Grandma, is the sun going to blow up?

It was late summer, nearing sundown.  My grandson Charlie and I were in the front yard.  Two hundred miles to the west, wildfires were raging in Arizona.  The haze from the smoke was always on the horizon these days, and it turned the sun into a bright red ball.  It had been like this for many days.

In my head I heard Tanya Tucker singing That Georgia sun was blood-red and goin’ down.  No doubt the atmosphere in Georgia is thicker and heavier than ours.  We never have blood-red suns in New Mexico.  But now, suddenly, we do.

Grandma, is the sun going to blow up? 

Charlie was seven years old.  I knew exactly how he felt, terrified and terrified to show it.  My own child-self:  Are the Russians going to drop an atom bomb on us?  And Why don’t we have a fallout shelter?  Questions I never spoke aloud.

When my sister and I were children, The Ed Sullivan Show showed an animated film that gave narrative and pictures to our terror.  The film, “A Short Vision,” haunted us.  Years later I wondered, Could it have been as bad as I remember?   Not until the internet could I find out that indeed it could, indeed it had been.  And six minutes long!

Watch it here:  http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2011/06/short-vision-ed-sullivans-atomic-show.html

Charlie is in high school now.  A typical teenager, he no longer voices his fears to his grandma.  What haunts him now, I wonder–school shooters, the uncertainty of our planet, terrorism of every stripe?

I do believe ’twas ever thus.  Every generation has its horrors and nightmares, I know.  But it seems, whether true or not, that our existential dread is exaggerated these days.  Everyone seems to be frightened.  To be dreading something that is about to happen.

And now we all are hypervigilant.  Loud noises, smoke on the mountain, people who look strange or different.  The news, always the news.

Threads

I make dolls. The idea was that this blog/website would promote them. The idea was to sell dolls.

I opened a doll shop on Etsy.   At first I listed only three dolls, but the shop looked pretty good, I thought. I announced the new shop on Facebook. Many people went to my shop and some “favorited” it. People posted nice thoughts, praise.

I didn’t expect to sell dolls right away. I worked on my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and hoped, believed that time would deliver people to my shop, and that among them would be buyers. I made more dolls.

I tweaked my Etsy shop and decided that I wanted to display more and say more than that site allowed me. I decided to start a website/blog.

Well, learning to use WordPress was more daunting than I’d expected. I worked. I got a couple of books. I figured out a few things.

I revisited my Etsy shop. I love my dolls, but why would someone else? They aren’t inexpensive.

The thought occurred: “Why would someone buy one of my dolls?” This thought took me down the rabbit-hole.

I make dolls:

  • because I can
  • because I enjoy the process, seeing each doll come to life, so to speak, to take on a look and a personality
  • because I love them
  • because I’m inspired by the art dolls I have discovered online and elsewhere
  • because I’ve always been a maker of one thing or another
  • because–ah, this is it!–my grandmother made dolls

This sock-monkey-doll is Jocko.  My grandmother made him for me more than sixty years ago.  He is made of a pair of socks, thread, buttons, yarn, and he’s stuffed with Gram’s nylon stockings.

I told him secrets.  I told him of the things that scared me, things I couldn’t tell my parents, or anyone else.  His quiet presence comforted me.  And he gave me courage.

Suddenly I knew that this is what my dolls must do–give comfort and courage to those who are afraid.  And who isn’t afraid?

 

Every Day is the Day of the Dead

I make skeleton dolls, reminiscent of the Mexican Dia de los Muertos figures.  I make many kinds of dolls, but the skeletons are perhaps my favorites.   Some people think they are morbid.

But, no, they are not morbid.

One of the Five Remembrances of Buddha is I am of the nature to die.  There is no way to escape death.

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-five-remembrances-449551

Meditating on death is an essential part of Buddhist practice and can bring great peace.  Just as having a near-death event makes the survivor more aware of and appreciative of life, awareness of death

Jane Kenyon’s awareness of death gave us the poem “Otherwise,” which reveals an appreciation of life.

Otherwise

Jane Kenyon, 1947 – 1995

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

I more or less accidentally created an ofrenda on my bookshelf, leaving the funeral pamphlets of friends when I returned from a memorial service.  Gradually I added photographs, candles, and small things that reminded me of each of them.

In many cultures the cemetery is central to commemorating lost loved ones.

My Grandma Bell lost two sons in traffic accidents.  This was before my time, but my mother told me that her mother walked to the cemetery every day, a distance of some miles.

My cousin Joan also died in a car wreck, in  her freshman year at Western State College of Colorado in Gunnison.  She was buried in Grand Junction.  When her parents, my Uncle Jim and Aunt Gladys, died, they were buried beside her.   My Grandma Gage walked to the cemetery often.  I remember going with her on that long walk, carrying mayonnaise jars and modest flowers from her garden.  She would point out to me the adjacent plot.  “I will be here,” she said.  And she is.

Our American funeral practices have changed in recent decades.  Families are now often far-flung from the homestead.  Increasingly, we cremate rather than bury our dead.  It’s a decidedly more economical option.  When my mother died, my sister and I had her body cremated.  When my sister died, I had her cremated too.  My daughter laments that there is no place to go to to remember them.

Mom died 26 six years ago, and Loretta died six years ago.  Their so-called cremains are in my closet.  I don’t know what to do with them.

Qasim Shuwe, who was on a school bus hit by a Saudi bomb in a Yemeni village in August, standing among the graves of 44 classmates killed in the airstrike.

We commemorate the dead

I Wondered. . . Whatever Happened to Lady Godiva?

She was a legend.  But was she a person?  Did she grow old?  Did she become a grandmother?  Was she happy?  I did some research, and the answers are yes, yes, yes, and yes!

Yes, she was a person.  Before she was a legend and long before she was an image on a box of chocolates, she was a woman.  She lived in Coventry, England, in the Eleventh Century.  Her name was Godgifu (gift from God).  She married Leofric, Earl of Mercia.  Widowed in 1057, she died in 1067. (Source: Lady Godiva: A Literary History by Daniel Donoghue)

Yes, she grew old and became a grandmother.  Her granddaughter Edith (Ealdgyth)  was, in fact, twice a queen, first as the wife of Gruffrydd, the king of North Wales, and, after his death, as the wife of Harold Godwinson, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England, who died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. (Source:  Kings & Queens of England & Scotland by Plantagenet Somerset Fry)

The legend of her naked ride through Coventry first appeared almost 200 years after her death,  and holds that the ride was on a dare from her husband.  Leofric had levied a new tax on their people, to which Godigfu objected.  He agreed to rescind the tax if she would ride naked through town.  So she was a social activist with a kind heart!

And, yes, she was happy.  She was so happy that she continued to ride her horse her whole life long, and when the weather was good, she rode naked. (Source: a little bird told me.)

I am fond of grandmothers (I am one), and I am fond of horses (I have one), so I made a doll of Grandma Godiva and her horse.  I took Grandma Godiva as my domain name and as the name of my Etsy shop.  Under that name I began to make many other kinds of folk art dolls.

Lady Godiva is the subject of novels, poems, paintings, and sculpture. She even captured the imagination of Dr. Seuss, who took part of her legend and made a book called The Seven Lady Godivas.

Lady Godiva belongs to the world.  But Grandma Godiva, I believe, belongs to me.