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.

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.

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.

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!