Cacti

On of my earliest memories involves walking around a very big store, with very wide aisles and white linoleum tiling.  I am not sure of my age or location, but I must have been rather small because I remember the floor better than anything else.  Small people are closer to the floor.  I was with my grandmothers.  Yep, that is right, plural, grandmotherS.  I was with my Grandma Esau and my Great-Grandma Freckles.  Freckles was not her real name.  Her real name was Anice Ida Leach.  But I wouldn't know this for several more years because I was small and names and relationships are kinda vague and smoonched together.  What I knew was that Grandma Freckles looked like she had a lot of Freckles, so that's what I called her.  Grandpa Freckles got the name just cuz he was married to Grandma Freckles.  It made sense at the time.  Grandpa Freckles used to pull quarters out of my ears and made coffee so strong that it would make your hair fall out.  I didn't know the part about the coffee until much later, either.  So, me and the grandmas in a store.  I don't know exactly where we were or what our purpose was, although I imagine we were grocery shopping Albion the "big" town (population approximately 1,000) near our "little" town of Petersburg (population 283). 

What is important though, is that I walked out of that store with a little cactus plant all my own. It was the kind that has a green trunk and then a super florescent pink round bit grafted to the top. I don't know what brought about this gift.  My family never had much money and I didn't have the kind of grandparents that expressed love by buying me things.  I certainly didn't ask, that's not how the world worked for me.  Why it was decided I must have a cactus, I will never know.  However, it was love at first sight, I believe. I can't be sure because as I mentioned, I was quite small. But, I have cacti in my home now and more at my office. I often experience the following scenario with clients in my office:
"Are these rea--ouch! They are real!" It is a good measure of impulse control, "can you resist touching the cactus to see if it is real long enough for your therapist to give a response?" There is never a time that I haven't owned a cactus of some sort. I even grew some from seed, once. They are a constant for me. I never thought about it much until recently, though. I happened to mention, in passing to my dad, that I really liked grasses and cacti.  I appreciate flowers and love to have them growing around my home but I don't typically make a bee line for the flowers at the garden section of home stores.  I go for the the cacti or grasses.  My dad replied "Hmm, I bet that is because of your grandmas in Nebraska."  My dad can be kind of oblivious to things, mostly minor, like the birthdays of his children, but he got this one right.  I think I have always had cacti around as a way to remain connected to my grandmas, even though I lived half the continent away from them most of my life, and especially now that Grandma Freckles has passed away.  I remain connected with them by sharing a love for pokie, spiny, awkward plant. There is a beauty to them as well, the variations in color, shape & spines, but you have to have an appreciate for unusual beauty. And when the do flower, it warrants a full blown celebration.  Other plants are like girls from the wrong side of the tracks, they give it up easily.  They flower all over the place without anyone even half-trying.  If you see a cactus blooming and you are not in the desert, you know that there was either the perfect alignment of the stars or the person growing the cactus was very attentive, meeting it's every need, like pampered royalty.  I find them more beautiful for it and I appreciate that I learned to love something not commonly considered beautiful.  That is very likely the true gift of the grandmothers.  And yes, the grandmas had blooming cacti in Nebraska. 

Artist

Well, it seems I am an artist.  Identifying myself as an "artist" has never been part of my self concept.  I strongly identified as "creative" and have loved making crafts, arranging holiday vignettes and personalizing my living spaces, even as a small child. My mom tells me I would arrange my play things "just so" in a little toy kitchen.  It was usually, promptly destroyed by my younger brother, much to my consternation.  I also cannot remember a time when I didn't have a stash of crafty things for making gifts, cards, Christmas ornaments, and random bits of this and that.  I felt totally and completely "unglued" when I couldn't find my, you guessed it, my glue gun for a few months after a recent move.  I was totally disoriented.  I doodled through every lecture I ever attended, right on up to and through my doctoral program.  But, straight up artist was not me but people who painted or had fancy cameras and dark rooms or did more than just doodle.   I formed my identity around being academic.  I studied, researched, hypothesized & memorized.  I am fascinated theories, ideas, research results.  Boring nerd stuff.  I went as far as I could go academically.  Hello, Doctorate in Philosophy of Psychology.   Recently, I joined an online community via Facebook called Open Group for Bedlam Farms, started by one of my favorite authors, Jon Katz.  This a community for those who love animals, writing and other forms of creative expression.  As I have seen posts of photos, paintings, poems, essays produced by individuals who identify as artists, I have considered the possibility that I might not just be a nerd, but also an artist. In fact, I think I can pretty confidently say that my creative expression "counts" as art. How can I be sure?  Well, in true nerd fashion, I looked it up!   According to Google, "art" is defined as "The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,...: 'the art of the Renaissance.'" And "Works produced by such skill and imagination."  Hmmm....  chew on that for a while, self!  Major, cataclysmic shift, tectonic plates in my brain crashing.  It seems that all these years I have been creating art!  Therefore, it follows that as a producer of art, I am an artist.  My brain still screeches to a halt writing that sentence and starts looking around for more familiar academic territory.  That's okay, though, I'll integrate this new idea into my sense of self.  Its nice to experience growth, even in "middle age" (although if I live as long as my great grandparents, I won't be truly middle aged for another decade!).  I am looking forward to being a part of the artist community as nerd artist!

Photograph of my dog, Kona

Photograph of my favorite flowers.

Two Feet of Love

I have always said that my husband, Hugh, and I had souls that were cut from the same cloth.  It is stereotypical, but totally true, that it felt like we had known each other our whole lives when we first met.  It was magical and seemed to be the product of divine intervention.  Hugh is convinced that his Grandpa Jones, who was a gambling man, worked out a deal in heaven.  When he was alive he constantly tried, and constantly failed, to set Hugh up with eligible women. After he passed way, it seems he continued his efforts to set Hugh up from heaven.  Apparently, Grandpa Jones ran into my Grandpa Esau and they found a way to get their grandkids together.  This was a huge gamble since my life circumstances didn't make starting a relationship an easy thing to do (super long story!).  Eventually, the fabric of our lives were sewn together.  There have been a lot of snags- a terrifying, life threatening pregnancy, a very angry baby, debt from the pregnancy, the loss of our support system, job changes and health problems.  Hugh contracted mono when our daughter was about a year old.  Unfortunately, he never fully recovered and has astronomical levels of the Epstein Barr Virus (which causes mono) in his system.  As a result, he has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  We just learned of this diagnosis and he is beginning treatment.  The snag this time is that he will feel worse before he feels better and we have hit the worse part of the journey.  It is hard, there is little I can do to help, he is not mentally or physically present as much as I want him to be.  However, our souls are still sewn together.  This picture of feet is actually picture of our souls connecting.  No matter how sick he feels or overwhelming this illness seems, there is a connection.  Even if it is just putting his feet on my leg, he reaches out to me.  And that is enough.