Lessons and Reminders All Around
How curiosity about an old house reminded me to slow down and appreciate the mundane
When I first met my now husband, he lived in a wonderful little house on the south side of the city (in Forest Hill, if you know Richmond, Virginia). We lived there together for a little over a year. We believe it was built in the 1920s, but even if we're a bit fuzzy on that detail, we do know for certain that he was only the third owner of the house. The second owners were architects. Their updates, specifically in the kitchen and the upstairs space, were a huge part of the charm of the place. Bright tiles and clean-lined wooden cabinets in the kitchen. So, so many built-in drawers along the sides of the upstairs space, making up for the hallmark older-home lack of closets downstairs.
The architects were Mimi Sadler and Camden Whitehead (who own the local firm Sadler & Whitehead), and recently there was an exhibition of Whitehead's work up at our local museum of architecture and design. A couple of weeks ago, on a particularly cold and rainy Saturday, we took the opportunity to learn a little more about one of the designers whose work we'd lived alongside for a bit.
Admittedly, we were also curious about whether any photos of our old house would be included. While they were not, we could absolutely see common themes: wooden cabinet knobs, built-in storage, color-washed woods, cork flooring, all with a sense of playfulness. And while it was fun to trace the familiar, the most meaningful takeaways for me came from Whitehead's own reflections on his work.
In the artist's statement for the show he writes:
I believe in slow. Slow should not be confused with sloth or inaction. Slow requires an intense focus and rigor. Slow allows for a more productive integration of action and reflection about one's life and work. (Camden Whitehead: A Visual Manifesto)
Earlier in the week I had just been involved in a discussion about the importance of mindfulness and self-awareness, specifically in relationship to others, in training I'm helping facilitate this semester. Reading this in Whitehead's statement felt like an exclamation point emphasizing the message to just slow down. To take a moment to savor, or process, or just sit with. And how doing so nurtures both our life and our work. The creative and the interpersonal.
This linking of life and work came up again, in explanation of this part of the exhibit:
These daily to-do lists were hung low, beneath the sketches, watercolors, and renderings. Early in the exhibit there was an explanation of how Whitehead learned from a friend how to fold a single sheet of paper into a booklet. He then started making his daily to-do lists in these folded booklets. Here's what he shared about their inclusion in the exhibit:
I love the message here about the integration of all parts of oneself: we are all the things we do and the roles we play. We do work things and art things and family things and personal things all side-by-side-by-side every day. And when we talk about these myriad tasks and selves as things to be "balanced," we risk pitting them against each other instead of seeing them as compatible. All needs and desires. All serving each other.
I showed up at this exhibit mostly out of curiosity about an old house (and admittedly partly as a diversion from yet another cold, gray winter afternoon) and left with so much more. A great reminder that there are messages and lessons everywhere when we allow ourselves to slow down enough to make the connections.
This Time Last Year
I was also learning lessons from art.
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Squirrel of the Week
From the US Department of the Interior— the Lemonade Berry is a shrub native to California that produces (as it sounds) small tart, lemony fruits that squirrels enjoy snacking on.
I'd love to hear about reminders or lessons or little nudges that have shown up for you in unexpected places. Where has your curiosity (or desire to escape a gray day) taken you lately?
I'm saving this post so I can return to it later. I loved it. The idea of elevating the mundane particularly resonates with me, because so often, I DO feel like the minutiae of life competes with the Important Goals, like writing a novel, reading a book, sitting still in nature, snuggling my animals. I like the idea of all of it serving all of it. I'm going to try to embrace that.
I'm currently struggling with the inability to use my left hand due to some neurological screw up that's still being investigated. I whined about it on social media and then a friend who's an incomplete quadriplegic remind me that she too struggles with the loss of function in a limb. I felt slightly like a dirt bag, but as I've experienced over and over in my life, there's always someone out there who has it harder. I think that was my reminder from the universe to slow down, let my medical situation play out, and do the best I can with what I've got right now.
Admittedly, I don't make a very patient patient, and I don't like not being functional (and I hate not riding, crocheting, sewing, WORKING), but I will take the lesson.
I have good dictation software, maybe it's time for me to do some writing, myself.