204 Comments

My Dad was never the world's best guitar player, but he had lots of music in him and he came from a place where music mattered and was essential to life. He scraped and bought a Gibson L model in 1964. He took some lessons and used his ear. He would strum and play "Five Foot Two Eyes of Blue" and the "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds" Never for long though. He'd take his guitar out, play for 10 - 15 minutes and put it back in its case and the case would go back in the front hall closet.

Music is my life. I play, I teach. I never really touched Dad's guitar. Not because he wouldn't let me, it just seemed too special. It was really well taken care of. As he got older he couldn't play as much, I convinced him to set it up on a guitar stand so he could just pick it up and play, and he did, for awhile. Until his Parkinson's Disease got so bad that it was no longer possible. The guitar has a sunburst finish, and there is wear on the fretboard , but mostly in first position where he liked to play. The white tuning pegs are still hard to turn. There are a few little dings here and there, and the grain is very visible through the finish. It's a parlour size with a narrow neck. But it's the sound of that guitar that makes time stop and brings my Dad to me. When he was dying in the hospital he asked me if I had brought his guitar home yet, I hadn't. He said "Jackie, just take it, it's yours." I couldn't do it until after he was gone, but now it's mine. It's one of my most prized possessions. 3 of my 4 kids learned to play on that guitar at Grandpa's. The beauty of it lies in what I can't see - in its sound, its stories, its imperfections, and the love that it was given with.

Expand full comment

What a beautiful memento.

Expand full comment

It really is!

Expand full comment

So lovely! My sister has my Grampa’s fiddle--she took it in for a repair and some guy wanted to refinish it...she said “never!”. ❤️

Expand full comment

What a wonderful memory shared so eloquently! Your Dad lives on!

Expand full comment

Thanks Harriet

Expand full comment

This is so beautiful. I’m smiling with tears in my eyes. So lovely.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad, Holly Huitt

After losing two beloved golden retrievers to cancer within a six-year span, I told my vet, “I can’t do this again.” She had just put my second one to sleep. She told me about her dog, a collie mix, and said there was a woman with a rescue group who came in about once a month. Would I want her number? Sure, I said.

Nine days later I was dragging my husband and daughter to a woman’s home to look at her collies. I wanted to see if I liked the breed. They were wooly and not what I wanted. But she was fostering a young mix, a smooth collie-shepherd who had big brown eyes -- soulful shepherd eyes -- and the cutest ears that stood up at times and bent forward and pivoted at others. He had a long pointy snout and brown spots on his white paws. His fur was soft as a mink.

My daughter only wanted a golden. But this mixed rescue, Marty, rail thin from being abandoned, had a sweetness about him and I fell for him. A week later he was ours, renamed Chase as a concession to my daughter (she was obsessed with Chase Utley of the Phillies).

Chase’s first week home he destroyed a sofa and pooped twice in my daughter’s bedroom (revenge for her bratty non-welcome). But he followed me everywhere like a baby duckling and one by one we fell in love with him. He stopped cowering around men as my husband became his Daddy and earned his trust. He won over our daughter who became his fiercest protector and grew up to tattoo his silhouette (one ear up, one bent) on her ankle.

He doesn’t lick, will randomly bark in an empty room, refuses to eat unless we decorate his food with toppings, doesn’t play ball or like toys, and hates to be brushed. He’s offended by closed doors and will use his snout to burst into my daughter’s bedroom every morning.

But he’s sweet and quirky and loves to go on walks. He still follows me everywhere. Once we accepted that he wasn’t a golden, we got to know his chill but sweet personality and all three of us love him completely. He has outlived both previous dogs and will be 15 this year (we think). Every day with him is now tinged with knowing this could end at any time.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Holly Huitt, Suleika Jaouad

I love this! As soon as I read the prompt I immediately thought of the numerous dogs that have been in my life!!

Expand full comment

Dogs are the best, aren’t they?

Expand full comment

Yes!!!!❤️

Expand full comment

Exactly ! Thanks Abby🐾

Expand full comment

Quirky rescue mutts are the best! I have two. Thank you for sharing about yours, Abby. May he be peaceful and well for the rest of his days. ❤️

Expand full comment

Thanks Liz! ❤️

Expand full comment

Chase is perfect. I love him just reading this. ❤️🐾🐾🐾🐾

Expand full comment

Pretzel is our 4th rescue over almost 50 years. They have all brought joy with their idiosyncratic ways just like us imperfect humans. Pretzel was the most injured but has become a loving protective sweetie over the past 9 years.

We can all grow softer when loved and loving the imperfections.❤️

Expand full comment

Pretzel is a great name, too!

Expand full comment
founding

Abby - Often we perceive rescue dogs as already being “imperfect” and that is why they have been “abandoned or discarded”. Why would any of us want to take that on? Yet, your story of Chase is all about loss, healing and making a broken hearted family whole again. Chase’s Imperfections became the perfect solution for you, your husband and daughter. Thank you for reminding me to see beyond imperfections whether it be in a puppy or a human being.

Expand full comment

Pat, I see that you live “in the wilds of BC” and I’m intrigued. I passed through your province on my way to and from Alaska last year, and it was incredible. Whereabouts are you located?

Expand full comment
founding

Hi Liz - yes I have read a bit of your van journey to Alaska? I am live off grid in a valley located SW of Anahim Lake, BC. Hwy 20 turns west at Williams Lake, BC. You were heading north.

Expand full comment

Oh, you’re on the way to Bella Coola. That’s on my bucket list!

Expand full comment

23 years ago we inherited Teddi, a 4 year old Border Collie-Shephard mix, when my sister-in-law died. I had never been a dog owner, but as our 15 year old nephew was coming to live with us, we were not going to leave his family dog behind. Teddi was quirky, unruly and likely grieving her "Mom". As she adapted to our home and we cared for her, I fell madly in love. My grief at loosing her years later was shocking to me. We did get another dog, but a different breed. Maybe it was the circumstances, but although there was love, he was a different dog and it was not the same.

Expand full comment

I’m sure Teddi was such a comfort to your nephew and your whole family at such a tragic time.

Expand full comment

What a lovely telling of who Chase is and why all his idiosyncrasies are precious. I think we all need a Chase.

Expand full comment

❤️❤️❤️

Expand full comment

My neighbor’s kids named their dog Bryce (Harper). 😊 Sweet Chase. I’m glad he found such a loving home in which he could be his authentic self. ❤️

Expand full comment

Oh, I love that! Bryce (even Harper) is a great name. Chase is unapologetically his own dog and we love him for it. He's our boy.

Expand full comment

What a lovely story. I have a huge soft spot for dogs with “wonky” ears. I grew up with Ebony, a mixed rescue who was jet black, with a white chest and one white paw. One velvety black ear always stood up while the other folded down. It was so endearing.

Expand full comment

Awww, Ebony sounds adorable. Wonky ears are the best.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Holly Huitt, Carmen Radley

We had a table that was handed down from another family with five kids, and I think it had been handed down to them. We could have bought a new one, but we were about to move overseas, and I didn’t want to “invest” when it might get damaged in shipment. And anyway, I really loved it, even if the top needed refinishing (a project I always said I’d take on but never did). It was solid wood in a sort of cottage style, and some of the chairs had broken, so I bought blue chairs in a French cafe style. After our move, when the table was set up in our apartment in South Korea, we always thought about our friends who had given it to us and on lonely, homesick days, that was a great comfort. My youngest was just barely one at the time, and as she grew, the surface got scratched and painted on and lots of food spilled, and I never worried. I was just happy that there was room for all of us around it, and room for friends when we put the leaf in, that it had been a place of happy memories before us and that we were making more happy memories at it. When we moved last year, some circumstances more or less dictated that it was time to pass it on to someone else. I posted on a giving circle page, and a woman responded. She and her husband had four kids, and their table was so small that she would usually just sit on the couch to eat. I told her she’d need someone to help her move it into her place because it was solid wood and heavy, and she said, “I love solid wood tables.” When she came to pick it up, she told me she was pregnant with her fifth. I miss that table even though I love the one we bought to finally replace it, but I know it went to just the right family.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad

Perfect timing. I’ve been “going through” some stuff with my partner and my thoughts were full of all the things that annoyed me, that angered me, that frustrated me...and I love her anyway and wrote about all those anyways - and I can’t wait for her to wake up so I can, once again, be that person with and for her. As usual, thank you.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Holly Huitt

What a beautiful story, Joy, and how fitting that you were able to pass the table along to a family who will make more memories there! ❤️

Expand full comment

I love this. I’m glad your wonderful table found a loving home. So much of your families soul is in that table,

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley

This is a beautiful story. And such a great example of why “things” can have such a rich history that it’s palpable. I always feel this when I go thrifting or antiquing. I can practically sense the energy of some of the things - the love that surrounded them. Thank you for this reminder this morning of how well lived things are often more beautiful than brand new.

Expand full comment

I love that about thrifting and antiquing too! I went yesterday to some of the shops about an hour from here, and though I didn’t buy anything, I spent a couple hours just looking and having a great time.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad, Holly Huitt

Over 40 years ago my husband gave me a small ceramic pear with a cute painted face, shaped a bit like a blob, imperfect from the start. It’s two tiny eyes appear to spin. There was tiny black text across the belly that read ‘you make me spin’.

Sweet, gentle & loving words long gone.

The little guy has taken many falls over the years, and although encumbered by chips, fading color, and scratches here and there, he has served a purpose at our front door, before texting was a thing, by holding handwritten notes like ‘dinner is in the fridge’, ‘please hang the laundry’, ‘Kevin called’, ‘at ER, will call’.

He is there, still.

In fact, if I were to add tiny black text across his belly it would read “I’m still here”.

Expand full comment

I love this image, Mary, of an object as witness to so many mundane and impactful moments of your life. And it’s still watching! 👀

Expand full comment

☺️😎

Expand full comment

And so are we all! I love this!! Thank you.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Holly Huitt, Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad

I love me in spite of all my flaws, which opens me to loving others in spite of their flaws. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. I’m so grateful that , for me, I’ve lived long enough for this wisdom to come through.

Expand full comment

You are perfect as you are❤️

Expand full comment

❤️❤️❤️

Expand full comment

I was raised in a home where being perfect was confused with being loved. Then I met my husband. It was love at first sight. His eyes caressed the scar on my cheekbone, which I’d gotten from a ski accident when I was eleven. He admired it because he sees scars as a sign of strength. When I heard him say this, I knew I was safe. He has since proven to love my so-called flaws.

May everyone feel this kind of acceptance.

Thank you for your gorgeous essay, Suleika, and the opportunity to reflect with this prompt ♥️

Expand full comment

Beautiful, Monika. ♥️

Expand full comment

Thank you Constellations ♥️

Expand full comment

You are very welcome, Monika ♥️

Expand full comment
Jan 21·edited Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad

We moved from a house built in 1886 to a cabin built during the 1970s about 1 1/2 years ago. There are things I love about both. I miss the creaking floors and the old stone lined basement of the old house. We lived there longer than any place I've ever lived...25 years. The walls hold thousands of memories, ones I can no longer hold in my own brain. And I used to sit in the living room, drinking my coffee, and imagine the lives of the people who lived there before me. I mean the house was built not that long after the Civil War ended! It's like if the war ended in 2003 compared to this year. That's mind boggling to me. I wondered what the homeowners thought about the Civil War. But what makes my newer cabin home to me is the scarred and dented antique furniture I brought with me from the old house. I love the wood, the patina, every nick and scratch. They tell a story. A story of lives lived. A story of craftsmanship we no longer seem to value. We used to have an old screen door on this cabin. It creaked and slapped shut in a way that said "summer" to me. One year, family members stayed at the cabin for a week by themselves. That sound bothered them so they "helpfully" WD 40'd it for us. It was one of the first things I noticed when my husband and I came down from our old house to the cabin for a weekend. Silence! I was more disappointed than I should have been I guess. But we took the screen door off and got rid of it completely. To me, it was useless. The sound of an old screen door in summer was the only reason I had it there in the first place. Old, used, furniture, certain sounds, like ticking from an old clock or the creaking of floors or an old screen door comfort me in life in ways that new and shiny cannot.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Holly Huitt

"We used to have an old screen door on this cabin. It creaked and slapped shut in a way that said "summer" to me" - This is glorious. I too knew that sound and feeling - gorgeous. Thank you for the memory.

Expand full comment

Yesterday I took a sip of water from my metal water bottle and for some strange reason the taste reminded me of water drunk straight from a hose, something I did during my childhood summers in Los Angeles. I was immediately transported back in time and there was a moment of joy in that. I think in the same way some things "trigger" us because of negative past experiences, other things can trigger us in very pleasant ways. I want to be present for them.

Expand full comment

Oh my gosh - drinking from a hose; how I recall those moments too - makes me cry so beautiful and so rare. So many memories of that as a child - all gone but flashes of them conjure up the little girl waiting for the water to cool off a bit; the hose in full sun. Such a simple wondrous sensation - an explosion of delight in the present.

Expand full comment

Yes! Now I am remembering the wait for the cooler water. Thank you!

Expand full comment

Yes! This line resonated with me too! The slap of a screen door screams summer ☀️

Expand full comment

My mother was a little deaf. In order to hear people come into the house through the door in the garage, she hung a string of jingle bells. You heard the bells first, and then people appeared. I have the jingle bells on my back door now.

Expand full comment

I love that. We got an alarm system that we only use when away for long periods of time but there are parts that are always on and cause a "ding" whenever a door or window is opened. I love to know when someone opens the door. I love the idea of your jingle bells! I also attached a line of bells to my back door and taught my dog to jingle them when wanting out.

Expand full comment

My pups do that too! I feel like that's their dogspeak when we can't recognize roorooroo as their plea to get outside and do their thing!

Expand full comment

Smart doggie!

Expand full comment

She was...a little too smart! LOL

Expand full comment

I can hear that screen door shutting. Many summers at my aunt’s cottage brought me the same familiar memory. Summer! Bravo to you for taking the new screen door off!

Expand full comment

My new apartment is the first floor of a house built in 1880. You walk in the front door and through a long hallway with windows before you reach the living areas. My brother joked that it was the world’s biggest mud room, since coats hang at one end and I have a spot for shoes and boots (and bird seed). When I was puzzling how to use the walls, I realized: it’s a perfect art gallery. So, I have hung a selection of paintings, prints and photographs there. When I go out, and when I come in, I walk by art. Instead being over things, like sofas and other furniture, my pictures surround me.

Expand full comment

What a perfect use of that space!

Expand full comment

I love this! I am picturing your hallway with its artwork & photographs!

Expand full comment

I don’t think I can post a photo here, but I will put one up on Notes.

Expand full comment

I would love that! When you do it, please let me know!

Expand full comment

I put up two photos. Enjoy!

Expand full comment

I found it & commented! Thank you!

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad

I have long loved the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. I love the mark of time on the human made. And that includes myself.

Expand full comment

You might enjoy the book, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty by Sōetsu Yanagi, if you don't know it already!

Expand full comment

That’s the word. Thank you!

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Holly Huitt, Suleika Jaouad

Myself a work in progress-as a friend once wrote "scars are stronger stuff".

Expand full comment

Oh I love that perspective, Mae, that scars are stronger stuff. It’s so true, literally and metaphorically.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Suleika Jaouad

My friends words meant a lot to me and have stayed with me for decades. xxoooo

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Holly Huitt, Suleika Jaouad

Up the hill behind the pond is a tree that struck me as a minor wonder of the world when I first came upon it: an enormous white pine with seven trunks. Lateral branches from some of these trunks fused into others, creating windows gilded by the late afternoon sun.

It is more common to see white pines with straight, singular trunks shooting up over a forest of bushier trees. In colonial times, and in the times of the Lenape before that, they grew to towering heights, the tallest on record measuring 250’, the height of a 25-story building. The shape, rot-resistance and comparative lightness of these trees made for excellent masts, prompting the King of England to claim every sizable white pine for the Royal Navy, much angering the colonists, but that is another story.

This story is about the minor wonder on our hill. According to a visiting ecologist, the creature responsible for its peculiar form is the white pine weevil, or rather, a host of them. White pine weevils are rather cute little bugs with anteater-like snouts that seek out the leaders (or central trunks) of healthy, sun soaked white pine saplings. They climb to the top, plunge their proboscises into the soft young bark, and do their business, eating and laying eggs. When the larvae hatch, they feast on the insides, an activity that is often fatal to this part of the tree. However the lower lateral branches are spared. They curve upwards, as if to become new leaders. But instead of one, now there are many.

I was astonished when I took a class on pruning and discovered that such trees are considered malformed. Foresters want trunks to be singular and straight in order to produce valuable lumber. City planners believe that multiple trunks are less stable than singular trunks, and therefore dangerous. Arborists are sometimes called in to cut them down. But I was also amused: What better tree to have growing on a patch of land intended to be a haven for people with disabilities than a gorgeous, extravagantly malformed white pine?

Yet also, what clunkiness. The mal- and dis- of malformation and disability tend to shut down the mind, subjecting subjects under their heading to a category deemed lesser and imperfect. What if instead of being guided by a dis- or mal-, we were led to the idea of responsiveness? The white pine responds to the white pine borer. The bone responds to the accident, the nerve responds to the mutation, the memory to the assault.

Don’t get me wrong. I use the term disability frequently; it is a necessary word these days, and does not cause me offense. It is just good to remember that it can, as can many other words that try to pinpoint identity, diminish our perception.

In any case, I am glad our seven trunked pine would have never been claimed by the Royal Navy! Perhaps you would like to hoist yourself into the cup formed by its many trunks the next time you visit; if so–you will not be the only one. I often find scat and feathers of other creatures who spend time there when I am not around. It is a popular tree.

Expand full comment
author

This is a beautifully written, powerful reflection. Here's to the white pine with seven trunks!

Expand full comment

Thank you!

Expand full comment

Are you in that tree in your tiny photo here?

Expand full comment

Yes!

Expand full comment

Definitely a family resemblance. 😉

Well done you!

Expand full comment
founding

Imperfection and resilience - strength in the knowing. Thank you for sharing your white pine with us, today, Eliza. I would love to visit it one day.

Expand full comment

If you are ever in the Hudson Valley of New York, let me know!

Expand full comment
founding

Thank you. I am adding it to my wish list.

Expand full comment

Wow! This is stunning! Trees are always such lovely metaphors for life

Expand full comment

This is so lovely with such a wonderful message. Your writing had me on the hill visualizing the trees!

Expand full comment

How wonderful. Thank you!

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad

Many years ago a coworker bought a pendant with a Rhodochrosite stone. I think she bought it on EBay. The stone had a crack through it which she couldn’t love. I loved the stone the moment I looked at it. The crack made it special. No other Rhodochrosite looks exactly like this stone because of the crack. I bought the pendant from get. Imperfections are perfect. It makes everything unique. And it’s all subjective anyway. The pendant is really pretty and it has received many compliments when I do wear it.

Suleika I love your farmhouse. Old houses are characters. I admire the craftsmanship that went into building these structures. I love the windows that were blown and have the whorls. The craftspeople who worked on that Hoyle may have left behind a part of their spirit. I’m sure they are grateful you love the house they built.

There is no perfect. Perfect hoods us back. I’m trying to let go of what I think others perception is. I wonder how many drawings or painting never were created because of the fear of not reaching perfect. Or unwritten books. Perfection is overrated. I know this! If I could just manifest this into my daily life.

Expand full comment

So true that perfect holds us back. Beautiful!

Expand full comment
Jan 21·edited Jan 21Liked by Holly Huitt, Carmen Radley

Jericho’s lovely poem on crepe myrtles struck a chord with me. I believe what I love anyway are the things that are less than perfect in this world. The misshapen trees in the woods come to mind. There is a monster of a pine tree in the woods behind the house, all of its weight is in the top cluster of branches. It finally gave in to the wind and has been slowly falling, with its crown snarled in the crown of another tree, locked in a grip that is slowly bringing both of them down. They no longer reach for the sky, but for each other. Like two silver-haired friends who cannot stand alone, they hold one another up. There are more perfect trees all around them, but they are the ones I look to first when I open the curtains in the morning.

Suleika, I loved your reference to Annie Dillard. I'm reading a wonderful book, The Book of Nature by Barbara Mahany, and she quoted Annie with this:

“If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go . . . That which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.” I’m flint most of the time, with a little scorching around my edges.

I love the idea of extravagances. Most of what strikes me are the contorted and bent things in life, Not perfect, but more striking because of imperfection. I feel right at home among them.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley

"They no longer reach for the sky, but for each other" Reality makes me swoon.

I believe that one day… Actually, I believe this now, we will see the interconnectedness of everything from the universe to our little feet standing in the grass.

Expand full comment

Swoon is such a wonderful word, and I believe in that interconnectedness.

Expand full comment

One of my favorite trees was an old dead pine. One of the higher branches broke off and was caught and held like a baby in the arms of two lower branches. I thought it was a lovely metaphor for how we support each other when one of us is broken

Expand full comment

Profound.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this beautiful meditation on trees. I also love the profound line from The Book of Nature

Expand full comment

I hug trees because they fascinate me. I highly recommend Barbara’s book. I read for about an hour and then spend a day or two absorbing what I read. It’s richly written with a lot of meaning for me.

Expand full comment

I love Mary Oliver’s poems, How I Go To The Woods and Can You Imagine. Beautiful imagery and feeling.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Holly Huitt, Suleika Jaouad

Our first dining room table was a treetop we carted on the VW Bug in 1975 to our first apt. We added wrought iron legs and it’s been my office desk in my therapy office and at home since the 90s. I love the time we sit and think and breathe as i stare out the windows at the trees...we are imperfections growing and aging together.

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Carmen Radley, Suleika Jaouad

The writing cottage is a palimpsest. New lives being written over the old, with traces of the previous lives peeking through. .

Expand full comment

And pentimento! (I love both those words).

Expand full comment
Jan 21Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Holly Huitt, Carmen Radley

The quarryings of time, oh my heavens!! Words are so powerful.

Is there Flawed??

In the entry hall, my friend Margaret, had about 25 beautiful wedding photos framed. I asked her about her ancestry of all these glorious brides. She burst out, strangers!! They were loved on this day, and I want to honor them. Flawed and forgotten? Never.

I borrowed her idea, and gathered dozens of old photographs, when I would come upon them. Strangers, covered and smothered on my coffee table!! Flawed and not forgotten.

I opened my house to these strangers, my extended family members.

My dinning room has become my art studio since I have aged. My family dinner table from 1960’s is my watercolor table, my grandmothers dinning table from 1940’s is for pastels, the piano is also in that room.

All the paint brushes are in some of my aunties flower pots.

The dinner table, had marks on it, from a tool that looks like a pie cutter but it was for dart lines I think. Mom made all of our clothes on that tables. Cutting out patterns, and marking up the table.

Beautifully flawed . Still telling stories.

I think heaven may be in the flawed, delicious details.

Mother of five, four boys, one daughter.

Grandmother of 4 boys

Woman of 71 years, blessed and highly favored.

Flawed and present

Love you Sulieka

Expand full comment

Wow..."heaven may be in the flawed, delicious details". Yes!

Expand full comment

“Blessed and highly favored”. ❤️

Expand full comment