Good Morning! Sunshine!

Tea at the ready this morning. The Studio beckons and I am excited to work in there. I have reached a halfway point with the Shibui I am working on. It can be one for the collaboration I am working towards as it depicts a connection to plants.

~Thoughts~

Reading Kinds of Love by May Sarton. I am reminded of people from the past and observing their connections. What I love most about the way Sarton writes is that it echoes my own experiences. I am reminded of my father’s sister Gladys. She lived in a long farmhouse attached to a huge barn. There was wet land outside her kitchen window. The kitchen’s wall was made in thin strips of locking Wainscoting painted white, above it was a floral wallpaper. I am reminded of my aunts concerns about other family members. I am reminded of her stories about the small Maine town she had raised her family in.

Aunt Gladys was a happy soul, kind and compassionate. Her friend Lucy lived in a tiny home across the road. Lucy was elderly when I met her. She too was a happy, kind and compassionate women. She had helped my aunt cleaning the home and caring for kids over the years. I sensed life had not been easy for either and that their friendship had brought them through a lot. I now wish I had known more about that life. Love for one another was the bond between these two women not unlike Christina and Ellen two main characters in Sarton’s book. I could see myself in Christina’s granddaughter from the story. I had asked Auntie about Lucy, and it was how she talked about her that gave me my clues. They had known one another a very long time. I thought about what a younger Lucy who worked in the garden, helped make meals, who tended kids and helped with household chores who lived in a tiny house filled with all she owned stacked about her. Lucy too spoke of Auntie with this same compassion. I loved that I understood this. Lucy was well taken care of by my aunt and other family members.

In Sarton’s Story different town folk are brought together as a group to write about the town’s history. Christina is considered one of the “summer” people and Ellen poorer has always lived there. Christina’s father had brought his family to the small New England town. The two have known each other since young girls. A tight bond had been formed. The point being that summer people are not from here originally but somehow earn a status over time. Christina and her husband are such people.

Yet as a part of the town in her older age she and Ellen come to realize that it was the women of the town that were the glue that held it together through all its harsh realities such as businesses folding due to WWII. The war had ravaged the town and its people. Christina and Ellen feel the real story needed to be told. For Ellen she had been a teacher, and in the past, it had been a teacher in a one room schoolhouse that had brought enlightenment to the children, and then Ellen herself. A truth about what life was like, its hard times should not be forgotten, the effects of life on all should be what their histories should be about. Ellen’s son had come back from the war a shattered man. Aunt Gladys’s son had come back from war, and he was not the same. People like those May Sarton portrays in her book Kinds of Love are very much like people we know. The story unfolds as a good story should. You learn tidbits of who Christina and Ellen are. Christina journals and so you learn about her concerns and about who she and who her husband Cornelius are as people. You learn about Ellen and her son’s relationship. How well they know one another and do not have to speak to know how the other feels. What shatters one is known by the other. The attic at Ellens is full of the past, and love is mentioned from an abusive father who had lost his dream of farming due to the War’s effect on the town. Drink and anger had consumed him. There is a lot more in the book. You can glean these thoughts in just a few pages.

Best wishes! Pejj