stitching/painting selves

la voilà

herself be a dogwoman

scored these two at a local flea-market the other day, more precisely the historical cookbook caught my eye and friend A. found Clarissa Pinkola Estés for me; despite having spotted the book in many blogs over the years I never got 'round to ordering it & now I have a Dutch copy; A. bought it 'cos she thought the title fitted me De ontembare vrouw = the untameable woman, not a literal translation of English version, apt nonetheless.

herself and Snoop feeling fluid after a swim

AAAHHHH

herself at night

i think she has many stories to tell....i guess i'll be making more

Summer has arrived, 30+C/90+F

Snoopy and me go swimming a couple of times everyday now

My mother was not an easy woman to please. In retrospect I think she was not happy with herself and wanted better things for me. Up into my early teens I told her everything, that all changed when I wanted to become me. 

The last thing she said to me in her Danish mother tongue 'Mor, mor'

There are many things I enjoy doing and never got to do with her. She belonged to the generation of women who got the opportunity to go to university (Denmark was very progressive in the fifties). She felt the household duties and 'feminine' skills not worthy of her time. Despite claiming to being emancipated however, she never worked full-time (a weird luxury typical of The Netherlands, meaning Dutch women remain financially highly dependent on their spouses and after divorce fall into poverty-trap, but that's another story). 

As I stitch this dress together, I think of the many women I have met over the years in this virtual world, where I read so much about how they learnt their skills from their mothers and grandmothers. I did not. I know I cannot change the past, I do at times feel regret that we had so little in common. We both love(d) buying books & reading. I realise this is a huge gift. We shared the same sense of humour and impatient attitude to stupidity.

using small patches from the garden tablecloth which never quite worked for me, i had to unquilt the entire thing to save these small stitch-stories, am roughly modelling the shape on my favourite linen sage dress

She loved colour, colourful clothes, colourful flowers and would fill their town garden with begonias in every shade of pink. She loathed snails and slugs, would catch them and cut them in two with a pair of scissors. She would laughingly remark to her friends I didn't mind, I did, she just didn't hear. A person can be many people to others, I get why her many friends admired and loved her. As her child it was easy to become invisible in her shadow.

She did say the funniest things tho:

'Don't say no to the future' (something she had picked up from her favourite aunt) this certainly helps me when I'm fretting over f.e. modern technology and whether or not I should be using it.

'If they see something god didn't make, let them holler,' she loved sunbathing nude.

'If you don't want to stay lonely, start your own club and invite folks you like.'

we do what we can

After last post I decided I do want to learn more about snails and slugs, I'll start with those I might encounter in our part of the world. 

addendum

in a newspaper article I read this: slugs play an important part in the eco-system, they help improve the structure and fertility of the soil and are themselves a food source for many other critters, such as magpies, blackbirds, hedgehogs, wrens, toads and frogs, even spiders are known to nibble a slug or two; whenever there are 'too many' slugs is a sign, it most likely means the balance is disturbed! So gardeners beware, make the garden attractive to all kinds of plants and animals and the so-called pest will be contained.....

I also bought another Mary Oliver, which has some of my favourite poems by her, I just love her writing.

CØRØ