Pedalling Uphill

My mother is 87 and has a steel trap mind.  She’s 100% all there in mind….body, not so good and that’s important to know because of what I’m going to tell you.  She has macular degeneration and only has about 10% of vision left in one eye.  Several months ago she mentioned that she was seeing piles of sticks and strange faces with big red lips (you know, the kind we used to get made out of wax) and she had even seen a ’short movie clip’ of a 1940’s car driving through the snow at night, with snow falling and heading towards a small town.  She said it was a beautiful scene. 

The first thing I thought was that somebody in their communal kitchen was spiking the food with an illicit drug giving her hallucinations.  But before I made any accusations, I made an appointment for her with the eye doctor and told her to tell him about these visions.

Here’s the amazing part!  The doctor told her that some few people who have macular do see these visions and that it would not be wise to discuss it with people that didn’t know her well as they might tend to think she was slipping a little off her rocker.   Since that time, she has seen many other realistic ‘visions’ - sometimes a lifesize woman dressed in clothing from the 1800’s holding the hand of a small boy is standing next to her bed when she wakes up.  Sometimes two young boys also garbed from the 1800’s are there.   And others that I won’t go into here - not one of them is anyone she knows or has ever known.  But it can make you wonder if these visions, seen by credible people throughout the centuries,  before macular was ever known about, were not the origins of ghosts.  From everything she describes to me they certainly fit the description.

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Not too long ago, Abe and I went to the Campbell Gallery (they carry my work) on Sherbrooke Street in downtown Montreal.  Because it’s almost impossible to park on these busy streets, we always park behind the gallery in a very narrow lane where each business has little offshoots of parking spots reserved for themselves and customers.

After we left the gallery we started driving down the lane to exit onto the street and lo and behold, a smart looking, black, sporty type car is parked blocking the exit.  So we sat and waited for about 10 minutes…nobody came.  Meanwhile I’m starting to stew at the inconsideration of this jerk…what if there were an emergency or something.  So I told Abe to stay put and I was going to find this guy.  There was only one commercial building in the proximity - a bank located across the street and approximately 100 ft away. 

I entered the bank and it was packed.  I started feeling a little shy, so I did what I always do when that happens, I pretended that I was acting in a movie and started going from person to person asking if it was their car parked in the lane across the street.  No, no, came the replies one after the other.  Finally I came to a guy standing at the teller, yakking away on his cell phone…right then I could see this ’schmendick’ was not going to be interested in our petty problem, so a thought occurred to me…I said “excuse me sir, do you own the black car parked in the lane across the street?”  Just as I suspected, he looked at me as if I was a piece of dog poop stuck on his shoe.  So I said “we just hit your car and you might want to come…” I was going to finish the sentence with “and see the damage”, but no need for superfluous words.  He practically threw his cell phone in the air and ran out of the bank and down the street to the lane.  I had a hard time keeping up with him!! His skinny long legs were really moving! 

Of course when he got there he realized he had been had, but I was too wound up to let it rest there!  I yelled “Do you see a sign that says PARKING SPOT anywhere here???!!” and continued to chew him out while he sheepishly climbed into his car and drove away.  After I got into our car and the anger wore off, I had a fit of the giggles and couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he had learned a lesson because all in all, I had a pretty good time teaching it!

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3 Wool Rugs - a Childhood Memory by Grace Woods

Once upon a long time ago, when I was about 12, my sister Gael about 10 and my brother Robert 7, my mother asked my father to take us to the Laundromat to wash 3 thick twisted wool rugs (they weren’t really wool, but not being much of a material maven, wool will have to suffice).  My father didn’t usually participate in household chores (or interact too much with us either for that matter) so the idea of going to the Laundromat with him was kind of an adventure for us.

It was winter – the old fashioned  kind of winter where the snow was often up to your ‘wa-zoo’…big drifts of the stuff and high snow banks on either side of the plowed street.  The Laundromat was about 7 city blocks and down a hill away…just a short car ride from our house.  So Stewart drove up and parked (I’ve always called my father by his first name) and we each grabbed a rug which just happened to be in small, medium and large sizes.  After we carted them inside, dear old dad turned to my 7 year old brother, who always seemed to be adrift in his own world somewhere else and handing him 3 dimes, said “go get me three soaps”.  While we were loading these long wooly things into the machines, little brother returns proudly holding up 3 cokes.  My father  (whose middle name was not Patience) stood there looking at him incredulously and my sister and I stood gazing at him as if spellbound by this turn of events.  Before we could blink however, dad started yelling at Rob    “COKES!!!… You brought COKES!!!!  I said SOAPS!!!  Not COKES!!!…at which point my sister and I went into spasms of muffled laughter turning our faces so as not to be the next ones in line for his wrath.

I must interject here to state that we were never physically abused by our father, but he did have a short fuse and he was rather high strung and nervous, so it didn’t take much to push his buttons – and there were many buttons!

Well, we got the soap, loaded the rugs and sat down to wait until the cycle was over.  At around this time, we noticed Stewart started to get a ‘little antsy’ and even though he didn’t say anything, from experience we knew that it was time for a little ‘drinky poo’.  Ten fidgety minutes later he came over to me and handed me 3 quarters for the dryers and said “Put the rugs in the dryers and when they’re dry you can carry them home.  It’s only a short distance”.  By car yes, by foot, not so short!

Even in those days, a quarter didn’t go as far as he thought.  After an hour in the dryer, the carpets were still soaking wet….and heavy!  However, having no more money and no way home other than by foot, we rang them out as best we could and I loaded the small one onto my brother’s shoulders like a shawl, the medium one onto my sister’s shoulders and threw the large one around my neck and out into the snow we trudged.

That was one loooong and cold walk home!  The fibers all froze to our necks and hair and the frozen twisted wool ends were making a jangling, clacking sound the last 3 blocks.  I remember the snow on the sidewalk seemed to come up to my calves and over my boots and I thought I would never make that last block.  We were all but starting to stagger, and then we noticed our mother looking out the window and somehow that and the thought of the warm house gave us just the extra motivation we needed to speed ourselves up.  As we came through the door we could hear her mumbling she was going to give him ‘what for’ when he got home.

He came home much, much later, she didn’t give him ‘what for’, at least not that we heard and we survived.  And you know what they say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. It’s amazing though how much funnier things seem to be in hindsight.
 

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I just put a couple of new pieces on the Originals pages 1 and 2 that I hope you will like. One in particular is very special to me.

Jim’s Story

Jim is a piece that took a long time coming.  We were at a show in Connecticut some years ago and I was asked to do a commission of 5 horses and a dog in one painting. Being the rabid horse and dog lover I am, I jumped at the chance and left the show to go and take the photographs.  I met the first 4 horses and they were lovely but then out of the barn came this spectacular animal unlike any I had ever seen.  Not spectacular in the confirmation or well bred sense, but spectacular in uniqueness and presence.

Jim is a pony draft stallion…only about 14 hands high at the shoulder, very round barreled and sturdy looking with a tail as big and bushy as his mane - and that mane was hanging equally thick on BOTH sides of his neck. He had a ‘wall eye’ - to those of you not familiar with horses, it’s kind of an eerie looking white un pigmented eye, which I originally painted him with. But I found that too many people were distracted by the eye and lost sight of what the painting is about, so I decided to repaint it in it’s natural color.

The thing that struck me most, compelling me to do the painting, and the sinking feeling that has stayed with me ever since were the number of healed over wounds he had on his body and then I noticed that part of his nose was missing!  Noses on animals are so sensitive that it really shocked me because I knew it must have been a terribly painful thing at the time in which it occurred.  When I asked about it, the owner told me she had aquired him from someone in the Mid West who had put a ring through his nose to lead him around.  Just writing about it makes me feel sick!  And on top of that, for some reason or other (and judging from the wounds on his body I can only guess) he had pulled back and it had torn a chunk from his nose.

What struck me most was that in spite of the obvious humiliations he had endured, he really carried himself with dignity.  But he was detached in a way that the other horses weren’t, as if he had gone into himself and had only himself, and yet he was very gentle.  I just think somewhere along his journey he had lost his faith in human kind.

Post Script:  I just heard today (May 5, 2006) that Jim has passed away peacefully.  Why is it some news feels like a sucker punch to the stomach and why is it that certain animals can touch us deep down inside in a place no human can ever get near.  If there really is God, there most certainly must be a reward for animals in another kinder, gentler world.

RIP Jim

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By Grace Woods

In  1970, my husband  AC and I acquired our first dog together  and we called him ‘Muffin’- we were so original then.  We found him as a pup, abandoned in a vacant lot.  He was a beautiful, blond collie type dog,  very sweet natured and it was love at first sight for all three of us.

When he was about a year old we were invited, along with my folks, to my sister’s house in the idyllic  countryside of Vermont for Christmas dinner and to spend the night.  Since it was only for the one night, the single article of clothing I brought with me was my favorite, very well worn but cozy, knee length flannel nightgown  (just call me a ‘sex kitten’!).  The elastics in the sleeves had long since outlived their usefulness and at the neckline, all I had was a large safety pin…. What is this  neurotic affinity some of us have for our more familiar clothing?   I can’t tell you…  but since no one was going to see me in it, except my tried and true spouse, who seemed immune to such ‘eye candy’, I didn’t put a lot of thought into it.

As we sat down to dinner, we all remarked on the lovely lace tablecloth my sister, Gael, had set the table with.  Did I mention that besides our ‘angel-dog’ Muff, Gael had her own  rather rambunctious and large Basset hound named ‘Ben’.   He had been quietly but stealthily eyeing the goings’ on while sitting on the floor next to my chair.  No sooner had Gael  put the food on the table and just finished setting down a large boat of hot gravy, when Ben’s nose got the better of his common sense.  In a flash – (and those of you who have Bassetts can certainly attest to the fact  that ‘flashing movements’ is not generally part of the breed description, so you can imagine he was highly motivated), he tried to leap ONTO the table!  Of course with his short legs he never had a chance, but his toenails got caught in the lace and as if in slow motion, I saw the gravy boat heading straight for me!  Spaaallllllat!  It landed right on my chest and dumped the whole of the very steaming HOT gravy into my lap!

There was only one thing to do…I had to remove ALL of my clothing to be laundered and the only item I had to put on was my ‘elegant’ nightgown!  So there I was sitting at the Christmas dinner table  in my ‘evening wear’ just digging in to what was left of the dinner when all of a sudden, Muff fell over and started shaking and pawing at his throat as if he was choking on something –  my immediate thought was that perhaps he had swallowed some little part of a newly unwrapped Christmas toy!   My father, God bless him, had been enjoying the Christmas cheer somewhat liberally and was obviously feeling no pain, and took it upon himself to debate out loud whether or not he should give the dog mouth to mouth resuscitation….and  I remember in the confusion,  seeing him sitting on the floor with Muff, mumbling something about not being able to figure out whether his mouth should go over the dog’s nose or if the dog’s mouth should go over his.  Ah, those Christmas memories.

However,  thinking my poor doggie was in the last stages of choking to death, I had speedily called a local veterinarian in the village a short distance away, who was also just sitting down for his family dinner.  Good soul that he was, he said to bring him over!  Without thinking, I grabbed my waist length winter jacket and low ankle boots and scooped Muff up in my arms  – Abe had the car running and I ran out and jumped in.  We drove speedily over the back roads to the town and in a panic, I couldn’t remember where the vet’s place was!  Fortunately we spotted a State Police car with two officers in it.  Abe stopped the car and I jumped out and starting running towards them with my big dog in my arms, my very white and fuzzy legs (it was winter and the cutoff date for shaving was August) and my flannel nightgown flying in the breeze! 

It didn’t take much to get the officer’s attention and after they recovered from the initial shock, they kindly said they would give us an escort to the Vet’s house. 

Two minutes later we arrived in the driveway of his house and out he came to greet us with his wife and three little children in tow.  I opened the car door and by now Muff had seemed to miraculously  recover and was struggling to get out and the first thing he did as I put him down was to run over to their big maple tree and lift his leg.   That’s when I noticed that all eyes were on me!  Big eyes!  Puzzled eyes!  And all of a sudden that nightmare feeling of being naked in church startled me into awareness!   Standing there in my threadbare  nighty with my very attractive white and hairy legs  - I was a real sight to behold!

As it turned out,  Muff had epilepsy and he had had his first seizure.  He had them about every 6 months after that but lived to a ripe old age nonetheless… I tossed the nightgown out and I can’t recall ever being invited back for Christmas dinner again, not that I blame Gael.  In hindsight these things seem  much funnier now than when they were taking place, but it’s no wonder my brother-in-law has always called us ‘The Clown Family’.

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