Out of the mouth of babes

So Emmie and Lulu know when something is up.  As do my buddies and frankly I am just terrible at hiding things.  My face gives my emotions a voice without me having to open up my mouth.

Emilie has known something was up long before I said anything and sometimes she  is just simply aware of the change in energy.  She is that tuned in.  Super sonic radar.

She has strong intuitive insight, always has, but  she hasn’t the years of wisdom built into that radar which comes with the passage of time,  so she makes wild guesses at what is up.  She comes round to see for herself.

Most likely to settle that feeling, rather then to satisfy the curiosity.

Lately,  Em has been coming back home pretty consistently.  The weekend I got home from my Ohio/Dallas trip.  Last weekend with her clown posse, and she yesterday was threatening to come home again this weekend.   She also called today, just to say ” I love you Dude”  She has been calling an awful lot lately too.

Last weekend, even after I told her to pass by  ( coming up late on their way to Richmond, so please go straight there so I can sleep) she did the swing by at about half past midnight, just so she could give me a hug.   Then she and the crew sat on the bench across from church and waited from me to come out on Sunday.  And the sermon was extra, extra long.

Emmie dropped off a card she had written back on Name Day.  The outside said:

Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you,

but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…

~Thoreau

on the inside:

Dude! It’s name change day and I don’t want to seem sappy cuz I’m kinda not good at that sh*t,

but sometimes you should stop and listen to what you tell me and the lulu. If we chase it or look

hard we are not going to see what we are looking for… and the truth is, you are an awesome 44 year

year old person, who helps wholeheartedly and without question (sometimes) and most everybody sees

that! So Dude, stop trying and just be. Do what you love, like helping people, swimming, go flying

and when you are just doing.. you’ll find what you need… and that you might try at what you tell

me…and its working. I LOVE YOU MUM!

She wrote that on July 31st.  Just before my trip out to meet my family.     Emilie is right on target this time… I have been in the chrysalis, and have just emerged back into the world, my wings are drying out and I am gently fanny them in the sun while I wait for the next gentle breeze to lift me up.

And Emilie, just so you know your radar is working: Monday I helped a random stranger, just because I could. Tuesday I spend a couple of hours submerged in pure liquid bliss swimming Caspian Lake.  This afternoon I stopped by the airport and reserved a plane for Tuesday with Dave.

Mimi’s Peony

Mimi's tools

Mimi has been working now that the children have gone back to school, and her time has proved fruitful.

Just before leaving for Ohio, I supped with her and Pat, and we talked about doing a barter of a painting for a sweater or some such other knit piece.  We talked of my search for family and the returning of my name to Jump and would she focus on this for the painting?  I wanted something of personal significance from Mimi, not just a painting that she did in the moment, but that was directional and meaningful to both of us.  How she taps into the story and translates and gives insight.  This is what good artists do intuitively because this is the way they are.

I can’t afford her work now that she has command of her field…. my words not hers.  She is most modest about her work and her talent and would never, never, never admit to her own brilliance.  But I will tell you she talented and becoming well known as an abstract artist,  watercolor on canvas!  There is some project where a documentary team has been filming her and following the progress of her work ….  she is silently a very big deal.

But more importantly, she is of Greensboro and part of it all.

So, last week, Pat and I returned late at night for a dip and a chat.  Mimi had finished this Peony piece, but it was so dark and I had to return to see it in the true light.  She had also finished a series of Mandalas in three colors, one of which was done for me.                                                                                           She writes:

JUMP

End of July 2009

This work was done for Alex Jump. Yellow, the source energy, intuition and the color of the sun was chose as I felt the intuitive connection between yourself and your father had been long standing “source energy” for you.

Blue, true blue, true to you ~ I could spend 7 lifetimes studying blue ~ in a sense you have spent 7 lifetimes figuring ” you” .

Purple is of the Spirit ~ Yours is large

Mini Carter-Haley              August 22, 2009

After the many trips I have taken recently to find self and to connect deeply with others, the symbolism of this piece is certainly not lost.

Mimi had also finished a wonderful piece: HOMAGE TO TWOMBLY

I love it more in the light with the bursts of yellow and the Haiku at the bottom.

Mimi is such a delight to be with.  She laughs easily  and openly and was so so excited when I showed her how to do her own blog .

Diamondsandcompost.wordpress.com

She has written this book (178 pages worth of art instruction!)  and had not gotten to publishing it yet,  so her first post is the beginning of her book.  Go Mimi Go!

What I enjoy about Mimi the most is her openness to joy and intuition and to looking at life from different angles.  Spending time with her makes me understand the connect we all have and I leave her energized and looking at color and shape and form once again in the landscapes of my life.

Sugar House (written for Pat)

Sugar House

” My feet take me up the road to the gate, and through it. Just inside the gate the road forks.  I ignore the Ridge House road and choose instead the narrow dirt road that climbs around the hill to the right.  John Wightman, whose cottage sits at the end of it, died fifteen years ago.  He will not be up to protest my walking in his ruts.  It is a road I have walked hundreds of times, a lovely lost tunnel through the trees, busy this morning with birds and little shy rustling things, my favorite road anywhere. “

Wallace Stegner ~ Crossing to Safety, 1897

Yesterday late, I headed up the hill to the Sugar House.  My lifetime friend Patty and I had a plan to meet before she heads home for the summer. We fall into the rhythm of a friendship that began as children and has lasted though the decades.  No secrets between us, as what would be the point?   Sadly we only see each other a few times a year, as she is now a “summer person” again.

My Nana’s house is just before it, right after the brook and down to the left.   Above both of us is Wallace Stegner’s home,  now belonging to Patty’s family.  Page and Lynn Stegner’s house is  just before us by the reservoir.

This is the place where I can just be.

I have always loved he Sugar House; has a loft inside and a huge ladder leading up to it and a secret bunk room behind the kitchen and a secret path leading up to the back way to Barr Hill. I though that house was much more fun then Nana’s.  Although my children would argue the opposite.

Back in the early days, my grandparents Arthur and Emilie Perry, Wallace Stegner and the Gray’s all bought a single property that was once a farm.  My grandparents had a little slice of a lot, with a small beach down in the gap.   The Gray’s have the lion’s share of the land, most of it now in the Barr Hill Nature Preserve.  But still, the paths from Nana’s to Page’s to Wallace’s to the Gray’s house and to Barr Hill are all there.    They were all life time friends, as were all of their children and now the grandchildren, my generation, too.  The next generation is coming along  with the same experiences and routines of summer. Hunting for Gnomes in the woods, picnics on Barr Hill,  swimming lessons at the beach, midnight swims ~ sans suits on star lit nights.

Patty and I had a lovey time talking, laughing, and dining, then headed over to Mimi’s for a late summer, star lit skinny dip.  Simply delicious.   Mimi’s house is on the lake and she too has deep roots in Greensboro, several generations back.  We all fall right into the pattern and rhythm that is generations deep.

It was so difficult to pull myself away after the dip and the warm chamomile licorice tea.   I have pulled my old copy of Crossing to Safety out again and will do another read.  Wallace puts into words my strongest feelings.

“There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

Nana's View for Lulu

Spectacular

Double Orange Daylily

Daylilys produce a bloom that lasts just one day.

Summer is here, finally in the later half as kids go back to school next week.  Yesterday I met a friend I had not seen in a while and asked her how her summer went.  Past tense. Sad but true.   My Greensboro friends are taking in the last few weeks before the end; golf and tennis tournaments, summer cookouts and the like.  Yesterday I bought my textbooks for an upcoming class this fall.  UVM campus was getting ready for fall too.  Groups of new students getting tours of the Davis center.

Summer flies by in New England and some years it seems like it will never come, then spectacular days and poof… gone, just like that.

It has been to hot to run lately.  When the air is hot and heavy I notice how it affects my Lupus. I can’t get enough air in my lungs and I struggle to get a good breath.  Screws up my rhythm, so I use an inhaler, which can really help.   Sometimes the heat can also make me feel really sick, so combine the two and running in temperatures over 80 can really suck. Swimming is a much better use of recreation time.

Yesterday a cold front pasted though and air was so much clearer, so I thought a good run around 6:00 would be wonderful.  Well, it started out that way,  my pace was good and I had used my inhaler, so I could breathe, and I was running in my new Asics.   But up at the top of the hill I felt the tell tale twitch in my right knee.

I bought the Asics in Ohio and gave them a good 5 mile test run and had trouble with the right knee.  Rested the knee a bit and did a good walk in Dallas.  Returned home and walked again, then Maine and no exercise, a run back in Vt was a run/walk 4 miler.  I didn’t trust the hills with the new sneakers and I didn’t have my inhaler and could not get enough air to run comfortably. So I walked the hills and ran on the flats.  Seemed to work OK.

Last night I had to stop just after the corn fields. And I was having a good pace and it felt really good in the muscles.  But  a definite tweak in the knee and sharp pain when running down the hill.  Damn, those shoes were $120.00!  So I am going to have to take the insert out of the right shoe and hope the insert from my New Balance, worn out, true but steady, never hurt my knees, right shoe will fit into the Asisc.   I am also going to email the show salesman in Ohio and see if he has any ideas.   I am flat footed and shoes with no arches work the best.

So now back to walking for the next week or so.  More swimming if I can get it in and the nice weather holds.   In all, like a short summer, I enjoy the windows of time when my body is symptom free.   I take in much as I can, and like the Daylily bloom it is spectacular.

Caspian lake and Sister Sue

Caspian Lake~Greensboro Vermont

I took swimming lessons at this beech back in the 70’s. We all did, beginning of July and the water was always cold and we all froze.  Then we grew up and made our kids take swimming lessons here too.  That’s becuase that is what you do.

It has been warm the past couple of days and the lake temperature is around 72, like bathwater for Vermont and simply delightful to swim in.   I have been up to the beach for the past couple of afternoons and loving every minute of it.  Yesterday I swam out to the boats moared on right, then around to a maker that isn’t showing in the picture, then back to the beach.  Today just out to the boats and back.  A bit choppy.

Today I also brought Sister Sue with me.  I had been thinking of Sue lately, most likely because of Rosmarie but also because I like Sue and miss hanging out with her and Judith.  Sue has known the Trapp family since she was in her 20’s and decided to bike from hostel to hostel one summer between her Junior and Senior year in college.  She was  in Vermont and saw a poster for the Trapp Family singers music camp and thought that perhaps they would have a bed for a couple of days.

They did and Sue ended up with home away from home.  Sue returned and worked up at Trapps music camp for 6 more years as part of the family.  Muttar ( Maria) ran music camp,with a monastic rhythm.  It is partially due to Sue’s inclusion as an honorary Trapp, that she chose the vows of a nun and lived as one for 37 years.  Why she left is her own story, not for the blog. But suffice it to say, she is the pretty coolest nun-like-peep I have.

She is one of my most favorite people in the world. Her birthday is the day after mine and we celebrate our days together.  Sister Sue is 82 and taking her swimming was such a treat for me.  I love love love making her laugh and be joyful.  Which is not really hard to do.  She is pretty joyful right from the get go.  But the point is, when you make an older person laugh, down deep God is smiling.  When that person is a retired nun, well then, triple points.  It is the same type of feeling you get when you make a baby laugh.   Simple Joy.

I love having a nun type person as a buddy.   We figure that she will make the pearly gates before me and has promised to leave the gates a bit open, so that I can sneak in when no one is looking.    I think it is a great plan.  Always good to have a member of the God squad on your side.

Today I was reminded of the time-less-ness that the water has on all of us.   How important is it to us and to our ability to live. We are created in a womb, cushioned by water and delivered out to the world.  Returning to the water has that very primal connection for me.  I have come to this lake, and to this beach at different points of my life and I wonder if this child will too.