“Three Women” (The Webb House; Hillsborough, NC) I’m fortunate, I know, in having had, over the years, many fine/smart/kind women as friends. I wouldn’t have ever particularly noticed this (and certainly wouldn’t have remarked on the matter) if I hadn’t had, particularly in the last few years, so many folks noticing and remarking and commenting on that basic fact of my life. It simply seems strange to me that anyone would live life differently.

In any case, I’m also fortunate in having a lucky number of fine neighbors.  Three of them were here a couple of weeks ago for an impromptu dinner here (the first held outside, this year). I admire all three of them a great deal, and (for JUST ONCE) I shut up and let them do the talking.  It was a beautiful evening.

And,yes, I took a lot of photographs once I’d basically excused myself from their sisterly confab. This portrait (there’s an earlier and very ugly version, done last week) derives from a combination of those, and it’s for Elizabeth Webb Matheson (yes…..the same family as the name on the sign down at the road in front of this house) and April Brown. I’ve gratefully learned a lot, in the past year, from both of these women.  I do, just sometimes, listen….

Whoever you are?….do yourself a favor and go to this link (a very beautiful song by Carrie Newcomer which provided the title for this painting):

go to:

There’s a light in the kitchen
There’s a glass on the stand
Three women round the table
And they’re holding hands

They’re taking the birthings,
Bringing food when they can
They’re easin’ the leavin’
And they’re holding hands

Oh, Life can get tangled
And jumbled sometimes
You can lose your way in this world
You can lose your mind

But there’s something
On which I can depend
It’s the strength in women
Holding hands

Oh, The night can be dark
So dark and wild….
And life burns like a diamond
It’s unbearably hard
But it’s sweeter than honesty
Right from the jar


Our eyes have the look
Of some far, different place
We’ve got one foot in heaven
And one still in this land

So we breathe it in deep
And we let it out slow
and we’re holding it up
While it’s letting us go

There’s a free falling feeling
That’s lighter than air
and home burns like a beacon in your eyes
But somehow we get anchored
And somehow we get by

So?…here’s to the women
Who bind the wounds tight
Here’s to the ones
Who sit talking half of the night

Here’s to the love
And the lives that they mend
And here’s to the strength
In women holding hands

And here’s to the strength
Women hold in their hands