The Crane Wife

One of the first stories I ever told is an Asian (it is found in several traditions) story called the Crane Wife, or another version is called the Crane Maiden. I've told it as the Crane Maiden. The basic premise is that a man does a good deed fr a crane and is repaid when the crane turns herself into a woman who comes to live with the man as his daughter or wife. However, the man breaks her one rule and she must then leave. It's kind of a sad story.

After I told it two years ago at a benefit concert, I had the good fortune to be able to sit with David Novak (a fantastic and innovative storyteller from Asheville, NC) and discuss the story. It sounds stupid to say now, but I had never really realized how much this story was about the inner life of any woman. David said he thought that it was very much about the need a woman feels to hold a piece of herself secret so that she could give the rest of herself sacrificially to her family/husband/parents.

The longer I'm married the more I think that his interpretation holds a deeper truth about relationships that I'm only just now starting to understand. I've made it a goal, this year, to find balance in my life. While I think that this might be a life-long search, I have found that my efforts to balance everything have led me away from the creative life I have been used to. My creative endeavors have been more work-related, and not just with my job. Even as I was working last night on something I am creating for Christmas, I found myself enjoying the creative process far less than I expected.

In many ways I believe that my creative urges are related to my true self- the one that only shows herself when no one else is around, and can fly- and trying to balance my life has become muddled because I am trying to merge my creative self with the rest of me.

What can I say- I'ma woman. I remember my mother making 16 pairs of shorts one summer just before summer camp, so we would all have new shorts to take with us. I wonder sometimes how she managed to not get completely sick of sewing. She sewed all the time.

Next year will begin with an inordinately large amount of change-and that's scary to me. I'll start a new job doing something I want to do, but I'm terrified. What if I'm really really bad? Who's bright idea was it for me to teach math, anyway?

Too late to back out now.

My friend Stephaie has a blog called "Middle of the Beginning" I've been thinking about that title for a long time now. I know what it means to her (or at least I think I do) but it always draws a different connotation to me. We are alwqays in the middle of the beginning, because life is not cut and dried like a story. There is not a "happily ever after" that we sit back and imagine as being a long lovely, stable period of life which slowly fades to obscurity. Life is more like reading a very long book, which you must constantly put down so you can go about your real life- full of abrupt and unfinished endings, which may be picked up later if you are lucky enough not to lose your place. Or like a tide, constantly picking up and easing back. Wave after wave.

So sometimes I sit alone in my house, before my husband gets home from work, and after I get off work, and I turn into a crane. I don't pluck out my own feathers to weave for the good of my family...that comes later when I do the laundry, or the dishes. I do what cranes do...

The Story Tsunami Benefit Concert: Chara Watson telling The Crane Maiden

Old Friends

I'm a bit addicted to finding new music on the web- mostly indie singers, and especially women. One particular blog I look at recently featured a couple of great songs by a woman named Sylvie Lewis. One of the songs, "Old Friend" sort of sums up how I'm feelig this Christmas. (If you are so inclined, you can download it here)

My Uncle Craig recently started a new blog of his own. I guess his nieces and nephews were saying so much that he decded to toss in his two cents. This morning I woke to his latest post, which also summed up the melancholy that I've been feeling.

My family never had Christmas on Christmas Day. Every year we would write Santa and tell him that he needed to come a few days early because we were going to go visit our family in Oklahoma for Christmas and we wouldn't be at home on Christmas day. Santa was very accomodating. And why wouldn't he be? I always figured that this was (of course) how Santa got all the presents out in time- he had enough people traveling for Christmas that he would spend several nights delivering presents, and thus, no one night rush (Duh)!

Anyway, the result is that we spent Christmas with my extended family until I was 21 or 22 years old. It's only been in the last few years that I have stayed in Tennessee, or gone to visit my in-laws (wherever they might be) over the Holidays.

This year Josh and I intended to try to go to Oklahoma to visit everyone. This year it seemed especially important. I wanted to see my family- all of them, especially my Grandma and my Great Uncle Joe, who I haven't seen since Christa's wedding.

But this year I am about to transition into a new job and Josh has limited time off, and we're going to visit Jack and Carole in Colorado (yay- snow at Christmas!) and... it's not going to happen. I don't really think I want to see my Granny's house empty anyway.

I keep looking at the pictures that my Uncle Craig took. We'd just gotten home from the funeral and the wind was really blowing hard and we all just stood out there watching the storm coming and coming. When it did finally come it was cold and the rain would come right up under the porch to soak your feet and legs. What my insides couldn't express came out in the violent wind, thunder and lightning. I stood out there a long time. Looking at those pictures feels like looking at old diary entries. It wasn't a rain that washed me clean, it was the beginning of a long journey.

Old Friends
The next time we meet we will be Old Friends.
We'll stand on the street laughing like old friends
Time will be kind, you won't have changed
your smile will be exactly the same.
One day we'll meet,
but we don't know when,
drink coffee and tea just like two old friends
you'll tell me your stories and I'll tell you mine
and we'll wonder at the passing of time.
No one can take your place
no one fill the space you leave when you go.
If we should lose touch you will not lose my love.
We'll catch up. Somewhere down the road... down the road
I hope you'll agree we'd make good old frieds.
If it were up to me that would be my goal, friend.
We'll take stock of one (?)in rooms full of song,
And we'll be old friends if I'm not wrong.
We'll be old friends before too long.

Well, I'm still at my parents house. I'm on my Dad's computer.

It's weird working here- it gets really quiet. I'm probably going to go for a walk sometime today.

**twiddles thumbs**

well, not much going on.

Sad news

Well, no pictures. No pictures because I no longer have a computer. After work on mMonday i turned off my computer and went about my business around the house. When i tried to turn it on again- nothing. It comes on, but the screen is black. No Music, no pictures, no documents...

This is very bad for a girl who telecommutes.

So I'm at my parent's house using their super-duper internet access. Man I love the high speed of a cable modem. I can download this stuff really fast! Except I don't because I don't have a computer to put it on... GRRRR!

Anyway... My posts (sorry, they've been a bit infrequent of late) may become a bit (more) boring for a short while.

By the way- keep your prayers with these people... All of the craft blogs I look at are friends with the wife from her site (Doe)and while they've found Kati (the mother) they haven't found her husband James, who left the car to find help.

Christmas Season

I'm sitting here looking at this blamk screen thinking about how I want to update my blog, but it seems that I have nothing to say. Maybe it's just that there are things I cannot say in words. So I'll try to give you context.

Josh and I had lunch with some good friends yesterday... Andy and Suzanne just moved to Murfreesboro to open a new business. I really like Andy and Suzanne- we always laugh a lot with them. Suzanne was telling me about what it's been like on the lot of their new business since the actual business hasn't been too busy (still building and organizing and getting set up). So Suzanne has started playing Spider Solitaire (I encouraged her to just make the leap to two decks- it's thrilling!) a lot and one afternoon she was also watching Family Fued on the TV in the RV they're running the business out of at the moment. No one was around so as the opening credits came on Suzanne introduced the show at the top of her lungs: "Family FUED!"
And she she noticed a nice-looking man who had stopped into the lot. She blushed a little when she told me about it.
Man, I missed Suzanne.

I've been keeping up with my Aunt Beth's blog. She's moved back to Oklahoma and is looking for a job and living with my Aunt Patty. Its funny to grow up and find yourself re-defining your relationship with your family. My Aunt Beth's blog is very honest. She's having a rough time right now and she's so honest about it. It's sort of encouraging to be confronted with that kind of honesty.

I'm terribly embarassed, but I'm obsessed with this: http://lonelygirl15.com/

I had a blast last Friday night at the Dixie Chicks COncert in Nashville. It was a roockin good time. I went to dinner with my fabulous sisters and we all enjoyed the music. I miss doing stuff with my sisters!!

We put up the Christmas tree last week. I'm annoyed because it doesn't smell very strong- what's the point of getting the real trees if they don't smell?? I think Josh has the camera, so i'll take pictures later and post them for you.