Basically Betty

I've returned to Seattle from a grueling 2 weeks on the road, have unpacked, put out the administrative fires that spark up while I'm gone and have settled back into my Seattle routine just in time to welcome another group of teachers from around the world who are arriving in a few days for a 5 day workshop with me in my home studio.  

On this past trip, I was in Chattanooga for a week and it was a remarkable time in many ways; the town is simply gorgeous, the people are pure and kind and open, I was graciously housed by the German neighbor of the studio owner who was hosting my workshops and I saw a firefly.  

A single firefly.

Although we only lived in Steubenville for a few years after I was born, that was enough time for two important things to happen in my life.  It was long enough for me to contract histoplasmosis and it was long enough for me to establish a relationship with fireflies.  

I remember chasing them through the air, jumping to the rhythm of their flight as I would catch them in my grasping hands.  I can remember how they felt crawling around in my gently closed hands and I can also remember pulling off their lights and squishing the glowing orb onto my ring finger and pretending I was wearing an illuminated yellow diamond ring.  But that would only last for just a moment or two until the light would go out.

I could never join PETA, of this I'm certain.

There are no fireflies in Florida and when, as a kid, we'd return to Steubenville for vacations, especially long ones over the summer, not only would I fall right back into the firefly frolic as if I'd never left but we'd also try to bring some back on the plane or in the car with us by putting them in jars, holes punched into the lids with some grass thrown in, as if that was the perfect environment to sustain them.  I don't recall that the adults on the trip, Mom or Papa, would mount a particularly forceful argument against this.  I do recall watching the fireflies die in the jar.    

So in Tennessee 2 weeks ago and after seeing absolutely no fireflies anywhere, on the very day that Mom's Steubenville funeral was held I had taught for 11 hours of my 15 hour day and was bone tired as I traipsed around the heavily wooded back side of my host's large home to let myself in the back door.  

As I stepped along the garden path, carrying heavy bags and some left over pizza, I made my way up the back steps by the light of my cell phone and as I put down my bags so I could unlock the door, there it was.

A single firefly.

Hovering at about knee height, silently gliding along the thermals, gorgeous.0

When Daddy died back in 1993 and just a few hours after he passed, a black crow came and sat on the hedge outside Mom's front windows and the thing began cawing and squaking and making a dramatic racket.  Mom and I decided it was Daddy.

I've decided the firefly was Mom.  And it was so good to see her.

She's like a Rolling Stones tour, she's had 3 funerals in 3 different states and I think she's finally put to rest as far as the necessary saying goodbye.  

When I leave in late August for a month of teaching in Europe and the UK, I'll be taking a bunch of her ashes, mixed with Daddy's, and spreading them in northern Italy and in the highlands of Scotland.  Mom and I talked about me doing that, she loved the idea of being everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time, and I can't wait to give her what she wanted.  

Firefly.  Crow.  The wind.  I see my parents everywhere, I feel them always and I love them more than ever.

Love and Prayers From Here to There.

Daddy traveled a ton when he was young.  He played ball all over the pacific northwest, when I first moved out west he used to tell me all the towns he'd been through, many of which I was just then learning about.  He hopped freight trains.  He was adventure personified.

Mom traveled with her folks and Margaret and Sandy on vacations, they went to Niagra Falls and other interesting places they could get to by train.  

While I was in high school and for either Christmas or my birthday, Mom and Dad got me luggage for a gift.  I took it to heart.

I've been on the road a lot since then and I'm on the road now.  Again.

What if the road is your home?  What does that make my actual physical home, the place where all my stuff is, in Seattle.  

I feel more at home in St. Pete than I do anywhere else.  I feel more at home in Oregon than I do in Seattle.  I feel most at home when I'm on the road.  

I take a mini-version of my larger life with me.  Every computer convenience.  I'm perpetually packed so there's not much to throw together in the days before departure.  I'm way more productive while on the road than I am when I'm in Seattle and I just love meeting all these marvelous people who don't live in Seattle.  I love seeing different parts of the world and realizing, all over again, that it's all really the same, but different.  

So, here I am, in Chattanooga, staying in the basement apartment of the neighbor of the studio owner who hired me to teach workshops at her studio this week.  The host family, a lovely family of 4 from Germany, said, sure, she can stay with us.  The mom and kids are in Germany for the summer so other than hearing the occasional early morning footfall of Arndt, I feel alone, safe and quite hidden from anyone who might be looking for me.  

After 6 long hard days of teaching here, I'm off to Charlottesville Virginia where I hope to see Monticello before working 4 hard days of teaching there.  I fly back to Seattle 2 hours after I'm done with my last session and before I know it, I'll be back "home."  

But not for long.  Never for long.

I see an Airstream in my future.  Didn't Margaret Ann & Don have one of those a long time ago?

Love and Prayers from Here to There.