Hoping for the Best

In "The Writing Life" Annie Dillard
admonishes

don't save the good stuff,

use it!

Those precious phrases, or in my case those fabrics,beads and jewelry kept safe in my art boxes for decades, demand to be given Life. Everything in this piece bears the weight of memory. The "frame" is old
yellow silk from a wedding dress, lace collars from Aunt Hazel and all of the beads , pins, buttons, Annie told me to use. The lower picture inside the frame is a postcard of Ball's Park in old Mukilteo circa 1900,repainted and idealized. My kitchen window looked out into those trees for 27 years ,1985 to 2007 . A place of refuge , joy and love . A place of leaving and of being left. The young woman in the upper panel belongs to the time, but lived elsewhere, I just loved her beautiful face and carriage. Note the way she leans toward a sound or a thought. Her name is Grace and we did not meet her until she was over eighty. The carved finial from a clock leaps upward as a wave of water, balancing the gold pocket watch below.

And that long winter as I worked on this , stitching thousands of silvery beads,

I wondered if all of the Good Stuff was gone from my repetoire,

from my Life. But it still pours.