My Peggy...

This past Easter weekend, I recalled a scene from, The Velveteen Rabbit, I hope the lessons from this book moved my children as it had with me many years ago…The scene I am referring to is which two stuffed animals discuss authenticity… “ ‘You BECOME,’ the horse said to the rabbit. ‘It doesn’t happen all at once. It takes a very long time. Generally by the time you are REAL most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But those things don’t matter, because once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’”

Recent events and conversations with loved ones this past weekend, filled my thoughts of a remarkable woman who I knew in Arizona, she taught me how to find compassion when I felt no hope and considered myself a complete failure as a mother, in my marriage, and in my life's choices.

I owe much of who I am today to this remarkable woman, and I thank God often, that she was the fork in my road to better understanding life’s situations. I met Peggy on the first day we moved into our new home and knew there was something special about her. Perceptive as she was, she must have sensed something about me and told me she was determined to crack my hardened shell with daily doses of hugs and verbal encouragement. A day didn’t go by for two and a half years that my mornings didn’t start with a knock at the door and her open arms, sometimes more, but nothing less. She taught me to find forgiveness and bring love back into my heart.

Peggy was a retired schoolteacher from Missouri with gusto for life. She was also a piano teacher and a part-time librarian; she had a passion for every living thing and was dedicated to her Alzheimer’s inflicted husband of sixty-seven years. She asked me once if I ever did any playacting as a child, and if it was easy to be someone I was not. When I asked her why, she explained to me something that I have not forgotten; something she observed in her many years of teaching was that “most compassionate people in real life are those who did a lot of playacting as children.” She said, "that you’re required to understand the motivation behind another’s actions, and to have sympathy for their plight, then along the way an enormous compassion for others develops.”

I hope one day I am fortunate enough to make a difference in one unsuspecting person’s life like Peggy did for me; it would be extraordinary to pay her gift forward.
I believe all of us have crossed paths with our Peggy’s, some of us were lucky enough to have acknowledged them while others ignored that knock on the door…

Today's Quote...

Reach for the fullness of human life...If you but touch it, it will fascinate. We live it all, but few live it knowingly. ~Goethe, Faust

A Tipsy Confession...

I never thought once to celebrate myself not even once—not after the birth of my children, not after nursing them through their young lives, not after the hundreds of times my arms extended to console others through loss or hard times. When my father passed away and a short six months later my father-in-law passed, I suppressed my grief to take care of two women, who like myself, never stood on their own two feet. More than thirty years later, I am learning to grieve, now that I am the only woman that I need to take care of.

I rushed forward in a straight line, pushing onward never veering off the path of rules set by other people, against whom I have measured myself. I never took the time to decipher where I was going—I just went. It’s only been recently I know what is missing in my life and what I crave to have back. I want a sense of balance that begins in my core; an integration of life experiences and it’s what’s driving me to my future.

It occurred to me that I was always eager to applaud my children’s accomplishments—walking, climbing, swimming, running, reading and writing—and yet I hardly noticed my own. Every decade I live offers new challenges and as I walk through the portal to the other side, I still strive to be me.

In the words of William Sloane Coffin, “The leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as action. One must…dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.”
I’ve taken that leap into uncertainty one too many times, the first monumental leap was when I said, “I do.” I was scared to death. Will this relationship really last till death do us part or will we tire of each other and move on separately in different directions…
Other times I leaped and fell flat on my face…starting one business then losing another. One will never know until they tried. I knew I didn’t want to reach old age and say, “what if.” Risks are attached to everything, even if you were afraid or never took that initial leap, they are they hiding around the corner.

I strive not to feel weak and inferior, and no longer want to keep up with the Jones’s who are keeping up with the Smith’s. I am grateful for the one person in my life that has stood by my side and I thank God he did not veer off the path of loving me and keeping me safe. I am selfish that I want more independence, to make my way and not call for help. Having been taught compliance and dependence, I strive for autonomy and the resurgence of will.

I celebrate my women friends, each successful in their own ways. I no longer feel isolated in my own selfish thoughts, because these very dear women friends of mine have let me know that I am not swimming alone. A song comes to mind for those of you familiar with the Woodstock era, Joe Cocker’s A Little Help From My Friends—from an era of make love not war, to an era where women burned their bras, and finally to the time in our lives when we need to find our true selves. I raise my glass to each and every one of you…Cheers! You know the tune…

What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

What do I do when my love is away
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel by the end of the day,
(Are you sad because you're on your own?)

No, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

Do you need anybody
I need somebody to love
Could it be anybody
I want somebody to love.

Would you believe in a love at first sight
Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time
What do you see when you turn out the light
I can't tell you but I know it's mine,

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

Do you need anybody
I just need someone to love
Could it be anybody
I want somebody to love.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends.

Thoughts...

I thought about a conversation I had today…Profound silence is not something I fall into easily and I suppose wisdom would more readily transpire if only I could keep my mouth shut. When I’m excited I become the habitual chatterer. Too often in conversations I interrupt the speaker, it’s not that I don’t like what he or she is saying, it’s because I get carried away by the energy of the conversation itself. I have to confess that each time I jump right in and add my thought right over someone else’s I’ve outright and probably diluted what the speaker was trying to say to me. So, silence remains one of my biggest challenges and I apologize for rudely interrupting…energy made me do it…

I can’t sleep. I am over stimulated by my thoughts tonight. I reflect on what is outlived in my life today. I’ve known that holding onto to something for a long time ruins it, as does clinging to old ways, outdated ideals and lifestyles that have run their course. By the way we were is not the way we are and why would anyone still want to hang onto those parts that have lost their zest? Certainly familiar is comforting, easy enough answer…None of us can control the way life passes us, we can only adapt as it goes by. Then, I think about Buddhists and their goal to exist completely in the present, which is a grand idea, but a difficult one for someone who tends to daydream about the future, because she wants immediate answers to questions. Logic tells me that to achieve such presence depends on idleness, another challenge for me—since I prefer motion and doing.

I think about my children, would I want them attached like the barnacles to an old conch shell? Would I want to have raised children who had no interest in flying to coop? No. I am proud of my children and their thirst to forge original lives. One thing I know, a mother can never outgrow her love for her grown children, even in light of what an Jungian once said, the intimacy she once shared over time becomes noting more than simply “hope for loved strangers.” I believe that raising a child, if you do it right, it’s the only relationship that will end in separation. Mothering remains a vibrant memory, but in truth is was but a fleeting moment—

I’m feeling warmed by a few embers of courage that seem to be coming from my thoughts and sleep is beginning to overcome me…

Today's Confession...

You are never free to do as you please when you stay with the familiar. People develop in aloneness and are only led to the truth after being disillusioned.

I’ve been running away all my life. When I was little I ran to a vacant lot—the only place I could be all by myself and contemplate life as a butterfly. At sixteen, I ran as far as my thumb took me—changed my name and became who I wanted to be. I tried to be my own person and thought it was deadly not to be! I had the knowledge of what was underneath, but it was obscured by what others thought of me. Of all the term papers I wrote in college, the ones that remain tucked within my journals are those written about runaways.

Today I forced myself to look at a family picture, focusing on the odd fifty-six year old woman. I barely recognized her forced smile, heavy eyelids, hair streaked more with gray than her natural dark brown. They say you get the face you’ve earned by the time you’re forty—all those sorrowful and angry expressions, long hidden behind makeup, become the naked truth. It mirrors who you are, who you’ve been in a mosaic of endless tiles.

I know what I no longer want; things like making life pleasant for others while forgoing my own desires. I hate myself for never being satisfied. I should be more acceptable and accept the status quo, but obviously, I wouldn’t be writing this if I could.


In the beginning there was thought and her name was woman.
She is the OLD woman who tends the fires of life.
She is the OLD woman spider who weaves us together.
She is the eldest God and the one who remembers and
RE-MEMBERS.
~Anonymous

April Showers...

April showers bring May flowers, and sweet bowers, where roses twine. Now I know too, I can show you, that it's so true all the time, if the sunshine came at one time, all the fun time would soon be through; April showers bring May flowers…

I have only met one person in my lifetime that expressed such pure elation about rain. That was well over twenty years ago when I went back to college in Arizona. Whenever it rains for more than a few days at a time and I start to get depressed due to the lack of sunshine, I can’t help but think of Skeeter.

This young girl and I shared the same English class. Her outrageous couture fell somewhere between shocking punk and depressing Goth. Her many facial piercings (twenty-seven to be precise), her pasty white complexion and her shock and awe persona was a turn off to most of those in the class, as well as by the obvious manner of the instructor. I think the reason I gravitated towards her was not because I was one of the older students in the class and needed to talk some sense in that pretty little head of hers; but because I saw her as a bold self-expression of myself at that age and I envied her that I could never pull it off like she did.

Skeeter didn’t exhibit any of the precarious or rebellious behaviors that most kids who looked like her had, nor did sit the back of the classroom uninterested in what the instructor lectured about. Instead, she was poised with styled confidence that was almost as electrifying as the outrageous color of her hair. She had much to contribute to the class discussions. I’m not sure if anyone actually listened to what she had to say, or if they were only observing her with idle fascination.

Our paths crossed under one of the breezeways one stormy afternoon in route to our next class. I stood there with much apprehension of getting soaked as I watched the rain plummet the cars in the parking lot. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. I made some comment, to the effect if you were a duck and when I looked at her, I actually thought I saw color return to her pale complexion. I don’t remember her exact words except for the initial statement, but Skeeter went on to tell me how she grew up in the Valley and the infrequence of long enduring rainstorms was as thrilling to her as someone who rarely saw snow.

I was captivated and I shared her “high”. She told me how she looked forward to the rain for as long as she could recall. She liked the way it tingled her bare skin. It freshened the air, it made the dessert greener, and it brought life to the otherwise dry and cracked riverbeds making the basins and rivers actually live up to their names like Bloody Basin or the Salt River.

Neither of us made it to our next class. She gave me her own personal history lesson of living in Phoenix and told me of her dreams of wanting to be an artist. To this day, I’m glad I didn’t miss the lecture. I don’t know what happened to Skeeter after that semester, I never saw her again. But, I clearly remember the girl who was “different” telling me how living her life made her almost as “high” as walking in the rain.

Drifting...

A different time…

That night, lying in bed, I could not help wishing that there wasn’t so much sadness in growing up.  It was all confused in my mind.  There had been the long, long days of being young and not wondering about tomorrow and at all and thinking in a strange, forgotten child’s world.  There were days when my thoughts were mind as feathers and even an hour seemed like a long time.  Then suddenly, it was like turning a sharp corner—you were older and all the things that counted when you were young didn’t count any more at all; and looking back, you couldn’t see them.  Growing up crowds your mind with new thoughts and new feelings so that you forget how you used to think and feel…

     This snippet was part of a letter I wrote to my daughter nearly twenty-four years ago when she was fourteen years old.  I still have that letter hidden away in an old scented hatbox along with odd scraps of paper sharing my thoughts and dreams for her.  Other mementos that nestled amongst the old stories and poems were the medals and certificates that chronologized her young life’s accomplishments. 

     Recently, a dear friend of mine mentioned how her life revolves around things and events and “two breaths you’re back to stage one” doing it all over again.  It triggered something in me and so it became my night’s mission to burrow into the back of my closet to find the boxes filled with all the precious memories and the little scraps of paper filled with loving sentiments from my children.  I lost many of their photographs, artwork and most of their saved schoolwork in a flood six years ago.  It was far more devastating than the sixty thousand dollar plus damage the flood caused.  I saved what I could by painstakingly wiping and hanging the less damaged items from makeshift clotheslines and cried when the colors ran together as they dripped dried.  Those early pieces of art don’t resemble the original beauty created by little hands, but nonetheless they still hold a place in my heart. 

     While I was drifting in time, I came across some pictures of my daughter’s friends that were taken at birthday parties and elementary school events.  One little girl shined the brightest in all the pictures with her curly blond hair and her bigger than life smile.  Not only did her reflection make me smile but it also made me cry.  You see, my daughter and her friend have been out of touch for most of the time after we moved across country.  We often talked about her and what she is doing with the usual barrage of questions.  Is she married and did she marry anyone my daughter knew?  Where is she living now and how many children does she have?  The curious questions went on and on and so, I made it my quest to find her friend and surprise my daughter.  It took me several months of no one answering my letters or inquiries on Facebook.  Until, one day I accidently finally stumbled upon somebody who might know somebody, who knew somebody that eventually led me to finding her mother.  Since, I didn’t hear from her for a couple months after the initial contact, I had to assume I had the wrong person and the search was on again.

     Last month I was elated when I received the most welcomed reply from her mother…then it was followed by the most devastating news…my daughter’s friend, Michelle tragically passed away nearly twenty years ago.  The news couldn’t have shocked me more than if it had just happened.  I called my daughter after I composed myself and we cried together.  Even though she is two thousand miles away I shared her pain and grief.  We grieved for the guilt we shared in not keeping in touch with friends and loved ones.  We grieved for selfishly taking advantage of time thinking there will always be another tomorrow…we grieved for all the years Michelle and her mother, Sandy did not share.  More than anything, we grieved for the closeness we lost as mother and daughter getting caught up in our own busy lives.

Fever...

Fever
1970
by Monica LaRocque

Like an evergreen’s kind
Of longing for love
I felt, standing
Alone
In the forest,
Gazing at the unyielding heavens,
And needing something
Hotly cold
To bite my soul.

Thoughts...

Bring up the topic of ghosts at any gathering and most of the guests will be able to contribute an anecdote of a sighting or a haunting usually set in an old building. I don’t know about most people but I’ve never been haunted by other people’s ghosts as much as I have been haunted by my own.

What haunts us most is what lies beneath the psychic surface of our own lives. The things stuffed away in the back of a closet, and the things that fall or go bump in the night which are buried in an attic or the basement all of it crying out to be buried, once and for all. They eventually become ghostly receptacles for all our thoughts, feelings, experiences and reflections.

Did you ever turn the key of a memory and have the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you go through certain rooms or different houses in your life? What is it that makes your breathing shallow? What memory triggers a panic attack? What closet won’t you open? What piece of furniture do you walk by and sigh? Do you suppose it’s because we have a hard time letting go of physical possessions and mental images that we adore ghost stories?