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.