One For Me & One For You

"And he sailed off through night and day
and in and out of weeks..." - Maurice Sendak






















When S was working with his OT, I ran over to the library to return some books and discovered they were having their annual book sale. Our life is chock full of perfectly timed lucky surprises like that...and yours will be too at the end of this post.

I grabbed a short stack of Native American tales for a friend...and I found one or two books that I can now scratch off our wish list. Then I found an musty old gem by Sabine Lohf.

I have always admired books that truly tickle the imagination, especially those that lean toward the earthy side...






















S studied that musty manual cover to cover then began making fleet of dream vessels.

















As we watched our flotilla set sail on imaginary adventures, I was reminded of the two review copies sitting on my studio table. I haven't shelved them because they are so lovely that I keep referring back to them for inspiration and ideas for the months ahead. I contacted the generous folks at Shambhala Publications and asked if I could host a giveaway because I greatly enjoyed these books and I know you will too.

The Rhythm of Family: Discovering a Sense of Wonder through the Seasons by Amanda Blake Soule is a soulful (pardon the applicable pun), and inspiring book that offers recipes, crafts and family activities that follow the rhythm of the seasons. Warm and welcoming, it's a guide that nurtures family bonds and fosters a deeper connection with nature.

Playful Learning: Develop Your Child's Sense of Joy and Wonder by Mariah Bruehl is a wonderful book that honors the connection between play and learning. The book is loaded with activities and resources that will empower parents to create play based learning experiences within the home. This guide thoughtfully demonstrates how parents can participate in their child's education in very significant, meaningful ways.

If you would like to win a copy of one of these two gems. Simply leave a comment. Tell me which book you're pining for then share with me one of your favorite childhood memories. Please remember to include an email so that I may contact you. Anonymous comments will not be included as it is impossible for me to contact you. The books will be sent directly from the publisher. Winners will be picked by Random Generator and announced next Thursday September 1st!

Thank you, Shambhala, for your generous spirit and for publishing books that have heart!

Merboy

"Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair." - Walt Whitman






















(Portrait on the night you passed your swim test)

Moth

Adrift in the liberating, late light
of August, delicate, frivolous,
they make their way to my front porch
and flutter near the glassed-in bulb,
translucent as a thought suddenly
wondered aloud, illumining the air
that's thick with honeysuckle and dusk. - Jennifer O'Grady

















Yesterday you found a giant, dying moth and carried it home...

"Why is it shaking?", you asked.

"It's trying to shake free of it's body", I replied.

"It's still now", he said, "it's soul just flew away...I think it waited for us because we are spiritual people".






















“This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings
so love, love, love.” - Hafiz

Come, I Have Something To Show You

Where have I been?
Click on the image, I'll take you there...

Summer Soul Quest: Part II The Hidden

"Seeing in the dark means seeing the things that ordinary sight overlooks...seeing in an unusual way that is resonate with your body and soul. The psyche is an enormous landscape into which there are many features that many people bypass because they are so consumed with the whir of life. The medial woman sees most everything because she pays attention from her soul, from her spirit, from her mind, from her body, from her heart, from her creative imagination, from her instincts and from her memory. The medial woman stands between the world of the obvious and the world of the hidden...the world that is not so easily seen as people rush along." - Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Seeing in the Dark)

"She was quite unlike the island women and some of her ways were so strange. Why, she'd go out on the rocks when the tide was low to talk to the seabirds and seals. And wherever she went on the island the seals were always watching her from the sea while the seabirds wheeled about her, calling her in a language she seemed to understand, for often she'd call out a reply that would set them laughing the way gulls do." - (The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry / Roan Inish)

We went to NY on holiday to visit friends and family...and so that I could attend my 30th (yes) high school reunion on Long Island. I had some trepidation about attending the reunion as I always felt like an outsider in high school. I never had that sense of belonging that others seemed to radiate. I kept to myself unless someone engaged me in conversation. I wasn't athletic, I wasn't popular, pretty, or a brainiac. I was either lost in my own thoughts or somewhere in the art wing.

Yet I felt a tug to go to this reunion because I needed to move outside my comfort zone and examine more closely this discomfort that I recall, the feeling of not fitting in, of not belonging. I needed to sit with those old feelings and rock them. I felt that it would help me connect more deeply with the girls that I teach...girls who are in a very vulnerable position as they stand at the threshold of womanhood.

"How might your life have different, if there had been a place for you?", asks Judith Duerk in her book "Circle of Stones".

This is the question I've asked myself time and again ever since I read her work. The answer to that question is the very reason I launched Mighty Girl Art camp. It is the very reason I pound the stakes into the ground each summer and raise my tipi, The House of Belonging.

During the car ride to NY, I listened to "Seeing in the Dark" by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes whom I am so very fond of. I purchased the audio months ago, but was saving it for this trip. The timing was profound, and the message apt. I soon realized that this trip was a pilgrimage. I would take my son to the places that hold my childhood memories. I would also make it a quest to seek the unseen places and try to find that fractured part of myself and hold her and say, "you're okay...you are now walking this earth stronger than ever".

Upon entering the banquet room where our reunion was held, I noticed a memory board of classmates that have since died. It was painful to look at. I looked at the names and faces and thought, "this is the reason we were all here...to celebrate our lives together, not just for ourselves, but for our friends who are no longer living".

Some time later, a man came up to me and asked "do you remember me"?

I said, "I remember that you were in my first grade class...and you gave me a pin...a kitty with two pink stones in the ears...and I was deeply touched because it was the first time I received a gift from someone other than family and you did so simply because you liked me...I was six years old and I still remember that 41 years later".

He began to tell me about work...and I listened then asked, "What brings you joy?" He smiled then proceeded to tell me such wonderful things about his life.

And so I began mining for joy. Over and over I asked my classmates, "What do you love and what brings you joy" and each time my heart was rewarded. I heard about children, a restored Studebaker and even a houseboat! An old chum told me that no matter how late he gets home from work, and even though his kids are grown, he always goes into their room to wake them with a kiss and tell them he loves them. The wife of a classmate told me a beautiful story of how she met her soulmate. What a gift!

And there were other gifts...

Here, I must rewind to the night before, to a gathering on Swan River, when a man walked up to me with eyes lost in memory and said, "Wendy Cook, you were always on the outskirts". His words gave me goosebumps although it was 103 degrees in the shade. My head suddenly began to spin because I realized that my experience had just been validated. I had found that part of myself and I held her close to my heart.

It took me 47 years to understand why creatives are looked at like they don't belong, why they are pushed to the outside. It's because creatives have other ways of seeing. They move through this world a bit differently. What I did not realize until now, thanks to Dr. Estes, is that we are not really on the outskirts, but rather on the frontiers. As Dr. Estes said, "The trees and the flowers don't grow from the center, they grow from the edges". My perception of feeling like an outsider, and the invisible push was the very gift that nourished my growth. It was not intended to hurt me, it was intended to guide me. Guide me to the places where I could flourish, and lead me to people who could nurture my form of expression.

At the precise moment those fated words left his lips, I looked down and saw a feather and I remembered Dr. Estes' "Prayer for the Outsider"...

"These souls were explicitly created to fly through more than one world and to return, ever return, to tell the stories of what can be seen when one is allowed to soar."

After the reunion we spent another two days visiting some of my favorite haunts. It was a gift to see my son explore the places that hold my childhood secrets. I watched him play with his daddy on the very shore I once played with my own dad. There with one foot in the past and one foot in the present, I gathered a handful of perfectly smooth, incredibly white, egg shaped stones to remind myself of all that I learned. It was soulful teaching to revisit the memories hidden within these sacred places, a privilege to spend some time with family and friends.

As I sit here in my studio reflecting on our trip, I am reminded of these words by Confucius...

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.






















Under the rocks and stones
there is water underground.
Same as it ever was...
time isn't holding us" - Talking Heads

Summer Soul Quest: Part I The Obvious

"Once a Selkie finds its skin again, neither chains of steel nor chains of love can keep her from the sea" - The Secret of Roan Inish

















I knew it the moment I said yes. This wasn't just a vacation, it was a soul quest. There is much to tell. There was the obvious and there was the hidden...there was the seen and there was the unseen, but lets start with seen, shall we?

With my eyes, with my cameras, with my heart....

(I will share what was hidden beneath the surface in Part II)

The first morning at his grandmother's house on Long Island he ran outside in his pajamas looking for worms and bugs.





















There was a dinner date with his grandma and an evening walk by the bay, and a mysterious fairy door at the base of an old tree covered in ivy, and there were fake mustaches and a Chaplin impersonation...





















and bonding with a cousin, and light-up cars to race along the driveway under the night sky and sleeping bags, and little boy secrets whispered in the dark, and mischief of one kind or another...





















There were sand castles on the south shore...





















































and the seaweed that he lifted gently from the surf and squealed, "Look...Mermaid hair!"






















There was a visit to Peppermint Stik Farms where my childhood memories linger along with my gratitude...





































































There was a family BBQ at my childhood home and there was a short jaunt to Mannahatta my second island home....






















where his honorary sister "poofed" him into a prince and they roared like lions and laughed about things known only to them...

















To the sprinklers in Tompkins Square...










































and to the Doughnut Plant for a sweet nosh before heading back to Long Island once again...

















where we began a new day with a run down the giant dunes that I once ran upon with my late dad...

















and onto the rocky northern shore where I once searched for colorful quartz for polishing and hematite for painting...

















where Satch insisted that he would catch a crab...and he DID, with his bare hands...

















a spider crab that he named, "Fergy" with whom he played gently and talked to for quite some time.

He cried when it was time to let Fergy go. I said, "I'm sure Fergy is telling his whole family about his adventure...and how he met a REAL boy who was gentle and kind".






















And the night before we left for home, there was feasting and laughing with 12 friends and one VERY long table...

and a stop in NJ on the way back to VA for a pizza party with cherished cousins. Memories of our grandmother (their great grandmother) were shared and her presence felt...

















And woven within the fabric of these outings and innings was a 30th high school reunion where I went to celebrate life with old friends, and took a dip into the sea of the past where I was reacquainted with my skin...

"Into the blue again
in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones
there is water underground...." - Talking Heads