I’m back home in Tucson, following two weeks back east on magnificent Mt. Desert Island, Maine, and nearly a week in cool Minneapolis visiting my son and his beautiful family. We’re awaiting the birth of their daughter. Meanwhile, my super adorable and super verbal nearly three-year-old grandson delighted me nonstop.

Foss hanging out with the bunnies at the Minnesota State Fair

On my one day alone, strolling alone around the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I encountered a Navajo concept new to me. The experience awakened something. Never before had I felt the urge to create art.

        Hozho is a foundational concept in the Navajo world, encompassing ideas of                beauty, harmony, balance, order, grace, health, and happiness. It is a state of                being, thinking, and acting. Navajo artists embody hozho as they weave, and                textiles are imbued with and become works of hozho.

From a stunning exhibit of Navajo rugs at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

So intriguing, this is canvas, again at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Art inspires me but words carry me everywhere.

***

On my 5 a.m. Lyft ride to the Minneapolis airport yesterday, my driver regaled me the entire way with her son’s paternity issues. He may be the father of four kids, but there was that time they found his girlfriend in bed with another man.

“Forget about your clothes,” she told the guy as he scurried naked past her, pulling his boxers up. “My son is coming after you with a hammer. Run!

“I made him get a paternity test,” she said.

In a way, I would have rather not heard this saga, but it stays with me. Part of my driver’s story portrayed her brother in the same position, fathering four kids, one of whom may not be his. My driver was sanguine about it all. “So what, he’s taken care of all four since birth so he’s their father.” (she may have felt more insistence about her son’s parental responsibility).

***

I’m so inspired by my son and daughter-in-law’s superb, joyful parenting.

Me, I’m a grandmother enchanted by balance, grace, health, and happiness wherever I  can find it. Hozho is a beautiful concept to live by.

Experiencing Hozho at the glorious, peaceful Rockefeller Gardens in Seal Harbor, Maine