Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I find myself frozen, waiting.  Ostensibly I'm waiting to hear about the MRI results, but I notice little things, like not having knitted the last few weeks, so last night I took up my knitting while we watched "The Martian".  The desolate Mars was perfect for my mood, and I had to laugh at myself for melodramatizing ordinary love and worry of a mother for her daughter.  I'm now waiting to hear her interviewed on the radio for her novel.  That's exciting.  She's doing a much better job of living in the moment than I am.  Her childhood friend is with her, and I know they are having fun, and in two days her younger brother comes up to be with her for two weeks.  She's well cared for.  Over the weekend her stepmother and half brother will visit from Ireland, and they are dear and fun people.  I am rehearsing the loss, and that is unwholesome.  I need to remember my practice, and be pleased with her voice on the radio, her words on paper, and her liveliness right now.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I took a walk this morning and, as she is in a meditation class, she asked me why many prayers begin with "May".  May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, for example.  I hadn't really thought about it, though I acknowledged that my prayers begin with "May".  May my daughter be saved.  May her MRI be clear.  May the unborn baby be healthy.  I told my friend that I believe, first of all, it gets the ego "I" out of the way, and as I'm not asking a favor of some entity outside my self for rescue, it keeps the universe open.  Many amazing, contradictory things happen that are surprising or illogical, so it keeps "don't know" foremost and hope alive.  "May" also addresses the interconnectedness of all beings, and how the butterfly in China may cause an outcome on the other side of the world.  The universe is infinitely complex, and every situation is unique as well as familiar.  We are throwing out to the unknowable our wish and that thought becomes a part of everything.  Not really owned by us, and hopefully embraced by all beings. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My baby grandson really resisted his nap this morning.  He kept standing up in my arms and trying to dance, then making faces, taking a swig of his bottle, then resting for a minute on my chest then getting up again.  I took him upstairs, where it is dark and there is a rocking chair, he looked around, then he settled down.  I sang the song I always sing - Sleep My Child and Peace Attend Thee, All Through the Night.  That's his signal, and he was ready.  I piled a couple of blankets on top of him in the portacrib and he was out like a light.  He is such an amiable guy, and he doesn't get fussy when he's tired, he just rubs his eyes and yawns.  We had a morning of blocks, a wooden train, the popcorn popper toy, and a lot of crawling and standing up holding on to a table or chair.  He wears himself out, and I admit me too, when I'm on the floor any length of time.  So now I have a breather to check my mail, read a bit, and watch the monitor.  A cosy day for us both.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I finished reading Chanel Miller's "Know My Name" yesterday.  Her writing is passionate and powerful, and the memoir heartbreaking.  I felt a sense of kinship with her and every other female on the planet.  But it especially brought me back to my days in college, when I had two encounters that almost ended in rape, but I was not drinking so I was able to think quickly and get away.  In other words, I was lucky.  Then I remembered all the near misses young women experience, and the ocean of women who are not so lucky, and I thought of my clients in the safehouses in which I worked, who somehow had been conditioned to blame themselves for the violence, and often whose parents blamed them as well.  They got lectures for being married to the wrong guy and not getting free of him because of lack of support, financial and emotional.  I blamed myself in college, and after the one party when a guy shoved me onto a bed in a room off the party room, I never went to another party as an undergraduate or graduate student.  Because it was my fault I put myself in that position, I figured, and up to me to stay away from drinking.  I still ended up abused by my first husband, and raped at knifepoint, but it wasn't rape in those days, it was a husband's right to own his wife's body, no matter how he treated her.  My parents never knew he'd done it, but I can still hear my father saying, when I asked them for help, "You made your bed".  I was lucky, he relented, probably because of my mother, and they did help me escape and carve out a new life with my toddlers.  This is the patriarchy, which pops up in surprising places, including the judge in Miller's case, who ignored the jurors' decision, and freed his fellow male in solidarity.  I hope this new uprising of women in our country and other places blossoms into a force for honoring women's bodies and safety in our world.  It's about time.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I saw "Parasite" yesterday with our friends.  We thought it was terrific.  I appreciate films that deal with class in an honest fashion, and this one was funny, harrowing and deeply touching.  I loved "JoJo Rabbitt" as well, which is about Right Speech, and the harm "othering" can cause people.  I was crying at the end of both.  Those two movies are my favorites this year, along with "Waves" which ought to be up for awards but has somehow been forgotten.  But then, my faves are usually overlooked, like women directors.  "The Farewell" ought to be up for an Oscar, but isn't, and Gerta Gerwig is snubbed for "Little Women".  If the world of misogyny is changing, it's so slow it's practically invisible.  I'm now reading Chanel Miller's account of her rape, and I feel the oceans of women she represents.  And crying in movie theaters won't change anything.  Class, race, ethnicity and gender are subjects we need to address, in this morass of a culture we abide in.  But a few movies isn't going to help.  We need new leadership.  Moral leadership.  I pray we get it soon.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Our grandson had an interview at a preschool that his parents are hoping he can attend, and yesterday my daughter was worried about how he'd do:  whether he'd cry or be shy.  He aced it!  I would say that proves definitely that he is not in the right preschool now, and the crying when they leave him is not that it's a bad school, but just a bad fit.  I hope he gets in this one, as it's where his mother taught for years, and it's bilingual.  I have felt that something was not right when he kept being miserable at his current school and yesterday when I asked him how his school week went he said, "not so great".  He's three.  But mighty articulate about his feelings.  I feel I have the luxury of really listening to him, whereas his parents are working many hours, too busy, and anxious about him in a way I'm not.  I've been down the road four times as a parent, with my foster granddaughter, with my granddaughter, and with my grandson who is a year older.  Little kids know a lot more than we give them credit for, and they can see the forest for the trees, in astounding ways.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I am waiting and praying that my daughter's MRI today is only good news.   I've just talked to my older son on the phone, and he is also waiting, as are the other kids and all her friends and family.  Waiting.  That means noticing that the sun is out today, and the temperature up.  That a black and white cat is skulking in the bushes outside my window.  That snowdrops are popping up under the apple tree.  That all my grandchildren are doing well and healthy.  That my younger daughter's baby, due soon, is head down the way he's supposed to be.  So new life is coming, about to be born. 
Waiting is LIVING each precious moment fully, and with heart.  My rakasu has my Buddhist name on the back of it:  Great heart, silent perserverence.  I try to not project, or rehearse, or jump into the future or back to the past.  Be here now, as is said.  This moment is all I have.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a great time with my nine month old grandson yesterday.  It is bittersweet, as in a couple of months they are moving to another state, and my weekly time with him will be over.  I have had this long distance situation with my granddaughter, and our relationship has stayed strong, but still...  I am feeling the loss already, and with the threat of losing my daughter, it seems overwhelming.  I will adjust and adapt, as I do, but the effort, oh, the effort.
Last night a watched a Hallmark film on tv, that is what I've come to, and after rotting my brain with sugary romance, finished the mystery I've been reading, by Nevada Barr, "What Rose Forgot".  It is delightful, funny and pertinent to folks of my age, and features a grandmother and granddaughter relationship that was sheer joy.  I'm going to take up another mystery, and why not.  The universe is mysterious, my daughter's prognosis is mysterious, my emotional state is mysterious, even to myself.  There will be change, disruption, a feeling of powerlessness and lack of control, and well, hello, welcome to the world.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

There was a lot of right speech in the almost three weeks I was staying with my older daughter.  There was a lot of silence as well, and just being companions in her journey to survive.  We had fun, we had laughter, we had tears, we shopped, we ate out, we went to the beach for the weekend, we had a fancy dinner, we saw Min Jin Lee give an amazing, inspiring talk, we discussed wills and trusts, and picked out a recliner for her which she adores, and celebrated my stepson's birthday.  I sat beside her as she had her chemo, grocery shopped with her, watched cooking shows with my granddaughter, went out to a movie with my ex-son-in-law (Jo Jo Rabbit), had pizza with him and my granddaughter, and met friends of my daughter and cried some secret tears. 
I do not give up.  I'm praying the MRI and other scans at the end of the week are good news, not bad, and that she gets to have her book launch, her interviews, the spotlight shining on her creativity and not her cancer.  I want her to live with all my heart.