Tag: nancy (Page 2 of 22)

In Our Own Language 16

IOOL16c

Usually Nancy (my disabled sister-in-law) draws,
and I stitch her drawings,

IOOL16Nancy2
but this time we laid the crayons down
and played with bits from my scrap bag.

IOOL16Nancy1
Nancy placed the bits of fabric on fusible sheets,
and I took it from there

IOOL16InCar

stitching in the car . . .

IOOL16Adonis

and under Adonis . . .

IOOL16God

and under Mr. God (dog, in reverse) . . .

IOOL16Dante

and under Dante.

It’s obviously a hit with the felines,
and Nancy seems to like it, too.

Nancy Does Her Part for The 70273 Project Blocks

Nancy does her part: makes a drawing that will become her block for The 70273 Project.
(Lighting was a little on the dark side on account of it was post-lunch nap time.)

And here Nancy and Jeanne (mostly Jeanne, actually) talk about
what it’s like to be a mother and an artist.

NancyChambers25Feb16a

NancyChambers25Feb16b

Here are Nancy’s finished drawings for her 70273 blocks.
Just wait till you see what I have planned for
my part of the collaboration.
Stay tuned.

Today we picked up the 563 (or so) drawings that will become
In Our Own Language 19.
Here are some of my favorites:

IOOL19a

IOOL19b

IOOL19c

IOOL19d

Tonight I was tickled to be invited to talk about The 70273 Project
with other writers over on Twitter
in #storydam,
a chat moderated tonight by Meredith Shadwill.

Don’t forget to help get the word out by mentioning The 70273 Project on
Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media outlet you hang out in.

and

Remember to subscribe so you stay up to date.

and

Let me know when you get your block finished
and let me know if you’re gonna’ participate in the
Make-a-Block-a-Day-in-March Event.

and, as always:

Thank you.

Turning the Tables

NancyAndAndy23Feb16

Nancy and The Engineer

Nancy Talks About her Baby Doll

When I was a teenager, too young to drive myself to the shopping mall and too old to want to be seen with my mother, I would sit on a bench in the middle of the mall and watch people. Sometimes I would pretend I was handicapped just to see how people reacted to me, then I’d switch back to me, then back to handicapped. On and on it would go, this private social inquiry, with me observing and noting the differences in people’s responses to me.

Though some were quite gentle, most pretended they didn’t see me when I donned the disabled persona.

(And yes, it’s true: I was an odd kid.)

(Some would argue that I still am.)

Some block makers have expressed reluctance to make a block fearing they will not do it right. Now I’ve known a lot of disabled people in my life (and my regular readers know how much I adore my sister-in-law, Nancy), and never – not once – have I ever heard a single one of them fret about getting something wrong. Right and wrong just doesn’t exist for them. Making isn’t about how they do it, it’s about doing it, period. The making is all that matters.

So I’m thinking that maybe, when we’re making these blocks for The 70273 Project, we could let Nancy and her friends be our teachers and just make for the sheer joy of making. And who knows? We might find it so freeing, we’ll decide to say “Good riddance” and leave judgement on the side of the road and never, ever look back.

\\\

Want to raise your hand and become part of the Make-A-Block-A-Day-In-March Tribe? Leave a comment here or send me an email or find me on Facebook and let me know ’cause I’m thinking about setting us up a Facebook page to call our own.

Want to subscribe? Click right this way.

And hey, if you’re on twitter, you’re cordially invited to join Meredith Shadwill (facebook /  twitter) and me (@whollyjeanne) in a twitter chat about The 70273 Project and writing. Look for (and use when you chime in) #storydam to join the conversation. It’s gonna’ be fun.

A(nother) Squeaky New Beginning

NancyNYD2016

Happy New Year from Jeanne and Nancy

Every New Year’s Day, my Grandmother would finish breakfast, get lunch on to cook, then take her seat in the chair underneath the telephone. She’d pull out the baby blue zippered 3-ring binder that held all sorts of important information, turn to the curled-up page where she’d written all the family phone numbers, and put her finger beside the name at the top. Carefully, making sure she got the number right, she dialed one number after another.

“Hello?” answered the receiving party.

“Hello. Is this 1-9-7-6?” Grandmother would ask, clamping her hand over her mouth so the person on the other end would take her seriously.

“No,” they’d say, thinking she was referring to a phone number, “this is 5321.”

“Oh yes, it is so 1976,” she’d say, “check the calendar,” her laughter erupting as she slammed down the phone. She’d take a few deep, satisfied breaths to collect herself before dialing the next number on the list.

New Year’s Day is the only day my grandmother ever turned prankster, and she wore that year-turned-telephone number prank slap out. Today, ignoring caller id because that’s not important to the memory, my cousin Stacy and I race to call each other on New Year’s Day, asking simply, “Is this 2-0-1-6?”, laugh, and hang up.

NYDFood

Happy New Year, y’all. I hope you’ve had your black eyed peas and turnip greens and pork cause there’s no need in tempting fate. But listen here: whatever resolutions you make, whatever resolutions you break, may 2016 hold delight around every turn. May you laugh more than you cry. And may you never question – or let anyone else question – your worthiness.

Now let’s get on out there and have ourselves a big time, why don’t we.

~~~

Doesn’t matter what day of the year it is, Nancy and I continue doing what we do . . .

Nancy draws:

IOOL4 023 copy

And I stitch:

IOOL4 23

And we watch to see where that carries us.

In Our Own Language 18

Ocean1

The ARC
last Friday . . .

Jeanne: Do you want to ride in the convertible?
Nancy: Yes.
Jeanne: Do you want to spend the night with us at the hotel?
Nancy: Yes.
Jeanne: Do you want to go shopping?
Nancy: SHOPPING!!!!!!
[I took that as a yes.]
Jeanne: Do you want to walk on the beach?
Nancy: [crickets] [Nancy does not like to walk.]
Jeanne: Do you want to look at the ocean?
Nancy: It’s green!!!

Nancy12Dec15

We went down to visit Nancy this weekend.
She didn’t know we were coming.
There were rides in the convertible

NancyInHotel

a spend-the-night in the hotel on Saturday night

NancyShops12Dec15

shopping

AndyNancyWatchWaves

and time spent looking at the ocean
the lacy, green ocean.

There was also drawing
of course.
86 drawings made at school since our visit in late October
and 46 drawings made in the hotel room.
The two batches make up
In Our Own Language 18.
132 drawings.

IOOL18Colorchoices

Note the color choices

IOOL18PositiveNegativeSpace

the use of negative space

IOOL18Borders

the border

IOOL18Movement

the movement.

IOOL18Symbol

She continues to make this shape
a vessel, I call it.
It will play a prominent role
when I begin to stitch these.

IOOL4 22

In Our Own Language 4:22

Right now,
I’m still stitching
In Our Own Language 4.
Yes, four.

~~~~~~~

Nancy, my developmentally disabled sister-in-law draws.
I, the woman who flat-out loves her, stitch her drawings.

87: No Tricks, Just Treats

JeanneNancy30Oct15b

Dr. Seuss
a convict
a princess or two
Minnie Mouse
the court jester
Robin Hood
Superman
a pumpkin
a leprechaun
and
Captain America
(who stayed pretty close
to the refreshment table)
attended the party.

Several witches were in attendance.
The one with the green face
and long black nose
kept her candy bucket draped
over her left arm
for safekeeping
while her right hand ate popcorn
without stopping.

Some wore helmets
and knee pads
but not as costumes.
They wear helmets and pads every day
cause they tend to fall a lot.

Nobody surveyed the crowd
making snide comments about how
somebody danced
or what they wore
or who they were sitting beside
or how many bags of popcorn they’d already devoured.
These people just rejoiced in being alive,
dancing with each other
dancing in groups
dancing with themselves,
dancing on their feet
dancing in their seats
dancing in their wheelchairs.
And those whose feet don’t work quite right
danced with their hands.

The music was loud
and the music was constant.
Quicker than the best contestant
who ever won Name That Tune,
partygoers went wild with
excitement and enthusiasm
at the sound of The Lazy Song
by Bruno Mars,
flooding the entire room
with joyful gyrations
and gleeful singing along.
Nancy and Mona
and The Leprechaun
and Robin Hood
and I
danced
laughed
and sang
at the top of our lungs,
our arms thrown in the air,
our heads turned up to the sky
as we sang about being one big fat
lazy bum,
(something that obviously
has universal appeal).

Those who can speak
sang the words
(theirs or Bruno’s, no matter)
and those who can’t speak
hummed or moaned
or made whatever sound
that just happened to fall out.

We attended Nancy’s Halloween party today,
The Engineer and I did,
and let me tell you:
it was the happiest,
funnest,
shortest (time just flew by)
most satisfying party I’ver ever been to.
Ever.

86: Real Estate in my Heart

JeanneNancy29Oct15a

Several people asked me to marry them around the same time. Five, to be exact.

I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with The Engineer, but because I’d known him the least amount of time (only two months), I sat with my pen and paper and listed the pros and cons of each young man then compared them to my list of things I was looking for in a husband, a life mate. The Engineer won that competition, hands down.

Forty-two years later, I still love everything about him I listed that day. Plus one very important item I didn’t know to list then: Nancy. Marrying Andy brought Nancy into my life, and I’d’ve married him for that one reason alone.

46: What a Woman Wants Sometimes Has Little To Do With Logic. Or Age. Or What Anybody Else Wants Them to Want.

JeanneNancy copy

1

The second year I was a Chambers, Nancy (who was then 15 years old) wanted a doll for Christmas.

“No,” declared her dad. “You’re too old for a doll.”

Her mother turned to me with tears in her eyes.

“I’ll handle this,” I assured my mother-in-law, and that fine Christmas morning found not one but two dolls under the tree for Nancy – one a big girl doll, the other a baby doll. Nancy’s joy was obvious, and my mother-in-law’s gratitude was palpable.

What about Mr. C you ask? Well, I like to think Mr. Chambers and I learned something about each other that year.

NancyAtStewartHomeSchool3 copy

2

Several years later, Nancy was a resident at Stewart Home School in Frankfort, KY. The Engineer and I attended Parents’ Weekend, spending the days on campus and taking Nancy with us to spend nights in the hotel room. We talked non-stop, Nancy and I did. Talked and talked and talked.

Now back then, Nancy would get fixated on one subject and kinda’ wear it out. That particular weekend, she was keen on talking about what good care she took of Baker and Terry Lynn – how she helped them in the shower, how she brushed their teeth, how she put them in the bed.

When we checked her in with her dorm mother at the end of that weekend, I asked Ms. Catherine if I could meet Baker and Terry Lynn. Giving me a puzzled look, she asked “Why do you want to meet them?”

“Because Nancy and I have spent three days talking about them. I know how important they are to Nancy, and I’d just like to meet them.”

“Follow me,” she said, and we headed off down the hallway, stopping at the foot of Nancy’s bed. “This right here is Baker,” Ms. Catherine said, patting a big stuffed polar bear on the head, “and Terry Lynn has been dead for about 12 years.”

I had spent the entire long weekend talking relatively intelligently – at least continuously – about a stuffed animal and a dead person.

That’s when I knew for sure I was a writer.

NancyJeanneBaby2014

3

To this day, Nancy loves her “babies”. When she started spending her days at the ARC a couple of years ago, I got a call from her teacher informing me that Nancy was regularly taking a classmate’s baby doll without permission, which, of course, upset the classmate. “We issue Amber Alerts when we see Nancy headed that way or catch her with the baby doll in her hands, but we just can’t continue like this and wondered if you could shed some light on this,” Mona kinda pleaded.

I told Mona about Nancy’s affinity for babies, how she likes to “take good care of them”, then promised to get a baby doll for Nancy that could live at the ARC. Every morning when Nancy arrives, Mona gets Nancy’s baby down from the top of the metal storage cabinet, and Nancy grabs the baby by the throat and slams places her on the table at her place. At the end of the day, Mona returns Nancy’s baby to the top of the cabinet, tucking her in for the night, and Nancy returns home to check on the 72 or so babies that wait for her on her bed. And in her chair. And on her dresser. And in her closet.

~~~~~~~

IOOL4 14

In Our Own Language 4:14

Nancy (my developmentally disabled sister-in-law) draws.
I (the woman who flat-out loves her) stitch.

~~~~~~~

Dailydahlia150915

The Daily Dahlia

~~~~~~~

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Hey, Sugar! I'm Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: writer ~ stitcher ~ storyteller ~ one-woman performer ~ creator & founder of The 70273 Project, and I'm mighty glad you're here. Make yourself at home, and if you have any questions, just holler.

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