Attending to the Essence

There are surprises that occur while living with a disease that may have exclusive rights to my final demise. One is that life is still a great open stage and I can do with it what I want. And I am still granted opportunities to decide what stories to direct and participate in. This is noted despite the fact that I realize I can be struck down any moment.

I had begun to think I was a bit of a puppet, as we can at times suspect. It seemed I was not infrequently subject to the unreliable winds of life, the whims of confounding, surly natured, occasionally dangerous people who crossed my path. It appeared I shared these experiences with many others. But I wondered if I was purposely situated in poorly designed scenarios despite my goal to explore only the very best. By my late teens I decided I had been duped. Too many hard things occurred, and not only to me, to convince me otherwise. What was this being human?

But, then, I grew up in a world of culture and classical music, Sunday dinners generally shared with intelligent, kindly people. Duly civilized and all. There was much to love. But it was also like being a hothouse flower (with a few toxic influences thrown in) and then set outdoors, exposed to the rawness of real atmospheric influences. My first visits to Detroit and Chicago were terrifying and fabulous. I suspected there was much more to learn and wanted to get to it. And gradually I figured out bits and pieces, some useful and others discarded. Then I started to lose power along the way. I misplaced that critical, pervasive sense of a life-sustaining essence. The thing that gave me both gravity and joy. One can come to doubt enough that rescue has to occur; a decision must be made to stay alive. The years seemed full of exigencies and I did not understand as much as I believed.

Not everyone is fortunate to have more than a couple of cracks at life. But people who cared, along with a few angels (reader, you know I claim them), dragged me to my feet before I went down for good. God waited until I found a better foothold so transformation could begin. I gathered clues to better living long before that forest hike commandeered my heart and took me down to the dirt. It’s a good thing I had helpful life skills because employing any victim stance again required more energy than I could squander. But it shook me up, that ton of pressure on my chest that left me reeling. I barely, with my husband’s help, made it out of the trees. I have decent intuition, sometimes very good, but it took me until the next morning to understand my heart was getting ready to kill me. And I needed a lot of mental and physical stamina to devise a new game plan. When I cold-called cardiology offices and found Dr. P., who listened and knew exactly what to do, I found liberation. A damaged heart, yes, but freedom was in the making.

My scheme included full-on healing. Not the sort that exercise, heart medication and diet support. All very good, but not enough. I took three years off work and began to re-learn how to be fully present in my body, in the moment, in my life. Dare I say it? Prayer and surrender. Expectation of health. Call it meditation if you like, call it conscious development of an awareness of Spirit. Call it Step 3 if you attend AA. But I needed a reminder and I had gotten it: personal power begins with surrendering stupidity. Well, perhaps more accurately the tyrannical ego that is constructed from lifelong illusions. What a mess it can make.

So, if my heart was to become strong, harmonious organ, didn’t it make sense to heal it from the inside out? The bitter words still echoing in the night, regrets that soured more with time? What is the value of vilification in the end? How about the lost passionate teen-aged love that was just that–a love that served adolescence, not this time, this person? Or the worst of the lot: nightmarish assaults and a legacy of addiction that hurt my family, my several failures to thrive and achieve, the grief that bound me still to the burden of living, not the sheer joy of it. The list of things that haunt and damn us. In truth, we are missing the ancient campfire to swap our troubles and then sing it all away.

Still, you wouldn’t have seen this at a glance. You would have found a woman competent and quick, hard-working and accessible. You could count on me. Yet I was a woman also driven to exhaustion, bruised to the marrow though a believer in hope–which was given to others, not so often to myself. I had to unclench my hands and let my own tears flood them, then fall away. I had to make a nest in mercy. Room was needed for the purity of wonder left behind in childhood. Space big enough for the essence, for life-giving light. I did not want a life lived and coming undone, like ruined skin peeling off. Impotence did not appeal.

I had to change, fast, before there would be three, not just two, stent implants or worse. Work began in earnest, because that is the only way I have ever known how to live. Intensely. Now. The panoramic experiences that wanted my embrace lay before me. I felt I was asked to take a step into, at best, intriguing but hazy possibilities. And because I have always needed to see what is around the next bend, I stepped forward despite becoming unmoored from my known life. Oh, the beauty I found. The way life insinuates the fibers of our being with its beneficent force. The elegance of faith that will not shake loose despite setbacks. When in mid-stream and the water keeps rising, float. What I have found is that there is no end to what we can manage and discover and in the process of discovery, act upon and give.

I did go back to my chosen field, counseling the mentally ill and addicted. Some folks advised against it–too stressful, they said. But the truth is, it has always been a calling. It was a fulfillment of a promise made long ago to be of good use to those with too little hope and resources. After more years I stopped working and threw caution to the wind again. This time to write every day. Stories were intruding on work, or perhaps it was the other way around.

Our hearts know us first and last, beat to cavernous beat. It knows us best although we try to hide. It will remind us important things we have forgotten, secrets we thought we might never know, avenues to God and ways to live on earth in full, unadulterated color. Every moment has potential magic. I feel this in its primal rhythm as I rest, sweat, play, ponder. So when I awaken, I do wonder what scenario will unfold today. What will I bring to the fore and let recede? Maybe directing is not so much the need but narrating the story is. As a child I wrote plays and poems. I rounded up a motley neighborhood cast and crew and we threw it all together for ticketed performances, all in the name of fun. It was so easy to create and share the pleasure. So now, here, I will hold on to this recaptured essence that infuses my living, without hoarding the wonder.

Let me traverse the path with eyes wide open, unflinching; look for the whole truth which can be perfected only with compassion. I want to hold an ongoing conversation with humanity as well as the starry canopy and beyond. I care to live within the transducing power of life, its wild center, until the very last moment here. Let me not hold back one good thing.

My Small View of Edna’s World

I like to run away for Mother’s Day. I take a trip, instead. I am this time, as well, so wasn’t going to write about it. Then gracious author Alice Hoffman invited folks to post pictures and stories about their mothers. On impulse I wrote a story for her site. She liked it which pleases me but, then, who wouldn’t like my mother? She is overall a breeze to write about. I decided to post it here, as well, if you will bear with me. I want to say a few words about my own mothering and then I’ll get on with it.

I tend to write little of what I experience being one. A mother, that is. Perhaps I should be more attentive to the topic; I could write reams. I oversee a history rich with five children, two of whom are not biological but feel like my own since I knew them before they knew me. Another tale entirely. I could extol their talents, characters, eccentricities and all, their challenges and trumpet-worthy triumphs. They each regularly take my breath away with their truth-seeking and passion for what they love. I am struck by the ways they live and grow within a dangerous albeit magnificent world. Mothers like to speak of such things; I am not above it. I will note they have had a few more steep hurdles to clear than perhaps most, for very different reasons. Thus, they are heroic to me. I respect their privacy so their stories are kept in some intercellular space. They radiate immense energy, have helped power my journey. Even now, at sixty-three. They each bring to me a particular happiness which is savored. One of the things that will remove my human armor is to speak of my children. But if you speak ill of them without a large dose of charity or wisdom, the armor is fitted again and I am readied for battle. Such is the way of the warrior mothers. I never expected to be one at twenty-three, and then I was and hallelujah, amen! I say that with reverence and a wry smile.

Excuse the side trip–I was not going to get started on how much I love them–all this talk of love and I am barely started!–but my mothering is derivative of my initial nurturance. So, then, about the mother who bore and raised me. Edna. Who is no longer using her time and space on this planet, or in not the same manner. I have written of her before for she is muse as well as mother. Let me introduce her to you if you have not met her.

Edna was a dreamer even as she was industriously engaged in life. She would stand at the kitchen window washing dishes and gaze, transfixed, past the maples of our back yard. She sewed in silence, focused on her creations, but I talked at her feet. She presided over  meals, placing on the table two or three vegetables, a meat dish, colorful tossed salad, fruit of some sort and a side of bread and butter. Pie came later. She would pause as the rest of us sparred and chattered. She placed index finger to lips, eyes alert to the story about to cascade from her. We watched, enrapt. Nothing was boring to her, not a walk to the store, not a day teaching mediocre or ruffian students, not the two hundredth concert my father conducted or we played in, nor a bright scarf on the third woman from the left at church. To every experience she attached an unfolding tale. It was in the dramatic telling that she gave us who she was, as well. She had a critical mind that was smoothed by good intent and fascination. Generous, powered by curiosity, rooted in faith in God and resilient beyond expectation, Edna Kelly Guenther was a woman to reckon with.

Perhaps you think she sounds too good to be true. Oh, she had her foibles but they did not include a lack of ambition or self-possession. (I won’t waste time on bad habits today.) In another place and time she would have garnered a Masters’ degree, maybe taught geology or creative writing. I sometimes imagine her a film director with her dramatic flair. Still, in nineteen hundred twenty-eight, when barely nineteen years old, she was in the process of getting her teaching certificate. She taught all grades in a one-room schoolhouse in Missouri and lived to share those tales as well. She might as well have become a business owner, a clothing designer, a public relations executive, or a newspaper writer although these skills were yet to blossom. But she and Lawrence were best friends who fell in love as teens, their paths well-aligned. His father was a public school system’s superintendent. She had survived the Depression, along with her large family, but it cost them their farm. She told me long stories at bedtime of her hay and cow days that riveted me. She left that life with no regrets, she assured me. She knew the aspiring musician and educator would carry her far beyond the country life. She was right.

She managed family obligations, including those of five children, with a stellar memory and stamina that required little sleep. She was social secretary, as well, she stated with a wink, and kept close tabs on us all. Over the years she was a milliner (how I adored those hats others got to wear), a fine seamstress and tailor (her own clothes drew others so she made a little money), an elementary school teacher, an indefatigable supporter of the talents and hopes of her children, a volunteer at church and in the community. And, of course, she was a loyal and proud wife. In love with Lawrence’s several gifts, she was as responsible for his public charismatic presence as he was oblivious to it. He stood taller and glowed under her direction.

A memory that remains vivid is watching her get dressed for a cultural event. She chose one of her own formal creations, beautifully fitted and made of perhaps a shimmering or partly-beaded fabric. She wore good high heels until her nineties that showed off high-arched feet. Her wavy hair was nearly white by the time I was born. On her it looked ravishing and people told her so. Her jewelry was not costly but it was tasteful and added radiance to the effect. She would chat while she dressed, catching up on things, and when my father called up the stairs, she would slick on rosy lipstick and a dusting of powder and be on her way. If we children were not attending a function, we watched my handsome father in his tux and mother in her gown as they departed. They were at times harried and late. But so good together.

She liked sports–in later years watched football on TV with my father–and once played a few games, herself. I could see her innate athleticism, although when I was ten and figure skating, she was fifty and no longer a basketball or tennis player. But she was strong and agile. She walked everywhere, children at hand, bags atop one arm. A devotee of nature, she camped in a pop-up camper with my father and grandkids into her seventies. She had a fascination with biology, insects, flora and fauna that encouraged us to explore and embrace nature’s mysteries. From her I learned about rock strata and types of soil. Her fear of water kept her on shore when we took to northern lakes in summer. She rooted for us as we dove from a floating diving platform, but worried about my father’s love of sailing, how the boat tipped and raced away from her.

I recently came across some of her travel journals and enjoyed the detailed, often amusing anecdotes. She was enamored of other places; my parents traveled extensively before they were elderly. She found the backstreets of Europe or our own nation equally of interest. How far from Blackwater, Missouri she had ranged.

But what I recall the most about my mother, is how purely she experienced life. She was not one to shrink from what was different, or hard. Although she did well to teach us how to “be civilized” with good manners and other appropriate behaviors, she did not make much effort to hide her feelings at home. If something tragic occurred (or she recalled the memory of it), she wept, tears running off her face and onto the lavender tablecloth. If something exquisite was seen, her descriptions were excited and meticulous. Her love for family and friends was unshakeable but if she did not love, her barriers were clear. Her anger could flash so hot it was surprising. Her laughter still rings in my ears, hearty, accompanied by tears if something was way past funny. And her great affection for my father was visible when he pulled her on his lap: well-seasoned with admiration and respect, a little fire was thrown in.

And did I forget angels? She had them gathered around her. I don’t wonder they spoke to her. She knew things; she was present, open, ready. Edna Kelly Guenther was a woman entirely alive. She was Irish, it’s true, but that was just the icing.

Is this the whole story of my mother? No. How can we really know our mothers? They’ve had lives both private and layered, just like ours. I often wondered what other stories she kept from us. I suspect if the whole truth came out I might be silenced by the depths and diversity of what she felt and experienced. And within my family history ran an underground vein of aching. We lived a few confounding times that we nonetheless survived. I sort them out as the years pass. It still just comes back to blood love.

She has been gone for twelve years. She crossed the mighty river between this world and the next near Mother’s Day and was buried the day after the Hallmark card holiday.

It was she who came to me one night on my balcony, under a star-bestowed night as I was rendered helpless by grief for her passing. How could she leave me, the youngest, bereft first of father on another May day, and now mother? But I heard her as she whispered in my ear: “You must write, Cynthia!” And so I do. Have done today. Thank you, my mother.

Dragonfly Glass

It had called to me from the shop situated in a mountain valley: a sturdy clear glass, pleasing of shape, with good heft. But most of all, the dragonflies that were in relief near the top brought a smile. I am a fool for insects of all sorts (even scarier ones), and dragonflies intrigue me with their grace and short lives (one to six months) in temperate zones. They love the water but do fly elsewhere. They rarely bite and don’t break the skin if they try. They have been with us 300 million years. If that isn’t a wonderful bug I don’t know what is.

But enough about dragonflies. The glass grabbed my attention and I pondered the price, which was more than seemed reasonable. Still, it was small enough for juice, a good size for a quick drink of water. I turned it around in my hands and visualized how it would look with my sturdy Desert Rose table ware. But such extravagance. I walked away. And back again. I left the shop with two cheerful glasses.

Today it was more summer than spring with a cloudless aquamarine sky and sweet breeze. I sat on the balcony and sipped chilled tea. The glass–the new favorite. It had held water, ginger ale, apple juice and iced tea. I admired it’s combination of ordinariness and decorative good sense. And then I held it up to the sunlight and the thought that came forward was a surprise. It looked like a glass used for a stout mixed drink or rich-colored wine, not tame juice or water. It was the right size, and its heaviness ensured it stayed put when set down. But to contemplate all this took me back.

Way, way back. You see, none of my glasses have had a lick of alcohol in them for twenty-two years. That was when I stopped drinking. something I write around but have never stated bluntly. Now it seems I want to speak of it.

The day I last drank has been, perhaps oddly, increasingly less a subject of daily personal interest than professional, as I have counseled and educated chemically addicted persons for twenty of those years. Yes, I have attended plenty of support groups. But after awhile something happened to my thinking. It was like the clean, unmistakable click of a lock’s mechanism disengaging to full unlocked position. The door that opened led to the life I had always wanted but could never fully discover or create.

I became free of not only any desire to drink but also of significant feelings about it. I didn’t and don’t hate alcohol and its undeniable power to alter even ordinary people’s responses to others and themselves. It is a power that the alcohol-imbibing public still doesn’t fully respect. I had a quite short drinking career revolving around too many goblets of wine and stiff mixed drinks, resulting in some harrowing tales. It would be dishonest to not note that a family member asked me to make a will when I was still pretty young. There is a common misconception that it is how much you drink that identifies whether or not one has an alcohol problem. In fact, it is more simply how it chemically impacts a person physiologically, emotionally, mentally. It didn’t take so much as you’d think to provide experiences I don’t care to live again.

So, I didn’t long for alcohol when I was finally done.  I detached from it while keeping clear the reality of what worked for me in life and what did not. Alcohol was definitely on the negative side. Recovery has remained number one every day despite not thinking of it all the time. The reasons are simple: I want to stay alive, live well and long, and be true to who I am–none of which alcohol could support. A drink–or a drug, for that matter– will eventually rob an addicted person of everything good and fine in human life. I reclaimed my own power to live more freely and richly again. Over time, I integrated what I knew about my unhappy relationship with alcohol into a broader understanding of my worldview and beliefs, as well as my authentic needs (not those society dictated) as a person.

All this sounds relatively easy, perhaps. It has been, in a real sense. Of course, there have been moments when holding tight to one moment of sobriety was the goal for the day. The painful events of life, physically and emotionally, didn’t back away or even lessen much when I put down the drink. But the good news is that as humans we are provided with an amazing array of solutions and aids to help us live intentionally, in peace. Our brains manufacture chemicals called endorphins (among others) to help us with bodily pain and even heartache. Our free will enables us to make many kinds of choices that either nurture or undermine who we are and want to become. Out of the caldera of the past, we can construct a Spirit-shaped life that is a wellspring of clarity as we imagine, act, speak, love.

It all completely works, I told my clients; you just have to try it and then keep at it. I perhaps did not tell them I am a good case study with a complicated history (which we all seem to have) coupled with an early onset of sedativism precipitated by prescription drugs. This made me a sitting duck for alcohol problems later on. The whole journey was a strange one that no longer haunts me. It was one of those dead-end roads. I got off (with much timely help), surveyed the options and took a different direction. Such liberation had a revolutionary feel; it stays with me to this day.

I return to my humble dragonfly glass. It holds peppermint-tinged iced tea; it cools and soothes on this magnanimous May day. And I hope to enjoy it for many years–at least all the days that are given to me. I consider the myriad wonders of life and know I am fortunate. The important parts of the puzzle of living fit together, and I fit there, too. I ask you this: what is not to love in this very moment? I thank God for this ordinary and bountiful life, come what may.

“What is to give light must endure burning.”
-Viktor Frankl

4.22.2013 Journal Prompt

Reblogged from Patricia Ann McNair:

April 22, 2013: Finally, the rain.

Read more… 4 more words

I enjoy Patricia McNair's photo prompts for writing exercises and thought I would share a couple of examples, including one of mine. Enjoy--and check them out for your own writing inspiration!

Celebrate Ties that Bind

We strolled among acres of tulips, fields spreading out like a quilt of electric color. It was a Pacific Northwest spring day unlike most, sun warming our faces and magnifying bright hues of flowers. Marinell gazed over the swaths of color, a smile warming her hazel eyes. Allanya noted varieties of tulips, making a list of those she might purchase. I was clicking away, each picture a frame of transient beauty captured. Flower season is not lengthy; blossoms wither and fall. The purpose of flowers, after all, is not to last forever but to offer pollen to bees who pollinate so next year we get to witness another display of beauty. The Cascade Mountains rose above Skagit County tulip fields in a show of stark permanency amidst the temporal, echoing our shared family moments.

My sisters and I have had a years-long tradition of allotting time together each spring,  a ”sisters getaway”, generally a long week-end freed of work and family obligations. M. is thirteen years older than I am, old enough to have helped my mother care for me when I was born. She has lived in the Seattle area for twenty-five years. A. is five years older, once a squabbling partner who became an important part of my daily life since we both reside in Oregon.

Although the three of us have been only 3.5 hours apart, we see one another on average four times a year during family gatherings. Our separate time ensures our own time, doing and speaking as we please. We have travelled to other destinations, walked many paths in village, city and country, shopped, and visited museums, gardens, exhibits, galleries. We enjoy learning things, exploring new territory, sharing enthusiasm for places and people. And as we go about sharing many interests including the arts, books, nature, psychology, travel to name a few, we talk.

We swap tales of family history and how we each experienced growing up–not necessarily so much alike, as we each have our own perspective and moments. We compare and comment on our trials, errors and successes which have been thought-provoking to witness. M. has been a professional cellist. A. has been an executive director of several non-profit organizations. Since we are not all committed to the same faith practices we explore beliefs and what has impacted us spiritually. Disposed to analytical thought, we have probing discussions on everything from social issues to natural phenomena.   We often just meander from topic to topic. And in the process, we laugh readily and often. And cry, at times. We are also very good at putting up with each other as needed.

This visit, however, was different.  We stayed at M.’s house instead of going off on a small adventure. The house, in fact, that is being put up for sale next week. She and her husband are moving to a southwestern state, closing one chapter of their industrious, fulfilling lives and beginning another. A. and I assisted in the sorting and tossing process. We each ended up with mementos, some of which were photographs of our extended family. I felt a deepening quietude as I scanned the pictures of family dinners and celebrations, lingering over images of those no longer with us. The picture of my parents’ back yard awakened my heart. Was it always so beautiful, the modest yard that hosted croquet and other games, barbeques served at the round wooden table with the umbrella, gatherings around the maple tree where we all climbed and swung on the old swing? The green shadows are dappled with playful light. Still, the life lived there, along with our two brothers and parents, was not a life without strife. Some of my memories are a blur imbued with an urgent need for peace and a longing for happiness that would not be dismantled by loss and pain. I study the pictures of my teen-age years and wonder over my seeming confidence despite secret struggles. The dining table is circled by family members who were accomplished, good-hearted and, naturally, flawed. But it was nonetheless a family life powered by the energy of love.

I studied the many decades-old portrait of M. taken a few years after she was named homecoming queen, an event that awed me as a child. A local photographer deemed her so lovely that her picture was entered into a contest and subsequently published. She had and has a humility that is noteworthy. This sister-woman who weathered a lifetime of challenges also profoundly enjoyed various fruits of her labors. I watched her as she spoke now and there it was: the same graciousness, soft but insightful gaze, a smile that emanated good humor. Her wavy hair is mostly white now, but she is the same big sister who so carefully watched over me as a little girl. Who I admired from a distance of thirteen years difference yet was lucky enough to get to know closely after growing up. Whose cello playing mesmerized me all the years we all practiced our instruments. I took up cello, too, because she did. In fact, all of us girls played cello at one time or another but she worked hardest at honing skills and considerable talent.

One of the nights together we sat in her music room and looked through music, some of which belonged to our father once. There were the old songbooks of standards. She stood n ear the grand piano. It, too, would be soon sold. The thought was more than I could bear as I remembered the baby grand in my parents’ home, and the shock I felt when I came back to find it long gone. So I asked M. to play for us. She chose a couple of songs I used to love to sing as she or our father accompanied. She stopped too soon for me, the last notes echoing in the room.

How do I say “farewell, have a good and happy new life in Texas” to my oldest sister? Of course, it is what my intention is when the day arrives for leave-taking. I know she is just moving from one space to another. I understand we will all see each other here or there, that A. and I will fly down to visit or meet up somewhere in between, perhaps each spring.

But it somehow feels as if she is going far away, just like the day she went off to college and I stood in the doorway waving, bewildered, at age five. And this feeling rises to the top of the laughter, hearty tales of tough and triumphant growing up years, and becoming older the best way we can, with lots of grit and the force of joy. This sadness floats and spreads out over my morning and brings me tears. Nothing stays the same, I know. And there is merit in that.

Then I am saved by this: we are sisters first and last, despite the relationships that have come and gone, the changing fortunes, the  health crises that can derail us each. We are of the same family and so, also, three who share a heart.

The last night together we talked by the warmth of a fire, right into the early morning. When we were emptied of stories, we hugged one another close. M. said: “We have all survived!” meaning we have all made our way through this wilderness called life and been able to call up enough strength and gumption to stay the course thus far. We have sought God and found faith a constant flame. We have elicited and shared laughter that lights up the deepest dark. We have made it together and also apart. Life in the final analysis is very good, indeed.

We straggled off to bed, only to arise the last morning to attack more sorting and tossing. It was a chore made lighter for M., but it was all just stuff. One house is soon to be exchanged for another house and furnishings. It is people who will make the difference for her as they do for us all. For now, she had sisters working side by side with her. And the fact is, the love that binds us has no state line, no expiration date, not here or in eternity.