It is clear: I am a big-project person.
When I was a child and built with mud and sticks under the bushes by my house, I didn’t just build a hut; I built a village, complete with a corral and a cemetery.
When I got curious about the brain mechanisms underlying both language and movement, I wrote a fifty-two-page paper–for fun–during a semester in which I took twenty-one credits of coursework.
My Ph.D. dissertation was “Extended Practice and Patterns of Bimanual Interference.” My sixteen subjects completed 2,500 two-handed drawing trials, each on a separate piece of paper, which I had to then score by hand on six separate measures. That’s 40,000 trials and 240,000 pieces of data, no computer.
“By audacity alone are high things accomplished,” she reminded herself and stepped into the corridor.
Stars in Your Eyes
I started looking for information about Emilie Loring and amassed thousands of pages about her while I was still teaching full-time. Then I wrote and published her detailed biography while also establishing this website, blog, and community of Emilie Loring readers.
About the same time that Happy Landings was published, I took on full-time caregiving. The timing couldn’t have been worse for book promotion. It’s like becoming a parent for the first time–too little sleep, always “on duty,” always responsible for another person’s health and well-being, as well as incalculable rewards.
My daughter and her family are living with me while they sell their Oregon house and buy another here in Kansas. Their company and support are wonderful, I get quality time with four-year-old Molly and baby Ryan, and we can all commiserate when things get crazy around here, as of course they do.
With all that’s been going on, I haven’t written here as often, and it’s been heartwarming that you’ve noticed and checked in with me to see if all is well. Thank you.
Now that I have my legs under me a little better, I am reclaiming my place in my own priorities, and what else would I do but choose some big projects?! Perhaps it seems counter-intuitive to add more tasks when one feels over-burdened, but I reason that with a constant load on one side, the only way to achieve balance is to add more on the other, right?
I’m at my best when I’m active and creative, so I started swimming again–two thousand yards, three days a week. Glorious!
Do you like digging as much as I do? I took on a humongous project in my back yard, re-grading a slope to direct rainfall away from the patio instead of toward it and establishing a smooth place for the kids to have an inflatable pool this summer. I dug in the evening, after Mom went to bed, and I finished up with some all-day efforts last weekend. No machines, just me and my shovel, hoe, and rake. It felt great to use my muscles. I got hot and tired, but I didn’t get hurt or sore. Terrific!
I also dug a garden for Molly, re-stained the deck, filled the deck planters with flowers, and gave Molly swimming lessons!
Writing is creative, of course, but I felt a need to get away from the computer and create something tangible. I decided to sew a happy quilt to have on my bed at our lake house this summer. I chose 1930s fabrics, reminiscent of both Emilie Loring and my grandmother. Emilie would have had delightful names for the pink, yellow, white, blue, purple, red, aqua, and green. There were over six hundred fabric pieces cut from dozens of different prints and a whole lot of white. I sewed at night when it was too dark to dig, and last Friday, I folded the completed quilt top and sent it off to the nice folks at the Missouri Star Quilt Company to finish for me. The quilt is overtly cheerful; I felt happy working on it, and I’ll have a happy place to sleep each night this summer.
Back to Emilie
Leaving “the kids” in charge here, I’ll get Mom settled in Wisconsin this week and get back to book promotions and blog posts, albeit from “on the road.” I feel like Emilie, because she had a list of titles in advance of writing, some of which she never used. Similarly, I have for-the-moment-titles and snippets of blog posts that have occurred to me:
What Makes a Good Story?
Boston By Foot (and why isn’t Emilie Loring on that tour?)
Elements of Refreshment
“Martha”
Women of Consequence
Pulitzer and Entertainment
Show, Don’t Tell
Why We Love Authors
Neither Prudish Nor Prurient
The Stroke of Midnight
Pan-American Exposition
Identifying With Characters
I’d also like to continue with the deep dives into more of her books. We’ll see what comes to the top.
The Kansas motto is Ad astra per aspera, “To the stars through difficulties,” and that has seemed apt lately. The trick is to “keep everlastingly at it,” as Emilie would say.
Now she craved time to think, to recollect herself–she had seen that phrase somewhere lately and liked it. Recollect oneself. It meant so much.
A Certain Crossroad
Do I ever relax? Oh heavens, yes! One of my greatest values is appreciation, and that means taking time to simply be, to take in the blessings that surround me. Another is balance–strive, relax.
Happy landings, everyone, and keep looking to the stars!
The Emilie Loring Collection 
Do you ever feel like a character in Loring’s stories? Life may be short on romance but difficulties and busyness, why it’s never empty of those! You have been doing and dealing with a lot.
My own family moved out in January and I don’t think I slowed down from making up for lost time until this month and this is a mildly busy month just the same.
Also wanted to say that my husband (retired medic) is a songwriter and I have my little bit of writing I do. We were just discussing the value of having ‘other’ creative pursuits to keep us full on the creative side so that we can continue to write. Quilting, making a pool area by hand, redoing a home, recovering a chair, even coloring fill up those creator meters so we can keep on going. I think you made good value of your downtime from writing to refill your meter.
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Aloha! Your life is full of excitement now! Wonderful! I love to dig too. I had and inspirati
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Goodness! I don’t know whether to feel exhilarated or tired after reading this entry! A little of both, I think. We need to regrade our backyard. I want to put in a raised bed garden and it just slopes too much. We’ll need to hire someone, though. The clay soil in our area is just too heavy to do by hand. I love your quilt, especially the cheerful colors. Emilie would approve. She dressed many of her heroines in bright colors. Jean Randolph in yellow, and Nancy Caswell in green. Diane Vernon also wore yellow and a “tomato red swimsuit.” And Gail Trevor bought a “flame color net frock.” Lovely. “To the stars through difficulties.” I like that. What a great motivator through hard times. And speaking of stars, your picture of the northern lights and Big Dipper is gorgeous.
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Thank you, Anne. You’re right, it’s a little of both. I love getting an idea and then making it come to life. Halfway through, I sometimes wonder what I’ve gotten myself into, but it comes right in the end. Good luck with your clay soil. I was lucky that the portion I dug had been a garden, so the soil had been amended to make it diggable.
Even reading those color names gives me a lift. Thank you for “getting” what I’m going for. When I wake up to that quilt on my bed and lake sounds coming in the window, it’s going to be so rewarding. And the Northern Lights and Big Dipper together were really a treat to see!
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Do you ever relax and do nothing? At 77, I felt tired just reading about all you do. If it works for you, keep it up. However, I think we all need time out to rest and refresh ourselves and to talk to God. (This is not meant as criticism.) My grandmother made many quilts and had a huge quilt frame to make the hand sewing easier. When she made quilts the dining room table and chairs were moved to make room for the quilt frame. She also did extensive gardening in her younger years. Unfortunately, I was always incompetent at sewing or any creative crafts and a terrible gardener. The flowers in my bedroom are all artificial. However, I was given the gift of appreciation for the artistic accomplishments of others. We all have different gifts. Christine Battaglio
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Oh yes, I can slow waaayyy down! I feel most vital when I am mentally and/or physically active, but I also enjoy the rest periods between action when I can take in the stimuli around me and luxuriate in what I see, hear, touch, taste. Appreciation is one of my highest values; I’m with you there!
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Although I don’t “go big,” I so admire people who do! Enjoy your projects and your summer!
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Enjoy yours, too!
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