A collection of observations on my view.

My apartment has only two windows.  One in the bedroom and the other in the living room.  They over look the same beige backs of the condos on the other side of the street, the little parking lot, and the insufficient awning that attempts to shelter bicycles behind ours.  A weathered grey wooden fence separates the lots, dotted with ambitious moss and some sage green squiggly lichen.  In the summer tiny birds come and sing to me from the fence.  A robin one year, and a red-headed something-or-another the next.  Sometimes there is a black and white tuxedo cat who prowls carelessly along the lip, other times a squirrel who will pause to nibble something important and then continue on his way.

Inside the living room has changed layout endless times to acquire the best light, the best floor space, the best spot for the sewing machine.  Always the light from the one window is teasing me, begging me to move all the furniture out of the way and have a picnic on the floor below it.  I have watched four years worth of seasons change from behind it's glass and screen.  I have flung the window wide open in hopes of catching the smallest breeze to alleviate the sticky doldrum heat.  I have closed it snugly in vain hopes of keeping any amount of warmth from the old electric heater that sits directly below in.  I crack it open just a bit when the spring rains begin, to hear the pattering of the droplets and the singing of the birds.  To smell the creeping hint of fall when summer's shadows grow short and cooler.

I used to lament that the view wasn't better.  That there were more trees, or anything green, that there was better breeze or sunlight.  Today I am happy that it is here at all.  I have learned where the greenery is.  The bamboo that sighs in the garden of the condos to the right, the fig tree slowly gaining height in the peculiar little back yard space on the left.  The one scraggly little shrub that grows in a rooftop garden only visible from my drawing table.  The ambitious moss on my fence.

Today the crows are wheeling elsewhere.  The wind is perfect for it.  Good updrafts with some nice currents to hover on.  The rain has stopped so the pigeons are out doing their formation exercises.  (I always imagine them as stout British air pilots.)  I am contemplating doing some painting.  The day is perfect for it.  

Taking "be-ing" time...

The last several days have been difficult.  It seems that graduating from college is rather like coming home from a long, long, grueling travel.  That's it!  I feel like Bilbo coming home from his adventures with the Dwarves.  That must have been quite an odd thing for him if you pause and think about it.  He had gone from this quiet person who was more concerned with a good bite with tea, checking for his daily post, and the perfect bowl of pipeweed than anything else.  He is then swept away without so much as a pocket handkerchief, the put into danger, adventure, foreign lands.  He fights for his life.
Cornish isn't quite that crazy in the adventure that is the journey to a BFA however the bewilderment of finally being done must be quite the same.  I haven't the foggiest idea of what to DO with myself.  Obviously, I'm still working at my dear little theatre, but there is all this time to be accounted for.  I can finish knitting and sewing projects that have languished for months, and years.  I could spend all day watching movies and no one will get mad at me.  There is no more homework.  It's utterly baffling.
I have been out of sorts due to this change; crying spells, poor sleep, etc.  Sweet and kind friends remind me that this is okay.  There is no right or wrong way to feel about graduating college.  I am pleased to have finally accomplished this goal, but never really considered how it might feel.  You imagine it when you first start out, how the end goal will feel.  Ultimately it feels so very far away.  And it many ways, it is.  Four years away.  Before you know it, before you have time to turn around and draw a breath, there you are, standing at the cross roads seeking a new direction to turn.
Much of my life will remain the same.  I'm living in the same place, loving the same man, working at the same job.  Only there is more space for breathing, and feeling human, and doing life things.  If I sit down and start thinking about all of them, it gets a bit overwhelming, so I have compromised with myself.  One simple, super easy list each day.  Something out of the house, something around the house, something so easy you can't help but accomplish it.  When it's done, that's all one needs to do. Nothing more, nothing less.  Breathing, just allowing myself time to be.  Organising, ordering, cleaning, and arranging.  Little silly things that give me peace of mind and help me remember who I am.  

Golden Slumbers

As I walked home tonight I realised just how much I missed a real summer.  Not in the sense that the weather has been a let down, but in the things I used to do as a kid.  I stopped for a moment, the street light shaded by an overgrown laurel, and looked up at the stars.  For the first time in years I could make out Orion's Belt and the Dipper.  And childhood came rushing back to me...
...Summer was waking up in the morning and pulling something on, carelessly -as children do- because all I wanted to do was be outside.  The sweet smelling damp from the night clinging to the soft blades of green grass, tickling my bare feet.  When afternoon came the water hose came out, filling up the long outgrown stiff plastic kiddy pool my parents had purchased from the drug store just up the block.  Sunlight dappled our faces as it streamed into the teal pool, glimmering turquoise in the shadows.
I miss the taste of water drunk right out of the hose, cold against my cheek, metallic against my tongue. I miss the smell of water drying on my skin, bits of grass and pine needles stuck to my feet and legs, musty and comforting all at the same time.  I miss the sound of the wind dancing in the towering pines that flanked the little outbuilding of a garage.
Summer changed and became lounging in the house shaped canvas tent that smelled faintly of tar and gunpowder.  Lying on camp cots, reading while the breeze whispered through the tent flap, just cool enough to read a book.  Summer became dozing under the apple trees, listening to cherries fall to the ground - "plop" - and setting traps for moles.  Stab a cherry on the end of a thin branch, bury it in a tamped down mole hill, and lie on the grass - still as statues - trying not to breathe, waiting for the branch to wiggle.  Holding our breath as the tiniest and pinkest of noses snuffled away the cool brown earth to wriggle at the sun.  Summer was running around in our Vietnam-era army fatigues after dark, with Storm trooper rifles that glowed red.  Hiding between the shadows of the fence and the neighbor's floodlight.  Sneaking up to the back deck where my father stood sentinel with a huge flashlight, sweeping the back yard like a guard tower in a war movie.
Summer was the scent of citronella candles burning on the back deck, late into the night as we played round after round of 21 or Gin Rummy, moths bumbling into the large deck lamp like drunkards.  Summer was turning off all the lights and lying on the deck watching the International Space Station pass over head, a tiny bright star that moved too rapidly to be a satellite, growing brighter and then dimming as it moved across the heavens.
Summer was endless glasses of homemade lemonade.  Syrup made from boiling lemon rinds and sugar water.  Eating strawberries dipped into sour cream and then into brown sugar, the red skins bursting inside my mouth, juice running down my chin.  Melons, honey dew, cantaloupe, watermelon, chilled in the refrigerator and eaten with greedy enthusiasm.
Summer was endless play time, staying up late because it was often too hot to sleep.  Reading books until the sun warmed you into slumber.  Slathering skin with sunscreen from a bottle with a little girl on the front, getting her panties pulled off by an overly enthusiastic puppy.  Soaking endlessly in kiddie pools, mud, utterly sodden grass and loving absolutely every second.
When I say I miss summer, this is what I miss.  The unencumbered summers of my youth.  The entire days dedicated to splashing at the beach.  The fading golden light that made pure magic of each day.
I do not smell the pine trees any more.  I smell cigarettes and fumes from endless cars.  I do not splash in a yard, despite being too big for the kiddie pool.  I take a shower at the end of a long sweaty day to wash the stink of the city off my skin.  I squint at the stars, so faded and dim against the light from the street, apartments, and bars, trying to see the velvet indigo of the sky above.  I miss how it was almost always cool at night and the frogs came out to sing me to sleep.  Now there are only sirens and raucous college students to lull me into slumber.  My hobbit heart misses the Shire.

I know there will a yard someday.  I know there will be another house.  I know I will have a place where I am the grown up who slices up the watermelon and makes lemonade.  Who walks up the little hill to the drug store to lug back the stiff plastic kiddie pool to splash around in.  Who slathers tender baby skin with sunscreen and splashes shrieking children with the hose.  Until then I hold the memories of childhood close, remembering their textures and sounds and smells.  Looking forward to the future.

Sunlight through Fog

Today Seattle is covered in fog.  The air hints of the fall crispness yet to come.  Weather like this makes me reflect on life, not really sure why, but it does.  This September will be the last time I go to college.  It will be my last orientation, my last few classes, the last time I get grades.  I don't know quite how to feel about it.  Certainly there is the feeling of elation, I'm finally going to get that pretty piece of paper with some calligraphy on it that tells the world I have spend over $90,000 and am now a completely qualified human being.  Then there is the apprehension.  How am I going to make a living?  How am I going to afford anything after this?  I need a car, and insurance for that.  I need a heart monitor, and insurance for that.  The list is endless.  I know I will make it all work out, I always do.  I just have to sit a worry for a spell first.
When one is a child, we spend all our time wishing we were older, bigger, stronger, faster.  Wishing ourselves into adulthood.  When one is an adult, you wish life were slower, simpler, quieter.  Wishing ourselves back to the peaceful simplicity that is most childhoods.  You don't worry about repaying your college debt, or buying a house.  These things simply are there for you.  It is the beautiful, dreadful thing of being responsible.  Or worrying over where the money is going to come from to pay for this or that.  You can sit around wishing your whole life away.
I'm not wishing I was a child any more, nor am I wishing away being an adult.  Today I do wish I knew what the future held.  I wish I could peer into it's depths and know where I'm going next or what I am doing after this chapter.  But then, what fun would life be if we knew everything to come?  Yeah, we might be able to be more prepared or something, but still.  You'd end up dreading things rather than being elated to have them.

So I sit at my desk and watch the crows quibbling on the rooftops and I reflect on where  I have come from and where I want to go.  I consider all of the ways to make the future my reality.  

Currently: July

It feels like only yesterday I was done with school for the summer and impatiently awaiting the arrival of warmer weather.  Today I am trying to ignore how close August is, which means September and the start of school.  Not that it's a terrible thing; I am going to England AND graduating this year.  It just means the busy time is up next and I feel like I haven't quite exhausted the glories of summer.

I have been sewing a little.  Played with my stash of "fancy scraps" and came up with a little dress.  I have no idea what I'm going to wear it for but that is okay.  Something pretty for the closet costume stash.

Nathen has been wanting to take up Warhammer again, and I have been introduced into the world of assembling and painting miniature figurines, or minifigs as some say.  They are very, very tiny.  

There have been long, lazy evenings spent at my parent's house, sometimes with these rascals, sometimes just my folks.  Realising the upstairs has been too quiet for too long lead me to seek them out.  Naturally they were on the roof, inhaling the sweet scents of the evening and marveling at the sunset.  I love their appetite for being young and experiencing all life has to offer.  

Internship is going nicely, working on both of the Wooden O shows; Henry V and The Tempest, makes for one tired intern at the end of a hot day.  However the delight of air conditioning made the sewing much more lovely.

I got to visit my darling Jocelyn while she was house sitting for friends.  We played with the pup (whom we were NOT drumming on, I just caught her mid-gesture), pitied the cat, and sipped iced tea on the porch.  Delish.

Oh, yes.  The hair is, once again, happily in the land of purple.  It has faded quite a bit this time, into the fuchsia range, and I am letting it be for now.  I'm not a fan of pinks, but this one is on the raspberry side, so I am letting it be for now.

More posts coming, just had to squeeze in a little update.

xoxo,

Anna

Morrison - Part Three

Our last few days in Morrison saw a frenzy of cleaning and small flurries of sorting the last few piles.  

Socks were scrubbed in the sink and hung up to try and "dry" despite the humidity.

We settled on pizza for dinner, followed by delicious Whitey's Ice Cream, which is on par with Husky's in West Seattle or Tillamook.

One evening we took a drive after supper, pausing at the house that is always decorated (in some way or another) for Halloween.

We said hello to my Grandpa George and Grammie Lou, nibbling some salmon and cornbread in their honors.

Garden Plain Cemetary provided a gorgeous view of the sunset over cornfields.

A quick jaunt over the mighty Mississippi River found us in Fulton, Iowa and I took a gander at their windmill.  It was built by Dutch artisans who had settled in the country.

Finally the movers came to pack up furniture and boxes we had scrounged up from around Morrison.  Empty packing boxes are difficult to be gotten.

Ralph was found visiting us girls in the downstairs bathroom.  I didn't squish him, instead trapped him in a tumbler and deposited him amongst the peonies.  I hope he forgives me for squashing his brother!

Deer Scott was dismounted and packed up ready to head off to his new home in Seattle.  The movers got a good chuckle out of his oddness.

On Friday, Mom's birthday, we went to the local museum to view Anna Hanford's wedding dress which we pleaded to have a look at.  I was hoping to merely look at it safely in the box, however the docents at the museum went above and beyond the call of duty.  They put the dress on a mannequin, brought out other garments that were donated by the family, AND they bought a cake!  It really was too much, but we were grateful and delighted to spend the time with them.

The dress

Me and my namesake's wedding dress!

Three generations of Wildi Girls!

The sad thing about being in the midwest was how much people needed it to rain.  Farmers were in the midst of a drought which threatened the success of their corn crops.  The soy crops seemed okay, but the corn was in a waiting period to see if it would survive or must be ploughed over.  There are three kinds of corn crop; field corn, sweet corn, and seed corn.  Field corn is animal feed, sweet corn is for people to eat, and seed corn is carefully irrigated to preserve next season's crop.  Seed corn will always survive because it must.  Field corn and sweet corn don't get such careful preservation.  It was fascinating for this City Mouse to be reminded that some people succeed or fail by their crops.  

In order to move a large roll top desk I had to remove one piece of door moulding.  It was very cleverly done with the hallway joint appearing to be mitered and the inside appearing to butt up against each other.  Before I replaced it, we decided to write a message on the interior.  

The Kentfield-Wildi Home

Filled with Family and Love

1918-2012

We enjoy leaving little notes as much as we love to find them.  I found it very fitting.

On Sunday Ann and Aunt Marion went off to church before Mum and I left for the airport.

Pictures were snapped in front of the Ginko, as per tradition.

We departed, leaving Karin to mind the house.  It was a funny feeling, knowing that I would probably never be back and it felt like this was the first time I had ever been.  I am so happy the house will be filled with laughter and a new family.  As if it will be able to shake off some dust and be a home again. Someday, should we find ourselves in Morrison, I am sure we will pause to visit the House on Grape Street but for now we say farewell, and thanks for all the memories!

Morrison - Part Two

The rest of our days consisted of cleaning out all of the places we could find (or think of) in the attic, basement, second & first floors.  Up around 7:30 and in bed sometime around 1:30 am because of the heat.  Work until it was time for lunch and giggle at how we were all eating like farmhands.  Work makes you hungry!  In between cleaning were moments of beautiful discovery, such as this letter from Levi Handford dated September 14th, 1795.  1795 people!!  That is the oldest thing I have ever held in my two (clean *ahem*) hands.  Wowza.

Enormous Ledgers 

(It was as big as a two-year old child!)

Family photos & tintypes

Sunday we went to church.  My mom and I attended the Presbyterian church and then walked over to Ann & Aunt Marion's to have cake and coffee.

The County Farm Bureau was once the Fallout Shelter

We think it's very cute that Ann attends the Church of St. Anne.

Waiting in the beautiful garden beside St. Anne's.

After church there was a jaunt to the Morrison Museum where bits of family history can be found such as this High School portrait of Aunt Marion.

The football team from 1915 and a Shia Lebeouf look-a-like!

I put coins on the rail road tracks.  I know you're not supposed to do that, but when in Morrison, do as the Wildi girls do.  It's a rite of passage.

Great Grandpa Carl's work room in the basement.

Tired and happy toes at the end of a long, good day!

Dear Scott.  This was shot by a family member and stuffed.  My Uncle Scott wanted it so we took to calling it "Deer Scott".  

In the cool of the evening we gals could be found lounging and chatting on the front porch of Grape St House.  Since we had to do a Radon Test (closed windows and doors for 48 hours!) it was the only place with a cool breeze.  Apparently the neighbors found our lounging on the front porch to be amazing.  Aunt Marion hadn't sat out there once in the 25 years she lived at Grape St.!

The 92 year old Ginko Tree that was planted the day Aunt Marion was born.

The Sun Room

The fabulous bricks that make up the front porch.  These bricks can be found in remnants of sidewalks around the house and I was sorely temped to wiggle a lone one free and take it home.  But I resisted.

Aunt Margarete was affectionately referred to as our "German Cleaning Lady."  Originally from Germany, she found Grandpa Carl a delight to chat with since he was raised speaking German in the home.  Aunt Margarete cleaned the kitchen and made us lunches while we hauled dusty everything out to the dumpster.  We gals all aspired to clean things as well as she, but never quite got the hang of it.

Do not be fooled by the seeming solemnity of this picture, Margarete is quick with a giggle or a conspiratorial wink.  She is darling and I enjoyed every moment with her.

Some of the sunsets were gloriously orange and this picture had to be filtered to get the accurate colour!  It was amazing.

All of the fire hydrants in Morrison are silver.

The Sauer (correct spelling Miss Editor?) House across the street.

To finish this edition of Morrison I leave you with a collection of photos, family and otherwise. 

There was an empty frame hanging on the back of the garage door, so we filled it with this charming little lady.  There was debate as to whether she was a boy or a girl.  I like girl.

Great Grandma Martha.

I believe this is my namesake, Anna Handford Kentfield, but I could be mistaken.  

My Editor will let me know.

Martha, a lady, and Carl out for a canoe ride.

Aunt Marion and Uncle Bob circa 1953

I believe this was a prom dress of Aunt Marion's.  Very cute!

We ended at Dairy Queen one night for salad and ice cream.  Mom found they had Mini-Blizzards (on the right) and I got a small (left).  It was very nummy, I can't remember the last time I had a Blizzard.

Ta for now my dears!  Third installment to come soon and once I finish editing the videos I took there will be "Movies from Morrison"!  Whee!

xoxo,

Anna