riverwrites

Family: The Many Parts

In Unison:

We are a fragmented unity. Like Picasso’s paintings, we are a broken, mismatched collection of parts that have been carefully assembled by the creator to present to the world the image, in our case, of a family. Like the figures in Picasso’s works, we are identifiable by the viewer as the intended image: family. And, like Picasso’s work, we are made up of straight lines, sharp edges, pointed, unbending angles, and unbalanced parts.

 

Sister #1:

I didn’t mean to break the rules. I didn’t mean to get sick. I didn’t mean to get divorced. The paths in my life just didn’t curve the way Mother and Daddy intended them to; I just couldn’t see the yield signs or the stop signs, and for some reason, my foot got heavy and I sped through all the yellow lights. Mother and Daddy were strong, though, bold and solid and impossible to erase. They kept me glued to them; they didn’t let any part of me fall away. And to my credit, I learned well. Look at me now, goddamnit, I’ve kept my own family together in spite of all the hardships that ripped at my heart!

 

Sister #2

I just wish everyone would be as happy and content in their lives as I have been. I like the rules and order set forth by Mother and Daddy – they made life easy to understand for me. I always knew what to do, where to do it, and how to do it – no questions or confusion for me. Everyone keeps shifting, though. Changing, moving, twitching, flip-flopping. It drives me nuts! Why do they have to ask so many questions? If only they would follow the map prescribed by Mother and Daddy, they would see that there really are no questions to be asked. They keep saying and doing and thinking stupid things. I just don’t understand.

 

Sister #3

I’m the one who broke the fragile family vase. I think Dad kind of liked the explosion, but he would have preferred it, had the pieces fallen silently and in slow motion. I know he wished the process of gluing it back together had been more effortless. Mom was pissed about the shattering, and she resented giving up her glue to the project. I’m sorry about that, but I love the broken lines; they are proof that the vase has been a part of our lives. Honestly, the vase would never have been complete in the first place had I not chosen to breathe that day.

 

Mother

I’m so tired. I keep putting things in closets and closing doors; I keep sweeping the dust under the rugs. I fix the girls’ hair and iron their dresses, then, as soon as I turn around, one of them has pulled out the pins or crumpled the hem of her dress. I see that someone has opened a door and spilled the contents of the closet, and someone else just walked into the kitchen and spilled some milk. And that youngest child, I just can’t seem to keep her dressed at all. I organize and tidy, close and seal, arrange and polish, but things are still a mess. I just want everyone to get along. Please don’t say that; please don’t do that. The photographer is coming today. Everyone, please, just sit still and smile pretty! I’m really looking forward to having a nice picture to hang on the wall.

 

Father

I am so damn fortunate! My parents and siblings and I, we didn’t have a pot to piss in, but we sure had fun with each other. And you know, you’re never really alone in life – you are born into a family, and you die out of a family. Children are the greatest gift of all. My parents had a lot of them; and I’ve been blessed with three precious girls. Hey, what’s for dinner? I hope it’s not a bunch of green shit.

 

In Unison

We are a fragmented unity. We are broken and we are fixed. Though the parts are not smooth, the pieces don’t all fit together quite perfectly, and our whole is not seamless, we are a complete work. Like Picasso’s paintings, we are grotesque; and we are priceless.

Divorce

I have a clean slate in front of me. I have a clean white sheet of paper and I can write my own story however I want to write it. The whole world is open for me and I can do anything I want. I should feel free and ecstatic. But I don’t.

 

It’s the void, the blank, the unknown, the emptiness that makes it feel less than victorious. I know what I’ve lost, but I have no idea what I have to gain. It’s the not having a plan or a dream or a vision that makes me feel frightened. But that doesn’t make me a loser – just lost maybe.

 

I need to refocus my thoughts so that I can see this new emptiness as exciting potential.

 

How long does a person need to lament disappointment before she can stand up and walk again? It crippled me and I will never again walk like I did before, but I will walk again. I can only know what it will feel like and where it will take me if I stand up and try.

 

I need to have a mantra that can serve as a compass – pull me back on this track of thinking every time I start to waiver and fall. Yes, being free of him is bigger than the pain. Even without a dream or a plan, being free is huge. I think I need to just identify this new freedom – the blank page is not so empty when I understand that it is freedom I have been given. I have always treasured freedom; how ironic then that I can not recognize this as freedom.

 

I am the victor because no one can ever destroy or take away what I hold most dear and those are all the intangibles – my relationships with my children; my relationship with God; my integrity; my theology and philosophy; my mind; my faith.

 

My dreams are gone, but he didn’t take away my ability to dream. And now, without him, my dreams will not be stifled or ruined. They will come; I trust that they will come. I will ask for them and ready my heart for their arrival. I welcome this emptiness because it means that when the dreams return, no old thoughts can cloud them.

 

I am free. Thank God, I am free! 

The family Historian

Let me tell you what kind of historian I am.

 

    The collection, organization, and maintenance of facts do not concern me. It does not matter to me that someone was born or died in a particular year, for example, only that they lived and died. My interest is more in terms that someone was around 10 or 11, or somewhere around there, for example, when such and such happened, and, more importantly, the impact that the event had on the development of that person’s life. I am interested in the stories, the perspective of the story-teller, and the impressions conjured up by the stories.

     Facts are important, they really are, and I do not mean to diminish their value at all. The facts set the framework for the story, so I am very fortunate to belong to a family that has other members who are willing to take responsibility to dig up the facts and maintain the records for an accurate timeline of events.

 

As for me, I am simply not designed to attend to such details. No, I am the story-teller.

 

    While I recognize the tremendous value of the facts, I also contend that ultimately, they are not very relevant. Don’t get me wrong, I do not mean that they don’t matter; I only argue that two or more people can be in the exact same place at the exact same time and experience the exact same circumstances, and yet, very different stories emerge. This is because no one ever interprets anything like anyone else. And it is our interpretations of our life experiences that shape our lives.

     You should also note that even though I try to stay true to the stories as told to me by other story-tellers, the mere fact I am retelling them makes the stores affected by my perspective as well.

     For example, my sisters and I may tell something about our father – something that happened when we were all there at the same time. And when we do, I am almost always accused of exaggerating. But I disagree! You see, I tell my version exactly as I experienced it. My experience is inevitably different from theirs, however. Maybe my experience is different because I was the youngest (you see, the fact of our birth order comes into play here and is, in fact, significant). Or maybe my experience is different because my natural design contains more sensitivity to certain nuances (such as tone of voice and facial expressions) while their design is more sensitive to other nuances (such as the state of surrounding circumstances).

 

Whatever the reason, I want to assure you that I tell the absolute truth as I see it!

 

    As a family historian, I seem to have an internal magnet sensor that vibrates at a high frequency near any story that demonstrates something about a person’s character. I look for characteristics that help me understand who I am and why I am the way I am. I look for stories that help me understand how my ancestors managed certain hardships (you see, the facts play an important role here, as well). I look for stories that explain human nature in general, and the particular characteristics of my bloodline in particular.

     The kind of historian I am is one who sees the intangible, absorbs it into my being, and passes it on to others as word pictures, heirlooms, and gifts of the heart. Take it for whatever it is worth to you (and I will argue that it is worth far more than you can know at this moment for that is the gift of history and human interaction: these things affect you forever, on into your unseen future).

I am a Descendant of Carrie Delph

    I am a descendant of Carrie Delph. She never knew me, and I never knew her in the flesh, but I’ve seen pictures; I’ve heard stories; and I see her flashing eyes and hear her laughter in the faces of my living aunts and uncles and cousins. She was tough, she was funny, and she was wild in her heart.

     These characteristics please me because, as a woman, it is nice to know that my gender and my blood line have a predecessor who was the giver of my own vitality and animated view of the world. It is nice to know that my adventurous spirit – certainly a gift from my father – has female connections. (Note: Carrie Delph is my father’s mother.)

     Carrie was widowed in her early 20s, left the single mother of 4 young children. Then she married an older man, the single father of 5 (looking for an adjective here ??) teenagers. Neither birth control nor assertive women were in vogue at the time, so it is not surprising that Carrie went on to birth seven more babies.

     She lived in a tiny house, plagued with poverty, and yet, she laughed. She found joy in her children. She bound them together with love and tied the bundle with strong cords of loyalty. Thin layers of my own life experience have built up an awareness, understanding, and appreciation of this loving act of Carrie Delph’s. The bundles she made are unbroken; they have defied the finality of death and miraculously, they have expanded to embrace new generations.

     Once when I was feeling terribly lonely, I confided in my father about the pain of solitary isolation. He sympathized, then retorted, “But you are never truly alone; you are born into a family and you die out of a family.”

     I was in the first stage of self-discovery at the time and what I was finding in myself did not much resemble what I saw in my immediate family, so what he said didn’t make much sense to me. Since then, I have strayed from my family periodically over the years and each time, they let me go. But always I have returned, and each time I did so, my return was like that of the prodigal son. Though where I had been and what I had done and seen changed me, my family remained constant in their warm, welcoming cushion of absolute love.

     And through the years, I have cycled in and out of seasons of more concentrated self discovery. It’s like a slow motion tumbling through a cylinder that is my own life journey. It is a magnified and stretched out version of the birth canal, perhaps, because it is full of the legacy of all those who lived before me who, in their own genetic, psychic, and spiritual make up, built for me this canal that my experience is destined to travel.

     Now in mid life, I take a moment to view my eclectic, eccentric, and somewhat exotic collection of experiences, friendships, thoughts and ideas, and discover comfort and confidence in who I am. I am a descendant of Carrie Delph! I belong. I belong to the family of Carrie Delph.

 

Shhh! Do you hear her delightful laughter?

 

    We all carry pebbles of Carrie’s mischievous antics in the pockets of our souls. We wear her smile and we ride on those family bonds she built for us. I implore you, all descendants of Carrie Delph, to touch those pebbles left in the crevices of your being by the wake of her living days; touch them with the fingertips of your conscious mind. Yes, touch them from time to time so you will always remember who you are. Yes, touch them and I promise you, you will hear her laughter.

 

What are your interests?

“What are your interests?”

    That is a perfectly acceptable question, and yet it makes me feel as though I’m sitting under the spotlight of judgment when someone asks me, “what are your interests?”. I clam up inside, but outwardly I giggle and say “I don’t know.., lots of things!” Oh, yes, it’s cute and charming, but it doesn’t feel very authentic. Of course I know what I’m interested in!  And the truth is, I do have a lot of interests. So I panic at the question because I feel that the inquisitor will form opinions of me based on my answers. I could say that I like to sew or I like tennis and then the inquisitor would think that I am totally into those things, but I’m not. I could be just as dis-interested in them as I am interested in them. You see, my interest is dependent on something else.

     I suppose I could sum up all of my interests by saying that I am most interested in quality of living issues. Beyond the basics of living, I am most passionate about those elements that serve to meet the higher needs of the human experience.

     Spirituality, mental health, intellectual stimulation, personal awareness, peace, simplicity, discovery, creativity, growth… these things fuel my energy and maintain my desire to live!

     What form to these things take? This is the crux of the question, I am sure. OK, so I like to walk on the beach and I like to explore the forests. I like to be barefoot and I like to wear jeans. I like to read and write. I enjoy good conversation and good food. Relationships are important to me, and so is humor.

     I like to watch movies and I like to swim and hike. I like live theater and live music performances and I enjoy going to art museums and historical places. I like to drive in the country and I like to lie in the grass and watch the clouds move by.

     People fascinate me and I love to hear their stories, but when I come across someone who bores me, age has given me the freedom to walk away. Animals make me happy and I value my relationships with them as I do my human relationships.

     I like to travel because it changes me, and yes, I like change.

     Actually, there is not much that doesn’t interest me, so perhaps that is also why the question stumps me so.

I think the question should really be: what are your values?

Family, honor, respect;

Authenticity, honesty, individuality; creativity, growth, learning and discovery;

Objectivity, evaluation, and analysis

 

    So yeah, I have a lot of interests, but I find that the activities of my interests must fit the values or they will not hold my interest for very long at all.

 

What are your interests?

When you answer that question, you must know that I will be wondering, how do those things contribute to the quality of your life?

The Final Farewell

    I just wanted to sit on the back deck with the dogs, look out over the bean field at the Midwest horizon, and cry until my heart turned dry and cracked like the parched August earth.  

    It was the final farewell. The home I had created with colors and soft carpet, filled with my laughter and love, and adorned with books and exotic memorabilia was now void of my things, my songs now silenced, and the doors now locked. The dogs I had trained, fed, walked with, traveled with, and oh yes, cuddled with on so many cold and lonely nights were anxiously hoping I would take them on another drive. They didn’t know I would not return. Oh, how I wanted to sit with them on that deck and be showered by their kisses and knocked over by their clumsy competition to be the most dominate one in my space.

    I wanted that. Their kisses would make the drying of my heart take more time, but I didn’t care – I wanted the opportunity to indulge in the full sensation of lurching emotions. I wanted to sit there on the deck and love on the dogs one last time without the watchful eye of my abuser. I wanted to survey the land I had loved and weep freely as my eyes lingered on the weed-choked garden, the shed that was to become my outdoor kitchen, not cluttered with broken machinery and debris like any other white trash back yard, and the remnants of my holy space. Oh, my holy space! Now abandoned, it lay dead like a rotting carcass in the desert. The circle where my tipi once stood so perfectly mirrored the abandonment of my heart and my marriage. The walkway I had created to the entrance with small garden stones was barely visible through the stubborn stance of unwelcome weeds. The prayer rocks I had painted were scattered about like trash, and the floor I had prepared covered the fire pit and alter like a grave blanket.

    I wanted to spend time with that space, my memories, and my dreams, expressing my sorrow, asking for forgiveness. I wanted that, but could not have it for the hawk eyes of my estranged husband hovered over me.

     Instead, I bend over Red and loved him quickly, taking his big head into the bend of my neck, tears dripping into his soft fur as I blubbered over his body, “I love you, Baby, I love you so much!” John towered over me from behind and the urge to run from him was strong. So I sucked in my tears and ran to the garage to say good-bye to the labs in their cages and little Mr. Higgins who was running about nervously, ever attuned to the state of my psyche.

     John was there, too. (How did he get there so quickly?) I stifled screams and swallowed my panic. “You can let them out of their cages,” he offered. How dare him speak that assumption that I needed his permission to free those dogs! I would not revel in the joy of them jumping on my body in front of him. I kissed my hand and stroked each of them through the bars, scooped Mr. Higgins into my arms and kissed him on the cheek, then walked bravely but briskly past John and got into my car. I couldn’t get it turned on and put into gear fast enough. “Stop starring at me!” The demand remained only a fantasy in my head until I was off his property and speeding down the country road.

A Date with the Moon

    I was called by the moon. It was so big and bright last night, so magnificent in the deep, black sky. The dense light of the North Star at the top left corner of its space kept vigil watch over the royal illumination. The moon sat there, an ominous presence, inviting me too, to sit in space and share her beauty. I felt the pull in my heart, yet I was too tired. I recoiled from the invitation with the innocence of a child believing in tomorrow.

    I descended the steps to my basement abode and covered myself with the pile of blankets on my unmade bed. There I fell into sleep. The mental and physical stresses of the day had me crippled by their grip and really, the only thing I could manage at that moment was to fall between the bed sheets of the dark, cold basement bed.

     I asked the moon for forgiveness and promised to join her later. “Just a little rest,” I explained, the words trapped in the spaces between my bones, and I ventured into the dark cave of deep, heavy sleep.

     The alarm went off at 4:30. it seemed it had only been a few minutes since I had collapsed into bed. I got up, pulled an over-sized shirt over my night gown, beckoned George to follow, and got into the dew damp car. I meandered through the dimly lit streets of town to get my coffee, then, with urgency, followed the moon out of town.

     I felt I couldn’t get to a big open space free of the safety lights of civil organization fast enough. The morning light was pushing at the horizon and I knew the moon’s watch would soon be over. I had to sit with her! I had to honor her call! It felt instinctual, natural, absolute, and outside of logical thinking.

     The warm coffee filled my chest with pleasant comforting heat and served to open my eyes into waking consciousness. My intent was deliberate: I had to get to a big empty space on earth so I could sit beneath the moon before dawn was in full bloom.

     Ah! Finally I arrived! I parked the car at the wooded edge of an open field and walked through the cool damp grass enjoying the cascade of sweet, wet kisses all over the tops of my feet. I spread a blanket and sat down to share some time and space with the moon.

     Nothing spectacular happened in the cosmos of my soul – no great epiphany revealed as I sat and connected my eyes to the beam of her light. I just sat and noted the weightless sensations of my mind.

     As I watched her bow to the dawn of a new day, there was an absolute knowing in my whole being that I had done the right thing by responding to her invitation.

     She has gone into retreat now, gone to bless other beings on the other side of the earth. My friends in Japan, perhaps – will they too, see her beauty tonight and look her way? Indeed, some of them will. This knowing penetrates that place in my heart that draws a spontaneous smile.

     This universal connection of past, present, and on-going infinity dwarfs those tangible and immediate details that paw and grope at me as the daylight hours move me through another day. This perspective provides me with new eyes, new energy, new resolve.

     The moon invited me to sit with her so she could give me the gift of peace. What a beautiful model she is for me! This is the gift I want to give to others.

     Can you strip from your eyes the confines of my earthly body and the entrapments of matter that we mistakenly think actually matter and hear my invitation to come and sit? I am calling you: come and sit with me. That’s all I ask, come and sit awhile, and let’s see what happens.

A Personal Mission Statement

As a result of a writing assignment I am doing for a client, I am thinking about a personal mission statement.

I created one a few years ago and carried it around on a business card that I kept in my day timer. I haven’t looked at it for a few years, but it would be interesting to see if my life has evolved in accordance with its qualities since I penned it. I wonder where it is now? It would be difficult to locate it now with my personal possessions in such a disarray and in so many different places. If I included personal order in that mission statement, I can say that at this moment in time, I am way off course!

I do know however, that my personal mission statement spoke to the desire and commitment to be involved in my community making a positive contribution toward quality of life issues. When I first married John, I joined the Art Association, the Downtown Revitalization Committee and a new church, all actions that supported my mission statement. We stared a recycling business and my creative juices were drenching me with ideas, energy, and productive action. This too, fell in line with my personal mission. There was a purpose and order to the days of my life.

Then things fell apart. My own quality of life dropped dramatically. The experience of that marriage was like being dropped from an airplane into a jungle maze with no compass.

Ah, but I did have a compass – my mission statement and my foundation on faith.

The drop caught me by surprise. I had no parachute prepared. My support of family and friends had no idea I was in a jungle. I didn’t even know it myself at first. It was only after starvation and thirst began to cripple me that I opened my eyes and saw that I was alone in wild, untamed territory. Darkness fell and monsters emerged from the shadows. My internal compass wriggled and strained to point me north. My foundation on faith became the soft, mossy carpet of the forest floor. It absorbed my weight, invited me to rest, encouraged me to take another step.

Quality of living is not always defined or identified by tangibles. When I was in the jungle dodging monsters and meeting dead ends, quality of living appeared as beams of light through dense forest branches offering me stamina, integrity, reason. Quality of living was fueled by my faith and given to me as recognition of my own gypsy feet that were designed to keep moving and venture down new, unforged paths.

For awhile, quality of living was simply survival and the conscious choice to keep on living.

That mission statement I wrote once upon a time was the needle on the compass that I didn’t even know I was carrying. And that mission statement was designed by the concepts of my faith.

Yes, I am thinking about a personal mission statement. We all have one somewhere deep inside where psyche meets spirit, but the act of forming it into words that fit the earth life experience may not be something many of us have ever done. I strongly recommend it though, because the deliberate thinking of your personal mission and writing it down somewhere is immeasurable valuable. Some day, we all come to a crossroads where things fall apart. When you least expect it, your personal mission statement will rise out of the debris and point you northward, the only way home.

I am Living the Dream

Prompt: who do you think is living the dream and why?

I am living the dream – I am living the dream not dreamt up by myself, but the dream that forms just before dawn when the air is most cold and the psyche most deep in its slumber.

The dream I created is now in shambles, the broken shards pierce my bare feet as I trod the barren earth. The dream I created has unraveled and trailed off into non-existence, into surreal questioning.

The dream I created evaporated in the trailing smoke of un-stoked cinders.

But I rise. I breathe. I live, nonetheless.

I am living the dream of the dreamer, the dream of the dream-giver. I go on and this fact alone qualifies me for the title of living the dream.

The dream has blood and breath and bones and they are mine. And I am alive.

The dream is colorful and vivid one moment, foggy and unclear the next. Still, I am alive and I go on. I go on in the colors and I go on in the fog.

The dream is loud with clanging clutter and noise; it swallows me then spits me out in deafening silence. I squeal, but can not be heard. I see myself, through the eyes of a distant dreamer and I realize that it is I who am both here and there; I am the living and I am the observer. I realize that it is I who am living this dream that belongs to me and only me. I am the creator who shapes the dream and I am the destructor who shatters it.

But I am not the original dreamer, and I am not the dream-giver. I am simply the one living the dream.

Flies are Good for Bullfrogs

^{_{Prompt: What have you recently discovered that makes you a believer?}}

 

Flies are good for the world because bullfrogs eat them.

 

I discovered this last week, not as a new bit of information, but through the eyes of a curious 4 year old who wants to understand this world where he now resides.

 

There were too many pesky flies in the car. We rolled down the windows to shoo them out. Some escaped, others entered. As we cursed the irritating flies under our breath and recited a rampage of nasty names and labels including filthy, disease-carrying irritants, Isaac sat watching the commotion and voiced his own belief that everything is good and everything has a purpose.

 

He was unaffected by the hissing of adults, our dissatisfaction, our stubborn, insistence that our space be fly-free. He was unaffected because he knew that flies were good for something. He watched us frantically flailing our arms about, then asked his sister, “What are flies good for?”

 

The innocent tone of voice alone brought me back to belief in the order of the world. Sissy did not disappoint: “flies are good for bullfrogs,” she said enthusiastically. “Flies are their food.”

 

“Oh, yeah!” he said, pleased and content with the order of the world.

 

Somehow our shooing seemed to fit the order of the day. Shooing is good for exercise, I thought to myself. And dissatisfaction is good for initiating change that inspires hope. The ugly, dirty things are indeed good for something. And those pesky irritants in life are good for something, too. They feed the bullfrogs. And what is nature’s music without the overlapping ripples and echoes of the bullfrog bass?

 

I recently discovered that flies are good for us because they feed the bullfrogs. And this makes me a believer in the security of the order of the world and the inherent good in all that is in our lives, even the ugly, dirty irritants.

 

This discovery gives me a deep, profound peace. And this feeling of peace confirms for me that I am a believer.

 

Disappointment and cynicism become nothing more than a pesky fly, no longer a crevice in my landscape. I can raise my heart rate as I shoo them away and look forward to the chorus of plump, healthy bullfrogs in my evening.

 

Yes, flies are good for us and I am a believer!