Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 22

Mom's Bernina and My Creative Space

On video today- sharing some of my creative space and the sewing machine I use, the one that belonged to my mom.

The Path Forward

In the last nine days, five of my friends have lost a parent, two of them were moms that I had known a long time because the friends have been in my life since I moved to Albuquerque in 1994. And two of those friends have now lost both of their parents, a club that I none of us wants to join, but it’s inevitable that we will. We just hope it will be later than sooner.

While all our journeys are unique because our relationships with family and all the people in our lives are as unique as we are, I know that for some there is peace a parent is out of pain (emotional and/or physical). And for everyone, this is a gaping hole in their lives. For most of us, even if we didn’t have perfect relationships with our parent (really, who does? A parent’s job is not to turn us into a mini version of them, but to help us forge a path for each of us to be the unique person and have the life we are supposed to be– but that usually comes into odds with so much of who they are), typically there is no one in our lives who loved us as much as they did. I don’t know that I fully understood this until after my parents died, particularly my mom.

After the loss of a parent, we are faced with the reality that there will be no new memories nor anyone to share the past with. I often want to ask questions, wondering about things I didn’t think about until it was too late. We are, for good and bad, who we are because of them.

There has been much loss and pain during this pandemic. I know that mine started with Hattie’s death just a week before the first shutdown. It’s been a continued spiral of realizing that there is much I can’t hang onto as the world spins forward. If I choose not to spin with it, I will end up stuck and that will be more painful that letting go and letting it take me with it.

As I was swimming early Friday morning, thinking of another set of friends where the husband just found out he has terminal cancer and some other changes in not just my life, but in all our lives, I realized that somehow I will have to find a way forward. I will have to let go of so much. Maxine was the mom I used to see my at pool parties (mom of my friend Jim whom I have known forever and whom introduced Greg and I), usually finding her in the kitchen near the end doing the dishes and shooing me back outside to my guests. I am sad because I didn’t get to see her all last summer since we couldn’t gather. I feel like I was denied something, the very something I worried about when the pandemic started– the deaths of people in my life whom I wouldn’t get to spend time with before they died (I’ll also add that none of these deaths was virus related).

But I have no choice if I want to forge forward in my life, the very thing I write and speak about here. There is so much luggage that we’re still letting go, leaving a baggage claim or some getting lost because it’s not supposed to go on the next leg of the trip with us.

It’s okay to mourn what we’ve lost. However, somewhere in there we still need to go forward, to remember the good that we had, to be grateful for it, and then let it go because its path forward isn’t the same as ours.

The February Vision

The videos are back! A message relating to all the pink– and it's not just about Valentine's Day.

Movement

I have a whacky workout schedule and I often hesitate to tell people how much I do daily because I understand how whacky it looks from the outside. But there’s more to it than the need to add steps and workouts to my Garmin watch.

There are three segments to the running part of my workout – I run Lilly, then I run Ash, and then I go for my run (which has gotten slower of the years and isn’t helped by the very cold mornings we’ve been experiencing this fall and winter season). But I trudge through my nearly six miles each day, walking some on weekends.

Then, five days a week, I quickly change after I get home and head to the gym pool with Greg where I swim for 45 minutes.

By the time we get home, I'm done and I can sit down to write and sew and do other activities that require being still. The best part is that I have a feeling of satisfaction that I’m not getting from a lot of other areas of my life because of the pandemic. That’s why I do this whacky thing five days a week.

Movement is partly what has saved me in the nearly year since the pandemic started. While I am not able to do some things in my life that are important to me, especially in my personal life (having dinner parties) and in my professional (taking Chelle Summer to event), at least when I run and swim I feel like I’m moving forward in some way.

The pandemic has forced all of us to rethink not just what’s important to us, but how we maneuver through life when we aren’t able to do the things that help us be hopeful and joyful. And sustain us in the routine of life. For me, one of those aspects has been a several-hour workout, but one then allows me to relax (in my head, at least!), knowing that I’ve completed that part of my day and I can now move into the next part.

Creative Freedom

I am filled with inspiration. There is more that I want to do than there is time for. And yet there is one part of me that lacks, like there is a disconnect between my head and what I actually produce– drawing.

I grew up drawing all the time. Mom made sure that Denise and I always had plenty of paper- the notepads my medical doctor grandfather received from drug companies and later piles of dot matrix computer paper Karen brought home from college– and markers and crayons. It seemed like almost yearly we received new markers for Christmas and after school ended in June, our leftover crayons ended up in one big bag, a bag I believe Karen still has.

In school, even as I grew older, I doodled a lot. Probably in suicide prevention meetings and my doctoral classes, too, but I don’t have the notes to prove that.

And yet now I find that even though I have good intentions about drawing, I easily push it aside for other things I feel I need to do. The disconnect seems to have more to do with what I allow myself to do in a day, that freedom not just to express myself, but to spend the time doing something that always made me deliriously happy.

One of my goals for this year to get over that hump especially since reading something that graphic artist Milton Glaser (who died a few months ago) said about how we have gotten away from our imaginations and we allow technology to be our creative outlet. I don’t want to color in someone else’s lines either, I want to color in within the ones I have drawn (if I even have lines on my page!).

Apparently, Glaser was known for sketching various aspects of life– landscapes, meals. It’s also a diary of sorts and one I hope that I can not just find the time to do this year, but make it a new way of documenting life and what inspires me.

Reconstructing Our Lives

Happy New Year!

While I was streaming mass from the Cathedral of Or Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles (my church here in Albuquerque remains closed because of the pandemic) yesterday, Fr. Gallardo was talking about how we are now “reconstructing our lives” as we continue through the pandemic, but there is light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines.

It’s been almost ten months since our lives were upended and from the beginning I saw that we all had an opportunity to make things better for ourselves. I’m not saying this was easy– it has been a challenging year and it’s been challenging in a different way for each of us because our lives are unique to who we are and how we live– but no challenge to become better is ever easy or a cakewalk. In fact, if we don’t walk through challenges or face them head on, we don’t grow.

Now that we’re at ten months and we see light coming at some point, although we don’t know exactly when, I it’s a good time to reflect both in the rearview mirror and what’s ahead of us. I see it that we have several months before things start to open up again so it’s a good time to finish up any projects or things we’d like to do or change. It’s a good time to make changes at home (mine include painting a bathroom, touching up paint around the house, recovering a chair and ottoman) before we get busy socially and find ourselves bouncing around outside our homes again.

It’s also a chance to make changes for ourselves. This past year we definitely took a step up at eating better at our house. We already ate fairly well, but we’re continuing to find more ways (er, I am continuing to find more ways) to include vegetables and beans in our meals. Since my surgery nearly two years ago, my body hasn’t been the same and it’s much happier if I eat less meat and eat more produce. I’m also swimming more than I was a year ago, knowing that running and swimming– movement– will help me get through the rest of this frustration and irritation.

Finally, what changes do we want in our lives to be permanent? For me, It’s about not just writing each day, but writing better and finally finishing the manuscripts I start. It’s about drawing more (to be covered in another blog soon), and upping my sewing production. While it has probably looked like I’ve accomplished more than most people this past year as I continued to sew, the inspiration is still coming quickly and I want to grab it while I can. But it means the list doesn’t get shorter because for each thing crossed off, there is something always getting added.

Turning the calendar to a new year is always a good time to make changes, but even more so this year as we look toward how we want our lives to be when we are finally free from the virus. Life won’t be exactly the same, it can’t be because we’ve changed in this experience, but it can still be great again. It’s up to us to find those opportunities and run with them.

December and Suicide

In the midst of the traditional December hubbub, I usually spend part of the month educating people on the myth that suicides go up in December. While people believe that suicides go up because of the holidays, it’s not true and there’s data to prove it. It is true that people are often more depressed, but the reality is that, whether we like it or not, in “normal” times, we’re forced to be in close proximity to people. This can be through family holiday events or just in parties and other gatherings we might be attending. Or even the shopping mall.

However, this isn’t a normal year.

While there is a glimmer of hope as the first vaccines have been given around the country, and there is light at the end of the tunnel (if you watched my video last week, you know that the light isn’t always there, but we’re getting glimpses of it), what we don’t know yet is how that will affect suicides this month.

There isn’t data yet to show that suicides are up although anecdotally it’s easy to say they are. But looking at the current situation, it’s also easy to see how more people might be suicidal – and act on it– this month as they face more isolation. For the people who might have been protected by spending time with loved ones (not that they wanted to, but that they had to per mom’s orders!), suddenly find themselves alone.

With their thoughts and with no one to keep them from acting on those thoughts.

Many people feel like this photo– walking alone with no one in sight. No one to distract them from the thoughts that are growing in their heads.

It’s going to be some months before we have enough people vaccinated that life can become to resume openly. In the meantime, especially this holiday season that is devoid of our traditional gatherings as we all try to stay out of hospitals and keep well, check on the people you about.

A little phone call can go a long way to keeping someone here with us until we can gather again.

December Details

Pandemic inspiration, a funky seventies dress, a handbag full of daisies and, oh, those earrings. All in this week's video.

Prickly Pear Hard Candy

Some of the most unique candy ever. And best tasting, too. All because of a cactus I planted in the front yard. Now a holiday tradition at my house.

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups white sugar

1 1/2 cups light corn syrup

1 cup prickly pear puree and 2 tablespoons prickly pear puree (these are used separately)

Grease a raised edge cookie sheet.

In a medium saucepan, stir together the white sugar, corn syrup, and 1 cup of the prickly pear puree. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Then bring it to a boil.

Without stirring, heat the liquid until 300 degrees using a candy thermometer for measurement. This part can be long and disconcerting because you do not stir it and it will appear the temperature will get “stuck” in several places– around 230 degrees and 270 degrees. Once it passes 270 though, it will go quickly so keep an eye on it from there on out. The entire boiling process takes about 25 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in the two tablespoons of puree. As the mix will have discolored somewhat in the boiling process, this will help bring back that rich hue that makes prickly pear so unique.

Pour the mix onto the greased cookies seek and let it cool. I usually let it sit overnight to be assured that it is indeed hard and not still pliable.

Store in an airtight container.

December 1 Inspiration

Finding peace and inspiration during the holidays this year...and Florence's vintage dress. All in this week's video. December has arrived.