Smarter than C-3PO

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Star Wars, Valentines

How do you tell your mom you love her?  Well, you might compare her to what you think about most in the world.  If you are a nine year old boy, that just might be Star Wars.

When my boys make something by hand, I cherish it.  Even more so if it is made especially for me. Most parents have a soft spot for what our kids give us, but Moms tend to be the savers of pieces of paper, squirreling these treasures away inside scrapbooks, folders, and files, for posterity or reminiscence in some unknown future time.  Because I oversee much of the creative work that happens at home with my kids, I’m rarely surprised by the end results. This means that I look forward to the surprises that come from school, pieces of writing and art that happen under another person’s guidance.

So February arrives (where did January go!?), the month when heartfelt cards are exchanged.  When another parent gently suggested to my son’s third grade teacher that a handmade gift from the kids would be nice for Valentine’s Day, he enlisted my help to come up with a project. Cards seemed to be the most straight-forward thing to make, given that our time to put something together was limited to a Valentine’s Day party during the last forty minutes of school.

Here’s how we collaborated on the Valentine project:

• I created a template for a simple heart-shaped card on decorative 12″ x 12″ paper, tracing out enough of these double hearts for each child to cut.
•  Separately I cut out small card stock paper hearts for the kids to draw on with colored pencils.
• I gave the teacher a list of ideas for what might be drawn on the little hearts before the party:  self portraits, a picture of the parent, a design or pattern, flowers, the words “I love you”, etc.
• The teacher would lead the kids through a poem writing exercise during language arts time, getting them to “show not tell” their love for their loved ones.  These poems would be written out carefully on small pieces of paper to be pasted into the large folded hearts.
• The students cut out the big hearts and attached all the small pieces during the class party, signing each card with love and their name.

The cards were a simple smashing success–I only wish I’d thought to photograph some of the funny and sincere messages inside.  A few kids read their poems aloud to their moms during the party, and more than one mom got a little teary.  Sigh.  Can we help it!?

A reading to her mom

D reads to his mom

That's Dobby the house elf with a Valentine

A, really not shy, reads with gusto "Mom, you are smarter than a dictionary!"

Regular readers might be able to spot my son’s Valentine among the photos above.  Look for the one with the castle battle scene and the robot doing mental math, and you’ve got it. Here’s what L wrote:

While some mothers might be compared to sunsets, and flowers, and comfortable pillows, this mom is more (fill in the blank) than Jedis and droids.  I love it.  My husband meanwhile, is deemed “taller than Chewbacca on a growthspurt,” with smarts to outmatch a computer game wizard, and unbeatable fortress strength.  I love that too.

C3PO, Chewbacca, stronghold castle Valentine

Funny thing about love. There are a gazillion ways to express it. This Valentine is surely a keeper (the most artistic mom in the whole world!?!), as is our goofy sweet nine year old boy.  Now if I could just try to feel the Force instead of getting angry, and dig into my memory banks to remember “over six million forms of communication” as I love my family, I’ll be doing all right.

That's AMORE under there

Love, to you all!  Happy Valentine’s Day.

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The leaves never know

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haiku

Something in the air today prompted me to pull three slim volumes off my bookshelf.  These books ended up in my possession when I was a teenager, after a great uncle died and the extended family gathered to sort through his things.  As a lover of poetry and occasional poet, I could not pass up charming Haiku books, translated from Japanese to English.

Besides being full of beautiful Haiku from some of the best-loved early Japanese poets, these books are delicately illustrated with woodblock prints, and are a pleasure to look at and hold.  But what makes these particular books even more precious are the notes written inside, by my great uncle, and his brother who gave him the books as gifts.

The first inscription:

I love that Mitchell described haiku as “word pictures of sensitive awareness of nature and life,” and that he trusted his brother would enjoy those very qualities in the poetry.  In the same book, in Howard’s own hand are three haiku.

My favorite:

“The leaves never know

Which leaf will be first to fall

Does the wind know?”

~SOSEKI

I wonder.

Tucked into the first book there is a small slip of paper, carefully cut from a longer letter, typewritten on one side, and in blue ballpoint pen on the other:

“Howard:   Thank you very much for the ‘Japanese Haiku.’  It is an unusually fine translation as it preserves a 5-7-5 syllable form and doesn’t attempt to rhyme.  Efforts to rhyme in the translation often spoil the haiku.”  In red ballpoint pen at the top of this note is written “FROM MBR JAN 1973,” another note from Mitchell, clearly cherished, and safely kept with his own haiku, by Howard.

And last, tucked into the back of one of the books is a folded piece a paper, some kind of photocopy with the exclamatory “A Few Thoughts on Birthdays!” written across the top.

At the bottom is the emphatically underlined phrase:

“Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.  Be gentle with yourself!”

The fleeting, bittersweet quality of autumn has always moved me, and in looking to these books for a poem to mark the day, I am moved by the picture of two aging brothers who had room in their lives for poetry, and a love and sensitivity toward the nature that inspired it.  I only hope for the same love of nature and poetry for my children, brothers all, and that they might also write letters and give books.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My boys know something about the knowing of the leaves and the knowing of the wind.  A couple of weeks ago, the younger two were patiently watching for the signs of the first falling leaves in the back yard.  For us, autumn comes slowly and less dramatically than in colder climates, but it does come in its way.  We are lucky to have great old trees in our yard that lose their leaves and turn yellow, but it takes time.  The boys decided to be prepared for that event.  One afternoon I came out to a yard that looked like this:

When I asked what they were working on, the reply was “We’re making leaf traps!”  The idea was to catch as many leaves as possible, just as they fell.  Here the brothers demonstrate how the traps work:

leaf catchers

caught

Perhaps not the most efficient leaf-gathering technique, but I like the resourcefulness at work!

For my boys, a haiku for autumn:

Fall soon golden leaves

Empty buckets and rakes wait

For you to let go

Autumn is coming here, slowly but surely–even as the days get shorter there is much to savor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perhaps you will be inspired to write your comment as a haiku?

Who makes a clearing

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Art, Poetry, Wendell Berry

There are days when I question the value of art, as a maker.  Who and what is the art really for?  Does my work help make the world a better place, or am I just making images and objects because it pleases me to do so?  Like storm clouds the doubts gather, clustered in their own convincing way in my mind, and pointing onward to other more pressing things.  The laundry for instance.

looking to the sky

Wait a minute… wait a minute!  Keeping my family clean and clothed will happen, as I know it must.  By regular attention to the dirty clothes pile, I keep the household running.  Regular attention to my artwork, on the other hand, does something else altogether.  The art-making opens doors and windows inside me– like an airing out– and as I cultivate it, the art itself can move beyond personal meaning.

This past week I was given an amazing gift–the time and space to ponder these questions, and those of art and spirit with a group of mindful, talented women– in perhaps my favorite place on earth, Northern New Mexico.

As a participant in a retreat focusing on Art and Spirituality, I was asked to bring poems that had significance for me, and original artwork to share with the group.  Before the trip I collected a number of items to carry with me, not knowing which ones would be pertinent when I arrived.  One poem I found in the Wendell Berry collection, Sabbaths.  It begins this way:

“Who makes a clearing makes a work of art,

The true world’s Sabbath trees in festival

Around it…

And upon reading the rest of the poem, over and over, layers of meaning circled out from it, overlapping with my own thoughts as to what kinds of clearings exist in my world. The empty laundry baskets and the planted garden beds, the organized art supplies and cleared work tables… clearings all.

level-headed mountain and heart labrynth

…The field is made by hand and eye,

By daily work, by hope outreaching wrong…

Our first exercise in looking at art together was to take an image we were given, and then choose two more from a selection of other images (mostly in postcard form); one image to affirm or expand on the first, and another to contrast it.  Van Gogh’s early painting, “A Pair of Shoes,” was handed to me and I went from there.

my sketchy notes on the three:

sketchbook

And in the act of grouping, comparing, and relating these three pictures to each other, I realized that a strength existed there.  Individually the pieces had the power to move me, and together they began to tell a story– of work and play, innocence and experience, of immediacy and the future, of seeing into and beyond.

This was only the first in a series of exercises, but it prompted the question :

What might the images I make mean, to someone who gazes upon them?  If I don’t make any art pieces, I will never know.  Why make art?

I’m still finding out.

…May light, the great Life, broken, make its way

Along the stemmy footholds of the ant.

Bewildered in our timely dwelling place,

Where we arrive by work, we stay by grace.”

the plower, after Brueghel

Beginning Winter

“It was beginning winter,

An in-between time,

The landscape still partly brown:

The bones of weeds swinging in the wind,

Above the blue snow…”

So begins my favorite poem of the last few years, by Theodore Roethke, “It was beginning winter.” As the poem goes on, the view is clear in my mind of the dry grasses and weeds, snowy fields, the quiet, and the light moving.  But more than the the winter surroundings, I feel myself in that place, silent and aware of the bittersweet impact of the season.  As the living things die, even momentarily, so the spirit and the mind are stilled.  We wait, for the returning light, the new movement, the “lively understandable spirit” that once entertained us to come again.  Finding those moments of stillness is what I hope to do this winter, and out of them, to recognize the resulting growth.