We Ran Together Then

Lying quietly in summer's open field, eyes half closed against the sun, the hot yellow grass molds the majestic shadow of buzzards wing. How low will they drift, how near will they circle before they discover we are pretending at death and at last moment glide away?

If we had seen an eagle circling, or even ravens, we wouldn't have been so bold. We were small enough, we thought, to be carried to a high sky world and raised as eaglets or fed to eaglets. We couldn't agree on the intent of ravens. We were different, even then.

Beside the field, a thin river resounds on the rocks in its bed. A low wind shimmies down the willows along its bank, slides beneath the dead dry leaves at their feet and begins to spin. It spins skyward, it churns earthward, a dusty whorl of leaves and wind.

We jump up chasing, laughing, mocking. It spirals back and pulls us inward, keeps us running takes us reeling, dizzy in its wayward spin. Grabbing hands we leap together, headfirst blindly towards the river yelling, "Save us! Save us! Save us from this crazy wind!"

The leaves scatter freed across the water, stick, and become little islands for bugs. We drop between them into the one pool where the river is over our heads. We know the river. We know it loves us. It keeps our imprint at its side, the running tracks of an earthbound wind.

I remember the summer we were watchful of eagles. I remember each of our sun streaked faces. And I remember, we were barefoot when we ran. But I cannot remember...were we spirit or were we creature when we went running on the whirling wind?

(A childhood keepsake for Kathy - for all of us - and our summers together on the riverbar at Redwood Creek) Note: I made the large muslin doll. The Teddy Bear, Charlie, was a gift for my first birthday. The little doll was made years ago by a member of the Blackfeet Tribe.

Dragon Under Wisteria

I just found this embroidery I began years ago. Maybe if I take a picture of it, I will want to finish it. Or not. Maybe I can't remember how to work with ribbon embroidery. Maybe I don't have the time. I also doubt I could even find the ribbon, should they make it anymore. Maybe I like it unfinished to remember those days when I saw things like a dragon in the garden underneath the wisteria. I used to think it was important to finish things then.

The Time It Takes

It was brought to my attention one day, that there were people who had not experienced playing a musical instrument, or experienced listening and dancing to live music made by people playing instruments, nor did they know what it was like to have or to hold something made just for them by hand - some of them, not even homemade food. Many people on the planet today in what was once thought to be the privileged world, live in fast paced surroundings with no time for any of the above. No time. When there is no time for something, that something becomes diminished in importance. Everyone knows how that feels.

So, I made dolls from antique fabrics edged in lace that had been knotted from tiny strings - tiny strips of lace that took years to learn how to make, months to complete. Did you know that of all the things machines can do, machines cannot tie a knot? I used fine spun cashmere and silk yarn I myself had spun for the dolls' hair. Everything I could find that I used for the dolls' garments was as close to handmade as could be. Even some of the fabrics were hand woven. And when the fabric was not, I hand stitched beads and colored threads to the finished garments. I made these dolls in the hopes a child would be given one and know what it felt like to have and to hold something handmade - and most all of the dolls were given to children.  I also made fruit from colored velvets - golden apples, red strawberries, and green pears. This all took time, but not as much time as it would have taken 100 years ago.

Today, the time it takes to learn a musical instrument remains the same as it did 1,000 years ago.

Remembering With Our Hands

When I embroider on velvet, it's the silk ribbons, the thread and beads and where the needle pierces the fabric that I pay attention to. Yet, while I am embroidering, it is that which I cannot see which comes to my mind and I begin to remember.

I remember my grandmother carefully teaching me how to thread the needle and draw the colored threads through the fabric so it will not pucker - all the while telling me stories such as how her mother divorced her father, moved to San Francisco and set up a tailoring shop in Union Square "when women did not do those things".  And I remember other stories of women too, for sewing is more apt to invoke images of women than of men.

It's tricky, this kind of remembering. All these closely stitched threads intertwined into tapestries which are not unlike the unending ripples caused by stones dropped in ponds. The surface patterns and the ripples distract. It's the backside of the fabric and the stone itself I am interested in - the stories themselves, the stories we hold in our hands when we do something like incline our heads, take up a needle and a strand of thread, lay it down and fasten it to the fabric as women, mostly women, have done for aeons in all kinds of worlds for all kinds of reasons.

...