Lessons from a Ghost

Timing with a Postage Stamp

When I was a teenager, or perhaps just before I reached those "teen" years, my parents left out of town for the weekend on a trip that left me home by myself. Where my two siblings were is beyond me, however, my mom had it arranged that I would spend the evening over one of her good friend's houses.
While this friend was considered my mom's friend, appropriately being closer in age, and sharing the familiarity of what it is like to have children, let alone more than one child, and juggling schedules back and forth from swim practice, school and trying to hold off the often noisy pagan sacrifices each child tried to commit on the other, there was a certain camaraderie with this friend and myself as well. While she had two perfectly fine children that were closer in age that would attract any kid to playing, I'd much prefer sitting at the table chatting with her rather than swimming in the lake, or getting involved in whatever game the gang was into on that particular occasion. So it was with great delight that I got to spend my very own evening over at her house, with her kids gone to swim practice, and watch grown-up movies, like "An Officer and a Gentleman" and talk about grown-up things like what we thought about life, and what we envisioned the future might hold, how we'd like to see things in our spaces and what not. In the course of this conversation, while the credits rolled up from the movies, my friend was telling me about how her father (if I recall the relation correctly) used to dream about having a bookshelf of all his favorite books and so slowly one by one, he purchased his favorite books in hardcover, placing each one gently on the shelf, watching it grow as he grew.
"I love that idea," I said, the little book-lover myself back then.
"Um hum, me too," my friend said.
"I could have a library just like Belle's, with my favorite books all up and down the rows with a ladder to slide around and find just the one I am looking for."
"Yes you could."
And so it became a tradition that each birthday, each Christmas, I would find a book in the mail. A hardcover book. Sometimes with a note of explanation in choice, sometimes without, but I always new who it was from. Even when this friend moved away, and we moved further away. Even when my mom and her fell further out of touch. Even when I began my own traveling, collecting library cards like postage stamps, where friends would call and ask, "Do you think you'll be ___ by summer because I'd like to visit?" knowing I often moved with the wind, a hardcover book always found me.
And so today, while I accepted a new formal job, and was walking up to the mailbox, moving the touch of nerves at doing something new, at moving once again, I smiled at the perfect timing my friend always has as I discovered a book waiting for me in the mailbox, and a note, reminding me of a truth she always believes and reminds me to believe as well waiting for me inside the pages. Just like the belief that someday I will have a bookshelf full of my favorite books, stretching from wall to wall.

Beginnings

I am presently reorganizing my old computer--backing up files, deleting files (it's 10 at night and I want to try my old X-Files game out).

All the same I came upon these two images... ones I had meant to use in a blog and must've forgotten.

Sometimes, when I stare at Trina Schart Hyman's amazing ability to capture the human form, I think, dang. She was just amazing--how can I ever hope to get to that level? Now, having interviewed many a friend of Trina's, I recognize she worked her butt off... that aside, sometimes I like to think back on her earlier books ... Sometimes I even pull them out to flip through the pages... and while I realize technology certainly aided in the coloring process, I smile and think, "Look at how she began. She was a beginner once too." And so, with that, I'm posting both Trina's beginning, and my beginning, to show how even the Caldecott Winning artist that I admire SOOO much, the incredible line masterer herself, once started out struggling a bit to capture a form that she eventually mastered. So here is my beginning to remind myself, Molly you are improving. And I toast to Trina's beginning, as I toast to my own.

Blog Fun

This is a playful post to demonstrate how blogs work.
This is me blogging. I'm writing fun things.. and I'm telling you about this picture.
This is when we were out checking out TC Steel's house--after he moved from The Hermitage. He moved from Brookville when his wife died.

Traveling with speckles of thought.

I'm sitting here, half comatos from a night with the Oscars, sipping on decaf coffee so that I may enjoy Dunkin's Full Tilt later on my two and a half hour drive to work, with a wet head, bare toes, one blood-shot eye consequence of my wearing contacts for my evening, and thinking about all those who were up there winning Oscars last night and I thought, "Wow. They must have gone a curcumtuitis route." Yeah, I made up that word, but I was trying for something like it. Meaning, these people all probably were not handed the easy relaxation of knowing, hey, all I have to do is follow this path so that I can stand at the Oscars and celebrate my love for say, costume design (did you know I once fantasized about being a costume designer?) Or watching an interview with Sandra Bullock who mentioned how venamently her mother didn't want her kids to be normal. (I tried to spell that word right but spell check says, "No Guesses Found".

Anyways, all of this has struck me again as food for thought. Here I am post-depression (wouldn't it have been nice if I was speaking economically) teetering between my former belief system of if you tackle and drive forward without distraction and without listening to the "practical side" of your head, you can in fact pursue dreams of say, participating in the field of children's literature, be it as a writer, illustrator, museum curator (at a picture book facility, librarian etc. or that you should really just wish among all wishes to just be normal and pick SOMETHING that is steady, sturdy and pays the bills that you wouldn't mind doing so that you can have fun with all your other "hobbies" on the side.

Normal.

I'm reading this book called, "Traveling with Pomagrantes" by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees) and since I have so much good quality time to think and listen to books on my ride to work, I found this book sparks a level of thought and reflection unlike some of my former books. I presently have listened to only four disks and love this book. I have already concluded that I am buying it for my bookshelf, in hardcover, because I can tell it is an important novel in the course of my life playing out. In part, I like this book because I can relate to the character of Ann. Ann seems to be in many ways a reflection of myself last year, her pondering over how a certain sequence of events, or letters from colleges, are causing her to become depressed and yet she is not familiar with this sense at all nor knows in some ways how to assist in preventing it from occurring or getting back to the place where she was her confident self. I smile as I feel I could give her a checklist as to what will happen to her emotionally. "And then this will happen..." I say to my car, piled with lunch sacks, mismatched clothes, and Dunkin donut coffee cups. And sure enough, it does for Ann, and I feel so sympathetic towards her, yet wait for her to hopefully emerge where I am and maybe give me some hints of the discoveries she has made on her journey that I am still working to discover for myself.

So where does this all tie in with the Oscars?

Simple, all of these pieces, the outstanding recognition for artistic talent in a touch-and-go field, the sense of bramblie path making that I feel at present as I know I cannot continue driving as far as I am without going nuts, (thus need a new career), and Ann's story, a girl who while slightly younger than myself seems to be in my same shoes of trying to sort out her twenties, a period that some people forget to explain is not that easy when you are in fact, not normal (or typical might be a better word).

That's it.

So now I need to blow dry my hair, put my coffee cup away, grab my socks and shoes and saunter out to my home-away-from-home, the Nissan, and continue thinking, wondering, pondering, musing, and well, listening to Traveling with Pomegranates to see who can reach the solution to life first.