family story | The Direction of Intention

Tip The Cup [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 2, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” ~ Ray Bradbury

My grandmother famously hid a horse in her kitchen when the truck from the glue factory showed up to take it away. What makes that story remarkable to me is that my grandmother was 4’7″ tall when she stood on her tiptoes. Although her physical size was diminutive, her spirit was grande.

Another detail of the story that confounds me: from the backdoor, there were stairs up into her kitchen. And then a hard left turn. It was no small feat getting a horse into the kitchen. Sometimes I ponder what it must have looked like, watching this teeny-tiny woman hurriedly coaxing a big-big horse through the backdoor, up the stairs and into the kitchen. I wonder if she shushed it as she peeked out the kitchen window, waiting for the truck to drive away. I can’t help but laugh heartily every time I imagine the scene.

Once, she and my mom drove me to college in Santa Fe. On the way we stopped to have lunch. I was grateful for their efforts, driving me several hours to school, so I reached to pick up the check and my grandma pinned my hand to the table with her fork. We burst out laughing. She was fast and left no room for debate.

The sun streaming into the farmhouse brought grandma to mind. Standing in the kitchen, looking at all the food we’d prepared, the mountain of snacks and beverages Kate and Jerry hauled from Minnesota, the bins of cookies and sweets, I thought, “This place is just like grandma’s purse.” Her purse looked like a punching bag and she could produce anything you needed at anytime from that bag. Screwdriver? Yep. Saltines? Yep. Duct tape. Of course! Water? How much do you need? It was the clown car of purses. Were I to be lost in the desert and had one precious wish to be granted, I’d wish for my grandma’s purse.

Tiny woman. Endless supply of love and support. She knew how to fill our cups. She knew how to tip herself over so all the beautiful stuff could rush out.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora & iHeart Radio

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUN IN THE FARMHOUSE

like it. share it. our “tip jar” (qr or link). tell us about tipping over.

Filed under: Family, KS Friday, Love | Tagged: abundance, artistry, beautiful, beauty, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family story, grandma, grandma's purse, grandmother, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, purse, ray bradbury, resourceful, spirit, story, studio melange, support, the melange | Leave a comment »

Do It Together [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on June 7, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Our house is beginning to breathe. As each bag or box leaves, as another load goes to Goodwill, space opens. Air moves. Stuck spaces relax. New possibilities circle our imagination. And, as the house takes a deep inhale and long slow exhale, so do we.

This is a task she must do on her own. In the past I tried to make it happen and only created more turmoil. I am a relative newcomer to this house so my memories do not run as deep. What looks like junk to me might carry a sacred family story.

That is the continual lesson of my life. My eyes can never see the full extent of your story. Your eyes can never see the complexity of my story. The creation of “our” story requires constant tending. It’s always best to ask a question. “Our” story becomes vital, rich, and inspiring the moment I cease trying to get you to see my way. There’s a space between – called “relationship”- that we can both see because, together, we create it. Together, we speak to it.

Those few simple lessons apply to all relationships, even the most casual.

And so, while I’m working upstairs, she is downstairs unpacking boxes and bins. Sometimes I hear her sigh. Sometimes there is laughter and I know a good story will come my way. Each day, before I climb the stairs, I ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?” Her reply is always the same. “I don’t know but, if there is, I’ll let you know.”

read Kerri’s blog post about CLEANING OUT

Filed under: Family, Love, Perspective, Possibility, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, clean house, complexity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, family story, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life lessons, no assumptions, old house, purge, relationship, seeing, story, storying, studio melange, the melange, together | Leave a comment »

Turn Out The Lights [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 11, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

There are first-times and there are last-times. I occurred to me, as we sat on the back porch of the house where I grew up, watching the sun go down, that this night would be a last-time. In the morning we would drive away and never again come back to this place.

We’d driven to Colorado to move my mom into an independent living community. The move was complete. The house nearly empty. My sister was coming to finish the clean-out and clean-up and then the house would be sold.

Kerri is much more “thready” than I am. She leads with her heart and feels deeply the story-threads that extend back through time. With the sun beneath the horizon, the light of the house beckoning, we talked of what it must feel like for my mom to leave this house after 54 years. We talked of the turtle that buried itself in the window well each fall and would claw its way back into the sunlight each spring. Climbing the crab apple tree when it, too, was young. Camping in the back yard in a musty green canvas tent. Riding bikes around the driveway in mock stock car race fashion. The Irish mail. Volleyball, basketball, and cranking ice cream on hot summer days. The small rituals that largely go unnoticed until the last-times, the experiences that fill life full-to-bursting.

These rich, amazing moments that we call ordinary, that happen with ease every single day, that pass unnoticed or unappreciated until the-last-time.

She asked me what I felt and my answer surprised me. “Relieved,” I said. “Just relieved.”

Tired, we went into the house, closed the back door, and turned out the lights. Last time.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE LAST TIME

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family story, home, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, last time, life review, life stories | Leave a comment »

Step Into The Next [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 4, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

There is a plot of ground in the backyard of my growing-up-home, as Kerri calls it, that for many years served as my father’s garden. He has not tended it nor planted it for quite some time and yet, a few intrepid carrots have pushed their green shoots up through the crusty soil. The impulse to life never ceases to amaze me.

In the back of our refrigerator we found a red onion. It was not ancient and forgotten. We used half of it in a new recipe a month ago and laughed aloud when we pulled it out and found it sprouting. In the dark and cold recesses of the refrigerator drawer, it sent out explorers to find the sun. It looked like an alien creature, these pale arms reaching, reaching from a purple half-orb.

Before we drove away, I walked through the empty rooms of my growing-up-home, touching walls, gathering memories, shedding the skin of my childhood. We’d already moved my dad to a memory care facility. Now, my mother is settling into her new apartment. Closing a chapter as another opens. All are reaching through a necessary uncertainty for what is next.

We left Denver and drove up the mountain into and through a furious snowstorm. Cresting the continental divide, we descended again into spring. There was snow and then, within a mile, there was a blanket of green climbing the hillside. This morning, outside of our door, the birds are in full chorus. The dandelions are in a heated competition with the grass and it’s anyone’s call which will win, though, left to their own devices, I’d put my money on the dandelions.

We think we are in control of nature but the last laugh is always on us. We are nature. Our control fantasy crumbles with age, making space for new life and next seasons. Whether we want to or not, we send out new shoots of pale green from our dark purple skin, hoping to punch through crusty soil to find the sun. Either way, we change form, stepping into the next, leaving well-known houses and used skin, filled with rich remembering, opening to welcome the new. The impulse to life.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE ONION

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: creative impulse, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, family story, growing, growing older, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, life cycle, life cycles, nature, new chapter | Leave a comment »

Breathe and Make Choices [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on February 16, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” ~ William James

A note from the Rejuvenation Fairy: the relief we seek may depend upon the phrase we choose. For instance, consider this phrase: coping mechanisms. What ease might become available if we viewed ourselves as something other than machines? Turn this dial. Adjust this screw. Add a little oil. Check the battery. Do this, then that will happen. Turn down the pressure gauge. Talk to others. Take a break. Cause and effect.

Breathe. Sentient beings are much more complex and subtle than apparatus made from iron and steel.

We story ourselves. For reasons no one will ever fully comprehend, we sort to the tragic. We imagine the worst. Ask any good storyteller and they will confirm that conflict is the driver. Yearnings meet obstacles and stories ensue. Everyone, without exception, is telling themselves a story. Everyone, without exception, is starring in their own movie, complete with impossible mountains to climb, monsters to face, dreams that remain just out of reach. Robert Sapolsky has it right: zebras don’t hold onto their tale of stress while human beings are reticent to let it go. We like to tell it again and again and again.

If we cast ourselves as victims in our movie, our stories will be filled with ogres to blame. If we reduce ourselves to the mechanical, our stories will be endless attempts at fixing what’s broken, looking for the right hose to replace. How to recharge the battery. The fortunate few recognize that their movie might be a story of choice. Choices made within given circumstances. The storm, like time, passes. How do we stand in it?

There’s little doubt that we are living in stressful times. There’s nothing like a deadly pandemic to turn up those mechanical pressure gauges. Add another notch or two of pressure with extreme national ideological division, cowards at the switches of government, mix in some economic stress…there are plenty of choices on the angst-menu. All are visceral. All are circumstances to the story we choose to tell, the story I choose to tell.

I came across a few universal coping strategies. Eat healthy. Exercise. Give yourself a break. Get plenty of sleep. Talk to others. Recognize when you need help and ask for it. I wondered why these good choices are reserved for times of stress. Why not give yourself a break as an everyday expectation. Talk to others. Eat healthy. Weave a calm center it into the fibers of daily life. Make choices. Especially in the story you tell yourself about yourself. The thought upon which you choose to fixate, to play over and over again in your movie-mind.

When Kerri and I fall off the pony and run around like our hair is on fire, we make chicken soup. I am the sous chef. She is the master mind. The recipe comes from her mother so the making of the soup is more than food prep, it’s a love-touch to her anchor. We touch love. And, of course, defying the advice of experts to avoid alcohol, we enjoy a glass of red wine. We choose the glasses: Jamie’s? Or Skip’s? Or Joan’s? For our wedding, we were gifted with many special wine glasses from many special people. Recently, Jay and Carol and Rob sent us wine. When we clink our glasses, we touch the depth of our support and reach of our friendships. We call 20 and laugh. As the soup simmers and the wine disappears, we realize that our hair is not on fire, that, although we are not zebras, we are infinitely capable of releasing our tale of woe. We need not cope or distract. We can grasp hold of the full tale of the enormity of our lives. We need only refocus our eyes, see the depth and expanse of our story and choices, enjoy the warming soup. Appreciate the story of the wine.

read Kerri’s blog post about CHICKEN SOUP & WINE

Filed under: Gratitude, Language, Love, Metaphor, Seeing, Story, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: chicken soup, conflict, courage, cowardice, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, family story, friends, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pandemic, Robert Sapolsky, story, storying, storytelling, stress, wine, yearning | Leave a comment »

Hold On And Smile [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 5, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

ernie straw copy

I do not know the full history of the Ernie straw. I only know that he holds a place of reverence in our odds-n-ends drawer. And, when Ernie makes an appearance, there is general celebration, photos taken and texted, and laughter-rooted-in-deep-memory swirls like the straw through our kitchen. I watch and appreciate their glee.

I do not share the lived history that Kerri and our children share. They are, as Michael Perry taught me to say, rather than my step-children, they are my given-children. At Kerri and my wedding, my newly given-children shook my hand and said mechanically, “Welcome to the family.” And then they laughed and hugged me tight. Our memories together are new and have tender, shallow roots. We are early in the creation of our history together.

This summer, I was on Island and Kerri made a trip home to see Kirsten. During our late in the evening phone call, Kerri was thrilled that Kirsten had found the Ernie straw and was using it everyday! She sent me pictures. Kirsten posing with Ernie joyfully spiraling out of her cup. I heard Kirsten laughing in the background. Kerri joined her laughter and they giggled me through their history with Ernie.

Ernie is out of the drawer every day since Kerri broke her wrists. He fits nicely into the lid of her Hydro Flask, the only safe coffee-delivery-system. Ernie has been seen rocketing out of her wine glass, too. These days he does duty on both ends of the day.

Mostly, I’m delighted to be making memories with Ernie. The next time he comes out of the drawer I will be more than an passive watcher, a mere listener to the stories of the Ernie straw. I now have real experiences with Ernie. I am slowly entering the weave of story, the fabric of participation. And, like Ernie clutching tight to his corkscrew straw, I couldn’t be more pleased to be winding my way into this part of the tapestry.

read Kerri’s blog post about the ERNIE STRAW