Classic

I am pretty classical. I like classical music and art and poetry, but don't think that I am classically trained, because I am not.

I am trained like a recalcitrant puppy by a world that made me do things over and over and over and over  - - until getting them right so they were over faster became my mode of being.

I have learned to read eyes and wiggle all over with anticipation and love and a desire to please rather than use my voice to sing the anthems of love in my heart because people might not like my songs or speak my language, but who can miss these actions.

I know when to bark and snarl and snap my eyes -- even when it does no good.

A watch mom rears children who can survive no matter what or who they are. She teaches them all the tricks of living in a mad, mad, mad world.

And she hopes they know they will always be loved by that great beast running around the yard barking fiercely while wagging its tail.

Even when they have been given away.

Primo mommas

Every so often, I find myself doing masochistic things like watching toddlers in tiaras. Surprised that they still exist and amazed at the shameless things some of the mothers use to justify it.

It is toddlers and even older girls at impressionable ages  transformed from sweet innocence into show girls and less appetizing things.

It is  mothers using their children to live out some long lost dream at everyone's expense, some being plainly abusive and proud of it.

It is the idea that this is an investment of thousands of dollars in froufrou costumes, modeling classes and coaches when the family is obviously going deeply into debt to do it.

It is the sad brainwashing of  little children, telling them that if they are good at this, as one mother said, "She might grow up to marry a rich man." Making them feel that something as ephemeral as physical beauty and purchased things are very important and that the family is counting on them to get their money's worth.

I have a very difficult time understanding how anyone thinks this is a good thing, especially for little girls. How can parents feel no shame about being on television for the world to watch as they promote this twisted form of entertainment that snuggles right up against child porn.

The children are adorable before they are dressed up and sent out to work, but my heart breaks as their mothers tell them to stop crying and not shame their families, to not waste all the money and time spent getting them ready. Some even scowling when the child performs poorly and meeting them after the performance with remonstrances about what they did wrong.

How can anyone think this is healthy? It promotes the idea that success can be bought, that beauty creates worthiness, that seductive moves are how little girls should be viewed and that without all this, they are not enough.

Monsters among us

It rises in the night. Out of the primordial darkness it emerges, spewing acid from it's forked tongue. A harbinger of all our worst fears, it attacks and slowly kills its victims.

And what do we ask?

Why was she there? What was she wearing? What did she say? ''

Already we have begun to blame the victim. Why is that?

What did the little acolyte do that made him a victim?

Was the girl too fat to be treated like a human being?

Are not all things about human beings sacred? No matter their race, religion, size, shape, sexual preferences, gender preferences, clothing choices?

Abuse, both physical and emotional continues on because our society accepts it. Not all men. Not all women, but enough that we go for the juggler, scapegoat the weak, act like it is survival of the fittest and since it is illegal to outright kill them, we do everything but.

How brave does a leader have to be to instill compassion and have a no tolerance policy for things that do not generate money, but make it not okay to mistreat human beings?

 Pretty brave.

If the football coach calls one of his boys for a sexist remark, it makes a difference. If a university president requires classes that promote equality of all people, it makes a difference. If the president of a huge corporation has a good human resource unit, it makes a difference. If using people becomes uncool, it makes a difference.

That monster came out of the primordial darkness of our civilization. It thought it was justified in taking what it wanted because that is what real monsters do. Otherwise other monsters might think less of it.

Time to redefine monsters I think.

If you do not stand up for what is right you are enabling monsters.

All my love

I want the people I love to experience all the good things I have and as little of the bad as possible.

Children! The best parts of my life have been with children. Watching them grow. Holding them. Playing with them. Seeing them happy and content. Being tickled by their orneriness.

They don't have to be blood of my blood, or bone of my bone. They only have to touch a piece of my heart and I am filled.

Exploring! This world is filled with so many unimaginable places. Some because nature made it so and some because experiences made it so. Both need to be savored.

Reading! Without books my life would have so many fewer dimensions. Where would all those vicarious experiences occur? What would feed my mind? Who would care for me when I am all alone?

Small blessings! Things like realizing how fortunate I am to be able to pay my bills.  To understand how good it is to have a place to call home. To be able to eat good food and not be hungry.

Friends. And these can be children, family, family of the heart, and just friends who will share a cup of coffee or tea. To have someone who cares makes life tolerable in the worst of times and glorious in the best.

Resiliency. Living through the worst, thinking you cannot bear it, and deep down knowing that nothing lasts forever. The sun will shine again. The pain will lessen over time. Just hang in there.

I don't know that these things are in order of importance, but I do know they are important.

Gone bad

Parents are the more immediate gods in our lives, the ones who create us in their own image and whose presence decides what we have and have not. They write the code we live by, set the parameters for our morals and can be our intermediary between life and death.

In the early years, most of the things I believed were true, maybe even true enough to die defending, were the things my parents taught me. I trusted them to really know and to be honest with me.

There were a few hitches like when I misunderstood that it didn't take both ten dimes and a hundred pennies to make a dollar and those ephemeral gift givers like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might not have been literally real, but hey, who can't forgive that kind of mix up?

Less forgivable are insidious misconceptions that come through the generations, but have never been laudable. Someone needs to step in and change them.

Things like gently, sweetly, quietly, deriding everyone in the world but mother and her maternal line. Emphasizing it with clever, sort of funny, stories to make sure it sticks. These things breed a line of loyalty that become a line of demarcation between mother and everyone else.

This type of mother keeps her children close with fear by disguising it as love and it can be unwittingly passed on generation after generation. Just one example of love gone bad.

Labels

Crazy or creative?

The danger in labels is that we all draw lines in different ways and places.

Whether it's a butterfly or a worm might depend on when you saw it.

Whether it is booming and loud, or soft and sweet, might depend on what part of the symphony you heard.

Masterpiece or mess?

Did it appeal to you, or not?

Did it meet your expectations?

Did you grow up surrounded by similar things? Were you taught to like diversity? Are you sure of who you are? Do you need other people's approval?

Labels can be so confining.

Waiting to die

I feel like I was born contemplating death.

My earliest memories are of quizzing my mother about heaven and being afraid I might die before she did. She assured me her father, my grandfather, would love me very much and take good care of me while I waited for her and Daddy to come. Of course looking back I realize she was deep in mourning for her father who died soon after I was born. I would lie awake after saying the child's prayer, now I lay me down to sleep, trying to imagine this place filled with clouds and light and long lines of souls waiting for their loved ones.

I was so homesick the first year of college that I took a whole bottle of aspirin, hoping it would end my misery. Of course it didn't and in the end I was glad.

The first year I was married we lived far far away from both of our families. My husband was in the army and I was so young. I remember going to bed several times certain that I would die before I wake. But of course I didn't.

My nearly thirty year marriage deteriorated with every year. The joy of watching my children grow was dimmed by a difficult relationship with their father. I put off going for medical treatment thinking it would be easier to die than  have surgery. I made several half hearted attempts to end it all, thinking the children would be better off if we weren't together. But then, just the opposite of all that was when he announced he was divorcing me the day after our son's 18th birthday. I was so terrified that I took most of a bottle of Xanax and ended up in the hospital for three weeks.

Two years later we actually did get a divorce and as the years have passed, that need to die has disappeared. But not the thought of dying. Dying holds less fear for me than fire, or being at the mercy of some dread disease. I have often thought I would die. When I turned 58, the age of my mother when she died, I fully expected to die.

I didn't.

There have been other times when I was just as certain, but I think the only thing that is truly certain is that no one will be more surprised than me when I actually do die and I am beginning to think I might be one of those people who push a hundred. Now I worry about living. I want it to be as rich and full of quality as I can manage.

Happy Anniversary

I hear that (haaap pee anni ver sar ree)  in a sing song chant like they used to do at restaurants where the staff all lined up and embarrassed you with good intentions, but today I would have been married 49 years.

Of course 21 one of those, the best really, have been spent alone after our divorce.

My marriage was a tumultuous combination of sweet expectations and soul grinding reality.

The best parts of being married to an insecure narcissist were our children. They filled me with a joy I didn't know it was possible to have.

I suspect that if I were not a naturally optimistic person, with decidedly dark sides, I would not have survived that 28 years of my marriage intact enough to enjoy the last 21 alone, but I did and the rewards have been amazing.

I fully appreciate how rich and beautiful my life is now because it was so difficult before. The contrast is striking, so maybe there is something to the saying, "everything happens for a reason."

Without the marriage I would not have had my three children, or the freedom to live the way I do now.

Terrifying children

Easter approaches and parents all over the county are taking their children to see the Easter Bunny.

Okay, that may be better than introducing them to pagan fertility rites or plowing people into the field, but it is still a pretty unnatural thing to do to a young impressionable mind! The only time I plopped my children down into the lap of a furry, six foot, creature with huge, unblinking eyes and a vinyl nose, my youngest became hysterical.  He was less than two and he was surrounded by his older siblings. When I got him home I asked him why he didn't like the Easter bunny, His response? "Dat wabbit's mouf didn't move when it talked."

Valid response by a normal, aware emerging human being.

I made me think of other times my children were terrorized by a well meaning world.

I was driving through a small suburb of Normal, Illinois when my older son began shrieking, "Chickie, chickee, chickee." If only he hadn't been in tears at the same time it might have been cuter, but what he was seeing was a huge, bigger than a truck, chicken on the back of a pick up! An advertisement for a local restaurant.

We were visiting Grandma for a celebratory picnic when a loud rhythmic sound vibrated through out the building and my 18 month old son suddenly pointed out the window screaming, "Bug! Bug! Bug!" That was one BIG bug, or helicopter landing right outside in the yard.

Or there was the time we drove down the Interstate and the baby in back started screaming, "Wabbit, wabbit, wabbit!" It took us a while to identify the large power towers we were passing that had two spires, looking quite a bit like Godzilla rabbits to an aware baby.

Less terrifying was when he started yelling boat in the desert. That time it turned out only to truly be a large yacht someone was towing down the highway.

Sometimes I wonder how children survive childhood without night terrors forever more. In our world they see things that appear hideously unnatural, loud and huge.

To wave or not to wave

Imagine struggling to decide whether to wave at someone you love -- or not.

If you do wave you may be accused of grandstanding, or being possessive, or one of a million other paranoid actions.

If you do not wave you may be accused of being rude, or not caring, and worst of all not being loving.

There will not be any physical abuse either way, but the emotional turmoil is still very real.

There is the cold treatment where someone will not acknowledge your presence.

The acid treatment where there is a silent accusatory look that comes up again and again.

And, if you are lucky, you know what you did wrong. If you are not, there is also the soul searching, the mind games, the added self loathing that comes from being in an insane relationship.

Almost no one ever tells you to leave such a relationship. Most people think you are overly sensitive, or overly imaginative. After all he never hits you, or acts that way in public.

But if you feel that way, you should leave and the sooner the better.

Worst case scenario: if it really is you, you will find it repeating itself in other relationships. (Of course it is possible you lean towards those people anyway.)

Best case scenario: you discover life can be much simpler and so much better. In a healthy relationship with someone else, or alone in a healthy relationship with yourself, peace is a blessed perk.

And joy doesn't come with strings.

That isn't cool

The epitome of my worst nightmares all rolled up into one occurred today.

Imagine being on the phone talking to someone you love and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

There is screaming shouting, snarling, growling, barking,  horrific sounds of things going wrong and I can't see what it is.

Not wanting to make things worse I am silent. Listening. Trying to make sense of what I hear.

And then there is silence punctuated by brief gasps that I hope is my friend.

I finally speak and there is no response!

I do not want to panic, because panicking now would serve none of us, but I feel helpless. Do I hang up and try to call emergency services in a far away town? That will take forever, but what else do I do?

Finally a voice says, "I'll call you back."

And he does. It turns out he was walking his dog on a leash in a neighborhood park when a woman and dog entered the park on the other side and her dog, off leash, tore across the park and attacked his dog!

She did nothing except stand where she was, saying. "No."

My friend tried several things and finally ended up kicking the dog in the head over and over to save his dog.

The woman never came over, but her dog finally went back to her. And my friend? He is much more in control and gentlemanly than I would have been. He yelled over at her, "That isn't cool!" And she said nothing.

He is okay. His dog is okay, but we were all seriously shaken up.

Rigged

One of the benefits of time is that it is possible to grow and become more aware of the reality of life.

As a child my teachers were concerned that I felt I needed to be perfect. My parents joked about it and most of my life I have too.

It never seemed to occur to any of them, or me, to wonder why I felt that way.

Tonight as I was downloading a picture from my phone to my computer I felt that same old anxiety flooding over me. The feeling that if I screwed up, or made a mistake, it would be irreconcilable. It would be a fatal flaw, an irredeemable error. I would have missed my one chance to do it right and therefore have engendered a series of events that would negatively impact my life forever more!

As my hand shook, I felt panicky trying to plug the cord from my phone into the computer!

And then it came to me.

What if I somehow did not download this picture? What if I even lost the picture in the process (which is almost impossible to do?) What terrible, awful, horrendous thing would happen?

And it hit me.

Nothing!

I would simply take the picture again and then transfer it to my computer. And it leaves me a bit shaken to think I have done almost everything in my life with this same frenetic fear that has no basis on reality.

Where did I ever get the idea that I could do irreparable damage to my life without even meaning to? That somehow things are rigged against me, just waiting for me to mess up? I realize I even have dreams about doing this, but maybe now I won't.

Maybe.

Hearts and snoozes

Most everyone stands shoulder to shoulder with their family when they are very young.

When you are little it doesn't matter if Mama is Mata Hari, Papa is Jack the Ripper, and Grandmother is a banshee, they are your family and those other offspring are your siblings. You are ready, willing and able to die for them!

But can you live with them?

That is the question that comes up later on, once their unique little personalities start to blossom out and you realize that you are not a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, but a perfectly normal human being living in a desert surrounded by cactus.

Beautiful cactus! Cacti with gorgeous red blooms and the ability to withstand all predators due to their long pointy spines. Cactus that can withstand droughts other people never dreamed of.

Nor needed to dream of.

That is when you discover a family of the heart and the snooze button on Facebook.

Born to bloom

Sometimes I wonder about me.

I have up periods that last months, years, decades.

I feel lucky. Blessed. Born to bloom.

And yet I don't bloom, at least not in traditional ways.

I sometimes wonder if I was born out of time.

I might have lived the same life, long ago, in some out of the way place, without all the media hype..

And just been a satisfied Pollyanna doing everyday things and making them special in my head.

Just a little bit

What is it about scarcity that frightens so many of us?

Most of us have never known real want. Once I was in a place where I had no more money until payday and just enough food to make it through. Then the dog ate my meal and I was devastated, but I wasn't really hungry.

Yet, one of the most effective ways to get people to buy something is apparently to tell them it is the last one, or one of the last. Suddenly the need increases as we try to figure out if we can live without this item. (Even if we had never thought about it until ten minutes ago.)

One of a kind! The flip side of a last chance sale. In this case the object is so rare that is might be priceless (or actually worthless.)

It might be a biological thing. If this is the last cup of water then it truly is precious and might be the difference between life and death, but most of us don't face that.

I see people who collect things, buy object after object. Not because they love each one so much that it gives them pleasure just to look at it, but because they might not have the entire collection in the end. And what happens in the end? Usually they die and someone sells their stuff at a garage sale, or gives it to Goodwill, or packs it away and forgets it is even there.

I try not to buy because of scarcity. Instead I try to surround myself with only things I really love. Things that give me a sense of well being and pleasure when I look at them, or use them. And I do use them. I eat on the good dishes, wear my favorite coat, dry off with towels I love. 

You don't have to have a lot to enjoy life if you do this.

Deep

I am afraid of dogs. When most people see a dog they see a four legged, furry creature who is a pet, an endearing part of someone's family. I see a wolf, an animal with a full set of teeth, legs that can tear across a lawn ten times faster than I can, and whose instincts come from a creature that fiercely protects its territory while hunting meat.

I am, however, not afraid of dogs I know. Dogs who specifically know me.

I am also approaching seventy, but a very young seventy. Think fifty. I still need adventures and I cannot afford to go on an African safari taking pictures of lions and tigers and bears -- oh my, no bears in Africa, but . . . I also cannot afford to float down the Rhine photographing old castles and the Black Forrest.

I can, however, get in my car and drive into the heart of the deep south and face my deepest fears bravely (in great comfort, but still, bravely.)

In the past I have gone to monasteries to meditate. Explored distant places in solitude. And faced other fears.

Soon I will go on a new adventure, facing one of my greatest fears. I will get in my car, drive deep into the heart of Dixie and spend five weeks alone with a large dog, walking in uncharted territory!

Okay, for most people this would be walking a dog in an upper class neighborhood among people who jet set around the world. But for me it is an adventure!

Deep.

Moth radio hour

I took myself to breakfast yesterday. Nothing fancy. I went to a local fast food place, bought a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit and a cup of coffee. Then I drove to a local park.

And parked.

Simple. Straight forward. And something I've done hundreds of times.

I was listening to the Moth Radio hour as I drove home. Ttrue stories told by people in front of live audiences. Yesterday's stories revolved around mothers.

Of course memories of my own mother began to gather and pour through my mind. A deluge of guilt and nagging questions that can never really be put to rest now.

These thoughts drifted around me as I rounded the mall drive. Almost drowning out the radio. Almost carrying me away from the business of consciously watching the road. Almost.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a drop of water hit the windshield in front of me and trickled down the glass, followed by five more drops, it took me a minute to realize they were only on half the windshield. My half.

Where did they come from? I told myself they must have dripped off of something, but what? There were no trees or tall posts there and I was moving. The first drop was at one place, the five drops were farther down the road.

Can rain do that?

I felt as if my mother had reached out to me; that I had somehow just experienced a very natural but very unusual connection. With myself if nothing else.

If it was my mother what was she saying? That I was right, I should feel sad and guilty, or that everything was okay and she didn't want me to feel sad?

If it was anything at all, I hope it was the latter. And that hope sort of makes it real.

Heart and Soul

I have been to funerals since I was six years old and my great grandmother died. My grandmother told me she was sleeping, which was terrifying because they put her in the ground and buried her!

Most of the funerals I went to throughout my life were random acquaintances or very old relatives. They seemed as natural as snow in the winter and heat in the summer.

Until my mother died.

There was nothing natural about that. One year my children were in elementary school, and my friends, who were pyschologists and priests, were saying we needed to break from our parents, so for the first time in my life I was not going home two or three times a month. Then, just before Mother's Day and her 58th birthday my mother called out of the blue to say she and my father were driving up for the afternoon.

I  ran out and bought grocery store chocolate cake that was one of the ugliest cakes I'd ever seen, but all that was available. Then I went to the mall and bought her a pair of gold heart earrings and got home just before they arrived.

My son wanted to show Grammy how we played our duet Heart and Soul, but I put him off. I said this wasn't the time and we could do it next time. We ate the cake, took pictures, opened the earrings and my mother and I walked to the end of the driveway together.

This was odd because she had trouble breathing and hadn't wanted to walk more than a few steps for a very long time. She asked questions about where we were in respect to town and how many streets over to the main street and other odd things as if she were going to have to find us by herself in the near future.

And then a couple weeks later we got a call late in the afternoon. Mom was being flown to Saint Louis University Hospital and we needed to come right away. We threw clean clothes in a basket along with bread and lunchmeat and drove! We dropped the children off in Taylorville with my sister's children at one of her friend's home and arrived in Saint Louis well after dark.

My sister and I sat in a waiting room with our husbands, grandmother, father and my mother's best friend who was also my aunt and my godmother. We saw Mom briefly in the ICU that night and the next morning each of us had a couple minutes before they took her into surgery. Trying to be cheerful I said, "Well, it's all downhill from now on." The look of terror on my mother's face immediately let me know I hadn't said it right. I'd meant once the surgery was over, she'd be fine and not have to worry anymore.

She didn't have to worry, she never came off the machines after the surgery was finished. Her heart had given up.

And I was left stunned for nearly five years.

How can someone just disappear like that? How is it possible that something that created you like a god can disappear from your life? You can see her. You can touch her. She is there, but she is gone! Escaped like smoke up a chimney, but without even a trace left behind. Silently. Permanently. Like some horrible magic trick that will not bring her back when the joke is over.

And yet, in the weeks that followed we were swallowed up in the scent of roses twice. Once on the back porch around which no roses grew and once in our van speeding down a city street. If nothing else they brought back the memories of her.

Roo

He stands there in a trench coat, hat upon his head, drink in hand and I should think he is a man, perhaps even a detective, but I know the truth.

He is an actor, an imp, a boy in a man's body, ready to play: a game, a part, a role in the world that defies being named.

The scripts are as varied as the Library of Congress stacks.

One day a worthy pedagogue pacing the halls of Oxford, England. The next an author peddling his book in Oxford, Mississippi.

Dawson's Creek, PBS, the U.S. mail, all have benefitted from his innate talent.

He is a tetrahedron among men. Not a jack of all trades, master of none, but a master of all trades and jack of none.

I have a CD case full of his music, a bookshelf full of his writing, a brochure of his travels through Greece and Ireland, Italy and Wales, but it is his softer side I love the most.

The one that encapsulates Roo and Rawrio, Tiki Bars, and boy with a dog. The one who speaks to a room full of septuagenarians as seriously as he does Deans and Presidents. The one who calls me every day while walking his dog three miles simply because we love it.

'Breakfast in bed

Life renews itself in the spring.

Bulbs poke their heads above ground, proof that the primordial darkness of winter is about to depart.

Days get longer and warmer.

Hope begins to rise as people once more begin walking and running, planting, and dreaming.

The air is redolent of my youth and those long ago mornings when I jumped out of bed because I just couldn't stay down one more minute -- even if it meant my mother might make me breakfast in bed.

I think it is the scent of damp earth, new life and earthworms, as Teamaker would say, that makes me feel like a kid again.

Rituals and routines

I was watching a movie documentary on Atlantis yesterday when it occurred to me how important ritual is.

Rituals are designed to take time, to distract people, to draw their focus away from the negative and give natural progression time to put things in order. If people believe that the right people doing specific things will solve their problems, often that's all it takes.

Many things work themselves out given enough time, if you can put people off, reassure them and keep down their panic, chances are everything really will be okay in the end. (As John Lennon says, if it's not okay, it's not the end.) (or as Dory says, just keep going.)

So the high priestess of Thera had every reason to believe if she made the right sacrifice on top of the mountain, the earth shaker would stop the volcano.

Routines are like ruts, once you get into them, they give you a sense of security and direction. They are the precursors to rituals, repetitive acts that have been both safe and apparently productive in the past .

Rituals and routines the mini and maxi cure-alls for things we don't understand. People feel safer when they are doing something to ward off the fear that they are at the mercy of the universe.

Adventures

I used to go on adventures quite often.

Off to California to visit friends and ride BART and bus to explore the Oakland/San Francisco area with it's little Zen restaurant and wonderful parks and shops.

Down to Saint Louis to visit friends and play drums, or listen to flute meditations.

Off to Knoxville or Austin  to help Bestest research James Agee,

Out to North Carolina to live near my grandson in the most beautiful mountains in the world.

Or out the other way to Seattle to visit my other grandchildren by the waters of Peugeot Sound.

I haven't been on any adventures in quite some time, but I'm revving up for one next Fall.

I'm goin to Alabama there to be a nanny for a dog.

Real Gifts

Gift giving is supposed to be done with love, but in today's world it has become much more.

There are rules about who to give and what to give and how much is appropriate for which occasion.

The whole idea of a father whittling a rocking horse for his child or a mother knitting mittens is long lost.

Now it is often a competition for people to one up each other.

Except when it isn't.

Once in a while, almost once upon a time in today's world, there are opportunities to give gifts in the spirit of Santa Claus. A gift of pure love, given for no reason except that the happiness it will bring will make the giver even happier than the one who gets it.

These are real gifts.

Gifts of the heart.