Advent, Revisited

I noticed the other day that Christmas is back.

The signs were small, but distinct. I went looking for my holiday coffee mugs, grinning as I liberated them from an upper shelf, where they had been imprisoned for four straight calendar rotations of December 25s. Oh, yes, and far back in the dusty, unused section of the closet, there is that bling-y Christmas t-shirt, black with a reindeer outlined in silver sequins (ooh-la-la). A colleague at the office looked up the other day from her screen and smiled when I motored past, unconsciously humming the soul-powering refrain from Oh Holy Night. (Oh, NIGHT, dee-VI-I-NE, oh, oh, night…)

Hahaha, may come the retort, of COURSE Christmas is back. It is everywhere, right? That surging sea of commercial madness, as unavoidable, as intrusive, as omnipresent, as the morning sun in the dawn sky. Where have YOU been, under a rock?

Where I have been is a place where Christmas vanished with apparent finality. Four years ago, my father took his last breath in the early morning hours of December 22, his eyes on my mother’s cherished face. Somewhere far away that morning, a trap door opened, and Christmas fell silently away, vanishing without a whisper, leaving behind an empty, fathomless shadow.

When Mercy is doing her job, memory blurs a great deal about tragedy. Thankfully, there are gaping holes in my recollections of that Christmas. I do remember showing up at the appointed time for the family gatherings already planned, because that is what my mother asked us to do. I also remember two dear friends rushing over to be present that morning, just after the news came. Among other acts of solidarity, they helped wrap my pile of gifts, the Christmas task I always leave for last. I hauled the packages out to the car like a bunch of fallen alien asteroids, existence unexpected, definition and destination unknown.

When Christmas rolled around again, 365 + 3 days after Dad died, I was angry. I stayed out of the stores, away from parties, nowhere close to church. Why should I join in something shrouded in pain? How dare everyone indulge in this endless excess when others are suffering? Only the required shopping was completed, and no decorations hung. Celebrations were shadowy shams for other people, and my own deep faith had not yet moved me to the place where I could again see the Light of Christmas. I thought I never would, when the next year was about the same. I managed a few more routine traditions, mostly for the sake of those close to me, but the Light was still absent.

Fast forward to the present, a few days before the fourth anniversary of Dad’s passing. The coffee is steaming in that mug with the Christmas tree on it, and the schedule includes tonight’s Lessons and Carols service. Christmas melodies cannot be silenced inside my head, where there is no pause button to click.

How did that happen? I wish I knew. So many learned people have studied the psychology and theology of grieving (including some very dear friends), but I can’t pretend to share their insight. I did pursue help when I couldn’t navigate alone, and I certainly learned to respect grief and loss along the way. They are forces that will not be harnessed or controlled, but will march onward with power that is unique to the intricacy and scope of the love that the grief represents.

I long to understand more as I think of a dear friend who lost her life partner unexpectedly a few days ago. Each journey is singular, so no one can pretend to stand in her shoes in these early days of heartache, but I do recognize the crossroads on which her feet are now planted. How we long to comfort those who suffer at this tender time of year. We can listen and offer presence, and to that I can only add my humble testimony that grace and healing are indeed possible, in time. Perhaps it is not for us to know when, or how.

I believe that those we loved and lost play a part in that process. There is no doubt what my father would say, as clearly as if he sat next to me at this table. Never one to preach, he forged his legacy by enjoying life to the fullest, to the very end. So I say aloud, right now: Daddy, my heart is aching. I miss you so much at Christmas. And echoes like these bounce back, in response: “Watch this joke I’m going to play on your mother and see how she laughs. She’s going to love what I got her for Christmas. Can I get you a cocktail? Is the game on yet?”

And so I affirm the empowering words of author Jan Richardson, below:

“It is hard being wedded to the dead; they make different claims, offer comforts that do not feel comfortable at the first. They do not let you remain numb. Neither do they allow you to languish forever in your grief. They will safeguard your sorrow but will not permit that it should become your new country, your home. They knew you first in joy, in delight, and though they will be patient when you travel by other roads, it is here that they will wait for you, here they can best be found where the river runs deep with gladness, the water over each stone singing your unforgotten name.”

Thank you, Lord, for Peace and Light, wherever and however it may be found. Grant comfort to those who need it so much this season.  Welcome back, Advent. And Merry Christmas, Daddy.

 

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The Invincible MM

A few years back, a well-intentioned therapist probing my history for signposts tried to steer me down the Mother Track.  It must be routine and fruitful territory in her line of work.  It was high on her list of questions, and she seemed mildly surprised by my responses.

“Did you resent your mother when you were growing up?”  she began.  Not that I can recall, I answered.  “Was your mother around when you needed her?” it continued.  My mother was ill for a period of time when I was an adolescent, but otherwise, always, I replied.  She tried one more time: “Did you feel that your mother understood you?”

It didn’t take me long to resent the implication that most people have Mother Issues.  Therefore, if I didn’t readily confess some, I must be in denial.

“My mother is a lovely person,” I countered, impatient at this presumption.   “I can barely remember arguing with her over anything that mattered.  She’s kind to everyone, including us.  Everyone loves her—puppies, babies, men, appliance repair people, tax accountants, everybody. ”

She took the hint and moved on, but I pondered the question later, searching my heart to make sure I wasn’t ignoring something important.  Did Mom miss any major milestones in my life?  I pictured her leaning over the gurney when I was being wheeled in to deliver my daughter.  Nope.  Did she favor one of the four of us over others?  My younger sister was her kindred spirit, the soul most like hers of all her children, so it always seemed they understood each other on a deeper level.  Did that connection serve to deprive the rest of us?  I can’t see it that way.  Did she disapprove of my choice of husband?  Maybe, but she kept it to herself and adopted him as one of her own, succeeding far better in understanding him than I did as a wife.  She grieved when we divorced, but never criticized that life-changing fracture in the family.

So, maybe it defines me as an outlier when it comes to Five Therapeutic Fundamentals that Work for Most of Us, but I loved my mother growing up.  However, emulating her was something else altogether.

In the cultural tumult of the Sixties and Seventies, when the roles of women changed forever, we so often thought (sometimes rightly, sometimes not) we knew better than the previous generation. I never really wanted a life like hers.  While she would be the first to point out she was not born to such things, my mother was, in my eyes, bridge and country clubs, stunning ball gowns and cocktail parties—while I was smoky blues bars, horse barns, jeans and bandanas, and bad boys.  Our family of six lived comfortably on my father’s income, while I instinctively knew I would always have to pay my own way.  As a working mother, later a single one, I juggled priorities that sometimes seemed a world away from Mom’s daily life, through no fault of either of us.  It was easy to assume that my father, in our traditional family structure of the era, was the tough one in the family.

Most likely I was too absorbed in my own problems, in too much of a hurry, too perennially distracted to develop the wisdom to appreciate my mother’s character.  Instead, I saw myself as different, not really cut from the cloth of her lifestyle and traditional family roles that were so easy, in those heady times, to disregard.  Maybe daughters always think they know more about their parents than they really do.  Could I ever be the person she was and is, or should I be?

The circle of life brought that question back around recently.

The phone rang early on Sunday morning, on Mother’s Day, ironically.  The screen showed my brother’s name and photo, and my stomach clenched.  When one has elderly parents, it is never a good thing when the phone rings at an unexpected hour.  Sure enough, this was one of those.  My brother, a veteran of many difficult phone calls, kindly began with the encouraging end of the painful news.  “Mom’s OK now, but we thought you’d want to know she fell during the night,” he reported.  “She banged herself up pretty good, bruised her wrist badly and cut her forehead, but thankfully, nothing was broken.  We took her to the hospital, just to be sure everything checked out OK.”

How is she now?  I asked fearfully.  Sore?  Confused?  “I’m sure she will be sore tomorrow,” he said, “but she said she is fine and seems like she really is.”

I called her a couple of hours later, anxious to hear her voice for myself.  “My arm is throbbing a little bit,” she admitted, “but nothing that a couple of ibuprofen won’t take care of.  I can handle that.”  That last sentence was delivered with the slight edge that emerges in her voice when the point is not to be mistaken or disputed.

My sister, who like my brother lives just a few minutes from Mom, dropped by with her husband to check in later, then delivered another update.  “You can’t see the cut on her head, I promise,” she confirmed.  “She’s wearing the sweater you gave her for her birthday, with pearls, and I swear she looks fine.”  She’s wearing pearls?  I echoed, amazed.  After being at the ER in the middle of the night?  My sister sent the photo above as evidence.  She captioned it The Invincible MM.  (MM is short for MartyMom, the name her grandchildren call her.)

What, I wondered for the umpteenth time in the last couple of years, gives a person that kind of strength?

Surely, the circumstances of upbringing generate roots for the character.  Born in the spring of 1931, my mother is a young member of what journalist Tom Brokaw christened The Greatest Generation in his book of the same name.  Mom was too young to have immediate contemporaries fighting in World War II, but plenty old enough to have experienced and remembered the sacrifices and the preceding Depression.  Brokaw described the age group this way: “It may be historically premature to judge the greatness of a whole generation, but indisputably, there are common traits that cannot be denied. It is a generation that, by and large, made no demands of homage from those who followed and prospered economically, politically, and culturally because of its sacrifices. It is a generation of towering achievement and modest demeanor, a legacy of their formative years when they were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order.”

Along with the times in which she has lived, there are the bonds of love and family that serve to mold the soul.  An only child adored by parents, aunts, uncles, and countless friends, my mother left her parents’ home to marry a man who loved and cared for her for nearly seventy years—literally, in sickness and in health, until they were parted by death.  Not that there weren’t tough times.  Every family has them, and ours was no different, though the bonds were not weakened by circumstance.  Does a foundation of unwavering love inspire a lifetime of courage and good humor, stalwart good spirits in the face of suffering?

It’s impossible not to look inward with these questions.  Will I have that determination and grace if the fates allow me to reach my mid-eighties?  Deep in my heart, I am skeptical.  Self-pity and slights claim me all too quickly; remembering the many blessings of my own family and life is a daily effort in which I don’t always triumph. What if I become one of the grouchy ones, whose pain and isolation drive wedges between them and those who love them best?  Is it too late to hope something of my mother is inside there, deep down?

It is funny to think, at the age of sixty, that it’s finally time.  I want to be more like my mother, when I grow up.

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Listen, here: That much, I can do

The status of grandmother was bestowed on me six years ago last month.  Oddly, it didn’t come with a manual.  Though it is surely one of life’s richest blessings, I’m still trying to figure out how to do it.

There must be others out there who, like me, feel so different from grandmothers of earlier generations that it is ironic to even use the same title.

After all, look how the role of women has changed in our culture in the last few decades.  Neither of my grandmothers worked outside the home.  Their parents died younger, and I have no memories of any of my great-grandparents.  They had lifelong partners, enduring marriages of five decades or longer.

In 2017, it’s a different picture for many women whose kids have kids.  Having just entered my seventh decade, I’m still a working professional, with miles to go before retirement is visible on the horizon.  I’m a single woman, looking after myself and striving to maintain a social life at the same time.  My precious mother is, thank heavens, still with us at 86, so I strive to stretch my time across four generations of family.  And many of them are 200 miles away.

Mom stirring applesauce June 2016

My mom taught us to make homemade applesauce.  I hope I get to pass that technique on.

My grandmothers occupy such large places of love and respect in my memories, but can I be to my grandchildren what they were to us?  Not likely.

 

My maternal grandmother often wore an apron, and could roast the most beautiful chicken any chef every claimed.  She came to visit for working trips, joining my mother in the kitchen for the all-day process of cooking country ham, and she patiently hemmed and mended hand-me-downs.  She was a crackerjack card player, demonstrating tactics that belied her gentle demeanor.  I liked attending her church, because its rituals were open to “all who believed” and not restricted to those who completed some class or ritual declaration.  That meant that a child could share in the communion celebration with the adults.

My paternal grandmother was a stunning, petite blonde who stayed beautiful as she aged.  She had elegant taste, a fine wardrobe, and the manners of an accomplished socialite.  That included certain standards that were not to be compromised, and when they were, hell might demand the settlement of accounts.  She hosted elegant parties that required dressing just so, and my mother prepared us carefully.   If my grandfather told raucous jokes at dinner and enjoying himself too much in his cups, she registered disapproval by threatening to leave the room—and when he didn’t behave, she vanished.  No shrinking violet, that one.

Is any of that a heritage I can pass on?

Elegant parties?  I like to set a nice table, and I have china and lovely dining treasures from both of them.  But my holiday dinners are more likely to be thrown together in the wee hours the night before, after a 50-hour work week.  By the time the guests arrive, I’m lucky if I remembered to shower and put on lipstick.  I would love to learn to cook a country ham myself.  But one has to weigh a whole day invested against the convenience of buying it cooked from one of the fine Kentucky purveyors, of which there are many.

Teach my kids how to maintain a home, how to get spots out, one of many of my mother’s great aptitudes? Don’t be silly.  Not long ago, I asked my extremely handy son-in-law to tighten the handle on a finicky kitchen faucet.  Got mildly irritated when I noticed him stockstill in the middle of the kitchen, staring intently at his phone.  Don’t they ever put the dang things down?  That was before I realized he was watching a You Tube video about repair of not just any faucet, but THAT faucet.  The next generation doesn’t need our knowledge.  They get it from strangers, on a tiny glass screen.

So what CAN we offer?  After six years, here are some intentions I have set (as the yoga teacher calls it).  The important things, it seems, are less about the hands and more about the mind and heart. They are not necessarily new to this generation, but perhaps take on a different hue in today’s times.

We can show up.  When they are older and look back on important days in their lives, I hope it means something if I was there.  So getting there is the goal.  Other things can wait.

We can listen.  The world is roaring with noise and distractions that defeat good conversation.  Yet communication defines our relationships.  If my grandkids have something to say, I want them to know I am interested in hearing it.

We can ask questions.  What happened at school today?  What’s that book about? I want Buddy and Sis to know I’m interested in their observations and ideas, their kiddie jokes, their fears.  Their parents are good talkers, wonderful at encouraging the kids to express themselves and talk through things.  But it takes a village.

We can show mercy.  A while back at a family meal, my daughter relayed a story about a particularly trying episode with Sis a few days before.  Absorbing the details of this transgression, I turned to notice Sis watching me intently, brow furrowed with anxiety as she awaited my reaction.  I support the parents in their excellent standards for discipline—but there was no need here to extend the sentence already rendered by the court.  Sis’ little map flooded with relief when I returned her gaze, winked at her, and changed the subject.

We can offer sanctuary.  It’s a tough world out there, getting tougher.  Buddy and Sis are lucky to be happy and safe in their home, but when they need another place to be encouraged, empathized with, or just to raid the cabinet for snacks, my door can be open.

At six, our Buddy is an intense thinker, progressing through reason and root cause and relevance at an astonishing clip.  Thoughts tumble out so quickly I struggle to keep pace, but I do my best.  He also seems to pick up particular turns of phrase that linger for a period in the Lexicon of Buddy.  He repeated one of those multiple times over dinner not long ago.  “Evie,” he kept asking, “Can I tell you something?”

Yes, Buddy.  You bet.  I might not get it, and it won’t be long before you are so much smarter than I will ever be.  But I am listening.  Tell me.

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What the Mirror Asked

Like so many Americans, G-ma has been diverted from her usual ruminations on grandchildren and family and turned instead to pondering this historic time in our nation.

Anyone with their eyes open in America this week has watched shock ripples that will be recounted for many generations to come.  For me, processing shock (and its close cousin, grief) seems to require a strange sequence of polar opposites.  With no intent to trivialize or make light, but only to affirm the oddities of humanity, I confess to the following map of shock in the days since the Great Eye-Opener (or GEO, also known as the American president election on Nov. 8):

Sometimes couldn’t eat; no appetite.  Then, I consumed doughnuts three straight days at the office, followed by candy later.  The sound of the television or radio was unbearable, then I found myself obsessing over every morsel of consumable news, everywhere.  One night was insomnia, then one night it seemed I would sleep until the next decade (and sorta wished I could).

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened on about Day 3, post-GEO.  I was brushing my teeth and casually listening to a TV commentator, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by so many people opining on what everyone should think, do, feel or envision now.  How exhausting, how useless. It’s too much.  I switched the TV off.

Spitting out the toothpaste with greater-than-usual velocity, I looked in the mirror, and a thought occurred. Maybe I should pay more attention to the inside of my own head, and start my examination there.  And really consider what I’ve done, just me.  Maybe, Mirror, those things are not quite as obvious as they seemed. Before.

The Mirror looked back with some questions.

“So,” the Mirror began, “Did you do what you thought was right for your country this past week?’

Well, I thought so, I began, tentatively.  I voted, early, even, wore my sticker to the office, wrote a check to my candidate, did my best to stay in the discussion in some places and out of it in others.  I stayed up later than anyone my age that I know to listen to the results and grapple with the implications.  I prayed for insight and understanding.

“And?”  The Mirror inquired.

And, what?  I stared back.

“Do you think what you did mattered?  Was it enough?”

Oh, you know, it was about the same as most people I knew—more than some, less than others, but generally the same.

“Then I’ll ask you again,” said the Mirror, one eyebrow raised, like my mother giving us the mean eye when we were kids. “Was it enough?”

Dang.  This is hard.  I fumbled for a response, but the Mirror won’t break my gaze.  And probably won’t like the first answers that float up.  They’re about status quo, and meeting my obligation, and how so many nice people think politics is icky, and sometimes I do, too, and sometimes my friends don’t like it on Facebook, and at least I didn’t write in some crazy person…on and on.

But the Mirror is not going to let me off with this, I can tell.  Best I can manage, without averting my eyes, is:  Okay, no.  In the deepest part of my conscience, down deeper than what rustles the pillowcase on the average night, I don’t think it was enough.  I’m not smart enough to know the precise factors that would have changed what happened this week, scientifically, analytically.  All that stuff.  But yes, fine, OK, I admit it, I could have done more.

“Now we are getting somewhere,” the Mirror agreed, lowering the eyebrow just a fraction.  “Would doing more have made a difference?”

I don’t know that!  I started to raise my voice.  I can’t know that.  Who can say?  I’m just one person!

“Okay, One Person,” the Mirror volleyed.  “That’s true.  But we are talking about you, after all. You are the only person we can manage.  And you think there could be a different answer, or we wouldn’t be having this little chat.”

True enough, I sighed.

The Mirror pressed on. “Sounds like you think next time should be different.  Must be different.  Fair?  If so, what does that mean?”

I don’t know!  My voice rose again, with just a shade of embarrassing panic.  It’s only been three days!  I don’t know what to do next time!    Or, now, even.  Join the march of women on Washington?  Give more money?  Help start a new party?  Wear my friends out on Facebook until they all erase me from their feeds, or find new Facebook friends?  Talk more about this at cocktail parties, or talk less?  More yoga and meditation, and better kindness to all peoples? C’mon, Mirror, help me out here—surely you can think of something!

“Go away,” the Mirror said, calmly but firmly.  “Go away and find out.  You were a reporter once; you know how to ask questions.  Start talking to people.  Watch for ideas.  Follow the people you respect whose conscience points them the same place that yours points you.  Take a step, even one.  If it’s the wrong step, take a different one.  Remember what Dad always said:  Do Something, Even if it’s Wrong.  Then come and report back.  I expect an update.  Don’t wait long.  It’s time.”

The Mirror is right about that last, for sure.  It’s time.

I switched off the light, and left the room.

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On Sibling Bonds, and Remembering Jane

Back Camera

It’s a funny thing about sisters and brothers.

You might long for them if you don’t have any.  But if you do, nothing in your life will ever drive you nuts in quite the same fashion.  That is, if you are like most of humanity.

Ours was a family of four kids, so common in those boomer days, three girls followed by a boy. My memories of my siblings as young children are distinctly unremarkable.  They might have been the bathroom wallpaper or the kitchen chairs–just there, the landscape of daily life, to be worked with, or around, as daily functioning might require.  No more, no less.

And then there was later, when inevitable dissonance and occasional outright war emerged with the arrival of adolescence.  Cruelty comes so easily then, and we devised our fair share and pointed it at each other.  When my older sister embarrassed me in front of, heaven help us, a BOY, I wrote a filthy epithet on her bedroom mirror in Vaseline (an interesting tool, yes?), using words I had never uttered out loud and might not have been able to define.  This awkward retribution earned me one of the most significant punishments of my young life.

But we three girls earned an even better one when we decided to show our young brother that he could not expect privacy in our shared bathroom.  When he sensibly resisted by locking us out, we picked the lock with a coat hanger and burst in before he could finish his business.  Our strict father exhibited zero tolerance for such bullying, thank goodness.  And really, remembering how we often we tried similar nonsense, it is a miracle that my brother is not a serial criminal, and still speaks to us.

Such stories, added to the routine family dynamics of adulthood, can crowd the heart at times.  So, when my daughter used to joke that she wished for a sister, I joked in return that I would happily give one of mine away.

That was before we lost one.

Back Camera

Perhaps more than any of the rest of us, my younger sister Jane signaled very early the adult she would become.  Named for both my parents, she was my mother’s spiritual and emotional twin, a magnetic personality endowed with faith and energy and a focus on others that drew people to her like hummingbirds to red petunia blossoms.

Her innate sense of right and wrong was maddening when we were younger.  Constitutionally incapable of tolerating unkindness or rule-breaking, she became an incorrigible tattle-tale.  For this saintly behavior we christened her Susie Good, and we dispensed revenge any time we could manage it without being caught.  We mocked her teeth, adding the nickname Snaggletooth (from the villain in the cartoon Quick Draw McGraw) and denied her entry into many of our games for no explainable reason.  Once on vacation we told her the only place available for her to sleep was in the closet, then watched with waning teenage superiority as she made the best of it and refused to cede victory by complaining.

A disposition to care for others that was embedded in her bones drew her to nursing school, and for a quarter century she nursed surgery patients, wounded diabetics, birthing mothers, and a long list of others.  She left active practice a few times, unable to disregard frustrations at the system, but she always went back to where she could get her hands on people in need.  When I observed that she would have made a great doctor, with more money for less hours worked, she rolled her eyes and shrugged, noting sarcastically that nurses are often closer to patients than doctors, and wasn’t that, after all, the point?

I can’t remember when I went from mocking what I perceived as a campaign for sainthood to admiring the person she became.  It might have been when I noticed that she showed up at every major turning point in my adult life.  She spent the night before my wedding, dispensing meds for the wedding-day diarrhea, my system’s physical signal of the unspoken fears that I was making a terrible mistake.  She took turns with my husband coaching me through labor, joking with the doctor about my cranky demands and patiently explaining every step.

Years went on, but her pattern remained.  With my older sister and brother, she came to unpack on moving day and stood by as I sobbed through my daughter’s graduation.  She drove an hour to my house so I didn’t have to be alone to tell my daughter the cat died.  Then my daughter married, and her aunt helped coached her through the birth of her first child.

My opportunity to try to balance the ledger of debts arrived way too soon, in the way you think happens to other people.  Suddenly, other people were us.  Diagnosed in her late forties with a rare and lethal form of breast cancer, she set out to wage war, and she succeeded so well for so long that at times we allowed ourselves to assume she would be among the few who beat the odds.  Whenever possible, I showed up for appointments and treatments and tests and sat in as bench support.

Even with all her professional insight, the system occasionally failed her, with an insurance snafu or a small clinical step overlooked.  At those moments, I bared proverbial claws and wanted nothing more than to use them to rip flesh somewhere on somebody, anybody, creating an uglier, bloodier version of Shirley MacLaine’s rant around the nurses’ station in Terms of Endearment.  My ferocious anger at any missteps astonished even me, but it didn’t take psychoanalysis or genetics to understand its roots. Watching her struggle was the tiniest millimeter away from experiencing it, since a sister is the nearest replica ever created to a woman’s own being.

When she said she just wasn’t up to attending the birth of my daughter’s second child, instinct told me time was short.  Diagnostic affirmation soon followed.  Along with her own two daughters  (both steadfast, brave and pragmatic like their mother), all three of us siblings took turns at her bedside in those final days.  In my heart, deepest dread joined with surprising gratitude for the privilege of being nearby, of witnessing the final steps in a journey she had defined so remarkably, all the way to the end.  As I bent to say my farewell on the last day I saw her, I said, “I’ll see you again.”  And I still believe it.

A person who lives life in service to others leaves behind a wide legacy of gratitude and, for one taken so young, profound heartbreak.  My own sense of loss at first seemed strangely functional, oddly physical.  It was like a power tool had ripped away one of my toes or fingers, or like I sat on a stool with a leg missing and was dumped sharply onto my butt on a concrete floor.  When grief is described like a part of you is missing, I had never before known how literally that’s true.

Thinking of her so constantly three years after she left us, I’m watching young siblings in our newest generation.  Their bonds and conflicts, their tender affection and dissonance, all ebb and flow with time and context.   After Buddy and I viewed a spectacular exhibit of antique Italian cars one day recently, the first thing he selected in the museum gift shop, without pausing to ask, was a present for his sister.  A couple of days later, I stepped in between them just in time as he screeched in frustration and lunged for her.  Her mistake?  She had boldly subverted his demands that she stay on her side of the line (literally) and color on her own dadgum side of the page.  And so it goes.

Will love triumph over the oceans of things that shadow sibling relationships over time?  Will they stay close enough to cheer each other’s successes, maybe even help the other one get there? If one is touched by tragedy, will the other stand shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to fight whatever needs fighting?  Of all my prayers for their future, none is more fervent than the one hoping nothing alters that singular sibling bond.

That, and the chance to be around long enough to see what happens.

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The Journey Ahead: Continued

An age-old instinct was triggered the other day, when I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, felled by a nasty stomach virus and trapped at home, recovering but still weak and irritable.

I wanted my Mom.

A little old for that, aren’t you, you might say to a woman with grandchildren who is approaching a significant birthday, one of those landmark years that ends in zero.  Who cares?  If your Mom is good at doling out sympathy, why bother to outgrow reaching out for a healing dose?

Mom ranks with the best at dispensing heartfelt consolation to the sick or injured.  (On some other matters, she leans more toward the help-thyself-and-get-over-it methodology, but that’s another story, another day.) Lucky for me, she’s as close as the phone, so I dialed her up, hoping for the desired helping of conversation.

A few months back, it seemed those days might be over.   With no warning signs, Mom was suddenly taken by something that looked and felt like a stroke.  Conversation became halting, confused, a struggle, and in a blink she went from taking daily strolls to being unable to rise from a chair unassisted.

Immediately, painful decisions shadowed the horizon.  Maybe a different facility was needed, with a higher level of care?  And a smaller room, with more reduction of her beloved inherited belongings, another change, another set of caregivers to learn. From where we stood on the path–and certainly for her– the journey ahead dictated hard, hard steps.  My attentive brother and sister, both in the same town with her, shifted into efficient action.  They got her on the list for a good nursing home.  There was a long round of doctor’s appointments, parallel to conferences with the staff at the assisted living facility that has become Mom’s home and community these last two years.

The thing about living with aging parents is the uncertainty.  Those blessed with good genes and life choices may walk the aging path with few health-related diversions, but for so many, there are constant ups and downs that leave us, still the children at whatever age, unable to know what any given day may bring.

Against the odds, the days might bring a pleasant surprise.  A little time passed, and we paused to reassess.  Slowly and determinedly, Mom showed some improvement.  Physical therapy renewed strength and motion.  She brightened up in conversation and felt strong enough to tell my patient brother in no uncertain terms that she was simply not up to moving anywhere, period.  A second episode occurred, but she recovered even more quickly.  The inevitable, detailed physical workups revealed—nothing.  Mysteriously (as modern medicine remains, more often that we think), the doctors told us what didn’t happen, but not what did.  There was no stroke, no heart problem.  Mom has changed greatly in recent years, that’s for sure, but for now, she is pretty much back to where she was before these frightening, inexplicable episodes.

So what does that mean for today, for the journey ahead?

It is hard to fully banish, in the back of the mind, a whispered undercurrent of unrelenting dread.  Practically speaking, of course it can’t last forever.  When my cell phone flashes my brother’s name at an unusual time of day for his calls, a small vise grips the heart.  Is it The Call, the one I don’t want to answer?

Of course, the flip side of this thought process is simple. What could be more absurd than seeking to predict what cannot be predicted?

To release that anxiety and turn to living each day to the absolute utmost, I probably should study the example set by:  my Mom.  Along with the hoped-for sympathy for my embattled digestive system, a rather persistent state of misfortune she acknowledges I probably inherited, there was other news on the recent phone chat.  There were updates on the summer garden, a visit by the great-grandchildren, and a satisfactory report on the interim pastor at church.  A recent surprise engagement party for one of her granddaughters required dressing up and traveling two hours in the car, each way, with a late-night return home.  True to form, she firmly refused to miss a good party. Even with all that time has wrought, and the roller coaster of what has been and what will someday inevitably be–for now, for today, the things that matter, matter still.

And that includes a few helpful details, such as instructions on what to eat when one is recuperating.  “Now, you take care of yourself, sweetie,” she instructed cheerfully, wrapping up our chat.  “You’ll have to eat something to get your strength back.  Bananas, lots of bananas.”

And there was nothing to be said in response except, “Yes, ma’am.”

 

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There’s No Friend Like an Old Friend

The first time I saw her, she was sitting alone in the bleachers, a row or two above and to the side of my little cluster of friends as we waited for the pep rally to start.  We were freshmen in high school, that tender, socially feverish age when your friendships are everything and time stands still around every relationship.

She had a haircut that was very fashionable in those days—I forget what we called it, but it featured bangs and fringe around the sides and back and looked unbearably chic.  I admired her trendy outfit and wondered why she sat by herself. Someone said she was new, just moved to town, so I guessed she didn’t know anyone.  I can’t recall our first verbal exchange, but it wasn’t long before we became the best of pals, endlessly carrying on about fashion, love, family, the state of the world, and the things that worried us.  It’s a conversation that continues still.

As 14-year-old best friends who embarked together on growing up, we were pretty tame operators, lucky girls who were loved and secure in our families, largely oblivious, for better or worse, to the radical winds blowing everywhere during those tumultuous times.  We got similar haircuts (hers looked far better), vacationed with each other’s families; suffered the humiliation of jolting our boyfriends into uproarious laughter on a double date when they spied our matching midriff tops and hiphugger jeans; thought ourselves unbearably hip when tooling around in her father’s convertible.  She cheered when I was elected vice president of the class, and I clapped and whooped at her Drill Corps performances. We hugged and sobbed the day her family left town after graduation, on to a new life in the Northeast with her father’s ascension to leadership at a major corporation.

I watched them drive away, envisioning her elegant new life near alluring New York City, her family summer home on the beautiful lake in northern Michigan, her admission to an Ivy League school, while I planned to start at the state university in the fall and fill my summer days with work in the hometown retail store.  Some people have all the luck, I simmered with teen petulance, too green and self-centered to appreciate my own blessings, experiencing searing jealousy for the first time in my young life.  It seemed certain she was leaving me behind.

But she didn’t.

The years rolled by, and in some ways, it seemed our lives would grow worlds apart.  In the season of youth marked by life-altering choices, we made very different ones. I stood up with her at her wedding, celebrating a marriage to a bright and caring man with a great future ahead of him, her intellectual equal and partner. Against the advice of my parents and nearly everyone I knew, I had married a man I shouldn’t have, and with some deep-seated instinct I couldn’t explain, even to myself, I didn’t invite her. If the omission stung, she never acknowledged it.  Alone at Christmas a year or two after the painful divorce that followed as surely as night after day, I was invited to spend the holiday with her family.  Her young daughter proudly presented me with a pencil holder, fashioned from a jar with a carefully drawn Santa figure taped to its neck.  Alone in my room later that night, I held the holiday artwork and cried, missing my own daughter and the life I thought I was going to have.

Through those years of marriages, young children, divergent careers and endless transitions, we somehow managed to cover many miles and experiences together.  There was my first Broadway musical in New York, a road tour of Vermont in the fall, a series of high school reunions, a return to the lake in Michigan when her children were nearly as old as we were when we first met.  Looking back, I’m amazed we maneuvered it, yet somehow, every year or two, we turned up somewhere together, continuing a conversation that seemed like it began only the day before.

From the years when all horizons are new and time has no limits, we have now arrived at the season when loss becomes part of living and loving, and life mercifully demonstrates that our similarities tower over our differences. When my beloved younger sister was taken by breast cancer at a very young age, she called to ask what she could do.  Come see me, I said, and she did.  Recently, we rendezvoused on a lovely island off the coast of Florida to visit her parents, who treated me like one of their own all those years and hold a very special place in my heart.  It was a great visit, but her mother’s health is changing, and one evening was difficult.

“I wasn’t sure it would be a good thing for you to see this happen,” she shared before we parted for bed later that night.  I longed to ease her heartache, having walked this journey with my father two years earlier.  In my head, I tried briefly for a joke to lighten the moment—because when you’ve been seen together in midriff tops, one would think the store of wisecracks could be unfathomable–but nothing came.  “Don’t be silly,” I said.  “You know I’ve been through this, and I wanted to be here.  Truthfully, I’m privileged to be here, to be your friend, and to feel like one of this family.”  It was the best I could manage, from the deepest part of my heart, but it made her cry, so I’m not sure if that was better or worse.

Yet during this time of looming shadows, when life can spin you sideways in the work of a moment, little things may show the enduring gifts of kindred spirits.  On a shopping spree through the tiny, charming Florida island town on that same trip, we pawed through a sale rack at opposite ends (she in the smaller sizes, me in the not smaller).  I pulled a multi-colored, brightly patterned top off the rack and held it up for her review.  “This is cute,” I said to her back.  “What do you think?”  She turned and laughed, and for a split second I thought she was questioning my taste.  Actually, she was holding up the very same shirt.

 

 

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The Journey Ahead

Those of us who reach mid-life (a time-frame with a definition that seems to stretch, these days, thank heavens) and still have one or both of our parents are among the very fortunate, indeed.  And as the journey continues, inevitably we find that the seasons of health and life as we know it for those we love who are aging may change in the blink of an eye.  Or even faster.

A change came on quickly for my mother just a couple of weeks ago.  The implications are not yet fully known, and while we have witnessed some recovery and maintain our optimism, still there are realities which must be faced, and changes that likely come with them.  The only certainty seems to be that these changes are never easy.

The scope of loss and change along my mother’s journey in the last couple of years is deep and wide, and now she stands at yet another fork in the road.  Watching her cope with this latest scenario, following those that preceded it, is a study in many things, simple faith probably foremost among them.  How must this feel to her, I wonder over and over, and watch and listen to her, when I am able, to try and understand the answer.  It is not always easy to discern, and her worst moments often occur when I am not present. I live three hours away, and the burden of those moments is most often borne by my steadfast and patient sister and brother.  Still, it seems clear that the determination to do her best, the appreciation for those who help her–these things remain foremost in the face she turns toward others, even though humiliation and ultimate frustration at some points emerge to test her naturally sunny personality.

Many of us have known those who do not or cannot face such things in the same spirit as my mother, people who are thrown sideways or backward by terribly tragedy and injustice and don’t have the tools within their hearts to recover.  The difference between them and people with the personality and faith of my mother is the subject of spiritual study, psychological analysis, genetics, and many other things beyond my scope of understanding. What makes some people brave and spiritually strong, while others struggle?  How we all wish the answers were more forthcoming.

Meanwhile, there is always solace somewhere in music, for me, and I found myself thinking of my mother recently when appreciating the lyrics of a song written by Buddy and Julie Miller.  The Millers are two very bright lights in Nashville’s musical universe (and far beyond), and this song has already been cut by several artists.  I saw Buddy sing it live recently, and I was very moved by the spiritual power of its poetry.  The song is called “Wide River to Cross,” and the first two verses go like this:

“There’s a sorrow in the wind, blowin’ down the road I’ve been

I can hear it cry while shadows steal the sun.

But I cannot look back now, gone too far to turn around

And there’s still a race ahead that I must run.

I’m only halfway home, I gotta journey on

To where I’ll find the things that I have lost.

I’ve come a long, long road, still I’ve got miles to go

I’ve got a wide, wide river to cross.”

 

 

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Spirits in Treasures and Handing Down the Ancestral Seat

A few years back I read a fascinating book about Te Maori, the first U. S. exhibition of ancient art from the native Maori people of New Zealand. The opening of the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York was preceded by elaborate tribal rituals symbolizing honor for and protection of the ancestral artists, who are believed by the Maori to spiritually inhabit the art they created.

The notion of beloved souls inhabiting objects is easy for me to accept on a spiritual level. It also prompted me to extend the concept on a different plane toward my mother, who throughout her adult life has served as custodian and curator of a large collection of family treasures handed down through various branches of our family tree. As years passed and circumstances caused the collection to grow, my father teased her about her strong affection for these items, which range from jewelry and handbags, to furniture, artwork, china, and the like. Ours is a blessed but certainly not wealthy family, so the value of the treasures spikes much higher on the emotional scale than on the financial. We are unlikely candidates for stardom on Antiques Roadshow.

Whether my ancestors owned or created these treasures, it mesmerizes me to consider what their spirits, if residing therein, could pass on to us. Could I replicate the hospitality at my own dinner parties that always illuminated my parents’ home by remembering to pull out my mother’s crystal wine glasses? Could I someday achieve tournament-winning putting, like my grandfather, if I keep polishing his silver golf trophies—or will I just inherit his predilection for corny golf jokes? Can I emulate with my little family the long conversations I had with my dad if I take good care of the old maple rocking chair I sat in, across from his favorite perch in their den, when we chatted?

Many of these objects are lovely to behold and an honor to own. And then there are others. Varying views on the outliers might be over style, sometimes for condition. Either was something we freely commented on when my generation was younger, when one is unerringly certain of so very many things. Such opinions were generally accepted by my mother with her characteristic equanimity.

Nowadays, honesty compels me to admit that these illogical attachments to ancestral objects have claimed some of us in our turn, as we move to a more reminiscent season of life. There’s an ancient, dented tin measuring cup with a bent, cock-eyed handle tucked in my kitchen drawer that I can’t relinquish, so it stays nestled there next to its shinier, more legible modern counterparts. For years my sister clung stubbornly to a thin old aluminum spatula descended from we aren’t sure where, swearing it was the only implement in her kitchen that could pry absolutely anything out of a skillet. Rust finally sent that one to the Great Beyond.

Carefully preserving treasures for children, too, my mother sent one of her favorites to my daughter’s family home after the birth of the first great-grandchild. This miniature, Windsor-shaped wicker rocking chair, freshly painted, was a gift to my mother from her own grandfather when she was a child, growing up in a small mountain town in Eastern Kentucky eight decades ago. That makes the current users the fourth generation to rock baby dolls and bunnies in the tiny chair, which I long ago jokingly christened The Ancestral Seat. Will my mother’s spirit in the little rocker impart her sense of humor, compassion, and common sense? If so, it would also convey a rather particular expectation that children should behave, help their family members, and take good care of older people.

My own favorite family treasure is a round hardwood table with a rattan pedestal base, acquired by my parents in the Philippines in the early 1950s and shipped home to occupy their series of kitchens for the remainder of their married life. Growing up, we ate so many family meals at this table, where my brother routinely knocked over his milk and my sister leaned back and fell out of her chair. Around its circumference occurred all kinds of family dialogue, more than a few pointedly delivered parental instructions, and more than enough smart-aleck teenage commentary. It bears cigarette burns and other scars from years of service at the center of a big, raucous family.

When my mother moved to a smaller home not long ago, there was no spot for the old rattan warrior. No takers for the kitchen table so far, said my sister, who patiently organized the sharing and relocation of items that my mother no longer needed.  I’ll take it, I responded, without a notion of where to put it. at first. Whether it lands on my porch for outdoor dinners, in the kitchen, or some space not yet imagined, the table, and whatever spirits it harbors, stays with me. With us.

At the moment, it occupies my home office, and serves as my workspace for writing these chronicles.

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The Empty Box: A Christmas Memory

If you are inclined this time of year to reminiscing about Christmases past, like so many of us of a certain age, you might linger on memories of treasured gifts you received as a child. Perhaps there was a favorite toy, a bicycle, or maybe a special outfit you wanted desperately and never thought your parents could afford.

For me, the most precious memories of Christmas gifts in my youth are tied not to things I received, but to the presents that my father gave to my mother. That’s not to suggest we were deprived as kids; we had much of what we wanted and surely more than we rascals deserved, especially at Christmas. But in our house, there also was magic that didn’t depend on Santa Claus or children.

In some respects—though not all—my parents played the roles of man and wife in the traditional ways of their time. At Christmas, she shopped for everyone else, and he shopped for her. He bragged on his timing (often not until Christmas Eve) and his selections, and he spared no effort in presenting them with theatrical flair.

The gifts ranged from the practical, to the fashionable, to the risque. One year she wanted new pots and pans, and he procured a large set. On Christmas morning she opened a package that contained one pot, with a note announcing that the remaining pieces were hidden around the house. It was a Christmas adventure for our family of six to undertake the search; ultimately, one of the lids never turned up, and whether that joke was his intent, I can’t say to this day. Mom has always loved gardening, and one year he bought her a combination rolling gardener’s seat and tool caddy, with fat wheels enabling the rider to propel herself around the garden. During the height of the Christmas morning chaos, he rode it into the living room, prouder and happier than anyone when my mother howled with unstoppable laughter.

In the era of Jackie Kennedy’s stunning style, Dad loved to buy Mom elegant clothes. He brought home her first mink, a “stole” the color of warm caramel, when we were all very small. It must have been a tremendous stretch on the salary of a salesman supporting four children. I can still hear her high-pitched squeal when she wrapped herself in it.

My parents met as young teens, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her for nearly 70 years. He openly admired her looks whether she was fashionably dressed—or not. One year, in the era when classy sleepwear was just part of a nice wardrobe, she asked for a nightgown. That Christmas morning she opened a beautifully wrapped box that was empty—except for a note that read, “My kind of nightgown.”

Dad didn’t make it to Christmas in the last year of his life, but as he lay in the hospital for weeks in late fall, he dispensed instructions to his daughters about acquiring Mom’s gifts. He sent my sister to the jewelry store with his credit card, while I searched online for a stunning white coat we knew she hankered for. Sadly, the coat was out of stock, so I pondered alternatives and brought those ideas to his bedside for direction. I could try this one, I suggested, and here are a couple of other options. Yes, yes, and yes, he said to all of them. The answer to all questions involving your mother is yes.

I’ve thought about that answer many times in the two years since he left us, thought about how it symbolized a bond that had no ceiling or floor, how it illustrated 62 years of marriage in which, even when life’s inevitable deep shadows intruded, the delights of spontaneity and the desire to please never faded. I briefly wondered if we should concoct some outrageous surprise for Mom this year, to try to continue the custom. At heart, I knew it wasn’t something that can be replicated by others. But knowing the intent behind the act, keeping that sentiment alive, the privilege of witnessing love that lasts a lifetime—those were his gifts not just to her, but to all of us.

Some say that Christmas is for children, and of course that’s true, in a way, because it began with the story of a child. But watching my parents, I learned that the simple pleasure of giving, the joy of surprise, the wonder of the unknown, these are treasures that have no age limit, for those who love.

Merry Christmas. When the question is love, Give us all the faith to answer Yes.

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