songs of experience

Track & Field Olympian, Joan Nesbit Mabe, waxes philosophical... and sometimes wanes.

12/6/2006

terri’s stick

Filed under: — Joan @ 9:03 am

I did my best to correct a mistake, so now I must turn the page. It’s December, for crying out loud, and I need to start thinking of Christmas presents. Yesterday, I went to a little celebration for one of my best friend’s 45th birthday. This friend is one of those people who can do anything; we joke that for Thanksgiving she hunts, kills, plucks, dresses, serves, and eats her turkey while the rest of us just buy our birds at the Harris Teeter. What do you give a woman who has - and can DO - just about everything? I’m sure there are people on your holiday list who fit this category.

Here’s what I came up with:
stick

I painted her a stick. It’s not really a walking stick; it’s more like a sculpture, an “art stick,” (something to put on a mantal … or, in your coat closet, perhaps only to be displayed when friend-who-gave-it comes to visit :)). On a trail where my friend and I often run on our easy days (with happy dog, Max), I searched and searched for a stick that seemed “trail-like.” What makes one stick stick out from all the others? Lumps. Curves. Knots. Discoloration. Are they flaws or flourishes? The perfect sticks were boring; I wanted one with a little history, some evidence of hardship endured.

Then I found it, a simple stick that had these beautiful, intricate carvings all over it. The carvings looked like our trail, winding up and down, around and crossing back over itself. The bark was already mostly gone, so you could clearly see all the engraving left by the critters who had lived there (wood mites? worms?). I ran the rest of the way back to my car with my friend’s birthday present bobbing up and down like a parade baton.

Back home I cleaned and sanded and started painting Terri’s stick with joyful vigor. Dinner was on hold, homework went unchecked, and my daughters became invisible as I lovingly painted each trail line. At one point, my youngest said, “Mommy, that looks like something a real artist would do.” Well, not really, but I felt like one because real art is inspired by great feeling.

This may well be an art stick Christmas. Coat closets beware!

7 Comments »

  1. Why do I detect some carving (whittling) in your future? They’re nice, just be careful, an old stick (non-live) can be bug laden, and bringing it into a house with warmth for a few days can unleash them.

    Comment by Scooter — 12/6/2006 @ 10:16 am

  2. I wish I had created the funky sticks in the photo. They are from a website on folk art I found when doing an image search for “painted sticks.”
    Next, I’ll look for an image of wood-eating bugs.

    Comment by Joan — 12/6/2006 @ 1:52 pm

  3. If you think that’s a mathom, then you don’t know hikers!

    Comment by Fat Charlie the Archangel — 12/6/2006 @ 5:26 pm

  4. I think that’s a wonderful idea and I bet your friend appreciates it more than you think. My mother used to paint rocks that she found during special trips and give them as gifts. Sometimes she just painted the words and date of the trip. I like the sticks a lot.

    Comment by Anne — 12/6/2006 @ 7:08 pm

  5. Clever, FC!

    mathom

    “This word is hardly new, since it was used by J R R Tolkien at the beginning of the first volume of the Lord of the Rings, published in 1954. As with so many unfamiliar words in his works, he derived it from Old English, in this case the one usually written maðm, “a precious thing, treasure, valuable gift”, that was current in about the year 1000. Following Tolkien, it has gained significant currency online and in a few printed sources. To define the modern meaning, I can do no better than quote Professor Tolkien’s own words: “Anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort”. It’s a useful little word for which there seems no simple alternative and now that we have come across it, mathom will no doubt become part of our family’s standard vocabulary, since we have an attic full of the stuff.”

    Comment by Joan — 12/7/2006 @ 3:24 am

  6. What fun! Happy stick painting. :)

    Comment by mis_nomer — 12/7/2006 @ 10:32 pm

  7. [...] For Christmas this year, I offered my little brother an expert shoe fitting at our local Fleet Feet along with a “professional” (me!) 13-week training program to help him become a runner. Like Terri, my brother is diffiult to buy for because he is working on not “wanting” anything. I’m actually quite jealous of him right now as he’s in mad pursuit of spiritual enlightenment - like I was in my 20’s when I read Sartre, Camus, Heman Hesse, Thomas Merton; watched countless Vittorio de Sica films, and Ingmar Bergman (dahhhling, you must see Wild Strawberries if you call yourself educated). I recently convinced my brother, John, to rent My Dinner with Andre - claiming it was #1 in my all-time top ten movie list - but he couldn’t make it through because Andre’s voice bugged him. “I love Wallace Shawn,” he said, “but he never talks.” He listens. [...]

    Pingback by songs of experience » morning bells are ringing … — 12/15/2006 @ 3:28 pm

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