A Pilgrim Soul

The Antique

2011-09-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

She puts her tiny hand on the dresser
as she passes.
He is tall, so tall, and
his handles are kind eyes.

She senses only
her sleeping parents,
the long walk to the bathroom,
her pride in her big girl bed.

Of course
she doesn't sense
the old lady she will become.
The limp, the drawer full of pills,
the love and the pain,
the children and grandchildren
the life well lived.

Of course
she doesn't see
the man's sweaters
that will live in the third drawer down.

The return trip is better.
She climbs into the high, high bed,
grateful to the friend
standing sentinel while she sleeps.

Fudge for Breakfast

2010-09-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

My mother used to make the best fudge—real fudge, not that soft stuff. Her fudge had a sturdy consistency, a "sheer factor." She would cool the cooked chocolate mixture down to almost room temperature, letting the butter melt and just sit still, and then beat it with a wooden spoon. At a certain point, the mixture would begin to lose its shininess, take on a sort of matte sheen, and get really hard to stir. This was the critical moment of truth—getting it into a pan and smoothed over before it completely seized up. With success, sighs of relief. With failure, oh, well, we could always mix the bits into ice cream.

My mother was a world-class hostess all her married life. In 1957, entertaining wasn’t anything like today. A cocktail party meant pretty dresses, dancing, Nat King Cole, and liquor. No girlie cocktails for my mother and father; they preferred Scotch, martinis, and after dinner Drambuie. There was smoking, laughter, and a high time was had by all.

Sometimes my father would flambé something. Once he put on a wonderful performance for a sleepover with my girlfriends. Flaming peaches, I think. It was awesome. I was the envy of the sixth grade.

Anyway, back to fudge . . . I was always an early riser, but on Sunday morning after a cocktail party, it was like an archeological expedition. I would wander downstairs, where the normally tidy living and dining room were a strange landscape. There would be the evidence of the bacchanalia. These clues were always enticing. Glasses containing strange olives, cigarette butts tipped with vibrant colors, my parents’ party shoes, records naked on the hifi. The whiff of foreign tobacco. And, if fate was smiling on me, there would be some fudge left over.

Fudge for breakfast had to be one of the most forbidden of pleasures. At 6:30 on a Sunday morning, there was no chance that anybody would catch me. I could put on my mother’s shoes, find a suitably untouched cigarette butt, grab some fudge, and pretend to party. I feel very fond of that girl as I watch her trying to act like a grownup.

By church time, the house looked almost normal.

Sometimes I think of those times and it seems like “before.” Just around the corner was so much national pain and strife, and a whole generation of baby boomers was about to take the stage. But just then, all that was unimaginable.

It was a mid-century childhood. And there was fudge.

The Meatball Story

2010-08-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

In 1979, my father, recently widowed, began to get his toe in The Dating Waters. Married to my down-to-earth, movie-star-beautiful mother for over 30 years, he was, shall we say, ill prepared. He worked in Manhattan, and had sublet a somewhat swanky apartment from a woman who was living elsewhere for a year. She had introduced him to her friend, Donna.

Donna could not have been any more different from my mother. She was petite, and wore Manolo Blahniks from the time she arose and put on her bed jacket. She floated into a room on a cloud of Joy de Patou perfume. She carried her tiny dog everywhere in a chic tote. Her hobby was getting her jewelry appraised. She had that kind of baby fine white-blonde hair that required twice-weekly appointments to make sure no roots showed. I’ll let you guess as to the upkeep needed on her fingernails and toenails. Donna owned a real Picasso. She Knew People. She had dated Michael Rennie (you know, from The Day the Earth Stood Still—klaatu, verada, nicto?).

It was such a disconnect for my brothers and me to contemplate this . . . exotic creature . . . in my father’s life. Really, it was as if we were watching from outside ourselves, as if a parallel universe had opened and something had gone horribly wrong. Nevertheless, we wanted Daddy to be happy, of course, and maybe this would be a relationship that would take his mind off his loss.

We decided that it would be a great idea to have a dinner party for Donna. So we picked the day for my brothers, maternal grandmother, and my best friend, Cheryl, to gather in our apartment for a buffet dinner. Our apartment was just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan.

Donna expressed some concern about this trip. “You mean, out of the city?” she asked my father, as if she were on a safari, or a forced death march. But she valiantly agreed, and the date was set.

Now, at this time of my life, my grandmother had gifted me with a Seal-a-Meal Kit. This little kitchen helper was just great. You cooked a big batch of something, put it in a kind of thick plastic sleeve, and inserted the end of the sleeve into a heat-sealing device. Basically, you got a boil-in-bag for things like soup, chili, sauces, etc. I had made and frozen lots of these bags.

As the day approached, we spent a lot of time making sure everything was perfect. I decided on my signature dish of spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and salad. I wanted everything done ahead of time, and I wanted everything to be plentiful, so I thawed four quart bags of meatballs in sauce. The apartment was clean, the cats were sequestered. We were all dressed up. Everything was prepped. All that remained was to cook the spaghetti and heat the meatballs and sauce. My friend Cheryl arrived, and we put the sauce into a big pot to heat. Sixty minutes, and counting.

“Alyson, this doesn’t look right,” Cheryl said, stirring the meatballs and sauce. And oh my God, sure enough, I had mixed together two bags of chili with two bags of marinara sauce. It was an unappetizing mix of meatballs, kidney beans, chili, tomato sauce, and oregano. We looked at each other in horror.

Quickly going into crisis mode, we decided that we would call the local Italian restaurant and throw ourselves on their mercy. The restaurant, named The Park View, was, as you might tell, from the name, not truly an Italian restaurant. But they had sauce and meatballs, the lady said. “Don’t you worry, hon,” she said. “I’ll fix you right up. How many meatballs do you think you’ll need?”

Well, quickly I figured it up. Eight people, let’s say three meatballs per person.

“I’ll need twenty-four meatballs,” I answered.

“Really! Well, okay, you just send your brother down to pick this up.”

By the time Kevin arrived, Cheryl and I were pouring the sludge of the ruined dinner into the toilet. I wish you could have seen the look on his face as he stood in the hall, wearing his fresh, white Saturday Night Fever suit, watching the two of us trying to dispose of the evidence of my crime. He stayed well away from the action.

“Kev, go down to The Park View! The lady is going to give you the new sauce and meatballs. And hurry, for God’s sake, they’ll be here in 45 minutes, and I’ve got to make sure everything’s hot and good to go. She’s going to have everything packed up for you, just bring the sauce back here and nobody will ever know.”

Kev, always ready for any crisis, hit the road.

Meanwhile, my other brother, Tim arrived, and my mother’s mother, Mimi. With only 20 minutes to spare, and having just used up the last of the toilet cleanser, we heard Kev coming in the door. He was holding two huge shopping bags, walking with them held way away from his suit. The smell of garlic wafted in with him.

“Here you go,” he said.

I looked at him in astonishment. “Are you kidding, how much sauce did she give you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “This is just the first trip.” And back he went to the car. Uh oh.

Cheryl and I went to the kitchen and began to open the containers. Now you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but each meatball was the size of a baby’s head. And sauce? My God, the amount of sauce was mind-boggling. By the time Kev came back with the last two bags, Cheryl and I were doubled over in helpless laughter, and completely non-functional. Kev stripped down to his underwear and took over the heating process. The kitchen looked like a scene out of a Fellini movie—huge balls of meat, steam rising from the pasta pot, nearly naked gorgeous young man. And of course, the doorbell rang. They were here.

Using an admirable aplomb, Tim managed to keep Donna and my dad on a “tour” of the rest of the apartment, and give them a cocktail, while we “finished up a few things in the kitchen,” like getting my brother back into his suit, and composing ourselves, and moving into the living room and back to make conversation as if nothing was wrong. We loaded the table with a big bowl of pasta with sauce, and the meatballs had their own place of honor on a turkey platter, the only thing I had that didn’t make them look more freakishly large than they already were.

“Okay, everybody, please take a plate and help yourselves,” I called, once again relatively calm and composed. Cheryl and I avoided looking at each other, lest we start each other off.

“Oh, come on Francine,” Donna chirped at her little yappy dog, “It’s time for some din-din.”

“Donna, you start,” I said, hearing my mother’s voice urging me to be a good hostess. “Here, I’ll fill a plate for you so you don’t have to put Francine down.”

“Oh, my goodness, we’re not having meatballs, are we?”

“Yes, can I give you one with your pasta?”

“Oh, no, I don’t like meatballs, I’ll just have a bit of salad. But Francine would like an eensy beensy bit of meatball, wouldn’t you, Francine?”

Even avoiding each others’ eyes didn’t work. Kev, Cheryl, and I just dissolved into a state I can only describe as incoherence. We just couldn’t help it.

The rest of the dinner was not the success I had hoped. Donna did not think the story was interesting or funny. Donna liked stories that involved her, her jewelry, Francine, her youth, and how much things cost. It was, shall we say, an early evening. Donna batted her perfectly lashed eyes, and my father took her back from the wilds of New Jersey to the safety of the City.

After they left and the sound of yapping receded into the distance, there we stood, my husband, my brothers, and Cheryl, looking at the mountain of meat on the tray, and contemplating the many containers still unopened.

“Well,” Cheryl said. “Let’s get this packed up and into the freezer.”

And that’s what we did. By 8:30, we were watching Monty Python, and taking aspirin. The best part of the evening was in front of us. And Donna? She lasted through about three more dates; my father came to his senses. There was much rejoicing.

And that is the night that we spent $213 on the meatball that Donna wouldn’t eat.

The Gift at the Back of the Drawer

2010-07-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a thumbtack, way in the back of the drawer. But what I found was a ponytail elastic, a Hello Kitty ponytail elastic—with a few strands of my daughter Molly’s snowblonde hair wrapped around. Her hair, but from so long ago. So many years gone by, and it still seems like just a moment ago. And with a sudden shift I am in that moment.

One touch of those strands and I start to cry. Not dainty crying, but loud, messy sobbing. Sit down in the chair and look for Kleenex crying. Cats come running crying. And it all comes back to me, comes flooding back to me. The feel of her weight in my lap. The clean, sunny smell of her cheek. The sound of her voice.

“Hug, Mommy,” she was forever saying.

“I never say no to a hug, Baby,” I would always answer. My baby. We still call her Baby.

The crying? It’s complicated crying. Yes, time has passed; children grow up. I’m not a wallower. I do feel sad that so many years have flown by, that the magical early years of childhood are past. But I’m also happy and grateful. So grateful that my memory of those times can come to me so sharply and bring a rush of joy. And so grateful that I have had the wherewithal to do my best as a parent. I have little to regret and much to be thankful for.

And Molly? I can see her from here, she’s out in the yard. She’s filling bird feeders, and having a sort of conversation with a very angry red squirrel. She’s strong and slender, tough but tender. She’s my daughter all the way. Amanda is more like her father, but Molly and I are tuned to the same wavelength. I finish her sentences, she reads my mind. We just know.

And that 3-year-old with the hair like straw spun to gold? Yes, she’s gone. Gone, but not forgotten.

(Art by Molly Stone)

How I Narrowly Escaped Death by Massacre in My Freshman Year and Became an Honorary Steel Magnolia

2010-05-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

In 1969, I arrived at my small, Southern college. I don't think I can adequately describe the cultural disconnect between the life I had led--in the metropolitan New York area--and the slow, placid, humid way of life I found in South Carolina. The emphasis was on civility and the Ladies' Rule Book was truly scary, with caveats like "no double dating at Lake Greenwood," "over-display of affection will result in punishment," "girls wearing slacks must exit by the side door only," etc.

Ever the editor, I edited my behavior, then watched and waited. I learned not to let my impatience show when waiting 20 minutes for a fountain drink, not to balk at the strange food (okra!grits!), and to withhold judgment about the level of sophistication of the residents. I had to remember that I was a guest in a strange land, where the people were different and I was completely uninformed. I took the required Freshman Bible course, bided my time, and adapted. I even acquiesced to Freshman hazing, singing the Oscar Meyer Weiner song and wearing a stupid beanie. It all seems so innocent now. It was kind of like summer camp, extended into the fall.

Because I didn't want to be "that horrible Yankee," a label I heard attached to another girl from the North, I was probably more willing to accept the eccentricities of our house mother, Miz Frazier. Of course, the Miz had nothing to do with liberation--it was just the way Miss was pronounced. I think Miss became a firm Miz once a girl had passed the years of spinsterhood and meandered into a kind of girlish crone state. Clearly, she had not forgotten her former debutante glory; she had never grown her wardrobe into adulthood. Miz Frazier and ruffles were good friends.

Miz Frazier lived in a "suite" on the main floor of the dorm, and monitored the comings and goings of the girls like a trapdoor spider. She could hear a pin drop from a half mile away, I swear, and if she caught you passing, you were invited in. She served iced tea and delighted in instructing girls on cosmetics application. You could always tell who had gotten caught in Miz Frazier's web that day, because they looked like puppets, with coral cheeks. Coral was Miz Frazier's chosen color, selected when she was a girl herself, and she never deviated from her colorpath. Miz Frazier was a practitioner of schadenfreude--she appeared to commiserate with girls who were guileless enough to share their boyfriend troubles, but in reality delighted in these youthful disasters.

Each night, Miz Frazier rolled her hair up in rollers. She used exactly five rollers, purple ones, with a cover that snapped over, giving each curl a permanent crease when removed. There were big airy holes in her hairdo, and she didn't always feel that washing the hair was required. Some nights, she used a dry powder spray instead of shampoo. Afterwards, she slathered on her cold cream and made her rounds, rollers wrapped in a hideous scarf. She had a well-worn frilly nightgown and robe and purple fuzzy slippers. She covered all three floors of the beautiful old mansion, checking on us and making sure we weren't planning a hippie revolution. Then she would gather us out in the hall, where we would sing "Now the Day Is Over," and some other clapping song. After that, we were usually free to pop some popcorn and get on with our evening.

One night, however, the routine changed. We heard her coming around the dorm, around 11 p.m., as usual, but her progress was marked by the sound of hammering. When she reached our floor, we observed her nailing the huge hallway windows shut.

"What's going on, Miz Frazier?" we asked. "Why are you nailing the windows shut?"

"Oh, my poor dahlings! The most awful thing has happened. Miz Jeanne Dixon has issued a prediction this day. She has predicted that theah will be a massacre at a small southern college! I am having palpitations. We must prepare for the worst. We are so vulnerable heah, with these big windows and all you innocent children at risk. But don't give it another thought, I have made us all safe now."

"But Miz Frazier, we all have big windows in our rooms."

"Well, you must nail your windows shut then, and push your steamer trunks in front of your doors. Remain in your rooms and wait for morning. If we get to morning, we'll be safe."

Now, at this point in my life, I was aware that Miz Frazier wasn't quite all there, but this was still an edict from an authority figure and neither I nor my friends were able to quite ignore the possible danger.

So we nailed our windows shut, pushed all our furniture in front of our doors, and armed ourselves with long bamboo spikes that we had kept as souvenirs from the temporary fence that had been one of the decorations at the Formal Freshman Soiree. We looked like a psychotic group of natives, half of us with rollers and green face masques, tearing the furniture away from the door and running into the hall at each strange sound, spears at the ready.

One girl, a charming southern belle who knitted all her own clothes, was especially disturbed by the rumor. (I'm not kidding, she knitted everything she owned and made afghans, slippers, scarves, etc. for presents. I never saw her without her knitting. She knitted her dresses, for God's sake. I think she had some kind of ADD or something; she could only think while knitting.) Anyway, at one point there was a big thump on the roof, and we all ran out of our rooms, crowding into the hallway. But here came Knitting Girl, and she had a RIFLE! A loaded RIFLE! Apparently, her dad wanted her to feel safe, and insisted she keep it in her closet.

"You idiots!" she screamed. "This is just what they want! They make a noise, and you just come out of your rooms like lambs to the slaughter. Then they can kill us all at once! Get back into your rooms and STAY THERE!"

Well, we did stay in our rooms after that--because we were afraid of getting shot by Knitting Girl. And the poor boys who had gotten wind of the rumor and were up on the roof trying to scare us were lucky they didn't get massacred by Knitting Girl.

Well, of course, the night passed; dawn arrived. We were alive, sleepy, older, and wiser. Miz Frazier was sheepish, but unbowed. "We must nevah forget, girls, that we are southern women, and as such, we are expected to handle any emergency and still be ladies."

I listened to Jean Shepherd on the radio for a lot of my childhood, and sometimes I could even hear his broadcast all the way down at college. I know Jean would have loved this story. I always wished I could have told it to him.

The Man Who Came to My Door

2010-05-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

I have had two mystical, unexplainable experiences in my life. There are a couple of other close contenders for miracles, but that's a story for another day. Today, I'm going to tell you about the first of my top two: The Man Who Came to My Door.

When I was first married, my husband and I acted as superintendents of a small garden apartment complex, getting free rent in return for managing rentals, taking care of hiring people to do repairs, managing the staff of part-time staff who cleaned the halls, landscaped, and plowed in the winter. We were the people who arranged for apartments to be painted when they were vacant, or helped the seniors who couldn't manage carrying groceries, or called the plumber. I got pretty good at fixing the boiler, which had a room of its own and was the size of an SUV, and as temporamental as an opera diva. The things I said to that boiler, honestly, I'm ashamed. Once, I remember, someone who hadn't been in our apartment before jumped about 3 feet into the air when the boiler came on in the adjacent basement area. I had become accustomed to "Bertha's" noisy eruptions, but for those unprepared, her noises could give quite a start.

Anyway, the strangest thing happened one afternoon. The doorbell rang, I answered it, and there stood an elderly man, slight of build, with the most amazing hair and eyes I had ever seen. His hair was white and downy, like a baby bird, almost blue-white in the sun. He actually seemed to glow. And his eyes--to this day I can't describe them. They were a blue that doesn't exist in eyes, a kind of luminescent cobalt and intense light blue that seemed to see right into my head. They were laser eyes, but kind and good. He radiated kind and good.

His clothes were clean but well worn. The thing I remember about his long-sleeved shirt is that the sleeves had been shortened in an odd way, with just a seam up around the bicep to make them short enough to fit him. Why I remember this detail--I don't know. Our entire interaction couldn't have been more than 30 seconds, but that stuck with me.

He asked very politely if I was Alyson Stone, née Button. That's what he said 'née Button'." I said yes, thinking that he was someone who wanted to rent an apartment. His gaze sizzled across the doorjamb. "I have been sent to give this to you." And with that, he handed me a dogeared, yellowish paperback book. I looked down at the book long enough to absorb the title; I looked up again to talk to the man. The man was gone. Simply gone. I went outside and looked around. Gone. Impossible. Gone.

The book was a manual on how to meditate. It described a process for imagining yourself going down a flight of stairs to an anteroom, sort of like a museum with showcases, then down another flight to a room of your design, furnished and outfitted in any way you wished. There should be, in this room, the book said, a comfortable chair in front of a screen on the wall. There were instructions for projecting healing thoughts, comforting thoughts, toward people you had come across in your daily life. There was an elevator for "guests" or "consultants" to appear. (I never know who will show up in that elevator, it's often a complete surprise.)

Of course I couldn't help but pay attention to the tenets of the book; I have used these techniques ever since. The book was not popular, not mainstream, not even traditional for meditation techniques. I would never have considered reading such a book. But the main reason I paid attention is because I alone knew the truth. That something impossible had happened to me, that the man who brought the book was magical in some way that I couldn't understand, but was willing to accept. The way I got the book made it easy to step into the magic; it gave me a rational reason to walk off the path and into the woods.

Before The Man Who Came to My Door, I worried constantly about things I couldn't do anything about: plane crash victims, droughts in Africa, poverty, starving children. I wasted my time fretting about things over which I had no control. All my worrying was just a purple haze around my head, serving no useful purpose.

Around the same time I read a simple statement that someone wrote in an interview in one of the women's magazines. The person said, "I try to take what God puts in my path--and act on it with grace." It struck home with me suddenly: I can't do anything about Somalia or a plane crash in Nepal. But I can spend the night sitting up with Mrs. Goldstein in 4G when she is scared. I can help her feel safe. She is in my path. Let me just put one foot in front of the other on this path.

So that is how I moved forward. I did my "concentrating," "my blue light," "my meditating," --I've never really settled on a description that is really accurate. I do no harm. I do not know if what I do helps, but I don't think it can hurt. The purple haze is gone. I try to imagine my thoughts like the gaze of The Man Who Came to My Door--a laser beam of blue, directed outward to the universe.

It's Just Not Spring Until the Begonias

2010-04-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

Several years ago we bought a custom screen room that attaches to our house off the back deck. Every year since, there's this "Christmas in spring" feeling that infects the whole family on the day the room comes out. Our whole life changes, opens up, the sights and sounds of spring surround us, and we all breathe deeply for the first time in months.

Everything has to go in its place--the bird feeders, the privacy screen, the nested iron tables, the ottoman. The cats have their own pillow, too, and they complain vocally every morning until I let them out into their spot of sunshine.

The giant tea bags get moved to the front of the shelf. We like it unsweetened, perfumed with bergamot and the taste of la dolce vita. Cardinals appear to entertain us. Squirrels frolic. We have chipmunks, neighborhood cats, and an annoying blue jay. The sedum rampages out of its stone edge, the hostas grow like teenage boys, and a fairy ring of moss large enough to dance in appears overnight.

But nothing makes as big a statement to me as the begonias. Not just any begonias. We have to have two kinds: tuberous and New Guinea. They each have their own charms, but the tuberous are a direct connection to my mother, who distributed them each year for our spring church service. We just called it Begonia Day. It's like pulling a switch. And my mother is close by, living, breathing, laughing, making the spring sing. My mother's begonias. My magic mother. Ahh, my spring comes again. Magic.

“All Right, Children, Line Up for Art”

2010-04-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Let me set the scene for you. The year—1956. The place—Anna C. Scott Elementary School. My grade level—First Grade. Picture her, this girl. Blonde pony tail, cute dress with a sash that tied in the back, sturdy shoes. It’s a Friday, in spring. And Friday is Art Day.

After lunch and some Math, the teacher would finally make the announcement. “All right, children, please line up quietly. We’re going down to Art.” Those words, those wonderful words. I loved school; I loved the teacher; I loved my friends. But Friday was not just the start of the weekend for me. It was Art Day. All week I waited and planned, charged with anticipation for a new project. And it wasn’t any dinky amount of time, either, it was the rest of the school day!

I never dared to say a word after lining up—what if I got in trouble for talking and (gasp) missed Art? The line moved along, out the door, across the linoleum to the main hallway, our steps on the hall’s shiny wooden floor loud and echoing. Then down the stairs, into the inner sanctum of the janitor’s lair, halls and floors painted shiny apple green. Turn left here, right there, following the asbestos-wrapped pipes above us like a map until, at last, we reached The Art Room.

The Art Room was a corner basement room, but in my memory it is filled with sunlight. Nice big tables, fresh supplies laid out for us, and oh boy—the wonderful smells would hit you. Like a bloodhound, I filled my head with those scents—crayons, chalk, paint, turpentine, and the indefinable smell of sunshine on paper.

This day, the project was almost magical. Bowls of beads in every color sat squarely in the middle of each table. Curliques of thick wire. And our very own tweezers! The project was a bracelet for Mother’s Day. It wasn’t the first thing I had made for my mother in Art Class, but it was the first gift that seemed tangible. A bracelet! Something she would wear!

The world narrowed to silence as I carefully chose each bead, sorting them into groups, re-selecting, sorting again, organizing them into a line, threading the bits onto a wire, clamping the ends with my tweezers. Pink and orange looked so wonderful together, especially when I added a bit of opalescent white and a bit of woody beige to blend into something my eyes liked to look at. I was transported. I imagined my mother’s face when she saw her gift. She would put the bracelet on and she would be happy.

Imagine my six-year-old astonishment when the Art Teacher approached. “Oh, Alyson, pink and orange don’t go together at all. Wouldn’t you like to pick some other colors?”

I looked around at other bracelets. My friend Cynthia had used all white beads. Very pretty. Ellen had made a red/blue/yellow/green vibrant mix. I liked them, but I didn’t want to change my colors. I thought my mother would love the bracelet. I shook my head. The teacher shrugged. This week, I was a disappointment to her.

You might think that a six-year-old would be swayed by the judgmental eye of the teacher, but even at six I knew something very important: There’s no right or wrong in Art Class. Unlike other disapproving moments from authority figures, this one rolled right off my back. I went home with my bracelet, somehow aware that I had made an important decision. I wasn’t worried about the teacher’s opinion. I wrapped the gift, and when my mother opened it, she loved it. She kept that bracelet safe; I found it after her death, carefully stored in her jewelry box.

I still love the colors.

Memories

2010-03-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

A conversation today with a Navy wife started me thinking about a wonderful summer long ago. My boyfriend was in the Sixth Fleet, and stationed on the flagship. It was anchored at Gaeta, on the west coast of Italy, near Rome. I had traveled throughout Europe with my family, but never in Italy, and never on my own, so it was quite an adventure for my brother, Tim and me. He was 17 and I was 20. I spoke Italian and French, but Timmy couldn't even understand a South Carolina accent. We were so amazingly young, but we didn't know that. We thought we were quite the bon vivants.

I was so in love that summer. I lived on unfiltered Camel cigarettes and CocaCola all summer and went home pounds lighter. One bite of food and I was full. I had stars in my eyes, and Italy only heightened that giddy feeling. We walked everywhere or rode the train. People used to stop me in the street and tell me how beautiful I was, and give me flowers. I think being in love makes girls beautiful, because I never felt that way in normal life. The neighborhood adopted me, because I wanted to be part of them. I took my string bag to the market with the ladies, and got in the rhythm of the community. I was never so contented with a neighborhood.

My brother and I went off on our own for part of the summer, because the ship was gone and Cliff went with it. Tim and I went to beaches where young Italian campers shared their homemade wine with us, pouring it into our baby bird mouths from a goatskin flask. We went to Portofino, where I earned our room and board singing and playing guitar in the trattorias. We stood where Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, where poets walked, where art was reborn.

One night, Cliff took us down a worn, uneven flight of stairs in Gaeta Vecchia--old Gaeta. We stumbled into the darkened stairwell, then into a maze of corridors, following beckoning aromas that turned out to be from pizza. Not pizza as we knew it in the U.S., but real pizza, made in a three-hundred-year old brick oven by beautiful young men who danced with the dough. When we tasted it, Timmy and I actually reached across the table and hugged.

On Capri, we climbed a thousand steps along a wall of flowers to reach a restaurant we had heard about. The lady grew her own vegetables, and we had our first real salad in weeks. We feasted on that salad, and then a piece of homemade peach pie, all the while looking at a view straight from a postcard, breathing the scented breeze, and looking at each other in disbelief that such a place could be real.

The summer ended too quickly. In the last days we went to the top of Gaeta, to a restaurant named A O'Re Burlone (The King of the Buffoons). We snuck up to the roof and danced under a full moon. I swear to you that the moon is bigger and closer in Italy. We saw fireworks from the flagship in the harbor. We talked endlessly and everything was possible.

Everyone should go to Italy at least once in their lives. While they're young. While they're in love.

(Photo by Stefano Viola)

Remembering Mr. Bolbach

2010-01-15T14:41:00.000-08:00

In Junior High, we were introduced to Algebra. The guide to this new world was Mr. Bolbach, who has remained in my memory clearly to this day.

About 5' 5" tall, he was a fireplug of a man, full of energy. He was about 60 then, at the end of his teaching life. I can still see his bald head and fringe of white hair, his blue eyes, and his signature bow tie.

Mr. Bolbach was passionate about mathematics, and I was a words person. But that didn't stop him from converting me. He would pierce me with his azure gaze from across the room, and challenge me to answer, to question, to understand, to appreciate his great love. A number line stretched across the room over the blackboard, and he would constantly refer to it, which was the best teaching method he could have used. He cemented information visually, and I have never forgotten it.

I also have never forgotten the moment when the light dawned over Miami between me and Algebra. There was this little shift in my thinking, and the magic made itself real to me. It was like a movement from 2D to 3D in my world, and love bloomed. It was all a big puzzle, cosmic, almost divine. Mr. Bolbach got to see me experience that. We must have made quite a picture, the two humans, old/young, short/tall, unlikely comrades-in-arms connected by the electricity of joy in numbers.

I kept in touch with Mr. Bolbach all the way through high school, but then lost track. I haven't thought about him in years, but recently I was talking to a photographer about the time I photographed that deserted school building where I learned so much. I wandered through the rooms, trying to find a way to capture the spirit that had lived there, looking for light and dark corners that would bring interest to my pictures.

I felt no connection until I went into the room where Mr. Bolbach had introduced me to his subject. A number line was up on the wall--the same one?--I don't know. I took a picture of it, now lost. No matter. Mr. B smiles through the years. One man with a mission. Mission accomplished.

A Christmas Awakening

2009-12-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

When my daughter Amanda was three months old, we scheduled her christening ceremony to coincide with a holiday visit to my family’s home. We gathered at my parents’ church for the small private ceremony, just our family, closest friends, and the godparents. With all the planning and preparations for Christmas, I confess that I had given little thought to the christening—-other than as one event among many that busy year.

As we assembled in the tiny country church, I suddenly became conscious of the fact that everyone my husband and I loved was present. The minister glowed in his vestments as he cheerfully prepared his missals and the font. Suddenly it seemed to me that time stopped. I could hear nothing of the outside world, but every detail in the church was distinct, each dust mote clearly defined in the sunlight. We were no longer fifteen solitary people—-but legion—-as all goodness coalesced in a sacred place for that instant of benediction. I perceived each word the pastor spoke as a flame—-warmth around which we gathered, just as cavemen must have huddled around fires against the uncertain night. The scene was primal, holy, cosmic.

Bewildered by the intensity of my emotions, I found myself weeping openly as the service progressed. Soon we were all weeping, embracing, and celebrating in a magic moment of awareness of the specialness of our love for each other and our belief that darkness will never triumph. It was a moment words are inadequate to describe, a glimpse into all that I wish to understand.

I am just as moved, even so many years later, to recall this special Christmas–the Christmas when unto us, as well, a child was given. We celebrated more than a birth that took place almost two thousand years ago, more than a ritual performed by mere men. We celebrated the magic of our very existence, and the potential for mankind that faith ever renews.

More Than Six Choices? Don't Ask Me . . .

2009-03-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I saw an amazing lecture about the downside of having a lot of choices. It was absolutely riveting. A lot of studies have showed that people like having lots of choices. But they were flawed studies, because they just assumed that because people liked three choices better than two choices, that it would always be preferable to add more choices. But this is wrong. It turns out that there is a point (and it's a pretty low number) where the choices are actually changing the quality of life for the worse.

Worse for a number of reasons, but the most interesting one is this: you aren't satisfied with any choice you make, because, with all those choices, you must have missed the best choice. Even in corporations, the more choices the corporation offers for retirements plans, the lower the participation in the plans! People are defeated before they even start, because they can't decide. They actually give up the free money because they can't decide. This holds true for making decisions about telephones, computers, blue jeans, entrees on a menu, and automobiles.

If we can hand over choice to someone else, even someone who doesn't know any more than we do, we are happier. Ask any wife. My own husband tells me that sometimes choosing among many options is physically painful to him! He shops for groceries; I buy everything else. Since there are 275 choices for salad dressing, I'm not sure he got the best end of that deal.

Right now, for instance, I have the luxury of some rare free time. But I am not sure whether to do my needlework, read, look at hulu, check my facebook page, study search engine optimization, check Twitter (in case John Lithgow sent me another twitter), or photograph some of my items for my shop on 1000 Markets (www.1000markets.com). So what am I doing instead? Writing about my inability to choose.

And now I thought of something funny that David Letterman did years ago. He went to a shop named Just Bulbs and kept asking for other kinds of things, until the old lady in the shop was ready to kill him. "Just light bulbs," she was yelling. "Just like the sign says, JUST BULBS." I think I will make it my mantra.

Just bulbs.

My So-Called Relatives

2009-03-11T14:31:00.001-07:00

This is my downstairs bathroom wall. Every day I look at these people, imagining their lives, their thoughts at the moment of the photographer's click. Ironically, while I have several other pictures of ancestors on the walls in there, these two aren't even related to me.

The man came with the beautifully carved tramp art frame, all the way from Australia. I have named him Henry. I picture him as a man with a successful business, possibly an enterprise involving the making of fine woolens, or somesuch.

Penelope, there in front of the hotel, is having a much-deserved holiday. Her life isn't clear to me, but she does have a beau. They are very much in love, but there are some issues that need to be resolved in order for her family to be accepting of the match. This clandestine rendezvous is by far the most daring thing she has ever done.

I wonder who they really were. I can't help but wonder what they would have thought to know that they'd be images for a stranger's imagination. At the very instant the shutter clicked, the world I inhabit would have been unimaginable to either of them.

Their presence pleases me. In my own way, I honor them. It's not crazy, is it?

Being the Change

2009-01-29T11:04:00.000-08:00

Improbably, this innocent-looking pair of eyeglasses symbolizes a journey of personal growth. First of all, I have had these glasses far longer than any other pair in my life because I can’t afford to replace them. New eyeglasses have been demoted in priority. In the past, I took for granted the benefits and entitlements of The American Middle Class. No longer. I remember the woman I was, oblivious to the fragility of a paycheck, but that women is four years gone.

I wouldn’t want to have that old me back. She was more shallow than I am, she was more arrogant than I am, she was living with blinders on. She would have had a problem with the cobbled-together repair to the earpiece.

Yes, she knew the things that were really important—health, family, living honorably. Service to others, to her Town. She knew those things. But she knew them through a thick glass of material comfort.

I know now that comfort has a different definition. Once you are tempered by adversity—real adversity—your perspective on “things” changes, irrevocably. So, eyeglasses break and can be repaired many times. They can even be repaired with an artistic flourish. Who will care that my earpiece is tipped with a glob of seed beads? That other Alyson would have cared, would have felt deprived.

The current Alyson’s opinion:

Puhleeze . . . . Everything is relative.

A Basket of Joy

2009-01-14T14:58:00.000-08:00

I have been caught up in my task of creating a new market on www.1000markets.com, caught up in making the market come to "live" status---you know, using my brain instead of my hands.

So this morning when I glimpsed this basket of yarns, I came to a halt, took a picture, and resolved to set aside time today to make things.

And I did make things.

Wow, all this Village stuff has gotten me to consider my goals carefully, and try to meet them. I even made a crocheted flower of my own design and hung it up. It is useless, but it pleases me.

I have a slew of ideas for making things. I hope this week to get some of them off the page and into reality.

I admit I have been "sunning myself" in the good feeling that the market has brought. I have a million ideas for The Village, too. They have to get off the page and onto the screen!

But now I have a community to share all that with. I just love that. I feel like I have found "my peeps" here after looking far and wide for those who share my need---the craving to share with others about all life brings, not just the creative side of our lives, but all of the messy and wonderful and sad and frustrating things that show up along the way.

I can think of many analogies for this, but none better than that basket of yarn, full of expectancy, full of promise, just waiting to be brought to life.

The Boys are Back

2008-12-16T14:08:00.001-08:00

I collect snowmen. They pose so nicely, too, don't they? Every year the collection grows, and now their box can hardly hold them. You can see how pleased they all are to be out and about, even if they do have to contend with (shhhh) the C-A-T-S .

And look who spent the day helping me decorate the house for Christmas. This is my baby, Molly. Isn't she spectacular? She is as pretty on the inside as the outside, as well!

This Christmas I feel especially festive. I don't know if I've just gotten used to poverty, or whether I've just realized that life is happening around me and to me whether we're poor or not. It's just not going to do any good to fret over our retirement money disappearing, or whether Richard has a permanent job or not. These things are out of my hands, for the most part. My children are healthy and happy. What more could a person ask for?

Plus, the snowboys make me laugh. And the cats. . . this is Gabriel Mozart. He is a sun hog. The cats are feeling festive as well, since Molly added vintage jingle bells to their collars. They sound like Santa's reindeer when they go on the move!

The Ice Storm

2008-12-12T14:07:00.001-08:00

This morning at 4:30, I gasped myself awake, hooked up to a sleep apnea machine that was no longer delivering the promised Positive Airway Pressure, but instead delivering a sound that sounded waaayyyy too much like Darth Vader on the treadmill. No power, no light, just a Stygian blackness that tends to make one believe that blindness has struck.

I have barely gotten used to this apnea contraption, which has offered blessed relief and improved sleep. Richard has one, too, and the two of us, if observed in the wee hours, must closely resemble a mini-hive of Star Trek's Borg species. Richard, in his briefs and undershirt (a vision of loveliness), put on his Nikes and headed down to the basement, where the sump pumps normally keep things crisply dry. Uh-oh, four inches of water!

The first half of the day is a blur of misery, rain, sleet, hail, no charged-up items in the house. Three flashlights that dimmed infuriatingly quickly. No telephone, no cell phones, no oven, even our Nintendo DS(es) were dead. Plus, I am apparently pathologically unable to resist trying to turn on everything in reach that runs on electricity, repeatedly.

A horrendous crash against the house--our pine tree had shed a huge branch. More followed all over the yard, and we can only imagine what the rest of the town looks like if our yard is a barometer. My little battery TV gave the news that there was a state of emergency, with a million people electricity-free, probably for several days.

Pretty soon we got our heads around the situation and began to adapt. Molly and I lit some candles and wrapped Christmas presents. We made a big pot of chili, because the stovetop is gas! We even were able to keep warm from one room where the heating is gas. Rich was in his element experimenting with ways to use the generator to keep our fridge going---"For God's sake, don't try to turn on the bathroom light again, Alyson, you'll overload the balance!" Thanks to his shenanigans we don't have to cook and eat 5 lbs. of shrimp.

The sun began to break out, the room lit up, then dimmed with the late afternoon. Candles again. The warm, rich scent of the chili enveloped us. We found some vintage Christmas tags and had fun using them on our gifts. The cats posed pleasingly for photos, hypnotized by the warmth of the wall heater. We laughed ourselves senseless remembering lines from Saturday Night Live skits we have seen and loved.

And then the lights came on. The perfect end to this day. Here is the chili recipe.

Alyson's Chili,
adapted from Lisa's Chili
adapted from Williams-Sonoma Chili

Ingredients:

some ground beef (anywhere from 1 to 3 lbs.)
1T cooking oil
some onions (I only had 1.5 today, anywhere up to 3 big ones is fine)
fresh garlic (I use 4 cloves), chopped fine
a bottle of beer
a cup of beef broth (or 1 beef boullion cube in 1 cup water)
a couple of cans of beans, drained and rinsed (I use pinto and red kidney)
a large can of crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup or so of bottled ketchup
1t jalapeno powder (Bobby Flay's), or a chopped, fresh jalapeno
1/3 cup chili powder (Chimayo is the best, if you can get it)
2T powdered cumin
1t dried coriander
1T dried oregano
salt to taste, and black pepper
1/2 cup masa harina
1 box frozen corn kernels

Method:

Brown meat, drain of fat and reserve. Saute onions in oil until translucent. Add chili powder, salt, cumin, coriander, oregano, jalapeno powder or jalepeno, garlic. Cook until spices are fragrant. Add beer, beef broth, tomatoes, beans, cooked meat, and catsup. Bring to simmer and cook one hour. Add corn. Stir masa harina into mixture slowly to avoid lumps. Adjust amount of masa depending on how thick your chili has become, and how thick you like it to end up. The masa will continue to thicken over time, so be careful or you'll end up with concrete. Turn it off and let it sit for an hour or so if you can. It improves with age. I like to eat my chili with Saltine crackers spread with grape jelly. Try it, it's good!

Stay warm; stay safe; stay patient with life's little surprises.

To All the Unemployed Out There

2008-12-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

You should read “My Life as a Statistic” by Steven Maas, an essay in the 12/7/08 Boston Globe Magazine. Heartbreaking, uplifting, and poignant. You’ll know how he feels.

My New Friend Janet

2008-12-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

This morning I got an email from Janet. I first met Janet when purchasing a kit from her for something called a “Dottie Bag.” She is the queen of this bag, even down to finding the most beautifully colored felt. She finds colors heaven forgot, let me tell you.

I had told Janet that I was looking at tutorials on the blanket stitch, and had been surprised that there are so many ways to do it. It was almost a philosophical dialogue to see what each teacher said about the stitch. Here is what Janet wrote back:

“Have you ever heard of the zen of stitching? When I get into my zen zone my stitches just flow! It’s such a great feeling. I have perfected my own blanket stitch. I know there are simpler ways to do it, but they don’t feel right to me. My style feels right and balanced. It’s a rhythm, like a heartbeat. To me, stitching is a prayer, a spiritual offering, a moment to treasure the miracle of our hands. It’s not work, it’s an expression of joy and it’s very personal. Not to mention comforting!”

Isn’t that an amazing paragraph, it absolutely exalts the idea of simple sewing to a new level, doesn’t it?

Here are pictures of a few other smaller bags that I was compelled to create. Oh, joy.

(See more of Janet’s work at http://www.feltonthefly.etsy.com/)

Dottie Bag by Alyson

Three Amazing Artists

2008-12-02T10:48:00.000-08:00

I joined Etsy (and now 1000markets) this fall, and just today I was marveling at how many wonderfully talented women I have met in my explorations.

I would like to tell you about three of them.

Janet is from Michigan. Her sellername on Etsy is feltonthefly. She makes the most beautiful colors of wool felt in the world. She sells goodies made out of felt, including an incredible Christmas “boot” for those who don’t have a place to hang stockings. I just completed one of her unique and adorable kits for a “Dottie Bag,” which transforms a few bits and pieces of ribbon, a felt triangle, and embellishments of your choice into a work of art. Janet told me they would be addictive, and they proved to be so. I have already made three more, and have ideas for more. Check out her website, http://www.feltonthefly.com/.

Fiona (sellername linenandroses) lives in the UK, where she lives a life immersed in art and beauty. Fiona is a thoughtful Renaissance woman, interested in many things. Her blog (ginghamandflowers.blogspot.com) is an education in itself.

And then there is Elke. She lives in Belgium, speaks five or six languages, and is a gifted jewelry maker. Her work is young but elegant, bright and bold without being garish, and very much a bargain. This necklace is only $26.00. Elke sells on Etsy as dellejuwelen.

The fact is that I have met these three spectacular artists because of my love of handmade things. I have to say that I have always felt a bit guilty about my “craftiness” gene. Maybe it wasn’t “real” art to me, or I felt that I should be doing something more useful with my time. I don’t know why I felt that way; it seems crazy now. The desire to create takes many paths. Why should anybody question that? I have been freed up at this stage of my life to explore hither and yon and I plan to follow where that leads me. Like Janet, Fiona, and Elke, creating pretty things, useful things, or even totally useless things is my journey.

I hope you will take a look at the work of these three amazing artists. They lit up my November!

www.feltonthefly.etsy.com (www.feltonthefly.com)

www.linenandroses.etsy.com (www.ginghamandflowers.blogspot.com)

www.dellejewelen.etsy.com

www.alyson2.etsy.com

(http://www.1000markets.com/users/alyson2)

“Soup Day” Dawns

2008-11-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

So, there was a slight problem with the turkey. We forgot it in the laundry room and found it the day after Thanksgiving. Thankfully (no pun intended) it is very cold in there, so my husband went ahead and cut it off the carcass to get ready for The Great Soup Day, Charlie Brown.

This is an annual tradition that always makes me feel very righteous and pioneer-y. We use up just about everything that is in the crisper to make this absolutely fabulous soup. Every year we do the same lame things: we claim that the turkey was the best ever. Then we tell the story about my first Thanksgiving as a new bride, when I suited up with rubber gloves to remove the turkey innards from the bird, causing my uncle to laugh so long we got worried. Then, when we have the soup, we say it was the best part of the holiday.

So here it is, my own invention, which I call

WONDERFUL TURKEY SOUP

Ingredients:
1/4 stick butter
2 T. flour
2 T. curry powder (I use Madras mild)
1 t. sage or Bell’s seasoning
1 big white onion, chopped
2 Yukon potatoes, cubed
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, sliced thin
8 cups turkey broth or chicken stock
salt, pepper
2 cups leftover turkey meat
1 cup cream
1 package frozen chopped spinach
Optional: leftover gravy, leftover stuffing, leftover green beans

Procedure:
Melt butter, drop in onion, celery, carrots, and potatoes. Saute for a few minutes; don’t worry that stuff is sticking to the pan, that’s normal. When the veggies have a bit of translucency and maybe even a bit of color, stir in the flour, curry power, sage, salt, and pepper. Cook for a minute to take the raw taste out of the flour, then slowly pour in the broth. This is the base for the soup, and you need to simmer it with the lid on once it has come to a boil. Let it simmer about 30-40 minutes.

Turn off the heat, immediately put in the turkey, frozen block of spinach, and cream. Put the lid back on and let it sit still until the spinach has completely melted into the soup.

If you have some leftovers that you are trying to use up, you can put in a bit more broth and add whatever strikes your fancy. My family is particularly fond of a bit of gravy in this soup.

What I like is that the turkey doesn’t get overcooked, because you are basically just heating it up, not simmering it for a long time. Also, this is the best use for dark meat ever! It is just delicious.

I hope you will try the soup, and let me know how your family felt about it.

The Crowded Kitchen

2008-11-25T10:43:00.000-08:00

I do love Thanksgiving. A different love from Christmas, which has a bitter aftertaste—-namely the months of January, February, and March. But starting Thanksgiving week, the world is rich with possibilities. The future beckons, all dolled up with seductive smells and glitter.

Not least of what matters to me about Thanksgiving is the food. Not even so much the eating of the food (although trust me, I’m no slouch in that department), but for the planning—the military campaign mentality that connects me to my mother, twenty years gone.

I guess it was a generational thing. Certain things had to be done, no exceptions. There was cranberry/orange relish, and out would come Grandma Feazel’s grinder. Clamped to the counter, this hulking holdout from The Great Depression seemed totally bewildered in our 1970’s avocado green kitchen. Even after we got the ubiquitous Cuisinart, that grinder made its annual appearance. It was undoubtedly a laboratory experiment of germ possibilities, so had to be assembled and disassembled with operating room scrub-up procedures.

And the oyster stuffing. Every year my grandmother made it using the instructions written in the spidery hand of my great grandmother. I wouldn’t trade that piece of paper for a million dollars, even though my grandmother was the only one who ever ate any of it at the Thanksgiving feast.

The secret weapon of the holiday was the dessert. We acquired this little beauty in 1960, when we lived near Boston for a year while my father attended MIT on assignment for his company. A very close group formed of those young couples, all on a yearlong adventure, and I recall how sophisticated they all seemed. It was that Camelot era, and everyone was young and beautiful. A cookbook was produced (again you can’t have it for a million), and the pecan pie recipe was introduced into the lore of my family. Unlike other pecan pie recipes, there is no corn syrup in it. It is dense, rich, and memorable. It wasn’t until I came into my own as a pretty good cook that I realized that it was basically a pecan tart baked off in a pie shell. It is like eating pecan fudge with a crust. Heaven. Dibs on the leftovers.

I don’t cook like my mother. I am not of her generation, and I have found that if I slap some butter on the outside of the turkey, put it in a very hot oven, and cook it to the right internal temp, it all works out. Probably no little credit is due to the freshest bird in the world, which we buy every year at the “farm” nearby, nicknamed the Yuppie Palace. The birds are moist no matter what you do to them, but I follow the Gourmet Magazine recipe with confidence and it’s always great, no turkey dust the next morning.

So, bird is easy, sides are painless, pies can be the day ahead. And yet, it is wonderfully crowded in the kitchen. I have my own two girls helping, and the voices of the women who shaped me. They guide my hands, my tongue, and my heart all day. I take out the biscuit cutter with the worn, green knob. I remember my mother’s warning not to let the stuffing get dry. My grandmother takes a rolling pin to that stack of Saltines. We don’t serve oyster stuffing, but I can almost smell it anyway. I am closer to my beloved women than any other day of the year.

Oh, yes, and we can’t ever forget to buy the Durkee’s spread for sandwiches. Never, never forget the Durkee’s, even if you have to drive two hours to find a grocery store that carries it. I’m not saying I ever did that, mind you. . . .

Have a blessed holiday.

The Last Craft Fair

2008-11-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

For the fourth time, we printed the signs, packed up the baskets and trays, loaded the goods into the car with the card table and my grandmother’s tablecloth, and hit the road for the craft fair. Today was the fourth one this fall. We have done four towns, both upscale and blue collar, with merchandise in every price point.

So far the outlay is about $125, and we have sold only one item for $7.50.

Everybody loved the stuff, thought it was fairly priced, oohed and ahhed over how cute, etc. Then they all went somewhere else to spend their money. One woman wanted to buy things with a Visa card. At a craft fair at a church. I ask you . . . .

Food sold well at all the fairs. Cupcakes for $.25. Can you make money selling a cupcake for $.25? My daughters are convinced that most of the vendors do fairs as a hobby rather than a money-making enterprise.

So, I am giving up the Craft Fair

Making a Cute Gift on a Shoestring (Great FREE idea!)

2008-11-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

Credit Card Holder with Vintage Buttonand Magnet Closure

I love that term —- shoestring. This little paper creation came to me when I began to wonder how we were going to give Christmas presents to my sisters-in-law and nieces without any money. I had just gotten some little magnetic paper closures from Basic Grey, and with a vintage button, this is a perfect little something for a purse full of either business cards, or credit cards, calling cards, etc. Here are all the pictures, along with a photo of the template, which is simple and easy to duplicate. For the gluing, first put about an inch of glue along the bottom flap, which you have folded up. Next run a line of glue down one of the folded side flaps, fold the other side over to stick everything down, and weight it down for a minute to dry thoroughly.

Decorate away to your heart’s content with interesting embellishments, photos, original art, or even use recycled plastic. I did line the inside of the top with a pretty contrasting paper, just glued it on and cut around to neaten it up. There’s no reason you couldn’t do this with felt, and embroider it. That magnet is such a satisfying little item, makes it seem so professional.

I realized as I was writing this that I can do a couple of masculine ones for my brothers and nephews! Okay, I am going to say the cliche that we all love so much —- “you are only limited by your imaginations.”

Enjoy, and please let me know how you like this.

Six Months at Intel

2008-11-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

It’s a night job in the computer labs, four nights per week, about half of his usual contract rate, but it’s a JOB! He’s got the hope of permanent work after six months, and we can just about scrape by without losing our credit rating. He’s already standing taller, looks younger. Just a coincidence that the hiring manager is also a mature employee . . . . I’m sure its just a coincidence . . . . bless his heart!

The Garland

2008-11-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

I spotted the prototype for the garland in one of those eminently tasteful decorating magazines. Lovingly situated between two candles in its sedate Connecticut home, the felt and ribbon creation called out to me as a do-it-yourself project.

It looked simple enough—a yard-long white fabric streamer with red checked ribbons attached, the whole thing gathered and scrunched to swag across a mantle. Simple and elegant cherry clusters clung every few inches. This looked easy. A mother/daughter Christmas project for Molly and me.

As with all such visions, the execution turned out to be much more involved than the initial assessment indicated. From one craft store to another we went, wheezing our way through the walls of scent from the holiday potpourri displays. Then to the fabric store for the snowy felt. Along the way we accumulated an assortment of irresistible ornaments, buttons, tiny porcelain roses, and snowmen for the decorations–, each discovery punctuated with Molly’s exclamations of delight. One ribbon down the center looked lonely, so we picked two to layer, one deep red satin, followed by a narrower red checked. It was already beginning to seem a lot more crowded on this garland than the picture.

First we cut the felt with pinking shears. Then, an ironing lesson with fusible web to get the ribbon to stick on down the middle. Another day to make the sturdy gathering stitches, and we were ready to add the goodies. But here we ran into a challenge. Somehow along the way our garland had lengthened to three yards. With this extended goal, our few red, black, and white trinkets began to look sparse and lonely.

I remembered a vintage pin I never wore, and Molly found some Scottie-dog buttons. Suddenly a lot of other jewelry box items were in the mix. There were shoe clips made of cherry-red Bakelite, orphaned glittery earrings, and keepsake red cloth buttons from Molly’s favorite coat, now outgrown. Things kept stored in drawers and boxes came out into the light. Here were the flashy buttons from a dress I gussied up to wear to the company Christmas party. There we found childhood charms, my old girl scout pins, a playing piece from my first Monopoly. We sewed them on in a joyous parade. My mother’s favorite angel pin took its place alongside a scrimshaw charm and a souvenir Alpine bell from my girlhood vacations. My father’s Navy identification disk and a dollhouse basket of eggs marched toward a gaudy red plastic summer earring.

When we finally came up for air and agreed that we had no more to add, the garland shone and jingled. Rich and heavy with memories, it has taken its rightful place with greenery on the stairway, where it will play the holiday lead for many years to come. After a time it will be Molly’s, to give to her daughter.

Molly and I like to sit and admire what we made. Our garland doesn’t look a thing like the magazine picture. It isn’t tasteful at all–it’s excessive and exuberant. We are content.

Stay With Me, God

2008-10-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

Stay with me, God.
The night is dark,
the night is cold,
my little spark of courage dies.
The night is long.
Be with me, God,
and make me strong.

This is the last month we can pay bills. After this, we exist at the whim of the universe.

Rich went on an interview last week that was particularly painful. He had been called by this company, they liked his resume. Then they had a 1.5 hour phone interview with him, and at the end asked him to come in. He was home in one hour. Rich said when he met the young man who had interviewed him on the phone, he could see that his age had not been evident from the resume. The guy just dismissed him out of hand. Rich said he could practically see the thought process. He couldn’t get him out of the place fast enough. Just dismissed him, even though he is completely qualified for the job.

I have traded horror stories about interviews with other wives. My favorite one that Richard had was a company in Boston. The job advertised fit Rich exactly. When he got there they brought guys into the conference room in groups of six, and they gave him a “problem” to resolve. He used a whiteboard to show how he would approach the storage issue, what products he would use, etc. This happened for two groups of employees before Richard realized that he was giving a free seminar. They had no intention of filling any position, they were using the interviewees to resolve their issues so that their own people could effect a solution. No concern for the fact that they wasted a day of his life and didn’t pay him for it.

I have a friend whose husband was flown out to Chicago on a private jet, given an interview with top management, offered the position, and spent the return flight mapping out the formation of the new division with top managers. His advice was undoubtedly implemented, but not with him, because he never heard from them again. They did not return his bewildered calls. Did I mention that the person who recommended him at the company was an old college buddy? Never heard from him again, either.

This happened to Richard, as well, on a smaller scale. A company in Framingham “hired” him, and we had a great weekend celebrating the end of our misery. On Monday we didn’t hear anything, and by Thursday it was obvious that something was wrong. The man who interviewed him introduced himself as a “Christian,” and said how important high morals were at the company. We never heard from them again. Yeah, great Christian behavior. It would make us paranoid that there was some black mark against Rich somewhere, but he has nothing worse than one speeding ticket long ago on his record. We have never been in trouble at all. Just regular people, work ethic, non-smoking, cheap champagne at Thanksgiving and beer in their chili kind of people. Apparently expendable.

Does This Seem Odd To You?

2008-10-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

I can’t work any of the media equipment in our house, either upstairs or down, without access to three manuals, four remotes, my conversation hat, and six beers.

Not one single piece of equipment operates according to its instructions. There are ancillary little boxes and switches on shelves nearby the equipment, lights flashing and beeps beeping, and the DVD player in our bedroom doesn’t work for more than half an hour without a portable fan trained on it. (I discovered this by accident, but you don’t even want to hear that story.)

In short, I am married to an engineer. Wherever he is, there is a dusting of wire bits and the faint sulfuric whiff of metal solder in the air, prompting visitors to query, “Been boiling eggs?” No, just waiting for that ferry to Hell.

Along with the fact that I am married to an engineer comes the additional fact that I am married to an engineer who appears to be incapable of accurately taping the correct episode of anything. We begin to watch the tape of The Mentalist, only to find that we are watching a grainy Hudson Selectmen meeting from 2006, or even better, the belly dancing class on local cable. This class isn’t even campy, let me tell you, somebody paid somebody off to get this on the air.

So today, after (literally) 30 years of this, I asked him, “Do you think this is acceptable?”

“What? I wrote out the instructions and stuck them to the bookcase.”

“Rich, YOU YOURSELF can’t manage this equipment without your calculator and your Boy Scout compass!”

“You just have to read my instructions! I spent a lot of time making those instructions for you.”

[Here is a sampling from the instructions: "Video selector IS on unless Sony TV says Video 1, otherwise will say 'not connected'. VCR = 3, Video 2/LD also may say 'not connected'.]

I feel like that man named Charlie who is still riding the subway through Boston. You can just hand me a sandwich once in awhile. I’ll be trying to find the input for the red jack, or is it the black one that needs the yellow hole? Oh, well . . . . see you sometime . . . .

Take It or Leave It

2008-10-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

ONE WOMAN’S PRESUMPTUOUS ADVICE FOR THE HOLIDAYS

When I was a child, the playground do-it-yourself merry-go-round was my favorite event. You held on, ran around and around to get up a good head of steam, and then jumped on for a long, giddy ride. My biggest choice in those days was whether to lie flat and watch the clouds spin by, or sit up and watch my friends’ faces appear periodically, like jerky frames in an old movie.
These days, I just wish I could stick out my foot and slow the ride down. Here are a few of my ideas.

Let’s slow the world down.

Recently I was roundly chastised by a fellow volunteer board member because I forgot to leave my home messaging unit on when I went out on errands. Three years ago I had a phone, with two extensions—whoopee. Now our family has access to Internet, IM, texting, Skype VOIP, voice mail, e-mail, fax machine, flickr.com, cell phone, file attachments, and so on. All these things are wonderful. But they are tools. We control them. We can choose when and how to use them. It is up to us to control the expectations that result from a speedy, technologically advanced society. We may not want to be always accessible. We can choose to make time together, to make that time sacrosanct, safe from intrusion by the tools we have embraced.

Let’s keep the holidays as events, not as a 6-month ramp-up period for merchandising.

For instance, I heard the first television ad for holiday merchandise just after Labor Day this year. November and December used to be anticipated with pleasure; now many of us dread the term “holiday season.” We don’t have to acquiesce to this pushing. We can decide not to fight our way through two months of the year with heavy hearts, rushing from one mall, one event, one cookie batch to another. There are many great ideas for avoiding this. Here are a few: shop by Internet; spread out shopping for holidays over the whole year (this is less painful than it sounds); make mustard instead of cookies to give as gifts (it’s much easier); buy good, store-bought food as gifts, wrap it creatively, and keep your mouth shut. Turn down invitations you don’t enjoy. Believe me, it won’t be tragic if you are not there, and it’s absolutely liberating. Simplify and downscale your own entertaining. If you want it badly enough, you can have a wonderful, stress-free season.

Do away with “I should” thinking.

I like and admire Martha Stewart, but I don’t intend to go into beekeeping or topiary design as hobbies. I like to watch This Old House, too, but I don’t plan to tackle that home theater/workshop renovation on my own house. Let’s look at media mavens as teachers and not as guilt inducers. Don’t buy the women’s magazines in December. Clean out a drawer if you have a burning need to drive yourself crazy. Don’t agree to run the craft fair at the school (offer to “bake” something). Don’t acknowledge the power of this year’s Tickle Me Elmo toy search. Don’t support that madness. Don’t start a diet, for God’s sake. Don’t worry; be happy.

Let’s be nicer to each other.

Road rage. Mother-in-law and sibling rage. The thoughtless boss or co-worker. The rude clerk. The bank teller with an attitude. The teenager who makes your teenager cry with embarrassment. Let’s kill ‘em all, right? I tried this kind of thinking, and it just didn’t work well. I have found that maintaining my own standards of behavior works better. This doesn’t mean being meek and witless; you can still take action on that bank teller deal. What does it mean? Teaching my children well, for one thing. They need to be streetsmart—yes—but they need to learn kindness skills, too. Set an example. Open doors for people; help when help is obviously needed. Stand up when someone significantly older joins the group. Don’t stereotype generation X’ers or any other group. These tolerances don’t hurt us; they make us a community. I wish they’d teach etiquette in school. It greases a lot of gears. Throw bread on the water with your behavior geared to conciliation and non-violence. It will pay off for everyone. Okay, sermon’s over.

Let’s work to banish fear.

This is a tough one because the fears are based on real issues. We have a number of sex offenders residing in our town—-human beings who have hurt children. I am afraid of these people living near children—possibly near my very home. What kind of world have we become? I am homesick for my childhood, when we had no locks on the door; when neighborhood houses were drop-by places for juice or snacks; when we rode our bikes all day Saturday and never checked in. I would never dream of such behavior now.

However, some of the fears are overblown. Apparently, for example, we are curtailed by the food police from enjoying Chinese food, popcorn, Mexican food, Italian food, water from our faucets, any imported fruit, cider, fast-food burgers, produce touched by humans, anything cooked rare, chicken or their eggs, anything with caffeine or fat, and to top it all off—I recently read that enjoying Jell-O was a crapshoot because some cow disease could be in the gelatin. I should be thin from these fears.

I don’t really know what can be done about fear, except to take prudent precautions and try not to let our kids see us with a bunker mentality. We can’t let the horrible few poison our world; we can’t let our children live in a world with joy stifled. This is a bit of a tightrope, so let’s try our best to keep a perspective.

Let’s read more things that make us laugh or inspire us.

Let me give you a few pointers here—from experience. For funny: Bailey White’s books of essays about living with her aging, loopy mother in the Florida wetlands. Gerald Durrell’s stories about his family, in particular My Family and Other Animals. Paul Rudnick’s hilarious (and instructive—you’ll learn some Yiddish) recounting of a car trip through the Northeast with his mother and aunts, entitled I’ll Take It. Two family members took this book to baby labor and laughed through the hard parts. Patrick McManus’s tales of life in the outdoors with his friend Rancid Crabtree and others. Anything by David Sedaris (I particularly enjoyed his essay on the stadium buddy appliance for avoiding going to the men’s room. I also loved his tales of being an elf at Macys.) And, of course, Jean Shepherd’s classic In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. You may remember him and his Red Ryder BB gun from a movie called A Christmas Story. Read, laugh, read with the kids, read to the kids. For inspiration, read A Christmas Carol; read A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Read together and to each other. Just read.

And love each other; stay healthy. Everything else is small stuff. Everything.

Unexpected Art

2008-10-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

My college was located in a little town in South Carolina, untouched by the twentieth century. Aside from the students, there were about 60 aging residents, courtly remnants of the antebellum South. It was a drowsy, gossipy, languid sort of place. Since I was a Yankee, which was truly like being from someplace like Tibet, I was treated with polite but persistent suspicion.

One day close to Christmas break, I noticed that an empty storefront along the town’s tidy Main Street had been spruced up and sported a “Christmas Exhibition” sign. With the arrogance that only 18-year-olds (who fancy themselves terribly cosmopolitan) possess, I posed a slightly sardonic question to my friends—-What could pass for art in such an unlikely setting? We crowded through the door and stumbled into a magical world.

Strung on invisible lines at varying heights—-from almost ceiling height to inches above the floor—-were hundreds of fabric-covered, decorated spheres. Large or small, they were each as unique as a snowflake, some lavish and regal, others simple and adorned with only calico ribbons. Some were trimmed in pearl designs with satiny ribbon shimmer. A few were as big as basketballs, others were intricate, small wonders the size of Faberge eggs.

Speechless, we began moving along a marked path through the globes. Some invisible moving lighting made it seem as though we were observing an underwater, otherworldly place—-a solar system unlike anything imagined. There was so much to look at that my brain resented my eyes as they moved to each new creation.

I went back every day until it was time to fly out for the holidays. But all through the break, I thought about those beautiful ornaments. When I returned to school, I dialled, with some trepidation, the phone number of the exhibit’s sponsor. I asked if I could meet with her to see her studio and observe how she made the wonderful works.

“Well, shuah, dahlin’,” she responded. “You just come ovah any time. I’d be delighted to show you my studio.” She chuckled and gave me directions.

I was startled to be greeted by a sixtyish, bosomy matron with a freshly lavender-rinsed hairdo. She was wearing a well-worn housedress and an apron. She looked like an illustration out of one of my childhood Dick and Jane books. With a sly glance, she said to come along for a tour of her “studio,” then threw open the door of what was obviously her bedroom. From behind the door, she pulled out a brown shopping bag, overflowing with colorful fabrics and ribbons. Further down, I glimpsed styrofoam balls of varying sizes, and other paraphernalia.

Mrs. Brennan and I became great friends, and, in time, she generously forgave me for being a northerner and shared many of her secrets with me. I learned so many lessons from her, not least of which was the lesson that artists’ spirits do not depend on trappings, or on youth. I miss her. And while I have often wished I could share just one more Christmas with her, her lessons did take root. My lovely friend, wherever you and your shopping bag are now, God bless.

www.alyson2.etsy.com

www.flickr.com/alyson2

Legacy

2008-10-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

A million of us have breathed
the clean smell of hot muslin,
have felt it between our fingers,
rich and velvety.

Or rejoiced,
laughing, talking of nothings,
ripe with our unborn,
in the sharp tang of August geraniums.

Some of us fashion quilts not of cloth,
but of memories, or of words,
or of families.

We are thus inherited by our daughters,
quiltmakers all.

To Jean Shepherd

2008-10-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

The rough voice in the darkness, always on the verge of laughter. I used to love the way he told his radio stories, taking side trips down back roads, only to bring the plot thread home just in time to close the show. I wish I could thank him for all the joy and laughter, and to wish him well.

Oh, Well

2008-10-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

The craft fair turned out to be a bust. We did sell one item, but were obligated to donate one of equal value to an auction. Plus the $30 entrance fee, which does go to a good cause. There were less than 100 people who came through, according to the kids, and the fair preceded the actual Pumpkinfest event, rather than coincided with it. Very frustrating.

I am wracking my brain to come up with ways that I can make money at handcrafts. I suppose more research is in order. I need publicity, so maybe I can make a comment at a political rally, and become instantly famous and trendy like Joe the Plumber. Yeah, that’s the ticket! In fact, I probably have as many bona fide plumbing credentials as Joe does — ZERO. We surely can chew them up and spit them out here in the USA . . . .

Perspective, Perspective . . .

2008-10-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

Shopping site for Alyson: http://www.alyson2.etsy.com/

So, as I was kvetching about our troubles, I got a reality check. My sister-in-law has a mentor and friend whose son’s wife just went into the hospital to deliver their first child. During the delivery her heart failed, and when she woke up her heart had been removed and she was hooked up to a mechanical heart. Can you imagine how devastating? Now they are awaiting a heart for transplant. The baby is fine, and I know that is a blessing, but how can I complain about my minor problems in the face of such actual suffering?

Life keeps on keeping on anyway, and this weekend I am putting my work in a local craft fair at our Town’s annual “Pumpkinfest.” My daughters are going to “man” the booth. I have gotten a folding bridge table, vintage linens to drape over it, and many, many pincushions to sell. I decided to make the sock monkeys into toddler toys, and now each one has a little booklet from the pictured monkey directly to the recipient child. They are just adorable, if I do say so. I can’t imagine that some of them won’t find new homes. I am told that their is quite a subculture of monkey-loving children. I hope it is true, because I surely have a lot of tiny monkey pillows. I also have now made over 60 more pincushions that I haven’t placed in my shop. I will wait until the craft fair is over to list those. I tried to explain today why I can’t stop making these things, and I think it’s because it’s a project totally within my control. Nothing else in my life is. Unemployment is not something I can influence or change. But a pincushion. A bit of fabric, a bit of fluff, an old button, and VOILA! A small piece of control.

If anyone is reading this, please post and tell us why you create, and what you create. I am so interested in what women do to express joy in their lives, and to cope with negativity. Be of good cheer, all of you.

Hanging by a Thread with a SAN Storage Engineer

2008-10-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

We’re at the 4-year mark for Richard being unemployed, and it’s becoming harder and harder to look ahead with optimism. We know that the reason is his age, everyone knows that it’s hard for 60-year-old men to find jobs, but it is hard to believe that corporations can’t see the value in the years of experience–and a person who has kept up with the skills in his field. He’s had contracts during the four years, but our lives always seem so precarious now, and with so few options to fix things. We have maneuvered our way through financially by selling investments that were earmarked for retirement, refinancing our home, and taking help from the state on our health insurance for two years.

It feels as if we have been painting a floor, and now we are painted into a corner and the paint won’t dry. What action can we take? Are people supposed to sell their homes, cash in their retirement funds, and get on an ice floe and float away? What are the options when you simply cannot pay your bills?

I never thought, back in 2004, that it would not be possible for my husband to find work. It almost seems as if there is a hidden black list or something that prevents him from getting a job. He goes to the interviews, answers the questions, is personable and enthusiastic, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and is a person who feels as if he represents a company even when he is on his own time. I have listened to him in telephone interviews, written and rewritten his resume, dumbed it down, made it into different styles, added keywords, had it looked at by professional human resource people. The only thing we can point at is his age.

To make it worse, Rich is a person who can ramp up on new technology in a heartbeat. But at some point keeping current seems futile. And we have begun to ask ourselves: Is his working life over? Should we be planning for continuing unemployment? How do you plan for that? We can’t live on our retirement at this point and certainly the crash has taken its toll on our assets. Companies with jobs outside his field won’t take a chance on him. He’s tried applying for lower level jobs with a synergy to his skillset, but they think he’ll leave when something better comes along. He tried applying for jobs driving shuttles and vans, but no one will call him back. He tried ambulance transport. What do people do?

There must be many of you out there with similar stories. Please write and give me some ideas and some hope.

New Sheets, a poem

2008-10-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

New Sheets

We really need new sheets, you said,
but then I found these, forgotten
behind the heating pads
and the old crib linens.

Translucent with age,
silky from a thousand washings—
one breath and I am young again,
folding, tucking.

We made love on these faded blues when
there was endless love to make.
We made babies
on these trailing, sage-green leaves—
babies now into women grown.

We need new sheets, you said.
And you shall have them,
new again.

—Alyson Button Stone

The Pickle Caper

2008-10-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

This week I “put up” my refrigerator pickles, and it reminded me of something so funny that happened years ago. The way I make pickles these days sort of feels like cheating. They are not “real” pickles, but rather boiling brine that I pour over jars of Kirby cukes filled with a mix of herbs and spices and garlic that I just guess at until it seems right. They are always so delicious, and we always say that “this year’s are the best.” Every year is the best.

Pickling wasn’t always so casual and peaceful around here, though. When I was younger and crazier, I used to make processed pickles. A whole day, the boiling water, the jars timed and processed, left to cool and make that satisfying popping sound, then stored for the winter. (I used to make my own mustard, as well, and it is delicious. Try it sometime.)

The last time I pickled this way was one August before my kids were born. Rich and I had moved to our first house, and he was making a bathroom out of an unfinished room on the second floor. I made like 6 dozen pints of pickles, a long day’s work. I stored them in a closet upstairs, and looked forward to a winter of plenty. No Claussen’s for me, no sir. I even had an “arrangement” with the produce guy, who put aside the best cukes for me.

One day I went up to get a couple of jars for consumption, opened the closet door, and found 6 dozen pint jars of brine and floaty bits. Richard, during the weeks of construction in the bathroom, had EATEN EVERY PICKLE. When confronted (and confronted is a civilized word for what occurred) he admitted to the crime, but said he hadn’t known how to tell me. “I just kept eating them, and shuffling the jars around to hide the gaps,” he said. “And then it got so there was no hope of hiding it.”

So he has sworn to consume only his jars of pickles, labeled in the fridge. But I’m considering an alarm, just in case.

Alyson

www.alyson2.etsy.com

www.flickr.com/alyson2

The Faith and Frustrations of Creativity

2008-10-09T09:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.alyson2.etsy.com/

www.flickr.com/alyson2

http://www.menopausepilgrim.wordpress.com/

I have an issue to discuss. Bear with me, it will make sense by the end.

I can do many things, but mostly I don’t feel that I stand out at many of them. I am a sponge when it comes to learning new things, but until lately, I haven’t had the feeling that I had anything new to offer.

For instance, I am a good writer–on a project basis. I recognize superior writing. (I was the children’s book reviewer for the newspaper for years.) But if you asked me to write a novel, or even a good short story, I would be lost. I recognize good fiction, but I can’t write it. I can write persuasive and moving speeches, but not fiction.

I look back at things I have created in a flurry of passionate artistic frenzy, and I marvel at them. At the same time, I get angry with myself because those creative periods peter out.
This time, I have done all the research, and I think I have got something unique and superior to offer. Some of the things I am creating are unique; I can’t find other similar things on ebay or etsy. The flurry of creative activity is not petering out, and I believe that I could continue to create my “art things” forever. But I don’t even know what to call this stuff. It doesn’t have a name, and some of it doesn’t have any use (like most art).

Sometimes I get inspired by someone else’s work. For instance, for my birthday my husband gave me a “pincushion” made of chenille with a little figurine of a deer on it. I took that idea and ran with it, and now have created many cloth and china “sculptures,” little vignettes of vintage animal figurines, old millinery bits, vintage buttons, bits and pieces of ribbon and trim. They are adorable. They are charming. They would sell — if only I knew how to categorize them in order to get them before the buyers on Etsy.com, or even ebay. They are technically pincushions, in the sense that you could use them as pincushions, but I don’t think most people would use these “story pincushions” for sewing, but just to look at. I have sold three of them, I think almost by accident, because the buyers happened upon them when they were looking for something else.

Then there are the “art collage tags.” I mean, these are just useless entirely. They are the size of manila hanging tags, with a hole at the top through which I thread ribbons. Most of them are on a wooden tag, too substantial to use as a bookmark, but with no real other purpose. But they are just great, with beautiful Italian papers, charms, old ribbons, photos, and gilding. Some of the papers and tags are made with a 50s retro feel, some with Art Deco flair, some tell a kind of story, or encourage the viewer to create a story. They are sort of altered art, sort of collage, sort of girlie vanity things. Who knows how to categorize these? There is nothing like them available for me to match up against.

Then there’s the knitting. God help me, I spent a lot of time and money on exotic fiber, beautiful embellishments, and vintage buttons so that I could make these adorable little handbags that you could use as an evening bag, or for your ipod, or your cell phone, or just to hang over a mirror and admire. Other people do make these, so I at least know how to classify them on Etsy.com. But how to price them? Well, I think I will probably break even if they all sell . . . folks this is not the way to wealth!

But I am very proud of my sock monkey portrait series. This is a series of little 4″ square pillows or pincushions, each with the face of an individual, unique sock monkey character. I imagined that these monkeys enjoyed getting their picture taken, gave each of them a name, and made tons of them. They could be used as pincushions, or just as easily as toys for toddlers. I even contemplated making up a little card for each character, telling a little story about where they are from and what they like to do or to eat. I would have loved for my kids to have such a charming toy to spark their imagination.

So imagine, if you will, the irony of having finally gotten to the point in my life where I actually think something I’m making is not mediocre, but superior. But — wait for it — I have no idea how to move it into public view in an effective way! Aaaaah!! I am afraid I will get discouraged before I have given this endeavor enough time. I know that Etsy.com is the best forum for these creations, because the cost of making a shop and getting started on selling is really low and very fair. I know that the people I have met through the site thus far are spectacular women (I haven’t met any men yet).

Since this is a blog, you’d think I could write about my trials and successes without guilt. But no, I am not used to writing about myself, and so I feel like discussing these things makes me self-involved–a whining princess who needs to get over herself. But menopause has made me bold, and I am going to overcome the rude comments by the “committee” in my own head. I am shushing them for the first time. (They all seem to speak in the irritating voice of a very unpleasant relative, now deceased.)

I would value any advice and counsel by other travelers, other pilgrims. Creativity should lead to grace, not to angst, don’t you think? Share your stories with me. There’s power in numbers.

A Lesson from Across the Pond

2008-10-08T09:53:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to sunshine, but it couldn’t deflect my dire thoughts about the economy and how it’s affecting our family and so many others. When I opened the computer, I was checking my Etsy shop and browsed the Showcase. Saw a really wonderful old British repro poster from World War II. It is a simple message: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. I took a deep breath and thought that I should take the advice.

As unfair as the Wall Street shenanigans have been, as awful as the current administration has been, as outrageous as it is that our retirement money is disappearing, as unfortunate as it is that my husband can’t find a job — all this pales in comparison to what the good folks of England suffered through in WWII.

I just finished a book about the island of Guernsey during WWII. It’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. What a remarkable tale. I am always astonished at all the history of which I am ignorant. I had no idea any part of England had been occupied by the Germans during WWII. This is such an uplifting novel, full of rich characters. It is funny, poignant, and ultimately I felt as if I wanted to go to the Channel Islands.

So, I will try to remember today: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

Etsy (Marketing Myself Is My Least Favorite Part)

2008-10-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.alyson2.etsy.com/

Next week I am going to take a hard look at the Etsy advice on marketing your shop. I have (finally) gotten all my handmade pieces posted, and that took two weekends. It is a wonderfully easy site to understand; nonetheless, there are many decisions for each of the items posted for sale, not least among which is the amount you are going to charge. That takes research and judgment.

I once owned a regional parenting newspaper, and as much fun as the editorial side was, the sales side was just unbearable for me. I just don’t have that ability. I am confident of the quality of the work, but convincing someone else to spend their money on something I made is just beyond my capabilities. I want to find a way to do marketing “one step removed” from personally selling.

The way I look at it, it costs only $.20 to list an item for sale on Etsy. So my investment so far is my time, plus about $30.00. Not too shabby! And I am learning about how to take the photographs of my items. Etsy sellers have been so wonderful to share their tips with me. That is another fine thing about Etsy–women helping women. I have met so many people through Etsy conversations who feel, as I do, that sharing your knowledge and experiences is a privilege. I love to see this level of support and encouragement.

So — this weekend I will take a deep breath and see what I need to do to put my work before the masses.

Contemplating the Great Depression

2008-10-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

When I would visit my grandmother’s apartment, I was always puzzled that she had a closet packed with canned goods, when she didn’t have the space or need to hoard food. When I was old enough, I had a conversation with my mother, who explained that Mimi had been through The Great Depression and ever since had an obsessive need to have a stash of food for “a rainy day.”

As I learned more about that era from both of my parents, I could understand the fear. Both my parents were young children when their families went through hard times. My father, a Texan, lived on a tiny farm (called a “dirt farm”), where his father (Papaw) eked out a meager living from the land, and odd jobs. My grandmother (Meemaw) took a job pumping gas at the town station. Every day after school, my dad would leave elementary school and walk to the gas station. Across the street was a diner, where for a nickel he would purchase a big hamburger. Then he would go across to his mother, and they would share it as their dinner. He told me that once, when a family friend came to visit from the city, he gave my father a dime to go buy candy.
When he came back from the store, Meemaw saw that he had bought bread for the family instead. I cringed to imagine how I would have felt if my children were in a situation where they needed to be so concerned about the family’s welfare that they wouldn’t even use a dime to buy candy.

Now that this downturn is so dramatic, I not only understand intellectually how my relatives felt, I feel it emotionally. I remember a similar unpleasant epiphany when we had the September 11 tragedy. I had never understood how Americans could hate Japanese/Americans in the days after Pearl Harbor. After all, they hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbor; they were Americans. Why couldn’t they see the difference? Were they ignorant, uninformed, or just stupid? But after September 11, I had experienced those pangs of hate and rage toward an ethnic group, and no matter how unreasonable it was to feel those feelings, I could now empathize with the way the Japanese citizens of the US were treated. Of course, it’s horribly wrong thinking. I am a better person for seeing that I could be filled with unreasoning prejudice. Now I can guard against it. It scared me to see the veneer of my intellect brushed away like smoke, to be replaced with some primal emotional response.

Now I feel those same feelings of rage against the faceless, greedy corporations. These entities (of course they are people) made a pyramid scheme out of the whole US population, unfettered by any common sense regulation and unchecked by any agency. Even after the savings and loan regulatory crisis, no action was taken to stop the train wreck. They got rich, went back into the woodwork like the roaches they are, and left all of us holding the IOU’s for their behavior. And now we are all in danger.

Looking at the world through the lens of my husband’s unemployment, the tribulations of our friends and family who have lost so much in the past few days, I feel betrayed. When we refinanced our home a couple of years ago, a young broker tried to push us to take an interest only package, one that we turned down because we could see it was crazy, not prudent. He was like a used-car salesman, calling every five minutes, pressuring us relentlessly. When we declined, he charged our credit card a $500 fee anyway, just to see if he could. We had to go through the process of protesting to get it removed. He is just one of many, many backroom brokers who sat in motel rooms with their laptops, cranking out the endless, crazy mortgages for their fee. They had to know it was wrong, that it would come around to disaster. The people who encouraged them, their evil minions, to do these things, certainly knew it was wrong.

Now we seem to have an America that is divided into three strata: rich, struggling to tread water, and dirt poor. There doesn’t seem to have been any payoff for being good citizens, paying on time, trying to get ahead, saving where we could, planning for retirement, honoring our employers by behaving honorably in our private lives. My husband is still out of work, still feeling his age as a horrible stigma. My children (who are grown, thank God) still worry endlessly about whether we will lose our home. That saying about following your bliss is inspiring, but unrealistic. We will do what we have to do, what we can do, to stay afloat. Our healthy retirement nest egg is decimated. We planned to take care of ourselves; who will take care of us now? I no longer have confidence that the government is running this country, or can control runaway business practices. Businesses, and the rarified strata of the richest of the rich are in charge.

We can only hope for some more reasonable future where things aren’t quite this difficult. That’s all anybody wants. Not to be rich, no, just to have enough so every waking moment doesn’t seem like a ticking time bomb leading to disaster.

So, Mimi, wherever you are, I understand the canned goods. It’s no mystery to me why Campbell’s Soup was the only stock to go up on the day of the worst drop in the market. Your pantry, full of dented, dusty soup cans, was a harbinger and your great grandchildren recognize the signs .

The Start of Something Big

2008-10-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

I know that there must be a lot of terrific women out there who are in the same boat — learning to live on the other side of menopause. This journey is fraught with opportunities, but sometimes I have trouble recognizing things as opportunities when they look so much like troubles. For instance, we used to have a pretty average middle-class life in our small mill town in Massachusetts. But in 2004 that all changed when Hewlett Packard let Richard go due to the downsizing following the merger with Compaq. Since then we have been sinking slowly into poverty, using all our tips and tricks to juggle things so we can remain afloat with a good credit record. Now, with the crash (and imminent Depression?) our retirement plan has been gutted and we can’t see how to climb out.

How can this be viewed as an opportunity? Well, for one thing, it made me count my blessings in a new way. Our two daughters are happy and healthy (25 and 19), and successful. My brothers and their wives are doing fine overall and are hugely supportive and loving. We both have good brains and can find ways to use them. We have generally good health.

The ironic thing about this stressful situation is how it affected my creative, artistic side. With all the time I spent doing stuff I didn’t want to do (either to earn money or help Richard with the job hunt) I found it necessary to balance it out by allowing myself to make pretty things for part of the day. I roam from thing to thing, trying altered art creations, handknit purses, pincushions with little scenes on top. I needed to see something come out of my time and effort, something that I could see and admire in a relatively short time. I can control this, if nothing else in my life.

I also find that I meet new and interesting people at a clip through the Etsy site where I sell my finished pieces (http://www.alyson2.etsy.com/). There are so many super-talented people; I can’t help but wish to have a conversation with all of them. It was lucky I discovered Etsy through a friend, or I would be hardpressed to come up with a way to use all the things I make.

I have come to admire myself a bit for my optimistic nature and ability not to get too wrapped up in my own troubles. I know some people who wallow — I hate wallowing. I have a time limit, and I am very strict with myself about the wallowing. I have a time limit for ranting, too. Except for discussions about Sarah Palin. Not a fan. . . .

My sense of humor has also come in handy. I believe that laughing is really healing. I love old-time humor and the newer, ironic kind. I love Jean Shepherd, but also find David Sedaris hilarious. Erma Bombeck is great, and so is Maureen Dowd. The oldies are goodies. The new stuff keeps you sharp.

I love to cook, and cooking on a shoestring is interesting. Sometimes take-out is cheaper, but I have become a soup chef. Soup is heroic. Soup makes me feel like a pioneer. Soup is like creating life. Also cheap to make. Yay, soup!

Hobbies: reading, handiwork, games

Favorite genres: mysteries, weird (Koontz, King), anything British, those Norwegian/Swedish police procedurals, Anne Tyler, Frank Parrish British mysteries

Weaknesses: chocolate, Martha Stewart reruns from the old days, onion rings

Joys: Reading the perfect poem, seeing the perfect photo, thinking about things in a new way (my brother calls this “seeing around corners.”

I love to hear from women who are of a certain age and moving into a new chapter of their life. I like to share stories with these women. My daughter says this blog will lead to that. “Trust me,” she said. “You are not alone.”