Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me ? When Father’s Day comes around, even though my dear father is no longer with us, I will peruse the Father’s Day cards thinking about him, missing him and contemplating which one I would have given him. Is it just me?

My dad was an A1 father. But of all the things I miss about him, I long to hear the sound of his voice again. Or to hear him laughing. I am certainly not alone in this, knowing other’s miss those familiar sounds of loved ones gone. Still I find myself feeling cheated out of what technology now makes available to us. Instant videos, Skyping, recorded messages and all things that were not available so readily or instantaneously like they are today. I only have him frozen in so many photographs from black and white to color… a few silent home videos from the 50’s, but they are all as quiet as the night.

Now I watch my son with his daughter and remember the brief time my dad had with him, never getting to see him grown, or meet his little girl. Flashes of my childhood came back to me a few years ago when I watched in wonder as my now grown son played with his daughter on the cellar doors at my sister’s house. We used to slide down the cellar doors as a child and I almost broke out in tears as I watched my son and his daughter enjoying this old game together. The generations rolled back even further as I recalled my grandmother singing this song to me when I must have been my granddaughter’s age:

PLAYMATE, COME OUT AND PLAY WITH ME

AND BRING YOUR DOLLIES THREE,

CLIMB UP MY APPLE TREE.

LOOK IN MY RAINBARREL,

SLIDE DOWN MY CELLAR DOOR,

AND WE’LL BE JOLLY FRIENDS – FOREVER MORE.

Happy Father’s Day all you lucky people who still have the hugs, smiles, and voices of your dad’s to enjoy. They live on because we remember them with love. I see him in my son and am reminded – TO END IS TO BEGIN

My maternal grandmother , Catherine Feldman, lived with us when I was a girl. I was in second grade when she  moved in, shortly after her husband died. And there she stayed as a household fixture until she had a stroke and was cared for at  The Brother’s of Mercy Nursing Home, right up the street from our family home. Her bedroom was upstairs and right next to mine. She had a view of Main Street and a little wire cart with violet plants in front of the window, and a little black and white television that she watched the six o’clock news on with her one cigarette of the day. I can picture her still in that room, where I had everything on her dresser memorized. On the occasion I had bad dreams, I would sneak into her room and crawl into bed with her . This was a huge violation of my parents household rules, but she never ratted on me. She had a bed with a built in bookcase headboard and there resided a lovely painted ceramic Virgin Mary that played Ave Maria. She would wind it up and I would fall safely asleep. It remains one of my most favorite hymns and I still tear up when I hear it. My sister was good enough to hang on to that treasured object and pass it to me years later, where it resides on my home altar, in a place of memory and honor.

My Nannie, as we referred to her, pops up often in my life in treasured objects. Her recipes always tug at my heart when I come across them. Her recipe for marrow dumplings for instance, which I have not had since she died. Her amazing Continental Frosting that I still love but cannot make. My mother dutifully makes that frosting for me when I request it. I still make her soft molasses cookies on some Christmas’. But I came across the Hot Milk Cake recipe a day or two ago and even though I had no intention of making it,  I kept it out.  I found as I would move around the house, from kitchen to studio, studio to kitchen I could not seem to put it down. Finally I just sat down with it and studied it, like you would a love letter – word for word, front and back,  the sound of her voice on the scrap of paper and a clear vision of  her sitting at the kitchen table writing it out for me. I loved unfrosted cake, and I had to laugh as I noted at the end of the recipe, she wrote as an afterthought – Frost as you wish

My Nannie, who I was named after, was a very religious woman, and I thought about her a lot when I was making FORSAKEN. ( see ART tab for this piece ) We are never forsaken by our loved ones…even when they are gone , they are with us so often, in the smallest of things and seemingly  most insignificant objects of memory. Love just goes on and on.

Today was the annual Italian Festival in downtown Reno. There are numerous ethnic festivals throughout the year here, celebrating the Hispanic culture, the Greeks,  and more, but the Italian festival is the last big street fair event of the year before the town rolls up the streets for the long winter ahead. In my 5 years here, the event has always been lucky enough to have had a simply gorgeous Fall day, and today was no exception. Before you even park the car you can smell the garlic and food preparations and hear the music. There is of course a ‘best of ‘ cook-off for sauce, and fresh pesto is being made from one end to the other with giant vats of sauce  bubbling up and down the street,  all competing for the honors.

The smells are nothing short of heaven.

My father was a first generation Italian and the Italian side of my family was how we leaned . It was large and wonderful, teeming with Aunts and Uncles and a small army of cousins. Family mattered when I was growing up  as a child and  nearly every Sunday was spent at Gramma & Grampa’s house. I have nothing but wonderful ,  sweet memories of that part of my youth. Gramma spoke hardly a word of English, though it didn’t matter to her or us. Her goal was to make sure we were fed as often as possible before we left her house in spite of my mother’s protestations of, “Ma, they just ate! ”

There was always room for another bowl of my Gramma’s pasta.

I have only two dear Aunts left now, and all but one of my cousins. Sadly, I hardly ever see any of them, and when I do it’s to hear of yet another passing of these lovely people who made up such a big part of my young life. I’m sad to have grown so distant from my cousins and regret not being in touch as we now grow older.

They say every journey begins from home. I ventured out into the world as a young adult very confident of who I was and where and who I came from. I had a  solid home base as a launching pad in life. I had a culture and a family with a history to relate to. They gave me so much by simply  being there. I’m sorry that so many are gone and I no longer have the opportunity to thank them for that. And if they were here,  I would let them all know, that  family mattered  – very much.

(featured photo , canvas collage – WISH YOU WERE HERE , by Catherine Massaro)

Well, my ex-pat son and his little family are off again. This time to settle in as full time citizens of Ecuador.

I was 16 years old before I ever took my first airplane ride. My little grandaughter, Grace, has been flying since she was 10 months old. Not that I’m happy to see her leave mind you, I hate not being a part of her life where I can scoop her up in my arms and hug her the way a grandmother is supposed to. But that’s just the way it is in our modern world I suppose. I will surely go visit them there in Cuenca, Ecuador, and have a fabulous new adventure myself when I do. I guess they are simply doing what I always loved, traveling and experiencing life with an eye towards adventure.

So, my goodbye to them sounds like this:

GO!

GO! often

GO! without reservations

GO! and don’t look back

GO! to escape

GO! to find something new

GO! when you are not supposed to

GO! to lead an interesting life

GO! again, and again and again

I’ll catch up with you Grace, further on down the road. Love Gramma C.

I like to say that art is all about noticing things, making connections. I haunt antique malls for this purpose. It’s sort of creepy to some people, the idea of going through other people’s things. Voyeuristic I suppose, creeping around the edges of others’ lives by virtue of the things they left behind. Still, I am unapologetic about my habit, and find it an irresistable pastime.

It’s the same attraction I have to clotheslines. Clotheslines connect me to the past while grounding me to the present. When I hang clothes, sheets, towels on a clothesline, I’m my mom, my grandmother, and countless women who came before me doing this mundane chore. I’m a child again, and a grown up too. I’m a pioneer woman and a modern day version of same. I never, ever cease to enjoy the activity. I can experience how the sun connects us all, and  the basic things we all have in common, just from the simple act of hanging wet clothes on a clothesline.

And that’s not even the best part, as you all know. The best part is burying your face in that dry, sweet, sunshine infused laundry. There is an old Zen saying:  

After ecstasy, the laundry.

I think about this saying whenever I’m taking warm laundry off the line, and have to laugh to myself … because I’ve got it reversed—After the laundry comes my ecstasy.

( photo detail of LONG LIVE THE SUN, canvas collage by Catherine Massaro)