Ferdinand

“Once upon a time in Spain there was a little bull and his name was Ferdinand.”

So begins one of the most cherished children’s books of our time,  and my own childhood favorite.  The Story of Ferdinand,  written by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson,   was published in 1936 while across the Atlantic the Spanish Civil War was raging.

But as a child I was oblivious to the book’s anti-Fascist,  anti-violence polemic,  nor attuned to its message of acceptance for children with differences.

And I certainly didn’t know that Hitler had ordered the book burned as degenerate literature,  or that in Franco’s Spain it was banned as anti-Fascist propaganda until the death of the dictator decades later.

And I don’t think I was bothered at the time by the concept of bullfighting,   perhaps I was too naive to realize that the bull always loses.  I simply loved the book for it’s sweet,  funny story,  and it’s delightful illustrations.   But decades later on a trip to Seville,  and against my better judgment,   I went to a bullfight that haunts me to this day.

Of course you may know the story –   unlike the other young bulls who love to run and buck,  Ferdinand is content to sit under a “cork tree”  and smell the flowers.   And when by a serendipitous and humorous twist of fate he’s taken to Madrid to fight in the bullring,  he catches the scent of the flowers in the hair of the lovely senoritas.   He then sits down in the middle of the ring to enjoy the smell,  ignores the provocations of the disgruntled matadors,  and as he won’t fight,   he’s sent back home.

Ferdinand’s mother worries about her unusual progeny,  but she sees he’s neither lonely nor unhappy,  and so leaves him to his peaceful pursuit because – as Munro Leaf so wisely tells us –   “she was an understanding mother even though she was a cow”.

What a better world it would be if we all stopped to smell the flowers,  like that little Spanish bull named Ferdinand.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Art Imitates Life

I don’t remember my mother Jessie saying  “When life gives you lemons,  make lemonade.”  but it certainly was her modus vivendi.  (See My Game Mother)

Coming of age during the depression in New York’s Far Rockaway,  my mother’s parents were necessarily frugal.   But although money was tight,  her lawyer-father was able to send her older brother,  my uncle Milt,  to a private,  out-of-state college.  (See Rosie and Milt, the Literary Lady and the Second-Story Man)

But one private school tuition was all the family could afford,  and so Jessie went to the public Hunter College,  traveling on the Long Island Railroad several hours each way between Rockaway and midtown Manhattan.

Then Mayor LaGuardia appointed my grandfather as a city magistrate,  and with his larger salary,   he asked my mother if she’d like to transfer to a private college.   But by then she’d met my father,   they married in June of her sophomore year,   and she was happy staying at Hunter.

Early in their marriage my parents took jobs at a summer camp – she as arts and crafts counselor,  and he,  just out of med school,  as camp doctor.   She had to borrow clothes from friends,   she once told me,  so she’d have enough of a summer wardrobe to take with her.

My folks went on to lead a financially comfortable life,  but like many of their generation,  they never completely shed their Depression mentality.   Both were handy with their hands and with tools,  and repaired things in their house that I would’ve paid a handyman to do without hesitation.   And before sending anything to the dry cleaners,  my mother would attack it with a rag and a little soap and water which usually did the trick.  (See Elbow Grease)

And my mother sewed,  not all her clothes,  but some.   A whiz with a sewing machine, she could even make curtains and slipcovers,  and was known to patch carpets and rugs with a big curved carpet needle.

A high school art teacher by vocation,  Jessie was a talented artist and painted wonderful landscapes,  still lifes,  and portraits in charcoal,  watercolor,  and oil.   (See Still Life)

“Never regret an accidental line you’ve drawn,  or an unintentional brush stroke you’ve made.”,    she told us,  “And never abandon your canvas.  Accept your mistakes,  incorporate them into the design,  and make it a beautiful picture ,”

Of course she was speaking about life as well.

Jessie 

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Mist. Mist outside my window...
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When I think back on my professional life, I’m amazed and humbled by how I could concentrate on complex and intricate tasks that I couldn’t imagine doing now. I could laser focus and often have music or even talk radio in the background, for an hour at a time.

My current clients pay me to focus, which is a real incentive, and when I despair of my diminishing attention span, I think about the nice people (really) at one of my clients. They are millennials or Gen-Zers, and there is a lot of TLDR going on. The problem is, their business requires a lot of detailed technical information for reference. I review their marketing documents, and often I’m the only one who reads them word-for-word. They often thank me for such a “thorough reading” and wonder how I can do it.

However, sometimes my attention span runs out of steam, and in other parts of my life, my focus dims. Once I remember to get bills paid, etc, and there is leisure time, I find I can read a book for only 15 minutes or so, often mimicking the fragments of time the other tasks take. Now that I am taking on more caregiving responsibilities, being “interrupted” is often a factor as well. “Where is my … can you find my …”

And oops, my mother is coming in 10 minutes (for real as I write this), so are we set up for the family Zoom, and did I take out the chicken for lunch? Off to the next time fragment …