Mary, Spun of Golden Sunlight

Mary is a classy woman in Atlanta – a smart woman in her 40s, an animal lover, gardener, a sensitive woman. Mary's life has been dedicated to healing others, and her work in community service and charitable organizations is praised. She is beautiful inside and out, flaxen hair falling about her face in its journey past her shoulders, and wide-open eyes which speak the music of the inner self she carries. When I am in her presence, I sense her heart as if it is a separate party in the room. She wears love on her face. It is liquid in her voice, and it languishes in her body. Words spill off her tongue in tones which soothe those who listen. Humor is her friend, and she uses it to change a mood when hope seems lost amidst pain and fear. Visits to Mary’s office are like trips for ice cream on hot Sunday afternoons – whatever is rustling your reserve can disappear with the first taste.

Mary became my doctor first and my friend as time passed. I went to her in significant pain, feeling hopeless to change the course of events which were playing roulette with my life. I wanted to be worry and pain free. Soon a bride-to-be with a lover who had turned my life upside down with joy and tenderness, I was stuck in a body screaming at me. The love which we shared was such a rich blessing, and I wanted to fully enjoy this time in our lives. I wanted to climb pain-free onto the private yacht where our wedding would take place on a warm summer's night on Puget Sound. I had a busy agenda during the next 6-8 months with a wedding and a relocation to Seattle to plan. My spirits were sinking, anchored somewhere between depression and my chronic pain which burned like a hot iron on tender flesh.

Mary came into the room of our first meeting, radiating cheerfulness with a huge smile that pulled her lips wide. She asked me many questions and carefully listened to every word I spoke. When I finished my tale with chin quivering and tears glistening on my cheeks, Mary put her arms around me, hugged me close, and said she had magic tricks and she knew she could help me. Within the hour she proceeded to move through several modalities of treatment bringing my rigid and ropey muscles to more flexibility. She and I began a treatment regimen that afternoon which continues. Even though we now live in Seattle, we travel 2673 miles twice a year to visit friends and family, and one of the first things on our agenda is to SEE Mary. Time spent with Mary is like revisiting a book you love or listening to a story which soothed you as a child. There is much joy, lots of squeals, giggles, squeezes, and snuggly hugs as soon as my husband and I arrive. He loves her as much as I do.

Since our relocation to Seattle, Mary and I keep in touch by e-mail correspondence, sharing the news of our lives. My husband and I have eagerly awaited her first visit to the Pacific NW. Shortly after we left Atlanta, Mary fell in love with another doctor we also know and love. This news sparked a big celebration for us who were both excited to hear of their joy. How thrilling it has been to see Mary happy and to know she is sharing her life with someone who values her, respects and loves her in every way that she deserves! The glow she wears could compete with the full sun on a beach at high noon as she talks about the rewarding blessings in her life and the joy she finds in each day. She now lives with love and devotion and the enchanting dreams and plans of their tomorrows. A mountain retreat, puppies shared and loved, mutual friends whose joy of this exciting merger could be heard all over town, and finally an office practice together – these things now decorate their lives.

Recently our electricity went out leaving us in total darkness on a windy, late-winter's night early in March. My husband’s cell phone also makes a wireless connection to the internet. I asked him to check my mail while he was online. "A letter from Mary," he said, and I asked him to read it to me. This letter brought the first news that Mary has a brain tumor, an inoperable brain tumor. The words stuck in my mind – eyes fixed upon my husband’s face, searching for some sign that this was not true, registering the words, then searching again. Stunned, I sat in my chair momentarily mute. Hearing that Mary was going through this very scary medical emergency, almost 3,000 miles away, made me long for the Atlanta I had not missed before now. Oh, I had missed the friends, but never the city. Now I wanted the familiar city, wanted to be close enough to feel like I was “close.” I wanted to be able to see Mary with my own eyes.

Since that night, she has had a shunt put into her brain to relieve the pressure. There is no definitive medical plan at this moment while she and her partner research the best alternatives and the best medical facilities to handle this situation. Friends, family, and patients alike have joined together to form a huge network of love and support. Mary is adored by people everywhere. She is a lamp of hope and love in so many people’s lives, a giver of health and promise. It is no wonder she is loved in such huge proportion, an amount that seems to surprise her as she is washed in it daily. She is basking in this love, finding solace when her heart is heavy, watching the detour signs, layering talk about tomorrow with medical terms about tumor shrinkage instead of simply focusing on the mountain cabin they are building. She is focused now on living. She is cared-for and caregiver. Everyone must be worried, but we keep a chin up and a positive attitude. All I know for sure is how my heart feels. It aches at the prospect of this extraordinary woman being in any peril, this woman who has been a savior to so many, whose loving heart has been given away more times than she can count, to so many of us.

Please add Mary to your prayer list, to your thoughts, to your wish list. Send her good energy filled with healing words and images. Imagine her head filled with joy and wisdom in such great proportion that this tumor is pushed away and reduced in power and mass. Join us please in sending loving thoughts and healing energy to this amazing woman, this healing force who has given so much life to so many. She is the wondrous face of hope and love – she is MARY.

Photgraphy, Digital Art, and Rendering shown above are from our private collection.

Art Courtesy of Photographer and Artist, Nguyen Ngoc Danh, Sacramento, California

Golden Threads
Memories of mornings when your blonde hair
shone lustrous, spun like you of golden threads and sunlight,dance quietly across my visits with the past,
when pain was constant
and you were there; always there.

Love dressed in such a tiny package then,
vibrant motion, healer that you are.
From every cell the healing trickled out,
while fingers kneading new life for the needy, coaxed broken bodies back to whole again.

You walk this earth, with sight projected far
to see beyond what lies upon the path
and let your intuition guide you forward to nurture spirits, cleanse the body’s chaos, remove the blockswhich keep the bones ajar.

You’ve been the hope, the dream, the gentle peace
for morning's comfort or in the evening's light that’s cast upon the glowing limbs, as redwoods bid goodnight to one more sun and bid a new one’s rise for dawn’s release.

With love we come as one to sing your praise
while you are fighting for your days ahead amidst us all whose livesyou have changed. We reignite the loving touch you gave and send it back to heal and light your days.

Poetry Thursday - Sexton

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.

~ Anne Sexton ~


             1928 - 1974
Anne Sexton, acclaimed confessional poet, was the 1967 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. A close friend of poet Maxine Kumin, and a colleague and friend of Sylvia Path, Sexton wrote poetry about her life as a woman, her depression and torment. It was poetry that kept her alive: she suffered from mental illness and alcoholism for years, making 2 attmepts on her life. Despite her success as a poet and speaker, she finally did kill herself at age 46 in the garage of her MA home; death by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Photography Credit: Anne Sexton Photograph; Rollie McKenna, photographer;
University of Pennsylvania, Photographs of American Poetry Review Records,
1971-1998.

Words: How important they are...these utterances which keep us connected and give us language by which we speak, write, teach, learn, invent, search, collaborate, find commonality and differences, create community, share lives, and make love. These most enchanting of tools can become the most hurtful at the turn of a letter or tone. We are always charged with remembering how powerful words can be, how selection is critical to the moment, to the truth, and to the heart.

Poetry Thursday - Wordsworth

Photograph: From our private collection

Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

~William Wordsworth~


                 1770-1850     
William Wordsworth, celebrated British poet and England's poet laureate in 1843, was orphaned by age 13 and was largely disinterested in academics. His friendship with Samuel Coleridge, in conjunction with a financial grant bestowed him at a friend's death, marked the beginning of his devotion to poetry. Around 1791 Wordsworth traveled to France and met a woman with whom he had an illegitimate daughter. He supported this child financially though he returned to England in 1792 and later married his childhood friend, fathering 5 children. By the end of his life Wordsworth, the most celebrated poet in the world, was considered primary to the English Romantic movement, characterized by writing which focused largely on relationships with nature.


Wordsworth is buried with his wife, who died 9 years later, at Grasmere churchyard, in Grasmere, Cumbria, the northernmost village in the Lake district of England.
Wordsworth wrote "Daffodils" in 1804, the first poem I remember memorizing as a young student.

Poetry Thursday - Levertov

Photography: Rattlesnake Ridge, Washington,
From our private collection

Celebration
Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

~ Denise Levertov ~
© 1999 Denise Levertov, from The Great Unknowing: Last Poems


      Denise Levertov, 1923-1997
Born in England, Levertov and her husband emigrated to the US in 1948 where she taught at Brandeis, MIT, Tufts, UW, and Stanford. A celebrated American poet, she published 20 books of poetry. Inspired by Mt. Rainier, she lived in Seattle from 1982 until her death.

            © David Geier Photography

Poetry Thursday - Tagore

Art Credit: MUON LA HU KHONG
Anh cua Nguyen Ngoc Danh


My Song

This song of mine will wind its music around you,
my child, like the fond arms of love.
The song of mine will touch your forehead
like a kiss of blessing.
When you are alone it will sit by your side and
whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd
it will fence you about with aloofness.
My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,
it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown.
It will be like the faithful star overhead
when dark night is over your road.
My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,
and will carry your sight into the heart of things.
And when my voice is silenced in death,
my song will speak in your living heart.
~Rabindranath Tagore~


Rabindranath Tagore, 1851-1941
He is the most revered Indian writer of modern literature. A poet, a novelist, and an educator, Tagore also became a painter late in life. He was a composer and set many of his poems to music. Born into a political family Tagore was an advocate of independence for India. Internationally acclaimed, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Although he wrote his most important works in Bengali, he often translated his poems into English.

Poetry Thursday - Sarton

Photography Credit: "Man-Made Mist" by Terry Beebe

Now I Become Myself
Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
~May Sarton~

Portrait of May Sarton, 1936, Polly Thayer Starr, Oil on Canvas,
Courtesy of Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

May Sarton, 1912-1995, was a prolific writer of poetry, novels, memoirs, and journals, publishing over 50 books during her lifetime. Journal of a Solitude was her most popular journal, but I received the most pleasure and personal comfort from reading The House By the Sea. Sarton lived the last 20 years of her life in York, Maine, in a house overlooking the sea. She and I corresponded from the summer of 1986 until shortly before her death
on July 16, 1995.

Her books and her personal notes to me remain immensely fulfilling,
especially during times of struggle and challenge.
May is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.

Short Straw - It's the Ferry!

In these early morning, frosty moonlit hours, I sit sleepy-eyed inside my warm house looking out onto the frozen landscape now decorated with white tents. These tents are a feeble effort to blanket tender vegetation with warmth against the recent blast of winter weather surrounding Puget Sound. My husband, gardener of gentle spirit, designed them by hanging sheets on bamboo frames, working quickly in the freezing evening air. When he rejoined me after his garden soiree, his ears felt more like icicles than the globes of soft, warm flesh I love to kiss. He warmed them in the nape of my neck while we laughed and I screamed in mock horror!

Now our landscape sits frozen, eerie with its white pointed statues scattered about the front gardens, testimony to the trauma looming in the icy air. It looks more like a cemetery than the birthplace of a soon-to-be mecca of massive color.

Fickle are the sunlit days which lived here only a week ago when I had my lunch lakeside, watching ducks dive for their fishy noon-time meal. They, like I, had tasty snacks in the warm afternoon sunshine. Sailboats moved quietly in the distance while pups joined their human friends in a lazy afternoon stroll. Feet and paws moving in rhythm along the water's edge reminded me of how this place bustles with energy when sunlight shines its healing beams.

Yesterday my husband shared his pocket hand-warmers with his friends, the stellar's jays and squirrels and songbirds, who dine on seeds and nuts outside our windows. He added these packets of temporary warmth to fresh water bowls, hoping to keep the shallow water flowing so everyone could have a drink. Birdbaths nearby are now solid sheets of ice. We remembered that the tiny chickadees and other songbirds must have many extra seeds to survive the coldest nights so we added suet cakes for more energy-making feasting and gave the squirrels and jays their daily dose of peanuts. With tails arched high in the breezy air, the squirrels devoured most of their nuts as soon as we emptied the bag. Soon we saw a couple race across the rocky garden wall to hide some nuts for a future hungry day, then play chase in the afternoon's last light.

We will get lost in the Sunday Times and warm our bellies with hot chocolate before we amble into the morning's chill to hang orange slices from the evergreen limbs which protect our feathered friends. Then we'll draw straws to see if today is filled with a myriad of household chores or a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island!

Photography Credit:
Wolfgang Wander gave his kind permission for the use of his photograph of the Chickadee.
Please visit his website: http://www.pbase.com/wwcsig
and see his work and profile at http://www.nwpli.com/photographers/wolfgang/

Photograph of the Ferry: Courtesy of our private collection.

Awakening

I sit by the fire tonight anticipating the new life which stirs outside. Just beneath the surface bulbs give birth to green fans and foliage, some tip-toeing through the soil reaching toward the sun's warmth. I took a walk through the remnants of winter’s unkempt gardens this week to examine the earth; to touch, to see, and smell. The sun warmed me as its rays touched my arms and face; a sun absent far too long from our lives. The earth was dry again. A few white candytuft blossoms greeted me among the buds on the bank. This bank will be magical when it is fully covered in white and sprinkled with blue lithodora. It will be the first to bloom. I observed it all carefully, searching for the flush of new growth, the promise of tomorrow’s bounty. I noticed one Lenton rose now open, and the primroses blooming in pastels. Little green stubble peeped at me from crowns indented in the soil. Short wisps of thin green stems moved gently as I passed. All was perfect in this NW garden’s life.

Irises are pointing their green fans toward the treetops, and new foliage is inching up to join. Soon the daffodils, now taller than my hand, will cover the landscape like lemons ready to be picked, and the perfume of hyacinths will float in the air. Tall stalks of tulips will dance lightly in April’s breeze, swirling pinks and purples around the cherry tree whose weeping arms will swath her in white. May will open the irises like a color box of crayons, some petals pointing up and others curling down to give the bearded flower its formal shape. Their Dutch cousins will mix creamy yellows with lilac and splash India-ink blue across the palette. It will be a stunning bouquet. Rhododendrons breaking the silence of their green winter nest will open in waves of lavenders and purples, whites and magentas. Pink azaleas will join in this celebration of rebirth, and in every direction I look I will see nature's glory. It will cause me to pause. Every time my eyes meet this landscape I will marvel that it is ours.

It is no wonder we love to garden. We paint a canvas with flowers instead of oils and then rest in perfumed air, drinking fresh lemonade as we admire our work. Spring cannot come too soon to this house.

The Rest of the List - The End!

I am tired of feeling weighted down by the pending tag, so I am finishing this NOW and moving on!

4 Jobs I have had:

See previous posts for installments.
I could have added 10th grade English Teacher.

4 Movies I would see over and over:

Gone With the Wind
Midnight Cowboy
On Golden Pond
When Harry Met Sally

I have seen them all multiple times and will see them all again!

4 Foods that I Love:

Banana Popsicles
Bindi Masala (Okra Curry) & Kabuli Nan (Indian bread filled with cherries and nuts)
Sweet Potato Soufflé
Salmon Paté

4 Vacation Spots I have enjoyed:

Coastal New Brunswick, Canada
San Francisco Bay area, CA
New England - especially Maine and NH
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

4 Places I have lived:

Southern born, bred, and educated in various southern locations.
Atlanta, GA
Puget Sound area of the Pacific NW

4 Places I would rather be right now:

On the Mediterranean, somewhere off the coast of Greece
Sleigh riding, snuggled up with my hubby, in Lake Tahoe, NV
Looking out on the Pacific Ocean from our bed in Pacifica, CA
With my sister, giggling and planning our trip to the OR coast

4 Television Shows I Watch:

American Idol
CNN NEWS; news junkie here!
The Apprentice (don't like Donald, just his show!)

Big secret? Shhhhhh...Don't tell, but General Hospital (taped since 1981)!
Ask me about Luke and Laura!

Morning Glory, Morning Bright

Tagged earlier by Tara Dawn, I have chosen to respond in installments.

Part Four of 4 Jobs I have had:

Medical Social Worker: Career ladder - 1st social work job

My favorite client was Henrietta, an older woman, small in stature with bright brown eyes that seemed to warm you when they rested on your face. She was raising her grandchildren, a young boy and teen-aged girl. Her granddaughter eventually gave birth to a baby girl, then disappeared leaving the infant with Henrietta. Soon we would learn this baby, whom everyone called Patty, had sickle cell anemia.

Henrietta and I would conduct our regular meetings at her kitchen table, usually early in the mornings in the roomy co-op apartment where she lived. The sizzling aroma of bacon and eggs floated through the house as we drank tea at the breakfast table shortly after sending her grandson off to school.

As soon as we finished our talk Henrietta and I would go quietly into Patty’s room, where I would wake her, and off we would go to the kitchen where Henrietta would set up her potty chair. Patty sat while we drank another cup of tea. Getting Patty up from her crib was something I always looked forward to. She seemed to know me, and I loved to hold her close and watch the sleep slowly drift away. Seeing that sleepy face shift into the curious, spirited 2 year old she had become was like a miracle each time it happened. Her face would infuse the room with light; her giggles were a magic potion. Patty was washed in love with every word leaving Henrietta’s throat. It was contagious; there was more than enough love to go around.

One morning about 26 months after we met I got a telephone call from Henrietta whose voice was broken by loud wails of raw pain. Finally I was able to understand. She was telling me Patty had died. I had not even known Patty was in an acute episode of her illness. Everything happened so suddenly. Henrietta begged me to help her understand this, to get information from the hospital, to talk to a doctor – anything, just do something! She trusted me, and she knew I was professionally connected to staff at the facility where Patty was treated.

Eventually I was able to get a copy of the autopsy report to review. By then Henrietta had been catapulted into a place of remoteness, jarred by deep pain that took her joy and seemed to hide it permanently away. She was withdrawn and deeply depressed. I studied this disease - this baby-snatcher and thief of childhood and future. I understood better its course, the way it crawled through the blood, changing red blood cells into crescent shaped cells which could accumulate and block the passage of oxygenated blood to the body’s system, much like beavers erecting dams in a stream. These crises, also called acute episodes, occurred when blood flow was severely restricted. Organs could be damaged, sometimes beyond repair, if they were deprived of oxygen too long. This disease seemed to prefer specific cultures of people, those of African, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern descent. It had no preference for age – the genes were inherited and present at birth. I tried to teach Henrietta everything I had learned.

Henrietta and I finally made sense of this painful moment in life when a future was stolen, when an empty bed left a family broken like glass, in pieces on the floor. I was glad to help her understand this life-changing event, to support her through the grieving process, and to gently care about her and her big heart the way she cared for others. Henrietta eventually reclaimed her life, smiled when she remembered Patty, and thanked her God for the days they had spent in the southern sunshine.

We stayed in touch for many years, reminiscing about days long ago when we were both much younger, when a little child was such a morning glory in our lives. Later I would move into different areas of social work, finally settling in medical social work where I would eventually become the supervisor of a team located in the very facility where Patty had died. Patty guided me into my career as surely as if she placed my feet on the path.

Patty would have celebrated her 32nd birthday this year. Sweet dreams, sweet one.

*For purposes of confidentiality, identifying information has been changed.

Night Flight

Tagged earlier by Tara Dawn, I have chosen to respond in installments.

Part Three of 4 Jobs I have had:

Telephone Magazine Salesperson: College summer break

What a deep dive into the real world this job was! I was 19 years old with no concept of dishonorable employment and only one summer job on my resume. I realized something was amiss, however, when the white-haired woman who hired me, usually walking gingerly on crutches due to an undisclosed infirmity, suddenly picked up her crutches and galloped like a derby-running gelding when she thought she was alone in the office suite. I was dismayed. Later, deciding she might be a "fraud," a colleague and I tried to find her house in the safety of early evening light. We were curious to see if she had lied about her address, too. Yep, no such person, no such place, at least on that street. What did all this mean, we wondered.

Our boss and the owner of this magazine sales business was a smooth-talking, middle-aged, friendly and mild mannered guy. He hired young women to sell magazines by telephone and to schedule appointments for the following day when young male staffers would go into the field to pick up checks for the subscriptions we sold.

We had a typed speech to follow, a script, we called it. We struggled to convince our listeners to subscribe, leaving nothing to fate along our way. Spontaneous discussion was not part of our skill set development; there was a written response to every kind of “No” one could anticipate. We would search our script to find it and then, like parrots, spill it out as sincerely as we could. As I conducted these calls I had visions of television commercial salesmen, doors pushed shut in their faces while they attempted to sell vacuum cleaners. Many telephone receivers banged loudly in my ear during my short term employment. My naivete was quickly being "slammed" out of me.

I never learned what kind of business was being managed in that office, but magazine sales surely may not have been the focus! One morning a colleague who sat next to me during these scrambles into the jungle of urban America joined me in the elevator as we reported once again to the dreaded solicitation shuffle. We exited the elevator, walked down the hall, and opened the door to our office. Peering into empty space we stood there speechless for a minute. The office was clean; not a desk or telephone was left behind. The old woman, soft spoken and articulate, was missing in action. No crutches stacked against a wall. No sign of life but ours. No young males planning field visits. No movement but our breath filling the empty space before us.

I felt sick to my stomach and curious at the same time. For a moment it was like I had dreamed the entire scene. I slowly came to realize the truth. This “game” had been played before and was likely headed to a new location. I gazed at the emptiness and wondered if the perpetrators would be caught. I hoped. Handcuffs seemed like a nice ending to this job. It didn’t happen.

There would be another time in my future, several years later, when a man using crutches would pull them up and sprint toward a bus he wanted to catch as it pulled away from the curb. I watched from a window in the office where his disability checks originated. But, that is another story for another time...

Long Ago and Far Away

Tagged earlier by Tara Dawn, I have chosen to respond in installments.

Part Two of 4 Jobs I have had:

Office Filing Clerk: United States Air Force Base; Summer job

What a job - a dream job for a 17 year old! A few positions at a nearby Air Force Base were designed specifically for high school graduates who would be leaving for college in September, and I was the lucky recipient of an early appointment! Good salary and good benefits, especially for a "first" job with no experience in the working world.

I was offered an office assistant position with a team of 3 men inside a larger department regulating the purchase of Air Force vehicles. No one had ever managed the clutter or brought order to the filing system these men had developed. And, no woman had ever been a part of the team in this office which they called home for 8.5 hours a day.

This team of three, Lucas, Barry, and Jack, worked hard and enjoyed each other. They were excited about the arrival of the new office assistant and the balance of energy a female would bring to the team.

Lucas, stoic and sure-footed, a man in his late 30s, was the manager of this work group. Jack, the handsome and youngest man, was the comedian who painted the walls with laughter and charm. A fatherly type nearing retirement age, Barry was quiet but warmly inviting.

At first, I was a little intimidated by Lucas whose reserved demeanor met me at the door. He took charge with easy firmness, his quick aptitude waving flags as he spoke. I learned there was sensitivity lurking inside his detached manner, but he was a taskmaster who expected hard work and consistency.

Apparently, disorganization had never concerned Lucas since papers were stacked high across open spaces like fences marking territory. No matter in which direction I looked, I was staring into heaping drifts of papers piled haphazardly in front of me. First I would have to understand the function of the papers in order to organize them appropriately. I had my hands full.

These men treated me like a valuable gem they had just uncovered. They were respectful and always looking out for me. I was pampered while learning about office politics and being introduced to the massive paperwork trail of our federal government.

The equal rights activists a few years later would have frowned on the pleasure I took from being spoiled. Once, when the office A/C system stopped working, they sent me to the library to work, pushing a good book into my hands with verbal permission to leave early since they didn’t want me to get too hot! They doted on me and made my work life easy and fun. It was a mutual admiration society in which we were all thriving.

Suddenly Lucas was promoted and transferred to SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and I was forced to get honest with myself. During the course of this assignment I had developed a huge crush on this man who was my supervisor, and I was as sad to learn he was leaving as I was relieved. He was married and 20 years older; I was innocent, afraid, and on my way to college in another city. It never occurred to me to share my feelings; they scared me too much. The tenderness I felt toward him would remain my secret. Nevertheless, the prospect of telling him goodbye was very painful, and I sobbed when the moment arrived.

Several weeks later at the end of my summer appointment when it was my turn to leave, Lucas surprised me and the others by showing up at my “going away” party. I never knew if he came back specifically for the party or if he had business on base or in the city that day; he had been in Omaha for 2 weeks. Crying as I opened the gift from the staff, a hematite and pearl necklace which I still have, I was sad to tell them all goodbye. Lucas stayed a little longer than the rest, and holding my face in his hands while thanking me for the summer work I had done, he leaned down and kissed me gently. Then he turned and left. We would never see each other again. He was gone in much the same way he arrived, quickly and without fanfare.

We exchanged one letter and had one telephone conversation during my freshman year in college. Both were casual and well-wishing without mention of our last encounter or the kiss. We never spoke or corresponded again.

Many years later when I was telling this story to a friend, I decided to try to call him. I didn’t know if he was still in Omaha. It was now 18 years later, and I was happily involved in my career and my relationship, but I remained curious about this man who had stirred such a whirlwind of confusion and feelings in my innocent heart so many years before.

Omaha directory assistance gave me the phone number, and I nervously made the call. His wife answered the phone, and I introduced myself as someone who had worked for her husband many years ago and asked to speak with Lucas. She was silent for a moment, and I was immediately concerned that she resented my call. She finally broke her silence and quietly said that Lucas had died of lung cancer several years before. Thanking me for calling, she shared a little about his struggle with this disease and the difficulty he had endured his last year of life. I listened to his widow’s story, and I cried.

His wife was a lucky woman. Long ago a very nice man made the right decision.

Red Clay in the Sunset

Ok, Tara Dawn. I will cooperate with your tag, but I will do this in installments, making you work hard for the information, reading through post after post to finish it up! ~ smiling ~

Part One of 4 Jobs I have had:


Brick Cleaner: First job; approximate age 9

Coated with white cement, thick in places like hardened icing, these red bricks had been used as part of some structure somewhere else, and my father wanted them cleaned for the new patio he was having laid. I was assigned the job of cleaning the bricks for the wage of a penny a brick.

I was obsessed with these bricks, young entrepreneur that I was. "...Money makes the world go around, the world go around..." I derived the most pleasure from my painstaking efforts to clean each one smooth, knocking the white cement out of the 2 holes using a chisel and a hammer, and then cleaning the edges of each brick carefully so as not to break the clay. Over and over I hammered, hands becoming rough from my labor. I worked tediously at this job, each brick gleaming once again in its newfound red glaze.

Proud I was, standing by my pile of bricks, beaming when the day's count was made and the money changed hands. Counting as I cleaned, it was easy to decide how much longer I would work each day - I liked to be paid in dollar bills, big money for a young child in the '50s, so my goal was usually 100. Sometimes I made the count in two days. I didn't work 40 hours a week in those days, but I was, after all, doing hard labor – and I was a child of 9.

First jobs are important milestones. If life had just remained so simple...

Let Freedom Ring

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963


HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARTIN.





Photograph of M L King's gravesite at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia. July, 2003.
King built his peaceful revolution movement on the work of Mahatma Gandhi who led India to peaceful independence in 1947.




A statue of Gandhi was given to the city of Atlanta by the Indian government and stands outside the M L King Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Where Are the Ducks?

Disconcerting doesn’t quite describe the atmosphere or the feelings floating around in the puddles of the Pacific NW. Land sliding down hillsides and caves opening where earth once supported the roads are enough to frighten even the bravest of residents. I caution my husband to travel down our mountain carefully, taking a road which seems more likely to be held by firm ground. I worry that the narrow street winding around the back side of the mountain could end up in a pile of mud at the bottom.

All my life I have heard about rain in this part of the country. Until now I have seen nothing like this – 25 days of consistent rain. Past winters were drizzly, but it is the downpours this year which are creating the floods. It all began during Christmas with what they call the Pineapple Express which blew in from Hawaii and stormed the west coast. When we returned from our Christmas vacation we were met with rain and landslides in northern California and icy patches mixed with snow in the higher elevations of Oregon’s Interstate 5. Rain and wind slammed the coast and sent precipitation east. It never stopped.

I don’t usually mind the rains. They give me permission to lounge by the fire, read a new book, write letters, or take long, lazy naps. I like to listen to it tapping on the skylights and think about nature’s refreshment. But this is too much!

Now I worry that the many bulbs we planted in our gardens here will decay as they sit in pools of water. At least we know the evergreens towering high above us will have plenty to drink this winter. Usually the canopy made by their branches interferes. Now some are tumbling down in places as the saturated earth can no longer support their weight.

Come spring the gardens, deeply watered, will flourish in our emerald city’s sunlight. Until then, the ducks have free rain…oops…rein.

Some Leave Us Too Soon

I was reminded recently of the poet Jane Kenyon and her husband, Donald Hall. Jane left us far too soon when leukemia came stalking and stole her away at the age of 47, almost 11 years ago. Donald is still writing at Eagle Pond Farm, their home in New Hampshire, a family home where his grandparents once lived. He spent childhood summers there in the same farmhouse which remains his beloved residence.

After years of crazed anguish in the wake of Jane's absence, he has created a bridge over this rocky chasm and lives more peacefully in his solitude. He is writing, and has made space in his life for companionship again.

Donald Hall said during an interview "What was the most beautiful thing in our marriage was when we weren't aware that we were going to die. And we just had our routine. You know you look back on it, and you think, 'Why wasn't I aware of how blissful that was?' But if you'd been aware of how blissful it was you would have been dreading losing it. Anybody who's been through anything like this knows what I mean." In a letter he wrote to Jane shortly after her death, a poem entitled "Letter With No Address," Hall wrote "four weeks/since you lay on our painted bed/and I closed your eyes." and "Your presence in this house/is almost as enormous/and painful as your absence."

Jane, younger by almost 20 years, was once a student of Hall's at Michigan, becoming his lover and eventually his wife. Theirs was an interesting life, separate during the day as they each wrote and worked in opposite ends of the house, yet connected in all ways. Lust would beckon them to make dates for love in the afternoon following mornings of hard work. This love affair endured until her death and captivated him long after she left this earth. I recently found Jane's poem, "The Shirt," fun-filled and spiced with her sensual sense of humor.

Hall chronicles this journey through leukemia, Jane's last days, and finally her death in his book, Without. I have just ordered The Painted Bed and The Best Day, The Worst Day. Both of these detail personal moments of this life which was blessed and rich yet tormented by impending death. Jane's posthumous book of poetry, Otherwise, is another one I shall order. Her poem "Let Evening Come" is a favorite of mine.



There is a fabulous essay written by Liam Rector who knew them both well and whose friendship with Donald and Jane offers a zoomed-in view of their life. His wedding to Tree Swenson, director of Academy of American Poets, was held in the back garden of Eagle Pond Farm. Swenson designed the covers of Jane's books, and only days before Jane died they collaborated on the painting which Jane wanted to grace the cover of Otherwise. Rector and Swenson had just gotten a puppy which they had named Kenyon when Donald called to tell them it was time to drive up to the farmhouse to tell Jane goodbye. Kenyon accompanied them on this sad journey.

My favorite of Donald's work is his prose, actually, specifically Life Work, which I have given as a gift several times. It was my initial introduction to him and this interesting life he lives. Through it I also found Jane and her beautiful poetry and later the PBS emmy-winning film, A Life Together. The film brought me their poetry readings and a glimpse of Eagle Pond Farm. It is a fascinating portrait of an intimate life lived and shared in love and poetry.

If you don't know these two exciting writers, be sure to check them out. It will be a delicious treat on a cold, winter's day.

The Spring of Winter

What promise a new year holds. It is a time when many of us become mapmakers, formulating our plans for new directions to the new places we want to go, charting our courses, fantasizing about the prospects and idealizing to some extent, but most of all renewing our hopes and dreams.

This time of rebirth kicks off such energy in some of us. I find myself willing to examine the parts of my life which keep me tied to results which no longer work. I want a change. I want to find a different path.

Why do we lose our way in the forest a few months after making these life altering commitments? January is filled with vitality and zealous affirmation. In February the momentum wanes, and by March or April many of us are back to old habits or at best revised newer ones. I want to make a firm commitment to make a lasting commitment! :))

There is something about a new year which propels us into a modus operandi of change and which presents us with a pattern to cut the cloth. Perhaps it is buried in the process of saying Goodbye to the yesterdays of the past year. Perhaps it is bound in the tradition of ritual. Maybe it is simply part of the seasonal shifting of nature. As the year ends could it be that we prepare for spring's renewal and begin to design our internal gardens? We are, afterall, perennials in a variety of ways.

No matter why resolution permeates the early days of January, I have determined that the most important gift I can give myself and others in the coming year is an attitude adjustment! It is time for me to look more often at the abundance of my life, to give thanks for the joys which surround me, to be more grateful and always to be gracious. Bad habits can outlive their usefulness in our lives and my whining is late to its date with the guillotine.

I hope that the coming year will bring peace to every corner of the earth and that the energy we learn to focus on this, our tender earth, will calm its inner conflicts and churnings, quieting it and bringing internal peace. The natural disasters of 2005 spoke loudly to this need for attention, for relief and comfort.

May we pay careful attention to Mahatma Gandhi's words: "We must become the change we want to see." Now, imagine the cummulative effect of such change....

Christmas Scents and Senses

Called by the scents of cinnamon and clove, I rush toward Christmas and the few shopping days I have left. These days are just icing on my cake since I finished all the necessary shopping weeks ago.

Wassail on a cold winter's night will warm the body and fill the air with the fragrances of Christmas. It is time to make this divine potion and my aunt's oatmeal fudge cookies. My husband is craving my sister's butterscotch haystacks so I will add these to my list of things to do. Good snacks for a road trip. Oh, if I could have his svelte body and eat the carbs he seems to crave. Some days his van resembles a rolling convenience store! :)

Our landscape is shining now with a lighted tree and tiny lights sparkling among the junipers and shrubs. Draped in ropes of evergreen garlands, the courtyard walls gleam in white lights while each post is tied with a red velvet bow. Poinsettias and gold grasses dress the entryway in Christmas cheer. A wreath I made 2 years ago accents the door and adds just the right touch. Mistletoe will complete the vignette and give us a place for stolen Christmas kisses and giggles.

We have lovingly brought home each ornament for our tree from places we have traveled or from shopping moments along the way when their beauty simply overwhelmed us. We began our collection long before we even married, when days and nights together were then bridged by Delta jets. Those days were hard ones. We had love and hate relationships with the airports and jets which brought us together yet were party to our cruel separations. It is more than a blessing for us to now enjoy our Christmases without the dread of each holiday's end. Instead we welcome winter's slower pace. We are eager for the cold nights by the burning logs where we will make plans for spring's garden while eating hot soup and drinking cups of hot chocolate and mocha. We are happy to see the New Year roll in. There is no "end" in sight - only beginnings ahead.

I am bothered during this season as I contemplate loss. I think of all the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, the children; think of the lovers and the friends, all those who no longer have the opportunity to share holidays with someone they love. I think of the men and women who have lost their lives serving this country, fighting a war which seems to have no end. I am angry and sad at such unnecessary loss. For all the loss, for all the unmet needs, for those who are lonely or afraid, hungry or cold, for those who ache with loss my heart is open and full.

We will find some blankets to carry to our Union Mission this week. I read an article that the natural disasters this year have created a deficit in local donations. Shoes, socks, blankets, gloves, jackets, warm underwear - all these are needed by someone who has nothing.

To all of you who read this entry, I send happiest holiday wishes. So, here is to wishing each of you a Very Merry Christmas!

Felix Navidad

An Unlikely Gift

Sometimes we must let go and let those we love live the lives they choose, silently and with respect for the choices they make. Respect - not agreement or admiration, but an honoring of choice - is an understanding that we can never stand squarely in another’s shoes and can never fully comprehend the complexity of the life being lived, the motivation, or the needs. What seems one way may in all confusion be another; what seems pointed and straight can be crooked and circular; what seems one color may be a conglomerate of many; in fact what “is” may not be at all.

Oh, the challenge to let go when it is one’s mother – our first opportunity of real intimacy: the first person we come to know, need, and love. The one we thrive with and die without. The one we mimic, learn from, cry with, laugh for, coo to, feed from, and touch. This woman who teaches us about love and life, about men and relationships, about personal strength and choice - the woman who teaches us most about being woman. She is our heart, our role model, our protector, our strength. Letting go is made even more difficult when she is old, frail, unsteady, undernourished.

It is so painful to watch my mother continue to choose neglect and deprivation over joyful abundance and the nourishment of her spirit, mind and body as she holds on to her life partner of more years than I care to count. She is miserable in the wake of his wrath, miserable in the absence of him. This woman who said she loves my sister and me more than life itself once again remains in an unhealthy environment as we plead for her to leave, a plea we have made since childhood. We open our lives and homes to her; we push for her to tackle the conflict differently this time – to walk away. Walk away from the pain and torment and weariness, walk into love’s embrace where nourishment awaits her. Leave the chaos and choose tranquility. Do it differently, this last chance for life where she is now standing. It is down to the finish line now – and we are the cheerleaders, dressed out with pom-poms and megaphones. We sing support, call her name, dance in animated rhythm as we chant the refrain “Come to us, where you are wanted and loved!” We cry in our pain at seeing her so frail and virtually alone in these, her last days on earth. We hold her, comfort her, caress her, support her – reminding her there is another way of living. She has a choice – either coast, either daughter, both willing to nurture her to better health and provide her with a home and a life which has promise – even at this late age. Both eager for her, both awaiting her agreement, a commitment to life and to love. Sadly neither will receive her.

How in the world did my sister and I learn from this woman to choose men who are kind and temperate, who are generous and good? Men who are loving and sensitive, men who wear integrity and honor as comfortably as the skin on their backs, who share in our lives, nurture and support us, defend and respect us – these are the men who sleep in our beds each night and kiss us each morning.

With the role model she provided how did we learn that women ARE valuable? How did we learn that husbands can and should treasure us instead of abuse and neglect? With a father who has no inclination to nurture, no disposition toward gentleness or respect, no ability to discern what another might need or want – or for that matter even care - how did we understand the role of men in a healthy partnership, the true and fair counter to our femaleness? How did we eventually find the extraordinary men we married? Perhaps we were looking for exactly what was missing in our lives – the very man we both needed and could find NO WHERE as children. If the gift of this selfish, abusive, angry, hurtful man’s presence in our lives was a passive dedication in us to find everything he was NOT, then we have much to thank him for.

Who would have thought the pain of our young lives could have brought such goodness into our later years? My beloved is the richest blessing of my life. Would he have been my husband had I been anyone else’s child?

I must allow my mother to be who she is – choose the life she feels compelled to choose, while accepting in some way that what I wish for her is simply not the life she is meant to have. I am sad that she does not have the courage to make different choices, but her life is hers, and she is not a young and inexperienced woman any longer. She has lived many years on this earth - she knows what she is doing. She sees the options in front of her, acknowledges other possibilities are available.

I can’t change her life, but I can change my own. I can make peace with her choices in life by accepting her will. This will offer me powerful freedom to live in peace with my own choice - to let her go.

Red and Yellow, Green and Gold

What is it about autumn that fills me with such comfort and sadness at the same time? I notice this most as I stand in our courtyard looking out over the gardens, eyes caught by the burnt red and apricot leaves of our smokebush, its spent blooms now looking more like pieces of hay than the pink puffs of mimosa they mimic in summer. At once I notice a feeling of longing inside, something on the verge of anxiety, but then all at once a feeling of satisfaction and comfort replaces it. Back and forth I seem to shift between sadness and a comforting sense of deja vu. Is it my youth I grieve, when schooldays brought me out into the crisp fall mornings much earlier than I would have preferred? Or is it something still unknown to me, an autumnal event which beckons my emotional memory but leaves my consciousness behind? No matter, autumn is my favorite time of year, passionate in its colors of hot flames and burning embers...seducing us into winter's long sleep.