Things I Cannot Leave Behind...Just Yet

I've got a 56-quart tub filled with my date books going back to the mid-90's.

Yes I did just say that I have almost 20 years of appointment books.

I have done enormous amounts of downsizing for my upcoming move from Washington to Minnesota.  Really.  But every time I look at the date book tub, I quail and shake.

Well, not really....but....I have not, up until today, been able to toss any of it.

So today I said, OK, you are going to actually look at these things and if it feels right -- throw something away.  And I did get rid of a few items (more than I thought I would at the outset).

Looking through the family/personal/church/work schedule from 2002, or 1995, or 2008 is an overwhelming memory movie, trips, and school plays, and band appearances, and graduations, and church meetings, and book groups, and every once in awhile a date with the husband...on and on...

Now I was tired and depressed throughout several (many?) of those years.  And I did spend alot of time vegging out, as I recall, and not doing what I was supposed to do, ie cook dinner.  I was exhausted and overwhelmed, and didn't ask for help.  I was angry and then felt ashamed alot of the time.  And yet -- there were some creative and fun things that happened.  And the kids experienced the worlds of art, drama, church, foreign and domestic travel, politics.

The appointment books chronicle all of that.  The counseling appointments as well as the women's group meetings and retreats.  Chemo appointments.  The weekend away every year with my best friend, and the camping weekend together that our families took each year.  The day my youngest got baptized. Trips to the vet.  Funerals, weddings, birthdays.

I experienced it once, and wrote it down.  Now I look at it all, and re-experience it from afar, and try to shake my nasty feelings of inadequacy and give myself credit for the effort and (sometimes) the successes.

I cannot quite figure out why I can't just toss it all and be done with it, but at this point, that's the way it is.


Until the next time I sit with it all and can part with a few more memories.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

I have often pondered my answer to the question, "What was the best advice your parents (your mom, your dad) ever gave you?"  Other people always seem to have such lengthy lists, about how to be successful, how to treat other people, how to balance life, etc., etc..  As in: "my dad always told me, be careful how you treat people on the way up, because you may need them when you're on the way down."  Or some such blah blah blah.

Jeez, I think to myself, I don't remember getting actual advice from my parents! Well, except for my dad teaching me how to write checks and balance my checkbook.  And both of them implying that probably voting Republican was not an option, unless it was for Abraham Lincoln.

The "advice" question seems always to be posed in the context of -- FOND memories of guidance and example. So my folks' lousy relationship, the alcohol and anger problems, the coldness (mom) combined with the sentimental efforts at connection (dad),  no, those are probably NOT the answers the questioner seeks.  I have been unable to remember the FOND type of parental advice.

Until.....today! There is something that I say to myself all the time, and remember that my mom used to say it to me, and I remember her saying it to me from when I was quite young, probably to comfort me if I was having a bad day.  I can hear her sighing it at the end of some busy goofy day later in my life when I was visiting her and as usual we crammed too much into one day.

And it is....TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY.  It was like a mantra, said to me many, many times. And today I realized -- hey this is the way I can answer that question!!  That was GREAT ADVICE!!

And I actually have used it my entire life.  I have ALWAYS felt comforted by the notion that "this too shall pass," which I feel is an equivalency to "tomorrow is another day."  You get to start over again!!! It's not the end of the world!!  Let's work on that tomorrow, after you've had a good night's sleep!!  Think of all the positive ways "tomorrow" can be interpreted.  It works for me!

Of course there IS other advice my parents gave me over the years, of course there is. The advice I got does not have to look or sound like the advice other people's parents gave!  So just as I've identified "tomorrow" as "advice," I now think of lots of other life recommendations my parents passed on.

Here are some of them!
* reading is important
* libraries are FUN
*voting is mandatory
*racism and anti-semitism are bad
*there are many religions and that's good.

WAIT, AND NOTICE

There is a difference between learning something and knowing it.  You can intentionally learn something, but you cannot intentionally know it.  Knowing comes unexpectedly.  You don't schedule it and you don't anticipate it.  Just as a for instance:

Washing my face yesterday afternoon (I got a late start)....becoming aware of a peaceful yet buoyant kind of attitude within myself -- not my usual state of mind.  Peaceful, yet buoyant.  And then the joyful thought -- just notice.  Just observe.  No need to hang on.  No need to analyze.

Here's where the knowing comes in.  At that moment, I knew what I've been learning about in meditation and yoga classes,sitting in silence, reading, journaling, listening to guided meditations.

Which is....everything is changing all the time, pain becomes fear becomes sadness becomes wonder becomes joy....etc., etc.  It is our stories and our judging that add pain to our lives, the stories we tell ourselves, the add-ons to what is.  So that we pay attention to our stories, and in fact we think our stories are "true," and we don't really know what is. And when and if we feel joy, we want it to last longer, and we want to know how to replicate it tomorrow.  And when we feel pain, we turn away and attempt to analyze how we can get rid of it.  Or we give it to other people.

But washing my face yesterday afternoon, I noticed.  I just noticed.

The thing is, I have been feeling sluggish, and a little stuck, and disengaged.  For awhile.  In the wilderness.  And then this morning, I was awake, and I went to yoga, and the day just flowed.  I was out of the house for 11 hours -- on a Sunday -- and it just flowed.

Do you think the knowing from the afternoon before had anything to do with the clarity I felt today?

Over and over today the word I thought was.....WAIT.  Things change.  Things get unstuck.  Emotions get re-engaged.  Energy gets replenished.  Being awake happens.  And the other way around too.

Knowing comes unexpectedly.  You wash your face and you notice.

Always Good To Check Back In Now and Then....

It is a new year, and 4-1/2 months since the last post in the blog.  Just checking back in on Blogger has yielded a fabulous find....the Peace Corps Blog my son in Senegal has started (no I did not know, yes he did not tell me).  So already it is a productive move to re-open Blogger!  That's him in the green being sworn in as a Volunteer. Mother's privilege.  

Decluttering continues -- not at a furious pace, but still.  Currently I am returning to the plastic tubs of stuff that had already been divided into chronological sections of my life.  I have basically been reviewing pre-1951 and then 1951-1985 and another brief section of time 1990-1996.

The closer I get to the Internet Era, the fewer letters I have to read.  We used to write letters.  I come from a family of seven.  I have many letters saved from my parents, together and individually, and from my three brothers (fewer from my sister, as she has never been a letter writer).  I also have many of my own letters to them, as I have my mom's stash that she saved over the years, and also my deceased middle brother's saved letters.

Let me just say that I am astounded at the constant communication between and among us all.  The topics generally are divided into: what's going on now and what I wish I was doing instead.  Mixed in are commentaries about the costs of things and the contents of our bank accounts.  Problems with cars.  Whether the dogs are doing okay.  The weather.

Click once to see larger image

Every once in awhile, there will be some very insightful statements about the family.  We had the typical family drama and then some of our very own special variety of soap opera.

Clearly I did alot of writing in an operatic manner about "where was I going in my life."  Also:  "I am so miserable."  I know this because of the letters I got from my parents which are shot through with compassion and wisdom.  Not sure I recognized that support at the time, or how special it was.  I think I probably felt entitled to it, or alternatively, accustomed to it and thus a little deaf.  I also remember feeling defensive about 96% of the time so I may even have been angry at "being talked to like I was a little kid." (Which, of course, I was, emotionally at least.)

Again I feel I must look through all these years of family life, remembered and long-forgotten. I'm in transition, so looking back and then moving forward with less baggage makes so much sense to me.
Onward!!!

Mother and Child Reunion

I slipped and called my youngest “girlie” the other day.   Amy briefly noted, “I am not a girl.” 

A simple interaction demonstrating the state of affairs between a mother and a child.  Having a child who identifies as “agender,” or “non-binary,” or “bi-sexual” – this mother is struggling but hanging in there.

Imagine if you will the birth of a child.  It’s a c-section.  It’s the second child, and (grinning with delight)  mom knows the sex of the child, but dad does not.  He hopes, though, for a girl.  And when the child emerges, he proclaims, “I got my girl!”

Twenty some years later, as this child informs  the parents of the gender identity journey they are on, this mother focuses at first in somewhat a silly fashion on the language.  We are not to use the female pronouns, we are to use the words they, them, their.  Grammar is important to this mom.  Now what?  Many conversations are filtered through the lens of “but are you talking about more than one person or what?”  “They” means multiple (well not all the time, but still). 

Mom forgets (see first paragraph).  A lot.

Mom hears this child talking about “them” and wonders what group of people she is referring to.  Then mom remembers…..the child is referring to their partner, who also uses they, them, their  for self-referencing. 

Mom is opening back up to the fact that her generation does not have a corner on liberation, on revolution, on change.  What? Sexual politics did not end with Germaine Greer and Alice Walker?

Recently, however, this mom has been asking herself this question: “How much of my relationship with this child hinges, absolutely depends, on the fact that they are female?”  How intrinsic, how essential to this mom’s understanding of her mom-ness to this child is the FACT in mom’s mind/memory that the child is female?

The answer of course is….very.  Absolutely.  “I got my girl!”  This mom, too, wanted “one of each,” and was so glad “we are complete now.”  This mom named the child after Amy March in Little Women, a most favorite book.  Mom and dad named the child after a favorite song, that, despite the difference in our ages, we both loved so much.  Two reasons for the name, two female reasons.

This mom struggled with a depression she witnessed in her own mother, and hoped against hope it would not be bequeathed to the second child (it was) – female lineage.  But this mom also saw the same handed-down intelligence and curiosity so familiar from her own childhood, and so affirmed by her own mom.

This mom saw her own face in her youngest child’s face. 

This mom was proud of her non-comformist second child….”she has never been a girly girl,” a statement made sooo many times over the years.  (This mom was not a girly girl either, so it felt like something that connected mom and child, an affirmation that was NOT A STRETCH for mom.)

The mom-child connection now IS a stretch for mom (but is it not for all parents who watch their child go in a somewhat different direction than the one the parent fantasized they would take?). 

Nope, the child certainly was not a girly girl.  The child tells us now they were not a girl at all, and now feels comfortable enough to invite their loved ones along for the experience, for the examination of how things are for them.  

Mom senses the space in her heart where there used to be a “girl,” knows there is still a wonderful person there in that space, can’t help wanting a WORD for that person,  and wishing (whining) for the process of re-learning not to be so danged hard….

.....yet the child inhabits the heart space, and mom won’t let go. 

Still connected.

Books Are Our Friends

Five years ago we began packing up our possessions to eventually move them from Minnesota to Washington State. Many boxes of books made the journey, some mine, some my husband's, some my daughter's and son's, some boxes strictly business, others blended with classics and Calvin and Hobbes anthologies.

Unpacking occurred and some things just never got situated outside their boxes. These were tucked away in garage nooks and cupboards but have now been brought back out because another chapter is unfolding, a divorce and a resettling of all the possessions.

Since March 2 my new apartment has been the scene of deliberate unpacking and reshuffling, some additional decluttering (yay!), yes even of books.  The other day my soon to be former husband presented me with a box of books he found as he completely rearranged the garage.

It took a couple of days but I did get to it, reacquainting myself with some oldies but goodies (Jo's Boys!), and doing the usual removal of some to the Half Price Books box. A book emerged I dimly remembered buying for the title. It's  a book written by a St Paul teacher/writer. It has the word "impermanent" in the title, which probably was the attraction for me then and certainly is what draws me back to it now.

The thing is, it's been there all this time.  Now I am so ready to read it, well, really, to gobble it up. What a gift from my not so distant past.

Smart girl, buying that book then. Grateful girl, reading that book now!

And the winner is....

What is it about this very seasoned social worker that wants to be better than anybody else at managing emotional stress?  Is there some competition out there that I must win?

The days that do not bring anger and fear are to be appreciated, for sure, because the days that are wrapped in anger and fear are so difficult to accept as part of the process.  Suddenly the awareness sinks in YET AGAIN: this is a tough road and the bad parts are not to be avoided.  Suddenly the nastiness rises to the surface and.....this is the hard part......must be acknowledged and addressed.

Oh yes you do TOO want someone to feel bad.  You are not ALWAYS the forbearing, patient, accepting person who is managing THE BEST DIVORCE EVER.

And yes you must remind yourself over and over about the things you can do to help yourself along.  Make that list of things you enjoy! Try one thing this week you have not been accustomed to doing before...maybe it will turn out great! And then do these things and start making them part of your routine, so that you are always there for yourself on these lousy lousy BAD DAYS.  Because those days arrive and smack you down and only you can feel your way forward and off the floor.