by Susan Lobb Porter | Family, Life |
She’s a newly turned 4 year old. The Energizer Bunny in a princess dress.
There are no off buttons. None. Nada.
I’ve been visiting for her birthday, cementing my place in her consciousness by being the one who wears princess dresses. Just. Like. Her.
I’ve done my best to keep up.
We’ve jumped in the Bouncy House.
Played games.
Hidden from the world in the castle -that-is-a-tent.
And then, because it’s something grandmas do, I passed along my wisdom and taught her how to take photos with my iphone. Which she did. Often.
So she could take pictures of me.
I’ll be getting on a plane soon and going back home. Home to a husband, a couple of dogs, the horses and the cat. Going home to my job. To my studio. To-do lists. Marketing plans. To my life a couple thousand miles away from hers.
I’m going to miss her, oh how I’ll miss her. But I’ll be back. Got some more dancin’ to do.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Kids, Process |
I called my friend Harriet once, around the time FirstBorn was thirteen. Maybe fourteen. Whatever…he was feeling his soon-to-be manly oats and was a total, absolute pain in the ass.
I wanted to kill him.
Oh, indeed I did. But first I needed to find out if a jury of my peers, i.e, mothers of teens, would put me away for life or give me a high five and send me to a spa. Prison was out, horizontal stripes make my ass look fat. But a spa? I could handle that.
So I called Harriet and asked if it was against the law if I did away with my son. Figured her kid, a few years older than mine, was still alive. I wanted to know if it was by choice or grand design.
She told me it was perfectly alright to kill him, as long as I ATE him. She said it with conviction, without any hesitation, so I knew it must be true.
But there wasn’t enough Maalox in the world to pull that one off.
I’m kind of glad I stuck it out with FirstBorn. He turned out okay. Pretty good, actually. And now when he calls and tells me what’s going on with Princess GrandDaughter, I find myself laughing and wheezing and enjoying myself immensely.
Because grandchildren are the best payback.
And now that we’ve established that, I’m going to put on my Arty Life hat and tell you to gather ’round. Because I don’t want to shout, not on the interwebs, not where everyone can hear me. Because they might not understand when I say artists must kill their children.
No no no…don’t jump to any conclusions and call me as your defense witness. The children I’m talking about the ones that bleed paint. Or clay. The ones you’ve put your heart and soul in and then one day you look at them and think you suck. Or maybe just I can do better than this.
The number one lesson I teach my students is nothing you do is precious. You need to be free to experiment and push beyond your comfort zone in order to find your creative boundaries. And once you find them you need to push past them too.
It’s incredibly liberating to create without attachment to the outcome.
This was an assignment from Judy Wise and Stephanie Lee’s Plaster Workshop. I carved a portrait of a young girl into a plaster covered board and then painted it. There was nothing wrong with it, I’m sure someone would’ve bought it some day. But to me it was an assignment. I didn’t feel my artist voice. So after letting her hang around the studio for a couple of months, I whipped out some joint compound and had my way with her.
Looks like buttercream icing, doesn’t it? But it’s not, I assure you it was death-in-a-can for the poor dear. But her passing gave rise to this…
One of my all time favorite pieces. Something from the sweet creative spot.
The title? Portrait of a Young Girl, Revisited. Of course.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Family, Growing up |
When Mama was young her father built his family a summer cottage on the Long Island Sound. The cottage was bare bones simple. Rooms were small, walls were thin, kids all slept up the ladder steep stairs in the unfinished attic.
There wasn’t a flush toilet until I was five or six. And the bathroom, when it was finally built, wasn’t inside the house. You had to go out through the back door to the little shed attached to the back of the kitchen. Nothing but the basics, the toilet and a sink, but heaven compared to the two seater at the back of the lot.
I dimly recall an outdoor shower but I don’t remember using it much. We spent most all day at the beach and if I was crusty with salt, well, that was all part of summer. Every summer. Along with sunburns and lazy afternoons reading in the hammock, a big canvas thing strung between a couple of trees. There were card games and coloring books and jig saw puzzles. There was no TV.
It. Was. Heaven.
Four generations of family called it home in the summer. Aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. We took turns and overlapped. And when the cousins were quasi adults in college and wanted a private place to…entertain, it became the winter weekend no-tell motel.
It’s a wonder we never bumped into each other.
We went to a family reunion there when FirstBorn was a baby. Flew in from California. By this time my grandparents were long gone. But their children, their grandkids and the great grands were all there.
It was the last time we were all together. People moved away. People died. The cottage was empty most of the year, even in summers. Eventually the decision was made to sell it. The new people tore it down and built their own house. A real house, a year round house.
Sound Beach. Our history grew into our vocabulary. When we liked something we said it reminded us of Sound Beach. Norway reminds us of Sound Beach. The narrow country lanes in my part of California are like the narrow roads we drove there. Wicker chairs. Hammocks. Hot summer nights. We were summer people, we never lived there but it was HOME.
This morning I woke up to an email from my sister, the one in Norway. A friend had been visiting Long Island. Armed with the address and Google Earth, she took pictures of the new place on our old property.
It gave me such great pleasure to see the house they built. A home with flower baskets on the front porch. Painted yellow, almost the same color as the cottage. It sits back from the road, with a lawn in the front. It’s well kept and looks comfortable. Looks like family.
Nana would’ve loved it. Mama would’ve loved it. And me? I could move right in.
I didn’t think I’d ever want to see the new house. But life is about growth and change. Moving forward. My family shares the memories of a magical place. But we have moved on.
And now it’s time for others to make memories of their own.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Family, Life, Parents |
January 31. This marks my parents’ wedding anniversary. Seventy years ago today they tied the knot. Mama was a Girl Scout, Daddy a Marine…they knew their knots. This one may have gotten a little frayed around the edges but still it lasted 58 years. Fifty-eight years…until the day my father died. At home in his own bed with his wife by his side.
Edie and Dick. Yin and Yang. They were a pair. And they were tied tight. Right over left and through, left over right and through. A good old fashioned square knot.
I came along late in the game but I heard the story of their wedding over and over. Mama loved to tell stories, especially if she was involved in them. And I loved all things about weddings. A pretty dress, flowers and cake that’s ten times better than any birthday cake. All that and a handsome man who will love you for EVER.
And don’t forget the PRESENTS!!!
So here’s the story AS I KNEW IT. It was a small do. An intimate gathering of family and close friends. The early afternoon reception was a simple one. Cake and coffee. Maybe some champagne. Because I can’t imagine a wedding without champagne. It was at her sister’s house. The same sister whose dress she wore. The honeymoon was a night in Manhattan. Fancy dinner. Fancy hotel. Fancy that.
Oh, and it rained.
And that’s what I was going to write. They fell in love, got married and did the ’till death do us part’ thing 58 years later. Because that was the STORY. Until I went through the folder labeled Richard. Daddy’s papers. I was looking for the menu from the restaurant. I saw it years ago and thought I’d amuse you with photographic proof of what two bucks could buy you in 1942. If memory serves me right–and these days it doesn’t aways–a full course lobster dinner plus drink.
I didn’t find the menu. But I found some interesting things. And, as I went through them, all sorts of questions began popping up.
It began with the envelope addressed to my father. It was plain white. Unadorned with anything save the simple return address. The White House. The letter inside was on matching stationery. It contained a hastily scrawled note from my father’s brother. Dated January 29. Two days before the wedding. He didn’t know if he could make it. No one was getting any time off.
There was a war going on. The whole damn world was shooting this way and that. And my uncle had a first row seat for the duration. Secret Service. OSS. Army Counter Intelligence.
He never made the wedding. Daddy’s friend stood in as his best man instead. One of the honorary uncles of my childhood. But I never put two and two together, never realized that’s why he was the best man and not my uncle. Not until I read the letter.
And then I realized there were a lot of things I didn’t know. A lot of questions I wanted to ask.
But there’s no one left to answer them.
I’ve always looked at the wedding portrait and seen my parents. Mom-and-Daddy-yin-and-yang-in-their-fancy-best. Young but old, because they came before me.
My uncle’s note sent the story I knew spinning off in another direction.
It was raining that day. Hard. Cold and blustery. Pearl Harbor was a little more than a month in the past. We declared war on Japan. Hitler declared war on us. Shock. Fear. Anger. Rage. Bravado. But happy days? I don’t think so.
I look at that photo now and see a couple of kids, 26 and 28. Just a little older than mine are today. Kids who were striving for normal when the world was going bat shit crazy around them. Kids who pledged their forevers together when there was no guarantee of tomorrow.
I think about the simple reception. Hear the undercurrents of small talk that never made it to the story. People smiling and raising a toast to the happy couple while in the back of their minds wondering….All the men in that room old enough to serve, did. Four uncles. And my Dad. The Army. The Marines. Europe. North Africa. The Pacific.
From the concentration camps to the streets of Nagasaki after the bomb.
They all served. They all came home. And they never, EVER, talked about it.
Mama was the story keeper in our house. She touched on a little of everything and told them over and over again. But like the story of her wedding, they were the bare bones, not the meat. And when I took care of her in her later years I heard them so often I stopped listening.
And I’m sorry I did. I regret they became so familiar I tuned them out. I wish I’d dug deeper.
Because she wanted to tell her story. But she didn’t know how.
And I didn’t know enough to ask the right questions.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Family, Kids |
There are two young women I love with all of my heart. My daughters. One I gave birth to, the other one married my son.
Today I’m going to talk about my daughter-in-law, the BEST DIL in the world, ever. It’s her birthday today. She’s 27.
I don’t know about you but when I was 27 I was on the tail end of my screwup phase. Finally getting it together. Sorta. I had an art degree and a couple years of waitressing and retail sales under my belt. There were a couple of broken hearts along the way as well. I was sharing a rental in a marginal part of town with two elkhounds and a roommate. The leap into the world of commercial art–illustration and graphics, would take place towards the end of that year. Even then it was a long, slow process.
Fast forward to BEST DIL in the world, ever. Her name is Nicole, by the way. Niki. And I’ve known her since she was 16, when she first started hanging around our house with all the other kids. I liked her for her own merits even before she and FirstBorn began dating. And once they did begin dating I fell in love with her too. Because she brought out the best in my son. What mother wouldn’t love that?
So it didn’t really surprise me when they eloped. But holy crap, they were 18 years old. Babies. DIL was still in high school. And FirstBorn was a brand new Marine heading off to what would soon become war.
But, as I said…it didn’t surprise me. Because even back then they were right for each other.
Fast forward again. They’ll be married nine years next month. NINE YEARS. Been a lot of growing up for the both of them. Three combat deployments to Iraq–not easy on any marriage. But while FirstBorn was being a Marine, Niki was working any number of part time jobs and putting herself through school. Not just taking classes, excelling. She made Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in molecular biology.
Not bad for a kid who got married in high school…
Today? Good jobs, both of ’em. A couple of cats. A dog. A mortgage. And best of all…most most MOST important of all… a baby. A beautiful little girl born to rock solid parents.
As the saying goes, ‘I didn’t lose a son, I gained a daughter’. Indeed I did. And I love her like my own. Happy Birthday Niki!
