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Wishes and Regrets

Smoky Hill River Festival

On Saturday I went to our outdoor arts festival, Art in the Park. It was boiling hot, as usual. I wore a t-shirt from one of my very favorite shows–the Smoky Hill River Festival in Salina, Kansas. One of the artists asked me about it.

Smoky Hill is the second weekend in June, i.e. this coming weekend. If you can do it, you should go. It’s wonderful. You’ll have a fabulous time.

I tried for several years to get into that show, without success. Finally, I tried something a little crazy. I figured, why not? On the application, it asked for a description of your technique and process. I wrote: “My technique and process are not nearly as complex as my wild desire to be in your show. Oh, please relent and let me in!” It worked. At last, I was in. What a joy!

Anne and her husband Terry, whom she’d lost a few years ago, in my booth

The show is not only extremely well attended by shoppers, absolutely filled to the brim with color and fun, terrific live music, great food, and wandering stiltwalkers, but the volunteers and patrons are some of the kindest, friendliest people I’ve ever met, anywhere. One of those people died last week.

I’d always intended to go back as a visitor after I stopped doing outdoor shows. I wanted to enjoy everything the show has to offer but I especially wanted to see Ann, my favorite person there, a volunteer who absolutely made the show a wonderful experience for me and for so many others. We’d been Facebook friends but I hadn’t seen any of her posts for quite awhile. Last week her daughter posted that she’d died. I scrolled through her page for an hour or so. I wanted to find out what had taken her and I ended up finding more and more reasons to love her. But now she’s gone. Cancer. Stupid f-ing cancer.

One of the wildly decorated vehicles to be seen at the Smoky Hill River Festival

The last year that I did that show, it was very very hot and my booth did not allow much air to flow through. I’d gone to the volunteer table for water, saying I felt “funny.” Ann wasn’t at the table right then but within minutes of arriving back at my booth, she showed up, her hand on her hip, head cocked, with a motherly look on her face, and said, “You come with me.” No arguing! I followed her to the First Aid station, where they gave me water and had me lie on a cot with a fan blowing on me.

All of the volunteers there were great, carrying two jugs around to our booths, one of ice water and the other iced tea. We had red ribbons to hang on our booths to let them know we needed something. One time I got up on my step stool to hang my ribbon and by the time I had stepped down, a gal with two jugs was standing there, smiling. I said, “Wow! You people are like Jimmy John’s!”

Anyway, lovely Ann. Gone. And I never managed to get back there to see her. I regret that, as I regret losing track of what was going on with her, even through Facebook. I wish I could have offered at least some little bit of something as she went through that terribly difficult time. I regret and I wish. Regrets and this particular wish, pretty useless pursuits but hard to escape.

“It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains . . . If only one could leave this life slowly!” ― Roman Payne, Hope and Despair

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.” ― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Whenever I saw a sunset, I would quietly make my secret wish right before the sun tucked under the western horizon and disappeared. It would seem as if the sun had taken my wish with it. I’d make it right before the last speck of light vanished.” ― Michael Jackson, Moonwalk

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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The Power of Cake

I’ve learned a lot of odd things on my travels to art shows.

Many years ago I tried the Bella Vista Art Show in Bella Vista Arkansas. It’s a big show and there was an option to put up your display in a huge tent that housed many artists. Tired of rainy shows and thinking this would save me from having to worry about rain, I opted for that. Bad idea. It did indeed rain very hard and the big tent leaked, right above my booth! Organizers helped me drape a sheet of plastic across the top of my booth but pretty soon it filled up with water and I had to poke a hole in it to let the water slowly pour out. The rain was a trial all weekend long.

Needless to say, that show did not make my list of top five or top ten shows, or even my list of Shows To Try Again. But that show was memorable for another reason.

The gal that helped me out told me something I’ve never forgotten. She was going through a rough time, maybe a divorce. I can’t quite remember. A friend came to her house with a whole cake and a sheet of plastic. He spread the plastic out on her floor, put the cake in the middle, and asked her to eat it without using her hands. Well! You cannot do that without getting cake and icing all over your face. And feeling silly. I imagine it would be something like a one-person pie fight. And it really did cheer her up and help her turn a corner. She said he did this regularly for any friend who was going through a rough patch.

I thought the idea was grand! I’ve even thought I’d like to do it myself, just for fun. I do love cake. But you can see, can’t you, that planting your face in a cake might very easily flip a switch in your brain? Might give you a new perspective. Might shake up the glum mood you’ve been wrapped up in. And it would be less messy than a pie fight.

I love the creativity of this, too. It definitely conveys love and affection, as when we bring sweets to people who are hurting. But then there’s the aspect of play. Lovely! Takes you back to your first birthday, when parents set a cake down in front of you and let you do what you wanted with it. At least, that’s what I did with my kids. So you’re transported back to that innocent time when you never worried about getting food on your face or about conducting yourself properly at the table. You didn’t think about how much you weighed or that you might get fat if you ate even a tiny slice of cake. You didn’t care about looking silly or uncool or unsophisticated or any of those things we worry about as adults. Your inner child is a messy, joyful little thing. Why not embrace some of that, with paint, dirt, clay–or cake?

“The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression.” – Brian Sutton-Smith

“A party without a cake is just a meeting.” – Julia Child

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Never underestimate the healing power of cake.” – Kay Foley!

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Stranger With a Dog

She wept there, unexpectedly, a young woman

with a brown dog not hers, helplessly asking

How did you get like this? so openly

so unfiltered so unrehearsed so much a child.

Something had come undone and she

wept, needing to and there it was, something

I’d done or written or put forth setting it loose in her.

And where and to what she’s gone now I’ll never know.

A stranger who passed right through my life within

minutes but whom I will always remember.