The Soul in the Soil

~ Margaret L. Irwin ~ Leave a comment

The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy – it’s all that matters.” – Audrey Hepburn

Let’s start in the middle, shall we?

Though I did give-in early in the weed-killing process and used a fancy named, heavily manufactured weed killer, it was with eventual remorse. There was guilt. And fear. The fear created the guilt because in LA we worry about El Niño, drain run-off into the Pacific Ocean, and the Dodgers (not necessarily in that order). I did what sounded the most resourceful – I ‘Googled’. Yes, I used the magic of the wide world (world wide?) web as my modern-day microfiche and it did not fail me. Sure there were plenty of ‘experts’ who had conspiracy theories about weed killers and the Soviet Union, but a few legitimate gardeners gave solid advice – use white vinegar with dish soap, and place newspaper, and/or cardboard over the weeds after you pull them. Yep. Simple.

Let’s jump to the end…

I finished the garden, and within days I had a dozen empty gallon white vinegar bottles stacked in my big blue recycle bin. Less guilt. Side note, I have no doubt that the FBI has rummaged through my big blue bin and found the now dozens of empty white vinegar bottles, empty bags of mulch, bark, pea gravel, and soil with manure. I am confident that I am on a watch list for TSA. If questioned, I plan to spill the beans on the Soviet Union and weed killers. I bet they try to convince me that there is no longer a Soviet Union. Well, good luck. I’ve see all of the Bond movies. Maybe not all of them since the 1980’s. Bottom line, you can use healthy choices to keep away your weeds and grass. But ironically, that is not the moral of this story.

BEFORE: South end
BEFORE North end

Now let’s go to the beginning… What garden? This is the lower level of our 4-terraced level yard. This is the level where the gas mower always ran out of gas (I started at the top! Why?)

This area is 1,000 square feet of tall grass. I say grass even though my mother once asked me, “You do know this is not really grass? It is just weeds.” Um, yeah, sure, okay, I guess I won’t need to go to that grass-growing class at Armstrong Garden Center this weekend.

She was right – and she was very right once the drought hit Southern California. Only the weeds showed up after rains. They would get very tall. And I would mow them, as if they were grass. But, again, not the moral of this story.

Back to the middle – maybe right of the center…

I had a very difficult couple of years and I needed to take action – real action. So much stress in my professional life had started to seep into my personal life, and the sacred sections of my heart and mind. I stopped recognizing me.

Then it dawned on me one day at work – leave your job – and I did, that day – I asked to be laid off, they did – and I was able to exhale for the first time in a couple of years. The very next day I ran off with the dog to Ojai where I walked, laughed, cried, got a massage, texted only the dearest of friends, bought art for a garden that was not built yet, and prayed. And prayed. And prayed. I didn’t know what to pray for, or if I should be so selfish as to ask for anything. I yelled in the car, I hid under the covers, and I talked to anyone about anything other than what I had just done. I was without a weekly paycheck, health insurance, and trust of others. Not the moral, but a destination. I was somewhere I had never been and I had created it. And the fun thing is that I had never felt so relieved, so sure of something, and so tired.

After 3 days the dog and I returned home with a trunk full of divine handmade garden art. With the help of the one friend I trusted in this precious moment, we had started the garden two weeks before so half was laid out and was patiently awaiting my return. These weeds and this garden would teach me to “enjoy my life”, for it was in the tall grassy weeds that I returned to me. The garden did not ask me to reinvent myself, it showed me how to rediscover me. To be happy. That is all that matters.

There will be more stories on the most personal steps of this journey, and how the art created a place for me to see me again – the red sign from an Ojai artist that reads “Give Thanks”, the St. Francis statue, the “prayer” bench we made by hand, the butterfly garden, the door and windows that create a sacred space… But, for this story, I want to show you the ending… for it holds the moral…

AFTER: South end
AFTER: North end

 

 

 

Alison Saar

~ Margaret L. Irwin ~ Leave a comment
“Washtub Blues” by Alison Saar is a stunning example of seeing something as one thing and then seeing it as something else, something deeper. At first glace you feel a twinge of guilt because obviously the subject is a hardworking woman who probably made minimal pay and spent her life taking care of someone else’s family. No doubt her back hurt at the end of a long day.

washtub-blues
“Washtub Blues” by Alison Saar
I first saw this work while sitting in a meeting in the President’s office of a Los Angeles museum where I had just been hired. It was hung next to other art pieces from previous exhibitions. This one caught my eye. I just stared. I was mesmerized. I remember my throat gulping from heartbreak. Both heartbreak for this woman I felt a deep spiritual connection and for myself. When I was young, Leola and then Bernice helped my working mom take care of us. It was as if this richly deep blue print had my family woven into the rice paper that it is printed on. Bernice was my second mom all the way through college, by then helping my grandparents. I was devastated when she and Leola died. Especially losing Bernice, it was the same heartbreak as losing a parent. But now, in this meeting – in which I was obviously very tuned out of – there she was. There was Leola. There was Bernice.

After four years of working at the museum, I decided to take on a new adventure. I hinted that I would love a copy of that print – they had two left in the museum store. The staff surprised me with it beautifully hand-framed as a ‘thank you’ gift on my last day. I cried. Later that night, I cried again when I hung it in my home. For the three years since that day, with each passing moment, my tears have turned to joy, my guilt has turned to respect. I smile and nod with gratitude for their meaningful roles in my childhood.

Recently I researched the print. The stunningly talented Alison Saar had written:

“When I was thinking about this print for the Women of the West Museum (part of the Autry National Center), it occurred to me that most of the famous  black women in the West began as laundresses or cooks. They were self-made survivors who became property owners, who achieved success by starting from the bottom. Often, they used their money to help others. Ultimately they are heroic. They made their menial, unrewarding work meaningful, maybe not for themselves but for others. Housekeepers and nannies have a huge impact on people’s lives and they are rarely recognized. Often they’re invisible; you don’t even notice them. That’s why in this print of a laundress you see her from behind, with her face reflected in the tub of water”.

That first-glance twinge was soon replaced by a tear. And then a smile. And then love. Love for two heroic women who cared so selflessly for my family. I had gone beyond the surface, deeper as the artist desired me to go in her storytelling – all at once in a reflection in the water. My heart was touched the way that my eyes had been at first glance. I had a way to honor their unsung heroism. No longer invisible. They were front and center on my living room wall. We were reunited. They were home. I was home.

Butler Steltemeier

~ Margaret L. Irwin ~ Leave a comment

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees – Marcel Proust

After a dozen plus years of saying that I would, I finally purchased a piece of art  from an artist I have long admired from afar – Butler Steltemeier. She is best known for her unique style in which she takes the observer on a lovely, whimsical ride of animals and bugs, in vibrant colors, like no other, in a world all their own. And a world all her own.

I knew Butler by another name in my childhood in Tennessee, she was in my brother’s class, three years older than me. Three years is a chasm in age when you are young.

I recall so clearly how I just instinctively knew that she was the most genuine person I had ever met. Kind. Sweet. Loving. She was what I imagined my mother must have been like at 15, 16, 17, 18. It made sense that my mother was so loving to, and even a little protective of, her when she would hang out at our house after Friday night football games. Butler was beautiful, popular, and part of the gang but she seemed to me to be just a little more evolved, a bit more real. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up! She was so willing to be herself. Authentic. Unwavering to the party crowd. You felt she always had more to say than she was saying, as if she had a story but maybe too shy to tell it? Not the right audience?

I remember being nervous to ask for advice. But I had to. I had to know her secret for being cool but not too cool. I was popular, too, but I wanted to have permission to not be a follower. She was not a follower. She had her own place in the world. I wanted my own place. I knew at 9 years old I wanted to work in Hollywood. I was always looking ahead. I wanted to be something more than a kid. It took a lot of nerve for my 13 or 14-year old self to ask. But I did. I had to. I asked, “I don’t want to always do what everyone else is doing, how do I just be me? How do I not give into all the pressure to party and to fit in?”

She looked me straight in the eye – oh, no, what’s the answer going to be? Did I just make a fool of myself? Should I be embarrassed?

She answered in her typically calming tone that always made me feel like everything would be okay, that I would survive being a teen, “You don’t need to worry about what others want you to do. You can just be yourself”.

Oh my God, she gave me permission to be me. To be awkward. To be quirky. To be the kid who wanted everyone to be happy and laugh at her silly stories. And truthfully, as the high school fun house, I didn’t want to be the kid who threw up in the backyard. Sure my mom always said this, she loved me unconditionally… but this was someone THREE whole years older. She had 36 months of wisdom that I did not. 36 months in teen years is as if she had climbed a mountain to meet the Dalai Lama, she had walked alongside of Moses, her comment had the weight of the world on it. I mean, really, this was monumental.

Let’s stop for a moment. How wonderfully rare is that gift?

I have kept her humble advice in my head for the past four decades. Through the college years, through those early hardship years when I moved to Hollywood, through the relationships, the breakups, the good times, the bad times, the loving times, the learning times, the passionate times, the spiritual quests I have taken and even in the most critical of times – the deaths of my brother and mother. Debbie/Butler Steltemeier’s permission was enough to bring solace.

In her acknowledgment of me in that one answer, she was a defining brick in the foundation that became me – a woman who does not follow the pack, who seeks to help others, to laugh, to love, to create, to honor, to be me. I am in my 50s and I think of all the times that I have given the same advice. All because I had permission from my mother – and from a teenager who probably gave the answer to get rid of me so she could hang with her friends. My life has been defined by not being like everyone else.

And she never knew.

But I did.

I recently purchased “Bashful” from the L.Ross Gallery in Memphis – this is not one of her larger-scaled whimsical, vibrant works, but the simplest of any work of hers that I had ever seen. The gallery owner asked me about the purchase. She noted that it was not typical of her work. And I replied, “that is why”. I told her that I felt a sincere connection between the artist and the animal, as if she had captured a split-second in time when they were speaking without speaking.

When I now look at this charming work on my dining room wall, I believe I am privy to a moment when the artist felt something more than whimsy. She was being true to the subject as well as to herself. Or maybe she painted it in a hurry so she could go hang out with her friends. But this time, I don’t think so. The  intricacy in the lines, the honesty in the eyes, and the bashfulness of the face confirm that this artist is the girl I knew so long ago. This is the story she wanted to tell.

“Bashful” by Butler Steltemeier