Author Archives: Sandi LoConti

The Art of Puttering

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This seemed to be the week of people getting organized, finally overcoming the overwhelming bedlam they call their homes, or their closets, or their minds, or their life.  Organization is a wonderful thing but I prefer puttering. Puttering seems to prevent any overwhelming anything.

The earliest meaning of puttering was the action of poking or prodding something repeatedly or to do something idly to pass the time.  I don’t use puttering to pass the time; I live in a constant state of puttering.  To me it’s not about being lazy but to move through my day at a slower pace, change direction on a whim, zero in on a nagging bit of something or just catch up to myself.  I could do this for a few minutes during my work week, or for a few hours when I get home from somewhere, or for an entire weekend.

Some people are deliberate in their puttering setting aside a certain amount of time or relishing specific days to putter like Monday holidays.  Some formal putterers wear particular “puttering” outfits or eat specific puttering food, never a full meal but something a step above snacks.   Others have rules for puttering.  I even read about someone finding themselves in a period of “puttering prayer”.  Not fully engaged but turning their attention to God in the moment and then carrying on with their day.  I kinda love that, just sayin.

For those people in full on chaos puttering will have to come later, although my Sister has a method that is working for her.  What bothers you the most, do that.  Repeat as necessary. I’m an organized person and a world class putterer, kind of the Martha Stewart of puttering.  When I’m in putter mode I have no set goals, no specific rules, no deadlines I simply relish the act of puttering.  The only thing I might turn to during a languid  turned energetic act of puttering is a good play list; The Big Chill soundtrack comes to mind.

Here’s how it might look.  Early mornings on Stowe Lane look the same every day, dog walking, dog feeding, nutriblast (or I might not see a vegetable all day) and latte.  Every day, no deviation it just works.  As I’m drinking my coffee something might catch my eye, like the spice and stuff corner of the kitchen.  Maybe they need topping off, maybe they need rearranging, maybe I might want to clean the canisters.  You see what I mean.

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That done, relax with a book for a while or catch up on TiVo.  Perhaps start the wash and then decide to change the sheets.  With a little help from Toto that might take a bit more time, so why not make another cup of coffee and take it to the deck.  Lina and Toto enjoy the deck too, coffee finished and I can continue on with the sheets.  It’s carefree, it gets done, everyone is happy.

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So while the laundry is going I’ll go back to the deck and catch up on some work.  I could work all day everyday but in these fits and starts I can pace myself and not even notice how much I’m working.  After a certain amount of time or the completion of a specific task I feel free to daydream a bit. The imagination needs moodling, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering said Brenda Ueland.  I couldn’t agree more, as I’m moving through some of the puttering I do feel like I’m dawdling but things are getting done, things I didn’t realize needed doing until just moments before. It’s quite efficient in its inefficiency.

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And one’s imagination does get rolling, so much so that I have to jot things down periodically so they’re not lost.  Little tidbits of this and that for a post or didn’t I have a picture that might work for something?  You see there is truth in imagination being unleashed in a clear mind. All of that done, sometimes I just sit.  And think.  Or doze.

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Or pop up and take a photo walk.  Why not?  There’s always something interesting happening nearby on my beloved Stowe Lane, or the farmer’s market, or a fair, or someone’s garden.  You never really have to walk far but somehow I don’t even notice I’m walking when I’ve got my camera with me.

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In the end there are many upsides to puttering.  There is a relaxation that comes over you, then a sense of accomplishment even if it is just rearranging the spices or one shelf in a closet or making a grocery list or throwing out all the expired medicines or discovering a new color, or talking with everyone in the neighborhood.  Because there’s no pressure to do any of it.

Everyone should learn the art of puttering.  If you don’t think you’re capable, find someone who can teach you.  I read somewhere that every neighborhood has a world class putterer with too much time on their hands that will gladly  join you under the guise of teaching.  We can never get enough.

 

Father’s Navy Hammock

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Imagine, if you will, growing up in an old-fashioned sort of family, in an old-fashioned sort of family`s back yard, with trees and grass and flower beds and a hammock strung between two maple trees in a far, shady corner. Imagine you and your friends, when no one else is around, swinging each other as high and as hard as you can, stopping only when one of you swings all the way around and ends up lying in a heap on the grass. – July 28, 1985|By Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Sentinel

It wasn’t exactly like that but damn close.  My friends weren’t really interested in my Father’s old Navy hammock but I was.  In the dog days of summer it was heaven on earth lying in the shade of the two maples with a book.  Summers back then didn’t seem nearly as hot.  Our backyard had a lot of shade, a constant breeze and the old maple was always in motion, rustling, reaching for the sky.  I could stay there for hours; my Mother always knew where I was and never bothered me.  If I fell asleep in it, so be it.

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I’ve been hearing lots of irritable remarks about the summer doldrums lately.  I admit I’m not a summer person but this summer seems more manageable to me somehow.  We’ve had a lot of rain and my garden isn’t complaining a bit.  We’ve had cool mornings that are conducive to coffee on the deck, especially with the overhead fan whirring, which has been practically unheard of in summers past.

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I’ve become nostalgic for that hammock several times in my life.  My first apartment (a hundred years ago) was a third floor walkup with no air conditioning. The coolest part of the place was my tiny guest bedroom, or as I called it my sewing room. I often fantasized about hanging the old hammock in that room, coming home from work, taking a cool shower and crawling into it with a book. If I fell asleep in it, so be it.

Another time was in my first house.  We had a hammock but it was woven rope and it never seemed as comfortable to me as the old canvas one I knew as a kid.  It was a shame to have lost that poor thing to old age and rot.  If I recall correctly it was my Grandfather who was the one who wound up falling through it.

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By the time our family no longer had any ties to the old house the maples had grown over the hooks that held up the hammock and only the memories of it remained.  There are days when the heat is high and the breeze is just enough that I would love to crawl back into that hammock and lose myself in a book.  That’s no longer an option but the memory of it serves as a reminder that summer is for using less energy, catching up on the slow things and enjoying obligatory lazing.

And Good Conversation

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The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you. Jean de la Bruyere 

 One of my best legacy lessons is to be someone’s first call.  I was someone’s first call this week and it was joyous.  When someone dear to you has had a fine day doing something new in a place that will soon be called home and they call to tell you all about it you have entered a special place in their heart.  When only you would understand the joy they feel riding home in the dark after a day filled with new people and places you have met them where they are.  When there is more listening than talking on your part, when the laughter and tears fill the same conversation, when everyone hangs up feeling heard new roads have been traveled together. When you can’t stop smiling hours after the conversation ends you know like you know that forever is now.

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I was someone else’s first call after arriving home from some very long and wonderful travel.  Meet we must in our usual place the sooner the better. And so we did among the lunch crowd, minus our usual server in a crowded neighborhood pub. Catching up on the fun and laments of the months we’d been apart, laughing and concerned, a tear or two, many more laughs and quips and hugs later we take a breath and notice there is no one left in the place.  Such is the joy of being together.

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Someone’s first call of the morning; you in today? On my way in now.  Then it will be worth it for me to come down.  Every once in a while you meet a new old friend.  Someone that has traveled your road walked your walk and thinks your think…even though you just met.  They have some of what you don’t and you have something too and you pick up where you left off even though you’ve just begun.  You love their family and they know what you’re thinking from the words you’ve written.  It’s glorious and seldom that this comes along.  It is a blessing full of exchanging ideas and ideology and technical blah blah that you would never ask anyone else for fear of being….something.

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Someone’s first call to someone else can be a delight for you as well.  Long overdue we meet at another usual place midway between three here and theres. My Sister’s boy is her light at any moment he is near her.  He is precious in his sweetness and love for her.  He is spoiled because he is such a wonderful about to be teenager with none of the manic depressive drama to be seen…yet. We three adults share a bond that can never be broken, made of unspoken words, sleeping on the floor and just being within whisper range of each other at the lowest point of our lives to date. Those days behind us we revel in our time around the table and in this child.  He is a nonstop delight and can talk to his Aunt incessantly.  Aunt Terri remember when…Aunt Terri remember…Aunt Terri yeah I like rap…such and such and Lil Wayne,  whatever happened to Lil Wayne…how could we not laugh and delight in this wonderful kid who just asked his 52 year old Aunt, who’s only knowledge of rap is on a door, whatever happen to Lil Wayne.  And so the night went with its constant stream of Aunt Terri’s, a new menu that caused all the food to be late, an amazing and funny server who kept everyone from being hangry…a night to remember because of course we all smiled all the way home.

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These weren’t just conversations they were inscriptions on our hearts.  Warmth and sharing and oh yeah there were words too.  One of Yogi Berra’s nuggets of wisdom, “It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much” might have rung true this week were it not for the satisfaction had by all.  Everyone was completely pleased with our cleverness and each other. It was conversational perfection because we talked in present tenses.

 

 

 

The For Nothings

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“The second best thing after a gift itself is the way of giving it” ― Ali Boussi

In the middle of the mom’s-been-rushed-to-the-hospital-with-a-UTI saga I thought that rescheduling our, now annual, Christmas in July celebration might be appropriate. But we could make it look a bit different she said.  Ok?  Let’s just be together.  And so it was that I found myself with my best friend and her daughter at Kinchley’s on Friday night.  Not the elaborate sleep over we had planned but a fun dinner at a place that defies gloom on every level.  We ordered and while waiting they both began to fidget a bit in their seats.

We got something for you.

You did?  I was genuinely surprised and they were both pretty happy with themselves about that fact.

Do you want to go first, no you go first.  Should we give her this first or that first?

There’s a this AND a that?

From out of the bag emboldened with the words “shopping is my cardio” came the first something.  Prefaced by the disclaimer: “you know we are big believers in “for nothings” so we found this at a tag sale in Lake George and we thought of you.  All I heard was “we thought of you” and then the book came out of the bag.  What else would you give a person so enamored with legacy but a book titled Pioneer Women, Voices from the Kansas Frontier.  The introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr alone made my heart skip a beat.  I know I’m a history legacy crazy woman. But how perfect, even after the man holding the tag sale said all the good books were inside, these were just the cast offs.

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Now which one? They looked at each other. Oh this one is really cool Aunt San.  It was a book, no it is a book but they carved your initial out of it.  It’s repurposed.  And damn cool if you ask me I said.

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This one’s from me.  In the box were two spoons one small and one larger.  I know where these are from, they looked at each other as if I were crazy or knew their every move, no not where you got them but where they’re from.

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They are from Malaysia.  I have a set very similar to them.  Turns out on one of their pop-ins at a local antique shop (because after all one must get in their cardio) my dear niece exclaimed, look Mom, spoons for Aunt San. The spoons are wonderful but even more wonderful; I’m in there. There are references that only equate to me in that beautiful little girl’s mind and I had all to do not to…well you know.  In my heart I hope that I was gracious in accepting these wonderful thoughtful gifts and not seem so selfish in my discovery that my legacy is growing with this future woman.

Dinner was fun; the movie we watched was fun.  We three had fun.  It was indeed a “cost nothing” kind of night that will forever be precious to me.  I may not be the Aunt that comes to the birthday parties but I am the Christmas Eve Aunt, the cool in some weird kind of way Aunt, the Aunt that stands in for Grandmas that can’t make performances and the Aunt that collects spoons, pottery and chairs.

“Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving…. Accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.” ― Alexander McCall Smith

P.S. I stand corrected on the proper “nothing”.  I was mistaken in thinking it was a “cost nothing” when it was a “for nothing” an even better nothing than the first.  It remained a cost nothing kind of an evening however.  Hopefully I’ve made it right this time.  

Conditioning the Air

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The apartment above me has finally been purchased after months and months of being empty.  You may recall my former neighbor was…something…reliant…addicted.  She was in trouble. The new owners are a lovely family with two young girls.  Now that the moving and fixing and tiling and hammering and sawing are mostly done, the sounds from above are giggly and joyous and alive.  A far cry from the former sounds…or lack of sounds which could be even more disturbing.

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One of the more aggravating sounds from what seems like long ago and far away was the sound of the air conditioner running…constantly…right outside my deck.  You know the deck that looks out on the enchanted forest, the deck that induces long-lasting exhales, the deck that makes coffee taste better, the one that has all that antique-salvaged-from-estate-sales furniture. Seems part of addiction is that you don’t know how to work the thermostat…but you do know how to wear three sweatshirts.  It was a very sad state of affairs.   As soon as the air conditioner would turn off it seemed to turn back on.

Now, enter a young family on a budget….ahhhhh.  The air turns on and off at reasonable intervals but even better is the epiphany moment when I heard the wind chimes tinkle.  I had never hung the wind chimes from this particular hook before, they always hung inside, so when I just threw them up to get them….someplace. I didn’t even think about the fact that each time the air conditioner runs it sends up just enough breeze to move the chimes.  Double ahhhhh.

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The wind chimes were a little house warming gift from my sister.  Meant to induce peace, which I sorely needed to induce at that time, I hung them in the pass through between my kitchen and dining area.  Every time I needed a little peace I would just pucker up and blow and the sound would help me switch direction.  Toward peace. A lifesaver many a time; this little set of chimes continues its peacekeeping legacy on my beloved deck.