FAMILY AT CHRISTMAS or ROMANCING THE STONE

THE FAMILY STONE is one of my favorite movies, not because Diane Keeton is dying, but because everyone has to fiercely protect the things that they love, even if that causes a dance where people shift partners and learn to respect new values. My favorite son (my only one) and his lovely wife arrive tomorrow. They will pull in right behind my husband who has been fixing broken pipes at our cabin in the Trinity Alps. And while I'm writing they are enjoying a night together at the cabin. My daughter and her significant other come the next morning and my other daughter and her husband will dance in and out as they go back and forth to their own home with my grandson and soon to be granddaughter. The next four nights are full of family and family extension dinners. For those of you that aren't old enought, that means we are all grandparents and our families now fill our houses...which means a separate night is involved to get the WHOLE family together. Chaos! And as an only child, chaos and the love of people we are close to is all I have ever wanted. Well, not really. I didn't know chaos might be a byproduct.

Once in a while you feel your life come full circle. When we lived in villages in Alaska, we had the same kind of chaotic Christmas week. We had a "village" family. The girls came to our house to bake and create crafts to share. We met at the dance hall, the drums beat and we danced and the kids were given gifts from Santa. Then village families joined their family of relatives. always telling us we could join them. But it was time for many of the teachers on the delta to enjoy their own family committment...to meet in a bigger school, where there was a gym or an extra classroom for the mom's and kids to sleep in. We layed pallettes on the floor and the kids all went to sleep, not caring who they were next to. If we had met these other couples in Sebastopol, where everyone had their own families to go to, our kids would never have known the idea of a village family, or a family of friends. We are lucky. In my family's world there are so many different kinds of families.

During the holidays... Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, etc. the idea of a family can become stereotyped. A mother, a father, a tree, a menorah, and don't forget the gifts! For those who have widened their circle, we should all be grateful...for those who work at food banks, share shifts at hospitals, take the extra shifts at grocery stores so that other can go home, recognize that we are all a part of a bigger family, a wider circle.
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I think that those of us who write and share our art are also looking for the bigger family.... a group that is open to hearing our story, and is willing to share theirs. And we are looking, often for the greatest gift... listeners. These are the people who listen to our stories, then tell their own so that our own circle can widen.

PIECES OF CHRISTMAS

Several years ago I wrote and illustrated a book called PIECES OF CHRISTMAS. It is about Santa calling the North Wind to recycle all the letters he's answered.

When Santa returns from making his rounds,

the letters he's answered lie drifted in mounds.

He calls the North Wind to swirl them around,

And pieces of Christmas cover the ground.

I wish we could break up what we try to do and feel at Christmastime, and at other holidays through the year, into pieces. I wish a piece of that feeling would land on us every day....talking to a loved one, creating something just from us out of love, giving more than taking, and a belief in something magical about to happen. I have been wondering why some of us, including me, save these good feelings, good thoughts and generous actions for times around holidays. I do know that these pieces often come unrecognized at other times of the year. But during the holidays we are more open to receiving them. We just have to listen, not to the earthly news, but to sounds of goodness that are all around us. As the poem for the stamp above says,

The vole performed throughout the night...

He violined in black and white,

While people stopped to hear the sound

of Christmas coming from the ground.

For all of you who have put extra stamps, exotic stamps. collectors stamps on Christmas mail to us, thank you . They are like small magical windows to look through. And like any perfect gift, they tell me that you know a little about me. As we exchange gifts and thoughts during the holidays, let us share small pieces of ourselves and let us continue to share these pieces after the holidays.

Oh, and usually I connect this with writing. All I can say is that when we write, we need to share a piece of ourselves. It is our greatest gift to give.

REPACKAGING

Ok, no more reflection. First it was reflection as I went through the year...and cleaned out my studio with its old memorabilia, but today was purging time. Time to throw out the old so that there is room for the feeling of Aaaahhh! that this time of year is supposed to bring. I threw out over 30 oil paintings today, and it felt good. I through out slips of paper with story ideas...something I tell people never to do. But I have a little more confidence that they will come back in some other form if they are important.
The paintings I threw out were not wasted. They led to something better, and now it's time to let them go. Who knows, someone at the recycling center may have that aaaahhh! feeling when they find them. But if I don't have it anymore, they just take up space....and they don't just take up space in the studio and shop, they take up brain space and they use energy. They keep you looking backward, unless they are that unusual idea that you are glad you rediscovered and now are thinking of packaging differently.
Speaking of packaging... about ten or twelve years ago my family started packaging Christmas and other holidays in a different form. My kids and I joined other soccer players in the county and had a Turkey Bowl at Thanksgiving, a Christmas Bowl, a New Year's Day get-yourself-out-of-bed game, and an Easter Game. People have had to pull out at different times. They are pregnant, like my daughter...they are out of town, they have injuries, etc. After the last knee surgery I can't play, but I still go...to watch my kids and their spouses and significant others. It is a tradition as important as sitting around the table. And afterwards, just before each family goes to their own homes for holiday dinners, we join at the bar for a beer. We toast each other, catch up on news, and know that we will see each other again at the next holiday.
This year, one of our players, a coach at a local high school, died scuba diving, and on Christmas Day we will toast him, his wife, and his love of life.
So what does that have to do with this time of year? Today a friend and I were talking about what Christmas used to mean to us. We agreed that it was the magic.... not knowing what would happen but having some traditions to look forward to.
So here is my question, now that you have made space for this time of year. What is the magic you remember from your past that you hope to find again, and what are some of the changes in tradition that you have made in the last few years? How are you repackaging things this year?

And to those of you who are writers, did I tell you that I have had to get rid of some old ideas in a new manuscript? I was hanging on to them because they were part of the original idea. Out with the old, let them develop into something new...something that comes in a wonderful new package.

A TIME FOR REFLECTION

How did this year go by so fast? I can't tell you all the things I thought I would have done by now, and here I sit, knowing that this is the end of fall...that next week not only brings winter and Christmas rush, but that the week after that brings a whole new year. I need a day to fluff out my feathers enjoy the brisk air and spend some time reflecting. LOON REFLECTIONS was started as a different piece of art while we lived in Alaska. The loons would call through the mist on the lakes in the delta and sounded lonely. Then we would hear another loon call back. They weren't really sociable yet, just announcing their arrival in the spring, or making their last calls in the fall before leaving. They were content to be alone a good share of the time. The air was heavy and full of moisture during those times. In the spring, it was a last chance to rest before the frenzy of mating, nesting and feeding started. In the fall, it was a time to rest up before another time of transition started.... to put away summer and fall and clear their mind for the time ahead.

As an artist, it is time not just to think about the year, but to clean my studio, to put my old work away in safe places or to display it on the wall, a time to put away reference materials from old projects and get rid of the clutter that keeps me from focusing on new projects. It's the job I have put off for weeks because it means stopping the "starting" of new work... time to throw out old pens that are dried, and pencils too short to use, and to rearrange my books.
It is my week to be almost alone so that when the holidays start and family comes home I can have a new energy to focus on being together.

I worked silently most of the day today, throwing things out, clearing spaces and rearranging , calling out once in a while to let people know I'm here, but not sociable. When the winter solstice comes next week, I hope to have a clear mind and a less cluttered space to work and live in.

THE CHILD IN US

I am an aging, like everyone else, and yet, when the holidays come, whatever holiday it is, I become a child again....that little girl that has spiritual tradition or belief, whether religion or custom or modern politics goes with that or not. For that I can thank my parents who never ushered me into adulthood in a hurry. I think as children we know what is right...maybe not the fine tuning, but the basic instinct of right and wrong, or good .

The image at the right is from my imagination mixed with the real part of my life. While sitting on a snowy, rainy day, literally stuck in our cabin in the Trinity Mts., I started thinking of a friend and her baby's babysitter Olga Michael, and how later, this woman from Kwethluk, Alaska, had been canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church as a saint. We just knew her as Hope's babysitter and a typical Yup'ik woman...full of nurtering and love, and common sense, one of the Grandmothers of our time. and full of belief that the mothers she helped with babies, and that this little girl that she took care of on a paid basis, and her mother, needed something that she could offer.

I am fascinated with icons, no matter where they are from, and their relationship to the child in us. So, while this painting is just a sream of thought about those who go before us in age or time, hanging stars in the sky for us we do not have to grow up yet, we have already created visual images to embody them in.

And as we approach Christmas, Hannukah or any other tradition that brings out the child in us, I hope the memories of how we celebrated these new periods of hope and memory bring out the child in us that felt like there was a lifetime of possibility to look forward to. And since most of us who are reading this are not children in age anymore, it is a time to reflect, not only on all those childhood dreams that have come true in one form or another, but on all the possibilites that are still open to us.

If you are a writer, pull out all those manuscripts that didn't get finished and see what the possibilites are that lie within them, and for those of us that are visual, go back to sketches and think about the excitement they were produced with. The child in us knows that they were good. Don't let the adult in you doubt that.

WAITING

Last year I gave my cousin, a close friend and advisor, a golden next with three glass eggs. I felt like one of the many things we both had in common was that we were waiting for a grandchild. She is waiting for her first and I am waiting for our second, a granddaughter who will arrive in March, just two months ahead of her grandson. So this fall I put the image at the left into print. It is called WAITING, for while it is our children and their spouses waiting to see what this new nest will hold, we are waiting as well. We can't quite picture the changes that this new arrival will bring to our lives and to theirs. It is a time of anticipation and my tendency is to focus so much on the next big event I forget to look at all of the things unfolding around me.

So as I wind up a year of new experiences that have hatched for me, I am mostly grateful for all the things that happened while I was waiting for what I thought would be big roadmarks in my life. Some of those eggs have been sitting in my nest for a long time...so long that I thought they would never hatch. A visiting professorship at Hollins University, art shows in Homer and Anchorage Alaska, joining a gallery in Sebastopol, finishing manuscripts and my new book, PAINTING THE SKY, and more study of cave paintings. But the egg that has finally hatched is something more personal. The realization that this year is a year of becoming stronger with other people. Giving credence to my own direction. In the meantime my children and my grandson are the most signigicant stories in my year.

This year reminds me of some of the books that I started to write and a great book for writers that my son gave my called The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo. It says to start writing and write till the subject becomes the background, the story beneath the intitial zing that got your started writing the story or poem in the firs place. The initial subject that your are writing about needs to be written about until it becomes background for the true essence of the story....the egg that is waiting to hatch.

So while we look at eggs in a nest with a great sense of wonder, or an idea for a story, or a list of what we think will be our next great accomplishment or adventure, we need to remember that they are only shells that hold something deeper inside, something that is waiting to fly free when it is time. Our job is to write, to create, to live our surface story of acheivements until we find out that something more than we were imagining on the surface has come to life.

If life were a novel we would find out that while we were living above the plot line with all of our actions, something deeper and more meaningful was developing below the plot line with all of our characters.

For those of you that are writers, or people who are waiting to see where the next idea or event is going, give yourself a gift this year. Here are some suggestions. THE TRIGGERING TOWN by Richard Hugo, ON WRITING by Stephen King, WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT by Dennis Palumbo, THE SPYING HEART by Katherine Paterson. I am taking them off the shelf to reread them as my Christmas gift.

A COZY HOLIDAY TEA AND WHACKY CAKE

This afternoon I attended the Gateway Council Holiday Tea with my friend Marsha Arnold. It is the first of a series of holiday events and receptions that combine people who share a passion for the arts and for reading. There are many who form the backbone of the local reading council.... Carla, Marie, Paula, and others who have spent their entire lives not only raising families, but also fulfilling their passion for teaching, either in the classroom or by running our community and school libraries . They match children with good books, which means not only knowing children well, but also knowing the vast variety of books available.
I stay connected to our local reading council not only because we share a similar interest, but because it connects me with people who constantly give themselves to creating the next generation. These people are the ones who create the people who will run our future.
So what about Whacky Cake? The refreshments at the Holiday Tea were made from recipes in a book called Taste of Literacy...a collection of recipes by authors around the state. Marie made my Whacky Cake. Barbara Winslow would be proud. She is the writer of DANCE ON A SEALSKIN, a book I illustrated, that recaptures some of our dancing experiences in Alaska. Barbara always did things the easiest way, and this cake is all made in the baking pan. Only one dish to wash when you are done.....and it's chocolate!
So this afternoon I got to combine one more thing with my love for reading and the arts....food and memories of living in Alaska. When it was Christmas several (sometimes 15) teaching families gathered together in one school on the Yukon or Kuskokwim Rivers in Alaska for Christmas. We did not have time to go to our homes in the lower 48 and join our 'real' families for Christmas, so we formed our own. We flew in, snowmachined in, and divided up the cooking. We layed out palettes for the children to sleep on in one of the classsrooms and the mom's slept with them on the floors. My kids remember bouncing from lap to lap with all of our teaching friends, going to the village activities, and playing in the snow.
Christmastime is often a time for nostalgia and for remembering old friends who are still friends, and this afternoon I was reminded that part of Christmas in Alaska was Whacky Cake..... there was always Whacky Cake.
So, if your are out there Barb, we are having Whacky (Crazy) Cake for Christmas here this year.
We will dump the following ingredients into a 13x9 baking pan and stir till all the lumps are gone (sounds like what life does to all of us)
2 cups suger
3 cups flour
1t salt
1/2 c cocoa...as in Hersheys Dark
2t soda
2t vinegar
2t vanilla
2/3 c salad oil
2 c water

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 min

I laughed when I read the last line...good cake for company if you are out of eggs. We were always out of eggs in the village!

MAGICAL CONNECTIONS

Years ago I created a book that felt like magic for the whole time I worked on it. It is called PIECES OF CHRISTMAS and was a gift to me from Holt. They let me work on a surreal idea....a set of poems set inside a snow globe with the premise that Santa calls the North Wind to recycle the letters he's answered...."he calls the North Wind to swirl them around, and pieces of Christmas come falling down ". Each piece of Christmas is a stamp torn from an envelope, with a poem. The image on the left is part of the spread for the following poem:

On Pennsylvania Avenue
Possums pray for me and you-
Please bless this world and bless this town
and those whose lives are upside down.

At the end of the book you find yourself watching Santa fall asleep after delivering his gifts. The stamps are part of the quilt he is sleeping under and the pieces of Christmas...the fragments of letters my own children wrote that Santa sent back to me...are now part of the snow in the globe. My editors knew it was a long shot but believed in dreams. The book monetarily has not done as well as my others, but I think there is something more important about it. Those who like it, love it in the way we are thrilled when we feel those unexpected connections, forming in our brains. Universal studios used a spread from the book in a movie and the director bought the picture. I think he knows how to make those magical connections as well. As an artist and a writer, those are the connections I hope for.

If you were a possum, or a person like me you would find yourself thinking that we have turned our values upside down in the last ten years and are only now trying to right ourselves. The one thing we can hang on to is our mind's ability to make connections that are new and exciting, whether they explain our real world that we deal with or the imaginary world that we are trying to form.

I take care of my grandson, Jack, one day a week. It is a day of sitting on the "apple porch" where we eat our apples off the tree (I'll be buying those soon), getting eggs from Donna's chickens and cooking them for lunch and making magical connections. Yesterday he watched my dog, Blue, chase vultures in the sky. I ask him if Blue could catch the vultures. He is almost two and he told me "Blue need wings to catch birds." He didn't tell me Blue couldn't catch birds, just told me the next step. He astounded me. His mind is building those magical connections that tell a story. Last night as the moon came up, we sat on the porch before we took him home, and Jack said, "Blue catch the moon". When I looked at him, he said, "Blue need wings to fly to catch the moon". Then he grinned and said, "Teasing Grandma." I looked at him in wonder as I realized he is already learning how to craft a story that makes him happy.

That night, while having dinner with my daughter and her husband, they told me he could tell a joke. They said, "Jack, can you tell a joke?" His response was "JOKE!" and the laughter of a standup comedian. While my husband says I'm the one telling this story, he has to admit those first magical connections are being formed in our grandson's young mind.

And for those of us being asked to underestimate the connections that young children can make while reading books, or being read to, I have to say, we need to counter that with the fact that our main job is to form new magical connections in their minds.

THE COLOR OF AIR

The image at the left is called Sonoma County Evening. It is imaginary, and yet it looks like most of the fall evenings in Sonoma County. After standing outdoors and painting many sketches of an area outside of Penngrove, I put my memories of those evenings painting into one picture. It is what I love about being able to create your own memory on paper.

The air in Sonoma County is always full of color. There are crystals of fog that collect the sunlight and crystals of condensation that paint the sky in the evening as the moisture in the fall rises from the ground. The sky becomes a canvas that is the beginning of the story of that time and that place. In some places a yellow sky means smog, in others, it means a sunset, but the color of the air around us always tells a story. And in a painting, smog and fog can both be beautiful. And the color of the air affects the colors of everything between us and the objects in the distance that we gaze at. I have had the same painting mentor for 5 years and she always says, "don't do anymore to the forground till you get the sky in." A yellow sky goes in and all of the colors in the hills need some yellow in them. A sky of light value makes the foreground darker. A sky of warmth needs to sparkle off of the objects in the picture.

In writing I think the sky becomes the setting, the culture, the time and the place. All of these things sit comfortably in the background so that the story itself stands out. In the foreground we avoid telling a story that doesn't match the background. In the painting above, I could not put smoke rising from the chimney. But even though that is a lovely thought, this is a warm evening, late in the summer and smoke from the chimneys would automatically place your eye on the buildings. Then I would have to add more detail to make that story make sense and pretty soon the peacefulness that I felt when I started the picture, the feeling of gazing at a sky full of color that paints the hills, would be lost.

How do I know? Because I have two drawers full of manuscripts that are overtold and need to be edited, two drawers of stories where the culture, the rhyme, the folklore template stood out as the main story and not as the underpainting and the background. They are pieces of work that I allowed to spin away from the story in order to keep a pet phrase or paragraph in tact. And for every painting like the one above, for every illustration in a book, I have ten that did not capture the essence of what I went after. But they did help me get to where I wanted to go.

So what is the color of air? Let me know what a yellow sky means to you, or a green sky, or a red sky. I'd like to know.