Portland, ME: Another Pinpoint on the Map

By Sarah

Hellooo ladies! Anyone out there?? One of us must have failed to mention in our previous posts, how great the Caouette-DeLallo women are at beginning things, but how easily we allow them to take a back burner when we take on new interests or responsibilities.

Summer has already passed and I am no longer living on my mother's property in the Airstream camper I renovated into a guest house. It is now my mother's garden studio until the nights get too cold to paint out there, even with the warmth of a space heater. I've since traded that intimate, green shelter space, for 1,200 sq ft of hardwood floors and my own office.

I share the apartment with Molly, who moved up here with me in September from Providence. We both knew this would be the perfect place for the two of us, though we chose it for different reasons. Molly said, "I have a thing for bathrooms." And I said, "There is so much light." And while she inhabits the front end of the flat, and I the back, somewhere in-between our bobby pins and hair ties, our snacks and shoes, intermingle in only a way sisters can live.

Portland has been good to us thus far, particularly the food scene (we've become Little Lad's popcorn and craft beer addicts). Though I am already trading jobs to maintain a better writing schedule. Writing needs to be my primary focus right now. As I'm reminded regularly, my twenties are slipping away, and I can see my window of opportunity getting smaller and smaller as time passes. My hope is to finish the novel I began three years ago, here in this city. It would be befitting, since when I first started working on the manuscript, I had loosely based the setting on Portland (even though I had never lived here. Kate had, and I enjoyed coming to visit her and hanging out around town so much, I felt it the best place for my story to begin.)

I have moved four times this year. Some people don't even move four times in a lifetime. I want to believe I will be here, where I've landed, for a little longer than usual. But the reality is, the future is uncertain for me when it comes to such things. Molly is talking about going to Ecuador during her summer break. (Not sure if I want to get a temporary roommate or not.) And at some point I am going to try to get over to England to visit Kate and Michael this spring, but of course that is all dependent on money, and work, and school etc, etc.

Today I have put in almost a full day of writing. I am exhausted, and even though it feels like I didn't even make a dent in all the things I want/need to be working on, I know that I did accomplish something. Tomorrow I will begin again fresh, pen to page.

The Sports Bra Dilemma

Please know that before you continue to read this, there are some slightly crude words that may offend you. That being said I am going to explain to the meaning of a sports bra and what it feels to live in one 7 days a week.

Sports bra, noun.-a uni-boob inducing piece of stretchy fabric that is meant to worn during high impact sports and days when all of your other bras are in the wash. Also for women (and the odd male-gynecomastia or man boobies) who want to appear to be athletic.

I am no stranger to wearing sports bras. As a competitive athlete and all around tom-boy, I worship these wonderful elastic rack hammocks. I mean, can you honestly say that underwire bras digging into your back and leaving gross marks all around your chest is attractive, let alone comfortable? If you answered yes to this question then it proves that your bra band is way too tight and it is cutting off the circulation to brain making it impossible for you to have logical answers.

One of my most memorable make-out moments with a boys was one in which I sported the sports bra. I was wearing a tattered and worn out lacrosse pinnie and sweatpants. I really get dressing to impress. So anyway, he did what any horny, college guy would; his hands went a wandering. Most boys think that when they put there hands up a girl's shirt, they will find a clasp gasping to be unhooked. But not with this girl. No way. Instead he pulled it off my skin about an inch and let it snap back into place. He was so amused that he continued to do so. That went on for over 20 minutes. Some girls would have been humiliated, but it was my proudest moment yet.

During the summer and sometimes into the fall if I am feeling frisky, I'll wear a sports bra without a shirt over it. No, it is not to show off my massive, size 30B knockers (can a 30 be described as massive?) not is it to show off how nice and tan and 6 pack-a-licious my belly is. I go sans shirt because running 15 miles when it is over 80 degrees is not something you want to do with a shirt chaffing your armpits. And those farmer tans make me feel like a Hillbilly. I remember one day when I went out in a gray t-shirt. It is one of my favorites (it has 'Dartmouth Soccer' printed on the front), a nice heather gray. But came home with the back completely wet from the humid air combined with my sweat. The armpits were another story. So I vowed to go out the next day in just the sports bra.

In Rhode Island, there are a lot of funky people. There are a lot of wonderful people, but the funkiness is very apparent. Whenever I go out for my runs, I get a lot of honks. Men in trucks, men in jeeps, even the jewel upon jewels, a man in a mini-van. What a douche! I'm am trying to leave a small carbon footprint by using my legs instead of a car and I get mullet donning weenies shouting 'Oh, yeah!' at me while they listen to bad country or booming rap. It is incredible what men find sexy. Here is me, dripping with sweat, red-faced with dirt and exhaust sticking to my skin. To top off the hotness factor even more, I usually pull my track shorts up to my belly button. In Rhode Island, you can't wear a sports bra and shorts. That is just out of the question. It frustrates me to know that even in a t-shirt, men still honk at me like. Miss Jenna Jameson would probably salute me.

Most people carry guns today so if you are out jogging/running and a man honks at you, don't scream out 'Fuck off' and flip your middle finger. He might be an ex-con so you can never be to cautious with the reaction. Or, to guarantee that no one will honk, carry a trident with you (not the gum, the thing Poseidon used). That will definitely scare 'em off. But the cops might not be as amused so make sure to disguise as something friendly or polite (i.e. a muffin or a chihuahua). If you want to wear a sports bra, make sure you do it with caution.

By Molly
  

Removing the Labels

One of the things I really get about myself is that I have always understood that there is not one label with which I can identify. I am not one dimensional. I do not neatly fit into any category. I never have. When I was a kid I played basketball constantly. I woke up in the morning thinking about getting to the court and once there, tossed one ball after the next from the foul line towards the netless hoop. I got to be pretty good, so good that the boys from the neighborhood let me play on their teams. I got a bit of a reputation as a jock. I happened to be a decent artist as well. I sold my first drawing when I was thirteen to Dino Chernasky, a kid from down the street, who wanted me to make a copy of a Cat Stevens album cover for him. He paid me fifteen dollars. So I was considered an "artist" as well.

I loved going to church. No one had to prod me too hard to get out of bed each Sunday morning to get to Sunday school, followed by church, followed by Sunday social where the tall stainless urn was filled and refilled with pale brown liquid and the smell lingered on the church basement's folding walls. The best part was the church lady made cookies, usually Toll House or jam thumbprints laid out on white doilies. At one point I was attending church three days a week between after school Bible studies and Sunday school and Catechism classes. I was given the honor of presenting the sermon on the day of our class confirmation. I talked about the importance of women in the church and we sang hymns written only by women, so I got this feminist/religious reputation as well. My minister, the lovely soft spoken Reverend Jacob Longacre who baptised me, confirmed me, and performed my first wedding at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church, really encouraged me to consider the ministry. I rejected this idea once I started partying in high school and lost my virginityand wondered what God would ever let me into his heaven after all of the sins I committed and the ones I had hoped to commit. I embraced drug experimentation, including L.S.D. which I took for the first time while wandering around the Boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey. I had this strangely permed hair that I never combed and wore embroidered gauze peasant tops sold at the same head shops where we bought bongs and rolling papers. Landlubber jeans with wide bell bottoms and Earth Shoes were all the rage. I doubt that I was considered stylish but I had little concern for what anyone thought of what I wore. So I was sort of a fashion rogue in my school, mix matching thrift store finds, gauzy shirts, and ponchos and vests my elderly great aunt crocheted for me.

Somewhere in a box is a ragged blue folder of poetry that I started writing when I was eleven or twelve. My love of writing got me an editorship on the school newspaper in both junior high and high school. I became the art editor of our art and literary magazine as well, and again when I was an undergrad in college.

My social groups were diverse and I felt as comfortable hanging around the housing projects with an ethnic mix as I did with the children of steel executives. I moved through the jock population and the artist/cerebral scene where we talked about Ginsburg poetry and Hermann Hesse novels, and got stoned on the weekends with my football player boyfriend. I went to church on Sundays with my great Aunt Mildred. I was a decent student.

Tim and I had an interesting discussion one day when he identified himself as a "hippie". I asked if he didn't find it limiting to label himself. People associate hippies with pot-smoking, free thinkers, who eat lots of vegetables, and in Vermont, typically drive Volvos or Saabs. As our conversation progressed I explained my rejection of labels because I want the opportunity to grow in ways that I might not even be aware are possible. If I identify with one group, doesn't that restrict my movement between groups? Can a hippie hang out on a basketball court? Or in a steak house? What about the cocktail lounge where my co-workers like to hang out on Fridays after school? They eat lots of fried stuff and drink pastel colored drinks while the rap/R&B music throbs from the speakers behind the bar. If I were a hippie, could I still go there?

Something I take great pride in where my daughters are concerned is how they have and continue to create who they are as individuals. They are open to the world. They are open to possibilities and they are fearless in their attempts. Over the years I sat in recital halls and gyms, ice rinks, stood at soccer fields, watched game after game of field hockey, had a ringside seat at indoor and outdoor tracks, gymnastic meets for all three, edited a manuscript and many papers, watched them cross stages, waiting with pride, my heart full, for the sound of their names. My head is full of memories of watching them become...I have purposefully chosen not to label them as any one thing. It's not Sarah the writer and Kate the actress or Molly the athlete. They surprise me all of the time. The gifts that they each possess will reveal themselves as they move through their lives and I look forward to what is to come. They too have each chosen to remove those nuisance labels that always get itchy and stick out way too far.

Dreams.

I woke from a bizarre dream this morning. I was in a park with my mother and Kate, and we were having a picnic. I was about 9 years old, so that would have made my sister around 7. As we are shaking out our blanket to lay in the grass, we notice a woman sitting cross-legged nearby with her back to us. Because of the close proximity my mother asks the woman if she doesn't mind the company. When the woman turns to us to answer, she is a younger version of my mother, about twenty years old. The younger Carrie is surprised by this, and even I am for recognizing the strangeness of the situation. Kate doesn't seem to notice, because she is already off playing in a field. But my mother isn't startled by this, and approaches the woman for a conversation. They talk quietly among themselves, and an understanding seems to be reached. When my mother comes back to the blanket, the encounter isn't mentioned or discussed, and we go about our picnic as though nothing ever happened.
I have been thinking about this all day, wondering what it means. ~ Sarah

Finally Coming Home

Nearly two and a half years ago while working in a boutique in downtown Portland, Maine I was messing about online during a slow day and found a google advert to "Au Pair Abroad!"  I was fresh out of an extremely unhealthy yearlong relationship with a man I hardly knew when I had moved in with him and still in the process of moving from our cramped studio apartment into an even smaller space with a group of friends also recovering from bad breakups.  I was an emotional wreck, feeling extremely displaced with my things in boxes relying far too heavily on my very patient friends and, nearing the end of my overworked five and a half year college career, unable to see much past graduation.

I was burying myself in theatre work (my chosen academic course) designing both for school productions and professional ones, trying to keep up hours at the shop and dallying with an ex-boyfriend with whom I'd had a long term on/off relationship.  I was thin, exhausted and probably hallucinating with the weight of my baggage when the sight of that ad drew me in like a siren.  Portland had become my adopted hometown in the four years I had lived and studied there and despite being a small city, was beginning to feel stifling in its interconnected web of theatre and art-folk with whom I socialized heavily.  The idea of running away to Europe (or any other foreign country for that matter) seemed like salvation.  It was a chance to start fresh, to shed the weight of my past relationships that I couldn't escape while living in Portland, and change the unhealthy patterns I had been perpetuating for years.  So that very afternoon, bored, emotional and confused I applied to take my unstable self to another country to care for other peoples' children.

A week later after a couple of phone calls and some lengthy emailing, I had booked my flight to move to Hamburg, Germany in just two months time and live with the Rexhausen family: Mari, 7; Jack, almost 5 and Jan and Katherine, successful creative types.  Their family sounded chaotic but warm and loving and supportive and despite having moved out of my mother's house when I was seventeen, the idea of living with a family again appealed to me.  I left Portland in a blaze of parties and tearful goodbyes with my wacky but wonderful friends and didn't really look back...Portland had been such an important place for me and could very well have become my home but something never completely connected and I found it much easier to leave than expected.  

Hamburg was closer...in Hamburg I had very little trouble settling into the Rexhausen family and eking out a life for myself.  I met a wonderful group of American and English ex-pats and slowly found a sense of routine..albeit one that revolved around work in the week and parties on the weekend but it worked.  I never settled really...I kept my work and home life quite separate from my social life to the point where I think Jan and Katherine were beginning to grow concerned: here I was, a twenty-three year old college graduate and I was still partying like I was an eighteen-year-old on holiday.  I justified it by saying that I had worked so hard in college and was so responsible in my work with the kiddos that I deserved the weekends to go crazy...

I was restless and in many ways still running around in circles trying to recover from my heartbreak in Portland and my break-up with Portland itself: I had thought Portland was home and realizing, like a lover after some time apart, that maybe we weren't quite as made for each other as I had thought.  We had moved so much growing up that I had been so proud of the life I had made for myself in that vibrant, young student town and hadn't realized that it was merely a stop along the way.  In Hamburg I was in basically the exact same role: irresponsible, high-strung and always on the look out for something.

In June of 2009 a visitor of my English friend David came to Hamburg with Dave's brother Phil for a long weekend of drinking and rugby watching.  Michael was awkward and shy and ginger-haired and wouldn't look me in the eye until at least 5 beers in...it probably wasn't so romantic as I remember it but somehow after he finally looked at me and we began talking which turned into a weekend of looking at each other and talking and hand holding and I was sixteen

again with a crush on a boy who was completely unsuitable for me based solely on the fact that he lived 777 miles away and anyway I didn't want a boyfriend, certainly not one that didn't live in what I thought was to be my new hometown.  But even after I listed the reasons why it would never work, he still came back five days later.  And this time it was just the two of us...and I'll spare you the mushy details but over the next eighteen months, an eighteen months that sometimes were a battle and always filled with time-limits and goodbyes and airports and skype and enormous phone bills, but somehow this awkward, insightful, beautiful Englishman came to be mine.

Mike has lived his whole life in the same town.  He has cousins and friends he's grown up with, adults who have known him since he was an infant and just two houses he's ever called home.  When it became clear about six months in that our relationship was becoming serious and that if we wanted it to continue we'd have to eventually make the move towards living in the same city, I was initially apprehensive.  I had lived with two boyfriends before, had moved in with them after only short amounts of time of dating and both had ended disastrously.  Mike already meant so much more to me and I refused to destroy the relationship in the same way.  So we waited...we waited another year, a year for me to mature a bit more, to get to know each other better and for me to be sure that I could in fact settle in a family.  The Rexhausens were invaluable support during this time and my biggest gauge into my own "readiness".  I suppose I figured it was time to start thinking about it about six months after the initial discussion when seven year old Jack started asking Mike when he was going to ask me to marry him.  Mike made me an incredible offer around that time to come to Sale, to live with him in a house his mum owned that we would fix up together and create our own home.

I was still scared up until the day I left Hamburg and left my Rexhausen safety net.  I wanted so badly to find my home and for Mike to be a part of that but...it was incredibly overwhelming.  I grew up in so many ways in the months since I had first convinced Mike to talk to me but in the comfort of my temporary Rexhausen life, living in their home I had almost convinced myself that that was where I was always supposed to be.  On November 15, 2010 I got off the plane at the Manchester airport for the last time and Mike drove me straight to 107 Urban Road, to a house that, for the past three months, he had singlehandedly been gutting - tearing out carpeting and wallpaper, painting everything white, installing a brand new bathroom - he brought me home.  It was just a blank canvas of a house at that point but as I touched the walls and opened the cupboards and sat on our new giant bed, I saw my life here.  I saw the curtains I'd sew and meals we'd cook and the love we'd make...it could have been any house in any city but this was my home with my love who asked me to marry him while lying in bed that night.

Four months on now and the house has purple and red and green walls (well, in different rooms), Michael is now my husband and we're working on putting in a small garden.  This is life I was supposed to lead, this is the man I get to spend my life with and every morning when I wake up there is no more anxiety, no more emotional rollercoaster, no more running in circles.  My husband brought me home.

The Things We've Carried

On my mom's refrigerator she has this magnet with the quote, "The best things in life aren't things."
It is true we moved a lot while I was growing up, having attended four different elementary schools and three different high schools, but the reality is when I look back at those experiences and those places, I don't feel like I missed out on a single thing, and I wouldn't be the person I am today if I had had a consistent childhood. Home to me was where my family was, because there was always this feeling of having made the transition or change together. Of course having a familiar environment to return to, where you can recognize a part of yourself and your past, is a wonderful feeling of comfort. But when I think of home there's a deeper connectedness that can only come from the bond a close family share; a family that has been through a lot and has seen a lot, and still wound up rather 'okay'.

"We are not like everyone else," my mom used to say. And we weren't. We were often the new family in town; the family with the strange traditions and stories, the eccentric artist mother and the stay-at-home step-dad, but we were never without a house full of curious neighborhood kids wanting to try obscure foods they had never eaten before, or participate in activities they'd never done before. And though sometimes my sisters and I struggled with the occasional ways to "fit in", so were all our other peers, because let's face it, junior high and high school are a bitch.

I think a lot about the "things" we equate with a settled life, particularly the things we collect. As my mom wrote in her blog, we got really good at labeling the boxes and knowing where our stuff was supposed to go in our new homes. It is as though we had many versions of the same house, but in various locations. Even now I can point out the items my mom has kept over the years that have followed me from toddler-age to adulthood, they are like old friends I can revisit when I am feeling nostalgic.

For the last 2 1/2 years I have been writing a manuscript with this concept of artefactual things. The working title is, Zola's Wonder Closet, and its about a woman revisiting her past by tearing apart a closet she stored with all her "memories".  Here is an excerpt from the opening:

"Zola found solace in transitory places; where the people and the environment were different with each day. The ocean waters were never quite the same green-blue, and she was always finding a better spot to frequent and watch the passersby. Then there were the rare, beautiful things that would come unpredictably through her camera’s lens, giving her a clearer focus with every, new discovery. It wasn’t about routine for Zola. It was about finding a natural rhythm.

She needed the sea, just as her body needed salinity. She needed quiet spaces, just as she needed her solitude. And she needed distinctness, just as she needed inspiration. There was a comfortable continuity to her changing surroundings and she felt like the spinning top at the center of it all. "

Of course we write what we know, and I know this character Zola very well. There are many others like us trying to, as the poet Mary Oliver put it, "find our place in the order of things." Change is something I will always be able to adjust to no matter where I am, its what makes me an adaptable survivor, and I have my mama to thank for that important life skill.

- Sarah

Settling In and Finding Home

A few years ago, Tim, my life partner, and I bought a house in a funny little suburban neighborhood not many miles south of Providence. It is close enough to the water that we have a "water view" from the second floor (which did not exist before we moved in) which can be seen when the leaves of the trees disappear and you know exactly where to look through the cluster of houses along the shore. It's a bungalow (small) style house, built in the 1930's. Our neighborhood was a vacation community that attracted folks from Connecticut and New York. There is a crumbling amusement park a few coves away called Rocky Point and 3rd generation locals remember the heyday of a place that I imagine was far more pristine than the place we call home now.

Warwick, Rhode Island/Oakland Beach is a place that I have to squint hard to picture myself remaining into my retirement years. There is certainly a blur when I try to imagine the future, but mostly what I think about when I think about home is the place I want my children to come to, perhaps with their children someday. Is this the landscape that I want to walk in my soft-soled shoes, arm in arm with my daughters, reminiscing about a life lived in one place or another?

I have a strong sense of belonging to a place. I was born and raised in Bethlehem, PA. I was surrounded by an impressive number of family members. Holidays were caught in Brownie Box frames, the reds so vivid, images of everyone growing up and growing older. But my daughters do not have a place that they can identify as home. There was no constant for them. We moved so many times when they were young that the photos in the albums require labeling. Each scene is so different, mountains as backdrop, ocean, cities, huge gaps with no relatives sitting around the tree. Instead of big turkeys on Thanksgiving as a centerpiece we rolled raviolis. The gifts that were stacked beneath trees at Christmas were homemade; one year a balance beam, a cradle, stilts, quilts, homemade books, dolls made of fabric. We strung rose hips and popcorn and drilled tiny holes to thread ribbons through sea shells we found on the beach across the street and topped the tree with a starfish. There was even a bird's nest resting in the boughs of the scrawny tree that we dragged from the woods behind our house!

I convinced myself that we were creating our own traditions and with each move I worked hard to turn the physical space in which we lived into a home. I laboriously labeled the packed boxes so that I knew exactly where to plunk them down on moving day. There was familiarity with objects carefully arranged. The oak hutch that belonged to Sarah and Kate's great-great grandma that their dad scraped and sanded to find exquisite detail, the collection of photos that were too precious to change from their frames, the blue spice cabinet purchased for a song when I was pregnant with Sarah, paintings, one in particular painted Degas style of ballerinas found at a yard sale in which I convinced the seller that it wasn't worth much because the paint is cracked and sold it to me for seven dollars! He threw in a drafting table for ten more that sits in the corner of my living room waiting for art to be made. I just brought it from Sarah's apartment when she decided to leave Concord, NH three weeks ago. It feels right to have it here. Eventually she'll want it back, but for now it's home for a painting I found in an art market in Cuba and an Oklahoma landscape, a blurr photographed in passing with the shutter opened wide.

Everything in my house has a story and a history. I can tell you where it came from and how long it's been around. I've moved so often that I can't afford to keep every single thing that means something, so I choose the things that mean the most. When my daughters come home I want them to see something familiar. I want them to feel connected to a place when their feet hit the ground. I want them to want to be here and to feel something settled inside them. I prepare the meals that they know. I make up the spare bedroom with blankets that I held onto, a large painting of a mother embracing her baby that I painted from a photo of me and Molly. I was wearing a bright orange skirt and chambray shirt and Molly was nestled in my lap with a gentle smile on her face. There are photos three deep on the chest in that room and books beside the bed that I read to them when they were so much younger, some autographed by their authors that my mother stood in long lines to get, Steven Kellogg a favorite, and Graeme Base with his fabulous illustrations.

The most important part for me is their desire to be here, to understand that home is not just a place, rather it just might be the familiarity of the beat of a heart that waits patiently for their return.

Somewhere in the middle

I'm a bit late to the game here in terms of introducing myself...typical really.  I'm a bit of a flake anyway but I'll do my best to keep up.  I'm Kate or Katy or Katydid or, more recently, Mrs. McCarthy.  I'm the middle daughter of Carrie, sister to Molly and Sarah and niece to Donna, granddaughter to Norma Lenore.  I live in Manchester, England in a crumbling brick terraced house that my new husband Michael and I are desperately trying to hold together (sometimes by just some string, duct tape and hope) and spending my days in visa purgatory as a housewife...as of late that means painting the walls in ridiculous jewel tones and teaching myself guitar whilst waiting for my husband to come home so I can cook us a feast nearly every night.  I prided myself on my nomadic tendencies for years, spending the past 5 or 6 bouncing around between Maine, Italy, Germany for a couple of years and now finding myself in the unlikeliest of places: still, settled and married in the suburbs on a quiet tree lined dead end street with a garden.  But somehow it's made sense, landing here.  There was so much inconsistency to my life and a sense of profound displacement that when I met the man who was to become my husband, I clung to him, to the life he could give me...there has been calm now for months.  I know I was the one to worry about for a long time and to be honest, I'm feeling quite smug these days!  But there's comfort in routine, in living an ordinary life extraordinarily.  The only thing missing these days is the 3 incredible women contributing to this blog but hopefully through these conversations we'll stay closer than ever.  -Kate

Little Boxes.

"Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside, the boxes all the same. There's a green one, and a pink one, and a blue one, and a yellow one, and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same. And people in the houses all went to the Universities, where they were put in boxes and came out all the same.  There's Doctors,  there's Lawyers, and Business Executives, and you're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same..."

This was my mother's lullaby to me as I remember it best. She would add a little extra punch to the lyric's "And they're all made out ticky tacky and they all look just the same!" She could never fit that mold. Even when there were times where she longed for the house in suburbia and to be taken care of. Her anger at what she deserved and didn't get, sometimes over flowed into jealousy to her friends that did. She never saw herself as a cleaning lady in an elementary school, but as a woman who held a secret to the woman who was the cleaning lady in an elementary school. The secret she beheld, the fact she desired to be bigger than life on stage. In the basement on Dellwood St., ironing the kids clothes, her heart and soul poured out of her voice into the cloud of steam and starch. Me, holding a flashlight on her while she sang into the extension cord. She sometime sat on a paint dripped stool, swooning her attentive crowd of one, Edie Gourmet or Dione Warwick ballads.

Ok, the truth is I cringed sometimes at those sour notes. And all the opera singing lessons she had in high school had certainly taught her to how belt it out. Somewhere lost inside the years that passed by, the dream still had a fire in it. Perhaps in church where she could legitimately over power those church ladies. I would lip sync next to her amazed at her courage. In a moment caught up in my mother's fantasy world, I was drawn in as a pupil. A song in mist and starch, don't dream it just be it. Sometimes I forget where my core is and my notes are unmistakably sour, but as an artist I draw my notes out onto paper, and in paint to canvas. For a moment I am transported to a New York City loft and getting ready for my opening night. So many canvas so little time.

I'm the Momma, the Aunt, the Sister, Cousin, Friend and Lover, but ultimately I sing out of tune, always from my heart, and a with a very long extension cord.

Love you Mom, Donna

Boat Shoes and Great White Sharks

I'm Molly, the youngest sister. This is what you should know about me:
-I want to study behavioral patterns of predatory sharks just because working on Wall Street (my initial plan in life) just seems ludicrous now that Goldman Sachs is in debt. I mean seriously, why work in an office when you can just cage dive with massive great white sharks?
-I am a vegan and I do not do it for the animals. Sorry, PETA, I'm just don't sympathize cows and chickens.
-Trail running is my favorite 'activity' to do. I'm just that weirdo who will go out and run 20 miles. I could be doing a lot stranger things.
-A couple months ago, I came home from Italy after spending 5 months with a very strange family. The experience gave me a whole new outlook on Italians. Who knew that they loved cheeseburgers and french fries so much? Incredible what you can find out from living with strangers. I got attacked by their dog while I was there and now look like Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin Phoenix before he became an aspiring rapper for publicity.
-My sense of humor is quite dry and somewhat crude, so I will do the best that I can without offending people. The other day I was in a thrift store and Sarah (the old sister-sorry) presented me with "101 Hamburger Jokes." It was one of the most beautiful things. I just like all kinds of ridiculous stuff which is why YouTube is like a gold mine. You just find...wow, it is so great I am at a loss for words.
-I love Sperry Top-Siders and not just because I went to boarding school. I recommend them to everyone.
-My sisters and I don't look anything alike. I am blonde and fast and have a semi-fro.
-I aspire to be Jacques Cousteau. No, I still want to be a girl and I have nicer teeth, it is just that he is most amazing person in history.
And the last thing on my list is that I am reapplying to college because the first school I went to was too...hmm, I don't want to offend anyone so I'll just say it was too Coach Bag and Natty Light for me.

Being Mom

I am the mother of three amazing young women, Sarah who is 28 and aspires to be a writer and is off to a beautiful start as she is nearly finishing her masters in creative writing, Kate who is 25 and recently married to the love of her life and living in England, and Molly, who at 20 years old is just beginning to think about all of the posssibilities in her life, including education and geography.

There has been no greater journey in my life than being a mother. I am constantly challenged to be the best that I can be because I value so deeply their pride in being my daughters.  For now I will say that all that is good in my life is connected to the deep commitment and love that I feel for them.

Writing about our relationships to each other and our views and feeling about our collective life experiences will be still another remarkable endeavor that I look forward to as this project evolves.  Welcome to the beginning of something so very lovely and how apt that it should begin on Easter Sunday, a day that was very important to my mother, Norma, who started the Red Dress Conversation.

Just Sarah: The Rambling One

My name is Sarah Elizabeth Caouette-De Lallo. I don't expect you to memorize that, because I am pretty accustomed to the fact that most people don't. I go just by Sarah, named after the Hall and Oates song "Sarah Smile", I guess the name suits me, because I can't imagine going by anything else. My grandmother used to call me Lizzy, but it was the only real nickname I have ever had, and it was reserved for my Grammy only.

I'm 28 years old, a graduate student, and aspiring writer. Currently I'm displaced, not exactly settled, but trying to find where I belong. I recently moved to St. John V.I. for a week, only to end up back in New England spending nights on couches and in hotels, sorting through the practical stuff of trying to find a job and an apartment. Before I made this spontaneous move to the islands, I had a pretty comfortable situation. I lived alone, had a nice cushy job, and I was as close to single as I could come, (meaning I had ongoing relationships with men I cared for). For some this may sound like a great place to be in, but of course I wanted to see if the grass was really greener on the other side, and so I traded in the regular comforts of my lifestyle, for a leap without a safety net. This is a curiosity I have always seemed to have, and yet I still can't get a handle on it, often ending up back where I started in the first place. My mother assures me "happy and settled" is attainable, but I think part of her recognizes that it may not be my nature. I am happy, but always impatient for that next step. So, in the meantime I am writing like a banshee, submitting, and applying, hoping that something will pan out soon.

What Are the Red Dress Conversations?

In early 2008, we all dressed in red to say our goodbyes to Norma Lenore, our dear mother and grandmother. She died on Valentine's Day, to remind us to love life to the fullest and to never take it for granted. She told us to be without fear and we will never feel like our lives passed us by.

And in the wake of beautiful Norma, we went on; some of us moving, some of us marrying, and all of us growing to become better versions of ourselves, but she was never far from our minds, our prayers, or our conversations. And as we sought out new directions in relationships or in different places, she had become an angel of guidance, a presence forever missed.

We've talked about starting this blog for over a year, (myself, my mother, and my sisters) but never seemed to get around to doing it, that is until now. So, where do we begin? I guess a little introduction is always needed to get a story off and running.  Let's start with a little background about the bloggers, shall we?