Graduation

Last night was the final Habitat for Humanity Women Build clinic at Lowe's.

The "lesson" was about siding--a skill I can't imagine having any use for in my daily life. But Gina had hinted at a surprise for us, so I found myself racing out of the house early to make sure I didn't miss a minute.

Attendance was light, no doubt due to it being a holiday week coupled with the post-rainstorm flooding of the Passaic River that has hit the area hard. Our intrepid group was more interested in talking about the location of this year's "build project" in Paterson than in learning the surprisingly simple secrets of applying vinyl siding to plywood. Construction is set to begin in early June, and we agreed to exchange email addresses and choose a day to go build together.

There was also a fair amount of dissing by the veterans in the group about the just-announced wall-raising kickoff event that had quickly been booked to capacity. It was disappointing (but not surprising) to find out that it's more or less a PR thing where people show up just for a photo op with the celebrity chair (Patti Scialfa for several years running.)

The evening concluded with a visit from the store manager, who handed out gift-wrapped T-shirts and thanked us for participating. There was plenty of hugging and promises to keep in touch. As I left with my parting gifts (my work apron and Gina's homemade Rice Krispie treats), I took with me a sense of accomplishment and high hopes that we'll all cross paths again. Because as much as I've loved learning to tile like a pro, the true gift of the past few months has been becoming part of a new community of women. Women with a purpose. Dedication. And heart.

Women build, indeed.

Revealing My Sources

This is for my friend who blogs at Oak in the Seed.

She asked if I'd share some of my "sources of inspiration" and I am happy to do so. With a few caveats:

1. I don't love everything about all of them.
2. I don't read them daily: I like to pick and choose and flit from one to another.
3. I have Stacey to thank for getting me started.
4. Most of them are linked to each other in some way.

That said, they are keeping me entertained and engaged in my creative process. And many of the prompts have yielded fascinating results:

1. Jamie Ridler Studios: I'm doing her Sparkles online course and loving it.
2. Creative Every Day: The word-of-the-month thing has really struck a cord.
3. Wise Living Blog: Tara Mohr's site is just lovely.
4. The Daily Love: He's so annoying....but sometimes so spot-on.
5. Susannah Conway: Photos to die for and the Unravelling course is very enticing.

Care to share yours?

Resilience

I should write about the Omega NYC retreat I went to last weekend. As Stacey, who'd invited me to join her, aptly put it: "We should take pictures--it's blog-worthy, right?" Indeed it was: Geneen Roth, Elizabeth Lesser and Joan Borysenko led us on a magical exploration of what it means to be resilient.

But I don't feel like writing about that.

I should write about the weekend before that: my annual March retreat to Ocean City, NJ with my sister, Deborah. It was totally blog-worthy, too. Surprisingly sunny days filled with beach walks, meandering talks, fantastic food, and shared intimacies.

But I don't want to write about that, either.

Why not?

It's too hard. Finding words to express these experiences feels like an overwhelming task. The depth of emotion. The power of the realizations. The sensory overload. Exhausting!

And yet these weekends were so pivotal in so many ways. Surely they should be cataloged. How else will I remember all that I felt and discovered? And how else can I possibly share all of this amazing stuff?

Well, like it or not, blogging works best for me when there's no "should" involved. When instead of being mandatory, it's just the handiest self-expression tool in a given moment. So what I want to write about is this: When Deborah and I walk the shoreline in search of shells, she encourages me to expand my definition of what's worth keeping. To be open to the beauty in the broken ones. To recognize the potential lurking in a textured sliver or a partially-exposed spiral. To rise to the challenge of using memory or imagination to fill in what's missing.

This morning, through the lens of my camera, snapping quickly so as not to make them too precious, I saw what she meant.

Making Mistakes

My second Women Build clinic wasn't quite as fun as the first.

Our mission was simple: take the wooden frame we made the week before, apply sheet rock, and add trim (aka casing). Gino, our fearless leader, zipped through his demo--showing us how to measure the casing and use a miter box to cut the pieces on a perfect 45 degree angle. He even cut the sheet rock for us.

His partner in crime, Gina, warned us several times of the two most common pitfalls: overzealous hammering that splits the sheet rock; and angling the casing in the wrong direction. We paired up, donned our safety goggles, and set to work.

Disaster struck almost immediately. The nails went in cockeyed. The sheet rock shifted, and then I split it at one corner. We moved on to sawing the trim, and I figured things would improve. After all, I knew my way around miter boxes from all those years of assisting my dad (and building doll furniture from scraps of wood that my sister and I stole from the new housing developments that sprung up all around us.)

Wrong. My partner, Bridgette, said, "You go first!", and I did--instantly cutting my angle in the wrong direction. Damn! Soon, cries of, "Well, it's not going to be perfect," rang out around us, as all of the women encountered similar difficulties. Gino reassured us, saying, "Of course it's not perfect--it's the first time you're doing it!" Gina added, "That's why caulk was invented!"

Bridgette and I laughed, and traded comments about the perfectionists in our lives who would say otherwise. I sited my brother and my dad, then downgraded my own inner critic to "picky." Who was I kidding? I hate making mistakes. Always have. I could blame it on having grown up under a regime that had a no-tolerance view of getting it wrong. Or blame it on the finicky artist in me. Whatever the reason, I'm harder on myself than anyone else could ever be.

Thankfully, I'm not alone. The following morning, I clicked open one of the daily inspirational emails I subscribe to, and the first thing I read was this: "If you want to be successful, get used to making mistakes...The idea that something has to be perfect before you start is just fear masked as perfectionism." So--this is the universe nudging me. Telling me it's okay to loosen up. To ease up. To remember that mistakes are just part of the process of learning.

The email ended with a challenge: What mistake would you like to make today? My response to that? "Yikes--not so fast!"

Late for Work

It's March 21. The calendar may say "Spring", but there's still time for one last snow event. Or two. Making us realize who is really in charge. Making us surrender to the moment.

And making some of us late for work.

River Walk

In February I began following Leah Piken Kolidas' blog, Creative Every Day, and have been enjoying her monthly “theme” challenges. She chooses a word and then offers a list of suggestions for responding to it creatively. She’ll share some of what she’s doing and open up her blog so followers can, too.

The word for March is “Nest”, and it has really struck a cord—triggering an art project I’m loving and some haiku I’m not. On Friday Leah shared the idea of taking a walk with a camera in hand, saying: “Simply having the camera with me helps me see things in new ways. It reminds me to look up at the sky, to look down at my shadow, and to notice the little moments of beauty that are everywhere.”

I became aware of this exact same thing last summer. When I took my camera to a park, or a friend's house, or on an excursion to a new town, I saw things through a different lens. So today I put it in my pocket when Jim and I went up to Nyack Beach State Park for one of our favorite walks: the path along the Hudson. I was on the lookout for signs of spring, but found so much more:

Frame It

This week I discovered a new form of stress relief: hammering!

That's right: I attended my first Women Build Clinic! For the past four years, Habitat for Humanity has been partnering with the Lowe's in Paterson, NJ, on a series of free clinics designed to teach women the basics of home construction. Novices like me are encouraged to attend as many as possible before signing up for a build project.

Despite my admittedly snobbish belief that I know plenty (having served as my dad's trusty DIY assistant for well over 10 years), I decided to sign up for a few of the sessions that covered things I wasn't familiar with.

Tuesday night's focus was framing, and I'll confess I was excited as I walked towards the gathering of women at the back of the store. After signing in and being outfitted with my very own apron, someone asked, "So what drew you here?" Without pause I said, "I wanted to be carpenter when I was a girl." Of course I went on about how volunteering for Habitat was something I'd been thinking about for years, but on this night it was all about stuff I loved as a kid: measuring, sawing, and hammering.

Our instructor, the patient and affable Gino, put us through our paces. And yes--I listened as he gave me pointers on how to toe a stud and swing a hammer without wrecking my shoulder. There was even a pop quiz at the end, with answers like "16 center", "shoe," and "speed square."

Jessica and I--the two newbies--won a very cool tape measure by answering everything correctly. More important than that: I met an interesting group of women, laughed a lot, and discovered that pounding nails into two-by-fours is really relaxing. So I came home and signed up for every clinic they've got.