Poem #11

Another prompt I got from sasqi was to 'steal a language fragment you see somewhere today.' Just having claimed A's desk as my own, reorganized it with my stuff, and hung bright bunting from the curtain rods, I sat down beneath the desk lamp with a new notebook (Clairefontaine, gorgeous) and wrote a poem. Two actually, but I'm only sharing a stanza or two from one of 'em.

Poem #11

...

My friend once took an airmail envelope,
the ones with the red, white & blue border
from some lawyer's office--I don't know where--
she wrote I MISS YOU in pink watercolor
beneath the airmail printing, drew
three stick-figure redwood trees:
one for each of us, in the corner just so.

Every time I send a letter home,
I think of her.

Family & Chocolate

I love my family. And one of the reasons I love my family is because they love chocolate.

My cousin MO's wedding cake, for a visual.

I always try to bring them chocolate from wherever I've been and we know the best places for hot chocolate and sweet delights in multiple countries. As I wrote last week, my aunt, RO, sent a care package chocked full of America's finest candy, most of which were chocolate. Today, a package arrived from my cousin, KO, with a beautiful engagement card, two packages of Maltesers (yes!), and a box of milk and dark chocolate Rhéo Thompson mint smoothies:

Possibly the best mint chocolate on the planet...

Yes, they do look that good in person and they are melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Alex and I about fell over when we opened the package and its contents explained the slight minty odor I detected when carrying the package home from the post office. Chocolate like this makes me happy my cousin followed her heart and moved away to the Great White North!

The gold foil wrapping to it all? My finacée's family loves chocolate (and food, for that matter) as much as we do. And if anyone had told me I would get chocolate for getting engaged, I would have proposed even sooner!

Ok, maybe not, but still...chocolate...

Fabrics of Memory

This morning I trekked myself to the post office to collect the package that was 'too big for the letter box,' expecting it to be one of the graphic novels I've ordered by Ariel Schrag for a paper I want to present. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see the handwriting of one, Knits with Carrots.

Inside: Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt. In time for the recent finishing of my first quilt, Knits with Carrots got choked up reading the beautiful picturebook and decided I needed it in my collection; I quite agree.

In the picturebook, the author's Great-Gramma Anna is a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York City and from her childhood and family's clothes, the women of her family and community make a quilt to remember home. Each piece of fabric has a story and the quilt welcomes each new daughter, becomes a table cloth at the Sabbath and special occasions and acts as the wedding huppa through multiple generations.

Reading the book reminded me of the legacy that quilts can have and that just last night, I was telling Alex stories about the fabrics in our quilt. Most of the fabrics were bought specifically for the project, but still, others have stories.

Like, the softer white cotton fabric with the smaller red polka dots was from a tank top of mine. I think I found it in a thrift shop, and it, too, had been made by hand. I wore it on stage the summer before my freshman year of high school in a Talent Competition: me and three other girls did a dance routine to 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' and won 2nd place in the county fair. I kept the tank top long after I stopped wearing it; I thought it was good fabric.

Others are scraps from pillows and aprons I'd made as gifts. The inner circle of pinks were fabrics given to me from Em, my quilting guru, and pieces of those are probably in other quilts of their own.

And from this quilt, I still have more scraps--strawberries, bandanas, endless pinks--which will possibly make their way into other quilts, other projects. It makes me wonder about the depth of one's own fabric stash and the wealth of memories.

Thanks, darling.

Care Package

Last week, my love and I received a care package from my aunt filled with the best candy America has to offer, the kind of candy you get special just for the movies and you scarf down before the opening scene even starts:

Junior Mints
Milk Duds
Whoppers
Sour Patch Kids
Red Vines
Baby Ruth
Peanut M&Ms

I can hardly think of an instance where I didn't get one of these for a trip to the movies, sneaking it in under my jacket or paying full price at the theatre for the bigger box.

As if enjoying their taste wasn't enough, I have relished in talking about them. Calling them 'candy' instead of 'sweets' and feeling justified because they're not English sweets, like Wine Gums or Smarties or Maltsers, but an all-American spread of candy. It's like I have some kind of Sandlot mentality when I talk about them being the ones you take to the movies--not the 'cinema'--as if buying a box of Junior Mints for the blockbusters were some nostalgic weekly summer tradition of my childhood.

No such weekly summer tradition existed, and often times the actual chocolate of the candy or sweets is better in Europe (see: Ireland's Cadbury), but it seems I still can't help but be excited when I see the tub of candy on the kitchen counter... I think I miss home.

Mail

I want to say that mail is a powerful thing. But, as I consider what different countries call letters and packages--mail, post, airmail, shipping--mail is not a thing, but actually a verb that has been turned into a noun for every day uses. The meaning--and the power--however, still resides in the action.

This morning I recieved online messages from those I love and care about back home whom have just recieved mail from me: Mother's Day presents, crafty gifts, creative connections. In turn, I'm sitting at my computer smiling, still not able to fully comprehend how things packed in little envelopes and boxes travel 6,000 miles from one person to another.

Think about each pair of hands that touched that package: me, the guy at the Royal Post that put it in the bag, the person that picked up the bag to take it to the shipping center, the trucks, the planes, the person from the USPS who unloaded the plane, the person who sorted it, the local postman, you.

There was a certain amount of care and love that went into getting that piece of mail from here to there. Even if someone in between hates their job, even if the recepient is disappointed by the contents, the act of posting a letter is connecting.

The potential in a single piece of mail is awesome and staggering.