Birthday – Seventy-Seven and Doing Okay

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I trimmed the bolted lettuces, nasturtiums and blooming parsley from the pots on the deck just now. Some shoved in with the ever-present rosemary stems I keep on the counter.

My drawing yesterday had to do with my birthday coming and going and a turned bowl Lee made several years ago. I love that he was such a practical use wood worker who seldom made things just to appreciate their forms.

These bits of stitching added to the book remind me of what it has taken to keep things together. They are small autobiographical patches of who I was and am becoming. It is so soothing to hold the pieces together with stitch. Touch is so important to holding onto ourselves, our memories, our need to record days gone by in a very physical, tactile way. Like my memory of places I long for in Australia stitched into this long panel that hangs over my love seat in the den. It is much longer than this detail…fifty some inches by six.

I was recently advising a friend in Australia that getting through hard times on a daily basis could be helped by stitching into a long scroll. Each day with its good and bad can be marked in some way with scraps of cloth and threads and then rolled up tight and held in the non-stitching hand waiting for the next day to be recorded and hidden. I was not only inspired by my own strip of longing for Australia but also a stitched piece of textile artist, Carolyn Sullivan. I think hers was more about recording a place in her extended travels throughout Australia. I loved how at times it appeared to be an endless documentation lovingly told through stitch and cloth.

After recording and rolling the days up tight they can be stored next to each other in a box. And later pulled out unwrapped and viewed as the beautiful strips of cloth they will end up to be….hopefully the hard times will give way to the beauty of release. In the meantime each is a meditation on the struggles life can toss our way that need tending to.

And about that birthday! The evening dinner from Patrick…more oyster shooters with popovers and a lovely Caesar Salad.

He has gone back home now that all his work here is finished, not least of which was helping to get Lee settled.

And I dug out my night critters pieces wondering how to frame them up. 8 x 10 frames were too tight. So another backing of cloth enlarged them enough to fit nicely into 11 x 14 frames. Now I just need to order some more in that size.

Today I am going to paste in an old etching I did of Australian landscape that has patched cloth added to it and on a facing page I will draw the Eucalyptus leaves someone sent me. I am missing that country today and this will help get me past it. Like rolling the scroll up, I can turn the page tomorrow and think of something else. Maybe these small pieces of driftwood my daughter put in her rock tumbler to make them irresistible to the touch for her father and me.

Til later…

 

Some Good Days

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I saw this sign on our walk this morning at the dam. It seemed appropriate for me now. I can stop watching and waiting for what I need to do next for Lee. It is out of my hands and the care he needs now is not at all what I or even the Memory Care Home can do for him.

It will be a couple of weeks before I can see him and only after I make an appointment and he is brought out to where I will be. I will never see his room but know that his favorite cow picture that I painted in 1984 and his television are in there, And as of this morning his recliner.

In that wing they wander in and out of each other’s rooms and yesterday Lee was seen wearing someone’s hat and carrying his stuffed cat under his arm. He is on another medication to keep him from getting overly agitated but having his cat to hold onto helps. It is the process of dementia and they are equipped there to understand and help him.

Here is his view if he gets near a window.

I took the Ankaret Dean basket that I bought at an exhibition in Canada in 1988 and kept in our living room ever since. It was what I took to his room in Memory Care for his sticks if he continued to collect them. He did not but put all his small rocks in it with feathers and some postcards. When an attempt was made by him or cleaning staff to pick it up, it became unraveled.

I decided to put it on the trail for me to continue to put feathers and rocks inside. I can see it from my studio.

It has been pushed into this old stump by the trail so with the rocks for additional weight it will be hard to knock loose. Come fall I will fill it with the beautiful leaves he and I found last year.

Our son, Patrick will return home this Saturday. He has been so helpful and fun to have around. I will miss our “board” meals.

Speaking of meals, I am going out to dinner tonight for the first time in almost two years. We are meeting friends at a local brewery to eat on the screened porch. I will comb my hair and maybe even try a bit of lipstick. Earrings too. It will feel so strange to be sitting with no mask, eating, having tacos and a beer with other people around. It will give me a chance to practice being sociable.

This morning I did more drawings of daisies and coreopsis growing among the weeds by the shed.  My yard man is woefully overdue.

Til later…

 

Much Much Better

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Yesterday we walked the other side of the river at the Riverwalk in Murphy. It is beautiful and so well maintained. I gathered goose feathers to do drawings of while waiting for phone calls.

We moved Lee yesterday to a nursing home just twenty minutes from me and near the walks at the dam. He was not exactly who our son was but took the hour drive good naturedly going from one place to another. The new people seem as happy to have him as the other place was glad to see him go after trying all they could legally do to treat him there, and coming up short.

We celebrated with the Copper Doors gift of a sumptuous Pinot Noir last night.

And this morning at the dam a lovely shot of fog finally lifting on our situation.

I just returned from moving everything but large pieces of furniture from Lee’s old room….just five weeks after I dropped him there. Now a bit more paper work and we can both settle down.

Til later.

Not Yet

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I think Lee is getting closer to being moved to the Nursing Home near me. It has been another week of distress as paperwork gets to the right places. It is so complicated and difficult to keep track of that I keep a stack of different pads of paper for each person involved as we work through the process.

Surely next week…..

In the meantime. Walks to the dam.

This morning I decided to look in the other direction and focus on things that depict a more hopeful perspective.

Surprises from friends and family.

Coated strawberries arriving via FedEx with a lovely note from “The Gs”.

A take out order of Oyster Shooters from a favorite restaurant that thoughtfully threw in popovers and a lovely bottle of Pinot Noir.

Patches needed to spend the night at the vets due to a severe upper respiratory infection. Patrick picked up the cat, the tab, and the oysters before coming back home. She is so much better.

I did another page in the book using an old print of myself on cloth. Then drawings of parts of sticks Lee brought in and a bourbon straight up.

It is nice having someone here to share meals with. It gives me practice with being around other people. Covid and Lee’s and my circumstances have had a way of keeping me isolated these past few years.

Today Patrick is putting in a higher speed modum for the computer system, installing a “see-all” camera for the doorbell/front door so I can see from the studio who is here. Then he will readjust the dryer vent outside so that I can reach it to clean the screen of accumulated lint.

And today I went back to carving.

This an old pine plank that I carved of a male figure based on some work I was doing on masculinity in graduate school. Now I am completely removing that section of “feelings” to fill in with smaller prints of how things change in the life of a man. How “what matters” is so temporary. I would like a long series of them in a row on some Japanese kozo paper that will take the number of male figures I would like.

It feels good to carve away what was there and think about the small carvings that will fill each one’s center.

Til later…..