The Journey to Goodbye.

My dear friend was clearly preparing to leave this world. The time out of time for saying goodbye was ever present during the past several days, hanging like silvery morning mist as the earth exhales the cooling November air. 


Tuesday night felt heavy and anxious, so I lit a votive candle in the beautiful natural rock crystal holder that my friend had given me last Christmas. 'Christ - The Light of the World' the enclosed card had read. It burned well past midnight...

On Wednesday morning, I knew that this was the day. 


I resolved to make my way to my friend's home after the morning ritual of driving my son to his bus stop. No rush, no urgency, this wasn't a time for rescue. It was a time for honoring a sacred passage. A time to be present and to help hold a space for gratitude and grieving and goodbye. 


On the morning's journey, the sunrise went from a familiar kind of pretty as we left home to a sudden and breathtaking display of bronze, copper, rose pink, magenta and violet as we were lined up in traffic on the approach to the river bridge. Unable to stop or pull over, I pointed my camera out the open car window, and with one hand on the steering wheel and two eyes on the road, I shot four pictures, trusting that I would capture the images I was meant to get. 


What I got was eerie and beautiful, just like the feeling in my heart and deep in the pit of my stomach - the visceral sense that time stopped for an imperceptible instant. That the stars blinked as a soul shot past them, leaving a never ending arc of light in its wake. I knew my dear friend was crossing a bridge then, too.

After dropping my son off, I made my way to my friend's home, stopping briefly nearby to take a couple pictures of a large carved stone statue of Christ that I passed every time I drove to her house.
I had always intended to do this small thing, somehow this seemed the right time to do it. The statue's hands were particularly evocative, and as I framed one of them in the lens of my camera, I reflected on my friend's loving intention of offering her hands to do the work of making a difference in the lives of the poorest of the poor in Haiti, where she and her husband supported many initiatives, and are building an orphanage and elder's home. 

As I got back into my car, my cell phone sang out - it was my friend's dear husband, telling me in a soft, heartbroken voice that she had just "gone to Heaven..." if he was surprised when I told him I was just minutes away, he didn't say so... 


It seems that our entire life is, among many other things, a journey to goodbye. I am forever grateful to my dear, dear friend for sharing some of her incredible journey with me, and for showing me that one can travel, even to goodbye, with love and trust, with dignity and humor, with purpose and kindness... 


Godspeed, my dear friend. We shall meet again.

Rerun.

It had rained overnight, the still-dark streets were shiny wet. We followed the now-familiar route of ten miles from our country home to the Park and Ride bus stop, the first leg of my son's daily journey to school. Garbage bags and bins line the streets. It's trash day in the city. We are avid dumpster-divers and trash-hounds, we believe in lost treasure. So today - garbage day - was particularly full of possibility. 
But mostly this time of year it's tons of leaves (as though they are trash...) 


Then I spied it - even in the dark it was unmistakably the shape of a small horse. lying in a heaped tangle of metal piping and angled tubes with big springs. I turned the station wagon around at the first chance and circled back. "Poor baby!" I cooed as I flew out the door and gathered the small figure up in my arms and loaded him gently in the back. My son rolls his teen-aged ayes in mock disdain. I know he'd do the same (not the cooing, but the rescuing!) if I wasn't here to do it. So would his dad. We know lost treasure when we see it. What redeems a human more than to save a helpless creature from destruction? With a thrill of excitement, I realize this beauty is now mine, all mine. I always wanted another horse.

I marvel at the detail of the once-beloved toy, left abandoned on the curbside. I think he's neither very old nor very new, but truthfully I have no idea when he was made but he is sturdy and beautiful. He has wavy mane and tail, a curly 'B' brand and a fancy western saddle. Roy Rogers or The Lone Ranger would've been proud to ride him into the sunset on the tiny TV screen in my childhood living room  His only visible fault is the places where he once attached to the springs are now worn and broken. That's OK - he'll be a free horse now.

I dropped my son at the bus stop and smiled all the way home, stopping to take a few pictures of the rain-washed honey-colored sunrise on the way, and marveling at my good fortune.

Think I'll name him 'Rerun'.

Blue Cowboy.

Funny, the little things that can catch you by surprise 
and break your heart...                                         

Take this small blue toy cowboy (or is he an outlaw?) 

I was minding my own business one recent autumn day, cleaning up a bit around the garden near where my son's sandbox and fort had been until earlier this summer. 

I was already at a serious disadvantage in this encounter, reflecting as I worked in a sort of melancholy way on all the happy years he spent digging and playing, creating and destroying entire worlds with his own hands. Sand, water, rocks, twigs and some "guys" (his word for any small figure, human, animal or otherwise) was all he needed for a whole day outside, summer or winter. It all went by so fast I kept thinking. 

I miss my little boy. (Don't get  me wrong - I love the young man he is becoming - I'm just struggling with passing time, change and transitions...)

This spring we dismantled and sold the fort to a cute family with a animated three-year-old boy. He was so excited, I think he could feel the accumulated energy of this little wooden world. Then my son and his dad built a small circulating waterway, waterfall and pond from free and cheap craigslist finds. It quickly became a bustling destination for the local critters and others we rescued and re-homed throughout the season. 

So there I was, working and reminiscing. I absent-mindedly brushed aside some fallen branches and there he was, handgun drawn and a stance that meant all business. What could I do? I burst into tears. 

Damn it all. Ambushed by a plastic cowboy. I didn't have a chance.

(I left him there at the scene, a fitting testament to a happy childhood, and perhaps someday a welcome find for some young explorer. I suspect he's not biodegradable...)

Deep Pink

Autumn is bittersweet by its very nature: the season of things ripening then falling asleep or dying away... it is a season we associate with blazing reds and burnished golds, rich maroons and mahogany browns, and eventually the striking orange and black of Halloween. 


Autumn is not a season that I typically associate with pink. 


But a heightened sense of the preciousness of life in the face of a dear friend's terminal breast cancer, and the onslaught of the annual pervasive hype surrounding October as official 'Breast Cancer Awareness Month' has opened my eyes to the pink that is all around me this fall.


I call it DEEP PINK. 


Not because it is a particular shade of pink, but because, for me, it is pink with a new depth of meaning. It is pink that has nothing to do with Barbie dolls or tulle netting, with fashion forward handbags or hot retail spaces. This is the outrageous live-and-in-your-face-constantly-changing pink of October dawn clouds, and the delicate shifting pink of hydrangeas on sunlit fall days. It is the graduated shades of pink of fallen leaves and fading vines, and the impossible-to-capture shade of violet-pink of an October night sky with a bone-colored crescent moon. 

Suddenly, my lifelong aversion to pink is transformed and I am drinking in the life-affirming symbolism of this misappropriated color. I am still deeply troubled the lack of any real progress in a cure for breast cancer, and I am very uncomfortable with the marketing of breast cancer as a cause to buy stuff for...  but the intuitive logic of the choice of pink for the Code Pink Peace Movement now seems obvious to me.

Pink is the color of life and love. 

Pink in every shade. Pink - dappled and speckled and dazzling and subtle. Each pink as unique and dear as the next. Like the women - the mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, friends and co-workers, the strangers and foreigners - who are lost to their loved ones every day from breast cancer. Each one as dear as the next...

As I steel myself for the part of my dear friend's journey where we must part, I will hold this image, taken recently, of her communing with my sweet mare. (Somehow they had never met before now - my dear friend isn't a horse-girl.) 

There is a kind of love in this exchange. The open gesture of my friend's hand outstretched in greeting, and the gentle sadness in my mare's eye as though she knows this is a good-bye...

This picture of such a tender dialogue will live forever 

in my deep pink heart. 

Horse + Boy + School

Well, I guess I had it coming. 


What was I thinking: trying to raise my son to be free, to think for himself, and feel like he could do anything he put his heart and mind to? Is this what comes of nurturing his self-esteem, supplying him with lots of raw materials and supporting his dreams? 


When one thinks of teenage rebellion, the picture of a kid demanding to go from unschooling to a public high school probably isn't what pops into most people's head first - or ever. 


It was entirely his idea. And, like most acts of rebellion, it was a big surprise. I sure didn't see it coming.   


One day we are all merrily sleeping till 10 and staying up till 2 because my husband works nights. My son reading books or drawing, riding horses or exploring outdoors all day. Doing plays (and even a film as an extra), recording lightsaber choreography, making swords or making music all night... working hard, playing harder and learning all the time.

Next thing I know he is commuting across state lines from our rural western Wisconsin home to downtown Saint Paul to a performing arts public charter school. 


Whoa.

Did I miss the part where aliens abducted my son and left a changeling in his place? Or did I simply choose to ignore the signs that he is hearing the call to join a larger band of gypsies? He is searching for his tribe out there... he found something that spoke to him in theatre, and now he wants more.

Yes, it does look like a fairy tale castle.
But it's still school...

In the past ten years we have gone from Waldorf school to homeschool to unschool and now, literally, back to school. 


What have I learned in the last ten years when it comes to schooling? Expect the unexpected. 


And, what have I repeatedly NOT learned in the last ten years regarding schooling? 
How to "fit in" with other people, and how to navigate remaining true to my self while not being a hypocrite. School always feels as though it's forcing these lessons on me. These are some of the reasons I don't like school. But that's me.


The only real lesson here? 
That this is my son's journey, not mine.


(I just realized - I'm sort of out of a job here. Oh well, it didn't pay worth a damn anyway... but I liked the hours and I sure loved the company.)

Horse + Boy.

My baby just turned fifteen years old... I am in shock. Where on earth did the time go? 


It seems just yesterday he was in third grade and had started riding lessons on a big ol' cowboy horse named Ice (he had pale blue eyes). On a late November day, Ice went down in the icy mud (ironic?) taking my son down with him. Ice was fine, my son broke his wrist. 

 A Harry Potter t-shirt, a pirate headscarf, fingerless gloves and a black velvet cape -
sort of Errol Flynn does Zorro.

Then we started homeschooling, and after the winter off from riding, my son got back on a horse. This time he rode a pretty and willful Welsh Pony at our barn named Matilda. The ground was a lot closer from her back. 
When it came to riding, my son's concern was getting hurt again. Matilda's only concern was getting back to the barn. Fortunately it wasn't long before Matilda got too short for my growing son.

The battle of wills is rather evident in this charming picture.

So, my son began riding our 14.2 hand mare, TigerLily. 
TigerLily is a sturdy paint with canon bones like tree trunks. She loves this boy, but that love didn't extend to a good work ethic. In riding lessons with TigerLily, he learned about clarity, respect and consistency. She learned what she could get away with, tolerating the work and loving the attention.


Not too long before TigerLily, too, got too short. My son is a "tall drink of water" for his age - he is six foot two inches tall so far, and his legs hang down so far on her sides that everyone at the barn jokes that he could click his heels together under the girth and and say "there's no place like home..."

TigerLily loves her boy...

Then one of our dear neighbors, who board a tall handsome 16 hand Arab gelding at the barn, kindly offered this horse as a lesson mount for my son. These two hit it off immediately. This willing horse comes like a happy dog friend at the sight of my son and the halter, and they seem to understand each other completely. It's a good thing our mare loves this gelding too, (they are contented pasture mates) or jealousy might rear its ugly head - you know mares! 

Two wonderful boys.

This fall, my son wants to try high school... I'll miss being able to simply "go up to the barn" on a whim with him - to ride, to explore the woods or just hang out with the horses. I hope that horses will always be a part of his life, somehow. I guess I did my part, making sure he had the chance to experience for himself the magic, the power, the beauty and the love of horses. 


(Oh, if only he can find a nice horse-girl to love out there, somewhere... )

Farewell to a Gentleman Mule.

Mule Gal and Mule Guy are neighbors, they are friends and they own the barn down the road where our mare is boarded. They are the sort of people who you call when your woods are on fire and they come immediately with tanks of water and shovels... and hugs.
I know because I did - and they did. 


And, as you can guess from their nicknames, they love their mules. 


They love horses, too. 
But as Mule Guy points out, you can ride a horse to the edge of a cliff and say "jump" and a well-trained horse will. Do the same with a mule and the mule will say "you first". He swears their legendary stubbornness is simply a sign of superior intelligence. 


Mule Gal is a reserved rider, a very sensitive, highly intelligent and intuitive woman who had a deep and rich relationship with her mule partner. She's no cowboy. He was no ranch horse. Trust was their theme, and they were a joy to see together. This mule had the demeanor of a gentleman, the patience of a saint, and the deep, dark eyes of an old, wise soul. 


And this mule loved his human. 


Mule Gal's mule was struck and killed by lightning last night during a furious storm. 


I witnessed this same storm, from my place just down the road. I captured several pictures of the storm's dramatic lightning. It's entirely possible that one of the pictures I took is the strike that took this gentle mule's life... 

Lightning is a frighteningly powerful force of nature.
A precious, beloved life - over in a flash. Literally.
But the heartache has just begun for Mule Gal.


Fortunately, friendship and healing are powerful forces, too. And Mule Gal has many good memories of her kind mule to help her smile through her tears.


Farewell to a Gentleman Mule. 
You will be sorely missed, but never forgotten.

Iron Horse.

A tale of trains, a railroad bridge, a temple of columns underneath that bridge, and a treasure unearthed on the bank of the small river traversed by that bridge...

Spent a recent afternoon with my son, exploring a debris-strewn stretch of river in search of frogs and turtles. We came to a small railroad bridge and followed the well-worn path from the tracks down to a secluded spot underneath the bridge, loud with graffiti and littered with shards of broken glass.

I looked across the river, at a solid-looking expanse of green duckweed from which several massive concrete columns rose to support the train bridge overhead. The series of arches and doorways formed by the columns and the long paths of light between them suggested an ancient temple. The effect was enhanced by beautiful and intriguing surface designs drawn and painted on the columns, 

more like hieroglyphics than graffiti.

I stood there and took this all in, transported by the unexpected sacredness of the place, and then took a couple pictures. Something at my feet caught my eye - something burnished and embedded in the compacted soil at the river's edge. I bent to pick up whatever was beckoning here, it was metal - copper I guessed from the warm tone - more or less round and very flat with a tiny eye-shaped hole on its edge. Delighted at the thought of stringing and wearing this small treasure (I am such a jewelry person!), I inspected it more closely. Though perfectly smooth, the surface of both sides bore shadowy images -what were they?

Then it hit me - this was a penny. 

It had been put on the track above, run over by a train and flattened. But it had escaped. As I ran this narrative in my head, I stopped and looked up and sure enough there was blue sky with drifting clouds alternating with track. So, my treasure had fallen through the spaces and languished here on the riverbank for how long? Years? Decades? The patina was aged-looking... and now I could just make out the slightly distorted profile of Lincoln on one side and the series of upright columns (echoing what I was looking at here in front of me) of the Lincoln Memorial on the other side. 

Later, at home with my treasure, I resisted the impulse to embellish it - I am a jewelry artisan, after all -and simply added a silver jump ring and a dark patina-ed ball chain. 

I slipped it over my head, thinking: LUCKY.

Hair.

Hair is powerfully symbolic. 


Humans spend a lot of time on hair. Our hair - its length, style, and color, or our lack of hair - is a highly visible message to the world about how we see our self and how we wish to be perceived. 


Hair is both highly personal and very public. Folklore attributes hair with a variety of magical powers, even Biblical stories relate this ancient belief - remember the tragic story of Samson and Delilah? 


Horses are among the very few animals who have hair that is much like our own hair, and perhaps that is one reason many of us feel so connected to horses. We see a bit of ourselves in them, hair framing their faces much as our hair does...


As an artisan jeweler working in the realm of horses, I work with a fair amount of horse hair, both in custom work and in work of my own inspiration. I have washed, sorted, braided, and even hand-dyed horse hair. I make necklaces and bracelets with lengths of braids, and I make tassels and other ornamental objects with tufts of unbraided hair. Most of this work is memorial in nature, adornments designed to honor the memory of horses who have left this world. Occasionally I have the pleasure to make something with hair from a horse who is still here, and even better I have had the lovely opportunity to make something with hair from a horse (or a mule, I'm delighted to add) who is around and who I know personally.


There is a history of sentimental and memorial adornments made with human hair, too. Examples exist in museum collections of nineteenth and early twentieth century gentlemen's watch fobs, embellished with lovingly woven locks of hair, presumably as a symbol of love and betrothal. Lockets were often filled with wisps of hair from a lover far away to keep them close, or from a baby or child as a memento of a life lost or at least of a childhood gone by.


Hair comes to mind for other reasons, too. In these days of rampant cancers, most of us know someone who has endured chemo or radiation-induced hair loss. It seems a distressingly common thing. One can hardly go out to a large public place without noting women wearing scarfs or other sorts of head coverings over obviously bare heads. Some do it with panache, others are clearly self-conscious. Wigs are even harder to wear convincingly, so bolder souls throw all pretense to the wind and opt for an outrageous color or style. And some venture out with their bald heads for all to see, challenging themselves and everyone else to respond honestly and authentically. A bald head can not be ignored. It will not go quietly away to let us pretend cancer isn't ripping apart the fabric of many, many lives. 


Once again, hair, and the lack of it, is highly symbolic. It can be the symbol of hope and recovery, when hair grows back after successful treatment... or its loss can be one of a series of heart-breaking losses that precede the final loss - of a life.


I have mentioned my dear friend who is living with advanced breast cancer. She is on my mind as I think about hair because she recently endured full-head radiation that has left her with no hair. She was told it won't grow back. Which, damn it, is really a moot point: she has also been told her time is short. In a fit of sorrow and regret, I think maybe I should have made something beautiful with some of her hair before it was gone... something to remember her by. Then I smile a little and think of all the ways she has been a dear friend, all the ways she has filled me with her kindness, compassion, humor and creativity. And I know that hair is not the thing I will carry in my heart in memory of her when she leaves this world. 


Hair is very symbolic, but the symbol is not the thing...

Grounded

To feel the earth, solid beneath your feet, and to feel secure that you can stand up to or run away from whatever comes at you, 


To draw power, sustenance, healing and energy from the storehouse of organic animal and plant material, alive or once-alive, and minerals transformed by time, in the form of grasses and grains that grow on this deep layer of history and biology. 


To feel the rhythmic vibrations of approaching land animals or the shudders of moving storms through the bottoms of your feet. 


To be a Horse must be an amazing thing.

Paint. Horse.

Paint Horse. Painting horse. Paint a horse. A painting horse. Oh my.


It sort of started one May 1st, my horse TigerLily's birthday. A couple of years ago I baked a special horsey cake for her - the recipe was from the author of 'Misty of Chincoteague' and I figured any cake good enough for Misty was good enough for TigerLily. The ingredients were supposedly a horse's dream come true: oats, carrots, molasses and apples. 


My son still guffaws at the memory of TigerLily daintily plucking the diminutive cake from my loving hand, and then bobbing her head several times like an iguana doing the primal territorial display before spitting it out directly at me in disgust. The barn dog, Fergie, did a remarkably well-timed fly-by and made off with it. (She came back and asked for more, bless her little omnivorous heart. You can always count on a dog to eat nearly anything). 


Anyway, since baking birthday cakes wasn't going to happen again, I resorted to other methods of celebrating. Being an artist, decorating my horse seemed like a good idea - it was the pink and orange livestock marking paint that wasn't. The dear forgiving man who owns the ranch down the road where TigerLily boards almost had a heart attack when he saw her, thinking that she was grievously wounded. I promised to only use non-gorey colors after that. 


TigerLily is a black and white Tobiano marked horse. What most people call a "paint", so painting designs on a paint horse has some extra linguistic appeal. I have also painted pictures of her.

(Funny thing - whenever I paint her, TigerLily is some shade of blue). 


And then there are paintings by horses. Often this is a rather gimmicky ordeal, with a handler coaxing a painting-like performance from a dutiful but baffled horse. And just as often the results are a predictable blend of mechanical smears and smudges of unfortunate colors using mediocre raw materials... 

Then there is Cheryl Ward and her painting horses. Holy smokes. 


I came across her website (http://paintinghorse.com) and I am completely smitten with her "collaborative interspecies" approach to painting in partnership with horses, and I am dazzled by their results, which truly are art. 

I am so inspired: Paint. Horse. And Human. 

(Stay tuned...)

Beast of Burden, Part 2

Donkeys are the archetypal beast of burden. All around the world they are seen as pack animals put on the earth to carry stuff around for humans... and, in spite of their collective reputation for stubbornness they have carried burdens since long before Mary rode one to Bethlehem, and they continue to do so in countless towns and villages, in the rustic countryside and the mountains. 

The little donkey pictured here, that I hand sewed of wool felt, yarn and embroidery thread, is a different kind of donkey made to carry a different kind of burden.

A dear friend, the one I have mentioned previously, has been traveling the hard road of breast cancer for a couple of years now, and the path has become increasingly difficult as the cancer finds ways to disguise itself, invading various parts of my friend's body and eluding eradication. Her burdens increase by the day. And her burdens will, her doctors say, become unbearably heavy unbearably soon... 

This little donkey was created as a humble gift to symbolize the help that a friend can provide: the act of sharing a burden, through words and actions, and through a willingness to accompany a friend along a too-short, too-hard road. 

   

Beast of Burden

A view of my horse from across  the back of her friend, a sweet mule... 


This picture I took, on my horse's birthday (and shortly after a long weekend at the Minnesota Horse Expo), made me stop and think about all the ways we humans interact with the equines in our lives, how many things we ask them to be and do, and how grateful I am to have a horse in my life. 


I don't really like to admit how much I depend on my horse to be my muse, my confidante and even my shrink. When I am feeling burdened by indecision, anger or sorrow, or when I am grieving or searching for the "why" of something, it is often my horse's company I seek. 


Sounds crazy, yet I know horse people understand. Do horses have a special understanding of the complexities of human suffering? I don't know. Sometimes they seem to be good mirrors, reflecting back to us the powerful emotions we are projecting, and sometimes they seem patient, non-judgmental listeners to our unspoken hopes and fears...


To my horse:


"Here I am again, at your gate (damaged creature that I am) seeking a holy communion older than written history. Here I am, calling your name, your honest eyes see right through me. Yet still you come, willingly, from your temple of hay to greet me as though I was the only thing in the world you wanted. You breathe me in, and in return my senses are flooded with the fragrances of last summer's green grass and sun-warmed fur. Words escape me, and you lower your head and take my lead in the ancient horse-human dance that stops time, if just for a while.


You carry me on your wide, goddess-shaped back, and you carry my secret sorrows, too. For a little while I am rocked into a wordless bliss in the leather cradle of our old western saddle. But that vulture, Time, circles back around, casting a sorrow-shaped shadow, and the spell is broken: human and horse must part at the gate. The escaped words return and I ineptly express my gratitude, human-style. I leave, carrying my burdens with me as I go. Yet somehow I feel lighter, strengthened by our time together... 
who, indeed, is the "beast of burden"?  

A Second Spring

The heart of our woods, formerly an idyllic tree-lined hollow, is now something like a lunar landscape due to a small forest fire. But a recent ramble revealed a translucent pale green fern frond, rising from the blackened forest floor, unfolding in a slightly unusual pattern... perhaps the heat of the fire disrupted the pre-programmed spiral form? 

No matter, it was such a welcome sight. The first herald of the year's second spring for us. A symbol of life pushing back against destruction. Of rebirth and renewal. Or maybe it's not really all that simple, not that "black and white"as the phrase goes? Maybe life and growth partner with death and destruction, the black and the green, in collusion... "in cahoots" as the old folks say with a wink. In cahoots. 

I ponder the upcoming 2010 Earth Day as I walk. Recalling the devastation of the earthquake in Haiti last January, and the primeval power of volcanoes at work in Iceland this week. I consider that Earth Day isn't just planting trees, hanging laundry out on the line and recycling. Clearly, the uncontrolled and barely-understood forces of nature on this earth are relentlessly at work in the world, creating and destroying, giving and taking away. Not exactly the gentle Mother. The grand and the minute spirals of life and death, always spinning, from the sub atomic to the galactic. Same laws, different scales. How do you fit a whole planet into a day? And do you just ignore the scary parts? I am thinking that if Earth Day were an ancient holiday, there'd have been plenty of sacrifices made.

I wonder about the fern's altered form. 

(And I bet horses don't worry about this sort of stuff, except possibly the part about green stuff growing).