Old and new stuff, Obama!

When I was four years old, my new friend, Juliet, came over to our house. (In those days no one called this a 'play date') In the course of that first day, we were to take a nap together on my parents' big bed. I noticed that my new friend was not wearing an undershirt! This was my first experience in knowing that people are different and it didn't actually matter if you wore an undershirt or not. As the years passed and Juliet and I became best friends forever and we grew up; the things that mattered were what books we read, where we would go in the woods, what imaginary games we would play, and later on, the boys we loved. And still, the books we read.
Today, the differences are far different from what undergarments a kid wears. Our public schools are full of colorful children, the differences mostly about class, not color.
In my elder life, in my retirement from a lifetime of teaching in a private school, I realize that the most compelling issue of my adult life has been about race in America. I have struggled to make my private school welcoming to blacks and I have tried and been lacking.
This is why I will vote for Obama. I will readily play the race card. I believe that Obama is a brilliant person, no doubt. I think that Obama will be the hope for change that African-Americans can support. Perhaps I am putting too much responsibility on him, to think that he can (hopefully!) bring that quarter of our American population into the mainstream of America.
I want to see our prisons free of having a majority of black men incarcerated there. I want to see black children have two parents who care about them. And I want to see the day when the sun shines on all our colorful people and we all rejoice together and go forward to address our needs and desires. I believe Obama has this best chance.

Our Children are not our Children

I love my family and I want to encircle them all in my arms and have everyone be here together. I felt this most intensely after 9/11, but none of them were here, and we wept alone. Our three children have been given wings to fly, and they now live their own lives..
Today, we anticipated the wonderful birthday party for two of our grandchildren who were arriving from thousands of miles away. We hadn't seen them for six months. Our oldest grandchild was also here for his spring vacation. And we had our youngest grandson and his mom here as well. My sister and her husband were coming, and our nephew and a couple of friends-a full house.
Before the gang from far places arrived, we had all the beds made up, the dog hairs vacuumed from the carpets, and the major volcano cake constructed and decorated. (It erupts with steam from dry ice and spews out red lava.)
It was a long day. We cannot do anything very purposeful that is a part of our regular lives. We wait for arrivals and empty the dishwasher many times, do lots of laundry loads, and prepare meals for the multitudes. In bits and pieces we connect with each family member.. I spend time at the barn with my two small grandsons, hugely enjoying a ball game. They are three and four, so different from each other, a white blonde and a redhead, but they are interested in each other and quickly find a common interest in little cars and vehicles. I see a physical commonality in the cheeks, the toes. The youngest grandchild, Caroline, joins the group. She is a very beautiful child, so delicate and petite at two, very self-contained. She doesn't know me and is wary. She takes her cue from her trusted brother and allows me to woo her.
In this family visit I think I am better than I have ever been. I have no particular expectations and take the visit hour by hour. I hear our daughter inviting her brother and family to come down to her place nearby and for one nano second I think "Oh, no! These precious people can't leave for a day!" But, then, I do a self-correct, and recognize that this is what the visit is all about.
Our oldest grandson, now fourteen, is here by himself. What a magnificent young person he is! He particularly wanted to meet his youngest cousin and he is so great with the toddlers and the three dogs. He is eager and willing to help out with whatever needs doing and he is amazingly forthcoming about his life and interests. He loves to go out in the truck with his grandfather who lets him drive. This is a really gifted boy who is very connected to family.

The weirdness of time

As I put the leftovers I will have for lunch into the microwave I think that these sixteen seconds will never be mine again. Another period of time, however short, is gone. Bing! At my age, I think of these things sometimes. Maybe I have another thirty years to go.
All my life I have thought about time. When I was five I couldn't tell time on our living room clock and it was a frustration to me that it didn't have proper numbers, just modernistic dots that other people could decipher, but not me. I couldn't wait to get a watch, and for all my life, a watch has been indispensable to me. I need to have a clock I can see in the dark on my bedside table. For trips where the clock is problematic, I always take my 'moonglow' watch so I can know even in the dark what time it is. For many years we have had a functioning cuckoo clock and that little bird belts out the hours and half hours faithfully. When sleepless, I hear it in the kitchen. I feel the time passing.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to all that time. There were so many stops in time. In elementary school I looked at the classroom clock at noon on Wednesdays and thought that this week was halfway over, only two and a half days until the weekend when I could read for hours or go out into the woods for adventures.
Each summer I spent a week or so with my friend,Juliet, and her family in a cottage on Lake Ontario. The rule was that no one had a watch or a clock. This was heavenly! We got up with the dawn and spent all day messing about in our canoe and came back to the cottage when it felt like time. We read Shakespeare out loud until the light failed.
There are discreet lumps of time we all have- middle school, high school, college, graduate school- and we remember the events and people and some of the ideas we had then. The years of young marriage, new careers and having young children pass in a blur. I look back (with the help of photo albums) and wish I could have enjoyed it more. But time was passing, and where did it go?
I can't believe I am an elderly person now. I look at the cheeks of my best friend, my age, and see her lined and beautiful face. I am sure I look the same, though in my bones I feel I am the same ten year old I have always been, lithe, skinny and smooth skinned. But now, with all that time passed, I am wiser, fatter, experienced, and more open to new adventures!
Right now, I want to enjoy every moment. But that is as elusive as ever. Sometimes I now forget to put on my watch after my morning shower. But not for long. Soon I must retrieve it so I can start the day and monitor my productivity.

The politics of hope

Back then, when we could first cast our votes, we voted for JFK. We were excited to think we could do our part to elect a president, a young man, who asked us what we could do for our country.
Those were heady times and we young people were ready to join the Peace Corps or do whatever it took to make our country great. We started many non-profits, lived in communes, participated in Earth Day. Our hair grew long. The charisma of this young president gave so many of us hope for a future we couldn't even imagine. We trusted him.
When the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, my new young husband and I drove to Vermont from Providence where we were students. On that weekend, we took our savings of two thousand dollars and bought fifty acres of wilderness. We grabbed the brass ring. We were scared that tomorrow would never come and we would be blasted away by Soviet warheads. We stayed that weekend in some sort of hostelry nearby. I recall walking in the snow, hoping against hope that our young president would pull us through.
After the weekend we returned to our classes at Brown and Harvard, intact. Diplomacy had prevailed. Those hours and the aftermath of relief are still indelible in my mind. I look back and think how magnificent our young president was. This young president had wisdom.

Now, almost fifty years later, I have the visceral memory of wanting change so badly it hurt. In fifty years the world has changed into something we could not have imagined then. There are now some delicious possibilities out there. In the last election I worked so hard, as did so many others, to get the current occupant OUT. But it seemed that so many people had one issue (guns, gays, abortion) and those prevailed.

This time, we know that we are getting the current occupant out. His time is over. Now it is about change and hope and going on. This election is so much more full of hope than any others of recent past. I will not vote for an old white guy, especially an old white guy who will continue to protect the rich, and bend to the religious right in their fears of change of the status quo.
I will vote for the candidate who envisions a USA of possibilities, who sees this magnificent country as a place where every child can get the health care needed, who sees that we need to mend our fences in a global economy, who sees the need to protect our planet. I will vote for a candidate who knows the importance of safeguarding civil rights. I will vote for a candidate who includes all of us Americans of every color and class into the valuable fabric of our communal culture.
We have some good candidates, none of them republican, as far as I can see now. It is your responsibility to choose.

Personal Quilts

This is one of the personal quilts I have made for friends. This one was for my friend, Anne, the quintessential turtle expert in the entire world. I think it now hangs behind her bed.
I must have made more than a hundred quilts, always for other people. When I make these I think intensely of the person for whom I am making the quilt. This means that I think about my subjects for hours and hours. Lots of quilts are for young people who were once my students. I do not make quilts for anyone. It takes a long time to conceive the design, and much longer to make that design into a workable quilt. Making quilts is also expensive. I make quilts for young friends who care to connect with me.
I love to make graduation quilts for young people going off to college, or graduate school or getting doctorates. I like making marriage quilts. These quilts are full of love (and dog hairs!).
My quilts are not traditional ones. I am self-taught, idiosyncratic and a bit crazy. My quilts are strange collages, mostly machine sewed but with lots of hand-sewed attachments.
This evening I have placed on the floor of my studio the quilt for Maddy, who is soon to graduate from high school. This one is almost finished, and I am happy with the colors and the content. I have yet to pick the color of the backing.
I have three other quilts to complete before spring! Alex, Katie, and Sarah need quilts as well. These are all kids who were my students and who have continued to make connections with me. I love them so much and I will make the quilts for them to take to college, thinking all the while about them.