I will if you will

I have a hat hanging in my shop that says that, I will if you will. I thought it would be something I sold but I got embarrassed by the wide open possibility of it and stopped making it, but I like the broader thoughts there so maybe I will bring it back. It would seem new and I guess I need some new hat designs, to please my customers, the ones who read each and every hat looking for the perfect one. I wonder how many of them noticed my absence yesterday.

Yes, I skipped Saturday Market yesterday. It was a hard decision but the right one for my body, so I tried to convince myself that if I had a cold, that would be more clear, and easier. My issue was that I had overworked and a chronic condition had flared up...I have a nerve issue in my left arm. I knew the lifting would make it worse. Lifting all of my wares and fixtures four times adds up to a lot of work, all harder with an injury. The right thing to do, to rest, was clear, but it wasn't the easy thing to do.

As are many life decisions, this one was complicated by many conflicting desires. I would have had pretty good sales. I heard someone had their best week ever. That part was pretty hard, and self-destructive in a sense, since I need the regular presence and the sales to keep everything on track. Yet the physical issues trumped that; if I lose the use of the arm for all practical purposes, I'll have to quit all the way. So skipping a week was a compromise and it did work. The arm is better. I should be able to manage the week's work work that is really important to me and to the OCF. People are counting on me that don't even know me or anything about me.

I tuned out the world, washed my dishes and mopped the floors and tried to baby my arm. I pondered my future and the future of hand-crafting. There had been some heated discussions on the OCF Facebook sites about the future of crafts at OCF that highlighted some of the essential differences in perspective. I chatted with everyone who helped me with my printing this week to see how off-base my thinking might be compared to the larger general public and volunteer population of OCF. I had just been explaining at a party last week how the Fair seems to be shifting its focus from a craft fair to a festival. I claimed there was a culture of folks who went from festival to festival, dressing in fairy and other costumes and partying, looking for peak transformational experiences and fun, but not really caring if the stuff they had or bought was handmade or not. I also claimed that there was a stupendous amount of stuff being sold around Fair, in the campgrounds, along the roadsides, and from person to person that had nothing to do with the  hand-crafted goods that we crafters sell in our booths.

My little bit of personal research showed I was more-or-less correct, but it also shifted my thinking by reminding me that situations like this grow organically by individuals making practical and unrelated decisions about things that don't amount to social movements, and in no way are they calculated to undermine or change anything that is already in place. Change just happens. All the people who sell things just do so because the opportunity presents itself, and they take what seems to be the easiest and quickest route to their solutions to taking advantage of the opportunities. For instance, let's imagine that some group of people were at a festival or the Fair, and they thought of a description for themselves, their group. It makes a good t-shirt, as it has that appeal of being something that begs more information, gives a sense of belonging, and creates group cohesiveness for a small group of friends. Then, and I'm speculating in a general sense, to cover their Fair costs, a person makes and sells the shirts or has them made, creates a website for them perhaps, commissions more designs when they catch on, and then curiosity spreads. As the group gets bigger, the individual cooler full of drinks and snacks for family and friends evolves to a potluck, then maybe to an organized distribution network of bigger quantities, say perhaps a keg, which then requires some kind of controlled system to keep it from being used by opportunists or kids below the drinking age, and then some mugs are perhaps commissioned and rented out or sold. Something like that could develop. It wouldn't be intended to be a problem for anyone, and it doesn't break any rules, in fact, it allows better compliance with rules such as preventing underage drinking. So let's imagine that about a thousand of these kinds of things developed in relation to OCF over the last four decades. Some fizzled and some stuck, some were great legends and some are still there to be found.

At no point did anyone think about how this might affect a person who prints shirts, or makes mugs, and sells those items in a craft booth. There was no intention to shift the Fair emphasis from celebrating handmade art
 objects to selling commercially made objects outside of the "eight". Those two things were not seen to be related, and aren't seen that way, and the proliferation of folks who want to be festers and want to flit around in wings and little dresses without pockets having fun and not buying crafts or things to carry was not anyone's intention. So no foul. When I look at that and relate it to my decreasing ability to screenprint shirts by hand and to get my goods to the marketplace, I'm making an attempt to relate two things which aren't really in the same realm at all. There should be room for their party and my booth, and my aging process and ability to make a living for myself should not really be thrown into the discussion of what someone in a campground does with their spare time and money.

The Facebook groups have really changed how the Fair Family communicates and thinks about each other. We used to just have our private discussions and meetings, then our FFN with the opportunity to write articles or letters, and the Board meetings for issues that didn't get heard or resolved at the lower levels. People with what we could call "Pressing Member Issues" generally kept them to their group of friends unless they had a crisis and then they sometimes exploded with a letter or angry rant and generally didn't get a helpful response. They often targeted a random volunteer with their rant, often not anyone in a position to provide any help at all, due to a general lack of information about who does what, which is just another area where Fair grew organically without a great deal of intention or supervision. Because we do not have a person in charge of everything, and we never will. We have people in charge of things, some paid to be, but there is way too much going on to have it all under centralized control. That's just the way it is in large groups of people intent on having fun and putting on an event.

Our little group of a thousand crafters and their representatives on the Craft Committee do not always see the issues outside of our perspective. We don't always know what is going on in the campgrounds, at pre-Fair, or along the surrounding roads. We have our heads down and are doing our work as fast as we can during the months and days before and during Fair itself. We see our own culture, and our needs and issues, and we see our diminishing abilities to survive in our world without safety nets, and we can build up fears that don't resonate for others. Like my absence at Saturday Market yesterday, our one craft and booth is not really something so essential that we will make a tear in the fabric if we step back. It's a big tear to us, but the fabric quickly reweaves if we quit or take a Fair off or even die. Obviously many essential Fair family have indeed died and the fabric has rewoven around the hole they left. It has been important to the few who were directly connected but less important to the many who were not.

And that is life. It's important for me to remember that I am small and my concerns are not generally shared. My crisis is not someone else's immediacy. What some of us crafters see as an erosion of all we have created and depend upon, was not intended to be, and we have the job of showing the relationship of it, if indeed there is one. Someone selling a cool commercially made t-shirt in a campground does not mean I can't sell my cool t-shirt in my booth, and with as many thousands of people as we have at Fair, it probably means nothing to my sales. I just have to hold my own with my handmade things in the ocean of things that are not handmade. So I have to feature myself in my presentation: have my hangtag that says how I use a craft technique to make this product one at a time and how this product will improve your life and keep me alive too. I have to make that matter to you, to keep that direct link connected, or I won't make it in the Fair as we know it today. Maybe OCF should help me with this, maybe they do, maybe I'm on my own.

Nothing was calculated to make it harder for me. Nobody overworked my arm (but me) and no one decided not to care about my future when they bought commercially made OCF items to sell or made a product to sell to their friends or fill a need for their family or community group. So me ranting about my fears is not going to get a great response, just as it has always been when any small interest group or person with an issue tries to get the greater attention of the big spinning peach. There lies some of the frustrating response to the struggle to define and protect the hand-crafted part of OCF. Lots and lots of people don't see a problem. Lots and lots of people never thought about it, can't relate, and have no idea what we crafters are talking about.

The reality at OCF now is that many goods being sold, both outside the craft booths and within, are not handcrafted by the definition we've assumed was common knowledge: one person making a thing and selling it to another person. Lots of people have responded to the Fair opportunity by making other choices: that of taking on a partner to do some of the work, buying commercial components to lessen the workload, or simply buying commercially made items to elevate the income and fun for the individual during the brief window of monetary exchange that happens there. Maybe they're opportunists or maybe they have a bad arm and can't approach the marketplace like they used to, but they still need to pay the rent. Maybe they lie or maybe they interpret the words in the guidelines differently, or maybe they don't even know what the guidelines say. Maybe they juried in or were grandfathered and don't even know they are not in compliance with the guidelines. Maybe they used to comply, and now they don't really care and don't see the point.

It's the time in our history to pause on this ridgeline and look at the downslope of history on one side and the future on the other. What can we do with what we see and know and how can we resolve all of our differing views and parts and keep a cohesive community going for the next decade or more? Do we let the handcrafter flounder in the sea of commercially made goods or do we give them some protection? Do we find a way to keep the people who aren't in compliance or do we find a way to jettison them? Can we weather all the narrow interests which will spawn the rants and letters and now Facebook posts of people who don't have the broad knowledge to see the big picture, and see it clearly? These are huge questions with very little agreement in the larger groups that form and revolve and break apart and reform continually within our very large membership.

They aren't simple questions, and discussing them brings up fears and defensive responses and even personal attacks. I am not prepared, as a Craft Committee Member and longterm craftsperson, to be castigated for my questions or my answers. I wish I were confident that I could speak out and discuss these issues without bringing harm upon myself or people I work with and know. I have my struggles. I can't stay on Facebook for hours each day patiently explaining that screenprinting is a craft technique and I am allowed to do it on commercially made goods because I am a printer and not a seamstress. It doesn't matter that I have done it for forty years and am wearing myself out. It doesn't matter that I skipped Market to serve the Fair, had to make that agonizing choice yesterday. The fifty or sixty dollars that I didn't pay Market won't break the budget, and the people from out of town who didn't get to buy my crafts found something else to buy. If I died and my craft booth was given to someone else, that wouldn't matter either. What would matter?

I think all that would matter is that we all did the best we could at every step, with every question and every answer, to think of each other and the good of the commons. It would matter whether or not we listened with an open mind to another's experience and opinion. It would matter that we were giving and kind, not selfish and grasping. It would be important that we thought of our own well-being and survival and set some priorities so that we would not hurt ourselves or sacrifice too much or let each other down. It would be best if we worked hard to find the elegant solutions instead of pushing for decrees that didn't really solve the problems and indeed created greater problems. We can't just have a majority vote on things in our culture. We are committed to the consensus process. We have to take the time to care for each other. We really can't let that go. See if you can do your part. It is going to take all of us to really do a good job. I will if you will.

Working on The Big Job

I'm happy working, about a fourth of the way through the big job, working hard every day. Doing other things, of course, but mostly that. Worked on Friday, went to Market, got up and worked on Sunday. Worked today. Decided not to go to Tuesday Market because it will be rainy, and because I want to work on the big job tomorrow. I want to work on it on Wednesday, so I'm happy my writing group was cancelled this week. I want the second half to come right away and I will be sorry to finish it, though tired and relieved I'm sure.

Mother's Day came and went, and I sent a card and talked to my Mom on the phone. I thought a lot about mothering, and parenting. My ex- called me to thank me as he often does. I thanked him back. Mothering was the first big job that really felt good to me like this one does. The feeling is that nothing is as important, that this is the first and really only priority. Mothering was like that, but not until the helpless baby was really here. Pregnancy was a bit abstract, and my first priority was still work then. For years and years though, mothering was my first and largest thought every day, every hour.

The business I had with my ex- then wa
s the direct connection to this life now, and I do owe him thanks because I would never have chosen it. I would have stayed a little one-person craft business and not ever had employees to manage or accounts to wholesale to, or a giant warehouse unit with machines and shelves and equipment I didn't even really know how to use: that big old-fashioned photo enlarger. That fabric knife that we used to cut out the fish ties was too scary for me. The rafts of sales reps were way too much for me. I endured the big business because it was what we were doing, and because it allowed me to buy this house, another thing I wouldn't have done. I followed Mike's lead, and was happy to take on the challenges once I realized I could succeed at them. It was the perfect thing to be doing in my late thirties. I kept it when it got small and I am still living it, and doing a lot with the skills that connect me with my community. It has been keeping me alive for decades now. We started it in 1985, so thirty years.

In 1989 I decided to have a baby, and had my son when I was 39. I had a new role, and I still had the old roles, but this one was different. I immediately set out to prepare myself for a new level of relationship. None of my boyfriends or partners had expected that much of me, that I would keep them alive and figure out how to allow them to thrive. I knew how to make a home, but not how to be the person who was at the center of it. So I put my son at the center and worked around him while I learned how to grow up. I did okay at it, though I would change a great many things if I could. Still, I honor myself for the immersion and for the seriousness with which I took on the challenge. I loved the primacy of it, the fact that nothing was more important. That's probably what was the hardest thing about the empty nest phase, the way I had to let go of that primary role, that honorable and deeply engaging role, and find another that would fill me at least half as much.

I found other things and people to nurture. It's not the same, as these are organizations and adults and philosophies and theories that I nurture now, and I spend much more time on my own self-indulgent pursuits like my writing and reading and film studies and birding and plant interests. I'm at the center if anything is. I'm at the center making any kind of choice I want to make, whether it be the silliness of the Jell-O Art Show or the seriousness of diligent historical research. I think about important things like whether or not to cut down the apple tree or the holly tree, when to fix the roof, what to do about all the many things that need my attention. I do a lot for free and a lot for small amounts of money that add up, and I work most of the time on my own terms. I'm happy to have such a varied life with what seems like the right amount of responsibility and I don't want to make any big changes, though I am making small ones as I age. Letting go of things is getting easier, and changing is less under my control and more up to the fourth dimension of time.

When I get into something like this big job, it reminds me of those days of mothering, when I had one clear and always present priority. I had to meet the needs of my son. And now I have to deliver this great quantity of printed shirts. Each one is going to be used and treasured by an individual who is involved in another big thing, an event that is much more than an event, a time that is wide and deep for many, many people. While I am cranking them out at a rapid rate, 597 the first day, and 637 the second day, each one is going to the hands of someone I know or will see or will miss during the event, or for years afterward. Each one is a symbol of the thing we are going to do together. This is the year of the fifth element, now that we've gone through the ceremonies of Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

The fifth element, which I think is Spirit, is something we can't even really talk about. I start to cry when I try to address it. I know some of the dimensions of it, some of the language, some of the mysteries. I know there are no answers to the questions that we ask of spirit. There is no end to the labels and interpretations and limits we humans try to place on it. Our pettiness does not bother spirit. Our individuality, our self-importance, our righteousness, does not impress. I don't matter, except that I am everything as well. I hold spirit in my hands and I am using my hands to convey spirit to many others, in the objects I am making.

They are practical and meaningful, and yet common and rather ordinary in many ways. They're all alike even though handmade artifacts touched by me. Others will touch them and not think of me. I am a vehicle sending them on their way to be meaningful. I'm letting them all go. Some will return for an additional layer of meaning, when I print things on the back to honor pieces of the work we are all going to do. When I handle them again they will resonate for me, but not as something I own, but something I am giving.

I like that I am doing this by myself. I'm not, really, as I am paying someone to help me and will be inviting others to volunteer to do so, but I'm the main effort being applied and everything is depending on me. If I failed or flaked someone else would step up, but that is not going to happen because this big job is my reason for life right now. My immediate life, right now. This night, this heart is beating to do this thing. I can't think of anything that has felt so important since my son was small. I'm fully immersed. I feel quite beautiful and powerful and full.

The wedding and all the people and the life and death was all framed by the word love. Everyone was saying it so much I felt cynical. I felt that it was so simplistic to talk about this bit of love, the relationship between a man and a woman, one thin slice of the world's love. The poem I almost had to read was kind of saying that if you didn't have that, nothing else mattered. I just knew that wasn't true. I wanted to explain somehow that all the love that was there, the many ways people were sharing it and declaring it and owning it and giving it, all that love was still not all the kinds of love.

This kind of love, my love of my work and the depth of it, even though it looks like a job of screenprinting when some ink gets applied to some fabric, encompasses a lifetime of meaning. It's the main kind of love I have right now, and I feel very lucky to have it and to recognize it. I don't have to get up early and go to work tomorrow. I get to get up early and put my heart into it, use my hands to enrich my life and the life of thousands. I can hardly wait. I just had to stay up late and remark upon it. It's work worth doing.

Life Markers

Today was my 65th birthday, and I broke my cardinal birthday rule: I didn't take the day off. I'm glad that I went to Tuesday Market...it was the first of the season and the rain didn't materialize, though it was chilly and windy. Hats sold well, and a few bags, and I got presents! People gave me plants, flowers, meat, cookies, tamales and salsa, hugs and smiles. I cooked my own dinner and then went to Sweet Life, and now I get to write!

Work is really heavy these days, cramming lots of small jobs in between a couple of larger ones. I printed one pile of 250 shirts in two hours, with one helper. I think I can go even faster than that when I need to. I wasn't even sore afterward, except my foot. I just can't stand up all day anymore. Standing on concrete downtown is really bad, but in my shop it's more the walking that gets to me. Having a helper is the best solution, so I'll try to make myself do it more. I hate to pay people for doing my work, but I had better get used to that.

There's no way to fix Market from being hard on me; that's just going to be a continuing saga. Lots of folks quit this winter and gave up their reserve spots. It's sad to see but the way it is. I still feel young, and hope with better care of myself I will be able to last another decade on the blocks. Guess we'll see.

I saw Lotte today! That always cheers me up to see the founder of our Market coming to buy her vegetables. She just does what she can each day, and that is all we all can do. Each day our best.

I really haven't had a chance to say more about my trip to Australia. I was so lucky to go, and treated so well. Now that I'm back in my little world and my quiet home, I'm so appreciative of that opportunity to see another place and explore new woods and list new birds (32 species at least!). I'm still stunned at the quality of the hospitality I received. John and Graziella thought of everything, and went so far as to convince their neighbors to let us use their houses, so that many of the guests had free lodgings. They rented vans and cars so that wherever we went it was easy. We rarely had to take the bus, getting picked up and dropped off at any destination we chose. It was as if we were the honored guests, when I expected to do whatever was needed by the bride and groom. I know I was on my mom's coattails for all of that service, but really they did things for everyone. All of the cousins and uncles and friends were invited to meals and coffee time rolled around whenever there were more than two people in the kitchen.

On our ferry day to Watson's Bay

Graziella's parents Colomba and Rocco modeled that sensitivity to others' needs, and did it all quietly without a trace of bother. If milk ran low they were off to the store. We ate so many loaves of bread and kinds of pasta and delicious simple meals I was hard pressed to even get hungry. We lived in luxury. I don't know how to thank them. The obvious way would be to offer the same, should I ever get a visit, or at least learn to treat my own guests with a similar sense of open generosity. I've vowed to get rid of some belongings so that I have a decent guest room and can extend sincere invitations. That will be a good project for the coming end-of-summer, when my time frees up a little.

As always my brother inspired me to do better in so many ways. I love how he does that, not by telling me but just by being a good person, allowing people to see how he struggles and works to fix things and craft life carefully. Weddings are very powerful for showing a person's community. There were a hundred people around those dinner tables, all wishing the best for their two friends.The speeches, the happiness shared by all of us, were reflections of the two of them. They inspire each other, and the work they do to communicate and love each other is visible. The maturity of their lives and their relationship is warming and hopeful to witness. I was drawn to them, like everyone there. They were the center of our human collection on that day and for that time. No wonder I was overwhelmed with emotion. Such a rich experience.

Family group photos

I loved being with the older people too. We had one evening when Mom and a couple of Graziella's uncles sat around the table and talked about the conditions of their childhoods and those of their parents in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Their experiences were quite similar ones of poverty in a rural setting, growing their food, trying to increase their resources, and providing dreams and support for their children. Their parents and grandparents had worked even harder than these folks, farming with draft animals, sleeping in the same buildings with their animals for warmth, and using the dung (or that of the departed bison) for fuel. There was plenty of fun too in the large families. Living history lessons from the family stories gave us all a lot to imagine about our ancestors. Mom happens to be writing a book about her grandmother, who homesteaded in Nebraska in about 1880, and I'm working on my book about the history of my property, which starts in 1850. All of that time came alive for me listening to the families. The uncles gave my Mom a copy of their book about the Italian community in Adelaide, many of whom migrated from Molinara in Italy. Their family is still close because their family has always been close, and they maintain that intentionally.

It's hard not to want that, and maintaining it is something I want to work harder at. I want to spend that time. It's hard to find the ways, take the steps. I have to work harder at gratitude for what I do have, for the attention I do get, and lose some of the impatience and petty thoughts that come to me. Nothing is gained by getting; it's all in the giving. It's good to have directions for self-improvement, good examples, and plans. As I yawn my way from the few hours off I gave myself tonight for my birthday, I grant myself some good dreams. I can dream and work for the little improvements that step by step will add to the work of the last sixty-five years to make the next many better than I can presently imagine. I love my life. Thanks for being in it with me!

Wedding sunset before we all went inside

Going Down Under

I missed my blog when I was in Australia. I didn't take a laptop or my password, and I wrote madly in my journal to keep track of everything but there were so many deep thoughts in such quick succession, it didn't seem like a good time to write. I'm changed, though. I come here a changed person.

My brother got married at 52, in a well-planned explosion of calm joy and I was so lucky to be there for that. My Mom at 89 traveled all that way and gamely went all the places we went and she and I shared a room in John's condo in Leichhardt. We ate all of our meals with John's wife Graziella's parents, who speak a mix of Italian and German as they live in Switzerland. If you know me you know I didn't really study that Italian like I meant to. There was the writing conference and the Jell-O Show and the Opening Day of Market and then making the cake decorations, and everything was a blur of challenge and work and then I spent a very long night on a plane and landed on the other side of the world. I learned quite a bit of Italian over breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and cafe many times a day, though. So there's that.

I'm a person who lives in an alternative society bubble and I think I'm politically aware but I didn't really know how socialism felt. It feels really safe. When you have free health care (which I do but I don't trust it at all) and a safety net when you get old (which I do because I have made one by staying in this community for 40 years and being a fairly nice person) and live in a beautiful place (which I do because so many people care about this place and others haven't completely ruined it yet) you can open up a bit. There was no sense of fear and desperation there like you feel here, no constant competition for resources. I felt like I had opened up a lot but when I hung around with all these people who were younger than me, who were working a lot harder to be open and stay open, I saw how closed I generally am. Ah well. I'll do better now.

Family patterns are overwhelming and seem like they're set in concrete forever. At best you can tease and laugh about them, but changing them is daunting. The ones between me and Mom are pretty okay. I take care of her as well as I can, which is minimally, but for two weeks I did great with that. I walked slow and carried her water bottle and bird book and woke her up the night she had the whimpering nightmare. She was the person I could talk to the most, so I told her all my reflections and complaints and little thoughts and we talked about most of the things we could think of. Our worst pattern is this emotional very deep conversation we have to have about my dead Dad, every time we see each other, every time, and we had it right away this time. It was fine, we cried, but if you know me you know it's still deeply disturbing to me to talk about my Dad, who killed himself when I was twenty. Mom, like many people, wants to rewrite that story and boy, I do too. We both try, but rewriting is the best we can do. We can't make it go away, or not come up. I thought I had it handled for myself, with this knowledge that everyone has something, and that one isn't nearly as bad as most, but it was still there as it always is. Then I had to tell my brother about that, and he has a different story, but maybe he heard me. There were some funny sides of that story, like this incredibly tragic movie we saw in the torrential rainstorm. At the end I turned to him and said "What a happy little wedding movie!" and we got a good laugh out of it. I spent the whole movie saying "Tra la la, I don't live like that, my life is not a tragedy at all, I'm going to keep laughing," to myself. Which worked pretty well. There were some gorgeous scenes of destruction in the film that I'm glad I saw.

My brother was eight when that Dad thing happened; he's twelve years younger than me. We have some things in common, and can relate fairly easily, but there are patterns there too of course. When he was fourteen he came to visit me here and I led him astray in a few ways, and we've spent more time together than our other siblings perhaps...we share a willingness to work on ourselves and be open to pain and growth, but he is ever so much better at it than I am. I was afraid to be with him for two weeks, figuring he would see through all of my thin defenses and see right into my heart, and he did. He was patient and kind, though. He was really really glad we came. I spent a lot of time feeling that I was trespassing on his life (I doubt the Catholic language is a coincidence) as they was sleeping in the livingroom and we were just always there. I saw him in the week leading up to his marriage ceremony and met many of his friends and if anyone was exposed and vulnerable, it was him, but I worried about both of us. We did fine, overall, and he saw me and my heart and he still loves me. I got up on his wedding day and he had stolen my toothbrush, not on purpose, but just in a little brother way like the time he took my shabby shoes to the dump in Alaska. I just walked to the shops and bought a new toothbrush. It was his wedding day; he should have had all the toothbrushes he wanted.

As it turns out most of the things I was afraid of happened. Mom missed her connection and had to travel alone, but she did just fine with it and John and I worried more than she did. It gave us the opportunity to talk about how we don't communicate about things. He was late to meet me and I wandered around the airport thinking things like "What if they are saying to themselves that I am a 64-year old woman and I can certainly take a taxi in an English-speaking country..." I knew that they would pick us up but without Mom I doubted my assumptions bigtime. My phone wouldn't work there, of course, and I didn't know what to buy (a sim card sounds like something from a game that I haven't played) and I changed some money and the person was kind enough to give me the right change for a pay phone so I called him but he didn't answer. I walked up and down and went outside and probably missed him a couple of times. Oh yeah, I got pulled over to the Group W bench in customs, because I had a felony 35 years ago and was afraid not to declare it on my visa. They couldn't find anything in the system and asked me to explain it, so I told them that I had left the scene of an accident and had to pay $50, as that was the extent of my felony conviction, but it is still shrouded in shame for me as it was stupid and I hate to be stupid. They didn't bust me for bringing in the animal products (gelatin) and didn't find the dried mango or they would have confiscated it. My distress on entering the foreign country was laughable but as I was alone, it shook me. I felt weak and unprepared. I was weak and unprepared. I had brought his correct address and forgotten where I had left it, or I would have stupidly taken a taxi and gotten even more lost.

It went on. I did all the tasks which included writing the name cards, so I could figure out some of the people and their relationships, which helped make connections. There were relatives from Switzerland, Italy, Argentina, and other places in Australia, as well as Alaska and both coasts of the USA. John and Graziella's friends are great and were quite welcoming, but there was a lot of sitting around the table listening to their family speak Italian. I liked that, but there was no solitude.  I did go out and wander by myself, and found some neat places, one with rock carvings that remain mysterious.

 I was different, am different, in my hippie artist ways, but that didn't bother anyone. They were more puzzled by how old I look, as apparently I look old enough to be his mother, because people in the rest of the world outside Eugene generally dye their hair and wear makeup and dress fashionably. Whatever. I wore a bra the whole time and thought that was a huge concession to social acceptability. I shudder to think what they would have thought if I hadn't. To be honest probably no one would have noticed. Once I started dancing at the wedding I sensed a change. I got my confidence back, for one thing, because I have always been a good dancer, and people thought it was pretty cute that an old lady could move like that. I guess. Anyway I had a blast dancing at the wedding. (Except for the slow dance with my brother when he told me to stop leading.) I told people I rarely pass up a chance to sing or dance and that's kind of true. I got to sing with my brother's choir with my Mom and that was really sweet and fun too.

Oh, it's late, and this is long and I can't really tell the whole story. While I was gone someone died and someone else died and was brought back to life, though my house did not burn down or get ransacked. My friend who had cardiac arrest will not be all right for a while. He is having a big surgery tomorrow. He is a work partner of mine and I immediately decided to do all of his work which is a huge undertaking, but entirely the right thing to do. A lot of people are counting on me and that is when I am at my best, really, when I have a big load of work and can just immerse in it. I printed today for really the first time in a month or so and it felt great. I will be able to make a big impact in the next months and while I am working I can mull over these changes at a slow pace and write more. It all leads up to the big hippiefest and with all the love and dread of it that I hold after all these years, it will be the place to feel that big heartbeat. I'll get to hug my son then, and lots of other people.

Every year there I have that conversation, deep in the soul, about the fact that we are here now and someday we will not be. Every year someone or many are not. I go to the spirit tower or sit in my piece of the woods and feel that. It's a gorgeous and rich moment and not painful, just real. Real like the wedding moments, which I cried through just as I feared I would. Real like the aftermath when I came home so intense my son didn't want to talk to me. Real like my mother reading that poem about marriage that I would have had to lie to read. Real like the absolute tons of rain that cascades down in the tropics, the thunder, the hail, and the whipbird that we saw in that part of the forest by that waterfall we won't forget. Real like the way we flew around the world, lost a day in a long night, got one back in a short day short night short day. I looked out the window almost the whole time and I was the only person on the plane who did. It was magnificent, and I can report that there are lights in the middle of the ocean, but you can't see a whale at 33,000 feet. And you can fly right over Hawaii in the dark and not see a thing. It was colder than minus 50 degrees right outside my window, all night. There was no way I could sleep through that.

I feel different on the verge of my 65th birthday. My life feels more real. Real like my garden, my tomato starts, my bike and my messy house with no guest room. Real like family, like partnership and what we call love, which is a huge thing we can't describe. All we can do is participate in it, witness it, and feel it as much as we can. We can't deny it, that I know. I don't know why I sometimes try.