Missing

During the summer of 2005 my mom started to do unusual, compulsive things as a result of her Alzheimer’s. One of the things she did for hours on end, was to dead-head the flowers in the garden and put the seeds, pods, leaves, stems, and blossoms into arrangements everywhere. I told my sisters that she was trying to make order out of chaos. Everything she touched became a work of art, so I started photographing what she had done. I will post those here occasionally.


So my husband, my son, and I went for a quick visit to my dad’s. I can’t help but miss my mom when I’m up there. I can’t believe it’s only been four months since she died. Sometimes it feels like forever ago; sometimes it feels like she was just in the room.

I am a fairly early riser usually. And I like to stay up late as well. So once in a while, I take a mid-afternoon nap to try to catch-up with my sleep. But last Saturday, as I sat on the couch reading a magazine at about 11:00 a.m., I started to feel my eyelids get heavy, and soon stretched out and fell asleep — which is a very strange thing for me to do. While I was asleep I had the same dream about my mother – twice.

I was sitting at the dining room table drinking orange juice from a coffee cup, alone in the morning quiet. Mom walked into the room wearing her green velor robe and smiling at me. Her hair had been newly done and looked vibrant auburn and neatly styled — not the way she looked in the last few months of her illness when we could barely get it washed and combed. I looked up at her, and she smiled at me, and I started crying. I felt as though my whole body was shuddering with my sobbing. She reached across the table and held my had. “I miss you so much,” I said to her. She didn’t say a word to me, just pulled me from my chair and put her arms around me. Even now, a week later, I can feel the feeling of her slender but strong arms wrapped around me, holding me close. I was crying in her arms as she stroked my hair.

You know what it’s like when you have a nightmare that you want to escape and you force yourself to wake up just a little or you roll over to interrupt the images? That’s what I did. But I didn’t wake all the way up. Instead I had the exact same dream for a second time.

At the exact same moment, I forced myself awake — all the way this time. My husband was sitting in the recliner next to me watching football. “Did I say anything in my sleep?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied. “Why?”
“I just had the strangest dream.” I was so surprised that I hadn’t been crying in my sleep. My body felt achy, like it does after a good cry, and I just couldn’t shake the image and the touch of mom out of head. And I still can’t.


A Slab of Beef and My Little Book

A humungous, over-sized replica of a piece of steak won the Grand Prize at the 3rd Annual National Juried Exhibition of the Art League of Northern California in Novato. This chunk of cow was amazing; it must have been about four feet by three feet in diameter, and it looked exactly like the meat I buy at Raley’s, from the fatty marbling down to the hand-drawn bar code on the label and the cellophane wrapping stretched over styrofoam with the blood pooling inside under the meat. It was displayed low to the ground on a pedestal and had a “Do Not Touch” sign placed in front of it. Good thing too, because I really wanted to feel what it was made of. I tried to get a closer look at the display label, but there were always people standing in front of it. I think it may have said “resin.”

I dragged my husband and my long-suffering son to the artists’ reception last Saturday night. We actually had to drive an hour and a half out of our way to get to Novato because we were going to visit my dad in Sacramento after the show. My son didn’t want to be going to his grandpa’s in the first place, so he was rather surly and unenthusiastic — you know, a typical mopey adolescent.

I had really talked myself into schmoozing while I was there. I was going to mingle with artists, network, bask in the glow of my art work. But it was not to be. The gallery was crowded, mostly noticeably by the front door where there were serving brie and fruit and other interesting tidbits. I tried to appease my son by directing him towards the free food, but that didn’t do much good.

Meanwhile, my husband and I snaked our way along the walls of the little gallery, looking at the art work. Some of it I loved – a huge oil painting of a woman in a sheik black mini-dress lying on the floor repairing a dishwasher really stood out. As did an assemblage piece made entirely of discarded radio tubes. There was a nice variety of types of art, from collage and ceramics to oils, watercolors, and photography. My piece was the only altered book or book art piece. It was in the back gallery on the wall across from the meat. It looked tiny and forlorn by comparison. And a couple little matchstick pieces had broken off from the top. Directly below my book was a painting (or was it a photograph?) of a dog in a funeral home. I liked the looks of that.

When we got to the back room where Fear was hanging I noticed two women pointing at it and talking. I wanted to get close to them so I could hear what they were saying, but the room was too small and crowded and noisy, and that sirloin was taking up so much room! I wondered if it would be kosher to walk up to them and say, “Hi, I’m the artist that made that. What do ya think?” But I was too chicken. So I waited until they left and Michael took a couple of pictures of me standing next to my pride and joy. Did I tell you before that my son picked out that one to enter? I let him choose the three of the six books in the Broken Doll series that I would submit because I couldn’t decide. He may be a surly teenager, but he is my absolute best source for truthfulness — no matter how the truth might hurt!

It’s hard to try to wheedle yourself into a conversation with strangers when you haven’t had a drink and your son and husband are hanging on your sleeve. It’s hard enough for me to engage in small talk even without those hindrances. So after making one and a half rounds again, (with one last look at my book to make sure it was still there) we left and headed up to Sacramento to see my dad.