Our Lady of the Red Thread

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Five

Cloud always made the best of things. After all, she was an artist and artists were innovative. She made a game out of being the “New Kid in School.” When people asked her where she was from, she would answer “Highway One O One.”

When a little girl Cloud’s mother always dressed her in plaid dresses as all of her school pictures will testify. In only one is this classic standard substituted with a black turtle neck. When her cousin Bridget saw that one she exclaimed, “How did Cloud get out of the house without being plaid?!” Some say Cloud’s mother dressed her that way so she could “pass” and make people think they weren’t as wild as they were.

They always shopped for school clothes at Macy’s and for quality rather than quantity, during which Cloud would be thoroughly indoctrinated with the reasons for doing so. She would have preferred the quantity, but over time she came to understand and agree with her mother’s wisdom in these matters.

One year, following one of their moves, as September loomed on the horizon and she was to start a new school, she asked her mother when they would be going on the shopping trip.

Her mother sat down with her and explained that she needed every cent she had to re-invent her design business and their budget could not accommodate the classy Macy’s wardrobe she had come to expect.

This came as quite a shock to Cloud and she said she wasn’t going to school. It was apparent that this was a right time to address the subject of finances and career and her mother told her that if she wasn’t going to go to school she would have to get a job.

Further consideration revealed that there was not going to be any employment available to Cloud that she considered up to her standards. Cloud said that in a few more years she would join the service. Her mother told her that would be fine but further consideration revealed the rigorous hours and the wardrobe would not suit her standards either.

Cloud said she was going to marry a rich man and her mother told her that would be fine and that they needed to get to work on her immediately so that she could become all the things that a rich man would be looking for in a wife. Well the idea of having to become something specifically to please “some man” was definitely not in accordance with Cloud’s standards.

“Okay Mom,” Cloud said with no sign of further frustration or disappointment, “just give me what you can. I’m going shopping.”

When Cloud returned she had totally re-invented herself. She was delighted and delightful modeling the treasures she had gleaned from second-hand stores, and so was her mother. Among her outfits were red paisley pajamas bottoms with a black T-shirt and a blue and grey striped silk neck tie. A fuzzy pink fifties angora sweater with raggedy jeans and beat up cowboy boots and an impressive assortment of bracelets and chains. Cloud had gone “Punk Rocker”.

She enrolled in the new really “straight” school in upscale Walnut Creek, got the low down on all of her teachers and before classes started, went around and formally introduced herself to each of them.

She walked into the history class with her blonde hair streaked with various shades of red and black and in permanent BOING. She walked right up to the teacher and introduced herself. “So nice to meet you. I’m Cloud, and I hear you don’t give out A’s in your class.”

He had no choice except to shake the hand she stuck out with the four-inch band of little pieces of string from under her bed all braided and woven around the wrist, as he said in a stern voice, “Very rarely young lady.”

She said, “Well, I just want you to know you are shaking hands with the ‘young lady’ you are going to be giving A’s to this year.” And he did. He had to, because Cloud worked hard for those A’s and he was quite happy to have someone to give them to for a change.

When she told her mother about this her mom said, “Honey, why did you want to set yourself up like that?”

Cloud said, “Mama, the next time he sees a kid come in that doesn’t fit his pictures, he’s going to remember me, and he’s going to think twice before he passes judgment.”

When her mama had told her that she thought Cloud was working too hard to try and pull this off, Cloud said she was working for those other kids. According to folks, who claim to know, Cloud is still working too hard for those other kids whether they come from Walnut Creek or the wrong side of the tracks.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Four

Cloud wondered if this moving on just ran in the family. After she discovered Rumi, she was comforted and inspired by his poem that begins, “Come, come, whoever you are! Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving….”

One time when she went to visit Grandma Cloud she found her putting things in boxes. When she asked her if she was moving, the little old lady just smiled her famous Mona Lisa smile and said, “You never know. After all, I’ve already been here six months.” And when Cloud’s mama decided it was time to move on she usually moved her mom right along with them. She’d ask, “How would you feel about moving, Mama?” and the grandmother would just get up and start packing without even asking where.

Cloud never had to help with the packing and moving. Her mother said that their moving wasn’t her fault and wasn’t her job. She would take Cloud up to the mountain to stay with her other mother, Bayou Butch and the goats, her Sifu Aunti and her wild red-headed cousin Bridget who she wanted to marry when they grew up.

When her mama came and got her it helped Cloud some that she always told her they were off on their “Next Great Adventure”. There were things in the car to eat and music streaming from the tapes made up of songs her mom had put together and called their “Movin’ On Sound Track”. They made a brave start with Willie Nelson singing “I just can’t wait to get on the road again.” When the Grateful Dead came on sweet and mournful with “If I knew the way, I would take you home…” they grieved the going some, and wondered if there would ever really be a way home for them, and figured probably not until Jesus comes. But when Janis Joplin started singing “Bye bye Baby, good-bye,” with Big Brother and the Holding Company, followed by Barbara Streisand’s “Anyplace I hang my hat is home” they felt like they were tough enough. By the time Gerry Rafferty’s “City to City” was harmonizing with the sound of the road, the going was easy and they settled in to play their car games: “Shiloh says, seven sparrows sang soulful….” And sometimes they would play “Talk Show” and her mother would interview her about her brilliant achievements regarding her career in art and poetry. The car game her mother liked best, however, was when Cloud would spontaneously make up stories with involved plots and a full cast of characters with dialogue of depths that utterly amazed Mama.

When they got to their destination they would drive all around the new town, eat at some really neat little cafe, usually go to some beach not far away (as though a beach made everything okay) and then go to their new house or apartment.

All of her materials and stuff would be neatly arranged on shelves her mother had made for her brand new room with a brand new flowered comforter and sheets with matching curtains her mom had also made, and the pictures of the mermaids would be on the walls. And there in the middle of her flowered bed, she’d put the big baggedy raggedy teddy bear she’d had for as long as she could remember and who went everywhere with her. The bear had more than one name, and some of them were secret.

Cloud always loved her new little rooms, but she still cried for the first few nights when she went to bed because she missed all her friends and was just getting used to her mom’s last husband or boyfriend, and it had all happened so fast, and no warning, and besides — she didn’t know how long the new room was going to last. When her mother was old and regretting her regrets she would wonder how she could ever have thought that sparing her daughter all the details leading up to their moves would be less traumatizing than keeping her informed as the details occurred.

Cloud often took her bear and got into the big bed with her mom which would be in the living room and fixed up to look like a couch with lots of paisley silk pillows and velvet patchwork quilts her mom and grandmother had made of red gold and green. And purple. She would snuggle in and pretend that they were Arabs or Gypsies, whispering to her bear, “Wow, if you could talk, the stories you could tell!” because she told the bear even more of everything than the everything she told her Mama. And some say she still does to this very day.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Three

 Cloud appreciated the fact that her mom didn’t make her do dishes or take out the garbage. Mama Cloud would say, “Anyone can do dishes. That’s not something you have to learn how to do. Go learn something, read, study history, draw pictures, memorize a poem — something important.”

She also appreciated that though her mom was very tidy and organized about the whole house, she let her do “her own thing” in her own room, and Cloud was a very messy kid. Because, not only was she a “Material Girl”, she was an artist. She needed a lot of stuff to work with. Her mom always said, “When we move” (which was really often) “we have to rent one Uhaul truck for the household stuff and another just for Cloud’s stuff.”

The problem was that after a certain amount of time her mom would come in and clean her room and when Cloud came home to find her room all orderly she would go into shock because she knew that when she looked under her bed, there was going to be a big black hole where a lot of her “materials” used to be.

Sometimes she thought her mother to be really insensitive. How could she possibly have thrown out that lonesome fuzzy pink sock and those broken-in crayons, and all those papers, and pieces of papers, and puzzles, and pieces of puzzles, and string and pieces of string, and that little lone red Barbie doll shoe, and little blonde Barbie doll heads, and coloring books, and, and, and…..

Didn’t her mother know she was a great artist? Artist’s needed their stuff! Her mom wouldn’t even put her art on the refrigerator door like the other kid’s mothers did. But then she would console herself with the fact that her mom didn’t put anything else on the refrigerator either. She said she hated “Refrigerator Art!”

It was pretty easy for Cloud to forgive her mama even though she wouldn’t put things on the refrigerator, because when she really liked something Cloud had created she would frame it and hang it on the wall along with all the other art her mother collected. Some of the things she had made when she was just a little girl would still be hanging on the walls when they were both old. And, not that long ago she found some drawings, which she had thought the black hole had eaten, in an old album along with pictures of her.

Though neither Cloud nor her Mama could know at the time, after Cloud grew up and left home and her mama got old and sentimental she did give in and put things up on the refrigerator door. Mostly cards that Cloud sent her. Cards with lots of sparkle and glitter. Cards with pictures of red cowboy boots, legendary women on horses, mermaids, forties movie stars, elephants and bees. Cards from all the places and towns where Cloud traveled and lived. The best were from Cloud’s own card line, usually with pictures of the Madonna and Child or the Guadalupe.

Then periodically — like when she used to clean Cloud’s room — she would take them down. She would read the wonderful things Cloud had written in them, calling her things like Mama Bear, Wolf Mother, Daughter of the Bee Queen, and Mommie Cloud. She would tell her she was beautiful and brilliant and funny.

Sometimes there would be poems inside that she had written, saying things like: “If there is anyone God likes to please / with His riddles, rhymes and prophecy / I Have no doubt / that it is my mother.” She would tell her how much she loved her even if she had made them move all the time. She would write things like, “I miss walking with you along all our shores, especially the one where the seagulls sing with their bird breath smelling of Pizza from Waterfront Pizza Parlor. I forever long for home and that home is always with you.” On those future days and shores her mother would kiss the cards, cry, and put them under the cloth on her altar next to the refrigerator to make room to put up the next batch. And some she framed.

The truth is, when Cloud was a kid she didn’t really care that her mom didn’t put her stuff up on the refrigerator. Even then she knew her art was too good to be on a refrigerator door, unless, of course, it was a card. And it wasn’t even so much that the stuff from under her bed periodically disappeared that traumatized Cloud. She appreciated the clean room. It was that when this happened, sometimes it meant they would soon be putting the rest of their stuff in a Uhaul truck. Again.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.