“Do your kids a favor—don’t have any.” (-Robert Orben)

Any parent knows that in the final analysis, there’s no guarantee you’ll have Nice Kids. I'm one of the lucky ones.

My son Eric married a lovely girl from Bermuda, and they lived and worked there for several years. Now, they live in Cambridge, Massachusetts while his wife is back in school working on her PhD.

While he was growing up, I was the Queen of the Worriers. I was a single parent, so I was always agonizing over something: how I must be a bad parent, or how I couldn’t afford to do different things for him I'd have liked to do, or what he might wind up being like as an adult. There was always something to be concerned over. Eric always said he didn't worry, because he knew I did enough worrying for the two of us.

In some ways, Eric really raised me. I was a young mother, and I used to tell him, “You know, there’s no book telling me the right way to do this. We’re both learning how this all works.” He took everything in stride, and he was always thoughtful, sensitive and kind, even as a little kid. I often tell people, when I describe how pleasant he is now, that even if he weren’t my son, I would want him as a friend, and I mean that.

Now,…that said, I don’t want you getting the wrong impression. As much as I was the Stress Queen, he is the King of Sarcasm and Humor. He makes me laugh…always has.

Once, when he was very small, I was in my 20’s, and I had had a particularly tiring day, stressing out more than usual, and I said to him, “Eric, your mother’s getting old.” I suppose I was looking for some sort of comforting words. He looked up at me, and without blinking an eye, he nodded his head, and very matter-of-factly said: “Mmmm…soon, you’ll be dying!” with an almost cheerful lilt to it. He didn't seem remotely phased by that notion. He's made me laugh, and he's made me proud over the years. I love him very much.

“Families are like fudge—mostly sweet with a few nuts.” (author unknown)

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jig" (nursery rhyme)

I grew up as a child in the northeast, but grew to feel Virginia was my second home when I spent college and the years raising my son in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Now, I live in NC, and I love it here, but I will always think of Virginia as my second home.

The Valley has such spectacularly stunning landscapes with vistas that stretch out as far as the eye can see. Its history is rich, and I have yet to find another part of the world that surpasses its beauty.

When I lived in the Charlottesville area, there was Monticello, Jefferson’s lovely home, as well as Michie Tavern and Ash Lawn, the home of James Monroe. Across the mountains from Charlottesville is Harrisonburg, where I taught at James Madison University. The rural outskirts of the town are home to Mennonites, and one is still likely to see horses and buggies ambling through town.

I thought, when I first moved to Virginia, after living close to the metropolitan NY area, that I would not feel at home. I love New York, and loved living in the northeast while I was there. Certainly, I imagined I would miss the pace of life in the northeast. Instead, I found home.

“Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.”
(-John Ed Pierce)

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” (-Bob Dylan)

I’m fortunate that I like my job. My career has taken detours in different directions, and each job I’ve held has been interesting in its own way.

In my current job, I travel quite a bit. I’m all over the US for several months in the fall, as a recruiter for Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. I meet students, professors and Career Services personnel at colleges and universities all over the country and educate them about our graduate programs at the Nicholas School.

I’ve also learned a lot about traveling and living out of hotels for weeks on end. Planning and scheduling is a huge part of this job, but I’m fortunate that I get to see beautiful campuses, and sometimes, in the towns I visit, I get to see wonderful places and people as well. I work hard, but I learn every day as well.

“I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” (-Eartha Kitt)

"Improvement Needed"

“Education is what remains after one forgets everything he learned in school.”
(-Albert Einstein)

As a young girl growing up, I was smart in school, and I always got good grades. I went to a competitive Catholic school and enjoyed learning. Well,... I always got good grades, excepting in one area, where I was given an “I,” which stood for “Improvement Needed.” That area was “Social Conduct.” Basically, what that meant was that I talked in school. The nuns gave me a black and white composition notebook all for myself, and called it my Punish Assignment Notebook. Every single night I wrote, in cursive, 500 times, “I must not talk in school.”

I honestly did try not to talk, but I just couldn’t help it. The nuns were hoping that instead of talking so much, I'd be praying rosaries. Sadly, to this day, I have awful penmanship, and I still talk a lot.

The only other subject where I got a poor grade was in Art, and I once again got an “I.” In the first grade, Sr. Marietta handed out sheets of graph paper to each of us. We were instructed by Sister to count over 12 spaces and place a dot there. Then, down several spaces and place another dot. This went on until we had a page full of dots, and then, we were asked to connect them all and color in the image. The result was a rigid Christmas tree with little round ornaments at the end of every row of dots. Everyone’s drawing looked exactly the same except for mine: I didn’t like the fact that there were only ornaments on each side of the tree, but none in the middle, and I’d made mine cover the whole tree. That was evidently not desirable in Art.

No wonder I was afraid to ever take Art classes again…

“School’s a weird thing. I’m not sure it works.”
(-Johnny Depp)

"True heroism"

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

(-Arthur Ashe)

"You cannot spell painting without pain." (-John Lithgow, 3rd Rock from the Sun)

There are some days when I feel like I’m capable of really intuitively painting something that’s light, loose, and easy. Other days, I really do feel like I’m “pain”-ting. Everything I’ll attempt will feel like it results in disaster and mud.

Here and there, I’ll sketch things outdoors in our yard, and while those surroundings are lovely, the results of my efforts are definitely not. I don’t get depressed by that, though, because I tell myself that it’s all practice anyway: trying to improve and learn more about the process.

I’ll ask myself how I could have approached that sketch differently if I were to try it again, to achieve a different result. I realize I have to keep plodding along! Practice, practice, practice, like any other endeavor.

“Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.” (-William Inge)

“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.” (-Dorothy Parker)

I’m not sure when I first became enamoured of the birds. But anyone who knows me now knows that I love them, and especially the bluebirds. They possess a certain elegance, and conduct themselves gracefully compared to many of the birds we see. Right now, we have a pair nesting in our bluebird house and we’ve seen a good bit of familial activity going on there.

It’s hard to capture the vibrant blue of their feathers in a painting. They are real stunners, and I keep attempting to communicate their beauty, but somehow their essence eludes me.

Some of the perky little ones are adorable. Sketching them is fun, because they’ll tilt their heads or plant their feet in a jaunty fashion that’s very endearing. I happen to love them, and the plants mucking up our yard.

“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing and the lawn mower is broken.”

(-Jack Handy)

“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?” (-Dr Lawrence J Peter)

I actually have several desks—one I use for sewing projects, one for writing letters and paying bills, and one with all my work on it since I work from home when I'm not on the road. None of them is ever remotely free of clutter.

I can always leave my sewing in the midst of a project and close the door on it, so I don’t have to remember what a mess I’ve made on that desk. It will sit with yards of fabric stacked around, needles and pins in opened tins, notes on paper with yardage calculations and fabric swatches. I can come back to it and dig right back into the project I currently have going and never mind it at all.

My work desk has baskets and files, stacks of folders that often need filing, and a printer/scanner on one end. There are usually notepads with “To Do’s” and tons of brochures and packets for work stacked up on it.

My favorite desk is just a little desk that tucks into a small corner. It’s nestled by a window where I can look out and see the bluebird house, one of our flower beds, and a pond that sits closeby. It gets nice morning light and makes a comfortable spot for a cup of tea. It also tends to have good shadows come evening, so it’s a comfortable place to relax.

I have photos of my son and his wife on that desk, books that I like to keep close at hand, and cards and letters I can’t part with in its single drawer. I don't mind this clutter at all.

“Happiness is a very small desk and a very big wastebasket.” (-Robert Orben)

“To attract men, I wear a perfume called ‘New Car Interior.’”

I’m on the quest for a new perfume.

I always had a signature perfume, and they’ve stopped making it. When I was on the road this year, I tried a few on for size, to see if I liked them. But it’s difficult. You know how it is when you put a little bit on in a store, and it smells good, but then, by the next hour, it has a cloyingly awful smell and you want to head for the nearest shower all over again.

My mother used to wear Chanel #5, or a pretty Caleche smelled beautiful on my grandmother, but every scent is different on a different person, and they don’t do much for me on me.

Now, I’ve no desire to drown out a room with scent, but I do like to spritz on a little bit after a shower every day, and I miss my old one. So for now, I’m actually asking for those little sample sheets in department stores that I normally avoid when being accosted during the holidays.

“Dignity is like a perfume; those who use it are scarcely conscious of it.”
(-Christina of Sweden)

"Gardening requires lots of water--most of it in the form of perspiration." (-Lou Erickson)

We've planted lots of perennials and bulbs over the years. Initially, our thinking was that once you plant those, they pretty much take care of themselves: they pop up again every year, right? Pretty much gluttons for punishment, though, we dream up new concoctions every year for “what to do with the garden.”

One year, it was “let’s add an arbor.” Of course, if one has an arbor, one must have a climbing vine on it. And then, one must put a path beneath it. This year, we yanked out our pampas grasses and planted roses in their place. We’ve put a wall of stones along a walk, and we’re attempting to add a path along one side of the house. I've also come up with a new spot for another arbor as an entryway to a path I want us to do.

We tend to forget that in the middle of all that work, there’s still the weeding, dead-heading and cutting fresh flowers for inside the house. Gardening never really stops. There are always new ideas...But we love all the color and all the flowers from our own yard sitting here looking pretty inside. Not to mention the fact that all those flowers provide wonderful sketching opportunities. We basically just enjoy gardening…

“God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done.” (-Unknown author)

“The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other, milk" (-Ogden Nash)

Painting en plein air is a romantic notion, but it’s also just plain fun. There are so many things one is incapable of controlling, so you have to be amenable to whatever happens.

Cold, heat, flies, mosquitoes, rain, intense sun...they can all be troublesome for painting outdoors, but it's still just kind of an adventure to be right in the thick of things and there's nothing like it. Some time ago, two friends and I ventured out to a local dairy farm to sketch the stolid creatures there. It was a searing NC summer day with flies buzzing and birds to serenade us instead of cars. We didn’t mind the flies at all, but happily wiled away the time, content with observing and sketching head shapes, tails and hooves while chickens clucked nearby. Hours spent outdoors seem like minutes in such a serene setting.

“Plein air painting and painting from a reference: The first is like going to Paris for two weeks with your girl friend, the second is like reading a book about Paris at the local library.”

(-Sylvio Gagnon)

“God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.”

We’re seeing lots of fledgling birds around our place lately. Spring is the season and these little guys are really starting to leave the nest. I often marvel at all they have to learn until they’re independently flying and eating on their own.

One tiny, scruffy little bird was on the ground, unsure of how to get back up into the tree, but his parents were close by, guarding him as good parents do. I watched our bluebird house as a little head peeked out. Slowly but surely, he finally flew a short distance with uncertain wings, and landed on the first available surface: our kidney-bean perennial bed with stoke’s aster flower bud. He repeatedly flew back that short distance to the house, and back again to the bed many times. Practice makes perfect.

It amazes me how the birds learn to fly and find food sources. We often see parent birds feeding their young, while the young flutter little wings and open their mouths for food. The babies are often as big as the more mature birds, but you’ll see little signs of their immature status.

One young finch had fuzzy little bits that he had yet to lose. He looked like he had an elder statesman’s furrowed eyebrows. Another tufted titmouse had wispy beginnings of wings on his back, all a-flutter. When they are young, they don’t know to be frightened so it’s easier to try to snap a photo—they’ll sit still and pose for you.

“I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
(-Sir James M Barrie)

"Never work before breakfast..."

Mornings have never been easy for me. I have never been someone who leaps out of bed perky and rarin’ to go. Even as a child, I agonized over leaving the warm cocoon of bed to face the cold day. My father was the one who woke us every day: he’d go through a ritual of coming into our doorway initially and gently telling us it was time to get up. Then, he'd come into the room, reminding us what time it was. I was the worst. By his third attempt, he used to threaten that if I didn’t get up soon, he’d pour water over me. Well, I never really believed he’d do such a thing, but one day, he actually did come in, after several attempts to wake me, and he squeezed a wet cloth over my face. While I was incredulous beyond words that my father would do that, desperate times called for desperate measures.

Don't get me wrong: over the years I have certainly paid my dues with sleep deprivation and early mornings. And it's not so much the hour when I awaken, it's just how slow I am to take in the new day. When my son awoke at 5am for years, I was always responsible, and I'd be up and doing all those things one needs to do. Work and traffic usually had me up at the crack of dawn. However, I believe I functioned like an automaton for a good portion of my life.

We’re talking about a woman who, to this day, still takes a shower with her eyes closed, and the lights off, because it’s just too much stimulation that early in the day.

Breakfast?...

Now that’s another matter entirely. I rarely want to eat much at breakfast but I am a believer in getting food for a good start to the day. Most days, it’s a bowl of yogurt with fruit and a glass of juice. I like it accompanied with the New York Times by my side. The tea can come later, and on the road, a muffin might do, but it’s all about eeeeeeasing into the day.

“Dance is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts..."

Some friends of ours have asked us, several years in a row now, to join them in watching their daughter dance at a local annual dance competition. North Carolina State University has hosted this event. She is just addicted to ballroom dancing, and does very well. We thoroughly enjoyed it, and I practiced sketching some of them from this event. It was great fun, because these folks really have such a love of dance, and it was mesmerizing to see them go from early in the day ‘til evening with hardly a break.
During one break, a little girl who was a spectator in the audience approached one of the young male dancers and asked him to teach her to dance, which he readily did. It was endearing to watch how sweet he was with her and how excited she was to learn.

They danced for the sheer joy of it and their passion just oozed…

“The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.” (-Mata Hari)

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." (-Lao Tzu)

When I travel for work, I am ruled by a pretty rigid, set schedule, and I have places I need to be at very specific times. I fly and/or drive almost every day, and I live by the dictates of my calendar on the road.

My most memorable personal travel experiences, however, have typically been the results of serendipitous moments I haven’t anticipated or planned in advance. While I usually set a general agenda for things I’d like to see on trips, my favorite kind of travel, unlike some people, is when I can just sort of venture out and discover new haunts with no particular destination in mind.

The Netherlands are teeming with pristine, enchanting canals, but I also discovered, there, little restaurant boats perched in the canals where you can sit and people-watch on the waters as you dine. Sometimes, just turning a corner yields the most delightful surprises, and they’re even lovelier when these encounters are spontaneous.

In Italy, I wound up having dinner in a villa that was featured in the movie “Much Ado About Nothing” in the beautiful Chianti wine region of Tuscany. Venetian canals appear like intricate mazes, and I relished the views I had at every twist and turn of the buildings.

Similarly, I planned and went on a fascinating trip to Pompeii, and then because of sheer geographic proximity, decided I had to see Capri and Anacapri, where the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. I enjoy everywhere I’ve gone, but I am always amazed at how much more a trip touches me when I find the unexpected treasures that are everywhere if I allow myself to be open to them.

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”

(-Miriam Bird)