TENDERLY

It was difficult to know who was the elder of the two; they both had white hair, they both moved slowly, he perhaps a bit more slowly than she, so for purposes of telling the tale, I will say that he was the elder.

It doesn't really matter, and yet it does. Every detail of life matters.

Slow motion. Plastic bag, black plums, one at a time, hands shaking.

The slow motion of advanced age.

Confusion, mounting. "Let me..." he said, but he didn't finish: she kept trying to open the plastic bag, an act that can defy the agility of the youngest hands at times.

"Let me....hold....the bag!"
He was softly insistent.

It seemed to take forever for that message to reach her brain; she kept trying to open the bag, hands shaking, head bobbing, legs wrapped in thick stockings, a threadbare green sweater draped over her rounded shoulders, her hair wispy white, surrounding her face like so many tiny feathers.

He tried again. "Let...me...hold...the bag."

Their eyes met and it was as if the world stood still, for them and for me as the observer of this moment. For in that moment, she knew again, after all those many years, that yes, he loved her.

She let him open and hold the bag as she placed one, two, three, four shiny black plums into it.

It took both of them to work the twist tie to close the bag. And then, the best part:

His were on the handle of the shopping cart, and just before he pushed off for a very long journey to retrieve the other things they needed in the store, her soft, deeply veined hands covered his; he looked into her eyes and there it was again, right out in the open, for all the world to see: love.....so tender it made me cry.

Always Check For Comments...And Reply

hi claudia - it's me susan pietrowski, i would love to contact you...so someday when you post a new post to your blog, you will see this message and say "wow",,,I remember her and then you will email me at lonestarsprite@yahoo.com! I love monarch butterflies and have a plant in my backyard that is covered with those wonderful green, yellow, black and white catepillars...they eat every leaf off the plant. Hello long lost friend!

December 13, 2010 4:18 PM

I found Susie's comment on or around January 6, 2011. I smiled deep and wide as my mind flooded with images, memories of our college years together, her soft nature, sweet smile, great wisdom....and i carried all that with me, gently, for days, imagining my reply, imagining how i would craft my hello after so many years. Susie was our son's Fairy Godmother. she had always wanted to be a fairy godmother,and with susie you knew that desire was for real. she even sent him a glittered magic wand for his first christmas! susie was special, loved, an artist, eventually a mother to two children her soul adored. she was not without her demons but even those she was gentle about.

So i walked and i remembered and i smiled and i thought and i prepared to write back to this dear dear friend from, basically, childhood. but i waited too long.

On the morning of January 24, 2011, I received an email from another dear college friend telling me that susie had died the day before.

Susie was gone.
I waited too long.
There would be no email to Susie, no reply to me, no phonecall....

I waited too long.
I have been in touch with her beloved son, Rivers; i cannot imagine his grief, nor that of his sister Sarah, only 13 years old. I want to scoop them both up and tell them everything i know of their mother, all the spots inside that maybe she only shared with me...all the memories that sparkle like gems....and maybe i will do that. Soon. Before it is too late.

I am so so sad that i missed the opportunity you presented me with dear friend: you must have known that you were sick, that it was ending, this life on earth. You must have been contacting me to say goodbye.

Goodbye sweet friend.
I will never forget you.

I love you Susie.

I'm sorry I waited too long.

when i met my cousin Brendan last night, my Irish Eyes felt all soft inside, as if on the outside they may just have looked like this. my cousin, the first one i've met, with no memories between us from our childhoods due to stupidly stubborn Irish brothers who were our fathers...stupid grudges and disagreements, so we cousins never climbed trees together or learned to smoke cigarettes together or rode bikes together or layed in the last day of summer vacation sun together counting notebooks and pencils, talking about the teachers we hoped we didn't get.

but there is NOW. and brendan started it....and he is the first of many that i've now met. thank you brendan, thank you Divine Order of The Universe for allowing this to open up for us. Blessed Be.

It's been HOW LONG since I posted on here?

as you can see, the caterpillars do get pretty fat and happy as they store their bodies with food...









let's see.....where does one pick up after taking such a long leave of absence? i mean what HAS the world been doing without my BLOG?????

(a quiet falls over the room. nervous coughs , squeaky little laughs.) it's okay. i know. you have just been waiting patiently. you knew i would be back! you believed in me!!!!! and for that faith you shall be rewarded!!!! i am going to start with What I Did For My Summer Vacation!!!......in pictures. See the pictures? Well, what you are watching is the birth of a Monarch Butterfly, slippin' right out of its chrysallis, right on time. this has been the most amazing project i've ever involved myself in.

i walk by the lake pretty much every day in the spring and summer and this , i decided, was the year i was going to do it, look for the tiny little eggs on the back of milkweed plant leaves.....and i found a leaf with an egg and thought myself to be quite fortunate. i was walking back to my house and ofcourse had to investigate OTHER milkweed plants too, and i ended up with a total of fourteen eggs AND one caterpillar, a fairly sizeable one, so he had been one of the earlier born ones and was eating and eating and eating those milkweed leaves until it was time to transform.

i was addicted! every time the opening of the chrysallis was imminent, i would get so excited with the anticipation.......to watch this truly is one of the many beauties of nature. each butterfly needs about two or three hours to dry out their wings and try flapping them a little bit. what i started doing was letting them come out of the tank they were born in and letting them fly from my finger to the screens on the windows in my studio. there were only two casualties, one of which was just so sad; i had no choice but to euthanize him. he was a wonderful flyer but he was a bit brainless. i noticed him hitting the screens really hard and that one last hit just took him down...broke his two front legs and he couldnt' walk. so you know what you do if one needs to be euthanized? you put him or her into a small plastic bag and put them into the freezer for an hour or so. they feel nothing, they don't think "oh my god i'm freezing to death!!!" no, they just go to sleep, and that way i get to keep a beautiful completely intact Monarch Butterfly.

and THAT is what i did on my summer vacation!

I Can Only Call It What I Think It Is.....

(...The Grace of God.)

I have received a plethora of emails from them over the past few weeks, reminding me as a participant from last year that it is time.....time to submit another piece of work, should I choose, and time to pick up last years' submission. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo sponsors submissions to the jury of their Collector's Gallery once a year; if your submission is accepted by the jury, they will display it in the Collector's Gallery for a full year; businesses can rent your work to have in their offices for a few months at a time , or your work can be sold out-right to an interested party. It is now the time of year where those of us whose work did NOT sell are requested to come to the gallery to pick it up; if we choose to submit something else, there is a later date in May for that.

When I submitted my photo last year, at the urging of a dear artist friend, I figured it was a long-shot; I mean what chance did my one photo have amidst all the other submissions that were accepted and on display in the Collector's Gallery? So many pieces, only so many visitors to the gallery...difficult , as always, to know who is in the market for what kind of art. But it was a good "next step" for me as I began putting my work "out there"; I had success with the photo at our Image City Photography Gallery's first and now annual juried show and from that I was encouraged to continue the building of my latest creative venture as a photographer. I have had success as an actor, a dancer, a writer, a voice artist, and an artist; it was time to move forward with my photographic "captures" of moments in life, and so I did.

NO ONE could have been more surprised than I when I saw the envelope in the mailbox..the envelope that announced through its thin nature that it more than likely held.....A CHECK.

SOMEONE BOUGHT MY PHOTO.
I have sold my first photography.
Someone liked it enough to buy it, to have it as their own.

YAHOOOOOOO!

Here I was, just minding my own business, preparing another image for submission to the Collector's Gallery, actually kind of looking forward to picking last years' submission up on the fifteenth of the month, a reunion with a much-loved image, all matted and framed and beautiful in its presentation...but no....SOMEONE BOUGHT MY PHOTO!!!! Oh, but I already exclaimed about that, didn't I? Heck, YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO again!~ It is, after all, "a first". I mean how many more of those will I get in my life?? (smile)

And there's a copy of the photo: I called it "Watching the Watchers"; I took the photo aboard a whale watching ship in Cape Cod last fall...it is an image of the silhouette of people on the upper deck in the huge white foam created by the ship in the deep blue of the Atlantic. I had been on my way to the side of the deck fearing that I may..well, you know, toss my cookies, but then I saw this image...and the rest is history.....it saved me from feeling sea sick too!

The Grace of God brought me this gift and I am grateful.

All Grown Up...Or Are They?

"Are you going to wait or will you be coming back for it?"
"How long of a wait will it be?"
"At least forty five minutes..."
"Hmmmm.....I'll wait..."

With that part of the decision made, I decided how I would spend those forty five minutes in the hospital while waiting for a prescription to be filled at the pharmacy; our insurance offers a nice discount on medications if we make use of it, so we do. I decided to go up to the gift shop and do some browsing. I'll say!....I was in there for the entire amount of time I was told I would need to wait. I think I touched everything in the small shop at least once! I actually took the time to read cards, a luxury I never indulge in as I am usually on the move: I see the heading of a section, "birthday for HIM/HER" or "encouragement" or "sympathy", thumb through a few and quickly make my choice. But on this day, I read and enjoyed many cards BEFORE making my choices.

I was making my way to the stuffed animals, just because I wanted to, and the "text" feature on my phone began its chiiiit chitttt sound; it was my son...he just needed to talk; he is 27 , lives down south, and is struggling to make sense of the economic meltdown we are living through, struggling to keep his thoughts positive as he waits even longer to really get his career back on track. One more time, for emphasis: HE IS STRUGGLING, and he was looking for a place to vent and get encouragement. So for the remainder of the wait-time for my prescription, I listened to my son and thought about how odd it suddenly seemed that I think of him as "grown up" at 27. I thought about how even without the global crisis we are experiencing, he still has much growing to do and that the same could actually be said of ME. It was with that realization, that basically we are ALL always "growing up", that I started to lose my footing a bit: here my son was turning to me for a listening ear, maybe for a bit of guidance, in the grip of a situation that is bigger than anyone could have imagined, and I suddenly felt very young and ill-equipped to help him hold his sorrow and frustration, even though that is really all I CAN do, help him to hold it: I cannot fix it, and to realize that I found myself to be basically bereft of words of wisdom on the subject, well.....it made me feel like I am in need of as much "growing up" as he is!

He did not know of my hesitation, did not sense it; I don't think he ever does: no matter what the topic, the struggle, the disappointment, I am first and always Mom to him: just the sound of my voice, in real-time or through my thoughts appearing in text on his phone, I am just as grown up as he needs me to be.

How come my soul was ever-so-slightly shaking when we disconnected then?
Parenting never ends, even when the children look for all intents and purposes like adults, like grown ups.

Some days I sure do wish MY parents were still here to talk to; I doubt that we would be texting each other, but I sure would like to ask them if THEY ever felt this way.

God-speed my son.....all will be well.