The Aggressive Christian Woman

Posted on March 29, 2012 by This Woman Writes

If you’re not part of the evangelical Christian community (I’m a survivor of it), then no doubt you look at the title and think, “Aggressive Christian woman? They’re all aggressive, male and female. Look at the tea partiers.”

This post has nothing to do with tea party politics, and come to think of it, beautiful things like tea parties need to be disassociated with politics. Tea by the Sea by Steve Henderson

I’m sorry. This post won’t make sense to you.

But if you do live within the cultural boundaries of evangelical Christianity, and you’re a woman, then you’ve probably heard the term “gentle spirit.”

If you’re like me – outspoken, analytical, a little pushy, ambitious, dreaming dreams that you want to see come true – then you’ve battled with that term because, deep down, you know that you’re not submissive, meek, gentle, self-deprecating, and fully “under the authority of your husband” – all vague mandates that, despite it being the 21st century and not the 17th, contemporary evangelical Christian women labor under the burden of fulfilling.

Everyone, male and female, harbors a natural sense of aggression – in even the meekest of the gentle spirit meek it comes out when someone pushes your three-year-old into the sand box – and it’s time to admit that it’s okay, as a Christian woman, to be aggressive. Wanting something, asserting yourself, standing up to a male, any male and including your husband, doesn’t make you a bad Christian.

Just as there are many types of homes, there are many, many types of homemakers, from the traditional to the contemporaneous. Bayside by Steve Henderson

I bring this up because I have transitioned from being my generation’s idea of the proper Christian homemaker – wife at home, full time; husband at work, full time – dinner on the table by five, house tidy, kids scrubbed clean – to running a business with my partner in life.

In order for this situation to work, I had to alter my notions about what it meant to be the “wife” part of the Christian marriage, and it helps that I never bought into the system in the first place. Although for years I felt sadly lacking as an official Christian wife, I never did defer to my Norwegian Artist’s every judgment (nor did he expect me to) or wait for his every pronouncement before echoing and embracing it.

We always ran our marriage as equals, which goes far in explaining why we never fit in to the conventional evangelical paradigm. My ambitions exceeded being named deaconess of baby showers and table centerpieces. I was too forward, too outspoken, too questioning, too unwilling to accept any one’s word – other than God’s – as law.

Does this sound harsh?

It is actually gentler, kinder than the unseen strictures placed upon many women of faith, many of whom, like me, are intelligent, articulate, aggressive. We have strong ideas of places we want to go and things we want to do, with our husbands and with our children, and without the unseen, unspoken, undefined but very real fetters placed upon us by breathy-voiced women’s seminar speakers, shepherds from the pulpit, and the nebulous community itself.

"Gentle" and "weak" are not synonyms. It takes great strength to be the woman that we are uniquely meant to be. Riverside Muse by Steve Henderson

A gentle spirit is not the unique province of woman alone – and I speak as an outsider, who was formerly an insider, of the evangelical Christian lifestyle. We are all – male and female – called to be servants of one another, loving our neighbor as ourselves, putting the needs of others before our own.

And we all – male and female – have an assertiveness, confidence, aggression, and boldness that is not evil, but natural. Like any natural tendency, it can go too far, but not going far enough is just as bad.

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Dirty Talk, or, Compost Conversation

Posted on March 22, 2012 by This Woman Writes

You know, if you limit your conversation to non-controversial topics, you’ll never talk at all. And considering that these days people get pretty sensitive about a wide variety of subject matter —  not just the Big Three of Sex, Religion, and Politics — then the gag on the mouth goes for all of us, not just me.

Take compost.

The Garden is a beautiful place no matter what kind of compost you use. Garden Gatherings, available as original, prints, and note cards, by Steve Henderson

What an innocuous subject — table scraps, garden soil, animal intestinal byproducts — you wouldn’t think that glorified dirt would inspire such passion and emotion in certain people, but believe me, it does.

I found this out last week when I fell into conversation with a woman who, at first glance, looked like a normal human being, but the mention of compost did something to her eyes.

“There is a precise relationship between the mass of brown matter — straw — and green,” she pinned me into the corner. “And if you don’t get it right, you will never achieve success.”

“The Norwegian Artist gets his spring exercise by shoveling out the goat pen,” I made the mistake of replying (please understand: initially, I thought we were having a normal conversation). “He makes a big pile in the garden and we add vegetable detritus throughout the year.”

(And yes, I did use the word “detritus.” Even at the outset of the conversation I must have sensed a necessity to show that I speak in words of more than one syllable.)

The look in her eyes intensified.

“That is the wrong way of going about it,” she averred. And I mean that — she didn’t say it, she didn’t comment, she didn’t reply — she averred. “You can’t make proper compost that way. This must stop.”

While for the first time I heartily agreed with her, my mind wasn’t on goat pellets interacting with egg shells.  I managed to glance at my watch (I don’t wear one), exclaim at the time, and extricate myself from the situation.

Goat pellets, egg shells, orange peels -- these weren't on my mind as I sought to get away from this woman, so intent on educating me about compost. Fenceline Encounter by Steve Henderson

Aren’t we people funny? We have deep set, intrinsic beliefs about the oddest things — I’m not talking whether or not there is a God, and if there is, if He’s personal or distant; or the merits or drawbacks of particular government programs or policies; nor when life begins or ends — these are the meaningful issues, not the odd ones.

No, we get upset, really upset over whether you throw or pick when you knit; or whether or not you salt watermelon to make it sweeter; what you call carbonated cavity water —  soda or pop; or if you identify the newspaper page with the cartoons as the comics or the funnies. Either with a long I or E; apricot with a short A or long.

In many ways, as long as we can keep from shouting at one another, the differences keep our edges sharp. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing; spouses and siblings do it all the time. The problem comes when we focus on the differences and insist that they shouldn’t be there.

The same push-me, pull-me contrast that makes a successful painting makes for interesting relationships as well. Where Wild Things Grow by Steve Henderson

Just because we disagree doesn’t mean we hate. Just because we believe differently doesn’t mean we’re intolerant. Divergence isn’t deviant.

It is possible to agree to disagree. Even better, it is possible for both sides to actually listen to the other and be willing to make changes in their mindset. There are, after all, many effective ways to make compost.

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Kung Foo Sudoku

Posted on March 14, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Unless it happens to be your weekend, there’s not much to look forward to about Mondays.

Rainy Days and Mondays -- actually, I like rainy days. Break in the Weather, available as a print or original, by Steve Henderson

The best thing I find about the day is the end of it, when I sit down to the newspaper, toss the sports section (this gives you an idea of what kind of “team player” I am), and, hands trembling with excitement, reach for the TV guide section.

As we don’t have TV service and have contentedly been in this state for 30 years, it’s not because I’m looking to plan the rest of my week around a pathetic group of attractive women debasing themselves to finagle a date with a narcissistic male who is being paid to live every narcissistic male’s fantasy island.

No, it’s the Sudoku puzzle.

Our little town’s little newspaper features this once a week, and while I know that I can pick up a whole book of the frustrating squares for a dollar, I have established an amiable sense of personal tradition by launching my week with this particular brainteaser. At the very least, I start Monday morning by saying to myself, “If I can make it to the end of the day, I can Sudoku!”

I know. It sounds pathetic to me, too.

Added to my anticipation is the challenge of actually finishing the thing, which I am impelled to do because my brother, 30 miles away, does this so smoothly and easily, every week. I however, do not, not only because Monday’s offering is sadistically difficult (if you don’t think so, please don’t write and tell me), but also because I rarely can find the paper it’s printed on once I temporarily set it down.

While I don't necessarily Climb Every Mountain and Ford Every Sea (or is it Stream?), I am up to a challenge now and then, like the Sudoku puzzle. Ascension by Steve Henderson

Usually, the TV section starts Tuesday morning’s wood stove fire. Other times, it’s the dust pan of choice for the kitchen floor’s sweepings. If we had dead fish randomly lounging around the counter, only this section would do for wrapping them in. It’s not until you want to keep a section of the paper around do you realize how many uses there are for it.

Last night, the TV tabloid just plain disappeared, not necessarily surprising since the Toddler was spending the night, and all sorts of things disappear when she’s around.

“Here it is!” the Son and Heir brought it upstairs. “This one must have been really hard; I see that you colored in a bunch of the squares and scribbled over the rest.”

Well, it looks like the Toddler found a pen at the same time that she found the puzzle. I had no idea that a two-year-old could color so well and completely between the lines, but if it weren’t for the numbers, I’d swear that this was a crossword. What an amazing child.

Amazing or not, at the moment she’s frustrating, because this one time out of many I was actually succeeding, and looked forward to casually mentioning to my smug brother, “Oh, yes, I completed the Sudoku puzzle. Easily.”

“She probably did you a favor,” the Son and Heir observed. “It looks like you were struggling.”

Much thought and contemplation goes into each and every Sudoku puzzle, whether or not I finish it. Contemplation by Steve Henderson

No, this is what the puzzle looks like when I’m succeeding.

When I’m failing I wrap tulip bulbs in the tabloid and stuff the whole thing out in the garage.

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Round and Round about on the Roundabout

Posted on March 8, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Most people, when faced with a three-hour car trip, manage to do it in three hours.

Do you see that stone wall ahead? That's pretty much what I was hitting, direction-wise. Evening Colors by Steve Henderson

But what is it my mother always used to say? “You’re not like most people, dear.”

And so it’s true, my latest three-hour car trip turning into five, not because of anything fun like an unexpected stop at a yarn shop or anything, but simply because I managed to get lost while taking a trifling detour to drop the vacuum off for repair.

Without going into why I needed to drive 70 miles to drop off the vacuum for repair when one month before it had successfully returned from its annual checkup at the shop, not necessarily with glowing reviews but certainly with no note attached saying something like, “Wind tunnel canister about to break. Will blow dust throughout the entire room and in user’s face,” suffice it to say that the people responsible for road signs, shouldn’t be.

I had three choices on the brand new roundabout, providing I wanted to eventually get off of it, and my destination was the Happy Busy Place Boulevard, which, for many years before the engineers got their hands on the highway, was marked by a sign that said, The Happy Busy Place Boulevard.

No more. My choices were Another Town 10 Miles Away, A Major Highway Going in the Opposite Direction, and The Happy Busy Place Drive.

Yeah, I noticed that too – Boulevard and Drive are not the same word, but I knew it couldn’t be the Major Highway Going in the Opposite Direction, because I tried that on an earlier trip and it didn’t work, so I closed my eyes (figuratively, don’t freak out on me) and took the exit.

Boulevard? Drive? the difference between the two terms is a slippery slope indeed. Crall Hollow Late Afternoon by Steve Henderson

And found myself in the midst of heavy industry. Not Happy. Not Busy. Not a Boulevard.

The sensible thing would have been to backtrack, but confused by the stream of panicked verbiage circulating through the car (I was alone) I decided to rely on my innate sense of direction, the one that says, “Go this way. It feels north,” and be my own GPS monitor.

It’s okay. The gas tank was three quarters full.

Well, that project lasted 10 minutes, when I pulled up beside two nurses on break and asked how to get to The Happy Busy Place.

“Wow,” they looked at one another. “That’s a long ways off.”

I’m in a car, I thought. Is it a long ways off walking, or in a car?

“It’s at least 20 blocks,” they said.

Whew.

Twenty blocks, straight ahead, stay on your right, can’t miss it which I almost did because by the time I reached a right turn only lane I was at a major intersection that did not identify the major street I was turning onto.

The engineers had been at it again.

Eventually I made it, dropped off the vacuum, and described the fiasco to the technician checking in the appliance. He smiled sympathetically.

For me, getting around in the city is no drive in the county. County Road by Steve Henderson

“Next time,” he advised, “take the exit to Another Town 10 Miles Away. It will take you straight here.”

Well it’s a relief that at least one of the three exits will work; otherwise I’d be spending the rest of my days on the roundabout, getting the runaround.

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Sex, Religion, Politics — Conversation, Anyone?

Posted on February 29, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Sex, religion, politics – funny how the most interesting topics are the ones we’re not supposed to address in polite company, that is, if we’re determined to keep things polite.

Tea time -- so refined, so socially acceptable, so NOT the place to discuss certain things. Tea by the Sea by Steve Henderson

While most of the time I am prosaically non-confrontational, I jumped into a social media forum last week with less than my usual diplomatic aplomb, but seriously, the other guy started it.

(By the way, if you’re my mother and you don’t understand what I did, it’s as if I were passing by a group of people, overheard a total stranger’s comment to a distant acquaintance, and stuck my mouth in.)

I’d like to know if any of you could have resisted:

“I don’t know,” the guy moaned. “I don’t really have any opinion on any of the candidates or anything and I’m not up on any of the issues and I don’t know if I’ll get around to it, but if I ever do decide to vote, I’ll do it on Biblical principles.”

This guy is scary. Whatever Biblical principles he was nominally thinking of, I’m sure the average atheist would agree that they don’t encompass apathetic witlessness and passive illiteracy of oblivious thought, the latter an activity I engaged in when my fingers moved faster than my brain synapses to type:

“A major Biblical principle is to love your neighbor as yourself, and any politician who promises to stay out of our lives and let us live and let live is probably as close to Biblical principles as you can hope to get,” or something like that.

Is there anything so wrong with the concept that a man's -- or a woman's -- home is his -- or her -- castle, and they can live in it without undue interference from other, generally governmental, bodies? Bayside by Steve Henderson

I don’t deny that I calculatingly tossed in that gauntlet, and it was no surprise when a sweetly religious woman lassoed me with a series of Bible verses, tying me up and trussing me like a chicken, but not so tightly that I couldn’t tap out a few gasping thoughts.

Do I never learn?

Within minutes she was back, shards of glass embedded in the rope this time, pretty much garroting me with a select choice of verses and her appropriate interpretations, forcefully instructing me that “live and let live” is not a phrase to be found in the Bible (I know that), unequivacobly bringing the “conversation” to a close with,

“This has been a nice discussion and God bless.”

I am eternally grateful – no pun intended – that I encountered and made my decision about Christianity before meeting people like this.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Christians need to be in politics, or that they don’t need to be in politics, I’m saying that if people are going to take Christians seriously – in the political, social, commercial, private, and public arenas – then Christians need to be serious about

1)      Thinking

2)      Listening to the ideas of others

3)      Responding with grace and humility

4)      Recognizing that we can disagree and promote our opinions without resorting to beating people into submission with words, platitudes and Bible verses

5)      Accepting that it’s not our job to change the world, but in the lifelong process of allowing Christ to change and shape us, we will manage to do so despite ourselves

You can't change other people. You can only change yourself, and even that takes a lot of time. Time Out by Steve Henderson

“God bless” is not a salutation or a sign off but a heartfelt wish for the wellbeing of the recipient’s soul, and it’s not very convincing coming from someone who has just made us feel small, unimportant, injudicious and irresponsible. End of conversation. This has been nice. God bless us all.

And social media sites are not the best platform for connecting with people – beyond a hopelessly superficial level – on key issues like sex, religion, and politics.

I wonder how long it will be before I grow up and learn this?

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The Grown-Up World of Make Believe

Posted on February 23, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Movies aren’t real.

While ostensibly, most grownups agree on this, we frequently don’t act as if we do. It’s not so much that we look over our shoulders for zombies or vampires as that we gaze at our bathroom scales, willing the needle to move to the left. From that point we advance to the mirror and pull back the skin around our eyes. Then the bravest of us step back, turn to the side, suck in, and peer quickly at the result. Gwyneth Paltrow? Nah. Matt Damon? Yeah, right.

country road autumn blue sky rural travel steve henderson painting art

Real life is frequently like a country road — it’s not fast, dramatic, or explosive, but it is beautiful. Country Blue Sky, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.

In the movies, all normal people are skinny and young. Sometimes, when a movie wants to be grittily authentic and show actual real people like the residents of Iowa, say, they make the actor gain weight, change the hairstyle to something flat and lifeless, dress in sloppy clothes. This, it is understood, is reality. But most of the time, they feed us skinny and young with thick glasses and sweatpants, who later metamorphosize into ordinary office workers in contacts, short leather skirts, and stiletto heels that amazingly do not preclude performing martial art feats.

Regardless of whether they are falling in love or being chased by rogue federal agents, the skinny and young, airbrushed and Botoxed, characters of the movies hold down ordinary jobs as magazine writers (do you know anyone who works for a real magazine?), although they never actually spend any time in the office. Regardless, they’re paid well, judging from the size of their New York apartments – all with views – most of which are larger than our houses, and certainly better appointed.

zion utah national park landscape southwest travel steve henderson art

In real life, this view is in Zion National Park, Utah, but in a movie it could be outside a New York apartment. Last Light in Zion, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.

Everything they do looks cool, which isn’t surprising because they’re young, or made to look that way, and skinny and rich and well dressed and continuously surrounded by background music. Most people, when they text, look kind of silly, but not these people, because they can text with one hand, while ice skating, and with a few button pushes they manage to access interior state department satellite sites closed off to the rest of us.

Car crashes are no big deal, actually multiple car crashes generally ending by flying through the air into the water. But that’s okay because our skinny, young protagonist can hold her breath for six minutes. (I should clarify: females are skinny; males are buff, and even if they are accountants or insurance agents, they manage to casually rip off that dress shirt and flex.)

They down whiskey like water; never exercise; speak multiple and obscure foreign languages; and number their close, really close, friends in the dozens.

None of this would be a problem if we truly separated reality – the jobs we go to, the people we see, the bills we pay, all done without background music – from the imaginary world of made up stories played by people whose primary job is to exercise for hours, eat very little, and never go out in the street without bodyguards, nannies, or make-up.

Movies are pretend. Actors are people who pretend well. The two provide entertainment, respite from our real world of unemployment, insecure bosses, rude customers, broken down appliances, anemic bank accounts, overflowing toilets – the boring stuff that make up our everyday, difficult yet beautiful lives.

Let’s give ourselves a break. Take a walk, by yourself, with a friend. Sit around the table and eat with your family. Read a book, pet the dog, write a letter, call your mom, learn to knit, close your eyes and just daydream.

Real cowboys exist in real life. They probably don’t call people “pardner.” Time Out, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.

Then, when you get bored, consider watching a movie. But make it a good one that afterwards makes you feel good about being yourself and living your life, and not wishing that you were living the life of someone else, someone who doesn’t actually exist.

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Trickling Economics

Posted on February 16, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Well, gosh Beave. Since everyone else is talking about economics these days, it’s time for me to throw my (gorgeous, handknitted) hat in the ring. While I do realize that I’m not a lettered expert in the subject, considering where the experts are getting us these days, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

While I love being in the midst of nature, there aren't a lot of people out there, so I do a lot of my networking in the grocery store. Last Light in Zion by Steve Henderson

Today’s pontifications originate in the grocery store, my preferred locale of random human intereaction, where I fell into conversation with a woman who mentioned a new eatery in town.

“Oh, the prices are reasonable,” she assured me. “A half-sandwich, a piece of fruit, and beverage came to just over seven dollars.”

Maybe it had something to do with my surroundings, but I’m thinking that I could slap some deli lunch meat on a piece of bread, grab an apple, do my teeth a favor by skipping the pop, and have several dollars left over for the “I need more yarn because I never have enough” fund.

Does this sound weird to you?

I ask because, through the years, we get incredulous looks from people when we admit that no, we haven’t tried out the new pizza place. We make soup from scratch. Haven’t seen the latest movie yet because we can easily wait nine months and rent the DVD, which by that time won’t be assessed New Feature charges any more.

“Don’t you people live?” we are constantly asked.

“Don’t you people budget?” I have always wanted to retort, with that sweet, gentle smile of mine.

Bill and I just don't fly around in the same circles -- there are far fewer empty pizza carryout boxes in our trash than there are in his. Heading Home by Steve Henderson

It is fundamental reality that most of us are not related to Bill Gates — unless you want to go all the way back to Adam and Eve, but I don’t think Bill takes this seriously — and we operate under limited funds, the majority of which are already designated for property/income/payroll/sales taxes, auto/life/health/insurance payments, utility bills and their roster of attendant fees, gasoline, the monthly mortgage, and dog food. Are we having fun yet?

What’s left over we splurge on stuff like prescription glasses, a visit from the plumber, four new tires, and light bulbs for the bathroom.

Oh, and there’s food.

While I don’t go around asking other people what they make, I do hear complaints about how it never goes far enough, and I am properly sympathetic — because of that tax, fee, and insurance premium thing — until I notice the year, model, and number of vehicles they drive; the quantity of empty carryout boxes spilling from their overflowing garbage can; the regular garbage bags of really nice clothes that they pass on to our tribe not because their own progeny has outgrown them, but because the stripe on the side is a different color this season.

I understand the desire to have new, fun stuff, and if we weren’t already obligated to pay for demanding intangibles that we can’t see or really enjoy, then I’d probably splurge on more of it, but with the little bit we have left over, we make soup, setting aside funds — for emergencies, for a highly anticipated family outing, for an automobile purchase five years in the future. We try hard not to be judgmental, but at the same time, we find it hard to be sympathetic when the same people who call us boring moan because their hours got cut down, and they’re seriously considering cutting cable TV. (Our TV, a cast-off, lies silent until 99 cent DVD Thursdays.)

This is economics: most of what we make is taken up by purchases that do not directly benefit our daily lives.

Much of our paycheck is pre-designated to areas that have no direct impact upon our daily lives. Summer Breeze by Steve Henderson

Because individuals — unlike government — cannot create more money out of nothing, we are forced to make do with what we have, meaning that

1) We can’t buy everything we see, but

2) We can still have special, beautiful things if

3) We don’t fritter it all away in little increments first.

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The Frugal Fanatic

Posted on February 9, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Saving money and living green are so cool these days. So why isn’t it cool when I do it?

Sometimes this frugality thing goes too far.

So says the Son and Heir, who is singularly unimpressed by the toys I magically create for Toddler out of nothing (“junk” he calls it), but maybe he’s just irritable because it’s his job to take the trash out each week.

It's not junk, it's stuff, admittedly not as cool as the stuff in this painting, but cool in its own way. Out of Africa by Steve Henderson

My latest conception — a tambourine and a drum and an interactive puzzle – which to the uninitiated looks like six used thread spools rattling around in an empty 50-CD disc holder, kept the child entertained for, well, a good 45 seconds, which isn’t bad considering that the average $20 purchase at the box store lasts 10 seconds longer than that.

When you remove the thread spools from the CD case and if you aren’t too particular about authenticity, you now have great little people for the doll house. On another day, they’re aliens.

My fascination with plastic products stretches back decades, when my childhood bath time companion was an empty dish detergent bottle that, except for the spout at the top which was disappointingly too small for a head, looked like a lady in a white dress. When she wore out or ripped or caved in beyond repair, another was always ready to take her place, and sometimes, when there were two at a time, I had a jolly tea for three.

Me, and two empty Ivory dishwashing soap bottles makes three. I think I like grown-up tea sets better. Tea by the Sea by Steve Henderson

While on the one hand this stuff is garbage, think about it for a minute: if you were alive in 1365 and carted your macaroni and cheese around in ceramic pots and someone handed you an old, bright yellow margarine tub with a lid, wouldn’t you get excited? It’s lightweight, doesn’t break, and seals in freshness. What’s not to like?

My preponderant weakness is for the metal canisters that hold flavored coffee – small, cute, modular – every time I see an empty one of these I think, “There’s surely got to be something that we could do with these things.”

I must frequently speak the sentiment aloud because the Norwegian Artist, while he can’t effectively cross the street to evade me, does avoid eye contact when I pick up the empty boxes and eye them.

“No,” he has lately taken to saying, circumventing the issue before it becomes one. “I can’t use them in the studio, paint tubes won’t stack in them, brushes would fall out, I don’t use crayons, and I can’t see any possible reason why I want or need them.”

Once in frustration he counterattacked: “Why don’t you see if you can use them in the sewing room?”

Not a bad idea, that, only I couldn’t find anything to fit in them other than used thread spools, and I’ve already got that one covered.

So with a sigh I throw them away.

Whether it's a plastic coffee tub or ancient pottery -- it's still a container. Chimu by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

The other day someone gave us a flavored coffee box of monumental proportions, and while it’s not metal, it does have a lid, and it sure looks like something you’d put things in after the coffee powder is gone.

Do you remember the Winnie the Pooh story about Eeyore’s birthday present, in which the sad little donkey spends a pleasurable afternoon dropping a broken balloon into an old honey pot, and pulling it out again?

Everybody thinks that Eeyore is cute. Pathetic, but cute.

But I’ve got it, and the Norwegian doesn’t have to panic, because the box is the perfect size to hold a stack of empty 6-ounce yogurt cups, which everyone knows make great drinking glasses.

The paintings in all of my posts are by my Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson, and they are available as originals,  as well as archival quality limited editions of various sizes and prices at Steve Henderson Fine Art.

Posted in Art, Beauty, blogging, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Economy, Family, Green, Growth, Humor, Life, Lifestyle, Motherhood, News, Parenting, Personal, Random, Relationships, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 1, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Considering that the holiday is all about love, there are a lot of people who hate Valentine’s Day — namely, single people who wish they weren’t so and don’t appreciate being aggressively reminded of it for the next two weeks.

Some days find us sailing alone, miles away from anything that looks like a romantic relationship. Becalmed by Steve Henderson

In my long ago college days, my dorm room overlooked a courtyard that was regularly filled with courting, and necking, and snuggling, and irritatingly happy couples, and while I sat at my desk, composing vitally important analyses of obscure 14th century poems, I understandably looked away from the task to think about something, anything, else, only to watch an endlessly changing Chick Flick unfold just outside my window.

I swear that I was the only person on that university campus to not be involved in a romantic relationship.

My mother, being a mother, understood my feelings, and two days before Valentine’s Day, a care package filled with chocolate arrived. While an extra dose of calories to the existing Freshman 15 wasn’t necessarily the answer to my angst, it salved my soul, as well as substantiated in my own life the tradition that my mother had started years before:

“Valentine’s Day isn’t just for couples,” she told us, her brood. “It’s for everyone who loves one another.”

And so, in 3rd grade and high school, although I found myself unfettered by the romantic attractions of a 9-year-old or recently licensed stud, I was never bereft on Valentine’s Day, receiving, from my mother, a card, a small gift, some chocolate. While I would infinitely have preferred such gifts to be from a boy as opposed to, well, my mother, even my immature little mind could see beyond the obvious to the true:

Someone who loved me very much was doing what she could to get me through a painful time.

The older kids get, the more creative parents must be to tend to their wounds. Madonna and Toddler by Steve Henderson

I honestly don’t think my mother intended to start lasting traditions, but most of her ideas were so good that they can’t stop at one generation. While I did eventually go on to discover my Norwegian Artist on a white horse (actually, it was a yellow Datsun), it is ironic that we have never done the official Valentine Day thing — roses, chocolates, lobster and steak at a restaurant — because our first years were so mired in financial struggle that such an expenditure would have wiped out the grocery budget for a week.

But because I cook, and cook well, we celebrated, and since candles are cheap we could pretend we were in a fine restaurant, and when the kids came along we just set another plate at the table and made sure that there was enough dessert to go around. As the kids grew older they contributed to the dinner, and the day became less wrapped around Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara’s passionate kiss as it did just a bunch of people who really like one another, and really love one another, and get through this highly commercialized and over-hyped day by sharing it together.

Years ago, an older couple celebrating their anniversary invited the Norwegian and me to an exquisite restaurant in observation of their special day.

“But it’s your day,” we protested. “You should celebrate it alone.”

“Our friends and family are as much a part of our lives together as we are,” they replied. “It gives us joy to be with the people we care about.”

Sometimes, the important things and people in our lives are so regularly there, that we don't notice the way they tumble down to surround us. Stonework by Steve Henderson

Oddly, they’re not related to my mother, but they could have been — generous minds thinking alike.

May your Valentine’s Day be a truly happy one, surrounded by the people you love, reminded not of your relationship status but of the extraordinary friends and family who are there for you every day.

Posted in Art, Beauty, blogging, Christian, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Encouragement, Family, Humor, Life, Lifestyle, Motherhood, Parenting, Personal, Relationships, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

The Genius and Ingenuity in All of Us

Posted on January 25, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Every time I flush the downstairs toilet, I think affectionately of my Norwegian Artist.

Life is made up of both the grand sweeping panoramas, like this hidden canyon, and the small things, like fixing the toilet. The Pataha by Steve Henderson

It’s not that he’s getting into installation art or anything, it’s that he knows the basics of fixing a toilet, which, while it may not rank with six-pack abs or rippling biceps on the sexiness thermometer, is way up there on the real life, I-like-living-with-this-guy scale.

The initial fix, after the handle broke off, involved fluorescent orange cord wrapped around one of the Toddler’s plastic blocks, creating a one of a kind pull toy until we got it through to the Toddler that this was not a porcelain product for her playtime use.

Then something happened with the inner sanctum of plastic and metal parts, resulting in a stream of living water that flowed into the holding tank and out of the holding tank but never into the bowl itself. A temporary fix was attained by removing the tank top so that we could manually adjust the parts, but I assure you that, while the Norwegian hoped that this would be a long-term temporary solution, I emphasized the temporary aspect of it over the long-term part.

While the obvious next step – replacing the entire toilet with a shiny new model – seems the simplest, complications arose because the Norwegian eventually wants to move the toilet to the opposite corner, where the claw foot bathtub now is, which will then move to where the not-quite-finished six-foot wide and all-the-way-to-the-ceiling towel and toiletries unit now stands; but that’s okay because the Norwegian will tear that out and build a new, smaller one where the corner shower is, because the corner shower will take the sink’s place, and the sink will rest in the toilet’s old spot.

Sand on the beach, clouds in the sky -- even the simple things in life are complicated. On the Horizon by Steve Henderson

So, replacing the toilet isn’t that simple.

You know, there’s no use having color coded towels and pretty soap in a bathroom whose toilet screams at every visitor, “Look inside!” While my love for the Norwegian Artist did not waver, the sigh I discharged upon entering the bathroom must have increased in forcefulness, because eventually he disappeared to the workshop, found an extra toilet and gutted its inner parts, then performed reconstructive surgery on the lavatory chinaware.

(By the way, parents, this is a great reason to encourage your children to play with blocks. It may look like they’re not doing much of anything now, but the skills they pick up will be invaluable to a future spouse.)

While I recognize that most people don’t have spare toilets in the workshop – we have spare everything in the workshop – they do have more ingenuity than they think, and if the spare weren’t an option, they, like the Norwegian, would raid more of the Toddler’s toys or the kitchen drawers to find what they needed to do to effect the repair.

While in some ways the world is different these days, certain things never change. Chief Joseph Mountain by Steve Henderson

“It’s a different world nowadays,” my mother likes to say, but in many ways, despite the smart phones and the notepads and the blue tooths that she doesn’t even bother to understand, we are finding ourselves back in a time that was familiar to her: the 1930s, with its Great Depression; the 1940s, with its wartime scarcity of resources; the 1950s, with its confidence to do the things that needed to be done.

Whether or not our Great Recession is officially over, and this depends upon what the pundits and the media want us to feel and believe, a lot of people are living on less these days, be it because they’ve lost their job or whether it’s because what money they do have sure doesn’t buy as much as it used to.

And we learn to make do.

It’s hard at first, because for so long the easiest solution involved sliding the debit card, but little by little, we are rediscovering the resourcefulness that we let slide. And along with saving money, we earn confidence in ourselves, our skills, our abilities, and our tenacity.

Posted in Art, blogging, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Economy, Encouragement, Family, Growth, Humor, Life, Lifestyle, Personal, Random, Relationships, success, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments