Why “Passionflower’s Canvas”?

In October, H. was pestering nagging encouraging me to join an online writing group and start a blog. Once upon a time, during that brief period when we were living in the same city but did not yet have children, we used to meet at a coffeeshop once a week and write. We aren’t likely to have a similar opportunity again until our small children are in college, so she offered up a digital alternative. I was hemming and hawing mainly because…I couldn’t think of a name for my blog.

Let me start by saying that I don’t look like a “Passionflower.” In many ways, I am a resounding example of “normal” or “standard” without appearing extraordinary. My build is well proportioned with no particular feature standing out. My hair is a “medium” brown with some red, some blond, some gray, with no particular color taking center stage. In the winter I wear a uniform of khakis, white shirt, and some form of sweater. I have a job in the technology industry that certainly doesn’t scream “passionflower.” With two small kids, a husband, and a full-time-plus job 70 miles from my house, there’s barely time to trim my nails or dry my hair, let alone cultivate passion. And yet, one day, someone on Hayhouse Radio (I think it was D*enise Linn, or maybe S*onia Choquette) called me to do so.

I was doing a time-consuming but rote task at work and listening to Hayhouse on headphones to make the act of verifying translations of CD labels more pleasant. The whole show was about connecting with your spirit, and the host kept asking callers to name their spirits. Every caller hesitated. “Come on,” she’d encourage, “if you had to make up a name, what would it be? Tell me the first thing that comes to you.” And they’d come up with something. Could I name my spirit? What part of my spirit would I name? What is the essence of me, without the kids, husband, job, education, experiences? When those are stripped away, what is left?

Passion + Flowers = Passionflower

In the moments when I can still my mind, I rely on my body for guidance. I feel my intuition in my heart, the heart in my physical chest, and then I see pictures. This time I saw my heart, sporting a few old wounds but quite healthy overall. Maybe it was all those trips to a local science museum that had a heart big enough to walk through when I was a child, but I have a clear vision of what a real heart (not a Valentine heart) looks like. When I thought of the word “passion,” flowers started sprouting from my heart and opening. I felt the opening, the flowering, in every part of me, the way the oxygen gets carried to the cells in every part of your body. So passion flowers (verb), and I decided that my spirit was a flowering of passion, a passionflower.

Canvas

Although writing is certainly a compelling practice for me, this blog is not called “Passionflower’s Notebook” because it wouldn’t convey the whole picture. If I were to call myself a writer only, I would be denying the part of me that longs to create visual beauty. So, even though you haven’t seen evidence of it on the blog yet, I wanted to be an artist long before I knew how to read or write. My favorite gift the Christmas when I was 5 was a big Crayola set with pastels, paints, colored pencils, and crayons. It still chokes me up to remember hearing my mother’s father (who died when I was six) say, “I never saw anyone so small draw so well.” When I was in elementary school, my mother kept me out of school on my birthday and took me to an awesome art museum in the big city nearby (because that’s what I wanted to do). When I cut school as a senior, I went to the same art museum. By the time I was 8, I knew on exactly which shelves at the library to look for books on the Impressionists and Picasso, and I checked them out on a regular basis, right next to my Beverly Cleary and Sweet Valley High books.

The tagline of this blog is “One woman’s journey to rediscover her creative spirit.” I don’t know where those words came from, I don’t remember crafting them in my mind, so they must have been my spirit speaking. If I am to rediscover my creative spirit, it’s going to be a multimedia activity, with physical and digital canvases as well as words painting images for your to create in your own heads. So that’s why this space is more than a notebook, it’s Passionflower’s Canvas.

Memorable Christmas tree

I grew up in a Cape Cod style house built in 1976. It was a house my parents built, and I suppose that means they CHOSE the harvest gold carpeting for my bedroom, the avocado green carpeting for the bulk of the house, and the dark PLAID carpeting for the boys’ bedrooms (I have three brothers), which seemed to be indoor/outdoor in nature. My decorating sensibilities cringe, but in retrospect, my mother was a genius. The carpeting in the boys’ rooms looked to be in the same condition 18 years after it was put down, after all of the unspeakable things that had happened to it.

When there were six of us at home (2 parents and 4 kids), we had one complete bathroom (and another one upstairs, behind a door, waiting to be finished). By the time there were four of us left at home, my parents managed to finish that bathroom. When brother number 3 went off to college, my parents built a large family room addition, which had built-in bookshelves, a nook for a card table and chairs (at which we did actually play cards, or sometimes type on Dad’s typewriter — whew, I sound old!), a bathroom with shower, and a seriously high ceiling. It was 14 or 15 feet high.

My parents are very responsible people — a pastor and a nurse, responsible with their money, good neighbors, good parents, and all that good stuff. We went out to eat as a family about twice a year, at the Ponderosa, after church, with a coupon. They had an actual budget for each week (for food, for gas, whatever) and paid attention to it. We went to church every Sunday, we had dinner as a family every night, and we returned to the same places for vacation. But every once in a while my dad shows his impulsive side.

Unlike in the South (where I reside now and am happily married to a southerner and have been converted to say “Hey, y’all” instead of “Hi, you guys” — so, no offense, y’all!), where you apparently must purchase your Christmas tree by December 3 or you will end up with some brownish stick that drops needles, where I grew up we used to get our tree between December 15 and December 20. By that time, everyone was home from college and we could all be part of the setup. I didn’t go to pick out the tree the year my parents built the addition, but I remember the looks on my brothers’ faces when they came back with Dad. They were beaming. They were laughing. They were dragging in a 14 and a half foot tree. I have no idea how they got the tree on top of the small car my dad drove. I’m not even sure how they got it through the front door, but they did.

The very top of the tree grazed the ceiling. It took up an area bigger than the large cubicle I sit in at work. God only knows what it cost. They got out 8-foot ladders and still had to kind of toss the lights over the top. We decorated and ran out to the store for more lights and more candycanes and decorated some more. My mother walked in and her eyes got really wide, and she LAUGHED. I was fourteen years old, and I have no idea what presents I opened that year, but that tree was magic.

Finish one thing.

A wise man (a real man, he was one of my professors) once told me: “Finish one thing. Then finish another. You will gain energy in the finishing.”

I needed this yesterday, after a whirlwind three and a half days of packing, driving, visiting, trading presents, and more presents and visiting, repacking, and driving home. At our last stop (in addition to the kid presents) we received several armloads of a wardrobe for our 2-year-old, which started out in a nice big box but could fit only if the contents were dumped over all of the other present loot. This was a rented vehicle, mind you, so it had to be emptied yesterday. With all of the excitement and driving and odd eating habits, Kate was not feeling well and I spent the last three hours of the drive praying that she would not be sick in this rental all over our stuff. She made it home and seemed to mend from a magic formula of  loose PJs, a movie, and, later on, some bland oatmeal, but the stress of worrying that she MIGHT be sick was exhausting for me.

“Finish one thing” drove me to empty the car, put away laundry, put away the clean dishes waiting for our return, put away the snacks we had dragged 5 hours south and east and back again, put away the toys we’d brought as diversions (before we got the slew of new toys). I managed to gather up the pieces of an outfit to wear today, set up the coffeemaker, set my alarm, and NOT check e-mail. One at a time, item by item, bird by bird (love that Anne Lamott!).

I thought it would be OK if I got that far. I thought that all I needed was a plan for dinner and a start on the kids’ lunches. And yet…today…my head is like the inside of a snow globe. All the work to-dos, swirling around, and I can’t quite catch one individual flake to finish one thing. I try to catch one, and I end up swirling around all the rest. Breathe, focus, reach up one hand to catch a flake…swirl them all around again. I wrote out a list of priorities before I left on Thursday and sent it to myself in e-mail. The letters are Greek. I can’t break down the tasks into the next step. Reach, focus, almost catch the flake…swirl. Finish one post. Stop. Then finish one more thing.

My English degree in action

I have come to the conclusion that Mulan is the most emotionally mature of the D*isney princess stories. As the mother of a four-year-old daughter, I feel amply qualified to make this judgment. I am far more familiar with Belle, Jasmine, Ariel, Mulan, and Cinderella than I am with Ophelia or Juliet. I have put in hours, probably many entire days studying these characters in movies and books…here are some observations.

First of all, I have to say that I am proud of myself for avoiding Snow White completely. Snow is not part of the family DVD collection. I heard her voice on a preview once and good LORD it sounds like an inexperienced piccolo player. I can’t comment on Aurora because we don’t have Sleeping Beauty, either, though I just wrapped her the other day for Christmas, so I might have to amend this in January, by which time I will surely have watched it 100 times. On to the serious analysis.

Despite Ariel’s strong spirit (she has the guts and independence to go against her father’s wishes) and her brief flash of feminist insight in the secret grotto (“…bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand…”), let’s face it. She gives away her gift, her talent, her VOICE to be with a man she sees once. Now, I’m not dissing Prince Eric. He is strong, handsome, can sail a boat and play the flute, and is kind and thoughtful enough to take in Ariel when he assumes that she has washed up on shore from a shipwreck. But still — she saw him ONCE and changed her essential being (mermaid to human) and gave up her gift for a chance to be with him. Not a course of action that I recommend for Kate.

Cinderella seems like a ridiculous pushover at first glance, keeping up the “yes, Stepmother” and “yes, Drizella” as she gets treated like a slave. But you see a tiny bit of intelligence and humor, so quick that it is easy to miss, when she raises her eyebrows and almost laughs about interrupting Anastasia and Drizella’s hideous “music lesson” to deliver the announcement of the royal ball from the king. Still, she maintains her sweetness just a bit too long for my taste.

Belle does have a brain and realizes that she would not make it as Gaston’s “little” wife. She is the only princess caught reading, and she cares about her family and about the beast. The other thing she has going for her is that she appears to be about twenty, which, though young, is much more palatable than the 16-year-old Ariel running off to get married (don’t even let me get started about Pocahontas). In addition, she actually spends at least weeks getting to know the beast, unlike Ariel (3 days before marriage) and Cinderella (one evening and she gets married the next day).

Jasmine is an independent young woman who wants to marry for love. She is still kind of Daddy’s girl (by the way, Daddy is a carbon copy of the King in Cinderella), but she can see through the pompous idiot suitors. And she can leap across buildings in a single bound, which counts for something. Her age is unclear, and I don’t recall her reading any books. I do like the theme of freedom: freedom from the bottle (genie), freedom from forced marriage (for Jasmine), and freedom from potential-stunting poverty (for Aladdin). But again, we are talking about 3 days of courtship, tops, before she is marrying the guy.

Then there’s Mulan. She doesn’t fit the mold of perfect silent wife: she speaks her mind and risks her life to save her father. Though she demonstrates physical strength, her greater strength is her intellect. Mulan figures out how to use any challenges or liabilities to her advantage. When faced with with the task of climbing a pole with heavy large discs weighing down her wrists, she loops them around the pole in a way that helps her reach the top. She uses one cannon to take out an entire army by aiming at the snow above, causing an avalanche. And in the Forbidden City, she uses her weakness (as a woman, no one listens to or sees her) to her advantage by dressing the male soldiers as women to sneak into the palace.

We see the destruction of war, an entire village burned to the ground, the Imperial Army slaughtered, no survivors. We are reminded that this really is a war movie when she takes a small doll, says a silent prayer, and places it beside the helmet of the fallen General, as if to honor the women and children lost as well as the fallen warriors.

Finally, Mulan’s father is not portrayed as a slave to honor and tradition, though he clearly values both. He puts aside the tokens of honor (the crest of the emperor and the sword of the enemy) to hug his daughter (“the greatest gift and honor is having you as a daughter.”). Yes, Captain Shang shows up to see Mulan, but she simply invites him to dinner. They don’t get married in the next 5 minutes. This time, the big D got it right. And yes, this is how I deal with English major withdrawal.

Public apology

For anyone who will receive my Christmas photo/card thing this year, can I say OOPS?

I didn’t notice it while I was obsessing about which photo to use.

I didn’t notice it while I was obsessing about which template to use.

I didn’t notice it when I checked the whole thing for spelling errors for the twentieth time.

I scoff at those morons who would need to check spelling of names and ages of their children and such.

And then…when I was stuffing about envelope 6, I thought, “Hmm…Matthew’s age is 2 (that’s right), but the year says “2009″, which would make him 3. He’s not three….he was born in 2006. How is this possible?” It is possible, dumbass, when you put down the wrong year! The card does say “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,” so let me just clarify by saying that I wanted to be sure you knew I was wishing you a happy 2009. There.