some thoughts on Mosaic Woman

Yesterday, a loud and apparently scary moan brought Mosaic Woman to my rescue. Luckily it was a back muscle not a heart muscle that took me down to the porch floor, a bin of mosaics in front of me.

Friday night I remembered ten years ago. If I had blogged back then I would have proudly called her Poet Woman. On that night in April, the US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, was saying wonderful things about her poems as she started her year as the Montgomery County Poet Laureate. In previous blogs I would have celebrated her NEA grant, PA arts grant, and many contest wins. I would have talked of the frustration of coming so close to having a book published.

She is so much happier these days filling bins with her wonderful craft made of glass bits than in the days she used bits of our language to create poems. I have sat watching people being awed by both. I wonder how such a creative woman came into my life.

But yesterday morning I needed someone to love me, not to awe the masses. As she was talking to the neighbor cat, I went in for the final box of mosaics. Twisting through the front door I felt the pain and set the box down. I stood and sent my breath into the pain and exhaled the pain away from the muscle. I have learned the hard way to fight these rare spasms by relaxing not entering a panic. I could hear her talking to the cat on the other side of a monster hedge when I foolishly decided to lean over to pick up the bin. The second shot of pain brought forth the groan and I dropped to my knees. And that is where she found me.

I once again breathed and eventually opted to go to the craft show. It appears to have been the right choice. The pain lessened to become the memory of an overwhelmed muscle. Moving about was what it needed more than bed rest.

Last night she was feeling bit like a fool. A mosaic was sold twice in the same day and she had to refund the money and apologize in e-mail to a woman in Massachusetts, who was too late when she bought it at our ETSY site. Mosaic Woman had thought about shutting down our on-line store down (as had I) before we left for the craft show. We talked about the need to take off the items that has sold. But when we got home a nap sounded better. While we napped the sale happened.

Last night we waited for the sun to go down to go outside and walk in the unusual April heat. We walked... a couple of folk filled with imperfections and love.