Tag Archives: relationships

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Dance like it’s the last night of the world

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A song from “Miss Saigon” is running through my head… ‘a song, played on a solo saxophone…so hold me tight and dance like it’s the last night of the world’.  Not that I seriously think the world will end tomorrow.  Aside from the darkness and the rain (instead of snow) here in Milwaukee, all seems fairly normal. 

But it raises a good question.  What would you do on the last night of the world?  What would you want to be doing any or every night of the world? 

My husband sang that song from Miss Saigon on a recital one February, a snowy scene visible through the plate glass window behind him.  The tune was a tad high for him; his sweet tenor voice seemed a little strained.  He lived only another 7 years after that day. 

I would want to dance with him and Steve and my children and my mother, to hold them tight and look into their eyes until there was nothing else to see. 

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My Best Friend’s Birthday

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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.)

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May All Beings Be Happy

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Out of the technological complications of internet networking come some of the simplest expressions of human compassion, a wish for another person’s well-being, even if that person is a virtual stranger.  And it makes the sleek, glib, electric world a bit softer  and warmer.  I’ve made some sweet connections this week with a few of my favorite bloggers, all of whom live at least a couple thousand miles away.  I’d like to share them with the rest of you.

Mistress of Monsters is like another daughter to me, in a way.  She is getting married next week.  Here’s an exchange we had.  She turned it into a blog post.

Naomi Baltuck is an amazing blogger and professional storyteller.  She’s also a mom.  I see a kindred spirit in her…although she’s much more adventurous and accomplished than I am, yet.  I echo her wish in this post for the Weekly Photo Challenge prompt: Mine.

And then there’s that rascal, Stuart.  He’s a gritty city photographer who travels to exotic places like Brazil and Spain and has just taken up residence at a farm for the winter.  We inspire each other to keep open to possibilities.  Here’s his post. Our exchange is in the comments section.

I’ll be taking about 3 weeks off from the blogosphere beginning next week, but I will be thinking of all of you.  May All Beings Be Happy.

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Carry On…

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I have been reading a book called The Barn at the End of the World: the Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O’Reilley.  It has been my companion for months now.  I am reading very slowly, savoring each chapter as a separate essay, which it lends itself to very well.  The author writes about her time with Thich Nhat Hahn at Plum Village as well as her time working with sheep in a barn.  My birthday reading included this passage of notes she took on one of Thay’s dharma talks:

“Koans are buried deep in the unconscious, watered carefully like flowers.  They do not respond to intellectual reasoning.  Mind has not enough power to break the koan.  It should not be answered, but absorbed and waited for in right mindfulness until it explodes and wakens again in the conscious mind as a flower.  What did you look like before your mother gave you birth? …

“At Plum Village, our basic koan is What are you doing?  The answer is Breathing and smiling.  Often I ask a student, What are you doing?  Often the student responds, Cutting carrots.  I say, Good luck.  Now, you don’t need luck to cut a carrot, but you need luck if you are going to get your practice back on track.”

My life is a koan.  My life with Steve is a koan on live chat.  Our relationship doesn’t always respond to intellectual reasoning.  We want to be able to express our irrational emotions and learn about each other from them.   We want to move through adventures and experiences and be aware of ourselves and each other in the moment.  We want to be present, to “show up” with a genuine answer to the question, What are you doing?  And we want to look up.  We’re working on it, and we are truly glad to be doing so.  And sometimes, I realize that it’s easier simply to cut carrots.  And that’s a mystery, too.  “How wonderful.  How mysterious.  I draw water.  I carry wood.” 

My birthday evening was beautiful.  I came home to find flowers delivered — two arrangements!  I opened a bottle of champagne, cooked dinner, listened to music, and let myself loose until I was sobbing all over Steve.  I felt very alive. 

And today, I want to check things off my “To Do” list, eat bad food quickly and hide from my partner.  Is there a reason?

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Couple-ness

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Steve and I have been together just shy of 4 years, now.  Lately, I’ve been noticing how my thinking about ‘Us’ has evolved.  I keep my late husband’s last name, always, to retain that common bond with my children.  I have internalized Jim in many ways, as my sister pointed out in a recent comment.  I am adding a sense of past, present and future with Steve.  I wrote last about celebrating birthdays with his sister and brother-in-law.  I do feel like I’ve joined his family throughout a year’s worth of life events now: holiday dinners, post-surgery visits, weekly breakfasts, etc.  Now I’m feeling the reflected perspective of work colleagues who met us as a couple.  We’ve been invited to our first party!  Totally un-family, totally unofficial (although with friends from work), like a real social engagement based on what we do as partners.  That’s a new thing for us. 

A visitor to the museum met us while my daughter was touring the facility for the first time.  I took Emily into the wagon shop to surprise Steve (neither of us knew she was coming).  The visitor thought we made such a happy little family reuniting, that she asked if she could take photos.   After her visit, she sent this photo to the Historic Society and asked if they’d forward it to us.  She included some very nice comments about how delightful and kind we were.   I look at it and think of Emily behind her, making me crack up.

photo credit: Carol Toepke

We are eager to go off on our next adventure – a 3-week road trip to “Metaphorical Montreal & Maine”.  Where we actually end up is immaterial.  The adventure is continuing to forge our partnership, responding to new situations like dancers in tango.  We are becoming more graceful, more complementary, even though we have many more decisions to make. 

 

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Justifying Decisions

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There’s something I do sometimes that drives Steve nuts.  I know it, and I’m trying to stop, but it seems to be a deeply ingrained habit.  He asks me to make a simple decision about something, and the first thing that comes out of my mouth is rarely my true feeling about it.  It’s either, “Well, we could do that….” or a few practical reasons to do something, none of which is genuinely revealing.  It’s like I’m protected my deepest self, the one that really wants something particular.   I imagine this is a coping strategy that arose from being Daughter #4 in my family of origin.  I probably didn’t experience much success simply saying, “I want that!” so perhaps I tried to come up with smart sounding reasons why giving me what I want was good for the general public?   Maybe.  Maybe the rejection of my true attachments was too painful, so I would pretend to be interested more in logic, which would appeal to my father.  It’s an interesting head game, anyway.

It came up again this morning, as I was thinking about how to justify something that I’ve wanted for more than a year.  I want a new camera.  I have been using a little Lumix that I borrowed from Steve’s aunt.  I had a Canon AE-1 which my husband bought for me when we were dating in high school.  It lasted 30 years, and then a gear broke down, and I couldn’t advance the film.  So I moved onto the digital point-and-shoot camera, but I’ve dearly missed the ability to focus manually with ease and get really sharp pictures.  What’s been keeping me from just buying a DSLR?  This weird thing I have about justifying what I want.  I never buy anything for myself until I can think of a few practical reasons or some really sentimental reason that will please someone else.  Pretty neurotic, actually.  

The breakthrough this morning was that I thought of the last bit of rationalization I needed to move forward.  It’s not enough that I just want a camera.  It’s not enough that I am turning 50 years old in a week and a half and a birthday present to myself is due.  It’s not enough that I have the money because I’m still only earning minimum wage at my seasonal job.  It’s not enough that I’m planning to take a lot of pictures on my upcoming 3-week trip, and I want them to turn out well.  What got me over the hurdle was thinking that Jim, my late husband, would have bought me that camera in a heartbeat.  On credit, even if he didn’t have the money.  The first camera he bought me was still working fine when he died.   I can hear him now, “Look, dear, the life insurance money is for you, from me.  I want to buy you a new camera.  It would make me happy.”  It would, I’m sure.  And he’d throw in all kinds of extra gadgets just for fun.  A macro lens.  A carrying case.  He was that kind of guy, generous and spontaneous to everyone, including himself. 

Why do I struggle so with offering up a spontaneous decision when I’m asked?

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Barometric Change

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I fell asleep next to the open window, listening to the deep, distant rumble of thunder.  The sky flashed like paparazzi bulbs in the south.  Finally, finally, after 4 weeks of drought, the rain came all the way down to earth.  In the morning, it hung in the air like a smothering wet blanket.  I dreamed that I was sitting in the bottom of a sleeping bag, zippering the top over my head.  My sinuses were heavy, and I couldn’t open my eyes.  My body felt a sea change that I had anticipated since yesterday when my temper flared unexpectedly at a chaperone scolding a young child.  Tension gave way; I sank to the bottom.  I could feel Steve beside me like the earth feels the sky when it finally comes down in a shower of healing touch.

In 33 more days, I will turn 50 years old.  I feel more connected to nature than I ever have.  I am more aware of my nature, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and more aware of the Universe around me.   I am more aware of my partner and my children.  I feel peaceful and mature, young and ancient at the same time.  I feel good.  Really good.  I am in love with my life…at last.

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Family Milestone

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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.

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Interesting Inconsistency vs. Efficiency

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People are inconsistent.  We must be; we’re alive, living, responding, changing.  Funny thing is, in the West we’re often taught that this is a bad thing.  It isn’t efficient.  It isn’t dependable.  It goes against all kinds of Protestant ethics of order and purpose and such.  But in Eastern cultures, it’s often celebrated.  “If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him.”  When the Buddha becomes a monolith, a never-changing dogma, it is no longer a life-giving source. I look to historical information and try to understand why people did what they did for a living now; I’m a historic interpreter.  I keep fighting this penchant for landing on the “right answer”, the one that describes order and purpose and makes sense.  I’m learning more that the joy of interpreting history is found in saying “we don’t know why”.  We’re quirky; isn’t that marvelous?  We change, we evolve, we digress, we’re capricious.  In many cultures, gods were like that, too.  It was acceptable, maybe expected.  But in Western theology, that became a bad characteristic for a god, and immutability became important.  We want something dependable, something stable, so much that we’re willing to construct it and enshrine it.  Why?  Because it allows us to stop trying to be responsible in the world?  The effort of responding is perhaps a constant drain, and we are lazy by nature?  I think of cultures that are resilient, flexible, responsive to the environment, and I think that consistency is maybe not that important or beneficial after all.  

  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, 1830

What made me think about this?  I was looking into Wisconsin history, and the history of the Upper Peninsula, and came across the story of Henry Schoolcraft.  His first wife was half Ojibwa and helped him in his scholarship of Native American cultures.  His second wife wrote a popular anti-Tom novel in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book and disapproved of mixed-race unions, thereby alienating her stepchildren completely.  Why would the same man be married to both of these women?  “I don’t know why.”

Bookshelf at the Raspberry School, Old World Wisconsin

I recognize in myself a tendency to try to put my partner in a box, to figure out the consistent rules that will help me predict his behavior.  There aren’t any, really.  But he is hardly a sociopath.  He simply wants to be allowed to communicate his thoughts and feelings as they arise, to be understood in the moment, known intimately for the authentic and complicated man he is.  He is more than willing to talk and reason and explain honestly and even to make promises and act on them in order to gain my trust.  Perhaps it is simply my natural laziness that wants to put labels on him and save myself the trouble of paying attention.  Truly caring about a person requires great effort.  It is hardly efficient.  It necessitates all kinds of little adjustments.   And that is a valuable process, a craftsmanship of sorts.  Which reminds me of this clip my brother-in-law sent me which he titled: Precision East German manufacturing in the workers paradise.  I’m not sure if he was trying to be cynical.  I think it illustrates a very authentic part of human process. 

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The Root of the Issue

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I love this fence.  It’s made from the roots of trees that were cleared to make farms.  It’s in the Finnish area of Old World Wisconsin.  I wish I had photographed it earlier in the season before the roadside weeds grew so tall.

Tomorrow, I have a day off, and I’m looking forward to being able to spend some time with some issues that have surfaced (again) in my inner life.  Grief is always there; I had another dream with Jim in it that made me wake in tears.  Existential angst is there; today, I found myself embroidering “Alle Menschen ist der Grasse” on my sample cloth.  And the differences between me and my partner Steve are always there.  I had a vision of this a few days ago where I saw him as an archaeologist in a deep quest for something, sweeping away at an artifact to remove bits of dust and reveal some very important discovery.  I saw myself as a widow who had lost everything, sitting among shards of broken glass, saying, “Oooh, sparkly!” to whichever bit caught her attention.  To be honest, I attribute some of this mood to the hormonal cycle that still influences every month.  However, cycles are natural, and to be brought back to a place of regular introspection is a good thing, I think.  Anyway, I may have something more poetic and cohesive to say about the meaning of life….later.