News Trend Finishing Strong: Chicago|Actual

"Art takes time - Monet grew his gardens before he painted them." -Atticus Poetry

Had to be at least ten years ago that I went through a phase of fooling around with white oil pastels on ordinary white tissue paper.

Now that in and of itself is not much of an artistic experience. The marks of the pastel crayon barely leave a trace behind.

But load up a paintbrush full of watercolor and push it across that tissue paper - carefully, so as not to completely demolish the wet tissue - and suddenly those almost invisible markings leap into bold relief.

One day, after an hour or two of .playing with this process with no particular end in sight, as one does, I looked at my work and a theme jumped out at me. My creations reminded me - not just a little but a lot - of my  post-college twenty-something life in Chicago.

Then and there, I decided to make some sort of a little book about that life, and use these papers as the background motif.

After prowling the aisles at the craft store, as one does, I found a perfect blank make-your-won-journal kit with heavy card stock pages and a cover, complete with instructions for how to bind everything together in the end.

So I ripped and layered my tissue paper paintings into agreeable fragments, glued them into place with watered-down Elmer's for a nice collage-y look, and sat back to admire my progress.

And then, I was fresh out of ideas.

The Magnificent Mile at night, starring the Water Tower

Well, to be fair, I probably had a few other items ranking higher on my priority list than a book about my past life, but in any case, this project got put on the back burner for a while.

But not too long. Within a year or so, I came up with an idea for illustrations. Since my Chicago life was pre-smart phone and even pre-digital camera, I didn't have many photos to draw upon. So Google came to my rescue. I spent a few nostalgic hours looking at photos of my old stomping grounds in the Loop and printed off my favorite scenes on glossy photo paper.

Thank you to all the photographers whose work I, um, borrowed. I appreciate your artistry.

In 1980, it was called the Xerox Building. Now it's something else.

When I went to mount those photos in my book, I realized I had a new duduk perkara. The Elmer's glue that held the tissue paper in place was completely dry but not quite, cured, I guess you would say. The surface of the pages was a bit tacky, and some of the pages occasionally stuck together. I was not about to let my pretty purloined photos or my perfect pages get ruined, so I now needed to engineer a solution around that.

More time passed.

The Picasso. Love.

Eventually, genius struck. I used manila arsip folders to build little flaps for the photos. Fashioning a custom shelter for each image, I then glued them into the book, creating a kind of lift-the-flap experience.

Successful troubleshooting is a heady experience, and I was rolling forward with a full head of steam.

Until the next dilemma struck.

What to do about words?

Bitty little Water Tower and soaring John Hancock. Don't make me choose my favorite.

I wanted to provide some narrative, a bit of storytelling about how I was impacted by the sights and scenes of the photos, but my options were dismal.

I could not write on the pages. Too bumpy and also sticky. See above.

I could write on a different piece of paper and then cut and glue that paper to fit on my pages. But that would cover up my fabulous tissue collage. Not an option.

I could write on the manila flaps of my photo protectors. Hmm. I pondered this for a long time but decided that strategy would not give me enough room to write. Sadly, the flaps were just too teeny.

Once again, I set the book aside.

The only down side of my binding technique is this bulky knot at the back of the book. I'm fine with it.

And by aside, I mean that I put all the loose pages with their adorable tissue collages and manila-flap-protected photos and the equally adorable cover into a Ziploc bag, along with instructions for binding the book, and ignored them for many years.

Probably eight years.

The L rolling through the Loop.

A year ago, the book resurfaced. I looked through my work so far, remembered how happy I was with the start of the book and also my frustration of stalled ideas, and decided to keep it.

But these old directions on how to bind the book? Pssh, I didn't need them. I'm sure there are plenty of ideas online, I told myself. Let them go.

And so my binding instructions went into the recycling.

So this winter, when I pulled this book back out onto the table and resolved to finish it, I realized I now had two problems.

!. Still didn't know how to add text to the book.

2. Now I didn't know how to bind it either.

Much to my chagrin, my Google searches turned up plenty of binding tutorials, but nothing that would work for a book, like mine, with three holes for binding. So after another week of horsing around, I improvised with a long leather cord, and a simple X pattern that efficiently and effectively holds the book together.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

With that persoalan solved, I went back to the issue of how to add the text. Once day, as I sat at my dining room table, looking at the pages and wondering what to do, I absent-mindedly admired how the tissue paper layers so beautifully, and allows me to see traces of the bottom layers through the top layers. If only, I mused I could add a top layer of words that would still let me see through to the patterned layers below.

And that's when it hit me.

Tracing paper.

Calder's Flamingo. Adore.

Fast forward one more week, and I was scribbling out my thoughts about each Chicago landmark onto bitty scraps of translucent tracing paper and then, when the ink was good and dry, gluing them onto the collaged pages where the underlying colors and patterns still peek through.

Miracle of miracles, my Chicago book was finally done!

Goodbye, Chicago!

I mean, never mind the fact that it took me almost twice as long to make the book as the six years that I actually lived in Chicago. But art is a stern master, and I've learned - as one does - that I cannot rush the process.

* * * * *

Want to see the other journals I've finished? Check them out here:

The Presidents' Pocket Biographies

My Princess Book

My Stash

Chicago

News Trend May Day |Actual

In my mind, May is a month for mothers. Of course, the second Sunday of the month is traditionally celebrated as Mother's Day, but this is also the month when I first became a mother. So it's only natural for me to consider the many dimensions of mothering whenever May rolls around.

* * * * *

Today, the first of May, is also May Day, a holiday that has mostly fallen out of favor in my world. My mom used to tell me precious stories about how she and her sister would make little flower baskets from paper, fill them with fresh blossoms from their mother's lilac bush, and secretly hang them on their neighbors' door knobs.

As a little girl, my heart yearned to follow that tradition. But, at the time, we had no lilac bush and I was much too shy to go up to our neighbors' doors alone, so that tradition never took hold in my life.

I'm sorry about that.

Blooming lilacs also put me in the mind of another sweet memory - the arm loads of the fresh purple flowers that my fellow students would bring into my first grade classroom and present to my teacher. For the journey to school, the stems of the lilac branches had been carefully wrapped in damp paper towels and then waterproofed with plastic wrap or aluminum foil, which Mrs. Newheart would ceremoniously remove before placing the lilacs in a vase on her desk.

On some spring days, an entire row of lilacs would line her desk and fill our classroom with the irresistible aromas of spring.

As I admired my own lilacs today - propagated from a sprig of my mom's old Michigan bush - I thought once again of my fellow first-graders and their beautiful bouquets, and a new thought took me totally by surprise.

Six-year-olds did not go out before school into the cool April morning to trim off those flowers and carefully wrap them for transport to school.

Their mothers certainly were the ones who did that.

I thought to myself, what a wonderfully thoughtful thing that was for a mother to do, to make time in her busy breakfast routine to prepare a sweet surprise for her child's teacher.

And that, I reminded myself, is exactly the sort of thing that makes mothers so special.

* * * * *

For more reminiscing about the lilacs of my childhood, read this:

My Lilacs Are Blooming

* * * * *

My latest thoughts on mothers and mothering:

May Day

Grandmother's Christmas Cactus

Mothering

Passionate Moms

News Trend Cinco De Mayo|Actual

A hundred and fifty some-odd years ago, France tried to bully Mexico into paying up on an old debt. In a little town called Puebla, ragtag Mexican resistance force put up a good fight against robust French invasion forces and decisively if unexpectedly won the day-long Battle of Puebla on May lima. Though the Mexicans' problems with the French were far from over, this relatively minor scrimmage gave rise to a strangely significant celebration of Chicano culture in the United States.

Welcome to Cinco de Mayo.

^ As usual, my family honored the day by tucking in to a Mexican-inspired meal. By no means am I an authentic Mexican cook, though as my daughters well know, I'd love for one of them to bring into the family a lovely abuela who can teach me how to make authentic handmade tortillas. So if you know of any eligible and muy guapo bachelors from south of the border, by all means hit me up.

This year's sajian featured fish tacos. As has been well documented in these pages, I'm obsessed with fish tacos and besides devouring them in mass quantities in Cabo, I have tried my hand at making them at home.

They're not difficult, though a well-prepared and completely homemade fish taco involves quite a few steps and fiddly processes. Which is fine sometimes, but other times, not so much. So I have also developed a high speed bullet train approach that serves me well when time is limited.

Like today.

Ingredients:

Fish, fresh or frozen. I like cod and salmon.

Olive oil

Chile lime seasoning

Kosher salt and pepper

Shredded cabbage

Coleslaw dressing

Oranges

Green onion

Cilantro

Salsa. We are huge fans of Paul Newman's mango.

Sour cream

Guacamole

Tortillas

Directions:

^ 1. Cook the fish.

I started with frozen cod. After defrosting it part way - hey, I ran out of time - I drizzled both sides of the fish with olive oil, then shook on the seasoning, salt and pepper. Popped the sheet pan into a 425 F degree panggang and set a timer for ten minutes. When it's white all the way through and flakes under a fork, the fish is done.

^ dua. Mix the coleslaw.

This is pretty self-explanatory but I do have a few hot insider tips:

a. Spring for the ever so slightly more expensive Dole coleslaw rather than the store brand, which tends to be a bit bitter. My husband did the shopping today and ended up with the store merk but I suspect they must have been out of the Dole because he's the one who pointed out the difference to me. Covid strikes again.

B. It's super easy to whip up homemade dressing but if saving time is of the essence, go with Marie's. We've tried quite a few different brands of store-bought slaw dressing and this is our favorite.

^ tiga. Chop up the freshies.

A splash of citrus is critical to the swoon-worthy spectacle that is a fish taco, and while many chefs go with lime, I am a fan of the orange. I highly recommend. I'm also a cilantro person - no, it does not taste like dish soap to me - and a sprinkle of green onion lends a lovely crunch. Sometimes, but not today, I go for some thinly sliced red onion as well. Definitely worth the effort of picking up a knife.

^ Now grab the tortillas, salsa, sour cream, and guac, and layer all this deliciousness onto the table with some tortilla chips, bowls of berries, and a cerveza fria.

^ Dig in! Relish every tangy morsel and think of those feisty Mexicans giving it to the colonial French forces. Huzzah,guerreros valientes!

^ Here is my plate. I went the deconstructed route, which just means I left out the tortilla and ate it with a fork. I won't be putting any fish taco gourmet chefs out of work any time soon, but this is a fast and delicious short cut version that I had on the table in just over fifteen minutes.

^ As usual, our Cinco de Mayo giraffe donned his kecil sombrero and reigned supreme over our dinner table.

^ And then it was Gracie's turn.¿Qué onda wey?

* * * * *

Care to learn more about my obsession with fish tacos? Read this:

My Fish Taco Challenge

News Trend Reading Rowling|Actual

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K.Rowling

In which we meet an eleven-year-old boy who is chuffed to learn that he is actually a famous wizard, and accompany him through his first year at wizarding school in which he makes lovely friends, learns to play Quidditch, and defeats the dark lord who killed his parents.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K.Rowling

During Harry's second year at school, he deals with the foolish new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, unravels more mysteries, and once again confounds He Who Must Not Be named

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K.Rowling

There's a big black dog stalking Harry and also an insane escaped inmate who is linked to the Potters' deaths and apparently skulking about Hogwarts. Harry and his friends solve another curious case using a magical necklace, a spot of time travel, and a wink and a smile from Headmaster Dumbledore

When it comes to Harry Potter, I?M a terrible snob. The movies...Well, let's not even talk about the movies. How far they fall short of these marvelous stories. Of course, the books are marvelous, through and through, and back in the day, we spent endless hours reading them aloud as a family. But even more spell-binding and infused with rich storytelling are the audio books. Narrated by the extraordinary Jim Dale, his crisp British tone, brilliant pacing, and amazing range of character voices boost the entertainment value of the Harry Potter franchise through the roof. We own the CD sets of all seven books; my daughters grew up listening to them endlessly and to this day, I break them out whenever I'm facing a long road trip or a big painting project. These audiobooks are, in a word, magical and I recommend them with highest praise.

News Trend Forgiven|Actual

It's not just anyone I would allow to step through the miracle of my blooming wood hyacinth. And, you would think, especially not a rampaging, rabbit-hunting, red-headed eighty-five-pound beast.

But as we were crossing the street on the way home from our walk, Gracie saw a bunny in the neighbor's yard. She couldn't help herself; she simply took a direct line through my garden and under the bushes to where the rabbit unsuspectingly posed.

And I'll give her credit. Even in the thrill of the hunt, my lady stepped delicately through the blossoms and as far as I could tell, didn't trample a single stem.

So. She is forgiven.

News Trend Mothering |Actual

From bottom left, clockwise:

for those mourning their mama

for trans mamas

for those who have painful relationships with their moms

for mamas who have lost a child

for stand in mamas

for mamas of fur babies

for teachers who love their students as kids

for bonus step moms

for moms

for first time mamas

In the past decade or two, on Mother's Day and all through the year, our culture has spoken out more often about the different kinds of mothering.

Of course, it's been that way all along. Throughout history, women have found room in their hearts and at their supper tables for children not of their own bodies, and that has always been a beautiful part of life.

But these days we are talking about it more often, and making a point to be thoughtful and inclusive enough to recognize and celebrate women who mother in the broader sense of the word.

I am for that. I am 100% behind anything and everything we can do to inscribe value to this incredible art of creation and nurture that we call mothering.

My only concern is that by lifting up the different kinds of mothering, we may inadvertently suggest that mothers are one or the other, compartmentalized as bio mom, foster mom, pet mom, and so on.

The truth is much more subtle and interesting than that.

Take me, for example.

First and foremost, I call myself a bio mom, and I consider it the biggest blessing and privilege of my life to have raised four daughters bred from my bone. And let's be honest, that blood connection matters.

A couple years ago, when I met my new brother-from-another-mother, a secret sibling who had grown up knowing he was adopted, he told me in no uncertain terms that as much as he loved his real (adoptive) parents and sister, he craved that blood connection. And when his first child was born, he felt incredible joy in the knowledge that finally, on this earth, he knew of someone who shared his blood.

I'm not a foster mom or an adoptive mom, but I've had a long line and a steady stream of young people passing into my house and through my life who I have mothered. My daughter's friends. My students. My Girl Scouts. My youth group kids.  And let's not even get started on all the toddlers who have wandered into my life and stayed around to play and eat popsicles at my house.

I mother adults too, though I don't like to say it that way. People who struggle with grief, anxiety, depression, addiction. With a bad break-up or a career crisis. With kids who are running amok. People who need someone to sit down, shut up, and listen without passing any judgment or parceling out unwanted advice. I prefer to call that friendship, but it really is a form of motherly nurturing and care.

I mother with wild abandon my dogs. Interestingly, I never think of them as my children but I definitely see that I mother them, each one my darling and special red-headed mischief-making only, and I have loved each one of them with my whole heart.

In a mind-bending reversal of roles, I mothered my mother on her journey through Lewy Body Dementia. Another example of how mothering does not imply an adult-child relationship; instead it speaks to nurture and care. I mothered my mother fiercely.

And sometimes, I find that I need to mother myself.

You see my point?

Most women are more than just this type of mom or that type of mom. We all pour fourth many kinds of mothering not just over our lifetimes but on any given day, because that's just how we roll.

We are not, as the image suggests, individual flowers in the garden of mothering.

Each one of us is the whole darn bouquet.

* * * * *

My latest thoughts on mothers and mothering:

May Day

Grandmother's Christmas Cactus

Mothering

Passionate Moms

News Trend Pie People|Actual

We are pie people and that?S just a darn fact.

This goes way back through the generations on both sides of the family tree.

For Thanksgiving, while the rest of the relatives contributed apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies to the feast, my family of origin was known for chocolate cream. The others loved to joke and tease about that - "Who eats chocolate pie for Thanksgiving?!" they would heartily chortle. But when the knives began to flash and the pies were offered up, their tune changed. "I guess I'll try a little piece of that chocolate."

Mhmm.

In many areas of his life, my father lacked in common sense and good graces. But one of his few-and-far-between redeeming qualities was that he always requested lemon meringue pie for his birthday instead of the usual cake.

I approved.

* * * * *

Over on my husband's childhood dining room table, his mom ceremoniously baked a pie every Saturday for his dad, grandfather, and bachelor uncle to enjoy for Sunday dinner. (You know, the midday meal in farm folk language.)

My father-in-law was not otherwise a demanding or picky man, but for him, it was fruit pies all the way.

Cherry.

Black raspberry.

Rhubarb.

Peach.

Blueberry.

And of course, apple.

Most of the fruit came from local farms and orchards, lovingly frozen in mass quantities by my mother-in-law so she could pamper her husband with his favorite flavors all year long.

See what I mean? This is serious devotion to pie.

Often, for her birthday, after a year of endless fruit pies, my selfless and soft-spoken mother-in-law treated herself to her own favorite flavor of pie: coconut cream. I love that she indulged in this little act of rebellion for her special day. Fruits be damned; the queen of all pie bakers wants custard!

* * * * *

My husband inherited the fruit pie gene, and I've done my best to step into his mother's enormous pie-baking shoes. He sure hasn't enjoyed the weekly pies that his mother provided but  I've done my best to whip him up a half dozen or so every year. My special addition to his family-of-origin pie tradition was a la mode presentation; although he disdained the idea at first, even my father-in-law couldn't say no to a bit of vanilla ice cream on the plate. At my table, pie and ice cream share an inviolable bond.

Of course, it goes without saying that our family pies must be made from scratch. We've learned to make do with a certain type of canned cherry - they're extra tart! - but otherwise the fruit must be fresh, and the pastry of course home made and hand trimmed.

Don't even joke about bringing a store-bought pie into this house. That would NEVER fly.

As my daughters grew up, I wasn't a bit surprised when they became little pie fanatics all their own. Though normally we did our best to instill reasonable table manners, pie nights were the one time when my girls were allowed - even encouraged - to pick up their almost-empty plates of pie and ice cream, and lick up every last drop.

As parents, we felt responsible for modeling the proper technique. To this day, we all six heartily lick our pie plates clean.

I also took it as my duty to be sure that each of my daughters could turn out a hand-made pie. Happily, I can report that they have all successfully done so, but it's my fourth-born who has really taken to the challenge.

My daughter's rhubarb masterpiece, ready for the panggang,

complete with her grandma's fluted baking pan. It lives with us now.

For my husband's recent birthday, she gifted him with the promise to bake him as many pies as he can eat, as fast as he can eat them.

There has been a freshly baked pie popping out of the panggang every three or four days.

Cherry.

Lemon.

Peach.

Blackberry.

And this week, rhubarb.

Pretty as a picture.

Not only are my daughter's pies delicious but they are immaculately designed. She perfects every element of the process - fruit sliced to precisely uniform size, juices thickened just so, and crusts woven to delicate perfection.

She also bakes them on my mother-in-law's special aluminum drip pan, and we think of her every single time we use it.

* * * * *

For Mother's Day, my daughters asked me what I wanted for dinner.

Nothing fancy, I said, just the usual steaks or salmon on the grill.

But what I really wanted, I told my youngest, was a pie.

Happy Mother's Day to my pie-baking mother-in-law,

whose traditions live on in our pie-loving family.

Coconut cream, please. For my mother-in-law and me.