Building Framework

Last year, I was able to submit my taxes online and it went well, efficient; this year there were choices according to how old you are.  So I picked the category that fit, punched in the numbers, and the computer said CONGRATULATIONS!  You get $11,448.00 back.  

After finding my glasses to see if the decimal point was in the proper spot, numbers were checked, re-entered, and like a carny show Aladdin's lamp, the same answer lit up the screen.  CONGRATULATIONS!  This isn't right.  I allowed myself two seconds to believe in fairies, then went to the IRS site and printed out hard copy forms to figure the amount by hand.  It came out to the usual refund that made sense.  But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, $11,000.  For a brief synaptic flash, it was $11,000.  I coulda had a Subaru.

Tisn't a flood of money, but for a windfall out of the air, it would have been fun. Use some for taking the kids to the Keys, a down payment on a car, the rest in the bank.

This evening I framed my Roscoe charcoal and the man looks dapper; if I put a frame around my head, would my students listen more intently?  Only if it looked like a video game screen frame, and anytime they got the answer right, a gold coin would appear over my head.

I dug out the picture frames as I dismantled the second room, third star to the right, and found things that I thought were still hanging on the wall.  Sorted out frames, and repotted houseplants; nothing exciting, all domestic stuff; but it will allow me to put the exercise bike in there. Heaving and ho-ing.  Drag the table out, get rid of stuff, let the neighbors have whatever; I need room to grow and thereby must pare down my collections and projects.  Come in to the museum slash art studio.  That's the goal.

Years of cozy have come and gone and good riddance; frankly, cozy can go eff itself.  Not that I didn't enjoy making a home when I had a family, but now the aim is little care, less dusting, fewer piles of quilts and stuff.  I have things to do that don't involve tasteful arrangements of the latest holiday whimsy, but require cleared, flat surfaces to mat and frame, build canvases, and lay out immense tubes of paint.  What gets in the way is sentiment; the latest theory says to say goodbye to Grandma's things, to keep her in your memory.  I'm not there yet.

The last Christmas, she had four ceramic clocks made for each of us girls; they are the kind of ugly that scares children and animals but: I will not give mine away, she was so proud to be able to do something at the last, and she loved me.  I have my mother's teacups, green glass compote dishes, and a box full of newspaper clippings telling how to get stains out of cotton with a lemon, or how to make chicken surprise for twelve.  Part of this is the life she had.

She wasn't allowed friends, or to go places, or to have nice things; after her death, I found the box and read through the recipes and handwritten instructions that were basically directions on how to entertain, what to serve at a card party, a barbecue, Thanksgiving.  She had recipes for church suppers, potlucks, fundraiser nights.  I had never understood why she saved newspaper and magazine clippings as she did; I thought it was just another recipe that she'd never make, something we'd never eat.

She did it for herself, it gave her a temporary sense of belonging to a bigger world where people had fun and could talk to neighbors, get the grill out and toss on a few dogs while Mom got her Potato Olive Salad for Twenty out of the fridge.  Dorothy wanted to be around people, to learn the give and take of friendships, to talk and laugh about commonalities without having her potato salad bowl get thrown against the concrete patio by my father because she said hello to someone he didn't like.  Going behind my back.  You're always, then you get me mad.  You don't ever.  Hear me?  HEAR ME?

So, you see, I can't throw them out.  They were like a happy fairytale for her.  Some of them are yellowed crumbles of old newspaper, so frail from years of being saved; others are hilarious combinations of Jello, mayonnaise, and grated cabbage, colored in sixties inks as women in flaring skirts and heels are shown bringing these creations to a table of guests. If my mother could have climbed into the pictures, she would have, dragging me and my brother with her.  I would have been allowed to sit at the dinner table (I wasn't, I ate on the floor in the living room on spread out newspaper), maybe the adults would sit and talk after, (boy that was the best Jello mold ever, Dorothy), and then go outside in the late sunset to toss the ball around while the adults swatted mosquitoes and breathed the cooling air.

Don't look back, I tell myself; learn from it and move on.  But not yet; I can winnow the myriad clippings for rhubarb crumble down to one or two, toss out repeats; she's got at least a dozen home solutions for brighter whites.  Not everything.  To my son, they will mean nothing, but by that time they could be in a scrapbook, a short story; Dorothy's story.  I'll go toss out that box of sewing scraps instead, even though they came from when I did make a quilt for my son; he sat on my lap at the machine as I sewed. Well, maybe not all of them.

Sleep you, and let go of the day with its busy, with its movement.  The dark curtains the daytime events, lights go out, people sleep; it's a period of enchantment and quiet thought.  You have your own clippings, wishes; what pulls you there, what draws your attention, what have you to do with finding your own desire?  A bird cracked out of an egg today; I picked up the hemisphere of blue shell and brought it home to a glass case.  Sleep covered in feathers, a beating heart.