Blessings of the Lowly Places: Everyone has their Story

 

Thanksgiving Musings and the Bounty

of Family

We were all together for that afternoon..

            November brought us all together for Thanksgiving for the afternoon. We feasted on the

 Thanksgiving foods and shared out time together. Telling old family stories and laughing.

Everybody has their Story.

            An old friend almost moved in but it didn't work out for a number of reasons. After

the stress of that moment I set out to relax in the pool in St Paul.  As I rounded the corner I found heard a pop and an exhale. Then Whoosh! My tire was Flat! I pulled into a little driveway overlooking a barren area under development and called AAA. A cheerful voice said "It will be 15 minutes!" and so I waited as the clock struck 4 pm. The time passed. The sun went down and darkness set in. An hour went by. I passed the time by drawing my way through although I felt a myriad of emotions. It was hard. My drawings reveal my struggles to feel trust as my feet got cold, as I reached to Trust and not be scared and to be in the moment. Drawing my way through as usual.

                                

Weary time kept ticking and finally an hour and a half later Eric called and told me to put on my flashers Blinking, blinking into the dark night I waited! Finally he came. A stocky good looking bearded guy. As I sat in the warm cab he banged on the tire and could not get it off. We towed it to my house.

I carefully drew him with Too Many Cars to Count around him.

I was home safe and did not have to think about the car for a day.

As frost gathered on the window

As my pillow froze on the windows.

As my cats slept and snored.

As I slept

As the season turned into deeper winter.

TODAY

 

As snow turned the roads into beautiful white ribbons.

I woke slowly and made my way downstairs to have coffee and wake up.

Finally I called AAA and my tow truck guy came soon. He was tired

having towed cars all night long. He hitched up the car.

I drew him and we talked. He told me he was native american

I leapt through the years and we talked about baseball.

I drew him and gave him the drawing.

Arriving at Tires for You there was a long line of cars and Oh No!

I had forgotten to bring my car keys! 
How absent minded of me!!

He was patient although tired as we waited for my sweetie to bring the keys.

Finally he came and I was in my car driving it in a very lumpy dumpy way

It was slow.

I texted and sighed.

And tuned into my daily Jewish Meditation Class which felt miles

away (it is on the east coast) and meditation felt rarified as I dealt 

with waiting in line. Finally at a snails pace we moved along.

I got out of my car and met Ahmed in line behind me.

We smiled and he handed me his snow brush so I could brush

the snow off my car

I did not say a blessing over the fluffy white snow

But I felt a Blessing rise in me as I looked upon that familiar

winter sunlight that illuminated gritty 3rd avenue briefly

transforming it into a numinous place of insight and in

that brief moment I was grateful

and felt how winter sheds light on the inner life.

then the sun faded and it was gloomy.

It was all very slow and I truly felt I was going nowhere fast.

Finally I was inside and I recognized it all as I had drawn the workers and 

the place when I was there in June. There I sat in the lowly place among the

cars, tools, grease and dirt. It is a fast paced place.

Edwin remembered how I had drawn him and 

I remembered how I like to draw people who aren't seen.

and thus the blessings flowed down on me. 
He got me two good tires for a real good price

.  

A Tale of Memory and Hennepin Healthcare

As I waited a man came up to me smiling! It was Chef Don who made such great meals 

when I was at Hennepin Healthcare with my late husband Josh 6 years ago.

Memories and moments flooded back of how I would go eat such a great inexpensive meal 

prepared by him in the midst of so much chaos, uncertainty and challenges.

.    
     Chef Donald                                                                                         Michael the Dishwasher

                              Oh so hungry hardworking Hospital Workers 

                  ......and so the moments faded and the years floated away and I remembered....

                  We embraced and bid farewell .....knowing we would meet again.....

          And I drew Hassan....... he was impatient waiting for his car to be fixed...and I asked if I could draw him.Always a vulnerable moment....he waited and then he turned to me..and I looked into his face......and there is that tender moment as I look up and down at my pad... drawing and looking and feeling...He exclaimed!! "Amazing!"   "Amazing". and I gave him the drawing.

                             My bill was so reasonable...and I felt somehow the blessings had flowed down 

    to me....and there on that very busy day...the guy I gave my payment to was in pain from a recent appendicitis operation... I drew him a healing hand... 

I left and drove on beautiful ribboned roads all around the lake

Loving winter for only a few minutes

until I felt the challenge of driving on ice all over again.

But my back wheels carefully guided me home.

   

 

                     

All the Moments: Emily the ER Nurse at MCAD Sale

Sometime in 2017
HONORING Emma who brought you two hot sandwiches after you

had not eaten for twelve hours in the ER 

Honoring the Old Memories

Emily who remembers me from ER so long Ago

Last night I was at the MCAD sale with my work surrounding me like a peacocks tail open around me. The moments and the decades revealed...that's when I painted waterlilies by the Mississippi with Pat..that's the Romanina flower market I found beauty and inspiration in Cluj after my group saw the sign on the synagogue saying the Jews were rounded up fro Aushwitz there, here is my backyard, and the cardinal amid the flowering crab tree in the front yard...here it is all of it! The winter water lilies at Walker Art Center Conservatory long ago

And then Emily stops. I smile as she has my mother's name and then she remembers..

"I know You" I remember you!" You sat and painted everyone in the ER when

you were there with your late husband. And then I remember too.

I am no longer at this nice bustling art sale with a glass of white wine in my hand,

booming music and my memories and art arrayed around me.

I remember those nights.

When I called 911 so desperately 

when the minutes ticked by like hours 

and the siren's shrill call was comforting

because I knew help was close and on the way

after the men in heavy clothes evaluated you

after you were helped out to the ambulance

I ran out the back door with my

sketch book, paints and snacks.

I knew what to pack for these moments.

after the relief of finding you in 9B

or 8C or 7A settled in 
I created a small studio that was the extra chair in the ER room

the ghosts of those there just before us had not left

and we were there to endure the hours.

that's when I drew Emily

She said:

"You just painted and painted"

and I did

It was how I navigated the hours and uncetainties

as the Divine Hand held us.

The years have rolled by

but when an ambulance shrieks by ...

I remember all of it again

Emily and I hug.

I weep for what was

as I sit there in the splendor 

remembering the past

and enjoying those I draw in the moment

. 

How it was

ER that Time.  ER this time.  ER that time

                                                        

          
 

                               .

          

  

 

Drawing My Way Through:Musings and Moments Week of November 15 to November 23rd

 Drawing My Way Through:Musings and Moments November 2024

• By returning to this Blog I hope to communicate my inner life of drawing in the moment and 
• paying attention to how my life flows by in an often lyrical way.

Ongoing Meaningful Relationships at MCAD

PAINTING WITH BELLA

Over the last year and a half I have been able to renew my relationship to MCAD and the students there. I leap effortlessly through the 50 years since I graduated from there in 1974 and continue to have meaningful experiences there including being a part of Art Sale, and Auction.

Once upon a time I set up art projects for dear Bella at the private Jewish Day School I taught at. She is a student at MCAD and invited me to paint with her and others last friday. So it was poignant to have her set up a project for me as I had once done for her. The small paintings we did are being given to residents at Ebenezer Nursing Home. A very weary place I once worked.

But I know these paintings will bring Joy!!

As always I feel like a water lily that has spiraled up through the complex waters of the years to Bloom on the Surface in Splendor once again!

.  

 

Balance and Beauty

.    

 

= 

 

 

Visit to the Wound Clinic

Wound Clinic Waiting Room

There at the Wound Clinic each person is wrapped in their own suffering and problems.

I felt like we got a Front Row Seat with Struggling Humanity.

It was sobering...and yet as hard as our situation was there was .a man in wheelchair nearby...

 He was on oxygen...with a catheter..his poor little feet wrapped in foam.

His shirt draped over him... his wild hair all asunder..

I tried to say something and comfort him but he brushed me away..

He looked dazed by his pain and isolation

I drew him,  the oxygen, the tubes, his feet in the foam...all of him except his face so as to preserve his privacy and somehow to honor him in that moment of difficulty...so public and so private.. all of his needs on full display and he so obviously in discomfort and even more so suffering so much isolation and lonliness...

Later as he got into the van I saw him look at me with such a lonely ache.. and need.

I realized he was so blockaded by pain that he could no longer reach out or recieve

My heart broke quietly for him... but at least I tried to give him a moment of comfort.

His situation was So Much Worse than ours...so much worse and he was so obviously alone and lonely.

Despite all of Joshs challenges he has me by his side and he comes home with me.

Even if the Bickersons make an appearance... I am there for him and our love sustains us.

So once again... just as we were wrapped up in our situation like in a cocoon, what gave me wings of insight and empathy was seeing how our struggles paled in comparison to others... and then empathy opens even more..like a peony in full blossom releasing its scent...

We made it home, passing the Wall of Forgotten Natives and saw again..even if from a distance..true need...

I come home to the beautiful fragile structure of my sukkah and sit in the sun all afternoon painting and drawing and musing...

realizing how despite the fragile structure of our lives..somehow we endure... we are resilient and we survive....

Visiting Paul Wellstone's Grave November 9, 2002

 

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New Years Day in Vienna…then and now 1/1/19 for my mother Emily

                                                                                               My mother and grandmothers favorite Opera.

                                                                                                     "Tosca" one they heard often in Vienna.

       This New Year’s Day morning is terribly cold. My car shudders and barely wants to start. The engine clatters reluctantly and I wonder if it will make it. I dash off because Josh is being released today after a week in Cardio Renal. On Christmas night I called the ambulance because he had shortness of breath…kind of another wild week…but we held on …Now insights pave the path ahead and I trust he can find some stability for his health for a while.

     The moment I turn on the reluctant car New Year’s Day music from Vienna fills the cold sunny air. A soft German voice tells the selection and I hear my mother’s voice with her ever present Viennese inflection. Her youth in Vienna shaped her life and she brought to the pedantic Midwest her European culture, love of music and grace in entertaining.

    As I near the hospital a particularly beautiful piece lingers.  I park and listen. Amid the harsh pragmatic buildings delicate music all the way from Vienna fills the air coloring it with nuance, feeling and ethereal emotions.

     I ride the elevator with a woman in a wheelchair wearing a beautiful scarf. These 20 seconds with a stranger reveal so much. She frustrated with not getting in the door. Still elated from the music I bend low and comfort her for a moment. My mothers empathy in my DNA making the moment easy.

     Josh is sleeping and on oxygen when I arrive. His room mate moans. All of a sudden I realize I forgot to bring the green pants he wanted to wear home. I know he will be irritated and he is when he awakes. For a moment I look down at my brown velvet pants thinking they “might”fit. He is impatient and frustrated. I decide to go home and get the green pants. I am mad at myself and then I am not…as a silver lining glints in the harsh winter sunlight. I realize that driving back and forth will allow me to hear this special Viennese New Year’s Day concert.

   Driving south on ordinary Hwy 55 the music from Vienna lifts me.   Then January 1^st 2011 comes into view. I have hurried over to see my parents. My mother has been visibly and slowly declining for a while. Everything feels tenuous and anxious as we sit on the couch. I can tell it’s time to change her diaper. Life has been fraught for a while and I feel a deep foreboding. Old friends come by and we have a kind of sort of New Years Day party. So unlike other years when the old table from Vienna would be pushed against the wall and my mother would have the silverware laid out in that particular way of hers. She would have made a yellow box cake and proud of her efforts it would be front and center on the table. Her lack of cooking plainly evident. There would be those funny little round boxes of cheese with cows faces on them. Emily presided and we were all welcomed in.  But January 1, 2011 was bleak. Death sat sulking in a corner…waiting. I wept as I drove recalling that last New Years for her with the silvery Viennese music weaving a net of memory in the air.

      I got home, found the green pants and the fuzzy brown ones too. I drove back to the hospital on the same ordinary Hwy 55. But now my mothers youth opened up before me as I heard Strauss’s “Artist Life”. She led a full life of painting, poetry, and Jungian insights. Somehow I could see my mother walking to school in Vienna past magnificent marble statues of composers. It was easy to imagine her at the Opera with her parents and then playing the piano with ease. Her Viennese life opened up as I drove along. She grew up  surrounded by music, art and culture as my father picked cotton on an East Texas farm listening to his sister tell stories of Scarlet O’Hara from “Gone with the Wind.”

    I drove along  in my old 1995 purple Saturn car filled with the flotsam and jetsam of my busy life. But my car and that little radio took me on a journey past the sad memory of my mother’s death to wander the streets of Vienna with my mother in her youth.. before life changed. before the Anschluss happened. Just waltzing in the carefree life of her youth in Vienna.

    I lingered with the music when I got to the hospital. Once again the silvery notes held me. I did not see the metal and stone structure before me but looked up to see my mother in her heavenly realm gazing down at me as the waltz played reminding me that beauty, music and harmony endure despite the hardships that life brings.

I brought Josh home. We resumed our complex life together as the temperature hovered about zero. The radiator thumped to life and we were warmed.