Art Festival Surprise

My brother was in town from St. Louis this past weekend. Jeff and I spent most of our weekend with my brother and my parents, visiting and catching up. I don't get to see my brother nearly enough and it was wonderful to spend some good quality time with him. We had dinner with them on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday we caravaned down to Kansas City with my brother to watch the St. Louis Cardinals take on the Royals. The stadium was 60% red at the game. No one can ever say that Cards fans don't travel well.

On Saturday though, Jeff and I started the morning with an indulgence. We picked up cupcakes from a cute little place in Valley Junction, the historic shopping district in West Des Moines. With cupcakes like Peanut Butter Double Chocolate and Fizzy Mai Tai it was tough to pick just one. I ended up with a raspberry cupcake with a lemonade based frosting that was incredible. We ate out on the covered patio while watching the rain come down.

In the afternoon, the rain cleared up. The boys (my dad, my brother, and Jeff) went out golfing. My mom and I headed downtown to check out the Art Festival. Each year the Des Moines Art Festival includes some really fantastic artists, some good food, and a wonderful atmosphere. It takes place in the downtown sculpture garden so if you're not checking out the art, you can walk through some very unique sculptures.

As we were walking through, my mother found a woman who creates butterflies out of paper. They look incredibly realistic. We had to peer really close to the glass before we could tell that they weren't real butterflies and were just made out of paper. The artist even sticks each sculpture with a pin to make it more realistic. Since my mother collects butterflies (real ones) she bought a small Blue Morph Butterfly sculpture to hang next to the real one she has at home.

Then we walked past a mixed media artist that had my attention. She had a number of painting which were lovely but it was the journals that caught my eye. Gena Ollendieck (from Cresco, IA) creates wonderful pictures, leather bound journals, and photo-albums that are covered with found objects that tell a story or evoke a mood. Here's some information about her. Her pieces are unique and each one is lovely. I found at least six or seven journals alone that I would love to own. I was oohing and ahhing to my mother about one of the journals when she declared that she would buy it for me. I argued with her, a bit. They were not cheap journals. But she kept telling me how beautiful they were and how wonderful it was to support artists, something I believed as well. I have to admit that I only half-heartedly argued. This was one of the most beautiful journals I'd ever seen. And when the artist wrapped the journal in brown paper and handed it to me, I couldn't stop holding it. I brought it home and showed everyone there. It's now sitting on a table in my library. I'm not sure if I'll write in it or use it as a photo-album. I do know that I feel incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful piece of art. Thanks Mom!

Birthdays

It's birthday month for me. Over the course of five weeks I have five family birthdays. My little brother had his at the beginning of February and although I couldn't be with him (he lives in St. Louis) I called him and thought of him. It's odd to think that my little brother is now over 30 and is getting married sometime in the next year or so. I still remember him as a little boy in shorts.

My little sister is next. We celebrated her birthday last week by meeting at my parents house to open gifts and then headed over to one of her favorite restaurants in town. If I haven't mentioned it I adore my little sister. And impressed with her. She's working two jobs and going to school right now so I don't get to see her as often as I would like but we try to make every moment together great. She's one of my favorite people to talk with and I'm constantly learning new things from her. She balances me out.

Dad and Mom

Today is my father's birthday and we celebrated with dinner at one of his favorite Indian restaurants and some quiet times talking back at his house. He even made brownies for his birthday. My dad is awesome. I'm constantly in awe of him. He's incredibly smart and his excitement for things is a bit contagious. Like me, he picks up hobbies and dives full force into them for a while. Actually he and I are very similar in temperment and interests and get along well.

My nephew is the next birthday. He's young enough that no one will mind if I say that he'll be turning 11 this year. He's my brother's middle child and is definitely the most active of the three kids. He's constantly on the go. When he's not playing sports, he's drawing or designing stop motion movies with lego characters. He doesn't live in Des Moines so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like but he's a pretty great kid.

My mother's birthday is next week to round out the month. If I was to use one word to describe my mother it would be generous. My mom is constantly thinking about others. Having just come from her house, I'm covered in fur from the animals she keeps taking in. She constantly wants to make sure that Jeff and I don't need anything. So I hope that when we celebrate her birthday next week that I'll be able to find something special for her.

I know I rarely talk about my family and I'm not sure why that is. I get along great with everyone in my family and love the time we get to spend together. Family dinners are something that I look forward to all week. So this is my attempt to at least mention more about my family. They mean so much to me that it's time they entered the blog. At least until they tell me to stop writing about them.

My Mother is More Adventurous Than Me

I had a whole post-it note worth of things to write about today. I simply have to tell you about the play I saw this past weekend in Minneapolis. I have to tell you about the weekend. I should mention the two straight days of snow that will hit us tomorrow. But all that changed with a phone call this morning. Now I have to tell you my mother's story.

My sister called me this morning and the conversation went a little something like this.

Alissa: Have you talked to our mother recently?

Me: I haven't talked to her in about a week or so. Why? What's up?

Alissa: Mom's had a bit of an adventure.

Me: (worried) What type of adventure?

Alissa: Well she drove to Florida this week...by herself.

Me: Ah ah ah (that's the sound of me being speechless.

And the story only got better. My family had been down in the Turks and Caicos islands over the holidays and my mother had fallen in love with a wild little dog she found down there. She contacted the rescue league on the island and told them to keep an eye out for it. Well I guess last Monday they called her to tell her that they found the dog and were shipping it to Miami for her. Would she be able to pick it up?

So my mother did what any animal lover would do. Or maybe not. She jumped in the car and drove to Florida. By herself. She didn't take a cell phone or make any plans. She just jumped in the car and drove. After three days of 12 hours of driving, she arrived in Jupiter, Florida and picked up her new puppy. Then, without even much of a stop, she turned around and headed home.

Since my mother doesn't drink caffeine she simply didn't eat so she could stay awake, only eating when she reached her evening destination. She drove through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Iowa. In Illinois, at a rest stop, she found another straggler. A young kid looking to get to Minneapolis and she picked him up for the drive to Des Moines. My mother!!!! My mother picked up a hitchhiker. This is the same woman who has warned me for the last 30 years not to trust strangers. Not to talk too freely with odd people. And to never pick up hitchhikers. When I asked her about it, she says that he was such a sweet kid. When she dropped him at the rest stop in Ankeny she gave him a bit of money and her phone number with the promise that he would call her when he got home. She got her call at 8 that night.

As I talked with her this evening I had conflicting feelings. My mother is more adventurous than I am. And that makes me incredibly proud. She's normally very reserved and a bit suspicious. She's normally a stay at home person. And in the last week, she's broken all of my impressions. She's had the kind of adventure that only college kids tend to have.

And at the same time I'm furious with her... for acting so rashly. For putting herself in harms way. For being so much of an animal lover that she would do something this crazy. But what can I say, my mother may be becoming a vagabond. My mother!!! If you know her you'll be shocked by this story. Shocked and a bit awed. I'm just excited for her. She's had an incredible adventure and I could hear the pride in her voice. She'd done it by herself. She did it for all the right reasons and I couldn't be more proud of her.

Love Songs and Poems

I developed my love of picture books from my mother, who would sit for hours with all five of us curled around her. I still remember snuggling up to her on the living room couch while she would read the stories until she fell asleep. And we always woke her, prodded her on with the next sentence. Exhausted and sleep-deprived as she was, she always continued reading. I love her for that.

So I loved picture books because of my mother but I loved poetry because of my father. Dad was always reading bits of poetry out to us. As I've mentioned before The Raven was a favorite. The Jabberwacky for humor or the wonderful Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service (which most of us kids can quote, at least the start). He read us The Twins although the author always escapes me about a case of mistaken identity. And one of the other ones he would throw out often was this line. "Let us go then, you and I. When evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table." With him as a doctor it made sense to us but it would take me years before I was brave enough to tackle T.S. Eliot's greatest poem. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

I knew the first lines by heart and by the age of 12 I could recite the entire first stanza. This was still before reading the poem in full. Nowdays I can't think the words "let's go" without that poem popping to mind. Jeff has even started quoting the first couple lines even though he's never read the full poem. So for this Poetry Friday and for my father, I present a part of the poem in all its middle-aged, indecisive, awkwardness. It's a poem that I learned to recite before I learned to love it. It's long, I'll warn you, so I won't post the whole thing here. You can read it in full here. And I recommend, if you haven't read it, to try it. You be surprised by how many references from this you have heard before. (measured out my life in coffee spoons, Do I dare to eat a peach)

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.