My Vintage Christmas Tree 2012

Sing to tune of 12 Days of Christmas....

My vintage white tree is up                                               
and I'm coll-ap-ap-sing
in my re-clin-er.

Broke
2
Shiny Brights
and
1 Pink Pig........tra la la la la
pearl garlands
My feet are sore
there's a beer in the
re-fridge-er-a-tor!

The top tilts
just a little bit
too-ooo-ooo
much .
You may ask me-ee
if I care.

I love vintage
orn-na-ments, but not
in the
waste bassss-ket.

On Christmas I will
love it twink-a-ling
in the early morn-ing
glare.

Let the Christ Child In...Please someone OOOOO-PPPen the Door!
Merry Christmas,
Lambie

God's Eyes

My favorite picture of Mya.

Sometimes she is shy and even closes her eyes to make herself feel safe.  You know, "if I can't see you then you can't see me".
In this picture she is at Siesta Beach. The huge expanse of sand and water surrounding her.  The Gulf of Mexico behind her as far as one can see. 
Mya is not afraid.  Her eyes are on her mother and father.  Her parents are with her.   She is safe.  She is bold.  She is striding with confidence, joy, purpose.  She is exalted. 

In this same way our Father God 's eyes watch over us.   If only we will look to him in every circumstance we can feel this safe, this bold, this exalted.

King David asked in Psalm 139: 7-10

"If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast."

 

The Lord will watch over you

In Psalm 121:7-8, he gave us a precious promise:

"The Lord will keep you from all harm - He will watch over your life.
The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore."

 

Blessings on you my dearest Mya.  I pray you always feel the love of God your Heavenly Father and know in your heart this safety.
Gramma.

Yes I Did

Did you really do it?  Or is it just a picture?  No, I really did it. That is my wrist you are looking at.

Something that says what I can't always manage to say.  Something beautiful. Something I never would have dreamed that I would do.  Yet there it is along with the miracles and the Faith.  There is my one and only tattoo.
I am home. We are all presently in a safe harbour.  God is with us.
Anne

Vintage Memory Haze

I recently opened another box of my mother's things.  Simple everyday items.  They are vintage now as years have passed and the common things we took for granted have achieved a new level of importance to those who love vintage, collect vintage.

My mother was storing away her sewing supplies.  She saved everything and neatly put things away for future use.  That is her writing up there on those paper labels.  Labels made from recycled scraps of envelopes, the back unused sides of writing papers...she used everything.  It is plain to see she has thread in a plastic bag, buttons in a paper sack, rug & embroidery hooks (she misspelled embroidey...a clue) each bag carefully tagged. 
My Mother was leaving visual reminders to herself in the most practical of ways.  One with Alzheimer's can look at a spool of thread in a plastic bag.  Plainly seeing it's color, shape, and might even take it out and hold it in wonder.  Searching for meaning in this relic of the moments just gone by.  Clenching the fingers aged with knobs of arthritis around its smooth surface and with mind racing in a windstorm of noise be unable to remember it's everyday name. It is hard to imagine being in that spot.  We all forget momentarily why we walked into the kitchen or where we set our keys last...this is so much more.  This is the loss of controll of everyday actions and thoughts. This is scary stuff.  My mother fixed this problem for years without mentioning her vast unknown fears to us her family.  She labeled every plain everyday thing.  Took notes and then copied them over again and again. 

Mom also copied down what was important to her.  Left little pieces of paper with quotes that were important enough to be transcribed and left behind.  The things she wanted to remember to say to us, or hear again herself. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The sky is full of blue
and full of the mind
of God"
         -child
from book "Dakota"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christian love is the
warm,
free,
continuing expression
of intelligent good will
to all
without being
judgemental
or manipulative
(Walker Evans
definition)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vintage collectibles.  So much more meaning when you think of how easily things can be forgotten.  We treasure everyday objects because they are what our daily lives are made of.  What we build our futures with.  The thoughts, readings, buttons, threads that bring us to our eventual end.  If you loose the 'thread' of it you have lost yourself.  Alzheimer's is just as devastating to minds and lives as the land fills that so greedily cover up and rot our possessions. 
If you look at the CT scan of a brain with Alzheimer's you plainly see vast dark areas of nothing amidst the remains of functioning matter.  In this way it is like collecting vintage. You cherish the broken bits of pottery as you hope you find all the missing pieces to the set of Grandmother's silver. What bits you can no longer find or retrieve you will regret, tell their story and remember.   If you are so unlucky as to have lost the memory then you can only hope to find your notes. 

Thanks for leaving the notes Mom.  I am remembering you.  Your brilliant creative mind and I cherish your notes.  They whisper to me the things you didn't remember or have time to say to me. I find you in them and in that I am fortunate. 

from Mom

Mom in her high button shoes.

Love, Lambie

Introducing My New Grandson

Birth by appointment... C-section is really very nice to plan around.  Our little man entered the world right on schedule and both he and his mother are doing perfectly...
and here he is...

Brennan Cole

Brennan Cole entered our world on June 20th, 2012 weighing 6 lbs 11 oz and 20" long.  He has his mother's eyes, his father's mouth and his big sisters hair...he is exquisite in every way.  He was born on the 100th anniversary of my mother's birth. 
We are all in baby bliss... big sister loves his little toes...and secure in her parents love she is showing her love for her tiny baby brudda.

first day

Mya discovers baby toes

Big Sister Mya

Dad in total bliss with his boy in his arms

all knit and wrapped up!

Brennan may you be blessed as you have blessed us.  We thank you God for this tiny life intrusted to our care from your eternal love.

A Peaceful Place

Remembering

O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The Book of Common Prayer

Celebrating Mothers

I found this amazing photograph of my Great Grandmother and her sister...

Great grandmother Elizabeth White Harland and Hannah Mary Donkin White

 Look at these sisters gleefully walking arm in arm down the lane in front of the church. The Church of England in the background. Maybe it is St Hilda's the church my father's family attended in Hartlepool, England.  They are grinning so happily.  It must be early spring and I am guessing Easter Sunday as they are both wearing corsages as big as cabbages on their coats.  
We don't dress like this much any more. I mean really dress up.  It is a long list. The silk stockings, heals all polished and shiny, fancy dresses, jewelry, brooches and silk hankies, hats, gloves, purses, and then there is that fox.  Yes my Great Grandmother has a fox draped around her neck.  My Grandmother Arnold her daughter had one too. It fascinated me as a little girl.  Maybe it was this same one. 
It makes me happy looking at this picture that captures these two sisters in a moment of joy and sharing.  This is a celebration of life.  Two sisters caught in a gentle moment between two world wars. 
There is a lot to think about when a picture like this comes into view.
Anne 
mother's day 2012

My Mother's Writing Her Story of Motherhood

How Do You Dust A Butterfly:
  by my mother
Barbara Arnold written about 1995

Dusting was not high on my priority list, but it had to be done occasionally.  When I was especially lax my husband would write the date on the slant top  mahogany desk.  Then I would go to work.  The children's rooms were a problem.  There were the unfinished automobile and plane models I wasn't supposed to touch, and piles of oddments I didn't want to touch I might put my hand on an attempt to cure a squirrel skin, or a very old sandwich with furry mold on it.  I was careful about clothing after I pulled three decomposed clams from Ross's blue jeans, the forgotten bait from fishing two weeks past.
    
I dusted the base boards, window sills, and arranged stuffed animals artistically, as in a home decorating magazine, then tackled the real challenge, the tops of furniture.  Here were the treasures which under no circumtances could be thrown away, not a single rusty nail, box top, marble or unstitched baseball.

The Scouts, bless them, and the schools all encouraged hobbies and edifying collections in shoe boxes, glass jars, mounted on cardboard, taped in scrap books which fell apart, and in heaps.  All attracted dust, especially Chip's car parts.  Have you ever considered dusting the greasy organs of a disembowelled automobile engine?  The trick is to put them in boxes with covers, a bigger box every week as the collection grows.  I must not forget he won a blue ribbon with his dismantled V8 engine, each part carefully identified and connected to a diagram with tape.

Then there were the live things, the fuzzy caterpillar living of course in a shoe box, the bowls of guppies which ate their children, and the baby racoons demanding to be fed every half hour with Anne's doll baby bottle.

No, our house would not have made the pages of  " House Beautiful".  Interesting, yes, but odd.  What decorator would put piles of rocks on the bureau, and cigar boxes of possible fools's gold and "could be" arrowheads teetering  on the bookcase:  Why were the books in tall stacks on the floor?  They were pressing leaves and wild flowers for, you guessed it, a nature collection.

Anne's room was usually booby-trapped with open paint boxes on the floor, jars of mixed and murky paint water, and damp paintings where I needed to step.  "Ginny dolls" and their accouterments occupied the level spaces, all of them, except where the stuffed animals and our live cat Cleopatra lounged.

I dediced to go with the flow on one occasion and posed the dolls interestingly
standing on their heads, peeking out of drawers, sitting precariously on the toilet, peering in the mirror, and so on.  That was fun but I had to stop to fix supper, and the dusting didn't get done.

Lullabelle, the Big Doll, seated in Anne's little rocker, presided sweetly over the chaos.  I had to be careful of her.  She was the Best Doll, so loved her arms and legs were prone to fall off.  She once had to go to the doll hospital and came home intact but with a new wig which took a long time to become accustomed to.  Today she sits on the sofa in Anne's living room, a presence in an antique dress.

My heart skipped a beat once at the sight of a fragile bird nest on Ross's desk, and one day, a butterfly.  After a few weeks I could blow the dust off the nest without disturbing its delicate construction, but how does one dust a butterfly?  It wasn't impaled on a pin, or part of a collection, just there as one would place a treasured bibelot, a wonder to be cherished.  It stopped me.  I was suddenly so glad I had a son who kept a butterfly on his desk.  In the high school, this oldest son Was on the wrestling team, but I had seen this butterfly!  At last the wings fell off, it disappeared, and I would look at the space where it had been.

Ross is gone from us now, but not before the special dust on a butterfly's wings touched us all forever.

Anne, the little mama of Lullabelle, the "Ginny"  dolls, and Cleopatra's descendents which cat-wise threatened to populate the earth, grew up to mother two adopted children along with her home made son,  sheltered a succession of black Labradors, and presently owns a mutt named " Otis Campbell", and a small dog creature that well looks to me, well, like a "dust kitty".  Her water colors now decorate her walls, crisp fragile renditions of fruits and flowers which I who was an art teacher wound not dare attempt.

Anne and her husband once provided dinner, bed, bath, and breakfast to a remarkable man passing through town on foot.  He was carrying a huge wooden cross, like Jesus.  It had a little wheel at the foot so he could drag it along the highway.  More recently she was a nurse and bus-mother to twenty teen-agers on a church mission to Mexico to build a house for a grateful little family in a barrio.  Twice lately when I have gone to visit her in another state there was a family or person in need housed in the guest room.  That is what she is like.

Younger son Chip, now middle aged, shares a house with me.. He has long since graduated from car parts, though that knowledge has been invaluable to us all these years.  He distinguished himself early by becoming the youngest graduate of Saab school and parts manager in the country.  He likes to hike in the woods and this spring brought home a beautiful perfect skin of a five foot long black snake, freshly discarded.  He draped it across the chest of drawers in his room, among the pictures and mementos of his children.    I found it a problem on cleaning day, so coiled it in a shallow box and stretched Saran over the top for viewing.  It is very handsome.  We can see how the emerging retile carefully peeled it off around the eyes and mouth, revealing an elegant new suit, never tearing even to the tip of the tail!  I feel good when I look at it.  I am old now and know I am in good hands.

I learned I didn't need to be so tidy, just wait a while and the hoards would be assigned to oblivion by their owners.  New sets of wonders would appear, and they really were wonders, the stuff and dreams of my children.  Dance programs, a victory sign cut from leather, another of metal welded in the school shop, posters, ballet slippers, a tiara, hockey pucks and the derby Ross wore exuberantly for sprin skiing, awards, diplomas follwed, and then they were gone, so soon it seemed that after all the dust had settled.

by Barbara C. Arnold


I miss you mom and I always will.  I think of  " how to dust a butterfly" often.  I remember the brother who first collected it every day.  I wonder at how my mother managed this balance in her life... this will to continue to search for beauty and the courage to cherish life and children with such passion even as they are taken from us and the dust settles.  Mothering is like taking off your clothes and walking naked when your tired and your feet hurt and your heart hurts you would take this walk for your child you would carry your child.  This is how God shows us to love one another.  Having faith to loose all you hold so dear and taking the walk carefully and with amazement past the butterfly, past the mementos and ahead into the every lasting love of God. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:


Happy Mother's day to the mothers I know, and the birth mother's I haven't met but who have taken that naked walk and intrusted their most precious gift with me.
Happy Mother's Day to my daughter's Amy and Biz and my dearest friends and my Sister's in law Gail and Debbie.  Bless you all.
Anne

Mom and Ross

Mom and Chip

Biz and Leo

Me, Mya, Amy

Mom and I her 90th birthday

Me and Lullabelle

A boy

Prayer                                                                                   
for a boy
praying
a moment
of wonder
and waiting


Prayer 
my boy
for time
a chance
praying.


relinquish the wish
to God.
breathe.


Anne 3/7/12

Family 2012

The last day of Christmas vacation...

we went to Myakka State Park Sarasota, FL

the bird walk over the grass and lake offered a safe place for toddlers to explore...

a place for a boy's curiosity to bloom...

a chance for Auntie to get one more armful of boy...

for cousins to climb...

 a moment for proud gramma to share the stage of life with her son and grand children...

for Momma Biz to put her back into it and have her heart and hands filled with the loveliest of children...
The house is quiet now.  Decorations are stored away for another year.  Gramma and Papa have had a couple of days to get back into their routine.  The memories begin. Where did two and a half weeks go so quickly?  I am already planning for when... for when we get together again.
God thank you for the joys of family and the many blessings in my life. 
Anne

The Best of a Mess. Prayer Shawl

wristers

Prayer Shawl

Some things are just too hard. Like knitting a sock.  I have spent hours with four metal sticks and some baby fine wool making little knots and loops to create a pair of socks.  Maybe it is the light so I have adjusted the goose neck lamp. Or could it be my progressive lens glasses?  I have cleaned them thirteen-umpty times. What to do? Frog the sock and start over? Call it quits and admit I am too old, too blind, too arthritic to knit a sock? How useful would bulky knit socks on large needles be?  At least I could see them and make them, my fingers would not cramp so much with the larger needles.  What is the point?  I should be enjoying this.  Decision made I am not going to give up on socks.  They will be a work in progress....and put away for a while in the stash bin. I will try wristers in fine wool and tiny needles first. At least no heal to turn. They will stand a chance of getting finished. I feel more determined with this decision and I really want my own pair of delicate wristers for semi chilly Florida weather.
So back to difficult situations and knitting.
My son is on a liver transplant list.  He has been fighting his disease  for over 2 decades now and yet he is so young. Thirty-four. Not fun, unfair, sad beyond words.  I weep. I pray. I put it out of my mind. I can't get it out of my mind. It becomes my mind. I have no mind. I am finding the point. I am missing the point. He is better. He is worse. Dr's are miracle workers. Dr's know nothing. Prayer helps, Prayer frustrates me. I can't pray, all I do is pray.  I am on my knees. I am mad. I am handing it over...no I am taking it back.  I am a mother.

Ross at 24

I am knitting my way to the city of oblivion. Along the way I make some nice things. I make messes. I solve some problems. I frog my knitting. I become a yarn snob. No I will use any yarn...just keep busy knitting. I use yarn I got at Goodwill. Acrylic. No I need to use pure wool. Wool so natural the lanolin faint on my fingers.  I need the connection to life to real wool. Sheep. Silly sheep in the fields.  Chewing their way to the earth to get every taste of green grass. Sheep are such good lawnmowers.
I grew up with sheep. My brother Ross raised sheep. My mother's oldest son and he died so young at twenty-four.  My oldest son trying so hard not to die young.
Sheep, wool, knitting, mothers, children, prayer, projects, desire, love, things that fill my life and clutter my mind.  I am doing my best in this mess. My best is not enough.  The wool is lying slack in my hands with metal needles all akimbo. My son in a hospital.  My son on a list. Far away in the north. My prayers sent into the abyss.
I picked up the Acrylic yarn from Goodwill and began to make a prayer shawl. K3P3, and the opposite on the returns.  Father, Son, Holy Ghost. The Best of a Mess. Prayer.

Pray

Joshua

When I first locked my eyes with your eyes and fell into those black pools I loved you. I loved you before I saw you, when I saw you and I love you still.
You were six months old when I got off the plane at the San Salvador International Airport, El Salvador. It was November of 1976 just before Thanksgiving. I stepped out onto the stairs of the aircraft into the sticky sweet tropical evening and looked up to the roof of the terminal. There clustered against the sky a throng of people awaited the arrival of the plane that I was on. The silhouette of one tall man holding an infant high above his head into the fading light caught and held my searching gaze. I knew as a mother knows her child that he was holding you up for me.
Somehow at 25 years of age I had arrived alone at this place at this time to receive into my arms my first child. After struggling through the crush and confusion of Customs I found you again out side the glass doors of arrivals. Thomas your foster father came directly toward me and placed you into my outstretched arms. Immediately you looked up into my eyes and grabbed my nose and held on tight. Your little body was solid and so warmly dressed in a yellow terry one piece footed pajama. Sweat curled your straight black hair into glistening concentric swirls on the crown of your head. I drank you in. Your heft, your scent, no longer strange to me, but now a part of me. We came together a mother and a son as only God alone could have chosen.
Looking into your eyes I saw an expanse of time that reached back to the very beginnings of time. Like rain pouring down a spring green leaf and mud sliding an other wise sure footed step I tumbled into an awareness of love. Love that passes all understanding. Our Father's love for us. All of that reflected in your deep dark brown eyes.
When love is not enough there is faith. I have had to be reminded of that so many times. God has you in his hands. He always has. I pray that his plans for you become fulfilled. My son. My boy for whom I could not always do what was needed or wanted. My Joshua. You are filled with light and laughter and I pray that our Heavenly Father's guiding hand keeps you safe and heals you.