It is a sunny, cold December morning in California. Dad is finally home. I am a curious seven year old full of unanswered questions. Where has Dad been? Why don't Mom explain? When I grow up I discover that 1954 is the year of my veteran father's break down and involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital. At seven, all I know is that he is out of a job, mom is looking for work, and we are “poor.” We are told not to expect Christmas this year. Is Santa also poor? As the oldest, I hold the responsibility of creating a joyous holiday for my siblings tight to my heart.
We bake cookies; we cut out and make paper chains for the tree we found on BLM land up the mountain from our house. This tree looks scrawny in our living room, just as I think our Christmas will be. My grandparents are babysitting my toddler brother while my mom goes to job interviews. I am in charge of my younger sister; Dad, well, Dad is in his own world. I walk down our narrow hallway and hear Dad talking to someone in the bathroom. I catch a glimpse of Dad's twisted face as he stands before the mirror. I love my father fiercely, and know something is wrong.
It is the Fifties, and our small neighborhood is full of children. We all walk the fifteen blocks to our elementary school and we all learn to ride a two wheeler by sharing the same small, training-wheeled bike. My sister and I skip down the street to play with sisters Dawn and Denise. All the adults in the neighborhood treat us well. We don't understand Dad's recent comments about trusting no one. Though kids come to our backyard to climb and swing on our swings or to play dress up, families rarely visit. I am a sensitive, gregarious child who loves school, loves having friends and desperately wants our family to be close and loving.
Mom's usual childlike joy is heavy with quiet despair. Dad isn't himself; he needs a rest. The merriest of holidays are upon us and I have never felt so sad. No ones knows what we're going through, I think. Even Nanny and Grampy, my mother's parents, send disapproving glances Dad's way, which does nothing to add to the mood. But we have a tree and we have cookies and on Christmas Eve we children sit by the huge living room window, wishing for snow and reindeer.
Christmas morning dawns with us slowly sliding out of bed. We hear sounds in the kitchen and smell eggs and bacon frying. Mom's smile greets us as we tip-toe and stand at the entryway. “Nanny and Grampy brought over a bag of groceries last night,” she announces, “and there are some surprises from them under the tree.” We race to the tree to grab the gifts our grandparents brought us. Dad is still in his pajamas, sitting in his favorite brown leather chair, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. He gives us a half-hearted smile and a half-hearted Merry Christmas as we reach for our packages. “I feel so awful Santa Claus couldn't make it this year,” he moans. Then suddenly we hear a loud knock on our front door. Dad jumps and Mom wipes her hands on her apron as she unlocks the door and pulls it open. I run to her side. We step out onto our porch and look up and down the street...no one. Then we turn around and notice a sign on our screen door and this string tied to the handle: “Follow the string,” it states.
It's a chilly morning for the San Fernando Valley, and I stand, staring at the sign and at the string. The excitement pours into my body and warms me up. We gather together; even my dad looks amazed. We kids are at the head of our family line and hold onto this thin string: we follow it to our front yard, along the edge of our bushes, around the side bed of roses, across our driveway, up to our garage door. There the string is tied to the handle, which is decorated with a huge red bow. Mom and dad glance at each other, as mystified as we children are. “Well, let's open the garage,” says Dad. Together we all lift on the handle and the garage door swings open. We stand there stunned. Every inch is filled with boxes. We move closer. There are boxes of clothes for each of us and boxes of toys and boxes of canned goods and boxes of children's books. Even at seven, I remember staring at the amazement and happiness on my family's faces and I notice my heart isn't tight anymore, but wide open.
Santa made it after all! We become exhilarated and slightly intoxicated after opening our presents. My parents have a look of pure, unexpected joy on their haggard faces. I catch a glimpse of a tear on my Dad's cheek. We troop back and forth into the house carrying armfuls of clothes and toys. I would never forget this particular Christmas. It is the beginning of a difficult childhood with a depressed and sometimes violent father. But this Christmas, when Santa truly does not forget us, gives me a hope and a belief in human kindness that cuts through my father's cynicism.
It isn't until I am a teenager that I discover what really happened; I am sitting in the kitchen as my mother prepare dinner. Somehow our conversation veers back through Christmases of long ago. Mom reveals what she eventually found out after that wondrous extravaganza. Our family's name was submitted by a neighbor to a local church and the members gathered all the boxes for us. I am dumbfounded by this generosity from total strangers. Throughout my growing-up years, my father constantly tied to make strangers our enemies. A knowing smile crosses my face. My father is not as wise as I think. I can feel the pull of that simple string on my fingers and the memory of how this thin piece of twine gave our family the greatest joy in a dark time. I will always be eternally grateful.
© 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Giving Birth: An Oregon Story (continued)
Gestation
When Dan and I returned to California, the sweet taste in our mouths of the Pacific Northwest made us come to an easy decision. We were heading back to Oregon. Dan packed his family inherited dresser, his guitars and clothes into his Chevy van. I packed my family inherited maple rocking chair, my journals, books and clothes into my Fiat station wagon and, like modern pioneers, we carvaned up the coast. This time as we drove over the border into Ashland and then on to Eugene, we knew we were coming home.
Our first autumn with its brilliant reds, oranges, golds and yellows is remembered like an artist's dream. We camped inside the van on the doorstep of a friend's house. Dan and I started looking simultaneously for an apartment and for work. The crisp sunlit days turned into cool nights. These cool nights turned into freezing winter ones. During the first pre-Thanksgiving snow fall, we had been visiting another friend teaching near Dayton. We appreciated the warmth of her living room. I now fondly remember the thirteen comforters and blankets piled on top of the sleeping bags we used in our van bedroom. I never appreciated having a home so much as the first day we walked into our duplex.
Labor
Our seventh anniversary brought a searing transformation. I had been attending graduate school, working on the father/daughter relationship in literature and in psychotherapy when my father died from an accidental house-roof fall while gutter cleaning. His death came one week after his birthday and four days after Christmas. In the middle of counseling, working to heal the tempestuous relationship I had with my father, I was devastated. I grieved passionately. I wrote in my journal. In California I visited my dad's favorite haunts. In Oregon I meditated on a McKenzie River boulder where I had once brought my nature loving dad. Over a nine month mourning period I sobbed my way to my own rebirth.
Dan was supportive during this difficult time, but he was also set adrift by my emotional volcano. He listened intently as I bubbled over from my counseling sessions. I was growing in such leaps and bounds he couldn't keep up with me while his intimacy needs were not being met. We were each becoming more involved in parallel lives. We loved each other but change was in the air.
My need for a home, a commitment and a child were coming to the fore. Dan emotionally backed away from my needs without expressing his own. We began searching for a house to buy. During this house seeking process, however, I unexpectedly discovered that Dan had been having a romantic connection with another woman on his softball team. I asked for a three month moratorium on this other relationship and we started counseling with a family therapist we knew.
We bought our home; I took over ownership when Dan moved out. What followed was a turbulent year. We lived apart and drifted into our separate lives. Dan's other relationship ended and he continued the counseling he had started earlier. I got a roommate and worked and cried full time. In my late thirties I began to mourn the loss of a daughter I might never have. The name Aspen was etched into poetry and there I thought it would remain.
Near the end of our year apart I began seeing the whole of me rather than the loss of an “us.” I was doing house repairs with my roommate, plowing up the front lawn for a vegetable/flower garden, writing, hiking and learning to thrive on my own. I thought I could now finally be friends with this man I loved. One evening we set up a meeting at the house to discuss finances and our co-parented cat, Lupe.
As we talked we began to fuse in a way we had never been able to do before. He spent the night. I panicked and felt I had committed the gravest of sins. Wasn't I over this man? Hadn't I already been hurt? Was I asking for more pain? Gradually my tears begin spinning into gold. For Dan and I, remaining in our separate living spaces, began to “date” again. And we began weekly couple-counseling sessions which over a two and a half year period brought us to the intimacy needed for a life long commitment of marriage and the promise of trying to give birth to a child.
Birth
We planned our own wedding ceremony for the third Saturday in May, 1988. It was to be a small friends and family affair in a lovely, grand backyard. We ended up inviting over a hundred guests including twenty children. Four friends called the four directions of earth, air, fire and water and we ended with the community we had created around us, speaking out their tributes and strange/humorous remembrances. We had each written our vows separately and revealed them to each other on that day. We held hands and instead of crying, laughed our way through our spoken words. But what unexpectedly touched my heart was the vow Dan made to have a raise a child with me.
It was November and we had been trying for a baby for nearly eight months. In December we left for our planned trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. One late afternoon as I was sitting at Casa Arnel's communal table, a woman I had never met who was sitting across from me said, “You're pregnant.” On some deep, unconscious level I intuited she was right.
A youthful forty-one, I was joyfully and deliciously exuberant throughout my pregnancy. The summer months brought warmth and the nesting syndrome. It also brought a visit to a Native American Sun Dance near Salem. My friend Wren and I set up a tent on the outskirts of the ceremonial fire. I breathed in the peace of the forest and meadow surroundings. That evening there was a gathering of the elders. The fire blazed gently in the middle of the circle. After introductions and shared wisdom, we were each invited to step to the fire and ask for a wished blessing. As I approached the flames, I caressed my blossoming belly and asked that this child I was carrying be a child and caretaker of the earth.
Aspen Louise was born on a September 1st Friday near midnight. My midwife, Dan, the soon-to-be Godparents were all in the hospital room with me, as I chanted my way to her birth. “It's a girl, I think,” exclaimed my husband as our precious one was lifted from my body.
When Aspen first latched onto my breast, all the years of waiting and wondering, sadness, disappointment and hurt disappeared. Only the present moment of cradling this small being remained. And it seems that moment led to the next moment and to the next and within the blink of a fairy's eye, twenty-two years passed. This daughter is now five inches taller than I am, and I sometimes wonder if she was ever really inside of me. Three days after her birth, her tiny perfect physical presence still invisibly attached to my umbilical cord, we brought her home to our cats, home to our small house, home to our garden, home to our community of loving friends, home to the life Dan and I shared, home to Eugene, Oregon, where we have now spent thirty-four blessed years.
© 2011
When Dan and I returned to California, the sweet taste in our mouths of the Pacific Northwest made us come to an easy decision. We were heading back to Oregon. Dan packed his family inherited dresser, his guitars and clothes into his Chevy van. I packed my family inherited maple rocking chair, my journals, books and clothes into my Fiat station wagon and, like modern pioneers, we carvaned up the coast. This time as we drove over the border into Ashland and then on to Eugene, we knew we were coming home.
Our first autumn with its brilliant reds, oranges, golds and yellows is remembered like an artist's dream. We camped inside the van on the doorstep of a friend's house. Dan and I started looking simultaneously for an apartment and for work. The crisp sunlit days turned into cool nights. These cool nights turned into freezing winter ones. During the first pre-Thanksgiving snow fall, we had been visiting another friend teaching near Dayton. We appreciated the warmth of her living room. I now fondly remember the thirteen comforters and blankets piled on top of the sleeping bags we used in our van bedroom. I never appreciated having a home so much as the first day we walked into our duplex.
Labor
Our seventh anniversary brought a searing transformation. I had been attending graduate school, working on the father/daughter relationship in literature and in psychotherapy when my father died from an accidental house-roof fall while gutter cleaning. His death came one week after his birthday and four days after Christmas. In the middle of counseling, working to heal the tempestuous relationship I had with my father, I was devastated. I grieved passionately. I wrote in my journal. In California I visited my dad's favorite haunts. In Oregon I meditated on a McKenzie River boulder where I had once brought my nature loving dad. Over a nine month mourning period I sobbed my way to my own rebirth.
Dan was supportive during this difficult time, but he was also set adrift by my emotional volcano. He listened intently as I bubbled over from my counseling sessions. I was growing in such leaps and bounds he couldn't keep up with me while his intimacy needs were not being met. We were each becoming more involved in parallel lives. We loved each other but change was in the air.
My need for a home, a commitment and a child were coming to the fore. Dan emotionally backed away from my needs without expressing his own. We began searching for a house to buy. During this house seeking process, however, I unexpectedly discovered that Dan had been having a romantic connection with another woman on his softball team. I asked for a three month moratorium on this other relationship and we started counseling with a family therapist we knew.
We bought our home; I took over ownership when Dan moved out. What followed was a turbulent year. We lived apart and drifted into our separate lives. Dan's other relationship ended and he continued the counseling he had started earlier. I got a roommate and worked and cried full time. In my late thirties I began to mourn the loss of a daughter I might never have. The name Aspen was etched into poetry and there I thought it would remain.
Near the end of our year apart I began seeing the whole of me rather than the loss of an “us.” I was doing house repairs with my roommate, plowing up the front lawn for a vegetable/flower garden, writing, hiking and learning to thrive on my own. I thought I could now finally be friends with this man I loved. One evening we set up a meeting at the house to discuss finances and our co-parented cat, Lupe.
As we talked we began to fuse in a way we had never been able to do before. He spent the night. I panicked and felt I had committed the gravest of sins. Wasn't I over this man? Hadn't I already been hurt? Was I asking for more pain? Gradually my tears begin spinning into gold. For Dan and I, remaining in our separate living spaces, began to “date” again. And we began weekly couple-counseling sessions which over a two and a half year period brought us to the intimacy needed for a life long commitment of marriage and the promise of trying to give birth to a child.
Birth
We planned our own wedding ceremony for the third Saturday in May, 1988. It was to be a small friends and family affair in a lovely, grand backyard. We ended up inviting over a hundred guests including twenty children. Four friends called the four directions of earth, air, fire and water and we ended with the community we had created around us, speaking out their tributes and strange/humorous remembrances. We had each written our vows separately and revealed them to each other on that day. We held hands and instead of crying, laughed our way through our spoken words. But what unexpectedly touched my heart was the vow Dan made to have a raise a child with me.
It was November and we had been trying for a baby for nearly eight months. In December we left for our planned trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. One late afternoon as I was sitting at Casa Arnel's communal table, a woman I had never met who was sitting across from me said, “You're pregnant.” On some deep, unconscious level I intuited she was right.
A youthful forty-one, I was joyfully and deliciously exuberant throughout my pregnancy. The summer months brought warmth and the nesting syndrome. It also brought a visit to a Native American Sun Dance near Salem. My friend Wren and I set up a tent on the outskirts of the ceremonial fire. I breathed in the peace of the forest and meadow surroundings. That evening there was a gathering of the elders. The fire blazed gently in the middle of the circle. After introductions and shared wisdom, we were each invited to step to the fire and ask for a wished blessing. As I approached the flames, I caressed my blossoming belly and asked that this child I was carrying be a child and caretaker of the earth.
Aspen Louise was born on a September 1st Friday near midnight. My midwife, Dan, the soon-to-be Godparents were all in the hospital room with me, as I chanted my way to her birth. “It's a girl, I think,” exclaimed my husband as our precious one was lifted from my body.
When Aspen first latched onto my breast, all the years of waiting and wondering, sadness, disappointment and hurt disappeared. Only the present moment of cradling this small being remained. And it seems that moment led to the next moment and to the next and within the blink of a fairy's eye, twenty-two years passed. This daughter is now five inches taller than I am, and I sometimes wonder if she was ever really inside of me. Three days after her birth, her tiny perfect physical presence still invisibly attached to my umbilical cord, we brought her home to our cats, home to our small house, home to our garden, home to our community of loving friends, home to the life Dan and I shared, home to Eugene, Oregon, where we have now spent thirty-four blessed years.
© 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Giving Birth: An Oregon Story
Conception
My husband Dan affectionately laughs at the notion that everything in life happens for a reason. Having been cradled in the arms of sadness while watching my railroaded dreams disappear, I have come to understand that my life has kept to its own mysterious schedule. At twenty-nine I remember sorrowing about a loveless existence, and a decade later I rode my bike, sobbing, down the streets of Eugene because I thought I would never have a child. But all the time, I was, often unwittingly, unfolding my own Oregon story.
In the spring of 1977, I was teaching at a private school in Ojai, California. The students were difficult, and I was at odds with another teacher. Then one day, a six foot three, strawberry blond, bearded fellow came striding down the hallway wearing a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans and work style boots. After one look at his kind blue eyes, I was smitten. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. The next thing I knew Dan and I were in a small room with a piano and he was playing his song about the meaningful people he had met on his life's crooked mile.
For a week we taught together and celebrated at the end with a dinner up in the Ojai hills. Our common love of literature, nature and earth based spirituality ignited a romance. Like a ready cake mix, we found our missing ingredients and became a couple. Biweekly, we ran side by side through the neighborhood California orange groves, sucking the succulent oranges while watching the sun set behind the paper thin hills. By June, it was love.
Dan had made plans for a summer job with a friend who lived in Chiloquin, Oregon. We packed simply and rode up North in his orange Chevy van. As we crossed the border into Ashland, the magic of previous visits there returned. We wandered through Lithia Park and watched Shakespeare's Tempest in the outdoor theater on a thunderous summer night. Then we made our way to Chiloquin and up a seven mile dirt road to Randy and Susan's hand-built house which bordered a national forest and an aspen grove.
Susan was pregnant with her first child and maintained the chickens, goats and garden. Randy was working in the building trades. Their homestead had an outhouse, a well, and no electricity. To take a bath, hot water was heated on the wood stove and poured into the bathtub sitting in the living room. Guitar strumming became our entertainment. We also had horseshoe playing, story and musical potlucks. That first Oregon summer in 1977, I felt like I had been reborn in the 1800s.
Chiloquin was a cowboy and Indian town. I would walk down one side-street to the co-op grocery store and then walk down the main boulevard which had a bar, a hardware store and a cafe. What enthralled me, however, was the Klamath Indian Reservation. Susan and Randy were both part Lakota, reclaiming their Native spiritual rituals. They took us for a visit to the small reservation and introduced us to Chief Edison Chiloquin and his wife Leatha.
I was honored to have Chief Chiloquin shaking my hand against a backdrop of rawhide teepees, a wooden trellised outdoor dining room bordered by a rushing creek. We feasted on salmon and fry bread. Sitting around the fire, we listened to tribal history. When the federal government came to buy up the Klamath land, Edison refused to sell. He wanted a traditional village site as a legacy for the youngsters of the tribe. Camping on this piece of land we now sat upon, Chief Chiloquin lit a daily fire. He refused to move. Finally through years of prayer, an act of Congress gave Edison and the tribe these 200 acres. Hearing the evening echo of the steady drum beat amongst the trees, we entered their sweat lodge full of admiration and reverence for this tribe who was trying so desperately and deliberately to maintain their forgotten way of life.
Known as the “teachers,” Dan and I spent the majority of our summer in and around Chiloquin. Though I loved the herb and mushroom searches and the first stirrings of wanting my own child while meditating under a grove of aspen trees, my heart wasn't sure if back-to-the-land living was what I wanted. Dan had a friend in Eugene, so we made a journey north.
Eugene's collegiate, cultural atmosphere breathed energy into my literature-loving brain. We walked the quaint neighborhoods finding wood-shingled houses built in the 40s and lush vegetable/flower gardens. The wide bike paths along the Willamette River and the abundance of juicy blackberries overwhelmed me. I felt a community connection I hadn't found down in southern Oregon. On our return to Chiloquin, we detoured to the coast highway and drove towards Port Orford. I had grown up loving the warmth and spaciousness of California beaches, but the Oregon coast's natural ruggedness spoke to my soul, seeping into my home seeking consciousness.
Dan drove us by the farmhouse he had spent a winter in. With his German Shepard Louise, he had taken up an offer to rent it for that season. He fondly remembered his days of meditation, yoga, pure vegetarian cooking and the Faulknerian characters he met in that stretch of country. Parking on the ocean's edge with a view of these giant towered rock formations in the ocean, I felt the sunlight kiss my face and watched the birds fly quietly overhead. I was in paradise. As we walked up the sandy cliff to the van, a strange visionary scene appeared. I opened the driver's side van door and before I could scoot inside, a slender, girl with reddish blond hair and a mid-calf length dress, got into the van ahead of me. My heart told me this was my future daughter and her name would be Aspen. Little did I know then that Aspen Louise would indeed be born, but it would take fourteen more years.
Our Chiloquin summer ended with a clogged well, too little work, frazzled nerves and strained relations. Surprisingly, our friendship endured with Randy and Susan. Susan would later remarry, to a man named Mark, and they would become our daughter's Godparents. But this Oregon story is slowly rolling along.
To Be Continued...
(c)2011
My husband Dan affectionately laughs at the notion that everything in life happens for a reason. Having been cradled in the arms of sadness while watching my railroaded dreams disappear, I have come to understand that my life has kept to its own mysterious schedule. At twenty-nine I remember sorrowing about a loveless existence, and a decade later I rode my bike, sobbing, down the streets of Eugene because I thought I would never have a child. But all the time, I was, often unwittingly, unfolding my own Oregon story.
In the spring of 1977, I was teaching at a private school in Ojai, California. The students were difficult, and I was at odds with another teacher. Then one day, a six foot three, strawberry blond, bearded fellow came striding down the hallway wearing a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans and work style boots. After one look at his kind blue eyes, I was smitten. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. The next thing I knew Dan and I were in a small room with a piano and he was playing his song about the meaningful people he had met on his life's crooked mile.
For a week we taught together and celebrated at the end with a dinner up in the Ojai hills. Our common love of literature, nature and earth based spirituality ignited a romance. Like a ready cake mix, we found our missing ingredients and became a couple. Biweekly, we ran side by side through the neighborhood California orange groves, sucking the succulent oranges while watching the sun set behind the paper thin hills. By June, it was love.
Dan had made plans for a summer job with a friend who lived in Chiloquin, Oregon. We packed simply and rode up North in his orange Chevy van. As we crossed the border into Ashland, the magic of previous visits there returned. We wandered through Lithia Park and watched Shakespeare's Tempest in the outdoor theater on a thunderous summer night. Then we made our way to Chiloquin and up a seven mile dirt road to Randy and Susan's hand-built house which bordered a national forest and an aspen grove.
Susan was pregnant with her first child and maintained the chickens, goats and garden. Randy was working in the building trades. Their homestead had an outhouse, a well, and no electricity. To take a bath, hot water was heated on the wood stove and poured into the bathtub sitting in the living room. Guitar strumming became our entertainment. We also had horseshoe playing, story and musical potlucks. That first Oregon summer in 1977, I felt like I had been reborn in the 1800s.
Chiloquin was a cowboy and Indian town. I would walk down one side-street to the co-op grocery store and then walk down the main boulevard which had a bar, a hardware store and a cafe. What enthralled me, however, was the Klamath Indian Reservation. Susan and Randy were both part Lakota, reclaiming their Native spiritual rituals. They took us for a visit to the small reservation and introduced us to Chief Edison Chiloquin and his wife Leatha.
I was honored to have Chief Chiloquin shaking my hand against a backdrop of rawhide teepees, a wooden trellised outdoor dining room bordered by a rushing creek. We feasted on salmon and fry bread. Sitting around the fire, we listened to tribal history. When the federal government came to buy up the Klamath land, Edison refused to sell. He wanted a traditional village site as a legacy for the youngsters of the tribe. Camping on this piece of land we now sat upon, Chief Chiloquin lit a daily fire. He refused to move. Finally through years of prayer, an act of Congress gave Edison and the tribe these 200 acres. Hearing the evening echo of the steady drum beat amongst the trees, we entered their sweat lodge full of admiration and reverence for this tribe who was trying so desperately and deliberately to maintain their forgotten way of life.
Known as the “teachers,” Dan and I spent the majority of our summer in and around Chiloquin. Though I loved the herb and mushroom searches and the first stirrings of wanting my own child while meditating under a grove of aspen trees, my heart wasn't sure if back-to-the-land living was what I wanted. Dan had a friend in Eugene, so we made a journey north.
Eugene's collegiate, cultural atmosphere breathed energy into my literature-loving brain. We walked the quaint neighborhoods finding wood-shingled houses built in the 40s and lush vegetable/flower gardens. The wide bike paths along the Willamette River and the abundance of juicy blackberries overwhelmed me. I felt a community connection I hadn't found down in southern Oregon. On our return to Chiloquin, we detoured to the coast highway and drove towards Port Orford. I had grown up loving the warmth and spaciousness of California beaches, but the Oregon coast's natural ruggedness spoke to my soul, seeping into my home seeking consciousness.
Dan drove us by the farmhouse he had spent a winter in. With his German Shepard Louise, he had taken up an offer to rent it for that season. He fondly remembered his days of meditation, yoga, pure vegetarian cooking and the Faulknerian characters he met in that stretch of country. Parking on the ocean's edge with a view of these giant towered rock formations in the ocean, I felt the sunlight kiss my face and watched the birds fly quietly overhead. I was in paradise. As we walked up the sandy cliff to the van, a strange visionary scene appeared. I opened the driver's side van door and before I could scoot inside, a slender, girl with reddish blond hair and a mid-calf length dress, got into the van ahead of me. My heart told me this was my future daughter and her name would be Aspen. Little did I know then that Aspen Louise would indeed be born, but it would take fourteen more years.
Our Chiloquin summer ended with a clogged well, too little work, frazzled nerves and strained relations. Surprisingly, our friendship endured with Randy and Susan. Susan would later remarry, to a man named Mark, and they would become our daughter's Godparents. But this Oregon story is slowly rolling along.
To Be Continued...
(c)2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Contradictions 101
My husband and I are sitting at a small table, one among many, in a packed pizza restaurant. We are listening to a panel discussion concerning the Occupy Movement. Most in the room are supportive of the issues being raised by this devoted and diverse sampling of America. The media has, of course, painted these pre-revolutionaries as on the outer societal edge, hippies, having-nothing-better-to-do vagrants, lower-class homeless. But on the stage in front of me are a young female civil rights lawyer, a university graduate student, a non-profit program coordinator and another university student. These Occupy Eugene representatives are articulate, worldly, both practical and idealistic, and dedicated to the cause. I am overwhelmed, in a good way, by their youthful zeal and their hope for a more egalitarian, “for the people” non-corporate government.
I feel terribly proud to be living in Oregon and to be in Eugene...the home of the Oregon Country Fair, the home to a number of anarchists, the home to a large older yet still idealistic group of 60's rebels. In my predominantly white, striving-to-attract-more-minorities town, we think, we question, we diversify our opinions, rather than accept the norm. The norm resides here in spades, but the striving for justice element in this room resides here too. The Eugene Occupy Site has become a beacon of safety for the homeless in our community. This is a main issue that the movement has brought to the foreground. Several hundred are being fed daily at the Eugene Occupy Protest Site and this evening, up on the restaurant stage, many individual stories of help and healing are being shared. Here in Eugene homeless are cited and issued tickets with expensive fines for living in their trucks or trying to camp on city property. The movement is giving voice to these voiceless.
While I empathically and intently listen, lately I have become a walking contradiction. Dan and I have always lived simply: one car for the whole family, a small by “normal” American standards one bath, one and a half bedroom house with no microwave, dishwasher, or big screen television. But I realize to many here in the United States and abroad, we live in abundant luxury. At times I feel completely selfish. Though I live in deepest gratitude and give to the causes I believe in, my aging has also given me a live-now splurge surge. For most of my existence, I have watched my money like a hawk scanning dinner. I'd forgo luxuries to save; I'd have an arrogant judgmental attitude about my sister's designer clothes and upscale lifestyle. Instead, I would buy at used clothing stores and only occasionally buy a house or garden item. The frugal me is there but a you are worth it, buy what you want before you die me has surfaced.
So I'm hearing stories of hardship while sitting on a pile of guilty purchases: since the daughter's flying of the coop, we have partially refurnished our cozy abode, but still no huge screened t.v., still no dishwasher or microwave, still no iPhone! And my taste in clothes has graduated. My mind tells me how superficial I am, but my heart leaps forward towards a wool jacket or tall leather boots or a warm sweater. These items are not found in used clothing stores. They are mostly practical, but more expensive than in my past. I could give that money to the homeless, I reflect, as I sit eating my pizza and salad and sipping Dan's beer. And with each bite and sip, another contradiction pops in my brain. Dan and I can eat out and if we so choose we can occasionally go to a fancy restaurant. Our house is nearly paid for and we do have the means to fix it up as we wish. We have a car (going for 150,000 miles) and we can buy gas. We have the means to travel.
Also a result of both aging and the empty nest, I buy symphony and opera tickets, while Dan buys rock, folk and first-run movie tickets. Our lower income says we are among the 99 percent, but since the recession began, I feel as though I am living in the lap of luxury. In the winter I am warm, dry and comfortable. The camping in the mud and freezing weather Occupy Movement is in stark contrast to how we survive. We may not be typical American consumers (no Black Friday, no present giving for the holidays) but we are consumers. This is my conundrum: how to follow the creed of living with less, while allowing for that once in awhile giving and splash of luxury. I want to be a returning to the land, communal purist. I want to cut my shopping, beyond food and necessities , to zero. The contradictions arise when I realize that shopping and the malls, eating out and attending movies, are the American answers to the town square and the sometimes human need of seeking people contact in a crowd.
The media portrays the Occupy Movement as one without purpose or goals. But I am here to attest that, if one listens, their goals are clearly defined: They are encouraging Americans to think, to reflect on how we live and why we live the lives we do. As I sit eating my pizza and listening to the discussion, I wonder how I can wrestle out a solution in my own life between the superficial and the profound, the crass commercial and the intangible higher moral values I want to live by. Shopping is my addiction: a getting out of the house socializing and a temporary fix for my being lonely, insecure, in the middle of a life transition. Like all addictions, I must first acknowledge my weakness aloud: I too am an American consumer. The Occupy Movement has given me, a member of the 99 percent, the gift of seeing my abundance and telling myself, I have enough, we have enough!
© 2011
I feel terribly proud to be living in Oregon and to be in Eugene...the home of the Oregon Country Fair, the home to a number of anarchists, the home to a large older yet still idealistic group of 60's rebels. In my predominantly white, striving-to-attract-more-minorities town, we think, we question, we diversify our opinions, rather than accept the norm. The norm resides here in spades, but the striving for justice element in this room resides here too. The Eugene Occupy Site has become a beacon of safety for the homeless in our community. This is a main issue that the movement has brought to the foreground. Several hundred are being fed daily at the Eugene Occupy Protest Site and this evening, up on the restaurant stage, many individual stories of help and healing are being shared. Here in Eugene homeless are cited and issued tickets with expensive fines for living in their trucks or trying to camp on city property. The movement is giving voice to these voiceless.
While I empathically and intently listen, lately I have become a walking contradiction. Dan and I have always lived simply: one car for the whole family, a small by “normal” American standards one bath, one and a half bedroom house with no microwave, dishwasher, or big screen television. But I realize to many here in the United States and abroad, we live in abundant luxury. At times I feel completely selfish. Though I live in deepest gratitude and give to the causes I believe in, my aging has also given me a live-now splurge surge. For most of my existence, I have watched my money like a hawk scanning dinner. I'd forgo luxuries to save; I'd have an arrogant judgmental attitude about my sister's designer clothes and upscale lifestyle. Instead, I would buy at used clothing stores and only occasionally buy a house or garden item. The frugal me is there but a you are worth it, buy what you want before you die me has surfaced.
So I'm hearing stories of hardship while sitting on a pile of guilty purchases: since the daughter's flying of the coop, we have partially refurnished our cozy abode, but still no huge screened t.v., still no dishwasher or microwave, still no iPhone! And my taste in clothes has graduated. My mind tells me how superficial I am, but my heart leaps forward towards a wool jacket or tall leather boots or a warm sweater. These items are not found in used clothing stores. They are mostly practical, but more expensive than in my past. I could give that money to the homeless, I reflect, as I sit eating my pizza and salad and sipping Dan's beer. And with each bite and sip, another contradiction pops in my brain. Dan and I can eat out and if we so choose we can occasionally go to a fancy restaurant. Our house is nearly paid for and we do have the means to fix it up as we wish. We have a car (going for 150,000 miles) and we can buy gas. We have the means to travel.
Also a result of both aging and the empty nest, I buy symphony and opera tickets, while Dan buys rock, folk and first-run movie tickets. Our lower income says we are among the 99 percent, but since the recession began, I feel as though I am living in the lap of luxury. In the winter I am warm, dry and comfortable. The camping in the mud and freezing weather Occupy Movement is in stark contrast to how we survive. We may not be typical American consumers (no Black Friday, no present giving for the holidays) but we are consumers. This is my conundrum: how to follow the creed of living with less, while allowing for that once in awhile giving and splash of luxury. I want to be a returning to the land, communal purist. I want to cut my shopping, beyond food and necessities , to zero. The contradictions arise when I realize that shopping and the malls, eating out and attending movies, are the American answers to the town square and the sometimes human need of seeking people contact in a crowd.
The media portrays the Occupy Movement as one without purpose or goals. But I am here to attest that, if one listens, their goals are clearly defined: They are encouraging Americans to think, to reflect on how we live and why we live the lives we do. As I sit eating my pizza and listening to the discussion, I wonder how I can wrestle out a solution in my own life between the superficial and the profound, the crass commercial and the intangible higher moral values I want to live by. Shopping is my addiction: a getting out of the house socializing and a temporary fix for my being lonely, insecure, in the middle of a life transition. Like all addictions, I must first acknowledge my weakness aloud: I too am an American consumer. The Occupy Movement has given me, a member of the 99 percent, the gift of seeing my abundance and telling myself, I have enough, we have enough!
© 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
1 of the 99 Percent
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man [or woman] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, s/he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
~~Robert Kennedy, 1965
My dad would be fascinated with the Occupy Movement. During his short sixty-six year life span, he evolved from Nixon patriot to Kennedy supporter, from a World War II Veteran devotee of war films to a pontificator of war's carnage and psychological damage, from a critic of his daughter's liberal politics to a man who simply loved his oldest offspring. I am grateful he missed the absurdity of the Afghanistan and Iraqi Wars, but I know he would want to get those “bastard terrorists,” especially that “Goddamned Gadhafi.”
As a college student, I evolved from a 50's kid raised in a white-only neighborhood to an embracer of diversity and fairness. As a teenager, I never argued with my father; I made up for this in my twenties. I remember at the end of one of our knockdown, dragout verbal battles, my dad called me a hippie and a communist. My dad's misunderstanding of who I was hurt me deeply, at the time. Now I can laugh, for as a young woman I was as straight and naïve as they come, never delving into pot, way too organized and nerdy, a virgin until I was twenty-three. Ironically, I married a true hippie of the sixties: a then yoga practicing, vegetarian, war pacifist, politically concerned pot smoker.
But I digress. Coming from upper class, German immigrant stock, my father lived a comfortable childhood in Seattle and the Bay Area. Then his father lost everything through bad business decisions and the Thirties'Depression. Thus my father understood early in his life the differences between the rich and the poor. With the help of the G.I. Bill, my dad, newly married and a father himself, was able to buy our small home up in the California foothills of the San Fernando Valley. As can be imagined home and family were the top priorities of the creators of this generation. We were on our way to being a traditional middle class family, with a stay-at-home mom, when Dad lost his job. This sent us into a tailspin, ending in a spell of church-food-box-poverty until Mom found full-time employment at a savings and loan. And this became my childhood: my mother staying over thirty years at the savings and loan while simultaneously being a mother and housewife, and my dad being made over into a working class, self-employed, curmudgeon gardener.
My father took to the working class like a fish takes to water. Growing up, I would have never guessed my father came from wealth. Though racist in conversations, my dad hung out with Hispanic gardeners and befriended Black custodians. A preacher of philosophical sermons by inclination, my father held tirades concerning the inequities of the rich and the downtrodden. His eyes would be riveted to the t.v. from the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Oh, he'd bring out his epitaphs concerning hippies and near-do-wells and we'd be having lively conversations about what the goals of the Occupy Movement seem to be, but down deep in his hidden, huge heart, he'd understand, he'd admire and he'd agree: many of the hardworking 99 percent do not find America the land of milk and honey.
And here would be the key for my dad. Most of the working class are just that: people who put in a hell of a lot of working hours with a smaller-than-deserved amount of compensation, to simply feed their families. As he would say, we in the working class don't want to shirk our share of taxes and most of the time circumstances, luck, including backgrounds, culture and education, have not made it easy for us to become wealthy. We admire those who have found the honey. But goddamn it, people need to share and support each other in this great nation of ours, and tax fairness and better financial regulation would be a good start.
I am beginning to sound like my dad, especially when I know that he, too, would see simple solutions to our overwhelming debt crisis: get out of the wars we are in, bring the soldiers home, create jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure and emphasizing alternative sources of energy, increase rather than reduce our funds to education. My father would be appalled at the dumbing down of the American culture. He might be lured by the biased tirades of Fox News and the conservative talk show hosts, but he'd soon find his working class voice. He would not be fooled into thinking the Republican Party and these right-wingers were going have his welfare in mind.
As a young, impressionable, trying-to-find-herself, twenty year old, I was brought tears and frustration by the many social political arguments with my dad. I never thought that he understood where I was coming from. And maybe I was the one who didn't understand him. I saw his blowhard, bigoted inheritance and thought I would never be able to teach an old dog new tricks. But I forgot about my father's huge compassion for what he might label “the common man.” He would see immediately the increased inequities our society has been living with. He would remember the tent cities of the thirties' unemployed and he'd come to praise the Occupiers for their courage and their determination. “They're camping in the mud and the freezing cold for god's sake...they're putting themselves and their beliefs/our beliefs for a more humane America on the line...” Then my dad might be off running on about his muddy and cold trench living experiences during The War.
I miss my dad. I miss the arguments between an elder man who might have mellowed, but still been a fighter, and an aging daughter who is finding her philosophical footing beyond the black and the white, the right and the left, the rich and the poor. There were harsh words and walls built between us. There was the push and pull of a young woman refusing to be told what to do. But I knew all along there was love, and I knew all along I had been and would always be my father's devoted daughter! I have absorbed his truer values and made them my own: Have respect for all humans and creatures of the earth; Be kind and civil; Own a simple home filled with books and music and a garden; Be happy.
Early in our lives, my father, who was not a traditionally religious man and never attended church, gave each of his children a Bible with our individual names lettered in gold on the front. Inside he inscribed a personal message: Dear Girl – Remain securely happy, growing in love – interest – peacefully alert, respect forever greater mental satisfactions up ahead in life – regardless what others choose to do – you can find them (right at home) – Dad
Is this not basically what the Occupiers are trying to say?
© 2011
~~Robert Kennedy, 1965
My dad would be fascinated with the Occupy Movement. During his short sixty-six year life span, he evolved from Nixon patriot to Kennedy supporter, from a World War II Veteran devotee of war films to a pontificator of war's carnage and psychological damage, from a critic of his daughter's liberal politics to a man who simply loved his oldest offspring. I am grateful he missed the absurdity of the Afghanistan and Iraqi Wars, but I know he would want to get those “bastard terrorists,” especially that “Goddamned Gadhafi.”
As a college student, I evolved from a 50's kid raised in a white-only neighborhood to an embracer of diversity and fairness. As a teenager, I never argued with my father; I made up for this in my twenties. I remember at the end of one of our knockdown, dragout verbal battles, my dad called me a hippie and a communist. My dad's misunderstanding of who I was hurt me deeply, at the time. Now I can laugh, for as a young woman I was as straight and naïve as they come, never delving into pot, way too organized and nerdy, a virgin until I was twenty-three. Ironically, I married a true hippie of the sixties: a then yoga practicing, vegetarian, war pacifist, politically concerned pot smoker.
But I digress. Coming from upper class, German immigrant stock, my father lived a comfortable childhood in Seattle and the Bay Area. Then his father lost everything through bad business decisions and the Thirties'Depression. Thus my father understood early in his life the differences between the rich and the poor. With the help of the G.I. Bill, my dad, newly married and a father himself, was able to buy our small home up in the California foothills of the San Fernando Valley. As can be imagined home and family were the top priorities of the creators of this generation. We were on our way to being a traditional middle class family, with a stay-at-home mom, when Dad lost his job. This sent us into a tailspin, ending in a spell of church-food-box-poverty until Mom found full-time employment at a savings and loan. And this became my childhood: my mother staying over thirty years at the savings and loan while simultaneously being a mother and housewife, and my dad being made over into a working class, self-employed, curmudgeon gardener.
My father took to the working class like a fish takes to water. Growing up, I would have never guessed my father came from wealth. Though racist in conversations, my dad hung out with Hispanic gardeners and befriended Black custodians. A preacher of philosophical sermons by inclination, my father held tirades concerning the inequities of the rich and the downtrodden. His eyes would be riveted to the t.v. from the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Oh, he'd bring out his epitaphs concerning hippies and near-do-wells and we'd be having lively conversations about what the goals of the Occupy Movement seem to be, but down deep in his hidden, huge heart, he'd understand, he'd admire and he'd agree: many of the hardworking 99 percent do not find America the land of milk and honey.
And here would be the key for my dad. Most of the working class are just that: people who put in a hell of a lot of working hours with a smaller-than-deserved amount of compensation, to simply feed their families. As he would say, we in the working class don't want to shirk our share of taxes and most of the time circumstances, luck, including backgrounds, culture and education, have not made it easy for us to become wealthy. We admire those who have found the honey. But goddamn it, people need to share and support each other in this great nation of ours, and tax fairness and better financial regulation would be a good start.
I am beginning to sound like my dad, especially when I know that he, too, would see simple solutions to our overwhelming debt crisis: get out of the wars we are in, bring the soldiers home, create jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure and emphasizing alternative sources of energy, increase rather than reduce our funds to education. My father would be appalled at the dumbing down of the American culture. He might be lured by the biased tirades of Fox News and the conservative talk show hosts, but he'd soon find his working class voice. He would not be fooled into thinking the Republican Party and these right-wingers were going have his welfare in mind.
As a young, impressionable, trying-to-find-herself, twenty year old, I was brought tears and frustration by the many social political arguments with my dad. I never thought that he understood where I was coming from. And maybe I was the one who didn't understand him. I saw his blowhard, bigoted inheritance and thought I would never be able to teach an old dog new tricks. But I forgot about my father's huge compassion for what he might label “the common man.” He would see immediately the increased inequities our society has been living with. He would remember the tent cities of the thirties' unemployed and he'd come to praise the Occupiers for their courage and their determination. “They're camping in the mud and the freezing cold for god's sake...they're putting themselves and their beliefs/our beliefs for a more humane America on the line...” Then my dad might be off running on about his muddy and cold trench living experiences during The War.
I miss my dad. I miss the arguments between an elder man who might have mellowed, but still been a fighter, and an aging daughter who is finding her philosophical footing beyond the black and the white, the right and the left, the rich and the poor. There were harsh words and walls built between us. There was the push and pull of a young woman refusing to be told what to do. But I knew all along there was love, and I knew all along I had been and would always be my father's devoted daughter! I have absorbed his truer values and made them my own: Have respect for all humans and creatures of the earth; Be kind and civil; Own a simple home filled with books and music and a garden; Be happy.
Early in our lives, my father, who was not a traditionally religious man and never attended church, gave each of his children a Bible with our individual names lettered in gold on the front. Inside he inscribed a personal message: Dear Girl – Remain securely happy, growing in love – interest – peacefully alert, respect forever greater mental satisfactions up ahead in life – regardless what others choose to do – you can find them (right at home) – Dad
Is this not basically what the Occupiers are trying to say?
© 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Ecstasy
Had I not seen the Sun
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made -
#1249 Emily Dickinson
I tend to wake up on Mondays feeling like I have to climb up and over the mountain of despair. I know I've been reading entirely too much Dickinson. My Emily Dickinson/Walt Whitman poetry class ended this last Saturday to a mixture of sadness (for the incredible gifts of insights from the mature participants and the scholarly and skilled teaching of the devoted poetry professor) and relief. Both poets eulogized aging and death. These are subjects I'm deeply interested in, but also subjects I now want to spend less of my precious time digesting. Dickinson had reasons for despair: being a 19th century woman, under the thumb of her patriarchal father and the century's predominantly male Christian philosophy, she decided to seek seclusion from this outer domination by pouring her soul into her poems. Emily was an amazingly sensitive, brave woman who faced her demons by attempting to carve out an opposing feminine, dare I say pagan, paradigm through the writing of her nearly 1800 poetic statements.
But I want to move beyond my Monday morning blues. Beginnings need to be celebrated, and not cursed. If I erase the labels and see only this day, I have deep gratitude for my blessings and feel wealthy beyond measure. The sun is shining away my dark mood by lighting up the last of autumn's brilliance. Earlier I stepped out on our garden deck and reeled at the beauty of the surrounding, colorful trees. According to my poetry professor, Autumn's October was Dickinson's favorite season, and I can understand why. It is the perfect antidote to winter's impending cold gloom. Take one dose of autumn color every day for at least thirty days. As Dickinson pointed out to her visiting niece as she entered Dickinson's window-surrounded, cozy, upstairs bedroom and study, “Here lies all the wealth in the world.” Even though creative solitude can conjure up desperate emotions, Emily knew it could also conjure up the highest bliss.
It is this bliss I am after when I write and more often than not it is this bliss I find. Even winter's dreary weather can be eased by intertwining spring remembrances with the verbalization of my fears and anxieties; by using words to describe those moments of existential anguish, a hidden, healing beauty surfaces. Being a slow learner in my sixties, I am only beginning to comprehend the complexity of human emotions and the human spirit. To truly understand joy and ecstasy, I find I have to also experience the sadness and the dark. Writing these words makes it all sound so simple. Write about the negative and the opposite will appear. Unfortunately, it's all caught in a tangle. This is what Dickinson and every other daring to be creative soul knows and this is what Dickinson labeled wealth: Going below the surface of our given times, our given human vulnerabilities, our human mortality.
Sometimes, as I look out on this miraculous, golden-red-leaf morning, I consider what I'm trying to say as total bullshit. Can words, art, or dance give us more joy than rushing outside and feeling the crunch of broken twigs under our feet, smelling the last faint whiff of rose perfume, feasting on the vision of dew glistening colors before the grays and naked trees are born? I'm always struggling between sitting here at my kitchen table with my overflowing, introspective brain and my itchy, trembling feet that want to explore the world beyond. Try as I might, for I have sporadically given up on my writing, I am unhappy unless I have both my inner and outer worlds. They feed each other and the two feed me and keep me alive.
What nourishes me even more is being able to discover, through my introspection, through my writing, a universal connection to other humans. During the last poetry class, I realized that Dickinson spoke beyond inner despair and found both hope and ecstasy in her outer, natural surroundings. My heart started beating faster as Dickinson's experiences with ecstasy led me to Virginia Woolf's “Moments of Being” - a time she described when the thick wool veil of life's dour reality is briefly removed to reveal an underlying, uplifting, universal, artistic beauty. Somehow, according to Woolf, no matter who or where we are, whether an unknown, down to earth farmer or a known, elegant composer, we each have the seeds of all other humans' potentials inside us.
Walking home from campus that afternoon, the vision of two of my own unforgotten, unveiled moments of being appeared: I am a serious and overly sensitive-to-my-surroundings college student living in Santa Barbara, California. One evening I am taking a solitary walk along a creaky harbor structure overlooking the ocean. The waves are breaking up against the wooden pilings and the fog is thickening. There is a glow to the hidden, evening sky and I am a twenty-something young woman trying to figure out her place in this soupy mystery. Just as I step down off the elevated, man-made path and my feet hit the smooth, white sands, a huge flock of seagulls rise from their standing positions and fill the sky above me. Standing in the midst of this wing fluttering whirlwind, I feel captivated by an ever-expanding magical experience. It is my answer to the mystery: right here, right now, I am being told I am simply another part of this miraculous cosmos. I am the sole person seeing the gulls soar and I am the sole person the seagulls see below.
At the same college, my residential dorm is located within a short distance of an enchanting lagoon. On another evening stroll, climbing over crumbling crags, hearing the roar of the ocean's waves behind my back, sensing a pre-storm stillness, I see a vivid, rainbow coming out of the night sky. An elderly gentleman, who is also walking the lagoon, whispers barely loud enough for me to hear: “We two are the only people here, witnessing this unusual natural phenomenon. What a gift we have been given.”
My Monday morning, which began with the blues, laced with thoughts of despair, took an ecstatic flight with remembrances of nature's wonders. How complex, blessed and rich a day of living can be! And for being there as observer and participant, for however long, I will be ever grateful.
© 2011
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made -
#1249 Emily Dickinson
I tend to wake up on Mondays feeling like I have to climb up and over the mountain of despair. I know I've been reading entirely too much Dickinson. My Emily Dickinson/Walt Whitman poetry class ended this last Saturday to a mixture of sadness (for the incredible gifts of insights from the mature participants and the scholarly and skilled teaching of the devoted poetry professor) and relief. Both poets eulogized aging and death. These are subjects I'm deeply interested in, but also subjects I now want to spend less of my precious time digesting. Dickinson had reasons for despair: being a 19th century woman, under the thumb of her patriarchal father and the century's predominantly male Christian philosophy, she decided to seek seclusion from this outer domination by pouring her soul into her poems. Emily was an amazingly sensitive, brave woman who faced her demons by attempting to carve out an opposing feminine, dare I say pagan, paradigm through the writing of her nearly 1800 poetic statements.
But I want to move beyond my Monday morning blues. Beginnings need to be celebrated, and not cursed. If I erase the labels and see only this day, I have deep gratitude for my blessings and feel wealthy beyond measure. The sun is shining away my dark mood by lighting up the last of autumn's brilliance. Earlier I stepped out on our garden deck and reeled at the beauty of the surrounding, colorful trees. According to my poetry professor, Autumn's October was Dickinson's favorite season, and I can understand why. It is the perfect antidote to winter's impending cold gloom. Take one dose of autumn color every day for at least thirty days. As Dickinson pointed out to her visiting niece as she entered Dickinson's window-surrounded, cozy, upstairs bedroom and study, “Here lies all the wealth in the world.” Even though creative solitude can conjure up desperate emotions, Emily knew it could also conjure up the highest bliss.
It is this bliss I am after when I write and more often than not it is this bliss I find. Even winter's dreary weather can be eased by intertwining spring remembrances with the verbalization of my fears and anxieties; by using words to describe those moments of existential anguish, a hidden, healing beauty surfaces. Being a slow learner in my sixties, I am only beginning to comprehend the complexity of human emotions and the human spirit. To truly understand joy and ecstasy, I find I have to also experience the sadness and the dark. Writing these words makes it all sound so simple. Write about the negative and the opposite will appear. Unfortunately, it's all caught in a tangle. This is what Dickinson and every other daring to be creative soul knows and this is what Dickinson labeled wealth: Going below the surface of our given times, our given human vulnerabilities, our human mortality.
Sometimes, as I look out on this miraculous, golden-red-leaf morning, I consider what I'm trying to say as total bullshit. Can words, art, or dance give us more joy than rushing outside and feeling the crunch of broken twigs under our feet, smelling the last faint whiff of rose perfume, feasting on the vision of dew glistening colors before the grays and naked trees are born? I'm always struggling between sitting here at my kitchen table with my overflowing, introspective brain and my itchy, trembling feet that want to explore the world beyond. Try as I might, for I have sporadically given up on my writing, I am unhappy unless I have both my inner and outer worlds. They feed each other and the two feed me and keep me alive.
What nourishes me even more is being able to discover, through my introspection, through my writing, a universal connection to other humans. During the last poetry class, I realized that Dickinson spoke beyond inner despair and found both hope and ecstasy in her outer, natural surroundings. My heart started beating faster as Dickinson's experiences with ecstasy led me to Virginia Woolf's “Moments of Being” - a time she described when the thick wool veil of life's dour reality is briefly removed to reveal an underlying, uplifting, universal, artistic beauty. Somehow, according to Woolf, no matter who or where we are, whether an unknown, down to earth farmer or a known, elegant composer, we each have the seeds of all other humans' potentials inside us.
Walking home from campus that afternoon, the vision of two of my own unforgotten, unveiled moments of being appeared: I am a serious and overly sensitive-to-my-surroundings college student living in Santa Barbara, California. One evening I am taking a solitary walk along a creaky harbor structure overlooking the ocean. The waves are breaking up against the wooden pilings and the fog is thickening. There is a glow to the hidden, evening sky and I am a twenty-something young woman trying to figure out her place in this soupy mystery. Just as I step down off the elevated, man-made path and my feet hit the smooth, white sands, a huge flock of seagulls rise from their standing positions and fill the sky above me. Standing in the midst of this wing fluttering whirlwind, I feel captivated by an ever-expanding magical experience. It is my answer to the mystery: right here, right now, I am being told I am simply another part of this miraculous cosmos. I am the sole person seeing the gulls soar and I am the sole person the seagulls see below.
At the same college, my residential dorm is located within a short distance of an enchanting lagoon. On another evening stroll, climbing over crumbling crags, hearing the roar of the ocean's waves behind my back, sensing a pre-storm stillness, I see a vivid, rainbow coming out of the night sky. An elderly gentleman, who is also walking the lagoon, whispers barely loud enough for me to hear: “We two are the only people here, witnessing this unusual natural phenomenon. What a gift we have been given.”
My Monday morning, which began with the blues, laced with thoughts of despair, took an ecstatic flight with remembrances of nature's wonders. How complex, blessed and rich a day of living can be! And for being there as observer and participant, for however long, I will be ever grateful.
© 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Days Dog Gone
What happens to time? A minute can last forever if we are waiting for it to pass. A week can jet by where we wonder what we did. Being in my sixties I've been trying with fear, desperation, and,ultimately, futility, to lasso and account for each of my days. The hour glass is running out, I tell myself, as my anxiety levels rise. This isn't the healthiest way to live, and what I often end up doing is wasting even more of my precious hours escaping with trivial pursuits.
But let's back up. Time appears to run in circles and I know I am circling around what I'm trying to talk about. It all started with my dog, Lacey. She's getting old, nearly fourteen and a half in people years. We got her when my daughter was eight because when she was little and begged us for a dog we thought becoming eight years old sounded like it was in some distant land. We also thought in time she might forget her wish. But time is tricky. It's the outside, long shot, racing from the starting gate and rounding the track faster than anyone imagined. Eight came and the dog question was still strongly there and Lacey almost magically appeared to us.
Lacey has been a saint of a dog. She bonded more with my husband than my daughter or myself, even though he was the one who least wanted her. During my daughter's childhood she became the family member who led us on hikes, protected us from harm, and made sure both outdoors and at home we were all accounted for. The grown up daughter is on her own path now, and the continuing-to-grow-up parents are trying to create a new path without her, but with the old ties of a dog and several remaining cats.
I'm circling around to days spent and a dog aging. I'm sixty-four and though I've had a hard time with this empty nest phase, there's now a huge part of me that wants to be free to roam, free to create, free to tuck my days into my back pocket to do with as I wish. My sixties have begun to feel like my twenties when I sought out traveling and intellectual adventures, choosing to study and eventually to live abroad. But this time I want to do many of my undertakings with my husband. And I want to be ready for spur of the moment, day and weekend getaways.
Lacey goes through her ups and downs, just as aging people do. She's been fairly healthy for her age. But she has had trouble walking, trouble doing her business in the back garden rather than in the house, trouble with nervous comings and goings and early morning barking. I've woken up ready to have a creative day and before I can even adjust to the light, there's a mess to clean up. Or I've stayed up late and the dog wants to wake up super early. Sometimes Lacey needs help to stand up on all fours and my husband and I both gladly try to assist her. We have mostly been rewarded with relief, but we have also been rewarded with growls and snarls.
I know I'm sounding like a whiny ingrate. I know the value of a dog's loyalty and companionship. And Lacey gets gold stars all around. It's difficult because though we constantly talk with her, she doesn't necessarily understand why she can't be the younger, agile animal she once was. My husband tells me I am very caring and patient with Lacey. But I know this isn't continually so. Inside I've raged about my days being dictated by dog care...as I'm picking up back yard or indoor poop or because of these frequent accidents, letting Lacey outside as often as her heart desires. I kept thinking my dog days were holding me back, keeping me city bound and unable to risk breaking my staid, routine mold of living. My young old age is flying by, I'd tell my husband, and we can't take off on a moment's notice.
We've had dog/house sitters, but this requires planning. I suppose what I'm after is the less planned days of a youth gone by. I'm like my dog. I simply don't comprehend or believe in my aging process. But wait. I had a sudden revelation. This goes back to a minute seeming like an hour and a twenty-four hour period seeming like a minute. My dear Lacey is smarter than I give her credit for. I've written about my slower walks with my dog and this is where the revelation began. Lacey can't go far and she loves to meander and stop a thousand times on each block. Naturally I was frustrated at first. But then a light glowed. Lacey was telling me to slow down, smell the roses, be present to each sidewalk crack, each green leaf, each part of my day.
A dog knows time is dictated by the mind. And for a dog, his or her mind only works moment to moment. Lacey doesn't understand past or future. If she is mad at me one day, she has forgotten about it the next. Dogs forgive and forget. My mind makes me anxious about my slipping away days. I can lasso these days by erasing the rage, erasing the frustrations, erasing the burdens. What I realize is that dear Lacey isn't holding me back from my desires and hopes, I am. We humans are a dumb species as compared to the other parts of the animal kingdom.
Days lengthen when I patiently and lovingly take care of my duties while also putting in time for self-expression, self-love and family/friend communications. Worry, with its unmindful mutterings, filter the sands quicker through the hour glass. I know these things. I've known these things. To travel abroad is a legitimate dream; to live spontaneously in whatever time and place I happen to be is a legitimate possibility. More extensive travel doesn't fit with my current circumstances: an aging dog is actually at the bottom of my list; my daughter may only be living in Portland for the next three years; my husband's retirement will be official in two years; I will have finally worked out the emotional kinks of the empty nest phase and my relationship to time will become creative, flowing. So thank you Lacey, I need these dog gone days!
© 2011
But let's back up. Time appears to run in circles and I know I am circling around what I'm trying to talk about. It all started with my dog, Lacey. She's getting old, nearly fourteen and a half in people years. We got her when my daughter was eight because when she was little and begged us for a dog we thought becoming eight years old sounded like it was in some distant land. We also thought in time she might forget her wish. But time is tricky. It's the outside, long shot, racing from the starting gate and rounding the track faster than anyone imagined. Eight came and the dog question was still strongly there and Lacey almost magically appeared to us.
Lacey has been a saint of a dog. She bonded more with my husband than my daughter or myself, even though he was the one who least wanted her. During my daughter's childhood she became the family member who led us on hikes, protected us from harm, and made sure both outdoors and at home we were all accounted for. The grown up daughter is on her own path now, and the continuing-to-grow-up parents are trying to create a new path without her, but with the old ties of a dog and several remaining cats.
I'm circling around to days spent and a dog aging. I'm sixty-four and though I've had a hard time with this empty nest phase, there's now a huge part of me that wants to be free to roam, free to create, free to tuck my days into my back pocket to do with as I wish. My sixties have begun to feel like my twenties when I sought out traveling and intellectual adventures, choosing to study and eventually to live abroad. But this time I want to do many of my undertakings with my husband. And I want to be ready for spur of the moment, day and weekend getaways.
Lacey goes through her ups and downs, just as aging people do. She's been fairly healthy for her age. But she has had trouble walking, trouble doing her business in the back garden rather than in the house, trouble with nervous comings and goings and early morning barking. I've woken up ready to have a creative day and before I can even adjust to the light, there's a mess to clean up. Or I've stayed up late and the dog wants to wake up super early. Sometimes Lacey needs help to stand up on all fours and my husband and I both gladly try to assist her. We have mostly been rewarded with relief, but we have also been rewarded with growls and snarls.
I know I'm sounding like a whiny ingrate. I know the value of a dog's loyalty and companionship. And Lacey gets gold stars all around. It's difficult because though we constantly talk with her, she doesn't necessarily understand why she can't be the younger, agile animal she once was. My husband tells me I am very caring and patient with Lacey. But I know this isn't continually so. Inside I've raged about my days being dictated by dog care...as I'm picking up back yard or indoor poop or because of these frequent accidents, letting Lacey outside as often as her heart desires. I kept thinking my dog days were holding me back, keeping me city bound and unable to risk breaking my staid, routine mold of living. My young old age is flying by, I'd tell my husband, and we can't take off on a moment's notice.
We've had dog/house sitters, but this requires planning. I suppose what I'm after is the less planned days of a youth gone by. I'm like my dog. I simply don't comprehend or believe in my aging process. But wait. I had a sudden revelation. This goes back to a minute seeming like an hour and a twenty-four hour period seeming like a minute. My dear Lacey is smarter than I give her credit for. I've written about my slower walks with my dog and this is where the revelation began. Lacey can't go far and she loves to meander and stop a thousand times on each block. Naturally I was frustrated at first. But then a light glowed. Lacey was telling me to slow down, smell the roses, be present to each sidewalk crack, each green leaf, each part of my day.
A dog knows time is dictated by the mind. And for a dog, his or her mind only works moment to moment. Lacey doesn't understand past or future. If she is mad at me one day, she has forgotten about it the next. Dogs forgive and forget. My mind makes me anxious about my slipping away days. I can lasso these days by erasing the rage, erasing the frustrations, erasing the burdens. What I realize is that dear Lacey isn't holding me back from my desires and hopes, I am. We humans are a dumb species as compared to the other parts of the animal kingdom.
Days lengthen when I patiently and lovingly take care of my duties while also putting in time for self-expression, self-love and family/friend communications. Worry, with its unmindful mutterings, filter the sands quicker through the hour glass. I know these things. I've known these things. To travel abroad is a legitimate dream; to live spontaneously in whatever time and place I happen to be is a legitimate possibility. More extensive travel doesn't fit with my current circumstances: an aging dog is actually at the bottom of my list; my daughter may only be living in Portland for the next three years; my husband's retirement will be official in two years; I will have finally worked out the emotional kinks of the empty nest phase and my relationship to time will become creative, flowing. So thank you Lacey, I need these dog gone days!
© 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
The Meaning of Life
Most children love animals, and my daughter was no exception. Once the basic life skills of walking and talking were finely tuned, her curiosity about birth and living beings increased. Her godmother's young cats became teen mothers several times during my daughter's summer stays, and through these witnessed, miraculous, and slimy beginnings, we inherited a number of our cats. A baby bunny conceived at her preschool arrived, years later a puppy, even an unasked-for goldfish. There were nature camps with bug and butterfly chasing, rat care taking duties during school vacation, and a 5th grade veterinarian mentorship. As an only child, the animal kingdom was where my daughter found her siblings, and it was where she began to learn about the meaning of life.
A few weeks ago, I took an “Insight Seminar” at our local university titled “The Meaning of Life.” When I mention I took a class on “The Meaning of Life,” most people roll their eyes. In fact, the professor began by explaining to us that of course the topic is an impossible, dare he say absurd notion of study. But as I sat there among the sea of predominantly mature, eager learners, I did not find the theme humorous at all. I have always been a rather serious human being. Once I learned to talk, that was it. I've been a talker and a wordy philosopher ever since. So the seminar merely gave me more thought tangents to follow, and a strong desire to capture those thoughts on paper.
Days blended into weeks, and I just could not face the blank page. Then I awoke one morning filled with the memories of my daughter's love of animals, and especially our visits to our County Fair. At this fair she could barely reach up to the animals she wanted to pet, but her small hands lovingly caressed each creature she met. We introduced ourselves to hens and roosters, rabbits, sheep, goats, sows and baby piglets, and even took a turn at milking a cow. What held the most fascination, however, was this clear glass, box-shaped incubator full of soon-to-hatch eggs. We noticed cracks in a few and stood staring as a tiny tip of a beak appeared. My normally antsy-to-roam preschooler's eyes never wavered from this birthing experience. Time slowed to a snail's pace as we stood in front of this transparent world. The information sign said it could take hours for a baby chick to hatch. We waited and watched. We watched and waited. I suggested we veer off to the sheep barn and then come back.
Over the next several hours, we wandered through the fair's animal kingdom, periodically returning to the incubator. The crack was enlarging, the beak was lengthening. Other cracks were appearing on other eggs, but my daughter only saw “her egg.” This birthing process, this simple lesson on life's beginning, entranced both my new awakening daughter and my older, more experienced self. We both had an insurmountable measure of curiosity and patience as we marveled at the struggle these little chicks were enduring to be born.
By now, two tiny eyes and a fuzzy head appeared. On a later return one wing poked through the shell's opening and then another. During our final visit, the chick insecurely wobbled onto the hay-strewn bottom of the enclosure. My daughter and I excitedly and quietly jumped up and down while waving our arms and doing a sort of welcome-to-the-world dance. There was our chick, our creature of the universe, beginning a new life.
The daughter is grown now, and the mother is in her sixties. If asked about the meaning of life, I would zero in on the exhilaration we felt at witnessing the completion of our chick's birth. Life's meanings, for I believe there are more than one, come from opening our eyes to the simple “acts of being” happening around us every day. At the fairgrounds that mild August day, our eager willingness to learn something new, our ability to enjoy the slower moments of time, allowed us to experience the wonderment of living. If we each take the gifts of our “seeing” opportunities plus our “life-lesson” understandings and share these with other humans, then the meaningfulness of life can expand and evolve.
During my daughter's later growing up years, she would shed tears over her beloved dying cat, Blackberry, feel the biting sting of her outdoor rabbit Licorice's tragic, violent death, and sit with our aged, suffering cat, Luna, as we gently put her to sleep. This cycle of living and death gave us the additional gift of realizing that the meaning of life is sweeter for its impermanence.
For me, Emily Dickinson sums up my thoughts on baby chicks hatching, curious children learning, and meditative adults philosophizing on the meaning of life: “I find ecstasy in living – the mere sense of living is joy enough.”
© 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
From My Journal: Heavy Heart
October 10, 2011: These past days I have had a sad and heavy heart. We found out that Randall, Naomi's partner died about a week and a half ago. I sat down this morning to send a card from all of us and the tears finally started to come. It was Aspen's phrase, “Randall was such a good man” that choked me up. I know death awaits us all whether good or bad, rich or poor, young or old. But Randall was indeed one of the saints and he died much too young. I cry for Naomi and her daughters. I find I have this permeable, sensitive nature that crawls inside other people's emotions. So there I am with Naomi and her family, feeling all her feelings of losing the man she loved for nearly forty years. I don't really know Naomi well. I see her as a compassionate human, grounded in civic and neighborhood giving, reason and practicality. But whether we are emotional or practical, grief is grief, loss is loss. I find the older I become the more I see how difficult and tremendously sad our living can be.
Words are not flowing through my fingers. I am struggling to express myself. What I feel over Randall's death is so much more than the loss of a good man. I selfishly see that he is my age and I cry because life is too short and I can't seem to grab it by the tail and swing it down and capture it. Even if I try to close my hands around my days, the minutes, the hours, sift through them at tremendous unstoppable speed. I am frantic. I want to grow old. For I now see that my sixties are but the child of my older age. I want to have at least thirty more years and I feel so greedy for wanting more life when a friend has died.
I don't want to waste my days though I know I do. I want to give myself over to my passions without allowing my fears to block the way. At least I'm here trying to write. I'm here trying to carve out my feelings. What I know is love is my main passion: giving love, lessening the hate, lessening the differences, spreading an appreciation of diversity and our connections as mortal human beings. After writing Naomi a note, I also sent Oksana's nine year old daughter, Anna, a card. I want her to know how beautiful and special she is. There is death but there continues to be life.
Last night at our full moon, I came to Lilly's with my weighty heart. I thought I didn't want to be there. I was a huge lump in a chair, waiting for our potluck to begin. Why am I in such a hurry? Why do I think “being on time” has any relevance? Why do I think my time is wasted when I wait for others to “be on time”? I want desperately to let go of prediction, judgment, categorizing time. I want to melt into each moment, be surprised, be present to what is given, let go of expectations. Once I ate, once I relaxed, once I told myself that in grief can also be joy and gratitude for simply standing on the earth's abundant ground, I discovered I could laugh and lighten my load. The nearly full moon broke through the clouds with our sound and music making. The energy was as bright as the moon. Last night I literally felt the moon's presence embrace me and the blessings of nature caress me. I knew then it was OK to enjoy the evening. Randall would want everyone to love what they were doing. I sensed for a few moments Randall was all right in the spirit world. He appreciated his life. He had more love and fulfillment than most and wisely knew what being truly human means.
My sadness continues but writing about brings me some comfort. My words are my stepping stones to understanding. We had the perfect, mostly clear sky evening last night. It was as if the sky held the tears behind the clouds so we could dance and sing and connect with each other. This morning the rain has returned with an intense vengeance. The darkness is there at the peripheral edge of my vision. I want to shake my brain and tell myself I know what's important and everything else doesn't matter. I'm here now at this kitchen table in the warmth of my cozy home writing these cherished words. I am alive!
© 2011
Words are not flowing through my fingers. I am struggling to express myself. What I feel over Randall's death is so much more than the loss of a good man. I selfishly see that he is my age and I cry because life is too short and I can't seem to grab it by the tail and swing it down and capture it. Even if I try to close my hands around my days, the minutes, the hours, sift through them at tremendous unstoppable speed. I am frantic. I want to grow old. For I now see that my sixties are but the child of my older age. I want to have at least thirty more years and I feel so greedy for wanting more life when a friend has died.
I don't want to waste my days though I know I do. I want to give myself over to my passions without allowing my fears to block the way. At least I'm here trying to write. I'm here trying to carve out my feelings. What I know is love is my main passion: giving love, lessening the hate, lessening the differences, spreading an appreciation of diversity and our connections as mortal human beings. After writing Naomi a note, I also sent Oksana's nine year old daughter, Anna, a card. I want her to know how beautiful and special she is. There is death but there continues to be life.
Last night at our full moon, I came to Lilly's with my weighty heart. I thought I didn't want to be there. I was a huge lump in a chair, waiting for our potluck to begin. Why am I in such a hurry? Why do I think “being on time” has any relevance? Why do I think my time is wasted when I wait for others to “be on time”? I want desperately to let go of prediction, judgment, categorizing time. I want to melt into each moment, be surprised, be present to what is given, let go of expectations. Once I ate, once I relaxed, once I told myself that in grief can also be joy and gratitude for simply standing on the earth's abundant ground, I discovered I could laugh and lighten my load. The nearly full moon broke through the clouds with our sound and music making. The energy was as bright as the moon. Last night I literally felt the moon's presence embrace me and the blessings of nature caress me. I knew then it was OK to enjoy the evening. Randall would want everyone to love what they were doing. I sensed for a few moments Randall was all right in the spirit world. He appreciated his life. He had more love and fulfillment than most and wisely knew what being truly human means.
My sadness continues but writing about brings me some comfort. My words are my stepping stones to understanding. We had the perfect, mostly clear sky evening last night. It was as if the sky held the tears behind the clouds so we could dance and sing and connect with each other. This morning the rain has returned with an intense vengeance. The darkness is there at the peripheral edge of my vision. I want to shake my brain and tell myself I know what's important and everything else doesn't matter. I'm here now at this kitchen table in the warmth of my cozy home writing these cherished words. I am alive!
© 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Golden Harvest Moon
It's early September and we are going camping. After over five years away, we (Dan, our daughter, our dog, Lacey, and I) are returning to our Shadow Bay campsite at Waldo Lake. This was our place each August during our daughter's growing up years. Here Lacey experienced her first adventures in the wild and nearly had the pleasure of eating a live chipmunk (it got away). Here our five year old daughter had her first small, inflatable raft and rowed herself to the miniature island off shore. We discovered frogs; we discovered picnicking and swimming at an inlet bay cove where the crystal speckled water reflected the clearness of the sky above; we discovered floating butterflies...we discovered life.
Time has a way of disappearing behind the clouds of our days. On September 1, the daughter turned 22; on August 24th, Dan turned 61 and on August 18th, I turned 64. We call this birthday season, and have always celebrated for the three solid weeks. This year, we thought we would come together for a kind of birthday reunion, thus the camping trip. Since our extremely loyal and saint of a dog Lacey is 14 (98 in dog years) years old, we figured this would be her last camping trip. Her arthritis makes it difficult for her to hike long distances and so we planned to take turns being with her.
I've learned that events planned can rarely be “planned.” I have this foolish tendency to envision how I want experiences/interactions to be but have to remember to simply let go into the moments that present themselves.
Our daughter calls the day before our trip. She asks for medical advice and I tell her “come home and we'll take care of you.” On my side of the phone conversation, I silently smile, thinking I might get a chance to be a mother again. I make her an appointment at our clinic, for the next morning. Whether we go camping or not is not as important as our daughter's health. When I see her that evening (noting how she exaggerated the nature of the malady) and especially after her visit with her favorite nurse practitioner, I know it will be OK and that we will be able to have our Waldo Reunion. What I don't expect is a return of her teenage-like, sulky moodiness.
Is the umbilical cord between mother and child ever really cut? I feel every nuance of the dark shadows crossing my daughter's face as we set up our tents, organize our “kitchen” and swat at the mosquitoes. My heart is heavy when I want it to be light. Feeling my intense concern, I'm sure the daughter simply needs to wallow in aloneness. I become too motherly, as I usually do, and wallow in my own alien emotions. I revert to words as bandages rather than giving intuitive, caring space. We are back to the push-pull of a mother and daughter's struggle for separation when all I want this birthday season is to cherish our small window of being together.
By early evening, while there is still daylight, we stroll the forest paths, sharing early memories of kayaking the lake's expansive, bluest waters and hiking the perimeter with the young Lacey who once energetically ran back and forth with us on the trails. Waldo's magic is seeping through our feet as we reenter our camp and my daughter and I build a bug-repellant fire while Dan begins to prepare dinner. We thought if we waited until September the bug population would have dwindled to nearly zero, but they are exerting with a vengeance their will to hang on. There is a bit of irritability in the air, a tease that says nothing is perfect nor will it ever be. My daughter's sadness has become my sadness. I want desperately to shake off my over-sensitive, vulnerable nature. Instead I'm swatting at mosquitoes and wondering if we will make it through several days of this.
Our simple pasta dinner tastes miraculous, as only meals eaten around a camp fire can, and the wine has given us a mellow glow. Our daughter's face has softened as she brings out a guitar. She asks if we mind if she plays and we are flattered she would let us into her musical world. I am sitting across from her as she begins to strum a few tunes she has composed herself. She has her father's musical gift of knowing music from the inside of her soul rather than from notes on a page. As she plays, singing with a louder more mature voice, I feel the gift she is giving us of being able to understand her words.
We are sitting in a circle, Dan, Aspen and I, surrounded by these tall, majestic, silhouetted trees up the hill to our left and Waldo's sunset, lapping waters down below to our right. A golden moon is slowly making its way between two of the pines and even the mosquitoes have bought into the evening's hush. I am intently watching Aspen's now-beaming happy countenance as she hands Dan the guitar for his turn at our family serenade. All our voices become woven together in the singing of old, familiar songs. The darkness, the vision of my dearest daughter and her love of music, Dan's focus on his own skilled strumming, make it easier for the tears to come. Stop crying, I tell myself. Stop being so dramatic. But I can't help it. Here is the moment I've been waiting for. Here is the moment I want to remember. As if on cue, a flash of rain-portending lightening trembles through the sky. The tears flow freer as I reflect upon how much I love living, how much I love my family, how much I will miss these magical, unplanned moments of life when I die.
The next day Lacey and I stand on the smooth sandy shore and wave as Dan and our daughter row out towards the far end of the lake. I feel as though I am saying a forever good-bye as I quickly pull Lacey along the bark strewn paths to the next clearing and catch another glimpse of my beloved family. Where in the beginning their paddles had bobbled and clashed, now the daughter and dad are in sync. And I ponder how much more alike in take-it-as-it-comes personalities these two are. With Lacey beside me, I write and read and sense something is missing. A resolution of life's ever present sadness? An embrace of the change to joy? How sadness and joy are merely the flip sides of the same coin?
The husband and daughter return with the daughter wet from head to toe. “She jumped into the nearly ice cold water,” tells Dan admiringly. It's like our daughter has been baptized by her swim, for as I look into her vibrant, contented face, I can see she has been reborn. Later at twilight, with the comfort of the trees, the stillness of the waters, the shadows cast by the boulders, my daughter and I meander and meditate on memories gleaned from the passing years.
“Do you remember our fictional frog stories and how on our evening flashlight walk we nearly stepped on those little frogs?
Do your remember rafting to and spending all day on your island?
Do you remember trees catching on fire?
Do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember.”
Can I add another memory? Can I add this story of the golden, harvest moon?
© 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Hummingbird
It's morning. I awake and find myself wishing for an uplifting experience. Everywhere I turn lately there is sad or tragic news. America's politics is sorely and scarily lacking in reason; a Black man, who I signed a petition for, is executed in Georgia and might have been innocent; several new movies out are about people finding romance while they are dying...I could go on but writing it all down is making me depressed. I need to find some joy, I tell myself; I need to have a sign of hope.
As I am doing last night's dishes, there it is, my hopeful emblem. I watch intently as a flitting hummingbird rises above my plum red perennials. She perfectly balances herself mid-air and then flies off. How beautiful and wondrous, I think. Then the deepest azure, blue jay appears on the chrysanthemums. He seems to be searching the garden for someone. Another bluest jay sits camouflaged on a finger-thin branch up in our flowering cherry tree quietly scanning the horizon. The eyes of the two birds meet. Their songs float between them and then in a finger snap they both fly together towards a fir tree across the street.
In gratitude I bow to the simple, yet magical scene of daily living outside my window. It is enough to momentarily lift my spirits. Dear Mother Earth, dear majestic realms of the natural world, I want to remember you are always here whenever I open my eyes and heart. I get so caught up in my small, small world and forget there is the constant companionship of myriad trees nearby or the sweet melodious sounds of frogs, crickets and fowl on the Amazon canal, or the frolicking teasing of squirrels in my own back, cedar enclosed, garden.
My heart has been heavy lately and my voice has been stuffed with the pain of my own creating. I've been spending too much time alone, waiting for my school year as a home instruction teacher to begin, waiting for the days of summer to blend into the days of autumn, waiting for new dreams and purpose to enter my line of vision. We are our thoughts, I am told; we are what we can imagine; we are our own self-creators. I've been stuck and struck dumb and numb, telling myself being stuck is fine because that's where I am.
Time is leaving me behind and I figure because time runs away so quickly that my sour mood will runaway quickly too. Why is it, though, that the events, feelings, experiences we want to pass us by linger on and on, while the positive ones are over in a lightening flash? Like the hummingbird moment...I want to capture this raising of the soul's essence and put it in a treasure box. Then whenever I want I can open this box and observe my hummingbird one more time. But life doesn't work like this. Life's precious moments pass and cannot be recaptured.
I want my good memories more accessible and my bad ones buried beneath a pile of debris. But I have this tendency to remember the words wrongly spoken or the needed words not spoken at all. The creative optimist becomes unseen under a stack of wishes and regrets. Like Alice's white rabbit, I tell myself there is no time and I run away faster from all I want to be and do. I am becoming lost in metaphor and lost from my own blue jay intuitive communication. I want to come out the other side...an other side I imagine as a kind of heaven to my self-imposed hell. Wasn't it in Paradise Lost where Milton reminds us we can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell?
The answers are blindingly simple to any question I pose. The up to the down, the forward from the back, the turn around is there before me...there right outside my window. If only I'd remember to look and see.
© 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tarot Thirteen
On my birthday I drew Death, the Thirteenth Tarot Card. At first I sucked in my breath and wanted to quickly shove it back into the pile. Twenty six years ago, on my father's birthday, which coincided with Winter Solstice, I had a Tarot reading done with the Death Card appearing on the top. A week later my father fell from a rickety ladder as he was sweeping the leaves from the roof of our childhood home and died. Thus, my reticence. What my heart told me then and now is that this death card does not predict imminent physical death, though I know my death is out there, but spiritual, emotional, even mental transformation.
Just before picking the death card, I glanced at the bottom of the newly shuffled deck and there was the Wind Mother Card. So when the death card was revealed, my first thought went to the death of the mother. My Aquarius mother died last July and I have since found myself obsessed with the aging and dying process. As the oldest sibling with both parents gone, I am theoretically the next in line to walk the plank. I have been reflecting all year on my own death, so drawing the death card seems a natural outcome of these thoughts. I have gone through periods of extreme anxiety, afraid to close my eyes as I attempt to fall asleep and have often felt overwhelmed by the shortness of my life and the need to leave behind a positive legacy.
There is also the death of myself as a mother. My daughter will be twenty-two tomorrow and I must be a slow learner: as much as I continually let her go as she grew up, her final flight to independence has given me pause as I grieve the loss of the mothering phase and question my childless future. I gave more than I ever thought possible to motherhood and truly loved this role. It has been three years since the “empty nest” began and though I am more grounded in my new life, I still weep on the way home from visiting my daughter.
This umbilical cord connecting mothers and daughters must be strong. It stretches over miles and miles. I never felt close to my mother, but her final years brought out my love for her. I found that, as she lay dying, all I wanted was to be with her, in any way possible, so she wouldn't have to be alone. For months after her death, I didn't feel she was gone at all. I still sometimes sense her presence. Each sunrise and sunset brings the balance of living and dying. More than ever before, I know I have but this one last part of my life to truly be present.
As I watch myself wasting time on trivial worries and banal anger, I wonder if the dramas, the misunderstandings, the churning, anxious, self-generated emotions even matter. The death card reminds me that nothing matters. The death card tells me to get over myself, to bury the maiden and the mother and to embrace the crone. My mother never embraced her aging, rather little by little she let it squeeze her into an unhappy hole of complaint and negativity. How do I not repeat her path? This summer, the exuberance of the sixties has gradually taken over my fears. I close my eyes with gratitude for each day: each conversation, each book, each meal. I treasure and try to understand each emotion, each thought, each moment of awe. I have cherished being physically alive by hiking, biking, and kayaking. My garden has been my tranquil, bountiful place, and I have soaked in the daily lessons plants, trees and other growing things have offered me.
“Death is always on one's shoulder,” writes Carlos Castaneda in The Teachings of Don Juan. This past year has been intense. Though scared, I have sat with death; though foolish, I have run away from time, and thus from mortality. I have poked and prodded and lived with my phobias. I have reasoned and reflected; I have weeped and written. I drew Tarot Thirteen on my 64th birthday. This wrestling with death, with time, with the dark shadows has only begun. I drew the card of death, but I drew a final chance to fully and righteously live.
© 2011
Just before picking the death card, I glanced at the bottom of the newly shuffled deck and there was the Wind Mother Card. So when the death card was revealed, my first thought went to the death of the mother. My Aquarius mother died last July and I have since found myself obsessed with the aging and dying process. As the oldest sibling with both parents gone, I am theoretically the next in line to walk the plank. I have been reflecting all year on my own death, so drawing the death card seems a natural outcome of these thoughts. I have gone through periods of extreme anxiety, afraid to close my eyes as I attempt to fall asleep and have often felt overwhelmed by the shortness of my life and the need to leave behind a positive legacy.
There is also the death of myself as a mother. My daughter will be twenty-two tomorrow and I must be a slow learner: as much as I continually let her go as she grew up, her final flight to independence has given me pause as I grieve the loss of the mothering phase and question my childless future. I gave more than I ever thought possible to motherhood and truly loved this role. It has been three years since the “empty nest” began and though I am more grounded in my new life, I still weep on the way home from visiting my daughter.
This umbilical cord connecting mothers and daughters must be strong. It stretches over miles and miles. I never felt close to my mother, but her final years brought out my love for her. I found that, as she lay dying, all I wanted was to be with her, in any way possible, so she wouldn't have to be alone. For months after her death, I didn't feel she was gone at all. I still sometimes sense her presence. Each sunrise and sunset brings the balance of living and dying. More than ever before, I know I have but this one last part of my life to truly be present.
As I watch myself wasting time on trivial worries and banal anger, I wonder if the dramas, the misunderstandings, the churning, anxious, self-generated emotions even matter. The death card reminds me that nothing matters. The death card tells me to get over myself, to bury the maiden and the mother and to embrace the crone. My mother never embraced her aging, rather little by little she let it squeeze her into an unhappy hole of complaint and negativity. How do I not repeat her path? This summer, the exuberance of the sixties has gradually taken over my fears. I close my eyes with gratitude for each day: each conversation, each book, each meal. I treasure and try to understand each emotion, each thought, each moment of awe. I have cherished being physically alive by hiking, biking, and kayaking. My garden has been my tranquil, bountiful place, and I have soaked in the daily lessons plants, trees and other growing things have offered me.
“Death is always on one's shoulder,” writes Carlos Castaneda in The Teachings of Don Juan. This past year has been intense. Though scared, I have sat with death; though foolish, I have run away from time, and thus from mortality. I have poked and prodded and lived with my phobias. I have reasoned and reflected; I have weeped and written. I drew Tarot Thirteen on my 64th birthday. This wrestling with death, with time, with the dark shadows has only begun. I drew the card of death, but I drew a final chance to fully and righteously live.
© 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Letter to Michelle Bachmann
Dear Ms. Bachmann: I am writing to you as a parent and as an American citizen who believes in our founders' constitutional creation of “liberty and justice for all.” I have heard that you also believe in our constitution. As a mother of five, I am certain you can understand a mother's love for her child. I am also certain you love each and every one of your children unconditionally, and want only that they are happy, productive adults. I love my daughter beyond words and as her mother I am saddened by the hate speech I hear coming from you and your husband's mouths. You see my twenty-one year old daughter is a beautiful, confident, compassionate Lesbian. Rather than being influenced by Satan, I see my daughter's Queerness as a deeply spiritual gift. She has dared to become her authentic self in a world that encourages conformity. She did not choose to be who she is and she cannot change who she is. She simply is the incredible human being she is suppose to be.
That you desire to become the President of the United States baffles me. To me our President needs to be held to a higher, moral standard of character. Our President needs to strive for fairness and inclusivity. Our President needs to at least respect the American citizens he or she are working for. I do not want to hear purposeful, divisive hate speech coming from the leader of my democratic country. You say you want to reinstate Don't Ask Don't Tell. LGBTQ soldiers have and are giving their lives for this country. I believe their blood also bleeds red, white and blue.
According to you and your husband, Gay people are psychologically messed up and sub-normal human beings, in bondage, despair, and enslavement. Please, Ms. Bachmann, would you appreciate such an unscientific labeling of your children, family and friends? Along with my daughter, I have known and have a multitude of Gay friends and other family members. No doubt you have unknowingly met many wonderful Gay people. The Gay community is a part of every nation, every state, every provence, every city, every community around the world. My Gay friends, family and acquaintances are attending college, have careers, are loving parents, are community volunteers, are church members. I do not want my President to be so blatantly ill-informed.
I understand you have signed a pledge to create a constitutional amendment to ban Gay Marriage. As a PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) mother, I strongly believe the tide is turning, and equality cannot be stopped. Recent polls show the majority of Americans now believe Gays should be allowed to marry. What concerns me more is your pledge to investigate LGBTQ people who you believe are harassing people who share your particular beliefs on this topic. I do not want to go into the centuries of harassment, up to and including murder, that homosexuals have undergone. But please go to the Internet site, www.itgetsbetter.com to hear first hand of the suffering homosexuals have and still do experience during their growing-up years. No youth deserves such treatment. No youth deserves such hate and violence. And no youth should commit suicide because he or she feels so threatened and harassed that his or her life is not worth living.
I am not asking you to change your beliefs, but rather to embrace your Christian faith. For Jesus preached love not hate, the embracing rather than the distancing of one's neighbor. All I am asking, Ms. Bachmann, is that you try to change your blatantly hurtful, vitriolic words towards other human beings. During these deeply troubled and difficult times, I want my President to be a uniter rather than a divider. Sincerely, Victoria Koch, PFLAG mother, teacher, writer
© 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Bee Stings
Yesterday morning I was watering my garden when I noticed a group of bees or wasps circling around the zinnias. The larger bumble bees have been congenial all summer long so I spoke a few gentle words to these insects and paid them no mind. As I was expecting a call, I had my cell phone in my pocket and when it rang, I forgot about the bees and the direction of my watering. As the call ended I discovered a nipping at the bottom of my neck and a small disturbance inside my hair. I flicked my hair with one hand and that's when the trouble started. This darn wasp was lost in the jungle and in his or her effort to find a way out, she went under my shirt. Now I started panicking, lifting my shirt, flipping my head down, listening to the dreaded buzzing. I felt the sting on my back and another sting at the base of my neck and then with a final show of “take that,” I felt a sting on my upper lip.
I stopped watering, went inside and applied ice, took a homeopathic remedy and felt silly about how aggravated I'd gotten. I found myself shaking as I sat down in the arms of my comforting leather chair, with a cup of tea. Try as I might to lessen the swelling, for the rest of the day I watched as my upper lip slowly became an elongated balloon. Slowly, though, I began seeing the bee stings and my reaction to them as one of those metaphoric lessons of life. I realized that whenever I have a disagreeable phone conversation, direct interaction or unpleasant experience, it's how I react that is more important than the event itself. Receiving three bee stings in my garden, I could easily see how these corresponded to my most recent life stings.
My sister called a few days ago after a silence of several months. This is typical of us, so I shouldn't make out that it is unusual. She lives in another state and in the past few years I have flown there several times. For several summers now, my sister tells me she's coming to my neck of the woods for a visit, and then cancels at the last minute due to insufficient funds. I won't go into her upper class life style, but the sting for me is she appears to honor money more than family. But my sister is who she is, and instead of getting upset every time I have a conversation with her, why not simply apply a cold pack and relax! Our mother died recently, and our being with our mother through this passage and our taking care of lose ends after she died brought us closer. I want to feel gratitude for these moments of bonding, and I want to become more accepting of what I perceive as my sister's need for a less intimate (than I would prefer) relationship. I want to share what I can about who I am, and listen when my sister tells me her story.
What I have always known is that a family will sting us many times with their judgments, self-interests or simple unconsciousness comments. I too have given my fair share of stings, so my reaction can only be to try to become the better person I know I can be.
Most of my stings come from irritating miscommunications with friends and acquaintances. Humans will say one thing and mean another and assume their personal intent is understood. I got frazzled this week by such a friend who sent an e-mail about getting together the upcoming week. I responded to a day she suggested and somehow...don't tell me how...she interpreted my response as meaning the day I chose on the week after the one she wrote about. I was sincerely baffled when she called to clarify her misunderstanding (because I had said see you tomorrow in my responding e-mail). But did I need to go ballistic after the phone call?
I suppose the most common stings come between mothers and daughters. I have deeply felt the hollowness of the empty nest phase, and am slowly getting back to my non-mothering self. What I find, though, is that I say the dumbest things when my daughter is around. I am in a sense stinging myself. I long to impress my daughter with the worthiness of her mother, and this usually backfires. I'll say what I really don't mean and know I am saying what I don't mean and watch anxiously as my daughter interprets my words, verbatim. The salve for this sting is humor, especially the ability to laugh at my awkward self. Plus, sharing my empty nest nervousness would allow her to see why her mother is such a communication weirdo.
I sit here with my upper lip looking like I had too much Botox. Damned wasps, for my daughter tells me they must be wasps because wasps are meaner. For every action in life does there have to be a reaction? Why not instead of ranting, sing? Instead of raving, laugh? Instead of irritability, dance? Stings are maddening, and the swelling lingers for far too long. Can I ignore the swelling after taking out the stinger and caring for the itch? I'll continue to try.
© 2011
I stopped watering, went inside and applied ice, took a homeopathic remedy and felt silly about how aggravated I'd gotten. I found myself shaking as I sat down in the arms of my comforting leather chair, with a cup of tea. Try as I might to lessen the swelling, for the rest of the day I watched as my upper lip slowly became an elongated balloon. Slowly, though, I began seeing the bee stings and my reaction to them as one of those metaphoric lessons of life. I realized that whenever I have a disagreeable phone conversation, direct interaction or unpleasant experience, it's how I react that is more important than the event itself. Receiving three bee stings in my garden, I could easily see how these corresponded to my most recent life stings.
My sister called a few days ago after a silence of several months. This is typical of us, so I shouldn't make out that it is unusual. She lives in another state and in the past few years I have flown there several times. For several summers now, my sister tells me she's coming to my neck of the woods for a visit, and then cancels at the last minute due to insufficient funds. I won't go into her upper class life style, but the sting for me is she appears to honor money more than family. But my sister is who she is, and instead of getting upset every time I have a conversation with her, why not simply apply a cold pack and relax! Our mother died recently, and our being with our mother through this passage and our taking care of lose ends after she died brought us closer. I want to feel gratitude for these moments of bonding, and I want to become more accepting of what I perceive as my sister's need for a less intimate (than I would prefer) relationship. I want to share what I can about who I am, and listen when my sister tells me her story.
What I have always known is that a family will sting us many times with their judgments, self-interests or simple unconsciousness comments. I too have given my fair share of stings, so my reaction can only be to try to become the better person I know I can be.
Most of my stings come from irritating miscommunications with friends and acquaintances. Humans will say one thing and mean another and assume their personal intent is understood. I got frazzled this week by such a friend who sent an e-mail about getting together the upcoming week. I responded to a day she suggested and somehow...don't tell me how...she interpreted my response as meaning the day I chose on the week after the one she wrote about. I was sincerely baffled when she called to clarify her misunderstanding (because I had said see you tomorrow in my responding e-mail). But did I need to go ballistic after the phone call?
I suppose the most common stings come between mothers and daughters. I have deeply felt the hollowness of the empty nest phase, and am slowly getting back to my non-mothering self. What I find, though, is that I say the dumbest things when my daughter is around. I am in a sense stinging myself. I long to impress my daughter with the worthiness of her mother, and this usually backfires. I'll say what I really don't mean and know I am saying what I don't mean and watch anxiously as my daughter interprets my words, verbatim. The salve for this sting is humor, especially the ability to laugh at my awkward self. Plus, sharing my empty nest nervousness would allow her to see why her mother is such a communication weirdo.
I sit here with my upper lip looking like I had too much Botox. Damned wasps, for my daughter tells me they must be wasps because wasps are meaner. For every action in life does there have to be a reaction? Why not instead of ranting, sing? Instead of raving, laugh? Instead of irritability, dance? Stings are maddening, and the swelling lingers for far too long. Can I ignore the swelling after taking out the stinger and caring for the itch? I'll continue to try.
© 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Life's Crooked Mile
Nearing thirty my heart told me I was ready to meet my soul partner. I had had several long term relationships and thought I was deeply in love. After each break up, however, the missing pieces became visible. Friends laughed as I confided my confident belief: “I will know when I meet him that he is the one.” Even now as I write these words I am mystified by the magical coincidence of love. But then as I have continually reminded my dear husband: I believe there are no coincidences.
We met at a private, residential high school up in the hills of Ojai, California. We were both substitute teachers for the Spring Break week. Most of the students were on a school-sponsored ski vacation. Our job would be to “entertain” and “possibly teach” a group of male foreign students who chose to remain behind. The Friday before my assignment began I drove up to the school to meet with the lead teachers and the director. As I walked through the main door I spied a rather tall, blond, curly haired, slightly bearded fellow strolling towards me. Dressed in a red plaid wool shirt, jeans and heavy hiking boots, his kind blue eyes and inviting smile immediately drew me in. Like in a Broadway musical my heart went zing and a quiet voice inside me spoke: Here He Is!
We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Dan told me later he had no idea why he made the next move. But as we stood frozen and entranced by each other in the middle of the hallway, he spied a small, open room with a piano inside. As if being reeled by a fishing line into this room, suddenly we were sitting together on the piano bench and Dan was playing me a song he wrote: “On My Life's Crooked Mile.”*
“Maybe a thousand people have passed through my life
In the last few years
Ther've been friends and enemies and lovers
But the distinctions are no longer that clear
And time it always passes, and they come and they go
like opening and closing doors
it gets harder and harder to remember all the faces...
But I'll always remember yours...”
I was smitten with him from the very beginning. But as we were to work together for a solid week, I deferred thoughts about our potential relationship until the following Friday. Almost immediately we discovered we worked well together. Over coffee we planned several activities and lessons we thought these students might enjoy. The lessons flopped; the outings to parks and games of basketball and tennis received a lukewarm reception. During one of Dan's tennis matches, I unconsciously walked too close behind him and with his racket swinging back for a serve he hit me in the mouth. Apologies flowed freely but this event has become a humorous touchstone for the beginnings of our romance.
What our foreign students truly wanted was a field trip to Hollywood. We secured two vans and set as our educational destination the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. We left early in the morning for the several-hour journey. The museum only appealed to a few of our students and we finally agreed to cruise Sunset Boulevard and stop at Grauman's Chinese to view star foot and hand prints. Afterwards, we found a small and delightful ethnic restaurant and it was this meal that brought the most smiles to our guests. When we made it back to Ojai we sighed with relief: no one had gotten hurt and no one had gotten lost.
Friday finally arrived and we were both exhausted. My head rambled with thoughts: What's going to happen now? Will I ever see Dan again? Isn't this relationship meant to continue? Like shy and gangly children we both kept alluding to the end of our teaching job and wanting to do something to celebrate our success. Dan mentioned a unique restaurant up in the Ojai hills and a date for dinner became a reality.
Since Dan was renting a room from one of the teachers in Ojai, I drove to his place and then he drove us up through the mountains and canyons of Ojai to Casa Landucci. This restaurant is by far the most romantic place I have ever been. Nestled in the midst of a wide ravine and surrounded by rugged and lush hills, we sat on the deck sipping our wine and feeling nature's blessing upon our meeting. We talked and talked, ate and drank, as if we were the only survivors of our species at that time and at that place. We found ourselves totally comfortable in each other's presence and as many lovers before us have exclaimed: we felt as if we had known each other for years.
“Get you to the highway
anyway away from here, I raced
from Oregon to Guatemala
sweet liberation I've chased
and with all the hard lessons that bought me
I stand before a thousand more
but of all of the friends' loving arms that have caught me
I'll always remember yours...”
And today after our first hikes through the Ojai terrain and after our first runs through the California orange groves, and after packing all we owned in two vehicles and moving to Oregon and after raising our now twenty-one year old daughter, we have known each other for years and those thirty-four years are only the beginning.
“There is so much I wanted to say to you
before you touch that dial
but it mostly amounts to thank you, for being,
On my life's crooked mile.”
*“On My Life's Crooked Mile” song lyrics by Dan Fuehring
© 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Small House
I live in a small house and I lead a small life. But I gave birth to a towering beauty of a daughter who boldly walks around the edge of a circle instead of in the middle. And my six foot four loving husband has the most compassionate, all encompassing spiritual heart I have ever experienced.
A light coming from my vagina seeped out into the entire birthing room when my daughter was born. I am daily illuminated by a presence beyond the ordinary. I see huge reasons for being in every person I meet. With age I find I have nothing and everything to fear. I read hearts and can put strangers at ease. If there is blackness I keep my distance. But usually every encounter has the possibility of immeasurable joy and reflective wisdom. These encounters include the soft caress of wind and clouds, the songs of birds, the touch of feline and canine fur. My eyes become dazzled by the new green of trees, the brilliance of continual invading color, the pelting rain and the expanse of space; and my brain bursts as I contemplate the shadowed layers of mountains, the depth of oceanic horizons, the unfathomable mystery of humans.
When I sit inside my hovel of a home and hear the pounding of the rain against the thin skinned windowpane, I shrink into a dot on the universal map. But outside, simply walking outside, makes me feel as though there are never ending possibilities of meaning. Who will I meet today? What newness will I see? What thoughts will meander in and out of my consciousness? It's not that I'm not grieved by dark days because I am. Then I am wound back inside myself and have no outer vision. I miss the color and I miss the sounds. I hear only my own complaints and feel only my constant judgment.
In darkness I'm small. I forget to say thank you. I forget to read lips. I wish I were somewhere else and forget my truth. When I'm small I'm weighed down with self imposed burdens. My ego clouds the source. It's there...whatever “it” is. It's not bothered by darkness or burdens or ego. Sometimes I can see it when the patterned rain slants on the windowpane or my daughter's protective nature permits her to open an inner drawer. Look quick before this drawer shuts again. She hides her love; she hides her truth. She rightfully saws constantly at the umbilical cord. I want to snap it in half and be done, but then I'm sitting there with needle and thread.
This reflective, sensitive, push pull life isn't easy. Words give and words take away. But I can't stop my tongue, my brain, my hopping up and down. Maybe I can erase, crumple, sculpture the troubled times into something whole. My lover does this for me. He stands firmly on the ground and reels me in. He patiently tucks me into bed and tells me everything will be alright. Will it? His never changing love tells me to hold on. Tells me my world is larger than it seems. Tells me there will be breakfast in the morning.
Tears can be larger than smiles. They swell my heart to twice its size. When my daughter left I wondered whether my world would shrink. Or would I become newly born? From far away I watch her like a mother lion who knows that with every twig creak and with every wing flutter, there comes both magic and danger. The layered vastness of this universe invades my psyche as my daughter and I continue to open our gates.
Home is safe; home is small. And then I go outside and remember. I remember the touch, the look, the infinite measure of beauty. I remember the treks around the globe and each time I return I pile gem on gem. My heart has been rubbed raw and my heart has become like a cherished, sweet and warm cup of coffee. There is no smallness without expansion and no darkness without soul. For every step through the door, my daughter carries out and leaves behind a beaker full of love and learning. I remain permanently pregnant. Try as I may, I have never been the same. This daughter who is not mine has stretched my emotions to the furthest corners of this unfathomable universe.
I want to let smallness go. I want to passionately grab my husband and breathe in unison. I want to grab the creative self walking beside me and tell her it's time: the umbilical cord has been retied. I watch the light from my vagina seep under the door out into a wide and waiting world. And I say thank you.
© 2011
A light coming from my vagina seeped out into the entire birthing room when my daughter was born. I am daily illuminated by a presence beyond the ordinary. I see huge reasons for being in every person I meet. With age I find I have nothing and everything to fear. I read hearts and can put strangers at ease. If there is blackness I keep my distance. But usually every encounter has the possibility of immeasurable joy and reflective wisdom. These encounters include the soft caress of wind and clouds, the songs of birds, the touch of feline and canine fur. My eyes become dazzled by the new green of trees, the brilliance of continual invading color, the pelting rain and the expanse of space; and my brain bursts as I contemplate the shadowed layers of mountains, the depth of oceanic horizons, the unfathomable mystery of humans.
When I sit inside my hovel of a home and hear the pounding of the rain against the thin skinned windowpane, I shrink into a dot on the universal map. But outside, simply walking outside, makes me feel as though there are never ending possibilities of meaning. Who will I meet today? What newness will I see? What thoughts will meander in and out of my consciousness? It's not that I'm not grieved by dark days because I am. Then I am wound back inside myself and have no outer vision. I miss the color and I miss the sounds. I hear only my own complaints and feel only my constant judgment.
In darkness I'm small. I forget to say thank you. I forget to read lips. I wish I were somewhere else and forget my truth. When I'm small I'm weighed down with self imposed burdens. My ego clouds the source. It's there...whatever “it” is. It's not bothered by darkness or burdens or ego. Sometimes I can see it when the patterned rain slants on the windowpane or my daughter's protective nature permits her to open an inner drawer. Look quick before this drawer shuts again. She hides her love; she hides her truth. She rightfully saws constantly at the umbilical cord. I want to snap it in half and be done, but then I'm sitting there with needle and thread.
This reflective, sensitive, push pull life isn't easy. Words give and words take away. But I can't stop my tongue, my brain, my hopping up and down. Maybe I can erase, crumple, sculpture the troubled times into something whole. My lover does this for me. He stands firmly on the ground and reels me in. He patiently tucks me into bed and tells me everything will be alright. Will it? His never changing love tells me to hold on. Tells me my world is larger than it seems. Tells me there will be breakfast in the morning.
Tears can be larger than smiles. They swell my heart to twice its size. When my daughter left I wondered whether my world would shrink. Or would I become newly born? From far away I watch her like a mother lion who knows that with every twig creak and with every wing flutter, there comes both magic and danger. The layered vastness of this universe invades my psyche as my daughter and I continue to open our gates.
Home is safe; home is small. And then I go outside and remember. I remember the touch, the look, the infinite measure of beauty. I remember the treks around the globe and each time I return I pile gem on gem. My heart has been rubbed raw and my heart has become like a cherished, sweet and warm cup of coffee. There is no smallness without expansion and no darkness without soul. For every step through the door, my daughter carries out and leaves behind a beaker full of love and learning. I remain permanently pregnant. Try as I may, I have never been the same. This daughter who is not mine has stretched my emotions to the furthest corners of this unfathomable universe.
I want to let smallness go. I want to passionately grab my husband and breathe in unison. I want to grab the creative self walking beside me and tell her it's time: the umbilical cord has been retied. I watch the light from my vagina seep under the door out into a wide and waiting world. And I say thank you.
© 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Mountain Lion Eyes
Growing up with a spontaneous, moody father made my childhood both rich and uncertain. In early elementary school, I came home one day to find my dad had procured a kitten. This was no ordinary kitten. My father told us her name was Haywee and he had been given Haywee as a present from an “Indian Chief.” At this time my father worked for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Out on an isolated stretch of land far up the Angeles Crest Highway, he had come upon this authentic “Indian Chief.” They talked as two open-hearted men might, my father sharing in loving detail about his three small children. Taking an immediate liking to my handsome, gregarious, six-foot father, the Chief wanted to give him a present for his children. Thus, Haywee became a part of our household.
Every kid wants a dog, and we were no exception. Only the way we got this dog was never straight forward. My dad appeared one evening with this purebred “Norwegian Elk” puppy and said his name was Viking. This would be an incredible dog, my dad explained, for his genes went back to an ancient, northern, fiord land in Scandinavia called Norway. With his thick white fur, upturned tail and splashes of black, Viking was beautiful. My younger sister became the attached, primary caregiver and grieved uncontrollably when Viking, poisoned by a spiteful, unhappy neighbor, died two years later.
Dad, a self-employed landscaper, often took us with him on his gardening route. By our elementary school years he had a collection of rather rich clients, many of whom had, in the heat of a California summer, cool, refreshing swimming pools. With permission, we became swimmers in some of the finest pools in La Canada. Dad also made it a point to bring us to his most beautiful gardens. Lectures ensued about the names of plants, and what plants belonged in what climate. My father's face visibly softened, losing its contorted anger-at-the-world rage as he spoke about his landscape designs. A natural storyteller, he loved sharing background stories about the people we would meet. He proudly introduced us to his fellow gardeners during our many coffee shop breaks. We had no idea what Dad's work routine was like without us, but when we were with him, we stopped frequently for “treats.”
The love of nature and gardens was in Dad's blood. Our great grandfather was the director of the Hamburg Botanical Gardens in Germany. One of our traditional weekend excursions was to La Canada's Descanso Gardens. These acres of groomed yet wild public terrain had once been privately owned. Dad would throw together a bag of cheese, bread and fruit plus an added sack of duck food and off we would tramp. The gardens were free and entering by the main gate, we would make our way first to the small duck pond. From there we hiked through large, towering trees, open meadows and spacious rose gardens to enter the sumptuous former residence on the grounds. As we kids crossed small manmade bridges, sneaked in an out of bushes, Dad would spout his natural wisdom, never failing to point out this bird or that squirrel. Dad loved taking us off Descanso's beaten paths. But one visit brought us in contact with poison oak. Though we showered immediately upon coming home, we all broke out with the dreaded itchy rash. Mom railed and Dad felt slightly contrite, but further adventures continued.
Another favorite family outing was the more formal Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. Our first stop was the infamous art collection, where we stared at Da Vinci's original “Mona Lisa.” We made up stories about why her captivating smile intrigued Leonardo. As we strolled the garden byways, we then made our way through the Japanese themed landscape to the jungle-like river. Here Dad pointed out how the first Tarzan, Johnny Wisemuller, made the beloved and exciting Tarzan movies. We stood on the banks in awe, imaging ourselves swinging by the tree twined ropes.
On a par with Dad's love of nature, was his appreciation of the arts. When Dad pooled our savings money from Grandmother Hadley to create an addition to our small living room, we all helped him build solid wood, wall high bookshelves. On the top of these shelves, Dad carefully placed the precious German books Grandma Koch had brought over from her native Germany. Throughout my childhood, I yearningly stared at these heirlooms. Some day, I promised, I will learn German and visit the places of my ancestors' birth, and in my twenties, I spent several years studying and traveling abroad. On the shelf beneath was Dad's collection of antique, leather bound Shakespeare plays, special editions of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and his Modern Library Classics. Years later he would purchase the Britannica Great Book collection. With a bachelor of arts in English and German literature, I became the first in my family to receive a college diploma.
I remember our family being poor growing up, but somehow my dad always found a way to introduce us to great ballet and great music. On a star-studded evening, Dad quickly herded us into the car after dinner. We drove through darkened streets with no word about where we were going. Up the Los Angeles hills, past Griffith Park we drove and into the parking lot of the Greek Theater. The lot was full and the crowds bustled to enter the outdoor tiered rows. Dad stepped up to the box office and came away with four tickets. Three of these tickets were near the front while one ticket was a few rows back. We sat near the stage and Dad promised he would be guarding us from behind. As the volume of the full orchestra reached a crescendo, as the curtain rose, we were magically captivated by the beginnings of the New York City Ballet's “Nutcracker.” As the Christmas tree rose from the floor to the ceiling, we wide eyed, innocent children became part of an immortal memory.
There would be the incredible Russian Bolshoi Ballet at the Shrine Auditorium, classical/pop Hollywood Bowl concerts, and excursions to the Los Angeles Museums and the La Brea Tar Pits. Each brought an awe inspiring remembrance that would soothe the tougher, occasional violent times of our childhood. But the adventure that gave our family the happiest moments was the only vacation my father could organize and afford to take. It was this camping trip which brought us in contact with the mountain lion eyes and initiated us into the “Koch Warrior Tribe.”
Dad bought a huge burlap tent, outdoor cooking utensils and stove, plus five flannel-lined sleeping bags. These items were loaded into the back of Dad's Chevy pick-up truck, we were squeezed into the cab and off we went one summer to Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. Nearing Sequoia we drove our car right through the hollowed trunk of a gigantic redwood. We found a camp site on the edge of Sequoia's mountains, forested by further towering, ancient redwoods. It was our first camping adventure, but Dad seemed to know what to do. Mom became the primary cook and keeper of our camping quarters. Dad was the “scout leader.” Within hours of our arrival we were back in the truck, driving the rim of Sequoia's wilderness. For every animal/bird we spotted Dad paid us a dollar in spending money. We saw a family of quail waddling along the highway, chipmunks scurrying towards the tree tops, innumerable birds and eventually bears!
In the dark pre-morning, bears arrived at our site looking for food. While Dad and Mom slept in the tent, we children cuddled in the back of the pick-up. Lumbering down from the forest, two bears began creating an awful racket with the metal garbage cans. “Bears,” Mom nervously exclaimed, shaking Dad's shoulder. Groggily replying, “Uh Huh,” Dad rolled over and fell back asleep. We children sucked in all possible breath and sound and with no food left on our picnic table, the bears departed. When we went to cook breakfast the next morning, we found two plastic drinking cups with teeth marks on their rims. We kept those souvenir cups for years.
On our final Sequoia evening, Dad took us on a flashlight walk. As we hiked along a dusty road, we begin to hear strange noises. Our imaginations made these noises into growls and the growls into fierce human eating prey. “Quiet! Turn off your flashlights,” Dad suddenly warned. He led us to the edge of a small cliff, pointing down into what appeared to be a dark, redwood and fern lined cavern. To this day we swear we saw two bright yellow glowing eyes staring up at us. Dad said those were mountain lion eyes and we had hit the jack pot! Not one gasp of air escaped our little bodies as we stared and stared.
If we thought Sequoia had been an incredible adventure, Yosemite proved to be beyond belief. This was the mid-fifties, when camping was allowed right in the heart of the National Park and “fire falls” was the evening entertainment. Our camp ground formed a circle around this huge, lush meadow. Once the tent was up, we wandered over to the lodge to see what activities would entice us. Dad booked us on a half-day donkey ride and I remember wishing I could stay on my donkey forever. We hiked, we roasted marshmallows; we played with our neighboring campers. This was a kids' summer paradise.
During our first day, Dad repeatedly mentioned there would be a special evening ceremony. After supper, as twilight colored the meadow, Dad gathered us around the camp fire. He told us we had been extremely brave when the bears visited us in Sequoia; he added we had become expert animal watchers and outdoor enthusiasts. It was time for our initiation as Tribe Warriors.
We entered a darkened tent one at a time and met Dad's loving, flashlight glowing face. Sitting cross legged, speaking a strange native tongue, he placed a twine roped wooden, glazed medallion around each of our necks. This Sequoia medallion had a carved black bear face on the front. With this necklace we became initiated into the KOCH Tribe. We each received an appropriate name: I was Dancing Girl; my father was Chief Meat and Potatoes; my sister was Singing Princess; my brother was Chief Droopy Drawers; and my mother was Laughing Maiden. We treasured these medallions as if they were made of gold, and slept proudly that night.
Like the climax to a fairytale, on our final camp evening, sunset brought deer down from the hills. One young stag with new budding antlers walked into our camp site. Dad signaled us to step softly. The deer showed no fear as we cautiously surrounded him for a memorable photo. I remember being mesmerized by his elegant beauty and loving deer ever since. As darkness descended all the human families gathered to sit on blankets on the open meadow. The sky was pitch black with no flashlight or lantern lit. Our eyes strained towards the top of the monstrous, jagged mountain peering down upon us. There as if on a high wire were tiny men arranging the “show.” In an instant we saw chunks of fire streaming down the mountain, becoming a falling fountain of fire.
We never went camping again. In our teen years we once did a spontaneous weekend excursion to Sequoia/Yosemite, staying in cabins, but it wasn't the same. We grew up and Dad grew older. His stories became rants and sermons. As his adult children left, he didn't know how to hold onto us. Despite my father's dysfunction; despite my fears of him; despite our later conflicts during my college years, I want to remember the magical education he provided. I want to remember his youthful heart and yearning for a close, loving family. I want to remember his serene face whenever he was in a garden or a forest or a meadow. I want to remember the wisdom he shared with a then unresponsive teenager. And most of all I want to remember forever those yellow, glowing, mountain lion eyes.
© 2011
Every kid wants a dog, and we were no exception. Only the way we got this dog was never straight forward. My dad appeared one evening with this purebred “Norwegian Elk” puppy and said his name was Viking. This would be an incredible dog, my dad explained, for his genes went back to an ancient, northern, fiord land in Scandinavia called Norway. With his thick white fur, upturned tail and splashes of black, Viking was beautiful. My younger sister became the attached, primary caregiver and grieved uncontrollably when Viking, poisoned by a spiteful, unhappy neighbor, died two years later.
Dad, a self-employed landscaper, often took us with him on his gardening route. By our elementary school years he had a collection of rather rich clients, many of whom had, in the heat of a California summer, cool, refreshing swimming pools. With permission, we became swimmers in some of the finest pools in La Canada. Dad also made it a point to bring us to his most beautiful gardens. Lectures ensued about the names of plants, and what plants belonged in what climate. My father's face visibly softened, losing its contorted anger-at-the-world rage as he spoke about his landscape designs. A natural storyteller, he loved sharing background stories about the people we would meet. He proudly introduced us to his fellow gardeners during our many coffee shop breaks. We had no idea what Dad's work routine was like without us, but when we were with him, we stopped frequently for “treats.”
The love of nature and gardens was in Dad's blood. Our great grandfather was the director of the Hamburg Botanical Gardens in Germany. One of our traditional weekend excursions was to La Canada's Descanso Gardens. These acres of groomed yet wild public terrain had once been privately owned. Dad would throw together a bag of cheese, bread and fruit plus an added sack of duck food and off we would tramp. The gardens were free and entering by the main gate, we would make our way first to the small duck pond. From there we hiked through large, towering trees, open meadows and spacious rose gardens to enter the sumptuous former residence on the grounds. As we kids crossed small manmade bridges, sneaked in an out of bushes, Dad would spout his natural wisdom, never failing to point out this bird or that squirrel. Dad loved taking us off Descanso's beaten paths. But one visit brought us in contact with poison oak. Though we showered immediately upon coming home, we all broke out with the dreaded itchy rash. Mom railed and Dad felt slightly contrite, but further adventures continued.
Another favorite family outing was the more formal Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. Our first stop was the infamous art collection, where we stared at Da Vinci's original “Mona Lisa.” We made up stories about why her captivating smile intrigued Leonardo. As we strolled the garden byways, we then made our way through the Japanese themed landscape to the jungle-like river. Here Dad pointed out how the first Tarzan, Johnny Wisemuller, made the beloved and exciting Tarzan movies. We stood on the banks in awe, imaging ourselves swinging by the tree twined ropes.
On a par with Dad's love of nature, was his appreciation of the arts. When Dad pooled our savings money from Grandmother Hadley to create an addition to our small living room, we all helped him build solid wood, wall high bookshelves. On the top of these shelves, Dad carefully placed the precious German books Grandma Koch had brought over from her native Germany. Throughout my childhood, I yearningly stared at these heirlooms. Some day, I promised, I will learn German and visit the places of my ancestors' birth, and in my twenties, I spent several years studying and traveling abroad. On the shelf beneath was Dad's collection of antique, leather bound Shakespeare plays, special editions of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and his Modern Library Classics. Years later he would purchase the Britannica Great Book collection. With a bachelor of arts in English and German literature, I became the first in my family to receive a college diploma.
I remember our family being poor growing up, but somehow my dad always found a way to introduce us to great ballet and great music. On a star-studded evening, Dad quickly herded us into the car after dinner. We drove through darkened streets with no word about where we were going. Up the Los Angeles hills, past Griffith Park we drove and into the parking lot of the Greek Theater. The lot was full and the crowds bustled to enter the outdoor tiered rows. Dad stepped up to the box office and came away with four tickets. Three of these tickets were near the front while one ticket was a few rows back. We sat near the stage and Dad promised he would be guarding us from behind. As the volume of the full orchestra reached a crescendo, as the curtain rose, we were magically captivated by the beginnings of the New York City Ballet's “Nutcracker.” As the Christmas tree rose from the floor to the ceiling, we wide eyed, innocent children became part of an immortal memory.
There would be the incredible Russian Bolshoi Ballet at the Shrine Auditorium, classical/pop Hollywood Bowl concerts, and excursions to the Los Angeles Museums and the La Brea Tar Pits. Each brought an awe inspiring remembrance that would soothe the tougher, occasional violent times of our childhood. But the adventure that gave our family the happiest moments was the only vacation my father could organize and afford to take. It was this camping trip which brought us in contact with the mountain lion eyes and initiated us into the “Koch Warrior Tribe.”
Dad bought a huge burlap tent, outdoor cooking utensils and stove, plus five flannel-lined sleeping bags. These items were loaded into the back of Dad's Chevy pick-up truck, we were squeezed into the cab and off we went one summer to Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. Nearing Sequoia we drove our car right through the hollowed trunk of a gigantic redwood. We found a camp site on the edge of Sequoia's mountains, forested by further towering, ancient redwoods. It was our first camping adventure, but Dad seemed to know what to do. Mom became the primary cook and keeper of our camping quarters. Dad was the “scout leader.” Within hours of our arrival we were back in the truck, driving the rim of Sequoia's wilderness. For every animal/bird we spotted Dad paid us a dollar in spending money. We saw a family of quail waddling along the highway, chipmunks scurrying towards the tree tops, innumerable birds and eventually bears!
In the dark pre-morning, bears arrived at our site looking for food. While Dad and Mom slept in the tent, we children cuddled in the back of the pick-up. Lumbering down from the forest, two bears began creating an awful racket with the metal garbage cans. “Bears,” Mom nervously exclaimed, shaking Dad's shoulder. Groggily replying, “Uh Huh,” Dad rolled over and fell back asleep. We children sucked in all possible breath and sound and with no food left on our picnic table, the bears departed. When we went to cook breakfast the next morning, we found two plastic drinking cups with teeth marks on their rims. We kept those souvenir cups for years.
On our final Sequoia evening, Dad took us on a flashlight walk. As we hiked along a dusty road, we begin to hear strange noises. Our imaginations made these noises into growls and the growls into fierce human eating prey. “Quiet! Turn off your flashlights,” Dad suddenly warned. He led us to the edge of a small cliff, pointing down into what appeared to be a dark, redwood and fern lined cavern. To this day we swear we saw two bright yellow glowing eyes staring up at us. Dad said those were mountain lion eyes and we had hit the jack pot! Not one gasp of air escaped our little bodies as we stared and stared.
If we thought Sequoia had been an incredible adventure, Yosemite proved to be beyond belief. This was the mid-fifties, when camping was allowed right in the heart of the National Park and “fire falls” was the evening entertainment. Our camp ground formed a circle around this huge, lush meadow. Once the tent was up, we wandered over to the lodge to see what activities would entice us. Dad booked us on a half-day donkey ride and I remember wishing I could stay on my donkey forever. We hiked, we roasted marshmallows; we played with our neighboring campers. This was a kids' summer paradise.
During our first day, Dad repeatedly mentioned there would be a special evening ceremony. After supper, as twilight colored the meadow, Dad gathered us around the camp fire. He told us we had been extremely brave when the bears visited us in Sequoia; he added we had become expert animal watchers and outdoor enthusiasts. It was time for our initiation as Tribe Warriors.
We entered a darkened tent one at a time and met Dad's loving, flashlight glowing face. Sitting cross legged, speaking a strange native tongue, he placed a twine roped wooden, glazed medallion around each of our necks. This Sequoia medallion had a carved black bear face on the front. With this necklace we became initiated into the KOCH Tribe. We each received an appropriate name: I was Dancing Girl; my father was Chief Meat and Potatoes; my sister was Singing Princess; my brother was Chief Droopy Drawers; and my mother was Laughing Maiden. We treasured these medallions as if they were made of gold, and slept proudly that night.
Like the climax to a fairytale, on our final camp evening, sunset brought deer down from the hills. One young stag with new budding antlers walked into our camp site. Dad signaled us to step softly. The deer showed no fear as we cautiously surrounded him for a memorable photo. I remember being mesmerized by his elegant beauty and loving deer ever since. As darkness descended all the human families gathered to sit on blankets on the open meadow. The sky was pitch black with no flashlight or lantern lit. Our eyes strained towards the top of the monstrous, jagged mountain peering down upon us. There as if on a high wire were tiny men arranging the “show.” In an instant we saw chunks of fire streaming down the mountain, becoming a falling fountain of fire.
We never went camping again. In our teen years we once did a spontaneous weekend excursion to Sequoia/Yosemite, staying in cabins, but it wasn't the same. We grew up and Dad grew older. His stories became rants and sermons. As his adult children left, he didn't know how to hold onto us. Despite my father's dysfunction; despite my fears of him; despite our later conflicts during my college years, I want to remember the magical education he provided. I want to remember his youthful heart and yearning for a close, loving family. I want to remember his serene face whenever he was in a garden or a forest or a meadow. I want to remember the wisdom he shared with a then unresponsive teenager. And most of all I want to remember forever those yellow, glowing, mountain lion eyes.
© 2011
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