Courting disaster

 

I have had two strange experiences lately. Each around 1:30 AM when I am awakened from a deep sleep. The first was the circle of women I saw with toddlers standing out by the lamp in the driveway.

The other was last Friday when I was awakened by flashing lights in the window near my bed. I've seen lights like that before when an ambulance was called, so I got up to look closer.

There was a fire truck backed up to the east side of the front door and five or six firemen in fire hats and coats hustling around. 

I remember I thought it was strange because one fireman was lying on the sidewalk in a fetal position and I wondered if this was some sort of re-enactment like they do at airports practicing for disasters. Another fireman dropped to one knee near this man and pointed out towards the fire truck.

I really needed to go to the bathroom so I left and when I got back they were all gone!

Now there was a huge thunder and lightning storm going on.

I don't remember seeing any ambulance or hearing any sirens and I am truly doubting what was as clear as day to me at the time.

Have I become such a sound sleeper that I can be aware of walking around, but actually dreaming? I really don't understand.

The inheritance

 

My grandmother had a terrible experience with her first husband at an age where she was very vulnerable and also very pliable. She learned early on that men could not be counted on and, in her experience, were unreliable sources of support. She became a very independent woman after that and no one ever breached her boundaries again.

Unfortunately for my mother that meant even her father, my grandmother's second husband, was considered less than by my grandmother. No amount of kindness and no attempts at pleasing her were really considered important. She did not need him beyond a home for her children and some financial support. Her love was fractured and it influenced those generations of women who came after her.

My mother loved my father. Their marriage was an amazing one.Until my father, in an attempt to please her even more decided they could move back to my mother's hometown so she could work in the family business with her mother. That was really the beginning of the end for their marriage as they had always known it.

My mother, who was always well intentioned, but also limited by her intense desire to please her mother, soon became part of the girl's club that found men flawed and simply things to be tolerated. My father continued to bend over backwards to please her, but it was pointless. My grandmother, mother, sister and even my aunt were part of an impenetrable clique that could never be breached. 

Anyone who was not one of them was less than and in the way of women who believe they are protecting themselves and their children, they cleaved to that idea like religious fanatics.

I never realized this for most of my adult life. I had moved away and only saw the slow disintegration of my father and their marriage from a distance. And that distance was filled with my mother's point of view that reinforced what she and my grandmother believed was true.

I am older now and having moved back to the same small town I am once more involved in family dynamics that people who have always lived here accept as gospel. It is only from an outsider's view that I see the damage that was done and that is faithfully carried on by my sister who spent most of her life trying to emulate the gods she believed my grandmother and mother were. Men are to be at the beck and call of the women they love. They are tolerated so there can be children.

It is a prime example of incestuous living that occurs with the best of intentions when children do not leave home and develop their own set of values. 

soul glitter

I've been working on a painting for a while now. 

This seems to be my gold period. Meaning I bought some gold paint and now I have it I want to use it. 

Of course I have over done it and painted over it several times. Who knows if I will even keep this painting when I am finished working on it, but it has given me hours of meditation during the process.

I sit starring at it with the intention of coming up with better ideas and choices, but then my mind wanders off into that great grey mist as it is wont to do.

I envision a soul leaving the body, evaporating into that great mystery I do not understand.

And then I see tiny flakes of that glittering soul gently settle onto and into everything.

And we are reborn, minuscule pieces of soul become part of flowers and trees and carrots and people and every breath taken. It glitters in the wind and sparkles in the snow. It is the twinkle of an eye, and the reflection in ice.

All the mythis are true to some extent. Each one hindered only by the mind of the imaginer.

Meditation on painting

 

I like to paint. I make no claims about my painting except that it gives me satisfaction to feel the paint slide onto my canvas and sometimes to watch it daub on in interesting patterns. I love the colors I use and the way they go together, 

I just like to paint.

I also like to look at other's paintings. I wonder what those people felt as they made them. I think about why they used certain colors and wonder if it gave them pleasure to look at them. 

I do the same things with my own painting, sometimes feeling as if someone else made them. I can't tell you where the actual ideas come from. I know where they start. That is usually a very conscious decision that soon gets lost once I actually begin, but I don't know why I pick the shapes or colors that end up there. That''s one reason it takes me so long to paint a picture. I can only paint until it feels like I am finished for that day. Then I have to wait until I am called to paint more.

I don't always see what the great art critics say is there. I think colors are personal and shapes even more so. What pleases one person bores another, or even offends some. 

It seems to me that good art is art that makes me want to look at it. It calls to some part of me that is so deep I don't even understand it. Like tendrils of fog it escapes my consciousness and wraps around those things it needs from some primal place.

Circle of mothers

 

I live in a building for people over fifty. That is the first thing I need to make clear..

Last night I woke up about 1:30 AM and looked out the window by my bed. I could see people down at the edge of the grass by the light.

They appeared to be women, maybe five or six or them and each one had a small toddler standing in front of them. A child young enough to be holding onto a parent's finger or hands while standing there.

I watched them for a few minutes. I couldn't see details or faces, just silhouettes in the dark, but they appeared animated like they were talking to each other and the children were fidgety.

I couldn't understand why they would be there at this time of night or what they could all be doing with such young children with them. I tried to imagine some kind of meeting just ending, but it made no sense. After a few minutes they began to disperse.

One of the infants picked up his legs and looked like he was making a fuss about going.

I wanted to stay and see what happened next. Did they all get in separate cars? What did they do? But I had to go to the bathroom and I was afraid to wait. When I got back there was no sign of them.

I tried to look at the scene through tree branches and light and see if I could reinvent them, to see if maybe I was imagining all this, but I could not.

The truth

 

Looking back on life I think two of the most important traits people can have is empathy and flexibility.

Empathy because if you don't understand how others feel, you will make lots and lots of mistakes.

Flexibility because life is in a constant state of change and the inability to roll with the punches is a great handicap. 

You can be kind and even gentle, but if you don't really understand the person you are with you are likely to hurt or annoy them more than ever. No one wants to be a stereotype or charity case.

You can be a genius or a fool, but an inability to change to accommodate the facts is lethal.

Truth is often in the eyes of the beholder, but a mind capable of assessing the facts without bias is an art.

Shopping

 

I did something yesterday that I have not done in a very long time.

I went to the grocery store.

Now that may seem like a normal thing to most of you, but for me it has been an unattainable feat for over two years.

Both Kroger and Walmart are set up to make you walk blocks and blocks just to buy groceries, but both also have a pick up policy so that if you spend over a certain amount you can simply pick up your groceries in the car.

This requires a lot of planning in order to get the products I need. I have to make sure I have enough to reach the amount necessary and I have to wait until I do and go without until then.

Lately I have lost some more weight and have been able to cut my diabetes medicine down to a quarter of what it was. I have been forcing myself to walk, really amble, for fifteen minutes after every meal. And I have received a handicap card for my car. All these things made my short fifteen minute trip yesterday possible.

I only bought an onion and some celery and I checked out at the first register, because these things were close to the door, but it was a big step. I almost didn't get the onion because four employees working in produce were all very slowly stocking things and visiting with each other. Oblivious to me and another woman who were blocked from the yellow onions. But just before we gave up, they finally dispersed.

Then an elderly woman in an electric cart was ahead of me at checkout and the whole process took forever, but I made it! On my way out an employee made a special request that I put that basket right back where I got it, which I intended to do anyway.

 Part of me wanted to complain about inconsiderate employees, but another part of me thought how bleak their lives must be if all they do all day is corral carts, or sort vegetables for what is probably minimum wage. Instead I simply celebrated my first freedom to shop in a long time.

Kumbaya

 

I have been taught to always put my best foot forward. 

As a first child my only examples were the grown-ups around me and of course everything they did was much better than I could ever hope to do or be at that early age. I don't remember any explicit directions to do better, but I think my inborn intuition was to succeed.I wanted affirmation that I was okay, doing it right, a good person.

As an adult I often find myself doing something and then stepping back to see if it is done "right." Is there a wrinkle or line out of place? What if I have company and they see this. Will they think I am doing it right? Is it perfect?

Then I have to ask myself if I am doing it for me or them. Why do I make the bed? Why does it have to be perfect? Am I really teaching those I love to do the right things or am I teaching them to be neurotic and obsessive?

As a preschool teacher I sometimes made a "mistake" just to let a student know that was okay. That the world didn't end if I did. 

Having the perfect house, dust free, wrinkle free, in a well designed space should not be the goal unless I am in a contest for house beautiful in some magazine. I need to cut myself some slack and allow the people I love the freedom to be at ease. Let them know that if they are not here I don't necessarily keep every spot of water off the faucet, or speck of dust off the glass.

My daughter-in-law once said, after the birth of their first child, "He thought when you came everything would be kumbaya, perfect." 

That has stuck with me, but it is still a challenge for me not to try to be perfect. Knowing there is a fine line between wanting that and obsession.

Someone

 

My sister did not want to continue living retired in my building. She felt that it made her no one and she wanted to go back to being what she considered someone.

Now she is back working part time and living in a house with a yard, she feels as if she is someone again.

I feel she was someone from the day she was born, but that she just didn't understand it. I suppose it depends on how you define someone and how you evaluated who they are.

For me it is important that I am as self sufficient as possible and to that end I have eliminated, or modified, most of  the things that require me to ask for help. I feel that being empathetic enough to realize other people are already very busy and do not need to be at my beck and call is a kindness I can offer. I enjoy their company, but they don't have to be doing something for me to see them. I want them to come because we have things to talk about, dreams to share, ideas to create -- not furniture to put together, or things to repair.

It is nice to be needed and loved, but that shouldn't become an obligation.

Being someone I am proud of is more about ethics and empathy than titles and possessions.