Holiday Celebration = Social Investment

It pays to take a breath and notice the resources we have in one another.

I recently wrote a celebration of shallow ties that unite the community and enrich us all but we can’t overlook the deeper ones either. From a social perspective, the holidays are about recognizing and reinforcing our connections on all levels.

From a nod on the street, to an office party, gift baskets for customers, Christmas cards for old neighbors we no longer see, brunches with friends and visits (even under duress) to or from families out-of-state, the season is a gauntlet of social obligations.

The other day, my wife and I shared our annual holiday freakout from being overwhelmed by it all. I asked her to take a deep breath and I needed one myself. So I walked to the studio through the neighborhood.

The Temple of my Mother

My mom would want me to take my camera along on my voyage of remembrance and I'm glad I did! I was channeling something that day and I can't wait to share more of the results.

When the news of my mother’s passing went out, we received many encouraging words and offers of support. It feels really good to know that I am the opposite of alone: I have many friends who would gladly do anything I ask, no matter the reason.

There was one invitation I especially could not resist: James’ cabin in the Goshen Pass, the seat of many joyful memories, a place of terrific beauty, and not least a place where I could spend some quiet time with a very dear friend, talking over weighty (and weightless) matters.

With my family’s blessing I threw my sleeping bag and a cooler in the car and raced over the Blue Ridge with an elated spirit. Knowing I would arrive about an hour before James, I resolved to go for a run and I knew just where I wanted go: a trail called Laurel Run that follows a lovely side canyon along a mossy and steep-falling brook into the heart of the mountains. I just wanted to stretch my legs but I got more than I expected.

After climbing a few miles, the trail petered out into a secluded glen high in a sheltered amphitheater on the mountain’s shoulder. The ground was mossy damp and open, with mighty oaks soaring up to support a green canopy high above. There were no human sounds and a quiet that is not typical in Virginia—just a few crickets, distant birdsong, and the sound of acorns falling.

I had strode unexpectedly into a cathedral, of the kind my mother had often spoken longingly and there could be no better place to remember her. I walked through the trees feeling completely invigorated and in touch with all lives, both current and disappeared or even forgotten. I thought about her presence in this place, within me and everywhere.

At a moment when I was receiving encouraging notes and gifts, this was the mightiest of them all. I am grateful for whatever force called me to that particular place. Whether it was a benevolent voice from my mother or from within me or simple chance that took me there, it was exactly what I needed.

After some remembrance and contemplation, I flew down the mountain and back to the cabin, ready to celebrate. I picked up some of that bumper crop of acorns. I will plant one in my yard to remember my mother, who taught me how to walk with the trees.

Postscript

I stored the acorns in a little plastic cup on my side porch. Meredith reports that some squirrels raided the place and spirited the acorns away. It looks like the job of planting them is now out of my hands. One can only hope that the squirrels buried the nuts in spots with plenty of light and that they forget a few of them, as they often do. It's an absurdity that my mom would appreciate. Meantime, I'll be on the lookout for tiny seedlings with alternate-lobed leaves.

The Pond

Baker's Branch is an Eden forty-five miles from my front door.

Yesterday I got up early and harvested the first greens from my garden. I was making sandwiches for my father-in-law and myself. We had a special day ahead.

He owns a share of a large and mostly undeveloped piece of land about 45 minutes from town that is divided up like a pie with a pond in the center. The only permanent structure visible from the pond sits on a communally shared tranche. It is a small but beautifully crafted cabin consisting of a porch and a dry sauna.

The routine is always the same: first we heat up and stretch in the wood-stove-heated sauna, then dip in the chilly (though no longer frigid) pond. Afterward we sit on the porch and enjoy the woods, then repeat the cycle four or five times.

The pond occupies a space in my life akin to the Turkish Baths back in New York. We go there to rest and rejuvenate. We sweat out—and I stretch out—the toxins that slowly accumulate in daily life. The pond’s water and its many subtleties inevitably recall Thoroeau. The open spaces, soft treescapes, and primeval purity couldn’t be more different than the delightful skank of the Turkish Bath grotto.

During one of his visits to New York, I took the old man to the Baths and he fully appreciated its many—and consummately urban—charms. Breathing the fresh air and hearing the natural sounds, we reflected on that other place and how we love both places equally well, but in different ways.

The Pink House

Layhill's Last Farm House oil on canvas 30" x 40" 1992.

When I was a child the little subdivision where I lived was an island of suburbia in the middle of the country--or at least it seemed that way. In every direction, fields and forests: a small Eden for a boy to explore and proving ground for a thousand childhood fantasies.

I learned to run crosscountry by chasing deer and I found out that I was fast when I caught one. I helped my father chop wood in the autumn and my mother taught me where to find rare wildflowers in the spring. Sledding was an embarrassment of riches and summer was a toy boat in a bubbling stream. Open space and unstructured play with the many children nearby made me the person I am today.

Passing years could be measured in bulldozer tracks as one farm after another was sold, razed, and replaced my more culs-de-sac until only a few parks remained of what had been a pretty wild place. By the time I was in college, the winding country road was a divided highway and you could walk to the Metro. The Real Estate market even claimed a nearby golf course.

By the time I came back from junior year in Europe (1992), only one farm house remained, and it didn't seem long for this world so I did a painting of it, illustrated above, to keep at least some record of how things were before.

All this time later, the pink house is still there. My brother lives in the house where we both grew up and the painting is hanging on his wall. He emailed me the other day with a link to a blog he had found. It was about the pink house.

It turns out the owners are musicians who are methodically restoring the house after a fire in 2005 (now I'm really glad I did the painting!) and blogging about it. The account is extremely detailed and is links the their other, more personal, blog so I've been able to learn quite alot about the pink house and its residents.

Standing in the tall grass in the hot Washington summer and feeling like a vanGogh/Hopper hybrid (I had just been to Arles) I wondered a lot about the people inside and their lives. When I finished the painting I think I went to show it to them and I don't remember if anyone was home.

Thanks to their blog I was able to learn more about them, and now thanks to my blog, they can see the painting.

My dad's pancakes

Here's a picture Sebastian caught of my dad and me--and an early tree painting. He was four at the time.

It's difficult being away from Sebastian. This has been a good trip so far, but saying goodbye to him only gets harder. And he's starting to suffer a little bit too.

This past weekend, I met Meredith and him at my parents' house near Washington, DC. While we were there my dad told me that he had to spend a year away from my mom and my two sisters (I was not born yet) while he completed his graduate studies in Saint Louis. Our little struggles are familiar to many, maybe even universal.

That made me feel better. I really respect my dad and it was a great message because it combined sympathy and a gentle reminder that I wouldn't lose Sebastian while I'm away.

To comfort me just a little more on my return to New York, he sent me off with pancakes he had made, each wrapped in wax paper and packed in groups of four into sandwich bags.

Monday morning, I threw those puppies on the griddle and thought about my dad as I had breakfast.

A nice way to start the week.

Death Imitates Art that Imitates Death

Lydia McKenzie is a Williamsburg-based photographer whose work recreates cold-case murder scenes in the neighborhood. Her first New York solo show awakens a killer who kills McKenzie’s models in a way that gruesomely imitates her photographs. That is the premise of Meredith Cole’s debut novel, Posed for Murder.

This fast-paced mystery is full of hipsters, cigarette-butt-filled loft stair-ways, local coffee joints, smarmy landlords, mafioso-wannabes, bad-Thai, vintage clothing, a Puerto Rican detective that’s too handsome for his own good, and a thousand other hilarious references to the peculiarities that make our neighborhood special. The prose read crisp, quick, and smart as a whip. It’s required reading for all Williamsburgers, Art World denizens or lovers of mystery, mayhem, and contemporary art.

Posed for Murder will have its official Brooklyn launch on March 13 from 7 PM to 9 PM at Open Gallery night in Williamsburg at The Front Room Gallery. Meredith will join Brian Wiprud at Word Bookstore in Greenpoint on March 10 at 7:30 PM for an evening of mystery. Friends of the Williamsburg Public Library is also planning an event (date TBD). The book can be purchased at Spoonbill & Sugartown, Word, retail locations nationwide, and online. More information on Meredith’s website.

Dreams from My Grandmother-in-law

Something about this place gives my dreams extraordinary vividness...

For the first time since her passing, I dreamed of Margery last night. She was ancient and needed help down a winding staircase--so much so that I practically carried her. It would have been easier for our combined ungainliness nearly caused us to tumble more than once teetering on the brink. Whe we reached the bottom I set her gently down on a stone floor but she was folded like a heap.

Her sigh that closed the dream are imprinted on my mind: "Oh the burning..."

Benski+Emski

These two know how to have fun. Congrats Benjameister and Emski. We couldn't be happier for you.

Ben and Emily’s wedding was the full deal. Really four days of celebration. Huge tent like a circus or country auction set up behind the garden. Friends encamped on ridge opposite. Outrageously good barbeque. Plenty of excellent local creftbrew. Old friends from really far away. New friends. Missing relations and missed. New members of the family and they feel really close.

Torrential rains with cheery-sized hail that somehow replaced itself with perfect blue skies just at the right moment. Sunlight as if designed by an experienced theatre hand. May’s full bloom. No bugs(!) Four piece bluegrass band on a haywagon complete with hay.

Kids free to roam and do as they please with minimal supervision and tons of fun. Plenty of company for them and for us too. Wonderful people constantly figuring out how to help and just doing so with being asked or told. Two cozy fires, one with free neck massages.

An Aussie, an Alaskan dogsledrunner, lake-country Minnesotans, people from the hills of Carolina. New Yorkers, a photojournalist from DC. She had to leave early to shoot another wedding—the president’s daughter. Vollyball on the east lawn. Croquet to the north. Ping pong on the south slope. I watched them play from the outdoor shower. Of course a good friend just happened to be working on the catering staff. This is Charlottesville and all people of taste were mobilized.

Grass so green and air so sweet. Tiki torches. Fond stories of the one who could not make it. Wish she were here but our thoughts about her are celebrations. Washing dishes in buckets on the porch. Mark your cup with a sharpie or a white ribbon. You’ll want to hang onto it.

It was a wonderful, affirming experience. This pair was destined to marry but they worked hard to get to the altar. Not always an easy road for them but the right one.

Farewell Margery

Margery Edson-Gould (pictured here on her wedding day) departed just a few days shy of her grandson Ben's own much-anticipated nuptuals.

Margery Swan Huff Edson-Gould (6/20/15-5/6/08) passed away last week, and we’ll all miss her terribly. Everyone who met her they always walked away thinking, "So this is what a human can be." She was quite simply magnificent and her quality shines brightly in her daughters and through to her granddaughter Meredith, my lovely wife. I have been fortunate to know Margery for the past eighteen years and I am better for it.

The first thing most people noticed about Margery was her fierce, burning passion for life. I say this not as a cliché about someone who is physically battered yet with a great lust for life, though by the end such a description would fit. She was physically precocious and her prime years extended well into what others would consider old age. She used to whip her grandchildren in tennis and was notorious for receiving speeding tickets in her VW Scirocco. She lived life as one on fire yet she was always calm.

She would have made a great coach, and she was, in fact, very interested in [and opinionated about] sports. I'll never forget the night I got us prime seats at the U.S. Track & Field Championships. I told a few people there that her grandfather had been an early Olympian but the luminaries of the running world treated her as a star that night for reasons not even they understood. There was something about her that commanded respect. Maybe it was her eyes, which were perhaps Meredith's greatest inheritance.

Margery inspired those around her not only by setting a great example, but by taking a very real and thoughtful interest in everyone she met. She was extraordinarily generous with her thoughts, praise, and many small gifts. She never met anyone she considered a hopeless case and saw great potential for good in everyone. She told them so and they wanted to go out and make good on the promise she found in them. Perhaps that explains her rapid ascent from the gym teacher to high school principal and beyond. She would have been a great politician and perhaps president in a different sort of world.

But she changed many lives nevertheless. Her influence was meted out in small conversations, cards and bouquets, winks and many, many hugs. She lived a very full and rich life and hers is an example I would gladly follow.