My hands

I've been  thinking about my hands lately.   They're small.  They are plain.  I don't do well with polish or long nails because they chip and peel, and sometimes I bite my hangnails.  Gross, I know.

I wear three rings--my wedding ring, my engagement ring, and a cocktail ring that belonged to my mother, and before that, my great grandmother.

I've been thinking about hands lately because I take such terrible care of mine.  The skin on the backs is often rough and cracked from too much cleaning without gloves, and they are cut up from working with paper crafts.   They are a mess.

For years, I've been telling myself that my hands are like this because "they're useful."  It's the height of Midwestern haughty to tell yourself that you're hands are busier than someone else's, to act as though your rough paws are that way "on purpose."

When I was 12, there was a girl in my class named Lisa, who had long, perfectly shaped and polished nails. She made a show of it, tapping them on cans of soda, complaining in typing class about the risk of breaking them. She would sit in class and scrutinize her nails, turning her hands this way and that--palm out, fingers outstretched, then palm facing in, her fingers curled down and nestled together. Bringing her hand toward her face, she'd make little tsk sounds, examining the moon-shaped nails for chips or other imperfections. Sometimes I'd watch her and wonder what it felt like to have those colorful additions to my fingers, lively and bright as small birds.

I was plain, my hands matched my clothes--sort of tossed together carelessly. I had a small wardrobe, and I basically wore the same things over and over, rotating each weekday. I had one small ring that I wore: a treasure that had been my mother's when she was little girl. The band was gold, and had some detailing. But special part for me was the emerald-green glass set into it. I wanted desperately to believe it was really an emerald, and I must have said it was. The glass, though, was obviously old and scratched, and clearly not an emerald, and I was teased for wearing a ring from a gumball machine. Having messy hands didn't do much to enhance it, I imagine.

The funny thing is that I have always loved the look of my hands. I like the bend of my fingers, even my bizarre, hitchhiker's thumb. I really like the color of my nails without polish; their pinkish-lavender moons remind me of the inner layers of tiny seashells. I love how they fly over the keyboard, and I like the short nails on them. They feel so, well--me. Perhaps I romanticize them because I'm defensive of that little girl whose hands told so much about her life.

Thinking about all of this makes me ask why I continue to neglect caring for my hands? The smallest things would make a difference--wearing rubber gloves to clean, putting on moisturizer at night, trimming the hangnails (or just using cuticle cream). I resist. I do believe it is part of a story that I tell myself about the "busy hands." It's a story that carries into other areas of my life--the same reason it is easier to do something for someone else than it is to do something good for myself. It's also springs from the fear of becoming too outwardly focused; I harbor an irrational anxiety about turning into an adolescently mean girl, my perfect nails turned talons to sharpen on the weaker spirits of women plainer than myself.

Like I said, it's an irrational fear. I don't think mean and beautiful necessarily go together. I'm not the meanest of sorts, and I love feeling beautiful. I love makeup, and good skin. I love clothing, even if I don't always dress much beyond my LLBeany -uniform. I am somewhat vain about my hair, and I have shoe lust as much as the next woman. And for all that, I have never felt myself becoming that bitchy-type teenager, though there are some days I wish I could call her into service to give my confidence a boost.
The bottom line is that I neglect myself because I labor under the most common of burdens: When it comes to meeting the needs of those around me, I feel as though I should come second--or fourth, or last. It's pervasive. I serve my plate last at the dinner table. I wash my clothing last. I "sneak" into the study to do my writing only after I've done (yet another) load of laundry. I get to my artwork only after I've done a project with Esme. If there is a good side of the apple, I give it to one of the girls and eat the bruised side myself. I bathe when everyone else is clean, and if my clothes get ironed, it's only after I have finished all the other ironing (not often!). You get the idea.
It is good to be able to set aside one's own needs. It is often necessary as a mother to do so, I realize. But I have taken it way too far, I think. Must I feel a guilty twinge at such a small thing as when I put moisturizer on my hands? Because I do feel guilty, even for doing the simplest of things for myself. Probably the saddest thing is that the guilt isn't coming from anywhere else but me. There is a part of me that is self-defeating. This part of me is convinced that I am not worthy--of time or respect or care, I don't know. But it's there. I see it in the way I treat myself, in the way I treat my hands.

I'm not alone in this. There are lots and lots of other women who must feel this way, obliged to be last on the list, whether from fear or self-loathing or a firmly-instilled (and misguided) sense of "what makes a good woman." I wonder if they think about this, and if thinking about it makes them as lonely as it just has made me...

I started this long post talking about hands, and it is to my hands that I look now: the way that I treat myself is, in fact, in my own hands. As this year progresses, I am seeing more and more that through simple changes, I can shape the way I see my own life. Perfect or imperfect, I create all sorts of things with my hands. It's time to create something for me.

Another house story

You know, as I was re-reading this last post on the tent house, I saw in myself the shadow of someone I recently described to a friend in a not-so-kind way.   How easy it is to throw stones, especially if you live in a glass house!  

Here is a snippet of my own experience as the newcomer the neighbors wondered about.  I recently wrote this in an email to a friend of mine to describe one sort of "welcome" I received:

We live on a little island.  Our town is immediately recognizable as the classic New England village, with fewer than 4000 people in the wintery off-season.  I discovered when we moved here that many people had the curious habit of rocking back on their heels and saying with smugish satisfaction, "Yep, I'm born and bred." I had to hear that from four different people before I figured out that they meant "I have always lived in this state." Some of them have always lived on this island, in fact. When I heard this born-and-bred expression from the fifth person, I wanted to say, "yeah, I happened to have been born and raised, too. It's pretty common for humans." But I bit my snippy tongue.

These multi-generation islanders don't always take kindly to people like me, who move here from parts unknown to promptly remodel a decrepit house beyond recognition. When Ada was four, I once had a well-meaning woman (4th generation town resident, thankyouverymuch) visit our home for tea. It was the strangest thing--I had asked her to come because she was always seeing Ada in town and giving her little trinkets, etc. She went so far as to write an editorial in the local paper, saying she had found an angel named Ada, and she wanted to become her adopted Aunt (I was a bit uncomfortable at her blithe use of adopted, let me tell you--let alone that she wrote the editorial at all). She started referring to herself as Ada's "Aunt Nancy," stressing that Ada pronounce it "Ah-unt", a challenge in itself since Ada was used to my midwestern twanging of the word to "ant."  In any case, we kept up the pleasantries for a few months, and at some point I asked her to tea.

She came, a vase of lilacs from her garden in hand. It was one of the odder encounters I've had, though. I love having tea, and we had a little spread with cookies, etc. It was a bit of an effort for me at the time because I was pretty pregnant, and Ada had a bladder infection and needed "to go potty!" every 5 minutes. But we managed, and I recall being pleasant and welcoming. Nancy, however, seemed suddenly much colder than she had when she talked to us in town. The kicker was when she sat at our dining table, waved her hand around, and said, "I know there are a lot of people in town who don't approve of people who move here and do (here's the wave) all this. But I'm more open-minded." I don't recall how we ended tea, but she stayed for almost two hours total, I think. Funny, it was such a strange visit that if she hadn't left the lilacs, I swear I would believe that I dreamed it. She never called or spoke with us again. Some of it must be that she changed jobs, and we didn't see her in town. But there were no more calls, either. I left a message on her answering machine a few times, still nothing. I still have the vase and some trinkets, so I know she really did come. Did I say something wrong? I have no idea. I do know that I was one of those "new people" she referred to. 

I felt a little set up--she knew where our house was before she started talking to me in the grocery. Did she just want to see the inside of the house? Maybe--but what a lot of effort. So bizarre. And our house is just a remodeled 1980 cape, not a mansion, or even very large or anything worth wanting to see...

If you read my post about the tent house, then see my anecdote about curious "Aunt Nancy," you must see the contradiction.  I recognized it when I reread my post this afternoon, and I am stunned by it.   It is embarrassing to be caught as the judgmental one. I am blushing as I write. 

I considered deleting the tent post before too many people saw it, and saw me for the mean person I can be (a shameful blush again).  Should I perhaps try to convince you otherwise by making excuses--Do you care that my house isn't a sixteenth the size of that guy's, or that we built it green, or that I was the general contractor myself, accountable for all the ruckus we may have caused? Would any of this convince you?  It doesn't convince me.   I myself built the custom house of my dreams, albeit smaller ones.  The dreams of Mr. Tent house are just bigger.  

So, at the remove of years out from my own arrival here, do I now have I the mindset of the oldtimer myself?  Or am I still the new and ostentatious neighbor renovating at will and whim?  I have no idea.  

If I let myself think past my humiliation, I do know that I am capable of holding contradictions in my own perceptions, and I see the dangers in assuming that I am free of judgment myself.  As open-minded as I proclaim to be (just like Aunt Nancy), I'm a prisoner of my own limitations, my own assumptions about other people and their desires, their actions.   It's okay to admit this weakness; recognizing it in myself will make me a stronger and more empathetic person.

I am pretty sure that won't be going to tea at the "tent house," under the guises of a welcoming party or not.  But I do think I should prepare my own mind for being truly open to new people and their experiences, as different from mine as they may be....

I am a work in progress.

A Tent House

Not the kind of tent house we make around here in our nest.  Ours is made from my grandmother's quilt and the cushions from the sofa, filled with board books and stuffed bears and dogs, and little bowls of cheerios and chocolate chips.  That's a tent house.

This white form behind the trees also is a tent house.  Because we live in a cold climate, building a new home exposes it and the crew to extreme weather.  This, in turn, causes delays.   If you've ever had any work done on your home, you know what I mean.

But this home, situated on the water and boasting at least 6 acres, must have an owner who is determined to avoid delays and weather.   This owner has contracted to have an enormous plastic tent erected around the entire structure of the home.  A few years ago, a similar home was built on the lot next to it, with the same tent method.  The kicker is that the crews on both of these homes work on continuous shifts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Huge work lights illuminate the site and drive the neighbors batty.   There are local discussions of noise and light disturbance, and the owners are being asked to take breaks during evenings, weekends, and holidays.   

I'm showing this to you today because I'm nosy, I'll admit it.  I am curious about who that owner might be.  I'm curious about what sort of life must produce the need or desire or right to build in such a way.  I drive past this tented project from time to time, and each time I marvel at the the size of this project.  It seems a certain kind of hubris to building such an ostentatious home so ostentatiously, especially in these times.    I wish the owner well, but I wonder if building a house this large will generate a happiness that fills it completely... 

Wearing my heart on my sleeve: An ongoing project

If you have read more than one or two posts here, you know as well as anyone in my face-to-face life this important fact about me: I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I fight it sometimes, I do. But I just can't help it. I put my whole self out there, into the world, just because I feel I have to. You'll not be surprised to learn that I do not have a poker face among my repertoire of facial expressions.

Being this way brings its complications. I'm overwhelming to some people with my puppy-like eagerness. Because I'm not good at pretending ennui, I probably lack a certain mystery; I don't do aloof. 

I love meeting new people and getting to know them. I think most people are interesting, and I love learning about new friends, getting to know the details of their life.   And equally so, I love connecting with people whom I've cared about in my past.   


For years I have been a little ashamed of this kind of enthusiasm.  But now, instead of working against it, I have decided to embrace opening my heart to people. I am wearing my heart on my sleeve, proudly.

Tomorrow I will post the first in a long series of posts I'm calling "Open Heart Letters." These are open notes to people in my life--both currently or from my past--who have made some sort of impression on me. For the people in my life now--well, I am writing these because it's so good to know that someone cares for you and thinks of you, isn't it?

And for those people I knew long ago-- I realize that many of them won't even see these "love letters" I feel compelled to write.  Regardless, I think it's a worthwhile exercise to reflect on the people I have known at formative times in my life, even those I knew for just a short while. They stay in my memory. From time to time my thoughts will land on such a person, and I am reminded how amazing the wide world is, filled with good people who make positive impressions on you just by crossing your path.

This is an ambitious project, and potentially endless--there are so many people I've admired and cared for over the years.  Some notes will be long letters, others distilled into a few lines or a poem.   I invite you to come along on the journey, and consider your own connections as we go...

Lines in my head, part 2 of a series

More lines to inspire, to haunt. These glow like embers in my mind.


"You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me."
from "The Cinnamon Peeler," Michael Ondaatje, from The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems


"The word spills from my tongue, not scientific: Genes,
folksy and proud, like they’re crops grown on family land."
from The Storialist
"Monday, October 6th, On the Street, Mr. Pinguet, Paris."

"The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls."
from "To Be of Use," by Marge Piercy, from Circles on the Water

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying."
from "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," Robert Herrick

"The sea is so beautiful,
she is so young and old.
I look at her and
I see the beauty
of the light of music."
from "You are Everything," REM, from the album Green

And, to serve a different sort of gluttony:

"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry."
from "Eating Poetry," Mark Strand in Selected Poems

How do you do it?

Over the holidays, in conversations with friends and family, I've wandered into the topic of blogging several times.   It's not something I always confess to doing.  I say confess, because talking about it does feel like a confession of sorts--to see my blog is to see a side of me that's not immediately apparent in my day-to-day life.   

Slowly, though, I am revealing it to people in my real life. See the pretty cards MOO cards I made for calling cards? I've now included the URL to 3littlechickies, which is a big step.

My blog takes up a decent amount of my thinking time, and writing it is something I really love to do. After keeping my blog for almost two years, I'm more ready to talk about it in real life. Maybe I'm getting more comfortable with the merge between the me I present in writing and the me in person. That's not to say that I'm so very different; it's just that to look at me, you really wouldn't think that I had much to say.   That assumes that I do have something to say, and that's assuming that the way a person looks is always representative of what they think about--oh boy, this is getting complicated, and this is why I don't usually talk about it.    That is fodder for an entirely different post, isn't it?

What I'm talking about here is much simpler.  How do I go about blogging?   Here are a few of the questions I get.  I'll give a few answers here, answers that are attempts to be more articulate than my off-the-cuff responses I've given to family or friends in the past.

Question 1:

"No, really," I'm asked by a family member, "how do you find the time?  I don't know where you find the time to write anything, let alone take photos."

It's not surprising I get asked this. I make no secret about not having time to do the basic things, like finish folding the laundry, or vacuuming the carpets more than once or (if I'm really good!) twice a week.  So to do the blog, I don't find time to write. I sneak it or steal it.  For instance, this entry that you're now reading has taken me 9 visits to the computer, each fewer than 4 minutes long. Some of my visits are less than a minute long, actually. Before I'm ready to hit the publish button, I imagine I will have written for a total of 35 minutes or more, and then edited for 10. And all of this writing is literally done in bits and pieces, a sentence or two at a time, in the bits of time I can manage to carve out of the day.  The time deficit from all these stolen moments shows itself in piles of socks that need to be folded, and sometimes by the circles under my eyes from waking up too early.

Question 2:
"Where do you get ideas? I would have no idea what to write."

I have always loved writing, and in my head, I'm "writing" all the time. So coming up with ideas and developing them has never been a problem. These writing-thoughts are the basic starting ideas for the posts, and they come to me all the time. I put some of them into a little notebook, and some of them get axed by my "inner editor" to be fodder for something else, like an essay or a poem. My family is sweetly supportive of my blogging, too, so sometimes my topics come from them. For instance, Ada will give me a suggestion, like "Hey mom, this soup is so good, it should go on your blog! Go get your camera!" A cute endorsement like that will sometimes make me write a post immediately.

Question 3:
"Who are you writing this for?"
This is the biggest and most loaded question of all, and it's one I grapple with all the time. In fact, getting asked this question is probably why I haven't talked about the blog as much as I might have. It merits a few posts for a fully-developed answer, but I'll give the brief version here.

Coming from some relatives, asking "Who are you writing for?" is akin to asking "Is a blog like email?" Needless to say, this relative isn't going to be looking at my blog anytime soon. Neither is the person who is asking it with an inflection that says, "Who do you think you are? Why are you wasting your time with this?" These people aren't my audience.

But you are reading this, aren't you? I am writing for you. I am writing for myself, too. I'm writing for people who know me well in person and live far away, and I'm writing for people who haven't met me, but know me through my words. I'm writing it because I feel compelled to get some of my thought-writing into a space other than the one between my ears. I send this little snippet of myself into the ethers and hope to make a connection with someone else, even if it's only connecting with the me I'll be at some later date...

Invoking Janus

Looking foward, looking backward.   Like Janus, we stand at the gate of the new year, and reflect while gazing ahead.

Here are two poems that make me think about that certain kind of retrospection that makes you look ahead with hope, too.  

The first is by William Stafford, from his collection Even in Quiet Places.  

You Reading This: Stop

Don't just stay tangled up in your life.

Out there in some river or cave where  you

could have been, some absolute, lonely

dawn may arrive and begin the story

that means what everything is about.

So don't just look, either:

let your whole self drift like a breath and learn

its way down the trees.  Let that fine 

waterfall-smoke filter its gone, magnified presence

all through the forest.  Stand here till all that

you were can wander away and come back slowly,

carrying a strange new flavor into your life.

Feel it?  That's what we mean.  So don't just 

read this.  rub your thought over it.

Now you can go on.

The second poem is by Linda Pastan, from her collection Carnival Evening.

The Happiest Day

It was early May, I think

a moment of lilac or dogwood

when so many promises are made

it hardly matters if a few are broken.

My mother and father still hovered

in the background, part of the scenery

like the houses I had grown up in,

and if they would be torn down later

that was something I knew

but didn't believe.  Our children were asleep 

or playing, the youngest as new 

as the smell of the lilacs,

and how could I have guessed 

their roots would be shallow

and would be easily transplanted.

I didn't even guess that I was happy.

The small irritations that are like salt

on melon were what I dwelt on,

though in truth they simply

made the fruit taste sweeter.

So we sat on the porch

in the cool morning, sipping

hot coffee.  Behind the news of the day--

strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--

I could see the top of your dark head

and thought not of public conflagrations

but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.

If someone could stop the camera then...

if someone could only stop the camera

and ask me: are you happy?

perhaps I would have noticed

how the morning shone in the reflected 

color of the lilac.  Yes, I might have said

and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

With each of these poems, my thoughts skip like a stone across the pond to a future me.  My mind whirls when I imagine the bright rings left behind in the skittering path of years, glittering like the sun on the water.   

Wishing you a bright new year.  May your 2009 be filled with hope and light and bright shining moments.

Taking a moment

I'm a master at stating the obvious--I've been away for a few days.  So much of the past week has been fun--making treats for the tea party, preparing for Christmas, and getting ready for a visit from my parents.  And yet all of it has been tainted with a deep sorrow for my friend, Kim, and her family.   It hasn't felt right to just prattle on about all the trivial joys of my day.

It's a time of year for this sort of juxtaposition--endings and beginnings, happiness and great emptiness, togetherness and loneliness.    Even the religious celebration of Christmas is actually celebrating not just the birth of Jesus, but also his ultimate gift: his death.   

And so it is that I am feeling those contrasts vividly.  I feel compelled to take a moment from the fun and cutesy photos and writing to acknowledge it.   I feel that sticky mixture of happiness and loss, and I embrace it as part of being human. I will breathe. And be. And be awash in the morass of feelings for just a moment... 

Facing Facebook

I did it.  After a year of putting it off, I finally joined facebook.  Clearly, I'm no spring chicken (as you can tell by my grannified expressions!). If I were in my twenties, I would have joined long ago without a second thought.  Of course, now lots of my own contemporaries (think late thirty-somethings) are getting active on facebook, and I predict that over the next few years, there will be many, many more people networking there.

And as enjoyable as it is, it's a bit weird, right? As you may have noticed, I have a tendency to overanalyze and dwell on things, so now I'm obsessing thinking about what I'm doing on facebook.

I have to say upfront that I like the networking aspect.  It's fun to catch up with people I knew long, long ago, and to see what friends far away are doing. But the "making of friends" is more puzzling. I have befriended people I only know from email, and I have sent requests to people who are more akin to acquaintances. I'm a word girl, and that word "friend" is so sticky.
I think I have a few categories of people I'm re-meeting on facebook:

• People I love dearly, but are far away. 
  
• People I loved in the past, but lost track of as life moved us from place to place.
  
• People I knew in highschool (marginally, very well, or otherwise), and who I really enjoyed seeing again (or emailing again) at our 20th reunion.
  
• People I just met recently, either through the blog or in person. 
  

Are all of these people friends? Well, as I'm writing this, I'm beginning to think they actually are friends... I do have connections to each of them, and so maybe "friends" isn't such a confusing term after all...

With all that said, however, I am catching myself regressing to high school insecurity once in a while. What if I "invite" a friend and they reject me? Don't remember me? Don't like me? Ugh. Why do I want to think like that? But I'll admit these thoughts have crossed my mind since I started playing around with facebook.

There must be some happy medium...

Maybe a facebook network is a like little neighborhood.  If you look out your window, you get a glimpse of what your neighbor is doing, from raking the leaves to having birthday party for their baby.   You might not be close with all of these people, but it's nice to be part of their community.  Some neighbors you invite in for coffee, while others you just wave to as you bring in your mail.   It's a connection, regardless of how intimate it is.

That's what facebook is, I think.   Even the most mundane updates of a friend ("so-and-so is getting ready to go to the big football game") is comforting in a way.  And keeping in touch is hard enough these days; it's nice to feel community with people who have surrounded you in various stages of your life.

I was just contacted on Facebook this week by my friend Kristen, a girl who falls into the "I loved dearly in the past" category. She moved away when I was in fifth grade, and I was devastated. Her mom had sage advice for me then, and I have recalled the lines many times since then. "Make new friends, but keep the old. Some are silver, others gold." Facebook is a way of keeping all those friends in one place--silver and gold alike.  Are you on yet?  Would you like to be friends?