my mountain

Five months of embroidery didn’t achieve all of Mom’s 125 views of Mount Rainier. But...she had 88 years to accomplish her obsession, and as it turned out 88 is the number of handkerchiefs I completed. I WILL finish them; each a story, a connection, her mountain, my mountain, my own obsession now.

space invasion

ships for craig

pairs for jessica

mountains for ruthie

It is the last month of embroidery and I continue: selecting a photo, matching it to a handkerchief, plunging the needle in and out following the mountain's outline in a simple running stitch, taking time with my clumsy satin stitch to record the direction Mom was looking when she engaged the shutter... Northeast,
North-Northeast,
North,
North-Northwest,
Northwest,
West,
Southeast,
and finally, from the air.

land(ing)

while my father's departure point on the tug boat was always from the same dock along the Foss Waterway, my location on land changed frequently. i lived in 8 places in Tacoma and Gig Harbor during the first 10 years of my life. the houses have names like "the bomb shelter" or "next door to Ronnie and Rennie" and "the house we lit on fire". it wasn't until my adult life that i took inventory of these places. visiting each one, walking the trails and sidewalks that used to be my racetrack and escape routes. much like my father had the Puget Sound to navigate his way through, i always seemed to have a new school, new classmates, and a new neighborhood to become familiar with. i mapped the terrain in my head, keeping a chart of the short cuts, bike jumps, mad dogs and even madder boys. my dad and i have this in common.... we remember places and pathways as if our lives depended on them. his are on water. mine are on land.

Red Right Returning

my father would work for 2 weeks at a time on the tugboat without coming home. followed by his constant presence at home for the remaining 2 weeks of the month. my fondest memory of his time at home related to helping him study for his Captain's license. i was responsible for yelling out maritime navigation questions from a stack of index cards. i would ask these questions regardless of where we were at. it could be in the aisle at B&I, or on the dock at Point Defiance, or walking the railroad tracks between Titlow Beach and Narrows Marina. i was too young to understand the logic behind the answers, so i made up my own version of what the answers were about. one question that sticks with me relates to the color of the buoys on the waterway. the maritime rules dictate that when entering a harbor or waterway, the red buoy needs to be on starboard side of the vessel, and the green buoy on the port side. this rule is known as Red Right Returning, or Red on the Right when Returning from sea.

as a child, i had my own understanding of what Red Right Returning meant. while my father was at sea, the house became a calmer place to live. we developed routines without him and i enjoyed the stability of knowing what to expect during those 14 days. in short, i missed him and welcomed his absence at the same time. leading up to his return, anxiety and tempers grew as my brother's and i would test all limits with the knowledge that our window of freedom was closing with each passing day. my father would dish out 2 weeks of punishment as soon as he got home, as a sort of retroactive discipline for perceived wrongs that, in his mind, must have occurred while he was gone. as a result, my definition of Red Right Returning related to his wrath when he got home from being on the tug. his returning right hand turning my butt a bright red.

after his initial disbursement of punishments, things would settle down into new routines and rituals while he was home. some good. most bad. and as the days passed on the calendar and his departure grew near again, i would find myself cherishing the fact that i was helping him become a Captain of a tug boat. while at the same time, secretly wishing he would stay at sea for ever.

grok.

how does reading "stranger in a strange land" when you're 12 years old shape your ideas about adult relationships and intelligence? certain disappointment follows when you realize grokking is a martian concept.

mountain to hankerchief

each stitch locates me
this is where she stood
where she collected
where she reach out to grasp
what she wanted to hold