Nonna's Hard Blink

I often only concede that I am part French and part Italian, which is actually all parts fallacy since I am one-third Portuguese, an ancestry that I rarely connected with.  Being a French girl at heart, though, the only way you'd know I am Italian is that I call my paternal grandmother, "Nonna", the Italian word for "Grandmother".  My father, with his seasoned New England accent, pronounces it "Norna", adding an "R" where there should not be one.  These days, my grandmother - Nonna herself - signs her cards "Nona", having misplaced one of the "N"s sometime over the last ten years.  She also goes by Maddy and Madeline, but even family members who she is not Grandmother to call her Nonna. 

Aside from the four people who take credit for raising me (I often refer to them as "all of my parents"), my grandmothers were, and continue to be, very involved in my life.  I would spend weekends with my Dad as a child, which meant spending much of that time with Nonna - and boy did she spoil me. 

One such anecdote goes something like this:



A look-a-like of Nonna's bad-ass car
Circa 1981

I loved McDonald's happy meals as a six year old: The cheerful box it came in with its clever, clasping cardboard handle; the pickle laden hamburger wrapped in bright yellow paper; the too-hot, crispy French fries that made the condiment packets warm; and the free, unisex toy, which provided either joy or curiosity, depending on which side of the gender fence it was leaning.  There wasn't anything about the happy meal I didn't like. The great misfortune in this was that my mother strictly forbade me to eat fast food and anyone who took care of me knew this rule - especially Nonna.  But being the lovingly stubborn and forthright Italian Grandmother (she was sneaky, too), Nonna would pick me up in her beige Ford Maverick and drive us directly to the nearest McDonald's, defying my mother's rule, and enthusiastically order me a happy meal.  There I would be, sitting shot gun in the Maverick and smiling widely in anticipation of all the savory splendor I was otherwise not allowed to have.  At that moment, no one in the world loved me as much as she did.  Nonna knew there was no harm in this clandestine arrangement since I would never reveal our secret and, of course, withholding the truth from my mother wasn't necessarily lying, right?  I am not sure how long it took for my mother to discover these covert, fast food operations.  But when she did, Nonna begrudgingly brought our drive-thru affair to a halt and devised other ways to spoil me - most likely with some other form of equally noxious food. 

When we were together, Nonna and I played simple games, the type that didn't require a lot of props or money to play them.  She would let me dress up in a hodgepodge of her clothing and mine, don a handkerchief on my head and pretend to be a maid that "cleaned" her house.  Admittedly, it was the closest I ever came to actually learning to clean.  Other times, allowing me to rearrange her furniture, Nonna would watch as I carefully constructed fort-like tents with draped sheets and other found blankets.  I would take up most of her living room for days at a time and hide myself away with only a flashlight and drawing books.  I believe there may even be photographic evidence of these strange events stored somewhere in Massachusetts.

In those days, Nonna was young enough to go out dancing on Saturday nights. She was a spry and spunky lady, widowed at a far too young age and she would dance on these particular nights with a large group of her coupled friends. She never shared with me the details of those younger, single days which a child's mind could not understand. But in a recent year, I spent an afternoon listening to her tell a short collection of colorful stories.  Her gray eyes, now filled with cataracts, sparkled as she gleefully recollected those fond and carefree memories of her wily, young self.

Being a hot-blooded Italian, Nonna has occasionally gotten angry. I recall a very memorable photograph published many years ago in The Boston Globe that captured her - the gray-haired, 70-something-year-old President of the Massachusetts Senior Action Commmittee, in a very heated debate over state Medicare reform.  While standing on the steps of the Massachusetts State House with an incendiary expression on her face, eyes large and aggressive, her lips in the shape of something serious being said, and she was very clearly wielding her forefinger in an unsuspecting political opponent's face.  It was glorious.  I bet the poor guy never anticipated being embroiled with five-foot-two Nonna.

On other occasions, Nonna's angry face would surface as a result of her being fed up with my father or me teasing her, which sometimes she would take in good spirits - sometimes not.  There was a hidden threshold between when Nonna was having fun and when she had had enough.  During these episodes, with pursed lips and a melodramatic air, she would, in rapid succession, blink both of her eyes causing her entire face to twitch in an ostentatious manner, the vibrations of which would ripple well past her wiry hairline.  She would repeat this behavior, presumably until she fatigued all the muscles in her face, in the meantime bringing our fun to an abrupt end.  Words were not necessary.  Several years ago, without her knowledge, I coined her signature move: Nonna's Hard Blink. 

Nonna would sometimes display her disapproving hard blink just to let me know too much time had passed since my last phone call to her, or that I perhaps had something to do with the bad weather that day.  She would look at me, with those Crushing Eyelids of Displeasure, say in her throaty voice, "Hiya, Monkey" (the origin of this pet name is still unknown to me), and hard blink her way into eliciting a hug and kiss on her soft, wrinkled cheek.  I guess she doesn't realize I give those willingly.

She turned 91 in January.  Life is slow for her now.  She likes her white toast and cigarettes and plays cards for pennies with the community of same-aged people that she lives among.  I saw her on Christmas morning, first exhaustively unfolding her creaking body out of the passenger's seat of my father's car and then shuffling her steps doggedly to the front door of my mother's house. 

Nonna's spirit is still strong, but it is evident that her age and the difficulties that come along with it frustrate her.  She has a sharp mind, but has given up the freedoms that a young person's body allows.  She moves slowly, much of the time with assistance.  And she stopped driving seven years ago due to being completely blind in one eye and nearly so in the other. 

In a continuing gift-giving trend, I gave paintings to my immediate family members this past Christmas.  It has become an annual tradition and a reason to paint but also an excuse to avoid the commercial trappings of the holiday "spirit".  The funny thing about family is that they seem to adore whatever piece of art I give to them whether it be out of pride or affection - or perhaps, with any luck, they actually like the piece I created with them in mind.  Over the years, my parents' and grandparents' homes have become veritable galleries of my work.  My mother, for example, believes that since the dawn of my life began in her womb, all of my original paintings naturally and automatically belong to her.  This is a belief that I have unquestioningly affirmed since she does indeed have many of my original pieces. 

Painting for Nonna this year proved the most challenging because her eyesight has severely degenerated.  It seemed perverse to give her a gift that she would have to struggle to gain enjoyment of.  I quickly realized the error in my thinking since, even though she may not fully see the image on canvas, in the end, she would deem having her granddaughter's artwork on her wall gift enough. 

On Christmas morning, I carefully watched her reaction as she opened her abstract flower painting, a departure from my normally detailed subjects.  Her eyes strained slightly as she took one close look at it through her bifocals and said proudly, "It's so, so beautiful, Aly." 

That's family for you.  

Nonna's "Wildflowers", Christmas 2010

Having Courage

A man with whom I work, Jeff, has a quiet demeanor.  I do not know him particularly well, except that he is the type of man that exudes a confident warmth, a gentle humanism.  Never superfluous in his speech, he has a calm disposition, soft spoken but also articulate.  When I have the opportunity to see him a few times a year, I am happy to talk with him, usually about work or how he fared his three hour commute that particular day.  He is the sort of man that when I see him, I smile and greet him warmly - something that does not always come naturally for me in my current work environment.

The one thing I know about Jeff, outside of his professional character, is that he has a wife who has cancer.  He has talked to me about her several times.  I don't know her name, I only know of her disease.  Having not seen him in several months, I recently asked him about her health.  He shook his head with a somber resolve that expressed without words that she is not doing well.  He said, “We are enjoying our time together.” He went onto briefly explain that the medical attempt to cure her through chemotherapy had failed and her prognosis to live is approximately 6 to 12 months. Jeff appeared stolid, composed while talking about his wife, leaving out the emotional details.  The balance of her life would be about bringing her physical comfort and “enjoying their time” together. 

Jeff talked with me about an upcoming trip that he and his wife were especially looking forward to.  A business trip would afford them the chance to visit Charlottesville, Virginia - a beautiful town with shops and old buildings and home to a classical university designed by Thomas Jefferson.  Cobblestone streets and sidewalks abut antiques stores and cafes.  Amorous couples walk slowly, arm-in-arm, through the streets.  There is a romantic and laid back air to the place.

While in Charlottesville, Jeff, in his understated enthusiasm, shared with me that he and his wife would be seeing Cirque du Soleil for the first time.  There was a detectable upbeat giddiness to his voice.  They had seen it on television, he said, and it looked wonderful.  As he spoke, I recalled my own experience seeing my favorite Cirque production several years ago and how it consumed and overwhelmed me emotionally to the point of tears.  I was amazed that what I was seeing - an elegant and gorgeously choreographed, stunningly costumed, intelligently written, beautifully woven patchwork of talented dancers and skilled and courageous acrobats - could be derived from the soul of another human being; that the creative charge from a person's vision could be turned into a tangible, visual, and beautiful expression.  I have never felt so overjoyed before or since by any other form of art.  I felt thrilled for him and his wife to be able to share a moment of sheer enjoyment - visceral and emotional - and for my coworker to have a memory like this to forever hold on to.

While I listened to Jeff and related to him my Cirque experience, finding myself with choked back tears for this man and his wife, I felt deeply compelled to say all the things of sympathy and condolence that one should, somehow muster words of eloquence that offer solace and wishes for emotional peace.  What I wanted was to show him in his time of need that I was human too, that I cared and understood.  But in that moment, filled with my silence, he offered a prolongued, gentle glance back at me graciously letting me know he heard me and he understood without me having to say a word.  It was a compelling display of his forgiveness, grace, acceptance, and connection that given his circumstance was a powerful deed.  All I could do later, finding myself safely alone, was cry for him and my lack of courage to express all the things I only wished I was able to say.  The weakness of words might not have done justice anyway.

"You can't feel compassion for someone unless you can personally relate to their experience", I heard a high school teacher once say to our class while discussing "Les Miserables", the classic story of love and redemption. I recall being suddenly angry all those years ago to hear such a blatant admittance of selfishness.  But, as life has proven, there is much truth to these words. By way of selfishness or not, it is essential, like breathing in air, to relate whichever way we best know how. What else is there, other than to relate and connect with others?

Of the things that I think of doing should I ever find myself with mere months to live, several things come to my mind. I think I would be painting more to create a legacy on canvas about what I was most passionate.  I might want to hike, if I was physically capable, in India or South America or Asia.  Maybe I would spend my last hours with my head on my loved one's chest, listening to their heartbeat or go camping in Africa, drink wine by candlelight and read my favorite book for the last time. I’d think about how I would tell my friends and family how much I loved them so they would always remember. Or maybe I'd see one final performance of Cirque du Soleil to know again how it feels to be delighted, enraptured, and amazed.

There are those people who I admire that give and love courageously, without barriers and fear, express freely without second guessing themselves.  I hope to learn something about courage from my coworker who showed me so much of it.

The Ebb...and Ever More Ebb...of Creativity

Creativity can be capricious, haphazardly wandering in and out of my life.  Thankfully, the periods in between satisfying artistic productivity - let's call it creative hibernation - has evolved over the course of the last two years.  I no longer experience weeks or even months without the need to create something, a sign that creativity and acting upon it have progressively become a regular part of my life.  This is a blessing but also a curse, since the burning internal plea to be creative is more often extinguished by fear or fatigue.  (Must remind myself to resurrect my copy of Art and Fear.)

I envy the artists and craftspeople (craftswomen, if you prefer the less politically-correct idiom) who have the opportunity to create on a daily basis.  They seem to always have the time, the means, and the energy to put things into action.  These days, I consider creativity a fickle friend, similar to, say, sexual desire:  it's always there in the background to some varying degree, but can be particularly insatiable at involuntary moments - and seemingly dormant at others.  But, you know what THEY say about the grass being greener, having to force "creativity" out of necessity could also take the fun out of it.  Or at least that's the excuse I am using.

The small town I grew up in had one small high school.  It also had, among others, one chemistry teacher, one girls' gym coach, and one art teacher.  Mr. Raposa taught the art classes during my freshman year before retiring that following summer.  He was also my mother's art teacher, revealing not only his general age but his goodly experience as an artist and educator.  He was the kind of man that had a deep, raspy voice (I think he might have been a smoker), silvering black hair - grown to a more carefree length than most teachers - and an obvious artistic bent that made him seem cool and young for his age.  A man of his tenure and laid back nature was just what we young endeavoring artists needed, but he gave enough direction to really teach us some new things:  integrating classical poetry and art, "seeing" something as opposed to merely "looking", and experimenting with various art media and styles (paint versus pen and ink versus pointillism versus expressionism).  What I liked the most about him was that when he looked at you, almost through you, it seemed he could see you for all of your artistic potential.  It felt kindred in some ways.  It was encouraging and it felt good. 

He also taught us something else:  If you don't feel artistically inspired, it's okay if you take a day off every once in a while.  We certainly weren't hearing mantras such as this from other teachers!  What I believe this instilled in us, though, was not a sense that we could get out of doing work, but that inspiration is so much a part of the process of making art and being creative.  It was a concise, but enlightening, lesson.

I find it particularly difficult to be inspired and creative during the winter months.  A day off from art every once in a while is rather a long, bitter season lacking in creative motivation, perforated by brief encounters of almost creating.  The coldness of these winter months has turned my formerly sultry relationship with art into a frigid one.  Frustration begets more frustration and the cycle of the ebb continues without a reciprocating flow.

This is the time when I look forward to spring and all of its resultant renewed senses and vigor for life.  The memories of melting earth and smells of soil and warm spring rain are buried deep in my psyche.  The growth that spring carries with it offers a sense of rebirth that no other time of the year can evoke.  For me, spring re-establishes a world of possibilities and catalyzes new goals, and often times, refreshes previous ones.  And so it goes, the cycle of intention.  Consistency makes perfect, right?  Or is that practice?  I could use some of both - and a little flow.

The Travails of a Live-Work Space

If your creative work space is anything like mine, I offer my profound condolences.  A live-work space is a formidable commodity to control if you juggle a full life AND endeavor to ritualistically squeeze out a few pieces of art.  This is why artists often have what is referred to as a separate "studio"...or as I prefer to call it, the unattainable, but wildly fantasized "Le Place d'Art".

When I was a kid, my bedroom was my studio.  My easel, if you will, was the surface of my bed where I would sit Indian-style, deep into the night, quietly listening to Led Zeppelin's IV ad nauseam, while working alone in my bedroom.  Being an introspective only-child made this easy to do.  I was never disturbed, not at those hours, and I find the memories of those freely creative, late nights to embody my young life. 

Now an adult, my bedroom is, curiously, still my studio - as well as my kitchen, living room, and office.  It is a room with a southward view and robust sunlight.  A studio by definition of real estate, it is based largely, as it were, on its meager size, not by its salivation-inducing distant cousin.  Living in a space not much larger than my childhood bedroom has proven to be simultaneously ironic and comforting.  Life typically causes our spacial requirements to expand - certainly mine has expanded and shrunk again over the years - but when I assess my live-work space, I have enough to accommodate both functions and negotiating the two within a small area always begins with good intentions.

But let me be frank: good intentions does not art produce.  Once the week's cumulative archaeological site of clothing, purses, laptops, gym bags and lunch bags has been cleared from the artistic working area, Pavlov's law does not suddenly take effect.  Tragic as it is, to sit at the table, paintbrush cradled in the palm, with the intention "to art" does not involuntarily fire the brain's creative synapses, causing a sudden flow of paint onto the paper.  Suffice it to say that making this constant and automatic connection has been one of life's enduring and puzzling difficulties. 

On the other hand, a dedicated art studio space lends focus not only to creativity, but also momentum, being continually devoid of the trappings of technology (with any luck and self control), toppling piles of the latest home furniture and intimate wear catalogues (must they send so many?), laundry in the wash queue, outstanding parking tickets to pay, birthday cards to send, and glasses of wine to drink (can one really drink and draw?).  And let us not be remiss in forgetting about the partially written, nonsensical, blog drafts.  Oh blasphemy!

What I can say in defense of having live & work joined in sometimes disharmonious union, is the constant supplicating that the creative space presents, with its coy but appropriate position, central in the room, gently imploring to gain my attention.  Art is a flirtatious nymph, longing for a visceral stroke.  With that, I must go clear off a table.  There is work to be done.

Simple Fulfillment

I believe that the ultimate measure of a good life, when looking back at it from that inevitable white-lighted, supine position, harps faintly playing in the distance - or, in my case, 80's Madonna - will be if one can say they have lived happily and without regret.  As we round the corner into Twenty-Eleven, I am using these twilight hours of our current year to spot check that I am on par with this goal.  I mean, I am fairly certain I have plenty of time left in this world, but you never know what life will throw at you.  And I will want to be prepared.

When you think about it, living happily is simply about being fulfilled.  However, as you and I both know, humans are not simple beings and our cerebral path to living in a fulfilled way is not always very clear.  We possess intelligence and are evolved (or at least that's what THEY want us to believe) yet somehow we still ended up being complicated.   But if you pay close attention to the very moment you are wonderfully consumed with the transcendent feeling of enlightenment, when the body, mind, and spirit truly come together and, like a universal zeitgeist, the world suddenly makes sense - you know you have achieved the powerful and almighty FULFILLMENT. 

You know what I mean?  Yeah, neither do I. 

A bazillion years ago when I was in architecture school, a very well known and respected instructor gave an assignment to my classmates and me.  He challenged us to make a list of the rooms we envisioned in our dream house.  Several minutes later with lists complete, we each eagerly read aloud our carefully constructed catalogs of finely decorated parlors and music rooms, exotic plant arboretums, well-appointed chef's kitchens, duplicitous bathrooms and guest quarters, frescoed-ceiling indoor swimming pools - all the vast and luxurious amenities that a budding architect would deem worthy of "dream house" by definition.

Our instructor's list, in contrast, was much more simple.  He read his short list to us:  A place to sleep, a place to cook, a place to entertain, and a place to read.  (Note: some fact-checking might prove this list to tweak slightly, but you get the picture.)  There was silence in the room as each of us students cowered our heads in shame for requiring so much over-achieving opulence. 

In my year-end spot checking, using my former instructor's spare thinking, I have created an abbreviated list of things that have given me fulfillment this past year.  When I boil it down, it really is quite short:

love
laughter
finding artistic inspiration
having space to paint and draw
a healthy family
a full rack o' wine

Call me less evolved if you must (Sticks and Stones....), but this simple list is the root of my happiness.  Air in my lungs is a necessity too, but I'll put that on next year's list.

In closing, my wish for you this coming new year is for a happy and healthy Twenty-Eleven, lived without regrets and replete with enough wine and creative fulfillment to really shake things up.

Turning Wine Into Chalk

It all started with wine one night, as most things do in this life I call mine. A night not unlike other nights that can be either enlightening or get me into trouble. Mercifully, this particular thought struck me during moments of the former. Though, I am now scratching my head to question: "What's so bad about getting into trouble?"

But I am getting ahead of myself....

I surmise several possible reasons that you are here. It is because you know me well (and the trouble that has been known to find me); you know me very, very well and are nervous I may mention herein the trouble we've gotten in together; you know someone who has spent time getting into trouble with me; or perhaps you've stumbled here, maybe by way of some wine-induced googlefest using my name. In this case, dear stranger, I hope you bought something from my Amazon wish list in the process.* All of the above, by the way, are acceptable reasons to be here. If you end up liking it, tell your friends to pay a visit.

Looking at some of the very first posts by some brave, pioneering bloggers, I notice words like "scary" and "terrifying" to describe starting their blogs, but observing the vast number of blogs in existence, there undoubtedly remains a myriad of compelling reasons to do so. The idea of a new project often begins as a noble feat, fraught with both fear and excitement, but the most difficult part of doing anything, for me anyway, is STARTING it. It always seems like it's a monumental leap - of faith, of taking action, of doing, and all while hoping to achieve a modicum of success.

But since when did everything have to be so "successful", anyway? When we were kids using legos to build castles or finger painting with egg tempera on newspaper (you know who you are out there), everything turned out to be a masterpiece to behold, resulting from very little emperical skill. Feeling confident in our squirrelly, swirling pet portraits and smoking-chimney backyard landscapes, some of us even took to the sidewalks, where gorgeous chalk-drawn wonderlands of imagination sprawled out in front of our houses, causing all passers-by to step aside to admire. Someone looking on may have wondered how this concrete canvas could be so beautiful or perhaps ponder where pastel green chalk really comes from. The mind reels. Something I do know for certain: They were drawn with the unbridled enthusiasm, excitement, and passion of childhood with unfettered courage and complete abandon. There. I said it.

Chalk is permeable, translatable, but also, gloriously impermanent. Drawing in Chalk represents the type of abandon in which we could take a lesson in fearlessness from. Insert "Art as Metaphor for life" here _____________. So, here's me, reverting to my chalk-drawing-on-sidewalk self - the one in my fantasy childhood where my Mom lets me drink a glass of wine while doing it.

I suppose, fantasies aside, being an adult does have its priveleges.


* Though it would be appreciated, this is not necessary to continue reading. However, you will be required to leave only positive feedback.