Once again...Memory

      That day 9/11 so long ago.... now 17 years ago.
I remember I was on my way to work and stopped at the Post Office to mail a birthday package to my brother. The postal clerk told me a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I felt slightly off balance hearing that news and had not heard about the first plane. Our electricity was off that morning as the huge tree (probably dating back to the mid 1800's) was being cut down that morning. It was all eerie and strange and upsetting.
    I made it to work at the Jewish school where I taught and wondered about our vulnerability. The day was thick with questions, fear and uncertainties.
    The day got worse and later I watched those people jumping from the buildings.
    Today as I write it is a brilliant sunny day. It was sunny back then too, but soon clouded by smoke and heartbreak. I came home that day to a wide open expanse of sky that was oddly eerie and symbolic of what had happened in NYC that day.

      Years pass. Memory remains. I recall how the NYT carefully and compassionately printed obituaries pairing maintenance people with high executives. Death had been a level ground after all. Grief saturated those months going into fall and winter. I lit candles on that tree stump for months even as the snow began to fall. Grief remained...

The Jewish Peddler and The Baptist Preacher

   

And so I row my leaky boat ...there on the vast and rocky seas of memory...I row and row...

hoping to set anchor

this densely packed holiday weekend began with opening a box of clay pieces made by me

and my students long ago at the Jewish Day School I worked at...

oh the labors....the sweat....the tears...

 the kiln opened when it was cool enough to reveal treasures that would

grace numerous Seder tables including my own

for decades....

the salt water dishes, the haroset dishes, the Seder plate, and Elijahs cup.

and always the Chaise Lounge Charoset Dish that occupies a place of honor.

I set out the dishes and the memories...

I carefully take the photo of my Jewish ancestors off the wall and prop it on boxes of matzah 

on a chair adjacent to the place setting for Elijahs Cup

for all these moments are mysteries.

years pass, but the ancestors remain..

I remember what I do not remember and know that my great great grandfather was

a seltzer water in nothern Romania.

I could not find a trace of him when I visited the graveyard in 1998

but allowed the mystical light flowing in the window in the middle of the night

to direct my gaze of wonder..

He appeared in dreams and in my imagination as I began the long road backwards and forwards

to this moment of holding a small Seder with friends..

******

when I take the train of memory back to Texas it is hot and almost summer.

I am arriving with my family after 3 days on the train. The salami sandwiches are now tasteless

and we are weary.

My grandfather C.H. White is there to pick us up and

we head to the small house in Waco where we will spend the week.

He was once a farmer who got the call to preach and so he rallied forth from his pulpit

and later circled round and round about Jacob.

On Easter Sunday we drive out to hear him preach with fury and brimstone in the 

small church 

so simple with just a wooden cross.

so simple it is hard to recall the Greek Orthodox majestry and mystery that  holds me 

up north.

where we are not Greek, but we fit in...almost

after church the family gathers

and I feel my sense of tribe

the South held and fascinated me...it was a part of me

just as part of me never gets used to these long northern winters

as I yearn for the sun and warmth

we had Fried chicken, beans, mashed potatoes and iced tea

if you look at the family picture of us all standing outside the old house

you'd see me in my homemade dress and specially curled hair.

*******

yesterday I went to Easter with my neighbors and remembered

my long ago Baptist past 

the service could not have been more different

but the ardent faith remained.

the fried chicken for lunch took me all the way back to Texas

*****

sometimes it is easy to dwell in the house of memory.

when I lived on that small island I wove belt for a living.

the warp and the weft holding each other 

to make a long weaving of color and strength

 the weft and warp of memory hold me now.

**

i row and row

finally landing on the small island of memory

there I weave in my old stone cottage

creating

my warp and weft of moments

from the past and future

of ancestors known and unknown 

on my simple square loom

remembered and mused upon

**

A Cake for What would have been my Mother's 97th Birthday

A Cake for my Mother

        Pity she didn't live longer. The opera "Rigoletta" was on last night and she would have been listening right along. Opening her thick Opera book and noting it again. Remembering when she had listened to it last in Vienna and the last time she had heard it on a Saturday day afternoon straight from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

         I can see her now laying on the couch on a Saturday afternoon. Stretched out somewhere between Minneapolis and Vienna, the cares of the week, the day and the moment vanished for a few short hours. My dad would be off to a movie or typing upstairs. She sighed thinking of the emotional terrain she navigated daily with this temperamental brilliant Texan who didn't like opera. Sighing she remembered her days at the Opera House in Vienna and how she went to Demel's afterwards for a Viennese pastry delight topped with whipped cream.  Sighing perhaps she sketched one of her enigmatic mystical faces in the back of her Opera book.

     Sighing I open the old Opera book. The cover is falling off, but the sentiments remain. If I open it at just the right spot the music swells out lapping out over the pages and those last desperate moments of La Boehme ring out as Rudolpho cries out "Mimi! Mimi!" over her dead body... or I turn the page and Tosca jumps over the parapet. Drama, turbulence, passion and drama. Nothing sedate or politely midwestern about this. And thus my parents dramas matched these operatic ones as well.

     What a couple. My mother Emily with her European manners, education and warm Viennese empathy. Her psychological insights remain and no matter what her own inner challenges were she always saw through to the core of a problem revealed in intimate conversation. Saying to me as we sat in the backyard on that hot August day precisely six months before she died. "Have the expectation of Goodness!" And there was my father from east Texas. The rambuctious intellectual who left the south, who loved Japan, who flourished in Kyoto, who read 1000's of books. Poetry bonded them, but it was a tempestuous union. They were so different. It took me years to realize that we were not midwestern. I popped my head up from within the family, looked around and realized we had no farm ties after all and not a bit of Scandinavian blood. We flourished none the less and my parents gift of entertaining kept their friendship circle warm and nourishing as dad tossed another log into the fireplace as he read another poem to a rapt audience gathered in the living room

          The opera remains. My dads books are piled up in the back room. I open at least one a week and share the poems he loved in my weekly poetry group. Their deaths have been just a blip after all as they float above me...somewhere in the ether...supporting me..nurturing me...commanding me to do this or that and most of all to remember them and hold on to their values.

                              In two days my mother would have been 97. I can see how she would have popped up after that long illness that almost took her out...and how we would  have celebrated despite her ensuing frailty with a cake, a handmade card and a small puppet show made at the last minute. Laughing she would have opened her presents and we would eat cake amid the bouquets she had been given..... but she's gone.

      Now I peruse the recipe for gugglehopf cake. It needs time. Yeast must be dissolved, almonds chopped, flour sifted and there are two risings. I anticipate making it just the right way and serving it with lots of whipped cream. Perhaps a side of jello would complete the honoring and the offering.

Happy birthday Emily. Your memory remains a blessing.

   

An Aria for my brother       Traversing the Inner Labyrinth        July 20, 2017

      As we circle the block again looking for a parking space the opera singers aria on the radio is full  rich and deep. I am singing my aria for my brother as we ease into the space and I bring him home.The singer who sings the aria doesn't get bogged down or tired. She just sings and so do I.


     We are just returned home from HCMC where my brother was almost admitted into the psychiactric  unit. But notthis time. I sing the aria of all the times I have been with him before and accompanied him on the long labryrinthian journey through his psyche back to feeling good again.


      As I look into his face I look past the generations and see our gran pa shuffling and obsessed, speaking of Jacob in the bible... I see my father with his brilliant wit, determined to be right.. I see our mother laying on the couch in one of her disabled depressive modes.


      My aria becomes tender, passionate and compassionate in turns as I hold onto my brother. Knowing I am here at this moment to bear witness to his suffering and to try to comfort him and guide him through.


    There are no easy answers, but singing this internal aria and drawing help me feel that I am not falling apart too.


     We keep moving through time. The ghosts of our familys troubled past lead the way.
I keep singing. I keep holding onto my brother. I keep drawing... He leads the way and I hold onto him...wishing him safe passage back to a better place.

Healing Heart Hamsa for Josh

Healing Heart Hamsa for Josh

    This morning it rained and I awoke Late. I painted two healing images for Josh. He has been in the hospital since Friday when I rode in the ambulance back to HCMC again.....this time shortness of breath and fluid build up from his atrial fibulation.....time..heart beat...thumpety thump thump....time and so many heart beats ago

that  the last time I posted was in November...back when the election was bad enough and it is so much worse now...back when we were just consulting with the surgeon about Josh's upcoming knee replacement...back when it was before the long winter and the bad election was about all the bad weather I thought we would be contending with...but the winter was long and fraught and there have been so many set backs for Josh...hospitalizations..and ER and one thing after another after another...

     drawing remains..and now I look back on all those moments recorded...and now there is just the next piece of paper and this healing moment of drawing and the next..and holding onto Josh in his moments of pain and suffering...wishing there was more space and healing in between these moments.

     So I drew him today...the fluid build up on his heart leaving and the oxygen of Divine breath in and out and in and out and in and out...holding and healing him...I drew that and then drew this healing image of his heart...

    The phone rang and he was in pain again...so I rushed to his side..The allergic reaction to the cleaning chemicals in his room caused him once again..pain and an unneccesary set back...

I held him. He sneezed and sneezed again. eyes watering and stressed.

        I put up the healing heart hamsa on his wall and then painted in the other painting of him with fluid leaving and the Divine breath in and out and in out. They are now on his wall holding him....giving out the healing energy that art can give....

      Then we watched TV which was a nice sedative, especially the Home building shows where all the pieces fit and look really good. No swear words or mishaps. Its how you'd like a life to be. The pieces fitting just so......and our pieces fit just so..in their own way..despite the challenges and difficulties along the way.

    As I left I held him and he said "Just love me the way I am.".

I held him close.

    A Viennese waltz played as I drove home in the rain..and I knew my mother was bending in close to me from her heavenly realm..giving me courage and strength to deal with Josh's Oh So Many Health Challenges and Crisis....I sat and listened to every note of the music when I pulled into the driveway..... feeling my mother leaning in and holding me.... as I hold onto Josh and

Love him just the way he is.....

   

The Moon, Shabbat and Pot Musings.

The Moon, Shabbat musings, Romantic Pots fall in love and The Pot of Bewilderment
Since the November 8th 2016 election I find myself wandering through
a labyrinth of many emotions with many companions by my side....
I turn to drawing and allow my feelings to emerges 
in the form of the dark shapes of
Lurking Uncertainties
that now populate our daily life.
I am grateful to find humor,
grateful for Shabbat
and grateful to gaze upon Goya's drawings ( more about that in another post)
I am grateful to gaze upon the eternal comforting feminine moon
that was just full.
Here are my musings on this time.
*********

For the last two nights the Full Moon has come in so close to earth. Two nights ago I gazed up into its wonder as feathery clouds lined up like so many angels coming in to sing to earth a comforting song...a comforting ethereal song....

The earth keeps spinning, the moon waxes and wanes and in the full light of the femininc moon we wonder. Last weeks election results have us spinning and wondering, but the cycles of the moon remain. The woman many of us hoped would be elected was not, yet feminine wisdom remains. We wander into a labyrinth of wonder and dismay, hoping not to get lost in our fears and anxieties.

the moon came in so close as if to bring us some comfort, some healing hope, some subtle feminine energy reminding that this strong inner light is not as bright as the sun, but holds its own wisdom..... I felt held by its beauty gazing upwards as the luminous clouds lined up...
as if angels came in close as well, to comfort and console.

**********

 I went to a lovely pottery opening a few nights ago...the simple pots on shelves sang their song and I drew them, as well as the anxious conversations all around...

My sense of whimsy emerged as I drew the pots. Nope, they did not vote, they just remain our objects of beauty to be used and adored.

I drew two pots falling in love amid the conversations as well as the ever present dark lurking shapes of uncertainty that populate my sketchbook now.

 

Shabbat remains

I hold onto the peace and rhythms of Shabbat in my own hand hewn ways.

The need for spiritual rest and insight remains. In facing challenging times, I feel more than ever the need to curl up within the sacred shell of Shabbat..I just want to curl up inside the shell of comfort, rest and forgetfulness... to let go of the world for a day and come back to it invigorated with insight.

 I took a lovely Cat Nap with my kitties!!

 

********

The next day I

Wandered the halls of Mia,

 my brother and I paused before our favorite paintings as always.

 After sitting and musing by the Fountain of Goodness

I turned and went briefly into the African Art Gallery

There before me was this ancient African pot

a very round figure pulling at its mouth

 with the other hand

in a questioning pose.

The expression on the face is one of

 bewilderment, fear and anxiety.

I named it:

The Pot of Bewilderment: What have we Done?

All for now.

Singing my father home

So the years pass after all and hot summer is here again...not as hot as the Texas summer my father James C. White was born, his mother sighing and pushing this intellectual, poet, railroad worker and teacher out into the world. An irascible birth of course, and there he was fully formed in the arms of his mother...later on picking cotton as his sister spun tales for him from the movies she had seen..
and then onto Baylor to be the handsome president of his class...Japan summoned him for his military non active duty.. time to have a girlfriend and sip sake...oh how the boxes in the back room sing of those time...and thus time tumbled by...a brief first unhappy marriage and then meeting that beautiful Viennese woman. My mother Emily.. oh the complexity and the passion..the shared feeling for poetry, the clash of culture and clash..all to be worked out here on the tundra of Minnesota..and me their first born..smiling into the world in the fall of 1952..and how he showed me Greek Poetry..and oh how a life tumbles by..and more children...my brother Wallace, Raymond and Margaret..His work
teaching at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design and then working for the railroad...handsome and erudite, always opinionated and passionate about politics and movies and poetry...the years did pass after all..and there I was calling him on his birthday to tell him that I had indeed rented a cottage on the island of Inisheer off the west coast of Ireland and wasn't it now a gift to him..but that he would have to support me...and 3 years later he and my mother walked the stony roads and we ate the weird and wonderful ray fish..and he charming the islanders with his stories and talk..the years just kept tumbling by and he kept writing poems, but never quite published and kept sending friends his patched together letters he Xeroxed....aging ever so slightly and then yes right into old age.... and finally finally after Emily was gone a year and a half we sat out there in my vine hut in early 'August and he said to me :"It's a Big Old World and I am getting tired of it." I drew him with a sigh and had a feeling he would not be long for this world.... less than a week later he was hospitalized... as I ran between hospitals as Josh lay in another one with a leg infection...I was filled with premature grief and ran to see him yet again with a poetry book under my arm...I read to him The Mower and The Glow Worm by Andrew Marvell...and he paused looking revived as if he'd had a blood transfusion...and later that night he did and he was gone...but ah, before I left that afternoon he smiled and said to me...You Sure Are Pretty...his last sweet oh so sweet words to me...


and he was gone.


the next few days a blur of activity and grief and now four years has passed and his box of ashes is not scattered yet....it is on a shelf with his shoes and glasses and a hodge podge of beloved books...I made sure not to organize the books..just have them the way he would want them...full of thoughts and ideas and papers ....pounded and beaten by his deep reading...


today I took that heavy box down from the shelf and of course a sheaf of carbon paper came down with it...


oh the weight of the years and yet now it is time to sing him home...and place the ashes in several special places..
out in front amid sunflowers he loved to grow..
         in a bright red pot with the hibiscus flowers big as dinner plates ready to bloom.
               down to the falls and scattered to the stream that will bring them to the mighty Mississippi and thus the sea eventually....
                    and surreptitiously to Emily's grave with a stick poked into the ground and the ashes shoved in.....
      and a small amount kept and saved for that inevitable journey south to Texas to plant in the vicinity of a place in east texas...


    yes.. I will sing my father home soon...and the sheaf of carbon papers will accompany the journey.