Dear Maura

Africa Calls! Off to Kenya and Rwanda

There's a lot of change and transformation happening in these countries and women are at the forefront of much of it. I'm here with a delegation affiliated with World Pulse (worldpulse.com), the international organization connecting women's voices worldwide, to meet face-to-face with those working in the micro-enterprise movement, health care, education, healing and human rights. We'll have the honor of meeting leaders affiliated The Green Belt Movement, Jamii Bora, Center for Rights Education and Partners in Health, among others. This is my first time to Africa. There is much to learn. Life changes when people have the opportunity to get their voice out there and be witnessed. I am so eager to listen to what makes peoples' hearts beat, what they envision for their futures, how we can all be in partnership as one world. I am eager to dance!

You're invited to check out some of my latest work on Facebook at LegacyBeyondBorders. Legacy isn't what you leave behind. It's what you live now. Live it with gratitude. And light!

 

Riding the Rails with Joe

Christmas Vacation. Endless, sunny skies in Southern California. Here's my youngest brother, Joe, sitting across from me on the Amtrak Surfliner that glides up and down the Pacific Coast. What could be better than this? Not much!  Here's a fellow who can't read, but boy is he enjoying holding and studying the Amtrak train schedule! How Joe's cognitive brain works is very much a mystery but we've never let that get in the way. Joe's twinkling blue eyes says it all:  I love being on this train with my sister! I love watching the world go by! I love holding my train tickets! All aboard the love train. Unfettered glee. That's how time is with Joe. How lucky I am to be his sister. Love is simply never complicated. Thank you, sweet brother!

Weaving Threads of our Legacies

I've talked to so many interesting people lately and the word "legacy" keeps popping up. What was your father's legacy? What was your mother's legacy? What is your legacy?  A word that always felt so weighted with gravitas and legal documents and morose salutations now seems filled with a lightness of being. We all are descendants of people who wove marvelous threads.

I'll stay with the metaphor. My mother kept a sewing machine in our family room, the machine her mother, my German Nana, bequeathed her upon her wedding engagement. My mother used the well-oiled, "White" brand sewing machine not to conjure couture but to patch holes. I, on the other hand, caught a whiff of the grandeur of sewing back in the 1970s and ate at the counter of Butterick and Vogue at my local House of Fabrics store (accessible after a five-mile bike ride, zooming past L.A. freeways.) To this day do I appreciate the scents of the sensuous I caught from the covers of those patterns, those sophisticated women who no doubt gathered at The Algonquin Hotel, a place I'd one day saunter after moving to New York City and working at The New Yorker. Counting the advertising revenues--that was my day job. But at night, it was art meets architecture. The angularity of the city intersecting with eternal circles of my own family history in Manhattan.

Here is another piece of recent artwork celebrating the weaves of our legacies. Okay, right brain (creative) meets left brain (analytical.) Being informed, form-fitting, measuring grains, loosening diaphanous edges. What the heck--wishing upon an evening star in high heels. The poetry lingers on.

A Still Life Video in Yamhill County (Wine Country) With Pooches.
Oh, a small moment. 28 seconds to be exact. In the early morning the sun glazed the leaves of the grapes du vineyards with eager sparkle, and the pooches stood still as if we were painting their kind faces. A wonderful way to celebrate a birthday and autumn and this beautiful part of the world.

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/ea74fa2c2051b63773048e9bf20d9a4e/video/25022191

Mirth=Connection

 

When is the first time you remember feeling "seen" as a child? I was so shy, winning the Most Quiet Girl Award in my eighth grade class. I once stood in a passel of chattering school chums when a classmate looked at me and said, "What's wrong with you--you never say a word!" Sometime after that comment (and after winning my award), I gave a speech in front of my class. I trudged up to the podium with a talk I wrote called "People Need People." Plastered on the front cover was this photograph of a girl scout tapping the rump of one of her troop leaders. I loved the mischief of that young girl. Her actions said: I know we all look solid and stolid and official but let's not forget to feel mirth in the moment. Mirth= Connection. I read my paper out loud to my class the way a lion roars in the jungle. It was thrilling to feel my audience bathe in my words. In that moment, I felt seen. 

The author and international peace consultant, James O'Dea, said in a recent interview how important it is for people to be known for their essence, their qualities. One person may be tart cherry. Another sweet apricot. To be known for your qualities is to be born into your leadership.

It all germinates from a very early age. Remembering when you first felt seen is an important part of your life story.

The Narrative of Dresses

This is a painting I keep close to my writing desk. I drew this in art class a few years ago. I am usually a word person so putting the pen and keyboard down to pick up a charcoal pencil and flit about with paints was an exercise of complete panic and sheer joy.

I am exploring the narrative of dresses in this next book I am writing. I grew up in the 1970s as a wild seamstress. Wild in that I sewed late into the night with the wind howling through my lace curtains and the glow from the full moon waltzing about my bedroom. That's what sewing felt like! Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, I fell into the fantasy life of where a couture dress of my own making might take me.

So (sew), I'm painting dresses, letting all of this dress creativity unfold like a bolt of gauze cloth that whirs and gathers in the wind, as summer winds down and dreams of woolen capes are soon to emerge.

 

Elbows on the Table: Afternoon

Elbows on the Table: Afternoon

We sit at the kitchen table

in the afternoon, threads of sun weave

halo blankets, a speckled voice shimmers:

 How was your day, my mother asks, as if the day ended

the moment I walked in the front door

after school

in my uniform

ready for milk and what the heck

a Hostess cupcake or Ding Dong.

I am learning all about living and reflection,

and the comfort of a kitchen companion.

I watch the mother across from me

(she once in pearls)

 sit with elbows on the table, 

breathe in and out like the tides,

as if the day begins, each

time I speak and she glistens again.

--Maura Conlon-McIvor, 2010

It is summer and a ripe time to share poetry!

 

Life on the Playground With Dad

Did your father take you to the local playground when you were a kid? Do you remember the feel of the swing or the dizzying swirl of the merry-go-round? We being of southern California were not too far from the royal playground called Disneyland, and we perhaps were spoiled to have close-by Dumbo the Flying Elephant.

 But here, in this photo, are the pre-Dumbo days: Dad and I at El Dorado Park in Long Beach. Here my father, special agent Joe Conlon, tends to my rendezvous with said animal. After his long day of chasing Communists or catching Capone or some such sort.

In no time at all do I remember asking my father, "When will this elephant fly?!" Yes, a cockeyed optimist from day one: but surely, Disney's Dumbo did soar through the winds with flapping ears as wings, so why should not the elephant at the local playground zoom toward the horizon?! Ah, precocious daughter.

Here is where imagination comes to play. At this warm summer moment, do I remember those sojourns to El Dorado park with my father and then on to Disneyland and stepping into the "Dumbo The Flying Elephant Ride" and buckling in, experiencing the thrill of sitting with my serious yet chuckling Dad and flying, round and round and round again, into the balm of blue lit summer nights.

Many memories start with the playgrounds of our youth. (Looks like we're flying upside down!)


  

I found this lovely (oldish) photo of us at the piano--that would be me in the background, with Julie and Joe next to me. I grew up playing the piano. In many ways it was my first language (quiet girl that I was). So often Joe would saunter into the living room and I'd play him "It's A Small World" (his favorite although "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La,Da, which my older brother played was right up there) and he'd go swirling about, shaking his hips. These days we are much older and live miles apart. When I call Joe on the phone, I sing to him. His language abilities are limited. But he knows lyrics to songs. That's how we "speak" to one another, how we connect, by singing. (You are My Sunshine...I Love You a Bushel and a Peck, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.) Music is still, in many ways, our first language! It all started here.

"Half the Sky" -- A Must Read for Global Citizens

My grandmother was the eldest of many children born into a poor family in rural Ireland. There was no work to be had, and so a relative in the U.S. sponsored her sojourn across the Atlantic Ocean. As a teenager, she sailed into Ellis Island in New York City and found work as a seamstress. Had my Gramma Molly been born in another country, however, where poor women suffer exposure to sex trafficking, her life story would have unfolded quite differently.

I thought of her often while reading the stunning book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” by Pulitzer Prize winners, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. So many women around the world can survive and thrive if global citizens reach out. Such empowered women, with voices of their own as we read here,  float the boats of everybody—other women, girls, boys, men, economies and societies. As Kristof and WuDunn argue, it’s time to remove our blinders and consider how we might help.

Many of us have similar grandmother or great-grandmother stories, don’t we?  Gramma Molly supported her three children (including my father) during the Great Depression when her husband was out of work for a decade. She passed on the old family skill and taught me how to thread a needle. I suppose you might say she exposed me to Art – for a well-made garment is nothing other than a reflection of beauty.

Our heart is a muscle but it is also a ball of threads eager to entwine with others. Read this book and consider how you and a new sister in the world might weave together a brand, new life. (Your grandmother, great-grandmother, or great-great would be proud!)