As my mother and brother step inside the Woodhaven Park residence for one last time, the once and past dream home of my parent’s, I am standing in the UPS Store in Wytheville. Joe is busy getting my print order together. He explains that he is not happy with the quality because there is some ghosting going on, barely perceptible smatterings of ink probably caused by the printer rollers. I try to explain to him that my letterpress-style poster design lends itself to a bit of grit, but instead I find myself telling him that my childhood home is about to be sold.

I tell Joe that “it’s all good.” And it is.

I tell Joe that it seems to be affecting me profoundly and that I am glad I am not there to witness the turning over of keys and signatures.

I am glad that I am not there to take one more last look at the trees, the paths, or the spot where my father passed away.

I tell him that I have been waking up with night sweats, quaking at the idea of muscle memory. Isn’t that photograph that I made – the one from Upstate New York that rocked my world so much that before entering college I switched majors from anthropology to photography – isn’t that image sitting on the floor by the bookcase in the upstair’s family room? Isn’t my grandmother’s handwritten cookbook in the box labeled “Nanny” that is sitting on the second shelf from the left in the unfinished portion of the basement? Isn’t my old wedding dress still in the closet on the second floor?

No.

No, most of these things are gone, found in new places, and sometimes with new people.

Joe seems to get all this and I am grateful for his compassion and kindness.

My mobile phone rings. It is my mother. Do I know if Avon perfume bottles are worth anything these days?

I tell her I am on my way to a meeting, but will use the phone to check the eBay status if she likes. She tells me she will just take the bottles with her.  There are still a few items in the house that she and my brother are collecting before they sign the papers that change our lives forever.

And the forever is promising, right? My mother now lives in a small, charming cottage near my old college town and is close to my brother. My brother can have  some of his life back (as can my sister-in-law), who have diligently spent a large majority of weekends this past winter moving my mother’s belongings out of the house and two hours more north. Perhaps now they can rest a bit. And me? Well, who knows. I will continue as I have, continue making images, continue writing…continue complaining, and well…just continue.

I think about a recent encounter with a soon-to-graduate college senior. When I asked her what is next after graduation, her response, after telling me see needs to get a job, was that she needs to grow-up. At the time, I thought, “Oh, Student X, do we ever really grow up?”

I look at my phone. I am five minutes late for my meeting. I say a hasty goodbye to Joe and head out to Cinnamon Sage Bakery, have a cup of coffee and debate the logistics of community art. My mother will sign her name until she no longer ever wants to give anyone an autograph and then she and my brother will celebrate over shrimp cocktail and lobster-topped baked potatoes.

I will quietly toast my mother, my brother, and my sister-in-law with my Negro Modelo and lime before finishing the evening meal of chips and salsa. I will go to bed and I will wake-up today.

There is no best seller. There is no completion of a great American novel. There is no Whitney retrospective. There is no moving to a hire-wage (or higher, for that matter) percentile.

But there is grey hair.

After a quiet morning of raining sunrise (see above photo shot from the living room window of Boxwood), birthday bagels (Asiago cheese thank you very much!), and half a pot of coffee  – and sometime before the non-fat latte (courtesy Starbucks) – the awful truth was revealed. It is as I may have suspected, I might have grey hair and just cannot see it due to poor eyesight and denial. Sometimes in the right lighting circumstances (oh hiss to the florescent lights of public restrooms), I think I see a bit of grey mixed in that might not be the metal after-effect of a few choice hair chemicals. Ken, like a good sport, swears he sees no grey. Even two different hair stylist have told me “no grey.” And I live with this, happy in the notion that though the skin sags and the winkles deepen, there is no evidence of greying (and just so you all know, I was heavily carded at Nesslerod on the New’s Brewfest).

So, today, I finally take myself for my yearly haircut and my stylist tells me my reality. In fact, she careful looks at my scalp and begins pointing out “spots” of grey.

Oh, and now I see them clearly. I see them the reflection of mud puddles, dull car finishes, and in my own bathroom mirror. Is there nothing sacred, Mirror Mirror on the Wall.

So my accomplishments for the year may not be stellar (okay, I did finish my Masters – five years in the making), but I did manage to step into this  age-defining circumstance.

Everyday I am evermore Prufrock.

I grow old … I grow old … 
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Okay…maybe not rolled.

Yes, see, I remembered. On my last post, I mentioned Mercury in Retrograde being a potential topic and now here it is all laid out for you. Before you switch off too quickly, thinking “Oh dear, I knew she would somehow involve Edgar Cayce or some New Age voodoo into the mix” – you know me oh so well – I promise not to engage all my various personalities in this. The hypnotist is in the box. Well, okay, not completely in the box…that would not be fair to her, so the hypnotist is having a cup of tea.

A friend of mine, whom I shall call “D” (I really do not know how she would feel about being mentioned here), sent me note about two weeks ago, wishing that Mercury in Retrograde would end peacefully and quickly (or something like that). For her sake I hope she received the former, but the later is still two days away. She told me then that this is a period of change, when one should just hold tight, and see where the chips have fallen after April 4 (when Mercury is done doing its retrograde thing).

Personally, I have never truly “gotten” Astrology. It seems very complicated, so I stick to things I understand like numerology or tea leaf reading – and the revelation of archetypal symbols in the subconscious landscape (oh wait, that’s the hypnotist), but I digress. This time however, I am paying attention to D’s warnings and wisdom. Though I could not avoid traveling  (pictures and story to come at a later date), I did actively try to not add to the fray…and a fray it has been (holy mother of crows). Things have turned upside down, been shaken like a bad martini, and I am now waiting for it all to be decanted to see the murkiness of the liquid. I did my best to avoid conflict (well, almost) – even walking away from some potentially damaging situations. It has been painful.

But, after much thought about wishing to be a hermit during this retrograde thing, I have come to realize that I am also hopeful. There have been some really good changes (artistically-speaking) and somehow I had gotten off track. I used to relish change. Change can be good, and I think when the proverbial olives are tooth-picked and put into the martini (dirty, thank you), things will be alright.

And if not, I can always drown my sorrows at the neighbors (see the above photo). Have I told you that I have great neighbors?

It is Friday – at the hour when normal people (normal in the sense of having a nine-to-fiver) sigh in relief. There will be a respite from the daily rituals of the work week. A sudden Spring thunder storm has begun to unleash itself and the world is in birth rather than brand new. Rivulets of water make paths down the window screen that filters out the outside. The screen sits bared behind blinds and I think about turning on a light to better see my fingers tapping out this message. But, I am too lazy and the tea is too warm to do anything but drink it.

There are two thoughts competing for exposure here today – Mercury in retrograde and all those little lies. Will I type and type and type until every last word is out or do I separate them? Perhaps I do the later. Okay, let us try that path.

All these little lies.

Ask yourself right now – are you an honest person? I suspect you are not so far from me when I give a response such as “I try to be” (quiet, Yoda, I know there is no “try,” only do or do not) or “mostly.” And usually that is more than enough to fill my morality and ability to function within my human faults.

Then I watched “junk” television the other day, and was somehow profoundly affected by the opening monologue for “Being Human” (US version). It bespoke of all the little lies in our lives, one’s we are not even aware that we tell. The hair dye, the tightening of stomach muscles to appear thinner, and then there was another mentioned that I do not remember because I could not relate at all.

And as I meditated upon a recent photograph, I wondered if it too was a lie. The suspect photo is the one illustrating this post. It was created on a foggy morning, looking out Boxwood’s sunroom window. As I sat, ever compelled to recreate the photograph into something more towards what is in my head, applying filters, changing curves, and decreasing color – is that not a similar form of lie? I have changed what the camera captured into my own invention. I have always thought it creative and an honest rendition of my aesthetic, but is it?

Or are things like photoshopped models, plastic surgery, and Red Bull – more of a reality than what is surface? Is it a deep truth – the reality that wants to be?  We want pure beauty (we believe in it often more than we believe in the supernatural or even religion) and pure energy. Are enhancements perfecting something or are they lies?

And as the rain subsides and my tea grows cold, all I can say is that maybe the idea of all those little lies (color enhancements, physique tortures, and image manipulations) really is getting into too cerebral a thought. It is the sort of thought that smacks of creative blocks and diminished self-images. And we do not ever want those things. So, really, moved as I may have been by a television writer’s words, I shall go on enhancing, holding in my stomach, and creating my art.

Spring marches me forward, gently shoving me out of mornings that feel like hangovers (without spending the evening before in  alcoholic forays). I suspect I just need another cup of coffee; the green tea and honey just aren’t doing much for the caffeine addiction. So, here I am, still blurred-eyed (not much doubt that will ever go away) even after a bit of yoga. Yes, coffee, I am coming for you.

But I digress, Spring has moved me in a most delightful way. For one evening, I was able to feel what it is like to be an “It” girl (and I don’t mean information technology). Knowing that such things are as fragile as the delicate periwinkles growing beside our neighbors’ hedge, I this is a a memory to hold carefully within for its positive aspects to take root.

I belong to the American Association of University Women (the Wytheville, Virginia chapter). I guess I am working on my second year and have thoroughly enjoyed my membership and fellow “sisters.” Having been a bit tied up in my childhood past with odd experiences belonging to both Girl Scouts and 4H, I tread lightly when joining any group. Girl Scouts, though I was very much a loner in my primary years, brings me memories of being encouraged in my creativity by one particular leader (Polly Ward). Polly knew the benefit of looking beyond social cliques and seeing the unusual as something positive, allowing us to run free through her woods and barns (our meetings were at a historic house called Betty’s Delight, which boarded Rose Hill, a famous Charles County, Maryland landmark), providing us with ghost stories and opportunities for creativity. The other members of my troop were all about a year older than me and went to a private school. We seemed to have little in common. When my scout group disbanded, we all somehow morphed into 4Hers. We had a new adult leader and actually had our officers among the peer group. Trouble in paradise for a pudgy, non-private school girl.

So here I am, 30 years later in another female-centric group (now that I think about it, 4H would have probably been improved if we had a few of the male species in our midst…or I suppose, it could have been worse). I admit to having to quell some internal fear about becoming a member of AAUW, but everyone in the branch has been so warm, so interesting, and so encouraging that I have seemingly felt myself as part of the group. And before you judge me, I have belonged to several other groups that are still near and dear to my heart, but its the not so positive memories that are harder to fend off. And this is the first all-female group I have belonged to since those murky groups of childhood.

Now the “It” Girl part. I arrived at the meeting on time to help set-up (it was history night, for which I was a hostess), no thanks to a few extra pounds that made everything but old jeans and button down shirt seem comfortable. Everyone was so gracious with their congratulations over my recent victory in the AAUW art contest – it felt like a birthday. During the business meeting, I was formally congratulated; people seemed enthusiastic about my nomination for presidency next year; and another member made it a point to tell everyone about an article I had recently published in the Wythe County History Journal about Edith Bolling Wilson and the Suffrage Movement. Such positive attention. I am truly grateful to have been able to feel so positive.

And though I know tomorrow is another day – yesterday was good.

Looking out from contact-lens-reddened eyes, highlighted by brown eyeliner and the whisper of green eye shadow, nothing seemed in focus. The words on my laptop were blurred and no hint of reading glasses changed the text into something readable. With a sigh and the washing of hands, I said my mantra (no pain, no pain, no pain) and removed the offending lenses. I then switched the contacts, putting the right one in my left eye and… you get the point. A few squints latter, there was clarity. For 20 years, I had one toric lens (clear) for my right eye and one soft lens for my left. The soft lens used to have a blue tint to it; I suppose it was to make it easier to see it when dropped. For me it meant that I always knew which eye received which lens. Now that both eyes require toric lenses, I am out of luck, and keeping which lens is which is no longer a simple task.

The day had already been a bit different. Though we had to decline an invitation to the biggest St. Patrick’s social event in Nashville, Tennessee (my favorite private pub) due to exhaustion, work, and a just a lack of time, the day had been going well. After months of seeming rejection (work and photography-wise), I turned a small corner thanks to my friend’s on Facebook. They helped me win the American Association of University Women’s “Thumbs Up” Award during a national art contest. My Mother’s Roses won that one! And I received some wonderful words of encouragement, which were greatly needed.

To celebrate, we thought we might walk to the Pulaski Theatre, a beautifully restored historic location, to attended their St. Partick’s Day evening festivities. As we walked, the town was quiet and peaceful. The air seemed clean (a small thunder shower preceded our walk) and smelled of mulch and boxwood. We rounded the corner on Main Street and noticed that there were no excessive cars, no people milling about, and the theatre was closed. In our excitement over being able to attend a cultural event here in our little hamlet, we (okay, I) had neglected to look at the date and assumed everything Irish would happen on St. Patrick’s Day. I was day off. Well, oh Danny Boy, no festive songfest for us! No abomination of green beer (Guinness, thank you very much), and no soda bread.

So, we returned to Boxwood an hour later, choosing to walk slowly home. The images above represent that walk.

My Mother’s Roses has won the first ever  AAUW Thumbs-up Award during the 2012 AAUW Art Contest. This image received the most “likes” on the AAUW Facebook page. Many thanks to all those who voted!

Source: http://blog-aauw.org/2012/03/16/aauw-art-contest-winners/

The owner of Boxwood stopped by on Sunday to work in the gardens and trimmed the forsythia. She sent in the clippings and suggested we put the stems in warm water to force the buds, which I did…and hence a photographic moment. Many thanks, Jennifer.

We all survived my odd feelings about yesterday (a little cupcake therapy and some self-hypnosis did the trick).

And now you are probably wondering what the term snarkologist has to do with a post about forcing forsythia. I heard the word in my perusal of news items that accompanied my morning taking of tea. Snarkologist are the “snarky” bloggers out there in the blogosphere. I heard it in reference to Marilyn Hagerty’s Olive Garden review For ‘Grand Forks Herald’ (and I, too must add to it all apparently). Ms. Hagerty wrote an extremely nice review about the opening of the chain restaurant in her home town. Okay, so maybe I am not the biggest chain food lover in the world, but after living in rural Southwest Virginia, I totally get the thrill of anything new and tasty  being worth a positive mention. When you have limited choices for the palette, one takes what one can get and makes the most of it (I do get tried of my own Boxwood culinary fetishes sometimes).  So, it seems that there are those bloggers who see it differently, and feel a need to add a little more negativity to the world. They have trashed Ms. Hagerity (did I mention she is a columnist, not a blogger and is in her 80s).  Yes, we are all entitled to our opinion and the vocalization of it, but the term for those who do so in a negative light are “snarkologist.” Thank you for the terminology, Morning Joe.

The timing of my discovery of the term is extraordinary. Last night, an acquaintance of mine (in the world of living history) posted about his adventures with a snarkologist. About a year ago, he was spot lighted on a threatre writer’s blog (theatre people – you love ‘em, you hate ‘em). In this, she gave him a back-handed compliment. Perhaps her honesty was a little surprising, but that is not the issue. She lost me with her need to insult those who left comments defending said acquaintance. Her own sensitivity oozed out in the most ungracious, petty, and yes “snarky” way. She took the defense of saying her peace while her attacking the commenters – so what fun to be able to identify her as a snarkologist.

And just for the record – Albert you are so not chubby, but if you need a new photograph, I’d be happy to help you out.

Sometime last week (the days merge together), I made this image of the first daffodils of the season here at Boxwood. It was a beautiful day and maybe we had just returned from Tennessee. Today is another such day. The sun is shining and according to my iPhone weather, it should be a mild-tempature sort of day…and I don’t feel fine.

It is not that I feel badly. It is not that anything has happened out of the norm, but it feels like things are not quite in sync. My registration lines are not meeting up and my ink looks like you should view it through 3D glasses.

Again, I say that there is nothing particularly wrong that I am aware of here in creative land. I just cannot quite shake the feeling of something being amiss. Maybe it is because yesterday we received news that my childhood home has a contract on it (a very good thing, all in all). There will be no more sitting on the couch in the living room, looking out the bay window and wondering what the rest of the world is doing. There will be no more nights spent in my bedroom, waiting for the gentle assurance of sunlit mornings, telling me I survived the darkness. There will be no more finding miniature faces in the tiles on the bathroom floor. How strange. I thought I would not be sad, but I guess a part of me is saying goodbye. Perhaps childhood really is over.

Now I must leave, put on a face to meet the other faces I must meet today, and be patient with those whom I am working with as we all have good intentions. And I guess that is where it stands.

And so we left Tennessee on Monday. Goodbye Bradford Pear Trees – hello snow-tinged night in Virginia.

Our travel was uneventful and our return quiet. As we savored black bean and feta salsa leftovers, we mused on our experience at Miss Betty’s Park City Cafe, where we had enjoyed a buffet of “home cookin’.”  The fried chicken was perfect, as was the macaroni and cheese, but the people watching was even better. Lackadaisical squirts of soft ice cream turning into air as the self-serve machine emptied; the lifting of a large spoonful of collard queens at the buffet table, wondering if anyone noticed, followed by thoughts of putting it back, but ultimately doing the right thing and keeping it one’s plate; and the coup de grâce, which I did not witness, but needs to be retold anyway – the butter episode. Oh, how to describe this family in a charitable way that is non-judgemental…perhaps this stretches of the boundaries of any kindness…let’s just say they were in the obese percentile. The eldest daughter, who may  have been anywhere between age 8 to 12, neatly opened her packaged butter and began to spread it on her dinner roll, not with the provided knife mind you, but with her fingers. After lovingly, meticulously doing this, she put down the roll satisfied that it had been well covered and provided for. Yet there was still more butter left over and waste not, want not, she dabbed her fingers in the little cup holding the remaining butter, and proceeded to scoop it out and distribute it into her mouth. Aren’t buffets grand?

And also on the slightly, am-I-still-with-reality side – yesterday was Super Tuesday here in Virginia and we witnessed the strangest phenomenon in Pulaski. Voting was held at a local community center. It was a dead zone. No signage, no political supporters – nothing but a small sign on the door that told voting hours. I do not believe I have ever been near a polling place that was so deserted. Where were the Ron Paul people at the very least (since the ballot only consisted of Paul and Mick Romney)?

Sometimes one does have the ask the question – Is there anybody out there?