Project Life Beginnings

It was right after I made the previously mentioned Razorback Bear for my teenage grandson in December 2011 that I started investigating and then getting involved with Project life, so the Razorback Bear was a major part of one of the first pages to be included in this system designed to meld picture albums and journaling. 

Project Life page for Christmas 2012

Project Life is a system originated and developed by Becky Higgins that includes whatever components you want to use, but basically an album, divided pocket pages holding various size pictures or cards, the pictures you take, and other cards specially designed to fit into the 3×4 or 4×6 plastic page slots of the pocket pages.  I started with the Clementine set for 2012, and this year got the Cobolt set.  Love them both along with my own pictures and also images I get from Pinterest, another online networking site.    

Title page for 2012 album

This is the title page for my 2012 album using a store-bought album and background paper from Hobby Lobby while the cards are from the Becky Higgins Clementine set, available from Amazon.  The use of pocket pages makes the layouts easy as you can choose from many different layout presentations.  I tend to use Pocket Page D most of the time, but have been using inserts for special days, like for someone’s birthday or anniversary.

I’ve noticed that many people come from a scrapbooking background and so tend to embellish/scrapbook their Project Life inclusions.  And almost everyone does one week in a 2-page spread.  Right from the beginning I realized that, for less stress, I needed to include as many pictures and journaling cards as was needed and wanted, so many weeks spilled way over the 2 pages.  Also I prefer a simpler approach so color and visual enjoyment seem to predominate my layouts with lots of journaling on the backs of cards and pictures.  A lone dandelion in a flower-pot filled with chickweed is as worthy of a picture as well as the many pictures I take of people, the garden and its inhabitants,  like the many turtle visitors. 

And I do not keep track of where I got what embellishment from – this has been for my pleasure – and I am very pleased, with the process and the results.

Leaving the world of the 1928 treadle Singer sewing machine

My retirement has given me the opportunity to branch out in various creative endeavors, some of which I have done before but in a limited way, others I have never had the time to try, and still others whereby I expanded what I had been doing over the years.

My mother taught me how to sew and my grandmother taught me how to knit and crochet. Even in the early years of marriage, as we struggled with trying to make ends meet, we chose not to have me working but to be home with the children.  This made these handcrafts an imperative.  I sewed clothes for myself and for my children, drapes and slip-covers, all  on a 1928 treadle Singer sewing machine that only went forward (it was hard turning around all the material in a sofa slip-cover in order to get stitching backwards, but one could sew if the electricity went out.)  And I made numerous knitted things for my husband as well as the children and myself.   All very practical; all a part of ‘making do’.

But with retirement I started a quilt for my granddaughter which I had to stop because of problems with my eyes not seeing well enough on the dark-colored material of dolphins and whales in the ocean.  What could I still sew?

Then I remembered the Memory Bears made by a volunteer while I was working in hospice.  I used that pattern and made a University of Arkansas Razorback Bear for my teenage grandson. 

University of Arkansas Bear

The picture above is the Bear holding a baseball key chain.  The one below is the Bear wearing a University of Arkansas (hoghat) baseball cap on.

UofA Bear wearing a University baseball cap

Needless to say, he loved the Bear and its accessories, particularly the ferocious looking baseball cap. 

Time had moved on in many ways: one was I no longer had the 1928 treadle Singer sewing machine but did have one which sewed both forwards and backwards, which was a great help.    Another, I was sewing something for my grandson, not my children.  And yet another, I was doing this because I wanted to, not because I had to.  Time keeps moving on.

Garden Visitor

One of the joys of being home now that I am retired is to be available to greet visitors that may arrive unannounced, like this turtle.

She had wandered in to a garden area I was about to work in and, as most of the other turtles that I have encountered, looked up straight into my eyes – not at my feet.  Her back was scraped, as if a lawn mower had sliced her shell years ago since it was now well healed. I put her into a bucket and brought out some blueberries, a slice of banana and some tender lettuce – all of which I’ve found turtles like – but each with their preferences.

 

She went right for the blueberries and demolished them as you can see, as well as the scrapes on her back.  It was wonderful to once again watch and hold a sweet turtle, one of many who have more personality, preferences and awareness than most people would expect. And there is much to learn from them, like patience and pacing oneself one step at a time, but also keeping your eye on the goal and overcoming challenges and obstacles along the way.

So glad I was home to welcome this garden visitor.

Spring

I started on ‘spring’ early this year by planting an indoor garden in November.  Hands in dirt planting seeds filled with the promise of good taste and nutrition is always rejuvenating for me.  December and January saw things coming up gingerly as I watered and misted  and talked to the bright seedlings rising to the light.  By February and March everything was developed enough to eat the salad greens and the herbs, like basil, cilantro, parsley and dill.  What a treat for both the eyes and the taste buds.

And outside the grape hyacinths and tulips have been blooming along with the henbit, dandelions and violets. All shades of green form the backdrop to the vibrant colors.

The angel is healing from having one of her wings broken off when either a squirrel, raccon or the wind knocked her over.  She is still lovely even with only one wing.

What beauty and healing within and without!

My Gratitude Flower

 

For the opening of the hospice workshop this year on Gratitude, I asked everyone to fill in a gratitude flower I had created.   The petals of a sunflower seemed like an appropriate way to express gratitude since the petals allow for individual items and the sunflower is associated with sunshine and good feelings. I drew large petals surrounding the inner circle and made copies for everyone.  Each person was to fill in the items he or she were grateful for, and then paste their picture that they brought along for this purpose, in the center of the sunflower.  The finished project became the first page in their new Gratitude Journals that would be worked on throughout the day (for another see Timeline Goals in A Hestia Project).

 

 

This was my page which I then added my picture to.  I have since put it in my Gratitude/Legacy Project, but am not sure where it will wind up since it has to do with general categories I am grateful for rather than about specific people.  I do plan to then take this same sunflower outline and put in the names of people I am grateful for, probably having to add more petals to make this work or to break down the people into specific categories for each sunflower.  Perhaps then even use one sunflower per person with their picture or name in the center and listing the various aspects of them I am grateful for.  Since this is an ongoing project, there is no telling where or what this will develop into.

My Medicine Bag

All those years I wandered over our 25 acres in the Ozarks, I carried a medicine bag with me.  It was more practical than esoteric.  The outside material was made of bleached and faded out old denim, in a pattern of light and dark blues.  It was about 10 inches square, with a flap of the same material secured by Velcro to keep out bugs and leaves that might otherwise fall into in. There was also a long strap made from the same material so it could be slung over one shoulder, thus allowing my arms free range to move bushes aside, or to pick some delectable wild green. 

Within was a material divider: on one side were various sizes of plastic bags to use for placing various foraging items I would come across.  On the other side were a small knife to cut off leaves or flowers suitable for eating and a small field identifier book for those items I found that I still did not know. 

 

 I would spend hours foraging through the woods and the meadow looking for tasty possibilities for supper salad: various greens, perhaps a mushroom or some wild persimmons, or violets growing by the stream for putting into cookies or scones.  In the fall there were also plentiful persimmons, only to be collected after the first frost so they wouldn’t sour your mouth and before the turtles and other critters got to them, wild passion fruit and wild grapes.  In the spring were new sprouts of poke, cardoon, dock, chickweed and dandelion greens, as well as mulberries and wild strawberries.  And in the summer prickly pear cactus were to be found and the more mature greens like sorrel and even dandelion flowers and rosehips.  Winter might find nuts or acorns for the deer but also great for making muffins or cakes after rinsing off all the tannin and then drying them out to make into flour.

Those were my practical years, when we were attempting to live off the land as much as possible and be self-sufficient.  Hard years, but with many wonderful encounters with the natural wildness of the land and its inhabitants.

Now, my medicine bag would contain different items, many of which would be hidden from the physical eye.  I use this medicine bag when I am with people who are sick or dying, sad or depressed.  It is partially the aura or soul cape that has developed around me.  Just the other day the hospice chaplain came in and asked if he could “set a spell” – he needed “some serenity.”  I know from people’s reactions and comments there is something carried around that others find healing.

Another item in my medicine bag is a listening ear (which conjures up an interesting picture.)  Most people do not have people in their lives to listen to them.  If we all did, we would not need any psychiatrists.   Listening is a gift I received from my mother that I can pass on to those who need someone to do nothing more than to let them know they are important enough to be listened to, who takes the time to listen.  With everyone in a rush, no one wants to take the time to listen.  And with everyone so into voicing their opinions as if it is “The Truth” – no one wants to listen, all want to talk.  So a listening ear is a very important item.

Hands that comfort are another part of the healer’s medicine bag.  Touch is so important for everyone, but permission does need to be asked for first.  You can’t assume everyone will benefit from a hug since so many people have been abused in their lifetimes.  Yet we all need touch, particularly when we are sick or dying.  So many people back away at those times that a person can feel very isolated, maybe even shunned.  A touch, a hug, a hand relaying concern, hands massaging another’s under the guise of putting lotion on dry hands and feet, a pat on the back, rubbing someone’s neck and shoulders – all are ways of using touch to communicate connection.

Also, vitally important is a compassionate heart: a heart that has known sadness and abuse, joy and love, frustrations and disappointments as well as fulfillment and success.  A heart that appreciates the differences in people and yet connects to the similarities.  A heart that finds patterns in life that transcend the individual manifestations of chaos.  A heart open to give as well as receive, for one must renew oneself if one is to keep on giving.  We can only give what we have: if we have money we can give money to others, if we have compassion we can give compassion, if we have time we can give time to others, if we have peace within we can give peace.

This medicine bag holds many other items that are available when needed.  But one of the most important is intuition, of coming from the heart.  We never know what may be pulled from us by someone’s need, but we should be open to the moment and trust in the process, and what might be contained in our subtle-medicine bag.

 

 

 

A Hestia Project

Many years ago, when I felt there was a possibility I might die within a year, I went to the store and picked out greeting cards that came the closest to what I wanted to say, to my husband and my children, and others I loved.  The cards came close – sort of – but didn’t encompass all I wanted to express.  I didn’t die, and when I came across those cards a few years later, I realized they didn’t express my feelings – just one small part.  But it was a quick, easy way to leave a legacy to my loved ones.

 Then a few years ago, I put together a much more involved Legacy for my family: children and grandchildren, siblings and their children.  I used the regular genealogy pattern for one page, with dates going back through the ancestors.   But then I added many pages of stories, memories and pictures going way back and bringing it all up to date with recent pictures.  I rested on that for a while, feeling I had left some good information and memories there along with other memoir items I had put together.

This year I was preparing for the annual Hospice volunteer Retreat utilizing the book A Year to Live, as mentioned in my blog writings (http://osbethsview.wordpress.com).  I decided that a section on gratitude flowed well from the Year to Live idea and so started researching ways to use for the usual collage/art section and exercises for our Retreat.  I always include art and writing projects so the volunteers can have some fun as they create and learn new ways of exploring and expressing themselves.  In the process I developed some work pages so that at the end of the day, each person would have the beginnings of a gratitude journal and a page of goals of what they would like to achieve or do if they only had one year to live.   And as always, I worked on my own pages so as to show the volunteers some possibilities.

 

And so my Annual Hospice Volunteer Retreat project morphed into something my Hestia/crone aspect loves.  I’m doing journal pages essentially, filled with gratitude – my gratitude for particular people.  I wound up doing individual pages for my loved ones, as things come to mind.  Right now I am keeping the individual pages in a loose-leaf binder with sections for each person so whenever I should die, in a month, a year or a decade, there will be a collection of things I wanted to share ready for each.

I also wanted to include little one-liners as they occur, i.e., “I really appreciated your call to share news of your engagement with me.  Even though I don’t see you as frequently as I would like (because of the great distances between us) I care about you and what is happening in your life.”   Using scribble paper initially, I at least get the thoughts with date down even if they are not in final form.

In order to further facilitate this, I am slowly putting decorative pages in the binder for each person.  I transfer what I might have scribbled already, and then write down thoughts of gratitude and love as they occur right on the page along with the date.  I may add collage, a poem or quote, drawings, paintings, colorings, frames I’ve made, pictures, clip art – who knows what – to decorate each page.  In time, no matter how much or how little time I may have, there will be a collection of reasons and pages as to why I am grateful for that person in my life, using words and art to convey my feelings – my legacy for that person.   And if there is enough time, I may have to separate out each person’s pages so there may be booklets for each person, containing their pages, a legacy from me – for them alone.  I am also doing pages for my deceased loved ones as things come to mind.  These pages will be a tribute to them and will also pass on to younger people the legacies of these people they might not have known.

This project feels so right as it combines my creativity with my legacy, and further compliments the genealogy and memoirs I’ve already done.   And it is personalized for each person.  And it can be added to casually, rather than as a big project – in which case it probably wouldn’t get done.

And one never knows where it leads.  When I put in the two sentences related above to my niece, I found myself remembering another memory I had of her from when she was small, so I went on to include that on the scribble page since I don’t have a formal page for her yet.

These are my stories but they are focused on the other person and how I feel about him/her.  Whether there will be only one memory/gratitude or many when each receives their pages, they will have something personal for themselves.

This will be my Hestia Project for these next months and thereafter.  An ongoing art/writing project about gratitude: my abundant gratitude for the people in my life.  What right now is one art journal kept in one binder about the various people in my life will become, when the time is right, many individual art journals of gratitude for many people – the people I love and appreciate.

Christmas in Panama

My first married Christmas was spent in a foreign country, far away from my beloved family.  My new husband and I flew into Panama a few days after we were married, in 1961.  It was the beginning of the threat of high-jacking, so we were subjected to women being searched and boarded separately, ahead of the men.  My husband previously told me of some of the problems regarding ownership of the Canal, which added to my sense of unease.  For a shy girl of 19 traveling for the first time on a plane and leaving my family, it was a difficult experience and added to the fears of being away from loved ones and her familiar environment.  The fact I didn’t speak any Spanish and was obviously not from Panama with my very natural blonde hair in those days and quite fair skin, also added to my discomfort and trepidation.

Fear and sadness led into feeling lost and overwhelmed.  The sadness derived from my seeing really poor people for the first time: children climbing through garbage dumps looking for food, people living in wooden shacks with cracks between the pieces of wood and a bare electric light bulb dangling down in the middle of the one-room building, women washing by hand out-of-doors and laying the clothes on the dirt and scrub grass outside to dry.  The two extremely different views from our apartment on the outskirts of Panama City exemplified the socio-economic division at that time: rich and poor with no middle class as we know it.  The very poor were across the street while behind our apartment were wealthy homes where the maids arrived every day and fancy cars roamed the streets.

I missed my family terribly.  I was used to my four siblings and parents, and to just be with one other person, and a new husband at that, was quite strange.  By Thanksgiving I felt totally lost.  Everything was so different in my life I decided to try to keep up some of the traditions.  My mother always started making hand-decorated Christmas cookies right after Thanksgiving, so I started to bake.  Pinwheels of chocolate and vanilla, peppermint pink and white candy cane cookies, pastel pretties with various hues all in one cookie, chocolate walnut crisps, by-crackys, butterscotch pecan freezer cookies, gingerbread cookies, snicker doodles, mint green cookie press tree cookies, and sugar cookies cut into many shapes and all hand painted with colored icing-all accumulated and stored in various containers.  It felt so comforting and familiar even though the weather was hot and dry rather than the familiar cold with a chance of snow.  I baked over 1500 cookies before I suddenly wondered, “Who will eat these cookies?”  I was acquainted with a few people but not enough to utilize all those cookies.  What was I thinking?

Fortunately, my husband happened to mention that the Army Post was going to organize a Christmas party for the local children.   Children!  Cookies!  They go hand in hand.  He investigated.  Yes, they would be delight to receive 1300 (I’d keep some) cookies to distribute to the children.  Would I like to attend and watch the distribution of gifts and cookies?  You bet!

What a pleasure to watch those children who barely had enough food by day to receive what they considered to be such pretty cookies.  Most never saw such things much less received such things for their very own.  They wouldn’t eat the cookies but planned to take them home and show the rest of their families.  Watching their faces light up with pleasure and wonder and their dark eyes twinkle was such a joy for me – a true reward.  My heart was filled with gratitude for the experience.

  

The rest of Christmas was handmade as well.  Since there were hardly any evergreen Christmas trees available (palm trees decorated with lights were not Christmas trees in my mind), and the ones that were for sale were scrawny and costly, I constructed our Christmas tree using a cardboard wrapping-paper cylinder as the trunk of the tree.  I took and straightened out wire clothes hangers, covered each with hanging green crepe paper, and stuck each in cascading fashion into the “trunk” of my tree.  Then I fringed the crepe paper to create the evergreen branches.  Ornaments were designed out of various construction papers.  And most of the presents we gave each other were handmade.  Our families did send us store-bought presents that we placed around the “tree.”

Christmas day saw me with a terrible sunburn, blistering skin and swollen eyes I received from being in the sun less than 15 minutes two days before at Rio Mar where there was black sand and white cliffs to, unknowingly, intensify the sun’s rays, and where I had no familiar family or traditions I grew up with or even their voices (phone calls were too expensive).  Christmas, seen through the slits of my eyes, appeared very different than I was accustomed to.

It must be true “It is better to give than to receive” since I so clearly remember the sight of those children receiving the Christmas cookies I baked that Christmas and have absolutely no memory of anything I received in presents.  But I did receive the lasting appreciation that simple gifts can bring joy to people, especially children.

Tholos Forgiveness

 

The sounds of bubbling water enhanced her awareness.  She felt serene in all aspects of herself.  This is a good space in which to live, where one is totally at peace.  And what a wonderful place in which to die—in a hammock in water—not drowning, but just floating in water in the ocean or a lake or, even a pool such as this.  She lay still, attempting to remember her dream, or was it an experience?  So wonderful, but what was wonderful?  Oh, yes.  I was told to prepare to leave at any moment.  Made total sense at the time, but what did it really mean?  That I’ll die so I need to be unattached to the world and centered, or a crisis is coming and so I’ll need to be prepared to leave the house?  The water sounds so happy…bubbling and frolicking in the pool.  Does the water carry the fumes of the oracle to me?

 

I remember reading in the American Book of Dying: Lesson in Healing Spiritual Pain where the authors Gross and Klauser talked of a medieval l’Hotel-Dieu–God’s Hotel–in Burgundy, France.  In the 15^th century A.D., this hospice served the social outcasts and was built over a river with a glass floor underneath the beds of the patients.  This way they could hear the soothing sounds of the moving water, as I am now.   I can tell this must be a special place, because I’m not aching from lying on the mossy ground.  This hospice had clean linens, also, almost unheard of in that time, even for the wealthy. 

 

Now I remember, another dream or experience, where someone in high authority asked if I wanted to go back and redo or eliminate some difficult times in my past. My parents were there, too, even though both are deceased for many years.  No, I said to all of them.  I wouldn’t change anything, as difficult as some things were at the time.  For then I wouldn’t be who I am today.  I wouldn’t have grown into the life I have, but still be stuck in the mundane, never having to be forced to have the opportunity to forgive both myself and another I deeply trusted, never having understood the great gift it is to be placed in a situation where one had to learn to forgive a deep wound.

 

The deeper the bond of trust with the person,

 the deeper the hurt and wounding,

the harder it is  to forgive,

 the more precious the gift of forgiveness

for oneself and for the other.

 

 May all  people who have been so hurt

 come to this gift of forgiveness

in the time that is right for them.

 

 

 

 (see also http://cityofladies.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/tholos-forgiveness/#comments)

 

Antique Gold Coins

           Originally, I started writing to uncover what lay buried in the mud within me.  As a child, there were things I could write about that I wouldn’t dare say out loud, things needing to be brought out into the open so as not to fester deep inside me, developing into a volcano.  My diary was my best friend for many years.  I would write as I huddled in my cubbyhole in the attic eaves, a place designed for storage but used as a private space for me.  Flashlight in hand, a book to read and a diary to write in—all comprised my comfort area.  Perhaps, sometimes, I would be lucky enough to have an Army-green can of cinnamon swirled pound cake, rations left over from World War II that my father acquired years later. Reading, writing, eating—all the comforts for a shy young girl needing an outlet for her emotions and a safe haven. 

 

One day, in the eighth grade, the assignment was to write about a hobby we enjoyed and how we became involved in that hobby.  I wrote all about being in my grandparents’ very old, rambling house, with the rickety staircase going up into the musty attic.  On one rainy day I was continuing my exploration of the house.  While rummaging in the attic, I discovered a collection of coins in an old, tea-colored and stained box, tucked away in a hidden nook.  When I brought them downstairs and questioned my grandfather, I found out the assorted coins belonged to his grandfather.  My grandfather added a few more when he found them as a boy, but then the collection was once again hidden away.  We looked at the coin collection together and, as he told me about the individual coins, I became interested not only in the history revealed about the coins themselves but also about the history of my ancestors.  So I continued collecting coins and relished the feeling of being part of a long line of people who engaged in this hobby. 

 

I finished writing just as the teacher called for the papers to be handed in.  I felt good about what I had written. 

 

However, I couldn’t sleep at all that night.  I tossed and turned so much I gave myself a headache.  I agonized.  How terrible!  How could I have done that?  Thoughts raced through my head and collided with each other, creating pain in my head.  What is wrong with me?   None of what I wrote was true.  I made up the whole story about collecting coins, and I had no idea why I did.  I didn’t remember reading something similar in any of the many books I read.  How could I have written such a lie?  Why did I?  By the next morning I was a wreck and my stomach was in knots.  I couldn’t eat breakfast and dreaded going to school yet I also couldn’t wait to get to school to admit to the English teacher it was all a lie.  With many false starts and gulps, sweaty hands and a flushed face, I finally told her.  None of what I had written was true.  I was sure I would at least wind up with a detention and my parents would be told. 

 

Much to my surprise, my usually extremely strict and exacting English teacher said it was perfectly all right.  She read the stories and found mine to be well-written so I received an ‘A.’ The fact I lied made no difference—it was the use of grammar and the way the story was told that was important.  She said the story was a far more interesting way to start a hobby than the other students’ stories were.  And she appreciated why I felt I had to tell her the truth.

 

Since then, the many kernels of writing excitement have popped open to reveal a poem, a memoir, a story, a book.  As I delve into memoir writing, I still agonize over trying to dig out the truth rather than use a fabrication.  I read of getting to the emotional truth rather than necessarily the factual truth.  Does it really matter if the curtains were white or yellow that day 50 years ago or is the important memory the feel and smell of the starched curtain (white or yellow) to remind you of your Grandmother’s living room?  William Zinsser speaks of “inventing the truth,” of acknowledging we write of the truth as we know it, not necessarily as anyone else knows it.   Bill Roorbach says, “The reader also comes expecting that the writer is operating in good faith, that is, doing her best to get the facts right.”  And, of course, the recent controversy about James Frey’s work continues. 

 

Over the years, writing has become a connector, a healer, a transmission, a memory organizer, a revealer, a storyteller.  Writing allows for patterns to be discovered, for healing threads to be woven into a wondrous tapestry with loose ends reconnected, for stories and ideas to be passed on to future generations, for the awareness of not only who, what, when and where but also why and how and what were the feelings and the lessons learned.  Writing has revealed preciously hidden meanings and patterns in a tapestry much richer that I could ever imagine.

 

I have written enough now to realize I am the pot of gold buried at the end of the rainbow, with each memoir or story or poem an antique gold coin, worth more in the present because it is based on an experience from the past.  Added together, these gold pieces provide a treasure for my future as well as for those of my children, grandchildren and others.  If I hadn’t dug up these memories and experiences, I would have lost them forever.  They may be covered with the remains of dirt, and some may be a little discolored and faded, but the glint of gold still peeks through.  After a little polishing and cleaning up, these antique gold coins will be worth a fortune.

              – published in Story Circle Journal – 2007 –