Today, I’m giving away a gorgeous baby quilt that uses the China line from my Small Wonders “World Piece” collection. Pendennis is modeling it here. It’s yours if you can solve the puzzle that I’ll be posting in the next hour.
The first person to solve the puzzle and email me the correct answers at smallwonderswednesday@gmail.com will get the baby quilt! This is your fair warning and the teaser, I guess, so you can get your engines ready. No purchase necessary — but if you’re familiar with the line, you’re smart. That’s the only clue I’m giving!
Good luck, and I’ll be watching the email box.
xo,
Mary + Pendennis
He loves it!Closeup of the darling Log Cabin blocks.Pendennis says it’s gonna be hard to let this go, but it’s the right thing to do.
I was up in the laundry room this evening and the joint was really hopping. I was continuing my pre-wash odyssey (I’m close) while a couple other people were laundering regular things, like underpants. After a bit, it was down to me and a pretty lady named Catherine who appeared to be in her early fifties or so. We got to chatting about what we do for a living.
Catherine has worked for many years in the children’s department of a bookstore, which means she is my new favorite person. Learning of Catherine’s job, memories of my favorite childhood books came flooding back: The Pokey Little Puppy. The Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day. Anything/everything Pooh. Anything/everything Shel Silverstein. Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Phantom Tollbooth. The Secret Garden. Anne of Green Gables. It felt so good to think of those books.
And then Catherine said something that instantly changed my entire winter.
“You know what I’ve been doing recently?” she said, soft-spoken and sweet like she needs to be to fit my children’s-bookstore-lady archetype. “I’ve been listening to audio recordings of children’s classics. It’s really wonderful. Treasure Island. Black Beauty. Little Women.” She smiled at me. “I’d recommend that to anyone, especially you, if you like to listen to books while you make your quilts.”
It would’ve been rude for me to run out of the laundry room at that moment so that I could get back into my living room and load up Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Hatchet, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and other A-listers in the genre. So I didn’t do that. But they’re all cued up — and while I folded three batches of fabric, I began with Treasure Island, which I have never read. I couldn’t wait.
Guess how good Treasure Island is? It was hard to break away to sit down with my computer, to be honest. Catherine and I didn’t exchange info, so unless I see her again she won’t know how much I appreciated our conversation. Maybe I’ll just go into the laundry room around this time next week and just bellow, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” until she comes and I can tell her she is very inspiring when she washes socks.
Here’s what my life is like: working, traveling, writing, sleeping, running errands, hanging out with Claus. Many of you will find that list is roughly your life, too, except for the Claus part — I hope. It’s a busy kind of life, but it’s important to not lose sight of what’s really important. Community. Relationships. Friendships.
I talk to friends and family in my life and write sincere emails, comment on posts, and send/receive funny texts and things. I have people I love and I assume these people love me at least a little bit or they wouldn’t send me .gifs of dogs getting blowouts. There are catch-up calls with long-distance friends from time to time, but those are often months apart. Even years apart in some cases.
The problem (and I hope this is not a problem for you) is that I don’t hang out with people much. When someone asks me to do this or that fun thing, I’m out of town. When I’m home for a spell and want to get together (in the past year or so I was never, ever home for a spell but that’s another story) other people are on vacation. Or they have a commitment, or they have a baby. So it’s all texts and emails and it’s better than nothing.
But then I need a friend and there’s no one there. “There” like on my couch “there.” One friend would be fantastic; I don’t even let myself dream of a whole crew coming over and hanging out just because. It used to be like that. In high school, in college, people just dropped by, and your whole world was your relatively tiny campus, so it was easier to have a close community. If you were going through something, sometimes you wished you could isolate and think for five minutes, but nope, there’s The Fons coming in in her leather jacket going, “Eeyyyyy!”
This has to change for me, this lack of real-life peeps in my life who I see on a regular basis.
When I come home from a teaching trip, I can’t keep doing what I’ve been doing for a long time, now: flop, bake things, write things, work on the next thing. I have to call people. People who are in town, not six states away. There’s a once-a-month sewing group that my (fabulous, steadfast, now longtime) friend Heather hosts. I love going to sewing group and even if I’m bushed, I need to go to sewing group. And I have to connect with and follow through with new friends from sewing group. I need to make friend dates and keep them. I need more women in my life and I need them in my house, not just on my text message screen. If I can go to someone else’s house, great. Not only will new relationships form, hopefully, I enjoy seeing the inside of people’s homes.
The great news is that it’s already begun. In fact, I began Mission: Peeps almost two months ago. I’m happy to report it’s working. You just have to say yes to things. For me — an introvert who likes activities that are usually done on one’s own, e.g., writing, sewing, bathing — it’s a challenge to say yes. But I need people around me like anyone else and I’m not going to stay stuck in a place that on a really bad day, has an echo.
There were fish, sharks, fish, strange plants, and 1.5 millions of gallons of water at the aquarium. In response to the Shedd, I’d like to post a poem I worked out this summer. It’s longer than most of my poems, but I hope you will read through it today and when someone asks you, “Did you read any poetry this week?” You can say, “Yes, I did.”
I much prefer a mountain range, which strikes me as more traversable; The ocean just strikes you with waves.
The “treasures of the sea,” to me, Are going silver (such foolish gold) Not proof of some grand, courageous adventure, Just wet and old.
We are to find an endless blue (or anything endless) a reflecting pool? This is madness and all madness should frighten you.
For lurking under sunset fire, just beyond the lovers’ sighs Are beasts with coal black eyes blind with only one own-only mind: survive
And longer than you, laughs the whale; Killer, indeed, and with a tail to crush you, As you clap and wave and save your photo.
All combers, Mind the suck down — that human-sized sucking sound; So much chum and lunchmeat now, First for the mighty maw that spied you (what’s red and white and red rolled over?) Blood becomes you ‘till you’re dispersed in that vast, mast-hungry pool adrift on the waves that lulled you Back when Cabo was not the site of your grisly end; The fishes catch the tissue last and any flecks of left eye that’s left — Are you finally out of the office
Further below, in depths we cannot fathom deep — translucents sleep Why they wake at all A question we ne’er allow to ask; Preferring such questions as: “Shall we take the pink umbrella, dear?” “Is Carol bringing Jake?”
The sea does not care The sea does not love Carol
But for heaven’s sake!” the swimmers scream, “Death’s not all the ocean! Think of schools and dolphin, Think of shells and oyster feasts!”
Please
A grinning manatee emerging from misty black is a heart attack — You’d mess your pants and your electric fan; And if walls of undulating weeds or tangerine clowns are cool to you Fix them in your mind for five minutes down the line these lives, too, are over;
Such is the lifespan of sea color And what a drag!
The cleverest trick the ocean ever played Was convincing us of her placidity
There’s chaos in the drink — A jungle reversed, inverted earth Primeval monster bedlam, Time and zero memory locked in loggerheaded war; What in heaven’s name are you out there for
The sea does not love you
The sea married herself a long, long time ago and she’s kept a tight ship ever since
See how she takes out the garbage
See how she freezes her food See how she sweeps the floor See how she claps herself on the back, see how she races herself at the shore, one more touch, one more touch, one more touch, one more
A teenage couple looks out on Chicago from the SkyDeck. Photo: Me
While in the admission line for the Adler Planetarium on New Year’s Day, Claus and I looked at a pamphlet advertising something called the Chicago CityPass. For $96 bucks, you can buy a book of tickets to five of Chicago’s best art/culture destinations for half the cost if you were to buy tickets for all of them separately. The catch is that you have to use your book of tickets within nine days, which means you have nine days to see: The Field Museum, The Shedd Aquarium, SkyDeck Chicago, The Museum of Science & Industry or 360 Chicago, The Adler Planetarium or The Art Institute.
It’s lousy they make you pick between The Art Institute and the Planetarium, both of them being potentially life-changing experiences if you’re on a family vacation and you’re six. “Look, Denny: it’s either stars or art. Make up your mind or we’re getting in the car and going back to your Aunt Rita’s. I need a bathroom.”
Claus and I went to the SkyDeck on Tuesday. The SkyDeck is the observatory on the top floor of the Willis née Sears Tower. It’s strange that I like flying so much; airplanes hang out at 30,000 feet or so. The Willis Tower is 1,450 in the sky and I hated being up there. I got nauseated. I got dizzy. And then I had to “face my fears” and step out onto “The Ledge.”
The Ledge is a clear glass box that extends 4.3 feet out from the tower. You’re supposed to walk out into the box and stand there. Stand in a 4-sided glass box 1,450 feet in the air. There’s nothing under your feet but a clear glass shelf. I do not ride amusement park rides. I do not sky dive. And The Ledge? I did not want to do it.
“You have to do it Mary,” Claus said. When he says “Mary” it sounds so nice, like, “Mah-rie” and this is dangerous.
“Absolutely not,” I said. I was feeling queasy again and wanted to go back to the gift shop to discern why they were selling those monkey toys with the velcro hands that hang around your neck. How was that a relevant Willis Tower gift shop item? Plus, the gift shop is at the center of the observatory, so I was safer there.
“Oh, come on, Mah-rie. Face your feers.”
I hate it when Claus or anyone else says that because then I have to. What, I’m going to live this life without facing at least half of my fears? Damnit! People laughed at me because I had to stick one toe at a time into the cube. Inch by inch, I made it out there, took one look left, one right, one out, and one down past my feet (oh sweet mercy) then immediately nose-dived back to what now seemed like safety. Relativity is a cruel mistress.
We checked the SkyDeck off the CityPass. Tomorrow: The Shedd Aquarium.
