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Currier and Ives: A brief history

As part of my son’s birthday wish, we visited Yesterday’s Books again. There, I found a hardback copy of Currier and Ives: Chronicles of America (1974). Currier and Ives was a New York City printmaking business that operated between 1835 and 1907. We know them best from their winter scenes and the shout-out in the song “Sleigh Ride” composed by Leroy Anderson in 1948 with lyrics by Mitchell Parish (1950).

Currier and Ives prints were so popular The Royal China Company produced a line of dinnerware featuring various popular images of Currier and Ives. The Royal China Company manufactured dinnerware in Sebring, Ohio from 1934 to 1986.

Royal China sold dinnerware through retail department stores, catalog mail order houses and supermarket chains. Many a housewife collected her dishes through supermarket rewards programs. I found them first at a yard sale in Alexandria, Virginia. 

With the Americana nature of the artwork, it was fitting I should find them the week of Thanksgiving along with a book about Norman Rockwell.

And now, an art lesson

This is not the sort of art I will find in my 5th grader’s art textbook for school. There, we see prints of remarkable fine art. Below the image, the textbook directs me to ask him questions such as:

Where does your eye go first?

Where is the painting brighter?

Where is it darker?

Where is the light coming from?

If you were in this painting, where would you be standing?

We learn about “chiaroscuro” in that book, that is, the use of strong contrasts between light and dark. Currier and Ives lack that quality. 

Art that imitates life or life that imitates art

And yet, the artwork and the song came to mind Thanksgiving Day as I looked out from a chaotic kitchen and saw an 11-year-old guest teach my 12-year-old a Jane Austenesque dance to the song “Simple Gifts”, while my 8-year-old daughter played the tune on the piano. It was a Little Women moment, a Currier and Ives moment. 

The light shined on my eldest that day. As I perused my Thanksgiving binder of magazine clippings and recipes, I told her the stories of Thanksgiving past, from my childhood to our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. On the morning of the holiday, while the littles watched the parade, she joined me in the kitchen, prepping vegetables, washing and clearing dishes. I explained why we worked the way we did, always making space for more festive preparations. She listened attentively, her eyes bright and her smile proud that she was numbered among those needed in the kitchen to make the feast possible.

After the brief dance lesson was over, after the dinner was served and eaten, the pie plated and shared, I asked her to play piano. She played beautifully, showing growth in the skill since we finally made regular practice and lessons a part of our daily and weekly routine.

Where does your eye go first?

I scan the room and rest my eyes on each of the bright little ones we brought into the world.

Where is the light coming from?

From a soft light shining within them, revealing more and more the young men and women they will become. Shockingly wholesome and innocent in a world that makes that status more and more challenging to maintain. 

If you were in this painting, where would you be standing?

I stand outside a little bit, now that she is older. I step back, making space for what will come, ready to jump in to answer questions, eager for a chance to share, praying her heart does not break too soon in this difficult world. 

The act of parenting unfolds one day at a time, one interaction at a time. We learn as we go. And if all goes well, our children will have something beautiful to grow from and aspire to. They will live a flourishing life, a good life, not built on instant gratification, individualism, or selfishness, but on goodness, generosity, and love.

These moments are simple gifts.

Staying with me like a picture print by Currier and Ives.

The toddler nestled into my lap on the 1940s, green artificial leather chair with brass nail head trim. Her head rested in the crook of my left arm. Across my lap, her legs dangled past the right chair arm as I cradled her. Her deep brown eyes, so dark the pupil is nearly indistinguishable from the iris, look up at me unblinking. Sometimes she moves her lips a little as I move mine, with mirror neurons firing in her brain at my speech patterns. At times, her brow scrunches a little as if her heart is taking in what I am telling her.

“Because I’m leavin’ on a jet plane/On Friday, I’ll be back again/Oh baby, I hate to go.”

Now I board a plane without them, a distance that is not easily overcome should an emergency arise. I trust my spouse to carry on, the meals, the chores, the school lessons, the love. When they snuggle me and say out of nowhere, “I love you, mommy,” I sometimes wonder, why? Why do children give their love so easily? Why do they love so recklessly? They are the ones willing to jump off a dresser because you stand there, knowing you will catch them because you will.

My daughter feels utterly safe with me.

How strange.

Life tells us, eventually, that human beings are imperfect beings, and that we make mistakes. We learn eventually that forgiveness is not as simple as mumbling out some words to your siblings even as you are still mad because your mother asks you to do so.

Hopefully, eventually, we even learn that forgiveness and reconciliation can make a relationship grow. It somehow cements the bond into something altogether stronger. You wounded that person or he wounded you and when the circumstances were right when both parties were ready to grow and heal, someone apologized and someone shared what it did to them and then forgave.

Forgiveness is something unearned.

The one who did the wounding does not deserve it. It is a gift offered on the part of the wounded one in which the one wounded says she will no longer hold onto this hurt. It is not forgetting, it is letting go. It gives the one who is wounded freedom, whether or not the other receives the gift.

Reconciliation is the thing that can mend the relationship.

Reconciliation is mutual. It is a desire to learn from what has happened, and receive each other again.

Repeat apologies, forgiveness, and reconciliations move a relationship forward. It comes naturally enough in the course of a marriage, or, at least, there will be opportunities for it, I should say.

Friendship is trickier.

I find the older I get the more it helps to follow the gesture of my young friend ten years ago and declare my desire to be friends with a person. The older I get, the more it helps me to stop guessing and realize, okay, I can try to trust this person. I open up about how hard it is to trust, and how hard it is to jump, and she listens.

As we age, there is less advice given, less insight is given, because life on the one hand seems so settled and on the other hand, those differences that were but hints in the newlywed stage now make ruts in the road. There aren’t many who tread the same path.

We become more of who we are as we age, and the field narrows on whose company we’ll enjoy, or who will enjoy our company. We find we need someone to fit a little better into those grooves. Someone who can anticipate when we plan to jump.

Maybe, in a way, as we age we begin to understand better what matters and what we need.

It doesn’t help much if someone offers advice unless there is a helping hand behind it unless they are willing to catch us just a little bit, at least as much as they can. Maybe that is why it grows harder to trust, words are cheap, and by now we need more behind them, the need is greater. The need is physical, intellectual, and emotional, and as we dig deeper into the path we’re on, it is harder to fill it.

But when we do, when we hear the friend anticipate exactly what we would enjoy, it feels all the more sweeter, because you knew how hard it was to get there.

Hello Autumn Books

September ushers in autumn and apple season for many parts of the United States. Therefore, the Read-Aloud-Revival book list for September includes a full lineup of apple related books. For those of us raised in the cultural element of commercialism, September lacks form and beauty. Read-Aloud-Revival filled that sentimental gap. 

Among my favorites, Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn by Kenard Pak, Flora’s Very Windy Day by Jeanne Birdsall, Autumn Story by Jill Barklem, and One Green Apple by Eve Bunting, on this list of 22 books, a very simple, rather silly book stands out called Orange Pear Apple Bear by Lucie Félix.

The book plays with arrangements of the four words of the title. The watercolor illustrations are soft, sweet and playful as the concepts change with the word order. I would not be drawn to it one bit, except for this fact, it was the first book three of my three readers ever read independently.

Books at School

Today, my 1st grader completed lesson 73 of “Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons”. The title is a misnomer as far as the easy part goes and the book does not work for every student, but it has worked for mine and today’s lesson marks the change from their strange way of indicating sounds to the “new way” that is, the Helvetica way of reading words. 

This milestone corresponded with September when Orange Pear Apple Bear finds its way into my hold list, then my library bag, and into my home to the hands of my little and mid-size readers on our living room couch. The questions come to mind.

Will this be it?

Will he read this book?

Will the world of books open up before him like my eight-year-old who lowers The Ghost in the Third Row by Bruce Coville from her face to tell me with her amazed voice about how she is reading books more and more and seeing more and more how she likes them? My nine-year-old says his brain gets a little fuzzy when he reads for a long time. He looks at me between math problems with that far-a-way look behind his eyes, telling me his brain is anywhere but on the math page. It may be in George Washington’s World, in Ancient Greece, on Leif the Lucky’s Viking ship or solving mysteries with The Hardy Boys. My nearly 12-year-old is long gone, lost to the love of horses in The Saddle Club and the world of George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblins.

How remarkable that world is!

I find myself at sea with John Henry Newman memorizing “The Pillar of the Cloud” and at Barnard, eavesdropping on Zora Neal Hurston’s letters.

In Miracle on 34th Street written by Valentine Davies, Kris invites Susan to consider a world beyond her own.

“Do you know what the imagination is, Susan?”

The child nodded sagely. “That’s when you see things that aren’t really there.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Kris with a smile. “No — to me the imagination is a place all by itself. A very wonderful country. You’ve heard of the British Nation and the French Nation?”

Susan nodded again.

“Well, this is the Imagination. And once you get there you can do almost anything you want.” 

My son is our fourth born, and as such, he has grown up in a world surrounded by children. He does not often play alone. When the older kids are occupied with school, he wanders around uncertain of what to do with his boredom. 

“Books are our friends,” I tell my children, having heard it somewhere else before. 

Is my son on the threshold of this world, of these friendships?

As a homeschooling mother, this happens right before me. I know it will happen, though I know not when. Having not intentionally chosen teaching as a profession, the excitement, the anticipation, and the joy of education is something I still have to learn myself.

So I guess we’re both on the threshold of something incredible, student and teacher together.

Previously published in the weekly column, “Here’s to the Good Life!” in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch.

And just like that, life changes. We move back to our schoolhouse.

“I’m strangely happy today,” my husband said just before he realized the source of this joy came from shorter days, cooler mornings and the sweet relief and hope that comes with the closing of summer and the beginning of fall.

I have many books on hold at the Hughson branch of the Stanislaus County library, picture books telling stories that sneak math into the lives of unsuspecting children, and books about apples and harvest and fall festivals. 

There are pencils everywhere, in every corner of every room. On every surface, stacks of books form a chaotic organizational system of a new school year. 

Kendra Tierney, author of the “Catholic All-Year Compendium” reposted an early post on homeschool choices that lightly characterized the types of people who choose these various homeschool paths. After a handful, she wrote, “And then there was Mother of Divine Grace which seemed like it was made for someone who would prefer a one-room schoolhouse at the turn of the last century.”

That is our curriculum.

That is my world. I even have the turn-of-the-century desks to prove it. My husband points out our schooling happens in one room, in a house, a perfect school house.

The method these past two weeks are to ring the bell, invite the children into the school area (a row of desks along one side of our living room) and say, “Good morning, children.”

It tickles them to respond, “Good morning, Mrs. Casey.” We begin with a prayer, the pledge of allegiance and start our day. 

We have our plans and work through our day, sending the kids outside for freedom and recess or freedom and lunch. We ring the bell again.

It was not until adulthood that I read “The Little House” series with its images of a remote claim shanty, a country walk to school, games of tag or catch outside a school house, adapted education for the daughter who can no longer see, a husband at home on the farm coming in for meals, a wife whose work is tied to those around her. Laura Ingalls Wilder recounts this fictionalized version of life as a pioneer and early settler from the eyes of a children, when parents could do no wrong and as long as Pa and their dog was there, they were safe.

It is not that I think we should turn back the clock.

I do not glory nostalgically in all that was before antibiotics or good dental care. The evils of that age are not hidden from me. 

And yet there is good that I take from it, that appeals to me, that I incorporate into our modern lives whether aesthetically through wooden desks and a primitive Hoosier cupboard or educationally through memorizing poetry and Shakespeare, playing piano, singing folk songs, and reading classics. 

They say the division of the man’s work outside the home and the women’s work inside the home made more sense when the man worked outside the home nearby, still connected to the world he supports through his work. The two worked as partners in complementary spheres. The situations around COVID-19 moved our lives more and more home-based as work from home became the norm, and our lives have been better for it.

My husband works in his music studio teaching then rehearsing. I work in my office and drive away from our homestead to the world to report on events important to the community. We all travel to the next town over to attend church on Sundays.

It’s the life we live right now.

Never do I feel its strange, other-worldly, old-timey-ness more than at the beginning of the school year. At Michaelmas, we host friends and family for an outdoor dinner celebrating the bounty of fall. We haven’t quite raised a barn yet but if invited, we’d be more than willing. That’s what neighbors are for, after all.

I know what goes on in the world outside this little slip of land. Yet I’m so grateful for events that have fallen such as they are to lead us to this point. We tone our muscles and learn what our bodies can do through labor on the land. We learn something similar about relationships and love when children can run next door to a neighbor’s house and when fruit and vegetables are shared. 

It is not for everyone, indeed. There’s a privilege even in the difficulty of what brought us to this point. 

I take the gift of it now, treasure it, appreciate it, and stand amazed that the architecture of life that strikes me as particularly beautiful is within our grasp, even if it isn’t perfect. It’s the lack of perfection that makes it real.

It turns out that Spring Fever is real. 

Centuries ago, it was the name for land scurvy and cured by consuming lemons, limes or oranges, Dr. Greg Swabe wrote for Knox Pediatrics in 2018. The disease “involved fatigue, malaise, easy bruising, bone pain, hemorrhaging of the scalp and gums, and poor wound healing….their vitamin C levels became depleted during the winter months with no available fruits and vegetables for consumption.”

As a Californian, I realize how I take things our short winter and access to fruit for granted. “It’s like you live in another country,” my Minnesotan friend told me after we discussed the 30-degree weather on her side of the world after I showed her photos of my garden.

The modern notion of spring fever involves restlessness, an increase in energy, vitality and even appetite. This is the Spring Fever I recognize. The absolute desire to say, “The school year is over! Bring on vacation!”

Today I paused and watched a hummingbird visit the new pale pink geraniums a friend brought over when we gifted them a leg of lamb for Easter.

This morning while my son plodded through the sixth to last lesson of math for the school year, I filled my bucket with water, stuck my clippers in my holster and headed to the flower garden, ready to harvest to my heart’s content. I planned to cut just enough to arrange six jar bouquets. By the time I finished gathering from my mother’s roses bushes, all counting was off and I harvested to the full, enough for ten bouquets and then some. 

We decided to hold a yard sale, quite a last-minute decision, but why not? Air out the garage, pull out pieces that would be very good for others but have ended their season in our care. A spirit of generosity pervades my pricing rather than the urge to make a few extra bucks. “It blessed us,” I think, “let it bless someone else.”

We attended La Boheme this week for a joyful operatic experience, connecting with a community of artists and opera lovers one meets only by getting out and meeting people, becoming a regular. I admit the opera itself is quite tragic but the quality of the production makes it a pleasure to watch. To see grief on stage, so well-acted, stirred my heart. Rodolfo presented that moment of grief. “Live! Live!” he cried out in Italian. My heart moved within me. 

Today a familiar car pulled into our driveway. A friend bought her son to music lessons when ordinarily she works in the evenings. We sat in the sun, in a midcentury patio set I recently purchased from Miss Potts Attic, surrounded by roses bushes, drinking sparkling wine and talking about the deep things of life: grief, motherhood, all the painful things and all the consolations.

Spring fever? How can we focus when the flowers the blooming, the breeze is blowing, and bowls of red ripe cherries from the Monroe Family Orchards sit on the counter?

The pleasure of the outdoors calling us outside. This year’s Spring seems longer than last year, which seemed so brief. Is it the time together, the time spent delighting in traditions that are not only mine but yours or ours shared together? Is it the festivals, the farmer’s markets, the sheer joy that people seem to be experiencing outdoors? 

Still, I know spring has not come yet for everyone. 

For me, these are the moments to look away from the pains that haunt us, the sorrows we carry, to something so full of joy and promise, that it aches to be recognized. March was a difficult month. April was the transition, for me, into this new spring. That joy does not make the other things disappear, but it balances it out. There is a lot of darkness in our world, but now is the time for poppies. Now is the time for Spring.