Author: Becca

My living room is bathed in golden light.  Relaxed in my favorite chair, a cup of fresh coffee waiting for my first sip, I am surrounded by the  vibrant colors of autumn. The trees in our backyard are at the peak of color, so bright I want to put on sunglasses. The sky is a blue so sharp, it almost hurts my eyes. The contrast of crimson, gold, and russet leaves outlined against the blue makes a palette any artist would die for. Later on, when I go upstairs to my desk, my window is filled with the outline of orange leaves pasted against the background of azure sky. It’s tough to get any work done with that amazing vista right in front of me.

In Michigan we’ve had an exceedingly beautiful autumn, warmer and drier than most. The leaves have taken their time in changing and maintained their beauty far longer than normal. My morning walks are a feast for the eyes, even here within our neighborhood. When I’m out and about, one of my normal routes takes me through a hilly landscape with a river running beside the road, a landscape so distracting I have to consciously pull my eyes back to the road. Talk about distracted driving – fall foliage is as dangerous as the cell phone!

In autumn, nature is truly a work of art. And though I personally don’t have any natural talent in making visual art, I am grateful to be enriched by the spectacle of this natural art all around me. It’s like living in an art museum and being surrounded by nature’s inspiring palette.

For me this has been a year of looking for refuge, of desperately seeking beauty and inspiration and a sense that -as the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich wrote –  “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”  My pantry of creative ideas feels bare, the river of inspiration runs rocky and dry. Yet the trees outside my window only have to BE and they are beautiful. They stand rooted in their space on earth and allow nature to work it’s artful magic. Then they simply glow with radiance.

Could my own glowing come that easily?

The poet Mary Oliver writes:

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – – – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Maybe I search too hard for my bright visions. Maybe all I need to do it is live in the momentary pasture of autumn and the bright visions of life will find their way to my feet. Life offers so much inspiration all around, free and easy for the taking if we open our eyes and hearts to it.

Like the leaves that fall in a sea of color all around me. Naturally beautiful. Naturally inspiring. Naturally art.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

The world is such a noisy place, isn’t it?

We’re bombarded with videos, photos, articles, in-depth news reports, texts, tweets, snap-chats…

It all vies for our attention round the clock: That nagging urge to “check in” on social media and see what our friends are up to; the itch to snap a photo of the leaves changing color on our favorite tree; the siren call of a friends text message. Add to that the dire and sometimes terrifying news reports of shootings and war and climate devastation, with election news like bad frosting on an overdone cake.

It’s not a pretty picture.

About a month ago, I found myself craving silence, and craving it badly. I realized I had settled into a compulsion – no, let’s call it straight, it was an addiction – to my electronic devices. I literally could not pass my phone without picking it up and scrolling through Facebook and Twitter feeds. I was completely unable to stand in line at the grocery store, wait in a waiting room, or yes, I confess, sit at a red light without whipping the phone out of my purse and looking at email. I stopped short of texting while driving, but only barely.

My real life was suffering too. I was having trouble focusing on one activity at a time, starting projects and then leaving them unfinished while I drifted off to something else (like looking at Facebook). I’d find myself always short on time, running late, rushing from here to there because I’d wasted more time than I realized on the internet. I couldn’t concentrate on whatever book I happened to be reading, having to go back and read paragraphs over several times to comprehend them. I was way behind on my Goodreads reading challenge.

Part of this behavior I blame on the grief process. Still missing my mom, I was looking for ways to combat the loneliness. Suddenly I had a lot more time on my hands, time I used to spend with her. I needed to fill it by connecting with other people and the outside world, needed to find a way to extract myself from the quicksand of mourning I felt like I was drowning in. The internet was a quick and easy distraction. It passed the time, helped me forget my loss for a while, and gave me a way of connecting with friends and family through social media.

But suddenly it just became overwhelming, the way the internet was constantly clamoring for my attention. I needed peace. I needed quiet. I tried to remember – what was life like before the internet? For the vast majority of my sixty years on earth, the concept of cyber connection would have been the stuff of a science fiction story. What did I do with myself all those years without it? I began to yearn for those simpler, quieter days, when the only electronic distractions were radios and televisions, and those with only a few channels!

Quitting the internet cold turkey was a frightening proposition, but I contemplated doing it. Still, there are so many good things about the internet, so many positive ways to benefit from it, I couldn’t bring myself to let go of all that. But limits must be enforced, and enforced strictly. I made a deal with myself, allowed myself three times a day to use the internet for social media and web surfing – at breakfast, just before dinner, and about 8:00 at night. I “unfollowed” a lot of the most prolific news and political sites.

I removed all the social media apps from my phone.

Gulp.

The first few days were hard, but not as hard as I’d thought. I keep a book on the kitchen counter where the iPad usually sits, and when I’m tempted to go online I pick up the book and read a few pages instead. (I’m now back on track with my Goodreads challenge, too.) There’s a good audio book in my car that helps pass the driving time.  I went away on a solo vacation for a few days during the second week, and thoroughly enjoyed watching people and scenery instead of losing myself in the wilds of social media.

The constant brain frenzy has abated, there seems to be plenty of time to cook, shop, write, practice piano, read, play with the dogs.

If I haven’t totally silenced the noisy world, I’ve at least muted it to a dull manageable roar.

The internet is a marvelous tool for learning, for connecting with people, for conducting business, and it’s here to stay. But like anything else so powerful, it’s easy to abuse. Neuroscience hasn’t even scratched the surface of the effect internet use (or overuse) has on our brains. But I know from recent experience that my old brain works better with more moderate doses of cyber activity.

How about you? Do you ever feel the need to limit your internet use? How has using the internet affected other areas of your creative life?

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking her dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

I grew up in a home with two Southern cooks. My grandmother lived with us for most of my childhood, and since she was raised on a small farm in central Kentucky, I was fortunate enough to eat authentic Kentucky Fried Chicken from the time I was old enough to chew. Not to mention angel biscuits, southern fried okra, homemade fruit and cream pies, and – the piece de resistance in my mind – her warm, yeasty bread with its crisp buttery crust. Paired with a platter of garden fresh tomatoes, warm slow-cooked green beans, and a glass of iced tea, we feasted for many a summer lunch.

My mother insisted she could not cook as well as her own mother did, but most of us begged to differ. My mom’s specialties weren’t the country cooking my grandmother learned in the farm kitchen. My mom excelled at dishes with a slightly international flair -like spaghetti and lasagna, Swedish meatballs, quiche lorraine. She was the chief cake baker in the family, and her German chocolate cake with caramel frosting was the most requested dessert at every family potluck.

Last winter, when we knew my mother was dying, it occurred to us just how many of our favorite foods we’d never taste again. My husband and I would be sitting at the table, picking at our food between trips to the hospital. “Cheese cake,” I said once. “We’ll never have her cheese cake again.”

“Or beef pot pies,” he said dejectedly. “Or baked spaghetti.”

“Potato salad,” I yelped.

“Ohhhh,” he groaned.

Should this sound less than respectful toward my mother’s final days, rest assured there is little she would rather be remembered for. She considered her cooking one of her proudest accomplishments, one the world recognized and rewarded. One year her neighbors gifted her with pearl handled cake server, engraved with her name and the words “Redford’s Best Baker.” She prized that just as much as her diamond rings and full length mink coat.

One of my projects this summer has been an attempt to replicate some of my mother’s most popular recipes.  I’m really not the cook my mother was (and no one in my family would beg to differ on that assertion), so it’s been a daunting task, and one I’ve met with varying degrees of success.

There’s an old saying: If you can read, you can cook. Meaning, if you can follow the recipe, you can expect an edible finished product. I’m here to tell you, that’s not quite so. I’ve followed my mother’s spaghetti sauce recipe to the letter, and it still doesn’t taste exactly right. And while many people have attempted the caramel frosting, no one has ever made it successfully. She was often accused of sabotaging the recipe, which she always denied. “It takes time and patience to get that right,” she’d say with a little smile. “Just keep practicing.”

Often there is a secret ingredient to the best dishes, one that you don’t find listed in the lines of the recipe.  Part of it’s the kind of wisdom we gain by watching someone work, and I will always regret not spending more time in the kitchen with my mother, soaking up some of her knowledge about bringing a recipe to life.

But more than that, there is a certain creative something only a few people possess, and it’s not something you can study or read or even be taught. In my handbell ensemble we talk about this very quality – in fact, it’s our (legal!) trademark. “Ringing in Color,” we call it, and it means taking the black and white notes of music and bringing them into vivid color with various creative touches – dynamic changes, movement, the particular lift of a musical line. Thus the finished product is made up of more than just following the music notes on the staff, more than just putting the ingredients in the recipe in a bowl and stirring them up.

My mother had that special quality, and she seasoned her cooking with it as well as the rest of our home. She was the kind who could arrange a vase of flowers just so, wrap a package so beautifully no one wanted to undo it, place a picture on the perfect wall to show it off to its best advantage. She knew exactly how to put things together  – from clothes to jewelry to home furnishings – so it looked stylish and elegant. If I were to suggest that she was being “creative,” she would laugh. “That’s nothing,” she’s say. “You’re the creative one with your book writing and your music.”

I believe each one of us has a unique creative gift, an ability to bring an extra touch of beauty to life. Yours might be in painting or sculpture, writing or music, sewing or crafting, cooking or gardening. Discovering that individual gift is one of life’s great adventures, and why it’s important of offer children the opportunity to participate in all kinds of activities. We learn by doing, by putting our hand to something, by feeling our way through the black and white instructions and uncovering our inherent ability to add the “color” that makes it come alive.

I nearly wept for joy the first time I made potato salad and it tasted exactly like my mother’s. I wonder if it’s because there was no written recipe, and I had to go purely on instinct and “feel.” Sometimes we can become so caught up in those black and white instructions we forget to trust our own creative instincts. So I’ll keep working on the spaghetti sauce. Maybe I should trust my inner wisdom and stop trying to follow the recipe so exactly.

If I’m really lucky, I may discover that I’ve inherited some of that kitchen creativity after all.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.