I had a random conversation today with a friend who, like me, has one child.  This friend’s daughter is going to be a freshman in high school, although he won’t admit it.  He will not say what he calls “the f-word” in regards to his child.  He refers to her as a 9th grader, not a freshman.

We commiserated about our children growing older, vocalizing all the usual trite sayings…how time sure flies, how they were toddlers just yesterday, blah blah blah.  But at that moment, something struck me.  As parents of only children, all the “Firsts” we experience are also the “Lasts.”

Luke’s first day of kindergarten all those many years ago was also the last first day of kindergarten Dave and I will ever go through.  His first time marching in a parade in Middle School band was also the last first time our child would respond to “Band Ten Hut.”  His first tuxedo fitting for prom was the last first fitting through which we would have to suffer.

Speaking of prom, several of the junior class parents met tonight to discuss plans for the annual After Prom Party.  It’s our responsibility (and joy) to plan this event.  One mom was all for getting a bus to haul to kids to an all-night arcade/gaming center; this is an alternative to erecting bounce houses in the gym and setting up casino tables in the Commons, a plan that also includes finding chaperones willing to stay up all night.  As this particular mom declared, “I’ve done the staying-up-all-night at Post Prom thing with my older kids and I’m not doing that again.”

I get that.  I really do.  I love my sleep.  But, the thing is, I haven’t done this before.  This is my first After Prom…and my last After Prom.  Next year, when Luke is a senior, some other parents will be in charge and I won’t have to do anything that night but help pin on the boutonniere and take pictures.

Next summer will be the first and last time we have to learn the ins and outs of senior pictures.  The year after that will be the first and last time we move our kid to college for his freshman year.  We have friends with a handful of kids who will be doing these things for years to come, but we only get to experience them once.

…or should I say we only HAVE to experience them once?  Honestly, I can’t decide if I should be happy or sad about this.  I love my son and I love his friends and I love his school.  I am going to chaperone After Prom and stay up all night and have a blast.  I’m also going to be dead tired for a good ten days after that and there is going to be a part of me that will be happy not to ever have to do that again.  This may be a Grass-Is-Always-Greener situation or one where the pros and cons of only having one child mysteriously balance out.  Truly, I’ll never know.

What I do know is that my son will start his juni…ahem…11th grade year on Wednesday.  He may drive himself because he can do that now.  He may go to Scooter’s Coffee with friends after school because he can do that now.  The days of going to his classroom the night before to unpack his backpack and meet his teacher are far behind (miss), as are the days of me getting to school at 2:45 to make sure I get a good spot in the pick up line (don’t miss).  As long as there are still firsts to be had, I can handle the lasts.

Very carefully.

I finished my Heart yesterday…it took just about an hour to add some dimension to the crane legs, touch up the base, and detail the river.  I could’ve worked on it many more hours; either I wasn’t satisfied that it was perfect or I wasn’t ready to be done.

My mom was with me again – which, as an aside, has been an awesome consequence of this project – and we talked about how difficult it is to let something go that we have put so much time and effort and love into making.  After a while, I’m not sure we were still talking about the Heart.

Last year, the daughter of my best friend graduated from high school.  This year, there is another one.  In three short years, Dave and I will go through that with Luke.  When I was growing up, my mom had a print hanging in our basement that said “The two most important things we can give our children are roots and wings.”  It took me a long time to get what that meant.

Tomorrow, my Heart will be picked up and taken away.  It will be clear-coated and then, probably by the end of the week, it will be installed at a particular location in Lincoln.  It will stay there until October, providing (I hope) enjoyment and inspiration to hundreds of people on a daily basis between now and then.  In October, my Heart, along with all the others in the Nebraska By Heart project, will be auctioned off.   While I am sure I will visit my Heart a few times when it is in Lincoln these next six months, I have no idea if I will ever see it again after the auction.

Is it perfect?  Heavens no.

Am I ready to be done?  Mostly.

Will I miss the stress of the deadline?  NO.

Will I miss my Heart?  Without a doubt.

***A big shout out to Dean Thomson (or, Dad, as I like to call him), Shane Allgood, and Kent Blum.  They bravely risked life and limb — seriously, I would have spilled blood had they broken it somehow — to maneuver my Heart from the ‘studio’ on the second floor of the NCTC house down to the main level.  As it was, there was only a slight bit of touch up required on the very top of the heart.  Whew.***

I am calling today a success.

I had set today aside to be a Paint Day, a day to work on my Heart.  Just after noon, I was finally able to clear (almost) everything else off my desk and decided I was ready to start painting.  My goal was to finish one more crane…that would leave two cranes (the final vignette) and the base to complete.  To give me more motivation, I contacted the Nebraska By Heart folks and told them I would be done by Monday.

My dad’s old cassette player was acting up, so I worked in silence.  I took one break at around 4 p.m.  I had to call it quits for the day at 6:30 p.m. so I could go home and get ready for my church’s Good Friday service.

Friends, I am almost done.

I finished all of the cranes — I only have the legs of the last two to do.  That means when I get there tomorrow, I’ll do those legs and the base…and that’s it.

Check out a video here of how it looks as of 6:30 p.m. tonight.

For more than two decades, I have aligned my work habits with a certain Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip.  It’s the one where Hobbes is asking Calvin about his homework and Calvin replies that he will start it eventually.  You can’t turn creativity on and off like a faucet, Calvin says.  You have to be in the right mood.  Hobbes asks exactly what that mood is and Calvin replies, “Last minute panic.”

My NE150 Nebraska By Heart project is due Saturday.  This Saturday, April 15, 2017.  Three days away.  I still have two crane vignettes and the entire base to do.

As much as I like to plan things out, I also am a darn good procrastinator.  I’ve always admired those people who seem to be putting things off until the last minute and suddenly – voila! – you have a masterpiece.  I think of Alberto Giacometti’s 1947 Man Pointing sculpture and what he had to say about it.  He recalled: ‘I did that piece in one night between midnight and nine the next morning. That is, I’d already done it, but I demolished it and did it all over again because the men from the foundry were coming to take it away. And when they got here, the plaster was still wet.’  That sculpture, by the way, set a world record a few years ago as the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold at an auction – $141 million.

There are two things about Giacometti’s story that speak to me.  The first is the frenzied outburst of creativity that happened in the course of one night.  That’s what we see in the movies, isn’t it?  That’s the romantic way of making art, writing, cooking, living.  The second is Giacometti’s throwaway admission that he was a perfectionist.  “…I’d already done it, but I demolished it and did it all over again…”  I live that life.  When working on a book, or this blog, or an email, or even a text for crying out loud, I write and rewrite and reword and rephrase.  When creating art such as the Heart, even when under a looming deadline, I often stop, dissatisfied with what I’m doing, and start back at the beginning.

Yesterday, on the Nebraska By Heart Facebook page, the photo below appeared.

The image shows a trailer bed full of Hearts loaded up and ready to be taken taken to their installation points in Lincoln.  This gives me inspiration to continue to work on mine and not wait for the last minute panic…although you’d think I should be panicking by now.  Oddly enough, though, I’m not.  I’m looking forward to my next paint day (Friday) and I’m not stressed about the high probability that I will not meet the Saturday deadline.

Maybe I should be…I’ll let you know how I feel Saturday.

 

So this is what you get done when your mom nags you about your homework.

On Friday, March 24, (the day of my last post) Mom and I painted the sky blue background around my sketches of the cranes.  I had another painting day set aside last week, but it got pushed back.  Yesterday, Mom and Nancy and I spent a couple of hours blending blues and doing an undercoat of grey for the cranes.  When I left, I was very happy with how the background is turning out.  It don’t want it a solid color…I want it to be a blurred landscape.  I haven’t gone back to look at it again today, but I think I will still be happy with it.  The state on the base isn’t going to stay blue.  I’m thinking greens in the east and sandy browns in the west with the Platte River snaking across the middle.  Truly, the detail of the cranes is going to be the biggest challenge.  That is scheduled to be tackled this weekend.

One fun thing that has happened with all of this is that I am reintroducing myself to some of my favorite music.  I have a selection of cassette tapes (for those of you under a certain age, Google that) with music that I loved to listen to when I was growing up.  There are several soundtracks – Forrest Gump, Dirty Dancing, Star Wars – and a LOT of New Age – Enya, Narada, Jim Brickman.  I have fun music from the Nylons and Neil Diamond and a collection of songs from the 1950s.  There is Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. (mine) and a mixed tape of songs by Prince (pretty sure that belongs to Dave).  I had almost forgotten how much I listened to music growing up.

These cassette tapes have stayed with me longer than any actual cassette player, so I asked Dave to buy me a cassette player the last time he ran errands.  He was nice enough not to laugh directly in my face.  Apparently cassette players are not easily found on the shelves of your local retail store any more.  I ended up borrowing a player from my dad in order to listen to them.  Dad still has our old Atari and Betamax player, so I figured he would have a cassette player.

So the heart is in progress.  This week, I will take the quiz bowl team to competition, go to five or so musical rehearsals, make two ads and a poster for Arbor Day, encourage my Academic Decathlon students as they do the first part of their Online National competition, create a newsletter for the Friends of Arbor Lodge Foundation, go to a band concert, support my husband on a new adventure, and take a friend out for a birthday dinner.  Come Saturday morning, I will don my “Earth Without Art is Just ‘EH'” paint shirt, slip the Hunt for Red October soundtrack into the player, and study the detail of crane feathers like I never have before.

Over two months ago, I posted about my involvement with Nebraska By Heart, a public art project created in conjunction with Nebraska’s Sesquicentennial.  I wrote about how my rendering of sandhill cranes was accepted and then sponsored, about how I was waiting for my six foot, 100-pound heart to be delivered to me so I could paint it, about how excited I was to be on this side of a public art project.

Then I waited.

I couldn’t start until my heart was delivered.  And while I waited, I took my Academic Decathlon team to Regionals…and State.  I had meeting after meeting about the upcoming Chautauqua, Arbor Day, Farm to Fork, and Gran Fondo.  We had the NCTC Banquet and Quiz Bowl competitions.

On February 20, 2017, this happened:

That’s my HEART!  It was delivered and placed upstairs in the NCTC house in a big empty room that’s flooded with natural light…the perfect temporary studio.  So I bought my paints and brushes.

…and registered Luke for his sophomore year.  And listened to Royals Spring Training games.  And performed in the Apple Corps Barbershop Show.  And started musical rehearsal.  And played pep band at State Basketball.  And became certified to drive a white bus for school activities.   And interviewed a 93-year-old man in Omaha about his life for a future book.  And had more meetings about Arbor Day and all of Nebraska City’s NE150 events.

Do you see what’s happening here?  When the idea of painting my heart…of putting something of myself out there for the whole world (or at least a good handful of Nebraskans) to see was just that — AN IDEA — I couldn’t wait to get started.  When it became real…six feet, 100 pounds of real…I panicked.

But, earlier this week, I slipped up the steps of the NCTC house and visited my heart.  I sat next to it and put my hand on it.  I talked to it like it was a friend, like it was God.  In my conversation, my prayer, I was honest about my fears…my fears of inadequacy, stretching myself too thin, failing.  These are not new fears.  They are always there, right under my skin, no matter what I do.

I wish I could tell you that I heard God speak to me that day, that He put all my fears to rest.  It didn’t work that way.  I did feel better after admitting why I was dragging my feet in getting started with the project, but the anxiety is still there.  It’s just after 9 a.m. on Friday, March 24, 2017, and I’m about to shut my computer and head to my ‘studio’ to begin work on my six foot, 100-pound heart.  The regular-sized heart inside me is pulsing a little faster than normal this morning and I can’t seem to stop bouncing my legs up and down as I sit here.  Yup, the anxiety is there, alright.  But, luckily, the excitement is winning.

Day 1.

I’ve been obsessed with silence lately.

My parents tell a story of me at four years of age.  We were living as missionaries in India and taking a bus ride down the mountains.  Apparently, I spent the entirety of the ride down the mountain leaning over the back of the bus driver’s chair, singing and laughing and chatting in his ear.  He loved it, calling me ‘clever.’  Then, when I was in kindergarten, my nickname was ‘Tammy Talker.’  All through school, parent-teacher conferences would bring up a recurring theme: ‘Tammy does very well academically, but she sure does talk a lot.’

As I got older, that noise turned to music.  I sang constantly; my life was a musical.  I’d hum doing dishes, I’d sing in the shower (of course), I even pretended to be on the phone in the car so I could belt along with the radio.  When Dave and I were first married, I slept poorly for months until I got used to falling asleep without the radio on.

But, lately, I crave silence.  I crave stillness.  I crave peacefulness.

In 1952, American composer John Cage released 4’33”, a three-movement piece.  Cage’s composition is for any instrument; each movement is labeled as tacet.  That means silent.  There are no notes, no sounds to be made during the piece, which lasts four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  The audience sits in silence and listens to the space around them and the space within them.  The piece has been called everything from profound and moving to a joke.

In 2010, Marina Abramovic, a 63-year old Serbian artist, took part in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Abramovic’s piece was titled “The Artist is Present” and featured Abramovic herself seated at a table in the atrium of the museum.  An empty chair was placed on the opposite side of the table, facing Abramovic.  Museum visitors were invited to sit in the chair for a short while, engaging in silent dialogue with Abramovic.  No words were exchanged and soon the visitor would rise and continue on their way.  Abramovic was surprised one night to look up and discover someone familiar sitting in the chair across from her; it was her old lover, someone she hadn’t seen in over 20 years.  The silent conversation they had was more meaningful than any inane empty small talk would have been.

I silence I seek is not for art, at least I don’t think it is.  I believe the silence I seek is a direct reaction to the busyness of life.  Who am I when I’m quiet?  Who am I when I’m not striving to be the funny one, the clever one?  Being silent allows me to breathe and clear my mind of this awesomely industrialized world we live in.

Now, I’m not saying I’m going to go all Henry David Thoreau on you…no matter how tempted I am.  I am, however, going to slow down.  To make less noise.  To turn off the radio and television.  To listen to the silence, perhaps even for as long as four minutes and thirty-three seconds.

Can you do it?
Tam

So…six years ago, I started this blog.  I believe I had one follower.  I wrote two stellar posts and then quit.  I’m not sure why I didn’t write more, but I assume life got in the way.  That’s what usually happens.

I’m starting this up again because I need a way to share some stuff with a wide group of people.  This year, 2017, my home state of Nebraska is celebrating its Sesquicentennial.  We are turning 150 years old.  And, boy, do us Nebraskans know how to party.  We are celebrating all year long.

A part of that is Nebraska By Heart.  Nebraska By Heart is a statewide public art project and I am blessed enough to be a part of it!  My submission of dancing sandhill cranes was accepted by the Nebraska By Heart committee and then sponsored by a group of Nebraska Citians.  Here’s a colored pencil sketch of the proposal:

The finished product will be painted (acrylic) on six-foot tall fiberglass heart.  The hope is that 93 of these beauties will be sponsored, one for each county in the state.  They will all be on display later this spring and summer in Lincoln and then auctioned off in the fall.

You can read more about the project by clicking on the Nebraska By Heart link above.

I am overwhelmed at the generosity of the fine people and organizations in Nebraska City who sponsored this project:  Tom Farrell and Miller and Farrell Realty/Miller Monroe Farrell, Doug Farrar and the Arbor Day Foundation, Dean & Keitha Thomson (my parents, who HAD to contribute), Nebraska City Rotary, Otoe County Visitors Committee, Stacie Higgins, Janet Palmtag, Bob Moser, Jeff Edwards, and Dave LeGrand.  Tom Farrell especially holds a place near to my heart for his work on organizing the sponsorship.

As the weeks go by, I’ll be updating this site with pictures and tales of my foray into public art.

Tam

Tomorrow I will be 35 years old.  As I said to someone this morning, that means in five years I’ll be dead…oh, wait, I mean 40.

I don’t feel as dramatic as Meg Ryan’s Sally in “When Harry Met Sally.”  Remember the scene?  She’s crying into the phone that she’s going to be 40…someday!  I have always felt unattached to my age, but this whole 35 thing is a bit like the fly caught between the screen and the window, banging for a way to get out.  It’s attracted my attention and I need to do something about it.

Let me start with being 17 because in my head, I’m still that young.  I was a month past my 17th birthday when I had a first date with this guy from my high school.  His name was Dave and he’s now my husband.  We have been together since that first night; I went home after the date and wrote in my diary I was going to marry that man.  Cute now, stalker then.  The point is, from that night on,  it was always DaveandTammy or TammyandDave.  He became my best friend and I wanted to spend my life with him.  I stopped aging at that moment.

It doesn’t help that I read a ton of young adult fiction.  It’s not because that’s my reading level (really, I can wrestle my way through “War and Peace,” I just don’t want to).  I really get into YA fiction because while the protagonists deal with big life issues, there is still enough Happily Ever After thrown in to keep me happy.  YA books usually feature young adults or even kids solving the puzzle, journeying on the quest, being in charge of their own destiny and they don’t yet have the hopeless attitude and down down down lives found in adult fiction – Jodi Picoult, I’m talking to you.

Maybe it’s my reaction to media’s coverage of 35-year-old actresses.  Google “35 year old female celebrities” and the one term that shows up most is Middle Aged.  Really?  At 35?  Does that mean it’s downhill from here?  I’m just getting started!

And, maybe it IS that I’m just getting started.  I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life and I finally have that opportunity.  I’ve always dreamed of being a mom and while I adored the days of chubby checks and naps, the conversations I can have with my now 8-year-old inspire me in ways that he couldn’t have done as a baby.  My husband is in a secure, stable, respectable job and wears a suit and tie nearly every day.  I have a beautiful traditional house in a beautiful traditional neighborhood with mature trees and brick streets.  I keep a monthly budget, I listen to NPR…when exactly did I grow up?

Mary Chapin Carpenter released an album years ago with a track of “Grow Old With Me.”  Here are some lyrics:

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.

When our time has come, we will be as one.

God bless our love, God bless our love.

Grow old along with me, two branches of one tree.

Face the setting sun when the day is done.

God bless our love, God bless our love.

As I grow old along with Dave and our family, I feel God’s blessings.  Age 35 is no different than 20 or 12 or 87.  The blessings of every age are there for us if we look for them.

Tam

Today was the 41st annual Earth Day and while I didn’t plant a tree or flowers, I did take out my recycling.  Earth Day in Nebraska City is a prequel to Arbor Day, this year one week later, April 29, 2011. 

One thing I did do today was visit with a friend about her husband’s job sitution.  His situation is unlike others you hear about in the news; he’s been at his job 25 years and loves it and has no plans to change.  The Powers That Be also have no plans to change, so he’s looking at a pretty steady job until he wants to retire.  He has a good fifteen years left, so that is still on the horizon, but in today’s world, my friend and I were both amazed at his longevity in his job.

Do we stay in the same job throughout our entire career anymore?  I’m in my mid-30s and have worked as a bookseller, travel agent, photojournalist, radio broadcaster, news director, publisher, house musician, photographer, tour guide, and writer.  I’m also a mom and wife and volunteer.  And, I am lucky enough to not work a full time job, but rather a series of part time positions that give me the freedom to be flexible with my schedule.

My haphazard career has taught me that I like my freedom, I crave jobs and projects where I can be creative, I don’t like to be micromanaged, and I don’t mind doing menial work for a time.  I feel very comfortable in the jobs I have now, even though more changes are on their way.

Are you doing what you really want?  Are you able to say you are truly happy and fulfilled?  If no, what can you do to turn the corner?  What can put you on the path to contentment?

God Bless – and Happy Easter.

Tam