Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had our last writing group last night.  We take summers off, as we're all busy traveling or having guests visit.  But this time I feel we won't resume in the fall.  Two of the participants seldom show up and are not really writing and are in other groups.  The rest often don't write except for myself and one other.  It's just not working anymore.  I will have to be the one to say this, as I began the group many years ago.  But it's right speech to say aloud what I am observing, and let go when it's time.  We are all friends, so we will see each other anyway.  We live within walking distance of each other.  So it's not goodbye, it's let's move on.  I believe what might work better is 3 or 4 times a year to get together and check in.  But forget sharing writing.  That's what I will suggest.  But I always write, so my loss is biggest, from the point of view of the craft.  The other person who is working on something might meet occasionally with me, and that could work better.  What nags me is the feeling I'm the bad guy for suggesting we shut down.  And maybe I am.  If they insist on continuing, well, consensus rules.  I'm afraid they won't want to hurt my feelings by agreeing.  It's complicated.  But I guess most things are.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I and two friends went on a tour of the Mormon Temple near us.  It's been renovated and until it is consecrated non-Mormons may see it.  It sits like a citadel or castle on a hill, with an amazing view.  Everyone was kind and welcoming, and the building like a warren of rooms, with different purposes for each.  The paintings are mostly of Jesus in various scenes from the Bible, with a few others of fathers and sons or mothers and children.  Everything is spotless and hushed.  There are no windows.  You have to go outside to see the view.  Our tour caused a lively discussion after, as we ate lunch.  We only had impressions, but from what was said we could all four see the appeal.  The emphasis is on the family and blood relatives, and the description of heaven as being where all the ancestors unite with you and yours a lovely image.  These people believe with all their hearts, and I surely wouldn't want to argue with them or take away their happiness.  I just don't believe in organized religion, and haven't since I turned 17.  Nothing dramatic happened, I just felt the structure was oppressive and bound me to something that made my life narrower and restricted.  I just no longer believed in someone or something OUT THERE to turn to.  Which is why the practice of Buddhism suits me better.  I work on myself, not others.  Changing or fixing anyone else is not my business.  When I act, it is to enact the precepts and keep my vows.  If there is response, fine, but that is not my goal.  So I am not missionary material.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We spent a couple of hours yesterday with the new grandson and his parents.  He still snoozes a lot, and likes to be bounced on a giant bouncy ball.  I was afraid I'd be tipsy with him but I mastered the bouncing easily.  The muscles in my one arm got tired after a while though, as he's a little butterball.  Observing my son and daughter-in-law's confidence with him is so touching.  I know it's going to be a wrench when my son goes back to work in a couple of weeks.  He's lucky he lives in a state that gives him six weeks leave, but many other countries give so much more.  Why it is not a top priority to support new parents is a mystery, along with many others that contradict "family values".  Will it ever change?  We seem to devalue everything to do with children:  teachers, schools, child care, nutrition, maternity leave, taxes, housing.  We hope that relatives will step in and help, but many are unable to do so.  Either they live too far away, have health issues or are caring for their elderly parents.  And most are not retired, and to survive will never be able to give up working.  We live in a Disneyland of fantasy, imagining ourselves in a 1950's sitcom that was utterly false at the time.  I'd hoped for better from my country.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

On this Memorial Day I'm thinking of two soldiers, one a secret to me until my mother died and the other the fallen husband of my dearest friend.  After my mother died I was visiting my favorite aunt and she showed me ancient photos of the family.  I learned I had an uncle my aunt was married to who adored me as a toddler, but he died suddenly in a car accident and my parents let his memory fade and never spoke of him.  I lost him in my memory.  And she surprised me again by saying my mother was in love with and engaged to marry a soldier in World War II, a pilot like my dad, but he was killed and she never mentioned him to my brother or me.  She carried that wound to her own death, silent.
 My friend secretly eloped with her beloved after graduating from college, right before he was sent to Vietnam.  He was a helicopter pilot, and died three months after he was posted.  It was a shock to her entire family and all her friends except the one who had driven across the country with her, ostensibly to visit me and my husband.  She never said a word to me.  When he died she was devastated, and didn't want to live.  I've traced his name on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. and seen it on a a wall of the college they both attended. 
Two loves lost, but not forgotten, two graves visited, in my mother's case by his relatives, and in my friend's case, by her, her kids and second husband and other relatives.  How our lives are changed by the secrets and memories we hold.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I went with my friends to a jazz show this afternoon, and the group playing was headed by a friend of ours from three and four decades ago.  His band played at my fiftieth birthday party which I threw for myself instead of feeling sorry for myself.  I hired his band, and he brought along a singer (R & B) who was fantastic.  I rented a hall, had a catered dinner, flowers and a hundred people.  I danced every piece, and for a year after was apologizing to people:  "Sorry we didn't get a chance to talk more, but you know where I was".  And they did.  I danced by myself, with everyone who was on the floor.  My band leader friend had small girls back then, and when I saw them at a recent wedding they were all grown up, through college and working.  He and his wife have held complex jobs, but he's always made room for his jazz.  He can play xylophone, clarinet, small saxophone and large saxophone.  He's always had a band.  And can he play!  His African American soul shines through, and he's an amazing historian who lectures on the history of jazz.  But he says it best through his music.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

What I love about Hitchcock's second version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is the sly inversion of the message.  On the surface, Doris Day's wife and Jimmy Stewart's husband are the perfect married couple, and yes, they are, for that time.  She's given up a hugely successful career as a world entertainer to be stuck in Indianapolis with her physician husband, and raise their son.  He's oblivious to the fact that she has given up so much because he doesn't want to move to New York, where she could flourish again.  He can't control her if she's in her world.  But underneath, it's she that has the smarts to distrust the Frenchman they meet in Marrakesh, and she who figures out where their kidnapped boy is.  The perfect scene for me is his withholding information from her until he forces her to take two sedatives.  You can see that she would be deeply upset, naturally, but it's he who can't bear to let his emotions out of the cage.  Day's acting in this scene is amazing, and you are gripped by the situation.  But he drugs her.  That way he can keep control of a situation he thinks he, as a man, is better equipped to handle.  Later, when he searches for a name he thinks is a person, and is mistaken, it's she who realizes it must be a building and finds the kidnappers herself.  It's she who screams and saves the Prime Minister, as Stewart is still running around searching.  Ironically, in an entertainment on the screen, it's that kind of career that is indispensable, not an ordinary GP.  Moreover, because Stewart is almost always neurotic on screen, and Day so authentic seeming, we come to see her as the hero.  And it's her singing that finds their son due the way she has trained him to sing and know her songs and voice.  Let's here it for entertainment!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm working on a grandmother journal for my fourth time.  Each time I work on one, there's a dollop of deja vu and yet a different tone, because I'm that much older, and I emphasize different events and also, I fear, my "story" has solidified, and I attempt to fight back and stay fresh.  Also, I'm protective, so I'm not going to be detailed and fiercely honest for a child.  Sometimes the "story" is enough.  It's a fine balance, which I don't believe I've achieved in any of the books.  I just give myself an A for trying.  It's better than nothing.  And if they grow up and want to know more there is my writing, in the form of blogs, poems, unfinished novels and memoirs.  Maybe someone will be a historian.  Of my kids, the oldest is the historian.  So I sit down and shut down my critical sense of what the narration is, and aim for some gentle picture of my times and life.  Of course the real thing is complex beyond my understanding even.  But perhaps they'll read between the lines. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had dinner last night with a friend, her partner, and her mother, who lives with them.  She's 95, but sharp as a tack.  She is pretty adorable, from my point of view, but then I romantisize all my friends' situations who are lucky enough to have parents alive.  I was forty when mine died, and they were younger than I am now.  One of my kids doesn't even remember them.  What I admire even more is my friend's dedication to her mother, coupled with firm boundaries so that she is able to take trips and live her life without feeling guilty when she does.  My friend's other sister lives back east, but flies out to visit when my friend is on a long trip.  How fair and sensitive she is to the responsibility for their mother. 
One of the topics her mother and I discuss is old movies and movie stars.  Another is books, as she's as avid a reader as her daughter and me.  Her hearing is bad, but I have the kind of voice that carries across an ocean, so we're okay.  My grandchildren also can project across an auditorium and need no microphones.  We are veritable loud mouths.  She likes to hear about the grandkids, and has seen them all at one time or another.  Her own are of course way grown up, but devoted to her.  It's a lovely and loving situation, and I appreciate the effort and care it takes for everyone involved.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm having lunch with my younger son, daughter-in-law, new baby and her mother, who has flown down to admire the little fellow.  And he is adorable.  He looks just like her daughter, so much so it's cute.  I know my daughter-in-law must be thrilled to have her mom here.  Their entire family is so amiable and friendly, and I'm lucky to be related to them.  I have been fortunate in my kids' in-laws and I know it.  Today is sunny and supposed to be about ten degrees warmer, so it's a great day to take the baby out.  My husband is up at the cabin trying to figure out what's wrong with our water heater, and he's a hero to me for doing so.  He's so busy singing and performing in his choruses that it's taken him a while to get up there.  I expect it's beautiful, with masses of wildflowers that will change but flourish throughout the summer, as we've had such a great year for precipitation.  I so look forward to being up there, but hot water helps, as everything and everyone gets mighty dirty traipsing around the lake and there will be tons of pollen this year.  We have kids and friends coming up, and we hope to take our granddaughter for a couple of days when she visits.  Summer!  Can't wait!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've had a lovely few days with a dear friend from out of state.  We saw the Monet show (my fourth time!), the Warhol show, shopped a bit, saw two of my grandkids, and talked our brains out.  The weather did not cooperate, but normally this would be a great time of year to visit.  Strange days!  Now I'm getting back to my various projects and going to help out with my grandson since his dad just landed a job he is excited about, but it's a commute.  It's only a couple of weeks until my daughter is finished teaching, so hopefully it will go smoothly.  Our son's mother-in-law is out visiting the new baby so I'm meeting up with them tomorrow.  Baby is only a month old, but they are venturing out more and more, as he's so easy and mellow that there is no danger of cabin fever.  I've got the info for our granddaughter's visit, in June, so I'm happily anticipating lots of fun.  Now if the weather will just cooperate.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

The controversy around abortion has always been and always will be about the patriarchy.  Controlling women is its object.  To constantly remind us we do not have agency.  And until women figure this out, because men are never going to back off, then men will be telling women what to do with their bodies and lives.  I've fought for this right all my life, and now it is my daughters' and granddaughter's fight. Men are hurt by the patriarchy as much as women.  They are supposed to be John Wayne on steriods, and the full range of feelings and actions are discouraged.  They need to be freed as well.  A bunch of white men had their heyday, played war games and colonized, and it's time to be open to an inclusive, compassionate and freer world for everyone.  One way to fight this battle is to get as many guns out of circulation so that men can stop killing each other, killing their wives and children, and themselves.  Take away that power, and women would be more easily able to leave a batterer, walk down the street at night, go to college and pursue a career or whatever dream they have.  Men don't have to have only one feeling:  anger.  Underneath anger is fear, and what they fear is a world where kindness not power is the norm.  But it would be a more livable, nurturing world for both men and women.  Don't let politicians and CEOs and movies and TV tell you what you are.  Be the best you can be; your most complex, interesting, unique self.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's raining today.  Very unexpected but then isn't all the weather this year?  My husband and I marched out with umbrellas to the bakery to order a cake for our son-in-law's birthday.  All the flowers looked luscious in the rain.  I'm catching up on correspondence and working on the grandmother journal.  I'm reading a very important but hard to read book:  No Visible Bruises.  It is research into how to prevent domestic violence, and it is gripping but painful.  I worked many years in battered women's shelters, and I try to keep up with what's going on, but this book is important because it highlights the signs that will develop into a likely homicide.  People are being trained to notice these signs:  police, medical personnel, shelter workers, therapists, clergy and others who may come into contact with victims.  It's a hopeful book in that there are patterns, and some are subtle, that predict fairly accurately, when a perpetrator will kill his wife and/or children.  I pray that more people get trained and the knowledge also becomes more general for everyone.  Because all of us know someone living in fear, we just might not be aware of it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I dropped by puddings from a local bakery for the new parents yesterday.  Chocolate and Caramel Custard.  Comfort food.  I had to quietly meet my daughter-in-law at the door, because baby was asleep on my son, and they said he'd had a fussy morning.  There is little I can do, as basically they are bonding and getting the lay of the land (baby).  I bring food and visit a bit and try to hold him but I'm really not much help.  I printed out some photos of him on my computer and put up his picture next to the other three grandchildren.  I know he is going to change so much that this is futile, but it feels good to have him included on our wall in our bedroom and downstairs in the hallway.  I am beginning to work on the Grandmother book I bought a few months ago.  My granddaughter enjoys hers, and I think the other two will when they are older.  And since my parents never got around to filling in the ones I gave them, I feel a kind of urgency.  I don't want anyone left out.  I find the book interesting, as I have to reflect on my own history.  I tell it slightly differently with every book.  And none is the same format, so the information is varied.  Plus, I'm writing in different years, with events highlighted that are more relevant to each child.  At least I hope so.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had a grand old time at the baseball game yesterday, eating peanuts and popcorn, slathering sunscreen on our faces and arms, and for the finale, running around the bases after the game.  The little grandsons thought that was fun, and they saw the mascot and his mother.  It was Breast Cancer Awareness day, and both teams wore some hot pink, and five hundred survivors marched the field before the game.  Our team lost, which is part of the tradition.  We have so much history in the ballpark, going back to when me oldest two kids and I went to celebrate the champions of the World Series, in the early seventies.  I'm quite the loyal fan.  But let's face it, I people watch, debate getting a lemonade, chatter to my family and this time to the two and three year old squiggles.  They both did very well, with only a seventh inning stretch to the kids room for a break.  We were all exhausted from the sun and trudging around from the car, to the car, to the field, around the stadium.  It was well worth it.  Summer is upon us.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My kind husband served me breakfast in bed.  When the kids were home, they did it.  I hope their kids are doing it for them.  Being a mother was something I always longed for, and helping with my cousin's kids and reading Little Women and the like increased my desire for more kids than two.  I ended up having four, but there was a time as a teenager when my parents' friends' seven kids seemed ideal.  Having easy labors and healthy kids encouraged me.  My mother's stories of her twelve siblings made children, a lot of children, appear attractive.  My mother was an inspiration, because she truly enjoyed children.  And she was the major parent.  My father traveled a lot, so it was often just the three of us.  She taught us how to play cards:  canasta, gin rummy, crazy eights, hearts, old maid, then bridge.  She herself was a bridge champion as well as a golf winner.  I knew she was smart and athletic before I knew she left school at third grade.  She sewed all our clothes, was an amazing, forward thinking cook, had house design skills that everyone admired, and had the capacity to draw friends to her.  She mentored many teenage girls.  But mainly, I could see she loved us, loved all children, and saw raising them as a full, wonderful life.  I wish she'd had a career, for after we left, but by then she'd fought a brave battle with cancer and survived when no one conquered that particular kind of brain tumor.  It left her with a fear of reoccurence.  She told me later that no way was she leaving her kids.  My brother was eleven and I was fourteen.  She kept her word.  Thanks Mom.  I love and appreciate you more each year.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We took our two year old grandson to the rose garden nearby yesterday, and did he ever love it!  Stopped and smelled dozens and dozens of roses and picked up fallen petals.  Even the waterfall did not interest him, nor the two turkeys who were very close.  They seemed to sense the snack bag.  He was deeply enchanted by the full blown beauty of roses ranging from snowy white to deep red, from pale pink to soft lavender, from bright yellow to orange, from red and white stripes to a delicate gray.  Finally, we sat on a bench for our snack.  We all had apples, and he ate half of a big one, while three boys wandered over from a preschool outing to talk to us.  They were costumed:  one said he was Sandman, another Superboy and a third Crusher, but with no clues on his tee shirt and shorts.  They announced they'd seen a Monarch butterfly.  I asked if they'd seen bees, but they looked puzzled.  The girls were in the middle of a rose batch, all wearing princess costumes.  I could tell my grandson was thrilled with the discussion.  After they left, I brought out a bottle of bubbles, but they didn't work well, so we gave up and went back to admiring the roses, until we had to leave, him with his fists full of rose petals.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I friend of mine had to rush to her mother's side for an emergency.  She's feeling full force the reversal that an aging parent causes.  My parents were younger than I am now when they died, and my mother's heart attack was out of the blue and instantly fatal, and then months later my father's cancer was so advanced when they found it so he lived only seven weeks.  He was almost eight years younger than I am now.  I miss them still, but really was involved in caretaking for only the seven weeks my father lived, and he had a person who came in and helped.  So I wish my parents were still around, but would find it agonizing to be a witness to their suffering.  Mine both were sharp as tacks until they died.  They looked darned good as well.  So I am sympathetic to friends in the position of aging themselves while taking care of parents deteriorating and needing care and involvement.  I can only imagine the inevitable heart squeeze.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I saw my tiniest grandson this morning.  I was bringing over baby rings from my babyhood, and a a charm bracelet my mother often wore that her grandkids adored, as it had a treasure chest that opened, a dog whose eyes and mouth moved, spinning lovebirds, and other trinkets.  I like giving something from my parents or my husband's grandparents for these momentous occasions like weddings, graduations and births.  The little guy looked adorable in a zebra striped sleeper, and he was ready for his parents to take him to the pediatrician to check that he'd gained back his birth weight.  When I held him it sure felt like he has.  He's a little chunk.  I'm grateful they share their joy with us and we can participate in these small but special markers of baby's development.  This afternoon we're seeing our middle grandson after he gets home from preschool.  We have a water toy to give him for his back yard.  Fun!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I went to our safe deposit box yesterday to get some baby rings out for the new grandson.  I'm slowly giving away all my valuable jewelry, given to me by my mother, aunt or my husband's grandmother, so that they can have something historical in the family.  I also found my mother's charm bracelet, which I remember so well, and am giving it to my daughter-in-law.  I like the idea of doing this myself now, so that no choices will need to be made after I'm gone.  I'd like to downsize in the next few years, to do the same with the furniture and paintings and mementos I have.  It's the decade to be giving away, and generally, as I age, I part easily with books and clothes and such.  The majority of what I have they won't want, any more than I desired my parents' valuables.  I immediately gave my mother's fur coats away, took no furniture, and just selected things to remember them by, and allowed my kids to pick out things as well.  I needed to see signs of them for the first year after they died, but gradually most of it has been given to the kids or packed away.  I'm sentimental, but I don't really need any triggers to jog my memories.  They are safe in my heart.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night we saw an old movie, that I had seen but my husband hadn't:  "I'll Be Seeing You".  It's set in the midwest during World War II.  Joseph Cotten plays a soldier on leave because of shell shock.  He meets a woman on a train, played by Ginger Rogers, who is visiting her aunt and uncle for the holidays.  He pretends he has a sister in the same town, and because it is Cotten, you are afraid he's a stalker.  (He always had an edge, see Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt)  Gradually her family invites him into their circle, and he spends Christmas and New Year's with them.  He confesses why he's home on leave:  he has been in a psychiatric hospital, and has no family, as he was raised in an orphanage.  She has her own secret, which she doesn't reveal:  she's out of prison for a ten day leave.  She has served half her sentence for manslaughter, three years, and has three more to go.  Her story is as raw as today's Me, too headlines.  Her niece, played by Shirley Temple, is a thoughtless teenager, and it is through her that we face our own prejudices and biases.  She carries this burden very well, and since it IS Shirley Temple, we are forced to identify at least somewhat with her.  Important issues are handled delicately and empathetically, and after the film is over, the viewer is haunted by them.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday we attended a wedding of our friend's daughter.  It was joyful and poignant, as these things are.  My friend has been a widow for decades, and raised her two daughters by herself after her husband suddenly died, when the girls were 10 and 13.  She's a champ.  I know she would have liked to have found a new partner, but it hasn't happened yet.  But she lives a full, meaningful life, and has two amazing daughters to prove it.  Her husband's brother gave the speech the proud father would have given, and did a great job.  Her speech was touching and wise.  She can laugh at herself, a quality I find almost more important than any other.  She is the definition of courage, and she has given back so much to others.  First to her mother, disabled with polio, then memory loss, then to her clients when she was a social worker helping families with special needs kids.  Now she is working with another friend of ours to talk about gun violence in the schools and do trainings that up the awareness of what guns do in our culture.  She's Bodhisatva, and she was beautiful and calm and gracious and everywhere checking in with people throughout the event.  I hope someone is taking care of her today. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We went on a walk with our grandson yesterday and he was fine until he wasn't.  We attempted to wait him out, as he fiddled with a found bottlecap and ran up an down a driveway.  We talked to the owner of the driveway and she said he was adorable.  We talked to the neighbor and she was a bit more clear eyed and remembered the age.  Finally, we held his hands and he let himself be dragged like a dead weight the rest of the way home.  It felt like he weighed 100 pounds.  It was the sixties again, he being the Free Behavior protestor and us cast as the mean police.  When we got to our stairs he walked himself up with one hand attached to me.  He appeared to be mighty satisfied.  I asked him if he was angry, and he said yes, but wouldn't say why.  I believe he's discovered the world is unfair, and people can just disrupt an innocent victim's cosy world, by taking away one's nanny and forcing him to go to preschool.  Sigh. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday I walked all over town.  I was exhausted by late afternoon, but revived when my husband and I met our friends at the neighborhood theater and saw "Amazing Grace".  Talk about being energized!  The film is of the two nights Aretha Franklin sang gospel with her childhood friend, a Baptist minister and his choir.  The film is poorly done.  Warner Brothers had hired Sydney Pollack to do the filming, because they wanted to release the film with the album, but I'm guessing Pollack was high or otherwise engaged.  But it doesn't matter.  The music lifts and carries you.  You see this legendary force give every cell in her body and mind with every song.  She is witnessing.  Her father is there and gives a little speech.  The Rolling Stones are there.  Everybody who made it to the two performances has been grateful ever since, I'm certain.  But you come away knowing you've witnessed a gift so profound and sublime that your cells tingle.  She didn't want this film released, and her family released it only after her death last year.  But she does it proud, and when you see it, you are never going to forget it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I went with a friend to see Norman Fisher read from his new book last night.  I seldom go out at night, since I can't drive, but I walked to the bookstore and we had tea, then after the reading she gave me a ride home.  The book seems interesting, and I will read it soon.  It is about the imagination, and the parts of the book he read and the discussion after were lively.  He had us speak to the person next to us and I met a woman who's grandmother and mother were Theosophists.  We somehow talked of Walt Whitman, and both agreed his poems were brimming with love.  How great a voice he seems now, and Thoreau as well. 
My friend had told me while we were having tea that many years ago, I wished for four grandchildren.  This was way before my oldest grandchild was born.  I hadn't remembered.  Now I have four, and what an incredible blessing!  My wish came true.  And how wonderful to have a long time friend who can remind me of words I spoke so long ago.  And trigger gratitude both for the grandchildren and my friend.