A Window-Look

To find an old Beverley Nichols book is to find a treasure to be savored. My latest find is his 1933 A Thatched Roof, his story of the 1540 cottage in the English countryside named Always. I am never sure if the houses in Nichols' books are built of real stone and slate, or made up of whole cloth, but I could happily move into the rooms of his house and settle down as cosily as do his cats named One and Four.

After Nichols has all of the cottage walls whitewashed, he takes a favorite piece of his Bristol blue glass to London and together he and the Bristol blue glass choose fabrics, furniture and china.

"Do you like these curtains, oh blue Bristol glass," I would say.

And always I received an immediate answer.

You would be surprised at the number of curtains it did not like."

Beverley Nichols A Thatched Roof

Doesn't this piece of Bristol blue glass look pretty in the window of the blog, Random Distractions? Please drop in and visit Maureen http://randomdistractions.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bristol+blue+glass at Random Distractions. Here is another picture showing more of her blue glass collection.

Wouldn't you love to have that deep windowsill? Explore Random Distractions where Maureen blogs about the books she is reading and the music she loves, the children's aprons she makes for her grandchildren, her knitting projects, and their excursions around Devon. And absolutely do not miss the gorgeous Harvest Loaf she baked on September 27, 2012's post. I love being an armchair visitor to her blog and I'm sure Beverley Nichols would like peering out her window.

Windows were the first board I created on Pinterest, before I ever decided to try to blog. I have a thing for windows. So did Mr. Nichols. Also from A Thatched Roof, he writes:

"To me, all windows are magic casements. Whether they are bright or dim, whether they give onto green lawns or blink at barren bricks, or are shaded or sparkling, the life I see through them has a sweeter pattern. There is something terrifying about the wide spaces which the eye enfolds in the open air; and there are times in a man's life when he must always be darting his head from this side to that, watching from the corner of his eye to assure himself that the Enemy is not creeping towards him from the dim distance. But when he looks at life through a window he is safe."

Nichols goes on to point out that one can "frame" the view one wants through a window. "With a tilt of the head, a cloud is banished, a green branch dances into view, the church steeple lifts its gray finger in the foreground."

I do this when standing in front of our windows. By looking one way I avoid seeing the big red dump truck parked over to one side. We rarely use this in construction jobs anymore as it is easier to have dumpsters delivered and picked up when filled. So the truck sits there in my view unless I look the other way. 

On the south side of the house sits the huge propane gas tank that wild ferns mostly hide, except in winter. I don't like looking out at that either, but, as with the dump truck, it is sometimes a necessity. The gas logs and heaters it fuels come in handy when the electric power goes off in the winter.

Through another window I look up to the root cellar built into the hillside. We know that one time, back in the 1930s, there was a tiny house built upon the roof of the root cellar because two handsome cousins in their 80s dropped by a few years ago to tell us they stayed with their grandmother here during the summers, and their bedroom was a tiny house on top of the root cellar. Think of that! Now I avoid that window until we save the money the stone mason has quoted us to restore it.

Have you accomplished what is our goal? That of having something pretty to look at outside every single window? Or do you tilt your head to avoid something ugly?

And I wonder, what do you take shopping with you to choose curtains the way Beverley Nichols took his favorite piece of Bristol blue glass? This old woven throw is what I took with me when we moved here to Valley View.

"A Plot for Weeds"

I opened Dag Hammarskjold's Markings this morning, a Goodwill find, purchased because I remembered that my father admired him and because W. H. Auden wrote the foreword. Hammarskjold, Secretary-General of the United Nations for two terms in the 1950s, and a handsome Scandinavian, pulls no punches in this book. He writes:

"You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds."

Them's powerful words! And what a title for a book or movie--A Plot for Weeds. I don't know about you, my friend, but R.H. and I do not set out on purpose to grow a fine crop of weeds, although if you could see our front garden by late July each year, you might think we had bought many packets of seed labeled "Various Weeds," and sowed them liberally. No, weeds may run rampant here due to neglect but we didn't set out to cultivate them. It is the nature of weeds to proliferate when your back is turned.

Now you know that I could easily write a parallel lecture here to myself and you about the "weeds" we let into our life--from television, movies, life itself, purely from neglect or apathy--soon sending out roots until the perennial beds of our lives are savaged beyond repair. I'm not going to because we already know that, don't we? And I need a bit of cheer here in Tennessee where our few days in the 70s said "bye-bye" today, and it's dark, cold, sleeting and the first mention of the dreaded black ice has been mentioned on the local news for tonight.

Although Hammarskjold is not always a cheerful chap in his book, I stumbled across some mighty pretty picture words he wrote that make me think this man might not be as intimidating as I thought:

"A line, a shade, a color--their fiery expressiveness.

The language of flowers, mountains, shores, human bodies:

the interplay of light and shade in a look,

the aching beauty of a neckline,

the grail of the white crocus on the alpine meadow in the morning sunshine--

words in a transcendental language of the season."

I sigh. Ah, he gets it. He's not only brilliant and discerning, he is a man of sensitivity and tenderness, too.  Obviously he has seen and remembered and can visualize not only nature's infinite beauty but "the aching beauty of a neckline." Have you ever read a more innately pure yet more sensual description of what a woman's décolletage can be when it's done right? I'm glad that Secretary-General Hammarskjold included this line. It helps me like him more, this man who doesn't suffer fools gladly. 

What does this last have to do with weeds? Maybe not a thing, but one does have to keep the weeds pulled from around the lilies in the garden in order to appreciate their lines, their color, their aching beauty. Weeds. Does anyone actually like weeding? Scout's honor?

It's a jungle out there!

"Who Ate My Cookies?"

(R.H.) "Who ate my cookies?"

(Dewena) "I didn't eat your cookies."

(R.H.) "Well, I know I had two left."

(Dewena) "It wasn't me."

(R.H.) "Why don't we make some of your grandmother's cookies?"

(Dewena) "I'm paying bills, but I'll get you the recipe."

(R.H.) "Hey, we can blog about it!"

(Dewena) "Okay, I'll take the pictures, but you're still making the cookies."

(R.H.) "Have you ever heard the story of the Little Red Hen?"

(Dewena) "Yes, but I'm the one who knows where the recipe is."

Grandma's Cookies

1) Cream together 1 cup Crisco All Vegetable Shortening with 2 cups sugar in mixer.

2) Beat in 2 large eggs.

3) Stir in 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract.

4) In separate bowl stir together 3 cups flour with 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt.

5) Stir flour mixture into creamed mixture and mix well.

6) Stir in 1 cup coconut.

7) Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet, dip fork into milk and crisscross cookie, mashing down.

8) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 13-15 minutes.

"Empty?! You took all the cookies!"

"They were trying to get out of the jar...Cookies get claustrophobia too, you know!"

Charles M. Schulz

Mrs. Deering's House

It's not just my house that I'm in love with, it's houses in general. I'm fascinated by them and the stories of the people who live in them. A novel rarely interests me if the house the main characters live in are not central to the story. Even though I was too young to have any memory of it, could that fascination for houses have been birthed when my mother and I followed my father around from one Air Force base to another during World War II, living with people who rented out a bedroom in their homes to service wives? All I know is that I have many clear memories of the houses we later lived in, or visited, when I was growing up. I remember colors of walls, furniture arrangements, dishes on the tables. I remember windows, Christmas trees, landscaping.

A vivid memory of when I was not yet four is a fond one. We were moving into our new house, a post-WW II cottage, and Mama and I were alone in the empty house as we waited for furniture to be delivered. We sat together on a blanket on the floor in the middle of the living room, the blanket like an island surrounded by the shiny hardwood floors, not a scuff mark on them. This has always been a completely satisfying memory.

The house was a two bedroom, one bathroom house, but my goodness, how many relatives we crammed into it when holidays and family visits took place. One time it was so full that an uncle slept in the bathtub and another one under the dining room table. So much cooking took place in the little kitchen and outside on the small patio where Daddy grilled in the summer. My parents were both from poor families that had lived through the Depression, but all were hardworking men and women striving for a better life for their own children. By the time I was in elementary school, our family was typical of many 1950s era families, upwardly mobile before the term had been thought of.

There appeared a television, a blonde oak dining room set, and, wonder of wonders, an air conditioner sitting in a hole cut especially for it in the living room wall. No longer did we swelter during the summer with a slight relief felt when we went to bed and, lights out, my father pulled down the attic steps and switched on the large attic fan that sucked out some of the hot Tennessee air, drawing in gentle breezes of coolish, damp night air to move across my sticky arms and legs in shortie pajamas until I could finally pull up the thin white cotton sheet from the bottom of the bed.

My early life was filled with visits to family and friends who lived in houses fairly similar to ours. Each homemaker of these houses, housewives they were always called in those days, kept a spotless house, served wholesome meals, sent their children to school dressed appropriately, and went to the store, church, or doctor dressed like the ladies they were. On the other hand, in my memory, not one of them had the kind of decorating style that made me want to grow up and copy it. That's the truth of it so forgive me, ladies, please?

Then came the day as a pre-teen that I visited a different kind of house. Mrs. Deering played the piano at our church and was quietly elegant with a heavy chignon that shone. I didn't know the names of the labels in her clothes and wouldn't have recognized them if I had, but when I grew up I realized that she was the epitome of "The Talbot Woman" when that used to mean a whole lot. My first visit to her house with a group of girls from our church was a revelation. It was my first impression of realizing that the house "fitted" its owner in a completely perfect way.

It was an old brick two-story and inside was one room after another of antique furniture that gleamed from years of waxing. Lamps were scattered around the rooms instead of harsh overhead lighting, vases held loosely arranged roses from the garden, interesting accessories were mixed with books on shelves, and there were oil paintings on the walls. I felt as if I were in a trance as she showed us through her house, my heart thumping. I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh, this is what a house can be like. I never knew."

Two other things remain in my memory. In the master bedroom Mrs. Deering showed us how their bed, the spread made of a dull satiny material, swung apart at the footboards so that the linens could be changed and yet latched together at night. This was, you must remember, the day when married couples, always on television shows and movies, and often in real life, slept in twin beds. As our hostess showed us their bed, she smiled sweetly and told us, "I didn't get married to sleep three feet away from my husband."

Ro-man-tic!

The second thing that knocked my bobby sox off was that she served our group of young awkward girls a full nine-boy chicken curry lunch. It smelled divine and even those of us who were all elbows rose to the occasion and daintily served ourselves the chicken on top of the fluffiest riceI'd ever tasted, and next took tiny servings of the condiments of chopped peanuts, raisins, coconut, chutney (I'm betting it was Major Grey), apples, bananas, pineapple, and I can't remember what else.

It was the first time that I understood that food could be more than the sum of its components. It could look pretty, taste of foreign lands and foreign spices, and be served by a hostess who wanted to give young girls something to remember, maybe even something to aspire to.

From the day I visited Mrs. Deering's house I have had a love affair with houses. So much so that I dream about them. My most recurring dream has been one with different variations where I walk through my house, sometimes the one I'm presently living in, sometimes a former home, often a totally strange house but I know it's mine. And invariably I open a door and discover a new room that I never had known was there. Have you ever had a dream like that? It was not until I read Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun that I found out other women have these dreams too.

"I dream of former houses I've lived in, or finding rooms I didn't know were there.

Many friends have told me that they, too, have this dream...In house after 

house (my best friend's in high school, my childhood home),

I open a door and there is more than I knew."

Think of that!

I may not remember what someone is wearing if they invite me to their house, but I will remember each room I saw. And I will always remember Mrs. Deering's house. It may not have been quite as large as this one, but in my memory this is the way it looked.

Was the house you grew up in similar to what you wanted to live in as an adult? Or was there one you saw when you were growing up that made you think: "So this is what a house can be like."

To Sisters

I have all of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's journals--I must have read each one at least a dozen times over the years--and every book written about her that I could find, especially those written by her daughter Reeve. I think she was the most extraordinary woman of my lifetime, and my admiration for her knows no end. This paragraph is from her Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead and is from a letter to her younger sister Constance written in January of 1930.

"I want an open fire and a room full of flowers--spring flowers--against the gray windows

long window boxes of narcissus and daffodils 

and a big flip jar of fresh white freesias on the table in the middle of the room.

And red tulips where the firelight will reflect in them.

And bookcases up to the ceiling and two large roomy desks and you at one of them,

and Daffin in front of the fire.

And for lunch (on a yellow tablecloth with mimosa in the center)--

and we would make it ourselves--

clear (canned) soup and a poached egg apiece,

and FRESH asparagus on toast,

and you would read me your latest story."

Lindbergh ends with this last sentence. May I claim it for my own to my three younger sisters, Deb, Teresa, and Jenn? We have poured out our hearts to each other this past week in emails, and I understand how Anne Morrow Lindbergh yearns for her sister and writes this:

"I love you and I miss you..."

A Properly Made Bed

No, this is not going to be a tutorial on how to properly put sheets on a bed. Martha Stewart, I'm not.

Did you ever hear someone say, "He's made his bed, now he'll have to lie in it"? Have you ever wished  someone had said that to you when you were young--and that you had listened to them?

The new year has just begun. It is the time of new beginnings. It may look like this outside:

But in a few months it will look like this:

One of the wisest things I've ever read in a novel was in a 1951 book called Shoulder the Sky by D.E. Stevenson, Robert E.'s cousin. A shepherd in the hills of Scotland happens across the cook's son, hiding in the opening of a cave, reading a book, a truant from school.

"Now listen," said Daniel gravely. "Just you listen to me and I'll tell you something worth remembering. When we're young we make our beds and when we're older we have to lie on them. I'd make myself a comfortable bed if I were you--straight and tidy with the blankets well tucked in at the foot--then it'll not come adrift when you lie in it. If a bed's not properly made at the start the blankets'll maybe fall off in the night and you'll wake up shivering."

A child could learn in a few short months to make his bed properly. It might take a grownup a little longer but I'm going to give it a try because I don't want to wake up shivering next winter.

If you have been shivering a little lately from the cold, the flu, from bad news all around us, you might like to visit the blog I visited earlier through Cozy Little House's Welcome Wagon Friday. It's name is My Cottage On the Lake and the blogger had some lovely ideas for finding beauty all around us. Beauty is always good when you're trying to make your bed properly.

http://mycottageonthelake.blogspot.com 

"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?"

A year ago, with a pile of vegetables to wash and chop, I turned on television to the last hour of a mostly forgettable movie. Two lines of the theme song were not so forgettable. They haunted me in the way that a song can where you think of it before going to sleep and the first thing upon awakening. Don't you hate it when this happens? This time it seemed important so I paid attention.

It went: "What are you doing the rest of your life? North and south and east and west of your life?"

I don't remember who was singing it in the movie because right away it became Frank Sinatra's voice in my mind singing straight to me: "Dewena, what are you doing the rest of your life?"

Weird, huh?

I emailed my sisters one of our Sister Letters, telling them about the music and the lines haunting me, challenging me. In turn, I asked them the question, "What are you doing the rest of your life?"

A dialogue opened up. One sister who had left a stressful career of decades wrote back that everyone told her to now do what she loved to do but she told them: "I do not know what I love. I have been too long at the rat race."

Isn't that the most frustrating of all? To finally be given time to do the things you love but you don't know exactly what it is you love to do? She wrote that she thought the song might be a message for her too.

A few days later our other two sisters joined in, one saying she couldn't get the song out of her mind, that it did cause her to reflect on the future.

The other sister jokingly fussed at me: "What are doing the rest of your life? Darn you (only she didn't say darn) for making us think! No, thank you, that was so good and so needed. I am working hard on that."

Somehow I think the first line of that song has stuck with us, focusing us, probably frustrating us too when other pressing personal responsibilities give us absolutely no time to pursue things that we would like to spend our time doing.

It made me determined to find more time to write. I began researching self-publishing as that seemed to be the only way I'd ever get published. For years, scribbling, scribbling, always scribbling. One short story and one magazine article published, then years of writing novels, never daring to submit them after the first rejection, too much fear of trying to promote them if one had been accepted. It was in the writing process that I found joy, not for me the search to publish, the marketing, phone calls, meetings. Rejection.

And yet as I heard Frank Sinatra's voice in my mind over and over, I realized that I wanted something more than just writing my stories. My sisters had suggested that I write a blog but I shied away from the idea because of the tech knowledge required. Still, I was spending chunks of my evenings enjoying my favorite blogs. Could I do it too? I knew if I did it could only be about what I knew--our house here and our life in it and my passion for houses and the stories of people who lived in them.

There is a quote from Diana Vreeland that sums up why I read about houses and the lives of the people who live in them, in books and on blogs. I feel strange quoting the esteemed editor-in-chief of Vogue from 1967-1971--can you imagine the expression on her face if she heard that I was presuming to quote her?--but when I first read what she wrote I said, "Yes, yes, yes!"

"Few things are more fascinating than the opportunity to see how other people live

during their private hours--in rooms they love, gardens they have planted,

among their personal possessions, pursuing their favorite interests,

enjoying their domestic arrangements to fit the pattern of their individual lives."

Isn't that what we bloggers write about, our own and others domestic arrangements? So I dropped "Across the Way" into the big pool of blogs for the sheer joy of it, trying not to care whether a small ripple appears and possibly grows or not. As an amateur I plod ahead writing posts, begging R.H. to take just one more photograph, trying to visit my blog roll friends and others faithfully, leaving applause for them, comforted and inspired by my visits to them, often astounded at the sheer talent out there,  rejoicing with their good news and often crying at their sad news.

Sometimes I get a little discouraged when there is so little response to mine. Then I remember how for one year and nine months, after I discovered the world of blogs, I read them daily, loving new discoveries, and yet never daring to follow or comment because that dreaded message would pop up wanting me to open a google account and I had no idea what that was about.

So, to any readers who might be reading this blog and never comment--and I have had two lovely emails from people who told me they were among my "silent" readers--and to those wonderful blogging friends I have made in the last two months, and to my family who check in regularly to see what Mom/Grandma/Mimi/Sister has to say, part of what I will do in 2013 is write on this blog.

I encourage myself with this much appreciated quote from G.K. Chesterton: "A thing worth doing at all is worth doing badly."

I like to think that the song, "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life," written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman--does their little tune "The Way We Were" sound a tiny bit familiar to you?--gave me the courage to attempt something risky, something different, something that will matter to me and might to someone else. For anyone who has given their valuable time to read through this long post, I would like to challenge you to ponder this question as 2013 is just beginning:

"What are you doing the rest of your life?"

If you feel like writing about it here in a comment I would certainly like to read it, but more importantly, just keep it in your heart. And please don't get mad at me if you can't get Frank Sinatra's voice out of your mind.

[I just tried to do a link here to Old Blue Eyes singing this song on Youtube but it failed. I am so tech challenged.]