Holly Cusumano

People often tell me their dreams. No, not their personal goals, I mean they ask me to interpret their nighttime dreams. I do like to think about symbols and their meanings. And like Lucy van Pelt in the Peanuts comic strip, I provide inexpensive insight. My husband is going through a phase where he talks and moves around a lot during sleep. It’s very hard to res t with a melodramatic opera or Greek tragedy being played out in bed, right next to you. The other night, during the second act, he jumped and screamed. I said, “Are you all right?” He said “Snakes.” Snakes are classic symbols appearing in the mythology of cultu res around the world. Often thought of as a symbol of evil (Adam and Eve), they can also rep res ent transfiguration (shedding skin) and healing (rod of asclepius). A few years ago, I made herbal dream pillows to sell, based on a book Dream Pillows and Love Potions by Jim Long, herbal superstar and author. Dream pillow recipes change d...

This week I watched the final episode of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” on the Bravo channel. Normally I dislike competitive reality shows, but I’ve enjoyed watching these 14 artists compete for $100,000 cash and a solo show in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Because I love art but have no formal training, this show gives me insight into the current criteria for what is “good.” Each week a panel of judges brutally tells the artists what they liked and didn’t like about their work.  Here’s what I’ve learned. Good art can be: about the materials about skill about the subject about the viewer's reaction The other day I kicked off a new piece of my own art. For several years, I’ve been recreating famous paintings by using torn paper. I project the image onto the canvas to get the main shapes just right and then carefully study the original to fill in the details. Sometimes I recreate the entire painting, but most frequently, just a part of it. Here is the original I am copying – P...

I've been thinking a lot about what makes me happy and I feel kinda bad about it. Pondering one's own happiness seems so self-centered. Do people around the world sit and ruminate on what makes them happy, or is this indulgence uniquely American? On the other side of the world, is there a school teacher in Beirut having a cup of coffee and thinking about what makes her happy? A student in Beijing? Considering my own happiness is so Oprah Winfrey-ish. Today I googled “Oprah” and “happiness” and I found The Happiness Test . You can rate your happiness, compare your self to others, and get your BHI (Be Happy Index). Kind of ridiculous, but of course I took the quiz. And the prompts are interesting. For example:  I am good at letting go of past hurts and disappointments. In Psychology 101, we learned about a principle called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs . The premise is that you work your way up through a pyramid of basic needs to higher levels of self actualization....

About 10 years ago during our routine Saturday phone call, my father asked me an amazing question, “Why does seeing something beautiful make a person cry?”  I was honored that he asked me such a powerful question and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. In my lifetime, I've seen some beautiful things that have made me cry. When I was 17-years-old and an exchange student in Spain , I walked down a dark corridor inside a church, turned a corner, and saw a huge painting (10 by 16 feet), El Greco’s “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.” That was 1972, but I vividly remember the colors in it: the metallic gold, the reds, and the grays and how the elongated faces and figu res dripped emotion. I remember the awe I felt in seeing that the artist had painted a sheer white gown over a black velvet robe (lower right). I stood quite close to it for as long as the guide would allow. For many, the natural world evokes wonderment. About 25 years ago, on a trip to rural Canada...

I have spent my adult life being prepared, rarely, if ever, missing a deadline. Our son was born two days early. Over the years, whenever we've invited people for dinner, I'd like to sit quietly in a chair for a half hour or so before our guests arrived and simply blink my eyes. This made me feel powerful. At work, when I had to make a presentation, I'd go to the conference room well in advance and clean the whiteboards, line up the markers and erasers in the slim, silver tray, wipe off the table with wet paper towels from the ladies room, and rearrange the furniture. Like a girl scout, I was always prepared.  But lately I’ve been messing up. Here's a picture of my jeans drawer. Note the total lack of clean jeans. My sister, Kit, had to come over to my house yesterday morning at 6 a.m. and help me get ready for a First Friday event at our local Art Center . We worked for four hours and ten minutes making product labels and putting price tags on the stuff I made...

Each one of us has two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. For every generation you go back, the number of people who procreated, to eventually make you, doubles. When I first started out on my genealogy journey, these numbers astounded me, and still do. I love to think about my DNA stew. It feeds my soul. Playing with numbers Let’s assume each generation makes a baby at age thirty. Perhaps the age should be 16, 18, 20, or 25, but whatever, I picked 30 for this exercise. After all, in the past, people started having children earlier than today, but they also bore many more children and did so over a period of 10, or even 20, years. Stick with me for this simplified and fictional example: For a child born in 1960, there were two parents who were born about 1930. The baby’s four grandparents were born about 1900. The baby’s eight great-grandparents were born in 1870. (You see, I'm doubling the number of grandparents and going back 30 years at the same time....

Recently while helping my sister, Kit, move to a new house, we found an inte res ting old bible belonging to “V. H. Reinhart” in the bottom of a moldy old box. I’d never seen a bible like it. The left-hand column is written in German and the right, in English. Victor H. Reinhart, born in 1885, was the father of my step father, Wilbur Reinhart, and I knew from oral family history that he was a Mennonite minister. Inside the bible we found a single, brittle, pale green leaf and immediately recognized it. I said, “Holy cow, it’s costmary!” (Tanacetum balsamita also Chrysanthemum balsamita)  Because I’m passionate about both genealogy and herb gardening, this discovery was a bit like taking a beautiful old painting to the Antiques Roadshow and finding a signed copy of the Declaration of Independence behind it. Costmary’s (now obsolete) common name is “bible leaf,” having been used as an aromatic bookmark since the time when a bible was likely the only book in the house. The volat...

So far I don’t like retirement. I keep thinking of a well-known Hemingway short story called Hills like White Elephants . In it the main characters listlessly tour Spain .  She points out to He, “That’s all we do, isn't it -- look at things and try new drinks?”  For me, like for the woman in the story, “everything tastes of licorice.” What I mean is that everything is nice, but there is a sameness to it. I feel like an uninte res ted tourist, passively observing my own life. It’s only been a few months, but most days I’m watching the clock by 9 a.m . The wash is done, the spices are alphabetized, and the house plants watered and pinched to perfection.  I hate this. So around  noon  I start thinking, I could make a nice lasagna for our son, for one of our nieces, for an elderly neighbor … a nice lasagna for somebody. Maybe I could make a nice lasagna and simply freeze it?  It's pathetic. It turns out that work is my dream retirement...