Band Concert

 

People have gathered under the summer skies to listen to band concerts in parks since time began. It is one of those things I do with my granddaughter that my grandmother did with me. Different bands in different towns, but the music is pretty much the same.

Tonight it was even more so.

Maybe because I am older, but I felt closer to my relatives than usual. My great grandfather fought at the battle of Vicksburg, was wounded and lay under his horse for three days before they found him. Later he was an honor guard on the train that carried Lincoln's body across the country. 

My great uncle was in the army during world war one. My dad was an engineer in the Navy after world war two when the German prisoners were still down in Louisiana. And my ex was in Vietnam in 1969. All those wars, all that death, all that suffering, but the music is still stirring.

I can imagine my great grandmothers and aunts listening to band concerts as they waited for their men to come home. Back then it was waiting that women had to endure. Tonight there was a woman marine who stood with the men when they played the Marine anthem.

Our band plays a song for each of the armed forces and the veterans stand when it is theirs. For some reason that touched me deeply tonight. The little girl who sat with us lost a brother in Iraq. He was 25.

What can I say? The music is beautiful, the stories time honored, but I never want to get used to the death.

Forever

All around the square they ride

dreams and hopes still living

High school football hero

tonight and a reputation

unending.

Crowned in glory, ascending she strides

Her future created in filming

Prom queen beauty

forevermore and her future

never beginning.

A great big truck

maybe a gun

and a house with a view

in the small town sun.

I dreamed of you

 

I dreamed about you last night

we traveled together to your friend's

who took us, in the back seat, in her car.

Stopping off at her house, you offered me your hand

pulling me out into mud up to my waist.

I lost my shoe.

I nearly lost my mind as your friend procrastinated.

Talking on the phone, laughing on the phone, visiting

while I searched for my lost ruined shoes.

My new shoes would never be the same

Unrecognizable in their filth, one lost forever

Until you pointed out that it was still on my right foot.

Your friend sent us on in her car, still in the back seat

Driven by her giggling children

to see a pumpkin factory making dishes out of pumpkins.

I wondered if it was worth it.

Being with you if it meant her.

I thought it was love

 

I am a vivid dreamer. I remember my dreams as if they are actual experiences. Being part of a Jungian dream group for over ten years encouraged this, of course, but it also taught me to look for what could be behind the dream. The setting, the characters, everything in the dream comes through the focus of my being. I am director, producer, star and cast.

Imagine living in the 1840's duplex house my ex-husband grew up in. In this dream it is now an apartment with distinctive white woodwork and comfortable rooms. Downstairs are other apartments, but only in the dream, not in real life, that I can get to by going around the outside of the house and down some steps. I go down there to visit a friend and a woman from the apartment under mine comes out to call to me. She invites me in for a cup of tea in such a friendly, insistent way that I cannot say no.

The house in this dream comes from a time of innocence and gullibility. The idea of a basement in a dream often portrays working through inner feelings, or betrayals of the past. In this dream the woman was incredibly friendly, likable, personable, outgoing, and single minded. She kept me placated by appearing to do what she said she would, make tea, while manipulating me completely.

I was aware of her manipulation, but also so inundated by her words and actions that it was hard to focus on anything else. She showed me extraordinary things, antique bookcases filled with ancient books, elegant antique woodwork and a rounded snowwhite door painted bright red over rough wood. Through that door was a room filled with exotic treasures, including a gilded cage with a hummingbird in it. 

She took the humming bird out and placed it in my hands and I was overwhelmed by awe and joy, quickly followed by confusion and fear as it appeared to morph back and forth from hummingbird to a black frog like creature with red diamonds on its back! I kept asking her why this was happening and she ignored me as if she neither heard me, nor saw it happen. Now I was very uneasy and she deftly maneuvered me out of that room and back into the bedroom where I noticed how much larger her apartment was than mine. How could that be when they were built on top of each other? Again she acted like there was nothing wrong.

Her four year old daughter drifted in and out of the picture and her young boyfriend appeared at the door. They both made the apartment seem much more modern and normal, but by now I was feeling very intimidated and trapped. I wanted out before it was too late! Too late for what I don't know.

I did get out, but once outside I could not find the entrance to my own apartment. Everything had changed. I knew this made no sense and by sheer force of will I found it and went inside only to find the woman sitting on my couch waiting for me. I was terrified and nearly hysterical. I drove her out.

I think this dream is remembering the times in my life when I have been gracefully and brutally manipulated by talented, narcissistic brilliant people who have had a single minded desire to get what they want at any cost. There have been at least two and possible more on a smaller scale. They used the things I admired and loved to pull me in and allowed me to think it was love.

Memories

 

Peering inside someone else's memories is both fascinating and dangerous. There is always the fact that no two people remember everything the same and there is always the possibility of things being misremembered. 

Add to that the choice of remembering,  what is important and how it happened, and you have a recipe for stepping on toes, or hurting someone's feelings.

Once you start writing memories down you also need an editor to look for misspelled words and names. I find the best way to edit is by reading something out loud. It slows the process down enough so that the obvious is not glossed over. This requires someone dedicated to providing the time that will take.

In the end, though, reading someone's thoughts can be a charming experience, especially if they are the thoughts of a loved one.

Father's Day

 

Father's Day somehow seems less celebratory than Mother's Day. The schmaltz abounds for mother's day. All our mothers seem bound for glory as saints they never were simply because we love or loved them. While fathers often just get honorable mentions.

I understand that. In my house the father was a revered person. When he was home we ate in the dining room. He always had an office lined with books and his presence was a time for better manners, more serious conversations, or the ultimate decision. 

And yet I adored my father. I wished he would want to go out and throw the ball with us, or do something fathers on television did, but that wasn't who he was. It might have even been who he wished he could be, but he grew up in a formal household that left him feeling obligated to do everything with great dignity. 

He succeeded at that. No matter what my father did, it felt noble and dignified and it felt like a great honor for me to be part of it. I wanted to grow up to be my father and I was a girl.

Que sera sera

What if? 

That is a question someone asks all the time. Does it matter if I don't love somebody, or somebody does not love me? Does it matter if things do not go the way I planned them? Does it matter if things don't turn out the way I expected, or wanted, or even needed them to be?

It does.

And it does not.

The Way is long and winding and filled with mysteries. Chances are the power I have over it is much less than I believe, but it is entirely possible that I am wrong. Maybe I have absolute power, just not my conscious mind. 

When I am sad, time seems to stand still or drag by. The reverse is true when I am happy. Time is seldom relevant when it comes to endings, because endings are hard to pinpoint. Everything begins somewhere and it seems necessary that this must follow an ending, but maybe those are just times when the scene is being set, the Way cleared, or the ego is set aside to rest and grow.

"Wait and see." Words that I hated as a child. Words that still frustrate me, but the only true path.

I can facilitate what I want to happen and hopefully, if it is good and solid and pure, it will happen,  But there are no promises.

What will be will be. 

Every language has its own way of saying that because it is a universal concept.

Whether I like it or not.

The real picture

 

Old habits are hard to lose.

I have lost over sixty pounds by eating right for months and yet I still find myself feeling guilty about over eating even when I have not.

There is a frame of mind where I will always be overweight and uncomfortable. It causes me to wake up thinking "Why did I eat that?" When I only ate small meals with very few calories. 

I get dressed in the morning and my clothes fit just fine, or are even a bit big, but in the evening I find myself feeling like I've been stuffed into them and longing for my pajamas.

Driving my car , I see other women who are very chunky and I commiserate with them. I still see myself as one of the chubby ones. I really have no sense of what size I am.

I try to reason it out. My sister weighs a certain amount and I think she looks great, so I should look fine too. I know it, but I don't feel it.

I will never weigh 110 pounds again. I really shouldn't even want to be that at my age and height, but my heart wants to be back there again. 

The truth is, I just don't trust my own eyes and perspective. 

Part of that is because I see other women who obviously have no idea how large they really are. I don't want to be one of them. And, on the other hand, I ask myself, "What difference does it make?"

Dusty rose and cornflower blue

 

Dusty rose and cornflower blue, colors that I always find myself drawn to, but not my favorite colors. At least that is what I tell myself. I think my favorite color is a deep foresty blue green. 

Pine trees and deep lagoons, sharp Christmas tree smells and cool forest darkness. These are a few of my favorite things. 

But what is a favorite thing without accents, something to highlight and show off its fascinating depth? I think that is where dusty rose and cornflower blue come in. They are the highlights of my life.

Deep rosy memories steeped in old world wealth and simple blue skies soaked in sunlight at the day's end, times that grab me in moments so rich and poignant that they fill my soul with aching for what was and what could be.

These are the colors that surround me and bring joy to the present.

Child-like

 

I often hear people described as childish, or child-like in a pejorative sort of way, but I think that it can be a very good thing to be child-like. 

Children forgive easier and they are comforted so much easier. A treasured stuffed animal, a hug, or a favorite blankie can go miles towards making child-like people capable of surviving. 

I'm not saying they actually heal faster, or better, although some do, but they can be comforted over and over again along that long road to healing.

In some ways I think children and child-like people actually feel things harder and deeper. They don't have the cushions adults have picked up along the way, but they just walk farther from the edge and they are more willing to accept help when it is there.

It is almost as if we are born perfect and that perfection is chipped away, or buried under debris as the years go by. When that doesn't happen it is both a blessing and a miracle. 

Happy Birth Day

 

Today my oldest granddaughter turns 28.

Way back in 1994 her mother was spending the night with us and suffering through what the doctor assumed were Braxton Hicks contractions. I remember giving her one of my geodes to focus and meditate on before I went to bed.

Suddenly, in the middle of the night, my teenage son woke me up to say his sister was feeling awful. I got up, her father called her doctor, and I told her to change from her "I dream of Jeanie harem pajamas," into something else. She put on shorts, which turned out to be very good later on.

We jumped into our mini van and headed for the hospital with her sitting in the middle of the back seat behind us. Just as we got to the stop sign across the street from her elementary school, she stood up and exclaimed, "Mom! The baby slipped out!"

I don't remember how I got to the back seat where my teeny tiny granddaughter was swinging out of the bottom of her mother's shorts from her umbilical cord, but I scooped her up into my hands. She was so tiny, two pounds, thirteen ounces and making mewing sounds like a newborn kitten, her tiny arms smaller than some of my fingers!

I do remember saying, "Welcome to the world little one, I am your grandma." 

Thank goodness we were minutes from the hospital, because I wasn't quite sure what else I should do. I knelt there holding her in my hands until we arrived. Once there, attendants rushed out and carried both mother and baby in and I was left standing in shock in the emergency waiting room looking at my hands.

It was a miracle very few people ever get to experience and one I will never forget!

The way we were

 

I grew up in a family where my dad was mostly working and gone, so our world was built around a group of women, Mom, grandmas, aunts, cousins, etc. 

As a younger child I remember that my maternal grandma was wonderful, awesome, beautiful, smart, always on the go, perfect in every way. My paternal grandma was stiff, formal, snobbish, and uncomfortable to be around, but looking back I wonder. 

These views were not from my point of view. They were impressed upon me by my mother.  If you were like her, thought like her, dressed the way she liked, did the things she liked, or were from her family, you could do no wrong. You knew you were actually better than other people in so many ways and you had an obligation not to let the world ever ever ever think less of you in any of those ways. It was better to be silent and unseen than to make a mistake, or dare to err in any way.

If you were from my father's family, or anyone else who dared to be different than her ideal family, you were mocked, made fun of and looked down upon as someone weird. That went for everything from the way you wore your hair, to the clothes you wore, even the food you ate. If it wasn't her kind of food it was horrible, gaggy, no good, lousy fare.

I seldom spent any time with my paternal grandma which is probably a shame, because I suspect she and I had a lot in common. We both liked to read, paint, and sew. We made dolls, played Bridge, and enjoyed formal events just for the fun of them.

I was not encouraged to do these things. I was told if I thought I was pretty then I was not. I was told I walked like a chicken with it's head out front. I was constantly compared with my younger sister who was tiny, delicate, spunkier and better in every way - or so I thought then. I believed my mother loved me, so she must be right.

I do believe she loved me, but she had a twisted kind of love that covered up its insecurity by wielding power over those who were different from her in any way. I felt different and yet when I see photographs of me I look like any other beautiful young child with big eyes and a shy smile.

I am not the person she wanted me to be.

Self respect

 

We just had a family photo taken while out celebrating my oldest granddaughter's birthday. Looking around that table I feel good about the smiling faces I see.

It is a simple photograph. No one is wearing makeup. Everyone is smiling in a big genuine way and no one appears to feel self conscious. 

I am proud of these people. I would be proud even if they were wearing tons of makeup and very self conscious. 

Nobody bought these people cars when they turned sixteen. They have managed to dress, feed, house and educate themselves and they have done a good job! They feel good about who they are and deservedly so.

All of them have had to face difficulties that might have left others feeling like failures, but these people just kept at it until they made it to where they are today. 

There is a lot of love in our family. And a lot of respect too. 

Choices

 

Life is a series of choices, so it stands to reason that those good at making choices will have a better life.

And that means we need to give children a chance to make choices early on and frequently, then allow them to live with the consequences for a while.

Otherwise how can they hope to build confidence in their decision making abilities?

I am sure some people are just born with the ability to consider all the options and make good decisions, but I see so many who don't have these skills as adults, that I wouldn't count on it.

I also believe it is better to feel you have more control over your life than it is to feel you are reliant on someone else taking care of you.  There is nothing wrong with having a little backup around, but that's all it is - a little back up. The power to take care of yourself is a wonderful and important part of being happy.

All that being said, it is also important to know that living with the consequences of your own decisions is part of life. It is one of the ways we learn what to do, what not to do, and why.

There is a sense of power and pride that comes with figuring these things out and it develops a confidence and stability that is absolutely invaluable.