Ok then....May

I began this little journal page when I realized a dear member of our extended family would be starting hospice. I finished it today and as I was painting, I realized that we have an abundance of people in our life who will have their first Mother's Day without their moms. A crazy abundance. Perhaps this is our new normal as we approach our 50s? I don't know.

We also have had lots of babies born. The circle of life - it really is a beautiful, sacred truth.

My siblings and I will have our 24th Mother's Day this Sunday without our mom. Of course everyone's grief experience is different, but mine has been that this sadness of yearning for my mom has never really gone away...it has just moved over to make room for joy. Lots and lots of joy.

So if this is your first year without your mom, I would like to assure you that you will survive, to encourage you to be gentle with yourself, and to challenge you to say just a simple word of thanks this weekend, and daily actually. I promise you, it may take a while, but life will continue to be very very sweet.

Sending out lots of love, Corinne

deep breath...

I have been reflecting a lot lately on the parallels between making art and parenting. It started easy, thinking about how leaving lights on (for example) makes me feel frustrated (sometimes make-my-skin-itch frustrated), but finding baseballs in my plants makes me feel thankful. The same is true for having a creative business, parts of this life just drive me batty (no pun intended) and other things make me feel this intense sense of gratitude, balance, assurance. And then that parallel extends to deeper topics. Schools nationwide it seems are putting new focus on grit (I heard this speaker this week.) and while I believe in this newish conversation, I also believe that we the parents are really who need to develop more grit. I think authenticity is seriously absent in our society.We need to speak more honestly with each other without fear of ending friendships, we need to listen, really listen, when someone offers a view that conflicts with our own. But before any of that can happen, we need to put ourselves out there and be honest about our parenting, our partnering, our personal (strengths and weaknesses all). It's just so hard. And I don't need to tell you how this parallels with art - sharing art is terrifying in its own way. But if we're all keeping our cards close to our chest, are we growing as best we can? Are we learning? Are we honoring who we're supposed to be as individuals and as community? I don't know...and then I wonder some more...

Anywho, I'm starting my paintings for the Craft Out Loud art show - first week in November. I don't know where blogging will find me, but I'm feeling right now like I just want to paint and not document it, not share it, not put it "out there". If people told me they felt this way about putting their parenting selves out there, I would immediately encourage them to change their minds. But with painting I don't know (still wondering). It seems like a little retreat might be just the thing.

My blogging has dwindled as of late. I do not think this is indicative of anything - I think it is just a season. Hope you'll check in with me again because I have every intention of getting back here. But for now, I'm just going to take a deep breath, dip my brush and see what happens next. xo

Hunger Games movie - a mom's review

So I am only one mom, but I am going to take this post to tell you my opinion about the Hunger Games movie. St. Louis kids are on Spring Break this week, so we indulged and attended the midnight premiere. These photos show our kids freezer paper stenciling some shirts to wear - tutorial for fpstenciling here. 

My big kids are 13 and 12 and we (Faith, Joey, David and I) read the Hunger Games trilogy last summer. The books are haunting, very violent and disturbing. They're also riveting, exciting, and grounds for many many many poignant and relevant-to-modern-day discussions.

This book series is not carried at our elementary school's library. The librarian there also read the books and loved them, but is very clear with families that The Hunger Games is a young adult book. It's shelved that way at every bookstore in the land, and there is a reason for that.

If you have children younger than 16, I would highly recommend that you read the books before you take them to the movie. (I picked 16 because if your kids are younger than that, in theory, you are driving them to the theatre.). The books are gripping. You will devour them. I know we did.

But they are also barbaric. The word "dystopian" is so interesting to me because it sounds so "vanilla" so no-big-deal, so non-threatening. But these books are eerie. They are haunting. You'll want to read them boom boom boom. David and I read them so fast, we were able to discuss how very interesting it was that even we felt desensitized to the violence by book three - book one seemed over the top for me, and by book three I expected the violence and absorbed it more easily. Is this a good thing?

The books and the movie are about children who are forced to kill each other in a contest - they are powerless to the adults who oversee the event.

My kids saw the movie - they both loved it. Loved it. They were delighted that the movie hardly deviated from the book. Faith and her two friends were interviewed on the news (at 2:30 a.m. good gravy). One friend thought there was too much violence, one friend thought the violence was not too much and one friend thought the violence was what she expected it to be.

I think the word "expected" is what captures whether you should take your children to this movie. If you are familiar with the plot, if your children know what's coming and they want to experience a favorite story, I say go to the movie. If your kids are not motivated to read the book, I say don't push it and don't see the film.

The special effects seemed very purposeful to hide some of the gore, the characters who die remain strangers to the viewers for the most part (in the books you get to know them - watching them be killed would have been difficult), the absence of soul in the Capitol city is beautifully communicated, the acting is terrific.

I don't know how the film could have been done better. Really. David will see it and my kids will want to see it again. And we'll let them, and we'll talk about it more. 

Have you seen it?

On a lighter note: The gold metallic fabric paint by tulip works beautifully - I'll post a better close up next week (Faith used it on her shirt - all the way to the left, above). It was so fun to use!

And Kyle of course did not see the movie and he has years before he'll read the books. But he did make a tshirt (I'll show that to you next week too) and thinking of Suzanne Collins reminded me that he is ready to begin the Overlander series - another must read, for children of all ages. 

Happy Weekend! xo

And now for some holiday preachy...

It's official. Every baby shower celebration we attend from now on will find us carrying a paper cutter as our gift. Not kidding.

The good reason is this: paper chains are awesome! They're so festive, they're so easy to make, they're so inexpensive (a chain made from old homework papers would be recycled and so fun), they're timeless. The "preachy" is this: We were at the dentist this week and in the waiting room there were TWO televisions with movies playing and a video game offering. On top of that there were children in that room playing with their own video games - I guess what was available wasn't good enough. Sorry, but it was the proverbial straw for me. I was sitting in the room thinking, "We are not parenting our children in a new, innovative way...we are collectively pathetic."

And that got me wondering: How often do kids sit and work in a way where they have to just think, daydream, imagine? And the answer for too many of our children (I'm including my own too) is not often enough. I did not walk 5 miles in the snow uphill both ways when I was a kid, but a generation ago kids did occupy their own time at their bus stops with no props, they sat in the car during errands and looked out the window, they made up games at the doc's office while waiting to be called...

Don't even get me started on how this led me to think about this issue and its connection to nature-deficit disorder! Anyways, my answer to this collective pathetic is paper chains. They are almost therapeutic in their quiet and calm making and kids of all ages love them. Love. Them. Babies love the colors and the paper (with supervision of course), toddlers can help with the order of the chains and the tape holding, and this is a great fine motor activity for older kids of all ages. My kids can sit and make them for a very long time. It's time for us to teach our children the lesson of what can be learned in times of quiet.

 It's a fun one. Preachy over. xo

Summer Budgeting [advice]

Maybe the best gardening advice that we ever received was this - spend your money on the part of your yard where you spend the most time, where you will see the fruits of your labor, where you will enjoy it. For many (including my family), this would be the back yard. And this advice was given because we were putting our dollars towards primping up the front of our first house - the section seen by guests and strangers alike, the section that is out there for all to see but (perhaps) untouchable and under-utilized to a degree.

I think of this advice every year when I'm budgeting. And then after I think of it for our yard, I think of it for our life. We're in our first week of summer and I've already heard so many regrets and worries from women in my community - and I always fret a bit too: Do we send our kids to too many camps? Do we send our kids to too few camps? Should we have joined the pool in our neighborhood? Should we have joined the pool closer to family? Is our traveling too frou frou? Is our traveling too local? Am I bad if I hate camping? Is it wrong that I don't want to fly? Should we be having more friends over? Are my kids getting enough "alone time"?

To these questions I say: Where is your back yard in all of your wonderings - where is the part of your family life that (maybe) needs to be tended, that brings you all the most joy, that feeds you, that you and your kids will remember the most? There's your answer - it's not in any conventional wisdom because there is no conventional wisdom that applies to all of us when it comes to summer plan making!

So take a minute to think about you and your family only. And then make a list of what you need and want. And then figure out your budget and what's realistic. And then (and only then) let the little voice that may still be talking in your head, come into the picture. Most likely, you'll have a clear plan for your summer, you'll be excited about it and you'll be taking care of what matters most.

And if you come across a friend who is grappling with her summer budget of time, money, priorities, be gentle and supportive. Wouldn't it be so great if we could all do that for each other?

Thanks for listening. We'll return to our regularly-scheduled-no-advice blog tomorrow! xo