My Room

The Burrows Home belongs to the Burrows Family...and when I say it belongs to the Burrows Family, what I mean is, sometimes this home is chaotic and maybe everything isn't just the way I would like it all the time ever. I have a husband. I have 3 children whom I homeschool. They have a giant dog and 2 cats. Outside the home, I have 5 chickens. Our home is regularly tidied and usually somewhat sanitary, but it is difficult to have everything clean and beautiful all the time. And...I can't really have pretty things because EVERYTHING gets broken around here. So I've settled for a simple, humbly appointed, mostly sanitary, sometimes tidy home. It isn't MY home, after all. It is OURS, and I want everyone to feel comfortable and at ease here in our place away from the outside world. A place where we can all be ourselves and enjoy one another's company without pretense.

BUT...I do need that one place where I can close the door and feel peace too, where I can be at ease and be myself, where everything does not get broken, where pets do not reside with their aromas and their shedding, and where I can enjoy some quiet time as I craft, create, write, read, or work. And sometimes sleep when Nick snores too much or I can't get comfy in our shared bed (or when the chaos of untidiness is too much for me in the master bedroom, which my husband has rather appropriated with his mountains of clothing and STUFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

So, a few months ago I laid claim to the guest room. The picture at the top is the guest bed. The cats are normally entirely unwelcome, but someone had left the door open this day, and they did look awfully sweet. I snapped a picture and then shooed them off with my lint roller, and then promptly rolled away any evidence that they'd been here. I just love my bohemian bedding and piles of pillows! This is a bright and happy, yet calming and centering space. I must have had myself in mind (and didn't know it) when I chose the bedding.

Here below we have a recent find. It came to me from a photographer who no longer needed it as a prop. It was painted an aqua/turquoise color, so I brought it home and sprayed it down with a couple coats of mustardy yellow and hung it up to display some fun and happy memories and small paintings of my own. I apologize that the photograph is a wee blurry, but the lighting in here is not good for photography. It is, however, perfect for ME.

The painting below was done by my Great-aunt Mildred, and it hung in my grandparents' home for as long as I ever remembered, until my grandmother died. Grandpa stored it in the shed for a time. My mother got it, and then she gave it to me. It was in an awfully old frame, which literally fell to pieces as it was handled. There was no glass or anything to protect the painting (which maybe isn't a valuable masterpiece, but which has a story and sentimentality, and I love it). So I reframed it this week and hung it above the bed. It is rather larger than it looks here, so almost serves as a headboard for the queen-size bed.

Here we have an old wooden vessel of some sort. I have no idea its original purpose, nor how old it might actually be. This is another piece that belonged to my grandmother and I don't remember a time it wasn't there. I used to play with this as a child. It was everything from a witch's cauldron to a butter churn to a chamber pot in my imagination. Often, I slapped a big, round, red polka-dot pillow on top and it was a giant mushroom for the fair folk. I believe it was also a Barbie hot tub at some point. My Aunt Debbie got this after Grandpa passed and wanted me to have it. I couldn't say no because I do have such memories of it, so it has come to live in my peaceful room filled with things I love.

Last, we have another art piece. This one I commissioned, telling the artist only that I wanted something inspired by the Iron & Wine E.P. Woman King. I cried when this is what I received. I was so moved by her capturing (and her rendering of the Woman King resembling myself) everything about the music that speaks to me so strongly. This piece is 36X72 and fills a wall for me. It is the first thing I see each morning and the last thing each night. I LOVE this painting!

In this room, I sit quietly. I read. I pray. I meditate. I paint. I draw. I write. I work. I listen to quiet music. I watch my chickens from the window. Sometimes I get a good night's sleep. I love this room.

The Art of Birth and Motherhood

"Serving Women and Families Through The Art of Birth and Motherhood" is my mission statement at Woman King Maternity & Childbirth Services. "The Art of Birth and Motherhood" is a multi-purpose phrase, really. My job isn't easy to learn in books, and no 2 doulas practice the same. It is an art form, and it gets better and better with experience and practice and appreciation. There is also art in listening to and watching birth and motherhood. I see raw beauty every day. Sometimes, I am absolutely captivated by the experience and it stays with me for a long time. The most recent birth I attended was one such birth. I wrote about it at Reflections of a Woman King, and I still feel the need to write about it more, and to play around editing the handful of pictures I took during this mother's labor. Because I already wrote about that birth, I won't repeat details here again, but I just wanted to share my favorite photo with some really neat artistic filters with the Prisma app. I do have permission to share her image, but these will make it difficult to determine her identity, and client confidentiality is important to me. 

I am pretty sure that top photo is my absolute favorite. I'd like to choose one and recreate it on canvas to submit to a birth art show.

I found the second and third ones really interesting, and I do like looking at them, but they aren't my favorites.

^ This one is competing for my top favorite. It's making it really hard to choose. What do you think?

And the last two here are definitely close seconds. The last one is actually from The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. My pineapple ukulele has that painting on it too, so I am a fan.

A Thing For Old Photographs

I have a thing for old photographs. This one is of my grandfather, James Sparrow (he's the handsome side-eye glancer on the bottom right-hand corner there) and his siblings. Top Left: Eugene Sparrow. Top Right: Lawrence Sparrow. Bottom Left: Clydine Sparrow-Waller. Middle: Martha Sparrow (she died in a house fire when she was 23, if I remember the age correctly). I don't know much about Martha. Grandpa never mentioned her even once. Grandma only ever mentioned her 2 or 3 times.

Nick has a pretty new interest and hobby in family history, so I thought he'd find pictures like this really interesting. My Aunt Debbie seems to be in possession of most of the old photographs that my grandparents had. She let me look through them with her while my family and I were in Illinois 3 weeks ago. It was fun walking down memory lane, or hearing stories I hadn't yet heard, or just wondering together over the pictures we didn't recognize or have any stories about which to tell. Aunt Deb said I could take whatever pictures I wanted. Some seemed too precious, or like I shouldn't have them as long as my mother and aunt and uncles are living. If they were VERY interesting to me (like this one) I snapped a picture with my iPhone.

I don't know anything about my grandpa as a boy. Nothing. He never talked about any of that. He wasn't a storyteller, and I don't think he had any appreciation for storytelling or history sharing. He was a good man. Stern, but loving. I sure miss him. He died 2 years ago this October. Grandma Bertie has been gone more than 11 years, and I still miss her nearly every single day. She WAS a storyteller! I loved listening to Grandma, and what little I know of Grandpa and his family, she probably shared it with me. Looking back at pictures like this I can sometimes hear her voice telling me this or that. In this one, I hear her telling me the story of Grandpa asking her for a date, and how she almost blew it because she was trying not to appear too eager. Grandpa didn't have a lot of patience, and being a practical fellow he would have moved right along had he thought she was trying to play hard-to-get or simply wasn't interested in him. I'm so glad they went on that date, so that I can look at pictures and think of stories like this when I feel lonesome for them.