Snowstorm Suite

It’s the season for gifts, for giving and receiving, for buying and returning and I’ll be the first to admit that shopping isn’t my favorite thing to do. Amazon.com has made the season brighter for me all around, and this year, I consciously and up front was a cheap ass and told people so. I bought small, thoughtful gifts for my family and it was fun. We all have what we need, I try to keep that as my litmus test in this culture of acquiring, holding in mind that things don’t bring us happiness, as much as advertising tries to make us believe otherwise.

Some gifts, even expensive ones, lay in drawers, the sentiment worn away, if not the perceived value of the item. We keep them, because they might be worth something, obviously, if they’re not being used or enjoyed; they are not.

Some gifts are intangible and priceless; like the gifts my children would often surprise me with when we were a much younger family. Kathleen, who’d clean up the kitchen when it was an overwhelming mess. Erin and Megan, out on the front porch in the cold, putting the Christmas lights up on the front porch to surprise me when I came home from work. And the day I walked into the house, worn out and weary with life, when Megan said, “Mom, you’ve got to hear this.”

I came into the living room and sat down as she cued up the music, “Listen, mom, I heard this in school, and I found this recording at the library.” It was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and it was, well, music to my ears. It assured me there was beauty in the world, and that my children would find it, and not only find it, but want to share it. Maybe this mothering gig would work out. (It did.)

Lately, more and more research is showing that classical music can help with depression, simple, but it’s true. In one study, the researchers noted that there are several possible reasons for the participants’ improved mental states, including the fact that music activates processes which facilitate brain development and plasticity. Music is good for us.

Being a research junkie, I also remember being fascinated by a story of an animal that wasn’t eating, and one day, it’s owner inadvertently dropped a newspaper over it’s food, and when it had to hunt for the food, it ate. Seems that we need to have some say in our lives, something to work for, to put forth a bit of effort for enjoyment.

So, with the thought in mind that it’s the season for gifts; that music is good for you, and hunting a bit makes you appreciate things more, I give you a gift-quest. Yes, I know that I could directly link you to sites, but I’m making you look, on purpose, because I don’t think that a life that is always just one click away from gratification is the best life for you. So here is the cheap-ass, 99 cent gift that I gave to myself this season, and that I pass on to you. Think of it as a recipe for a little happiness, from me to you.

Go to i-Tunes and find Georgy Sviridov's Snowstorm Suite IV, Romance; performed by the St. Petersburg Orchestra of the State Hermitage Museum; 99 cent download. Good for your head, good for your heart, listen and listen again. Happy New Year.

Wake Up In Your Dream

Driving west towards crosstown 62 there is a billboard, for a college I think, that says, “One day you will wake up in your dream.” This catches my eye, catches my mind, and then I’m entering onto 62 and I have to pay attention to traffic. Isn’t that the way it is, you want to mull over something good, something rich, something that you think is on the edge of brilliance, and then, you must pay attention to traffic, it’s a staying alive kinda thing.

So this morning, when I want to post something rich, something good, something to fit into the holiday season and be intentional, I am distracted by traffic. The traffic of my morning coffee making, Garrison Keillor is trying to tell me a story again this morning, but I turn a deaf ear, like the husband to the wife of an old married couple. He’d say, “You never listen to me.” And I’d say, “Garrison, I do listen to you sometimes, but today, today, I’m trying to ignore you and traffic and figure out why I haven’t awoken in my dream yet.”

Perhaps I have, and this is the unnerving thought, if this is my dream life, why does it feel like ordinary life? Why do dreams always have a glittery sheen, while real life is matte? Maybe it depends on your dreams. My dreams used to be simple, a house, a husband, warm clothes for my kids. That dream came partly true, partly untrue and there is no undoing what is done now.

I thought that if I kept my dreams small, the more likely they’d be to come true. That's how I was raised, socialized as a girl; to dream small or risk not only disappointment, but humiliation for having such a big dream to begin with. People might ask things like, “Who do you think you are?” The part they’d leave off, is “...to have such a wonderful life?” Underneath it all was the message that we live small lives, because to risk much is well, just too risky. We accept mediocrity for fear of failure, not realizing that mediocrity is a form of failure, masked in giving in.

Five years ago I had a dream of leaving Owatonna, of moving back home to MInneapolis. I dreamed of being near Lake Calhoun, down the block from where I grew up, and I dreamed of eating well, from bakeries to dinner out, enjoying the glut of food that Owatonna lacks. I dreamed of making new friends and having people in my life that I could feel a kinship with. I woke up this morning in Minneapolis, not far from Lake Calhoun, my babies all grown up, living the life, eating well, having made new friends, only it’s not a dream anymore. The glitter has fallen away, leaving a nice warm matte glow. Maybe one day you will wake up in your life.

Take care of yourself, take care of your loved ones, protect your heart and dream big.

No More Tears

In the bleak midwinter, well, we’re not even midwinter yet, and although the solstice is less than a week away; it’s bleak enough. I’ve wondered off and on, “Do I have SAD?” (sunlight affective disorder), but it just doesn’t fit. I've always liked gray days. I finally had an aha moment and realized I do have SAD, but it’s snow anxiety disorder! I had it bad during last Saturday's snowstorm, the more it snowed, the more anxiety I had. I was, as Megan put it, freaking out.

I was trapped and I’d never get out, again. I was sure of it, even though I’ve lived in Minnesota for all but one and a half years of my life; and every snowstorm, sure enough, we dig out. So there is now plenty of sun, and a path through the ginormous piles of snow, but now it is cold, and I won’t even try to tell how cold, the analogies aren’t bitter enough.

I’ve got a plan now, though, and I need to put it on a vision map for my future. I want to rent a condo for at least a month say during January every year in Santa Fe. Hey! Deal with anxiety how you must, I’m dreaming one more sunny, warm, snowless month a year into my future. The condo of course, will have an art studio, and a patio, and a pool. Splash.

A Box of Popcorn and a Balcony Seat or Comfort and Joy

I came home Tuesday after my brother’s funeral up in Alexandria, and nothing seemed right. It had been a 'good funeral.' A lot of people, my brother had many friends. I had cried and tried not to cry for too long, and I was tired. As for family, we were all together, but we've never been the most supportive family, we have trouble (like many families) with showing emotion and offering comfort.

That evening I had just enough energy to buy food and make dinner, mashed potatoes and roast chicken. Comfort food. I woke up Wednesday to an ache that felt like the flu. My chest hurt so bad. I chocked it up to holding little Audrey at the funeral, I gripped her like a talisman through my tears. At six months, she is a joy. She’s a handful now too, so I had to hold tight, and Wednesday I was sore. So I just mostly stayed in bed and I made it through one more day.

Thursday, I made myself get up out of bed. I’d gone to bed the night before with a horrible stomach-ache, and in the morning I mercifully puked. Still, I made myself get dressed and go to work, knowing that I’d see my therapist helped me haul out my sorry ass. No makeup, but I did brush my teeth. I felt like I never want to ever feel again. Going to work steadied me in the pain.

Through my sorrow, I made it to my kind therapist, mid downtown, on the 16th floor. He is wise and caring. His insight was to tell me this sorrow was not just about my brother, but about the comfort I never got in my family growing up. The comfort that wasn’t there at the funeral, and the ache I have for wanting it. Neither of my parents knew how to accept emotions or to comfort us in our pain. I grew up being ashamed of my tears and my need for comfort.

My therapist wondered when did I get comfort in my life? I did have some comfort in my relationship with my ex-husband, Steve. In my session, I recalled the story of being about 18 and I’d had a huge fight with my dad, and I’d run out of the house in tears. Steve and I had just started dating then, and I took the bus to the Orpheum Theatre, where Steve was assistant manager and I found him in the office.

He gave me a hug, bought me a box of popcorn, and found me a seat up in the balcony. He told me to just watch the movie and wait until he was done with work and then he’d talk with me. Later in our relationship, when I’d have a hard day and he knew he wouldn’t be able to be there; he’d tell me he wished he could keep me in his pocket.

There’s so many things we need as kids. So many needs that we humans should have met to feel safe, whole and complete. I’m making my way trying to know what I’m missing, and to fill in the gaps. I’ve surrounded myself with caring friends, and I know now why I’ve had this weird anger about life. I’ve been mad, really mad about missing out on having a family that held me, that nurtured me and supported me and my feelings.

As I left therapy, it was a comfort to remember that Steve was able to offer some small comfort, that a box of popcorn and a balcony seat seemed so huge a gesture of concern to someone so bereft of it. Comforting to remember, that in my life where love has often seemed so conditional and fragile, I’ve had moments of acceptance and comfort. Moments of feeling safe inside someone’s shirt pocket, next to their heart.

"We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe."
-Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). Which, by the way, if you haven’t read, you should read.

Postscript: Over the weekend, when I talked with my mom on the phone, she broke down in her grief and cried; and then apologized for crying. I was able to tell her, “Mom, it’s ok to have feelings.” She said, “I was brought up that its selfish to have feelings.” I replied, “Mom, I know” and gently said, “I was too.” I continued, “Mom, what’s so exciting to me to be studying emotions is that I’m learning that they are necessary, and useful, and they give us information that we need. What these tears are telling us is that we need to remember to cherish life. Our emotions are good, it’s ok, it’s ok to cry.” She said that she’d hoped that she wasn’t as harsh on us as her parents had been, and I assured her that she wasn't. I let her know it’s the best we can do as families, to make progress on what doesn’t work, and to celebrate what does. I was able to offer my mom some comfort in this sad, sad time for us.

Grateful for Tears

December 2nd, 2010

This morning I am grateful for the fact that the bathtub water is running out hot. Some days it is just warm. I don’t know what’s up with that, and living in this huge four-plex does not make me want to try to find out. In a house, you know, it’s all yours, and you can see where one thing leads to another. Not so much here.

This morning I am happy for left over half and half for my coffee, not just milk. This morning I am mourning, my brother Steve died yesterday afternoon. I was driving after work to pick Megan up from Erin and Andy’s, where once a week she’s a ‘mother’s helper.’ My cell phone rang while I was in traffic.

When my sister asked if I was at home yet, I knew. I told her, “No, I’m driving.” And we both knew. It was the call I’d known would come. The call I’d been waiting for, dreading, yet anxious for, ready for the wait to be over, for all of us. And now that it is, I am so sad, and so tired. My body is crying tears I didn’t know I’d been saving up.

I’m trying to be kind to myself as I try to go about my day. I’ll go to work, at least, and get through my day, and wait to hear about the funeral arrangements.

Last night, I was grateful to get to Erin’s to get a hug, to hold Audrey, to smile at her through my tears. I called my mom while I was there, and fortunately, my younger brother, who lives in Waconia, was already there with her. My sister and I shared making phone calls to other family.

On my drive home, I told Megan, “It was so much easier when I believed we all just went to heaven. But really, we just don’t know what happens to us after we die.” Megan philosophically replied, “But we know we go back into the earth.” And she’s right, we go into the earth, somehow, someway we contribute to however this earth keeps re-birthing. I took small comfort in that. Maybe my brother is in heaven with my dad.

Once home, I warmed up left over chili, wrapped my hand around a glass of wine, wrapped a blanket around my body and watched 3 episodes of The Office in a row, then went to bed.

This morning, I am mourning. Writing, drinking coffee, warm tears on my face.

Crying at the Madonna

Last March I went to visit my mother in her new apartment; a few months earlier we’d moved her from her large town home, into a smaller apartment. She is near my brother now, who works from home. He is a good man and will watch over her. She moved from Owatonna, where I used to live, to Waconia, a beautiful spot west of the Twin Cities. My mom turned 85 in April.

It was hard for her to move again, the second time since my dad died 8 years ago. Even now, she still has lots of unpacking to do. She said she wanted to put her Hummel nativity set up, even though it was barely spring. I said, “Let’s do it.” This nativity set is precious to my mom for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it is very valuable. My mom likes valuable things. Secondly, because it was my dad’s Aunt Sue’s and anything that Aunt Sue had was ‘very valuable.’ And thirdly, because it's just beautiful. The colors are soft and subtle, the features of the figurines are serene and painted with care.

I am not so certain, as my mother is, of the value of things. I grew up having to be too careful of all her things, and so my relationship with things is more ambivalent. I can be grasping and greedy one minute, “Ooh, it’s pretty, I want that,” to “Oh sweetheart, this vase, do you want it? It’s just collecting dust.” I am learning to be more fluid about stuff, knowing it is often, easy come, and easy go, especially in my family. And the value of things is always negligible, we assign things their worth.

So, we unwrapped the Nativity, a simple set, just baby Jesus, Joseph, the barn, and Mary. For some reason, when my mom handed me the statue of Mary, I choked up. I looked at this little figurine in my hand and I remembered the awe I felt at the back of our Catholic church, lighting candles in front of the statue of the Virgin. I was suddenly only six or seven years old, and I remembered my dad, taking my hand as a child after Mass on Christmas morning, stooping down, saying gently, “Theresa, do you want to go up and look at baby Jesus?”

Thanksgiving 2010

It is what it is. A holiday where families, if one is so blessed, gather for traditional food, like turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie. A holiday based on a blessed lie, that when the pilgrims came all was good. Well, maybe it wasn’t based on a lie, maybe there was some blessed moments, even in the midst of hard daily life, and people trying take other people’s land and colonize indigenous cultures. It is what it is.

If we all don’t share food, can we all share being grateful? Probably not, so this is not such a universal, or even national day, we probably will never all get on the same page on one day. It is what it is.

words on paper
babies
(mine)
Ella singing
Louie swinging
Coltrane laying it out like to die for
coffee
(with milk)
the Eiffel tower
men with kind eyes
overcoats
warm bed
new shoes
creme brulet
art & ballet
impermanence
solid ground

Missed

There was no hip hop no bebop no happening music
to play out our sad saga
There was no Chagall no Frida no color
to the palette of our lives
There was some champagne once in a while
but the bubbles all burst into thin air
Which was all that was left of our love
by the time I got there

Getting to Know You: How Our Children Become Our Zen Masters

or When their journey demands your truth.

In their book Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, authors Myla Kabat-zinn and Jon Kabat-zin talk about how our children can become our Zen masters. This take away alone makes the book worthwhile; it’s something to think about, perhaps meditate on, as you begin or are on the parenting journey. In the book they state how getting up to take care of your children is your practice, how brushing your teeth is your practice, and how not getting to brush your teeth because there is no time for you also becomes your practice.

So, as it seems that parenting is often all about everyone else, it can also become about you. Just not about you the way you thought it would be. Not perhaps the way you thought parenting, or even life would ‘be.’ These thoughts keep getting in our way. Thoughts of parenting, thoughts of life, thoughts of what is success, what is not success, competition. I struggle with competition more now than ever. I thought I’d escaped that condition but it haunts me now, chases me down, as I compare my life to others at this point. And I wonder, will I be successful, wondering if I’ll find my dream, even as I remind myself this is my life, this is my dream, right now.

Sometimes, I think it is this same competition that fuels parenting and leads us so far astray. Trying to mimic, when we are unsure what to do, and it ends up feeling unauthentic to ourselves and is just plain confusing to our kids as we’re also teaching them values about being honest and about respecting themselves and others. So, how do we parent authentically in an imperfect world? In a world where we as parents are imperfect people, the truth is contextual, and sometimes, the truth is so painful we try not only to hide it from others, but from ourselves as well.

Over the weekend, there came a point where Kathleen’s journey in her life demanded more truth about my life, my past, with her dad and well, I needed to know “how to tell”? How much to tell? Not only did we talk about what needed to be said, but also about how do parents share painful past histories? Each family has their own painful stories in both big and small ways. And both individually and collectively.

We try to show our children and each other what we’ve come to know in wisdom and guidance for their lives, but we all step in and outside of those lines, learning other truths, harder lessons, and how do we shape them and feel free to share these harder life lessons with those we love the most, those we hope so strongly to protect from these very life lessons? I shared with Kathleen, the irony of the story of the Buddha, whose father tried so hard to protect his son, Siddhartha, from any pain of life, as do most parents! But the Buddha left his protected life looking to find his own path, and he found in suffering that truth was the middle path, and left us this wisdom. We can’t escape the pain of life, but we can hope for the middle path, a balance of pain and joy.

As a therapist, I am prepared for hard stories, for sad stories, stories of loss of esteem, loss of love, loss of fortune and more. As a parent, I parented my children through their own valleys of the shadow of death and we are all mostly more towards the top of the hill right now, but roads twist and turn, irregardless of our hopes and/or choices. So, as parents how do we deal with our inner, personal struggles becoming shared life lessons? Perhaps, this is how our children, into adulthood, continue to be our Zen masters, if we let them. We follow down the path of what’s best for them, not considering the pain we need to go through to give them truth. We open our hearts, and tell our truths with compassion for ourselves, compassion for the past, and compassion for our children, on their own journey. Then perhaps, with each step, each breath, the universe opens us, and we, before we know it, have become our child’s Zen master.

who knows where the time goes

Really, November? This is the time of the year when expectations only beat up on my reality and it’s started already. Last Sunday, after another long week, after I’d spent Saturday driving from one side of Minneapolis to the other to pick up my daughter Erin, and new baby Audrey to go visit my mom in Waconia, after I’d taken my oldest daughter Kathleen, to her dance lesson downtown and then picked her up, she asked, “Aren’t you going to go see Audrey today?” I looked puzzled, I’m sure, when she said, “To see her in her halloween costume?”

My face must have fallen, and this is where I felt like crappy Bubbe, not warm, loving, wonderful Bubbe. This added injury to the insult I must have started when I told Kathleen I’d thought of buying her boys, Elliot 13, and Max 8, some candy for her to take home, but then I over-thought it I guess, and thought, “Why would they need more candy?” And I’d told her this. I guess there are times I just over think, and I’m over cheap, but sometimes it does seem like there is just so much stuff, and so much well, hoopla over the holidays, and frankly, I’m tired of it.

Anyone who knows me knows I love my baby girls and grand-babies. I’m just not the commercial type of mom or Bubbe, and I only want to be when I see this look on Kathleen’s face. Erin and Megan seem cool with who I am, I get to be the geeky mom that only belongs to them, but Kathleen struggles with wanting me to be a different kind of mom. When she was young, she did get to be the only child for 5 years, and back then she had lots of Grandmothers and even great Grandmothers still alive. It was a culture of special holidays. My mom would bake all day for Christmas, Steve’s mom would decorate her tables with red tablecloths and crystal. My mom would bake Halloween cookies with orange sprinkles and we’d often have Thanksgiving dinner at two big houses filled with friends and family.

Was not this way as Kathleen got older, her parents got divorced, and her Grandfathers both died, and her Grandmothers were not as able to entertain. Her single again mom (me) just never quite got the hang of the holidays. Truth be told, I missed being the beloved daughter who just got to show up with her crazy kids. It’s coming on Thanksgiving again, and this is what it means for me. I will never walk through the back door of my parents house on Sheridan Avenue with my hands full of baby gear and have my dad give me a hug and tell me “Come on in, Happy Thanksgiving.” I will never smell his warm, clean smell and feel his shaved cheek, and the warm embrace of his checked flannel shirt. Walking through the kitchen, through the smell of turkey in the oven, my mom looking pretty in her apron, hearing my sibs just hanging out, waiting for a wonderful feast. Coming in from the brisk November to the warmth of someplace so good. I’m sorry Kathleen, I don’t know how to make this magic happen.

Love For Sale

I was a bit silly and I decided ‘just for fun’ to create an account on eHarmony; a friend at work mentioned how many great dates his roommate got from this dating site. Last time I was on a dating service, a few years ago, it was one disastrous first date after another, but I decided I would look into it again, on this ‘other’ site. I hired a matchmaker last spring; she had a May special advertised of two matches for twenty dollars, and I thought, hey I can afford that. So far, no matches and I feel a bit duped, let down.

Well, it seems that there are quite a number of eligible men on eHarmony, trouble is, to join it would cost me a cool couple of hundred bucks for a minimal amount of time. The last site I was on was a small monthly cost, payable each month. This site wants the money, up front. So, it seems that I can’t afford to find a match. Wow, love is for sale, but only if you can afford it. I guess not exactly love, but perhaps the chance, the hope for love. They allow you to sign up, create a profile, and see matches, but no communication ‘til you pay. I guess that’s fair.

So, why did I think of this as silly? Somehow, I am embarrassed at times that I’m single. It’s true. I suppose if I deconstructed all the messages we get about being alone or being in relationship, I’d find plenty of things I’ve internalized about these states. I’m getting tired of trying to find out what I’m thinking, that’s why I want to date--to lose myself in a relationship. I didn’t really say that, OK I did. Honestly, though, sometimes there is something to be said for just living.

I wish I could just have a chalkboard in my brain that would list all the dumb things I’ve internalized that aren’t true about life or myself or people in general and I could just wipe the board clean and start over. How’s that for meaning making? I’m realizing that I’m probably too hard on myself and others, more often than I’d like. Still trying to open my heart chakra.

So, my profile is still up. All the great guys who’ve paid their price can see my profile, and I can see theirs, and I can’t afford to join, so we can’t meet. I’ll take down my profile soon, as it seems sad and strange to leave it up if I’m not joining. Maybe one of these days I’ll meet someone the old-fashioned way, or save up the hundreds it will take me to shop for love. In the meantime, I guess I could learn to be more content, and feel less silly for wanting what I want. Right now, I just can’t justify spending more money on taking a chance on love, and most of my free time is needed for homework. Great.

Hard to Leave

The last time I wrote about going up to Alexandria for a family reunion, I recalled a billboard that said Alexandria was easy to get to and hard to leave. Well I made an overnight trip up to Alex on Sunday, and it was again, easy to get to and hard to leave. I went up last minute to visit my brother Steve in the hospital, he’s been fighting lung and bone cancer and his time is running out. We don’t like to run out of anything, that’s why we have convenience stores, right? Running out of time, though, that is hard, and it’s hard for my brother and all of us. We want to hang on, to slow it down, to stop the days now. But we can’t.

So, the trip up North was a peaceful, if not sad, drive for me. Once I was there with family, it was terribly hard to leave. Even the drive back, coming back into the city was hard on me. I’m not a long-distance driver to begin with, and it’s times like these that it’s hard not to be resentful that I’m single. Like God, if there is one, thinks that I’m just such a tough soul, I can handle anything, alone. Hard to go back to work, as if my whole life isn’t shifting. Hard not to wonder about the meaning of life.

I’m realizing that meaning making is a part of each day. That as we live, we go about finding meaning. Meaning making is shifting for me as I’m learning meditation. Meditation is helping me to slow down, which means that as I’m greedy to make every moment count, I can step back a bit from my greed, and relax.

Meditation can take me, in my grief, a few steps back, to look at the sadness, the numbing sense of loss, and put it in the larger context which is my life. Which is my family of origin, which for me has often been a source of pain and confusion; and give me the ability to also see with clarity, the value my family has of simply being there, for each other in our hard times.

So we gathered, and as I’m home, my family is still gathering in Alexandria. My brother Steve is now at home, on the Lake. My younger brother is flying in from CA, my oldest sister drove five hours last weekend to be there. There are eight of us sibs, and we’re almost all of us taking the time to be there; my brother will not be alone. With eight of us growing up, alone was something we rarely were.

Brain Love

Poets, artists, philosophers have long held that we love from the heart, but I am proposing, without wanting to find all the scientific evidence, that actually we love from our head. Our brains, to be more precise, (if not more scientific). And I’ll tell you how I know; I know this from studying neuroscience. I know this because I absolutely love neuroscience like such a nerd. I can’t wait for new books to come out, I read parts of them and the table of contents on Amazon. I’ve had to tell myself, to calm down, to hold back, to just wait, read a little manga or something light, something fun, for a while. But the field of neuroscience is burgeoning, and I can’t keep up.

Then it dawned on me, driving home from work, listening to KBEM Jazz 88 station, I love neuroscience because my brain is in love with itself. Neuroscience is like a mirror for my brain, and I can’t look away. It’s a powerful thing, this brain love, and I’m not sure where it’s going, and hopefully, I will never leave myself. That would be truly a lonesome thing.

Going Home Again

Some say you can never go ‘back home.’ I say you can. I’m home. I spent twenty years in exile in Owatonna. It was of course self-imposed, but I didn’t see it that way, and of course I had all sorts of what I thought were good reasons at the time for staying in that podunk town, but it was never home for me. While I was there, mostly alone, I would dream at night of the years when I was young, working, going to the U of M, and hanging out with friends and Steve, whom, I would eventually marry. We had fun, for a while. We all mostly worked downtown, and at night we’d go out. We went to movies, dinners, and disco dancing.

The Nicollet Mall was as beautiful as it is now, lights lit in the trees at night. We spent our money on fun clothes and occasionally things like tuition. So, in my room in Owatonna, where my life consisted mostly of caring for my kids and having church lady friends who were pretty conservative, sometimes at night I’d dream that I was back in Minneapolis, and my friends and I were trying to decide where to go and sometimes we’d decide to go to David Fong’s in Bloomington. There’d be some moaning about “It’s so far out there.” But then someone would counter with,”Yeah, but let’s go!” And we’d all head out. This was about as far as my dream would go, we were going to go and it would be great. It was the closest I came to real fun.

A few months ago, I started talking with a woman who takes voice lessons before my daughter at MacPhail, we’ve become friends and she invited me to come to karaoke to hear her sing at David Fong’s. It seemed like a perfect storm of life convergence, the past, the present, my dream life all coming together, and so, even though it was a work night, even though I’d have to skip meditation class, I said, “Sure, I’ll try to be there.” This is not like me, I like to go to bed early and I don’t go to bars alone. But I did, and we had a blast. David Fong’s has literally not changed in 30 years. The karaoke scene in the bar was fun and homey. My new friend is very sweet and fun and she has a great voice. I’m learning to have fun all over again. I had a girl’s night out, at home, in Minneapolis. I’m happy to be here.

The Stuff of Life

I have way too many things to do, and too much stuff in my life. This is a recurring theme. Getting rid of things, sorting through things, taking on too much. I’ve had times in my life when I wasn’t so overwhelmed, windows of calm, and then it seems the wind picks up and I’m caught up in it and life takes me into the eye of the storm, where it seems safe, but it’s not.

My ex used to listen to a radio talk show, where this guy would give advice, mainly to other guys, and he’d call them ‘my friend’ and say things like if you got in debt, then get a second job, and I think I believe some of this stuff, thinking that if I just keep working harder and harder I will get to a place where things straighten out, where life will be easier, more like I remember from the past.

So, I try harder and harder and get farther away from where I want to be. What’s up with that? I don’t want my future to be only like the good memories from the past, that seems weird, at best. And of course, when the past was the present, it wasn’t necessarily perfect, our minds just do that to us.

This is today. My bedroom is a mess. I need to sort through summer and winter clothes. I’m going to try to move my bed around yet again, to try to find a spot that seems more like it works. My oldest daughter Kathleen will be here with her two boys a little after noon, and I will drive her to dance lessons downtown, and hang out with Max and Elliot, my grandsons. I will pick Kathleen up at 3, stop home so we can take separate cars and drive to visit my mom in Waconia.

Friday, my mom called to tell me that my brother Steve, who has bone and lung cancer is in the hospital with pneumonia. I am grieving. I went to class yesterday just trying not to cry, naproxin in my purse, in case of a headache. I’m scared of the way that grieving takes over your life, makes you stupid, and I’m a bit shocked at my lack of compassion for myself. I meditated this morning. I just want someone to hold me.

This is this week, I have lots of homework to do for the second MA degree that I’m pursuing. I finished a class in neuroscience and couples therapy and now I’m taking an art therapy II class, which is uncannily too much like art therapy I; which reminds me of why I’m studying neuroscience.

My finances are a mess, so much so that I just want to ignore them. I had an old boyfriend who just put all his bills in a drawer and left them there. Totally, just left them there. This is one way to deal with this I guess. Then there was my dad, who had my mom write down on a check register that they kept in the car glove box, every time they bought gas and what the mileage was. Keeping track I guess. I am not really one to keep track on that level.

Maybe that’s where I’m at right now. Keeping track, but keeping track of myself. Where I was, who I was, what I did well, what I want to do better. Remembering my older brother Steve, and how our family was back then. Maybe that’s why my bedroom, my money, my stuff seems like such a mess. I’m in that spot where I’m taking it all out of the garage, the basement, the attic, the stairways, and I’m sorting through it all. What good is it all? What do I keep, what do I throw away? Where am I going? What do I want? If I am stripped of all my stuff, and my caregiving role, who am I?

This was last week, a huge garage fire, not two blocks away. I drove right past it, saw the red hot flames, and suddenly I was 7, standing in front of our house in Franklin Park, Illinois, where we lived for a year and a half. Standing in front of our garage on fire. Standing there watching the flames eat up the new sandbox, and the new picnic table set that my dad had bought for us. They were still in the box, and when my dad had time, he was going to get them set up.

My older brother Pat, and his friends had been smoking behind the garage, it was years before anyone dared tell. I had been hanging out with them, ‘bugging them' just minutes before. Then we all went in to eat dinner. A neighbor boy ran right in our front door, without knocking, "Sorry to disturb your dinner, but your garage is on fire." Things were not so good for us in Illinois. We never got a new sandbox or picnic table, and we soon moved back to Minneapolis.

Some thoughts on gender by a mighty Fine mind

I dreamt last night that I was in a hoarder’s house and I could barely walk through it. Hoarding has been on my mind. Thinking about my mother’s hoarding, and how it is a temptation for me. In my dream I felt trapped, confused, embarrassed and angry. I woke up not quite ready to delve into more introspection on the topic. I’m gonna let it sit some more, I’m going to be kind with myself.

I decided time to sort through library books that need to go back; and I gently picked up Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, a witty and amazing read. A book that I wish everyone would read. In this book Cordelia Fine, Ph. D., deconstructs our gender myths. She says we look for answers outside ourselves for the incorrectly constructed schemas that we hold within ourselves. (I say amen.)

Take a look around. The gender inequality that you see is in your mind. So are the cultural beliefs about gender that are so familiar to us all. They are in the messy tangle of mental associations that interact with the social context. Out of this interaction emerges your self perception, your interests, your values, your behavior, even your abilities. Gender can become salient in the environment in so many ways: an imbalance of the sexes in a group, a commercial, a comment by a colleague, a query about sex on a form, perhaps also a pronoun, the sign on a restroom door, the feel of a skirt, the awareness of one’s own body. When the context activates gender associations, that tangle serves as a barrier to non-stereotypical self perception, concerns, emotions, sense of belonging, and behavior- and more readily allows what is traditionally expected of the sexes (p. 235).

What I didn’t dream, in my life as a single mom, was having to do everything, well, nearly everything by myself, as a woman. Many times, I made myself think of my dad supporting 8 children and a wife, and I told myself I could support 4 children (my 3 daughters and 1 grandson), and myself. I purposely made myself think ‘like a man'. For the most part it worked. I could pay the bills, fix the broken household fixtures, I could shovel the walk in the dark of night and get up every morning and go to work, and come home every night and feed my family. What I never counted on was that people would never see me as someone who needed the income to support my family. That the amount of money that women make dollar for dollar was skewed against me. That actually working moms make less money than working women without children. Still. 


Confessions of a Hoarder: Truth Be Told

As I’m trying to make time to meditate, and make more room in my life for people and things I want to do; I’ve developed a couple of bad habits. One is watching TV on Netflix. We don’t have cable, and haven’t for years, so for a very long time I never watched TV. Yep, never. No water cooler talk for me that revolved around fictional TV characters. Back when everyone wondered who killed JR, I couldn’t have cared less. Now, I’ve made my way through Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, am in the middle of season 3 of The Office, and have started watching Hoarders, one of the saddest shows ever.

This show has been strange and cathartic for me. It has made me see that my mom is a hoarder, as is one of my sisters. For real, not just collectors, not just hard to let things go, not just messy, but hoarders. I think I may be one, too. I’ve had my girls to help me fight it off, and I don’t get so defensive, but on a gut level, I feel it. One of the things that these hoarders all seem to have in common is a deep loneliness. They have people in their lives, but they are not connected to them. They live alone in their piles and boxes and a place in their head where all this stuff means something and takes the place of interacting with others on a level that comforts and satisfies. It is a sad, sad trade off. There’s also a huge amount of anger, just brewing under the surface of these sad people, an emotion that they seem unable to express unless someone is messing with their stuff.

So of course, as I’m studying neuroscience and therapy, my wheels are spinning, and this is what I’m thinking. Dr. Dan Siegel, who’s written The Mindful Therapist, says that as babies develop the right sides of their brains are developing faster than the left. He says that the right side of the brain processes are: earlier to develop, holistic, non-verbal, visual/spatial imagery, metaphors, stress reduction, autobiographical memory, and (an) integrated map of the body. This is complex, but stay with me here....The left side is: later to develop, linear, linguistic, logical, literal, lists, factual/semantic memory, and digital:Yes/No-Up/Down. (Siegel, 2010, p. 61). Siegel states, “Often the feeling of isolation comes along with a drive to be certain of the outcome of interactions, to guarantee the results of communication” (p. 61).

So now I’m getting it. My life, my loneliness and my compulsion to buy clothes and (cheap) jewelry. I wasn’t always so much of a hoarder, when I was young and had close emotional connections. It’s become a struggle in the past 10 years, when my life became very hard. I was raising three daughters alone as my sister succumbed to mental and physical illness and I accompanied her to way too many emergency room runs and doctor appointments. My dad was struggling with cancer and experimental chemo before he died. My youngest daughter’s thyroid disease was undiagnosed; and so we struggled with childhood depression, chronic colds, migraine headaches, and an assortment of issues associated with thyroid disease, that finally after years of therapy and specialists, my family doctor finally figured out. My middle daughter became depressed also in the midst of this, and my oldest daughter was a young mom.

And my mom. She is a hoarder. She never gets outwardly mad, but you can’t take things away from her. You can’t throw away old paper from 30 years ago. I have helped her move twice since my dad died, and it’s monumental. She has a three bedroom apartment now, all the closets are filled with clothes. She has become a tidy hoarder, so it’s harder to know. She has an amazing way of filling things up, with stuff. I nearly cried when we moved her to her apartment only a year ago. She had piles of garbage (old refrigerator drawers that she’d saved, with old towels) that she insisted of having the movers bring and I nearly lost my temper over her bringing them on to the already nearly full moving truck. It was a sad moment in her new apartment, when you couldn’t walk through it due to the boxes, and she knew she should have thrown stuff out. My childhood memories of bringing friends home after school were to hear, “Doesn’t your mom ever clean?” I felt ashamed and isolated, and ashamed of being ashamed of my mom.

I also remember my dad’s frustration with the clutter, and his idea of helping was to enlist us kids to clean on Saturday mornings. I invariably got the kitchen, and I would throw away anywhere from 10-20 plastic bags from bread and twisties. Dishes were washed and put away, bread crumbs cleaned out from the counters. The floor cleaned. My dad would take the unsavory job of cleaning out the fridge, saying things like, “Geez- us” and “Oh my God” as he threw things away. My dad and I would bond over the clean kitchen, my mom would smile and say thanks, and within a few minutes, fly off the handle and nearly cry because her plastic bags were thrown away. Throughout the week, she’d blame me for not having her plastic bags. I would secretly wish that our house would burn down. Then we could start over, and be like the Brady Bunch, with a clean house.

As a teenager, I cleaned my bedroom every week. I threw things away and my mom would retrieve things, like my old make-up out of my bedroom trash. People would walk into my bedroom, and it was clean, and orderly and they’d ask how come my room was so clean. I guess I was beginning to live in the left part of my brain, I was not finding what Siegel calls “resonance” with anyone on the right side of my brain, so I shifted to finding safety in the left side processes. I handled the loneliness and the craziness in this way. I grew to love school and the orderliness there. It increased my sense of isolation, but gave me a new reason for it, I was just smart and introverted. There, some sense made of the chaotic universe.

to be continued...

The Sound of Cognitive Dissonance

sounds like

buzzing

scraping

whirring

whining

crying

screaming

all the sounds your emotions want to make

when your head is telling you something untrue

about yourself

about life

about your life

and you are trying so hard not to hear it

but the sound is killing me

and I want to ask

“when was the last time your feelings really mattered?”

“did they ever?”

how long have you not been hearing the sound?

The Parking Spot

I worked a full day yesterday, met someone new for lunch, (networking with another therapist), took my youngest daughter downtown for her voice lesson, saw a client, and then raced over to go meditate, on 31st and Hennepin, where it’s always impossible to find a place to park. I drove South on Hennepin, turned around a few blocks and went North on Hennepin. Only a block away from my destination, an open spot, yes! The spot that I pulled into was behind a driveway, and there in the driveway sat a car that once I was in the spot, I realized, must have turned left into the driveway to get into the spot I was now in.

I wondered, then, maybe he’s just backing out, turning around? How can we know what’s going on with other cars? From his angle backing out, and my angle parked on this busy street, there was not much chance that I could get out of the spot and let him in. He backed out and I saw him drive back and forth again. I sat there for a few minutes, thinking, “Should I try to give him the spot ‘back’”? And by wondering ‘back’ I’m thinking “Did he have the spot first?” I was worried he was angry. I thought about leaving and not going to meditation.

When I walked into the room where we meditate, the room was full, but one of the things that I like about Tergar meditation, is that they just keep scootching in and making more room. It’s a welcoming place. I found an empty pillow and sat there wondering if I was wrong to have parked where I did. I wondered if the person who was in the driveway finally found a parking spot and was here in the room; and I wondered if he was mad at me, judging me. I wondered why I was obsessing about this. I got the spot, he didn’t. Did I have to always give in? Is that the most Zen way? Giving in? How could I have known that there was a car in the drive way to begin with? I didn’t see it until I had already parked. I realized that if I gave the spot up, the person who was in the driveway would be unlikely to get that spot. I wondered why it always seemed like the best way out for me, was to just give in.

So, I meditated on being OK with winning once in a while. I meditated on dealing with what is, when it’s in your favor.

Milk and Cookies

happiness is a shared bag of Oreos with cold milk near at hand

unhappiness is trying to fit in with people you don’t like

happiness is Bonnie Raidt, singing that song about the midway

unhappiness is worrying about getting old

happiness is knees touching under the table

with a good glass of wine on the table

unhappiness is a rainy day without spaghetti and warm bread

happiness is liking what’s going on in your head

unhappiness is like a breeze that just needs to blow

every once in while, so that you can sense happiness is just behind it

no matter how good life gets

I always want to reserve the right to whine and

cry some bitter tears

every so often

Malleable Mind

For all of us there comes times when life doesn’t work anymore. Either we lose a job or a relationship. We have a new baby, or the babies are all grown up. What we’d been doing just doesn’t ‘do it’ for us anymore. What then?

This is September, usually a month I love, this month I am melancholy in weird ways. As I walked around the windblown waters of Lake Harriet yesterday, I was frustrated by my inability to calm my thoughts. The past rushed up against my mind like the lake against the shore, and I thought about how nearly 30 years ago, on a beautiful sunny day, on the 27th, I got married. In a church, in a beautiful white dress, had a Mass, thought with a wish and a prayer it would last forever. Not so much. It’s divided in half now, 15 years married, 15 years single. Never ever thought I’d be single for 15 years. Along the way I had to let go of most of the untruths that I held on to as truth. I had to let my life be dynamic, and let the ‘rules’ (if there is such a thing) be dynamic also.

In September, 13 years ago, I had to accept that my oldest daughter, at fourteen was pregnant. I thought my life was over, I think I had more invested in my role of being a mom than my role of being a wife. I was a newly single mom with three unruly daughters already, and felt so overwhelmed. One of the ways I measured families in those days was how well they conformed to what I thought was the ‘norm.’ I measured myself and my family this way and I believed the lies I was told about young moms. Now that wonderful grandson is 13 and so cool, so amazing and my daughter is fine. She has her ups and downs like every other person, and some struggles that pertain only to single moms, and the life questions that most twenty somethings ask themselves. I am a better person for leaving behind the idea of trying to measure people. There is no good way to measure human beings, we defy measuring. It’s an insult.

I look back though, to my life, to my struggles with these September events that bring me back through time and give me a glimpse into how I’ve been able to change, and change with the flow of life, instead of stand against it, and I’m grateful for whatever spirit it is inside or outside of us that allows us to take our own truths and hold them against untruth and see the difference. Grateful for a mind that churns up against the hope for a peaceful walk and shows me how to walk.

I think, therefore I am, I feel, therefore I am more than

Western thinking has long been using Descartes’ model of mind and body as separate from each other; the mind as more spiritual and the body as likened to a machine. This duality placed the brain in a hierarchy over the emotions. This model has informed medicine and religion, both powerful entities in shaping our culture.

This duality of thinking plagued me as a youth. I thought of it as heart and mind. Which do I follow, heart or mind? I read Gone With The Wind, who should I be like, Scarlett or Melanie? The thought of my heart and mind working together, in sync, was not even a thought in my head. So without even the possibility of this happening how did I grow through my growing up years? Like most I suppose, often scared and confused, trying to figure things out.

When I was thirteen, (yes thirteen), many of my friends in 8th grade in Catholic school were starting to have sex. It wasn’t as consensual as we’d thought it was. One friend had sex with the dad of the family she babysat for, he told her his wife said it was “OK.” He was a sales rep with a designer make up company and gave her high end make up. Another friend just had a lot of boyfriends.

I was both shocked and left out. We had all been taught to wait until marriage, or to become nuns, so what was going on? Well, when I finally had a boyfriend, much older than myself, I understood somewhat. Being touched felt good. It felt validating in a way that doing schoolwork and being told what to do never could. The culture I grew up in, in most families I knew, did not involve much physical touch or affection. For most of the girls I knew, one kiss, and there went all thoughts of purity. We mistook the feelings in our bodies for the essence of love. How could we have done any differently?

The sad thing, there was no adult to talk to about this. So, we had our secret lives, and hoped not to get pregnant and eventually got married, still not knowing anything much about ourselves, our bodies, and clueless as to how most of us ended up getting divorced in our twenties and thirties. Having sex and bearing babies loses it’s allure when there is no attention to mind, either.

Then as mothers, how did we parent our kids? Tell them the same stories, the same myths about mind/body separation, mind good, go to college, body, bad, don’t have sex? Trying to retain the Christian paradigm, ignoring the cognitive dissonance, buzzing in our heads, we, most of us, told the same stories, not believing in them ourselves, but having no other truer stories to tell.

Language of Love

I heard of something recently called the Five Languages of Love (from the book of the same title), and of course I’m skeptical, skeptical but curious. It seems this book is being used in women’s bible studies. Seriously, a preferred love language? That’s my reaction, and I will admit I’ve never read the book, but I did peruse the author/book site and take the free online test, which, of course, is simplified, and it does seem to lead people on to think they really should have, or should pick a love language, just for them.

Here’s the love languages according to Dr. Gary Chapman: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. This probably sells books, but I don’t think that someone should use this information in relationships. It seems a bit unfair, to say to someone, “If you loved me, you’d love me like this, my love language.” My preferred language was Quality Time. This came as no surprise. I haven’t had Quality Time from someone in quite some time, as in quality time=a date, who else just wants to sit and stare at you? Not my friends or children. So, if I don’t get quality time, should I feel unloved? If my daughter’s preferred language is Receiving Gifts and I’m broke, how does that work? I’m just wondering....

I’ve been thinking about love lately. I’ve also been reading David Richo’s book, How To Be An Adult In Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving. A book worth reading from beginning to end. In this book, Richo says that what all children (and adults) need are: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing, as in being allowed to explore and be ourselves. And so, I wonder how abundant, or how scarce these things were in my parenting, and in my own life growing up? I believe we can always learn to love ourselves and those in our lives better. What a great premise and what a great goal: to continue to be the best lover I can be.

I realize that two of the ways that I seem to love myself the most, are the ways that my mom was best able to show me that she loved me. I dress myself well, and eat pretty well. These were both important to my mom, that we children looked good and ate well. Compared to getting a lot of other needs met, this seems superficial, and when you need a hug, and you’re told that your shirt is untucked, well, it doesn’t feel like love at all. But we all get what we get and it is really up to us to make the best of it. So, now I need to learn to give myself attention, acceptance (even when I’m not looking good), appreciation, which I do get from my mom now, affection, and allowing. A big task, non?

This requires more honesty and introspection. The ability to accept that we don’t always get our love needs met from our parents, or our partners. This then, however, frees us up to learn how to best love ourselves, and in the process, model for others how to love. The beauty in this is that I’ve found that how we love ourselves is how we love others. As we discussed at meditation sitting last night, as we meditate, compassion flows out from the practice of meditation. Love is not static, it’s dynamic and moves out into the world. It creates it's own language.

Welcome to Meditation, Tea & Shame

It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, it’s going to heat up again today, but the morning is cool. It seems like a good day to finally go to the Minnesota Zen Center to see how they meditate. Even though I’m really happy with Terger as my new meditation center home, I’m still curious about this big beautiful Spanish style home on Lake Calhoun that houses the Minnesota Zen Center. So I go.

I walk up the paved path and enter into a porch-way that overlooks the Lake, and I could just stay here all day. I’ve been trying to imagine the home of my dreams, just for the sake of creating the intention of where I want to live next, and well, this, or someplace like it, is it. I’m greeted by Rosemary, who seems to be in charge here, and we wait, as we take off our shoes and for everyone who will arrive for this intro session, to arrive.

Once it seems that we’re all here, we are shown into the main meditation room on the first floor, and then led up to the third floor. Thin memories of playing with friends in houses like this come through to me, I grew up just on the other side of the lake, and the third floors, or attics of these homes were often play rooms for us kids. All the while I’m here, I’m getting the notion that this kind of meditation, Zen meditation, is different than Tibetan Buddhist meditation. This Zen mediation is much more formal. I’m getting uncomfortable by it, and trying to check in; am I uncomfortable because I’m new and alone, (the other new comers here are in pairs)? And I wonder, why am I uncomfortable with the formality?

Rosemary introduces herself as a priest, and this tells me that this woman likes hierarchy, and likes titles, fair enough. I’m a little disturbed by the catholic similarities, but staying aware of my bias, I sit still and listen. Remembering that I need to have an open heart chakra, that my meditation, right now for life, is lovingkindness and compassion. Not all meditation centers are for everyone, and who knows, maybe I’m resisting because I need more discipline, more formality in my life, maybe? She asks if anyone has had any experience with meditation, and I share that I have, and that I’ve attended a seminar with Mingyur Rinpoche.

Then after she talks about how they meditate here, in this tradition, and explains the importance of the formality and ritual, we meditate. Problem is, we’re on the third floor, where it’s hot, and so there is a fan blowing, right in my face. I’m dealing, but while meditating, this causes me to both sneeze and cough. I compose myself, meditating enough to calm the tickle and to assure myself I can sit quietly, even though I desperately need a drink of water. My mind is wandering, I want to live in this house. I want to make some friends, I’d hoped maybe I’d make friends here, and it’s not turning out that way. Is it my ego? It’s obvious they want donations, here, unlike Terger, where it’s free, both financially and emotionally. I want to go now, but I stay, I’m still trying to keep an open mind.

After we meditate, Rosemary calmly talks about how you should not move when you meditate because it disturbs others. Well, meditate on the pain, unless of course you just have to be rude and move, and well, then, you should bow to excuse yourself to the people around you. This is in direct contrast to Mingyur Rinpoche’s teaching, he says, meditate on whatever distracts you, then go back to your original meditation. Thankfully, she wasn’t bringing up that not only did I move, but I also sneezed and coughed.

She goes on now, saying that if you sneeze or cough, that too, disturbs others. I’m starting to realize that this is about me. I sit there, new, guilty, wanting to say, “It was the fan!” This is about me in more ways than Rosemary realizes, and my newfound awareness of competition in myself, makes me aware of this horrible competition that is going on with this woman, as she goes on to tell us all how she now longer sneezes or coughs whatsoever during meditation practice. Well of course not, she’s a priest now. This comparison between my sneezing and coughing and her ability to control it is not lost on me. I struggle to maintain my loving compassion for her in the midst of this. Although she seems to not have loving compassion for someone new in her center, I remind myself that I didn’t know her before she began her practice, and so for her, she may be closer to compassion than she was before she started, all those years ago.

She reminds us that they’d like donations at the end. I struggle with the idea of having to pay for this introduction to their center and my humiliation as a teaching tool. She is calmly unaware of any of this. I only have bigger bills, (when did this happen?) and put $5.00 in the basket. I’ve decided at this point to stay for the teaching, maybe this will redeem the Zen Center for me. It did not. The teacher read some poetry and talked a bit about the concept of intimacy, something I didn’t feel here. Something about having intimacy with your meditation pillow, then taking that out into your world. I went out into my world, with the feeling of someone attempting to shame me, but with an awareness that this shame didn’t belong to me.

Not Guilty

The thing that can happen when you learn new things is that you can think in a whole new way. This sounds exciting, and amazing and I’m the first one to tell you it is; but what also can happen when you think in a whole new way, is that you wonder how or why you thought in the old way, and if by losing the old way you might be losing something valuable, and it ends up being a lot to think about. The new stuff, the old stuff, comparing the relative worth and merit. Also, all the while this is going on, you are going about your life, people thinking you are who you used to be,when really you are a whole new you, or at least some new neural pathways are making strides in your brain.

Then the challenge becomes how to let people know, hopefully in a rather gentle way, that you are no longer the you you used to be, but instead, a new you. There is a practice in the Narrative Theory (of Marriage and Family Therapy) of sending out letters, or making a certificate, somehow documenting, that through therapy you have changed, and you can call these people witnesses, witnesses to your change. Cool idea, even though it does seem a bit contrived these days, when you could just post a message on Facebook or Twitter it.
Or you could blog.

Part of my change process has been and still often is, a journey alone. I don’t often find people who think like me, or understand my passion for learning and my desire and ability to deconstruct strongly held religious and cultural views. I’ve often been told that I take things too seriously, and perhaps I do, I’ll try to be up for more parties. Yet it is this seriousness that partly drives me.

This is a long introduction, I’m sure. But here’s the stories....

Yesterday I read about two court cases where Marriage and Family Therapy students had sued Universities over having to accept GLBT clients and their lifestyle, and the students argued that with their Christian belief system, they could not. The Universities said that they were not asking the students to give up their beliefs, but to ‘suspend’ them, while they were seeing GLBT clients. This brings up an interesting idea to me, that it is not working from your belief system, but actually suspending it that is then being taught as good therapy. To this I have to say, hmmm.To this I have to say, “Who then is the healthy one in the room? The one outwardly struggling with their identity and how this works in their and the world, or the one suspending their belief, their worldview, acting not in integrity but pretending to hold a different worldview so as not to harm the vulnerable client?"

This brings me to the next story, also based on something I read yesterday, but this brought me clarity, not confusion, like the story above. I’ve been struggling with what I’ve been crassly calling to myself and close friends, “dumping the baby out with the bathwater” when it comes to my former Christian faith. If you have a dark sense of humor, you can get a bit of a chuckle from it. For me it works, because as I’ve studied theology and history, I’ve found so much of what has passed for faith, or God’s word, is just a lot of socially constructed verbiage meant to control people, a static faith grid put over a dynamic life force that won’t be contained. The Christian metaphors that permeate our culture then link up and people believe that someone saying, “God has a plan” for the fourth time that day gives them a divine comfort, when really the comfort was from the person who reached out and said the words to you. That you share metaphors for life only reinforces the human connection. It is the dynamic human caring that helps and heals, not the forced grid of what your behavior should be. The bible, by the way, does actually say, “Mercy triumphs over justice.” We swear on a bible for court, but where’s that verse built into our justice system?

Yesterday, around 5:00 pm, when I’d wished I was home, or taking a walk around the lakes, I was sitting in the Southdale area government center waiting to renew my car tabs. Realizing that this might take a while, I clutched my number, making sure it wouldn’t get lost, and ran out to my car to get a book. One of a number of books I’ve been reading lately on Buddhist psychology. I grabbed “Brilliant Sanity: Buddhist Approaches To Psychotherapy” and started reading, and this is what I read:

Coming from a tradition that stresses human goodness, it was something of a shock for me to encounter the Western tradition of original sin. When I was at Oxford University, I studied Western religious and philosophical traditions with interest and found the notion of original sin quite pervasive. One of my early experiences in England was attending a seminar with Archbishop Anthony Blum. The seminar was on the notion of grace and we got into a discussion of original sin. The Buddhist tradition does not see such a notion as necessary at all, and I expressed this viewpoint. I was surprised at how angry the Western participants became. Even the orthodox, who might not emphasize original sin as much as the Western traditions, still held it as a cornerstone of their theology.

In terms of our present discussion, it seems that this notion of original sin does not just pervade Western religious ideas; it actually seems to run throughout Western thought as well, especially psychological thought. Among patients, theoreticians, and therapists alike, there seems to be great concern with the idea of some original mistake which causes later suffering- a kind of punishment for that mistake. One finds that sense of guilt or being wounded quite pervasive. Whether or not such people actually believe in the idea of original sin, or in God for that matter, they seem to feel that they have done something wrong in the past and are now being punished for it.

It seems that this feeling of basic guilt has been passed down form one generation to another and pervades many aspects of Western thought. For example, teachers think that if children do not feel guilty, then they won’t study properly and consequently won’t develop as they should. Therefore, many teachers feel that they have to do something to push the child, and guilt seems to be one of the chief techniques they use. This occurs even on the level of improving reading and writing. The teacher looks for errors: “Look, you made a mistake. What are you going to do about it?” From the child’s point of view, learning is then based on trying to not make mistakes, on trying to prove you actually are not bad. It is entirely different when you approach the child more positively: “Look how much you have improved, therefore we can go further.” In the latter case, learning becomes an expression of one’s wholesomeness and innate intelligence.

From the Preface: The Meeting of Buddhist and Western Psychology, Choyam Trungpa, (p. ix-x).

I found these words comforting as I try to align my beliefs, values or passions with how I treat people and interact in the world. I too, came to find the belief in original sin to be stifling and horrible, and I find believing that I, and others, are whole and intelligent to be much more hopeful and suited to helping others believe that they can heal from life’s hurts. As I’ve been studying Buddhism, I’ve come upon many authors who claim that Buddhism (and/or meditation) is completely compatible with Christianity, and I would have to beg to differ. I find this a bit disingenuous, and an attempt to make everything palatable to those of us steeped if not in Christian faith, then in Christian tradition. The Christian tradition that makes pretending to be whole or holy or accepting, more important than aligning your intellect with your heart.

The Lost Art of Leaving Room

When I was a child, I walked quite a ways to school, not miles, have you, like my mother did, but about half a mile. I was a small child, who was never in a hurry. I walked from 40th Street and Sheridan South to 44th Street and Washburn to St. Thomas the Apostle School, the school I attended starting in the second half of second grade. I walked past Lake Harriet public grade school, where the kids would tease me for being Catholic, and past the bakery on the corner of 43rd and Upton which is now a yuppie flower and accessories type of store across the street from the other flower shop which always was a flower shop. I have fond memories of the once was bakery on that corner, of stepping in on November mornings when I walked to school with my sister and her friends and one of them would buy me a long john with cream filling. Now, that was a way to start the day.

Most of the time, I walked alone, and I walked slow. I dawdled, and this made me perpetually tardy. The word and concept of tardy for me however, meant nothing. This did not seem like a fault or a detriment to my learning and basically, I guess I just didn’t care. How can you rein in time? I was told I was impolite, that classes had started and I disrupted the class when I walked in late, so I would try to hurry, but it just didn’t seem to be in my genes. I would be approaching the playground, walking up what seemed like an insurmountable hill on Upton only to hear the bell ring, and watch all the other little children file into the building. It would be quiet by the time I arrived at the playground, and I’d make my way into the big brick building and find my class and take my seat, trying by this time to be inconspicuous.

I even got a reputation; soon as I made friends at school who walked my same way, they would tell me they couldn’t walk to school with me because I made them late. My dawdling was a bad influence, I guess. Early on I was trying to stop and smell roses, or gaze at the sky, or walk slowly by the bakery and catch the smells. I’d stop by the hardware display case at the glassware they sold, glints of glass sparkling through the window and imagine the gifts I’d buy my mom on mother’s day.

Eventually, I learned to be on time. I learned to show up to keep people from bugging me. People bugging me became as annoying as hurrying. I learned to do well in school, and leave earlier. Soon, I was walking a long way to school, to high school, where being tardy meant more consequences than just a slight reprimand or an exasperated look. High school, as I was taught, was more like the ‘real world’ where you had to buck up, be prompt and above reproach, in every way.

I took a lot of classes and graduated high school in three years. It was a hell for me that I decided to finish as quickly as possible. I believed I wanted to go to college, and so if this was the only way, well, I’d plow through it. Crowded hallways full of pushing kids and teachers assuming we knew nothing was exasperating for me, but I didn’t get to have feelings then, especially about where I spent the better part of most of my life.

In high school I learned the art of skipping. Skipping was an unexcused absence that you somehow found a way to get excused (or not). I learned to fake acting sick for a few days early in the week, making sure the teacher was aware of it, maybe requesting to go to the office saying I wasn’t feeling well, and then skipping the next day, having a friend say they were my mom, or sister and that I was home sick. It was a whole day, a whole day to myself, and if a friend skipped too, a whole day to go shopping or shoot pool or whatever we could find to do. Really, the consequences were minimal, and my friends and I were good students so what was the big deal? What is the big deal with time? Now that I’m finding myself overly busy, I have to ask whose life is this? What are the consequences and who’s going to look askance or be exasperated now if I’m late, or if I skip a meeting?

For a culture that puts a price on everything and measures the amount of pennies saved or spent on ‘special deals just for you’ I think we are overlooking the cost we pay for being overly busy. There is no monetary value assessed here, so maybe we don’t know how dear a price we are paying, but I feel it in my bones. I feel that the price I am paying for being too busy is losing the beauty of each moment; I’m losing the ability to be present for each amazing person that I encounter, because I’m too tired and distracted.

This means I’m going to have to somehow pare down what I’m trying to do, no matter how wonderful it seems to be, and learn to say no to some of the things I’m doing that seem ‘so important.’ I’ll need to take some time to decide how to proceed, how to slow down and get my own unique rhythm back, the one that has the power to both exonerate and exasperate and keep me in sync with my unique path in the universe. The one that allows me to leave room in my life to stop and look at the beauty of the city scape, to smile at a child, or to smell a warm bakery smell and take me back to 8 years old, feeling the warmth of sugary softness, bite by bite on a cool morning.

Fabulous Fury

We hold both life and death in our hands
feel the flux of the current of life
when it jolts and when it wanes

Hear the cries of the baby
the moans of the aged and the tender heartbreak
of every single thing in between

Take quiet steps looking only to the morning
when your heart is heavy and dark

Look to the evening holding the sliver of silver moon
in your brain to illuminate the pathways safely to yourself

Hold onto to the knowledge that the rhythm will build
and your heart will once again swell pushing chemicals into your
feet and you will sprint

Wondering where the time is going
wind in your face not looking back

The current of life runs parallel to the current of death
they run together they burn together to create
the fabulous fury that is our lives

Easy to Get to, Hard to Leave

I am swinging to Ella singing All The Things You Are. You are the angel glow that lights the stars, the dearest things I know are what you are....

I am listening to Ella to drown out the song Love The Way You Lie, by Eminem that’s still playing in my head after listening to it, hmm, maybe 5 times this weekend. Angel glow dissipates violence, or so I’d like to think. I rode up North to Alexandria, Minnesota to my family reunion with my oldest daughter, Kathleen, and her two sons, Elliot and Max (ages 13 and 8); and they like Hip Hop. There’s not much music I don’t like, but I don’t like Hip Hop and I don’t like violent song lyrics. But there I was, in the front seat of Kathleen’s White Malibu Maxx, listening to Eminem sing about tying his love to the bedpost and burning down the house. Great. (Ella has now given way to Elton John’s Come Down in Time.)

I was grateful for my daughter to drive, but had forgotten what road trips with kids in the back seat were like. The poking, the bickering, even the exasperated cries of “How many more miles?” Especially on the way home, tired of swimming, boating and fishing; hungry because someone missed lunch due to too much fun. “I will die back here if I don’t get food in 10 minutes.” So we find a drive through Taco John’s, only to not get back on 94 and then get stuck in traffic going back to ‘the cities’ at 10 miles an hour.

At one point, I lost my temper, and swore at Max (the youngest), which resulted in tears (on his part). He had scared me when he opened the car door after threatening to ‘jump out.’ Fortunately, we were stuck in traffic only going 10 miles an hour. Amazing how fast one can lose their cool in the right (or wrong) set of circumstances. I think I was channeling my dad. This was after I’d turned over the driving to Kathleen who demanded her car keys back after I lost them (only briefly) having set them down in the restroom in a Best Buy in St. Cloud. I swore then, too, but only to myself. (Kathleen had promised Elliot we’d stop on the way back so he could use the gift card he’d been hanging onto since Christmas.) Someone had turned the keys in, and we were back on our way home.

Alexandria, Easy to Get to, Hard to Leave the billboard sign claims, on the way in on 94. Mostly true, we missed the mapquest directions for the first turn off, towards Osakis, and ended up all the way into Alex and then had to turn back. The reunion was at my brother and his wife’s home, on Lake Jessie, not exactly in Alexandria, but close. We drove through Alex, "Oh, look, there’s the AmericInn, but we’ll stop there after we get to the lake." Max was more interested in getting to the hotel pool than the reunion.

There were lots of choices for fun at my brother’s lake place. My brother had often invited me and my kids to his home, and I just never found the time before. I’m sad about that, the missed opportunities to have gotten to know him and his family better, to have shown my girls how to have some fun together as a family, back when it seemed like we were so isolated in Owatonna. Back when we could have used some family support and fun. Well, we were there now, with my grandsons in tow.

All my daughters came up, and that was amazing. At the last minute, my youngest, Megan, decided to ride up with us, and my middle daughter, Erin & her partner Andy with baby Audrey, drove up for the day also. Megan rode back with Erin & Andy. This was the first family reunion of only my family. We had a reunion last year, but that included cousins, and even second cousins (people I didn’t know). There are 8 of us kids, and only my mom now, since my dad died 8 years ago. 7 of the 8 of us showed up, with their kids and grandkids, and so there were plenty of people. The only sib missing was my brother who lives in Alaska. He had been in Alex in the spring.

My brother’s home is right on the lake, with a dock for swimming and fishing and three boats. There were small pools for the little kids, and yard games. Plenty of great food. Later in the afternoon, Erin and I took a long boat ride. I am not necessarily an outdoorsy type, but it was fun to be on the water, and when I confided to Erin that I got a bit scared when we went fast, she said, ‘It’s ok to be scared.’ We encourage and support each other as needed. That’s what family does.

This reunion was bittersweet, like life. My brother Steve, who hosted us, has cancer. He’s looking good, and is as sweet and kind and generous as he’s ever been. He and his wife Brenda have a wonderful home, this place on the lake. Beautiful kids, and wonderful grandkids. They’ve lived life the way most of us dream of. Brenda confided to me that she loved my brother more now than she ever did. That was when Brenda, Kathleen and I went to Carlos Creek Winery before we headed home on Sunday.

We tasted wine and walked around the pretty grounds and had a chance to talk. It was good. We talked a little about the things that Steve had shared with Brenda about how harsh my dad had been when we were growing up. It was true. My dad had mellowed with age, but he didn’t spare the strap when we were young. This painful past plays a counterpoint to the beautiful day and the wind in the trees. Brenda had hoped we could stay one more night, “Go home tomorrow, you’re not working tomorrow are you?” Hard to leave, but I had to. Even though I taken the day off, I had two meetings on Monday, and then a full week of work and trying to grow my private practice.

Alexandria, was easy to get to, and hard to leave, like much of life. Like hard and painful memories that get stuck, easy to get to, hard to leave. I am home now, Kathleen on her trip up on Saturday morning had returned my computer that I’d left at her house a week ago. Settling back into my familiar life. Thoughts still at the family reunion, with my sibs, all our lives in different places than when we were kids growing up together. Movin on again, to bluer skies, to ripples on the water. To Ella, singing, “You are the angel glow....”

Ode to Annie Esther

Being born bright, curious and skeptical has had it’s drawbacks. It’s been hard to believe and trust people. I know that trusting oneself, and others also comes from having accepting and supporting parents and from a whole lot of needs having been met, of which didn’t necessarily happen for me. But that’s another story. The part that’s been hard for me in trusting people has been the ability to see their fragility behind their power. It started back with the nuns in grade school, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that these were women who traded in sex, family and independence for God, the Pope and collective living with other chaste women. And, they couldn’t wear cool clothes. Did they ever dream of Prada, of wearing read?

This by itself spoke volumes to me, and so when they thought they had some moral lesson to teach me, I was like, “What are you thinking?” I was arrogant I guess, and didn’t think anyone could teach me anything. Also, a little overprotective of my brain, and I wanted to control what people tried to put into it. Imagine that. That’s why I’m always the one to stick up for the kid labeled defiant. I like defiant, I think it shows spunk. I also saw creepy dark sides of these women who could go off on a little kid like there’s no balm in Gilead. One minute telling us Jesus loves us, and the next minute whacking a kid in the head with a book.

What these nuns didn’t know, was that I had other kinds of women in my life, women I wanted to be like. Like my Aunt Esther, who was a WAC in WWII and had traveled a good part of the world. She brought my sisters and I gifts from Thailand, and my mom and my grandma had beautiful things she gave them from the East. When she breezed in to visit my mom and our family, she brought in her own kind of magic. She made my mom happy. She cooked exotic food and lived on her own. She was a working woman, who dated but didn’t need a man or God.

As kids we called her Annie Esther, I didn’t figure out until I was much older that this was a version of Auntie Esther. Annie Esther had a big white cadillac convertible and when she stopped by sometimes she’d give me a ride. She was young and single for a long time, and I wanted to be like her. She had long dark hair, that she’d pull into a ponytail, and big sunglasses and a smile that was huge, and a laugh that was loud. She was real for me in a way that the nuns who wanted to teach me something could never be. When she finally did marry, it was to a man with a daughter my age, and I’ll always remember the hot summer day that she bought us both ice cream cones and took us driving in her convertible. Ice cream got blown into our long hair, onto our faces and we were a mess, Annie Esther just laughed at us.

I will admit, I still struggle with nuns, not trying to put them in a box. I know some nuns who are brilliant and amazing and work hard for peace, but I still can’t help wonder, what would make someone want a religious organization to be their home? It seems lonely, and it seems sad. I also know historically that when women had fewer choices, becoming a nun was a way to have some power, to get educated. To have a life outside of the box of wife and mother. The nuns that I knew growing up didn’t seem like grown ups, maybe that’s it. And when you are growing up and you are looking towards a leader, or a mentor, or someone brave to show the way, you want them to be going in a way you’d want to go.

Sunday Morning Gospel and A Proper Vacation

Sunday Morning Gospel Hour

While growing up, every single Sunday meant going to church. When I was about 8 maybe, it was a new-fangled thing that Catholics decided that you could go to church on Saturday night, instead of Sunday. Saturday night mass was early, like 5:00 pm. I think the Irish Catholics decided that. It worked out great if you were going to party Saturday night after mass, then you could sleep in. Have your party and your hangover with your faith intact. Well, I digress, I’m trying to put together a coherent piece on Sunday morning. Cause it’s Sunday morning, I’ve got the radio on and the jazz, gospel and Jesus songs are playing away.

Jesus will be there for you, he will wipe away every tear for you, he will be with you there in the hard times, just ask, just look, look to Jesus. I’m going with Jesus all the way.

These lyrics take me back to well, when I used to believe that stuff. For a while. Now I think maybe Jesus was my rebound romance after my marriage and then a brief engagement ended. Hey, He was there for me, He promised to love me forever, forgive me too, and then let me into heaven when the time came. For a while, but then, after a while I’d say things like, “If I hadn’t got religion, I’d get religion.” The balm of Jesus being there all the time was wearing off. You know why? Jesus wasn't there. Not ever, really. Jesus didn't talk to me. Jesus didn't tell me how to make all the long hard decisions I had to make as a single mom with three kids with lots of needs in a complicated world. I'd talk to Jesus, ya know, but He didn't talk back. It was lonely.

So, maybe I’m stuck on all this because I’m in the grieving period for this lost love. For this romance I’ve had since childhood. A romance where it was all about love and devotion and songs and lyrics and death on a cross and a glorious looking toward heaven. All for a girl who’s never even had a proper vacation. How could you imagine heaven, when you've never had a proper vacation? What good is heaven, when life is hard now? Come on everybody, clap your hands, lift up your hands, say yeah, say yeah, for Jesus, lift me up Jesus. Lift me up.


A Proper Vacation

I’ve been doing some introspection, well, more than some. I’ve been feeling resentful about people going on vacations. It’s part of my shadow self that I’m trying to befriend, OK? If you can’t take the dark stuff, don’t read any further. It gets bad. I was with my mom and sister and brother last month and we talked about our family ‘vacations’ on the farm of my dad’s friend Fred Moser that we'd take while growing up. 8 kids crammed into a station wagon, complete with barf can for my sister who always got car sick, fishing poles and minnows, driving up north for hours. My dad would be resentful if he had to stop for us to use the gas station stinky bathroom. There we sat, talking about the great times, about the freaky dog, about the electrical fence, and how Fred would trick my brothers into getting a shock from the fence. There’s all these photos of me, all of maybe 5 years and 30 pounds sitting on horse, terrified. Good memories, like being stuck on a tractor, in the middle of cows.

While in grade school I met my friend Mary. Every winter they’d take a vacation to the Bahamas. Every summer her mother would take her and her brother to Madeline Island, for real proper, vacations. It sounded so fun, and exciting, and relaxing. She was a good friend and would bring me back gifts from her vacations. Then it dawned on me just last week, at 51 years old, I’ve never had a proper vacation. Sure, when I was a teenager I took a couple of trips to Europe, that I worked and paid for myself. When I married, I looked forward to real, proper vacations, like other people took. Not going up north to visit scary farms or relatives. This, along with most of my other ideas of adult, married life didn’t happen.

So here I am fifty-one years old and wondering, when, if, I’ll ever get a proper vacation. Raising my girls, and all the bills that having a child with a chronic health condition puts on the plate, made vacations seem impossible and improbable, besides, I’m not sure I know how to have fun on my own. So there it is, the dark ugly truth. This week, a good friend of mine is taking a short vacation with a friend to California, she’s talking about all the fun they’re going to have, and it does sound fun. They're booking hotel rooms, making sure there's time to sit by the pool and read in between visiting fun places. It’s a new turn for me, to not feel horrid and sad and jealous inside. I’m happy for her. I’m hopeful for me. One day, I too, will take vacations. Proper vacations, don’t give me any of these crazy dog, electric fences, sitting on a horse scared kinda bullshit vacations.

The Most Simple Truth

When I was a teenager, I was hungry for truth. I never felt like I had the kind of relationship with my parish priest where I thought I could ask him for a chat on the meaning of life. My parents were either too busy or gave me the impression that this wasn’t anything to think or worry about. I did, and it made me feel very alone.

Hanging out at Lake Calhoun in the seventies was interesting. I’d go down there for walks, sitting around reading and sometimes just chatting with folks. There was the guy Tim, who thought he was God, who explained his theory of life as there being Red people and Blue people, Red people he’d explain, were takers, “Takers, man, they just take, take, take from you, you know.” Blue people were givers, “Like you, you are are a Blue person.” I think he was on drugs, but he seemed harmless enough, especially to me, since, well, I was a Blue person. He seemed old to me then, he was probably about 23.

Then there was this other guy, named Levi. Well, Levi was also probably in his early twenties, (I was around 15), and rode around the lakes on a bike. He had stringy, dusty blond hair in a ponytail, and wire rimmed glasses. We’d talk every so often and then he’d ride off on his bike. He told me about the book Siddhartha, and so I read that. It was my first introduction to Eastern thought. Interesting. One time, when he found me sitting at Lake of the Isles, he was so happy to see me. He’d been biking around with a book he’d wanted me to read. When I expressed surprise that he’d gone to such lengths to find me, he sagely replied, “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you know it’s there, you’ll find it.”

The book he wanted me to read was Be Here Now, by Ram Dass. Both the book, and his unique way of looking at life has stayed with me. Well, the book, we eventually met up and I gave him the book back, but I own my own copy now. I bought it a few years ago when I decided to reclaim a few important things to me; when I did my own soul retrieval, and called out for my pieces to come back. Be Here Now, came back. I too came back, back to Minneapolis where I grew up. Back to the lakes area where I feel at home. And last weekend, I came home to Buddhism, again. I attended a three day meditation weekend with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche at the Carondelet Center in St. Paul. A Catholic Center, hosting a Buddhist teacher, a bit like my life.

A Catholic girl, moving things around, making space for Buddhism. The weekend was life changing. The teachings simple and profound. The teacher, both wise and happy. The meditation practice that I did over the weekend gave me much clarity in the midst of the confusion and busy-ness of my life. I’d been studying meditation for a couple of years now, without community or strict practice. Trying it out, I’d guess you could say. Now, I’m happy to say, it fits. I’ve circled around and around and find myself back. It’s good.

The yearning most of us feel for a lasting happiness is the “small, still voice” of the natural mind, reminding us of what we’re really capable of experiencing. The Buddha illustrated this longing through the example of the mother bird that has left her nest. No matter how beautiful the place she has flown to, no matter how many new and interesting things she sees there, something keeps pulling her to return to her nest. In the same way, no matter how absorbing daily life might be- no matter how great it may temporarily feel to fall in love, receive praise, or get the “perfect job”--the yearning for a state of complete, uninterrupted happiness pulls at us. In a sense, we’re homesick for our true nature.
The Joy of Living, Yongey MIngyur Rinpoche

Two Very Short Stories

from September 8, 2009

Honor Bars

My mom is moving, perhaps her last move. She has so much stuff that it is taking me too many Saturdays to drive down to where she lives to go through it all.

We come across an embroidered handkerchief that has 1919 embroidered on it, with little flags. “What are the flags?” I ask my mom. “Honor Bars,” she says. Her friend Pat is staying with her for a few days. Both Pat’s husband, Chauncey and my dad, Dan, were in the Navy during WWII. My mom says, “Dan never did get all his honor bars.” And Pat agrees, “No, those boys didn’t get all their honor bars.”

These women were not bitter, but talking about the reality of the WWII vets. My dad was 18 years old when he shipped out. I know that there was nothing in his life that could have prepared him for the life he lived at sea. Later that same day, my mom found my dad’s navy ‘whites’ in a trunk. Mostly I can’t believe she’s saved all this stuff, but I feel a strangeness also, at all the stories in the stuff. All the stories I want to hear, I want to write, I want to tell. To not be lost; the stories that are my mother’s life, my dad’s life, and also, my life. Perhaps that is what makes me cry as I drive home.

The very short story about the candy dish.

Most of my mom’s beloved nice things are on her dining room table with little pieces of tape on them. The tape says one dollar, or fifty cents, and a few pieces say five, or ten dollars. These are the things that did not sell in our two garage sales. These are the things that I wince over a little as I see them spread out on the table. On the last day I was down to help my mom, before she was going to call the antique dealer, and then Salvation Army I noticed on the corner of the table, the candy dish. And suddenly I remembered this dish filled with mixed nuts when ‘the gang’ was coming over to play cards. I remembered the card parties, with Pat and Chauncey, and the other couples that were friends of my mom and dad’s. The evening when my mom would put on lipstick, after dinner.

I wanted to take the dish, but I didn’t want to take the dish and in the midst of the memories the fight over stuff began inside of me. My mom was sad over all her things being liquidated, trying to stay brave about the move. She wanted ‘stuff’ to stay in the family, and I’d already taken a few pieces and I am trying to constantly downsize, so that instead of taking care of stuff; I can write and spend time with my friends and family.

Permission to Tell

Long story short: this is a long story...

If the personal is political, sometimes too, the personal is public. There are many among us who walk with invisible scars, or barely visible scars, and then there are those among us who walk with visible scars. Scars that remind us that life can be hard, traumatic, violent, scary.

We have designated some among us to be watchdogs for pain, for injury, for violence. We hope to prevent or end abuse and pain. Doctors, teachers, social workers and therapists are mandated reporters. They are mandated to tell what they know to higher authorities, believing that something will be done. Sometimes this helps, and abuse does end, and with support, someone begins to be strong enough to stand up for themselves.

There are those among us who are reporters, the ones who interview, and take pictures, and try to contain and make tidy, very untidy scenes and stories. Then there are those of us who carry these stories inside of us, trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. Year after year, looking at the yellowing page of our own story. Mulling it over. I have been needing to tell, yet afraid to tell, my own history, my own stories. Sometimes, these stories need to be told when the truth just must be told, simply for no other reason. To fill in, to add context, to say, perhaps, that what we thought we knew was only a part of the story, condensed, to fit into what we wanted to believe at the time. But by condensing, we only increase our questions, somehow, our brains beg for context.

There are stories of violence that some of us carry within. Carefully guarded secrets. There are no contexts for these stories, outside of a therapy office. Stories we can’t bring up at lunch with friends. We carry them inside, afraid that if the truth were told, it would be too painful, or that no one would understand, or be angry with you for messing up their beautiful day with your untidy story. But after a while, the pain of hiding it becomes the greater pain.

I carry a secret story about my ex husband, Steve’s, family. Because we have children together, this is now my family’s story. This is a story about love and hate, and racism, and rage. A story about my children’s biological grandfather who tried to kill my children’s grandmother, when my ex-husband was school-age. It was the most brutal story I’d ever heard when I heard it. Steve and I had been dating for only months, when one night, he told me, as we sat in the dark of his 76 Monte Carlo, radio playing softly, that he was adopted, that his dad was not his real dad and that his real dad had thrown acid on his mom when he was a child.

I’d met his mom, a beautiful woman, elegant and sweet, with a scarred face. It looked like burn scars, and I’d never asked what happened. I guess it didn’t seem polite, perhaps I was afraid, and I was brought up not to ask questions. As he told me, I didn’t want to hear it. I was already out of my comfort zone, dating a black guy. Now, as he told me this story of violence, a thought creeped into my head, “Maybe black people really are more violent than white people.” Hmm, what would this mean?

This story scared me, I was scared, but I was not able to share my feelings, with Steve, or anyone else. I had never been allowed to talk about feelings. I didn’t even have the words for feelings. I was not aware of how to have a dialogue about race, let alone violence. I didn’t have permission. I thought that talking about it, being scared, would mean that I was racist, and I didn’t want to be that. I thought that I could only think that we were all the same, that it was only skin color.

I didn’t know that there could be so many different stories, so many different histories and that they don’t mean that we’re not equal, not human, but that we are different, and that it’s OK to try to understand the differences. It doesn’t make you racist, or a bad person to see differences and want to understand. I know a lot about internalizing now, and historical racism, and about white privilege. And I’m still trying to understand, to connect the dots between the personal, and the public, and history, both personal and collective. Both black and white, and it’s not simple and it’s not easy, but it seems necessary, if we are to move on.

I listened, horrified, to the details. Steve’s biological mom and dad married young, and his dad, Fred was abusive. Steve’s brave mom left him and remarried. When her new husband adopted Steve, Fred was angry. Angry enough to come to Minneapolis from Chicago with acid. Angry enough, in the cold of Christmas time to hide in Steve’s family’s garage, and angry enough, when Steve’s mom answered the door, to throw acid in her face.

I don’t know all of the details, I don’t know what day of the week it was. Who was home, who called the ambulance, where was Steve? I do know that his mom was pregnant. Steve tried to tell me about the loss of his sibling, but I didn’t know how to listen, at 18 or 19 years old, to his pain. It was hard to imagine, against the life I saw Steve and his family living at the time I met him. His mom was scarred, but beautiful and well dressed, his home, large and lovely.

His mom was a 1st grade teacher, a working mom. His step-dad was nice and friendly, accepting, and his sister, my age, stunning and proud. To me they epitomized a calm, well-ordered family, his home, never a mess, never anything out of place. My family of eight kids was wild, and my home was never, ever this tidy. I didn’t know what to expect, either, from a Black family. I was trying so hard to be polite, in spite of what I was feeling, having neither words nor permission for any of my experiences.

But there it was this story, this story that has haunted my life. One time, Steve took me to the library with him to look at the microfiche stories about the story. Of course this Christmas time crime made the papers. Steve’s bio dad was caught, charged and went to prison. Again, I don’t know the details, only that this was Steve’s ‘real’ dad. An angry, homicidal man. The fear stayed with me. I buried it, never told anyone at the time. I was ashamed of my fear.

I did have compassion for Steve, and I tried to understand with my limited understanding of anything, at that time. My limited understanding of historical racism, of mental illness, if that’s how we want to couch murderous rage. Limited understanding of trauma in children, and unresolved trauma in families. I knew Steve’s family was very happy that Steve was dating me. They were relieved he had someone to talk to. Problem was, I had no one to talk to.

With this sad story simmering in our shadow selves, we fell in love and married. Steve rarely if ever expressed anger, I thought this kept us safe. I felt anger, but it was always with a mix of other emotions, and it almost always came out in tears. I didn’t have words for feelings, and neither, I think, did Steve. We loved each other the best we could. And when his biological dad died, it was a strange mourning. A strange loss of only someone who we’d never know. Steve had met his dad a time or two, but even in this, it seemed Steve didn’t have the words to share what pain and confusion must have been there. Pain, guilt, sadness. I don’t know, I can only guess. A muddiness of emotions for both of us.

We had three amazing daughters together and this story fell into the past. Only to be revived when my oldest daughter asked her grandmother what happened to her. My mother-in-law lied to her, told her she got hit in the face with a ball thrown by a child. Hmm, what to do about this lie? I think I told my daughter the truth, sometimes, now I don’t remember. It was a dark secret, and no one really wanted to talk about it.

Steve’s grandmother had told me about all the surgeries Steve’s mom endured. The skin grafts. How she lost a baby. How she lost an eye, she had a glass eye. All this, and she struggled with diabetes also, she gave herself shots. She was amazingly brave and resilient and yet there was this thing about Steve, how he couldn’t upset his mom, it was almost as if one wrong word and she would die. It was strange. Very different from my family, where the women were strong and crazy, crazy strong. My great Aunt Tillie would drive from Minnesota to Alaska by herself and show up at our door unannounced to stay for a bit. My Aunt Esther was a WAC in WWII. Aunt Jackie, the lesbian, more out than in.

The story of Steve’s mom and his ‘bio’ dad faded into history, until my younger daughters were old enough to say, “Our real grandfather was a criminal, an attempted murderer.” Yes, well, there it was again. The story that weaves in and out of my life. The story that kept me with Steve when there were no words for whatever either of us were feeling. The story that made me look at him like a child, when I should have expected him to be a man. The story that stood in the way of so many things. The story that stood in place of the truth of two people, who were just trying to be in love and be a family. The story that left me speechless, and the story that I must tell. The one who still feels like the narrator, the white girl, the ex-wife. But it is my story, too. Stories are like that, never just about one person, never just content to stay in place. They move, they migrate, they become parts of people.


This story stays with me, when every so often, someone will ask why Steve and I got divorced. Why we couldn’t work it out. This story comes to my mind and it is too complicated to tell. So I say, “We just couldn’t make it work, we didn’t have enough in common.”

In the safety of my therapist’s office, I shared with him my reluctance to post this story. To tell it, to give myself permission. I was still so ashamed of the me who wondered, “Maybe black people are more violent,” as I was brought up as a white girl to believe. In a healing moment, he replied, “We were all told that.” Saddest thing is, we still are.

My daughter, Erin, just named her baby girl Audrey Myhrrene, Myhrrene for her paternal grandmother. Myhrrene, who is wonderful and brave and still very chic. I am so grateful that my daughters have this wonderful woman in their lives. I would not trade in any of the pain, any of the hard stories, any of my time so far, it is who we are. Shadow and light, pain and joy, sorrow and happiness. Past and present. Black and White.