My Best Friend’s Birthday

November 1, 2012 by scillagrace

Yup, today is Steve’s birthday. He is beginning to get comfortable saying that he is “in his late 40s”. We are still working on being transparent with ourselves and each other, genuine, authentic. This morning we talked about how difficult that is for parents to do with their children. We want to be better people, better role models, especially in front of them. But we miss the opportunity to be fully present, fully alive, and fully responsive when we hide behind those roles. That can hurt. The child may feel like they are not worthy to receive the person they love the most. I remember how honored I felt when my father asked me to help him with something. I was the mother of 4 children by then. He had broken his back and was lying flat in traction in the hospital. He asked me to help him brush his teeth by catching his spit in a pan when he spouted it straight up. It was the first time I truly felt that he was volunteering his vulnerability. I left the hospital in tears, not because I pitied him, but because I was so happy to feel connected to this man I adored for so long.

A man who had been my spiritual director for years sent me a TED video this week about Vulnerability. I highly recommend it. See if you don’t recognize something about yourself here. It may be a surprise. Then see if you can find someone to talk to about it. It may be a pivotal point in your life.

Today is All Saints’ Day as well. Here’s to all the truly good friends, the saints in our lives, who allow themselves to be seen, to be vulnerable, to be genuinely available and thereby, help us to find the courage to join them in that important place. “And I mean, God helping, to be one, too.”

(Steve, dressed up to see the musical “Hair” with me.)

Living Inside Out

August 2, 2012 by scillagrace

Denholm Elliott in the Merchant Ivory production of “A Room With a View” portrays one of my favorite wise characters. I love the scene at the pensione when he’s trying to convince two women unhappy with their accommodations to take his room which has a view.

“I don’t care what I see outside! My vision is within. Here is where the birds sing! Here is where the sky is blue!”

He is gesticulating with his dinner fork, poking himself in the heart all the while. Sometimes I need a good poke in the heart as well to wake up that inner vision. I find myself feeling bored and peevish, discontent with my fortune. Why a traffic ticket now? Why didn’t I get that early bird discount? What am I supposed to do with myself when it’s 95 degrees out, I’m wearing a tight corset, I’m at work, there are no visitors to talk to, and I’ve got no chores to do? Why am I feeling so stuck?!? Because I’m not taking responsibility and I’m not living from the inside out. I am waiting for the outside world to stimulate and satisfy me.

And the outside world would love to take over that job! There are a million things to distract and entertain and lead you from one external thing to the next. I spent 4 hours this morning at the Wisconsin State Fair, manning the Tourism booth in my 19th Century costume. A quick tour after my shift was all I needed to grab a lamb sandwich and some fresh roasted corn on the cob. I passed up all kinds of brightly colored, noisy stuff. I don’t need a chamois cloth or a giant roller coaster ride or chocolate covered bacon on a stick. They’re not really going to make me happy. I want to be satisfied from within, and I want that for my children. I tend to worry about their fortunes, too. How are they going to get a job? How are they going to pay off those student loans? How are they going to get around if their cars break down? I find myself getting anxious and peevish on their behalf, too. But really, more than catching a break, I want them to catch that inner vision. I want them to be able to be satisfied and happy and enthusiastic about life no matter what their outward circumstances show.

An inner life. Unassailable, regenerating, like solar energy that continues for millenniums. Do we even teach our children to cultivate that anymore? How are we supposed to have a moral compass if we don’t? How does a nation of outwardly motivated and distracted people develop a moral compass to guide their democratic process? I wonder about these things…..

Family Milestone

July 16, 2012 by scillagrace

I have been absent from the blogosphere for a few days in order to be present at a family event. My oldest, Susan, and her First Mate, Andy, invited a small contingent of family and friends to support them in a Handfasting ceremony. We gathered in a woodland setting to witness their vows and verbalize our advice and wishes in a ritual with varied symbolism. The result is, finally, that they are engaged. They will now begin to plan the final steps toward Marriage, which for my daughter has been a big, scary journey into never-ending adulthood that has made her skittish for years. This social event has her two sisters and at least one future sister-in-law completely ecstatic, and sent them into a frenzy of beautifying and picture-taking that reminded me of their school days on the cheerleading and pom-pom squads…

Girls will be girls

My son was much more restrained and tired from his night shift job and travel, but he surprised me by looking more like his dad than ever before.

For Susan, the event put her in the spotlight in a way that made her very nervous and vulnerable, but to her credit, she was aware of the neurotic nature of that anxiety and owned it with humor. Which only made her more adorable to Andy.

During the ceremony itself, I really wanted to pay attention to the real time emotion and meaning of the moment. While others snapped pictures, I put my camera down and watched the expressions of my daughter intently as her beloved read his vows and she read hers. Together they fashioned a three-stranded cord and allowed themselves to be bound together. I was in tears watching and hearing and feeling and believing right along with them.

Afterwards, of course, we had feasting and drinking and gifting at a Chinese restaurant.

If we all look like we are glowing and flushed, I can assure you it’s not because of quantity of drink so much as the fact that it was almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and it was, after all, an outdoor event.

The heat wave continues, and the wave of good feelings does, too. My daughter is grown and growing; she is building a very strong, very loving, very supportive relationship with a person she has admired since she was 11 years old. And it is very good. I suppose I can now take a sabbath rest for a day…I’ve been given tomorrow off from work because of the hot weather.

I Promised My Mother-in-law

June 18, 2012 by scillagrace

I promised to dedicate a post to my mother-in-law for her birthday, which was the 16th. The last time I saw her alive was on her birthday in the year 2001. She died sometime the following week, alone in her apartment, while we were traveling. That fact is consistent with the mystique I associate with remembering her. I’ll never be certain who she really was, although I have many theories. I have been told that she was a concert pianist as a young woman and that she played for Rachmaninoff when she was 16. I have seen the signed program portrait that he gave her. I did hear her play as an accompanist for our community theater. She was definitely capable, even with arthritis. I wish I had known the passion of her younger years. I saw in her such a mixture of joy and anxiety as a mature woman. She had a playfulness and sense of humor that I found completely amusing, so much more casual than my own mother’s. She was a grade school teacher with the ability to relate to people in a very natural way. She was sentimental about cats and dogs and friendship and children. As I learned more about her relationship with her mother, though, a very painful history emerged, steeped in shame and punishment. I’m sure that was the root of the depression that lingered throughout her life. She carried scars and secrets with her to the grave. We only learned about them when her sister-in-law spoke up after the funeral. I imagine, though, that she would have liked to allow the sunniest parts of her personality to shine through unclouded. It was her ability to laugh in the face of fear that I illustrated at her memorial service when I told this story:

In June of 1992, she came out to visit us from California. We had only been living in Illinois since August, and Jim had been through an emergency cardiac procedure that January. She came out eager to see him recovering and to bask in the hugs of her four grandchildren. He had a scheduled check-up during her stay, and learned that his arteries were even more clogged than in January. He was advised to undergo double bypass surgery as soon as possible. He was 31. She decided to extend her stay indefinitely and see what happened next. Her anxiety was tremendous, and so was mine. Her sense of humor, however, surfaced much more readily. It was her coping strategy, and it matched his perfectly. The day of the surgery was stormy and dangerous. A tornado touched down in the vicinity of the hospital and cut out power just as he was coming out of surgery and off the breathing machine. A frantic nurse grabbed a mouth tube and bag to squeeze air into his lungs. Marni and I were shaking all over and clutching hands as we watched. Moments later, the generators kicked in and a calmer air prevailed. Jim was breathing unassisted, and he was motioning me to come closer to tell me something. I leaned in to hear him say in a hoarse whisper, “They found out what was wrong with my heart.” “Yes, dear…” “When they opened me up, they found this!” His hand moved under the bedsheets by his side. I looked down and discovered that he was clutching the broken figure off of one of his bowling trophies. “The Bowler” was a running gag we had started the first year of our marriage. He surfaced in Christmas stockings, random drawers, and even in the bouquet of roses Jim brought onstage after my senior voice recital. How in the world did Jim manage to stage another practical joke on the day of his heart surgery?!! Well, he had an accomplice, of course. His mother, who smiled mildly and innocently at the end of the bed while I looked around in utter amazement. Then we all tried to keep from laughing too hard, only because it was so painful for Jim when he tried to join in.

Recovering from heart surgery, smiles intact.

So, whatever troubles lay at the core of my mother-in-law’s psyche, I appreciate that she had the desire to live happily and tried to do that as much as possible. She truly loved her children and grandchildren and enjoyed so many pleasures with them. She shared what joy she found with a lot of kids during her lifetime as a teacher, and I’m sure many are grateful and remember her to this day.

My Favorite Fathers

June 17, 2012 by scillagrace

The obvious blog subject of the day here in the U.S. of A. is Father’s Day. I have two stellar examples of fathers prominent in my thoughts and conspicuously absent in the flesh. My husband, the father of my four children, died in 2008. My father, who had 5 children, died in 2010. What they have in common is that they both felt woefully disappointed by their own fathers (at one time) and were determined to do better. I’m glad to say that my husband had the chance to improve his relationship with his dad over the years, whereas my father did not. They both had an internal sense of the kind of father they wanted to be, and were clear in their values. They were incredibly dependable, stable providers of basic things, although in slightly different mixtures. My husband was far more of a “warm fuzzy”, emotional Teddy Bear. My father provided more structure and logic. I’ve come to realize that these are not opposite qualities in parenting, they are important components. There are as many ways of concocting a life-giving balance as there are fathers.

My favorite memories of my dad contain literary and educational aspects: his voice reading aloud from story books, the ballet and opera and museum tickets he treated us to regularly, the vacations and nature walks we went on. My favorite memories of my husband as a father are visceral and physical: how he held them, laughed with them, cried with them, sang to them, praised them and worried over them. When a man is giving the best he has to his children, it’s a beautiful thing. Well worth celebrating, whatever flavor it comes in.

You gotta give Dad a tie on Father’s Day…

(Okay, photographers, clearly the slides taken by my father’s Leica in the 1970s came out better than the prints from my Canon AE-1 that I scanned into a dusty screen. My brother-in-law converted the slides to digital images somehow; I love how sharp they are!)

I Love My Mom

June 4, 2012 by scillagrace

My mother makes a very satisfactory leader of my Fan Club. She is, undoubtedly, First Fan, as many mothers are. The hallmark of her grace is in the way she embodies this position, not simply as a role, but as a genuine expression. I never get the feeling that she encourages me out of obligation. I believe she really likes me. What a stroke of good fortune!

This morning I got an e-mail from her titled “catching up on the blogs”. I felt her heart bubbling over like she had just emerged from an afternoon reading a favorite novel. She had associations, appreciations, memories, connections to share, like her synapses were fireworks going off. From a reader to a writer, this has got to be the highest praise. She started off by remarking, in all caps, that there has to be a book in this somewhere and that she wants an autographed first edition. Aw, Mom!

My mom is not a literary push over. She has a degree in English from Radcliffe (now coed with Harvard). She devours books regularly and always has. Her typical posture these days is sitting in her high-backed rocker with knitting in hand, book strapped in on her reading stand, mind and fingers flying. She used to hide away in her bedroom with a bag of snacks and emerge an hour or so later with renewed energy to tackle her household obligations, sporting a kind of secret glow. Get her talking about one of her recent historical sagas, and she will enthusiastically engage for hours! I love seeing her pull thoughts that have been carefully laid aside like unmatched socks and bundle them together with a flourish of discovery and pride.

She recently told me that her doctor mentioned her good prospects for living another 20 years. That would make her 97; she wasn’t sure she’d want to live that long. But think of all the books you could still read! Or that could be read to you, if the cataracts cause the eyes to fail. I can still hear my father’s voice reading to her behind the bedroom door. His partnership to her intellectually was so rich, until Alzheimer’s whittled his brain away. I wonder if she feels the same phantom guilt I have in enjoying a healthy body and a sound mind after our husbands’ deaths. Well, I suppose consciousness is a responsibility to approach with reverence. We live, we feel, we think, we read, we make connections still. May we both bring life and light to the world like fireworks, Mom, as long as we are able.

Mom (photo credit: DKK)

Mothers and Others

May 13, 2012 by scillagrace

I probably greeted about 200 mothers at work today. I talked to each of my 4 children on the telephone, and left e-mail and voice mail messages for my own mother. Mother’s Day was sunny and bright and happy, or at least seemed to be, here in the Midwest. The local grocery store ran a sale, as did most businesses, and featured a picture of a mother and daughter in 1950s style matching dresses, matching pearls and matching smiles on their outdoor sign. How American. How stereotypical. How misleading.

Every mother-child relationship is unique. We use the term “mother” for convenience, like we do any other word, and run the risk of that symbol replacing the concept of an actual individual living out a particular life in a particular way. This is where we have to be vigilant and intentional in order to keep from assuming a role instead of forming a relationship. My mother is not a cookie cut-out on an assembly line. Neither am I. Nor are my children. I want us to know each other as real people, in the present tense. We have histories together that span our lifetimes, but we are always evolving. I don’t want to get stuck in old habits, old emotions, old psychological baggage. I want to keep a vital, dynamic exchange going with these people whom I so dearly love. That takes effort. Distance complicates it. It takes dedicated time, too. I am humbled by the idea of loving my mother and loving my children. I want to have more than the sentimental attachment or the Hallmark moment once a year. I desire more and they deserve more. I guess this is another way that “convenience” and ease can lull us into accepting a substitute. Just send the card, the flowers, the e-mail. Say the words, do the brunch, go through the motions. Done. Off the hook for another year. Nope, not good enough; not to me. I want to slow down, appreciate, be present, be real. I want to know and be known. I want intimacy. It’s actually a scary venture, so I’ll only try that with a few people in my life. I think my mother and my children qualify. So, my darlings, I’ll keep trying to overcome the distances. You are very important to me.

Home and Hearth 2

April 29, 2012 by scillagrace

I love my daughter. I love having her visit, and I love how we slip into a comfortable companionship around making meals, talking, laughing, reminiscing and being outside. I love feeling that we are genuine with each other. It wasn’t always this way, of course, especially not when she was a teenager and I was an anxious mother. Ah, but it’s wonderful to mature.

I wonder how my relationship with my children would be different if my husband were still alive. Would we act as advisers? Would we be cheerleaders? Would we be judgmental? Would we be willing to share our mistakes and successes? Would we be anxious? Would we be distant?

I guess I feel like I can be more transparent, perhaps as if hindsight had opened up a window. I am able to offer my marriage as an example without feeling like I am betraying any confidence.

I suppose we learn by watching someone else’s example…and then rolling up our sleeves and doing it our own way. How did your parents influence the way you deal with money? or the way you communicate with your partner? or the way you take care of your health? When did their example stop influencing you?

My children are like embers from the fire my husband and I ignited. Our fire is extinguished; they’ve gone on to light their own blaze in the world. I hope they will be warmed and comforted by their own energy.

Summoning the Sand Man

April 18, 2012 by scillagrace

I am thinking about my oldest daughter today. She has been sick with a terrible cough, possibly pneumonia, and left a message on my phone yesterday afternoon saying, “I just needed some Mom.” Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact her since to get more information although I’ve left messages. These are those “Mom moments” that teach me how to manage anxiety. Her voice actually sounded better than the day before, I know she’s on antibiotics, so my brain can convince me that there’s little evidence that something catastrophic is happening. My imagination, however, cooks up a million scenarios that are “possible”. My spirit tells me that I live in this moment, not any imagined or borrowed moments from some other plane, and so I act in the present as best I can. Practicing living in peace with myself and the world, what I think I know and what I don’t know is an ongoing project. At this point in my life, I do not need added drama. Reality is exciting enough.

My daughter has always been open to engaging with lots of stimulus. Even as a toddler, she had a hard time shutting her brain off at the end of a day, relaxing and falling asleep. As a grad student, there are just so many exciting things to pursue, that I think she resists shutting down to re-charge. She’s a fascinatingly energetic person to talk to, but she has a hard time slowing down. No wonder she’s succumbed to illness, right? I checked out the poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo this morning, and they suggested writing a lullaby. Perfect! I know just who to write one for! I am hoping her phone is turned off because she’s resting, sleeping, meditating and healing. When she was a little girl, I used to do a kind of guided meditation that I made up in order to get her to relax. I had her visualize floating like a leaf on the surface of a slow-moving brook. So, here’s a lullaby for Susan and pictures of the Sand Cave at Wyalusing State Park. I apologize if this makes anyone sleepy in the middle of their work day!

Lullaby for Susan

Float gently, float slowly, my baby, my dear

Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear

Gaze skyward to heaven while stars gather there

Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear

With mermaid hair flowing, glide slowly along

While Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song

Go slowly, breathe deeply, my child; nothing’s wrong

Your Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song

Scale Model

April 5, 2012 by scillagrace

Happy Birthday, dear Joshua; happy birthday to you!

My one and only son was born 25 years ago today. I keep his little sneakers hanging from the rear view mirror of my car. He actually wore these when he was about a year old. He weighed 6 lbs., 6 oz. at birth (2.89 kg), and he’s still smaller than I am. But what can you tell about a person from his size alone? Not that much. Maybe it’s the first thing you notice, but you quickly move on. When Josh was young, I saw this cartoon sequence on Sesame Street and appropriated the nickname “Teeny Little Super Guy” for him. “You can’t tell a hero by his size” became the motto for my son, in my mind at least.

“Josh is a happy boy.” That was his kindergarten teacher’s assessment as reported on his first school report. We couldn’t agree more. He was a physical comic, dancing and doing pratfalls and stunts even as a toddler. He was certainly entertaining, and still is. I wear his High School letterman jacket around proudly, with the awards for choir and band and academics displayed. Out of that slight stature comes a flexible and deep bass voice…and occasional “throat singing” and vocal percussion. He’s traded his trumpet and euphonium for drums and didgeridoo these days. His musical talent and interests are wide and varied, and still being discovered. He taught himself to juggle one day when he was a teenager. He became a balloon twister in Oregon when he was between other jobs. Academically, he was always a hard worker and accomplished whatever he set out to do. He discovered that he likes to build while working on theater sets as a teen and eventually graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Construction Engineering.

For me, the world is bright and shiny when I’m thinking about Josh. His energy is infectious. His sweetness is charming. He works at a kennel now, and gets “puppy love” in regular doses. But life isn’t all Kibbles when you’re a young adult trying to make your way in a very competitive country. College is expensive. Paying off student loans is a burden. My mothering heart wants him to succeed without becoming cynical and hard. I wonder how to help. Do I act as coach? Do I act as cheerleader? I sit in the stands and imagine him banging one right out of the ballpark with all my might and will power, then wait to see the actual attempts play out.

Coincidentally, the NaPoWriMo poetry prompt for the day is about baseball opening day, or sports in general. This theme fits Josh. He did get involved in organized athletic teams as a kid, beginning with T-ball where the smallest T-shirt available hung down below his knees. In soccer, he was brought off the field in his very first game with a head gash that needed stitches. I remember someone once telling me “sports don’t develop character; they reveal character”. This is what I see in my son Josh.

There’s a wind at my back,

And the sun’s in my eyes.

There’s grit in my mitt;

The bat’s two times my size.

I stand at the plate,

And I know what to do,

But how it’ll happen,

I haven’t a clue.

Still, I’m light on my feet,

Feeling, mostly, at ease.

I’ve got friends in the stands

Who are easy to please.

There’s isn’t an outcome

That I really dread.

I know that the worst of it’s

Here, in my head.

I take a deep breath

With my eyes open wide

And swing with the strength

That I’ve gathered inside.

Swing away, Josh!! Remember, it’s a game. Have fun!