Author, Poet, Speaker, Book Coach, Editor
May 21 at 3:30 PM at Mechanics’ Hall join three amazing artists as they perform poetry, music and drama to invite dialogue on the topic of reparations. Seeking sustainable repair for the deep damage done by slavery is a complex conversation. Be part of a solution with this opportunity to listen, learn and speak to the too-long silenced history of our country founded on plantation economy and chattel slavery.
Thank goodness for the gloomy rain. If yesterday had been another sun-sparkled day, Heather might have had to pry my fingers from the doorframe when it was time to say goodbye to Vashon Artist Residency.
For nearly a month, I was given the opportunity to do nothing but write. With almost no other demands on my time, I could not only immerse myself in the work, but also to take care of my body and mind.
In my life outside VAR, every hour seems to be filled with endless tasks and the pursuit of their completion. If I can squeeze in a little writing time each day, I feel I have served my muse. But at VAR I could not only write, but also make time to feed my spirit. Where distant horizons of sea and sky became the backdrop of my days, I was able to slow down to find more space, both inside and out.
Each morning I wrote, revisiting painful memories as I hammered away inside the structure of sentences, building and reinforcing with images, memories and reflections until I had to stop.
And then, I turned away from the writing to walk, bike or kayak along the shores of Quartermaster Harbor. Strolling beneath towering Douglas firs reminded me to engage in the pleasure of respiration, drinking in the earth’s nourishing energy as I gazed at branches twining overhead. Floating on the glassy surface of the Salish sea, I rested in the quiet between calls of swooping gulls and splashing ducks. In the evenings, I grounded myself in the goodness of female friendship, side-by-side cooking and shared laughter as my sister artists and I discussed the challenges and insights of our day.
I am sure it was this combination of work, rest, exercise and camaraderie that worked its magic, helping me to turn a corner by the end of the residency. After struggling for years, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of words the manuscript holds, I was able to see a storyline emerge. Spreading hundreds of printed pages out in the studio, holding them in my hands, gathering, cutting, stapling, It suddenly came to me that there was an arc. I saw a path through what had felt more chaos than story when I first arrived.
This sudden insight came because my mind had been opened and my body refreshed in a way that made room for a wider perspective in general.Yesterday I left the spiritual shelter of Vashon Artist residency feeling rejuvenated, understood and even hopeful that finishing this manuscript will happen.
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Being here at Vashon Artist Residency for nearly a month has allowed me the opportunity to experience the constant sense of feeling valued as I know that everything around me has been made possible by the generosity of its founder, Cathy Sarkowsky. In the wake of this sense of support, I am discovering an expanding awareness of abundance in general. Living in a place where I know each day that I’ve been granted a rare and precious gift is providing me with yet another gift: I am noticing that the earth itself is showering me with riches.
Walking on the beach every day, I marvel at the stones underfoot, knowing each has been brought here by geological forces that feel epic. Bending down, I pick up a tawny one, no bigger than a golf ball, and I am holding in my hand a story that began 1.4 billion years ago under the desert sands of Africa. There, over the course of a number of years inconceivable to me, it sank below the continent, traveled inches each year on its vessel of a tectonic plate beneath the earth’s mantle to be disgorged again into the pacific ocean and rolled and tumbled in the tides and storms to land here at my feet over a BILLION years later.
And every other stone underfoot has its own story to tell. Shiny black basalt, sparkling white quartz, olive colored peridotite, porous pumice, rosy granite, and grey chert laced with fine lines of silica. The cool thing is that the “once upon a time” part of their stories stretches back over eons and the “in a land faraway” part happened deep beneath the earth’s crust. And there they lie, countless encapsulations of geological deep time, waiting only for me to stop and notice.
Within this expanse of stones that goes on for as long as I want to walk, clusters of shiny purple mussels cling to one another beside the bleached and barnacled backs of oysters, beckoning with their own kind of mini-monstrous appeal. As I walk, watery vertical squirts before and behind surprise me as if the clams half-buried in the sandy mud are laughing as I pass.
My most treasured gift is the sea itself, always ready to receive me when I work up the courage to enter into its enlivening embrace. Lingering before I dive, feeling the sun on my bare back and arms, I peer through the clear water to watch the ocean floor come alive. First my my eyes must adjust to see beyond the apparent stillness of rocks and broken shells and take in the small movements above them. Tiny crabs skitter busy over pebbles, thin black threads whip back and forth from the volcano-like forms of white barnacles (cousins to the crab), pulling in food with these unlikely little legs, and clams burp, emitting stray bubbles that rise to the surface.
Finally, I decide it’s time to swim. I fall forward letting my body slice into the chill that saturates my skin and mind and brings on that familiar sense of myself as effervescent. I lie back, floating between earth and sky, releasing, surrendering into ocean’s enlivening embrace. I look up at the sunshine and revel in my good fortune until the cold begins to feel like too much.
Then, I head back to my room and the luxury of a hot shower.
So many gifts.
Thank you, Vashon Island Residency.
Thank you, Cathy Sarkowsky.
I met Andrea 23 years ago when my family was living in a quiet neighborhood of Seattle. She too was a full-time mom raising an infant and two young children. Soon after we struck up that first conversation at the playground, we began easing the isolation of motherhood by sharing the burden of care, taking long walks with baby-carriers on our backs, pushing toddlers in strollers while the older children ran alongside. Afternoons we sat around her kitchen table, holding and feeding the babies while we visited and hoped the four other kids would stay unhurt while they careened around the house and yard between games of make-believe and Legos.
We had only known each other a few months by the time Dtaw and I moved our family back to Thailand where we knew the sanity of a slower paced life with extended family awaited us. But by then, regular sharing of worries and hopes and childcare had solidified our friendship.
When, less than three years later, Andrea heard the news that our six-year-old Chan had died of cancer, she immediately got in touch.
“We have a family trip planned to visit Thailand. Do you want to bring Dtaw and the kids and spend a week on the beach with us?” It had only been a month since my child’s death. My decision-making skills were slow.
“Let me get back to you.” At that time, I could not imagine leaving the place where Chan had died. There, among the dusty, golden hills, everywhere I looked held images, memories of my son. Wherever I was in that place, walking down the dirt road, over the broken, dead grass, in the quiet village, I saw him, I heard his voice. I did not want to leave.
But a small part of me knew that it would be good for my grief, to push myself out of this bubble where I lived so much in the past. And I knew Cody would be glad to see his old friends. Lost in my own pain, I didn’t realize at the time what a sacrifice Andrea was offering, spending her family beach vacation with a family deep in grief.
I finally called her back and said yes.
We stayed in a little hut on the white sandy beach, palms trees lining the shore. As always, we spent the days together with the kids, sometimes joining them as they played in the sand or splashed in the sea. Andrea, in true friend form, followed my lead through the days of grief, letting me laugh and be light and playful when I could, letting me cry and talk about Chan when I had to. In her face I could see and feel how, as another young mother, she could imagine the immensity of my loss. I drank in her kindness and concern as I let the stories and sadness pour out of me.
I will always be grateful for the gift she and her family gave us that week, being willing and able to hold us and our pain.
It was wonderful to see her the other day, over two decades later. We took a walk in the park where we often took the kids so long ago. Sharing stories of our grown-up children and laughing at the way motherhood never seems to end, it was good to feel the strength of our friendship.
Everything is wet and green and dripping outside. Buttery daffodils, fluttery cherry blossoms, staunch tulips, tender pink camelias, glossy leaves, all are beaded with glistening droplets reflecting the brighter grey of sky.
After a winter of sunshine in Denver, Taos, Thailand, Wyoming, Mexico and New Mexico, this feels like the first rain I’ve experienced in nearly five months. But it feels good to touch moss. It feels good to know my skin is drinking in the moisture. Puddles are an almost forgotten experience hinting at play and mischief. Cement sidewalks are a slippery adventure under worn-out soles of my shoes when the dogs pull at their leashes. Fully embracing the Seattle vibe and climate, I left my flip flops, cotton sundress and cowboy boots back in New Mexico. Here it’s clunky hikers, woolly sweaters and a flannel shirt.
After waking up every morning this winter eager to get out to greet the sunrise, now I sense the darkness of rain and heavy clouds behind the curtains and snuggle down deeper in my sheets and blanket, thankful for softness and warmth, a flexible work schedule, and a cuddly four-footed bedfellow, also content to keep sleeping. I relax into my body and revel in appreciation for this life with its infinite blessings that begin with health, friends and work I love.
I think about my children (grown men now at 22 and 27) on the other side of the world, grappling with the sudden loss of the father they loved so much. And I wonder how to help them.
Their dad would have turned 61 yesterday, March 22nd. Birthdays are not celebrated in Thailand like they are here, but if he were still alive, the boys would have given him gifts, homemade cards, invited family for dinner. Instead, they must move through the day like every other now, still sorting his stuff and tending the garden he planned and planted for so many years. Whenever we traveled along the Mekong when the kids were little, we had to stop so Dtaw could collect a few more huge shiny black rocks from the river to make a circle for sitting under the mango tree. He gathered smaller smooth stones, the color of sand, to cover the ground under the gutters to minimize sticky mud in the rainy season. And he was always bringing new seedlings home when he visited cousins and friends in the country.
At the time I grew impatient with the time he spent landscaping, planting, watering, watching. I wanted him to do something more productive. I didn’t know how to think long term. Today the garden is an oasis of birdsong and blossoms and breezy shade in a town turned dusty and hot and noisy from too much building and business.
Today the boys clip back the endless growth that seems to happen overnight in the hot humid climate. They prune the starfruit, mock acacia and star-gooseberry trees, sweep dead leaves from the dust to cover for snakes and scorpions. In the evening they share a meal with their aunts and uncles and cousins, remembering together what they have all lost.
I am grateful for that. I am grateful that they are in a place where family still gathers, where blood is still thick between relations, where, when they meet people, they are identified as “Dtaw’s sons.” I am grateful they are where they can be with people who knew their dad his whole life, who can tell them stories about when he was a little boy, a young man, a new husband, a new father. I know they will laugh with family over stories they’ve never heard and ones they’ve heard before. I know they need that.
People on the street and in the market will talk about their dad often, without fear of upsetting them. Where they are, in a community so connected that death is an almost mundane event, a simple inescapable part of life, people know that talking about the parent or child or sister or brother someone is grieving is essential. There is an unspoken and perhaps unconscious understanding that acknowledging the absence, speaking of the pain is a way of sharing the loss. This distribution of the weight of the grief, must somehow lessens its burden. At least this is what I imagine and believe.
It is good to know that even though my sons are sad, even though they are struggling through their grief and all that it awakens without their mother nearby, they are not alone.
Catharine H. Murray 