I hardly Know where to Start

I sat in front of the warm rumbling wood stove, while the night before, I watched fireflies bounce around the gardens. This Vermont spring has been filled with Aurora Borealis and plenty of rain in alternating layers. After work, we had finished off a large pizza and flopped into bed, full of memories of the mountains in the East covered in beams of shockingly bright light and close hugging clouds, worn over their shoulders like so many sweaters. 

So many things have happened since I last wrote a newsletter, I hardly know where to start. 

I do seem to have both the best and worst news at the same time, so often, it is the balance I walk, between both worlds.

I’m just going to start

Last fall, I received an email that said I was nominated for the Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Craft, and invited to apply. I applied and went on spinning my cocoon, caring for my mother full time, at home, doing all the things that make my life whole, filing every moment of each day and wondering now and again if that application registered. I apply for lots of things. I receive lots of ‘Thank you kindly for your application, however we have chosen to go in a different direction...’ emails. I take these all in stride and keep on applying.

Meanwhile

I had stepped away, almost completely, from stonework to provide at-home care for my mother. She needed to have a full time companion and I didn’t leave her or the property unattended. I watched her on cameras and positioned my glass studio immediately outside her door so if she left the house, I would know. Then, my mother stopped eating, drinking and talking coherently, mostly -almost completely. We did the paperwork - she entered Hospice, it was November.

I began the process of Discovery…

about what was needed for a green burial, and learned about the permit process to bury mom - here on my land. I attended the Select Board meeting to advocate for such, I ordered a natural basket to be hand-built for her along with a shroud felted with the fibers from our own goats. We dug the hole. We dug the hole between the bee hives. The wild flowers, bee balm, wild iris, forget me not, and mint were all asleep for the winter, we envisioned lining her basket in pine needles, making it so beautiful. 

And, she bounced back, she bounced right up off her deathbed like nothing happened. She got up and was almost ‘normal’, even went grocery shopping again, eating, talking, showering, like the “old” Abbie. We had an Abbie sized hole under the maple tree and our Abbie at the dining table chattering away and clinking her ring.

Wild Flowers, Bee Balm, Wild Iris, Forget me not, and mint were asleep

I almost felt like we got away with it, and she was going to live longer, stronger, after accepting that she was going to die at last, and I started to think about returning to part time work again. 

The yo-yo of emotions. 

Wow, my nerves stretched and frayed. 

I didn't know what would happen from one moment to the next. Near dead, hole in the yard, happy, sitting at the table, playing board games around her. Then, my mother died. She died in December, a sudden death. She left amidst the later stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. I was grateful, relieved, and a little sorry for myself, but mostly so exhausted from the stress of anticipating battles that never happened, ones that did happen, ones that I feared would happen, and the ones which happened so long ago that I still held against her. She was not easy, and yet she was lovely. The full dichotomy of “Mother”. 

We buried her on the winter solstice. I spent the rest of the winter months in my cocoon, surrounded by hockey, and the work of tending to my woodstove, dogs, goats and lover. I spent many days deep in stained glass work, making the brittle material warm, warming it like my heart, reminding myself that my memories could be happy, and I could view them through that lens. I reminded myself that I didn’t, any longer, have to live in anticipatory fear of arguments and worry of Mom bolting out of the dentist office or walking down the highway to get cat food in winter, or any of the things that happened or could happen. I had lived and re-lived and ran worst-case-scenario scenes, worse every time, bigger every time. With her passing, I could stop that behavior and begin the work of calming my mind and enter into peace and healing.

I had no particular attachment to the outcome of that application I had made back in the fall, so much had happened, I barely remembered to remember it. It was a dark but not particularly hard winter, in February, in the darkest days of February, I began to think I won, thinking of the result, seeing the ‘congratulations’ email, giving myself a little glimmer of light, just pushing the hope out there. Living a little into the acceptance part of it. Just a little, just a little, ‘yes’. I allowed myself to smile. I allowed myself to see the beauty of the light parting through the clouds, that part where you are close enough to a branch or a twig to see your own reflection in that ball of ice. There’s a whole little world of beauty in there. So sprezzatura.

We are traveling to California to build a sculpture. I am in the middle of designing a cross vault for a spa, and wrapping up an extraordinarily complicated house design/build project for a client who, like so many of my clients, is now a friend. I need business cards, I need to finalize the materials orders for two classes that I’m teaching about ovens, and a third oven project needs to be launched. I have pumpkins to plant and half a sunflower wall to install, a log sculpture to build, goats to worm and chicks to move into the next size-up housing. I need to buy clothes, I need to settle the insurance claim for my Helix sculpture, and the separate-most recent accident. I need to mow paths in the meadow... 

I also need to breathe and absorb and sit still and acknowledge that my full, beautiful life is always going to be this, this paradox, this two-handed beast of joy and agony.

I will use the fuel to build and the angst of exhaustion to build and I will build my world from a tired one to a crown of beauty into which I can curl, at last satisfied and full, and dream sweet dreams of new sculptures, new adventures. Peace and calm will have to come later, I have work to do…

Peace and calm will have to come later, I have work to do…