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You are welcome to just skip this one and wait for something better, something pretty, something fun. This may not be your cup of tea.

I am holed up in the office downstairs. This Leunig cartoon showed up on my facebook page this morning. It came on the heels of long distance kindness. Saturday a note came from two old neighbors that were part of our kids childhood. Tears flowed down my face as I read such nice words that they think of me often and hope I am hanging in there. They read my blog just to catch up on Lee and I.

Sunday morning we are at the diner for breakfast. Lee is not in a particularly pleasant mood….which is rare nowadays. He says that he doesn’t want to be there. Without warning again tears drip down as I think, “Is this one more thing I am losing?”

The day before I was talking with my daughter and told her that I honestly think I have lost myself. Now I was thinking that those years of Sunday breakfasts were coming to a close….those silly napkin wrapper things that were something to smile about might be over. I used my napkin to wipe tears away when Lee said I looked sad. He told me his omelette was good to make me feel better. And I told him that I would not count on us always having to go to breakfast on Sunday mornings, that I would ask him first if he wanted to go. We left it there.

And this morning an email from a friend in St. Louis catching me up on her husbands illness as she cares for him. She has in home care assisting, she has relatives that check in daily along with her friends, and her art group has set up a meals delivery service to help her out.

We picked the wrong place to live. I only have the paid for friends of home care. Someone stays with Lee for four hours three times a week so I can come downstairs and do something on my own. Work in the studio on something that I have no idea what to do with afterwards, write on my blog about times when it all seems too much.

I know there are people out there who are in similar situations and they read my words that sometimes help, but not today. Today is a letting-it-out day.

Today is not the time for a once a week call to tell me all the fun things you are doing and the great places you are going. Not today.

It took a couple of months for an out of town friend who regularly visits the folk school to let me know that she could not interest anyone she knew here to come by and check on us…check on me. The only surprise there was she remembered to tell me after two months of, “I am going to get someone to come over.”

I will not take Lee away from the only place he knows. Our doctors are here. We both need that security right now. But I will leave eventually with few regrets….and find a new home closer to those who send the type of kindness that brings tears to my eyes.

On a lighter note for those of you looking after someone with dementia. This morning Lee was thrashing around in the bathroom. He couldn’t get his pants open. On inspection, he had put on two pairs of shorts…one frontwards and one backwards. I told him to pull the whole bunch of clothes down and just sit. I told him,”I’ve been doing it for years and it works just as well.” We both laughed at that.

And lately he knows his arms are supposed to go in the sleeves of his shirt but he has been going up the sleeves from the wrist end and comes to find me with no idea what comes next. When we get the shirt worked off and I remind him to climb up through the bottom he says, “Boy am I stupid.” And I tell him that with two arms things are just twice as hard to figure out….and he is satisfied with that and we move on.

Now he is upstairs with his care giver. The care this one gives is to just sit with him and talk or watch TV. The other one has him doing exercises for his range of motion and memory. He laughs more with the one who makes him move.

I am going to go over to the studio and pick up the papers and cloth that I dyed with Eucalyptus. I am going to bury my nose in them and think of my long distance friends in Australia who are getting ready to head to the Grampians and take workshops, and have flat whites, and try not to buy too much cloth and paper and thread……and….

And I am going to pull myself together. Suck it up.

And as soon as five o’clock comes and the caregiver leaves, I am having a good full bodied single malt and pouring Lee a Southern Comfort….and we will go on the porch and remember better times…..and smile.

Til later.

Back in 1997 I was asked to come teach in Australia for the first time. I owed the invitation to a fellow basket maker who taught very structured, traditional Shaker baskets.  He found himself caught in a nest of very unstructured students who found it hard to settle down with a new material and then being told how to use it. It was a new thing to him because all of his students here in the states were anxious to learn the traditions and techniques of Shaker basketry.

And because he and I shared a need to behave in a non-conforming manner in tightly-ruled basket conferences here in the states, he thought I might be a good fit for the “wildness” down under.  So I got the call.

And I got introduced to Inga, one of the most out of the box thinkers taking workshops. I think Inga and her close companions came to those textile conferences to just be together and do their “own thing.”  Once they got their hands on a new technique or material they were ready to tune out anything that came after.

Once on an early teaching tour down under they were told to “look after Sandy.”  It resulted in Inga coloring my hair red and orange while Charlotte fixed me tomatoes and eggs for breakfast and made sure I ate them.

But that first time I was thrilled that I was going to meet Inga because I was so familiar with her “Robes of the Imperium” series. They were featured in almost every Textile Fibre Forum magazine that I had at the time.  Back in the 90’s if you saw an ad for the magazine, you could send your name to Australia and they sent a magazine to you for free.  I loved Inga’s work, her imagination and her enthusiasm.

Here is one of the robes. Each one was named for the responsibility of the wearer in her imaginary country.  And each one also had a bag they carried.

The Beetle Totem Forrest People’s Robe.  Inga had skills in paper making and textiles.  And as I recall a degree in anthropology.  All this came together in the series. This one even has the shells of Christmas beetles attached. The robes averaged about ten to twelve inches high.

Here is the gathering basket for the Forrest People.

These works were the ultimate in “mixed media”, an area of art making that was drawing almost all of us who leaned toward the tactility of fibers at the time.

Because my workshops were not technically structured, more idea based, Inga signed up for a few of them over the years.  She sat near the back, kept to herself and produced some of the most interesting things.  Most times she would even prepare a special book to use in the class. In them she would make drawings and take notes.  Inga poured herself into the time we had together and I had the pleasure of watching it all happen.

This is a piece she did in my class as the start of a series of “Unwilling Journeys”.  It was all about the women in her family that were taken to places without being given a choice….from an early slave taken from Africa to Haiti to her and her mother arriving in Western Australia via a ship carrying “orphans” from England shortly after WWII.  Her heritage was rich for expressions in artwork.

When she first made the top layer and thought that was “it”, she said, “It looks like a biscuit tray.”  I told her that it did not have to but could be a part of another larger piece with more attached to it.  She just kept building and building and making and making.  I loved watching her work.

One of the many books she showed me in her studio several years later.  Inga could layer so much meaning onto the pages.  This one is completely stitched in kantha marks.  I will note here that several artist books made in Australia have this long horizontal format.  I think it is the influence of the land that just stretches out forever.  And I do know that just looking at this book makes me want to go in the studio and make one for myself….stacks and stacks of pages that are later bound together in something that feels so intimate and exciting as this one.

And she could easily switch to obsessive drawing and using bright colors.

This skeleton stands in her studio and wears some of Inga’s jewelry collection.

This page from another one of her artist books has a section that I believe comes from Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step by Edward deBono.  That book was in my bibliography for students and was about the only handout I ever gave out in class.  My own copy sits on the vanity in the bathroom near my studio.

And this was the last time I saw Inga in Katoomba deep in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.  We sat in a cafe sharing a bottle of Yellow Tail red wine with our mutual friend, Kath.  Inga was catching us up on her latest projects.  As I recall it was a book of drawings all about illnesses and waiting rooms.

I think it was Inga’s unique approach to what she wanted to say as an artist that got me invited to Australia in the first place.  As my traditional friend told me upon his return, “Sandy, some of them even have tattoos and dress up like Cleopatra.”  She did have great clothes, jewelry and a beautiful look about her.  She inspired me as a student and an artist and was even a good dance partner.  I think the last time I danced was with Inga maybe twelve years ago.

I will forever be grateful for the experience of knowing her, her work and her non-conformities.

So there is another artist……I will look for more for later.

Til then.