My arms ache, my fingernails will never be clean again, but I’m smug and happy with the beauty I have coaxed, with all due respect to Mother Nature, out of this small plot of land. With my garden going on 20, I am continually amazed at both the new panaromas and new details that I find every day.

I’ve always thought of the garden as my canvas. Since I stopped making art for a living more than a decade ago, I have used the garden as a living work of art that is never done. Now for the first time I have both the perspective and the schedule to really treat it that way on an ongoing basis and I find myself going through very similar thoughts and actions in caring for and creating it.

Art happens in the garden much the way it happens in the studio. You have a plan and you execute it, but the result is never quite what you expect.

Kind of like rearing children.

Less room in an empty nest than you might think

My 19-yr-old daughter, who's been living on a theatrical tour for more than a year, will be home for a month in November.

Last time she was home for an extended period, she drove us crazy-- messy, disengaged, expecting to be catered to (at least emotionally), and frankly kind of mean to her mother (that would be me). It's too long to be considered a houseguest, and too short to really integrate her back into systems. She can be somewhat oblivious to her effect on those around her, but is generally charming and great to be around. I just don't want to have to either pick up her shit, or remind her to do so.

So I asked an on-line forum what to do, and the consensus was lay down the rules then chill out and get out of her way.

The best of the comments:
"She's an adult, who's been living "on her own" for about a year now. Expect a lot of frustration if you try to fit her back into the teen-child mold. Let her know you know she's an adult, but also let her know that as family, not a house-guest, she is expected to be responsible. Set guidelines and boundaries up front, in clear terms, without judgments expressed or implied. In terms of expectations in regards to messiness, I'd say let her deal with her own space, but set reasonable requirements for shared spaces, like the kitchen. Try to present your requirements as you would to a potential tenant, not as to a disobedient child."

Life can be so simple sometimes.

Why I hate the web

Just waiting for the roofer to show up, on hold with all of my work projects, so I start to surf. Knowing that it's a bad idea, I decide to check out the blog of the daughter of a close friend, and lo and behold, she's using it as a diary and conversation with her friends, she does not want her mother's friend looking at it, and yet now I know it is there. Now it is a scab that I can scratch. Now I know something about her that I don't want her to know that I know. I have removed the bookmark, but I still know that it is there.

The internet gives you the ability, if not outright permission, to snoop. It lets you know what an ignoble person you are, because the ability to do this is irresistible. I never had trouble not snooping in my children's rooms or among their belongings. I've cleaned their rooms without ever feeling a need to find things or pass judgment on items that pass through my hands. I have never read their diaries.

Yet the internet offers a way to look without looking. Pop over to Facebook and see who's talking to them. Drop in at MySpace and check out the page hits. Since I feel sneaky and uncomfortable when I do this, clearly I'm in a morally unpleasant area, and should stop. And yet, who will know?

Telling stories

Every family has its myths and stories, they constitute the family's collective memory. It's important to families to have stories that connect you to the ancestors and to each other. Immigrant families treat story-telling in different ways-- either mythical "old country" parables that create a perfect world of tradition and beauty that has been lost, or else a void.

These last believe mostly in the new. "We left the old country and its myths behind". My mother, my grandmother, and my mother-in-law subscribed to the leave-it-be school of immigrant story-telling. We have no old-country stories from these women. All of the stories of the Samioses (Samii?) and the Chins are new land tales, about what happened here in the country that they chose, rather than there in the country that they left. The only thing that really came with them was the food, so Bill and I know nothing about our immigrant heritage except how to eat.

When you don't tell stories, it's hard to get the details to agree. Everyone involved in the original incident must agree-- I said this and you said that, then these things happened in this sequence. The collective must create the stories. The grise tells the mother tells the child, who carries that story at many removes into the future: "This is who we are, because this is who we were."

Knowing people

One does what one gets recognition for. This is why a job is so rewarding; even a bad job. If you do it with reasonable effort, someone notices every single day. You are around people who do the same thing, so you know that your efforts are not only appreciated, but also understood. It is also one of the things that makes internet communities so compelling-- you can find groups of people that share your passions both generally and specifically. There is no sense of the kind of patronizing "support" one gets from friends and family members (oh, Xan's making art, that's so important to her, here's a hug); you don't need hugs or specific praise to know that these people approve, support and understand what you are doing.

When we were young, we found these communities live, by creating cooperative efforts. Galleries, critique groups, activist efforts, community gardens, neighborhood associations, play groups. I wonder, given the ease of finding communities on line, and the safe barrier of anonymity, if people still do this to the same extent.

I find on line communities nearly addictive-- I know if I post a comment or make a journal entry or put up a picture here and here, someone who shares my interest in or love for this thing will see it, and maybe even tell me why they liked it. I don't need to hear from them directly; I can tell from the page views if people have looked at. An irresistible combination: love and statistics.

I think this is what motivates the near-frenzy of young people to get away from their parents. A parent's approval is suspect, and tainted. The approval and support does not spring from shared passion or understanding, but from the uncritical stance of love. It cannot help but feel belittling and condescending. Your parents' pride excludes them from your community.

The Matriarch

What makes a matriarch? Is a matriarch the oldest female in the family, or the wisest, simply the one who usurps the role? We often conflate age and wisdom in our society, possibly because no one ever feels quite "wise," but it seems safe to assume that age confers wisdom. I think my own mother would have resisted the role of matriarch; it would not have appealed to her sense of the ephemeral. Julia, Liz's mother, made a classic old-world matriarch, but probably just because she was Old World right down to the accent, the home-cooked Hungarian meals, and the house dress persona. We all try to shoehorn May into the role, but she also resists it. This leaves me or Liz. Or really it just leaves Liz, because I think she covets the role. Which is maybe what makes a matriarch.

The concept of the matriarch, the crone, the wise old woman is very appealing. I am too young for this role, of course, and don't have enough of a satellite system, so to speak-- no young 'uns, and not much of an extended family. (Which brings up the other question of how large your tribe needs to be before it requires a matriarch.) I'm not sure people would really view me this way either. I suspect I am headed more towards Crazy Old Lady than Wise Old Lady.

The matriarch is the unanswerable Mother, the person with the final say. This is the appeal-- that someone can say- stop. Someone can say- do. That someone actually has the final answer and the right to an expectation of obedience, or at least compliance. It is this expectation that confers the power of the Matriarch, and by extension the wisdom. This is a feedback loop that reinforces the power-- if I give you power over me, I need to justify that with a belief in your wisdom, which gives you power over me.

Time

Today is the 61st anniversary of my parents' marriage. I cannot say "my parent's 61st anniversary" because that seems to imply a continuing relationship. I would better say, "my parents got married 61 years ago today," which seems to put it in its proper context of an event and consequence that were and remain in the past.

I don't know the anniversary of their divorce. 1976? So my father has been not-married to my mother longer than he was married to her. What does that mean, when one life passage exceeds another, related one. I have been without my mother longer than I was with her. I have lived with Bill longer than I lived without him. I have known Bill longer than I knew my mother.

I don't know Robert and Marilyn's anniversary, but I know that they have been married 17 years. If my father lives to age 91, he has the potential for being married to Marilyn longer than to my mother; this bothers me. I want my mother to be the most important relationship in his life. Of course, I'm not really sure if that was true, even when it was on-going. So I suppose what I want is an understanding that our family was the most important relationship in his life.

It comes down to this: you should not know anyone longer than you know your mother. The family you create, with your spouse and your mutual children, should be the central one in your life. You cannot replace these relationships with new ones, because shreds of the old one linger.