Open Salon is an online community of writers who share their work through blogs. Here's how Open Salon explains what it is. http://open.salon.com/blog/kerry_lauerman/2008/07/24/welcome_to_our_public_beta
"Happiness and delight come easy in a supportive friendly atmosphere.
Agreeing to disagree courteously is impossible in an atmosphere of disunity and discord.
Less than two weeks ago I put out an Open Call that I thought would be mostly ignored, "12 Random Facts About My Life". Much to my delight over 80 people responed. I loved the lists so much I hardly moved from the couch for a good part of 2 afternoons and evenings. Looking back, I think the comments (full of love, laughter and kindness) kept me at my post scanning the horizon for new lists of 12 even when my legs were going numb. Delight was everywhere apparent. I'm well aware that many here on OS stayed away from the whole thing. I'm also aware some people felt it wasn't appropriate for OS. I'm simply thankful those who didn't care for it didn't say so "outloud," at least not where I was reading. During those few days, OS felt like a warm, caring, supportive community.
Yesterday and the day before, a lengthy, often unpleasant discussion about "who is a writer," lit up OS. As far as I can tell, the fire is out. Unfortunately not without incurring damage. I've been on here less than a month so I may be responding to something that happens regularly. If that's the case, how unpleasant. Many comments and posts were peaceful and courteous. Many weren't. As a result, several people on both "sides" may have left OS. Two people contacted me to let me know they would not be sticking around. I know, people are free to make their own choices. We choose to be hurt and walk away. True. Does that relinquish each of us of the responsibility to be mindful of how our words may be received by others?
There may be an answer in a teaching that can be found in most, if not all, of the worlds major religions.
"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." - Buddhism
"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire law; all the rest is commentary." - Judaism
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - Christianity
"No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself." - Islam
"Blessed is he who preferreth for his before himself." - Baha'i Faith
Regardless of what one believes or doesn't, can't we agree to disagree courteously?"
I wrote this in the afternoon but didn't have time to finish it up until now. This is my response to the many posts and comments about who is a writer. Though it doesn't seem like in in the beginning, keep reading, I do address the issue.
I'm ready now. I'm ready to have my work picked apart. Thirteen years ago I wrote "My Name is Heidi Beth," for a writers workshop. Tonight I'll be attending week 2 of my first writing class since college. My piece will be on the table. Our teacher already warned us she'll be honest.
Two years ago I may have declined, let someone else go first, kept my pages hidden until I was home. I may have opted out of the critique process completely. I was at a different stage in the process.
Most of my writing is practice, not product. For thirty years, I spent countless hours finding my written "voice," playing with word combinations, reading to friends while reading their faces and revising almost nothing. That changed earlier this year.
In January I decided to write 30 pieces in 30 days. I Posted them to my first blog. My intention was to move out of practice into form. For the first time, I reread, revised, reread, asked for feedback before posting and continued to revise after I hit publish. The difference in quality between earlier writing and the first 30 in 30 is night and day.
A few weeks ago I found OS. I was delighted to find a community of writers at all different stages supporting each other through friendship, detailed praise (not just, "Great!") and feedback if requested. I was so delighted, I hit a wall! To get past the block, I decided to do another 30 in 30. My purpose in this has been to keep moving so I don't get intimidated by my inner voice that has been trying to tell me I'm not good enough. Good enough for what?? This is day 16.
Now I'm entering a new stage, willingness to accept critcism. While I've always intended to "do something" with this obsession,that is, to form thoughts and impressions into published works, I know myself. If I sought feedback too soon, I would have folded. Instead of fear and discouragement, today I experience excitement and eagerness at the prospect of continued constructive feedback, especially from a qualified teacher. I've seen the results and I want more!
In the piece we're going to be critiquing tonight, I wrote, "When I was little I thought there'd be these lines I'd cross when I belonged, grew up, succeeded...and now I see life as a dance, round and round to this beautiful music. I have to be quiet to hear it, and to feel the swan like motion."
Is there a clear line when someone becomes a writer?
While we've all been figuring out the answer to this question in posts, comments and PM's (I got an intense one this afternoon) for 2 days, I sense that some people have been hurt unnecessarily. Everyone has valid points to share. Going back to Ken's post that seemed to ignite this fire, I found my first comment. In it I quoted him and then responded. Maybe it will help to share it again.
"This, then, is where I leave it: when “amateurs” and “real” writers talk about writing, they’re probably not talking about the same thing. I hope the “amateurs” can see why the “real” writers get cranky: we’re surrounded by people who don’t recognize or respect our craft. I hope the “real” writers can accept the enthusiasm of the “amateurs.”" - It sounds like you're asking for respect and understanding for and from everyone. Sounds reasonable to me.
I was 8. He was 34.
I was at the summer babysitters house. I spent that season with Jamie, a 12 year old who was the coolest person I knew. I was her shadow. Other than seeing myself trail around after her all over town, I have only one clear memory with her that summer.
We had just returned to her house. I walked to the kitchen when Jamie's mother told me I had a phone call. My mom was on the line. "Daddy's been in a bad accident. He was hit by a taxi cab. The doctors think he'll be OK but he has to stay in the hospital for a while. Here, he wants to talk to you."
Those four sentences lasted weeks. Normally I remember many unimportant details of each house I've ever been in, like where the kitchen window is in relation to the hanging pots and pans. I remember nothing of Jamie's house. I only know it's where I was the first time I experienced sink in, terrifying, "out of body" dread where the earth shifts and wobbles beneath you.
"Hi honey. I'm OK." Gentle laughter. "I was walking across the street downtown Chicago and a cab came roaring around the corner and out of the more than 30 other people walking my way, the cab managed to hit me and I flew 30 feet." Breathing returned. My brain began to thaw. This is what I saw in my inner visiscreen. My dad first flying straight up then sideways at a ninety degree angle across the sky before crashing onto the pavement. My next question will forever be part of family history, "But how high did you go daddy?!"
The following day I was allowed to visit the hospital. I understood why he was there and not at home. I got that he was fragile. So did the wonderful staff seeing to his recovery. That's why they earnestly discouraged my dad from letting me wheel him around the corridors. My dad would not be swayed. His little girl wanted to take him for a ride and he wanted a little variety.
Keep in mind, though my dad was bruised and bloody (and up to his eyeballs in pain meds), he miraculously had suffered no broken bones or internal bleeding. The fact that he wasn't dead mystified everyone. The consensus was that his having been a trapeze artist in the circus 14 years earlier saved his butt, as well as his bones and organs!
Anyway, there I was, the shortest girl in my in grade at school, strong beyond my understanding, hands at eye level gripping the grooved, gray plastic handles of his wheel chair. And away we went. I wasn't interested in moderation. I assumed my dad wanted to go as fast as I could push him. I was right, much to the yelping concern of everyone watching with wide eyes, their shoulders between their ears with anxiety. I couldn't stop that chair on my own. In a short time I had run him into a wall. He was laughing so hard. At this point, these well meaning people tried to step in but my dad insisted he was fine and that they should go away. His amusement park ride didn't last much longer, though it did include a few more meet ups with other walls and man was it fun! I love my dad's laugh.
Soon he was back in his funny looking bendable bed adorned with useful wires and swithces. Hospital rooms can be eerily quiet. One by one he showed me each of his wounds. That's when I understood how lucky I was to be hearing his voice.
He came home a week later. Eventually he was fully recovered aside from some back problems that have manifested in different ways over the years.
In a long, low plastic box under my bed, I have a brittle envelope containing photos of every scratch, gash and ocean of black, blue and red on his legs, back, abdomen, neck and face. I used to look at them often. No thoughts, just observing again, thankful my dad knew how to "fly through the air with the greatest of ease," even after being rendered unconscious.
I have half an hour to write.
I've got most of an 80% cocao content extra dark in my backpack. I'm sipping strong decaf loaded with cream. Old show music sings behind me. Hello sun! You're why I came to this crowded cafe at a busy intersection. Autumn days insist I sit outside.
Autumn asks me to smile, feel her gentle spirit, spend an extra moment silent.
This 30 minute break is all I have to focus. When I get home, there's pizza to make and I have a date with my ideal man. Grandmas and grandpas are precious. They like to watch boys watching Pokemon. They like to feed them yogurt and dates and grapes. Grandpa has some of this Pokemon world figured out.
Cleaning trumps creativity for the rest of the evening (though I may sneak in a batch of chocolate mint cookies).
There's it is! Here's what I want to write today...
Oh little boys. I only need a break from you so that I can see you as you are. Beautiful. Without a break, you begin to walk sideways because I'm tilted. You begin to whine more because I forget to listen for what you're really saying...and because I whine more. I don't whine like you. I correct more. You begin to cling anxiously because I withdraw right in front of you. That must hurt. My dad used to do that. Then he used to go to IHOP in the middle of the night and write endless pages in a top ring half spiral. Doubtless he has a box of old notebooks too. I take a break so I can remember and retain the wonderful times with my parents, their gifts, and pass these on to you.
For my dad, it's his story telling. I hope one day he can tell you too. About his crazy family, his favorite aunt, his early determination to find that "something wonderful" in the world, how he and grandma met, their first two years together before they accidentally conformed to a normal that broke their spirits and how they found their hearts again.
For my mom it's her questions. She saw me as a complete human being from the beginning and treated me...well, we all may have benefitted if she had put me in my place as not the head of the household sometimes (the place I carved for myself as it's my natural personality). Grandma spent time, included me in her every day life and was a part of mine. Out of necessity, but she enjoyed my company.
This must be why I tell you stories, ask questions more often than giving answers and spend most of everyday with you by choice.
Break's over. Time to get a few groceries and head home.
Many here on OS are polished writers. I'm not one of them. I believe a few of the posts I've shared here are good, but I haven't developed the skill of artfully discussing every day issues in a way that clearly expresses my understanding or insights on a given topic. This lack of skill (that I'll gain eventually) has been the reason for my delay in sharing part 2 of "How I learned Racism is Real and Present." I wrote part 1 eleven days ago here.
http://open.salon.com/blog/heidibeth/2010/09/15/2_of_30_how_i_learned_racism_is_real_and_present_part_1
Swallowing my hesitation, I'll now share my story in whatever way unfolds as I let my mind go back in time to one of the saddest learning experiences of my life.
I was 20. Old enough to drive, vote, work and be classified as an adult. I was old enough to live on my own. I wasn't old enough to thoughtfully sort out the destruction triggered by the Rodney King verdict that I was witnessing on the news. I wasn't old enough to feel anything but horror and then numbness at all of it. I hadn't developed the faculty for mature reflection in the face of violence. Everyone had gone crazy. I was going back to the cafe for a latte and a cigarette.
Fortunately, I was surrounded by thoughtful people who believed something needed to be done, even if it was apparently insignificant compared to the magnitude of what was ultimately needed to bring order to the chaos resulting from the very real presence of racism in our nation. As I was often concerned with basic survival issues back then, like getting enough food, finding a job I enjoyed that paid enough for me to live on on my own, healing from an event I may never write about, when I look back, I only see disjointed scenes and conversations, but not a cohesive series of events. Here's what I remember.
A weekly gathering for people to learn about various aspects of the Baha'i faith was changed into a weekly gathering of people who wanted to have an open, honest discussion about the current reality of racism and what we could each do in our daily life to heal the wounds already existing and help build a world much like the one I thought we already had (this is explained in part 1). I showed up every Saturday night. So did Harold, a tall black man who was relieved to finally have an opportunity to share his experiences with a group that included many white people he trusted would listen to him and not brush off his assessment of his life experiences as over reacting. Harold and I always had great respect for each other but it wasn't always evident. I didn't want to be lumped with all other white people. He didn't want to believe my experience was real and he wanted me to clearly understand that his experinces were the norm. One time we stood next to the couch hot in a debate at high volume, Harold towering over me, me looking up at him, locked eye to eye.
Over time we learned from each other. I learned that a high percentage of the population felt justified in treating a fellow human being as inferior. I realized at least one assumption I regularly made based on skin color. If a white guy I didn't know asked me how I was doing I figured he was being polite. If a black guy I didn't know asked the same thing, I assumed he was about to hit on me. I can't say for sure what Harold learned but over the next several years he became active in the Baha'i community again, a respected voice in the area.
Within a year of the beginning of this painful education, I attended a workshop called something like Healing Racism. There were two trained facilitators, one black, one white, both women. We watched a documentary about 2 close friends alike in most ways, notably, similar education and economic position. Their noticed difference was skin color. An experiment was performed around St Louis where they each applied for the same apartments, jobs etc. They were given different answers at many of their stops. The white man was treated with respect, the black man was brushed off with comments that contradicted what the white man had already been told by the same managers. We watched other videos, very graphic, that took us (the white participants) on a tour of our countries history of racism even up to present day. I can only recall one comment from that whole multi week workshop. The black facilitator expressed irritation that anyone would say they could never understand what black people have gone through. She said anyone who's been treated unfairly based on gender, size, how much their daddy didn't make, or for no known reason, could understand enough. She challenged us to start from there and think in terms of how any human being, regardless of color, would feel and respond to injustices such as slavery and institutionalized racism then and now. Something clicked. I finally had a way to understand. That's when I started to cry.
Before these gatherings, for the most part I saw each person as an individual (except when I made race based assumptions about a guy's intentions and the fact that I generally didn't want to be bothered by "jocks"). I waited tables because I love people. I enjoy their smiles, their unique voices, how they laugh, the funny things people say. Gradually though, the more aware I became of this devestating social reality, the more difficulty I had being myself. I remember one day, in downtown Chicago, while waiting on a group of black women, I grew nervous. I started overthinking. Do they think I'm like other white people? Do they think I'm being nice to them because I want them to know I'm different? Do they think I'm irrelevant because I'm just another white person? It was incredibly painful. I wish I could explain how shattered I was that day. I'm even tearing up now, 16 years later.
Eventually my sadness would turn into anger and I would find myself regularly challenging the damaging assumptions of many of my white friends. Eventually I learned how to do this without alienating anyone.
If I were to tell my journey in regard to the efforts I've made to heal racism and create unity, as well as new understanding and insight, I'd go on too long. I've come to realize that racism is a tricky and ugly monster. I've come to clearly understand that in order to heal the wounds inflicted by this monster, we must all be willing to internalize the reality that every human being is a member of our family. Then we can begin seeing each person as an individual with a name given to them by their parents. And not simply, "one of them."
I will hit "Publish," even though this is a completely inadequate piece compared to what I feel it should be, as the issue of race in our country affects every one of us whether we know it or not. If there are comments, I hope they are respectful. Maybe I'll have more to tell there, when I can talk to an individual.
There will be a last time I pick up my youngest child. I won't know it's the last time. I won't realize that he hasn't wrapped his little legs around my belly, little arms around my neck, head on my shoulder until it's been months. Then I won't be able to look back in time and remember the moment of the last time. I can feel this day coming sooner than I'd like with my older son. He's a small 10 so we may have another year or two of running jump hug mommy holding. But I feel the transition coming. I want him to grow up. Still, I ache knowing some things will change unnoticed.
I knew as each started walking that crawling would quickly phase out. I was sad then too, but I knew. Same with sitting up, learning to crawl, weaning. There were chalk marks in time. Right now I'm thinking of the transitions that happen invisibly. Like when words are one day clear, no more endearing pronunciations. Our youngest still says, "yorgut." That may be the last hold out. He wears his shoes on the right feet now too, washes his own hair, dries himself after a bath, and chooses his own clothes. His older brother runs his own bath, often makes himself food, reads to his adoring sibling and spent a couple days teaching him how to draw a few months back. I may be the only person in the world amazed by these talents. It comes from spending countless hours with them when I had to do for them more than what they could do for themselves.
I don't remember when each started reporting the contents of night dreams nearly every morning. I do remember that at first it seemed our oldest was making up a story, calling it a dream so he could be seen as being like mom and dad. We listened just the same. Now, comforting a child at bed time because he's afraid of what he might experience when he drifts off is common.
They're 6 and 10. I was an adult 10 years before my first child was born. Those 10 years took forever! The 10 years I've been an adult since he and then his younger brother came into the world have been a blink. I spend most of everyday with both of them and this doesn't seem to slow the pace. It does give me more memories of their faces at every stage. More than if I had to work outside our home.
Today I realized that I don't know how long it's been since I sat down on the couch with a stack of books and called out, "Story time!" There's no reason I can't take a break from typing, head over to the couch right now and initiate that long ago midday ritual of snuggles and kind conversations over Pooh or The Quilt Maker.
Excuse me, I have plans.
What do you do with a dad, fully recovered from quadruple bypass surgery, who spends 22 hours a day either in his recliner with the wooden arms or in the once new bed you bought him as a recovery gift. What do you do when he won't take walks, eat healthy or enough and won't socialize 95% of the time with anyone besides family. It's been 2 years. I don't do anything. I don't remember giving up trying but I did.
When he'd been home from the hospital a month, post heart surgery depression flattened him completely. I sent out prayer requests to friends all over the world. A few hours later, not knowing I'd sent out a request, he lifted himself the slightest bit, craned his neck around and smiled, reporting that he finally felt just a little bit better. I was standing in the kitchen door way behind his chair. Many of these friends, from as far back as 40 years, sent him messages I later forwarded. He delighted in reading every one. That was the first inch of progress. A few months later, he was still fairly sunk in mire. So I posted a note to facebook, tagging everyone my dad knows. I asked not just for prayers, but for people to send him loving letters. Many did and it had a positive affect, but he was still scratching the sides of a deep well of nothingness mixed with anger.
That Spring, his brother took him fishing in the north woods of Wisconsin. This brought him out to where he could at least see, smile openly with his grandsons, begin to joke around. The year following was static. The next spring his brother took him to the north woods again. This trip was magic. He witnessed an eagle swoop near his boat over and over as one of his companions presented the beautiful bird with food, placed close enough that the amazing creature came within a few feet of their boat in it's graceful dive and return to flight. That wasn't the only magic, but those parts are not for me to tell. They're his to cherish.
For weeks after that trip, my dad was willing to go with us on small errands. Over and over he said how much he missed Wisconsin, how he wanted to go back, how he hadn't wanted to leave. He was happy in his sadness. At this point my dad made it out of the well and into the sunlight but he didn't leave the ledge to explore his new surroundings. At least a smile comes easily now. Months have passed. An unusually hot summer came and went. Now autumn. There's a chance his brother will take him to the woods before winter. I haven't heard.
But what can I do? I don't ask in hopes that someone will hand me the magic solution. I ask because a few minutes ago I realized I've given up and that makes me sad. He does take care of our 4 cats that have all adopted him. He gives them generous love and attention. He gets their special allergen free food from the vet across town. He buys grapes for his grandsons when he knows they'll be over for a movie-a-thon. He's interested in our family life, in the most recent adventure, an ever changing report. But he barely leaves his house and doesn't eat enough to have sufficient energy on the rare occasion he goes out socially.
I get it! I get that I don't get it. I know the number of times, in my own life, when well meaning people have missed the mark trying to help me out of some emotional wreck I was managing internally. It's like this. I'd go to his house every morning at dawn, open all the windows, brew fresh coffee and blast Beethoven if I thought it would help. Rather, I do think it would help, but not if I walked away soon after, leaving him to have to close a curtain if the sun's too bright, or close all the windows if it rains. Leaving him to himself in a wide open space, full of emotional triggers, like a gentle breeze or natural light. I have an affirmation I must say sometimes or suffer. "I pray for the willingness to accept the prosperity in my life." I get the need for this kind prayer from my dad. Too much beauty hurts.
Maybe I didn't give up. Maybe I'm simply being more respectful than I used to be. I used to make his private world up to be serene to me, because I assumed it would be so to him. Instead he'd get uncomfortable. He'd sigh and politely ask that I return his things to their proper place.
I haven't spent much time at my parents lately. I've been busy home schooling boys, doing my best to maintain a clean and loving household, baking for the business we decided not to continue, teaching with Soul Miners Children's Theater Company or out on my own for much needed Heidi time while my mom and dad watched their grandsons. But when I am there long enough to cook a meal, I try to make what he likes. Meat. I can't manage beef, but I'll prepare buffalo. I don't ask if he's hungry. I hand him a bowl of meat, rice and vegetables with salt and butter on top, a spoon and napkin. Then I walk away. He smiles. He eats.
Maybe we've simply turned a corner in our relationship. I can no longer be the daughter who spends long afternoons at his house, cleaning (because I'll clean almost anyones house if they let me), looking through family photos, telling him eagerly all my new insights about life and the world, listening to him unravel magic tales of meeting spiritual giants back in his 20's or carefully framing advice I didn't ask for so it doesn't sound like advice. He's good at that last one.
I guess it's time I love him just as he is, grateful for every inch of progress, every smile, every act of generousity, every spontaneous visit to our house, every enchanting story of his childhood, even if it's so much less than before. Love him just as he is. Yes.
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Between Monday night and now, I've lerned something I already knew. Every person's story is important. If not to them, it's important to their friends, or to a stranger who would benefit if only there was time to connect.
I expected a few people to respond to the new OSer's Open Call, mostly out of kindness so I wouldn't feel left out in the cold. I don't mind encouragement so this was fine with me. I put the call out Monday evening, notified my favorites, then waited for only one comment. It came from mimetalker. She has known me all my life and before, when I was just a hope in my parents life. Still, the tone of her comment was delightful. I was content.
Fortunately I didn't have concrete plans for Tuesday because when I opened my laptop in the early afternoon to check email, every other message was either a comment alert or a "someone has made you a favorite..." notifcation. I figured I'd have a little while of enjoyable reading getting to know some folks. Almost immediately I was laughing out loud then reading aloud to my husband who didn't want to miss out on whatever the good news was. Then a surprising thing happened. Every time I checked email there were fresh messages, fresh favorite notifications. Every time I returned to my blog there was a new random 12 list on my favorites post updates. Soon I was checking "most recent" to catch the others. I love people. I love their stories. I was in a candy store! Countless bite size stories were available in seemingly endless supply, at least for a while.
At some point I realized a couple hours had passed and I was still on the couch, cross legged, thoroughly wrapped up in reading, laughing, meditating, trying to comment authentically. A bit after 5pm I forced myself to go beyond the 900 sq feet of our home. I went for a bike ride to nowhere in particular. I needed to be in the fresh air. I needed to move!
When I returned around 6pm there were more. That's when I gave myself permission to do nothing but read OS responses to this oddly popular Open Call all evening. I enjoyed writing and reading comments as much as the blog posts. The pace of new lists continued late into the night. One of my favorite comments came at 10:05pm from sweetfeet. She said, "I'm gonna be reading theses all night, you know." I did know! When I finally dragged myself to bed, I had 4 windows open of blogs I wanted to be sure to remember to read this morning.
Today, I didn't get on the computer until early afternoon again. Again my email was full of notifications and the newsfeed, though not to the same extent, was dotted with these random lists of 12 life facts. Cranky Cuss, one of the first writers I looked out for here, joked that, "This may have turned into the best OC ever, and you know why? Because we're writers and we LOVE to talk about ourselves." It's true, we do. But I don't think that's the reason. I think it was so popular, at least in part, because people matter, our lives matter. Our memories are a precious possession and one of the most valuable gifts we can give another person, even if they're not pretty or grand, because they are the fabric of our life.
...it can be fun...even if it has gone the rounds (has it? I'm new to OS).
12 Random facts about your life. There are no rules.
12 Random Facts About My Life
1 - I was a competitive gymnast from 7 to 15. Until I had kids and nieces, I didn't know a straight leg cartwheel was unusual.
2 - My dad was in the circus as a trapeze artist. He did a round off, flip flop, back flip at age 34, right after the meet I won 3 first place ribons, including first all around. This high point of my gymnastics career happened before I was 10. My picture was in the newspaper.
3 - One of the first stories I wrote was about 2 friends walking accross the street. One of them gets hit by a car and dies. The rest of the story is about how the friend grieves. In my head they were grown ups. I was 10.
4 - I drove from central Illinis to Raleigh/Durham and back by myself in a blue Ford Escort 2 times in near complete silence over a 6 month period. I listened to the radio for an hour tops on the first trip. On the second trip it was broken. I remember being perfectly content with the conversation in my head. I was 24 and busily setting up "my ideal life" scenarios.
5 - I had a miraculous experince at a Native American healing retreat and didn't realize anything unusual happened until I told someone else about my experience there and as I got to the amazing part, we both held our breath. He laughed in a loving way as elders sometimes do, giving me permission to be awed by a stunning moment in my own seemingly unimportant life. Then I cried.
6 - I once wrote a list of 100 dreams, things I want to have, do or be during my life time. It took several days to write. 2 days after I wrote #36, "Pass out white roses to residents of a nursing home and take all mobile residents on an outing of their choice," a guy who wanted to date me gave me 9 white roses. I didn't see it as a sign I should go out with this man who I wasn't romantically interested in. I did see it as a sign that the list is good and my dreams are possible.
7 - I tend not to write about what's currently going on in my life as if writing it will make living it less real.
8 - I quit smoking suddenly in 96, after 9 years at 1 1/2 to 2 packs a day. I had been saying the affirmation, "I am non smoker," for 2 weeks and was gifted by the mysterious powers that be with a terrifying experience that I might try to put in words one day. Not today.
9 - When I read a good novel, I become one of the characters in real life for a while. I'm careful what I read. Anne of Green Gables and The Little House Series were lots of fun.
10 - I used to be shy and still tend to hide behind a series of funny remarks that reflect how illogical people, myself included, can be. I like to make people laugh.
11 - I was a waitress for 11 years because I like people. I always wondered if people thought I was being nice just to get a good tip. It made me sad to think of human interactions as being phony just for $. I know, wake up and smell reality. No thank you. I like my fantasy world where people tell the truth and are for real. I believe courtesy, sincerity and trustworthiness will be the norm in the future, even if humanity has to wait hundreds of years.
12 - Leo Buscaglia is my hero. He passionately calls people out of their lonely boxes, daring them to connect, give life their best and make loving the people in their life their first, second and third priorities. He will always be known as the crazy Italian guy who loved to hug.
The state wants us to file and pay slaes tax. One of our insurance companies wants us to fill out an audit form. I want chocolate.
I'll soon enough get back to the official forms that remind me I'm over 18, I started a business and that sometimes it's not the fun part.
Not now. Instead I'll listen to George Winston, drink a B Monster smoothie and eat small squares of chocolate carmel crunch one at a time, leaving just enough time between each bite.
I made myself a pizza, crust and all, with fresh basil and mushrooms, at 10:30pm last night. While my family slept, I ate with a fork and knife so I could read "Sabbath," by Wayne Muller and avoid embarrassing tomato sauce smudges. I was honoring an agreement I made with myself when I woke up yesterday, no internet at home for the rest of the day. Otherwise I would have been on my laptop doing nothing in particular, wondering why I wasn't engaging with the quiet at midnight.
I slept in this morning and ate leftovers for breakfast while my family played Pokemon. I read the sound of people I have to love, grateful I'd love them anyway and that we get to live together.
Later I went out, mailed the water bill, bought a case of water and laundry detergant, returned what I thought would be a turning point book but wasn't, to the library. "How Babies are Made," was read and regarded like every other children's book in our home.
I sat on the kids bed with a boy in pajamas on either side of me, looking slowly from one to the other. Gradually they stopped wiggling and settled in because they knew I wouldn't read otherwise. We opened to page 1 and I read. In most children's books there are illogical representations of the subject on every other page. We found funny things to say and laughed easily, unconcerned with how much time it took to get to the end. Fortunately I didn't let them hear my nervousness as we bagan. Fortunately I have years of practice so read like they always hear. They did get wide eyed at the part where mom and dad are naked in the bed and words tell them what's happening under the covers.
But I was cool, keeping up giggles, answering matter of factly. And then we read the next chapter in Super Fudge, the chapter that prompted me to check out the informative plain covered purple book, followed by the next chapter of whatever Magic Tree House book we were up to, just like every other night at bed time.
A couple questions have come up in the days since, and they've flipped through the pages on their own. Fortunately neither of them responded like Fudge, of Judy Blume's imagination, who told everyone he met that he knew how babies are made and proceeded to pour forth his knowledge. I don't even think my kids have told grandma. They probably figure she knows already.
Now the library can put "How Babies Are Made," back on the shelf, ready for the next nervous parent to check out when their curious offspring wants to know where little sister came from.
I brought the water and soap home, delivered cake to our new neighbor, then headed out to the grocery store cafe. I did keep my priorities straight. Once situated at my press board table, computer plugged in because it only had 9% battery left, I called the state # given on the form telling us to pay sales tax please. I called our insurance agent for guidance on the audit. When the calls were done, instead of running home to get both matters mail ready, I logged on here to witness my afternoon from the place in my mind where written words form.
And before I go home to tend official matters, I'm going to read a while here on OS. I do have priorities.
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I prefer the grocery store to Starbucks. I'm sitting at a wire table outside of Schnucks, facing the sunset. There's nothing special or firey about this one, other than how it's light plays between leaves of a pair of fledgling trees.
I worry about little trees near main roads or in parking lots. Aren't they choking? Is that why they're all so small? Or is it that they have such a narrow space to grow in, being neatly surrounded by curb borders or pretty red brick. I know the point is to add beauty, but I feel bad for the little trees.
Not bad enough to look away or stare too long contemplating action, just bad enough to sigh before turning back to my lighted screen, enough to be a bit more reflective than I otherwise might when I look up at a mother wheeling her youngest in a cart, keeping near an older but still young child, taking mother steps. One in front of the other at an inconsistent pace, casually hunched over the cart because one feels more patient and kind that way, making sure the small walker can keep up.
I like the sound of 20 carts neatly smuched together rattling in front of usually a male employee who flips a lock of hair out of his face before shoving the unruly mass toward the store.
Not everyone is willing to pay $4 for a cup of coffee and the privelage of free wifi in an atmosphere of mood inducing melodies. But everyone has to eat. And I like everyone better than just a few.
The golden ball of setting sun was just at the edge of the gray rectnagle that's Sav-A-Lot accross the street. Now it's gone, leaving a trail of pink and suggestions of yellow painted on stretched out clouds that hung all afternoon over mild weather.
A few minutes ago I dropped a blop of pesto on my jeans and now I've knocked the whole container face over on the cement near my feet (lucky miss). At Starbucks I'd feel self conscious. Here I just flip the container over, set it back on the table and keep on writing.
But since I had a coupon for a free drink, I walked an uncertain path accross the parking lot, past a strip mall with a Radio Shack, past the store gas station and now I'm sitting on an unusually large orange living room chair listening to something new agy, which I like too, just not as much as my perch surrounded by everyday people.
It's dusk. I'm pleasantly tired. I just woke up from a 30 minute nap. I could probably sleep all night but responsibility calls. We opened Soul Miners Children's Theater company's 2nd term today. This term I have a smaller role and was free to leave at 2:15, almost 3 hours before my mom and Bernice, but Soul Miners is magic and I wanted to stay with the group of parents gathered by the couch.
In 2010 my life became so literal I'm having a hard time thinking in soft lines and quiet pauses. I'm getting a taste of the "adult" world and I don't care for it. Honestly it's not where I'm supposed to be right now anyway. While the boys are still young, I'm supposed to be primarily caring for and teaching them. That'a how our family chose to arrange matters. It gives us long lazy afternoons with other families. These extra hours help us cultivate friendships. We enjoy slow morning routines, relaxed bed time conversations that often go longer than they reasonably could if we had to rise at 7am every day. This is how our lives have been from the beginning of parenthood.
Then 2010 came along like a speeding train. Before we realized what was going on, all of our routines were upside down. I was tired all the time from tending a successfully budding gluten free baking business and co-producing Soul Miners first term and my husband was exhausted from filling in for me when he wasn't working his 60-70 hours a week. Our children were hanging on tight for the ride. It wasn't sustainable.
It was fun arriving at the Farmers Market with boxes of goodies, spreading them out next to price lists, hanging signs and laughing with new customers. It wasn't fun or realistic or sustainable for me to run 3 extra errands every week, bake 10-12 hours between Thursday and Friday nights, not getting to sleep until 2am then gathering my enthusiasm and my body at 5am to go set up for the fun part at our table down town. It was hard to walk away form people who finally found a good loaf of bread after giving up hope because they didn't want to eat turkey and mayo on cardboard ever again. I loved the light in their eyes when they tasted the food that was the result of hours of enjoyable experimentation in my home kitchen (before we ever tried large scale production...ugh).
It was fun helping start the theater company (except for the 30 hours in meetings to learn what we needed to do). Being with 11 children, focusing on virtues, watching a musical about an elephant come together while I visited with parents who became like family and keeping time for snack, breaks etc was a dream. Everything about Soul Miners was great, except that it was too much.
Now I'm letting go, trying to ease back into family life as we knew it before. But I have a few things to let go of, like my shattered illusion that I can do everything I want if it's good and helps people. There's also a truth that I need to bring back in to my intimate understanding. I can help one hundred people, but if I'm not properly caring for my family, I've missed the foundation. I love my boys so much. I missed them in all that creative helpful doing and our 6 year old was beginning to melt.
I'm ready to take my boys to the park again, the museum, indoor playground, to friends homes just to play and return to creating with them. I'm ready to turn my creative energy back into baking experiments, knowing I don't have to take them any further that my kitchen and gatherings of friends. I'm ready to focus one hour a week on virtues classes for Soul Miners knowing I can leave when my part is done, or I can stay and visit if I choose. I'm ready to do what I can do well and no more.
I started this in an open office document, to be safe. I thought I was saving a partial draft and blip, it disappeared into a mysterious corner of my computer from where it may never emerge. It's not in documents or the desk top. It had no title.
I wrote that I want to help change the world for the better through love and fellowship over good food. And that I hate messes.
Then I compared the anxious self pity I've been stuck in for a few weeks to a squirrel I saw in a trap tonight. Poor thing had no idea what happened after he dove in for an easy snack. He desparately crashed against the walls, shoving his nose through metal wire squares. It's useless. He has to wait for a human to free him in the morning. He'll end up far away from the building where he and many of his friends have been having a party and making home in the roof.
I went on to explain that I've been passively waiting for wonderful to fling open the doors of my home, put on a grand show and introduce me to fascinating, humorous, lively and friendly.
I told how the reminder fairy nuzzled in close to my rational mind and whispered the obvious. She said I first had to let loving, considerate, generous and happy out to play even though they're scared of bullies.
Then I shared the good part. I told how I picked myself up from my soft low white chair, walked to the kitchen and made carrot, apple, raisin muffins so I can take some to our new next door neighbor tomorrow afternoon.
That's as far as I got. That's enough.
Last night, I sat in my living room, staring at the computer screen, head slightly tilted, as if trying to hear written words speak aloud.
"Our beloved friend and brother Gavin Welch passed away last night. He and his father were in a car accident, and his father is currently in critical condition.
Tonight at 7:30 we will host a prayer service for Gavin and his father Roger in Foundation Hall. Please join us as we remember our dear brother in prayer, sharing stories, and laughter. Prayers for the progress of his soul as well as the healing of his father are welcome."
Like many others who shared a loving comment in a line of memories, I confirmed my attendance because I would be there in spirit, praying for you and your dad from my home. I set my phone alarm, set the phone back on the end table, turned back to the computer and turned to soft stone.
I barely knew you. I knew you well because you wore your heart in your shining eyes. I miss the chance to get to know you better from your earthly place behind a welcome smile. I cried like everyone else when I heard.
Another bright young star has taken flight.
I didn't wait for the 7:30pm alarm to remind me to join the assembled group in prayer. Quietly, heavily, I walked to my bedroom and closed the door.
You know that long beautiful prayer for departed souls? I said that one for you while the tears streamed down, while I heard my thoughts like an echo of dominos tumbling on a wood floor. Despite my sadness, I know you are dancing.
For your dad, I continued to weep. For him I said the Long Healing Prayer, intoning name after name for the Divine. Fashioner, Satisfier, Uprooter, Perfecting, Bountiful. Healing for his body but really for what I can only assume to be his broken heart.
I remember meeting you at Bahia and Dan's wedding reception open house at the Baha'i Center. I felt awkward and clumsy, on the outside of the group assembled on the couch. When you spoke to me from no distance, friendship was a given. All discomfort faded. I can tell this is how you must have been with everyone. Thank you.
I've read over what I have written so far and though it's accurate, there's too much weight, too much sadness. So I went back and read messages to you from friends. There I was reminded of what I know to be true.
"O SON OF THE SUPREME! I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?" - Baha'u'llah
When someone passes, like my Aunt Alma, someone who was sick for years, I don't linger in grief. I simply smile, close my eyes, pray, then ask them how it's going in the new digs. I still cry, because separation from a loved one is hard, but I don't sink like I did last night. But because you were so young and full of delightful energy, because you lived like few do, securely fastened to love and laughter, I forgot.
Peace Gavin, you will be missed.
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Yesterday I was frustrated every time I sat down to write. I went on an afternoon bike ride to see if I could unloose some insight. Here's what came, "Write what you know." I thought about this for a while, but I didn't really get still before I'd position myself in front of my laptop and let my mind race off only to have it come back like a dog sent after an imaginary stick returning confused. Unlike the dog who continues to wag his tail hoping for another chance to retrieve a stick, I just got discouraged and felt like I'd never be able to write clearly again.
Late in the evening I was kicked back on the couch, still so discouraged I was ready to extract myself from another creative endeavor I'm committed to because I was sure I'd mess it up too from lack of real skill. Tears and quiet, simple but desparate prayers and time helped begin to erase some of my anxiety and replace it with calm if not confidence.
My dad used to tell me that the answer to begin getting out of a seemingly permanent state anxiety or sadness was to dig a hole. He'd go on to explain that the act of doing something useful, something that required moving your body, would begin to take you out of your own head and provide perspective. I got up from the couch and washed the few dishes that had accumulated after dinner. While at the sink, I remembered a story I've told often. It's about the day I realized racism was still alive and kicking in our country and not just a few isolated incidents perpetratd by irrational human beings who had their heads put on backwards. Until that day I truly believed racism was mostly a thing of the past, preserved in history books but not a major present concern.
My ignorance stemmed from the fact that I grew up shelterd. Every neighborhood we lived in was an even mix of black, white and hispanic families in similar economic positions. Our neighborhoods were friendly and safe. All the children played together at the park accross from our first apartment in Evanston. In our second place, the alley was our playground, our favorite game piggy bounce out and when the weather didn't allow us to play outside we'd spend the afternoon at the house that had the best snacks in the cupboard any given day. In our third place, our first house, we were the only white family on the block. All of our neighbors were black except possibly a family accross the street. I think one of the parents was white though I never met them, just their boys who I went to school with. By the time we moved there I was 15, almost 16 and not much for staying close to home so I only have a few memories of babysitting a little girl next door. In all of those places, from age 4 to 20, I never heard mention of racism as a current reality.
There was only one incident where the color of my skin triggered anger in others. It came from of two girls I barely knew. I was in 8th grade. I briefly dated (what does that amount to at 14?) a boy from another school. He was black. One day after we decided not to date, though we were still friends, a white girlfriend and I went by his apartment to see if he wanted to hang out at a nearby park for the afternoon. Two of his cousins came to the door. They told me he wasn't home and proceeded to yell at my friend and I as we walked away. They followed us accross a busy street, still yelling, calling us names that referred to our being white, throwing tennis balls at our backs. I don't remember being afraid. These girls were a bit younger than us and I had no context to understand what they were accusing us of to deserve being the target of their agitation. One negative incident directly related to skin color was not enought to open my sheltered eyes.
When I was 15 and my boyfriend, who had very dark skin, proposed, I said yes (I wasn't the most mature 15 year old and had no concept of marriage so we only lasted another few months). I was neither aware of or alerted to any disapproving looks from strangers when we walked around town. He was part of my family and I was accepted by his. None of the close friends in our group ever mentioned discomfort at our difference in looks because our town, apart form the north side, was racially mixed and so were a good portion of the young couples seen around together.
Our town prided itself on being different (I found out later), so maybe we were in the lucky pockets that really were differnt to some extent, or maybe no one who knew the present reality of racism thought or wanted to talk about it when we were having so much fun. I know I'm spilling my ignorance all over the page here trying to figure out how I missed the elephant in the room for 20 years.
Where I grew up is a direct result of my mothers awareness of racism and the need for concrete helpful action from everyone to heal the wounds it created and build a world where the content of ones character is all we weigh in the balance to decide who we want our friends to be. She chose the neighborhoods for their diversity. She discussed the reality that we are all one human family matter of factly so it was just another easy truth to me, like the sky is blue but I didn't think about it like, hmmm..., I didn't think about anyone ever considering that it wasn't the case except a few extreme people in white hoods on tv, people that never touched the surface of my real day to day life and were (to me at the time) irrelevant in the scheme of things and easily forgotten.
I was also surrounded by a faith community that believes, among it's main tenets, in the elimination of prejudice and the oneness of mankind. At meetings, Holy day observances, Baha'i children's classes and casual gatherings,the group was always mixed, racially and ethnically, always full of accents from faraway places (especially Iran) and discussion focused on celebrating our differences and our similarities the way one enjoys a variety of flowers in a garden each with unique colors, shapes and scents.
This is why I was only thinking about the threat of violence in our area as we drove by the recreation center on April 29, 1992 and my mom told me that L.A. and other large cities were going up in flames from rioting and people were dying because of a verdict in a case involving someone named Rodney King. We lived in walking distance from the Chicago border.
Terrified and wide eyed I asked my mom if we should go to her in laws house in the country for a while until things calmed down. My mother can be called testy but she is generally mild in sharing her irritation so I rarely see her get intense or fierce. But at that moment she turned to me angrily, looked into my eyes and said in a cold voice, "Are you going to run away and lose this opportunity to do something to help or are you going to stay and be part of the solution?" I received it in my gut. I was being called a coward and at the same time challenged to put my actions where my beliefs were.
How did the horrible destruction of whole neighborhoods, innocent lives and harmful illusions happen with one verdict? I would soon find out.
In January I wrote 30 blog posts in 30 days with the intention that some of the pieces may end up being rough drafts of possible pieces I could work with later, but I didn't think about this while I wrote. I had just started reading Natalie Goldberg's book, "Old Friend From Far Away, The Practice of Writing Memoir" so I followed the exercises day by day, following my writing wherever it went even if it wasn't the path Natalie seemed to be asking us to take (really I can't imagine her expecting writing to stay with the teachers suggestion). The suggestion is merely a starting point.
Since I found OS a week and a half ago I've been eating, breathing and dreaming in words to write. I have always loved writing. I have always written whenever I have time and mind to. When I was younger this looked like a young girl, later a woman, hunched over a cafe table or curled up on her couch writing as fast as she could get her racing thoughts on paper. Then I got married and had 2 children. Children take time and energy to care for. In the early years my hands were the busiest, holding, nursing, changing a diaper, reading to my sons or singing familiar tunes with hand motions. I told myself, as days, weeks, months and years went by that I was collecting life that would one day fill pages of notebooks. I told myself to stay present because these days were precious and I would miss them if I didn't pay attention. I told myself to pay attention so I could later recreate on paper some of the insights, mundane and momentous moments and learning that so completely filled my days. So I payed attention to my world, inside and out. Often it was frustrating, more often I was happy, immersed in a sea of innocent love form 2 large eyed boys that had each emerged from my body not so long ago and a family life continually being created with the man I chose to marry.
Now these boys are 6 and 10. My hands are free. So in January, when a fellow artist, a friend who creates/channels watercolors that speak silently so intense are they, announced she'd challenged herself to create 30 watercolors in 30 days and invited others to take on a similar challenge with their art, I was in. First I announced my intention in my other blog, linked all facebook friends to it, then I wrote. I had no idea if it was realistic for me to complete this project or not. Day 1, I opened Natalie's book on memoirs, read the first exercise, let my mind get quiet, looked at what words and images came into my thoughts and started writing it down. In this way I got most of the way through the 30 in 30. Towards the end I chose a few topics of my own. With each piece, I'd post a status update to facebook. The response was kind but I told myself I had to write even if no one ever commented. I finished the 30 posts in 30 days.
Today, I've been frustrated. I can tell my writing is forced, a reflection of the difficulty I have feeling serene in a disordered house. Because I have a family and we home school, I can't expect the house to be neat, clean and orderly all the time, especially until we really finish this third major purge and get down to just what we need and what helps us to thrive (not much when all is said and done). When I was single, I could only write at home once I'd put everything away, dusted and spent a few minutes sitting in the quiet. This kind of preparation is only rarely available to me at this time, but the desire, the driving need to write right now is not letting up, not waiting for me to be in my fairy land of outer serenity.
I went on a 5 minute bike ride tonight to clear my head and move my blood. Out there in the dusk of late summer I realized what I need to do next. I need to get back to basics. When I got home, I pulled Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind off the shelf, opened to the first line and read, “Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.” Deep breath, I nodded, letting my shoulders drop for the first time in hours. I am ready to follow up on my bike riding insight. I'm going to do another 30 in 30 blog posts with the exercises in “Wild Mind” as a guide and the intention of just writing. If a decent piece or two emerge from it, fine. If not, I'll write anyway. If I have only a few minutes, I'll post something short and possibly not revised at all. If I have a few hours, who knows, I'm not there yet.
Now it's time to begin.
And I invite anyone who is inclined to do a 30 in 30 with their particular art to join me.
Cool summer night on the north shore, sitting on a curb outside Whole Foods, I was 26 and independent.
Shaun was talking about the moments of awakening participants experienced at a conference he'd recently attended, "The Equality of Men and Women." He told about honest dialogue between men and women in the main room. He told how grown men cried, apologizing for thier mistake of thoughtlessly thinking women were less important and treating them accordingly. I stopped listening for a second. Next thing were tears, then I knew, for the first time, sexism was real and it had touched my life. Before this I had convinced myself that I'd out maneuvered discrimination. I still held the cell phone to my ears, listening in stunned silence.
At the corner store below our apartment I was the only customer again. The new owner, and Indian man came around from behind the counter into the aisle behind where I stood deciding which soft drink to spend my allowance on. He reached both hands up and started rubbing my shoulders. I shook him off. He smiled, gave a slight grunting laugh and walked away. Any time I was alone in the store he did this, for months, so I gave it no thought. He walked away after all. Until the day he didn't. That day he bent low and kissed my neck. I am strong and have always been praised for it. He had crossed the line and I knew it, even though I was only 12. I reached back with a sideways fist and hit him where my hand landed, as hard as I could. With injured pride but otherwise intact, he raised his voice angrily asking why did I do that! Did I answer? He walked back behind the counter. I walked to the cash register, paid for my snack and left. He didn't come around the counter again though I continued to shop there for 3 more years. He never spoke to me again. Was this to punish me or wisdom on his part?
Shaun told me how women were pouring out story after story of discrimination to their haunted but loving audience of men they knew intimately, friends and acquaintances. How had this never come up before? I heard myself telling Shaun that I was unaware of what most women experience because I have so few female friends because most women are...annoying. As the words fell off my lips I trembled in shame and recognition.
Until 5th grade when one boy shot up a head above everyone else and confidently challenged me to a match he knew he could win, I was the arm wrestling champion of my school class and of my neighborhood. Kids lined up on the metal train at the park hoping to beat my record. At camp I rode that long bike trail always coming in ahead of everyone else which wasn't easy since a pack of threatened though good natured boys were determined to beat me.
Shaun laughed slightly in recognition at my verbal fumble (he'd faced hs own at the conference), at my sad realization that I thought I could be better than most girls, that I had chosen to judge a group of people based on one factor and so avoid most of them.
My best friend Mary was gang raped by two 21 year old men that hung around fountain square hoping to buy young women alcohol (I didn't realize their intention until years later). We knew them as familiar and weren't threatened. They came around for months before that disgusting helpless afternoon. Then they disappeared. I get sick in my throat even attempting to bring them to mind enough to write a simple description. They both had strained speech and smoked too much, smiling to one side. I walked to my friends house the way I did most aftenoons and found our mutual friend Rhonda hysterical, pacing in the front yard. She told me what was going on in the north bedroom upstairs. Sadly, neither of us, both latch key children, had been prepared to see this as an emergency, or we might have called the police. Truthfully we were stuck, since our friend was drunk, having stolen the alcohol from her parents and now too drunk to say yes or no for herself. We had no idea how to navigate the next right move without stepping on one land mine or another. My memory of that day goes blank after a desparate expression crosses Rhonda's face. We were 15.
Shaun continued to paint a beautiful picture of lives renewed, couples grown closer, friendships mended and forged. I listened quietly letting the tears drop one by one off my face. I was still on the curb. People walked by as if they hadn't noticed the earth shift a few moments ago.
Images of friends I hadn't talked to or seen in years flooded my mind. Like a terrible dance I witnessed what I had previously missed. Women, girls, making themselves less to catch a man if only for a night, if only so he'd stay in the conversation and not think her intimidating. I replayed the day I decided not to try out for cheerleading. I was at the home of a girl I only knew by sight at school, practicing for tryouts. Every other word out of her mouth insulted a friend who wasn't there to defend herself. Do men do this?? I have no idea. Our crowd wasn't perfect, but we did respect each other most of the time and if we did have a problem it was usually laid out somewhat thoughtfully with hope for solutions.
In my early 20's I waited tables at a diner on State Street. I often went out back to have a cigarette and look at small patches of sky between gray highrises. Occasionally, too often, the night busboy would come up behind me, push my braid over and try to rub my back. Every time I said no and shook him off. Since he'd always stop I never reported it to the owner who was like a father to me. After months of this stubborn failure to be respectful he may have figured he should move faster, that maybe I wouldn't brush him off if he could get me close enough that I liked it. One evening just outside the back door, he pulled my braid aside, pressed close to my body and kissed my back. I am strong and have always been praised for it. He had crossed the line and I knew it. I was 24. I reached back with a sideways fist and hit him where my hand landed, as hard as I could. With injured pride but otherwise intact, he raised his voice angrily asking why did I do that! Did I answer? We walked back to the dining room. I went back to quietly filling salt shakers. He pulled the white towel from the side of his apron and cleaned the table the night's last customers had just left. He never spoke to me again. Was this to punish me or wisdom on his part?
Even in a family that focuses on gender equality, sexism can live. How can one stay dry in the ocean? When I was first married, I noticed my dad ask my husband to do things he used to ask me to do, things typically thought of as man's work. I wish I could remember specific examples. At the time I was amused. David saw it too. We both knew it wasn't on purpose or because he thought I was weak. I could say my dad was simply pleased to have another man around, interested in helping David feel a part of things. Maybe this is all it was. But I think it was an automatic reaction to years of societal training that taught him a woman should be called on to assist in certain matters only when a man can not be found.
Like that classic song, "I Was Gonna Be an Engineer."
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What do old women do at 3 in the afternoon when they can not see to sew or read or drive, when they can not stand to watch another minute of tv, when they remember a young friend, call out her name yet decide not to call her, not to be a burden.
What do we do for an old woman who tells us years of her life in broken English peppered with Persian, smiling because she's not alone on her brown leather sofa, who loves our children like family because our children love her first, who feeds us bean soup with crackers and cuts up banana for our children?
Do we feel life in her photos, the ones on the dusted coffee table next to a glass bowl full of m&m's, the pictures of her beloved children now grown and scattered and the faces of her dear granchildren? Do we catch the adventure in her shaky retelling of past adventures in other countries, or do we nod politely and miss the gift? Do we let ourselves cry when the richness of her lost years and her frustration at growing old opens our heart?
When we leave her living room in early evening for our books, errands and quiet family time at home, do we hug the old woman, tell her, "I love you?" When she hugs us, do we go through the motions or savor the feel of her soft thin skin on our cheek?
I was an every day skater by 7 years old.
It started as many extreme life changes, with little knowledge of what we were getting into. I was 5. A neighbor gave me her daughters old ice skates. I was smaller than all other 5 year olds so blessed with a closet full of hand-me-downs and now this pair of wonderfulness I carried right home. Once in the door, likely in the third word, I asked to go skating. A phone call informed us we could go the following day. Unfortunately for my parents I was not a mild child, accepting things as they are. This has served me and others well over the years but that day it was screams, tears and useless pleading as if by sheer will I could get my parents to make the rink redo their schedule for me. Life goes on and even whiny children quiet down when waiting is all there is to do.
The next day, my mom, dad, a neighbor, her son and I adventured to Robert Crown Recreation Center. At this point my mother jumps in to tell it at the potluck, but she's not here tonight (she's wisely in her bed asleep, I have no excuse). My memory will have to suffice. Our friends Marie and Johnah and my dad, the same people who had PROMISED my mom they could help her skate, were all clutching the wall, waddling and slipping carefully around the edge of the rink. Irritated but undeterred my mom was also managing along the wall, bit by bit, looking down or no more than 1 foot ahead. I have no idea what I did.
This worked 3/4 of the way around. Fortunately, one side of the ice was sectioned off by orange cones, therefore no wall. When my mom reached this terrifying place she froze. She could get on all fours and crawl to the other wall. She could turn around and go back (breaking the rules). She could scream and yell much like I had the day before. She could stay there and do nothing and pretend it was a dream.
My brave mother did finally let go of the wall and carefuly wobble, surely whispering a desparate prayer, and in great concentration, upright, all the long way to the other side.
So great was her exhultation of triumph over what she had believed to be a doomed situation that she went around again! and again! until she had developed a firm belief that if she came back another day (soon), she could learn to glide first on one foot then on the next, no hands. This is how we came to live at the rink for the next 8 years.
I don't know the details of her story or my dad's, other than they took lessons, and could get around real fast. Eventually they both learned to jump and spin! I do know my story, at least an outline of it. The whole story is a book. Until it's written, here's what I've put down for posterity.
I started in group lessons, quickly tested up the patches of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and into the freestyle levels where I had the advantage of a private coach. The fruits of this labor?
My first group performance I hid under an enormous hoop skirt with 15 other 1st graders in from the beginner class, emerging to delighted spueels as a spotlight tried to follow the equivalant of human cats. By 8 I had solo parts in both the annual Nutcracker and Spring shows and group performances that involved more skill than toddling out from under a dress. At different times and in no order I was the sugar plum fairy, a snowflake, a tiny furry mouse being chased by the housekeeper (my mom) and in one act, my friend and I did cartwheels and front walkovers on ice.
Every day after school I put on white leather boots with sharp blades attached. I pulled the laces as tight as I could despite the necessary discomfort of snug fiiting skates. I giggled and raced with the other daily kids. Much of our practice time was unstructured when we were expected to practice waltz jumps, spirals, lunges and eventually axels, back spins, flips and loops. This we did, but in our own loose jointed kid way, except for one girl (I'll call her Sara) who was always with her mom. Her mom skated behind her every day, pushing her constantly, to the point of tears. Sara was better than the rest of us but we didn't envy her. We reached out to her in friendship careful never to mention the obvious.
I was always aware of the concession stand. I'd trot off the ice with a skip as my blade hopped onto the foamy floor and dash to the high red ledge, asking for another hot dog, bag of orange salty popcorn and a coke...my parents complained that I spent too much time there and not enough time on the ice they were paying for me to practice on. Maybe, maybe not. Half the joy of those years was in memorizing friends. Sharing a bag of pretzels reveals a different aspect of their personality. And I love hotdogs.
During anybody ice hours, hockey skaters took over public sessions and figure skaters tried to take over the center, marked off with orange cones. Most rinks still do this. I figure rinks that support a non college level hockey team still have mini padded, helmeted figures, swinging arms, cutting through the middle of the rink aggravating daintily dressed figures in white leather skates.
When it was my turn to perform solo in any show, when all was dark save for a ring of light following the preceding skater as they executed their much practiced routine of jumps and spins to a familiar tune, I stood shivering behind an enormous wall that reminded me of a giant Hefty bag, nervous, ready to launch onto the ice the moment their music faded, just before mine began to play. Out there on the ice, a million miles from anyone, engulfed in a bubble of terror, I couldn't hear the cheering section of my peers in the far right corner 2nd floor seating. I heard my blades scratch the ice. I was aware that a million people with 2 million eyes followed me, a lone figure in a vast emptiness. It really was that scary. I wish I'd enjoyed those brief moments more, been present, or at least not petrified. If anyone had asked me what I was afraid of I wouldn't have told them. Too embarrassing. I was afraid of what my friends thought of me. I was afraid they were high in the stands secretly laughing, talking about how pathetic I looked. Back in the changing room, surrounded by encouraging chatter I was over it, until next time.
Every December Naomi B. made white chocolate candies before the Nutcracker. She made them in blue, red and yellow, as horses, hearts and stars. I love white chocolate. She passed them out to her fellow skaters as we entered the ice for dress rehersal. Naomi was part magic.
My feet hurt in stiff white boots that left red dents in my legs and squinched my toes. Taking them off at the end of practice was a high point. But I LOVED everything about skating! I loved flying for hours every day, spinning fast and jumping in full circles. I loved time with friends having spelling contests as we laced our skates or maneuvering through quick changes in crowded co-ed locker rooms. I loved eating snacks at tables that remind me of Volkswagen Bugs because of their chunkiness in solid bright colors where our mothers also sat hours later waiting for us to finish practice. I loved listening to the mothers talk. I liked the rhythm of their speech, the way their mouths formed words, the way they leaned in to each other listening intently.
There's more to Robert Crown than the ice rink. When I was 6, the same year I started ice skating, on Friday nights, in another wing, CPC gymnastics set up an open gym for all kids who wanted to fly in circles around little bars and fling themselves off the end of runways into a foam pit. I was there EVERY Friday I possibly could the year that program lasted.
In that wing there was an arts and crafts studio with potters wheel, kiln, sewing machines and big half circle windows at the top of south facing red brick walls. This is where Nutcracker and Spring Show costumes were sewn by a volunteer staff of overwhelmed but dedicated mothers. This is where I took my first pottery class. This is where I would sometimes wander to if I got bored in the ice rink area.
As far as latch key children go, I was lucky. If Iwasn't skating Iwas at gymnastics practice (another story or, how I became a competitive gymnast) for 3 hours after school most days. I had somewhere to go regularly where I exercised, made friends, ate expensive junk food and learned skills that still live in my muscles, ready to show off whenever I enter an ice arena, gymnasium, backyard with friends or anywhere with a semi soft floor.
I have photos to prove it. Last Friday I was upside down in a friends hallway standing on my head while creatively swinging my legs around until I nearly crashed into my niece who was wide eyed and too close.
In November 1998 I had two pieces published in a small book put out by a writers group I was a part of. One has the same name as this post. Since joining OS exactly a week ago, I have been thinking in possible posts, leaving myself email messages with ideas. Today I knew it was time to meditate again on who I am in the same manner I did 12 years ago. I have just spent the last hour doing this. What I'm posting here is first the piece I wrote in 98, followed by the one I wrote this evening. Therefore it is very long but hopefully worth a few minutes time.
1998
"My name is Heidi Beth. My favorite color is purple and I like green too. I like to sing 'cause it stirs my soul and it's fun. I like to draw flowers and gentle designs with the thin felt tip pens my dad gave me four years ago. My hair is brown and curly. My eyes are green and I'm pretty short. This was all given to me. But I like to draw with colors and I try to be kind.
I learned how to waitress the day after I turned seventeen and I still do it. I wrote a story about a monster named “Hugo” when I was six. That's “Huge O” I yelled at my dad when he read it wrong. I don't know what it's like to have brothers and sisters even though my parents wanted this for all of us. I'd sometimes curl up in my bedroom closet, try hard to figure out the beige telephone, and fall asleep mid-investigation, sometimes lonely, sometimes tired.
I like to climb trees, to get way up in the branches and look at the patterns in wood, watch the sky through the leaves and forget about the ground. Birds didn't come to the trees when I was up in them. I won't watch scary movies and I cry in all human directions. I like the soft sound of a pick pulling single strings of an acoustic guitar.
When I was little I thought there'd be these lines I'd cross when I belonged, grew up, succeeded...and now I see life as a dance, round and round to this beautiful music. I have to be quiet to hear it, and to feel the swan like motion. I'm hard on myself when I mess up, and I spend too much energy censoring myself according to what I think other people think of me. Always I look back and see that I only knew the skin of reality, even in my own motivations. I keep trying to learn and get more grown up. I like to take naps in the afternoon in winter. What's your name?"
2010
My name is Heidi Beth. Every day I struggle to get out of bed. I love my life but it is painfully rich. A friend gave me an affirmation to help. "I pray for the willingness to accept the prosperity in my life." When I say it, I relax. I am shy and quiet but not according to anyone who spends a few hours with me. I found my voice 12 years ago because I have always been comforted by people who reached out to me, the quiet girl. I want to do the same. I am a mother and wife, happy with both roles, aware of my shortcomings in being either, showing up regardless because I believe in commitment.
I carried both boys like basket balls, deceiving and surprising those who saw me form the back first. This was true all the way to delivery. I didn't enjoy being pregnant. I didn't enjoy delivery.
I enjoyed meeting my first child, holding him before anoyone else, helping him nurse before he was weighed, before I knew if I was nursing a son or daughter. I even enjoyed the warm stream of should have been expected newborn pee streaming down my shrunken middle because it made us all laugh through our joyful tears. I enjoyed my fascinatingly small childs wide open eyes, taking in his new home, our world. Already he was busy!
I was quietly amazed upon meeting our second son, also in my arms before anywhere else, born 3 years later, just he and I and 3 midwives in a white painted hospital room at the top of a mountain. He was careful from minute one, deeply thoughtful, investigating the nursing process the way one tastes wine, checking the different aspects of the product presented. Then he fell asleep in my arms for an hour. Blessed sunrise!
I am a good friend, having learned to be considerate for real. I love when my house is full of people who mostly don't know each other then do two hours later because we've been deeply engaged in a discussion of life, the universe and everything, laughing and nearly crying. I like when grown ups drum together. I like the lost and found look in the eyes of that one person who is transported for the first time by the heartbeat beneath her fingers. When I draw designs now, my son gets his spiral and pens, sits close by keeping an eye on my work. He creates worlds based on my patterns but completely his own. I love to listen to my children's laughter. I love listening to your children's laughter too.
I have begun to find my voice again, and an element of life separate from mother and dear though never far from them. When I write now, often the universe hands me a particular moment in time, especially when Carlos Nakai plays beside me. I try to ride my bike a little every day, even 10 minutes will hand me my heart, opened, having been reminded of wonder through wind on my skin, wind that makes a rushing sound as I cut through space, crows above, the smell of exhaust mixed with fresh mowed grass, groups of slowly sauntering youth navigating fragile friendships, darting squirells and looking eye to eye with others who are biking or walking on my random route. I miss all of this from the drivers seat of our minivan.
(I removed the last line. When I woke up I realized it was inconsistent and an easy way to finish a pieec, a too common last line of grateful contentment. I'll now be meditating on how to finish this)
I cried all the way home from Earn and Learn's work site back in the city where our camp bus dropped us off, some 30 kids who had spent 10 days outside of time in a Wisconsin woods as family, learning from experience that their peers matter as much as themselves and that they each matter as much as anybody. I curled up in a ball in the hatchback of my parents car. My heart ached like I had never known. I remember a light sky, my wet face, that I rocked as I cried and physical pain in the center of my body, pain of home sickness for a place I would never return to. As I write this, I cry. I know that little girl holding tight to her knees. I know her sincere heart, her intense desire to grow, to shine out. She has company all over the world. O God, let us reach the children while they still know they can sing. That's the thing. Rick Weiland believed in each of us. He gave his heart and soul to Earn and Learn. Ease is not the way to happiness, nor is discouragement. Challenge, loving mentors, accountability and loving encouragement grow a child. Love and respect are key. We had all that. Going back to the life that had begun to break my spirit knocked the wind out of me. Thankfully, my parents didn't try to change my sadness. They drove in silence.
I'd decided earlier that I would work at the after school work site over the remaining days of summer. Extra money and more time around these new friends was appealing. Day one, 8 hours stuffing envelopes in a cement room with hard cold floors easily changed my mind. I lost all enchantment with Earn and Learn by days end. The way a child does, I decided I was done. I would not be returning to the worksite in the summer or over the school year. I had fun at camp but no thank you to whatever this other boring, non recreational aspect was. It wasn't the joy of nature. It wasn't full of laughter, feeling dawn's light breeze on my skin. I quit.
Instead of returning to the work site the next day as I'd said I would (remember the statement of commitment?), I went to Allison's house. My parents showed up there after a while, said it was time to go. This was not unusual, so okay, whatever. Then I noticed we weren't going home. Where to then? The Work site??! NO! Not back to that place. I don't like it. I don't want to be there!
They responded with silence. They ignored my tantrum, ignored me kicking the inside of the car, calling them liars, saying they couldn't make me! They were helping me honor my commitment to see this program through for a year. I was huddled up crying in the car again, this time desparately angry.
When we pulled into the Earn and Learn driveway Rick came out to greet me. He wasn't tough or stern. He saw me. He smiled so kindly. He joked around and made me laugh the tiniest bit. No hurry. With a trace of willingness, I left the car, still clearly tender and scared. Speaking gently and as always, respectfully, he led me into the work site. There were 3 other kids inside already working.
I wiped the tears from my face, punched my time card, walked over to a long brown table, looked at my new peers and sat down to work. We stuffed envelopes for hours. How long was it? I sat across from someone named John. He was funny and sweet. We laughed all afternoon, tears running down our cheeks, the kind of laughter that makes every sad thing fade for a time and happiness seem everlasting. I knew we were friends. Happily resinged to my new life, I was in.
Once school started, each Earn and Learn student took a slip of paper to school every day. After each class, the teacher marked the appropriate box with a 1 or 0. Categories included getting to class on time, doing class work, homework, and participating in class discussions. The more 1's in a day the longer one could work at the site that afternoon, the bigger one's paycheck. I liked school so this was fun. Being on time became a game.
Once at the work site, we were divided into stations. These included envelope stuffing, small parts assembly, collating and many other simple repetitive jobs. A short time into the school year I was allowed to work in the office which was more fun to me than being on the work floor. I remember the office as a privilege for those who showed themselves to be reliable and a welcome change of scene.
Earn and Learn was considered a dork program by the general student body at my school. I knew I was seen as defective. I disliked it a bit, but in a way a 14 year old knows things, I knew I was lucky. I remember 8th grade better than any year of school. My closest friends went to two other Evanston middle schools. I was part of a tight knit group of 5 kids from the program. Their names I remember and 4 of us are still in touch. I wish I remembered the names of others I worked and grew with. I see their faces surrounded by plain walls and metal framed windows. I remember their smiles when bonuses were passed out. That's when we all sat facing front, heads up, listening for our name and amount awarded.
I worked voluntary overtime on weekends putting advertisements on door handles and in the lobbies of 3 flat apartment buildings. Street by street, house by house all day. Mary and Ray drove the bus. We assembled each packet before hand so when the bus stopped and I'd recived my orders, I'd jump off the bus and make sure to put a long plastic bag on every door knob on my route. The work was hard, often tiring, but I usually signed up. Purpose (and extra $) has that effect.
Friday was payday. We were a sight. A line of talkative 7th and 8th graders shuffling on the lobby carpet of a bank, waiting to change white paper into money. Cash in hand we'd stroll into the sunlight. We spent our money on cokes and fries, pizza and music albums. I see 4 us in a booth, merrily conversing, full of antics and laughter. One day I pretended I was going to spray coke from my straw onto...oh, which one was it...Leslie I think, but since she didn't know I wasn't going to really, she hit the straw toward John. He received a lovely blessing that afternoon. Or was it the opposite?? Either way, I was amazed that friendship could be so independent...money, time, a common bond and harmless mischeif all under our own watch.
Our group of troubled 30 to 40 7th and 8th graders spent 4 seasons together in circumstances foreign to most of our day time classmates. Back then I knew something special was happening though I had no need to name or meditate on what it was. Years later, grown and floundering again, after 9 months attending the same 12 step meeting where I always faced a large undressed window, I realized the wonder of seeing the same honest faces framed first by autumn's blazing colors, then by winter's black skeletal branches and finally by the light of lengthening light in evening and small buds where nothing grew the week before. That was it.
All was not perfect. We did dumb things I won't print. We weren't always kind to each other and I was still shy and quiet at school. Home life hadn't changed. It was worse. Most nights after spending all afternoon with my friends on site, we spent a good portion of the evening on 3 way calls discussing...I have no idea what. I still enjoyed school, now earning top grades. Honestly life was difficult. I constantly worried about the state of the world and whether we'd explode in nuclear war any minute. I constantly worried about the state of my family wondering when the next storm would come and drive us just a little farther apart.
But a seed had been planted. Beneath the soil of my anxiety, a tiny flower began to grow. I took in that wonderful year with Earn and Learn like a fish back in water after flailing in the open air even for a moment. It needs the water to live, but hasn't a name for the air.
I don't remember much from 7th grade. One memory only stands out in an otherwise colorless landscape. I got into my first and last physical fight. An odd scenario. One boy who I usually ignored asked me if I could beat up friend A. I didn't answer. He asked me again. No answer. Third time, no answer. Soon, friend A is angry, telling me I said I could beat her up. Friend A challenges me to a fight. Did I answer? I remember calling her over winter break, making arrangements the way two people choose a place to have tea. I didn't see another way out. First day back, lunch recess, behind the building behind the playground. I met anxiety like a roaring engine in my nerves between that call and the day we returned to school. We fought. No one was hurt. Mercifully, it was done. All agreed she won. I walked away at first opportunity, tears falling easily. I was sad to be involved in something mean and angry. I didn't mind losing. No teachers were aware of our senseless well planned conversation with fists. It was never mentioned again.
I know I was sad because my parents were changing. Instead of inviting friends over for potlucks and generally being social, a lovely way to live I had grown used to, they spent nearly every night at home alone reading, glued to the screen to which all living room chairs faced or asleep. Tempers were shorter (understatement), laughter less frequent. I was older before I realized our good life of easy fellowship with a house full of smiles had shifted to what was for me a pathetic nothingness of watching my parents turn outside in.
I loved my school, an experimental place where teachers wrote their own curriculum, children were treated as the reason for the building and I loved to learn. Regardless, in 7th grade, I often showed up late and I was quieter than usual within school walls (if that was possible). I did my work. I didn't talk back to any teacher. I just didn't take notice enough to remember nearly everything. Fortunately a group of teachers did and as was the style of the place, they took loving action.
Toward years end, two things happened. First, I was called to a conference with all my teachers. Just me and them. They told me that if I continued to be late I would miss the end of year picnic. Egg tosses, water balloon tosses, outdoor silliness, that I looked forward to. Done then, I was on time after that. But an impression had been made. An impression of a sad quiet child lacking motivation to perform certain expected tasks. Second, I was recommended for a work study program called Earn and Learn for my 8th grade year.
Though I was well behaved (aside from that ridiculous "fight") and academically present, I wasn't personally present. I was also lucky enough to be growing up in Evanston Il in the 1980's where Rick Weiland lived and cared for children in a program he was passionate about, Earn and Learn.
Earn and Learn started every year with an intense 10 day mini behavioral, emotionally cleansing boot camp. It set the stage for what would be, hopefully, a positive turning point for students heading the way of a problem. I wouldn't call us "at risk" because I don't know what's really meant by that, but also because it's difficult to see oneself as an at risk youth. So I told myself we were the ones in the middle. Not too problematic, showing promise, heading astray, therefore steered this way, to Rick and Earn and Learn's guiding care.
First of all, I had to make a commitment. Yes, I would see the year through, being part of a work program where I could make money. Yes, I would show up. Easy to say to a piece of paper asking for my signature. Easy to enjoy at camp. Camp was the first activity. Camp where the main lesson I learned was that the individual is accountable to the group, but the group is also accountable to the individual, that we were one entity when gathered, that one could hinder progress for all. While I don't like to think that life is this way, it is. The upside is respect, the downside consists of many character building moments when patience must be called on, courtesy, honesty, where walls tumble and we are all in one room, vulnerable, waiting. We waited when one person was not cooperating, therefore keeping the group from moving to the next activity. We knew it going in. No less annoying, no less frustrating, especially the day our group missed lunch.
Camp was like most others, tucked into nature, surrounded by tall trees. The dining hall was large, there were cabins for sleeping, cabins for activities. Worn dirt paths, grassy earth.
I learned about deliberate meditation at Earn and Learn camp. Mats on the floor, we were to lay quietly, let ourselves relax...quietly. I loved the idea, It felt cool. It wasn't easy to do as a group. The meditation cabin was dark on a bright afternoon.
Besides meditation, other character building at camp included a points or "bucks" system (wish I could think of the exact name). There were many ways to earn points through service or accomplishment. At camps end, we would all go to the Wisconsin Dells, a supposed reward. There we would convert our "bucks" into real money. I was so completely unimpressed by the Dells that I didn't enjoy being there. It was a man made bunch of nothing compared to the time I'd just spent expanding as a human being.
The only way to earn these points that I remember for sure was to swim across a small lake as many times as possible. I think I went across twice, though maybe only once. A boy named Andrew, a scrawny kid with a funny voice, surprised us all by going back and forth more than anyone, many times more. I say the lake was small. Standing on the shore at 5am, cold, tired, determined, I did not think small. I tried not to think, just dive in and go. I would have thought "huge", but that would have stopped me at the start. I wonder what I said aloud?
During camp we went on an all day bike ride, 48 miles?, with 3 or 4 stops along the way for cheese sandwiches, juice and fruit. At the first stop, I glided in ahead of the front pack I'd been riding with, all boys but me. After a bit, one of them realized this and alerted all the rest that a girl had just "beat" them. So this pack, all boys and me, stayed ahead. At each following stop and the end, a great race set up, incredibly intense. Those boys were so upset at the idea a girl might win (win a race that wasn't intended as more than a day on the trail). They stayed upset because I "won" every time, though they gave a great effort, with lots of hollering to encourage whoever was at the very front with me. I held onto that triumph for years, proof that being a girl was not a disadvantage in a competition with boys.
We repelled from a small cliff too. I was so ready for this to be exciting. It was a lot of waiting at the top of a bit of rocky wall where each of us was securely wrapped in straps and buckles. In the sunshine, I see a swarm of wasps tucked in to the side of the rock. That was the excitement, listening to the concerned confusion that followed discovery of the nest. Going down the side of a rock in what felt like a diaper was not. I enjoyed talking to Ernie, my favorite counselor, as he guided me down that little wall. In memory, Ernie and excitement over wasps are all that made an otherwise incredibly boring afternoon in the hot sun tolerable.
Every moment from the time we woke until lights out usually after 10pm was structured. We knew they were growing us. We knew they were serious...usually...until, one evening, outside the dining hall which was near the lake, a fantastic ketchup and mustard fight fought with yellow and red restaurant style squeeze bottles was loudly, messily enjoyed. That night, other than streaks of bright condiments whizzing by, I remember looking out over the lake at a soft darkening blue gray sky. I remember seeing a single building, where we ate 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, among a quiet scene of countless tall gorgeous leafy tree. I don't hear the night song of the woods when I look back in time but I know such a symphony surrounded my serenity. All was well.
I thrived there. I grew there. I did not miss the city with it's hot cement, sunlight reflecting in slicing glares off tall buildings, the incessant roll of rubber tires, synthetic reality. Camp was simple but hard. The staff sincere and loving. I was home.
Camp set the stage for the year ahead, which is another story, the test of commitment.
I was the 15 year old telling my mother how to improve her driving though I had never been behind the wheel. I studied her feet, how she balanced the needs of the gas pedal and the clutch with each shift. I told her with great and annoying authority how she could master a smooth transition from 1st to 2nd. I couldn't seem to shut up because I KNEW her driving could improve and since I was now in the know (my dad had been giving me pointers and descriptions of how to), well, good thing she was open and patient.
In Drivers Ed we spent long boring periods reading glossy paged books, sitting in sterile simulators with bad audio in a cold class room, listening to the teacher go on and on and on. From my classroom I could see the parking lot across the street, full of orange cones, ready for the new young driver to practice before braving the streets.
Then one day, we were allowed behind the wheel. First of course, we had to spend just a bit less boring class times weaving cones. But soon enough I flipped the turn signal, looked both ways, looked again, then turned onto the real road! with a tense and sighing instructor at my right.
Two events stand out in my learning to drive experience. One of them is a brief and terrifying moment in the car with my instructor as I merged onto a busy I-94West. After signaling, I looked behind in to the lane I was merging onto, as well as the rear view mirror, then I merged successfully. BUT, my instructor, who I had heard didn't even drive himself but rode his bike everywhere, screamed at me that I hadn't looked behind me! and what was I thinking! and that is so dangerous! and blah!!!!!!! It didn't take much reflection for me to conclude this was a dangerous reaction! So, that was that. One practice merge per class.
The second involves my patient mother who believed my intelligence about smooth driving with a manual transmission existed in my body as well as my mind. Once I had permit in hand, down we go to the car, ready to set out on some errand and with a proud and happy smile, my mom tosses me the keys. I don't remember whether my inability to drive a stick shift in actuality showed itself when I jerked down Greenleaf Ave a couple blocks or if I admitted my ignorance right off. Surely she remembers and will let me know after reading this.
It all worked out soon. My dad took me to a large parking lot after hours, suffered through a series of jerks, stalls and fancy noises and eventually felt I was knowledgeable enough to drive around the block.
I got my drivers license at the first possible moment after my 16th birthday, having to go to two facilities in one day because I forgot to put my seat belt on so failed my first test. The second tester tapped out a happy tune on the roof of the car. Very nice :).
I definitely preferred manual to automatic and still do. The challenge of shifting smoothly was fun and engaging. As a young friend said when I took her out one afternoon to learn to drive a stick, "It feels like I'm driving a race car!"
And I never have stopped telling my mother how to drive.
I wrote this the day after he died. When his name surfaced today, I remembered and wanted to share.
Everyone has a comment about Michael Jackson. I'm no different. So far I haven't reflected on his career, his talent, his amazing contributions to the world.
I've been thinking about the person who had to live in his skin. The person who seemed to want to do right, regardless of the small or large mistakes he made. My first thoughts were so sad. I cried for his soul.
I see him as the poster child for the most damaged adult child of a dysfunctional family/society(though I don't know anything about his family...guess I could read up on it pretty easily now). He's also the poster child to give us an image of cancerous materialism. I watched a slide show of his career on yahoo news last night. I cried that he is human yet seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin, so desperate to get out. I cried because someone so potentially beautiful had become such a horrible image.
I don't know what we think we're doing in our society. We each have an idea of why we're here, what we're supposed to accomplish and give in our life time. For some it's simply a not knowing. A going along in the wave of energy that engulfs a soul and hides reason. Could this be it, riding waves of just going along and anything to mask the pain?
I was just like the rest, obsessed with Michael Jackson for several years. I probably wanted to marry him. I don't remember. I memorized Thriller, the song and the video. But remembering that and thinking that his talent is gone from this world are not what bring tears.
It's that this spiritual being suffered in a way most of us can not imagine because he shared his talent, did what he had a passion for, made his livelihood in front of us all and we judged him constantly. You are so great! You are so deformed! You are so sick! You are brilliant!
Can he rest now, ignore the criticism and praise that have flared up after his unexpected death and be answerable only to a loving God? That's the way it's always been anyway.
Acquired yesterday...25lbs gluten free all-purpose flour, over 50lbs fresh picked apples.
Yesterday I chose to go to the apple orchard with my family and a few friends. Emily spent much time behind the lens, photo documenting the afternoon, capturing Aaron and the black kitten, boys stretching small arms to tree limbs, magic stretching apple bags that fit every apple our 6yr old brought to daddy, mothers, fathers and sons in midstep through a leafy lane and silly faces. I hadn't slept much the night before so when we got home, though I wanted to bake apple something! for a potluck last night, all I could do was lay down, then eat chocolate and look at Open Salon (a new playground I'm enjoying very much). So I brought a vegan cheesecake I'd made a few days ago. No one complained.
Last night, after the potluck, after the boys were in bed, after I was in bed, though tired I did not sleep. No profound or racing thoughts kept me awake. I suspect it was the chocolate.
This morning I planned on going to the Farmers Market to help with a table promoting a childrens theater company I'm part of. Morning required a pep talk about logical consequences and keeping ones word but I made it there. Funny thing about sunshine, smiling, promoting a service people want and get excited about...I wasn't tired at the market, only happy.
When I came home I intended to make cinnamon cookies and apple something! but I only had enough energy to sit. I'd thought about split pea soup last night when all were asleep and I wasn't. Soup with organic carrots and potatoes, Rapunzel broth cubes, split peas and greens over fresh cooked brown rice with a bit of earth balance margarine.
After a 2 hour nap, more sitting and a mug of apple cider I went to the store for carrots and cashews. Once home I rinsed peas, chopped carrots and the few potatoes we have on hand (only a few since we'd made a large batch of homemade ff 2 nights ago), dropped in broth cubes and now I'm waiting for my husband to return with more potatoes so I can add them and start the soup. The rice just finished.
While waiting I put almond butter and homemade chocolate frosting on a spoon, wondering why I haven't eaten such yumminess in over a year, then going back for seconds, thirds and fourths.
Soon the soup will be done and I'll savor every rich warm spoonfull. I have images of getting up from my perch after that, baking apple something!, soaking cashews, freezing chocolate mints, but I'll probably (hopefully) be ready to sleep.
Apples and flour can wait til morning.
We lived just south of Memphis, in Walls Ms, when Hurricaine Katrina slammed New Orleans. I don't watch the news and at that time rarely read it either, but my husband gave me the sad news of what was probably coming over night and no one could stop nature. My children were 1 and 4 at the time. I was living in a quiet meditaiton of active bodies, loving snuggles, smallness of people I couldn't wrap my mind around even though I gave birth to them and hours alone with only the walls of our apartment and the sighs of sleeping boys. A few months after that night I blogged a writing practice that found it's way to the anguish I experienced as I didn't sleep, aware that countless families were literally and nearly drowning, terrified, and being torn apart and the much milder down pour that found us the next day, a reminder, as we read headlines of destruction, that it wasn't us. Memphis kicked in to high gear along with much of the country to help any way we could and it wasn't until we were on our way to Colorado a few days later that I saw footage. I explained it to our 4 year old as best I could. The following is a highly revised version of that writing practice which is really a wandering accross the page (screen).
All avoidance, some balance. I'm thinking things like...If I had a light lap top, I would spend time in odd places writing on this blog. I seem little pleased with the corner I sit in presently. Though happily listening to one of the radio stations on pandora. It's after 5pm, the computer reports 6:16pm. The afternoon was long and sleepy. Today, Bahiyyih helped Devyn plant his first garden. It feels so human and regular, like I am a worthy mom now. We tried to plant in little clay pots in Mississippi, but it was too late in the year and too cold. Also, Devyn, in his speedy and amazing way, rushed out to water his flowers too much and in my inability to stop him and do all else that was then required of me, they did not grow more than an inch above soil.
I believe we are all more mature now and a good and beautiful garden will soon spring up in the square of ready soil we offered seeds to today.Water every third day. After it rains, start over. Bahiyyih down the street now can be called on for councel. The sun, so peaceful a presence pours into the front windows. I passed by it on the way to the computer and felt that just because of it's light, here, now, everything will be all right.
Oh Lord, settling is quietly hard, the no running away part. How I have perfected it God, but pray still to learn to live with out the fear of angry men. How many of us, I wonder are conciously and unconciously afraid of angry men. The ones in our lives and the ones through history, and the ones now, who seem unable to think clearly and yet, are in charge of masses (reference to no one in particular, just fighting in the name of "fill in the blank" around the world in general).
I realized one day that I have failed to feel sad for anybody suffering far away. That I have failed mostly to think of them at all, let alone pray for them, hope for them, think of their children. I think of them now, sometimes. At times recently, I have prayed for them, even cried for them.
But mostly I have been stuck in my own life. I pray this continues to change. That hurricaine, so close to our home, but not close enough to touch us, that was the kick over into sanity as far as this goes. How I ached for those people Sunday night. All night. I ached like I did the night I looked into eternity, saw it was real and beat my fists into the carpet, a deep down scream in my soul, way down, where I couldn't stop it, or quiet it, or be distracted from it by any thought. The next morning I saw Baha'u'llah. The next morning was sunshine and light everywhere, inside and out. Finally I could sit still, take in a deep breath, hear birds sing again (when did I stop listening?), see dust dance in a ray of sunshine like I used to many a bored afternoon after school before mom and dad came home from work. I could exhale, aware that an anxiety I carried around like a sick pet had vanished (I would find anxiety again another day, but not this one. It has never returned).
Monday after Katrina, when I woke up, knowing a storm had raged, I was not rewarded with spiritual light like before. Only the pain of the night had been similar. Instead I ached. Here are the tears now, again. Once it happened in America for all of us to see, the pain accross oceans began to seep into my belly.
Mrs. Rogers thick, rich accent came from growing up in the south. She sat perfectly straight, legs crossed ladylike proper in her teachers chair at the front of the room.
She wasn't interested in our self esteem. She was interested in expanding our knowledge of the parts of a sentence, grammar, how to "sharpen the focus" of an idea until the reader could sit with your mind, be a part of the memory, because you were so clear. I can't think of a time I ever saw her smile, but I never wondered if she cared. I knew she did. And she was focused!
I sat on the west wall, first row, windows at my back. She never turned the overhead lights on. I wanted an A on something in her class, but don't remember if I ever managed to get one. Here's how it went.
At the beginning of each year, she told us how many papers we were to write. Then she told us that she expected each one of us to rewrite each paper until it was finished. This meant working on more than one assignment at a time. After I turned in a paper, she would mark down her comments, expectations and corrections in red, then hand it back. Now my part was to rewrite the paper according to her notes. The challenge was that she would give us a new assignment before we were done with the previous one. I think I managed to only ever have 2 papers going at the same time, which was no small task.
I naively thought that what she meant by "sharpen the focus" was the same as describing what a camera sees when it zooms in on a single spot. One time I used many words to describe a drop of rain on a leaf. Then I described a world of fairies living in the drop. I was bound and determined to sharpen that focus, even if I had to make up a new world smaller than a dime!
But this isn't what she wanted. To this day I don't know how for sure what she meant by "sharpen the focus" but I have my own idea. Follow the focus could be it's name. Follow the heat, when writing comes alive. Follow the heart, the energy. Follow it even if I'm a puddle of tears on the sofa with my little laptop lighting up my wet face. Be there again, wherever it is, hand it to the reader carefully, but remain open. Beyond this, just write. No editing(that is a later part of the process), no judge, no excuses, no critic. Practice in this way for years, as many days each year as possible.
In a way, Mrs. Rogers gave me a willingness to practice writing like one practices ballet or sketching. During the two years I was her student, her assignments were my main homework, the greatest challenge from the academic side of school. For her work, for her no-nonsense attitude, for the time she must have spent reading our countless drafts, I am incredibly thankful.
It's dark at 8pm, crickets in full song.
Owning a house = someone has weeding to do.
Getting rid of unwanted stuff that is being given away involves a cluttered living room for a few days.
Some burned bits are harder to remove from the stove top than others.
I like making new friends.
Helping the boys clean their room is easier than gearing up to do it.
I want to make chocolate mints but need to finish cleaning the stove top first. Chocolate mints are proper motivation or at least effective.
It's easy to over commit to activities that benefit other people.
I like books but I'm diggin' the idea of having only what I get from the library and a few Baha'i books around the house.
When I finish filing the living room will grow, even though the "to file" box is under a desk.
We may only need one big desk in the house but the second one is pretty and holding a lot of stuff I'm not sure what to do with yet.
I like listening to audio books more than video games but since the boys earned the $ for their hand held game boys, I like the tinny song they make (for a while).
We have many pretty figurines that need homes. I'm not sure who would like which ones.
I like the way Bahiyyih's kitchen smells. There's always something yummy making or just made.
Kids rooms and chocolate mints are calling.
Since I wrote this a few days ago, we have cleaned off and given away the pretty desk as well as a book case. We've cleaned and organized the existing desk and filed 75% of our various possibly important papers. Today a special connecting cord arrived, one the boys have been patiently waiting for on the edge of their seats so the ting ting continues with an added element of cooperative conversation. I made that batch of chocolate mints and made 2 more as well as 2 vegan cheesecakes. Then the house dances!
Simon and Garfunkel
-Greatest Hits
-Wednesday Morning 3am
-Scarborough Fair
-Sounds of Silence
-The Concert in Central Park
-Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
-Bridge Over Troubled Water
I first heard Simon and Garfunkel at Rose Records in 8th grade. Mrs.Robinson was playing. I had my own Money. Their Greatest Hits was my first Album ever. At one time I had every single song memorized. Their poetry is mesmerizing. Ironically, since not long after that purchase and from then on, Mrs.Robinson has been my least favorite of all thier songs. For a couple years I collected all their albums and none else.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Deja vu
When, after months and years of continual Simon and Garfunkel, I became aware of other magical harmony in the world, I bought Deja vu. It doesn't hold the same magic for me but I am completely transported when it plays.
Red Grammer
- Teaching Peace
-Soul Man in a Techno World
Red Grammer started out as a children's musician. I found him at 19 and quickly memorized all of Teaching Peace. 9 years later when I got married and now had a child of my own, we bought everything else we could find of his. Soul Man in a Techno World was one of his first adult cd's. I listened to it a few times before it's powers transformed me.
Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries
This is the second Michael Hedges cd I owned. The first, Taproot, saved my sanity when I was working for a door to door, business to business, walk the pavement "opportunity" situation that found me "working" insanely long hours Monday thru Friday. On the weekends I could be found many an hour sitting quietly on my couch, staring at earings and necklaces I'd put up decoratively on the opposite wall in a burst of creativity. Too tired to cook or clean, too mentally and emotionally zapped to think, I listened, over and over. A few years later I bought Aerial Boundaries. From the first note I flew, seeming to be made aware of a beautiful future full of love and light. More years passed. I believe I'm living that gorgeous future now.
Arrested Development - 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of....
Pure genius musically and lyrically. Ideas that must be explored, considered, meditated on. This one I memorized at 2o while saving $ for my 2nd semester of college. I still hadn't figured out that adult society was confused so I was still making an effort to do things "right." This album gave me permission to continue asking questions, seeking truth for myself.
Sweet Honey in the Rock - All For Freedom
I heard this when I picked it up from the library. I was 4-6 weeks pregnant with our first child. We lived in a boarding house of sro's with a shared kitchenette on the second floor. There I sat on the floor, eating who knows what that actually appealed to me, feet under a board stretched accross crates that was our table. I cried and cried so enchanting and sweet was their sound, so powerful and necessary their message. Our landlord happened to have a copy and made me a tape.
Carlos Nakai - Earth Spirit
This is all I wanted to listen to in labor with our first child. I don't remember how this cd came to me. I remember only the hours of peace as I listened to it.
George Winston - Winter into Spring
I listened to a lot of George Winston the fall, winter and spring before I got married. My favorite spot was sitting up in my bed with pen and paper, usually writing a 20+ page letter to some lucky soul, pausing often to stare longingly out the attic window, grateful to be at such a momentous stage in life, grieving the child I was (now healing from deep wounds), celebrating in my heart the wonders sure to come when one becomes two.
If I were eating smoked salmon and goat cheese at home, I would taste a jubilant wild song, unedited conversation, a wide open room with flowers and lots of bright noises just beyond the edge.
If I ate them at the beach I would taste a breath of vastness, blue as far as blue can be, a bit of earth mixed with yellow. I'd turn my head often, brush hair away from my face, searching out the source of each immense sound.
If I ate such delights on my door step, home alone on a hot summer afternoon I would taste richness almost too big, even heavy, like quiet knowing, slow speaking, nearly missing the turn to Jenny's house on a long windy road.
In this cafe right now, they taste like gentleness, a peaceful mind, a smile, sweet echos of happiness, gratitude, walking among fragrant purple blooms, stooping to observe their gifts.
After midnight, I sat at the foot of my bed. The room was simple, no decorations. I was being helped by a friend of a friend who lived in a trailer in a small town surrounded by cornfields in Illinois. They had a spare room which I called home for a couple months. I was a 3rd shift waitress, serving biscuits and gravy, coke and gallons of coffee to the regulars, the local farmers and mechanics, factory workers and my fellow lost 20 somethings.
I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing with my life, other than writing, making money and hanging out with friends...but it wasn't enough. This early morning, in the quiet, the empty flat quiet of the edge of nowhere, I was trying to write a beautiful anything. My letters were big and chunky, sloppily scrawled. The paper was recycled so had an off white tint and it was wide lined. I remember the big spaces available for each word made me feel childlike and inept, as if my life at that moment was hopelessly stuck.
Sitting alone in this emptiness I temporarily called home, cross legged on my blankets, I listened to a hard rain dance on the roof, splash on cement, slosh onto muddy patches of earth outside my window. I would write for 10 minutes then sit stone still, listening. I'd sit and only sadness sat with me, a determined alert sadness that cannot sleep, that only hears the rain, the scratch of a pen and racing thoughts. Then I would write for 10 more, over and over in this way, all the while under this natural symphony, until dawn.
I loved the tap, slop, swish of a downpour, the tink thunk of water patting window pane, even when I was stuck with what I perceived as my pitiful lost self.
For a few hours I was cool.
I was at the raised round booth with a solid wood table at the south west wall of Yesterdays, a local and better quality TGIF type place. I was there with friends from our short lived improv troupe. Usually we met in someones apt, the kind that's payed for by magic, with very little furniture, including a few turned over card board boxes with fancy cloth on them as well as an old cold cup of coffee and a full ash tray. If you were to look up from your perch while sitting near such a table, you'd see sitting on the window ledge a wooden incense burner with 1/4 of a stick left and the wormy crumpled ashes below. Maybe that was just an image of 20 somethings in the 90's around my neighborhood, but it was common.
But tonight we were celebrating after a great show, feeling close and happy. The audience had been large and appreciative, offering compliments at show's end. We thought this was the beginning of something big (it actually lasted only a few more weeks due to major disunity and hurt feelings). We had a few dollars and little sense (I'm 37 now, and think about reality in terms of budgets and sustainable situations).
I almost got away from the point I was heading for. There we were, hunched over incredible nachos, melted cheese, tomatoes, guacamole..., enormous juicy cheese burgers covered in dripping amounts of ketchup, mustard, and mayo, thick with pickles and onions on a fat white bread bun, chunky, perfectly browned french fries on the side. We sipped our sugary sodas between bites, between jokes, between happy glances whenever our eyes met. I remember Meghan, Jason, Sam and the slightly older balding guy who seemed to have more experience and better ideas than the rest of us (can't remember his name any more).
I felt like I was in a commercial
I wasn't very old, still too young to be completely in my body. I was at a point where I walked around hollow, listening to my heart beat, listening to the empty space where I could not bear to think about what was most painful (healing would come later, in waves and moments, through prayer and courage). Adulthood loomed and I felt utterly without guidance. I had dropped out of high school and started waiting tables at Pizza Hut on Dodge, then the IHOP in Wilmette. Many people didn't understand. "You have so much potential" they said. "That's nice" was my inner reply. I don't know what I said out loud. Maybe I smiled and enthusiastically explained all the reasons I'd left or maybe I just assured them it would be OK, knowing they weren't convinced, but I had made up my mind firmly.
When I was off work I was writing in that cafe on the corner by the Dempster el stop, the one with brick inner walls they eventually painted white, the one that I saw closed recently as I rounded the corner onto Sherman Ave or I wrote at Steep & Brew in the back, the smoking area. I spent time in Northwestern's music rooms with a few friends when they were out of school for the afternoon. I read Richard Bach and hoped life could be as beautiful as he hoped it could be, as he claimed to experience.
Around this time, my grandma Katz was getting old and sick. The kind of sick that comes from worry. She lost weight, seemed to unlearn how to talk, needed to sleep a lot, be fed with a spoon by another. I watched in observation mode as I couldn't hold on to an image of her for long and certainly no thoughts about her condition. It was what it was and I was her kin, so I sat with her in the kitchen, listening as she struggled to be understood, when she may have only wanted to have a sip of water but the effort to communicate that simple request was exhausting.
In February 1990, she went in to the hospital for several days. It was serious, so we were called to her bed side in St. Louis, several floors up in a quiet hospital wing. It's the nicest hospital I've ever been in, distinctly missing the common bustling, dinging pace under the surface of relative calm. I remember enormous windows, good natural light, serenity and quiet. There was a large room full of couches and tables near her room. This is where I spent most of my time. I had a pair of head phones and several tapes of Simon and Garfunkel. I had an 8 1/2 x 11 cardboard bound spiral with a bright yellow cover. I'd wander into my grandma's room, see my aunt Marsha, Agnes or my mom by her side, holding her hand. They were often silent. I might linger in the doorway a moment but since I had nothing to offer, I'd slip out again, head for that large comfortable lounge, turn on my music, open my notebook and write what I saw. I wrote about the sun coming in the window just so, about grandma laying there so small and helpless, about the quiet. I also wrote poems about flying, painted word pictures of gorgeous sunsets and shared my hopes for the adult I would one day become.
We were there for 3 days. I went to another universe during that time. The universe of slow sadness, of beautiful wondering. Hours and hours each day, from morning til night, I wandered back and forth between the lounge where I was cocooned by my art to grandma's room. Sometimes I'd go to her side, talk to her, but it was awkward. It didn't seem to be my place. As I write this I can still feel the air brush past my face, the still air of a hospital corridor as I wandered about knowing I couldn't feel impatient. I nearly filled that yellow spiral. I would leave the overhead lights off in the lounge until the last bits of light faded each evening. I was always alone in there.
Grandma didn't die in February. She held on until December. December 1990 in her house is less clear to my memory than the hospital. I know the house well, but no details of the mundane aspects of the trip have lasted. I only remember that my grandma was in her corner bedroom, in her bed, small, so so small. I was always aware of the antique mirror on the inner wall, huge, reflecting bottles of perfume and a hair brush she kept on her dresser. Her legs moved of their own accord beneath the green covers almost constantly. It was her breathing though, her labored, raspy breathing that I could hear clearly no matter what room of the house I was in that penetrates every thought of that good bye.
At that time in my life I was a heavy sleeper, often hard to wake, even aggressive toward anyone who disturbed me. But not that night. I fell asleep after midnight to the hollow rattle of her sighs. I was on the couch in the front living room, the one with the prettiest furniture, the fireplace and ornaments collected over a lifetime. I slept on the couch where I sat with my grandma 10 years earlier explaining the Baha'i Faith. It was the only time I remember having her full attention. My legs stuck straight out over the edge of the cushion, grandma and I angled toward each other in deep conversation. I patiently explained progressive revelation over and over. She wanted to understand but only asked the same questions over in over in the most earnest tones.
I remember that in normal life my grandma was always busy cooking and cleaning, usually afraid, often uncomfortable, so to have her sitting there with me, just us on that big couch, together in the middle, her listening to me respectfully, having a regular kind of conversation was Gold. Tears spring to my eyes as I write this, as I recall us sitting there, side by side. You'd have to have known grandma Katz to know how wonderful this was. This was the couch I slept on, the one I woke on a bit before 8am December 19th when something unseen drew me up out of bed to the doorway of her room. My mom woke at the same time and we met there, looking at Molly Katz, unexplainably aware that we were witnessing her last breaths, both aware that this was a time for her to be alone, like an invisible shield kept us respectfully on the other side of the open doorway.
Right now Carlos Nakai Earth Spirit is playing on Pandora. This is the one I listened to in the delivery room the miracle morning Devyn was born. Now I listen to it as I re-experience the moment my much loved grandma was born into the Abha Kingdom. Oh God, I didn't know I had any sadness left for her parting, anything I'd miss. But then I saw us in the pretty living room, grandma with her only grand daughter, talking the way I wish we could have done more often while she was alive in body.
I have talked with her many times since that December morning we said good bye. She has hugged me and comforted me through countless painful times in my young adult life from her new home. Sometimes she jokes around and cracks me up. I'm willing to accept this may be wishful thinking but I believe it is more real than the floor I stand on when I wake each day.
We were newlyweds. I was in our 2nd apartment, down the hall from our first apartment (that we left after only a couple weeks when the prettier bigger place opened up) in a small economically depressed down town between two cornfields, on the same street as 5 bars that let out screaming drunks at 1am, all geared up to have a good fight under my window...at 1am, when I'd wake from horrid nightmares to their vicious slurring anger at volumes passing sirens reach. High ceilings and radiator heat don't have enough appeal to stick around that nonsense for long.
But...in the two months we did live there, while David was at work one afternoon, I tried to cook cat fish.
Pan on the burner, fish in the pan, heat beneath, a bit of oil, all set. Domestic in the kitchen I was not at all, or even properly knowledgeable.
Here's how it went. The pan started smoking and in a flash flames had engulfed the fish and spread through out the pan. I did not know about grease fires. I did not know to cover it instead of douse it. I was a DORK! I doused it. The flames grew. I panicked, rushed the pan to the bathtub where it would have more room to be a fire while I continued to panic. In the tub, the flames licked up higher. What happened next was a blur, but a little voice deep inside, the one that heard Mr. Fireman when he came to my elementary school 15 years earlier, suggested that covering the pan was my only hope. I don't know what I covered it with. I only know the fire went out, my heart was pounding fast and I was in a cold sweat.
I felt like an idiot, sure I would not be using stainless steel frying pans for a long time if I ever would again. This moment is so embarrassing I have only told a few people, maybe only David. Now I'm telling you.
Later, when we moved to a little bit larger town in the corn fields I asked a friend, an older woman we liked to visit, how to cook fish. She didn't even know how to answer my question, the answer was so obvious. Pan, heat, oil or water, wait til it's done all the way through, put on plate. Yeah, now I know and cook fish all the time. Regardless, I didn't use a stainless steel pan for another 9 years.
Lessons? Too many to count.
You know what else I remember from that afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day and I liked how the light settled on everything in the living room, which contrasted with the dark scary bathroom scene. Ugh.
Allison and I used to walk through clothing aisles for fun. We'd search for the ugliest article, hold it up for the other to see across the way, make a sound like only a 13 year old can and laugh like crazy. Really it was a sport for us, at least once a week for many months. I thought not once about who we might be annoying or not impressing. We certainly were not impressed and everybody should know right? Gblaahch!
We rode our bikes between our homes, through the middle of Evanston, mostly down Wesley. Lots of yellow houses on that route. We cleaned her house once a week because she had chores to do but we wanted to be together. I avoided her cat. Beautiful but unfriendly. We sometimes spent an afternoon in her parent's bedroom den where the typewriter sat and wrote stories and poems. We danced all over the living room, we cried (a lot) at all the trouble life was becoming as we got older, we sang loud to Duran Duran and Simon and Garfunkel as it played on the turntable that sat in the corner of the dining room I don't remember ever seeing anyone eat in since there was a more convenient dining table in the kitchen.
We watched Alex, The Life of a Child more than once and cried every time, especially in the last scene when Alex raises up, radiant, looking into a beyond her parents must wait for to be with her again. Fybromialga was real and now we knew what it was. I can't even write that with out starting to cry.
We played badminton in her yard most warm afternoons, our only objective to see how long we could keep the birdie in the air. When I looked toward the house from my side of the net I saw a gallon of tea basking in the sun on a yard table. I always wanted some but we were never allowed. That tea never made it to the fridge, or my mouth as far as I can remember.
We often walked to the beach, walked aimlessly around downtown Evanston, waked because we had to move. One summer she helped me watch a couple brothers who were 10 and 12. By then we were 14 and 15, not mature but making an attempt.
Time went by.
I went to college for a semester and discovered Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones. I was 21. Most of what I can remember from then on is sitting across from each other at a small cafe table, cigarettes burning in the ashtray, 2 cups of coffee in white ceramic mugs, our heads bowed over spirals, each writing rapidly, aiming for first thoughts for 10 minutes, no editing. When time was up we'd raise our heads and look at each other, eyes dazed, bodies resettling into the moment, breathe deep and smile. Then we'd each read aloud what we'd written. Her pieces were these intense journeys into the heart. Her imagery was rich, a journey into magic in the form of a land we both wanted to go to where colors speak and music has gentle caressing hands. I don't know what I wrote. I have all or most of it in a box in my bedroom. We'd immediately choose another first line or topic then bow again to the rush of creativity.
I wrote with many friends over the years in this way. I've been there when people who never thought they could write looked up after reading what they'd written (or listened as I read aloud with their permission since they felt embarrassed) either with a full smile or holding in a smile of pride, delighted at their work, aware for the first time that they could write, really write!
But it was the hours with Allison that are the foundation. At one point we lived in the same building, sharing morning coffee with our legs stretched out before us, a crate for an end table, keeping a close on eye on her most recent cat Cassidy who was aggressively playful and more than a little scary. I have memories and pictures of Cassidy flying theough the air, all 4 legs stretched out ready to land claws emerged onto her prey which was sometims a human body part. We'd talk shop in the evening after our shifts of waiting on the public, helping them eat. Eventually I moved away into the cornfields and she moved away to another state.
Time passes but we remain aware of childhood through the harder tests/gifts of becoming an adult, a spouce, a parent, as well as the inevitable challenges of an expectation of maturity and what that looks like outwardly.
A few months back I saw a friends teenage daughter and her friend at Target. They didn't see me. One of them held out a fascinating shirt from the round rack for the other to appreciate, crinkled her nose, made a unique noise as only a teenager can and they burst out laughing.
At first I thought about immaturity, ready to judge, wondering how long until they'd grow out of such inconsiderate behavior.
Then I thought about friendship.
From the day after I turned 17 I waited tables, up until Devyn joined our family. I tried a few other things, but always went back to the fun of visiting a few minutes here and there with regulars, cheap meals, decent money and exercise, serving people plates of food, bowls of soup and whatever they chose to drink.
Among the few other things I did was door to door sales from business to business. Believe it or not, I made enough money this way, but the schedule and morning office pep talks finally wore me out. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week in 5 days. And the morning pep talks seemed to me about disrespecting the customer sweetly to make a sale. Not that they asked us to go against anyone's wishes, just an attitude I sensed.
I enjoyed the job when I was out there, walking around, visiting with people. I had high sales for our office. After a month or two I could do a days work in half the day, so I spent much time visiting with customers, sharing life stories or hanging out with my mom or dad by going to their towns to sell. At the time my dad lived 3 hours in one direction and my mom lived 2 1/2 hours another way. One time my mom came with to see exactly what I did. I enjoyed having her with me.
What exactly I did was carry a big black duffel bag full of items, like calculators, games, planners etc. We were able to sell them much less than the stores because we were the stores...a pretty cheap work force at 100% commission. I wasn't too proud to be seen at my work, but none too sure of it's value either. Basically I'd walk into a business, look the nearest worker in the eye, tell them I had stuff to sell at a good price in my bag, and ask if I could show the employees. A surprising number of places allowed me in. I later found out this was because I didn't have a pitch, just a "Hi there."
One of my favorite aspects of that time were the sunsets I witnessed over corn fields. That was always a moment I was completely detached from my life situation, from my uncertainty about the future. Another favorite was the long drives that offereded meditative consideration of all that had come before in my life and all that I hoped to do, have, be and give.
Over the final weeks with that job I spent most days either at my moms or dads place, letting them offer what guidance they could to their obviously floundering offspring. A small amount of each day during that time was spent "in the field", but I don't remember my sales dropping, just my will to walk into another business.
In order to work so many hours I had to wake before the sun, shower, dress and feed my cats in the dark. I drove before the sun, south to the office. On the way I often stopped at a Mobil station for cigarettes and to fill my tank. Because I smoked, I cracked the window several times a day. After a while, it got off track just a bit, so I was in the habit of quickly and gently adjusting it as I rolled it up completely.
One morning, when the car door was open (fortunately), I did the usual adjust as I rolled it up and BOOM! the window blew out onto the cement lot, hundreds of little safety shaped pieces of auto glass. Could moving the window 1/2 an inch cause such a freaky display?!? I had no idea. The sun was still behind a curve of earth. I was awed, dumbfounded. I don't even remember what I did between the window shattering and arriving at work with an amazing but true tale.
Someone helped me duct tape plastic bags to the frame, but it was March, cold and wet, so this was of little help against the elements. Over the following days, maybe even two weeks, I went to my dads mostly. I was truly at a loss. I would sit in his living room, limp in the soft chair, aware that tears would be appropriate, even desirable, but I was numb. He offered comfort, empathy, food and coffee. The worst were days of cold wind and rain, the plastic flapping wildly with every passing truck, letting in a burst of insulting cold air.
One afternoon, in a small town between my place and dads I found an auto glass shop. I found it on my own. I spent the good portion of a day there walking around town, chatting with the staff, watching the process by which a window is installed in a car door. And then I paid for it in cash. For me then this was a HUGE triumph, accepting responsibility hen I wanted to give up, paying for a solution with my own money. I was no longer defeated but empowered. I felt some of my doubt about my ability to be a grown up slip away, replaced by an inner light that matched the brilliant, clean afternoon sun as I drove away from that little shop onto the highway, able to look clearly out the window on my left for the first time in seemingly ever!
In November 1998 I had two pieces published in a small book put out by a writers group I was a part of. One has the same name as this post. Since joining OS exactly a week ago, I have been thinking in possible posts, leaving myself email messages with ideas. Today I knew it was time to meditate again on who I am in the same manner I did 12 years ago. I have just spent the last hour doing this. What I'm posting here is first the piece I wrote in 98, followed by the one I wrote this evening. Therefore it is very long but hopefully worth a few minutes time.
1998
"My name is Heidi Beth. My favorite color is purple and I like green too. I like to sing 'cause it stirs my soul and it's fun. I like to draw flowers and gentle designs with the thin felt tip pens my dad gave me four years ago. My hair is brown and curly. My eyes are green and I'm pretty short. This was all given to me. But I like to draw with colors and I try to be kind.
I learned how to waitress the day after I turned seventeen and I still do it. I wrote a story about a monster named “Hugo” when I was six. That's “Huge O” I yelled at my dad when he read it wrong. I don't know what it's like to have brothers and sisters even though my parents wanted this for all of us. I'd sometimes curl up in my bedroom closet, try hard to figure out the beige telephone, and fall asleep mid-investigation, sometimes lonely, sometimes tired.
I like to climb trees, to get way up in the branches and look at the patterns in wood, watch the sky through the leaves and forget about the ground. Birds didn't come to the trees when I was up in them. I won't watch scary movies and I cry in all human directions. I like the soft sound of a pick pulling single strings of an acoustic guitar.
When I was little I thought there'd be these lines I'd cross when I belonged, grew up, succeeded...and now I see life as a dance, round and round to this beautiful music. I have to be quiet to hear it, and to feel the swan like motion. I'm hard on myself when I mess up, and I spend too much energy censoring myself according to what I think other people think of me. Always I look back and see that I only knew the skin of reality, even in my own motivations. I keep trying to learn and get more grown up. I like to take naps in the afternoon in winter. What's your name?"
2010
My name is Heidi Beth. Every day I struggle to get out of bed. I love my life but sometimes it is painfully rich. A friend gave me an affirmation to help with this. "I pray for the willingness to accept the prosperity in my life." When I say it, I relax. I am shy and quiet but not according to anyone who spends a few hours with me. I found my voice 12 years ago because I have always been so comforted by people who reached out to me, the quiet girl. I wanted to do the same. I am a mother and a wife, happy with both roles, aware of my shortcomings in being either, showing up regardless because I believe in commitment.
I carried both boys like basket balls, deceiving and surprising those who saw me form the back first. This was true all the way to delivery. I didn't enjoy being pregnant. I didn't enjoy delivery.
I enjoyed meeting my first child, holding him before anoyone else, helping him nurse before he was weighed, before I knew if I was nursing a son or daughter. I even enjoyed the warm stream of should have been expected newborn pee streaming down my shrunken middle because it made us all laugh through our joyful tears. I enjoyed my fascinatingly small childs wide open eyes, taking in his new home, our world. Already he was busy!
I was quietly amazed upon meeting our second son, also in my arms before anywhere else, born 3 years later, just he and I and 3 midwives in a white painted hospital room at the top of a mountain. He was careful from minute one, obviously deeply thoughtful, investigating the nursing process the way one tastes wine, deliberately checking the different aspects of the product presented. Then he fell asleep in my arms for an hour. Blessed sunrise!
I am a good friend now, having learned to be considerate for real. I love when my house is full of people who mostly don't know each other then do two hours later because we've been deeply engaged in a discussion of life, the universe and everything, laughing and nearly crying. I especially like when grown ups drum together. I like the lost and found look in the eyes of that one person who is transported for the first time by the heartbeat beneath their fingers. When I draw designs now, my son gets his spiral and pens, sits close by keeping an eye on my work. He creates worlds based on my patterns but completely his own. I love to listen to my children's laughter. I love listening to your children's laughter too.
I have begun to find my voice again, and an element of life separate from mother and dear though never far away from them. When I write now, often the universe hands me a particular moment in time, especially when Carlos Nakai plays beside me. I try to ride my bike a little every day, even 10 minutes will hand me back my heart, opened again having been reminded of wonder through wind on my skin, wind that makes a rushing sound as I smoothly cut through space, crows above, the smell of exhaust mixed with fresh mowed grass, groups of slowly sauntering youth navigating fragile friendships, darting squirells and looking eye to eye with others who are biking or walking on my random route. I miss all of this from the drivers seat of our minivan.
I am nearly 40. I wouldn't change a thing.
This is from my yahoo inbox from a daily email to the group. I agree so much I had to share.
"According to the head of psychiatry at Stanford one of the best things that a man can do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she can do for her health is to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.
Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin--a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities.
We share from our souls with our sisters, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.
There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged--not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!
So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good for our health."