a northern port city, where the sea and the sky blend together so easily that you can only tell where one ends and the other begins by the bold black gash of mountains lining the horizon. I wore a jacket but still felt cold. It was August.


I was mesmerized, entranced, captivated. I have always loved gray northern places. I love the sea…but not the bright, cajoling seas of the SC Coast where everyone heads for vacations. I want a rocky, remote sea. I don’t want to bask in the sun in a string bikini…I want to wrap up in a blanket and feel the chill that rides the crest of waves colder than ice water. I want that other sea, that rocky, rugged sea that Captain Ahab knew. I have never entertained the slightest notion of taking cruises to the Bahamas or other sun-drenched shores…but I’d jump aboard an icebreaker in an instant, just for the offhand chance I’d see a narwhal.

My fascination with the far north has been with me since childhood, but my fascination with the sea came to me as an adult, when something about the vastness of it seemed to pull me in. Standing on a dock in the middle of Seward, I was suddenly possessed with the thought that if I ever wanted to run away from something, this would be the place I’d come…no doubt. No one could ever find me here. No one would ever think to look here, of all places. It would never occur to anyone who knew me well that I’d flee to one of coldest, farthest-reaching corners of the US. And yet I could dissolve so easily, so completely in this cold, windy place. I could find work, rent one of the numerous little apartments that dotted the cityscape, spending my free time knitting items I’d need for a harsh climate and tossing food scraps to gulls and eagles on the rocky shoreline. There was only one glitch in this little fantasy…it’s not in my nature to run away.

Stepping outside just past daybreak, the cool air and overcast sky remind me of my time in Seward. I was in my early 20s then, and I had few valid ideas about, well, anything. I had no experience with what kind of situation might actually make one want to run away. And I had no idea that, when presented with these situations time and time again later in life, I’d prove to be a fighter, not a flight-er. There would never be a time in my life when I would consider running away from, well, anything. And there would never be anything in my life that I was more willing to go to bat for than someone I loved.

“I so enjoy your writings about letting go,” says a friend to me via text this morning. “You make it sound so easy!”

I think for a moment of the power of words, how they can flow so smoothly from our minds to the page. My words convey a sense of ease about the struggles we all face, because I want somehow to encourage people to actually face those struggles, to break free and live the lives the dream about. I try to accomplish this by taking my own experiences and putting a positive spin on them, so that someone else might draw strength from my observations, just as I draw strength not from palm trees, hammocks, and a still sea, but from birch trees, thunderclouds and crashing waves against a rocky shore. In Wilmington, NC last summer, I was struck by the beauty I saw. But these are not the beaches that strike a chord with my soul. Seward, Alaska, was a place more suited to my nature, more beautiful, even in the cool drizzle of late August rains.

I look down at the text, and send only a simple smiley face icon as a response.

I think it’d be nice to return to Seward…I’d like to watch winter descend on a Northern seaside town. I’d like a new experience to take my mind off one I’m trying to forget. But I’ll go to the library instead and check out Ahab’s Wife, or, The Star Gazer, by Sena Jeter Naslund. It seems a little less impulsive than hopping a plane to a place I’ve not seen in over 15 years and hoping to crash in a lighthouse for a week or two. Not to mention a trip to the library is much more financially reasonable than the catastrophe of expenses a spontaneous Alaskan adventure would incur.

Memories…I cast them out, like rocks into a raging sea. I hold on to nothing, not even tokens of affection I once treasured. And I write about letting go, striving to make it seem so damn easy that everyone will want to cast something out of their lives, just to get in on the fun.

I think for a moment of the power of words, how they can flow so smoothly, just like water. Cup your hands, try to catch what you can…but it’s as futile as trying to hold back tears.

There are some fights that you just can’t win.



When I looked at the water, I felt contempt. The color was more green than the dark blue of English poets, and the waves were small and choppy.

“It’s not wild enough,” I said.

“You always loved a storm,” she said. And she told me again how when I was a small girl, only freshly equipped with language, when it rained I had said, “Harder,” and begged her to make the rain bigger and more extreme.

“How do you like the lighthouse,” she asked.

“I wish that it were taller.”

She laughed. “Accept the world, Una. It is what it is.”

~ Ahab’s Wife, or, The Star Gazer - Sena Jeter Naslund

Blue Moon Jazz and A Story of Stuff

Sitting around a bonfire tonight, waiting on the blue moon to rise, our host passed around a piece of paper and pen to everyone in attendance. One by one, we wrote something on our piece of paper that we wanted to release from our lives. One by one, we were to toss our small papers into the bonfire and bid farewell to what was written on that slip…what we wanted and needed to let go of.

I’ve written before about letting go. As I held my slip of paper in my hand, it wasn’t letting go that was on my mind. It was the idea of holding on, or rather, what we hold on too.

Earlier this month, my 89-year old grandmother decided that the 4 bedroom house she was living alone in was simply too much upkeep and expense, and decided to move into a smaller dwelling. Within a few weeks, she’d signed the lease on a perfect little duplex apartment. Her new neighbor had a porch full of flowers and potted herbs. Wind chimes danced from a shared overhang. The apartment was tidy and quaint, the yard well-maintained, and she seemed very excited about moving in...but within a week of beginning the process, she changed her mind. She wanted to stay in her house.

Why? Because she could not live in the quaint, small apartment without letting go of some of her stuff. “I worked too hard for what I’ve got to just give it away for nothing,” she said. And despite the fact that she’d already paid two month's rent and signed a lease, she has now gone back to a house that is too much upkeep and expense simply to maintain possession all of her stuff. Huge furniture, glasses, china that hasn’t been used for about 25 years, collections of dolls, doo dads, knick knacks…when I was standing in the midst of it, realizing this is what she was bound to, I wanted to say to her, it’s only stuff! You could have had a beautiful place to live, a nice neighbor close by, and a rent that was almost half of what the mortgage you pay on the house is...but sometimes it pays to remember that when it’s nearly impossible for us to understand another person's actions, it’s just as impossible for the other person to comprehend that we don’t understand their actions.

I’m sure she will face legal repercussions for pulling out of a rental agreement, but she says she doesn’t care. I suppose, to her, not having to let go of any of her stuff is worth whatever consequences she might face. Attachment…is it ever a healthy thing? Trying to decide what to write, I look up at the night sky above me. Clouds part just enough to allow the stars to shine down. My son asked me recently if stars were really our ancestors, watching us from above. It’s an age old concept children seem to easily understand, something I've taught him since he was a toddler to believe in. Today, after school, he proudly presented me with a bracelet he’d made for me with beads and a pipe cleaner. It will not last forever, nor will I try and force it to. I treasure it, yes…but I treasure more the gesture itself, the knowledge the he was thinking of me in the moment that he fashioned this bracelet from the simplest of materials. I treasure the love behind the bracelet more than the bracelet itself. I told him, when he asked about the stars , that yes, they are the lights of our ancestors, shining down their love upon us, allowing us to see just enough of them to know there is something beyond this world. Logically, I am aware of what a star actually is…but my son is a child and therefore needs to believe there is something beyond this world, some greater purpose to our existence than the routines of daily life, than working simply to acquire and hold on to...stuff.

The night sky is as magical to him, as it is to me. He greets the stars, tells them hello as they begin to appear in the evening skies. We spent a tremendous portion of summer clearing our home from unnecessary stuff. Clothes we haven’t worn in a year? Gone. Toys he no longer plays with? Gone. Books we no longer enjoy? Movies we no longer watch? Gone. Furniture, knick knacks, and collections of doodads and things given to us that we never really liked or needed? Adios. I’m not overly sentimental; I do not hold deep attachments to material things, nor will I teach my son to. I tell him it’s the thoughts, the memories, what is in our heart that we hold on to…not things. I would never hold onto china that I wasn’t going to actually use, no matter who owned it before me. My mother fusses over my using antique bowls to mix cookie dough in the kitchen, or using an heirloom quilt on the bed…but what other purpose should these items serve? They were meant to be used when they were created. If they become damaged or broken, well...so be it. They will have served thier purpose, which isn't merely decorative.

Stuff weighs upon us, whether it is material or emotional. It locks us down, binds us to places we may not particularly want to be. It holds us to a certain place in time, keeps us paralyzed in a moment when we should be moving forward. I spent the entire summer freeing myself from the baggage of both. I’m in love now with the open spaces in my home and in my heart. I want to be able to embrace new life experiences, to pack up in a moment’s notice and head out on any new adventures that come my way. If I can't take all of our stuff, then we leave it behind. I've done this before. I think to write ‘attachment to things’ on my slip of paper, but no, I believe I’ve already conquered that. And if there were any doubts, the image of my grandmother standing alone in a house that is far too big for one person, surrounded by things that are just things and will cost nearly every amount of income she has coming in to keep, will never leave my consciousness.

The bracelet my son made for me catches my eye in the firelight, and I touch it, smiling. He opted not to come to this gathering with me, but to spend the night with a buddy instead. I allowed it because I believe giving children some degree of say-so in their own lives at an early age can negate the need for them to demand it through rebellion in the teen years. I don't know it all, by far, but I'm proud of my son and my choices in raising him. I'm proud of our hippie-ish lifestyle; that we take no medications but ibuprofen; and that we know the produce seller far more intimately than the pediatrician. In this moment, I am comforted by the vastness of the night sky, because it reminds me of the sea, and I think of my son making me the bracelet in class; how proud he was to bestow it onto my wrist; how well he played his first soccer game this week; how excited he is that his two top teeth are loose; how he bursts into my classroom full of joy at the end of each day; how in tune he is to the energy of others. I need to pay more attention, I think, to that last one. I need to pay more attention to how he reacts to the people I bring into our lives. He's never been wrong about one yet, and the ability to read another person's energy almost instantly and discern a good situation from a bad one is a gift I need to teach my child to honor. It's a gift I wish I had. In Reiki training, I learned that intuition is a voice very, very much worth listening too. I need to work harder to teach him to recognize when it is speaking to him, and I need to teach myself to do a better job of listening when my own is shouting from the rooftops at me.

But for now, I'm in this moment, surrounded by friends on a beautiful property that is home to woods, a pond, and a yoga studio, as well as home to one of the most amazing women I've ever met - a 79-year-old yoga teacher more vibrant and full of life that most people half her age. She is a living testament to another way of being in and with the world, and her presence reinforces my belief that the lifestyle I'm most comfortable with is truly the right one for me. Any advice she gave me, I think I'd take, because she radiates the energy that I wish to send into the world. She represents a place I strive to arrive in, and I am so happy here that I can't even think of one thing to write on the slip of paper. I'm in such a state of peace that I can't imagine there could still be something I still need, in my heart, to let go of. But then it comes to me, one simple word, and I quickly scrawl it on the paper, then watch it turn to ash in the fire. Judgements is the word that I wrote, and it symbolizes not only the feelings I deal with when others judge me and my actions/choices, but also my own willingness to judge the choices and actions of others. I don't understand my grandmother's behavior anymore than I undersand how a close  friend can retire and choose to simply sit on a quarter of a million dollars and live on his meager retirement because he is afraid to 'start dipping into' his savings, or how another friend can keep returning, over and over, to a relationship that unhealthy to the point of being toxic and keep thinking somehow that this time it will be different...but I have to remember these are their choices, and whether or not I understand them is irrelevant to their freedom to make them...and keep making them. What would it say about me, really, if I allow myself to lose respect for another person because a decision they made was not what I felt it should be? I have to let go of judgment, and remember others may not be in the same place as me. Their path is thier own, as mine is my own. We are all bound by something, whether it be stuff; numbers on a bank statement; or the belief that another person can change. We all have something we could stand to let burn.

Beside me, someone starts to tap lightly on a drum. From somewhere else in the circle come the low, melodic notes of a flute being played. “There, behind the tree, you can see the moon” my host says. “Oh look, it’s so beautiful!” I don’t get up from my spot because I’m just feeling too warm and full of joy to move. But on the way home, later, the blue moon in its full glory stays with me, visible through the window, shining down. I think of my son, who is no doubt sleeping soundly now. I think of another person I love, of a conversation we had earlier this week, of the excitement I feel knowing a package from afar is on its way to me...

These are the things I hold on to.

The Finnish Yarn

I am doing it again...taking apart what I have created with the Finnish yarn I bought 2 years ago in Helsinki.

I've come to see this as a symbolic ritual, almost. Anyone who knits knows the feeling of pulling apart a project that you've spent hours and hours working on...it's not the best feeling in the world. This time, it is not an unfinished project I'm taking apart, it's a large wrap shawl completed last summer on lazy evenings sitting outside while my son played.

But before it was a large wrap shawl, it was several panels of a bolero-styled sweater. Before that, an infinity scarf, and before that it was the beginning of a hat; a sweater that tied in front; a scarf with simple ribbing... I don't know what it is about this particular lot of yarn, but nothing I make with it seems to be right. The bolero-style of sweater is not flattering on my figure; I don't really wear infinity scarves; all this color on a hat is too much for me (not to mention it is way too much yarn for one hat); a sweater that ties in front is likely to be annoying, as I can see it constantly coming untied and I don't like fussing with my clothing; and the yarn seems just too precious somehow for a simple scarf pattern. The large wrap was nice, yes...but I never wore it.

So no matter what I have made with this particular batch of yarn it just doesn't feel right somehow.

I often buy yarn with no project in mind, just because I'm drawn to the sight and feel of it. It will sit in baskets or bowls in various rooms of my home, where I live with it a while, looking at it briefly as I pass by, thinking about it as I putter around doing other things, until I come across a pattern somewhere and know just what to do with it. Only with this Finnish yarn, no pattern seems to work. It has been two years now, and I know there is a purpose for this beautiful, soft, elegant rainbow-colored fiber. But nothing ever seems right. I don't know what the yarn wants to be, or what the significance is in my life of creating something, then unraveling it, over and over, for the past two years.

Or maybe I do.

A friend recently posted a beautiful saying about fibers on the Facebook page of my knitter's group (The Fiber Goddi, check us out!). It was a quote by Dodinsky, stating simply that "We are made of the strongest fibers known in the universe - hope, love respect, courage, perseverance, etc. These are the threads we use to repair our soul when unfortunate things momentarily cause a tear in our lives." There is a sense of Zen in the unraveling of a project one has invested hours in. A letting go that many find hard to imagine...but why put more time into something that just isn't right and then attempt to justify it with the fact that you've put time into it already?

And so, I unravel the large wrap, wind it back up onto skeins, and place them into a yarn basket. I won't try to steer the flow this time, I've learned more lessons in patience these past two years than you'd think necessary for one soul in a lifetime. And even though I'm damn eager to create something beautiful with this yarn, whose place of origin alone makes it near and dear to my heart, I'll let it sit for a while longer, allowing the lessons I've learned, lessons in love, hope, courage and perseverance, fill my soul and remind me that persevering in the wrong direction is not noble but futile; that it takes tremendous courage to unravel and thing and begin something new; with every ending comes hope for a new beginning; and love...what can I say I've learned about love?

Go with the flow. Like a pattern you finally get the hang of, love has a way of unfolding perfectly when the time is right.

You're the Inspiration

I was delighted by the bounty of today's mail: a package and two fat letters, all from girlfriends who live states away. But the most exciting one was from a friend I've not seen since my son was an infant. We've touched base off and on through the years via email, but real letters means something, just like a phone call or an actual face-to-face visit. And I was delighted to get one of the three from her. It was multiple pages, catching me up on 6+ years of life, which has taken her from South Carolina to Georgia to Virginia, wow! I was impressed and cruising happily along through her letter when I came to the line, "You are an inspiration to me all the time, how you are able to accomplish so much being a single mom and an artist."

This letter comes on the heels of multiple emails loaded with praise of an art-writing collaborative show I participated in and attended a reception for on Friday night. And in the middle of introducing one friend to another at a poetry reading Sunday, the friend I've known longer referred to me (to the other friend who has not had the pleasure of knowing me quite as long) as a 'catalyst'. He'd mentioned to her that I talked him into participating in an event. She basically warned him to get used to that. "She's a catalyst," she said. I know it was a compliment, but it comes on the heels of the most unproductive summer I've ever spent since I began teaching 8 years ago. I smiled, then left, thinking, "I need to get something accomplished before summer ends."

But my interests have shifted, I've been exploring new art mediums and creative philosophies and ideas about writing, living, parenting, not to mention basically making over my home, my vehicle, my clothes, and myself. And still somehow it doesn't feel I'm doing enough. I've always battled this predicament. I once had a mantra on my mirror that said, basically, "While you're goofing off, someone else is working hard, and they'll get the prize." But what prize is that, really?

In my den there is a basket full of yarn that almost matches the ridiculously gigantic bowl of yarn on the desk in my bedroom. I love the look of them both, they inspire me with their colors and textures. I have a million ideas in my head for how I'll use the skiens. Books of patterns (which I can oddly follow the logistics of despite not being able to balance my checkbook without breaking into a cold sweat) are my favorite reading material these days. One of the blessings of having a brain that can derail with the slightest provocation is the ability to bounce between projects, ideas, drama, peace, moments I'm in and the moments I'd like to be in. One of the blessings of knitting is that it is a moving meditation, which is good for me because it's the only meditation I'm able to do for more that 37 seconds at a time. I can knit for hours, but I'm always amazed when I actually finish a project. Somehow I never see that far into the future when I'm casting on. I don't see the finished project in my head, I only see the steps of the pattern, the stage I'm in, the colors and textures and how it's coming together. Knitting, I'm in the moment, because I can't be anywhere else. When I'm too busy to sit and knit, I'm passing by my baskets full of yarn, thinking of what I'll begin next, of what I can yarn bomb and winter sweaters and scarves and hats and what on earth can be knit for young boys obsessed with style. I'm even thinking of asking a friend who is handly with tools if he'll build me a loom so I can finally indulge my dreams of weaving, which I've been slow to explore due to lack of, well...a loom.

My mind is always working, and as a result, usually I'm always doing.

Only this summer...not so much. This has been my summer of dreaming.

If I'm an inspiration, a catalyst, some one others might actually look up to, then I need to get busy doing, well, something that could merit such high praise. But all I want to do, really, is touch these natural fibers, work them together, blend them to make something beautiful. I want to touch them with the same reverence I have when touching the earth, with a mixture of love and wonder akin to what I feel for seeds and the way they hold life, unaware. Like alchemists of old, I want to take the simplest of materials and use them to create something that, without me, would never have been.

Which is what a dream is, really...something that, no matter how simple or profound,without us, will never be. Like seeds, we hold life unaware.

Knit one, purl two, knit one, purl two, yarn over, knit one...I'm lost in the moment, everything else falling slowly away. Hurt feelings, they pass with each stitch.

For a second my mind wanders, but I shake my head and bring my thoughts back to my needles.

This has been my summer of dreaming.

Prey

Earlier this week, I got a call from an organization I volunteer with to pick up an injured hawk and deliver it to a rehabilitation center. I told my son to quickly get dressed. "We've got to help a hawk that's been hurt," I explained. He moved fast.

My son is my partner in crime for all things, mainly because I have no choice but to haul him along on all of my adventures. There is a distinct absence in my life of people chomping at the bit to tend my son so I can have adventures on on my own; I’ve not been to the grocery store alone since he was born, and I rarely ever make it out to Starbucks for a solo coffee. But after seven and a half years, I have grown accustomed to it. I like thinking of how his life, personality, and experiences are being shaped by being my constant companion and listening to writers, artists, and poets discuss their passions; seeing wild animals in the wild instead of on Animal Planet;  hearing hushed conversations about life's realities between my friends and I at kitchen tables (this is tall talk, go play) ; by watching me win, lose, succeed and fail, but always, always try. The older my child gets the more I reflect upon my own memories from childhood, and I feel on display to him somehow…everything I’m doing now he’ll remember, just as I remember my own mother, sitting around the kitchen table with my aunts, drinking coffee, giving one another permanents, and talking about someone’s surgery, divorce, or who was having a  baby.

The men, on the other hand, were always outside, and that’s where I usually ended up. They were loud and their laughter was prefaced by expletives that felt dangerous on my tongue. I saved the words for later, when I was alone in the woods, and could say them out loud without reprimand. The men caroused outside the main houses, always in shops or sheds, lords of grills and pots of hash, denizens of poker games at card tables without chairs, sitting on 40 gallon drums or large engines turned on their side. I’d always inevitably be drawn away from the kitchen table female chatter and the mindless girl-play of my cousins to the backyard where the men were, because they always seemed to be having so much more fun. There was always a smoky haze around them from grills, cigarettes and cigars; it clung to their hair and clothes; it followed my father down the hall when he came in for the night and became a scent I still associate with all things masculine. I can remember, as a child, preferring to be where they were, even if I was merely hiding out somewhere unseen, listening.

I have very few memories from childhood that include men and women being present in the same room; this was primarily reserved for solemn occasions, like funerals or hospital visits. Inside, the men seemed larger than life somehow. Like animals in a cage, they paced and cleared their throats. They bumped into things and thier boots made scuff marks on slick linoleum. They'd shoot outside the first chance they got while the women rolled their eyes and said, “Good riddance.” And this segregation of the sexes makes perfect sense in the South, a place where men and women really have precious little, if anything, in common. So it’s funny, now, me always having my son in tow. Were we a typical Southern family, he’d be at the age where he’d begin to spend most of his time with men, sitting around smoky grills, practicing swearing (don’t you go saying that ‘round your Mama now, yah 'ear?) and learning how to be a man in the South, which is a unique lesson, for I’m not sure anything like Southern men exists outside the Mason-Dixon line and Animal Planet reality shows. But my son’s been on my heels alone since he could walk, so it stands to reason he will end up being just like me…I thought.

Last week, I took him with me to the salon, and he asked for a haircut as well. I was hesitant; I love his long curls, and have only trimmed his hair 4 times in 7.5 years. But then I remembered my philosophy on parenting (which is basically to just do what makes sense to me) and I told him okay. I gave him complete freedom of choice. He took a book of hairstyles to the chair and picked one out without showing me. I watched his curls fall to the floor in horror, and I nearly cried out when I heard the trimmers. When he came bounding up to me, he was another child. I was astonished. He’d chosen a typical short cut, nothing trendy, no faux-hawks or surfer flips like I was expecting. In the car on the way home later, he announced proudly, “I want to have short hair from now on because men are supposed to wear short hair.”

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded, adding, “And watch football.”

The day before the salon trip, he’d pitched a fit in a store for a Clemson shirt. I bought it, because it was a resale shop and the shirt was only $2, but I was surprised he wanted it so intently. While he has a natural agility and stamina that screams ‘high school star,’ his only experience with watching any sport, ever, has been a few brief glimpsing of football games at a friend’s house. I did not grow up around men who stayed inside and watched sports, save for the occasional Nascar race, which was usually listened to on the radio around the grill rather than watched on television. Guys who were into sports were foreign to me. They were the boys who ruled the schools, who elbowed and disregarded you in the halls when their friends were around but told you deep secrets about their plastic girlfriends and alcoholic fathers during study hall when no one was paying attention. I could hardly see my child fitting into the mold that all the star athletes of my alma mater seemed to pop out of, clad in thier Clemson shirts with hair that never touched thier ears.

“I’m gonna play football, too, when I’m bigger,” he says. “And baseball. Boys do that.”

Lord.

Two nights ago, we found a mourning dove that had been injured by a cat. I held it in my hands while he ran inside and got a box and a blanket. We settled the dove in safely. My son didn’t hover as some children might; this is not an unfamiliar experience. He knew the animal was in shock and needed nothing at the moment but a calm, safe place, just as he knew not to even touch the box the hawk was secured inside of, lest he risk losing a finger. The next morning, we carefully carried the box outside and opened it. I’d fully expected the bird to fly out; the injury did not seem to be severe. When it didn’t, I carefully lifted it and held it in my hands, where it sat, motionless, until it heard the soft, low cooing of another dove. She then stood and opened her wings, and that’s when I noticed the odd angle of the right one. She couldn’t - and possibly never again will – fly. I gently placed her back in the box and called the same wildlife center where we’d taken the hawk.

“Why can’t we just let the vet fix her wing and keep her, mom?” My son asked in the car. I have known people who did keep doves or other wild animals they’d found as pets, but this simply wasn’t an act I was going to put my stamp of approval on.

 “No,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right, or fair to the bird.” And that it's okay to tame the wild is not a lesson I’m going to teach you, I thought. Truth is, there was something similar about the idea of keeping the bird as a pet and my own internal reaction when my son announced his desire to be an short-haired athlete. What flashed through my mind, at that moment, were my own memories of obnoxious high school superstars, and the idea of my son being like them made me cringe. I had, until this week, been operating under the misconception that he would be like me, that as a teen he’d want to wear long floppy hair, t-shirts with the logos of Indie bands and cartoons no one has ever heard of, and the only sport a sport he’d partake in would be riding skateboards he’d painted himself. But no…he wants his hair cut so close that it doesn’t need to be brushed and prefers football shirts with jeans and plain sneakers to anything I pick out. In his own words, he wants to be 'just like all the other boys'. The child whose mother would freely allow him to express his individuality in his appearance and not bat an eye chooses instead to blend in with the crowd.

I could not have predicted this any more than my own mother could have predicted that, during family gatherings, I would refuse to stay inside playing dolls under the kitchen table with my cousins like a proper little girl. So be it; I bless my child with the freedom to be the person he chooses to be.

I wouldn’t dream of caging a dove.

The Owl in the Window

I’m having a discussion with a friend about moving. It’s an age-old discussion, this talk of relocation. We both know we need to do it, and for pretty much the same reasons - we love our homes, are happy with the daily routines in our lives, and adore the people we are close to...but we don't really fit in. We both also understand the concept of proper timing, however, and so we both wait. I’m not sure why. We talk about this, too.

As we talk, my eyes drift to a small carved wooden owl sitting in the window. It has been there for many years, but before it sat in my window, it sat in the window of The Medicine Man, an art gallery, bookstore, and so much more on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Western North Carolina.

“I just know this,” I say, looking at the owl. “Where ever I go, there must be mountains.”

The Medicine Man is my favorite shop on the reservation; there is a history there between it and me. I grew up traveling the lengths of the Great Smoky Mountains (I was 12 the first time I was even taken to a beach). As a teenager and into adulthood, I would consider the Cherokee Reservation my second home, traveling there with my family for powwows and with my friends for spontaneous daytrips as often as I could. The Medicine Man was strategically located beside The Drama Inn, a hotel set on the banks of the Oconaluftee River and conveniently located across the street from the ceremonial grounds. It was the perfect place to stay, and the only place I can ever recall staying.
I fell in love the first time I ever set foot in The Medicine Man. It’s a store far removed from the commercial hype and rubber eagles (Made-In-China souvenir Indian merchandise) that seem to drown the entire length of Hwy. 441. It’s authentic, this shop. The artists and craftspeople are local, and often popped in to drop off new works while I was there. The now-famous Cherokee artist and illustrator, Murv Jacob, was there once with prints of new work. My family struck up a conversation with him about my art ambitions; he encouraged me and gave me two signed prints, which I still have and display in my home.

When I was 16, I bought supplies at The Medicine Man to began a large beadwork image of a hawk swooping down. It was an ambitious project, for beading was a skill I'd taught myself. After a while I put it away. Years later I would buy supplies there once more and complete the piece while sitting outside The Drama Inn, listening to a powwow raging long into the night. The beaded hawk is now part of my son’s dance regalia. It’s fitting, considering he’s named for the bird, and it’s a testament to how little we really know, when we begin something, where it will end up.

It is the same with us; we don't always know where we'll end up either. But love of the mountains is in my blood, the sight of them awakens a part of me that seems to go deeper than memory. The Great Smokey Mountains were home to my ancestors until 'The Removal', more popularly known as “The Trail of Tears”. Of course, to the US Army at the time, it was considered ‘The Relocation,’ which sounds completely wrong to my ears. Relocation implies consent. Relocation is what my friend and I discuss. Relocation is what I did when I left those beloved mountains and spent a few years trying on city life in Detroit. No, what happened to my ancestors was not a relocation, it was a removal, just another of the ‘you’re out and we’re in’ takeovers in the name of progress, so common at that time.

And while the government intended for the Cherokee to stay out, a greater force than man intended for them to be there. And so, in time to come, my ancestors found their way back home. My grandmother was born in the same mountain region of Tennessee as Chota, capital city of the Cherokee Nation back when there was a nation instead of Eastern and Western bands. When I left this area and headed north, bubbling over with excitement about the relocation I was undertaking, I was prepared to miss my friends. I was prepared to miss my family. But I was not prepared for the tremendous feeling of loss that would overtake me as I drove through the Great Smokies and realized I was about to put nearly a thousand miles between myself and these mountians. When I could only see them in my rearview mirror, I knew I was heading in the wrong direction. But I was in my early 20s, too young to realize what life, what the mountains, and what my ancestors were trying to tell me in that moment. I kept driving.

Now I know better.

Putting a thousand miles between myself and the Cherokee reservation ended family trips to powwows and the daytrips to roam the mountains. It was the end of late summer Saturdays afternoons donning bells to ward off bears and foraging for blueberries. It was the end of sitting outside The Drama Inn and sipping coffee as the sun crested Rattlesnake Mountain. It was the end of long visits with friends at their mountain homes, watching thunderstorms and eating bean bread and listening to tales. It was the end of my powwow dancing days, it was the end of skipping in the door of The Medicine Man, pausing momentarily to look at the wooden owl statue in the window, then gazing at the art inside and wondering if I would ever have my own work represented there.

I lasted 4.5 years away. And while I had some fun, truth is, the city life I tried on didn't really fit. Like my ancestors, I came back. I have a million excuses as to why, but there is only one truth: Where ever I go, there must be mountains.

Now it is my son and I who take trips to the reservation for powwows, although there aren’t nearly as many now as there were 20 years ago. We stay at The Drama Inn and play in the Oconaluftee River. As he sleeps, I sit outside and sip coffee as the sun crests Rattlesnake Mountain. This summer, I’ll slip a bell around his neck and take him to pick blueberries on The Shining Rock Trail. The friends I had there on the reservation have grown, married, divorced, moved away...I tell my son the tales now. I’d hoped he’d dance  like me, and for two years, he did. But then one day, as I was dressing him in his regalia, he said, “Mama, I don’t want to dance. I just want to watch the pow wow and hear the drums.” So be it. Like our ancestors, his spirit is strong. I won’t fight it. Dancing must come of one’s own free will; it can’t be forced. Perhaps he will go back to it one day. Perhaps I will as well.

The thing about relocating is that while you can always return, you can never really go back. My years growing up with Cherokee as a second home are some of the most precious memories I have of being with my family. But this is a time to be in the now, not in the past. Like the Oconaluftee River, life changes with each breeze, each drop of rain, each rising and setting of the sun. We can return to a place, but never to a time. This is what my ancestors discovered when they snuck back into their homelands; this is what I know now as well.

A few years ago, in a beautiful coming of full circle in my life, I finally had several art pieces placed for sale in The Medicine Man. It was a moment I can hardly describe, knowing my work belonged there, just like the work of Murv Jacob and the other artists I’d spent years admiring. When I exited the shop that day, I looked out across the street at the ceremonial grounds and remembered dancing there so many times, and seeing my son dance there as well. I turned and looked at the store, at the wooden owl staring back at me from the window. Maybe it was the same one that had always been there, or maybe the artist just made a new one when one sold. I do not know. But I went back a few weeks later and bought that owl. It was my sole purpose for the trip that day; I wanted - or maybe I needed - to place him in the window of my home. I wanted to see it every day and be reminded of The Medicine Man; of the Reservation; of the Great Smoky Mountains; of my ancestors who refused to stay away; of my memories of growing up; of the difference between removal and relocation.

In the creek behind my home that evening, I tossed in a pebble. Ripples formed, spread, then faded away. Still they were there, as I was there. I am now here, but my thoughts dance daily with the word relocation. When, where and how remain unseen. I know only this: The owl goes with me, to sit in the window. And where ever we go, there must be mountains.

Visit The Medicine Man Gallery online at http://medicinemancrafts.com/

*** Sadly, I can not credit the artist who made the owl, there is no name on the bottom, only a cryptic symbol. I'm sure the owner of The Medicine Man knows, however, and when I return to the reservation in a few weeks, I'll ask and post it here.
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Finding Wish Bear

“Mama! I can’t find Wish Bear.”


It’s the tone, more than the words, that capture my complete attention. I hear ‘Mama!’ - usually followed by a request of some sort– all throughout the day, and, like any apt parent, I can easily gauge the speed at which I need to respond by the sound of my child’s voice more than by the actual words he is using.

In this case, I responded immediately, but rather typically – “Have you looked under the bed? In the closet? In your bookbag? In your toybox?” My list went on and grew to include looking under MY bed, in MY closet, under the car seats, behind the couch, in the board game chest, in the linen closet….and I looked again in all the places he’d already looked before. That little pale green bear had, for all practical purposes, simply vanished.

Has my child lost things before? On occasion, yes. There was the little die-cast Tonka bulldozer that he left in a buggy at Wal-Mart, never to be seen again. And the big Fisher Price boat with a deck and a plank that he left by the creek one evening, an evening it would later rain so hard the creek would swell and wash the boat away forever. The soft black bathrobe he loved that inexplicably disappeared on a vacation to the mountains…these are small losses, really. These were shrug-your-shoulders, ‘Oh well’ kind of things, situations I tried to use to teach my child responsibility for his things.

But Wish Bear being lost was an entirely different ball game. You see, I was lucky enough to have a mother who saved most of my favorite toys from childhood. So when my son was born, some of his first toys were the small, moveable Care Bear dolls I’d had growing up. In time, I managed to find a few Care Bear VHS tapes, books, and other assorted items, including a small stuffed Wish Bear that was, upon receipt, firmly instituted as my son’s very favorite toy.

And who wouldn’t love Wish Bear? She’s got not only a pet star named Twinkers who accompanies her everywhere, but the power to grant wishes, as long as they are from the heart and for the good of everyone. Wish Bear went everywhere with us, from the market to the mountains; on every overnight trip; on the planes when we flew abroad; tightly clutched in his arms when he had his tonsils removed. Wish Bear was his comfort during sickness or sadness, a familiar, favorite friend. It was a toy I wanted to keep, to save along with the tiny die-cast blue car he loved to hold in his hand as a toddler; the gown he wore as an infant; the onesies I tie-dyed for him and the set of books we used to come home and read every day. As a single parent who works 40+ hours a week outside of the home at one job while still pursuing dreams of another, I don’t take time to be overly sentimental. Life moves in a blur far too often…but Wish Bear was a constant, a staple, a fixture of my son’s childhood, which is passing by too quickly for my own comfort.

And she was gone. Clearly. I felt a little sick. Not just because Wish Bear was missing, but because a few days before we’d taken loads of items to the donation box at the thrift store. I mean loads of stuff. It’d felt so good to get rid of it, then…but all I could think now was that through some tragic oversight, Wish Bear had found her way into one of those boxes. Nothing else made sense. We had looked everywhere.

I put the thought out of my head, a skill I’ve mastered, and we went to run errands. We picked up my friend’s daughter and went to visit another friend and her daughter at the lake. We found caterpillars and the kids swam. We came home. My son played outside. I planted Black-eyed Susans, drank coffee, and tended my flowerbeds. But when bed-time came, he resumed his hopeless search. A long time later, my son, who already refuses to walk into school with me in the morning, who already insists on picking out his own clothes so he can look ‘cool’, who is already beginning that necessary stage of separation from mom that will last, I know, for the next few decades at least, looked up at me with tears in his eyes.

“I give up,” he said. “Wish Bear is just gone.”

And what could I say? Keep looking? There was no place left to look. He climbed into bed without complaint, and I told him goodnight. I had so many things waiting, after all. So many projects I needed to tackle, a to-do list longer than most people’s weekly agendas. But I couldn’t focus. I had to find that bear.

Amazing how children rearrange and reinvent our priorities for us. I dismissed all of the plans I had and spent my solo evening hours scouring the house yet again, looking in unimaginable places, possessed with a determination to find that Wish Bear. She could not be gone. She represented an entire portion of my son’s young life. And while he would recover from the loss of her, I wasn’t so sure that I would, and it surprised me to realize how desperately I wanted, or needed, to find that little stuffed animal.

And then I did. I found her wedged between a large chest and a small storage bin, in a small space obscured by the drawing tablet propped up beside it. How she came to rest there will forever be a mystery. All I know is this: I’ve accomplished many things in my life, things that have brought me great delight, seemed very impressive, given me monetary rewards or fleeting moments of regional fame. But nothing, I swear, has ever equaled the feeling of being able to place that small stuffed bear into my son’s arms. Nothing.

Parenting isn’t an easy road to begin with. Parenting solo takes the already not-easy road and fills it full of mountains and storms and twists and bends that seem, at times, impossible to navigate. But then, there are these fleeting moments when all is right with the world. Moments when you know you’ve done something spectacularly good for your child, moments when you know, without a doubt, that you have fulfilled a purpose, that you are a hero to someone. No matter how tough you think you are, these moments find their way beneath all of your guards, softening the edges life has hardened around you, enabling you to feel more joy than you ever thought was possible.

Perhaps Wish Bear really does grant wishes after all…