From My Journal: In Gratitude

This Thanksgiving Day Dan and I will be alone. Perhaps this will be the first Thanksgiving without the daughter who will be with her girlfriend's family. We kiddingly referred to ourselves as Thanksgiving orphans when the daughter made the above announcement. “We've never gotten this holiday together as a major celebration,” she mentioned, “and we'll come to you for Christmas Eve and Christmas because that is our special time.” She's right, of course. While for many Thanksgiving is a time to spend with multitudes of extended family members, ours has been a three-some or an attempt to be with family members where cousins have totally ignored us or acted rudely. We've also had failed, miserable attempts at being with people we didn't know. So yes, this holiday hasn't been one of our winners.

Thinking to be mature and to strike out on our own, Dan and I tried earlier to make a reservation at a favorite beach bed and breakfast, but this was sold out weeks ago. Secretly we both hoped to have our daughter and her girl friend with us. While at first I felt deflated by our daughter's news, I have since recovered. I have decided to go beyond my illusive desire for community and family and to simply accept what I am given. Dan and I deserve a fine dinner with desert, wine and all the trimmings, and so we shall create one. Our cooking plans have commenced, to be accompanied by elegant place settings and candles, background music, and later activities such as hiking, movies, literary readings aloud. No doubt we could have searched for a place to invite ourselves, but for this year this feels right.

What the empty nest has given me is a compassionate understanding of how our American holidays are all about the “ideal” family, when this ideal is rarely met. Without children and their easy acceptance of magic and wonder, Winter Solstice has taken on greater spiritual importance to me than Christmas, which has become deeply crass and commercial. I don't want to become bah humbug about the winter holidays but I do want them to be more accessible to all, single, unmarried, Gay, straight, Native, non-traditional family gatherings. And I want to redefine love and gratitude this Thanksgiving.

I want to give thanks for being in a loving relationship for over thirty years. And what I want to remember is we raised a child to become an incredible and compassionate young woman, but we also raised ourselves to become giving, wiser, more humble human beings. We had a partnership before our daughter was born, and we have that partnership back again. We have helped each other grow up and we will continue to help each other become elders.

I give thanks for my daughter. That she made it through her turbulent teens and that she had support and positive resources for her “coming out” years. I give thanks she is a solid, mature human being with awesome people and navigating the world skills. I give thanks she is in a healthy, loving relationship. I simply give thanks for who she is: herself.

I may not always believe I have friends (this coming from my over-protective childhood) but I do. I have cultivated an attachment to a group of women who are thoughtful, sensitive, spiritual and caring. For all of them I am in deepest gratitude. They make me see myself as I might not see me - as whole and real.

I give thanks for the town I live in where people work damn hard for human rights and the acceptance of diversity and justice. Where many try to live sustainably through food gardens, biking and energy conservation. I give thanks my town is surrounded by Mother Earth's bounty: the oceans are in one direction, the mountains in another. Precious old growth trees encircle us and the seasons (including our abundant rain) replenish us. We are lucky to be living where we do.

What I have learned through the years here in the Pacific Northwest is the definition of family is a wider one. Family means community: neighbors, strangers walking down the streets, our own children and the children of others, students and their teachers, co-workers, friends. We all have similar needs and wants for communication, caring, shelter and vocation.

We are not alone this Thanksgiving.

© 2012

Road Trip

I'm seeing one huge pelican and then another swooping and making a half circle arc in front of me. A feeling of effervescent ecstasy slowly rises to the top of my head. Pelicans...have I ever seen pelicans before? Dan and I have found a bench along the Santa Barbara strand overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We are resting after taking a nostalgic walking tour of the city where I once lived. We had lunch at this scrumptious Italian Cafe, the former Copper Coffee Pot, one of my old writing/study haunts. Nothing and everything stays the same. My first studio apartment, located in a quaint Victorian complex, The Magnolia, near the downtown park, appears, however, to have been frozen in time. It is eerily quiet. Where is 90 year old Willie doing yoga handstands on the lawn? Where are Meghan and Shauna sitting outside on their miniature deck sipping tea? Where is my neighbor Jenny, who pierced my ears? Presumably, these people in my former life moved on decades ago.

I don't want to return to my college and soul searching, twenty-something years, though I keep flashing to the fact my own daughter is the age I was then. Weird! Our California road trip is about people, youthful memories and grown-up insights. Dan and I might as well have been kids when we met; and then poof: here we are full blown adults in our sixties. We met in Ojai, up in the hills about 45 minutes from Santa Barbara, a major stopping point on our journey. We are staying several days with friends, first, the former remarried husband, and then the former remarried wife. But back to those pelicans. I thought our trip was mainly going to be about people and not places. But I am wrong. Each place has brought me a visual gift of wild and natural beauty...like those hold-your-breath pelicans.

As we make our way through the narrow high mountain roads towards Ojai, it is as if I am seeing this landscape for the first time. Having worked part-time at one of its private schools, having met Dan at that school, I drove this path a hundred times. But this September summer beauty whizzing past the car window is indescribable. We have climbed inside an enclosed hilly canyon of paradise which keeps opening up to these scenes of three dimensional splendor: jagged cliffs, bowls of greenery, and serene, eternal skies. Ojai has been equated with a spiritual Shangra La, and it is still thick with theosophists. As a college student, I came here frequently to hear Krishnamurti speak in its parks.

At Dennis's house, I meet and immediately like his new wife Meredy. Before dinner we are taken on a dog-walk up along one of those hills I saw through my car window. As we walk and talk, I feel my feet touching this amazing land. It is hot and I am sweating. The town of Ojai is small; one long, yuppified street. There are remnants of the orange groves along which Dan and I used to run. Kathy and Allyn's rental is in a posh neighborhood and makes Dennis and Meredy's sprawling tract home look rather earthy. Kathy beams through the front door window as she sees our faces. Decades-old friends whom we haven't seen in over a decade. E-mail and the telephone can't replace pure physical contact. Kathy has a manicured, cascading waterfall in her back garden, but this doesn't seem to ease the feeling that I have lost contact with nature. It isn't until the next morning when Kathy takes us for a walk through a neighborhood access only, corral-like open meadow that the natural contact resumes. I find that talking outside, talking in wilder and more primitive places loosens people's inhibitions.

That Dan and I are in rugged Ojai after spending two feet-burning days walking and visiting with friends in bustling, downtown San Francisco and Oakland, shocks us. We are like birds making our way south for the winter, flying through one habitat after another.

Leaving Ojai, we skim along the coastal highway to Dan's mom's house which is a half block away from the Hermosa Beach Strand. Dan's mother and younger sixty year old brother live together and always have since their father's death, at age 45. They resemble a grouchy, long-married couple who know they need each other to survive. Dan's mom has a tremendous heart, beating inside a neglected eight-five year old body. The television is on every waking moment, and so to find solace we take walks along the strand or walks through this now more upscale beach town to our usual coffee place for breakfast.

Our daughter wants to see grandma, so we fly her down for the weekend. After she arrives I feel complete. It is hot, even at the beach...record highs in Los Angeles. Mid-morning, the daughter and I go for a bike ride, riding fast along the sandy, increasingly peopled shores. There are huge tankers far out on the glassy waters looking more like toy boats. There are rows and rows of volleyball nets with groups of players arriving at every one. There are boy scouts doing their duty on beach clean-up day. My daughter rides faster, and I try to keep up. The sky is unlimited if I look north, but a stack of smoke is rising to the east. We stop and walk our bikes onto a pier and see surfers paddling for waves. It's a normal day at the beach, but it's totally different from our Eugene, Oregon home environment.

At one place where bikes must be carried up the steps, with difficulty I begin lifting my bike. But then this incredibly nice gentleman says, “Let me help you.” I thank him profusely and he jokes that he'll be happy to carry my bike all the way to Starbucks! As I hop back on my bike, I wonder if this is what it means to be a senior citizen? I like the respect and care but hope I can be an agile aging specimen. The daughter keeps turning around and asking me if I'm OK. “Yes, yes,” I tell her as I'm catching my breath and wiping away the heat induced-sweat. When I say “I love this,” what I am really saying is “I love being with you.”

In the afternoon Dan's sister and her partner, Mary, arrive and we all head down to the beach with our beach chairs and umbrellas. All the water people, myself and Mary excluded, go body surfing. I sit and watch the expansive horizon and see what appears to be seal heads bobbing up and down in the waters. Later we are given this habitat's gift: a pod of playfully frolicking dolphins swim merrily by my beloved human swimmers and can be seen from the shore. I am once again elated...dolphins are rarely seen so close to this Pacific Coast civilization. I scan the waters for more surprises but all I can focus upon is my beautiful, lanky daughter and dripping wet husband, both of whom I love beyond measure. They are so alike in temperament, I think, and can feel myself edging towards an outsider frame of mind.

Is it a burden to be full of sensitivities and mental meanderings? Is it a burden to have to put all experiences, all musings into spoken and written words? I so admire the quiet nature of my family. My husband and daughter have no need to speak. Their inward contemplations are enough. My enthusiastic energy can't be contained.

Like a taunt yet subtle rubber band, our eleven days of travel have stretched us far and away from our home and back again. From wall-to-wall peopled big city to quiet as a pin-drop mountain oasis, from one upscale California beach town to another, we have opened our hearts to and rejuvenated our minds with old friends and family. On our last afternoon in Hermosa, we set up the gigantic umbrella, wipe off the lounge chairs and help Grandma and her walker make their way around the side of the house to this front yard respite. In the thirty or so years I have known Dan's mother, she has never sat outside with us. But here we all are: brother, sister, partner, Dan, wife and daughter, Dan's mother, my daughter's grandmother, sitting facing a view of the ocean rising above the sand. It is a miracle, this short span of living we do. It is a miracle to be able to encounter the surprises nature presents. It is a miracle, simply to be together, sitting side by side with those we love.

(c) 2012

What's for Breakfast?

Every morning when I wake up, I tiptoe around the house and open the curtains, turn on the heater, and fold up the futon bed. In the dusky silence I listen to my three year old daughter Aspen's breathing or hear her small voice trailing down the hallway, “Mommy, I want to nurse. What's for breakfast? Where's Daddy?”

We cuddle together on the green rocking chair as the sun slowly filters in through the windowpanes. “Look, Mommy, it's the morning light.” I dress myself and then help Aspen. We make sure to go potty and then she sits at the kitchen table with her stuffed friend f the day, waiting for her juice and cereal and Mommy's company.

A mother's life is full of simple, ordinary tasks, I think to myself. Many days I love opening the house to light and these daily routines. At night I ceremoniously draw the day to an end by closing the curtains, turning on artificial lights to continue the warmth and glow of the sun, and putting away the remnants o the day's activities.

Evenings bring quiet times: reading or acting out stories, building huge towers or other magical Lego structures, treating ourselves to popcorn or ice cream, listening to our favorite music. Again, simplicity.

Is this life, I mean the very essence of life? IS washing dishes, doing laundry, wiping a runny nose, hugging away pain, hugging in joy, reading stories, telling stories, licking each other's faces like slimy slugs, cooking, IT? Is this the warp that holds the fabric of life together?

Put on pajamas, brush teeth, give good night kisses and hugs, tuck ourselves in for another dream-filled sleep. Where is the deeper meaning of why I am here on this earth? It seems like I've been searching all of my life for something more, something that's really important that I'm supposed to be doing.

I wake up in the middle of the night next to the rhythmic breathing of my husband. The house radiates a humming quiet until I hear Aspen cough. I crawl across the bed and move toward the entrance to her room. I peer in and see her round, innocent face framed by her cloud-like pillow. Her arms are cuddling her brown stuffed horse. A halo of peace and contentment surround her. I want to crawl into her bed and hug her tight. I want to crawl into her bed and become three years old again.

“Where does the sun go at night, Mommy?” Nothing is simple or mundane to Aspen. Everything is wondrous and totally new.

I go to the bathroom. Let out the cat. Look up at the moon and notice the light reflecting off the lilac bushes. I feel a chill in the air, but buds are forming and it will soon be spring.

I crawl back into bed and feel the warmth of my partner's body. I snuggle closer to him. Have I told him lately how much I love him? How much I love being a part of our family?

Our lives are simple, we often tell each other: we parent and we work. I hear movement from our daughter's room. Little feet patter across the floor to our room. She drags her pillow and stuffed horse over the middle of our bed and places them and eventually herself between her father and me. I kiss her and tuck her in We sleep.

In the morning I quietly get up and open the curtains and turn on the heater. I let in the cat and feed her, put on some water to boil for tea and get dressed.

Looking out the front room window I notice a few people biking down the street. A professionally dressed woman walks briskly by on the sidewalk near our house. She stops for a moment to notice the flowers and vegetables in our garden. The school bus turns a corner; a few cars drive pass.

I hear Aspen's small voice in the background, “Mommy, what's for breakfast?”

And without hesitation I turn and tell her, “Life, dear heart, life.”

© 1995

From My Journal: Family

Say the word “Family,” and a thousand complex emotions surface. Our childhood family never leaves us, no matter how hard we try to replace this first story with another one. When my sister says that she's coming for a visit, I, a woman in her sixties, immediately revert to the competitive, yet vulnerable sibling. Dysfunctional entwined patterns unwind and I begin to feel less than adequate, unworthy, wishing for a loving appreciation of my real self from this sister who has never wanted to know or touch my authenticity.

And so I hide my truth, my do-over family's truth. I stuff down the anger over incidents past and try with the greatest difficulty to reach for that bite of forgiveness. It's time to let go, to forget. But like a rapid dog's teeth clamped onto my shoulder bone, the remembering, the reasons I dislike this sister remain.

When I have made myself vulnerable – sent books, shared my writing or written personal e-mails, I have received silence in response. When our mother died, we were able to reach across the divide and bring ourselves closer together. I thought we had made it, returned to each other as the younger, intimate sisters we once were. A few phone calls later comes the humming of a steady, dull, dial tone instead of words. One birthday call a year; only calls with a rational purpose other than connection.

The desire for connection was voiced on her end, but the actions fell flat. Several summers in a row, she said she was coming for a visit. Several summers in a row, I planned and spruced. Last minute caving, excuses on her part...no money for air fair...giving the free ticket to her son. And so I felt unworthy of her money, unworthy of her time. But she's coming now. Coming with the added bonus of one of her former Tucson home-tutored students and his family living nearby. I am trying to understand. I love my students; I easily bond with them and their families. I understand. But this sudden ability to easily buy the air fair; this sudden ability to take a bus from Portland to here because we decided to simplify the visit by putting ourselves up in Portland, does give me pause.

I succumb to archaic patterns of low esteem. Haven't I created a rich life apart from my upbringing? Apart from the fatherly rage and criticism, the motherly neglect and the hiding of our dysfunction to the outside world? Apart from the siblings who rallied together and then separated without sharing our true stories? Our everything's fine smiles are plastered across our faces now. We don't really want to know who we are. I am the odd, reflective, talkative one who doesn't live as materially rich or who lives an alternative life style...alternative only because we haven't hopped on the band wagon of America's cultural norm of status and achievement.

Since my sister's visit announcement and since reading the latest blog post on “Courage to Create” which suggested we experience a “blessings week,” I have been driving to and from my students thinking about how my family is a blessing. With my current, do-over family, the blessing rating is high. My husband is beyond supportive; he is on a spiritual plane with access to the most patient, compassionate listening devices. My edgy thinking, also extremely compassionate, intuitively wise Queer daughter has been and continues to be my opener into new experiences and life-lesson teacher. So with this family, I am beyond blessed. But what about my sister and my family of origin? I'm looking for clues all day long as I teach at one house and another while hopping back in my car in between. From the books my students are reading (The Color Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Book Thief), I know family is what we make it to be. From one of my parents at the close of the day, after discussing how we lay blame during hard economic times and the American blame these days has been illegal immigrants, I fully nod as she says, “We are all human. We are really all one human family.”

OK, I get how blessed I am to have the families and students I work with daily and I get how blessed I am to understand the interconnection between all earth dwellers...but I'm still having trouble placing my sister into this philosophical belief. I suppose it comes from my stubborn nature, my not letting go of grudges, my not relaxing into myself and saying, “Fuck it, I am who I am and I lead my life as I lead it and it doesn't matter what this sister thinks.” But this sounds crude and not quite what I had in mind. I have never sworn at my childhood family and I probably never will. Perhaps one has to feel totally comfortable with someone to be able to swear at them.

My family frustration is softening. Writing and time does that. I'm owning up to my part in the family drama. I can reach out more; I can continue to risk more, be more honest. I can be a compassionate listener. Or...I can simply admit there is no reason to fight for intimacy when it isn't there. I can admit who my supportive family members are and let go of the rest. Unfortunately, I am programmed to believe only biology counts, and this pull is strong. Yet it is my women friends who are the sisters I was meant to have. It has never been easy to be the person I am because I tend to be my “self” with everyone. I have a hard time being false or merely “social.” As my husband can attest, I blurt out my inner thoughts without consequence. And I have paid the price of my forthrightness. What it all comes down to is forgiving “me” and seeing “me” as my own first blessing. I have given to families, tried to save families (including my biological one), created my own family, given widely to a community circle of open, sensitive, caring people. One of my dearest sister friends gave me a treasured piece of wisdom: “Take what you get and let it be enough!” And this is my answer to my family dilemma: quit trying to shape my sister, brother, nieces, nephews into what I hoped they might be. And let go of the person I wished I could be with them.

© 2012

From My Journal: On The Streets

April 12, 2012: There's a note on the kitchen table: Expresso machine not working! I already plan to swing by the Eugene School District Education Center to drop off a book I no longer need and so going for coffee nearby seems written in the stars. Just as I reach the train tracks, the red light starts flashing and I think, “Damn! Caught by a train.” On the other side of the tracks comes this young father with his baby in a buggy. He looks down the track and motions me forward. I wave my thank you as I drive across the tracks and he gives me the hugest smile. My day is made.

Even before my interaction, as I observed this young father out walking his child, I was already thinking how far fathers have come in their participation as parents. My mother, of course, did it all while my father lounged in his leather chair waiting for dinner to be served. But now I see young men throughout my neighborhood with babies strapped to their chests or bouncing in their backpack carriers. There are several women in my women's groups who are the main breadwinners of their families while their husbands hold down the household and care for the children.

On the way home from getting my coffee, I see this young father once again and we both broaden our expressions of happiness as we knowingly greet each other. I love my neighborhood streets. I love running into transient-appearing Peter on his bicycle who stops and tells me all about his family... a family I have never met. Peter has medium length, unkept hair, wears grungy clothes and lives with the help of food boxes. But he is the nicest man and I know he'd help out if neighbors needed him. Then there is/was this old hippy a few blocks down who “became sober” as he put it and started an imaginative garden. This garden has evolved over the years with tiny ponds and bridges, pieces of glass and found stones, all while incorporating the natural trunks, roots, grass of his surroundings. I haven't run into him this year and my intuition tells me he has passed on. But his garden remains and this is his legacy to the neighborhood.

One of my major hang ups is ever yearning for family and community. I feel estranged from my siblings, my parents are no longer here and though I know my daughter loves us, she is in her twenties, in the the middle of working, attending college, discovering who she is, not sleeping, having a girl friend, etc. So my home, my neighborhood, my community is where I am. And on these positive, bright morning days, I see that my family is here.

I decide to buy a travel mug from our local Wandering Goat Coffee since I gave one mug to my dear husband and the other to my dear daughter. I'm waiting for my latte when in walks Dan with a surprise kiss. He is definitely my family...even more than family...he is my soul mate and I know I am damn lucky to have found him over thirty years ago. We sit briefly at one of the tables with the sun streaming in through the window, sipping and connecting; then he walks back to his work truck and I to my car. My new travel mug fits perfectly in the container by my seat and I'm enjoying a swallow of coffee each time I come to a red light. Eugene, Oregon is such a down home town. Wandering Goat has dread locks, long hair, short and cropped hair, hippies, straight...I'm dressed for teaching with my black jeans and blue jacket and look so much more professional than most in the cafe. But we earth dwellers are really all the same and I never feel uncomfortable except when I am obviously with the very rich.

My sometimes hang ups about family extend to my hang ups about the upper class. My dad was a working man and we were a working class family. So I suppose this is the reason I gravitate to your everyday, average Joe or Jill. My sister would be appalled by the street people I have conversations with and she wouldn't be comfortable at Wandering Goat Coffee. But here I am creating divisions when basically, as I stated earlier, human beings are full of the same wants and desires: love, hope, dreams, purpose.

I guess what I'm after when I talk about neighbors and friends and community and family is caring for one another. “All you need is love,” is not an idle refrain. Daily my students and I have constant conversations about racism and hatred and wars. These young people inspire me, fill me with hope. They, like myself, do not understand why the color of our skin or our ethnic backgrounds cause so much discomfort, animosity and segregation. They don't understand why we can't sit down with each other and work out our differences...use our words rather than our weapons. Why haven't we evolved far enough to quit killing, torturing, hating each other? I am ever the idealist, even at 64.

I look out my kitchen window and there is another family pushing a baby stroller, sauntering down the sidewalk. Cars are whizzing passed, the students at the corner alternative high school are playing a pick-up basketball game, the sky is wiping away our usual deluge of rain and replacing this with wispy clouds and possible sun. With the final sip of my coffee I know how fortunate we are to be living in a neighborhood, on the streets we do.

© 2012