Purple and pink. Burnt umber and grey. Who can tell what is real or dream? Last night in a dream I walked in tall grass. It scratched my legs. Today I walked through the same grass. Little white bugs flew up but never touched me. Fiona called them flies. “Mommy” she whined. “Flies are getting on my horsy”. I walk back through the flies and tall grass. A bit of asphalt on the ground catches my eye, I hadn’t noticed it the first time I passed this spot. The area intrigues me. Old remnants of structure, of road that used to be here. A strange brown bridge Jack, Fiona, and Valentina sit on. It’s old pieces of round, dark brown, wood, it almost looks like tree branches. It’s scratchy and splintery. It goes to nowhere over nothing, as if it were transplanted from a place it belonged. “Fiona, your horsey loves grass.” I say. She got a new play horse yesterday, she loves it. Memories flood me, being a kid, playing with my horses in the grass, pretending they were eating and I was going on a ride. I imagined what I did and did what I imagined. In nature. Under the sun, the dirt, red ants biting my butt, stepping on nails, getting tetanus shots. Bugs and beetles and pollywogs. Frogs and snakes and old barns, old trailer campers. Vacant rose greenhouses where the sun shines through the broken fiberglass roof and roses still bloom. We rode our ponies through, feeling what was, feeling what the space is for us. A vacation. A dream world with real spiders and scary stories. Purple and burnt umber. Pink and white. These are the colors I chose to paint with today. It was a good, productive day in my studio. Painted in my notebooks. Pulled apart tons of pages that have stuck together leaving scars. Leaving repairs to be done. Structure. But it went well. Realized I have a lot of pages to finish in my gargantuan notebook before my show this fall. I can do it. I take deep breaths throughout the day. I stay connected. I cocoon when I need to. I got what I needed today.
Category: memory
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Drawing. Red. Rush. Heart Pounding. Newsprint. Red Watercolor Pen. Fast. Dishes piled up behind me. It’s beaten me. The endless piles of dishes and laundry. It’s different now. Big portions. Messy Messy all day long. Finding Mud Puddles. Ice Cream Cones. Lizards in the house. Spiders falling on the living room floor from Jacks shorts and pants and shoes and socks that I pick up in the back yard. He won’t stay dressed. He pees in the bushes. Picking up all day long. Always a pile in my arms. One arm dirty rags. One arm dirty dishes. One arm trash. One arm cup of water. A little precious hand to hold while crossing the street. A Blu Blu. A Tiny. We have a conversation; Jack, Fiona, Me. “The dentist says you can’t chew on your Blu Blu Jack, and you can’t suck your thumb anymore Fiona”. I say. “But we Love our Blu Blus and Tinys.” Jack says. Fiona puts her head down. She’s so distraught, disbelief. “I Know! How can it be? I Love Blu Blu and Tiny too. I’m upset too. I totally understand how you feel too. I like special things. Things I hold and cherish and can’t let go of.” I say. I wonder should I consult a psychologist? I don’t know how to do this. How can I take away these creatures, these special toys? Toys that have been with them since they were born. They attached to Blu Blu and Tiny right away. They were my saving grace when Jack and Fiona were babies. They call them transition pieces in the child rearing books. Now I’ve probably made them even more important with my chat in the car today, now they know how much I am attached to Blu Blu and Tiny. What are we gonna do? Blu Blu and Tiny are sentimental and nostalgic. I will miss them so much. I almost feel depressed about it.
They took a nap today. I’m so glad, they needed the rest and I needed a break. I made myself not clean. At first I didn’t know what I would do, feeling the way I do. I get out a pad of newsprint and box of pens. I turn on my computer. I start to doodle, then draw, draw rapidly and freely. I write. Now my time is coming to an end. Jack and Fiona will be up soon. My husband will be home. I need to do a list of things. I don’t feel like it though. I feel like just sitting and doing nothing for the rest of the night. Then just going to bed.
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I pull off a book from the shelf in my studio, looking for something to use in my new notebook project. It’s an old Sunset Vegetable Gardening book. At first I want to use it for collage. I flip through and on the last page there is a sketch and a list of winter vegetables to plant: beets, brussel sprouts, carrots, lettuce, and spinach. I recognize the hand writing, it’s my mom’s. I can’t use this. I think about the garden in “Jennifer’s Walk”, a book from my childhood I read to Jack and Fiona. The garden in “Jennifers Walk” always reminds me of the garden my mom planted in our back yard. Now I am looking at a sketch of her vegetable plot, the one imbedded in my memories. I remember walking outside with her, “Jenny, a rabbit ate my carrots”. I imagine a white rabbit. Every time I read Jack and Fiona “Jennifer’s walk” I think of the white rabbit. I am reminded of my mom, my life as a child. My body yearns to be that little girl, to feel that way. The way my body felt today when I opened the page and saw my mom’s writing. I take the books into Jack and Fiona’s room when they wake from their nap; “Vegetable Garden” and “Woodland Animals” another one of my childhood favorites. I tell them the story of the books, they watch me in earnest. Fiona doesn’t have her hearing aids on yet, but Jack hears every word. He doesn’t interrupt, he processes. I flip the pages, he sees a picture of a turtle, “I don’t like turtles, they bite” he says. I look at him and giggle, he smiles.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 