Over the horizon

One month until summer, and I'm perched on the cusp of the season, considering the view, wondering what will unfold in the hot, humid days on the hazy horizon and what lies beyond the life I'm living now. Summer always raises the ghost of my younger self and resurrects the dreams I had, the life I imagined, the need to keep dreaming.

On my recent drive through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I realized I'm probably not ever going to live there, among pastures, cattle, and wildflowers. I always envisioned myself as a rustic country girl, but time and experience revealed me to be a nature lover who appreciates the culture and convenience of small cities. I still seek out trees and trails, gardens and wildflowers. I worship a dramatic sky, but I haven't swam in a river in many years. I didn't learn to ski,  rock climb, ride horses, or backpack on the Appalachian Trail. I let go of all those intentions, for reasons simple and complicated.

While that youthful version of myself never came into being, my dream of  building a home and family did. It has been a different experience than the one I expected as an idealistic teenager, but here I am, decades later, still with the same partner, raising two children (though at 16 I dreamed of four). I work at creating a home that most of time is a peaceful respite from the world beyond. I've heard therapists say that a happy childhood sustains a person for their entire life. I'm hoping that's true and that long after I'm gone, my children will be able to revisit the home and life we had in memory and draw strength and inspiration from it.

I wanted to be a writer--always. And I have been a writer--always.

I wanted to travel and possibly live overseas, and I have traveled and lived overseas.

I never expected to be an artist, and now it looms large in my consciousness. I've dabbled in art for a few years now, but my dream is to explore it more deeply and freely, to try and to fail and discover what I am capable of in the process. That's the frontier I'm traveling toward, the life I hope to immerse myself in once the demands of parenting have lessened and my days aren't consumed with driving, cooking, housekeeping, and shopping.

Maybe I'll work for a non-profit.

Maybe I'll learn to garden.

Maybe I'll get to be a grandmother.

Maybe we'll spend part of the year living somewhere else (this really appeals to me).

As doors shut on some of my old dreams, new ones are tapping gently at the window in the starlight, just like Peter Pan. When the house empties of children, I'll be able to raise the sash and invite them in and see what happens next.

What have you left in the dust? What are you peering at over the horizon?

The long and winding road

...that leads to my heart.

Sunday drive with the ones I love. Heart wrapped in stone and leaf, twig and sky.

Bare-boned and lush, growing and dying, shadow and light, enduring and blue.

 Memories rest, rise, bloom again.

Lone tree, heathered meadow. Big sky, big love.

Shifting winds, drifting clouds, dimming light, ruffled hues

Aging and wondering: what lies beyond the wild blue yonder? 

Mother's Day

My mother has been gone for twenty years now; I lost her when I was fairly young. I've been without a mother most of my adult life and feel that loss acutely at times.

My mother never saw me become a mother and I longed for her presence when I came home from the hospital with an infant in my arms, feeling joyous and overwhelmed and a bit unsteady. I wish she'd been there to celebrate my children and tell me "Don't you worry, you'll do just fine."

She would have comforted my colicky son, fed me and my husband, and oohed and aahed over my daughter's rosebud mouth. She could have told me how she navigated through the scary and exhausting moments and shared stories of her own experiences with me and my siblings.

We never got to have those conversations.

I never got to take her out for a Mother's Day dinner or plan a weekend trip with her. Once in a while, someone I know will complain about "having to do something about Mother's Day" and I will think to myself, "I would love to have the opportunity to send my mother flowers or surprise her with a visit or buy a mushy card or visit a botanical garden with her."

Now that I'm older, I wish I had her guidance and inspiration for handling middle age and marriage and teenagers and menopause.  What would she have told me? Maybe nothing more elaborate than "You'll do fine!" but I suspect she had more to say than that.

My mother adored my husband and would have been delighted and impressed by his gardens--all the flowers and the waterfalls, pond, and patio he built. I would have loved to have brought her a cup of tea as she sat on the patio next to the pond. It makes me sad that my mother never saw any of the homes my husband and I have created together.

I miss her warmth, her faith, her laughter, and the way she loved to put dinner on the table and feed a crowd. I almost always visualize her in the kitchen or sitting in a chair at the end of a long day, dozing off with her latest crochet project resting in her lap. Her hands never rested, even when she sat.

It wasn't until I met people who had mothers who were self-absorbed or emotionally unstable or unavailable that I realized what a treasure my mother's no-frills devotion to her family was. She was always there for me--when I got up in the morning, when I came home from school, when I stepped through the door after a date, when I moved away and needed someone to call. At the time, I didn't fully appreciate how lucky I was to have the constancy of her presence. Being there for someone, simply being present, is such a gift.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.  I miss you still.

For a friend

I used ink to sketch this joy-filled, freedom-loving  rabbit. I then painted the paper using watercolors and mounted a hand-painted gold moon onto the background to create a special birthday card for a special friend.

This card is one of a kind, but if you're interested, I can create something similar just for you. I have other cards which are completed and ready to ship for sale in my Shop. 

The Instagram effect on reality

I don’t have photo editing software beyond the basic stuff that lets me crop and adjust brightness, contrast, tone. I use those tools regularly to improve my work, but I haven't gone any farther than that with photo editing. I expect one day I will.  As an artist, I love what people can accomplish with Photoshop, the multi-layered and textured looks are what appeal to me most or the ones that make an image seem dreamlike or blurred like an imperfect memory.

Instagram transformed cell phone photography into something akin to art journaling. All day long, Instagrams from various sources appear in my social media feeds, and for a moment, I am where my friends are. Neil uses it regularly to capture scenes in LA and New York, and his work, enhanced by apps and filters, has a cinematic quality that I really like. I can see how Instagrams have changed the way people relate to their surroundings and the way they visually archive their experiences.

Using tools and apps, a ho-hum ordinary scene can be altered, made more dramatic or toned down to match the photographer's mood or "reading" of the scene. This can magnify the feelings a photo evokes and make it better match the photographer's emotional experience in that moment. I can appreciate what that means and how it works.

I wonder, though, about the absence of "real" photos. When everything is heavily filtered, wrapped in a haze of nostalgia or hipness, reality becomes the pale imitation of “virtual life.”

I’m not sure what I think about that.

Once again, as an artist and writer, it appeals to me. The ability to translate our experiences and shape them so they evoke a particular mood or emotional response is a powerful tool for self-expression. With photo editing, Instagram, and social media, we have tools to create our own mythology.

However, when does the gap between the life we really live and the life we post online become too wide? Does it ever become too wide? There's a lot of talk about personal branding and authenticity online and debates about whether and when those two concepts collide.

Is shaping our reality in an attempt to show others how we perceive more authentic than a straight shot of unvarnished realism? Does Instagramming our lives help us stay in the moment or does it cause us to disconnect from it?

Your thoughts?