After nearly six months, it is a little strange to be trying to find a compelling story, something to lure readers back. On the other hand, I could simply blast from the heart and hope for the best. When I wrote in July I was hoping that I was better, but I was mistaken. I had just a bit more uck to endure in a downward direction before my spinal degeneration decided "Okay. We're done for now. We think we'll stay here for a while." At that point I could begin the process of learning how to live with what I have.
What do I have? Two legs that do not fully function, but which require entirely different nerve paths to get them going. So if I switch signals to the wrong leg, well, I stand in one position looking most confused. Or, sometimes, I move in a circle around my left leg, the one with the most recent problems. I look like a dancing, gallumphing bear ambling in a circle. Fortunately, the ludicrousy of the situation makes me laugh and laughing often releases whatever's blocking the signal from my brain to the leg. I DO laugh, but it is confusing and it is difficult. It is also inordinately painful, this latest jog downward.
It takes time to adjust to intense pain and to learning to walk AGAIN. It would appear that, for the third time in my life, I'm about 11-13 months, learning to walk, to stand up straight unassisted. Running? Not so much. But I will take standing and walking slowly.
My house did not sell, so it's off the market for a few months again. I am still awaiting my disability hearing, but we have a date: December 2nd. I have no income, but I have something better. Friends who are family. LIke a magic pitcher, just as there is nothing left in the account, money appears. Sometimes I earn it from tutoring, but mostly a friend comes through where family says "no." My family. I tutor, however, and I paint. I haven't written because, until the last couple of weeks, the voices that urge me to turn to this blog have been silent.
I have been afraid there is nothing to say that would touch the hearts of anyone. Afraid I was a whiner. Afraid that I am a bore. Blah, blah, blah. Fear is such a bore, you know? I have so many tales of childhood left to tell, of my brother and me, Robin Hood and Maid Marion, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Adventures in a Japanese garden, making statues for black and white posterity. The mountains that never talked back; they listened. Innocence destroyed, while innocence remained untouched. A mother who won and lost her daily battles with demons that had no name, who threw rainbows while hurling wordswords. Pickalily Dinasewer. The girls of the island.
I don't know. I Know there are tales in my head still waiting to leap out and dance, and perhaps it's time to let them invent themselves, here. Where it's safe. Thank you to those who still check. For tonight, it's just about coming back and trying to put some words on virtual paper. I have not tried in so long.
The future is so uncertain, but I think it may be uncertain even when we think otherwise. I think my life has been the living illustration of the value of plan B... of being flexible, of rolling with the changing landscape. I have planned and had the plan changed in a moment. I have been committed to a course of action only to have the path blown up so suddenly there was no time to plan again. I simply reacted to remain breathing. And often that worked out better than the plan. I look at my life and want to do something with it; I think it HAS been more colorful than many. I think there are lessons in the living, as long as I do not preach the lessons, but rather simply tell the tale.
We'll see. This is where I do it. Where I write the past on one blog, and the newest journey on the other--though they intersect.
That's all for now. I am allowed half hour sessions and no more. I Look forward to reading the blogs I left behind. I look forward to continuing to learn to walk, and take in these new lessons as a child. Happy November, my blogging friends.
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Monday, November 1, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Hard to update, but your messages brought me here
As some of you know, I try to blog when I am writing from a position of calm. My most disturbing entries have been about issues I've already moved through and learned from. I have distance. When I blog about current problems, while the support from you all has helped me beyond measure, it isn't what I want to do. My blog, for me, is about the lessons learned AFTER Hell... when time has passed and I've been able to see what I learned, see the angels whose wings carried me out of the fire.
Just this past week, I put out the call to my angels and they came. They came with money, when I was just $500 short of having no money at all, anywhere. They came when I had fallen three times in three weeks and had now battered a knee and my back was swolled to the point of not being able to wear any clothes that had to fasten around my waist.
They came when my millionaire relatives canceled my visit to them once they knew I was not well and in need of help. My aunt is withering from Parkinson's and they live five hours away. My uncle had begged me to come and I told him when the house was on the market and I had had time to recover from getting it ready, I would make plans. He said he would put me up in a hotel for two nights, for the trip there and the trip back. A friend of mine switched her vacation plans so that she'd be available to help with the first 3.5 hour drive to the hotel, and to help me debrief from the visit. They are toxic, but my uncle had, for the first time in my life, called FOUR times because they were worried about me. I knew it would probably be my last chance to see my aunt who, while becoming increasingly selfish and bizarre in the last twenty years, had been a mother to me when mine could not function through my late teens and twenties. I wanted to remind her of all te GOOD times we've had, and not convuse things. Foolishly or not, I wrote in advance to tell my uncle what he'd been asking. He had said he wanted to help. I was down to ONE month's bills and found that the only insurance for which I qualify costs $1500/month! I cannot be without insurance, particularly while I OWN anything!
So I wrote and said that whatever they could do would be welcome, but that I did not want to cloud the visit with this. I wanted to be there for Joy and have us just enjoy one another one more time. I prepared them for the fact that I do not walk well and cannot stand up straight. I didn't want them to be shocked at the difference of the last three years.
Two days before departure, my uncle called and told me they didn't want me to see them. That my aunt did not want to see me this way, but to remember me as I used to be, and that she could not cope with my being in such dire straits. And my uncle said, "Try a reverse mortgage. Ask your son to go over your finances to show you how to manage."
When it was clear that I had exhausted the obvious avenues, he said HE would come at some point perhaps, to show me how to manage my finances. I said, "There are no finances to manage. I have x money to my name. I have a car and a house. That's it. Done. No need to come, Jack. Either you care to help or you don't, and I shall not bother you with asking again."
"Well. We didn't mean to offend you. If you want to hear Joy tell you not to come, she is right here."
I said, "No thank you. I do not care to hear my failing aunt tell me she doesn't want to see ME because I'm not what she remembered. I think you two have hurt me enough."
He said, "Perhaps. Okay." Click.
Folks, I hit bottom. I did not think these two or ANY of my remaining relatives could find new ways to be cruel and horrid to me. I was mistaken.
And I told my REAL family and the angels flew all around me. Even the one I least expected to show up. She came. I reconnected on FACEBOOK with a woman of my parents' generation whom I have missed for years. SHE found me. She had heard from somewhere or other that my life was hard and she just wanted to stay in touch. And these last couple of weeks, when I hit bottom for real? HOW IS IT that so many of YOU chose this time to simply say you care?
How? I don't know. I don't care. I know only that suddenly I am solvent for four months, even with the new insurance. That my doctors are rallying and ASKING my attorney what else they can do to assure that the hearing that is STILL at least three months away is, as my Primary physician says, a SLAM DUNK. For my birthday on the twenty-fifth, friends sent checks... one from her dead mother who thought Delores needed a check. She said to me, "Oh, I know your name is Jeannette, but you look like Delores to me." All my cars are named Delores.
And the friend who changed her plans, who really is NOT close to wealthy, said, "Book a hotel closer to home, where we can do a few things and do NOTHING. A NICE place. We're getting the HELL out of here." And she treated us BOTH to two days of luxury, lolling, lobster, and Key lime pie!
My life is day to day. The pain of the spinal damage is unbelievable. The housing market is horrible and who KNOWS when the place will sell?
***
But right after my birthday I decided I could not wait for my new life to start, just because the house hasn't sold and I don't have disability yet and I have NO idea how on earth I'm going to figure out how to function with this worsening spine of mine. I began three new paintings on a card table in my living room. I can dismantle the mess in twenty minutes, if it is completely in mid-session... ten minutes if I have put things in order for the end of the day. I cannot photograph my work. Several friends have tried and they do not translate well. When I have at least ten, THEN I will pay a professional to tackle it. As one said, "You need to stop giving them away now." True.
But painting allows something different for me. There is a calm, a zone, a place wehre I do not have to reach through the horrible static of pain. Writing is a different art form, from a different place. It has been impossible for me to focus these last months, for more than short bursts. When I paint, I UNFOCUS. It is almost like meditation.
And the fear of the situation I've been in was very, very real. There still is uncertainty, but now there is also a world of hope where I had lost hope. I found it. And my angels found me, as I have written before. I don't know what to call them--I'm not really a Heaven and Hell kind of woman. It's an image. My women. These mighty eagles. Phoenixes, one and all... but when we need help? The wings are full of light, soft, fluttering, but inordinately large and strong.
I have felt such love around me, so much support of people who believe in MY STRENGTH and beauty where I could not believe for myself. And who are offering what I need to be able to get through this time, to help me get to a point where I can rest for a couple of years as I try to find a way to stand and then to fly again.
***
I do not know why so many of you have chosen this last ten days to remind me that you are still there. To remind me that you find my writing something to look forward to. I have not had a time of so much struggle since my Jessie died. I ALWAYS know that there is the possibility of enormous gifts through such times, but while I'm in them, I have trouble writing more than my jotted notes of journals. The lessons are here, and for the first time since early Spring, I find myself believing I'm going to make it again.
I believe I will figure out how to work around and then through this pain. I forget that it takes a long time sometimes to adjust to a big jump for the worse. I forgot it took me over a year to learn to walk the first time around. It took me two years to figure out how to develop a work schedule I could sustain for a few years. then I had to do it again, adjust for a worsening spine. Now? I haven't a clue, but I will.
For now, painting is the place of peace. For today, the chaos has disappeared and I wanted to leap into here and thank you all for hanging in.
It matters to me more than any of you may know. There is nothing virtual in the caring that I feel from my fellow bloggers. Nothing at all.
Later.
Just this past week, I put out the call to my angels and they came. They came with money, when I was just $500 short of having no money at all, anywhere. They came when I had fallen three times in three weeks and had now battered a knee and my back was swolled to the point of not being able to wear any clothes that had to fasten around my waist.
They came when my millionaire relatives canceled my visit to them once they knew I was not well and in need of help. My aunt is withering from Parkinson's and they live five hours away. My uncle had begged me to come and I told him when the house was on the market and I had had time to recover from getting it ready, I would make plans. He said he would put me up in a hotel for two nights, for the trip there and the trip back. A friend of mine switched her vacation plans so that she'd be available to help with the first 3.5 hour drive to the hotel, and to help me debrief from the visit. They are toxic, but my uncle had, for the first time in my life, called FOUR times because they were worried about me. I knew it would probably be my last chance to see my aunt who, while becoming increasingly selfish and bizarre in the last twenty years, had been a mother to me when mine could not function through my late teens and twenties. I wanted to remind her of all te GOOD times we've had, and not convuse things. Foolishly or not, I wrote in advance to tell my uncle what he'd been asking. He had said he wanted to help. I was down to ONE month's bills and found that the only insurance for which I qualify costs $1500/month! I cannot be without insurance, particularly while I OWN anything!
So I wrote and said that whatever they could do would be welcome, but that I did not want to cloud the visit with this. I wanted to be there for Joy and have us just enjoy one another one more time. I prepared them for the fact that I do not walk well and cannot stand up straight. I didn't want them to be shocked at the difference of the last three years.
Two days before departure, my uncle called and told me they didn't want me to see them. That my aunt did not want to see me this way, but to remember me as I used to be, and that she could not cope with my being in such dire straits. And my uncle said, "Try a reverse mortgage. Ask your son to go over your finances to show you how to manage."
When it was clear that I had exhausted the obvious avenues, he said HE would come at some point perhaps, to show me how to manage my finances. I said, "There are no finances to manage. I have x money to my name. I have a car and a house. That's it. Done. No need to come, Jack. Either you care to help or you don't, and I shall not bother you with asking again."
"Well. We didn't mean to offend you. If you want to hear Joy tell you not to come, she is right here."
I said, "No thank you. I do not care to hear my failing aunt tell me she doesn't want to see ME because I'm not what she remembered. I think you two have hurt me enough."
He said, "Perhaps. Okay." Click.
Folks, I hit bottom. I did not think these two or ANY of my remaining relatives could find new ways to be cruel and horrid to me. I was mistaken.
And I told my REAL family and the angels flew all around me. Even the one I least expected to show up. She came. I reconnected on FACEBOOK with a woman of my parents' generation whom I have missed for years. SHE found me. She had heard from somewhere or other that my life was hard and she just wanted to stay in touch. And these last couple of weeks, when I hit bottom for real? HOW IS IT that so many of YOU chose this time to simply say you care?
How? I don't know. I don't care. I know only that suddenly I am solvent for four months, even with the new insurance. That my doctors are rallying and ASKING my attorney what else they can do to assure that the hearing that is STILL at least three months away is, as my Primary physician says, a SLAM DUNK. For my birthday on the twenty-fifth, friends sent checks... one from her dead mother who thought Delores needed a check. She said to me, "Oh, I know your name is Jeannette, but you look like Delores to me." All my cars are named Delores.
And the friend who changed her plans, who really is NOT close to wealthy, said, "Book a hotel closer to home, where we can do a few things and do NOTHING. A NICE place. We're getting the HELL out of here." And she treated us BOTH to two days of luxury, lolling, lobster, and Key lime pie!
My life is day to day. The pain of the spinal damage is unbelievable. The housing market is horrible and who KNOWS when the place will sell?
***
But right after my birthday I decided I could not wait for my new life to start, just because the house hasn't sold and I don't have disability yet and I have NO idea how on earth I'm going to figure out how to function with this worsening spine of mine. I began three new paintings on a card table in my living room. I can dismantle the mess in twenty minutes, if it is completely in mid-session... ten minutes if I have put things in order for the end of the day. I cannot photograph my work. Several friends have tried and they do not translate well. When I have at least ten, THEN I will pay a professional to tackle it. As one said, "You need to stop giving them away now." True.
But painting allows something different for me. There is a calm, a zone, a place wehre I do not have to reach through the horrible static of pain. Writing is a different art form, from a different place. It has been impossible for me to focus these last months, for more than short bursts. When I paint, I UNFOCUS. It is almost like meditation.
And the fear of the situation I've been in was very, very real. There still is uncertainty, but now there is also a world of hope where I had lost hope. I found it. And my angels found me, as I have written before. I don't know what to call them--I'm not really a Heaven and Hell kind of woman. It's an image. My women. These mighty eagles. Phoenixes, one and all... but when we need help? The wings are full of light, soft, fluttering, but inordinately large and strong.
I have felt such love around me, so much support of people who believe in MY STRENGTH and beauty where I could not believe for myself. And who are offering what I need to be able to get through this time, to help me get to a point where I can rest for a couple of years as I try to find a way to stand and then to fly again.
***
I do not know why so many of you have chosen this last ten days to remind me that you are still there. To remind me that you find my writing something to look forward to. I have not had a time of so much struggle since my Jessie died. I ALWAYS know that there is the possibility of enormous gifts through such times, but while I'm in them, I have trouble writing more than my jotted notes of journals. The lessons are here, and for the first time since early Spring, I find myself believing I'm going to make it again.
I believe I will figure out how to work around and then through this pain. I forget that it takes a long time sometimes to adjust to a big jump for the worse. I forgot it took me over a year to learn to walk the first time around. It took me two years to figure out how to develop a work schedule I could sustain for a few years. then I had to do it again, adjust for a worsening spine. Now? I haven't a clue, but I will.
For now, painting is the place of peace. For today, the chaos has disappeared and I wanted to leap into here and thank you all for hanging in.
It matters to me more than any of you may know. There is nothing virtual in the caring that I feel from my fellow bloggers. Nothing at all.
Later.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Not gone, just getting my home on the market + a PS
I JUST got it officially listed on Thursday and am using this week to collapse in a heap, after which I shall return. Thanks for asking. I just had to take care of real world business and there was not one little bit leftover for being creative or introspective. Packed up my studio for now, which REALLY hurt, but perhaps it means I'll turn to the writing in the coming weeks.
I miss blogging and have NO INTENTION of stopping. I am not depressed or anything. Just was knee deep in contractors, painting, glazing and gardening. FEH.
Soon, my friends. But my FIRST efforts will be to catch up on YOUR lives.
PS
TWO SHOWINGS TOMORROW (Friday) YAY. It's not been quite two weeks since the pictures went online, so this is NOT bad for Connecticut at all. Everyone hold a good thought. (I know you who are hanging in with me do.) I have my future apartment chosen--with room for a studio. My son surprised me by showing me where I can easily set up a temperary art station. He didn't like my stopping my inner life while we try to sell the house, so next week I can start painting again, too. I had JUST set it up when I got the calls about showings, so I found out just how easily his idea works. Took five minutes to take it down again. SO I CAN PAINT AGAIN.
I will start writing when I return from tutoring my nephew for his final exams. I get home on Tuesday. A new adventure begins.
I miss blogging and have NO INTENTION of stopping. I am not depressed or anything. Just was knee deep in contractors, painting, glazing and gardening. FEH.
Soon, my friends. But my FIRST efforts will be to catch up on YOUR lives.
PS
TWO SHOWINGS TOMORROW (Friday) YAY. It's not been quite two weeks since the pictures went online, so this is NOT bad for Connecticut at all. Everyone hold a good thought. (I know you who are hanging in with me do.) I have my future apartment chosen--with room for a studio. My son surprised me by showing me where I can easily set up a temperary art station. He didn't like my stopping my inner life while we try to sell the house, so next week I can start painting again, too. I had JUST set it up when I got the calls about showings, so I found out just how easily his idea works. Took five minutes to take it down again. SO I CAN PAINT AGAIN.
I will start writing when I return from tutoring my nephew for his final exams. I get home on Tuesday. A new adventure begins.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
More Lush than Rotting: Huckleberina Finn et al.
Maybe I should have broken this into two entries... it's a novella. Oh, well! I hope you enjoy...
Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.
Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.
I see the endless, island beach days -- white bright and singing throughout my childhood. And yet I see the inside of my father’s closet, smell his cologne. I feel the floor and ceiling nearly meeting at the back, where it narrows, floor reaching up, ceiling bending low. I am small enough to fit in the one safe spot, curled into a ball, silent, waiting.
I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”
I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”
No one can find me here because I’m the smallest; but, like a bull, Jim has been distracted by the nearest moving object, Jack. I stare into the safe and fragrant dark, even now.
But then I blink, and I see the white pine boughs kissing The Lake. The water laughing with sparkles in wind-driven sunlight. I first learned the word “diaphanous” there. Until Mommy told me that word, I had none to describe what I saw. So white-bright, it could blot out the darkness of "regular" life at home. There were no dark corners in my summers; my soul danced bare, shining, and safe.
Who gets to spend summers in Utopia? I did. And it shines as brightly through fifty-eight summers, today.
Even Jimmy lost the darkness, had others to distract him. Or perhaps, even he rediscovered innocence there, from time to time. I know that Jim never went to the Lake; only Jimmy.
***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea somewhere.
I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me. They were really helping, not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.
"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."
Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop. Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.
I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."
We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.
Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."
I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.
My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."
And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.
Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"
She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."
Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.
But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.
Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.
***
***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea somewhere.
I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me. They were really helping, not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.
"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."
Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop. Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.
I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."
We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.
Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."
I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.
My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."
And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.
Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"
She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."
Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.
But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.
Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.
***
Oh, the endless adventures, the magic of islands that turned to dragons and swept me to lands unknown. I watched fairies come to life. The giant Daddy Whales emerged beneath us, vaulting Judy and me into the sky, like baby dolphins. No, none of the rotting of our lives touched us at the Lake. I had Judy, and we all had communal parents, and tumbled about the Island like bear and wolf cubs.
There were family cookouts where all the station-wagoned families pooled food, love and nonsense. Evening games of Michigan Rummy in which my mom cleaned up. She would bid, staring with china doll, wide-open eyes around the table. Mrs. Claus with a dealer's visor and a mind like a computer. She’d stutter, feign innocence. And clean up.
Jacky and I never could understand how everyone could be that dumb about her. She was smarter than anyone there, except maybe her best friend Phi. (Fee) Phi spoke seven languages and was a world-famous anthropologist. She stood fully six feet, an Amazon. Classic features and a Jane Russell body. Hair in a French twist. Every man on the beach just stared, slack mouthed when Phi went for a swim. She and my mother played intellectual leap frog with the Sunday Times crossword, seeing who would complete it in pen first.
The birthplace for myths, if one chose to conceive. Rich. The freedom. That’s the thing. I was absolutely free there. Judy and I would meet by 9:00 and be together until supper time. Sometimes we’d see each other after supper, too. Taking turns running the half mile between our summer homes.
I never had to hide in the dark.
But the mind goes to the darkness anyway. I would dream images of dead mice in traps, feel a shove at the top of the stairs while safely tucked in bed, feel the blood on my legs, but will them away with the images of sun on water. The Lake taught me the art of forgetting. We learn to put it away, sometimes for years, these particular punctuation marks of pain, of terror too ugly to fix our gaze, too harsh for little hearts meant for fairyland and mythical battles where good always wins. My world had Medusa in the corners, and I learned the art of blindness. I learned the beauty of the sidelong glance, the ability to look away just before the monster appeared. Look away to the mountain that always steadied my gaze.
I ran to my spot by the bridge every morning before breakfast, starting when I was just seven, after first grade. I could walk down from the road, and sit on a rock, just hidden from view, and I would look off toward the Sandwich Mountains. They never changed; they never mocked my fears, nor laughed at my dreams of greatness. My mountain never left me alone. I would watch until the sun was high enough to make the fairies come, then I knew I had to go home.
Usually that was about 7:30. And by my third or fourth day there, the monsters did not bother even trying to come back. And summer began for real. I found the time and the room and the freedom to lock my closets and stuff the drawers full of whatever I could not bear. It was very hard work, but I was tenacious. I filled my days with adventures with my pirate/Merry Band/vagabond friends.
Maleness is not a prerequisite for a Mark Twain sort of summer.
It was the Season of Exile. The Reign of Terror of the Gang of Four: Judy, Marge, Geri and I were kicked out of, well, everywhere, pretty much. Pickle, Lily, Dinah, and... yes... I was Sewer. Those of you who know my last name, know it's a play on that. Judy and I felt we were kind of done in on that part, but, since we WERE the ring leaders, perhaps it was only fair.
Deep Sea Diving: Poisoning Our Parents
Pickle had lately discovered stuffed clams and had the idea that we could stuff mussels. We had also been mocking the t.v. show "Treasure Hunt" in which Lloyd Bridges deep sea dived every week and wrestled giant octopii, squids, terrorists, thieves, and sharks... and seemed to almost always narrowly escape a life-threatening case of something called "the bends." The best we could figure when we were littler was that they called it that because everyone was always bent over in agony and then they died. And it involved coming up for air too fast; you couldn't beat your air bubbles.
Lily required some assurance from our parents that diving off the raft for fresh water clams would not put us in mortal danger. Pickle and I were best at the diving anyway, having been tried by our fathers in the art of holding our breath and letting it out slowly.
We probably collected fifty. In the process, we found a couple of sunken ships and probably a billion dollars worth of doubloons. All in a day's work. I had just turned twelve, and Judy was due to turn. I was not keen on being a teenager ever, and was terrified of seventh grade, a new school and the great unknown. Fortunately, we four felt pretty much the same, except for Geri (Dinah). She was born boy-crazy, but she liked our games, too. That summer, especially.
Once we had the mussels, though, we realized that they needed cleaning, grinding and preparation. Pickle's Aunt Phi was a gourmet cook, so Pickle lifted one of her cookbooks for us to use, and absconded with the necessary spices. This was good, since we were headed for our kitchen. Grandma's cottage was the smallest place, but had the biggest kitchen. Her spices included salt, pepper, and... salt and pepper. Dad never met a seasoning he was comfortable with and Grandpa'd been no different.
We headed through the garage, slamming into the house with our six buckets of mussels and Grandma met us at the side door, barracading us from setting FOOT in the house until we'd cleaned the nasty things in the lake. That took us three hours. She was NOT easily satisfied; Dinah and Lily left before the job was done, with orders for us to call when the cooking began. Pickle and Sewer? My grandmother was not about to let us off.
Then we had to boil and open and gut and season and cook… we finished our works of art at 8 that night. Phi and Pickle's and Dinah's mothers were brave enough to try one and were violently ill for hours. On top of that, my grandmother’s kitchen was dripping in mussel juice. We spent the next morning scrubbing and were informed that her kitchen was off-limits, period. For life.
Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening. We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually. There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.
That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.
Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.
We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl." Unfortunately, we then decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood." When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"
"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"
Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"
It was my dad. He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!
Betty Crocker, Redux...
Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening. We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually. There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.
That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.
Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.
We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl." Unfortunately, we then decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood." When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"
"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"
Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"
It was my dad. He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!
Betty Crocker, Redux...
So we moved on to blueberry muffins. We snuck up to old Mr. D’s hill at about 6:00 a.m. about four days later, and began picking blueberries. I mean, his property must have gone up a quarter mile to the house, and it was nothing but blueberries. We picked really fast, and I don't think we laughed more than about four or five times at the retelling of my father's puns. Mr. D. came barreling out at about 8 yelling at us and we took off. He called us each by our name and told us that he would loose the dogs on us if we ever even walked BY his house again. Right.
I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.
Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.
Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi. We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too. We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...
I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.
Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.
Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi. We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too. We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...
Furthermore, we didn’t ask. We took. We were invincible.
We marched down the road with our haul, chanting, "Pickle. Lily. DinaaaahhhhSEWER!"
Lily's Mom had gone out with the three littlest kids to the library and store. She'd be gone forever. The older ones were working. And really, who cared about the two boys who were left? They went off on their bikes with candy bar bribes in their pockets. We would surprise everyone and all our sins would be forgiven.
Muffins. We wanted them to be generous sized, so we filled the cups accordingly. We couldn’t find liners, so we greased the cups. Have you ever greased twelve dozen muffin cups? The last fifty or so don’t get as much. When we carved out the centers of the muffins, about eighty were really very nearly presentable. It took us two and a half hours to clean the tins, though. And there was a matter of batter drippings between stove and counter. Lily's dad was not pleased... And it turns out we used up the milk and, Jude's mom had planned on using the eggs for an angel food cake and...
After all of us were over our three-day grounding for taking stuff, we decided we’d had enough of domesticity.
We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH.
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH. (Adventure on the High Seas)
It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.
Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour? Pickle and I brought the food this time. Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.) Life was good.
A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.
It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island. It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair) But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."
We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH.
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH. (Adventure on the High Seas)
It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.
Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour? Pickle and I brought the food this time. Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.) Life was good.
A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.
It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island. It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair) But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."
When we got to the cove, the romance began to die. There was nowhere to land and the island seemed a mass of dense undergrowth and granite. Huckleberry and blueberry bushes, sumac. Rocks. We rowed halfway around the island and found a small, bug infested beach.
“What are we, sissies?” Pickle growled.
Inside, I said, 'Uh, yeah. I hate bugs.'
But I got out. Pickle and Lily forged ahead and stepped into a ground wasps nest. They each got stung only about twice, but that was enough for some pretty mean pain, so we ran for the boat. The wasps were slow, thank God. We were not. Pickle and Lily then looped their legs over the boat to soak their bitten ankles and calves as we rowed away. I spotted another cove and this one seemed better. There was a breeze, so there weren’t the bugs, and there were huge flat rocks to stand on. The boat kathunked against one, but it was metal. No cause for alarm. We pulled the boat onto one of the rocks by the shore and waded in. We made mudpacks for the stings and we had our lunch, splashed around, sang loud obnoxious songs…
It was curiously dark before we’d finished the pretzels or the cookies.
“Damn! Thunderstorm!” Jude looked at me. Suddenly, we were just ourselves again.
We did not care to remember her father’s words or my grandfather’s. The words you live by in the summer at The Lake among the mountains. When the lake is flat until eight, there will be trouble in the afternoon. There were whitecaps and the water was molten lead.
We threw the food in the bottom of the boat, in a tangle with our sneakers and shoved off. About 100 strokes out from the island we felt the water at our feet. There was a leak.
“You bail, I’ll row!” Judy yelled.
“No, Jude, move over and we’ll both row while they bail,” I said. We rowed and rowed, getting nowhere of significance.
Then Geri screamed. “OH MY GOD! WORMS!”
All over the bottom of the boat, were puffy, horrible white worms wriggling. About three inches long. Everywhere. It was a total infestation. All we could think was somehow or other, they'd got on while we were beached. It was disgusting, but there was nothing for it.
“Shut up and keep bailing!”
The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.
We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.
Then we saw it. A police cruiser. To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.
The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.
We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.
Then we saw it. A police cruiser. To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.
Summarily ordered on board, the two officers could do nothing but shake their heads in disgust. When Judy said her name, they knew where she lived and we were quickly deposited on Judy’s dock, leaky boat in tow.
Ted was there, waiting for his daughter, for us all, his 6’4” enormous frame clearly visible from a quarter of a mile away. I snuck a look at the police and they were smiling, rather sinisterly, I thought.
One said, "We've come to deposit your girls here. We couldn't find an arrestable offense called terminal stupidity, so here you go, Ted. Good luck with them." (Ted knew everyone. I mean everyone. And anyone he didn't know, Mommy knew. We were toast.)
We tried to explain, which was pathetic, really. All that came out was, “Adventure … we were explorers … we know how to swim … boat leaked and stung by wasps and didn’t see the storm worms everywhere.”
“Worms?” Ted asked. It was the only comment he felt warranted attention. The rest was meaningless static. “What do you mean worms everywhere?”
Eager to distract him from the inevitable lecture and further grounding, we led him to the boat. He looked at the boat, then back to us, then back to the boat. He bent over and picked something up, then turned around.
“Worms,” he said, as he held up a now empty box of pretzel sticks.
***
We pretty much went back to playing tennis and swimming to the raft after that for summer excitement. After another week's grounding. I mean, we could play on the beach for an hour in the morning, then we had to go to our own homes, and got sprung maybe another hour in the afternoon. I got really good at Canasta and read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. This was when I decided to grow up to be a southern writer, and my mom informed me that this was not likely to happen, considering I was a Yankee.
Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.
I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.
***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was. That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days. It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.
I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy. He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was. I only knew my own.
Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.
I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.
***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was. That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days. It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.
I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy. He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was. I only knew my own.
And at the Lake, I broke free and flew.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Setting the Stage for the Reign of Terror of the Terrible Tweens: Pickle-lily Dinah-Sewer
I just found this poem, and it just sort of seemed to fit with the last entry.
I first saw what we always called "One House Island" on Squam Lake (Golden Pond), back when I was about ten and Jude's family was taking us to ride the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington. We pulled off the road to simply look. There was room barely to walk the rocks around the island, and the dock must have been on the far side. There was simply a long tree that snaked out over the water to the left, and a giant, many-gabled house among the trees. Years later, I wrote this poem. But as child, I would fall asleep, and dream stories of being the Good Witch of New Hampshire, guarding children in all the lakes, flying off on adventures far greater than the Pan, more sleepsending than any sandman...
Dream Witch of Holderness
In the mist, a castle-cottage
Rising silent from the water
Like the Loch Ness Monster --
You startle.
Un-turreted, but towering;
Alone, on small island nestled,
Where no safe harbor welcomes --
Only rocks.
Does your dock draw up at night?
Does your long-necked, pine-crowned bough
(So still and silent serpent
Over now day-misted lake)
Snake further still in the dark?
Turning gently to its queen,
"Dear Sorceress within,"
Does it whispering to you ask
"Where do we wander tonight?"
Then silent as owl's flight,
Does my Innisfree arise,
Unfurling gold-scaled dragon wings,
And vanish?
Do you color these worlds I dream?
***
We did not need summer camp, the terrible four. We had lakes and islands. Freedom. We had a seventeenth century graveyard and the remains of the Governor's Summer Castle from the 17th and 18th centuries. We had imaginations and parents who thought it was perfectly understandable that islands take flight and fairies were born on water and there might just be a black panther somwhere among the ruins. And perhaps the cast iron train on the mantle ran when no one watched, and we knew Grandpa's soldiers had bowling matches on the weekends we were away.
But there was one summer when we terrorized Heaven, were grounded for life and banned from every kitchen we knew. There was the summer of the worms, deep sea diving, poisoning our parents, and barely missing the Witch Rocks for our over-enthusiastic rendition of "Oh. Sweet Pea." People had DIED on the Witches and everyone knew that. We were banned from all power boats, but there was always a rowboat.
Yes, there was that summer when we were out of the summer before our teens with a police escort, for sheer stupidity...
But that's for another day.
I first saw what we always called "One House Island" on Squam Lake (Golden Pond), back when I was about ten and Jude's family was taking us to ride the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington. We pulled off the road to simply look. There was room barely to walk the rocks around the island, and the dock must have been on the far side. There was simply a long tree that snaked out over the water to the left, and a giant, many-gabled house among the trees. Years later, I wrote this poem. But as child, I would fall asleep, and dream stories of being the Good Witch of New Hampshire, guarding children in all the lakes, flying off on adventures far greater than the Pan, more sleepsending than any sandman...
Dream Witch of Holderness
In the mist, a castle-cottage
Rising silent from the water
Like the Loch Ness Monster --
You startle.
Un-turreted, but towering;
Alone, on small island nestled,
Where no safe harbor welcomes --
Only rocks.
Does your dock draw up at night?
Does your long-necked, pine-crowned bough
(So still and silent serpent
Over now day-misted lake)
Snake further still in the dark?
Turning gently to its queen,
"Dear Sorceress within,"
Does it whispering to you ask
"Where do we wander tonight?"
Then silent as owl's flight,
Does my Innisfree arise,
Unfurling gold-scaled dragon wings,
And vanish?
Do you color these worlds I dream?
***
We did not need summer camp, the terrible four. We had lakes and islands. Freedom. We had a seventeenth century graveyard and the remains of the Governor's Summer Castle from the 17th and 18th centuries. We had imaginations and parents who thought it was perfectly understandable that islands take flight and fairies were born on water and there might just be a black panther somwhere among the ruins. And perhaps the cast iron train on the mantle ran when no one watched, and we knew Grandpa's soldiers had bowling matches on the weekends we were away.
But there was one summer when we terrorized Heaven, were grounded for life and banned from every kitchen we knew. There was the summer of the worms, deep sea diving, poisoning our parents, and barely missing the Witch Rocks for our over-enthusiastic rendition of "Oh. Sweet Pea." People had DIED on the Witches and everyone knew that. We were banned from all power boats, but there was always a rowboat.
Yes, there was that summer when we were out of the summer before our teens with a police escort, for sheer stupidity...
But that's for another day.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Birthing Fairies, Rebirthing Me: The Lake Again
Draft One...
Coming Home to Me
I looked to the mountain and its silence filled my heart with a longing that had no sound,
No words,
No music,
No form.
A longing past the loneliness of a woman in this body alone,
without a lover to venture near, let alone enter.
A longing past a womb, still fertile yet unseeded for forty-plus years.
A longing past opportunities gone or missed.
A longing past mistakes or past, or wounds that never seem to heal.
I looked to the mountain for answers, but heard a question unformed in the wind.
I lowered into water, unburdened by bulk, too little strength or weakened spine.
I played and I jumped and I glided,
Soothed by caresses of a thousand tinkerbells born in a morning sun so bright,
I could not witness their birth wide-eyed.
I squinted,
I laughed,
I sang.
I helicoptered in waves created by Star Wars single-manned vehicles
from the Dark Side.
I dolphin-dived through white caps and swells,
oblivious to belying lumps of age.
I was sleek.
I was a child and abandoned the longings and galloping night-rider fears of aging alone.
I emerged, sat still,
shivering on the dock, studying my blue-tinged nails.
I smiled at the grown up who played too long for the joy of beating gravity’s pull.
I fooled myself, and God laughed Its answers to my joy.
In the song of the mourning dove, the splash of a mink.
In the rustle of squirrels, and the dart of the swallows, scooping the dragonflies before they flew.
I heard God whispering the answers I heard long ago,
“Hush.
You are enough as yourself.
Enough, if less than all.
A symphony in yourself.
Hush.
Rest.
Believe.”
And I cried,
Then sang
My Lullabye to Jessica, and
My last love song to Jack.
I sang for the loves I will never have and the only love who felt true,
To the mountain,
To the loon.
I sang my own song of God,
To my sister, to my mother, to my father.
To the loves I had known, to the friends I still knew,
well-weathered or new.
I sang,
for the miracle of answers
Without words,Without form,
But with their clear, soaring tune.
Later, I sat warmed,
Looked again to the mountain; it sighed.
I smiled back, and came home at last.
There, by the mountain, by my bridge, by a lake,
My hand before me, holding a mallard feather in my lap.
I smiled down at my hand, fifty-five years later, there.
Just so.
Pinky curled in ecstasy of a feather.
Joy flooding every crack in my soul,
I came home to myself at last.
And my mountain smiled back at me.
Birthing Fairies
I remember the day I discovered that fairies are, in fact, born on sunny calm mornings on lakes. I had spent the night at Judy's and awoke with the sun, as was my custom. Jude's family seldom arose before 8:00, so I knew I had to be quiet.
I slipped onto the porch and I saw the golden sparkles on the Lake. I know that it had to be just before or just after kindergarten, because of where the horizontal beams were on the screened in porch. I was little and I had to tiptoe to get a good view over, or scrunch down to look through the bottom screen. I also was little because we were not allowed on docks without parents unless we had on our life preservers. I used a pole to let one loose off its hook. I remember, because the pole was very, very long and it was hard for a little girl to manipulate.
I sat silent on the dock, watching the sparkles get bigger and bigger, then disappear entirely after a blinding glitter as they reached the shadow of the shore. I had lately seen Peter Pan, and had a sudden revelation, "Tinker bell!"
And in my brain I thought that this is where all of them were born, on mornings like these, and I pictured them twinkling all over the world, visible only in the twilight or reflected on the water by the sun. I wondered what would happen if the sun never shone and no more fairies were born, but that thought would stay only a second, because there was the sun and there were thousands of them born, out there in a golden pool of liquid light, scattering and skimming the surface to the shores.
I ran right into Ted and Janet's room. I'm not sure where I left the life jacket. I'm sure they were thrilled. I ran in and said I had to run home to Mommy and tell her I'd seen the fairies born. To their credit, they let me go without a lecture. I can see Ted shaking his head at me, smiling, and his enormous hand reaching out and stroking my hair.
And I ran home to my mother to tell her. It was a different time, a time when small children could run home, unaccompanied, without fear of strangers. I forgot to shut the screen door as I ran into the house, but I loved the sound of spring and slam. Perhaps the boys in the bunkroom next to the door had a different thought. I heard a groan, but was too focused on my news.
Mom was having tea with Daddy. I was grilled first, of course. I believe the little hand was on the seven, over the stove... "So, dear, you went into Jan and Ted's room to tell them you were coming home?"
"Yes, because they'd worry and we're supposed to tell the grown ups where we are."
They didn't tell me I'd done anything wrong, as soon as they realized I'd put on a life jacket. I had followed all the rules. No one had told me I couldn't walk home alone. Up there, it was a non-issue. But I jumped up and down, alternating feet, until finally Mom asked, "Do you need to go to the bathroom or is there something important you need to say?"
"Mommy, FAIRIES ARE BORN ON THE LAKE! You have to SEE."
They didn't laugh at me. Dad inquired how I knew this to be so, and I explained about how the sparkles got bigger by the shore and we had just SEEN Tinkerbell on TV, so how could it be anything but fairies?
"Of course," he said, and returned to the paper, holding it very high so that I could not see his face. Mommy simply looked at me with that strange stare she always had for me when I had discovered something important.
"Let me finish here, dear, then we'll go explore your theory."
When she finished her cup of tea, She stood slowly, cleared the dishes and put them in the sink, and simply turned to me.
"Go, quickly, now. Into the Plymouth."
"Go, quickly, now. Into the Plymouth."
Mom took me to the beach in the car! The little hand still wasn't near the eight. We stood by the rocks and the gnarled beeches, and the huge white pine that swept the water. We watched the sun to our right, silently.
Then my mother turned to me and said, "Well, you're absolutely right. I never saw it before. Trust you to figure it all out for me. I knew all about elves, but, Jetty, this is remarkable."
And we stood there, a small girl leaning against her mother’s still-aproned hip, until the sun was too high and the lake broke up into blue.
***
Years later, for fifty plus more years, I go to Judy's dock. I go to the Bridge. I talk to the mountains. And the fairies are still born.
Coming Home to Me
I looked to the mountain and its silence filled my heart with a longing that had no sound,
No words,
No music,
No form.
A longing past the loneliness of a woman in this body alone,
without a lover to venture near, let alone enter.
A longing past a womb, still fertile yet unseeded for forty-plus years.
A longing past opportunities gone or missed.
A longing past mistakes or past, or wounds that never seem to heal.
I looked to the mountain for answers, but heard a question unformed in the wind.
I lowered into water, unburdened by bulk, too little strength or weakened spine.
I played and I jumped and I glided,
Soothed by caresses of a thousand tinkerbells born in a morning sun so bright,
I could not witness their birth wide-eyed.
I squinted,
I laughed,
I sang.
I helicoptered in waves created by Star Wars single-manned vehicles
from the Dark Side.
I dolphin-dived through white caps and swells,
oblivious to belying lumps of age.
I was sleek.
I was a child and abandoned the longings and galloping night-rider fears of aging alone.
I emerged, sat still,
shivering on the dock, studying my blue-tinged nails.
I smiled at the grown up who played too long for the joy of beating gravity’s pull.
I fooled myself, and God laughed Its answers to my joy.
In the song of the mourning dove, the splash of a mink.
In the rustle of squirrels, and the dart of the swallows, scooping the dragonflies before they flew.
I heard God whispering the answers I heard long ago,
“Hush.
You are enough as yourself.
Enough, if less than all.
A symphony in yourself.
Hush.
Rest.
Believe.”
And I cried,
Then sang
My Lullabye to Jessica, and
My last love song to Jack.
I sang for the loves I will never have and the only love who felt true,
To the mountain,
To the loon.
I sang my own song of God,
To my sister, to my mother, to my father.
To the loves I had known, to the friends I still knew,
well-weathered or new.
I sang,
for the miracle of answers
Without words,Without form,
But with their clear, soaring tune.
Later, I sat warmed,
Looked again to the mountain; it sighed.
I smiled back, and came home at last.
There, by the mountain, by my bridge, by a lake,
My hand before me, holding a mallard feather in my lap.
I smiled down at my hand, fifty-five years later, there.
Just so.
Pinky curled in ecstasy of a feather.
Joy flooding every crack in my soul,
I came home to myself at last.
And my mountain smiled back at me.
Friday, March 5, 2010
March is Better! Let me Eat Cake
First of all, there was cake involved. Homemade butter recipe cupcakes with mocha butter cream frosting. LOTS of cupcakes.
Yup. Not quite a pluot. But guilt-free when it's shared. I spent a great deal of February WITH PEOPLE, doing my PT four days a week, writing on my own, painting.
I completed two REALLY BAD paintings, except that I learned a whole lot doing them, so I've started a couple that I think I will enjoy.
One of my best friends had to spend three or four nights a week overnight here because of our foul weather. She works in human services and gets out at about 8:30 at night and would face a 45 minute commute. So she has stayed with me and, as many of you know, February is colossally hard for me--so she was a blessing!
So I shared cake with friends and some little kids. And there has been a whole lot of laughter that began, oddly enough, the last week of the month. I wrote a closure letter that I HAD to write for myself. And, oddly enough? It closed the unfinished business for me, whether or not the recipient reads it. It was the writing and the sending that mattered.
I write a lot about my childhood in here. And about loss. I do not write much about the family dysfunction of my early adulthood and perhaps one day I will, perhaps not. I will write about it publicly ONLY when I have turned THAT into a positive in my life. Need some distance for that, but it was what crashed into my head this February. When my relationship ended so abruptly in the Fall, I found myself saying, Of COURSE he left. Who would want a woman with all this baggage, with all these problems.
Only you know what?
I don't lay baggage on people in my relationships--not any more than we all do. We are products of our WHOLE lives and cannot have lived without bringing our histories along. And I never did ask people to take care of me because of my back, because of my lung problems... So I found myself wondering why on earth I was going to this fall back position.
Well. The memories came, and I wrote them all down and I wrote what I needed to put that somewhere to percolate without hurting me. HUGE work. But not public work. I never want this blog to be about venom or hate. EVER. That difficult entry about Jack? There will be another entry about him, about the goodness that was Jack, my protector... the beauty of being with him. Regardless of the inordinate pain of my childhood and the abandonments that came later, I love four out of the five other members of my childhood family. And I've made my peace about brother Jim, to the point that, if he is still alive, I do not wish him bodily harm. I will leave him to God, Whatever God may be. It is enough to let him go. I have been given tremendous gifts from having had my parents, Jack and Jean Ellen. I would not be the best of who I am without those gifts. I want my memoir, or anything I write BECAUSE of that history to be more about what happens after the pain... how do we turn that all into gold.
I have a long way to go there, but I'm hoping to have plenty of time to keep working on it... and I love having a blog to try to write about it.
The tribute will come for Jack, as it did with my sister. For now? As I vacillate between blogs, I will be remembering to stand tall again... to recognize that surviving nine back operations, even ten days in a Striker (sp?) bed without visitors, driving MYSELF to Boston for surgeries when my husband didn't want to take time off, going through six days a week of PT to learn how to walk--these are STRENGTHS, not weaknesses.
I took a break to learn some important lessons and to tend to the business of being able to stand up straight. I can't walk any further than I could a month ago, but I can walk that distance BETTER! My feet point forward and I can lift my legs properly. When I was married, when I had worked hard to be able to point my right foot forward and lift my leg straight from the hip and bend my knee, I was excited and came home from PT to show my husband.
He said, "So you want a medal for this?"
I looked at him and said, "You're damned straight I DO!" And I left the house and went for a drive to cool off.
Better to live alone just now and enjoy my friends. And I showed Martha what I could do and she clapped. And I baked cupcakes. We had veal marsala I COULD STAND LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE, broccoli with parmesan cheese, carrots with a light hone glaze, an entire bottle of wine, and CUPCAKES. We saved the frosting for last.
Hell, that's BETTER than a pluot!! (We had a spinach omelet and fruit for breakfast, though. And laughed some more over coffee this morning.)
I was going to go to the pool this afternoon, but I wanted to do this kind of therapy instead. And start to write on my blog again.
To those of you who have remained my followers through this absence, THANK YOU. When I've been online and read, it's helped. I have my beautiful photograph on the wall where I see it every day and I am enjoying a wonderful book written by a new friend, and have been reading back issues of a magazine I'd never have discovered on my own. And a saying is STILL on my mirror to see every single day.
I am back. I am me. Still have to sell the house. Still trying to apply for disability. Still have absolutely no income. But you know what? It's MARCH.
Spring is coming. The days are longer. And I can point my feet forward in more ways than one. I have missed your blogs and will start catching up on YOUR lives now!
Yup. Not quite a pluot. But guilt-free when it's shared. I spent a great deal of February WITH PEOPLE, doing my PT four days a week, writing on my own, painting.
I completed two REALLY BAD paintings, except that I learned a whole lot doing them, so I've started a couple that I think I will enjoy.
One of my best friends had to spend three or four nights a week overnight here because of our foul weather. She works in human services and gets out at about 8:30 at night and would face a 45 minute commute. So she has stayed with me and, as many of you know, February is colossally hard for me--so she was a blessing!
So I shared cake with friends and some little kids. And there has been a whole lot of laughter that began, oddly enough, the last week of the month. I wrote a closure letter that I HAD to write for myself. And, oddly enough? It closed the unfinished business for me, whether or not the recipient reads it. It was the writing and the sending that mattered.
I write a lot about my childhood in here. And about loss. I do not write much about the family dysfunction of my early adulthood and perhaps one day I will, perhaps not. I will write about it publicly ONLY when I have turned THAT into a positive in my life. Need some distance for that, but it was what crashed into my head this February. When my relationship ended so abruptly in the Fall, I found myself saying, Of COURSE he left. Who would want a woman with all this baggage, with all these problems.
Only you know what?
I don't lay baggage on people in my relationships--not any more than we all do. We are products of our WHOLE lives and cannot have lived without bringing our histories along. And I never did ask people to take care of me because of my back, because of my lung problems... So I found myself wondering why on earth I was going to this fall back position.
Well. The memories came, and I wrote them all down and I wrote what I needed to put that somewhere to percolate without hurting me. HUGE work. But not public work. I never want this blog to be about venom or hate. EVER. That difficult entry about Jack? There will be another entry about him, about the goodness that was Jack, my protector... the beauty of being with him. Regardless of the inordinate pain of my childhood and the abandonments that came later, I love four out of the five other members of my childhood family. And I've made my peace about brother Jim, to the point that, if he is still alive, I do not wish him bodily harm. I will leave him to God, Whatever God may be. It is enough to let him go. I have been given tremendous gifts from having had my parents, Jack and Jean Ellen. I would not be the best of who I am without those gifts. I want my memoir, or anything I write BECAUSE of that history to be more about what happens after the pain... how do we turn that all into gold.
I have a long way to go there, but I'm hoping to have plenty of time to keep working on it... and I love having a blog to try to write about it.
The tribute will come for Jack, as it did with my sister. For now? As I vacillate between blogs, I will be remembering to stand tall again... to recognize that surviving nine back operations, even ten days in a Striker (sp?) bed without visitors, driving MYSELF to Boston for surgeries when my husband didn't want to take time off, going through six days a week of PT to learn how to walk--these are STRENGTHS, not weaknesses.
I took a break to learn some important lessons and to tend to the business of being able to stand up straight. I can't walk any further than I could a month ago, but I can walk that distance BETTER! My feet point forward and I can lift my legs properly. When I was married, when I had worked hard to be able to point my right foot forward and lift my leg straight from the hip and bend my knee, I was excited and came home from PT to show my husband.
He said, "So you want a medal for this?"
I looked at him and said, "You're damned straight I DO!" And I left the house and went for a drive to cool off.
Better to live alone just now and enjoy my friends. And I showed Martha what I could do and she clapped. And I baked cupcakes. We had veal marsala I COULD STAND LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE, broccoli with parmesan cheese, carrots with a light hone glaze, an entire bottle of wine, and CUPCAKES. We saved the frosting for last.
Hell, that's BETTER than a pluot!! (We had a spinach omelet and fruit for breakfast, though. And laughed some more over coffee this morning.)
I was going to go to the pool this afternoon, but I wanted to do this kind of therapy instead. And start to write on my blog again.
To those of you who have remained my followers through this absence, THANK YOU. When I've been online and read, it's helped. I have my beautiful photograph on the wall where I see it every day and I am enjoying a wonderful book written by a new friend, and have been reading back issues of a magazine I'd never have discovered on my own. And a saying is STILL on my mirror to see every single day.
I am back. I am me. Still have to sell the house. Still trying to apply for disability. Still have absolutely no income. But you know what? It's MARCH.
Spring is coming. The days are longer. And I can point my feet forward in more ways than one. I have missed your blogs and will start catching up on YOUR lives now!
Monday, February 8, 2010
feedback from my Followers requested
Hey, gang. I was wondering whether those of you who have read most if not all of my entries, might give me your opinion. I am wanting to enter a narrative nonfiction contest. It's time.
I want to base it on one of my entries, but am not sure which to choose and would like your opinions--NOT my last one, however. That sort of difficult subject I am just beginning to deal with in terms of writing publicly. As I have said, I do not feel that it's a matter of healing there--it's a matter of learning how to write about it beyond shock value, to weave it into a larger story.
But perhaps one of my entries, or a combination of two would stand out to you as something to work on and make into a cohesive whole for this contest. I can submit several entries. They even have poetry. The tone of the winners seems something my style would fit, and some subjects are even a little dark, though NOT like my last entry!
Thank you for your wonderful feedback on that last entry. No, I've not disappeared. Simply had a a cold that moved into something yuckier... but, as I said on my other blog, sometimes it's a relief to have simply whatever plague is "going around," nothing huge. Not my back. Not a cause for alarm. Just simply been sick and yucky, as is most everyone from time to time.
Life gets better, regardless of my emotional "nutties" from time to time. Overwhelming and I do not know how I shall get to the point of selling my home and moving into an apartment, but... I need to believe.
I trained something in my left leg! Yet another new nerve path so I can make my foot point FORWARD, not slightly skewed to the left. My right foot, when the nerve gives out, turns inward. My left turns outward. So I guess this means that when I am tired and the new nerve paths say, "nope. We're done" I will walk in a perpetual circle to the left!
Anyway, if any of you have the time to delve into my blog and give me your opinions, either here or to my e-mail, I would be grateful. I HAVE to start taking the plunge. After all, I sold a painting, so maybe I should oughta, as a friend said, try to sell my writing, too!
Sorry I have not visited your blogs in the last four or five days, but I will be back to that within a day or two as well.
I was telling my aunt in Alaska about this blog, and about how much support I have been given in the last months... She said she wished she could see and it was the first time in a long time she wished that! She said that she'd just been "too damned old" to learn how to use a computer, but thought that it was a wonderful thing, all this technology.
"Oh, I'm always hearing about the dangers and how people don't bother with real conversation... but you have contacted me more because of it and your emails are real letters. And it seems to me, with the amount you've had to be shut in and not moving? It has saved your life in several ways." NINETY-FOUR, and one of my best friends, who is my age, REFUSES to learn all she can about using this technology. She has health problems that incapacitate her, too, and is far more isolated, but has decided ALL virtual communication's phony.
No matter what I tell her, she gives one of those condescending--oh, YOU know the kind of look. She simply refuses to see that there is real communication here.
To me? When I read about Life in eighteenth and nineteenth century England and the US? It seems to me that many of us use the virtual world the way they used snail mail, as we call it now. It CAN be superficial and meaningless, but it can also give us contact with people we'd never have known.
That's my way of saying once again, how much I value all of you--your sticking with me, giving me such wonderful words of encouragement and advice (YES, Jo, I am speaking to you here, along with Donna and Carl and Linda Lou and Sparkle and Nancy and Erika and Dave and ... and ... it's twenty-four people long now! those are just a few. And a few new folks on Jetty Reconstructed as well.)
Okay. Enough mushy stuff.
I appreciate any suggestions. Of course, I still want to find somewhere to send "I ate a Pluot," but we'll see!!
I want to base it on one of my entries, but am not sure which to choose and would like your opinions--NOT my last one, however. That sort of difficult subject I am just beginning to deal with in terms of writing publicly. As I have said, I do not feel that it's a matter of healing there--it's a matter of learning how to write about it beyond shock value, to weave it into a larger story.
But perhaps one of my entries, or a combination of two would stand out to you as something to work on and make into a cohesive whole for this contest. I can submit several entries. They even have poetry. The tone of the winners seems something my style would fit, and some subjects are even a little dark, though NOT like my last entry!
Thank you for your wonderful feedback on that last entry. No, I've not disappeared. Simply had a a cold that moved into something yuckier... but, as I said on my other blog, sometimes it's a relief to have simply whatever plague is "going around," nothing huge. Not my back. Not a cause for alarm. Just simply been sick and yucky, as is most everyone from time to time.
Life gets better, regardless of my emotional "nutties" from time to time. Overwhelming and I do not know how I shall get to the point of selling my home and moving into an apartment, but... I need to believe.
I trained something in my left leg! Yet another new nerve path so I can make my foot point FORWARD, not slightly skewed to the left. My right foot, when the nerve gives out, turns inward. My left turns outward. So I guess this means that when I am tired and the new nerve paths say, "nope. We're done" I will walk in a perpetual circle to the left!
Anyway, if any of you have the time to delve into my blog and give me your opinions, either here or to my e-mail, I would be grateful. I HAVE to start taking the plunge. After all, I sold a painting, so maybe I should oughta, as a friend said, try to sell my writing, too!
Sorry I have not visited your blogs in the last four or five days, but I will be back to that within a day or two as well.
I was telling my aunt in Alaska about this blog, and about how much support I have been given in the last months... She said she wished she could see and it was the first time in a long time she wished that! She said that she'd just been "too damned old" to learn how to use a computer, but thought that it was a wonderful thing, all this technology.
"Oh, I'm always hearing about the dangers and how people don't bother with real conversation... but you have contacted me more because of it and your emails are real letters. And it seems to me, with the amount you've had to be shut in and not moving? It has saved your life in several ways." NINETY-FOUR, and one of my best friends, who is my age, REFUSES to learn all she can about using this technology. She has health problems that incapacitate her, too, and is far more isolated, but has decided ALL virtual communication's phony.
No matter what I tell her, she gives one of those condescending--oh, YOU know the kind of look. She simply refuses to see that there is real communication here.
To me? When I read about Life in eighteenth and nineteenth century England and the US? It seems to me that many of us use the virtual world the way they used snail mail, as we call it now. It CAN be superficial and meaningless, but it can also give us contact with people we'd never have known.
That's my way of saying once again, how much I value all of you--your sticking with me, giving me such wonderful words of encouragement and advice (YES, Jo, I am speaking to you here, along with Donna and Carl and Linda Lou and Sparkle and Nancy and Erika and Dave and ... and ... it's twenty-four people long now! those are just a few. And a few new folks on Jetty Reconstructed as well.)
Okay. Enough mushy stuff.
I appreciate any suggestions. Of course, I still want to find somewhere to send "I ate a Pluot," but we'll see!!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love
I am coming upon the end of my first year of this blog. And I want to say up front that there will be some uncomfortably vivid entries about my life. The hints have been here, a couple of stories ... memoir includes the ugly sometimes, if ugly is there. I do not live in the dark places, but those places made me myself as well. Surviving them and using the gifts of mother and sister, other brother and father--using those gifts of people at their best allowed me to fly out of the worst.
Anyway, I will not include those entries without caveat, so that those who would rather not read, who are used to my blog, have the choice to wait for a lighter day. Abuse is never pretty. Another blogger I follow pointed out the our past has only the weight we give it. I think of it in terms of power. The things that no longer rule my nights, confuse my days, those things have no power left over me. Now that I think about it, nor do they have weight.
Yet they are part of my truth, part of what has ripped me to shreds, part of why I was and am so determined to be whole, to love, to try to act out of love when it is hard to feel love, why I would prefer to slough off anger or bitterness as soon as I can honestly do it after being hurt or wronged. I do not always succeed particularly well, but I try and I'm getting better at it as I get older.
This Entry May be One of Those!
I have no problem if people pass this over. I still have to write it, for my own sake, because I am a writer and because I think every person's story can offer comfort or hope or benefit to others. I see that over and over in the blogs I follow--stories of HEALTHY families offer as many lessons, and offer me joy. I love reading about solid marriages and families that treat each other well. I do not assume there are dark secrets, or that other families are perfect. The voices of the writers and your visions are powerful, from wherever you come.
Enough. It is enough for now to alert you followers, for whom I am grateful. You all are giving my writer's voice a power I never knew I had in me. If I want to write a memoir, I MUST be able to find a public voice for what is not pretty, and this blog is the place where I am finding that voice. Sometimes I may not do it as well as I want, but writing is a learning process. I hope to learn to tell fewer and fewer of the details, but still make it clear what happened. I want the living details to be about seriously flawed, yet remarkably human people bound by MORE than just their illnesses or pain.
***
"What doesn't kill us makes us strong." Perhaps, but sometimes I have wondered whether, I mean really, just how strong do people have to BE anyway? I never liked that statement. Sometimes one can wonder what the definition of "kill" is. Killing innocence does not necessarily make anyone strong. Plenty of people are strong without that. And sometimes those whatevers DO kill. Why should survival of the fittest include surviving what is unconscionable to most of our culture, to most of the world?
Yet I accept that, if we are given tools from somewhere within or without, withstanding enormous adversity has created remarkably strong people in some. I was given something very early on--a child's faith. God is Love. Why I got that at three, I'll never know, but I did. And I am so grateful. I have written of this. And that was my secret weapon against my brother Jim--I loved him out loud and it usually threw him so far off, he would stop... for a while. I loved my mom and it allowed me to see beyond her psychoses and ultimately opened the door to our closeness by the end--a reconciliation that my siblings never had with her.
I did not learn that all by myself. It was a gift given to me... probably BY my mom, when she was neither drunk nor psychotic. I am surrounded by love for much of my life now. The phoenix women, laundry eagles. My sister's love wraps around me, all around me in my home and in my heart, as do my mother's, my father's, and my brother Jack's.
I survived. Sometimes the survivor of suburbia has survivor's guilt. Why did I get the gifts that my siblings did not? It's not an important question, nor even relevant. The fact is, I am here and I love life more than the others did. All I can do is hold onto that, to honor it, and to honor the two siblings who gave me the safety and the love to be here now, ready to start fresh. To tell the whole story to the best of my memory and ability, to include the music of their lives, not just the pain, is my only way to honor what they gave to me. I think their souls are worth revealing, and the stories worth the telling.
In the telling of these stories, I try to recreate them as I experienced them at the time. I write them that way, but understand that I no longer have flashbacks. I no longer feel conflict about my family. There was a lot of work, therapy, pain--all of it. But now? Now there is sadness, sure, but mostly there is love. And a deep-seeded appreciation for that rain forest of a family: lush or rotting, with little in between. And for the exquisite beauty of each member when they were at their best. I may have gotten each person's worst at some point; I also got their best. In that, I think I was uniquely blessed among my siblings. I am not sure that any of the others got the absolute BEST from all five other family members.
It is a hard story, this story of my family. We take it in stride when we read The Prince of Tides because it's fiction. But, in real life, sometimes families hold the same horror and beauty, humor and meanness, kindness and cruelties--and over-the-top stories. We had no tiger. we had other things.
Onward to today's attempt.
***
I move to Robin Hood. My brother Jack.
My protector, when he was big enough to stave off Jim's attacks long enough for me to run and hide in my father's sloping closet, perched on the shelf at the back, wrapped in Old Spiced jackets with patches on their sleeves. I would hear the muffled mysteries. "Whatever" did kill him, just slowly. I watched alcohol kill him by inches, and he died at only 50.
The year before, he showed up at my house one early summer's night. I had not seen him for three years, and he realized inside he was ill, and that his own pain had made him refuse to see his little sister who had been, for 23 years, his best friend and confidante--until he got married. Then he cut me off and cut Jean Ellen off. Just like that. Boom.
I saw death in him that night... I had seen it in my father's and mother's eyes, and it was there in his that night. His skin was just beginning to be tinged with yellow. But his gentle spirit seemed to have returned, and he sat very near me, holding my hand. I tried to remember the last time he had done that.
***
The day my daughter died.
Jacky came from school and sat beside me. We did not know where her body was, how she had died, or even where she had died. We knew only that she had. Jack volunteered to go to Jessie's Mom's house and to go to the police station. I'd been given no answers in calling, but, then, by that time, I had already called our senator's office to locate Jessie's Mom in el Salvador, tried to locate her father and his new wife off on a vacation, and had had to tell my son, on the phone, that his sister was dead, and arrange a flight for him to come. I was all out of practical.
That afternoon he sat with me, silent for ten minutes. Just as we had when we were children, we were face to face, and he leaned toward me and we rested our foreheads together a moment.
"I will find her." He left, and an hour later, he had found out all we needed to know for that time.
That night, her dad had come to give ME the news, having driven seven hundred miles to try to get to me first, and he and I had gone into my sister's living room to escape the twelve women who hated him for deserting me. I'd had to tell HIM what had happened--he knew only that she was dead. The police had called to tell him to come home, she was dead, and had hung up! So I comforted him, to the disgust of my friends. I had had to tell her MOM what had happened--on the phone to el Salvador! EVERYONE came to me for answers, for comfort. Five kids came over to cry. But the women came, and they managed to flutter the rest away. When they, too, left, it was Jean Ellen, Nancy (her best friend and my non-related big sister) and me. We heard guitar music on the front porch. I walked out to Jack and he said, "Come out and set a while and we will sing each other to peace." He was NOT drunk, and Nancy took my sister up to her side of the house.
We sat outdoors, with the nighttime cacophony of August insects, and we sang. I drifted off, and he began some familiar old riffs, then suddenly all was silent. My brother took me by the hand and walked me to my room, sat me on my bed, removed my shoes and tucked me in. I heard him play a while more, the sound drifting through the distance of three rooms and I finally slept.
He came to the funeral mean drunk, though. That afternoon he slurred, "You need anything more?"
"Not today, no. thank you. I'll call you if I need more."
"ONE day offer. You're just like Ma. Give one thing, you ask for it all."
My son said, "Jack, go home now." We looked at one another and Jay said, "I think he's next."
That had been the last time I saw my brother for three years. When I called at Christmas to get together, the response was, "Well, if nothing better comes up, maybe you could come over for a while." My sister and I declined the offer, tempting though it was. I moved to PA the following May, for two years. I sent Christmas and birthday cards from there, but apparently no one noticed. They sent joint cards to Jean Ellen and never looked at mine. I had sent them a note with the card, but it was thrown away.
***
The night he called to come over, it was because he'd heard from his best friend that I was back home after being in Pennsylvania for two years; Jack realized he'd never known I had left. It haunted him. He told me, "Jetty, I made the mistake of throwing out you and Jean Ellen because you both made me remember Jim, just because you are part of my family. I could not look at you without... without remembering things I hate."
"I've been a crappy brother to you since I got married, haven't I."
I looked him full in his impossibly deep brown eyes. "Yes, Jack, you have."
"Is it too late for me to be your brother now?"
"Never. You're Robin Hood and I'm Maid Marion."
The tears made his eyes shine in the dim light. I saw the hollows around them, that muted brown-gray of pain.
"You're not well, Jack."
"Well, no. It seems I'm more like Mom than you ever were or will be. It would seem I am drinking myself to death."
"You gonna stop?"
"Nope. Just some nights, like tonight. I go some weeks sometimes, when I feel like actually seeing my life. Which isn't all that much. But tonight I want to see."
He had my hand by then and I asked, "What is it you want to see?"
"Did Jimmy rape you?"
I said, "Yes, Jack."
"Was I in the house? How come I didn't stop it?"
"You were over at your friend's house, Jack. You weren't even there. Jim was there with Mom and me and Mom was, well. Drunk in her chair of course." The horrified laugh escaped us both.
But Jack was shaking now. "Well if I wasn't there, why do I remember? How come I KNOW?"
I said nothing for a while. We had never spoken of it. Well. We'd never had a conversation. "I'm not sure," I lied.
"Okay, did Daddy backhand Jim into a wall at dinner?"
"Yes Jacky."
Pause.
"Do you want to know more than that, Jack?"
Excruciating pause, and my brother began to shake. And he mouthed "not about that." No sound came out.
"HOW DO I KNOW WHAT JIMMY DID?" He was in agony now. And then, "Did I rape you, too? Oh, GOD, did I do it, too?"
I looked at him, his fear palpable, his pain intense. He had been 21 and I just 19. He had been stumbling drunk and I'd run to his and Jean Ellen's place because Mom had been drinking and was rather more horrid than usual. Dad was "away on business" and I did not want to be alone with her.
Jack shared some more wine with me, and we were sitting together on the couch, watching tv.
"God, you know how gorgeous you are?" he'd said.
His tone was weird, but I simply said, "Yup." And he had his arm around me and I stood up. So did he, and he came at me and kissed me on the mouth.
When I could pull away, he was touching my breasts and I smacked him. Then I shouted and smacked precisely, "NOT"--smack--"YOU"-- smack-- "TOO!" Punch, right in the kisser.
With which he went, "huh?"And he tipped over like a felled tree onto the floor. I stood over him and screamed, "YOU are NOT JIM. YOU ARE NOT HIM!" And I left, humiliated, shocked, disgusted, hurt. But mostly inordinately sad.
But I was absolutely right.
He was not Jim. It never happened again and until that moment, I assumed it had happened in one of Jack's alcoholic blackouts. There, I was only partly right. But maybe that's the nature of blackouts--you remember dim images of the truth, but cannot sort it out. I took both his hands, and I turned to face him full in his horrified and pained face. We tipped forward once more, foreheads touching, tears dropping into our laps. Robin Hood had come home and I did not have to lie or hedge.
I simply said, "No, Jack. Not you, too. You did not rape me." Something made me smile a little, and I added, "Honey, you are not our brother Jim. Nothing like our brother Jim. And you never really came CLOSE."
He looked as if he wanted to say more, to respond to that crack in the door to come clean, to face that demon. He tried, but the words stuck. We were crying, those big tears that it seems only children have... silent tears. It was more than enough for me, so I did not ask for more.
I released one hand and sang, "Ride, ride, ride, won't you let it ride."
And he picked up his guitar, which he'd brought with him... the same guitar he'd brought to play outside my house, just for me. We moved outside and sang, as was our custom, from back in high school, on the hot summer nights when Mom was drunk, Dad was "away" and we needed the cool of a nearby lake and the peace of music. And our tears ran into the "Song of the Great Silke" and faded into the accompanying chorus of late spring tree frogs.
No brother loved a sister more. No sister misses a brother more. I missed him for those decades he could not face us, could not bear the memories that haunted him until he drank to go numb. I did not force him to remember what I, myself, had blocked for so long. His secrets and pain were not mine to expose.
I had my brother again, if only for that year. I am alive because he was there to save me and to spare me pain he endured too many times. Robin Hood died; Maid Marion lives. That story is for another time.
I have to stop here for now. I have to listen to Judy Collins' Wildflowers CD and sing to him a spell.
***
It's a start.
Anyway, I will not include those entries without caveat, so that those who would rather not read, who are used to my blog, have the choice to wait for a lighter day. Abuse is never pretty. Another blogger I follow pointed out the our past has only the weight we give it. I think of it in terms of power. The things that no longer rule my nights, confuse my days, those things have no power left over me. Now that I think about it, nor do they have weight.
Yet they are part of my truth, part of what has ripped me to shreds, part of why I was and am so determined to be whole, to love, to try to act out of love when it is hard to feel love, why I would prefer to slough off anger or bitterness as soon as I can honestly do it after being hurt or wronged. I do not always succeed particularly well, but I try and I'm getting better at it as I get older.
This Entry May be One of Those!
I have no problem if people pass this over. I still have to write it, for my own sake, because I am a writer and because I think every person's story can offer comfort or hope or benefit to others. I see that over and over in the blogs I follow--stories of HEALTHY families offer as many lessons, and offer me joy. I love reading about solid marriages and families that treat each other well. I do not assume there are dark secrets, or that other families are perfect. The voices of the writers and your visions are powerful, from wherever you come.
Enough. It is enough for now to alert you followers, for whom I am grateful. You all are giving my writer's voice a power I never knew I had in me. If I want to write a memoir, I MUST be able to find a public voice for what is not pretty, and this blog is the place where I am finding that voice. Sometimes I may not do it as well as I want, but writing is a learning process. I hope to learn to tell fewer and fewer of the details, but still make it clear what happened. I want the living details to be about seriously flawed, yet remarkably human people bound by MORE than just their illnesses or pain.
***
"What doesn't kill us makes us strong." Perhaps, but sometimes I have wondered whether, I mean really, just how strong do people have to BE anyway? I never liked that statement. Sometimes one can wonder what the definition of "kill" is. Killing innocence does not necessarily make anyone strong. Plenty of people are strong without that. And sometimes those whatevers DO kill. Why should survival of the fittest include surviving what is unconscionable to most of our culture, to most of the world?
Yet I accept that, if we are given tools from somewhere within or without, withstanding enormous adversity has created remarkably strong people in some. I was given something very early on--a child's faith. God is Love. Why I got that at three, I'll never know, but I did. And I am so grateful. I have written of this. And that was my secret weapon against my brother Jim--I loved him out loud and it usually threw him so far off, he would stop... for a while. I loved my mom and it allowed me to see beyond her psychoses and ultimately opened the door to our closeness by the end--a reconciliation that my siblings never had with her.
I did not learn that all by myself. It was a gift given to me... probably BY my mom, when she was neither drunk nor psychotic. I am surrounded by love for much of my life now. The phoenix women, laundry eagles. My sister's love wraps around me, all around me in my home and in my heart, as do my mother's, my father's, and my brother Jack's.
I survived. Sometimes the survivor of suburbia has survivor's guilt. Why did I get the gifts that my siblings did not? It's not an important question, nor even relevant. The fact is, I am here and I love life more than the others did. All I can do is hold onto that, to honor it, and to honor the two siblings who gave me the safety and the love to be here now, ready to start fresh. To tell the whole story to the best of my memory and ability, to include the music of their lives, not just the pain, is my only way to honor what they gave to me. I think their souls are worth revealing, and the stories worth the telling.
In the telling of these stories, I try to recreate them as I experienced them at the time. I write them that way, but understand that I no longer have flashbacks. I no longer feel conflict about my family. There was a lot of work, therapy, pain--all of it. But now? Now there is sadness, sure, but mostly there is love. And a deep-seeded appreciation for that rain forest of a family: lush or rotting, with little in between. And for the exquisite beauty of each member when they were at their best. I may have gotten each person's worst at some point; I also got their best. In that, I think I was uniquely blessed among my siblings. I am not sure that any of the others got the absolute BEST from all five other family members.
It is a hard story, this story of my family. We take it in stride when we read The Prince of Tides because it's fiction. But, in real life, sometimes families hold the same horror and beauty, humor and meanness, kindness and cruelties--and over-the-top stories. We had no tiger. we had other things.
Onward to today's attempt.
***
I move to Robin Hood. My brother Jack.
My protector, when he was big enough to stave off Jim's attacks long enough for me to run and hide in my father's sloping closet, perched on the shelf at the back, wrapped in Old Spiced jackets with patches on their sleeves. I would hear the muffled mysteries. "Whatever" did kill him, just slowly. I watched alcohol kill him by inches, and he died at only 50.
The year before, he showed up at my house one early summer's night. I had not seen him for three years, and he realized inside he was ill, and that his own pain had made him refuse to see his little sister who had been, for 23 years, his best friend and confidante--until he got married. Then he cut me off and cut Jean Ellen off. Just like that. Boom.
I saw death in him that night... I had seen it in my father's and mother's eyes, and it was there in his that night. His skin was just beginning to be tinged with yellow. But his gentle spirit seemed to have returned, and he sat very near me, holding my hand. I tried to remember the last time he had done that.
***
The day my daughter died.
Jacky came from school and sat beside me. We did not know where her body was, how she had died, or even where she had died. We knew only that she had. Jack volunteered to go to Jessie's Mom's house and to go to the police station. I'd been given no answers in calling, but, then, by that time, I had already called our senator's office to locate Jessie's Mom in el Salvador, tried to locate her father and his new wife off on a vacation, and had had to tell my son, on the phone, that his sister was dead, and arrange a flight for him to come. I was all out of practical.
That afternoon he sat with me, silent for ten minutes. Just as we had when we were children, we were face to face, and he leaned toward me and we rested our foreheads together a moment.
"I will find her." He left, and an hour later, he had found out all we needed to know for that time.
That night, her dad had come to give ME the news, having driven seven hundred miles to try to get to me first, and he and I had gone into my sister's living room to escape the twelve women who hated him for deserting me. I'd had to tell HIM what had happened--he knew only that she was dead. The police had called to tell him to come home, she was dead, and had hung up! So I comforted him, to the disgust of my friends. I had had to tell her MOM what had happened--on the phone to el Salvador! EVERYONE came to me for answers, for comfort. Five kids came over to cry. But the women came, and they managed to flutter the rest away. When they, too, left, it was Jean Ellen, Nancy (her best friend and my non-related big sister) and me. We heard guitar music on the front porch. I walked out to Jack and he said, "Come out and set a while and we will sing each other to peace." He was NOT drunk, and Nancy took my sister up to her side of the house.
We sat outdoors, with the nighttime cacophony of August insects, and we sang. I drifted off, and he began some familiar old riffs, then suddenly all was silent. My brother took me by the hand and walked me to my room, sat me on my bed, removed my shoes and tucked me in. I heard him play a while more, the sound drifting through the distance of three rooms and I finally slept.
He came to the funeral mean drunk, though. That afternoon he slurred, "You need anything more?"
"Not today, no. thank you. I'll call you if I need more."
"ONE day offer. You're just like Ma. Give one thing, you ask for it all."
My son said, "Jack, go home now." We looked at one another and Jay said, "I think he's next."
That had been the last time I saw my brother for three years. When I called at Christmas to get together, the response was, "Well, if nothing better comes up, maybe you could come over for a while." My sister and I declined the offer, tempting though it was. I moved to PA the following May, for two years. I sent Christmas and birthday cards from there, but apparently no one noticed. They sent joint cards to Jean Ellen and never looked at mine. I had sent them a note with the card, but it was thrown away.
***
The night he called to come over, it was because he'd heard from his best friend that I was back home after being in Pennsylvania for two years; Jack realized he'd never known I had left. It haunted him. He told me, "Jetty, I made the mistake of throwing out you and Jean Ellen because you both made me remember Jim, just because you are part of my family. I could not look at you without... without remembering things I hate."
"I've been a crappy brother to you since I got married, haven't I."
I looked him full in his impossibly deep brown eyes. "Yes, Jack, you have."
"Is it too late for me to be your brother now?"
"Never. You're Robin Hood and I'm Maid Marion."
The tears made his eyes shine in the dim light. I saw the hollows around them, that muted brown-gray of pain.
"You're not well, Jack."
"Well, no. It seems I'm more like Mom than you ever were or will be. It would seem I am drinking myself to death."
"You gonna stop?"
"Nope. Just some nights, like tonight. I go some weeks sometimes, when I feel like actually seeing my life. Which isn't all that much. But tonight I want to see."
He had my hand by then and I asked, "What is it you want to see?"
"Did Jimmy rape you?"
I said, "Yes, Jack."
"Was I in the house? How come I didn't stop it?"
"You were over at your friend's house, Jack. You weren't even there. Jim was there with Mom and me and Mom was, well. Drunk in her chair of course." The horrified laugh escaped us both.
But Jack was shaking now. "Well if I wasn't there, why do I remember? How come I KNOW?"
I said nothing for a while. We had never spoken of it. Well. We'd never had a conversation. "I'm not sure," I lied.
"Okay, did Daddy backhand Jim into a wall at dinner?"
"Yes Jacky."
Pause.
"Do you want to know more than that, Jack?"
Excruciating pause, and my brother began to shake. And he mouthed "not about that." No sound came out.
"HOW DO I KNOW WHAT JIMMY DID?" He was in agony now. And then, "Did I rape you, too? Oh, GOD, did I do it, too?"
I looked at him, his fear palpable, his pain intense. He had been 21 and I just 19. He had been stumbling drunk and I'd run to his and Jean Ellen's place because Mom had been drinking and was rather more horrid than usual. Dad was "away on business" and I did not want to be alone with her.
Jack shared some more wine with me, and we were sitting together on the couch, watching tv.
"God, you know how gorgeous you are?" he'd said.
His tone was weird, but I simply said, "Yup." And he had his arm around me and I stood up. So did he, and he came at me and kissed me on the mouth.
When I could pull away, he was touching my breasts and I smacked him. Then I shouted and smacked precisely, "NOT"--smack--"YOU"-- smack-- "TOO!" Punch, right in the kisser.
With which he went, "huh?"And he tipped over like a felled tree onto the floor. I stood over him and screamed, "YOU are NOT JIM. YOU ARE NOT HIM!" And I left, humiliated, shocked, disgusted, hurt. But mostly inordinately sad.
But I was absolutely right.
He was not Jim. It never happened again and until that moment, I assumed it had happened in one of Jack's alcoholic blackouts. There, I was only partly right. But maybe that's the nature of blackouts--you remember dim images of the truth, but cannot sort it out. I took both his hands, and I turned to face him full in his horrified and pained face. We tipped forward once more, foreheads touching, tears dropping into our laps. Robin Hood had come home and I did not have to lie or hedge.
I simply said, "No, Jack. Not you, too. You did not rape me." Something made me smile a little, and I added, "Honey, you are not our brother Jim. Nothing like our brother Jim. And you never really came CLOSE."
He looked as if he wanted to say more, to respond to that crack in the door to come clean, to face that demon. He tried, but the words stuck. We were crying, those big tears that it seems only children have... silent tears. It was more than enough for me, so I did not ask for more.
I released one hand and sang, "Ride, ride, ride, won't you let it ride."
And he picked up his guitar, which he'd brought with him... the same guitar he'd brought to play outside my house, just for me. We moved outside and sang, as was our custom, from back in high school, on the hot summer nights when Mom was drunk, Dad was "away" and we needed the cool of a nearby lake and the peace of music. And our tears ran into the "Song of the Great Silke" and faded into the accompanying chorus of late spring tree frogs.
No brother loved a sister more. No sister misses a brother more. I missed him for those decades he could not face us, could not bear the memories that haunted him until he drank to go numb. I did not force him to remember what I, myself, had blocked for so long. His secrets and pain were not mine to expose.
I had my brother again, if only for that year. I am alive because he was there to save me and to spare me pain he endured too many times. Robin Hood died; Maid Marion lives. That story is for another time.
I have to stop here for now. I have to listen to Judy Collins' Wildflowers CD and sing to him a spell.
***
It's a start.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
White Icing
Today I drove to PT in a snow storm, not thinking about the fact that I had to WALK from the car into the building. But never mind, I made it. Sort of. I went because my therapist had never seen me "fully compromised," which means I am walking like one of the astronauts fully geared... flat-footed and VERY SLOWLY. It's as if my legs are always a beat behind my brain, and every step requires my WILLING the legs to move.
It seems that way because, on days like this, it IS that way. I am glad I went. I accomplished something with this day and did not allow the pain to interfere with that part.
My reward? Right now, as the sun is lowering toward sleep, the horizon is glowing peach to rose, slanting bright, pastel light across new snow. And there is white icing on all the tree limbs, so they glow as well. There should be a shade of paint called "afternoon snow blue." I can simply swivel in my chair here, on the second floor, to face the setting sun and simply watch the slow dance as night rises with the sun's fall.
At no time of the year, and no other sort of day, do I get this feeling as the day closes. This fall into February holds the pain of too many losses, but sometimes the intensity of loss simply highlights how much I had to feel such loss. The love of so many. The flipside of loss is fullness.
But this beauty. How did I come to feel it like a pulsing through my whole body, almost pain? And aching of the heart, this stillness.
Not often do we have the pristine of new snow for more than two hours, or the icing on the trees for much more--to have them both at once at this time of day? There is no wind. Just now there are no cars. No squirrel tracks on this new three inches. This silence is rare as well, because it is not the season of mowing and whacking and sawing, of children playing outdoors.
Just the silence only snow-muffled evenings know. I've opened the window, cold or no, to let it fill me for these moments. I skate in my mind, tracing the fine, even curve between the yin and the yang, and I let the tears fall freely.
***
I love chocolate. MY mom always asked me why it was I wanted white icing on chocolate cake for my birthday, instead of chocolate. My birthday is in late June, when all is at its most lush and hottest, and the days are long. There was no air conditioning then for us.
"It reminds me of when the trees have frosting, Mom. And the cold. I get Winter in Summer, and I like that, Mom."
She would simply shake her head, kiss me on my nose as was her custom and say, "Me, too. Winter in Summer cake it is. White icing for my Jetty."
***
I love my mom.
I'll close the window for now, though.
It seems that way because, on days like this, it IS that way. I am glad I went. I accomplished something with this day and did not allow the pain to interfere with that part.
My reward? Right now, as the sun is lowering toward sleep, the horizon is glowing peach to rose, slanting bright, pastel light across new snow. And there is white icing on all the tree limbs, so they glow as well. There should be a shade of paint called "afternoon snow blue." I can simply swivel in my chair here, on the second floor, to face the setting sun and simply watch the slow dance as night rises with the sun's fall.
At no time of the year, and no other sort of day, do I get this feeling as the day closes. This fall into February holds the pain of too many losses, but sometimes the intensity of loss simply highlights how much I had to feel such loss. The love of so many. The flipside of loss is fullness.
But this beauty. How did I come to feel it like a pulsing through my whole body, almost pain? And aching of the heart, this stillness.
Not often do we have the pristine of new snow for more than two hours, or the icing on the trees for much more--to have them both at once at this time of day? There is no wind. Just now there are no cars. No squirrel tracks on this new three inches. This silence is rare as well, because it is not the season of mowing and whacking and sawing, of children playing outdoors.
Just the silence only snow-muffled evenings know. I've opened the window, cold or no, to let it fill me for these moments. I skate in my mind, tracing the fine, even curve between the yin and the yang, and I let the tears fall freely.
***
I love chocolate. MY mom always asked me why it was I wanted white icing on chocolate cake for my birthday, instead of chocolate. My birthday is in late June, when all is at its most lush and hottest, and the days are long. There was no air conditioning then for us.
"It reminds me of when the trees have frosting, Mom. And the cold. I get Winter in Summer, and I like that, Mom."
She would simply shake her head, kiss me on my nose as was her custom and say, "Me, too. Winter in Summer cake it is. White icing for my Jetty."
***
I love my mom.
I'll close the window for now, though.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Flying into Dawn: Memories of My Sister
I've tried a dozen times to write about her, to capture her. What it was to have a sister who lived her life with on section of her soul in past lives, one part in this life, and one part in whatever came next. She always expressed her spirituality in terms of our being on an eternal continuum, that this time here, now, was just a section along the way. She'd have visceral feelings of déja vu, but talked about them to very few people.
She was seen as odd. Well, she WAS odd, and I've always felt that our world would be infinitely better with more odd souls like hers. She was incapable of violence. Seriously incapable. As she said, had she ever been attacked, she doubted she'd have even put her hands up to protect herself. "I'm a vessel in this life; I have received gifts and lessons, then I pour them out in teaching and in my art. That is what I am. I do not understand all this talk about life being an 'adventure,' that we must all somehow go after things because they are a 'challenge.' I loathe those words. I do not care to be challenged. I want to do what I want to do, nothing more. And of course nothing less!"
She once took an Italian class with her best friend, in her twenties. I was in college at the time and she came to pick me up one Saturday. She often did that; come to rescue me on a Saturday morning and we'd go for "a drive." Once from Storrs, CT all the way to New Hampshire and back, just so we could walk on the beach on the island for a bit.
But this time, she was laughing because Nancy was furious with her. It seemed Jean Ellen had received a C+ on an exam and was happy with it. Nancy had studied for hours and hours for her A and could not understand why Jean Ellen had gone out dancing the night before. Jean Ellen's response? "I am not taking this for certification or credit or pride. I simply want to be able to go to Italy and understand what they say and be understood. Nothing more. I don't care about the grade."
Nancy, apparently yelled at her and said, "How can you NOT want to do better than that? The professor even told you you could be the best in the class if you studied."
Jean Ellen looked at me and I smiled at her. I understood Nancy because I was more like that, but I knew my sister. "You have never cared about being the best in the class in your life."
"Right. It's an irrelevant argument to me."
"Now if the Professor had told you that the Italians will not want to TALK to you if you do this poorly---"
"I'd have given up the dancing. Grudgingly, however."
We once spent an entire drive making up swear words because we were bored with the old stand bys. We were headed to the Cape and on the other side of Providence, RI, I found the one. "BULL DROOL." Yup. That was our keeper of all of them. Unfortunately my sister began to laugh so hard, she drove into a small ditch and it took ten minutes to get OUT.
By then, though, I was able to make her laugh at everything. I think I was about 25 and she was , then, 34. I turned to her and said, "You know, from now on, I bet I can say the word 'apple' to you in a certain tone and you will always laugh." She shrieked.
Two days before she died, she was feeling very sad and frustrated. She could no longer speak very easily, the tumors having spread higher in her central nervous system. A visitor had tried her patience to the point where I literally escorted the woman out the door and told her that she had to listen to ME about leaving and that she could come back once more if need be, but only to say good bye. The woman was furious because she felt my sister was "faking."
I sat on her bed, stroking her forehead, her tears rolling unrestricted... I dabbed them because she had long since lost the ability to use her hands. I took her face in my hands and said, "Apple."
All was right in our world.
***
For my graduation present from college, Jean Ellen took me to Paris and Portugal for six weeks. I had not flown since I was sixteen, but had slept through some of that. Jean Ellen had us leave at night because she said I HAD to experience flying straight into dawn. I thought she was nuts, but was accustomed to her living on some sort of poetic edge I didn't understand. We were drawing on the plane a lot. We often drew left-handed, just for practice, to free up the right brain. She taught me about asymmetry when I was seven.
"Which of these arrangements is more appealing?" she had asked, showing me a drawing of a wall with three equally sized drawings of flowers, and one with three differently sized drawings, arranged so there was balance. I immediately chose the one with the different sizes.
"Why?" she asked, a teacher then, at only sixteen.
"That one's boring. Blah. I like this one." She was pleased with her Jetty and said, "You are an artist, Jetty. You just don't know it."
We did a similar lesson with incomplete line and then she taught me to make paper doll clothes in pen and ink, using lessons of incomplete line, and observing how various fabrics draped and how folds REALLY look, that really there were very few straight lines when it came to people....
Anyway, so on the plane we played with our left hand drawings and were laughing, when suddenly she said, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW...
I had the window, in front of the wing and could see where we were going... We were flying into a pool of red, and there was a line in the sky between dark and light, between night and day and we jetted into dawn, just like that... I began to cry.
Jean Ellen said, "THIS is why I had to bring you. YOU are the only other friend I have who cries at flying into dawn."
Friend. I was my big sister's friend and nothing from then on would ever be the same.
We flew straight into dawn, and we took Paris by storm, these two odd sisters. We drew with our feet when we were rained into the apartment one day. We spent three HOURS drawing with our feet. We bought rabbit at the grocery store and brought it home to cook. It was sold in PARTS, so we didn't have to deal with it as an animal... we thought. But when we opened the package, its little HEAD was there, with teeth and ears. Jean Ellen covered its head with paper towels and quickly chopped it off and threw the head down the garbage shoot. We prepared it with garlic and seasonings and wine. We had fresh vegetables and rice. We drank a bottle of wine before we even ate...
But we took one look at supper, at each other and went, "BUNNY." So much for that.
We sat at the Champs y Lysée (Sp--I'm lazy) and we sketched. I sketched an aging hooker, about fifty pounds overweight, with a ruffled hat and a tiny silk bag on a long ribbon, SKIPPING through the park. I wrote poetry and she sketched the gardens at a tiny restaurant across the street. We'd count the languages at the cafe outside the metro stop at La Place de la Concorde... We had affairs, each of us, with a different waiter at the local restaurant called Le Tahare, around the corner from our apartment. The place was our uncle's, but he was in the states with his wife and daughter for the summer. Two young women for ONE MONTH in Paris. Then we flew to Portugal, northern Portugal. Viana do castello. All the houses were limestone or marble, and there was a castle on the mountain that, at night, shone white, floating above the town. We were the only American tourists there for the annual August holiday. The town was in a triangle between mountains, a river, and the sea. I sat the beach and everything was BACKWARDS because I faced west. I'd not been to California, just the East Coast. A young man ran across town to get me my cigarettes and would not take a tip. One left tips in an envelope for everyone, at the end of one's stay. The head waiter, wine steward, and hotel manager treated us to our last two days at the hotel because we had been so much fun. We'd been fun? I knew what it was to be a princess for that week.
We played. We walked. We drew. We spoke to everyone we met, especially shopkeepers and hotel help... they took us on little side trips to "nowhere," and my sister and I felt that no one had ever had such fun before, nor been treated so wonderfully. I can still see the castle, shining bright white against the mountain at night, floating over the equally shining town.
We left Lisbon during the socialist overthrow of the Portuguese government, an experience of its own, and finally boarded an old DC 10 cargo plane for home. The stuffing was coming out of the seats, but we were safe and boarded. All we could talk about was the magic, as we left the revolution behind.
And we flew home straight into night; still we felt our hearts leap nonetheless as the plane flew low over the coast and we saw the glittering ribbon that was home.
I do not know how to describe the sister who thought that the greatest gift of the second half of the twentieth century was her baby sister Jetty. I was beautiful to her, some sort of jewel that went unappreciated in the world. She did not understand how men could be so cruel to me... she felt it was that they couldn't bear someone so open and loving. I tended to think it was that I had bad taste and was stupid, but I Much preferred her take on it. She mourned my not pursuing art, but understood. In our family the cutthroat comparison factors made us avoid taking up another's interest. Daddy wrote. He, Jack, AND Jean Ellen were teachers. Mom was a math genius... so was I, but I hated math. Mom wanted me to go into that because she hadn't. Jack played guitar and banjo and clarinet. I tried not to duplicate. Daddy sang in the Robert Shaw Chorale... So, while I could sing, paint, write, and play the piano... I avoided pursuing anything much. I was afraid. I blame no one but me. I saw how brutal Dad could be when performance was not perfection. He never really appreciated my sister's worth because she was severely obese and he could not admit there was beauty there. LOTS of men could, but not Dad. And of course that hurt her.
But Jean Ellen and I found our balance with one another through most of our lives. We were each other's number one fan. She was the sort of teacher who bothered to show up at a student's HOME when she feared the girl was suicidal. She was the kind of teacher who did not sleep until she had corrected her papers and made comments that were positive on every single one, even those who failed. She started preparing for September on August first. "I have to find something new to do, even though it's the same curriculum. If I am stale, then it will be stale to my kids." She taught all out, with all of her soul, just as she drew and painted with nothing held back.
I learned all I know about letting myself live with every fiber of my being from her. She was not brave in the conventional sense... until it came time for her to leave. She did not mourn that her life would end at sixty-two. She said, "I have done every single thing I ever wanted to do except go to Athens. EVERYTHING. I was an artist, a teacher, a big sister. I went to Paris six times. I went to England and Italy, to California, to the wild west. I made love and was loved. I have you as my sister and I've had you taking care of me these last years, no matter what. YOU have made sure I could stay here, where I wanted to be. My adventuress, my phoenix. I kept clipping your wings. When I go you will finally fly. Promise me you will fly."
The day she died I brought in all her favorite music--Harry Belafonte, and folk music. I kicked people out and told the nurses that she could not have anyone but me from then on. I sang to her, "Close your eyes." I stroked her head. She began to drown, though, along toward midnight. She choked. The nurses managed to get her cleared out a bit, but had gone down to get some horrible equipment for the next round. Jean Ellen, who was SO READY to go, was fighting for breath.
When the nurse left, I took her face in my hands and shouted, "LOOK AT ME!" Blue eyes wide and startled... My brown eyes hard and determined.
"They have gone to get some medieval atrocity to help you keep breathing. Jean Ellen. Remember? You want to go, so for God's sake, get the HELL OUT OF DODGE!"
The smile appeared. She breathed. She choked. She breathed in a long breath... and nothing happened...
My sister flew the hell out of Dodge, straight into morning...
The Nurse came in as I said, "Well, sure. FINE. Be that way." And I was closing her eyes. All she said was, "Well, you two are certainly related."
But when I looked into her eyes from my sister's, the smile flew away and she said, "I'm shutting the door for a few minutes, dear."
I sat with my sister and sang that song "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right." I sang to her, as I had to my brother, just four years before. I rocked and I sang for the longest time, and I drew a pen and ink picture of flowers, all in a tumble, beautiful, overabundant, asymmetrical, with incomplete line. It began almost going OFF the sheet to the left, but the images became less complete, fading into white space to the right. She had come from someplace full, that she remembered and used to tell me about, and had filled my life and hers with more beauty than twelve sisters, then faded bit by bit before my eyes, two years before she died, moving away from me, from all of us, leaving this part of the continuum. I drew and I sang and I cried because I could not see where she'd gone. Fading into white, a picture still being drawn by her, but incomplete for me... for me, left behind.
Before I left the room for the people to take her away, all I could think to say was, "I'll fly into dawn, honey. If it takes me til I'm ninety, I promise. I'll fly."
I kissed her now closed eyes, put the portrait on her chest, and walked into my mourning.
At dawn.
She was seen as odd. Well, she WAS odd, and I've always felt that our world would be infinitely better with more odd souls like hers. She was incapable of violence. Seriously incapable. As she said, had she ever been attacked, she doubted she'd have even put her hands up to protect herself. "I'm a vessel in this life; I have received gifts and lessons, then I pour them out in teaching and in my art. That is what I am. I do not understand all this talk about life being an 'adventure,' that we must all somehow go after things because they are a 'challenge.' I loathe those words. I do not care to be challenged. I want to do what I want to do, nothing more. And of course nothing less!"
She once took an Italian class with her best friend, in her twenties. I was in college at the time and she came to pick me up one Saturday. She often did that; come to rescue me on a Saturday morning and we'd go for "a drive." Once from Storrs, CT all the way to New Hampshire and back, just so we could walk on the beach on the island for a bit.
But this time, she was laughing because Nancy was furious with her. It seemed Jean Ellen had received a C+ on an exam and was happy with it. Nancy had studied for hours and hours for her A and could not understand why Jean Ellen had gone out dancing the night before. Jean Ellen's response? "I am not taking this for certification or credit or pride. I simply want to be able to go to Italy and understand what they say and be understood. Nothing more. I don't care about the grade."
Nancy, apparently yelled at her and said, "How can you NOT want to do better than that? The professor even told you you could be the best in the class if you studied."
Jean Ellen looked at me and I smiled at her. I understood Nancy because I was more like that, but I knew my sister. "You have never cared about being the best in the class in your life."
"Right. It's an irrelevant argument to me."
"Now if the Professor had told you that the Italians will not want to TALK to you if you do this poorly---"
"I'd have given up the dancing. Grudgingly, however."
We once spent an entire drive making up swear words because we were bored with the old stand bys. We were headed to the Cape and on the other side of Providence, RI, I found the one. "BULL DROOL." Yup. That was our keeper of all of them. Unfortunately my sister began to laugh so hard, she drove into a small ditch and it took ten minutes to get OUT.
By then, though, I was able to make her laugh at everything. I think I was about 25 and she was , then, 34. I turned to her and said, "You know, from now on, I bet I can say the word 'apple' to you in a certain tone and you will always laugh." She shrieked.
Two days before she died, she was feeling very sad and frustrated. She could no longer speak very easily, the tumors having spread higher in her central nervous system. A visitor had tried her patience to the point where I literally escorted the woman out the door and told her that she had to listen to ME about leaving and that she could come back once more if need be, but only to say good bye. The woman was furious because she felt my sister was "faking."
I sat on her bed, stroking her forehead, her tears rolling unrestricted... I dabbed them because she had long since lost the ability to use her hands. I took her face in my hands and said, "Apple."
All was right in our world.
***
For my graduation present from college, Jean Ellen took me to Paris and Portugal for six weeks. I had not flown since I was sixteen, but had slept through some of that. Jean Ellen had us leave at night because she said I HAD to experience flying straight into dawn. I thought she was nuts, but was accustomed to her living on some sort of poetic edge I didn't understand. We were drawing on the plane a lot. We often drew left-handed, just for practice, to free up the right brain. She taught me about asymmetry when I was seven.
"Which of these arrangements is more appealing?" she had asked, showing me a drawing of a wall with three equally sized drawings of flowers, and one with three differently sized drawings, arranged so there was balance. I immediately chose the one with the different sizes.
"Why?" she asked, a teacher then, at only sixteen.
"That one's boring. Blah. I like this one." She was pleased with her Jetty and said, "You are an artist, Jetty. You just don't know it."
We did a similar lesson with incomplete line and then she taught me to make paper doll clothes in pen and ink, using lessons of incomplete line, and observing how various fabrics draped and how folds REALLY look, that really there were very few straight lines when it came to people....
Anyway, so on the plane we played with our left hand drawings and were laughing, when suddenly she said, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW...
I had the window, in front of the wing and could see where we were going... We were flying into a pool of red, and there was a line in the sky between dark and light, between night and day and we jetted into dawn, just like that... I began to cry.
Jean Ellen said, "THIS is why I had to bring you. YOU are the only other friend I have who cries at flying into dawn."
Friend. I was my big sister's friend and nothing from then on would ever be the same.
We flew straight into dawn, and we took Paris by storm, these two odd sisters. We drew with our feet when we were rained into the apartment one day. We spent three HOURS drawing with our feet. We bought rabbit at the grocery store and brought it home to cook. It was sold in PARTS, so we didn't have to deal with it as an animal... we thought. But when we opened the package, its little HEAD was there, with teeth and ears. Jean Ellen covered its head with paper towels and quickly chopped it off and threw the head down the garbage shoot. We prepared it with garlic and seasonings and wine. We had fresh vegetables and rice. We drank a bottle of wine before we even ate...
But we took one look at supper, at each other and went, "BUNNY." So much for that.
We sat at the Champs y Lysée (Sp--I'm lazy) and we sketched. I sketched an aging hooker, about fifty pounds overweight, with a ruffled hat and a tiny silk bag on a long ribbon, SKIPPING through the park. I wrote poetry and she sketched the gardens at a tiny restaurant across the street. We'd count the languages at the cafe outside the metro stop at La Place de la Concorde... We had affairs, each of us, with a different waiter at the local restaurant called Le Tahare, around the corner from our apartment. The place was our uncle's, but he was in the states with his wife and daughter for the summer. Two young women for ONE MONTH in Paris. Then we flew to Portugal, northern Portugal. Viana do castello. All the houses were limestone or marble, and there was a castle on the mountain that, at night, shone white, floating above the town. We were the only American tourists there for the annual August holiday. The town was in a triangle between mountains, a river, and the sea. I sat the beach and everything was BACKWARDS because I faced west. I'd not been to California, just the East Coast. A young man ran across town to get me my cigarettes and would not take a tip. One left tips in an envelope for everyone, at the end of one's stay. The head waiter, wine steward, and hotel manager treated us to our last two days at the hotel because we had been so much fun. We'd been fun? I knew what it was to be a princess for that week.
We played. We walked. We drew. We spoke to everyone we met, especially shopkeepers and hotel help... they took us on little side trips to "nowhere," and my sister and I felt that no one had ever had such fun before, nor been treated so wonderfully. I can still see the castle, shining bright white against the mountain at night, floating over the equally shining town.
We left Lisbon during the socialist overthrow of the Portuguese government, an experience of its own, and finally boarded an old DC 10 cargo plane for home. The stuffing was coming out of the seats, but we were safe and boarded. All we could talk about was the magic, as we left the revolution behind.
And we flew home straight into night; still we felt our hearts leap nonetheless as the plane flew low over the coast and we saw the glittering ribbon that was home.
I do not know how to describe the sister who thought that the greatest gift of the second half of the twentieth century was her baby sister Jetty. I was beautiful to her, some sort of jewel that went unappreciated in the world. She did not understand how men could be so cruel to me... she felt it was that they couldn't bear someone so open and loving. I tended to think it was that I had bad taste and was stupid, but I Much preferred her take on it. She mourned my not pursuing art, but understood. In our family the cutthroat comparison factors made us avoid taking up another's interest. Daddy wrote. He, Jack, AND Jean Ellen were teachers. Mom was a math genius... so was I, but I hated math. Mom wanted me to go into that because she hadn't. Jack played guitar and banjo and clarinet. I tried not to duplicate. Daddy sang in the Robert Shaw Chorale... So, while I could sing, paint, write, and play the piano... I avoided pursuing anything much. I was afraid. I blame no one but me. I saw how brutal Dad could be when performance was not perfection. He never really appreciated my sister's worth because she was severely obese and he could not admit there was beauty there. LOTS of men could, but not Dad. And of course that hurt her.
But Jean Ellen and I found our balance with one another through most of our lives. We were each other's number one fan. She was the sort of teacher who bothered to show up at a student's HOME when she feared the girl was suicidal. She was the kind of teacher who did not sleep until she had corrected her papers and made comments that were positive on every single one, even those who failed. She started preparing for September on August first. "I have to find something new to do, even though it's the same curriculum. If I am stale, then it will be stale to my kids." She taught all out, with all of her soul, just as she drew and painted with nothing held back.
I learned all I know about letting myself live with every fiber of my being from her. She was not brave in the conventional sense... until it came time for her to leave. She did not mourn that her life would end at sixty-two. She said, "I have done every single thing I ever wanted to do except go to Athens. EVERYTHING. I was an artist, a teacher, a big sister. I went to Paris six times. I went to England and Italy, to California, to the wild west. I made love and was loved. I have you as my sister and I've had you taking care of me these last years, no matter what. YOU have made sure I could stay here, where I wanted to be. My adventuress, my phoenix. I kept clipping your wings. When I go you will finally fly. Promise me you will fly."
The day she died I brought in all her favorite music--Harry Belafonte, and folk music. I kicked people out and told the nurses that she could not have anyone but me from then on. I sang to her, "Close your eyes." I stroked her head. She began to drown, though, along toward midnight. She choked. The nurses managed to get her cleared out a bit, but had gone down to get some horrible equipment for the next round. Jean Ellen, who was SO READY to go, was fighting for breath.
When the nurse left, I took her face in my hands and shouted, "LOOK AT ME!" Blue eyes wide and startled... My brown eyes hard and determined.
"They have gone to get some medieval atrocity to help you keep breathing. Jean Ellen. Remember? You want to go, so for God's sake, get the HELL OUT OF DODGE!"
The smile appeared. She breathed. She choked. She breathed in a long breath... and nothing happened...
My sister flew the hell out of Dodge, straight into morning...
The Nurse came in as I said, "Well, sure. FINE. Be that way." And I was closing her eyes. All she said was, "Well, you two are certainly related."
But when I looked into her eyes from my sister's, the smile flew away and she said, "I'm shutting the door for a few minutes, dear."
I sat with my sister and sang that song "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right." I sang to her, as I had to my brother, just four years before. I rocked and I sang for the longest time, and I drew a pen and ink picture of flowers, all in a tumble, beautiful, overabundant, asymmetrical, with incomplete line. It began almost going OFF the sheet to the left, but the images became less complete, fading into white space to the right. She had come from someplace full, that she remembered and used to tell me about, and had filled my life and hers with more beauty than twelve sisters, then faded bit by bit before my eyes, two years before she died, moving away from me, from all of us, leaving this part of the continuum. I drew and I sang and I cried because I could not see where she'd gone. Fading into white, a picture still being drawn by her, but incomplete for me... for me, left behind.
Before I left the room for the people to take her away, all I could think to say was, "I'll fly into dawn, honey. If it takes me til I'm ninety, I promise. I'll fly."
I kissed her now closed eyes, put the portrait on her chest, and walked into my mourning.
At dawn.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
I'm Back... No. Really. More than every three weeks or so
AND, not whining even!
It's been a long, difficult climb back to myself, but that's okay. I will not say that all is fine, but somewhere between the Christmas tree decorating and the five-day stint of tutoring my nephew, I made real progress. Part of that progress had to do with gratitude. How could it not? I have this circle of friends I've discussed, these women primarily, who simply will not allow any among us to hit bottom at full tilt. I will have to hit bottom. It's there, still coming, but the landing will be far softer. Free fall is over.
One gave me my gym membership, so that I am able to pursue my new PT regimen independently as often as I choose. Already this is paying off. Others gave me gift cards to my grocery store, to my pharmacy, to some little restaurants. They were creative in giving me, well, MONEY. It is so hard to take help, but when people offer it with such glee, how can I not simply say thank you, cry, and be grateful? We do this for one another. Each of us has had to be on the receiving end, and each of us has been in the position of being able to give--it is a wonderful net of love we have. I think there are always about ten of us per person to help.
I will lose my house, yes. And I Still have no idea how I will make it until I sell this place, but I finally have faith that I will.
My physical therapists and I have worked up a tremendously difficult routine to keep these legs moving, and in these first six weeks, already I have--WE have established a new nerve path to move my left leg in one particular motion. It is one small enormous victory.
PT I think may be the most important source of life lessons for me. Patience. Perseverance. Blind faith. They all come into play there. Most victories are solitary. I move the leg when I am alone, in the middle of a series of repetitions--suddenly I realize I have moved the leg twice without thinking about it.
We take it for granted that we can move our legs sideways. Move our foot up and down. The little things. I could not move my leg to the side. We found this out during therapy. I went to do the motion and nothing. Not weakness. Simply no movement. So I took my hand and moved the leg. I lie on my bed and use my right leg to push the leg. ANYTHING I can think of, I make that leg move and I Focus on it. I stare at my leg and I tell it to move. You do this over and over and over again, and somehow or other, our brain maks a new nerve connect in a new way to that muscle and slowly, jerkily, in nearly imperceptible increments, the leg moves. I'm lucky. SOMETIMES, it moves okay, but more and more? With the new spinal injuries, not so much.
But on Friday? I was on my third set of reps. In the water, I'd move the straight leg in front of me, crossing my body, then grit my teeth and try to pull it quickly out to the side, away from the body, using the abductors. Sometimes I Give it a shove with my hands, to start it and my mind can take over just enough to move it jerkily all the way out to the side. sometimes I can't seem to make it move the whole way, but it's okay. I was doing well, focusing so hard I was breaking into a sweat in the water. It hurts to do this. It hurts MORE not to. On rep 13 something happened. A woman next to me asked what was making me focus so hard and I told her, but the LEG KEPT MOVING. I realized on rep 15 that Iw as talking to her but moving the leg, albeit slowly. As soon as I tried to make it move faster, with more resistance, NOTHING.
But the point was, it moved! Somewhere along the line, that new root path is there, despite all logic. It's there. I Don't GET how this happens, but it does. And I cry a little and the woman next to me thinks I am nuts.
I am, but so what?
And I think that this is how I heal my heart, my body, my mind. Constant, consistent effort and the baby steps happen. My heart goes to R. and I make it turn instead to my other friends. I start to feel that ache and longing; I pick up the phone and I call one of my artist friends. I look at the photograph a photographer friend sent me and I remember I am far more than my broken heart or my broken back.
Jetty is damaged. Terribly, terribly damaged. The last three years have had too much roller coastering for one little heart to withstand. But on Friday something clicked into place and I remembered how it is that I get better. Practice. Simple, but terribly difficult retraining. I used to block pain out entirely, but I worked hard to learn NOT to do that any more. It comes back to bite you in the end.
Christmas held a world of magic as it always does. And my New Year's Even rituals did their work this year. I gave away one of my paintings, to G. When she had it framed, she said that several people asked whether I had my stuff in a gallery! I haven't painted enough for that, yet, but the question stunned me. She said that people examined it because they could not figure out how I had gotten so much depth to the painting, such texture. Two kinds of paper are all I use. Tissue and... I don't know what it's called. It is a paper that is mostly holes. Wonderful stuff. It takes paint beautifully and is WONDERFUL for forest work, for heavy texture. Yet it is light enough to layer and allow what's underneath to shine through.
But I realized that my plan to give myself two years may really be practical and doable. That NOT to give myself that time to go after my passions with all that is in me would be a huge mistake. No matter what happens, if I give myself the time to work on that, and simply to work on my physical health, who am I to say that it will not open all sorts of doors for me?
Who am I to say that my art is less than anyone else's when I have not allowed myself to really try? Why do I suppose that my memoir, my poetry, my stories are not worth reading when I do not let myself FINISH them?
In some ways, I feel as if I will be reconstructing Jetty--the family name I was given by my father. When I am lost in my arts, my sister said, I always have an aspect of the little girl, Jetty, lost in her world. I used to extend and curl my pinky fingers whenever I was enthralled with something--a feather, a color, a cloud, a puppy. I do this still, especially when I paint, or when I am planning and dreaming. People catch a look and the gesture and call me Jetty.
I lost her for some months entirely. Yes, sad to say, the love affair did her in the rest of the way from what the battered body and spirit had already started. The physical pain and the way my town killed my plans for art, and the way the physical problems had shown me I could no longer work at what had been my career--these things had me at the edge of a fragile place. R.'s shoving me off the rest of the way, I DO confess, put me over an edge I'd not been over since my daughter died. Too much too fast, and I did not cope well at all. The grief was obsessive and a little dangerous. I just could not seem to process what had happened--there was too much happening all at once, and all of it was bad at the time. Still, I know I was in trouble there for a while.
Feh. I'm human. I will be starting a new blog at some point...I'll let people know when it's well underway. I want to keep writing about my family here, about my mom, my sister--the memoir things. I have such a colorful family and have had quite a life.
But I want to keep a record of what it is to start from scratch at fifty-seven or fifty-eight. Selling this home that's been mine for twenty years, knowing I have possibly just two years to make my two arts fly so that I can stay in the next home I have. What it is to actually give myself the permission to DO this. I will have a limited amount of money from the house, from my disability check. ALL my "extra" allotted money will be going to art supplies and to my living space. It's still cheaper to have an apartment large enough to have a studio than to rent studio space. It's an extra couple of thousand a year to have it be my home space... studio space would be DOUBLE that at least. And I can be in my home and work around my health.
I suddenly started thinking, what if this works? What if I find that I do have talents for which people will pay money? What if I CAN scrape by and now, at this point in my life, do nothing but paint and write? How exciting would that be, that at sixty years old I could start the life I'd always wanted to live anyway? Maybe it would inspire others to turn health horrors into something else... to find the way to turn having a profound and painful disability into the chance of a lifetime.
That's what I am slowly turning my attitude toward--thinking of the workouts as the chance of a lifetime to get healthier, no matter HOW little I can walk, and this inability to do substantial gainful employment into what amounts to a new training session to do what I've always wanted to do. I never thought I deserved to paint and write and nothing else--to create art just that I WANT, and to write for ME. I've done graphics design and rendering. I have written copy on deadline for others.
And I have taken care of everyone else, at the expense of myself.
When we finally sell this house, there will be just me. An apartment and me. No job, and extremely limited income, some cash, and TIME. Two years is enough time to create a body of work, to go to a gym/pool three days a week to build my health up again, to work on my memoir AND other work--poetry, Jetty Reconstructed, the novel I began.
Here I am in the New year. YES, I think of R every single day. I do. I confess it. But so much of the moroseness is gone. And some days it is a fleeting thought that I CAN easily redirect. And some days it's the thought that I am so glad that he talked about how it was about damned time I was able to get up each day and CHOOSE to pain or write, or stay in bed and sleep if my back demanded it, without tending to others' expectation or demands. I am so glad we talked about what it would be to have a life dedicated to our passions, our true passions... he awakened that in me and the ONLY way I can honor that short time he chose to stick around is to try to live that piece all on my own. I want to hold onto the real stuff that kept that love alive, in tact for a full thirty years--to block it all out or simply focus on the mess he made... I don't know. It seems wrong to me, and it belittles the truth of us. We built everything else on a friendship that was there in eighth grade. We are passionate people who grab life with both hands. Who are interested in many things--it is part of what drew us together. Passion is not all about chemistry, though that can be there, too, if you are very lucky.
In taking what he reawakened in me, I can hold onto the good of us and gradually the pain will subside, and maybe even go away. But the real beauty of his having come back to me, even for a time, is in recognizing that his being in the picture is not necessary to my fulfillment. At least not when it comes to living a passionate life. I'd forgotten how to do that for too long, I think. I was rediscovering it when I started this blog and when I put the studio into my home a year ago in March. He HELPED that, he did not destroy that. I need to remember that--let him go to whatever life it is he has chosen, but keep the fact that the man saw what mattered to me and wanted it FOR me. He would think it was a travesty for me to stay in some sort of limbo, to NOT go after these dreams if given the opportunity.
I am lucky to have a home to sell, to HAVE the possibility of a couple of years to dedicate to going after what I want. Many--perhaps most people never have that. Perhaps people who appear to have far better, fuller lives than I have, feel trapped there. It's easy to stay where things are predictable, to tell ourselves that we are doing this for others, that we are choosing what is right and somehow noble... when in fact, we are finding a way to avoid risk.
It's a little scary to decide to, what, think I might make a living on my painting and writing? I might have tried to do this when I was married, but my husband laughed at my dreams, my kids "needed me"--LESS than I told myself--and I told myself that I SHOULD do work that would help support the family right away, that I had no right thinking of my own wants. I starved my very being in my marriage, all in the name of being the "good wife." I was NOT a good wife and I am sure the martyrdom was palpable to my husband. I had a back problem and punished myself for it.
I dabbled in what I loved, but I did not risk. As long as I listened to his priorities, I was "safe." I could look as if I was the great stepmom and oh so strong, going through surgery, caring for my dying parents, taking care of the kids... all that. But if I am honest with myself, i COULD HAVE used that time to live my passions. I chose not to.
Hard to see that it was partly my choice, now. And it's easy for me to say now it's too late. Too late for R. to have left his life and started a new one with me. Too late to start an artistic career. Too late to start again. After all, soon I'll be sixty. I can tell myself our culture says I am too old. I can do what is "safer" and move to Lewisburg, get the little place that costs less, make new friends and lose myself in that life. But I do not think I would focus on my own art. THEY are already artists and musicians. It's a town with lots to do. Nope. The harder thing to do is to make the choice HERE, where I live, to CONTINUE the work I have started, to choose my comfort and my own life for a time. To commit to the artist's life for real.
Why is that scary? It shouldn't be. But it seems to be. For the first time, though, in many many years, I KNOW that this is the right choice for me. To my toes. And I don't know how it will play out. I SURE don't know how to get from here to there--to get this enormous place ready to sell, to weed through all my junk, while I'm in PT, WHILE I keep painting... IT feels overwhelming.. WHILE I apply for Social Security Disability. Praying for the money to hold out.
Yet it's right. I know it's right. And I don't think I'd have been willing to make this choice if R had NOT come back. Isn't that odd? He reawakened far more than my passion for him. The first time he shut the door on me I was getting ready to go off to grad school in Boston. I was going to get a master's in Adult Education. I had JUST realized what I wanted when he made the choice not to give us a second chance, to go with the sure thing he was in. And I fell down the stairs and my back changed my life for good. But I had realized, because of him, that I wanted PASSION not safe, in my life. I'd broken things off to see what a far quieter relationship would bring. A gentle intellectual... but within a couple of months I KNEW. I knew that, tumultuous or not, R. and I held the possibility of a life that would be rich beyond my dreams--that we could build something extraordinary. He did not want to risk our NOT working out. He, on the other hand, felt that he didn't want to try, that the risk of our not working would mean he'd lose out on the sure thing he felt he had with someone new he'd met.
I chose "safe" when Mark came. I could have kids, have a family, do the right thing. When R. left then, I decided that I'd been stupid to believe in living a passionate life and maybe he was right. Well, perhaps for HIM, but not for me.
I was meant for the edges of things, not the safety of the farmlands of New England. I was meant for the place where shore meets water, rock meets air. The edge of yin and yang. And NEVER did I let myself truly live there in a constructive way. NOW? I have absolutely nothing to lose but what amounts to about $5000. That is the gamble I'm talking about. To give myself REAL time to heal, to go after what matters?
R., when you read this, thank you. You are right. I DO need to do this. And while I would have loved you to be my partner in it all, and for you to give up the safe job/career and go after your own wonderful passions, I know we are different and have different circumstances. I've been judgmental because, well, you hurt me you big bobohead! But I do not live in your shoes, and maybe things have changed so that you can be more yourself now. But whatever your own circumstances, thank you for waking up that part of me who KNOWS she belongs living in that place where daylight fades into night, night into morning, and the rocks meet the sea. New Englander that I am. A woman of extremes, built on very solid, stable ground. I need no tornadoes, few hurricanes, but the seasons offer me the drama I need.
And so here I am again on my blog, working it all out in front of eyes who do not know me. Yours do. And I know when you read this, you'll understand and smile. Losing you again will remain a hole that no one else will fill. I can live with that. I miss you. I can live with that, too. As I said, I leave it to your heart whether or not our paths cross again... and I can only pray that you are living your life closer to the bone because of our reconnection. I hope that you found something through us that has helped you grow. I will keep writing and I hope you will continue to check now and again... but I must let go of that thought, even. I must truly let you go entirely, without blocking you out. Time. Agape. Han. Music. I will be fine.
But mostly I write for myself and for the other bloggers in here who are struggling to find their own ways to live their passions, to share their lives and purpose. Who inspire me every time I read their entries. You all have done more to help me keep a toe on solid ground than you know. You remind me that gratitude is important, honesty without necessarily being sordid or dangerous in our honesty. There is not a day that I read the blogs I follow that I do not find words that make me rethink my selfishness in my pain, or reexamine unhealthy habits, or laugh, or cry--you all make me so very glad I started my blog just about a year ago. Thank you for following me through my ramblings, the pain, the joy of this last year. Your blogs offer beauty, wisdom, honesty that can touch anyone who reads them.
So here I am again. Starting fresh. This next month I expect I'll be fumbling around with what I write, finding the rhythms again, finding my voice, finding the subjects. That's fine. Blogspot bloggers are so forgiving. We are all works in progress anyway.
The phoenix has found her way to the TOP of the ashes, but has a whole bunch of cleaning off of her wings, and has some pretty nasty burns that need healing before she flies. But fly she will.
*****
For now? I am going to go have an early dinner with four acquaintances. They are going to a special showing of Avatar. I can't do that because of the nerve thingy in my face. So instead, I will have supper--we'll all be silly and laugh a lot, then I will come home and work on the three paintings I have going.
*****
PS
I do not know how to photograph them. My work is meant to be viewed from at least eight feet away. Somewhere around that distance, the picture suddenly emerges for people. One of my friends tried, but when we put the pictures on the monitor, they simply looked like little dots and lines of color, barely discernible as the forest pictures they are. Perhaps I'll find someone who knows how to make it work. OH, well. It's the doing that counts!
It's been a long, difficult climb back to myself, but that's okay. I will not say that all is fine, but somewhere between the Christmas tree decorating and the five-day stint of tutoring my nephew, I made real progress. Part of that progress had to do with gratitude. How could it not? I have this circle of friends I've discussed, these women primarily, who simply will not allow any among us to hit bottom at full tilt. I will have to hit bottom. It's there, still coming, but the landing will be far softer. Free fall is over.
One gave me my gym membership, so that I am able to pursue my new PT regimen independently as often as I choose. Already this is paying off. Others gave me gift cards to my grocery store, to my pharmacy, to some little restaurants. They were creative in giving me, well, MONEY. It is so hard to take help, but when people offer it with such glee, how can I not simply say thank you, cry, and be grateful? We do this for one another. Each of us has had to be on the receiving end, and each of us has been in the position of being able to give--it is a wonderful net of love we have. I think there are always about ten of us per person to help.
I will lose my house, yes. And I Still have no idea how I will make it until I sell this place, but I finally have faith that I will.
My physical therapists and I have worked up a tremendously difficult routine to keep these legs moving, and in these first six weeks, already I have--WE have established a new nerve path to move my left leg in one particular motion. It is one small enormous victory.
PT I think may be the most important source of life lessons for me. Patience. Perseverance. Blind faith. They all come into play there. Most victories are solitary. I move the leg when I am alone, in the middle of a series of repetitions--suddenly I realize I have moved the leg twice without thinking about it.
We take it for granted that we can move our legs sideways. Move our foot up and down. The little things. I could not move my leg to the side. We found this out during therapy. I went to do the motion and nothing. Not weakness. Simply no movement. So I took my hand and moved the leg. I lie on my bed and use my right leg to push the leg. ANYTHING I can think of, I make that leg move and I Focus on it. I stare at my leg and I tell it to move. You do this over and over and over again, and somehow or other, our brain maks a new nerve connect in a new way to that muscle and slowly, jerkily, in nearly imperceptible increments, the leg moves. I'm lucky. SOMETIMES, it moves okay, but more and more? With the new spinal injuries, not so much.
But on Friday? I was on my third set of reps. In the water, I'd move the straight leg in front of me, crossing my body, then grit my teeth and try to pull it quickly out to the side, away from the body, using the abductors. Sometimes I Give it a shove with my hands, to start it and my mind can take over just enough to move it jerkily all the way out to the side. sometimes I can't seem to make it move the whole way, but it's okay. I was doing well, focusing so hard I was breaking into a sweat in the water. It hurts to do this. It hurts MORE not to. On rep 13 something happened. A woman next to me asked what was making me focus so hard and I told her, but the LEG KEPT MOVING. I realized on rep 15 that Iw as talking to her but moving the leg, albeit slowly. As soon as I tried to make it move faster, with more resistance, NOTHING.
But the point was, it moved! Somewhere along the line, that new root path is there, despite all logic. It's there. I Don't GET how this happens, but it does. And I cry a little and the woman next to me thinks I am nuts.
I am, but so what?
And I think that this is how I heal my heart, my body, my mind. Constant, consistent effort and the baby steps happen. My heart goes to R. and I make it turn instead to my other friends. I start to feel that ache and longing; I pick up the phone and I call one of my artist friends. I look at the photograph a photographer friend sent me and I remember I am far more than my broken heart or my broken back.
Jetty is damaged. Terribly, terribly damaged. The last three years have had too much roller coastering for one little heart to withstand. But on Friday something clicked into place and I remembered how it is that I get better. Practice. Simple, but terribly difficult retraining. I used to block pain out entirely, but I worked hard to learn NOT to do that any more. It comes back to bite you in the end.
Christmas held a world of magic as it always does. And my New Year's Even rituals did their work this year. I gave away one of my paintings, to G. When she had it framed, she said that several people asked whether I had my stuff in a gallery! I haven't painted enough for that, yet, but the question stunned me. She said that people examined it because they could not figure out how I had gotten so much depth to the painting, such texture. Two kinds of paper are all I use. Tissue and... I don't know what it's called. It is a paper that is mostly holes. Wonderful stuff. It takes paint beautifully and is WONDERFUL for forest work, for heavy texture. Yet it is light enough to layer and allow what's underneath to shine through.
But I realized that my plan to give myself two years may really be practical and doable. That NOT to give myself that time to go after my passions with all that is in me would be a huge mistake. No matter what happens, if I give myself the time to work on that, and simply to work on my physical health, who am I to say that it will not open all sorts of doors for me?
Who am I to say that my art is less than anyone else's when I have not allowed myself to really try? Why do I suppose that my memoir, my poetry, my stories are not worth reading when I do not let myself FINISH them?
In some ways, I feel as if I will be reconstructing Jetty--the family name I was given by my father. When I am lost in my arts, my sister said, I always have an aspect of the little girl, Jetty, lost in her world. I used to extend and curl my pinky fingers whenever I was enthralled with something--a feather, a color, a cloud, a puppy. I do this still, especially when I paint, or when I am planning and dreaming. People catch a look and the gesture and call me Jetty.
I lost her for some months entirely. Yes, sad to say, the love affair did her in the rest of the way from what the battered body and spirit had already started. The physical pain and the way my town killed my plans for art, and the way the physical problems had shown me I could no longer work at what had been my career--these things had me at the edge of a fragile place. R.'s shoving me off the rest of the way, I DO confess, put me over an edge I'd not been over since my daughter died. Too much too fast, and I did not cope well at all. The grief was obsessive and a little dangerous. I just could not seem to process what had happened--there was too much happening all at once, and all of it was bad at the time. Still, I know I was in trouble there for a while.
Feh. I'm human. I will be starting a new blog at some point...I'll let people know when it's well underway. I want to keep writing about my family here, about my mom, my sister--the memoir things. I have such a colorful family and have had quite a life.
But I want to keep a record of what it is to start from scratch at fifty-seven or fifty-eight. Selling this home that's been mine for twenty years, knowing I have possibly just two years to make my two arts fly so that I can stay in the next home I have. What it is to actually give myself the permission to DO this. I will have a limited amount of money from the house, from my disability check. ALL my "extra" allotted money will be going to art supplies and to my living space. It's still cheaper to have an apartment large enough to have a studio than to rent studio space. It's an extra couple of thousand a year to have it be my home space... studio space would be DOUBLE that at least. And I can be in my home and work around my health.
I suddenly started thinking, what if this works? What if I find that I do have talents for which people will pay money? What if I CAN scrape by and now, at this point in my life, do nothing but paint and write? How exciting would that be, that at sixty years old I could start the life I'd always wanted to live anyway? Maybe it would inspire others to turn health horrors into something else... to find the way to turn having a profound and painful disability into the chance of a lifetime.
That's what I am slowly turning my attitude toward--thinking of the workouts as the chance of a lifetime to get healthier, no matter HOW little I can walk, and this inability to do substantial gainful employment into what amounts to a new training session to do what I've always wanted to do. I never thought I deserved to paint and write and nothing else--to create art just that I WANT, and to write for ME. I've done graphics design and rendering. I have written copy on deadline for others.
And I have taken care of everyone else, at the expense of myself.
When we finally sell this house, there will be just me. An apartment and me. No job, and extremely limited income, some cash, and TIME. Two years is enough time to create a body of work, to go to a gym/pool three days a week to build my health up again, to work on my memoir AND other work--poetry, Jetty Reconstructed, the novel I began.
Here I am in the New year. YES, I think of R every single day. I do. I confess it. But so much of the moroseness is gone. And some days it is a fleeting thought that I CAN easily redirect. And some days it's the thought that I am so glad that he talked about how it was about damned time I was able to get up each day and CHOOSE to pain or write, or stay in bed and sleep if my back demanded it, without tending to others' expectation or demands. I am so glad we talked about what it would be to have a life dedicated to our passions, our true passions... he awakened that in me and the ONLY way I can honor that short time he chose to stick around is to try to live that piece all on my own. I want to hold onto the real stuff that kept that love alive, in tact for a full thirty years--to block it all out or simply focus on the mess he made... I don't know. It seems wrong to me, and it belittles the truth of us. We built everything else on a friendship that was there in eighth grade. We are passionate people who grab life with both hands. Who are interested in many things--it is part of what drew us together. Passion is not all about chemistry, though that can be there, too, if you are very lucky.
In taking what he reawakened in me, I can hold onto the good of us and gradually the pain will subside, and maybe even go away. But the real beauty of his having come back to me, even for a time, is in recognizing that his being in the picture is not necessary to my fulfillment. At least not when it comes to living a passionate life. I'd forgotten how to do that for too long, I think. I was rediscovering it when I started this blog and when I put the studio into my home a year ago in March. He HELPED that, he did not destroy that. I need to remember that--let him go to whatever life it is he has chosen, but keep the fact that the man saw what mattered to me and wanted it FOR me. He would think it was a travesty for me to stay in some sort of limbo, to NOT go after these dreams if given the opportunity.
I am lucky to have a home to sell, to HAVE the possibility of a couple of years to dedicate to going after what I want. Many--perhaps most people never have that. Perhaps people who appear to have far better, fuller lives than I have, feel trapped there. It's easy to stay where things are predictable, to tell ourselves that we are doing this for others, that we are choosing what is right and somehow noble... when in fact, we are finding a way to avoid risk.
It's a little scary to decide to, what, think I might make a living on my painting and writing? I might have tried to do this when I was married, but my husband laughed at my dreams, my kids "needed me"--LESS than I told myself--and I told myself that I SHOULD do work that would help support the family right away, that I had no right thinking of my own wants. I starved my very being in my marriage, all in the name of being the "good wife." I was NOT a good wife and I am sure the martyrdom was palpable to my husband. I had a back problem and punished myself for it.
I dabbled in what I loved, but I did not risk. As long as I listened to his priorities, I was "safe." I could look as if I was the great stepmom and oh so strong, going through surgery, caring for my dying parents, taking care of the kids... all that. But if I am honest with myself, i COULD HAVE used that time to live my passions. I chose not to.
Hard to see that it was partly my choice, now. And it's easy for me to say now it's too late. Too late for R. to have left his life and started a new one with me. Too late to start an artistic career. Too late to start again. After all, soon I'll be sixty. I can tell myself our culture says I am too old. I can do what is "safer" and move to Lewisburg, get the little place that costs less, make new friends and lose myself in that life. But I do not think I would focus on my own art. THEY are already artists and musicians. It's a town with lots to do. Nope. The harder thing to do is to make the choice HERE, where I live, to CONTINUE the work I have started, to choose my comfort and my own life for a time. To commit to the artist's life for real.
Why is that scary? It shouldn't be. But it seems to be. For the first time, though, in many many years, I KNOW that this is the right choice for me. To my toes. And I don't know how it will play out. I SURE don't know how to get from here to there--to get this enormous place ready to sell, to weed through all my junk, while I'm in PT, WHILE I keep painting... IT feels overwhelming.. WHILE I apply for Social Security Disability. Praying for the money to hold out.
Yet it's right. I know it's right. And I don't think I'd have been willing to make this choice if R had NOT come back. Isn't that odd? He reawakened far more than my passion for him. The first time he shut the door on me I was getting ready to go off to grad school in Boston. I was going to get a master's in Adult Education. I had JUST realized what I wanted when he made the choice not to give us a second chance, to go with the sure thing he was in. And I fell down the stairs and my back changed my life for good. But I had realized, because of him, that I wanted PASSION not safe, in my life. I'd broken things off to see what a far quieter relationship would bring. A gentle intellectual... but within a couple of months I KNEW. I knew that, tumultuous or not, R. and I held the possibility of a life that would be rich beyond my dreams--that we could build something extraordinary. He did not want to risk our NOT working out. He, on the other hand, felt that he didn't want to try, that the risk of our not working would mean he'd lose out on the sure thing he felt he had with someone new he'd met.
I chose "safe" when Mark came. I could have kids, have a family, do the right thing. When R. left then, I decided that I'd been stupid to believe in living a passionate life and maybe he was right. Well, perhaps for HIM, but not for me.
I was meant for the edges of things, not the safety of the farmlands of New England. I was meant for the place where shore meets water, rock meets air. The edge of yin and yang. And NEVER did I let myself truly live there in a constructive way. NOW? I have absolutely nothing to lose but what amounts to about $5000. That is the gamble I'm talking about. To give myself REAL time to heal, to go after what matters?
R., when you read this, thank you. You are right. I DO need to do this. And while I would have loved you to be my partner in it all, and for you to give up the safe job/career and go after your own wonderful passions, I know we are different and have different circumstances. I've been judgmental because, well, you hurt me you big bobohead! But I do not live in your shoes, and maybe things have changed so that you can be more yourself now. But whatever your own circumstances, thank you for waking up that part of me who KNOWS she belongs living in that place where daylight fades into night, night into morning, and the rocks meet the sea. New Englander that I am. A woman of extremes, built on very solid, stable ground. I need no tornadoes, few hurricanes, but the seasons offer me the drama I need.
And so here I am again on my blog, working it all out in front of eyes who do not know me. Yours do. And I know when you read this, you'll understand and smile. Losing you again will remain a hole that no one else will fill. I can live with that. I miss you. I can live with that, too. As I said, I leave it to your heart whether or not our paths cross again... and I can only pray that you are living your life closer to the bone because of our reconnection. I hope that you found something through us that has helped you grow. I will keep writing and I hope you will continue to check now and again... but I must let go of that thought, even. I must truly let you go entirely, without blocking you out. Time. Agape. Han. Music. I will be fine.
But mostly I write for myself and for the other bloggers in here who are struggling to find their own ways to live their passions, to share their lives and purpose. Who inspire me every time I read their entries. You all have done more to help me keep a toe on solid ground than you know. You remind me that gratitude is important, honesty without necessarily being sordid or dangerous in our honesty. There is not a day that I read the blogs I follow that I do not find words that make me rethink my selfishness in my pain, or reexamine unhealthy habits, or laugh, or cry--you all make me so very glad I started my blog just about a year ago. Thank you for following me through my ramblings, the pain, the joy of this last year. Your blogs offer beauty, wisdom, honesty that can touch anyone who reads them.
So here I am again. Starting fresh. This next month I expect I'll be fumbling around with what I write, finding the rhythms again, finding my voice, finding the subjects. That's fine. Blogspot bloggers are so forgiving. We are all works in progress anyway.
The phoenix has found her way to the TOP of the ashes, but has a whole bunch of cleaning off of her wings, and has some pretty nasty burns that need healing before she flies. But fly she will.
*****
For now? I am going to go have an early dinner with four acquaintances. They are going to a special showing of Avatar. I can't do that because of the nerve thingy in my face. So instead, I will have supper--we'll all be silly and laugh a lot, then I will come home and work on the three paintings I have going.
*****
PS
I do not know how to photograph them. My work is meant to be viewed from at least eight feet away. Somewhere around that distance, the picture suddenly emerges for people. One of my friends tried, but when we put the pictures on the monitor, they simply looked like little dots and lines of color, barely discernible as the forest pictures they are. Perhaps I'll find someone who knows how to make it work. OH, well. It's the doing that counts!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)