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.