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| Power Style Wellness Connections |
The Connection
the women in my family have always had a subterranean method of
communication.
By Mary Cartledgehayes
My older daughter, Tara, is here to visit for a few days. If I didn’t know
better, I’d swear I conjured her up from a half-remembered dream. Not
that it takes an incantation for her to come visit me, but the timing seems
suspicious…
Last Saturday, I went out scouting yard sales and flea markets and came
home with a remarkable find. It’s a piece of lace-edged linen suitable for
topping a mantel or upright piano. The lace is the kind once found only
on the garments of queens and princesses: hand tatted, eight inches at
its deepest, in a radiant pattern that combines lace wagon wheels, criss-
crosses, and pendants.
When I got the piece home, I saw it was perfectly sized for the linen half
to lay flat on the mantel with the lace half hanging down. There it softens
the edges of the wood and adds a glimmer of elegance to the room. The
lace is exquisite and it’s mine: all mine.
Such was the state of affairs until Monday morning when I woke up
thinking I should give Tara the mantel covering for her birthday. It is the
perfect gift. Her house in South Carolina was built in 1822 and was
added onto and renovated every 30 years or so ever since. The mantel
in her dusky living room would showcase the lace in ways my modern
white living room never will. The piece deserves that sort of setting.
But, I next thought, I don’t know whether Tara wants something like that
for her living room. I wouldn’t want to send her a birthday present she
doesn’t care for. I guess I’d better keep it for myself, in my own living
room.
Within an hour of this conversation with myself, I got a text message from
Tara. She rarely texts me, only every six weeks or so, so naturally I was
curious when I pushed the buttons to retrieve her message. The
message said, “Are u home this week?”
I send back a quick “Yes.”
“I think I come see u.”
The upshot was that she left South Carolina at 8:44 the next morning
and drove to Louisville. Now, as I write, she’s stroking my dog that she’s
fallen in love with, and we’ve already tracked down numerous items for
the Kentucky Derby party she plans to throw at her house next May.
About the linen-and-lace piece, she said, “Mother, you’ll be tired of it by
the time my birthday gets here, so you won’t mind sending it to me.”
Her birthday is in October, and I’m quite sure I won’t have tired of the
piece. I also suspect that through some mysterious combination of love
and air currents she caught wind of my decision to keep the piece for
myself. Why else would she have decided on that day of all days to pay
me a visit?
Maybe your life is more prosaic than mine, and this sort of thing doesn’t
happen to you, but the women in my family have always had a
subterranean method of communication. My mother has always been
able to name from the sound of the telephone’s ring which of her four
children is calling. My sister in Arizona was notorious for phoning me
when, unbeknownst to her, I was under duress. My daughters and I
continue that propensity. I just didn’t know that it extended to lace.
In truth, maybe it didn’t include textiles when all three of us lived in South
Carolina. Why would it? There we moved casually and frequently through
each other’s lives. Possessions — shoes, end tables, china¬¬ — drifted
from one of our homes to another. We hardly needed incantatory power,
or a sixth sense, to know what was going on. Now, though, the distance is
an unrelenting element in our relationships. I live eight hours from Tara,
who lives another eight hours from eastern North Carolina where
Jennifer, my younger daughter, lives.
Jennifer has in her bedroom my favorite antique dresser, which somehow
never got moved to Kentucky. One of the girls — at the moment neither
can say which — has the pink occasional table, with one leg held
together with masking tape, that I bought at an auction when I was 10
years old. So we are visibly and concretely present to each other, no
matter where we live. But that’s not the part you worry about it, is it? The
part you worry about losing, when it comes to family, is the hidden
connection, the invisible presence, the mystical connection that keeps
you whole.
Tara spotted the linen-and-lace mantel cover before she was well inside
the front door. We continue to joke about where it might end up in mid-
October on her birthday. I don’t know yet. But I do know that I now have a
bread-baking machine in my kitchen. Jennifer bought it at a South
Carolina yard sale for $5. She baked a loaf or two of bread, but then it
sat unused in her cupboard. When she was moving to North Carolina,
she gave it to her sister, who baked a loaf or two of bread and put it up.
Tara tried to sell it at a yard sale last weekend but had no takers, so she
brought it along in hopes I might need it.
“Why, yes, I’ve always wanted one,” I told her.
My plan, if I lose interest in the machine after my allotted loaf or two of
bread, is to deliver the machine to my mother. She and my dad already
have two bread machines which they use at least three times a week.
They’ll be happy to have a spare in case of mechanical malfunction. And
so it goes. One big and happy family supplying each other’s needs in
ways both spoken and unexpected.
MARY CARTLEDGEHAYES IS A REGULAR WRITER FOR Today’s
Woman.
the women in my family have always had a subterranean method of
communication.
By Mary Cartledgehayes
My older daughter, Tara, is here to visit for a few days. If I didn’t know
better, I’d swear I conjured her up from a half-remembered dream. Not
that it takes an incantation for her to come visit me, but the timing seems
suspicious…
Last Saturday, I went out scouting yard sales and flea markets and came
home with a remarkable find. It’s a piece of lace-edged linen suitable for
topping a mantel or upright piano. The lace is the kind once found only
on the garments of queens and princesses: hand tatted, eight inches at
its deepest, in a radiant pattern that combines lace wagon wheels, criss-
crosses, and pendants.
When I got the piece home, I saw it was perfectly sized for the linen half
to lay flat on the mantel with the lace half hanging down. There it softens
the edges of the wood and adds a glimmer of elegance to the room. The
lace is exquisite and it’s mine: all mine.
Such was the state of affairs until Monday morning when I woke up
thinking I should give Tara the mantel covering for her birthday. It is the
perfect gift. Her house in South Carolina was built in 1822 and was
added onto and renovated every 30 years or so ever since. The mantel
in her dusky living room would showcase the lace in ways my modern
white living room never will. The piece deserves that sort of setting.
But, I next thought, I don’t know whether Tara wants something like that
for her living room. I wouldn’t want to send her a birthday present she
doesn’t care for. I guess I’d better keep it for myself, in my own living
room.
Within an hour of this conversation with myself, I got a text message from
Tara. She rarely texts me, only every six weeks or so, so naturally I was
curious when I pushed the buttons to retrieve her message. The
message said, “Are u home this week?”
I send back a quick “Yes.”
“I think I come see u.”
The upshot was that she left South Carolina at 8:44 the next morning
and drove to Louisville. Now, as I write, she’s stroking my dog that she’s
fallen in love with, and we’ve already tracked down numerous items for
the Kentucky Derby party she plans to throw at her house next May.
About the linen-and-lace piece, she said, “Mother, you’ll be tired of it by
the time my birthday gets here, so you won’t mind sending it to me.”
Her birthday is in October, and I’m quite sure I won’t have tired of the
piece. I also suspect that through some mysterious combination of love
and air currents she caught wind of my decision to keep the piece for
myself. Why else would she have decided on that day of all days to pay
me a visit?
Maybe your life is more prosaic than mine, and this sort of thing doesn’t
happen to you, but the women in my family have always had a
subterranean method of communication. My mother has always been
able to name from the sound of the telephone’s ring which of her four
children is calling. My sister in Arizona was notorious for phoning me
when, unbeknownst to her, I was under duress. My daughters and I
continue that propensity. I just didn’t know that it extended to lace.
In truth, maybe it didn’t include textiles when all three of us lived in South
Carolina. Why would it? There we moved casually and frequently through
each other’s lives. Possessions — shoes, end tables, china¬¬ — drifted
from one of our homes to another. We hardly needed incantatory power,
or a sixth sense, to know what was going on. Now, though, the distance is
an unrelenting element in our relationships. I live eight hours from Tara,
who lives another eight hours from eastern North Carolina where
Jennifer, my younger daughter, lives.
Jennifer has in her bedroom my favorite antique dresser, which somehow
never got moved to Kentucky. One of the girls — at the moment neither
can say which — has the pink occasional table, with one leg held
together with masking tape, that I bought at an auction when I was 10
years old. So we are visibly and concretely present to each other, no
matter where we live. But that’s not the part you worry about it, is it? The
part you worry about losing, when it comes to family, is the hidden
connection, the invisible presence, the mystical connection that keeps
you whole.
Tara spotted the linen-and-lace mantel cover before she was well inside
the front door. We continue to joke about where it might end up in mid-
October on her birthday. I don’t know yet. But I do know that I now have a
bread-baking machine in my kitchen. Jennifer bought it at a South
Carolina yard sale for $5. She baked a loaf or two of bread, but then it
sat unused in her cupboard. When she was moving to North Carolina,
she gave it to her sister, who baked a loaf or two of bread and put it up.
Tara tried to sell it at a yard sale last weekend but had no takers, so she
brought it along in hopes I might need it.
“Why, yes, I’ve always wanted one,” I told her.
My plan, if I lose interest in the machine after my allotted loaf or two of
bread, is to deliver the machine to my mother. She and my dad already
have two bread machines which they use at least three times a week.
They’ll be happy to have a spare in case of mechanical malfunction. And
so it goes. One big and happy family supplying each other’s needs in
ways both spoken and unexpected.
MARY CARTLEDGEHAYES IS A REGULAR WRITER FOR Today’s
Woman.