Watching the Academy Awards was more emotional this year than I would have expected, and I was very heartened by the overall entertainment community taking this opportunity, given all that is going on in the world, to speak up on specific issues - and to speak up about the importance of not being silenced. There was also something very sentimental and comforting about having one of the most controversial and at times outrageous entertainers of our time, Lady Gaga, reveal herself for the incredible, timeless entertainer that she is in honoring the 50th anniversary of "The Sound of Music" - which is a movie about freedom - about using the arts to express individuality and personal values in the face of oppression and the loss of freedom. The warm embrace between Gaga and Julie Andrews - the mutual respect and awe was breathtaking, as was Andrews subtle reminder that The Sound of Music was special. As Julie Andrews put it, she blinked her eyes and it was 50 years later. And that's just from the moment of that movie, not from the time it represented in the early Nazi years when to take a stand as Captain Von Trapp and his family did, as the nuns who harbored them did - could just as easily have meant death as it did the liberation they eventually achieved. When we first saw the Sound of Music, who focused on what an act of defiance and independence it was for Captain Von Trapp to sing the Austrian folk song "Edelweiss" at the Salzburg festival, his small voice and his single guitar rousing the auditorium to sing along even as the Nazi flags hung threateningly about the place? In the blink of any eye.
And "Selma". It's been 50 years since the March, which came a hundred years after Emancipation and into Jim Crow, and nearly 50 years into the Great Migration. People had been marching out of places within the American south for decades prior to the organization of civil rights groups and The Movement, but they had been doing it a few at a time, most often risking everything they had and having to escape under cover of the night. Throughout the civil rights movement music and the arts helped carry the message forward and bring it into the mainstream, and while the song "Glory" is magnificent, joyous and a strong reminder of the reality that progress is a relative term - how fortunate we are that you can sing that song on the Edmund Pettus Bridge today and not face the consequences so many stared down on that bridge in 1965 and elsewhere throughout the civil rights movement. Harry Belafonte, who was honored is a separate ceremony for his humanitarian work, could certainly have recounted many times when to sing certain songs in public, to gather at all, put lives at risk. So could one of the actors honored during the In Memoriam portion of the program - Ruby Dee. Someone spoke of Belafonte's marvelous voice (a voice that was always in the background of my childhood and that I brought into my children's daily lives), and yet when you heard his speech at the earlier awards show he had the barely audible rasp of a man well into his 80s now. In the blink of an eye.
Patricia Arquette also spoke up last night, about equal pay/rights for women. Two of the faces I noted as they panned the audience were those of Meryl Streep as she leaped to her feet, and Shirley MacLaine. Even in the gilded realm of Big Entertainment, those two women know what it means to not earn the same as a man and not be treated the same as a man in the work environment. Their faces reflected the length of that struggle too - as it is unlikely many in the auditorium were involved in trying to ratify the "ERA" in the 1980s, let alone to remember what it was like before women dared to even push forward with an equal rights amendment. There was no ratification then - maybe there will be now. Streep and especially MacLaine seemed to be so heartened that Arquette, given a platform as she won an award for playing a single mother raising two children (in a movie focused on the son - "Boyhood"), would renew the cry. In the blink of an eye.
And there was the whole specter of Hollywood itself being silenced and threatened. America doesn't think of itself as a country, especially in the 21st century, in which people could be risking their lives just going to a movie theater to see a film. But that became real this year too. And people spoke out about it last night as well, and they celebrated the French - something Americans are not always wont to do. Satire is an art form. It was celebrated too. Hollywood likes to think it has spent years and years helping celebrate brave artistic expression across the globe - awarding and acknowledging films that posed great risk to actors, writers and directors in their home countries. And now that threat is universal. I was reminded last night of that scene in the original "The Producers" in which Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel become gleeful over the outrage and offense so many in the audience take to the opening number of their play "Springtime for Hitler" - and as they watch a couple walk out, offended horribly - they go to a bar to celebrate what they are certain will be the last showing of the play that must fail. But then scene two happens and Dick Shawn is funny - and people start coming back in - because humor is okay, and the idea of Hitler as a beatnik is ironic, satirical, and they want to laugh at him. That movie was over 40 years ago, and for the play within the film the concept of making fun of Nazi Germany 30 years down the road was a risk. Too soon? Too much? No, the audience said, much to the horror of the two men who banked on offending everyone. James Franco and Seth Rogan did not enjoy the same largesse as those fictional producers all these years later. In the blink of an eye.
And now to the personal issues. People spoke out loud about suicide last night. They urged us to embrace individuality, to love and embrace our families and our friends. They asked us to be sensitive to human suffering. As people hugged small gold statuettes, and as tears came to the eyes of some in the audience over the emotion of some of these issues, I think it was all in all a night to take pride in being open, in being free to speak up, in having a voice and not being silenced. We don't have to agree with what is being said all of the time, but we should never stop supporting and standing up for the right to reflect the world as it really is in art, music, film and to also use these art forms and our own voices to highlight the world as it can be. Whether we let the art forms speak for themselves and speak to the individual alone, or we stand up and use platforms like awards shows or press interviews, speaking up is a gift we need to preserve.
.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Why Women Need to Empower and Support Women
When I was a child and even a teenager the idea of empowerment was both very distant to me, and also something I did not realize I would need to embrace. I grew up in a family with all sisters, granted a traditional, even old world, mother - and a very supportive father. I did not get a sense of things I was foreclosed from pursuing. I went to girls' school for high school and did not experience what many women begin to experience in earnest there - any favoritism to young men, or steering of young women into more traditional areas. Certainly in a school run by nuns one would expect there to be much traditionalism, and there was, but we were all also supported in striving to succeed not just academically, but in life. We were nurtured to thrive.
Maybe nuns, especially those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the ecumenical movement was still very vibrant and neo-conservatism had not taken hold, were more than merely passive feminist symbols. And I use the term 'feminist' in the context of supporting women - not in any radical manner meant to marginalize men. Quite to the contrary, half the battle those nuns had was to empower us while still restraining those elements of freedom that were more about abandon. Our wings were opened to flight, but we were admonished to keep our legs tightly crossed.
So, it may be that my initial context going out into the wide world that begins with the uniquely safe realm of college, was one of not understanding the setbacks to come, not always reading the subtle undertones meant to connote inferiority or even subjugation, and also of perhaps being more shocked by the more overt ways in which women were sidelined and in which they sometimes sidelined each other. I didn't fling myself headlong into the world of material success and power right away, although eventually I gravitated in that direction. I did see and experience different treatment, different expectations. Fortunately, I had strong female mentors and very supportive female colleagues, especially in my early years at a regulatory agency. I had no context in the late 1980s that the two women who mentored me of their own volition, had weathered ragged battles in the 1960s and 70s - one as a divorced mother being slighted because she should be home with her children and should have held her marriage together, and the other for working outside the home at all when her husband made a very good living. The children of these women were my peers, maybe a few years older than me, and it sent a strong message to me that their children were also successful, making their own ways. I had strong male mentors too, and they were mentors devoid of any paternalistic notions or any ulterior motives for taking a much younger professional woman under their wings. There were certainly pairings of older, higher ranked men in our agency ending up married to or having relationships with younger women they had mentored, but even in those situations more were random occurrences without intention than were in any way predatory.
It is important though that women mentor each other in situations like that, give each other good counsel. Spending too much time with the boss or with anyone too senior to you to the exclusion of other colleagues doesn't advance your career well, and it can establish a pattern. One of my good friends at that agency had an older, higher ranking colleague who took a shine to her, and as her intentions were only friendship and to be a colleague to him, she made a point of including others in activities with him and also of spending more of her time with other colleagues than she did with him. They ended up having a lifelong friendship and a strong professional bond. She ascended in the organization at a pace commensurate with her significant talents, even if it was probably two or three years slower than the pace of some of our male colleagues. Another colleague, who was very gifted, befriended mostly men. She was more comfortable around men. She wasn't a chummy, girlfriend sort of person. She ended up in the middle of a couple of marital break ups for being too friendly with the husbands of colleagues, and through no direct fault of her own was also the recipient of numerous uninvited advances by men in our agency. She eventually left and went elsewhere, and she did rise to a position of authority - but her career stalled at a level where she would have moved on to having management oversight of numerous other employees. There was a perception that she favored men over women candidates for jobs, and that she recommended promotions for men over women as well. In her defense, she once told me that she didn't really know many of the women who worked with her well but men seemed to really connect with her. I suggested she look for female mentors and spend more quality time with other women, especially socially in work situations. She gave that a try but wasn't very successful at it - she had a difficult time being both social with women in the workplace and also working alongside them or collaborating with them, but she did not have this same issue with men.
I think about those two women a great deal, and I am in contact with both of them still, although not as often as I would like to be. They are both women who do not have a problem working in male dominated areas and they are equally as comfortable around men as women. I'm like that too. The difference is - one of those women has lifelong female friends - friends who knew her as a child, a teen, a young mother. Her relationships with her friends changed over time - but she always went back to them, always kept them close. The other woman does not have close ties to childhood and high school friends, colleagues of may years past, who are female. She doesn't look them up or make it a priority to stay in touch. If she sees them or asks them about their husbands or families, or their parents, it is perfunctory. She's told me that - 'you have to ask, right?' She also doesn't dive in to help a friend emotionally in tough times - like the loss of a parent, a divorce, an illness. She sends a card, maybe brings by a meal (although it would be prepared by someone else). Now, you can support and empower other women without having to be a 'chummy girlfriend sort of person' - but to really empower other women you have to be engaged with them. You have to want to understand them, empathize with them.
I was at an event two weeks ago with two colleague from a law firm I worked at over a decade ago. The younger colleague told me how much she was enjoying the event, a women sponsored event, because it just had a more comfortable feel than so many of the events we have to go to night after night in our profession. It felt 'real', and she felt like people were genuine with each other, men and women alike, because anyone who was there wanted to be there and wasn't attending out of obligation. I think that's what empowerment comes down to for women - we have to want to help and nurture each other. We have to leave the high school dance ideal behind us - the one where the boys get to go around and around the room searching out the right partner dance after dance while all the girls sit in their chairs straight backed, chests out trying to look pretty, like flowers waiting to be plucked. We find out in life that the best dances are the ones where the women get out on the floor and dance together, the dances where you see your friends and smile and as your husband gets a little winded or he tires of shifting from left foot to right, you tell him he can sit down for a while, and then you join your girlfriends and it isn't about looking pretty or standing out or being chosen, it is about dancing the way you want to dance in a circle of women who are also dancing the way they want to dance.
I think of those four women I've mentioned and I can tell you if an event came up and music began to play, with three of them, our eyes would find each other and we would not hesitate to dance together, and they would keep opening the circle wider for others to join in - men and women alike. But one woman would be sitting by the bar or talking with a group of men, and even if she was the best dancer among us - she would not join that circle. It would be too much abandon. Even if someone took her hand and pulled her in, it would not feel right or natural to her. Lots of meeting rooms and conferences and hiring committees are like a dance. Women need to feel empowered to be themselves, their best selves, and they also need to empower other women in the same way. If we stiffen, don't engage other women, aren't candid with them the way a girlfriend is (although certainly much professional candor is not 'girlfriend talk'), well we're missing opportunities. And at the end of the day, at the end of a long career, many of the opportunities we missed will really limit how far each of us goes professionally and how much we grow as human beings and as women. There is no purpose in pushing forward to get a place at the table for oneself if you can't also elbow out a place at your right and your left for others yet to join, and then lift them up to the table too.
Maybe nuns, especially those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the ecumenical movement was still very vibrant and neo-conservatism had not taken hold, were more than merely passive feminist symbols. And I use the term 'feminist' in the context of supporting women - not in any radical manner meant to marginalize men. Quite to the contrary, half the battle those nuns had was to empower us while still restraining those elements of freedom that were more about abandon. Our wings were opened to flight, but we were admonished to keep our legs tightly crossed.
So, it may be that my initial context going out into the wide world that begins with the uniquely safe realm of college, was one of not understanding the setbacks to come, not always reading the subtle undertones meant to connote inferiority or even subjugation, and also of perhaps being more shocked by the more overt ways in which women were sidelined and in which they sometimes sidelined each other. I didn't fling myself headlong into the world of material success and power right away, although eventually I gravitated in that direction. I did see and experience different treatment, different expectations. Fortunately, I had strong female mentors and very supportive female colleagues, especially in my early years at a regulatory agency. I had no context in the late 1980s that the two women who mentored me of their own volition, had weathered ragged battles in the 1960s and 70s - one as a divorced mother being slighted because she should be home with her children and should have held her marriage together, and the other for working outside the home at all when her husband made a very good living. The children of these women were my peers, maybe a few years older than me, and it sent a strong message to me that their children were also successful, making their own ways. I had strong male mentors too, and they were mentors devoid of any paternalistic notions or any ulterior motives for taking a much younger professional woman under their wings. There were certainly pairings of older, higher ranked men in our agency ending up married to or having relationships with younger women they had mentored, but even in those situations more were random occurrences without intention than were in any way predatory.
It is important though that women mentor each other in situations like that, give each other good counsel. Spending too much time with the boss or with anyone too senior to you to the exclusion of other colleagues doesn't advance your career well, and it can establish a pattern. One of my good friends at that agency had an older, higher ranking colleague who took a shine to her, and as her intentions were only friendship and to be a colleague to him, she made a point of including others in activities with him and also of spending more of her time with other colleagues than she did with him. They ended up having a lifelong friendship and a strong professional bond. She ascended in the organization at a pace commensurate with her significant talents, even if it was probably two or three years slower than the pace of some of our male colleagues. Another colleague, who was very gifted, befriended mostly men. She was more comfortable around men. She wasn't a chummy, girlfriend sort of person. She ended up in the middle of a couple of marital break ups for being too friendly with the husbands of colleagues, and through no direct fault of her own was also the recipient of numerous uninvited advances by men in our agency. She eventually left and went elsewhere, and she did rise to a position of authority - but her career stalled at a level where she would have moved on to having management oversight of numerous other employees. There was a perception that she favored men over women candidates for jobs, and that she recommended promotions for men over women as well. In her defense, she once told me that she didn't really know many of the women who worked with her well but men seemed to really connect with her. I suggested she look for female mentors and spend more quality time with other women, especially socially in work situations. She gave that a try but wasn't very successful at it - she had a difficult time being both social with women in the workplace and also working alongside them or collaborating with them, but she did not have this same issue with men.
I think about those two women a great deal, and I am in contact with both of them still, although not as often as I would like to be. They are both women who do not have a problem working in male dominated areas and they are equally as comfortable around men as women. I'm like that too. The difference is - one of those women has lifelong female friends - friends who knew her as a child, a teen, a young mother. Her relationships with her friends changed over time - but she always went back to them, always kept them close. The other woman does not have close ties to childhood and high school friends, colleagues of may years past, who are female. She doesn't look them up or make it a priority to stay in touch. If she sees them or asks them about their husbands or families, or their parents, it is perfunctory. She's told me that - 'you have to ask, right?' She also doesn't dive in to help a friend emotionally in tough times - like the loss of a parent, a divorce, an illness. She sends a card, maybe brings by a meal (although it would be prepared by someone else). Now, you can support and empower other women without having to be a 'chummy girlfriend sort of person' - but to really empower other women you have to be engaged with them. You have to want to understand them, empathize with them.
I was at an event two weeks ago with two colleague from a law firm I worked at over a decade ago. The younger colleague told me how much she was enjoying the event, a women sponsored event, because it just had a more comfortable feel than so many of the events we have to go to night after night in our profession. It felt 'real', and she felt like people were genuine with each other, men and women alike, because anyone who was there wanted to be there and wasn't attending out of obligation. I think that's what empowerment comes down to for women - we have to want to help and nurture each other. We have to leave the high school dance ideal behind us - the one where the boys get to go around and around the room searching out the right partner dance after dance while all the girls sit in their chairs straight backed, chests out trying to look pretty, like flowers waiting to be plucked. We find out in life that the best dances are the ones where the women get out on the floor and dance together, the dances where you see your friends and smile and as your husband gets a little winded or he tires of shifting from left foot to right, you tell him he can sit down for a while, and then you join your girlfriends and it isn't about looking pretty or standing out or being chosen, it is about dancing the way you want to dance in a circle of women who are also dancing the way they want to dance.
I think of those four women I've mentioned and I can tell you if an event came up and music began to play, with three of them, our eyes would find each other and we would not hesitate to dance together, and they would keep opening the circle wider for others to join in - men and women alike. But one woman would be sitting by the bar or talking with a group of men, and even if she was the best dancer among us - she would not join that circle. It would be too much abandon. Even if someone took her hand and pulled her in, it would not feel right or natural to her. Lots of meeting rooms and conferences and hiring committees are like a dance. Women need to feel empowered to be themselves, their best selves, and they also need to empower other women in the same way. If we stiffen, don't engage other women, aren't candid with them the way a girlfriend is (although certainly much professional candor is not 'girlfriend talk'), well we're missing opportunities. And at the end of the day, at the end of a long career, many of the opportunities we missed will really limit how far each of us goes professionally and how much we grow as human beings and as women. There is no purpose in pushing forward to get a place at the table for oneself if you can't also elbow out a place at your right and your left for others yet to join, and then lift them up to the table too.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Ash Wednesday
I have been a faithful Catholic all of my conscious life, although I suppose I need to qualify both the term 'faithful' and the term 'conscious', especially in the event my mother is correct that Jesus sees everything I do. By faithful I mean that I never actively questioned my faith in God, nor did I ever disavow my (uppercase) Faith. And by conscious I suppose I mean from the moment that being a Catholic became an act of will.
We all experience life, spirituality, and perhaps most of all, organized religion, differently. My experience of the Church has been about what I expect Its experience has been of me - steadfast fidelity even in the midst of betrayal and disappointment. I am human and my Church, like all instruments of Man, is also human. I remember being in confession once while in my 30s and asking the priest, who was someone I trusted deeply, why there was so much vitriol and intolerance voiced toward gay people even as we were in the midst of once again not fully coming to terms with priestly abuse - none of which was about homosexuality. I was really trying to understand spiritually rather than intellectually - because the latter was very easy to do. The Church needed to survive and it faced a difficult course toward survival, especially in America, if it acknowledged not decades but centuries of covering for priests who harmed mostly women and children. I understood that as an institution it would take a pragmatic course - but I was dismayed by how readily attention was being diverted away from what was abuse of power and position and trust by what was hopefully a relative few - to condemning the God-given nature of so many of the faithful. And, honestly the greater evil in the abuse situation was keeping it quiet, moving priests around, and not allowing the law to intervene where it should have intervened.
It reminded me of when a father abuses a child or a wife (which is not to say a mother does not also does these things, but for this comparison fathers suit the paradigm), and families close ranks and don't want 'outsiders' to get involved. This not only excuses the harm that is done, but it shifts guilt toward the silenced because silence connotes shame, and it continues to enable and empower the abuser. Worse, it forces the harmed to become complicit in the abuse. On its face, especially speaking as a Catholic who lives actively in the realm of a Faith that is about forgiveness and redemption, the silence forecloses healing.
We have an important sacrament in our Faith one that takes on a larger shape for people like me on a day like Ash Wednesday when we are humbled and wear the ashes on our foreheads, the reminder that there is no eternal life without death - that something must be rendered to ash in the first place. Which takes me back to that confession many years ago, for I believe it was also during Lent, when parishes double up on confession times and access as we roll into the long days of Lent. I was mindful in sitting before Father, for I wasn't in a darkened confessional speaking remotely through little window of anonymity as we used to do, but I was sitting across from him, looking into his kind eyes. I took to heart as we should the admonition when we confess our sins and are allowed to do a penance to forgive the sins, that we are expected to go forth and sin no more - meaning not continue to mindlessly or worse yet, consciously, commit the same sins, especially if we have confessed anything egregious. We all tell lies again. We all think of ourselves first when we should be thinking of others. We fall victim to vanity, selfishness, anger and other motives that lead to bad action. That is human nature. The things I confessed to Father that day, as on any other day, were things I wished to do no more, to rise above - and they were mixed with things I wished I could stop myself from doing again and that I hoped to gain better insight, strength, grace into avoiding. In the past Father had forgiven me my lapses as had every other priest I'd ever confessed to since I was seven years old. As an adult I remained silent about some things that I knew were regarded as sins, but that I could not embrace as such with my whole heart. That was the discussion I was having with Father on that day, and he forgave me, a divorced mother, for intimacy outside of marriage. He forgave it readily, as he accepted my explanation that I certainly did feel it was a sin at times, but not where there was love involved. And failing a Vatican reversal on divorce, I was not going to be free to marry again because I would not annul my first marriage. Even in the painstaking context of canon law, I did not believe our marriage was less than sacramental, and I did not believe in reversing that after the fact. Sometimes we have to admit to failing at things we had every opportunity to make successful. That was my position anyway. I did not consider myself married in the eyes of God any longer, but I accepted I would not be able to marry n the Church without an annulment. So we were at a stalemate. Father forgive me and told me I was likely to have a long wait before the Church would recognize divorce and remarriage. He reminded me gently that he knew of many couples in our parish who had not been married in the Church, and yet they came to mass and they received the sacraments. He told me he knew they did this in good faith. That was their approach to the stand-off, mine was different.
But, as Father had so readily forgiven me it raised another conundrum for me. There was no danger that I would approach Father to receive Communion on Sunday and be denied. He treated me as a Catholic in good standing. He recognized the world had become a more complicated place and that I had the option, always, to seek an annulment and remarry and then this whole confession thing would take on a lighter overall tone for me. He understood my discomfort with annulment in my situation. Sometimes a 'valid' marriage was a very subjective thing, made even more subjective after the fact when purse strings get loosened. But, I am quibbling. The rules are what they are. At least, I advised Father, I have a pathway to grace, a route by which I can share physical love and have it embraced as part of a sacrament, the sacrament of marriage. Not all Catholics have that pathway to grace, I reminded Father. Rather than try to embrace those Catholics for the love they hold in their hearts, at the time of my confession the Church and many of the faithful were lashing out at gay Catholics. Some even tied the criminal and reprehensible abuse some priests had committed to too much tolerance for homosexuality in the priesthood.
Father acknowledged that was misguided. It's true enough that given the stigma of homosexuality in the Church certainly some nuns and priests entered the orders not just because they were called, but also because it was convenient. Still, all were called to celibacy. Overwhelmingly the priests who committed abuse, or who broke their vows and left the priesthood, identified themselves as heterosexual. This is no different than the incidence of pedophilia in the general population. Many who abuse are married. Sexual abuse is an act of violence. It is about having power over someone else, making someone else vulnerable. And when done under the color of authority, well that is an even greater violation. It is absolutely nothing like falling in love with someone when you are not free to be in love with them, which also happens with priests and nuns sometimes. It happens with married people too. And, funny thing, even when falling in love with someone you are not free to fall in love with leads to breaking up a family, casting aside a spouse, in time all is forgiven. That is the nature of redemption. We make mistakes. The heart wants what the heart wants. We are selfish or we failed to speak up about our unhappiness - and eventually we get past the initial harm of the sin and onto the path of redemption.
As Catholics, Father reminded me, we have to forgive those who have sinned against us, including those who have done us egregious harm. I acknowledged this and I tried to think at the time if there was anyone who had done real harm to me or to someone I loved (and thus to me by association), who I had failed to forgive. No, I couldn't think of anyone. We have to be able to forgive in order for the process of redemption to truly take place. So, when Father advised me that the Church was acknowledging the harm but forgiving it, I accepted this up to a point. The Church was being irresponsible about the go forth and sin no more requirement. The Church enabled and even fostered recidivism by keeping things quiet and putting priests back into situations where they would harm again. Just like those families that close ranks to protect their own end up in most cases having only enabled more harm - so too had the Church exalted the abuser in quieting the abused. More harm was done - and on a great scale of magnitude than would likely have otherwise taken place had the Church really intervened to actively educate while also allowing law enforcement to come in and handle civil and criminal punishment.
My struggle at the time was with how warmly the Church had embraced individual sinner who had done great harm, who continued to do great harm - but as a body, as a speaking body on Sundays in mass, it turned its back on individuals who had harmed no one and who would not harm anyone. Why am I a Faithful Catholic today, ashes freshly brushed across my forehead in the sign of the cross? In part because the Faith is not a provenance of man even as the Church of necessity is such a provenance - but also because Father nodded his head at me that day. It's a grievous harm, he acknowledged, and one we will be many lifetimes atoning for - beginning with today. He did not qualify for me whether he meant to sweep the two circumstances - the harm of priestly abuse and the greater harm of its cover up AND the treatment of gay people - into this summation. But he left me to think for a while about my own sins, my own redemption, which I think is as it should be. No one compels me to treat any other person in a certain way. No one compels me to be silent, to tolerate harm. I have had to leave loved ones to God's tender care, to trust in His love not just as an article of Faith, but also as a solace against my own loss. There is no rising from the ashes without something first having to have been burned down.
On Ash Wednesday, on this specific Ash Wednesday as I am still actively mourning the loss of someone who was a lightness to my own being and as I continue to contemplate how best to direct the next stage in my own life - what course to choose, I recall that last time of not doubt so much as uncertainty. I realize how blessed I was to have that particular priest in my life for so many years, how blessed to have the nun I knew for only a short time who ministered to my older son as he was dying, how blessed to have the two church ladies who prayed with me daily years later in the hospital and brought me daily communion while I struggled to carry my younger son to term and bring him into the world without taking myself away as mother to my other children, how blessed to never have been short an angel when one was called for in times of need, darkness, despair. We are God's tender care, after all. We are gentleness, a kind and calming voice in the silence of uncertainty or fear,. We are tolerance, celebration in the storm of intolerance. We are kind and loving eyes that will not break contact even in the face of death. We are the comfort we seek and also the comfort we cannot know we provide. I think about someone I love very deeply, for death is not an end to love, and how joyous he was and what great joy I will know the rest of my life because of him, and that joy frees me from self-pity over other circumstances, from fear of things beyond my control and from any sense of injustice. Being in mass today, lost in my own thoughts but in a familiar place that also made me think of that specific priest, I thought finally of the forgiveness that must come before redemption as I went to receive the ashes. Forgiveness is an absence of judgment. It sets judgment aside and empowers, enables grace. With grace we are redeemed.
.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Triumphant Return to my Hometown
As the sixth of eight children, all daughters, I spent much of my childhood in the background of photos, waiting patiently for my mother to roll through various other names before landing on the correct one as she proceeded to scold me for some misdemeanor about the house, at times wearing clothes that had been picked out for and worn by others in the family previously, often walking home from some party or event because my parents had forgotten which child was where and what time each would be done, and striving for excellence to emerge as self sufficient and make my own mark. I was the paradox of being both athletically gifted and overweight, both graceful and at just the wrong moment incredibly clumsy. I was one of those kids who almost always emitted a sound when raising my hand in class to answer a question, and all too often that sound was accompanied by the 'about the jump out of my desk with enthusiasm' dance.
On family car trips I was often one of two or three siblings in the 'way back' of the station wagon, looking at where we'd already been as opposed to where we were going, and most likely also ingesting a good bit of car exhaust from the lowered back window that added to my throaty, asthmatic vocal tones that veered always between Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat" pre-asthma attack (or the classic Lauren Bacall in my own head) and a wispy Brenda Vaccaro circa those tampon ads of the 1970s. As an adult I guess that made me both Chandler's dad and Joey's mom from "Friends", but I lacked the tall, sleek elegance of Lauren Bacall making Humphrey Bogart come hither with a single downward glance.
Still, I did well in school and was often the person a lot of my less studious friends wanted to sit next to during an exam, and by college some of my friends were urging me not to just type their papers for them, but to throw a little of that famous "FYI" wisdom I couldn't help spouting - into the narrative if possible. Now, don't get me wrong, I was not a complete dork. In fact I fear I was a very incomplete dork. I had a great time growing up, leaped toward adventure and fun, and when I didn't get tangled up in my own shoestrings, could lead others into abandon as well. Of course, always at the back of my mind was my mother's direction to do my best always, follow the rules, marry well and get a solid government job with benefits. That was the ideal frame, wrapped around a tidy suburban home in proximity to one's church, for her picture of happiness. Being the most like my father in our family, down to his voice, his face, his large feet, his sense of humor and his love of music - it was natural I would struggle most of my life to please my mother and to get to a place where she was comfortable with who I am and what I wanted in life.
After college I made my way back to San Francisco and away from my childhood hometown. I loved the energy of the city, the people massed together in transit, scurrying across the street quickly against the light to get to work on time - and just the broad, intricate fabric of that lifestyle. I did initially follow instructions and got a good government job with a regulatory agency. I worked my way up, made marvelous friends to add to the ones I already had, and eventually fell in love and married. On paper all good with mom's comfort level and plans for me. And we did eventually buy a house in the suburbs, but a tiny, older house. We had children. A dog. And then we divorced. Oh, and to my mother's great discomfort my husband was not a Catholic (the entire reason she made so many of us attend a former all men's Catholic college), but he was an immigrant, like her own parents. He was also a self made person who'd come here for college and then had to stay completely on his own when the government in his home country fell and the financial support he'd been getting went away. He was funny and light-hearted most of the time, and very attractive. He made me laugh and I remember thinking how much like my father he was after I got to know him. My dad hadn't been a Catholic either until shortly before his death. My dad adapted to the new culture of his family, more or less, while my mother clung to the traditional, the comfortable - in part because she had suffered profound loss very early in her life that made her hesitate to step outside the cocoon of family, stability. Over time I realized my husband was actually a lot more like my mother.
But, I digress. We are who we are and we were who we were, and at some point I realized it was going to be better for my children if we moved back to Sacramento where the cost of living was less and where there was a little bit of distance from their dad to give him some space for a while. I also wanted to be closer to my mom who was already showing signs of early onset Alzheimer's. We didn't now what it was back then, but we knew she was struggling, and I wanted to be nearer to her. So we moved back to my hometown as I was able to split my job between duties in San Francisco in regulatory proceedings and in Sacramento as my agency's legislative advocate. I hadn't really thought about where in town to settle, although I thought maybe someplace between my mother's house and downtown, to make at least my local commute less on days I didn't have to be in SF.
My mother was having none of that. And she was not about to let me put my children back into public school as I had done in the bay area. Nope, on our second day in town to do advance work before moving she drove me to the Catholic school I had attended and marched into the office with me to insist that my oldest, who was midway through the second grade, would be enrolled there. The principal informed us that the second grade was full, very full. My tiny Sicilian mother folded her arms and gave the principal the look I always feared most - the look that said she knew I was lying, or I was weak or I was too feeble minded to understand the repercussions of the choice I was about to make. My mother put seven of her daughters through this school and to date not a single grandchild had gone there (although some had gone to Catholic School, just in other towns or other parts of this town). That was going to end today. My mom levelled her eyes at the principal. The principal blinked. A desk was ordered to be sent down to the second grade room and my oldest daughter would be starting school on Monday.
Here's where we get to the triumphant part. Not only were we temporarily housed at my mother's house while I searched for a place - all of the children and me living in the room upstairs I had last occupied before going off to college - but now my children would be going to my old school and we would be attending church there. Our pastor was still Father Doheny, who had been the parish priest when I graduated the 8th grade, and who had baptized my father. I looked around the school yard that day as we gave my daughter Lucy the tour, and boy, not much had changed. Well, I had, of course. I was a divorced single parent of three children, the last of whom had been born AFTER the divorce. I expected my children were the only Nigerian-American children at this tidy little school too - as I was seeing mostly white faces everywhere we went. Not much progress in that regard either. And there were a lot of second generation students at the school, children of people I had gone to school with, and a lot of the faces at mass that Sunday were also very familiar - the parents of the children I'd grown up with in the parish.
It was a strange type of time warp. I was used to going over to our friend Daljit's house for huge Indian dinners lovingly prepared by his wife Manjit. The consumer case I was working on at this time in San Francisco was being second chaired by a close colleague and friend who was a cross-dressing lesbian. I missed the symphony of Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa voices at the Naija wives group I belonged to in Oakland. And here I was now signing up for the Family Group after mass, taking the kids down for donuts and hot cocoa in the same small hall where I used to fidget in line waiting for a donut from the Knights of Columbus.
Remarkably, the family group opened wide for us and within a month or two I was actually heading it up and writing its newsletter. It was a saving grace at a time when I felt like we did stick out a bit as the only black family in the school that first year (followed gratefully by a second, mixed family the next year). Oh, and that bit about my former husband not being Catholic. He's Muslim. That went over well too. Ah, triumphant return I had dreamed of peripherally as a teen when I knew I would be going away to college, maybe not coming back. I was not going to be awkward, dorky - was not going to be the girl whose mother always showed up early to pick her up from parties or who dropped by the high school to check up on me. I was going to be hip, cool, successful when I came back. And probably taller and thinner.
The apex of that triumph occurred one day in mass about six months after we'd returned. Because my youngest was a toddler who fidgeted we often sat in the crying room behind glass during mass. I detested it. I felt my children should just sit still and participate as I had done when I was a child. My daughters were very attentive and well behaved in mass, but my son was little. He was the weak link. We got stares sometimes from other parents in the crying room if I let him wriggle away and go sit in a corner quietly playing with one of his little cars. He was not loud like a lot of the other toddlers and even older children, but it was clear he wasn't focused on mass. So, one day I decided we were just going to sit in the regular part of the church. It was time. He had just turned two and I was sure he could manage it. We sat about five rows back from the altar in the pews that were housed off to its left at the front of the church. We did get some looks in this new environ, the thirty something blond mom and the three little black children, one of whom fairly immediately began to chew on my keys. I took him up in my arms for a while and when he would begin to talk or sing song I would hush him and say "Shhh, listen to Father" - pointing to the priest up on the altar. Sometimes I would set him down on the bench because he was heavy, but if he started to fidget or talk I would turn to him and say it again, "Shhh, listen to Father!" I realized as mass meandered on that morning that the triumph I had sought was to blend in, to not obtain any special notice. I think that was what I probably strived toward as a child - just to be one of the pack, not get any negative attention, and when praise was being handed out all around to enjoy that brief moment.
Yep, as I looked over and saw a couple of familiar three generation families gathered together - the kids I grew up with looking more and more like the now grandparents had looked in my memory - and then the grandchildren dressed conservatively, smiling brightly, holding a parent's hand and looking much as I remembered their parents looking as children - I realized that was probably it. And we were half way there as we'd cleared the crying room for what I hoped was a definitive move into the main church for mass. We were ready. I was a proud head of our family even if there was just one of me. I looked over at the huddled, noisy masses in the crying room - the distress on some of the other parents' faces, and I knew I had crossed more than a literal threshold to come down here. As the tine approached for the handshake of peace I smiled brightly, turned to my left and right, to the people behind us and in front of us - and their handshakes were as warm and genuine as my own. We fit in, we did not stand out awkwardly. I was certain of it. And then the church grew quiet as the priest prepared for communion... and my son began to fidget again. He hummed to himself a moment and struck up a nonsensical conversation with his little Hot Wheels car cradled in his chubby hand. "Shhh," I whispered as I took him up in my arms again, putting my mouth right next to his ear so no one else would hear ' "Listen to Father!" People were beginning to kneel back down around us and I was still standing, setting his car down inside my purse as I held my son steady. He looked up at Father Doheny on the altar and then this barely two year old child who had hardly put more than two words together his whole life and who had a tiny voice, spoke out loudly, pointing up at the priest, "THAT'S MY FATHER?"
My face was immediately crimson as I rushed to get us down low in the pew, but heads had turned, chuckles were emitted, and one older woman gave my son a stern scowl as I lowered him all the way to the ground. Ah, yes, this was that moment of triumphant return, of splendorous homogeneity, where our clearly well born and well heeled selves emerged into my hometown to be lauded and feted alongside all of the other similarly happy, successful and pious families. After a moment I laughed too, and I picked my son back up off the floor and gave him a big hug. Father Doheny, who had taken us under his wing upon my return due to his close relationship with my late father, the former heathen, got a great laugh about it later when I explained to him what that moment of commotion had been about in mass earlier. Maybe fitting in's not my thing.
On family car trips I was often one of two or three siblings in the 'way back' of the station wagon, looking at where we'd already been as opposed to where we were going, and most likely also ingesting a good bit of car exhaust from the lowered back window that added to my throaty, asthmatic vocal tones that veered always between Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat" pre-asthma attack (or the classic Lauren Bacall in my own head) and a wispy Brenda Vaccaro circa those tampon ads of the 1970s. As an adult I guess that made me both Chandler's dad and Joey's mom from "Friends", but I lacked the tall, sleek elegance of Lauren Bacall making Humphrey Bogart come hither with a single downward glance.
Still, I did well in school and was often the person a lot of my less studious friends wanted to sit next to during an exam, and by college some of my friends were urging me not to just type their papers for them, but to throw a little of that famous "FYI" wisdom I couldn't help spouting - into the narrative if possible. Now, don't get me wrong, I was not a complete dork. In fact I fear I was a very incomplete dork. I had a great time growing up, leaped toward adventure and fun, and when I didn't get tangled up in my own shoestrings, could lead others into abandon as well. Of course, always at the back of my mind was my mother's direction to do my best always, follow the rules, marry well and get a solid government job with benefits. That was the ideal frame, wrapped around a tidy suburban home in proximity to one's church, for her picture of happiness. Being the most like my father in our family, down to his voice, his face, his large feet, his sense of humor and his love of music - it was natural I would struggle most of my life to please my mother and to get to a place where she was comfortable with who I am and what I wanted in life.
After college I made my way back to San Francisco and away from my childhood hometown. I loved the energy of the city, the people massed together in transit, scurrying across the street quickly against the light to get to work on time - and just the broad, intricate fabric of that lifestyle. I did initially follow instructions and got a good government job with a regulatory agency. I worked my way up, made marvelous friends to add to the ones I already had, and eventually fell in love and married. On paper all good with mom's comfort level and plans for me. And we did eventually buy a house in the suburbs, but a tiny, older house. We had children. A dog. And then we divorced. Oh, and to my mother's great discomfort my husband was not a Catholic (the entire reason she made so many of us attend a former all men's Catholic college), but he was an immigrant, like her own parents. He was also a self made person who'd come here for college and then had to stay completely on his own when the government in his home country fell and the financial support he'd been getting went away. He was funny and light-hearted most of the time, and very attractive. He made me laugh and I remember thinking how much like my father he was after I got to know him. My dad hadn't been a Catholic either until shortly before his death. My dad adapted to the new culture of his family, more or less, while my mother clung to the traditional, the comfortable - in part because she had suffered profound loss very early in her life that made her hesitate to step outside the cocoon of family, stability. Over time I realized my husband was actually a lot more like my mother.
But, I digress. We are who we are and we were who we were, and at some point I realized it was going to be better for my children if we moved back to Sacramento where the cost of living was less and where there was a little bit of distance from their dad to give him some space for a while. I also wanted to be closer to my mom who was already showing signs of early onset Alzheimer's. We didn't now what it was back then, but we knew she was struggling, and I wanted to be nearer to her. So we moved back to my hometown as I was able to split my job between duties in San Francisco in regulatory proceedings and in Sacramento as my agency's legislative advocate. I hadn't really thought about where in town to settle, although I thought maybe someplace between my mother's house and downtown, to make at least my local commute less on days I didn't have to be in SF.
My mother was having none of that. And she was not about to let me put my children back into public school as I had done in the bay area. Nope, on our second day in town to do advance work before moving she drove me to the Catholic school I had attended and marched into the office with me to insist that my oldest, who was midway through the second grade, would be enrolled there. The principal informed us that the second grade was full, very full. My tiny Sicilian mother folded her arms and gave the principal the look I always feared most - the look that said she knew I was lying, or I was weak or I was too feeble minded to understand the repercussions of the choice I was about to make. My mother put seven of her daughters through this school and to date not a single grandchild had gone there (although some had gone to Catholic School, just in other towns or other parts of this town). That was going to end today. My mom levelled her eyes at the principal. The principal blinked. A desk was ordered to be sent down to the second grade room and my oldest daughter would be starting school on Monday.
Here's where we get to the triumphant part. Not only were we temporarily housed at my mother's house while I searched for a place - all of the children and me living in the room upstairs I had last occupied before going off to college - but now my children would be going to my old school and we would be attending church there. Our pastor was still Father Doheny, who had been the parish priest when I graduated the 8th grade, and who had baptized my father. I looked around the school yard that day as we gave my daughter Lucy the tour, and boy, not much had changed. Well, I had, of course. I was a divorced single parent of three children, the last of whom had been born AFTER the divorce. I expected my children were the only Nigerian-American children at this tidy little school too - as I was seeing mostly white faces everywhere we went. Not much progress in that regard either. And there were a lot of second generation students at the school, children of people I had gone to school with, and a lot of the faces at mass that Sunday were also very familiar - the parents of the children I'd grown up with in the parish.
It was a strange type of time warp. I was used to going over to our friend Daljit's house for huge Indian dinners lovingly prepared by his wife Manjit. The consumer case I was working on at this time in San Francisco was being second chaired by a close colleague and friend who was a cross-dressing lesbian. I missed the symphony of Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa voices at the Naija wives group I belonged to in Oakland. And here I was now signing up for the Family Group after mass, taking the kids down for donuts and hot cocoa in the same small hall where I used to fidget in line waiting for a donut from the Knights of Columbus.
Remarkably, the family group opened wide for us and within a month or two I was actually heading it up and writing its newsletter. It was a saving grace at a time when I felt like we did stick out a bit as the only black family in the school that first year (followed gratefully by a second, mixed family the next year). Oh, and that bit about my former husband not being Catholic. He's Muslim. That went over well too. Ah, triumphant return I had dreamed of peripherally as a teen when I knew I would be going away to college, maybe not coming back. I was not going to be awkward, dorky - was not going to be the girl whose mother always showed up early to pick her up from parties or who dropped by the high school to check up on me. I was going to be hip, cool, successful when I came back. And probably taller and thinner.
The apex of that triumph occurred one day in mass about six months after we'd returned. Because my youngest was a toddler who fidgeted we often sat in the crying room behind glass during mass. I detested it. I felt my children should just sit still and participate as I had done when I was a child. My daughters were very attentive and well behaved in mass, but my son was little. He was the weak link. We got stares sometimes from other parents in the crying room if I let him wriggle away and go sit in a corner quietly playing with one of his little cars. He was not loud like a lot of the other toddlers and even older children, but it was clear he wasn't focused on mass. So, one day I decided we were just going to sit in the regular part of the church. It was time. He had just turned two and I was sure he could manage it. We sat about five rows back from the altar in the pews that were housed off to its left at the front of the church. We did get some looks in this new environ, the thirty something blond mom and the three little black children, one of whom fairly immediately began to chew on my keys. I took him up in my arms for a while and when he would begin to talk or sing song I would hush him and say "Shhh, listen to Father" - pointing to the priest up on the altar. Sometimes I would set him down on the bench because he was heavy, but if he started to fidget or talk I would turn to him and say it again, "Shhh, listen to Father!" I realized as mass meandered on that morning that the triumph I had sought was to blend in, to not obtain any special notice. I think that was what I probably strived toward as a child - just to be one of the pack, not get any negative attention, and when praise was being handed out all around to enjoy that brief moment.
Yep, as I looked over and saw a couple of familiar three generation families gathered together - the kids I grew up with looking more and more like the now grandparents had looked in my memory - and then the grandchildren dressed conservatively, smiling brightly, holding a parent's hand and looking much as I remembered their parents looking as children - I realized that was probably it. And we were half way there as we'd cleared the crying room for what I hoped was a definitive move into the main church for mass. We were ready. I was a proud head of our family even if there was just one of me. I looked over at the huddled, noisy masses in the crying room - the distress on some of the other parents' faces, and I knew I had crossed more than a literal threshold to come down here. As the tine approached for the handshake of peace I smiled brightly, turned to my left and right, to the people behind us and in front of us - and their handshakes were as warm and genuine as my own. We fit in, we did not stand out awkwardly. I was certain of it. And then the church grew quiet as the priest prepared for communion... and my son began to fidget again. He hummed to himself a moment and struck up a nonsensical conversation with his little Hot Wheels car cradled in his chubby hand. "Shhh," I whispered as I took him up in my arms again, putting my mouth right next to his ear so no one else would hear ' "Listen to Father!" People were beginning to kneel back down around us and I was still standing, setting his car down inside my purse as I held my son steady. He looked up at Father Doheny on the altar and then this barely two year old child who had hardly put more than two words together his whole life and who had a tiny voice, spoke out loudly, pointing up at the priest, "THAT'S MY FATHER?"
My face was immediately crimson as I rushed to get us down low in the pew, but heads had turned, chuckles were emitted, and one older woman gave my son a stern scowl as I lowered him all the way to the ground. Ah, yes, this was that moment of triumphant return, of splendorous homogeneity, where our clearly well born and well heeled selves emerged into my hometown to be lauded and feted alongside all of the other similarly happy, successful and pious families. After a moment I laughed too, and I picked my son back up off the floor and gave him a big hug. Father Doheny, who had taken us under his wing upon my return due to his close relationship with my late father, the former heathen, got a great laugh about it later when I explained to him what that moment of commotion had been about in mass earlier. Maybe fitting in's not my thing.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Why is this Blog called "Kelly B's Windows on the World"?
There are two very different reasons why this blog is called my windows on the world, and each overlays the conviction I hold that writers are witnesses. We are people who should translate what we see, hear feel, experience and act as conduits. I don't think there should be much ego in writing, especially since, when taken to its extreme, writing can be very powerful. So, as a witness it is always my intention to try to see and report vividly, personally but also universally, and with the great humility that should accompany the reality that all I am doing is pouring out what has been laid before me, what I am privileged to observe and comment upon or craft into a story.
My first conscious experience of the gift of having a window on the world occurred when I was quite young, about four years old if I am correct. My family had hosted a reception in our home on the occasion of my older sister's First Holy Communion, and as four year olds are wont to be, I was a bit of a whirling dervish about the small, crowded house, uncomfortable around so many adults and painfully shy at that age. I made a decision to make a run through the kitchen, past the pantry and laundry room, out the back door onto the breezeway where my rocking horse awaited and I could jump onto him (he was the type that sat up elevated above a platform with four large springs allowing the rider to approximate an actual galloping motion) and ride away my anxiety. Unfortunately for me the confluence of my small height making me somewhat invisible to adult line of sight, the reality that I am left handed and always veer left to avoid an oncoming object or person, and the fact that my mother was walking out of the kitchen just as I was darting in - and that she was carrying the just unplugged oversized electric percolator that held two gallons of coffee for our assembled guests (and that she was right handed and so veered right in these circumstances) - resulted in a collision. The unfortunate result of that collision was that I was scalded down my shoulders and back. I don't remember the aftermath of the accident, although I imagine it put a damper on my sister's event and must also have caused quite a mess in the house my mother worked tirelessly to keep not just tidy but extremely orderly.
My burns were fairly severe and I spent the next few weeks lying on my stomach wherever I was with bandages that needed to be changed frequently and with my mother's watchful eye almost always upon me to ensure against infection and disfigurement or death or some such. I was a trial to her always in that regard as she had some inkling from the day I was born with my two dislocated hips and my breathing difficulties so soon after she had lost her last baby to heart disease - that catastrophe awaited me. And indeed it did - over and over again. But, I never succumbed. And the aftermath of that scalding was no different. In fact, she had a difficult time keeping me contained as spring began to fold into summer and all of my older sisters and even my little sister wandered outside to frolic day after day. Frustrated, my mother set me up on my stomach on our piano bench next to the dining room window that overlooked our backyard. My back had to be open to the air at that point and I was just longer than the piano bench, which was flush with the window sill. I wanted to be outside with my sisters. I was horribly lonely, and this placement of me in the window overlooking them was the proxy that my mother devised.
My little sister's birthday was in early June and she had been gifted with a four seated teeter totter that also rotated around like a carousel. My parents had placed it out in our expansive back yard near the pear tree and close to our jungle gym. My mother told me to watch my sisters, pretend I was with them, enjoy the bright sunny days. And so I did. They were probably about forty yards away from me, but when they laughed loud I could hear them. Sometimes four of them would get onto that new piece of play equipment and swivel around and bounce up and down and try to make each other sick with the motion or try to knock each other off by going so fast. Shannon, my younger sister, held on like a champion and her low center of gravity may have been an asset when things got hairy. Many times I saw the 'middle girls', the ones born into a pair a few years before Shannon and me, hurled off quickly, ruthlessly almost, and one or both of my oldest sisters would laugh heartily and usher someone else into their place.
Sometimes they would put on plays with our neighbors, or they would climb the many apples trees,toss fruit at each other, pick the blackberries from the vines along the back fence, play jump rope on the patio or volleyball at the court in the tall grass that awaited my father's mowing on the weekend. I imagined my oldest sisters, who were on the brink of their teen years, as very sophisticated, very worldly. I feared my own inevitable first ride on that teeter totter, holding on for dear life while my stomach lurched. When they put on plays with the Brashear sisters an Terry from up the street I was mesmerized, as silent performances are always so much more dramatic than those with dialogue. I didn't know what they were saying, but I imagined it.
I don't know how long I was relegated to that piano bench, although I do remember some awkward visits from friends of my mother or relatives in which she would usher them into another room as I was not fully dressed and I had the bandages and scarring in full view and it could not have been very pleasant to the delicate eye. I do know that my mother was right, that being in that window, watching my sisters, was like being with them, was an adventure. Behind the window I was invulnerable in a way that the second youngest whose hips sometimes popped out of socket and who waddled slowly sometimes and ran awkwardly at other times, would not have been if I was actually in their midst. But, detached and seeing the full scenes unfold, my empathy expanded in a way it would not have from my own narrow perspective if I were struggling to keep up or be included. I developed a narrative in my mind, and for the first time in my life I think I understood the power of the individual narrative and the value of the panorama to its development. And I suppose the added gift of that injury and recovery was that I was so relieved, overjoyed when I finally was back on my feet and able to really be and play with my sisters again; and my brief absence probably made them more receptive to me upon my return too.
So that is the first reason for titling and couching this blog in this way. The second is because I have always loved New York, adored it. I couldn't wait to escape as a young adult into its depths on my own with a college friend and just explore it through and through. I visited New York City often after that first big sojourn, and really overcame my fear of heights amidst its concrete canyons. As a child my father had taken us on many trips, to see many sights, and always I become a little woozy, a little anxious in high places. I remember clutching my father's leg when we were all up in the Space Needle in Seattle, and not letting go, closing my eyes tightly in the glass elevator going up going back down. But when I got to New York years later, and that first time so soon after my father's death, one of the first places I went was to the top of the Empire State Building, and later even higher, to the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, Windows on the World. I remember looking out from that vantage point and being overcome. It was breathtaking. And I know it was touristy and kitschy but I always went to Windows on the World when I visited New York, even took my then husband up there no matter the ridiculous tourist premium you paid for a meal or a drink at that destination (his particular pet peeve).
In late August of 2001 I was in Seattle with my own three children and took them up to the Space Needle. My daughters were captivates, but my son clung to my leg, got woozy, asked if we could please go back down. I picked him up in my arms, not that he felt comforted being that few feet even higher inside the Space Needle. I had a very strange experience then as I stood with him just inside the windows to the outside observation deck looking west toward the Pacific. In my mind's eye I saw a jet fighter launch something at us, a missile probably, and it severed the top of the Needle from the base. It was very brief, but very vivid, and I was immediately in a cold sweat. I understood it was just some kind of a weird vision, but I imagined myself just pulling all three children into my arms so I could hold them close as that top began to make its way down to the ground. I never had any other experience like that and I took my children back to the Space Needle a few more times (although my son really doesn't like the heights). I took them to New York two years later, although, of course by then there was no Windows on the World - although we all went up to the Empire State building's observation deck together.
I know a good deal about physics, but I am not sure about the space time continuum. I think that moment in the Space Needle was not so much a premonition of something that was to come, as a vivid understanding, a personalization in an unguarded moment, of tragedy, powerlessness, I suppose, but also the overwhelming power of love. I felt absolutely no fear in that instant, but I did feel an instinctive need to hold my children about me, to embrace them, even if I could not protect them. I'd had similar sensations sometimes when we'd be driving along the narrow, winding river road between Sacramento and the east bay of San Francisco - of the car going over the levee and into the river, and my assuredness as a strong swimmer and cool-headed person that I could scoop up all three and get them to the surface. Because we want to believe we can.
So this blog was named windows on the world because it will bear witness to a lot of things I see and do and experience, but it will also be about that empathy, that understanding that has to be at our cores to understand the human condition. When you're up high and have a clear view you think you can see almost everything and it does take your breath away, but the things that are really important, the reason we are alive, are things much closer to the ground - those we love. You don't have to be up high to see them, and things that seem very small and far away really aren't. Everything, everyone is the same the world over - and yet each moment of joy, wonder, each dip into loss, despair - is unique but also universal. And, of course, we cannot let our fears or our anxieties overwhelm us, limit our experience of the world and of each other. We should all be each other's window on the world when we can be. It is my intention to be communicate the everyday, the ordinary and the extraordinary, as I see it and feel it and it is my hope to connect and bring positivity out into the world in that way.
My first conscious experience of the gift of having a window on the world occurred when I was quite young, about four years old if I am correct. My family had hosted a reception in our home on the occasion of my older sister's First Holy Communion, and as four year olds are wont to be, I was a bit of a whirling dervish about the small, crowded house, uncomfortable around so many adults and painfully shy at that age. I made a decision to make a run through the kitchen, past the pantry and laundry room, out the back door onto the breezeway where my rocking horse awaited and I could jump onto him (he was the type that sat up elevated above a platform with four large springs allowing the rider to approximate an actual galloping motion) and ride away my anxiety. Unfortunately for me the confluence of my small height making me somewhat invisible to adult line of sight, the reality that I am left handed and always veer left to avoid an oncoming object or person, and the fact that my mother was walking out of the kitchen just as I was darting in - and that she was carrying the just unplugged oversized electric percolator that held two gallons of coffee for our assembled guests (and that she was right handed and so veered right in these circumstances) - resulted in a collision. The unfortunate result of that collision was that I was scalded down my shoulders and back. I don't remember the aftermath of the accident, although I imagine it put a damper on my sister's event and must also have caused quite a mess in the house my mother worked tirelessly to keep not just tidy but extremely orderly.
My burns were fairly severe and I spent the next few weeks lying on my stomach wherever I was with bandages that needed to be changed frequently and with my mother's watchful eye almost always upon me to ensure against infection and disfigurement or death or some such. I was a trial to her always in that regard as she had some inkling from the day I was born with my two dislocated hips and my breathing difficulties so soon after she had lost her last baby to heart disease - that catastrophe awaited me. And indeed it did - over and over again. But, I never succumbed. And the aftermath of that scalding was no different. In fact, she had a difficult time keeping me contained as spring began to fold into summer and all of my older sisters and even my little sister wandered outside to frolic day after day. Frustrated, my mother set me up on my stomach on our piano bench next to the dining room window that overlooked our backyard. My back had to be open to the air at that point and I was just longer than the piano bench, which was flush with the window sill. I wanted to be outside with my sisters. I was horribly lonely, and this placement of me in the window overlooking them was the proxy that my mother devised.
My little sister's birthday was in early June and she had been gifted with a four seated teeter totter that also rotated around like a carousel. My parents had placed it out in our expansive back yard near the pear tree and close to our jungle gym. My mother told me to watch my sisters, pretend I was with them, enjoy the bright sunny days. And so I did. They were probably about forty yards away from me, but when they laughed loud I could hear them. Sometimes four of them would get onto that new piece of play equipment and swivel around and bounce up and down and try to make each other sick with the motion or try to knock each other off by going so fast. Shannon, my younger sister, held on like a champion and her low center of gravity may have been an asset when things got hairy. Many times I saw the 'middle girls', the ones born into a pair a few years before Shannon and me, hurled off quickly, ruthlessly almost, and one or both of my oldest sisters would laugh heartily and usher someone else into their place.
Sometimes they would put on plays with our neighbors, or they would climb the many apples trees,toss fruit at each other, pick the blackberries from the vines along the back fence, play jump rope on the patio or volleyball at the court in the tall grass that awaited my father's mowing on the weekend. I imagined my oldest sisters, who were on the brink of their teen years, as very sophisticated, very worldly. I feared my own inevitable first ride on that teeter totter, holding on for dear life while my stomach lurched. When they put on plays with the Brashear sisters an Terry from up the street I was mesmerized, as silent performances are always so much more dramatic than those with dialogue. I didn't know what they were saying, but I imagined it.
I don't know how long I was relegated to that piano bench, although I do remember some awkward visits from friends of my mother or relatives in which she would usher them into another room as I was not fully dressed and I had the bandages and scarring in full view and it could not have been very pleasant to the delicate eye. I do know that my mother was right, that being in that window, watching my sisters, was like being with them, was an adventure. Behind the window I was invulnerable in a way that the second youngest whose hips sometimes popped out of socket and who waddled slowly sometimes and ran awkwardly at other times, would not have been if I was actually in their midst. But, detached and seeing the full scenes unfold, my empathy expanded in a way it would not have from my own narrow perspective if I were struggling to keep up or be included. I developed a narrative in my mind, and for the first time in my life I think I understood the power of the individual narrative and the value of the panorama to its development. And I suppose the added gift of that injury and recovery was that I was so relieved, overjoyed when I finally was back on my feet and able to really be and play with my sisters again; and my brief absence probably made them more receptive to me upon my return too.
So that is the first reason for titling and couching this blog in this way. The second is because I have always loved New York, adored it. I couldn't wait to escape as a young adult into its depths on my own with a college friend and just explore it through and through. I visited New York City often after that first big sojourn, and really overcame my fear of heights amidst its concrete canyons. As a child my father had taken us on many trips, to see many sights, and always I become a little woozy, a little anxious in high places. I remember clutching my father's leg when we were all up in the Space Needle in Seattle, and not letting go, closing my eyes tightly in the glass elevator going up going back down. But when I got to New York years later, and that first time so soon after my father's death, one of the first places I went was to the top of the Empire State Building, and later even higher, to the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, Windows on the World. I remember looking out from that vantage point and being overcome. It was breathtaking. And I know it was touristy and kitschy but I always went to Windows on the World when I visited New York, even took my then husband up there no matter the ridiculous tourist premium you paid for a meal or a drink at that destination (his particular pet peeve).
In late August of 2001 I was in Seattle with my own three children and took them up to the Space Needle. My daughters were captivates, but my son clung to my leg, got woozy, asked if we could please go back down. I picked him up in my arms, not that he felt comforted being that few feet even higher inside the Space Needle. I had a very strange experience then as I stood with him just inside the windows to the outside observation deck looking west toward the Pacific. In my mind's eye I saw a jet fighter launch something at us, a missile probably, and it severed the top of the Needle from the base. It was very brief, but very vivid, and I was immediately in a cold sweat. I understood it was just some kind of a weird vision, but I imagined myself just pulling all three children into my arms so I could hold them close as that top began to make its way down to the ground. I never had any other experience like that and I took my children back to the Space Needle a few more times (although my son really doesn't like the heights). I took them to New York two years later, although, of course by then there was no Windows on the World - although we all went up to the Empire State building's observation deck together.
I know a good deal about physics, but I am not sure about the space time continuum. I think that moment in the Space Needle was not so much a premonition of something that was to come, as a vivid understanding, a personalization in an unguarded moment, of tragedy, powerlessness, I suppose, but also the overwhelming power of love. I felt absolutely no fear in that instant, but I did feel an instinctive need to hold my children about me, to embrace them, even if I could not protect them. I'd had similar sensations sometimes when we'd be driving along the narrow, winding river road between Sacramento and the east bay of San Francisco - of the car going over the levee and into the river, and my assuredness as a strong swimmer and cool-headed person that I could scoop up all three and get them to the surface. Because we want to believe we can.
So this blog was named windows on the world because it will bear witness to a lot of things I see and do and experience, but it will also be about that empathy, that understanding that has to be at our cores to understand the human condition. When you're up high and have a clear view you think you can see almost everything and it does take your breath away, but the things that are really important, the reason we are alive, are things much closer to the ground - those we love. You don't have to be up high to see them, and things that seem very small and far away really aren't. Everything, everyone is the same the world over - and yet each moment of joy, wonder, each dip into loss, despair - is unique but also universal. And, of course, we cannot let our fears or our anxieties overwhelm us, limit our experience of the world and of each other. We should all be each other's window on the world when we can be. It is my intention to be communicate the everyday, the ordinary and the extraordinary, as I see it and feel it and it is my hope to connect and bring positivity out into the world in that way.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Everyday is Valentine's Day, not just February 14
I am enjoying the ironic anonymity of public transport as we roll along on my Amtrak train this morning toward San Francisco, looking out over the valley in what I hope is the calm before some nice rainstorms the next few days. I love the train, perhaps because it is slower and more civilized than the BART I commuted to work on for nearly 15 years, but also because it always conjures memories of when my children were very young and we would frequently travel back to the bay area for visits with dad, or just so we could visit friends and family.
In the back and forth world of holding a family together after divorce I think it was very fitting that we often opted for the civility and conviviality that the train provided for our transition from home to home. We used to play card games, sometimes with some other child or teen who might be on the train alone pulled into our group. And especially in the summer I would read to the kids on the train, all three of them huddled next to me. I remember the trips when I read them "The Life of Pi", omitting or altering in the way a mother lion will for her cubs, the more tragic portions of the book - but not the shipwreck, not the profound sense of loss that compelled Pi Patel to bond with the animals who were his fellow travelers and to mourn the loss of one after another of them as he silently did for his own family lost to sea - and to bond with the tiger Richard Parker. My children loved that book, laughed with peels and rolls at the young Pi's misadventures while still in India fumbling over religion and taboos. Two years ago at Thanksgiving we all went to see the movie together when it premiered, and while we loved the movie, were captivated by it- it was not as vivid as the book. Still it was a great movie and seeing it together as two of the children were young adults and the youngest a high schooler standing taller than the rest of us at last - it was very sentimental.
Trains are sentimental conveyances. They remind us both of destinations and of journeys past. They hold the promise of future travel and adventure too. But this is not a valentine to the train - it is a Valentine to people I love - the Momoh family, and in particular to the other mother who waited at the other end of the trip, month after month, year after year - loving my children as much as her own. And, of course, that is mutual on my end. Rosemary Momoh is an extraordinary person. When people tell me I have raised my children well, that they are good, loving people with open hearts and that it is fortunate that their dad and I chose to keep on raising them together and to be friends and family to each other I just shrug. Our children were born endowed with their own personalities, their own capacities to love. Yes, we helped foster that by not screwing up too much and by trying to be open and loving ourselves - but we could not have held our family together, could not have seen it take this remarkable form it has now adding the three younger children - had it not been for Rosemary. She had to be open too - and from the very beginning.
I didn't think it extraordinary at the time, but I guess it is not too common that the former wife comes to the hospital and is welcomed into the home after the births of the children from the subsequent nuclear family. But welcomed I was, and what a gift to see three new wonderful members of our family come into being - to see how all of the children wrapped around each other from the very beginnings of their lives. When we are all together, whether it is at home or on vacation or at some family event - we feel whole and natural and enveloping. The sound of each of the children's voices is music, literally, in my ears. When we are together we don't have to think, we can just be. And, again, that would not have been possible without Rosemary, without a willingness to navigate through the early, more difficult times of trying to fold in an existing but evolving fabric that certainly had its tensions, and then help us iron out wrinkles together to be who we would all become together and individually as a family.
I would have loved Rosemary and all of the younger children anyway. They are open, kind, funny, down to earth and warm - each a unique jewel radiant with his or her own inner beauty. But I get to love them more, get to love my own children and of course my former husband, on greater and better levels, because Rosemary is who she is and because she trusted in love from the very beginning. I think the gift we have given each other as mothers in this extended family of ours is acceptance, love, respect, and maybe most of all - kindness and compassion. When raising a large brood of children those gifts indeed make every day full of love. Every day is Valentine's Day in that regard. But, I want to give this Valentine to Rosemary in February and remind our children how important it is to honor that special kind of love that isn't about the chance of blood relation but about reaching out and embracing - about seeing a circle and willing it to be open to expanding to include you - and then continuing to open it up wider and wider while fortifying it with love.
So I continue on today's train ride to a familiar destination and I can conjure in my mind the wide eyes and broadening smiles of our collective children and of Rahmon and Rosemary greeting us at the platform, of the trips up to Oregon to see the girls at college or to gather for a graduation celebration. They are all with me every day, but especially on train rides, and I know this journey has been and continues to be so much richer and so much warmer, so familiar and comforting because Rosemary has walked beside me.
In the back and forth world of holding a family together after divorce I think it was very fitting that we often opted for the civility and conviviality that the train provided for our transition from home to home. We used to play card games, sometimes with some other child or teen who might be on the train alone pulled into our group. And especially in the summer I would read to the kids on the train, all three of them huddled next to me. I remember the trips when I read them "The Life of Pi", omitting or altering in the way a mother lion will for her cubs, the more tragic portions of the book - but not the shipwreck, not the profound sense of loss that compelled Pi Patel to bond with the animals who were his fellow travelers and to mourn the loss of one after another of them as he silently did for his own family lost to sea - and to bond with the tiger Richard Parker. My children loved that book, laughed with peels and rolls at the young Pi's misadventures while still in India fumbling over religion and taboos. Two years ago at Thanksgiving we all went to see the movie together when it premiered, and while we loved the movie, were captivated by it- it was not as vivid as the book. Still it was a great movie and seeing it together as two of the children were young adults and the youngest a high schooler standing taller than the rest of us at last - it was very sentimental.
Trains are sentimental conveyances. They remind us both of destinations and of journeys past. They hold the promise of future travel and adventure too. But this is not a valentine to the train - it is a Valentine to people I love - the Momoh family, and in particular to the other mother who waited at the other end of the trip, month after month, year after year - loving my children as much as her own. And, of course, that is mutual on my end. Rosemary Momoh is an extraordinary person. When people tell me I have raised my children well, that they are good, loving people with open hearts and that it is fortunate that their dad and I chose to keep on raising them together and to be friends and family to each other I just shrug. Our children were born endowed with their own personalities, their own capacities to love. Yes, we helped foster that by not screwing up too much and by trying to be open and loving ourselves - but we could not have held our family together, could not have seen it take this remarkable form it has now adding the three younger children - had it not been for Rosemary. She had to be open too - and from the very beginning.
I didn't think it extraordinary at the time, but I guess it is not too common that the former wife comes to the hospital and is welcomed into the home after the births of the children from the subsequent nuclear family. But welcomed I was, and what a gift to see three new wonderful members of our family come into being - to see how all of the children wrapped around each other from the very beginnings of their lives. When we are all together, whether it is at home or on vacation or at some family event - we feel whole and natural and enveloping. The sound of each of the children's voices is music, literally, in my ears. When we are together we don't have to think, we can just be. And, again, that would not have been possible without Rosemary, without a willingness to navigate through the early, more difficult times of trying to fold in an existing but evolving fabric that certainly had its tensions, and then help us iron out wrinkles together to be who we would all become together and individually as a family.
I would have loved Rosemary and all of the younger children anyway. They are open, kind, funny, down to earth and warm - each a unique jewel radiant with his or her own inner beauty. But I get to love them more, get to love my own children and of course my former husband, on greater and better levels, because Rosemary is who she is and because she trusted in love from the very beginning. I think the gift we have given each other as mothers in this extended family of ours is acceptance, love, respect, and maybe most of all - kindness and compassion. When raising a large brood of children those gifts indeed make every day full of love. Every day is Valentine's Day in that regard. But, I want to give this Valentine to Rosemary in February and remind our children how important it is to honor that special kind of love that isn't about the chance of blood relation but about reaching out and embracing - about seeing a circle and willing it to be open to expanding to include you - and then continuing to open it up wider and wider while fortifying it with love.
So I continue on today's train ride to a familiar destination and I can conjure in my mind the wide eyes and broadening smiles of our collective children and of Rahmon and Rosemary greeting us at the platform, of the trips up to Oregon to see the girls at college or to gather for a graduation celebration. They are all with me every day, but especially on train rides, and I know this journey has been and continues to be so much richer and so much warmer, so familiar and comforting because Rosemary has walked beside me.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
What a dog can teach us about the depths of our own humanity
( I wrote this post on a day I was facing down a major life choice and was self-absorbed momentarily with my own disappointment and disillusionment. A loping, loveable Labrador wandered into view and opened the world back up to me. Now, just a few months later, I looked back at this and realized how profound and sustaining the qualities Lois embodied are -- simplicity, openness, playfulness, love and wonder) :
I’ve been watching my Labrador, Lois, playing inside her
little tent house, head popping up to look out at birds and squirrels and gauge
the distance between her and them and the physics of a well-timed lunge. Sometimes she walks out of her house and comes
to the French doors next to where I am sitting and she lies on her back and
looks up at me with those innocent, all seeing Labrador eyes, and of course I
want to be in her world.
Lois is incredibly important to the universe and blessedly
unaware of that. She is majestic and
goofy at the same time. She tries very
hard to sit for a long time when told to do so, but she loves you so much and
is so happy to see you that eventually her emotions get the best of her and you
have armloads of Labrador and paw prints on your chest. Lois is uncomplicated.
Food and love are her primary focuses (and squirrels and the
slow moving turkeys that walk the neighborhood and end up on our roof in an
awkward flurry of disused wings because they’ve gotten too close to her). She slides across the hardwood floor onto her
large bed in front of the hearth, and then it too slides across the floor and
she looks about her mystified by her continued motion forward. Eventually she lands in some corner of the
room and she sets her head down on the bed and looks up again with those
Labrador eyes. Her tail wags. She is in some kind of heaven just being near
me, and at times I am overwhelmed by that simple responsibility.
Lois lives large and fully open to life every day. I don’t know the particular status of her
short term or long term memory – but it’s clear each day is a gift, each new
rawhide a treasure like no other, each time she sees my son Mack up on the
landing peering down at her from the upstairs balcony her heart surges as if it
is her first sight of him. She has her
own rich, inner life too. She contemplated
a lady bug for quite some time this afternoon, mesmerized.
Am I a good human to her, a good friend and companion? Hopefully, but I think the truth is as long
as I am kind, playful now and then, and keep a food bowl nearby, she forgives
me my shortcomings and accepts me as I am.
Lois lives in the daylight, even when it’s dark outside. She is in so many ways my role model (and not
just because she can catch a squeaky football with significantly greater
consistency than any of my other playmates and doesn’t mind going outside with
me at halftime). You know what I
think?
I think the day Mack fell in love
with her at first sight fourteen months ago was one of the best days ever and
it’s a gift to emulate Miss Lois and enjoy the simple things in life and to
feel your heart expand in your chest and your tail wag of its own volition at
the sight of someone you love; or you know, or you are quite excited at the
prospect of meeting; at the sight of a nice rawhide or a lady bug, or that slow
moving turkey across the street. For
every turkey who realizes in time that he can fly, for every lady bug who also
flies away – there’s always the gift of a buried rawhide somewhere in the yard
that you discover quite by accident and get to carry in your mouth triumphantly
as you come inside to slide across the floor onto that big comfy bed by the
fire. Yes, life is good, love is
empowering, wonder abounds - and Lois is my daily reminder of that.
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