Seeing – Page 5 – Stephanie Sicore

July 22, 2006

You’ll Never Guess Who the Mother Is

On the drive home, as the kids fought over who would hold the chicken box on his lap, I began to doubt the success of the kids with the chicks. I figured it was a good idea I’d arbitrarily chose three versus two chicks: one would certainly meet its fate under one of the boys, and being left with two chicks is far better than being left with one.

But I may be wrong. In fact, the prognosis is GOOD. I watched them with a smile all day long, as they gently trod around the garden, the chicks weaving in and out of their footpath. They encouraged us outdoors the entire day, and I found time to rearrange the rosemary and trim the papyrus, harvest parsley bolts and this and that. Ford mentioned “I never knew there were SO MANY BUGS in our yard!” because the chicks: they never stopped harvesting them, too.

Ford is, to my surprise, the new mother hen. And he’s a natural. To watch him cradle the chicks, or sprawl across the grass while the chicks scramble over him, for hours at a time, and compare this sight to the same child in a playdate full of little boys: one would never suspect the two images belonged to the one Ford. But it’s true. He’s come into his new role with all the fever of a new mother. Periodically, I’d have to come outside and feed him a yogurt or a half-sandwich because he was so preoccupied with shepherding the chicks.

But, as it turns out, they follow Ford everywhere; there’s no need to chase them down. They believe that Ford is the mama hen and will run up to his feet, peep imploringly with pinched eyes, and all he has to do is pick them up before they drop their heads on a thumb and fall asleep. Ford looked up at me after his pullet, Abby, fell asleep this way. He had reddish purple circles under his eyes, his face flush with afternoon sweat, dry grass dangling from his knees. “Don’t you just love the baby chicks? I’m not going to let anything happen to them.”

He is drinking water from a glass right now, pausing after each sip to raise his chin to the ceiling and gulp it down, just as he’s seen the chicks do when they drink from their shiny metal tray. He licks his lips and smiles, and I wink back. As I read him a new book at bedtime, he reaches over and pecks at my arm with his fingers. He’s just so impressed with his new brood. For fun, I paint little glittery dots on his finger- and toenails, and we’ll wait to see how the chicks respond tomorrow. But the young Mama Hen needs to go to sleep. And so do I. Tomorrow we build the coop!

July 14, 2006

The Quilts of Gees Bend: The Soul of the Quilt

I arrive in Houston at six o’clock, scarf down a plate of italian sausage and spaghetti and my parent’s house, and escort mom to the Gees Bend exhibit at the MFAH. We have an hour before the museum closes and I get momenntarily lost navigating my way to the museum’s new addition, through the same corridors I used to browse with a trail of small children in my teaching days at the Glassell School, across the street. It’s embarrassing and I smile to an Asian security guard who doesn’t seem to remember me this time.

The glossy terrazzo floor reflects little observational discussions, the tapping of fancy shoes and the muted cast of each bold, vibrant quilt in this collection. And boy, are they something. If the colors and assymetry of the quilts don’t immediately make you smile, look closer.

If you have a sensitive conscience, then you have questioned the way we live today: the overlooked luxury in each car parked in the driveway and the way you can choose your way each day, the piles of fashion magazines and the excess clothes, garages filled so full of crap because the house is spilling over and space is limited– this is the typical American family way of life (not that I am the exception) and this is a way of life that starves people of happiness and groundedness and peace. I think about this a lot and was brought to tears when I listened to an interview with one of the quilters as I scrutinized a soulful patch of denim in a quilt, a piece taken from a pair of worn-out blue jeans, that included the dark blue ghost of a pocket, the reminder of the fabric’s former life. I wanted to run my hands along the seams, feeling the backbone of handiwork and sweat and conversation that birthed these colorful objects. I cradled the idea of reuse, inspiring the happy purist in me.

I thought about the stiff smell of rows upon rows of fabric bolts, the angst of shopping for the perfect hue, specialty scissors and quilting stores with basketfuls of fat quarters in every imaginable print: cats drinking milk, cats dancing, cats pouring milk, cats stargazing, cats chasing balls of yarn, cats chasing mice, cats napping, cats making me dizzy with a cascade of possibilities, for some reason(pardon me if cats are your thing–and I still think cats are cool). I thought about my own sleeping, shelved monster of a fabric stash. I thought of the closetful of clothes in my bedroom that I will never wear again but refuse to give away, holding them for some special deconstruction but not finding the time just yet. And so they sit there, looking stale. And smelling about the same. I think I vowed right there to boycott the purchase of any more fabric from a store or supplier for a good, long time–at least until I can manage to recruit much of what I already have. You know the old adage, Waste Not, Want Not. I mean, I value the use of new fabric for projects (and man, can some of you SEW!) but for now, I will value myself more if I downsize.

Plummer Pettway 1918-1993 “Roman Stripes, variation (local name: “Crazy” Quilt) cotton twill, denim, cotton/ polyester blend, synthetic knit (pants matieral), 86 x 70 inches.

These isolated women had only the outgrown and worn-out clothes and bolts of local fabric (I think Sears once gave them bolts of the avocado fabric that shows up in nearly one hundred of the collection’s quilts). One of the quilters, in the interview I was listening to, struggled as she tried to convey what it was like not to have much of anything to work with. Work shirts, blue jeans, feed sacks–nothing was wasted. Nothing.

I smiled to read little excerpts about the children, sitting on the front porch beneath the quilting table, watching the needle poke through the underside of the quilt. I told Ford about the way the children (who became the artists of these quilts) picked up scraps of fabric that had fallen to the floor and began making little quilts of their own, right there on the floor. “We didn’t have much, but we was happy” echoed similarly among them. And I still get tears to remember one woman share her surprise in knowing that someone else besides herself appreciates them, not to mention put them up on a wall.

Missouri Pettway, 1902-1981. Blocks and strips work-clothes quilt, 1942, cotton, corduroy, cotton sacking material, 90 x 69 inches. Missouri’s daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: “It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, ‘I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.’ She take his old pants legs and shirttails, take all the clothes he had, just enough to make that quilt, ahd I helped her tore them up. Bottom of the pants is narrow, top is wide, and she had me to cutting the top part out and to shape them up in even strips.” –both quilt images from Auburn Universitys: Quilts of Gees Bend in Context’s website.

April 28, 2006

Spring Sprang

Spring covered up what stood bare months before. Under a moonlit sky, dark circles drape the lawn and driveway like velvet blankets, shadows under the unfurled crepe myrtle and ornamental plum. I whack my head in the nightâ€™s shade on a low branch that is heavy with young foliage, and walk out, cursing, to my car.

Layer upon layer, Spring spackles up the landscape where Winter fails to slough. Years pass. The prickly pear cactus has budded and bloomed into an agglomeration of ovals, a colony. Little green pup ears stand atop careworn gray sections, each pup is topped with a flaming yellow flower.

There is some serious primping going on.

Night sounds have multiplied. The mockingbirdâ€™s soliloquy rambles like a long ribbon across the tapestry of night music, over the tiny drone of crickets and the clicking of bats. Sometimes the Chuck Willâ€™s Widows interrupt the peace with their harrowing calls, hammering from cavernous throats. White Wing dove keep cooing after hours, still love-drunk.

Day sounds too, they have bustled out of bounds. Itâ€™s a denser panorama, a flourishing of things everywhere: the chortling of swallows and Purple Martins, hissing wrens, bossy jays. After a rain, the Cardinal leads the symphony with its intense love song. Focused, the calls are sculpted, intricate and metered like gingerbread on a Victorian cottage. And while most female birds silently acknowledge their mateâ€™s serendades, the female cardinal responds clearly, without upstaging her man.

While she broods, I watch the male gently stuff her mouth with little morsels. I wonder if itâ€™s appealing to her, what heâ€™s brought to the table. Does she even care? Before Chas was born, I requested sushi and beer to be delivered bedside after his arrival. Instead, we shared a bag of cold Egg McMuffins. I guess we get whateverâ€™s available in the wild, or at 5am in the hospital.

â€¦You know, he still could have filled that order later that evening, or the next day, damnit. But I never got the damned dinner I asked for. And thatâ€™s where I differ from the cardinalâ€¦
â€¦.I totally forgot where I was going with this.