This week,  the Universe gave me a bounty of good things.  

1. With the help of the Scooter Lady Cayce in Tennessee, I finally got my pretty blue Voyager to start up. I was riding back and forth in my small kitchen and called Carlene.  "I wanted you to be the first person I'd call on my scooter,"  I said.  She is guaranteed to, invariably, share in whatever I'm excited about, commending me for making such a wise decision.   When we tell each other something we're happy about or proud of, we sometimes say, "I just wanted someone to saw A-WOOO!"  

2. After way too long, I finally go to visit with Chris, my delightful friend who lives in Kerrville.  We each took a few things for "show and tell"--she some beautiful collages built around dream fragments, me with five blank handmade books. I drove home inspired and hoping for some longer visits after we both do our August trips. 

3. Last night I took my first scoot, Luci leashed beside me, Carma and Jan behind us.   Jan was so excited about my wheels you'd have thought it was a Porsche. "It's Luci who. needs training, not you," she said.  Luci's accustomed to stopping to pee and sniff and negotiate different turns than I had in mind.  I need to train her to walk beside me and announce when she's about to stop. 

4. I went to Williams Sonoma and met my (I hope) forever pet sitter, Jules. When she saw Luci, she squatted with the ease young women have, all the way to the floor in high heels, to pet and converse with Luci.  When she asked if I ever needed someone to keep Luci, I took her number, and canceled the Rover sitter for August.  Her other job, besides WS, is in the Frost Bank Building a stone's throw from my house, and it's pet friendly. She'll stay in my house and take Luci to work with her where she'll get to commune with other small dogs. 

5. Lorraine recommended a novel and I stayed up very late reading it.  Excellent writing, engaging story.  Midway, I almost quit because I found the main male character wimpy and I dislike wimpy men.  We talked about it as I shopped for fruits in Whole Foods, then I went home and read it all the way to the end and was glad I'd stayed with it.   Leaving is by Roxanne Robinson. 

6. When my favorite Mexican restaurant, Adalantes, closed a couple of years ago--after 40 plus years, I missed it, especially their Santa Fe tacos which are really quesadillas. I ordered that dish almost every time.  I was lucky--the menu was online!  I'd struck gold. It's a mix of zucchini, green onions, corn, poblano peppers, and Monterray Jack cheese grilled between two large whole wheat tortillas.

7. Central Market has been under renovation for at least a year, with a year to go.  But I went there to get my ingredients this morning, it was so much fun to see what they've done with it.   Just being there can instantly make me happy.

8. Before Central Market and after Walgreens, I popped into The Green Door thrift store.  Just bought one thing--a beautiful art book called Alphonse Mucha, Masterworks.  From cover to cover, it's luscious. 

In the future, I'm going to try to cool my jets few days before writing about a new idea.  

Writing mirrors myself back to myself in ways that are often embarrassing and just as often illuminating. For example;

My last posts on plastic, now deleted, reveal to myself how easily I get seduced into a new idea and run to my secular pulpit with it.  

With so many troubling issues in the world, it's easy to latch on to the latest way to save--myself, the planet, my beloved children and grands--and then run with it.  I am easily seduced. Easily frightened for the next generation.  That's kind of sweet and endearing.  It's also kind of humiliating to realize how little a woman of my age can actually do. 

Not that it's not worthy of  concern--it is.  I did make a few simple changes that will be healthy for me personally.  Like returning to brewing tea instead of buying it in plastic jugs.  And ditching my peeling Teflon frying pan and buying one not coated in petrochemical stuff I can't even pronounce. 

But as for the 101 things I can do, the ones I read about, I'm just not going to live long enough to do all of them, that's a fact.  If I were a young mother with little bitty children, that would be a way different story. 

Once upon a time, I figured my grandchildren would cherish my advice and wisdom.  I would inculcate in them a desire to read many books.  I would steer them away from smart phones and social media and anything else I might find harmful.  

As time wore on, I realized how little power I had, how little younger people coveted a piece of my wisdom.  I'd had my chance as a parent; my turn was over. 

Wild Cards

 Rachel Martin and David Sedaris

If you're an NPR aficionado, you've probably heard this show called Wild Card, a hybrid of game and interview. 

Rachel Martin uses her Wild Card deck of cards, holds up three, and lets the interviewee pick one--which is the question he or she answer.  Or not.  Or asks the host to answer instead.  The cards are just prompts, the answers can go all over the map. 

The link above will take you to her conversation with David Sedaris. a self-deprecating opinionated writer and humorist whose stories are mined from his personal life.  

I found this house at the laundromat.

I stumbled upon a little black and white photograph last night, looking for pictures for a house-shaped book I'd made.

It was taken in 1969 or '70: me leaning over a stone ledge in the yard, my so very young husband below, his mama sitting on the ledge.  We two on the ledge are looking with interest at something he is showing us.  Behind us is the rock cabin, the house I found at the laundromat.

When we first moved to Helotes, we rented a concrete block house behind the Baptist Church.  The Bandera Highway was a two-lane road then.  A stone's throw from the church and our rent house was Flores Country Store where a young Willie Nelson sang on Saturday nights.  Next to that was the General Store where we bought groceries, "put it on my tab."

Since we didn't have a washer in the concrete house, I drove about a mile to the laundromat, always asking people if they knew of anything to rent.  

One day the manager, a woman named Charlotte, said, "My uncle has a little house he's wanting to rent, but it's very remote, a little hard to get to."  

It was a tiny stone house, the one in the picture, atop a hill.  To get there, you had to drive a long and extremely bumpy driveway, Beckmann Hill.  We could even hear Willie singing from our porch on Saturday nights.  

At the base of the hill was an open field we made into a motorcycle track.  My young husband got himself a 250 Bultaco, and for me, a 250 Montessa. 

So many memories are evoked in that photo.  We lived there for 11 years, first with just Tony, then Tony and baby Day.  Friends came out on weekends and we took long walks and cooked, tended babies and listened to loud Janis Joplin and Ray Charles and Otis Redding. By the time Mr. Beckmann sold the whole 65 acres, and we moved a mile down Scenic Loop, we had Baby Will.  

From the first day to the last, we paid $125 a month for that little patch of Texas Hill Country. 

Where the River Took Us

I'm listening to the podcast "Where the River Took Us" by Aaron Parsley of The Texas Monthly. 

He and his family were camping out just across the river from two of the camps last July.  He tells the wrenching story of their house being taken by the flood, and miraculously all of them survived except this sister's baby Clay. 

The podcast is about what happens on the day of the tragic flood and the aftermath.  At this point in the podcast, episode 4, he befriends a father whose grief leads him to being an activist for change in laws and technologies that prevent tragedies like last year's happening again.

MORE Tuition?

Carlene saved me and my kids and my friends a lot of grief and remorse by telling us early on that "everything is tuition."

That adage has an appendage: I ought to always be learning stuff.  I'm a learning junkie, always have been, but only on topics I care about.  I do not wish to learn trigonometry or make-up skills or how to strengthen my core or sports.  NPR is always on in my car because it's my best source of learning things besides You Tube and online classes.  

I learn every day more about how to interpret Luci's language.  Downward dog pose means "I'm tired of sitting around; I want to walk or go see somebody I like."

She has a very expressive set of eyes.  Jan came over to walk her one afternoon when I was unable to walk, and Luci gave her the side eye and went under the covers and curled up close to me.   Her preferences are obvious. She couldn't have said more clearly, "I  only like to walk with this lady."  But bless Jan, she overrode Luci's preferences and dragged her along. 

When we do walk, she tries to negotiate an extra block at every corner.  She plants her little tiny feet on the pavement, refusing to go in the direction I've chosen (back home mostly) and she holds that pose with fierce determination.  I usually give in.  She knows I'm a softie.

I spent hours last week researching scooters.  Consumer Reports recommended a Glashow, but when you clicked their link, it took you to Parseec.  I learned that two products can have--inexplicably--two different names that don't even rhyme.

The one I really wanted was too new to be reviewed on Consumer Reports: Scootngo Voyager baby blue could be purchased from the company or from Amazon and Walmart. But the warranty wasn't good unless you bought it from the company.  I called the company numerous times and left messages on their answering machines. I emailed them even more.  But no one ever answered. (Parseec/Glashow did answer at least but by Indian men I couldn't understand who answered my questions by reading verbatim from the website.)

I learned this: ask Google what stores sell or rent them--and that's how. I met Cayce who ran a store in Pigeon Forge. She has an American Southern accent and we understood each other perfectly.  One thing I'd learned in my research she reinforced by saying,   "A warranty is worth nothing if no one answers the phone." 

 In this age of QR codes and apps and portals and AI, life lessons come at us from all directions.  

After hearing of my recent betrayal by Orlando, Elena said, "You're too nice to everybody, Yenna.  You shouldn't trust so many people."  (I had an idea she'd heard that from her parents.)

"You're probably right.  I'm learning how to be more skeptical," I said.  "But when I was your age,  a person's word meant something.  If you said you were going to do something, you were going to do it.  It was this way with everyone." 

Sometimes we pay tuition for un-learning things. 

Art Show Saturday

 My friends and I are hardly seeing each other lately.  It's too hot to walk out the front door--much less walk all the way to the sauna of a car and drive to each other's houses very often. I mostly see Jan when we walk the dogs after the final heat wave has dissipated.

Today I ordered my scooter.  You'd think it was a motorcycle, I'm so excited.  It took two trips to the bank to make it all happen due to a summer SNAFU with my credit card people rolling their eyes because I was buying an item from a sports shop in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  But after two trips there, the sweet banker Jose finally convinced them it was a legit order.  It's a light blue Scootngo scooter that folds up like a suitcase at the airport, so I have high hopes of taking it with me to Virginia and Colorado and anywhere else I might be invited to go after the heat is replaced by cool fall air.

Before meeting Cayce, the saleswoman, in Pigeon Forge, I talked to a few men in India about other brands, and finally got to buy the one that had been my first choice all along. 

Tomorrow, however, I have an outing.  Joy is having an art show at Mockingbird Handprints, 3 to 5, tomorrow, speaking to us all at 4 o'clock.  It will be fun.  I hope all my San Antonio friends will show up to see the opening day event of her show, Celebrating Nature!  It will be up through August 22nd. 

A Tumble In A Very Fine Place

Three weeks ago, I was walking outside my room in an Albuquerque hotel, when suddenly my face met the concrete walkway.

My glasses landed a few feet away.  Luci ran over and licked my head and bleeding nose, looking worried.

I thought of that horrible TV commercial: "I fell and I can't get up!" It was early and no other hotel guests were outside yet, and I'd left my phone in the room. 

I crawled a couple of feet and pulled myself up on my neighbor's patio chair.  

I didn't want to tell anyone, not even Will--who was with Bonnie and Elena in the house they'd rented for a month in Durango, three hours north of Albuquerque.

So I called Jan--to ask her if she'd look in my house for a back up pair of glasses.  

Right after most accidents, the pain isn't as bad as it will be the next day. but the shock of splatting against concrete for no obvious reason is paramount. 

What I was about to get a reminder of is the incredible kindness of strangers. 

I called the front desk of the hotel. 

Within minutes, my room was filled with staffers, one carrying breakfast from the restaurant down the hall, another bringing brining ice for my  boo boos, another to "get my statement." 

Jeanette said, "If you want to go to the hospital, I'll take care of Luci., I'll take her home with me when my shift is over"  The manager said he wanted to have medics check me out, then he'd take me downtown to order some new glasses. (which we didn't do because Jan found some back ups and mailed them express to Will's place) 

Two adorable medics appeared and checked me out, and after they ruled out concussion, they stayed for a while to chat.  I felt okay, just shaken up. 

The manager wanted to speak to him, to tell him the medics had said I was in good shape, but didn't want me driving for a day or two.  They'd comp the rest of the nights, as many as I needed, then I could drive on to Durango.

But Will--like my daddy would have done--said, "We're on our way to get her."

As I waited on a big comfy bed, Jeannette came every hour to take Luci for a walk, and the other staff members stopped in to bring me snacks and drinks and more ice.

I was so impressed with the care they provided that I wrote a letter to the editor of the Albuquerque paper which they published the next weekend.

We had a wonderful time in Durango.  All was well.  

I just felt a tiny bit deflated by the fall.  It had dinged my confidence, and I dreaded the long hot dry desert drive back home.   

Will said one of my favorite things anybody can say: "We want you to stay as long as you like." 

He took us to the Durango Hot Springs and asked me what I wanted to drink.  "Pina Colada," I said.  'With alcohol in it?" he asked, grinning.  "You bet!" I said--and I settled into the hot water with the most delicious Pina Colada and the company of Will and Bonnie and their new friends--while Elena played with her new fan club of the younger children of those friends.  

After a week, I decided it was time to hit the road, to give them some time to explore the area more, do a long back packing hike, and follow up on some dinner and party invitations they were getting.

Will suggested I fly from the Durango airport, with a layover in Denver, and let him bring my car back when they come.  I could use their Four Runner and avoid that long hot drive through the desert--which is what we did.  

They arrive back in Texas late tonight and tomorrow I'll trade the Four Runner for my little red car that fits Luci and me a lot better.  

"With freedom and justice for all"

At rodeos, during the pledge of allegiance to the flag, I stand up politely but don't put my hand on my chest and don't say the words--I'm waiting until we get our sense back, what little we, collectively, had. That phrase sticks in my throat (figuratively speaking) because it's not true.  It's what we call an "aspirational phrase"--one we keep aspiring to turn into a fact.

Anyway, I never read aloud or recite words in a group, creeds, statements of belief ,or whatever.  I prefer to say my own words, in my own time, without a script.  

While nobody has freedom all the time, what we can do is find freedom for ourselves--whatever makes us happy, if only for a day or two at a time.  Julia Cameron of The Artist's Way, famously prescribed "artist dates" for one--two or three hours doing anything that fills your tank back up when it gets empty.  (I would add with no cell phone in sight)

I've made the 4th of July a weekend of freedom--from the phone, from texts, from any interruptions to my wallowing in the bed and watching funny and sometimes  senseless videos.   Also one poignant but cheesy movie, like "A Dog's Purpose" on Netflix, wherein a dog dies and gets reincarnated as another dog and so on, always remembering his former lives.

I've subsisted on a diet of cheese toast and grapes--except for this delicious gingery carrot soup Jan brought me on Friday night. 

While organizing my gel print supplies and going through all the old tubes to see which ones are juicy enough to keep, the standup comic Leanne Morgan is making me laugh out loud. 

I've canceled all my upcoming appointments--which gives me three more days in July to continue this artist date thing. 

I've been drinking Arizona green tea on crushed ice I got at McDonalds this morning.

Tried not to feel guilty if I don't return a call or respond to a text until next week sometime. 

Because I don't want to be terrified out of my mind or depressed, I'm not watching any news.

Back in my twenties, I had a book called BE HERE NOW by Ram Dass, published in 1971 the year my first baby was born.  It was about letting go of the ego and cultural shoulds in order to live a more mindful life.  It went against the grain of most of my beliefs at the time, so I kept it in a secret place so nobody would ask if I'd turned Buddhist. 

It didn't change my life right away, but the title of the book stayed with me all these years like an aspirational phrase: Be.  Here.  Now.  I keep forgetting it and falling back on the rules of polite behavior, but then I get as stressed as I do when I watch the news.  One good mutually satisfying conversation a day instead of six all in one day gives me space to enjoy that one conversation without reminding myself of the five other calls I need to get to. A beloved teacher of mine used to say, "Love is being fully present with another person"--and how can anybody be fully present six times in a row? 

The movie, "A Dog's Purpose," borrowed that phrase without attribution--as the dog's purpose was (spoiler alert) to Be.  Here.  Now.  Not to worry, not to fear, not to wallow in mistakes of the past, not to anticipate the sky falling--again. 

All the while, my little tiny dog is Being Here Now, wallowing in the bed with me, doing nothing.  She doesn't know what we'll be doing later today or tomorrow or next year.  She doesn't care.  All she knows is that whenever I do something, or go somewhere, she wants to do it, too.   Grocery store, thrift shop, the outside washer and dryer, the post office, or the Amazon take back line at Whole Foods.  All she has to hear is "Wanna go.....?" and she's off to find a toy to squeak to answer YES YES YES!

Luci doesn't feel guilty about anything.  She lowers her ears and hides under the cover if Jan offers her a walk--because she only wants to walk with me.  She doesn't worry about hurting anyone's feeling--she just lives her quiet preferences without apology.

That's how I want to be when I finish growing up. 

That's the kind of freedom we learn from our dogs and cats and children, but have to remind ourselves and each other over and over to capture while we can.  

When I told Day that I'm shopping for a scooter, she said, "That's terrific!  I want you to have the biggest life you can have for as long as you can."

Amen! 

July 3

 On the way home from the bank, with a detour at my usual turn in, I took the road that takes me past the green house across from the elementary school.  It's not a pale green, or sage, or pastel, or lime; it's full on Green Green, Baby!  

Doors, windows and trim are turquoise and yellow.  Potted plants in vivid multi-colored pots, the whole thing like an illustration in a child's book, perfect in its placement across the street from the school. 

It makes me happy to drive past it, and one day I'm going to be riding my scooter and stop and go up and ring the doorbell and ask if I can look around and have a chat with the people bold enough to create such a fun house in an architecturally conservative neighborhood of traditionally pretty houses and mansions. 

But first, I have to get my scooter.  I've been researching all week.  I've called a couple of companies to get the low-down on their products.  

None of the scooters on Amazon have warranties.  How much can one spend on a warranty-free machine without feeling you might as well throw four or five hundred dollar bills down the nearest drain?

The ones with warranties, like the ones on Amazon, are also made in China--but the owner of ScootnGo tells me that a comparable scooter, if made in America, would cost five times as much.  "My partner and I go to China as often as you go to your kitchen," he said.  "We oversee all operations."

My college students who drove cars patched together with duct tape (or that's how I pictured them)  used to call their cars "POS" cars.  I had to ask what POS meant back then--and one of them told me, 'Piece of Shit." 

You cobble enough to buy one from a seedy-looking used car place and hope for the best for as long as you can squeeze life out of it.  If it dies, it dies--you can say you had three good months.

So as I look at the models of scooters, I keep wondering, "Is this the real deal or a POS?"

Some of them fold up like suitcases and are light enough to roll to the door of the aircraft when you travel.  You take the 5 pound lithium battery out and put it in your back pack, and voila, when you arrive, you have yourself a scooter guaranteed to go five miles an hour. The overall weight of the machine is about 40 pounds. 

Others have traditional batteries, but could be good starter scooters if you only drive in your neighborhood and can lift 1 100- pound scooter into your truck or car.

The airline approved models have cruise control, voice control, bells and whistles galore.  

Some have handlebar baskets and rear baskets, with optional wagons that can be attached to the rear--for groceries and/or your dog if said dog gets tired of walking.

My research is so thorough that when I look on Facebook Marketplace, I can recognize the brands--but the used ones cost as much and more than the new ones. 

So this is my summer challenge: to find a scooter that meets all mine and Luci's needs-- hopefully in green and yellow and turquoise.  

July 2026

Each trip seems to take longer and longer to settle in all the way afterwards. I've been home now as long as I was gone on my Colorado trip and am still busy getting the things done that didn't get done while I was gone--thanks to broken promises from the man who stayed here to do them. 

Our agreement was that he'd have full use of the casita while I was gone in exchange for feeding my birds every day, watering and trimming plants, and hauling off all the dead brush he'd cut.  A week before I left I'd have recommended him to anyone. He's big, he's strong, he's capable of doing just about anything. But, well, he didn't hang the moon after all. 

According to the contents of my trash can which wasn't emptied for the entire 10 days I was gone, a lot of beer was consumed.  

My plan was to get the casita in shape for future at-home care should I need it.  In order to stay in my house long into the foreseeable future, I'd have a comfortable space to rent or swap to someone able to provide the kind of care I might need.

His promise was that when I got back I'd feel like one of those people on HGTV shows who comes home to a picture perfect house and yard and I'd say Oh!  My!  Gosh! over and over like they do on TV.

The 30 or 40 daily birds had not been fed and had looked for other places to eat. The brush was stacked in two piles exactly as I'd left them.  

It's awful to be disappointed in someone, especially when the work agreement has meshed with what felt like a friendship.  Bonnie and Will continue to urge me to stop being friends with everyone who comes to work--but it's kind of not my nature to separate the two.  

Anyway, I'm home now and catching up with friends on the phone and gearing up for a 101st birthday trip to Georgia in late summer.  This weekend my goal is to get back to some book-making and go shopping for a mobility scooter for scooting upon as Luci walks.  

HOME AGAIN!

 I just returned from one of the most relaxing and enjoyable vacations ever!

Durango, Colorado is the Happy Place of the Pritchetts, and now I get a big chunk of their Why.

Elena's rodeo, the Durango Hot Springs, nearby Mencas, downtown shopping, visiting Summit Church, meeting their friends, driving around looking for houses for sale, taking the dogs to Molas Lake and having dinner in Silverton, celebrating Will's Father's Day, and watching the wheels in Elena's mind turning until she finally decided that she's up for a move--it was a perfect week!

Molas Lake--between Durango and Silverton--is a place we've loved since Will was five years old and Day, twelve.  Will and Bonnie and the kids have fallen in love with it, too--there's something magical about it for us all.  They go there about twice a year--skiing in winter, fishing and hiking and horseback riding in the summer.  

Now, all they have to do is sell a house--and I'm hoping that won't take long. 

Not that I want them to move--it's going to be a big stretch for me--but more than anything I want them to be as happy year round as they are in Colorado!

So stay tuned.....

From Durango,Colorado

 I've been too busy playing the last few days to find time to write!  I drove first to Lubbock to spend a night with Nathan in his first house of his own!  He bought it with the idea of renting out rooms to students as roommates, then to future students!  He and his girlfriend, Chloe, and I had a nice visit touring the campus (by car), eating out, and their catching me up on where they are now--at 18 and 19!

Now I'm here in a beautiful house in Durango with Elena, Bonnie and Will--living the life!  Elena boards Yancey at a nearby barn--and she did an amazing ride in the barrel race event at the Durango Rodeo Tuesday night.  I absolutely loved sitting in the stands and experiencing a Colorado version of rodeo.  The people here are so friendly that two families of their friends came to watch Elena ride, too!

Yesterday we drove to Mancos (about half an hour's drive from here) where peace just falls down on you from all directions!  We had a leisurely lunch in an ancient building that has been all manner of businesses over the last century and is now a uniquely adorable bakery and restaurant.  We walked around an art gallery shop on Main Street and then drove through the area where Bonnie has "found her people" through women's retreats and now a yoga teacher training program of six weekends.  

Last night we enjoyed three hours at the Durango Hot Springs--along with some of their new friends, a family who moved here from San Antonio and opened a bicycle shop in downtown Durango.

I love the downtown area of Durango--and we're going to mosey around there today!

Then tomorrow we're going to Molas Lake and Silverton where we met Steve and Linda Kot and their children almost 40 years ago.  

Somehow I still don't know how to get pictures to post, but for now, just wanted to say a few words about this spot of earth Will and Bonnie call Paradise and none of us is ready to leave!  

Reading Alice and Jerry

       Some of us grew up on Alice and Jerry (I did); others on Dick and Jane. 

       The book I chose as a starter for my altered book is Day In And Day Out, featuring Mother, Father, Alice, Jerry.and a little dog named Jim.

        What a trip reading these stories!  I'm remembering, as one of the A-Team readers, feeling so excited to recognize letters that made words, and words that made stories. I also recall the B-Team readers who struggled painfully to decipher words. 

        I remember "going to the city" trips--on a train!  We didn't have trains or cities in my world. 

        I took it for granted that all our characters were white, living in nuclear families, people like me. What a shock it would have been in 1956 to see a child of color, or a "broken" family.  

        Reading this now with very old eyes, I'm wondering how these simple narratives shaped us, what we wanted, and what we should act like as girls. See for yourself: 

      Just then the man saw a box.  

He looked in the box.

      "Oh, Alice!" he said.

"Come here!  Come here!"

      Alice looked in the box, too.

      "A red coat!" she said.

"Here is my red coat."

        Then Alice laughed and laughed. 

In another of these chapter, Alice expresses a wish to go shopping in the city:

      Alice did not look happy.

      "I want to go," she said.

"I like to go to the city.

      "What!  What!" said Father.

"Is this Alice?

I like Alice.

But you do not look like Alice.

Alice is pretty.

You do not look pretty." 

Alice wants practical things, like a red coat.  At the toy store, Jerry wants it all: 

      "Oh, Father," said Jerry.

"I want the ball.

I want the boat.

I want the train." 

 I was walking around Goodwill on Friday looking for old books while Luci was at the groomer's.  I wanted to try a project in which you take the book block out of its cover and turn it into a traveler's journal .

I ran into a woman I've talked to several times in the past--,mostly at neighborhood garage sales.  An attractive older woman, she lives alone, makes and sells art cards.  Her beautiful colorful wardrobe--now I know--is made of creative  spins on thrifted clothes, scarves and jewelry.  

We talked in the book department, again in linens. She gave no indication ofever having  met me, but she was very friendly and chatty.  She told me about her business, what stores stock her cards, and that her mama always told her that taking a walk was a surefire way to ward off the blues.  

When her mother needed a pick-me-up, she walked through upscale clothing stores.  While she "couldn't afford a thing," she loved looking at beautiful clothes and jewelry.  The fashionable daughter, now almost 85, does the thrift store version of her mother's exercise routine.

In a less busy life, she'd probably be someone I'd choose to be friends with.  But I barely have time to see the friends I already have. 

She asked me where I live, and I told her. "We're practically neighbors!" she said.

Yes, I said, we should visit sometime.  The words were already out of my mouth, but I wanted to take them back.  It was my version of adults in my children ending store conversations with "Come see us sometime!" Not an outright invitation, but a vague hint of extending the conversation into the future. 

Her words, while unexpected,  were more honest.  "No, I'm a recluse," she said.  She said it in a way that was in line with her friendliness, not at all a rebuff. 

I loved her quick honesty! I'm going to take that page from her and use it in the future!

Sometimes one conversation in Goodwill is all you really need.  

Suddenly, I seem to have acquired some very young friends.

Madison, next door, is a high school student at Alamo Heights.  

Ava, Orlando's "girlfriend," is a curly-haired six-year-old. 

Kingsley lives behind me--and her parents brought her over on Sunday so that her dad could help Orlando move a heavy table. 

Another friend has a college-graduate daughter who wants to learn book-making.

Madison knocked on my front door yesterday with a jar of confetti cake.  They rent the dilapidated house next door. I have never seen her when she's not smiling. 

Kingsley is precocious and personable.  When she saw my house, she said, "Can I say something?....I have always loved small houses better than big houses."  She told me she and her mother are big readers, and I mentioned that I make blank books.  "Will you teach me?" she asked. 

Ava's favorite thing to do is paint and color.  I shared some markers and colored pencils with her and showed her some books I'd made.  "I will show you how to make an easy book next time you come," I told her--imagining starting with a folded book with no stitching for a six year old. 

She proudly carried her bag of "treasures" to Orlando's truck.  They were on their way to go swimming at her grandmother's pool.  Then she ran back and hugged me and gave me a present she found in his truck--a hot can of Dr. Pepper!

Orlando (aka Sasquash) and I are doing an art project together.  Mostly he's doing it.  I'm having a wonderful time!  I've always wanted a partner in making things happen, and he's all in, contributing and executing excellent ideas to do some improvements in the casita and yard. 

I'm in my happy place at the moment! 

 Making this little book has taken me on such a trip this morning!

I'm reading a 1995 book that is much loved and underlined--one of the few books I still have from the late 90s.  Feels Like Home is a compendium of quotations about the meaning of houses borrowed from literature, some of which I had in my original (unpublished) Women and Houses. I didn't just read this book, I conversed with it like a good friend. 

The introduction by Allan Gurganus is brilliant.  A writer from the South, he talks and observes and speaks to me like a real Southerner. So often The South is appropriated by writers from other regions, and I can spot the wrong notes right away.  Gurganus is a masterful storyteller.  He sets the stage for all the quotations and photographs in this beautiful book.  

While my book was specifically intended to answer the question, Why do houses matter so much to women? this book hints at answers by men and women who write about house and home, hospitality and homesickness, windows walls and doors, porches and possessions. 

My copy of the book is ravaged by marginalia and underlining and squiggles, but I found a new copy at Thrift Books and ordered it for $10 last night so I could have a pristine copy to share. 

"A man is not whole and complete unless he owns a house and the ground it stands on," wrote Walt Whitman.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "In human relations love at first sight is usually a mistake. In house buying, it is usually the only reliable guide."

David Owen, in The Walls Around Us, wrote, "To tinker with a house is to commune with the people who have lived in it before and to leave messages for those who will live in it later." 

Emily Dickenson wrote in a letter, "They say that home is where the heart is,: I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings." 

I still remember reading Witold Rybcznski's book by Molas Lake in Colorado: The Most Beautiful House in the World.  I loved that he shows up in this book, too.  He writes about every feature of the house and what it means to its dwellers.

"[The front door] is the place for many everyday ceremonies of arrival and departure, for familial hugs and for furtive adolescent goodnight kisses.  It is the memory of these that give front doors personality--that is why we adorn them with Christmas wreaths and Thanksgiving corn."

There's also good old Anonymous. 

The beauty of the 

house is order,

The blessing of the house

is contentment,

The glory of the house is

hospitality.

--Anonymous. 

Writing and reading about houses did lead me to my own answer to the question, "Why do houses matter so much to women?"  As Scarlet sort of said, I'll talk about that tomorrow.....

Women and Houses

When the 1960s turned into the 1970s, Mark and I lived in a quaint little stone cottage on Beckman Hill.  We rented that house for 11 years from our old German landlord, Mr. Beckman. 

For $125 a month, we had the entire 65 acres and we could survey miles of Texas Hill Country from "the point" behind our house. Both of our children were born during those years, Day in 1971, Will in 1978.  In the Bicentennial year, 1976, I grieved a miscarriage. 

To everyone's amusement, our German Shepherd Tony climbed a big tree with a crooked trunk.  He caught frisbees there and sat patiently beside Day's stroller when Mark and I rode our motorcycles in the open field we made into a motorcycle track.  Our friends (Joy and Frank and others from the SAC art department) drove up our long bumpy driveway to visit us there, to have a picnic with the babies beside the track.  Frank and a few others brought their bikes.

One day Carlene bought me a pot plant for the living room.  I'd never imagined having a plant hanging in the window, but it sparked something in me.  This was my home, and I could put things I loved in it.

Will was a baby when Mr. Beckman decided to sell the entire 65 acres.  If we'd had $100K, we might have bought it--but that might as well have been millions! So we bought seven acres from him, a couple of miles down Scenic Loop and built a house there--a story for another day.

I yearned for a house of our own, a house I could decorate, paint, and move things around in.  I wanted a house that would be a canvas I could make my own.  For reasons I'll go into later, it turned out that this was never going to happen. 

And so, I began reading about the relationship between women and houses.  I remember sitting on a blanket on the ground with books spread all around me one fall afternoon, copying lines and paragraphs that discussed the meaning of houses to women.  From there, I wrote a book of my own, Women and Houses.  

The book of the month in the Handmade Book Club was a book shaped like a house. I made mine this week--but I still can't get this site to post photos.  

But what to do with those pages?

Turns out I decided to resurrect my book.  Now that I'm copying my own past writing, as well as quotations I'd collected, it feels like coming full circle.  It's transporting me back to all my past houses while I'm seeing my past questions in a new light, literally.  I'm sitting beside windows looking out into a yard of lush native plants and hummingbirds and doves and cardinals.  All flat surfaces are covered with papers, some I've saved (for some reason) for decades.  I'm at home here--more so than I've ever been anywhere.

I find myself in this chapter of my life looking back on all the previous chapters, all the houses that even now I could walk through in the dark and tell you exactly how many steps there are in every staircase. Each one is its own treasure trove of stories and memories and the friends and family who visited there.  

What I long yearned for I now have in spades, including a big sense of being At Home.

 Is it everything I hoped it would be, having a house of my own?

Oh yes, it's all that and more! 

My only sad spot is that my daddy (who along with my mama bought this house for me when it was still charmingly shabby) didn't live long enough to see what it's become and to have his favorite banana pudding at this table, looking out into this yard full of flowers and birds.  By some standards, it's just an ordinary little house. I wouldn't trade it for a mansion. 

Marcus

As of today, my two oldest grandsons, are both over the dividing line between kid and adult.  Today is Marcus' 21st birthday!  (Jackson will be 25 in October) 

He just sent me a fantastic picture of himself that captures the man he is: sun-tanned and cheerful, fit and glowing--but Google is not letting me post it.  Some glitch!

His parents are in Copenhagen for a week and when they return, Marcus is scheduled for a tonsillectomy.  His girlfriend Lucia is home for a month in Spain.  So I'm guessing he and his brother will be going out for dinner tonight, Marcus having his first legal drink!

As a little boy, he was shy. He proclaimed that he would never move away from his mama, that he'd always live at home.  He was a Mama's Boy for sure.

One day I looked down at a three-year-old Marcus as we were packing the car to go somewhere.  "Here, Marcus, can you hold these keys for me for a minute?" I asked.

His face registered a mix of delight and pride, honored to be tasked with such an important job.  He timidly took the keys and held them carefully, then said, "Yenna, I've never holded keys before!" 

He played the trumpet for a while, played lacrosse, adored all sports, had an incredible memory for athletes, coaches, plays, wins and losses.  When he went to college, he reinvented himself: he knocked on doors and got whatever he asked for, mostly jobs relating to sports and sportscasting and writing.  He made so many friends and created the life he wanted. 

He interviewed a star basketball player for his podcast, a girl from Spain, an art major.  

When Day heard the interview, she said, "Marcus, I think she likes you.  I mean likes you!" 

"Like she's into me?.....Nahhh" he said.

But his Mama was right.  I don't know what transpired, but pretty soon pictures started showing up of Marcus and Lucia.

One night the two of them were having a meal with Jackson and Deanna and the whole table was filled with his friends.  Jackson (reportedly) asked Marcus: "Did you ever think this would be your life, all these friends, a cool girlfriend and all?"

Marcus said, "Yeah, for sure.  I always knew this would  be my life!"

Here's to Marcus and 21 candles!  Here's to knowing what you want and going for it.  Here's to creating the life you want!

Cultivating the Joy of Aging

Charlotte texted me this poem by Jayne Gumbel, and I wanted to share it with all my aging friends and family:

Cultivating the Joy of Aging

Some mornings now

I wake before the world

and sit quietly with my coffee

like an old woman

who has finally stopped arguing with the wind.

The body speaks differently these days.

Knees remembering storms.

Hands carrying the ache

of everyone they have tried to love.

Still!

Wendy, the willow waving no matter the weather!

The birds call my name from the trees -

as though nothing precious has been lost.

This delights me!

I was taught to fear becoming older.

As though aging were a narrowing.

As though beauty belonged only

to smooth skin and unbroken things.

But the heart!

the heart becomes enormous

through weather.

I have cried enough now

to recognize sorrow

in the eyes of strangers.

I have lost enough

to stop wasting time

pretending permanence.

And joy? true joy!

No longer arrives like fireworks.

It comes quietly now.

In painting, in poetry.

In a friend who still reaches for my hand.

In the courage to rest.

In forgiving the life I did not live.

In belonging to the earth

instead of trying to rise above it.

Aging is not a punishment.

It is an initiation.

A slow loosening

from performance, certainty, and speed.

A returning.

Not to youth -

but to something kinder.

Sometimes I think

the soul grows older on purpose

so we will finally learn

how to love everyone.

Even ourselves.

Especially ourselves.

And when my time comes

to leave this shimmering world,

I do not want to say

I stayed young.

I want to say:

I stayed astonished.

A Mother's Day message from Candy to Carolyn

Two of my dearest friends and I all grew up together.  Not as children and teenagers but as mothers of small children and faculty wives.  Our husbands were professors of art at S.A.C. in those days--and we three and other wives bonded as we watched our children play on the yard of the Koehler House where most of the faculty and student exhibitions were held.  

Carolyn's Candy and Joy's Kim and my Day were girlfriends--and Kim had a big brother named Chris.  The three of us now have two sons and four daughters in their forties and fifties. 

Now we three mamas are in our late 70s and early 80s.  We still get together when we can and it's always so dear to be with friends who go back that far. 

This morning scrolling Facebook, I happened to read Candy's Mother's Day message to Carolyn and it was so beautifully written and such a spot-on description of Carolyn that I'm taking the liberty of posting it for anyone who didn't see it on Facebook. 

Here it is:

Candy Carlos Banda is with Carolyn Cox.

May 11, 2025

  ·My mama is a magical being, my mooring to goodness and my spurring to evolve. She is such a story of juxtaposition!

Meeting as teenagers and wanting to get married just weeks later, she and my daddy weren’t supposed to make it, but they sure in hell did! Best love story!

Without a college degree, she wasn’t supposed to become Vice President of San Antonio Christus Santa Rosa hospitals, but her badass self did.

Society tells us that we aren’t supposed to talk with strangers in an elevator, but if you have ever been in an elevator with my mom, you know she certainly does just that. This lady makes a point to speak to all, to include all, to engage all.

She didn’t have to be our biggest cheerleader, but there she is showing up at all of our events. My mama is the manifestation of being present, buoying us up through love in action. 

A Catholic-raised girl doesn’t normally choose to live her life with an agnostic husband and daughter with all kinds of existential angsts, but there’s my mama showing us how to do it. 

My parents’ tandem of curiosity and reflection taught me how each of us can grow when we invest in others, ask authentic questions, listen intently, and engage in discussions that explore and examine the essence of being a human in this world.

She didn’t plan on being a widow, but she is now and damn is she my hero. I have been in awe of Mom from day one, but I am most proud of this chapter in her life because she has made the choice to live life with goodness, grace, and strength. She continues to show up and be engaged in our lives. In her constant effort to live a life bigger than herself, she chooses to work serving others. She is figuring out her life on her terms, and it is damn special to watch unfold.

Her being shapes my world. Love you, Mama—alll the way up and back down, again and again and again…Happy, happy Mother’s Day!!! 💛💛💛

Blue Jean Books and Dish Rag Books

I've picked up and then cut up a few pair of old jeans and a few other blue fabrics, and today I am ironing them onto interfacing and then backing them with a kind of tissue paper.  That's what you call book cloth.  Later, on another assumbly line day, I will cover book boards with them to be used on books with exposed spines. 

Same with dish rags picked up for a dollar at a thrift store along with a couple of vintage handkerchiefs.  

The smell of steam on fabric takes me back--since every garment I ever wore was made by my mother, Carlene.  

On the night before she made a dress or a skirt for either of us, she enjoyed cutting out the patterns--McCalls, Simplicity, and Butterick.  

Then she'd iron and neatly fold the fabric the long way, selvages together.  On each pattern piece, there was an arrow indicating straight of grain.  So she'd pin each pattern piece, sleeves and skirts parallel to the grain.  She then cut each piece with pinking shears and pin matching parts together.

My favorite part was sitting beside her as the fabric slid under the presser foot of the machine and watching the parts come out the other side connected.

While I've made a few garments in my life, I find making small pieces like book covers more satisfying at the moment.  When machine stitching is called for I love using her old Bernina to stitch the parts together.

Memories of my mother are woven into everything I make.  To her--and then to me, and then to Day--handmade gifts were the best gifts.  

Lyn's Classes

Lyn Belisle is a well-known San Antonio artist who generously shares her magic in these online classes:

Lyn's classes  

The first one on this site is the one Nellie and  I are working on now. To that end, I picked up sticks and stones and magnolia leaves as Luci and I were walking.  

This class, The Keeper of Fragments subtitled "A Devotional Reliquary Figure," teaches students how to honor the fragments and memories that make us who we are.  Nellie, an artist in her own right, jumps right in and makes beautiful figures.  I, on the other hand, start by collecting pieces--fabric scraps, buttons, string, ribbons, and papers.  And now I'm ready to tear paper and start assembling my figure.

This one is akin to one I've taken and loved earlier, The Secrets of the Spirit Doll.  Both build figures with faces and adorn them with tiny envelopes and bits of handwriting and all kinds of found objects.  

Nellie makes her own clay faces; I use, for now, faces made by Lyn, sold on Etsy.

My usual aesthetic in book making has a lot to do with precision and measuring and stitching.  Lyn's classes are more organic.  She rips and tears and rarely measures, making this a big step outside my comfort zone and a chance to look with new eyes at the things I've been saving.

It's refreshing and meditative.  I highly recommend any of her classes if you're looking for something new and meaningful.  

If you take your dog to the grocery store

This could happen:

A handsome man might squat down a bit and say to your dog, "You are the cutest dog in the whole store:"

Your dog might lick the bruises on his arm--if your dog's superpower is, like mine, healing anybody's booboos. The handsome well-dressed man might then tell you how he loves dogs but at his age, he's not able to take care of them anymore.  He might tell you he's 88 years old.

A beautiful young woman, in her forties, might ask if she can pet your dog--and of course, you say yes. When she gets back up, she might tell you that your dog made her day, that she'd been having a hard day and just petting your dog made her feel so much better.  You might say you're sorry she'd had a bad day and offer her to come over and pet your dog any time.  And then she might hug you, with tears in her eyes,  like an old friend.

An older woman with blond hair might be right behind her, asking if she can pet your dog.  "She's a Corgi, I know for sure--but she's so little.  Is she a mini-Corgi?"  She might tell you that her daughter raises Corgis (or whatever your dog's breed might be) and that they are the best dogs in the world.  

A baby in a shopping cart calls out to his mama, "Puppy!  Puppy, Mama!  Puppy!"

The sales clerk in the cheese department might say, "I want to touch your dog so much but I can't because I'm working.  I just love it when you come in here."

The check-out girl might ooh-and-aah over your dog and then take out her phone to show you hers--a Corgi Chihuahua.

A well-dressed middle-aged woman might say, "That is the cutest dog I've ever seen."

You will walk out feeling like your ordinary little mutt is a therapy dog!

In the middle of the night when I get up and down, up and down, Luci could deservedly get irritated.  But here's what she does instead: 

When I lie on my side, she scooches under the covers and parks herself against the back of my legs, in the crook of my knees.  At the moment, I can't think of anything that feels better than to feel her so so soft fur against my skin.

Today Will took me to a spinal surgeon to see if there is any involvement in the spine.  Had there been any significant issue there, I'd have been happy to sign up for surgery, but there was none.  Whatever it is is in my feet.  I am not diabetic, but based on the pictures he showed me of diabetic foot pain, it looks like that. 

Next up: neurologist, rheumatologist, and podiatrist!  I learned (from Dr. Day) that the pads on one's feet can thin with aging, and standing on my feet making books and cutting heavy book board is not the best hobby for thinning pads.  I ordered a big thick rubber mat and diabetic shoes, and I'm hoping that those will make a difference.

In the meanwhile, I have a healing puppy and a fantastic family and friends--and that counts for a LOT..  

My yard planned by Bonnie and planted by Orlando--populated by countless birds--is a tremendous joy! 

2026 Fiesta winds down

Fiesta is drawing to a close, San Antonio's ten-day all-over-the-place party!

Because I was up half the night planning and stacking for the inauguration of Blue Jean Books, Luci and I overslept and missed most of The Pooch Parade and all things dog, but we managed to see the tail end of the parade as the dogs and their families happened to end up coming down Abiso and converging onto Ogden for the final stretch.

So we walked on the other side of the street for a block, as the paraders walked back toward the pool where the parade ended.  We saw cocker spaniels, cow-dogs, retrievers, lots of breeds ending in poo, and terriers of every description.  We saw mutts and Weiner dogs and greyhounds.  Luci only broke into the oncoming line of dogs once--to lick a Corgi's face!  (if that's not proof that she's at least half Corgi, I don't know what is!--maybe she saw her former mama?)

Then we got into the car and drove over to Herwicks, the art supply store, to check out papers in search of some Clairefontane notebooks.  The paper in those notebooks is so smooth and beautiful, and I wanted lines.  I have a few so far and I've taken them apart, divided the signatures into smaller signatures, and they are now in the press awaiting a new life in lined books.

We hadn't been there in months, but the manager remembered her and took lots of pictures and gave her a vigorous back rub.  What a sweet man!  "My lady always wants pictures of all the shop dogs," he said.

Then it was nap time, of course.  And that is now done!

The King William Fair and the Arts and Crafts fairs, the finales of Fiesta, are going on just fine without us there--but used to be not-to-be-missed events.  I prefer this year to work on my own craft instead of walking all day to see others. 

The streets around my house are going to be more fragrant to Luci until it rains again.  She walks with her head down sniffing dog pee every four inches or so, then covering it up with pee of he own.  What an amazement it must have been to her--to have our very own streets filled with dogs from near and far, many dressed up in colorful costumes!  That, for Luci, is the whole of Fiesta every year.  

Prosperity!

I often get up in the middle of the night to play Spelling Bee--but that soon leads me to a video on the Handmade Book Club that keeps me awake until.....whenever!

I have enough art supplies to last me forever and beyond--which is why I feel so prosperous this morning.

Nellie sent me a video of books made of indigo and said she had some and would share.  This started me on a whole new road of this bookbinding journey, inspiring me to make a series of books I'm calling Blue Jean books. 

All of them will be covered in various iterations of shibori fabric, denim, and indigo.  The fabrics will be attached to book board with double-sided interfacing.

Signature wrappers that will show through on the spines will be papers of the same blues, then sewn with red or blue or white thread. 

I have finally figured out how to make lined pages!  I'm buying stapled-spined notebooks and tearing off the cover and removing the staples, then using the paper to build signatures.  (A signature is a bundle of pages--books might have four or ten or however many pages you want)

Beads and buttons, adhesives of all kinds, buttons and cords and waxed linen thread, and an unlimited supply of paper for pages--I've been collecting these things forever, and now have so many ways to incorporate them into books.  This is richness!

Besides all the good things we often take for granted--food and shelter and friends--what makes you feel most rich? 

Wimp to Warrior

That's Luci.  She roars like a warrior at night, then (during these delicious days of rain) hesitates before deciding whether or not to venture forth when there's a light drizzle. 

I encourage the warrior part.  "You go get 'em!" I say--knowing there's rarely any them to get. Or: "Have a fun adventure!"

She reminds me of myself--I can be both too.  

I was a warrior today at the doctor's office.  I was explaining my frustration with side effects of  certain meds. I told her that Gabapentin has cost me a couple of teeth and gives me nightmares.  Some are said to cause kidney or liver damage. 

She says no, they're all safe but IF they do cause damage like that, "we can take care of it."  What, with more drugs? I ask her, my hackles rising.  

"I'm pretty sure you could get your pain doc to increase your Gabapentin by three and you'd get a lot of relief," she says, forgetting, apparently, what I'd just told her.  I felt like Luci growling..The tears in my eyes aren't wimp tears; they're the wet part of speaking up, arguing with an authority, standing up for myself.  It took me way too long to learn not to be wimpy with doctors. 

"By three???" I say, unable to hold back my anger. "No pain but also no teeth??"

One day my children and grands were talking in the voices of their dogs.  Gruff, mischievous, bossy, submissive, or squeaky.  "So what does Luci sound like?" I asked them.  Two grandchildren said simultaneously, "She sounds exactly like you, Yenna!" (One of them did a line in a Southern accent to show me.) 

Like me, Luci is very friendly.  She loves people, and she's rarely met one she doesn't hope to befriend--except for the evil postman who throws bombs in our door that she must shake and shred.  When a stranger speaks to her, ever, anywhere--or even to me about her, she gently stretches her whole body onto their legs, all the way up to their knees.  

I was voted "friendliest" in my senior class.  Luci and I share a Southern accent and a friendly disposition. According to a documentary on dogs, that's the quality that best explains why dogs and humans have always worked well as companions.  From the beginning of time, dogs have approached humans around campfires and offered to break bread together--or steak or fish or stewed rabbit bones. 

"I call it," the documentarian said, "survival of the friendliest." We humans go ga-ga over their big friendly eyes and the way they nuzzle up close for pats. Dogs know--if they hope for a bone or a pat--they better be their friendliest selves. 

Luci and I both love to look at things. When we walk, she stops and stands stock still and stares at everything.  Could be an Amazon delivery man putting a box on someone's porch, a little kid riding a bicycle, or dogs taking their people for walks.  Certain dogs she looks and looks and looks at and whines plaintively to inform me that she would like to meet them up close.  

Others she sizes up as not-friend-material  and we move on down the street.  

Of all the countless dogs we've met on our walks, I've only once seen her respond with loud and irrational rage toward one of them. 

An innocent little cocker spaniel approached--attached by leash to its person--and Luci lunged toward it barking with all her might.  

"A cocker frickin' spaniel?" I asked her.  "What's up with that?"

She never told me.

Another parallel: while Luci and I love favors and treats and gifts, we have a hard time asking for them.  We basically wait and see what shows up and then be grateful. We like others to read our minds.

Luci never asks for anything.  She uses her eyes and body language to let it be known that she'd like to go outside or have a slice of turkey.  If I don't respond immediately or pretend to ignore her, she gets in the yoga doggie pose and her eyes say, "Come on, Ma!  You know what I want!  It's not rocket science!" 

We are friendly wimps, we are warriors. We are lookers.  We usually get what we want. 

Sprouts and Seeds

The last couple of weeks have been, physically, challenging.  In between the necessary chores of living, I calculate an average of two hours a day I can devote to making things like meals and books.  This week I have two doctors' appointments that make me hopeful for some answers.  

I continue to collect materials and arrange my instruction sheets from the Handmade Book Club--tangible signs of hope for better back and foot days.  I continue to spin ideas for when my body says yes again. 

Thanks to my wonderful daughter-in-law Bonnie, my yard is now planted for spring!  She chose and arranged beautiful plants and Will helped with the unloading and arranging. Then a couple of days ago, Orlando dug the holes, spread the mulch, and got those babies into the softened earth. I couldn't be happier with the results! 

I love flowers but neither of my thumbs is green.  Bonnie loves and knows plants like I know paper.  She picked dianthus, sage, salvia and other native plants that will require less attention once they get settled in.   In the front, we filled a pot with petunias and pansies, more sage and purple in the flower bed.  

Orlando spread poppy seeds and strung solar fairy lights from casita to the house and wound a string of tiny ones with jasmine around the gate.  Before going to bed last night, I looked outside and saw a wonderland of twinkles.  

Dozens of goldfinch feast at one feeder of Nyger seed, along with cardinals and doves.  It'a feathered peaceable kingdom and queendom right outside my window. We added a hummingbird feeder and hope that the  ones I've' seen in the front yard's pomegranate blooms will soon find it. 

It's a cool cloudy day today, so I'll wait until these plants grow a bit bigger before trying to capture the beauty of them in a photo.

For now, just picture pink, purple, yellow, and white along with all the greens of grasses and leaves.  The colors and the constant chirping of birds--it's already enough to take my breath away!

Knowing what rewards are for

Luci's got it right.

In most canine-human relationships, treats and slices of turkey are rewards for good behavior, following directions, and whatnot.

Luci and I never started that silliness.

Instead, she has taught me this: Get rewarded for what's fun, what's joyful, what makes your day. 

For example, her favorite thing in the middle of the night is "You wanna go outside?" And when she does, she's a wild girl, fearless, running with all the speed of her puppy years.  She's out to capture a fox or a raccoon or whatever, but she never does.  Then she does whatever she does outside my view for a few minutes and comes back, beaming.

She goes to the treat drawer and looks at me hopefully--and is never disappointed.  Then she goes to the refrigerator door--this was a night (as every night of running is) deserving of two treats.

I learn so much from this love bug of a dog:   When something is really really good, cap it off with something worthy of joy.  

Collaging my life in a house

When I was twelve, my daddy couldn't speak due to an ulcer on his vocal cords.  He carried around one of those small leatherette notebooks you might remember-- with six small silver rings that held lined paper. I kept that notebook, of course, and am using parts of it this morning in a collage.  

This fills one page:

"Linda's girl friend was at our house all week.  She lives in Jonesboro--I brought her home today.  Her name is Patsy Adamson."

On the other side of that page:

"Grant and I went fishing and caught 9--weighed 27 pounds.  I caught 6 of them--biggest one 5 1/4 pounds."

Most of Lloyd Harris' loves are hinted at in these two tiny pages: home, hospitality, fishing, and friends. I treasure his handwriting because it captures who he was, what he cared about.  To anyone who showed up at the back door (only the Avon Lady used the front door) he'd say, "Come in this house!" as if whoever it was was exactly who he'd hoped it would be. 

I fondly remember how when any of us (or anyone at work or church) asked him a question, he'd pull out his little book to respond with his U.S. Government ballpoint pen. 

My book of the month in the Handmade Book Club is shaped like a house and made of recycled materials.  When I get mine finished, I'll show you.

Its base is cut out to look like a house, gessoed, and folded, and I'm arranging papers and bits of writing to collage on its front and back, windows and doors.

Just choosing the papers is a trip!  

It occurs to me that a house book, like a house, is a container of so many memories and treasures with meaning to the maker of the home.  Maybe everything we are is embedded in everything we make in this life--though to viewers the pieces we choose may just appear to be squiggles? 

After Sunday night church, our parents, or someone else's parents, would say, "Y'all come home with us."  Nobody had to get home to watch a program on TV or check emails or anything.  Nobody said "no" to spontaneous hospitality. 

My parents would make something simple like ham and biscuits.  After dinner, my daddy and the other men would ask me to play the piano so they could sing a quartet.  Or the adults would talk and the kids would play in the yard, catching "lightning bugs" or listening to music in somebody's carport or playing "Ain't no buggers out tonight, Grandpa killed them all last night."

I'm not sure what a bugger was--but it was dangerous, and we were safe.  My daddy called me "Bugger" as a term of endearment--but in that context, it meant something cute and adorable.  

He also called me Sugar.  

In homage to my daddy and nicknames, I'll sign off for now:

Sugar Bugger

Two weeks ago, a man Elena knows from her coach's barn asked if she would  ride his horse in one of her barrel races.  Working almost every afternoon with her riding coach, she's gotten to be a spectacular rider. 

A freak accident that occurred riding this man's horse had nothing to do with her skill.  On the second barrel the horse tripped.  (Her own horse fell just like that a few weeks ago, but managed to get up without injury, but this handsome one was not so fortunate.)

Her mother knew what the outcome would be and she walked Elena away from the field while the vet checked out the horse.  Long story short, it was his last ride.  

Elena was devastated.  At first, she felt that she'd done something wrong--but everyone, from the EMTs to the coach and all who saw it assured her that it wasn't.  

It took her several days to get past it enough to want to ride again.  She's told me that she cried more in that week than she's ever cried before.  We all felt heartbroken that she had to experience this terrible tragedy at fourteen. 

Her coach said, "He was ending his riding years and he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,"--suggesting that the horse, on some level, chose how his life would end. 

"He'll be back, but it will take a minute," she said. "He's going to come back as a frisky young colt.  In the meanwhile, he's going to be watching over you."

From the beginning of time, when we humans lose the humans and animals we love, we look for comfort in the stories of our tribes.  

We may also grasp for lesson straws--not that the terrible event "happened for a reason," but since it happened, tragic as it may be, horrible as we feel, we look for lessons.

Elena is now back in the saddle, literally.  She will never forget what happened.  "But since I'm going toe a vet,  I need to know the good and the bad parts." 

April, Already?

Who can count the times, in childhood, that we made Crayola umbrellas and big fat rain drops on construction paper, gray clouds in the sky?  Underneath, the teacher had printed "April Showers."

T.S. Eliot wrote that April is "the cruelest month." 

It begins with April Fool's Day--which is now every day of the year....

But besides all that, it's a good month in Texas with weather that goes from moderate to summer hot in a day, the month of three of my friends' birthdays, the month when maybe it might possibly rain one day, and the month of San Antonio's Fiesta.

A tenth of the population of the U.S. participated in No Kings Marches on Saturday--which I would have done if my feet could march.

I'm enjoying several excellent shows on PBS: Thoreau, The Forsytes, and The Mount of Monte Cristo.

At the moment I'm eating a thin slice of white toast with blackberry jam. I prefer blackberry over any other topping because it reminds me of childhood in Georgia when blackberries grew abundantly.  Mamas made blackberry cobbler and jams, seeds in, cementing it in my flavor memory as the best of all fruits.   

Writings About Dogs

The minute I read the New York Times book review sent by Janet, I ordered this lovely book, a collection of essays by various writers collected by Alice Hoffman.  

the best dog in the world Alice hoffman

I could easily find her enough excellent writers to do a Volume 2--including Ann Patchett, Geraldine Brooks,  Alexandra Horowitz, and almost every one of my writer friends.  

It goes in my stack of dog books:

The Book of Dog Poems, Sarah Maycock and Ana Sampson

E.B. White (of Charlotte's Web) On Dogs

A Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas

For the Love of a Dog, Patricia McConnell

I have no books on dog training.  

This morning Luci and I were walking, unattached by a leash.  A man in my neighborhood who always walks his German Shepherd off-leash commented, "Wow, you're a good trainer!" 

"She's training me," I said.  I just walk beside her and go where she goes. 

My friend Bonnie Lyons has written wonderful poems about dogs.  She and Grant have recently adopted a young Airedale named Baela. This poem comes from her book, Bedrock, 2011--a couple of Airedale generations ago. 

    Dog Training

    Sometimes I think

    the only lessons I ever learned

    were from my dogs.

    So here is the accumulated wisdom

    of Sancho, Max and Zorba

    three sage Airedales

    First, yelp when you're in pain

    but let it go when it's gone.

    Second, travel the earth

    with a quivering nose.

    Third, answer the needs of your body

    with seamless relish

    but then go right on 

    with the real purpose of the day: play

    And, finally, whenever possible

    leap right

    into the arms of someone 

    who loves you. 

Books: #1, #2, #3

 Okay, here goes:

Making a list of books I'm currently reading is similar to constructing a family tree, the lines of one leading to another, including the ways the books showed up for me. 

Let's start with Geraldine Brooks.  I'm sorry to say I haven't read her fiction, but after reading this lovely memoir, Memorial Days, shared with me by Freda, I will start with Horse. 

I love reading writers' personal stories before reading their poems and fiction and essays.  I can picture Geraldine now almost like a friend I've actually met, living on Martha's Vineyard.  Her writing is so vivid that it takes you there.  She talks like we talk, only better on paper.  In person, she tells us she's shy, but her friends are a bunch of rowdy women.  She throws parties, because Tony loves them, but he's the gregarious life of every party--while she prefers serving the food. 

I wish that back in the day, when I was a child and reading every book I could find by Lois Lensky, I had known that Lois was a real person who lived a certain kind of life.  I wish I could have gone to You Tube and looked for speeches and interviews, or gone online to see if she'd written a memoir or autobiography. Back then, it would have been called the latter. 

Geraldine and Tony Horowitz, her Pulitzer Prize winning husband, live a fascinating life--two renowned journalists who traveled the world writing for esteemed magazines and newspapers.  He had just completed his book, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide, when he suffered a massive heart attack on a book tour in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  

Geraldine and Tony had met in the Columbia school of journalism and had been married for 31 years.  His death was devastating for her and their two sons.

After three years of doing all the minutiae required to deal with the death of a spouse, she realizes that she's never had the full-throated expression of grief that she yearns for.  So she goes back to her homeland in Australia and stays in a media-free rustic cabin on Flinders Island.  

"This will be, finally, the time when I will not have to prepare a face for the faces that I meet.  The place where I will not have to present that things are normal and that I am okay.  Because it has been more than three years and, contrary to appearances, I am not at all okay."

I have now ordered one of Geraldine's novels (she's also a prolific novelist and Pulitzer Prize winning one) and the kindle edition of Tony Horowitz' last book, Spying on The South.  

Thanks to the internet, I can track down interviews and book talks--so the lines in the tree are taking me all over the place on this Sunday morning. 

Postscript to the previous post

Geraldine and Ann Patchett are good friends.  Of course, they are.

Ann, as you know, is not only a stellar fiction writer, but also owns Parnassus Books in Nashville.  I made a huge mistake on my recent trip through Nashville--I should have planned the whole return trip around Parnassus. I didn't yet know that Luci would have been warmly welcomed there, and by Nashville I was too crumpled and exhausted to stop for an extra day. 

Ann Patchett does wonderful book talks and recommendations every Friday, and you can find them online.  

As Geraldine recalls, when she met Ann in the bookstore ten years ago:

"I loved the bookstore on first sight, because it was full of dogs.  Ann, like me, is a dog obsessive, and her staff are encouraged to bring their dogs to work."

Ann told her, "I"m one dog away from being shut down by the health department."

The writing and dog loving worlds almost always overlap.  I love knowing how friendships begin and grow: 

Ann is both empathetic and acerbic, a combination that reminds me of my mum.  When her novel Commonwealth came out, I persuaded her to present it at the Martha's Vineyard Book Festival so that we could hang out together.  She and her husband, Karl, a chevalier from Mississippi, stayed with us.

And now we shared a strange bond.  The very last time Tony and I were together was in Nashville.  I'd joined a week into his book tour.  The events manager at Parnassas thought it would be fun if I interviewed him, and I jumped at the chance to join him on the road and reconnect with Ann.

The last meal we'd had together was after that event, with Ann and Bruce, Tony's roommate when we were grad students at Columbia Journalism School.  Bruce, a Southerner, had settled in Nashville, in a house just a few doors down from Ann.  

"I may be old, but I know stuff."

 On Friday, Jan sent me a strange text: "HAPPY LINDA HARRIS DAY!!!"

I didn't get it.  Later she explained, "This is the anniversary of the date you reclaimed your rightful name!"

Oh.  Oh yeah.  I remember doing that about 20 years ago, but I couldn't have recalled the date if you put me under hypnosis.  I told her that.

She replied, "I may be old, but I know stuff!"

I am hereby adopting that line for future use.  It's such an apt phrase to pull out when a younger person assumes you don't know shit about anything pre-1994 when the world as they knew it was just getting started. 

When my spinal cord stimulator stopped working, I told the pain management PA, "The vibrator isn't working to ease my pain anymore."

"I hope you don't call it that around your kids," she said--she, being about the age of one of my kids.  She didn't even try to conceal the smile that expressed her amusement that a person of my age knew what a vibrator meant in common parlance.  

I informed her that "spinal cord stimulator" was a mouthful; "Vibrator" was just my shorthand for the device implanted in my spine, that was, even as we spoke, vibrating my feet so noticeably that I wondered if other people even saw my feet shaking.

Younger people do that all the time!  "Do you do email?" they might ask--instead of "Wha's your email address?" 

Do I DO email?  I was doing email, Honey, before you were born.

Sometimes we really don't know things for a minute.  We've hopped on the bandwagon of the digital world, for example, but may temporarily not recall that "digital" used to refer to the fingers on our hand.

I mentioned a minor issue to my dermatologist.  "Occasionally, I feel a tingle in my fingers that feels like a tiny bee sting. " 

"Oh that.  It's a digital mucous cyst," she said.  "Nothing to worry about." 

In other words, a tiny harmless cyst in the finger joints.  Ohhhhhhh!  

Here I was thinking that even my fingers were in need of a password change!

As I left the dermatologist's office, one of the receptionists asked "Can I pet that dog?" and all the others laughed.

"Yeah," I said--"But this girl is really a dawg, not a bear,"

I heard them saying to each other, "I'm surprised she knew that one!" 

Yeah, I'm super cool for such an elderly person.  I know about memes and things go viral!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P8JgEAmToC8

Making and Reading

Making things--that was the seed pod in my childhood.  (That and church and piano and library books)

My mama made so many things: 

Every garment she and I ever wore.

Wardrobes of tiny dresses for my Christmas morning dolls. 

Stuffed animals made from scraps from our clothes.

Complex stained glass hangings, churches, lamps, kaleidoscopes, insets for doors and windows.

Cross-stitch and crewel embroidery.

Quilts

Flower beds

"Surprises"--little fold-over pies with left-over pie crust dough, filled with cinnamon, butter, sugar, and pecans.

Shorter term, she painted china dishes with her friend, Bea, and built a display rack for them on the walls of our carport-turned-den.  

She used to say she could fix anything if she could just go sew for a while.  Her sewing machine was a lifelong place for thinking things out, making decisions, and healing.  I spent countless hours conversing with her as she guided fabric under the presser foot. 

I was never as good a seamstress as she, but I'm certain that my lifelong love of papers and fabrics comes from the hours we spent in McConnell's poring over pattern books then walking the aisles and handling the fabrics and deciding what fabrics went with which dress patterns.         

Calico, gingham, corduroy, velveteen--ah, how lovely even the words!

When my daddy gave me the McCalls Make-It Book, it became my favorite book.  The pages showed me how to carve animals out of soap, how to weave pot holders, how to make Chinese lanterns out of construction paper--things like that.

Making books is satisfying in a similar way sewing was for Carlene.  (She just gave me her Bernina sewing machine)   I love the precision required to measure, cut, and fold papers.  I love that final happy moment of stitching when the cover snugly holds the pages together.  And I love poking in thrift shops for braids and buttons for final touches.

This has been a tough week with my feet.  My PT released me after 8 sessions ("It's not working for you") and sent me to a spine doc, suggesting that there could be something going on in my spine.  So this week I have three medical appointments.  I'm also looking into other options, one of which is low-dose radiation, another is nerve ablation. But in the meanwhile, it's virtually impossible to stand at my beautiful cluttered-with-paper dining table long enough to finish a book. 

So, as we used to say about things that got in the way of what we really wanted to do and opened up time for something else: "The Universe must want me to read more." 

So that's what I'm doing:

I'll write about that tomorrow.  

Sports

I can't believe I'm watching March Madness!  (I didn't even know what it was until this week). Due to early-onset athletic deficiency (last to be picked on every team, for example), I have never had an ounce of interest in sports.  If someone so much as mentioned a game of ping pong or pool in somebody's  garage, I was the one to go wash the dishes, just to get as far away as possible. 

Marcus, along with a friend of his, is doing the commentary for VCU radio.  So we turn on the games on CBS without sound, while we listen to VCU on our phones.  I am amazed at the scope of his knowledge about sports, all sports, and his ability to recall stats on the spot whatever game he's announcing.

It makes me think about how we all choose our unique paths--based in large part on what is loved and enjoyed in our first homes.  Whether music, sports, animals, cooking, or reading, it's likely that those seeds are planted in early childhood.  

I remember being at their house when Rutgers was playing, back when Marcus was just a toddler, how they all put on Rutgers jerseys and took sandwiches and snacks to the basement for game night.  In those days I might have glanced at the game from time to time, but mostly I was fascinated to see a whole so INTO the game.  Even Day--who used to be pretty sports-averse like her mama, but last year coached girls' football at her high school! 

Buffalo Bills--the whole family, including Leary aunts and uncles and cousins, watch every single Bills game, without fail, all wearing jerseys and texting back and forth throughout the game.  

I didn't get it, until now--when the Pritchett/Harris/Leary's texts go on from start to finish. 

I might be starting to be a little bit of a sports fan!

Monday Afternoon at the Rodeo

This is rodeo season in San Antonio, and Elena is racing in anything open to teenagers.  Not only that, she's working with a trainer after school most days to up her game. 

She did great runs in the weekend barrel races--three this weekend and another tonight. 

On Thursday she found a newborn orphaned goat and has added goat-feeding-every-four hours to her busy days.  I can't believe how agile and sturdy Annie is so soon after birth, relating well to the dogs and horses and kids in rodeo world. She was a big hit with all the kids in the bleachers yesterday. 

Big old furry Conway, half blind, is turning out to be a natural surrogate mama,  treating Little Orphan Annie like his own little kid. .

From Rumi

 Man, man, man,

what kind of lightning are you, setting farms on fire? 
What kind of cloud are you, raining down stones?

What kind of hunter?
Caught in your own trap—
a thief stealing from your own house.

You’re sixty years old, you’re seventy years old, 
and you’re still uncooked?
Still won’t let Love’s flames near, 
won’t let them burn you up?

Enthralled by stuff and status, 
the crown, the turban, the king’s beard—
thorns pricking your hands,

but where is your flower?

Gazing in the mirror, 
you tilt your hat like a crescent moon—
but where is your light?

The Year of the Puppy

Every night, during the months-before-vaccine of Covid, I looked for puppies online.  I had a certain one in mind, something black and white, a breed that ended with poo.  When what we are looking for doesn't show up, or is way too expensive, we sometimes don't see what does show up. 

I will be forever grateful to my friend, Janet Oglethorpe, for scanning SNIPSA's site with fresh and wise eyes and sending me a picture of a dog who was, she said, already "my dog."  

But she's not a puppy!  "Don't get a puppy," she wisely advised me.  "Get a grown-ass dog."

As for color and breed and lineage, Janet knew before I did that none of that mattered.  

She found Luci online on the infamously memorable January 6th.  She grabbed her as a foster dog until she could introduce us.  

On January 7th, when she called to say she'd found MY dog, I hesitated.  January 6th had gutted me.  And I didn't yet have a fence.  

Nevertheless, she persisted.

On January 8th, she said, "I have to take her back today unless you want her.  Can I just stop by and introduce you two?"

In came this adorable little copper and white dog with a tail one observer has since called "resplendent."  Having just had surgery so as not to produce any more puppies that could wind up in shelters like she had, she was not particularly active.  She sat beside Janet and on her lap.

And then I picked her up!  She curled up in my lap, a tiny circle of fur, looking for all the world like a newborn fawn.  Then she put her head on my shoulder--that did it!

She was my ten-pound shadow, following me from room to room, curling up beside the bathtub when I bathed, standing between my legs as I made dinner.  Small as she was, she jumped all the way from floor into my bed and slept beside me.  The rest is happy history!

If you are inclined to get a puppy--or know anyone who is--you must buy Alexandra Horowitz' book, The Year of the Puppy." 

Ironically, just when I was writing that sentence, a family from the end of my street, along with a visiting grandmother named Lucie, knocked to show me their new little one-pound puppy, Remi--who loves following his new brother Moochoo, around the house.  

There is probably nothing cuter in the animal kingdom than a puppy!  

Luci was probably 10 months old when I got her, past chewing on furniture and whining all night and peeing on the floor.  On the first day she did chew up my favorite leather pocket book and a phone case, but I told her that was not allowed, and she never did it again.  Based on her laid-back and sweet personality, after reading this book, I'd say that her dog mama was very attentive and gentle with her.  And that whoever her first human people were taught her good manners.  

If you're a little on the older side, with no kids in the house to play with, and you want to take your dog with you everywhere, I'd suggest this formula: ten pounds, ten months.

"It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

Do you remember when the local newscasts ended with that question?  It was long before I had children myself, back in 1967 when I was a newly-married person living in San Antonio, but I often recalled it years later when my children started driving and being people out in the world without needing me so much.

Now three of my four grandchildren are older than I was when I moved to Texas trying to figure out how to be an adult in Texas, how to finish my degree, how to be married, and how to keep up without a TV or in-house telephone.  (There was a phone booth two blocks away and a friend sometimes invited me over to watch her TV). 

Now that I'm a grandmother, and still a mama, I come home from a trip wondering where they are, how they are, and what they're doing.  

So this morning, I got a call from Day along with pictures of her recent retreat to Virginia Beach for a crafts weekend with Deanna's family and friends.  Also pictures of Marcus and Lucia who are visiting for the weekend. 

At the Virginia Beach retreat, Day made a deck of face cards:  (I told her she's the most playful creative I know!) 

Everybody's okay--that's what I really want to know.  Marcus has lost a lot of weight from his recent mono and just found out he needs a tonsillectomy, but he's lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree.  Jackson doesn't get a spring break this year now that he's working.  Tom and Day are going to Denmark this spring--after they come here for Easter weekend. 

So they all love Lucia!  

Here is the morning conversation between Day and Tom:

"Okay, Tom, we can't get too attached to her.  She's from Spain, who knows where this is going to lead?"

Tom: "It's too late.  I can't help imagining them holding our future grandchildren!"

She's a basketball star and an art major, her parents were both Olympians.  She speaks three languages fluently.  She adores Marcus.  And vice versa.  What else do I need to know? 

Even I--who've never met her--am starting to get "attached" and hoping to get to meet her in the spring.