Thanksgiving Train Ride

 --- to Portland

Train food isn’t what it used to be when I was a child. Hot meals were served on white linen tablecloths, on china plates, in the dining room. Although to be fair, I’m on the Cascade 530 from Vancouver, BC to Portland, not a long distance train. But the snack bar is unworthy of being called a bistro as it serves slim portions of teriyaki rice, practically meatless turkey sandwiches, okay chicken salad served on plastic and probably lackluster coffee.

            When we headed out this morning an inch of snow had already accumulated on the ground. I took a deep breath before driving to the station. The roads to the station were dry yesterday and it was snowing so hard and fast I didn’t think it would have frozen back on the roads already. Once we were on the train, I enjoyed watching the white snow swirling outside our windows.

            The train was a half hour late crossing the Canadian border. Larry, the overly talkative conductor, told us the time won’t be made up. Although at the rollicking speed it is going, it seems like a possibility. A very tan man with light blue eyes and a white blond hair wearing a smart looking canvas shirt and jeans stopped with his daughter to watch the 18-month old girl across from us twist and whine as her parents entertain her with puppets. The couple in front of me, especially the man, has found a willing audience in a mid-thirish looking woman with long, long dark brown hair, wearing a black shirt, skinny black jeans and brown boots with stud patterning. He tells her: “I grew up with strong women, a different paradigm.” Strong women —a different paradigm? So the common paradigm is weak women? Eventually we leave our families, isn’t it possible we gain other views that overshadow the original ideas? Although, it does seem difficult to overcome some of the ideas that my parents passed on to me like prejudice. I’m not sure where my father stood on it, but my mother is racist and sometimes I hear her voice in my head saying something awful and I want that voice to shut up.

We’ve stopped at a small red brick train station, red brick sidewalks and Spanish tile roof. The large lettering says it is Centralia. A genuine Americana small town that has a walkable main street, the Olympic Club Hotel, and an old white painted brick Shell gas station. Then we pass the freeway overpass ripping through the town, destroying the image.

Emily’s friends, including Colton and Drew, have texted her a Happy Thanksgiving. Katy, says Happy Thanksgiving to one of the beautiful people I know?

The little girl across the aisle is quite busy. The grandmother keeps trying to pacify her, she’s following her down the aisle right now, but she has been the one to rock her to sleep. No one has gotten up and walked her down the aisle, it always seemed that walking used to work with Emily, or is that a false memory? Now the grandmother left, she set the little girl into her seat across from her parents who are clapping and making faces at her.  Imagine having people that determined to entertain you.

The train ride back from Portland

We are returning from our quick visit to Portland. Bunny held court last night. As we left today, Mom said, “I thought he’d changed.” But I didn’t think so; it takes more than one gloomy doctor appointment for people to change. And when I asked him on the way to the restaurant he told me that he’d seen a different doctor had given him a better prognosis, from the perspective of an electrician vs. a plumber.  Mom and Aunt ML didn’t stay long; it wasn’t possible to say much to mom. I didn’t know how to avoid the conversation in his living room since we were staying at his house, in his bedroom and he picked us up— it seemed like I should pay the courtesy of listening to him. Although his daughter told him, twice, to give the Reader’s Digest version of the story, which I thought was a good idea. He was telling the four stories of how Sajawaja saved the Lewis and Clark expedition. Also he’d had quite a bit to drink so what do you owe a drunk? Would he even remember the next morning if I were rude the night before?

We are flying down the tracks now, swaying back and forth through the darkness as if an evil being were after us. It’s only 5 o’clock but neither Emily nor I got enough sleep last night and we’re tired. I didn’t sleep well because Bunny has no curtains in his room, so there was light pouring in to the room and I can’t sleep well in so much light. My heart pumps in beat with the clickety

Mom commented on how she didn’t always pay attention to ML because she’d gotten so illogical. I realized that I did the same thing to Mom to some degree too because she’s gotten hard of hearing and isn’t always following a conversation when she asks questions. In the next generation, Emily gets impatient with me when I don’t hear her because of background noise or she’s turned away from me when she speaks. Understanding doesn’t always make for sympathy.

I realized that the Moka Joe coffee, the hazelnuts, and certainly not the lumpy chocolate-raspberry sauce that I’d brought as thank you gifts for Bunny, weren’t gourmet enough for him. I’d forgotten that despite his vulgar drinking, he fancies himself a knowledgeable chef. So I gave Ross the gleaned hazelnuts, which he appreciated. He doesn’t drink coffee, so I gave it to Becky and took the sauce home with me. I bought Bunny a bottle of wine at the restaurant where we ate lunch.  Ross will give it to him, he promised me he would take it home if Bunny made a disparaging comment about it.

Ross and I had a humorous, but bizarre conversation at lunch. Topping each other over recent tragedies. We told him about the woman slamming into the teenager while was she texting. He told us about looking down the street and seeing cars that had slid around the road. He crept down the road, but slid into the cars, missing the husband who jumped out of his way, but pushing the car in front into the wife. Then he told us about a man who had road rage and through out a woman friend’s dog, we told him about the Chihuahua that we saw running down the road after he was tossed out of a car that rolled over. He told us about some kids who had burned down their school, we told him that there had been an accidental fire leaving only the shell of Whatcom Middle School. Since children had burned the school in San Jose, we added about the fire that middle school children had started, burning down the old shopping mall in Lynden. Laughter worked to heal the fear of so many incidents happening recently to young people in Bellingham. Even David, Becky’s husband had mentioned the young Western student who disappeared, his body found later in the bay. Mom kept asking Emily what we were laughing about, and when she explained, why it was funny. Who knows? It might not be to Ross and I in a later conversation. As I told her good bye at the station, my eyes welled up, I was suddenly aware of how fragile she is, she’s 88-years old. I can’t take seeing her again for granted. I need to be more careful.

I just walked up and down the station sidewalk in Seattle, the conductor announced that we arrived early and wanted us to pass on the information. I jumped out of the car to shake out the stiffness and was told we were leaving at 1850. Okay, I’ll have to do the math to figure out the time. I walked into another car to check out whether or not when you flush the toilet it goes directly onto the tracks. For extra measure, I washed my hands too. Then I dashed outside to clarify whether or not the water goes directly onto the tracks. It looked like the soapy hand washing water was emptying on to the tracks, but I can’t confirm the rumor that the toilet water is flushed onto the tracks. When I go back to my seat I spy the man who sat in front of us going to Portland, educating the woman across from him, is in front of us again, he’s quiet this trip. When I got back to our seat, Emily told me couple of men got in to a rowdy fight. The conductor is standing, blocking the aisle looking authoritative; he told them if they didn’t settle down, he’d throw them off the train. His stance says that he will. And I missed the excitement during my water drainage experiment.

Emily hopped off the train for a short walk. When Michael was eight-years old and Matthew and I got off the train in Montana, I asked Michael what he would do if we missed the train and he said, he wouldn't worry, he’d just get off in Spokane. What a sophisticated child! He’d been to Spokane before and knew the cousins that would greet him, but he was so calm.

Emily and I watched the movie Ondine the rest of the trip so I quit writing. We arrived back to flooding rain.

Paintings and Dancing

November 5

Tonight Emily and I went to the Smithsonian exhibit at the Lightcatcher Museum: “1934: A New Deal for Artists.” Artists were commissioned during the depression to show America. Some uppity eyes have seen these same paintings because FDR hung thirty-two of these in the White House.

One of the most striking paintings was of a young African-American girl staring into the viewer’s eye as she sat in front of a red checked tablecloth, her dress casually pulled up showing the garters on her stockings. Her dress like one I’ve seen in pictures of my mother, and Shirley Temple, at that age in the 1930s, light green with tucks draped from the shoulder and a white collar trimmed in lace. I didn’t realize girls so young wore garters.

There were stylistic pictures of industry, especially of factories and changing cities. New buildings tall and gleaming towered about older buildings, showing the painter’s pride in the building progress that was happening during the times. The paintings show people in similar circumstances of today, men trudging off to work in jobs they aren’t accustomed to doing. Long lines at food banks.

Often the paintings represent pride in what is being built. But when I pass all the empty buildings on Cornwall, Sunset Square, it doesn’t look like we need new buildings. I believe we need to rethink, re-imagine our cities. At least during the depression the cities were walkable and cars hadn’t taken over. We hadn’t polluted our oceans. It’s hard for me to believe that I live in a time where libraries and schools, the park service, don’t have the funding they need. Although I believe my daughter is getting a good education, probably better than what she would have gotten in the 1930s, I worry about her future. I find it alarming that voters voted to cut back government revenue, that the mad cries of the tea party want to cut back government services. Who will pay for the safety net?

In one picture at the exhibit, the older red brick buildings were being torn down. Another painting was of a gleaming white underpass painted over a photograph, another of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction. Rich red brown hills looming in front of green fields, rustic mail boxes representing the new rural mail service.  A claustrophobic red brown painting of a man with a pneumatic drills under the ground in a gold mine, his chest sweaty from the hot, dirty work. A panther in a lush tropical forest, his black fur against a bright red flower in the deep green forest. Two monkeys in the jungle – representing the Brooklyn Zoo in New York. A group of people recording at a radio station, including an exceptionally pretty woman with manacled hair.  Many of the artists had similar bold, colorful styles, rolling shapes. A group of colorful ice skaters in snowy Central Park. In some paintings the dark, somber colors suggested the distress of the times, so similar to our own.

We dashed out of the exhibit after an hour to see “Five” the Bellingham Community Dance Theater production for its fifth year. The dancers from the production I’d been in, “In the Context of Life,” were dancing. The dancing was sensational. The dances ranged from light hearted to intense to funny to fascinating. The women’s bodies moving gracefully, angularly; they moved on the floor, over each other, flying through the air into each other’s arms, over, under around each other weaving in and out like poetry. Either I haven’t seen any modern dance before that was to my taste or my taste has changed to enjoy watching modern dance. Emily enjoyed it as well.

At intermission a woman who had seen “In the Context of Life” told me my piece was her favorite, that I was beautiful and she loved it ! Imagine that. I thought my piece a bit drab compared to the others. I exclaimed my astonishment to Emily when we got back to our seat and she leaned over and kissed me and told me that I w as beautiful. It was a magical moment that stilled the world for me.

It is two different experiences watching a dance and being in one. How I felt about being in the dance varied from night to night. The experience subtly changed me into being more who I want to be. Pam told me all the hard throwing herself on the floor has taken a toll on her body so she was only in one fanciful piece with Angela. They wore black wigs and black and white dresses, twins from different mothers. Vanessa, who was so saucy and playful in the community dance, was intense and athletic. If I hadn’t spent so much time watching her in the other dances, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Ella seemed the most like I’d seen her in the pieces of “In the Context of Life.” The evening uplifted me.

Lesson from a Doctor

Lessons from a doctor

On Thursday, a client had two doctor appointments.  I brought along my knitting so I could knit as we waited. Unfortunately, for my knitting, the first appointment was with an eye doctor who kept turning off the lights as I was trying to pick up stitches around the neckline. The doctor told my client his eyes were as good as they could be after the surgery to repair the damage from diabetes, My eyes widened when I heard that, the client had told me his eyes were damaged during the Vietnam War from Agent Orange, so he was “owed” treatment. After we got into the car my client asked me what the doctor had said about his eyes improving. I repeated what the doctor had told him,  his eyes would never improve; they’d been too damaged by his diabetes. He wistfully replied that he had hoped to ride his Harley again, but now he couldn’t. He’s been a difficult client to work with, but he looked so crestfallen I felt sorry for him. I suggested that he could still ride behind someone, would that be all right for him? He said it would be okay, but I knew it wouldn’t be. He didn’t want pity so I let him be with his thoughts.

We got to the second appointment twenty minutes early, I pulled out my knitting, but before I could set up, the nurse was ready for us. Who ever heard of doctors being early?

I’ve been frustrated with the health care system and the way some people abuse it. I suppose in part because I haven't had health insurance most of my adult life so I can't afford to see a doctor often. I have elderly clients that go into see doctors whenever they want. This client decided he didn't like the wait at Interfaith Community Clinic so he made an appointment at the Senior Health Services to get a new primary physician. He went on a day I wasn't there. But I picked up the phone for a reminder call for his follow up visit. So I told them I would talk to John to see if he really wanted to change physicians. He didn't so I canceled the followup appointment. When I first started working for him, I found a stockpile of pills that Medicaid had paid for. I took more than 25 bottles of outdated pills and dumped them at the drugstore bin. Despite his protests, I scooped out a cupboard full of lancets that he never used to check his diabetes and took them to the community health clinic for other patients to use. But the doctor at this appointment, a diabetes specialist, upended my thoughts.

After looking at the results of his tests showing that his blood sugar had way up, he talked to the client for twenty minutes trying to figure out how the client could remind himself to take his medication, even asking me put red balloons above his bed. Suddenly, the doctor said, “ I’m resigning from your case. I like you, but I need to be treating people who I can help. Unless you go into an assisted living situation, I can’t help you.” He told the client that he could come back if he went to an assisted living facility. The doctor said he would notify the primary physician of his decision as he walked out the door. I was astonished. Most doctors just let him keep coming. As we walked to the car, the client scolded me for telling the doctor that he wasn’t taking his medication. I told him it wasn’t fair not to give the doctor the correct information. If he let the doctor think he was taking his medication, the doctor might prescribe the wrong dosage. The word fair hung in the air. What is fair about life?

When we got back to his trailer, he asked me to show him what medication he was to take.  So I explained the Mediset to him, again. I asked him if I could put up a sign to remind him, but he told me he didn’t need it. I wondered what he’d remember over the weekend. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, but he didn’t want me to fix him anything. I checked the refrigerator, he had a Meals on Wheels meal, I didn’t know how old, and a dried up pizza. He had hamburger patties in his freezer that I knew he would cook so I left.

The doctor’s straightforward statement has stayed with me. I was as dazed as my client walking out of his office. The directness was powerful. Of course life isn’t that clean, the primary physician still has to deal with him not taking his medication. I keep reporting the irregularities and neglect that I witness with the client. One day after washing his clothes, as I pulled out his clothes, I found at least 15 wet, one hundred dollar bills in the washtub. After scooping up the money and placing it on the shelf above the washer to dry, I was shaking to have that much money in my face. I called my supervisor, she called his case manager, he is not to have that much cash and be on the program that pays for my services. I've filed his bank statements showing that he has enough money in Canada to disqualify him from Medicaid, but after I call my supervisor, and she calls his case manager, nothing happens. I don’t know what else to do. He needs help, I need work, so I show up.

Others' Creativity

I’ve been feeding my creativity by enjoying others creativity. Friday night, September 29, I went to a poetry reading, which Judy Kleinberg opened with a reading of some of her wonderful poems. I especially liked her poem “theft of the pomegranate” about Persephone and the images of sensual red. Peter Ludwin and Lorraine Healy also read. Lorraine Healy’s Argentinean expressiveness captivated me. I haven't tried writing much poetry.

Saturday night I heard blues singers Ruthie Foster and Eric Bibb at Mount Baker Theater. I worked the member’s pre-show reception. I was taking pictures for Emily Weiner. So when Eric peeked in to listen to what his manager said, I couldn’t resist asking him for a picture. He looked dapper in a purple shirt and hat. I wish I had the vocabulary to discuss music in a meaningful way, other than just saying I liked it, especially Ruthie’s sister’s violin, more fiddling. I’ve had violins on my mind.  Mine is tucked away in my closet, I wish it were easier to play and make it sound good. Today I stopped by Dorothy who is a luthier - imagine being able to make a violin? And asked her for an interview for my radio show. She’s been battling cancer and told me that the one thing that was important in life was love that we are here to give love and create love.

For my own creativity I’ve been editing two short romance pieces and I’m still working on Emily’s sweater. I had hoped to knit some at work this week, I did get started on a scarf, but Wednesday when I was working with a woman in a wheelchair, she kept slipping down and I was afraid she would slide right on to the floor so I pulled up my chair and spent my creativity keeping her up. More than once I was definitely not feeling creative as I crawled around the floor to get her slippers back on her feet. 

But it helps to keep thinking of the lines of Judy's poetry, 

"crunches a single red jewel 

between her teeth

crimson light flooding her mouth"

It puts me in a red mood.

Unraveling Brown Sheep Wool

 

Seventeen years I’ve had that wool?  Actually more like nineteen. I sound like the world’s slowest knitter. It’s just that I haven’t used that particular wool in awhile, I kept buying more. A bright turquoise for my granddaughter, lime green, purple, pinks to make scarves for the homeless. A yarn shop closed so I bought multiple skeins of fuzzy, loopy yarn for possible scarves or collages.  Skeins of revolving rainbow-colored yarn sits on open shelves like a favorite painting. Most of the Brown Sheep wool that I brought home from Holden is for warm, bulky sweaters like the ones I needed at Holden, in the winter, and in Minnesota, in the winter. But it doesn’t get as cold in Bellingham so I’ve made sweaters out of lighter weight wool.

             

I don’t stick to patterns. I find wool  I like or someone else likes and agree to make a sweater, figure out the gauge and then off I go until I get in trouble and lose the shape I aimed for. Then I take the troubled sweater to the knit shop and figure it out with another knitter. Once I took a knitting class on making sweaters without a pattern, but I missed too many classes because of work. And most of the women spent the time discussing their trips, I am not gracious around travelers because I can no longer afford to travel and I miss it.  Sometimes it’s possible to tell the mood of a knitter from the gauge, in this case my envy tightened my gauge to the point I had to unravel part of the sweater. Must work on traveler envy.

After leaving Holden’s supportive knitting environment, it’s been harder for me to find the time to finish a sweater. Finishing sweaters requires a lot of concentration to keep track of the stitches and the gauge. I love knitting in the round. If I could just knit up sweater bodies to the armholes, I’d have knitted up all my wool. But now if I’m at a meeting where I’m to pay attention or talking to someone I forget to mark the rows and lose track of when I need to increase or decrease. I guess meetings at Holden didn’t require my attention. My hands go on automatic and there’s no stopping them. Sometimes I just let them go and then go back and unravel my mistakes. Other times I stop my knitting and then fidget during the rest of the meeting because I would rather be knitting.

One time I agreed to make a hat for someone out of an expensive homespun yarn that she’d bought. It was lovely wool, but the weight was uneven so it was hard to get the hat to look exactly like the picture. I spent about five hours on it. The woman didn’t like the finished hat. She wanted a completely different shape and wanted me to knit it for free. So I unraveled the hat and gave her back the yarn. It was very satisfying. 

One reason I like knitting is because it is so easy to undo a mistake, just give the yarn a tug and out comes your mistakes. Wouldn’t it be great if we could undo life’s mistakes as easily?  “Opps, I shouldn’t have said that,” give the remark a tug, and it’s undone, no one gets hurt. My mother is an intelligent, vital woman and still making important business decisions. The other day I was frustrated with her for defending my dad’s decisions about his trust. Then suddenly she unraveled and in her brief tirade she admitted to me that she wished she had stood up to my father. I was stunned; she had always remained silent about his abuse and had resisted my questioning his behavior.

She even recalled the rose bush incident. She said she wished she’d protected me-- words I had always wanted to hear. Or did she say that? Did I just want her to say that? I was so stunned that she remembered the incident and that she actually admitted that she wished that she had stood up to my father - my mind was stuck on those words. “I wish that I had stood up to your father” that I held my breath.

The rose bush. She said she wished that she had protected me, and yet it was one time when I had consciously stepped back and wanted her to protect herself. I had dug up part of a 100-year old rose bush from a house that I couldn’t afford to keep and planted in her yard a couple of years before. Now I wanted to bring it to my new home and she and I were having trouble digging it up. Suddenly father stormed out of the house yelling at us. I thought he was crazy; the rose had nothing to do with him, what would have made him so mad? Sometimes I tried to defend my mother and he would turn on me. But this time I remember thinking my father had crossed the line of justifiable anger (justified yelling: a messy house, giggling at the table, swearing under the table when picking up a fork). So I consciously stepped back and did not interfere. I wanted my mother to stand up to him. When he called my mother stupid, it broke my heart. Now my mother is saying she wished she’d stood up to him, that she had protected me. I don’t remember if I’ve ever heard her so emotional, so angry and hurt and so straightforward in what she had to say.

Tears rolled down my face as she sobbed and told me she was 88 years old and she didn’t want to end up taken care of by people who didn’t care about her. (She was probably reacting, in part, to my complaints about my job).  She had to decide what she wanted to do about the next phase of her life. She went on to list all of the people and business that she was expected to take care of. She said she could understand what I felt not being appreciated because she didn’t feel appreciated either and then she slammed down the phone. When I called her back, she was her lighter self again.

I had unexpectedly tugged on the right emotion for my mother to unravel a small part of our difficult past, a part that was an important touchstone for me. Our relationship is much too complicated for one outburst to fix. I roll her confession around in my mind in and in my heart, I don’t know what, if anything, to do with such a remarkable admission.

When my daughter gets home from school today I need to trap her into trying on the sweater I’m knitting for her, again, to make sure I’ve made the correct adjustments so I can knit at tonight’s board meeting.

Creating a Sweater Started in the Mountains

My next creation is finishing a lamb’s wool sweater in dark blue that I’m knitting for my daughter. Both my daughter and my oldest son want dark blue sweaters. Neither one wants purple or red or even royal blue, nor  blue like in the night before a storm, just dark blue.

I learned to knit from Jeanette, an older Norwegian woman who was a skilled knitter; she had been knitting for 50 years.  When I first lived at Holden Village, almost 25 years ago, she was probably the same age I am now. I can still picture the beautiful purple and dark blue sweater that she made in an intricate Norwegian pattern. She was a wonderful, patient teacher.

I wanted to live in the mountains and Holden was the best place imaginable to fulfill my dream. The village is nestled in Railroad Creek Valley, which is 50 miles by boat from Chelan, then twelve miles by sputtering, choking school buses up the mountain on a gravel road to an elevation of 3200 ft in the Cascade Mountains. The village is not accessible by car, or phone or radio or television. A visitor from Switzerland compared the view of the mountains to the Swiss Alps; the views of Buckskin, Dumbell, and Copper mountains are that spectacular.

The village had been built to house miners and their families for a copper mine in the 1937. The mine closed in the 1957. The Canadian mining company, the Howe Sound Company, gave the miners little notice so they had to abandon their homes. The Forest Service tore down the miners’ family homes after most of the roofs collapsed under the winter snow. But several buildings remained including the single miners’ dorms, the hotel, the village center with a gym, library and a soda fountain upstairs and a pool hall and bowling alley downstairs. The school, twelve chalets that had been the engineers’ homes and an outdoor hot tub with a first class view of the surrounding mountains, also survived. Those buildings were given to the Lutherans, actually they paid one dollar for the village and leased the land from the Forest Service.

The first year I lived there I stayed in one of the dorms. Number six. We lived upstairs over the wood/electric/plumbing shop; everything was fixed in the shop. I came in April and was asked if I would be the head housekeeper. My job was to open up the four guest dorms for the summer season. I had a staff of two so I also helped out at the museum. I enjoyed working in the empty dorms, turning them into livable rooms. But I especially loved giving tours to guests of the village, explaining the remarkable history of the village and taking them up to the museum.

In addition to experiencing life in a remote mountain village, I learned to knit. I'd always wanted to knit a sweater. So my first knitting project was a bright turquoise blue sweater with a lacy pattern. I used to sit by Jeanette during meetings. At first my hands felt awkward and I was a clumsy knitter. I couldn’t see how the pattern was created. So whenever I made a mistake I would hand my sweater to her and she would either correct the mistake or make it look like it was corrected. Gradually I began to see the pattern and could correct my own mistakes, but it was a hard day when she left the village and I hadn’t learned how to finish the sweater.
The next woman who was in charge of the Craft Shop made socks and couldn’t help me with a sweater. She was impatient that I had been allowed to start with such a complicated pattern.  But wasn’t it wonderful that Jeanette didn’t discourage me? Wouldn’t the world be better off if we were encouraged to create what we wanted instead of what was reasonable? I still have that sweater. Although when I finished it and laid it out, I was astounded at how large it was. Actually after all the work it required, I was horrified. Fortunately the lacy pattern allows it to drape so the size isn’t noticeable. My gauge has always been a little loose and I have since learned to pay more attention to it and correct it when it goes astray.

After four months I left Holden Village to be with a man; I returned a couple of years later to stay away from him. When I returned I became head of laundry. They didn’t need me in the summer so I volunteered as a wilderness ranger for the Forest Service, working in Entiat Valley, the next valley over. Sometimes I would hike to the top of the ridge and look into Railroad Valley, but I couldn't see Holden because the valley curved away from the spot I could hike to.

When I returned to Holden at the end of summer, I alighted from the bus as part of the winter staff.  The volunteer coordinator announced that I would work at the Craft Shop part time and head of laundry part time. I had to learn to warp the looms, track the inventory, and maintain the supply inventory, which meant I ordered yarn. Ordering yarn was like having Christmas once a month. I could order yarn wholesale, and any of the staff could join an order. We would wait for the trucks to bring up the supplies off the barge. We would help unload the trucks, carrying bags of rice, potatoes, crates of milk and buckets of delicious ice cream. Then we would spot the boxes from Harris Tweed and Brown Sheep and we would grab them and run to the Craft Shop. After we cut through the packing tape, the boxes would spring open with the fluffy yarn in a whirl of colors.  I left Holden at the end of the year  with skeins, and skeins, of Brown Sheep wool. Seventeen years later I'm finishing a sweater for my  daughter from some of that yarn.

Final Performance

We finished the run of “In the Context of Life” on Sunday. Friday night we started warming up with a cast dance to Kathy’s upbeat music. I really enjoyed the freedom to dance without an audience and seeing the dance floor filled with joyful dancing.The Firehouse is such a warm space with its wooden floors and the care that went into creating the space.

Kathy told me that she liked my dance the best because there was no talking. I hadn’t realized that mine was the only one without talking. I thought mine was the simplest piece, but Pam told me it was complicated and the most dancelike. If there were an opportunity to use one of the pieces in a dance work, she said mine would be the piece that would qualify.

It took time to get used to the space and the lights. Although I never got comfortable with the lights glaring at me when I faced them. The second weekend I was still stressed and my body exhausted and tense. It helped not being on stage just before my piece so I could warm up with yoga poses and stretches under the seats. During the performance there was enough time between some moves so that I would shut off my mind as a way to handle the stress and discomfort. Ella reminded me not to go through it by rote, anticipating the next move.   Last weekend I forgot a move and Ella’s subtle hints didn’t trigger the correct move so the dance was thrown off a little. It was one of the few nights Pam watched so I expected some tsk, tsking, can’t remember your moves, but instead she was complimentary on how the dance was different and better. She explained that the tension the “mistake” created added to the dance. This weekend it sunk in that the piece was not static that I could still make a difference in the performance. I realized that I could make conscious choices in the piece by being more present. I missed the playfulness of rehearsals so I asked Ella if we could smile at each other in the end. It was never the joy of the creative process, but the space between us did get lighter. I especially liked the beginning when I followed her on stage in the semidarkness and at the end, her slight tap that we could walk off the stage, private moments.

My mother asked me if I would miss the people, but the cast didn’t spend that much time together. We spent most of it sitting on the stage watching each other. Also many of the people are public artists who I can see in other performances. All the dancers, including Pam, are in a production at the beginning of November. Shannon, who did the lights, will be running the lights at a Western theater production and invited me to come. And the musicians play around town.  After ten performances, I did not need to see the piece again. Spencer gave me a copy of Kathy’s music, my sheep bells and several of his other compositions. Some of the lines run through my memory, and some of the moves. 

In the process of creating the dance I moved through some of the frustrations that I have in my work as a caregiver. But further into the process, I left my work behind and allowed the dance to evolve into  my changing role as a caregiver to my daughter; to feel the give and take in our relationship as she moves closer when she needs me and then back out.  And finally as a way of letting go of my role with her as it was and allowing a more equal relationship to emerge as she becomes more independent and struggles with decisions she needs to make as a young woman.  

There is a beginning modern dance class on Monday nights that I’d like to try.  Kathy might try it as well. I think about how I made slight changes in the piece by being more present, which created a better experience for me. I can’t easily change my job, but I can create a better experience for me even in the mundane. So I carry the dance experience with me.

In the Context of Life

This summer my creative life was starting to bog down in my work as a home health aide so I decided to challenge myself and take a risk to perform a dance in public. 
This dance piece is my first public performance ever. It's a dance piece that I perform with a young dancer, Ella Mahler. I had the privilege of working with Pam Kuntz, a senior dance instructor at Western Washington University, who choreographed the dance. This is the sixth piece that Pam has created  with community members telling their stories with dancers.

This performance is about health. She had community members write out a Neighborhood Health Map. I wasn't sure what she wanted, so I composed a simple one like a wheel with me in the center and the spokes radiating out with my health care providers and activities such as yoga and walking and eating good food that I do to keep healthy. Then I talked with Pam and Richard Scholtz who has been initiated the health mapping project, to explain my map. Pam chose to create my dance piece around the care providing that I do for work. But as we worked on the piece, I realized that I have been a caregiver most of my life, and since my daughter turned sixteen, she's been moving away from me, so I am ready to move out of the care giving role and wanted the piece to represent that change. So instead of ending the piece entwined, Pam agreed to end the piece with Ella and I walking away as equals.

The first time I saw anyone else's piece was at the technical rehearsal. It was also the first time I performed the piece in front of anyone else other than Richard and Spencer who didn't count because they were working on the sound. Oh, and although they chose the ambient sound of sheep bells tha Richard recorded in Paraguay, they sound like cow bells. I asked for a picture of sheep flashed on the screen so  people wouldn't get a bovine image in their head, but I was overruled, or ignored. Now I am able to ignore the sound.

At the tech rehearsal I felt awkward and out of place in the new space. We are performing at The Firehouse, an actual old firehouse that was remodeled with loving care by a dancer into a performing space. But, yow,  the lights were too bright and made it uncomfortable to dance in. And I didn't know most of the other performers and some of their pieces were too long and I kept thinking, what have I gotten myself into ? 
The lights were were toned down for the dress rehearsal.  I concentrated on Ella. Ah, for the young, agile mind and body. I depend on her to remember the piece and sometimes to guide me to the next move.

Last weekend we opened the show. We've gotten lots of positive publicity. The Bellingham community is very supportive of Pam's pieces and this piece has several well known Bellinghamsters performing, including ex-Mayor Mark and a couple of popular folk singer activists so it has been well attended. I've been too stressed until today to really enjoy performing. Thursday I actually made an appointment with an accupunturist because I was so physically so uncomfortable. But this weekend I received several compliments. Today Pam asked me if I realized how good my piece was? I don't, some of the other pieces are so much more energetic and upbeat. And Warren, Warren is a perceptive, remarkable eight year old. How does one follow an cute, pixie-like child?  I sit next to him and he has relieved some of my tension though. I answer his questions - like why is that woman taking off her clothes? Me - because she is too hot. Why is everyone being rude and whispering?  Me - because we have lines to say, we'll get you a line. Now he remembers his line on cue and I have no idea what I'm to say, except cup is in the phrase.

My sixteen-year old came to last night's performance and afterward she came up and threw her arms around me and told me she liked the dances. She thought I was good ! I was worried that she would just think it odd and be embarrassed. And after today's performance,  a friend rushed back stage, threw her arms around me and told me I was wonderful ! What an amazing gift. I'm beginning to believe it's good.