It's me

It's me who begins to cry or needs to lie down or put my face into the wind. 

My emotions overwhelm me.  I become weepy or cranky.

Are you alright? the kids ask

I'm fine.  It's just hard for me to put a meal on the table these days, I say to them.  

We need to eat outside because we are still distancing ourselves, but it's not the meal that does it.

Not really.

It's all the other things going on.  The travel to England for one.

The Air Canada lady says that Pearson airport is worse than we can imagine and to get there 4 hours before a flight rather than 3.

I don't want to face that airport;  Ned and I leave on Monday.

He watches me, so wobbly most of the time.  If I ask, he hugs me and says "it'll be fine". 

I played board games with the boys and lost.  There was lots of teasing.  I am a good grand mom.  

(It's not every meal.  Most of them are fine.)

I say to myself "You're fine!"  

But it's me.  It's not them.  

I read Maria Popova's newsletter.  Recently, she wrote about the writer, Iris Murdoch.

Murdoch understood that we act out a 'middle - emotion' because it is too complex, contradictory, and category-defying for us to know what we are really feeling.  Unwilling to fully live into what we are, (anxious, uncertain, tender and terrified creatures), we act ourselves into being, costumed in false certitude. 

I turn to the large soft organic cotton quilt I've nearly finished.  

It's a real thing and it is very fine.

it's a thing

Two Years Into Covid by Martin Kotyluk  2022 acrylic on canvas  (detail)

The pandemic.

It is a thing.  

To not mention it would be lying and I try to tell the truth here. 

Our lives have changed because of that pandemic.  

Our ways of being with other people have changed.  

(my baking got better, my introversion got worse)

Cabin Dream in the Big Muddy by Rob O'Flanagan 2020-2022 acrylic on linen (detail)

My eye doctor had to close her local office.  

Which meant that I had go into Sudbury for my check up.  

I have not been going anywhere other than to the mailbox so this was huge.

Ned came too.  It was his almost birthday and so we had a date.

(My distance vision got better, my myopia got worse.)

Sick and Tired by Andrew McPhail 2021 sequins on bedsheet

We went to two art exhibitions because they were there.  

Both exhibitions had a pandemic slant.

Pandemic Partners by Rita Vanderhooft 2021 photographic print on paper

Art Gallery of Sudbury:   "is this real life?"  

A juried exhibition with a wide variety of media including ceramics, glass, textiles, photography, sculpture and painting.  It was thought provoking.  It was interesting.  I found beauty too.

I recognized many of the names, I am friends with some of the artists.  

In The Shadows no 1 - 7  Trish Stenabaugh  2022  digital print on paper

Gallery 6500: (a new gallery that has popped up in the hallway of the steelworkers union office)

Also thought provoking, this exhibition was self organized by the 'peer mentors group' of artists and poets.  The loss of one of their members over the winter, Ray Laporte, may have been the trigger for this exhibition that was entitled  "Lost and Found".  

I am friends with some of the artists.

Lost Dreams  Elizabeth Holmes and Gunhild Hotte 2021 acrylic on canvas

I wanted you to know that all this is happening in Sudbury.

Art.  Poetry.  Loss.      

I'm changed because of our trip to the city.

I keep thinking about the art.  

Cabin Dream on the Big Muddy by Rob O Flanagan 

I'd almost stopped thinking about the pandemic, but it's a thing.  

It's a whirl.  

one patch quilts

My hands ache from stitching.

My feet ache from ageing.

My heart aches from continuing on, 

through all the sadness and uncertainty.

I make textiles using just one patch.

(the technique is explained here)

I select one square of cloth and sew it to another one. 

Once I have a field of one patches, I make them stronger by quilting the seams.

The squares are all the same.

The squares are each unique.

Some are organized into rows.

Others appear random, but don't believe it.

They are also organized.

I feel powerless, unable to start the new textile pieces that flood into my brain.

I feel that if I can just finish these two simple cover ups, I can move forward.

I am calling this one Sunshine and more Sunshine

I wonder what is the urgency?

These quilts are not going to fix the war.

I am calling this one Lamentation

They do not protect against the illness.

They do not save beloved children who die.

But they are not a waste of time.

Rather, they are evidence of a time.

A time that we are living through.  

A time that we are grieving through.

All of us.   

Each unique.

Lamentation:  an expression of sorrow, mourning, or regret