dirty secret in the wee small

Right now, I should be fast asleep - in beautiful, fall-color engorged extreme northwest Massachusetts.  Taking a writing workshop with Nancy Slonim Aronie.

I am sitting in the computer studio at Squirrel Haven.  I am writing, though. And I am writing about something that Nancy suggests in her wondrous book (the one I'm supposed to having a living experience of over this glorious mid-autumn weekend), Writing from the Heart - - write about a secret.

Although I adore Nancy's book - the first book I started marking certain passages with clear tape tabs, after turning down countless page corners, folding entire pages in half, underlining special bits in glaring yellow highlighter - although I adore Nancy's book, have never used a suggestion.  This one, in particular, caught my attention & made me want to forget I'd ever read it.  Write about a secret.  

Yeah.  

There are a lot of secrets that came to mind, ones that would make for great dramatic revelations, but the one that has not let me alone since the very wee small hours of this morning is also my dirtiest.

I don't vacuum.

Ever.

And we have 12 cats. 

This time, last year, we had 13.

I didn't vacuum then, either.

It is not that I am lazy.  A big immense massive block keeps me from vacuuming.  It is a place I do not let myself go.  It is a "don't go there" feeling in my back, in the section right under my shoulder blades.  And it has been forever.

When the cats entered our lives, which wasn't planned, a very strong thought occurred to me ~ "This is the Universe making sure that you HAVE to vacuum the way you did when your mother expected it to be done on at least a relatively frequent basis.  Now, you HAVE to."  

Except, I didn't.

I haven't touched a vacuum in a couple years.  Maybe longer.

Everything about our house is a block.  Everything in my head around the house is blocked.  There isn't a single room in this house where I feel actually welcome, so none of them look welcoming.  

It could be related to the fact that I grew up in houses - two on Alden Road, one on Cherry Lane, one on Woodland Road - where I never felt welcome.  Because I wasn't.  Needed, yes.  Welcome - never.  It could be related to that.

Or totally not.

My reality is that when friends paid a surprise visit around this time a year ago, the first words out of my mouth when I saw them talking to John on our front lawn, here on Pheasant Run not over a thousand miles away on N. Vail Drive, wasn't, "What a glorious surprise!  How wonderful to see you!!"  No, it was, "You didn't let them into the house, did you??"  

He hadn't.

And they assumed it was because the house was a wreck.  It wasn't.  It was because our house stinks to high heaven of cats.  

The Universe might have given them to us as a spur to turn me into a reasonable house cleaner, but that worked about as well as my Mom giving my sister family treasures in the expectation that it would give her the incentive to take care of something. 

The Universe had as little success with me as Mom did with Mim.

There was an outcome to the phone call a week later from Candy, sharing her deep concern & offer to help make a difference.  Now, a year later, the house IS a wreck. 

And the vacuuming remains undone.

John cleans off the carpets.  He does a really deep clean, sort of combing the carpet, with a cat brush.

In all my years, this morning is the first time ever that I can write think about my vacuuming block & realize there is a way around it.  Just vacuum.  Just do it once a day.  At least in the living room.  It will be great exercise.  The how when wherefores of the block don't matter.  The only thing I know for absolute sure is that if I figured out the underlying reasons in my head, they would be wrong.  Blocks don't make sense.  They aren't about making sense.  They are about blocking.  

And this one has been a doozie.  A massively successful doozie.  

It is very easy to rewrite that short far-from-simple sentence.  To  "I do vacuum."  

Open my heart & energies.  See what is right in front of me to do.  Literally under my feet. 


Make it so.

and i have mine

mim has her voice & i hope she shares it. 

this recent news about her has certainly uncorked my own desire for writing memoir.  amazing that this weekend's workshop is on that very thing.  

coincidental?  ha!  

a zillion+ thanks to an always generous, amazing, appreciated universe!  

She still has her voice

No idea why my sister is living where she, as she is, for whatever reasons she is.  But am thinking that she has the time & the mind & the ability to write.  To write a book.  To write about whatever moves her.  To write persuasively, in the ways she's always had of capturing people's attention & moving their hearts.  That is no small gift.  And Mim's always had it.

She could take this time & all that she is & write.  Not just for herself, but for all of us.  She has it in her.  Will she let it out?  Will she allow the rest of us to share life through her eyes?  It would be epic.  But only if she writes.

My experience of my sister is of a remarkable voice that could world-moving.  There are many reasons for her to stay silent, to know all that she could write & choose not to.  I understand that.  And there is maybe only one reason why she should.  Because it's her voice & it deserves to be heard.

Am envisioning Mim dying & someone finding her journals & being blown away by all she's written.  Or maybe, if she does journal, she'd have them burned.  

The image of my sister writing has seized my mind - will take her with me, in spirit, to Rowe this weekend, to Nancy Aronie Slonim's workshop, Writing from the Heart.   Because I'll be connecting to my own stories, to my own voice, to my own everything.  Sharing the vibe with her, not held down by old restrictions & constrictions, but celebrating & releasing.

Liberated

This past Saturday, at the very last Bryn Athyn Bounty Farm Market (where I am the Cupcake Lady), I saw one of my sister's closest friends, someone who has known Mim since she was a young girl - a true intimate with a long, deep view of her.  She mentioned plans to see Mim sometime next month, which nudged me to ask, "What is it like where she lives?"

Cannot explain the change of expression on the friend's face.  She seemed to go ashen, as she told me, in a voice that didn't sound at all like hers, "Mim is living in prison.  She's in a nursing home's shut-down Alzheimer's unit. I've begged her to request a transfer to a regular unit, and she won't." 

Snake pit.  My sister is voluntarily living in a modern version of Snake Pit.  Only her story is the reverse of the 1948 novel, where the heroine works her way back to health & sanity.  Mim worked her way into where she is now; whatever the reason she was first placed there (not enough room in a regular unit?), she remains there voluntarily.

Hearing about where she lives, that she has refused to make any effort to be moved, was somehow the last piece in the puzzle that's my sister.  She is where she's always felt she belonged - with no independent life.  

Since my mid-20s, Mim struck me as a person who hated having been born.  

Up through the late 1970s, she was prone to deep, quiet anger.  Not like my own bursts of utter frustration, which flame out & vanish, directed against myself rather than others.  Mim's anger was definitely against others.  It was her anger that had me, in 1980, on the verge of leaving. 

As I said, Mim seemed to be a person intensely unhappy at being alive.  

I never could understand her intense feelings of resentment against Mom, but total adoration of Dad.  

Her darkness seemed to lessen over the years, but I remember the depth of her feelings back when we lived on Cherry Lane & our early years on Woodland Road.  I can still remember sitting on Mom's bed in the Woodland Road house, telling Mim that I was moving out because I couldn't handle her chronic... rage is the best word, and her promising to change.  And she did.

Or maybe the anger just went even deeper, muted but still there.  It was never really against me, but against something bigger.  

For some reason, Pam understood how the family felt about Mim.  (Kerry never seemed to get it at all.)  Soon after she & Peter married, Pam commented on how the family was afraid of Mim.  Mim & Mom & I thought that hilarious. The rest of us - afraid of Mim??  What a hoot!  Am still amazed that Pam got what no one else a) did or b) refused to acknowledge.  

We were afraid of Mim, from Dad right down to me.  Not once do I remember either of my brothers making negative comments to Mim about her weight, her general appearance.  To Mom, yes.  To Mim - never.  That is unusual.  I do not recall my parents ever taking her to task.  Sure, I resented that, but it made sense to me.  When you crossed Mim, you felt it.  

It is impossible to describe the negative energies Mim could uncork, energies that did no physical harm but were unimaginably ominous & threatening.  It felt like holocausts simmered just under the surface.  

Mim only physically threatened me once, in the kitchen of the Cherry Lane house, holding a knife.  I can see it as if it was yesterday.  I was in senior high school, Mim would have been in her mid-20s.  She was shaken with anger over something I'd said.  I remember going stone-cold calm, looking into the face of something indescribable.  

Mom used to describe how, as a little girl, Mim would act up all day but become good as gold whenever Dad walked through the door.  She recalled how he'd take HER to task for making out that Mim had been difficult.  That always got to me - Mom telling me, as if it was nothing, that her husband didn't believe what she told him about his daughter's behavior, that he faulted her instead.  Mim learned early that she could be totally awful to the people who didn't matter to her, as long as she acted differently with those who did.  

This most recent twist, with Mim living voluntarily in an Alzheimer's unit - in "prison," as her friend described it - is the coup de grace to my trying to figure Mim out.  It is the poetically macabre expression of what she always conveyed to me, if no one else, she felt was her just due in life.  No real life. 

And I seemed to be the only one who cared about it.  Mom wouldn't, maybe it was that she couldn't, do anything to help.  She & Dad had Mim see a psychiatrist when she was young, but all that happened was she'd come home bragging about how she turned the tables on the shrink & took charge of the appointment.  

Mom & Dad were the ones who should have sought counseling - Mim was already lost.  To her last day, Mom could not deal with Mim.  Easier to leave the room when things became unbearable then face it, acknowledge it, work with it.

No one cared about Mim, except her baby sister.  In 1994, when Mike & Kerry stayed with us over Christmas, I tried to talk to Kerry about my worries, describing Mim's history of meanness cruelty toward Mom, toward me, toward children.  She wanted to hear none of it.  Can still hear her saying, "If I believed what you say, then I'd have to believe she was a monster."  Remember sitting there, at the dining room table, my heart sinking, as I said, "Mim is not a monster, but she does monstrous things."  

Kerry was my last hope of someone, other than myself, helping Mim.  The information I shared were things that happened, things other people could, if asked, confirm.  But KCL shut me down.

Writing this, is sounds like my family was a small-scale version of The Snake Pit.  With the person pointing it out - me - tagged by others as the psychotic.

Mim living - of her own free will - in a nursing home's locked-down Alzheimer's unit, resisting a beloved friend's entreaties to be moved into a regular living space, has liberated me from much of my past.  It is what she's always seen for herself, has always seen in herself.  It makes no sense.  But it does to her.  

This latest is just the last of a long line of similar damaging behaviors present throughout her life.  Well, at least throughout my life.  And yet she was THE person held up by everyone - except Pam - as the apex of what lesser lights could only faintly aspire to be.  Voluntarily living the way Mim is now is no less unreasonable than how my family treated her.  Was it that they couldn't see, that something I can't begin to envision blocked their sight of what was right in front of them?  Did they just not want to be bothered?  What dynamic in play caused them to see ME as psychotic while they placed Mim in the center of our family solar system?  

My guess is that no one has a clue.  About any of it.  And they certainly had no interest in asking, in finding out.  

Years ago, when we were talking about some of the autistic children she was working with, about their families, Mim made a comment that was immensely illuminating, at least to me.  "When I look at their lives & their struggles, my life looks so much better."  Wow.  It took the depth of darkness of their lives to make hers look good, in comparison.  Have never forgotten that.

Mim is physically handicapped.  Am not clear what the situation is.  Dicey questions were always off limits.  She has tremendous problems walking.  Maybe the reason she prefers the nursing home's locked-down Alzheimer's unit - the place her friend describes as a prison - is that when she looks at the lives around her & the struggles they face, hers look so much better.  Maybe, in comparison, she feels relatively whole.

Or not.  Maybe it's something completely different.  But whatever it is, it sure ain't healthy or whole or what would be experienced as life affirming to 99.9999% of the rest of us.

And some form of Mim's present-day reasoning has been always & forever - literally - with me.  Her brokenness always held up as the golden mean, my constant striving for health regarded by everyone, parents included, as an ugly aberration.  Well, my take on it all was an aberration.  A glorious one that's finally liberated to me the norm, unhindered by the fiction that my sister is anything other than whatever it is she is.  

my heart is so full

How can I possibly thank all my family for being exactly who they are, as they are, playing such amazing roles in my life, helping me become awake aware active.  Couldn't have done it without them.  How right I was, all those years ago, when it first dawned on me that families can be described as amazing petri dishes, a Great Lab Experiment from which - under the right conditions -  the incredible can be discovered. 

 

intramurals

Thinking about how differently girls' athletics are treated these days in my high school alma mater than they were back in my day, back in my siblings' day, got me wondering how differently my sister's experience in high school would be if she were attending ANC now instead of back in the late 1950s, early 1960s.

See, Mim was a terrific athlete.  Mike loved to tell the story of how he'd bust with pride watching the girls play softball, seeing the outfield move way back when Mim came up to bat.  She was an all-'rounder at sports.  Gosh, she even coached her own "little league" football team!

But she lived in a day when the girls were only allowed to play for exercise & enjoyment.  Even in my day, eight years later, we were restricted to intramural events, playing against the other classes instead of against other schools.  The only way girls got close to a playing field was as a cheerleader - and Mim most definitely did not see herself as a cheerleader sort.  

Oh, if she could have played against other schools!  Mim would have been one of the school's most recognized female athletes.  Maybe it wouldn't have changed her low opinion of herself, but maybe it would.  Instead, the "girls can't" attitude of way back then just reinforced that she was super talented, but...  That mega negating "but" that diminished so many great female athletes, held them back & kept them off the radar of most of the community, let alone off the sports pages, out of the columns that regularly carried stories of the BOYS exploits & victories.

What if?  If only?  Glad today's girls (& their sisters) will never have to wonder.

itty bitty baby

copy of a facebook posting i messaged to the great molly nece -

it all begins with "once upon a time, there was a little bitty baby, born into a family that didn't see or hear her. it was not because her brothers & sister, mother & father were trolls & wicked wizards, but because they were under an enchantment. they could not see themselves as they were. 

the oldest brother saw himself as a prince who had been exchanged with the changeling that truly belonged in the family; he longed to live in the castle on the top of a hill, with servants & wonderful things & people who all saw him as special.

the sister was just the opposite - she saw herself as the lowest of the low, who could not see all her talents & gifts & graces, who experienced her family's oft-expressed praise as confirmation they believed she could do nothing of value, would never be worthy of attention & admiration. a treasured belief was that if you did something that brought joy to yourself, it was debased - only things that brought you pain had any worth.

these two siblings were the crown prince & the princess royal of the family.

always & forever, the parents looked to the two of them as the end all & be all of family life. their rare good opinion could turn dark nights to full moon shine, while their more common bad opinion could chill & darken the loveliest of days.

the other two brothers did as was expected, revering their two siblings, realizing that they could only be poor reflections of the others' glory.

but the itty bitty baby, from a very young age, said, "i think there is a better way." but none of the others - not the parents, not the crown prince, not the princess royal, not the other two brothers - could see or hear what she said. when she said "up," they heard "down." when she said "blue," they heard "chartreuse."

she was not under the same enchantment as the rest of her family, but she was certainly under a strong enchantment - she believed that the fate of the family rested 4-square on her itty bitty shoulders. she never made friends - who would want to be friends with someone so different from the crown prince & princess royal? she did poorly in school - why bother, since she could never be as brilliant as her sister, the princess royal? as she grew older, she made sure that she was always & forever at the beck & call of the others. and she saw her family as the norm & all other families as off kilter.

one day, a dark-haired maiden & her golden-tressed dear friend moved across the road from the once-itty bitty baby. they invited the now-young woman over for tea & coffee & kir royales. they talked to her & expected, wonder of wonders, her to talk, too. she began to realize she'd lived her life as a tightly-wound bud & slowly slowly began to unfurl.

it took two three brave men to set her to blossoming. they were the two beloveds & a dear dear friend of the lasses across the street. one day, after the once-itty bitty baby had made a comment about something or other, they disagreed with her. she responded. later, it happened again - she said something, they disagree, she responded. finally, the beloved of the dark-haired maiden smiled at her a warm loving smile & said, "do you know that you shadow box?" she looked at the three men, all looking at her with the same look, and asked, "what is 'shadow boxing'?" and they explained that they had intentionally disagreed with her to see how she'd respond & in each case she'd immediately changed what she'd originally said to be in agreement with their differing opinion. every time.

the once-itty bitty baby was stunned. didn't everyone do that? everyone in her family did, at least the mother & father, her two brothers & herself. (the crown prince & princess royal only did it when something made them seem in the wrong - then they would say they'd never said whatever & how crazy are you to think they had.)

slowly, a thought started to take hold. maybe ~ just maybe, her family wasn't the right way to be. maybe the way she'd always thought was best - having regular family meetings, sharing individual goals to see how others could lend support, having regular chores to do, talking about finances, expecting kindness from everyone - wasn't as crazy as she'd always been told. maybe the way she'd always seen life should be actually was a wonderful way & the way she'd always been taught was... well, sad.

it took 24 years for the itty bitty baby to shake off the enchantment of the others, an enchantment that had never been her own but had overshadowed every moment of her every day. that was the start of her searching.

it wasn't easy. she couldn't - from her heart of hearts - leave her widowed mother alone, for the crown prince & princess royal made it clear that their mother was there to take care of them, not ever the reverse. and one brother died when he was a very young boy, while the other moved far far away to the other side of the world.

it took another 24 years - plus several more - for the once-itty bitty baby to finally shake clear of the terrible enchantment that had never been her own but had overshadowed her life. she's now on a continuation of the original quest, which she hadn't realized was never about her family; it was always about her self. her best self, her truest self, her most bright & shining & glorious self, about seeking not just the good & the best, but what she'd been born to find & accept & seize as her own - greatness.

for decades, she's been training herself to be an engineer, finding ways to remove big & small obstacles from the path before her. she's off the roadway & into the flow. ironically, the more obstacles she removes & the clearer the waterway becomes, the more she spots smaller rocks & snags that can wreak havoc on her journey.

she's gotten better & better at navigating the rapids that keep appearing, remembering to NOT look out for the boulders that threaten to crash & crumble her craft, remembering to stay in harmony with the water slipping around & past them.

from itty bitty baby to seeker to path-beater to waterman. pretty darn interesting life - and so much more ahead!

Wedding gift from a Wondrous Universe

Our BEST wedding present came from the Universe - a totally unexpected, utterly blissed-out Reynolds family reunion.  Make that a total family reunion, bringing together genetic & family-of-the-heart relatives for a weekend of joy laughter connection.

Literally from the time the Ripleys got on the plane from Sacramento to Philadelphia, it was a weekend filled with the gloriously unexpected & the forever treasured.  

Mom & I had expected Peggy & Jack to make it - they came to Peter's wedding & to Mike's.  But to have everyone - even Uncle Paul - celebrate with us?  That possibility never dawned on us.  

It took me years to realize what a shock it was to John to discover how my sibs actually feel about me - nothing in that special time gave him the slightest inkling.  Of course, he didn't know about Peter's upset at not announcing my engagement, hadn't a clue that PRL had threatened to boycott the announcement party if he wasn't given the honor.  And certainly NOTHING in how Peter acted at that very special celebration would have suggested he was anything but unabashedly delighted to be with us.

John was clueless because our wedding celebration weekend - which extended over several weeks - was filled only with happiness.  Like the weather on our Day of Days, not a single cloud besmudged that time out of time.  

Twenty-five years ago, the Lockhart ladies were putting the finishing touches on the evening's open house honoring Mike & Kerry, Scott & Karen (okay, and the bride & groom).  So much happiness, having our family & friends surrounding us with love & best wishes.  So beyond anything I could have dreamed of, not even at our engagement party.   

What better gift could the Universe give ME than moments filled with connection, with family, with friends, with life working as our Creator intended?  Twenty-five years later, am still offering up my thanks.  

My Mother's Stories, by Mim

Several times, Mim published her poems in our school's alumni journal.  This one is especially dear to my heart...

My Mother's Stories

She sat with me, around our kitchen
      table.
Recounting the stories of her youth.
She talked while we washed all those
      dishes.
Or at the lake while we watched the shun
      set over quiet water.
My brothers and sister called these her
      "War Stories," all the adventures of
Dorothy, Alpha, Bob, Kay and Beth...
      They live their lives again in my
Mother's stories, and I am forever 
       connected to their
Adventures.
       I smell the aromas, see the
sights, hear the the sounds, feel the
       feelings and bear the burdens
Of these children who lived in another
       time, and other places.
My mother made them live, and forever
       gave them life...  In her stories.

Mim Lockhart   1996

At the same time that I love it, there is a teeny part of it that also perplexes. Mim had an interesting trait of setting herself somewhat distant from others.  In a family picture I drew at eight or nine, Ian is up in heaven, Dad & Mike ^ Peter are standing to the right, Mom is smack dab in the center, I'm to her left & Mim is to mine.  All of us - except Ian, in the upper right corner - in some way touches another family member.  Not Mim. There she is, to the far left, not touching anyone else, not in any way.  Separate, apart.  

She does it in this poem, too, distancing herself from the rest of her sibs.  It baffles me.   It's the line, "My brothers & sister called these her 'War Stories...'"  No one said "Mom & her War Stories" more than Mim did.  I always thought it was Mim who came up with the phrase, which covered all of Mom's growing up years, bracketed by the two world wars but not exclusive to them.  But in her poem, it's her brothers & sister who use the term. The rest, not her.  Very Mim.

Ah! That's what mom was writing about...

A previous post refers to a few comments in Mom's handwriting that talked about two letters that seemed to contradict each other.  My guess was they were from Kerry, but was only half right - one was from her, the other was from Mike.  And Mom was spot on - the two letters do reflect two opposite perspectives.

Mike had mentioned to Mom in an earlier letter to clue him in if she needed any financial help.  So, she'd sent off a request for help, listing a wide range - from minor amounts to significant investment - for him to pick out whatever suited him best.

That note was the backdrop of the two wildly different responses.  Mike had talked about the things he'd picked out for support, while Kerry blew a gasket over Mom coming to them with her hand out.  She pointed out that they'd already covered the bills she'd "run up on (her) last trip" - the medical bills for the stop-gap surgery that made it possible to get back to the USA for the full procedure.  They'd already given their share for her expenses & she could be content with that.  Oh, and she had never been sufficiently grateful for all that Kerry & Mike had done, which still hurt her loving daughter in law.

Whew!

Impossible to imagine my mother NOT thanking them for paying the related hospital bills, but perhaps she wasn't overly grateful enough.  I know for a fact that she knew Mike & Kerry were on the hook for the Down Under medical expenses related to the infected kidney.  Due to changes in her Medicare coverage, she no longer had out-of-country coverage.  Mike & Kerry had to literally sign off -to both the Australian government AND to Mom - that if any health care was required during her months long stay, they would cover it.  But in all the previous six visits Mom had made between 65 & 85, she'd never come down with so much as a serious cold.

But then, she'd never flown straight through from Philadelphia to Sydney before either - she'd always stopped over in Los Angeles and sometimes also Hawaii or Tahiti.  I'd had a fit when it turned out she & Scott would fly straight through, to save money.  She assured me all would be well, that they had a long lay-over in L.A., that she'd make a point of walking around the airport to get her circulation going, to take a long nap.  

It was only after she died that I discovered the lay-over was just one hour.  Small wonder she suffered an infected kidney.  Far younger people than Mom have died due to the pressure on their bodies of the long flight.

Did Mom write back & blast Kerry for not sufficiently thanking HER for getting her mind, body & spirit in fit enough fiddle to fly home to the USA for the major surgery, so it would be covered under Medicare instead of fall fully on their shoulders?  Of course not.  But she didn't just apologize, either, which was a huge step forward for Mom, who detested confrontation.  She pointed out to Kerry that she'd been told time & again that "Lockharts never share how they feel" & "keep their heads in the sand."  Well, she'd plucked up her courage, had let them know how she felt, what she needed - and, as she'd feared in the first place, was slammed for her efforts.

It's just a little piece of paper, with just three or four sentences.  But, realizing the context & the courage it took Mom to not just roll over with profuse apologies - - well, to me it is a priceless treasure, reflecting a very brave, massively courageous elder.

Is it right to write?

Mim FINALLY sent an address for Peter.  Now the dilemma - my every instinct is to send him a card, but would he want to receive one from the little sis he seems to find so...  irritating?  

Am on such tenterhooks when it comes to my sibs - never know when what I think is a friendly gesture gets interpreted in a wildly different way.   Past experience tells me that whatever I do, the response will be questionable.  sigh....

Wait a sec - am writing to everyone who touched us in a special way over our wedding celebrations.  Whew!  Mim's delay turns out to give us a natural reason to write & for it to be from both of us.

 

Had I but known...

Louise Doering Stevens took a weight off my shoulders, going through Mom's book shelves & bureau drawers after the Gramster's reunion with her O Best Beloved.  She came out of the bedroom, with that special wry Louise smile, holding a pile of books. The journals I'd given Mom, each written in for a page or so, then abandoned.

Except for the Country Desk Calender for 1988.  Guess I'd assumed she'd treated it like the rest of the journals I'd given over the years, because I never gave her a second, or third, or ... What I didn't know was that she wrote in THAT journal faithfully, all through that one year.  The year BEFORE John.  

Never knew, not until after she was gone.  How wonderful, reading all her entries, even the most mundane made special because it's in her writing, about her life.  Bermuda, Australia, home, then back down to Australia.  

Oh, what we miss because of what we just don't know.  The desk diary format prompts were as natural to her as the other journals were apparently fatally artificial.  One of my great treasures!

Oh, blessed pen & paper!

In looking back over the past 25 years, am awed at how happy moments were experienced with joy & how even the most difficult ones have, over the years, turned into new-found insight perception lessons.  

Would most of those transformed difficulties, even heartbreak, been possible without simple paper & permanent ink?  I think not.  From notes & jottings from Mom to herself & others to ancient letters from my sibs & Kerry to her, from dashed off comments or page #s in novels to her own started/stopped journals, they helped clarify what was actually happening around me when it seemed something else was.  

Just now, going through a long-ago journal, came across a single-sheet of writing paper, apparently thoughts Mom had jotted down before writing to Kerry.  Since there isn't anything they connect to, don't know what they specifically reference, although the message is pretty clear - at least to me.

"Comparing these two letters is confusing.  They contradict each other."  Two letters from Kerry?  One from Mike, one from KCL?  No idea.

"You wanted me to say what I feel and think.  When I did, you were offended.  Please know that I love you and want what is fair for you and for me."  (Mom originally wrote good, then crossed it out & wrote fair.)

At least I know the situation.  She had written to Kerry about something that involved her daughter-in-law.  Unlike her usual style, which Kerry had roundly criticized through the years for "sticking her head in the sand," Mom had gone waaaaaaay outside her comfort zone to be open & honest about a difficult situation (no memory what it was).  And Kerry had not taken it well.

Mom experienced something I'd learned decades before - from her!  It is one thing to say you want something, when it is in the abstract.  Quite another if someone takes you up on your request for change & you suddenly discover it's not as peachy as you'd envisioned.  

At least she had a reference for it.  Several years before, I took Kerry at her word & was open with her on a difficult subject.  Whew!  Let's just say it did not go well.  

Always struck me as weird that Mom had no hesitation with telling Dad - as discreetly as possible, and always along with cheddar & Ritz crackers & a glass of sherry - her mind, yet was loathe to bring up differences with her children, including (especially?) me.  She never feared Dad's response, but was apparently petrified of being slammed by their kinder.  

Will never forget the day she first really spoke up to me, really spoke HER truth rather than keeping quiet or seeming to agree.  Wish I could say it was okay, but 'twould be a lie - totally flipped out, missing that she was doing the very thing I'd encouraged since forever.  How did she respond?  Shut down & withdrawal or call me out?  Praise be, the later!  "Wait a second!  You tore into me for doing the very thing you've always told me to, what you've roundly criticized me for NOT doing in the past - standing by what I believe."  

Well, that stopped me in my tracks.  

I looked at her, blinked, and accepted the truth of her statement.  She WAS doing what I'd downright lectured her to do, and there I was, slamming her for it.  

Did the only thing I could - acknowledged the truth of her comment, thanked her for sharing her true feelings instead of masking or burying them, then gave her a big congratulatory HUG.  If memory serves me well, a few happy (Mom) proud (me) tears were shed.

Wishing I could say that Kerry had the same response. 

At last!

Praise be, Mim sent the address of Peter's rehab facility (as requested).  He seems to be making progress.

She included a pair of lovely memories from long ago.  No idea how she is or what type of place she is living in or really any details of her here & now.  But cherishing sweet reminders of precious times in our past.

three little words

Could three little words have significantly changed things in my life?  Looking back, I think that the overall status would have remained fairly quo.  But in little ways, those three words would have made a big difference.  How?  Will never know.

How many times in my adult life did I wail to Mom, "WHY do they dislike me so?  What have I done?"?  And every time she would push-tosh me, assure me that of course they liked me - they loved me.  "You're their baby sister."

Mom never had to go into any details, if she even knew what they were, for why Peter, Mim & Mike's wife heaped such scorn upon my head.   It wasn't until 1997 that I added Kerry to siblings who seemed to have no use for me, but the other two were pretty upfront with their anathema since I was in elementary school.  Mind you, Peter didn't seem to have any use for any of us, but his ire seemed particularly focused on me - yeah, the baby sister.

To this day, it makes no sense.  Have wracked my brains, searched my memory banks, and can't come up with anything I did or said that would explain Peter telling a counselor that what had drawn him closer to Mim was discovering that she didn't like me, either.  

And I sensed it.  From an early age, I sensed it, although it went  unquestioned until my thirties.  Every time it came up, would always get the same "Of course they like you..." response.

All Mom ever had to say were those three little words - "I don't know." At least I would have known my read was right.  

My apologies if this has already been covered, but nothing could have been more jaw dropping than the time that Mim, without malice, confirmed that she bore no love for her baby sister.  Said it twice - repeated, after Mom responded to the neutrally given information with "Of course you do!"  Looking back, she might have been as horrified by the calm with which Mim said it & with which I received it as by the admission.  

After the second, confirming statement, Mom did the only thing that she could - she left the room.  No comment, just departure.  

How different some key dynamics would have been if she'd only been able to accept that, perhaps for reasons unknown to her, that my sister & sister-in-law & oldest brother had no warmth or love or friendship toward me.  But she couldn't.  

Thank goodness, there were many lessons learned from all of this.  

• You never really know how people actually feel about you, for good or ill - until 1997, hadn't a clue Kerry held me in such contempt; wouldn't discover until 2007 that Mom knew it since at least 1973.
• Flat-out asking for a straight answer doesn't mean you're going to get it.  
• Trust you gut - mine told me that I was odd man out in our family long before it was confirmed.  
• Don't think of family as the end all & be all of relationships - you didn't ask to end up with them anymore than they asked to end up with you.  
• Don't get invested in what any others, even your nearest & dearest, think about you.  What they think about you is none of your business.
• Don't take things personally.  Because it usually isn't.  
• Cut people a break.  We know a lot less than we think we do.
• I'd rather be me, holding all my sibs in my heart, than be any one of them.  

AND don't - ever - dodge responding openly to a question, even if it's to say you can't answer it.  All Mom had to reply was, "I don't know," or, if she actually did, "I can't say" (which sounds the same but covers a lot more bases). 

Poor Mom.  Want to hold her in my arms & tell her it's all right, because in the long run she was the one who couldn't handle a full answer - whatever it might have been - not me. 

hazarding uneducated guesses

The best we can ever do in any given situation is to make our best uneducated guess about the hows & whys & wherefores.  The info we have at hand might seem like a lot, but it's usually just a teensy bit of what could be learned.  And our personal filter always colors what little we do seem to grasp.  Uneducated guesses - that's the best we can ever do.
 

a lifetime of getting it wrong

It took a letter just shy of 50 years old to wake me up to a lifetime of getting things wrong.  Or not...

For practically my first quarter century, I thought that my older sister was the sun moon stars to my inconsequential planetoid.  For over the second quarter, I thought that she was so blindsided by Ian's death, she consciously acted in ways that would bind me to her, heart & soul.  In my third quarter, am facing the reality that it might have been intentional, it might just have been her...  

Oh, how lovely it would be to truly believe it was unintentional on her part.  Sadly, she could intentionally devastate her youngers, even her olders.  Within a year of being married to Peter, Pam commented on how the whole family was afraid of Mim.  While we thought her observation a total hoot, she was spot on.  The fact is that she knew everyone's hot button & just how to push it.  With Mom, it was withdrawing affection.  With me, it was denying connection.  No idea what it was with Dad, but am sure there was one.  She knew just where to go with Ian - one day when they were coming home from school & he triggered her ire, she reached into the stack of books he was carrying, drew out his favorite, and dropped it to the pavement, breaking its spine.  

For certain sure, she never seemed to get the sense that she was adored by her baby sister, nor a clue that she was admired by all of the family & considerable more, in spite of her degree from NYU, her masters from Rutgets, and being officially recognized with a formal proclamation by the New Jersey State Legislature.  The letter she wrote Mom from Houston is sort of pathetic, in her assumption that her baby sis didn't miss her, just what she could do for me or - worse - the idea of missing someone, rather than specifically HER.

Been thinking about that thought - "I think she ... likes the idea of missing someone."  WHY would anyone want to miss a generic someone?  For the drama of feeling completely alone?  Did she really never understand that I couldn't be fully myself without her wind filling my sails?

Praise be for old letters. They reveal realities that would have seemed incredible if someone had suggested them.  As tied - bound - as I felt to her, she apparently felt totally ... what would the word be?  She rented a t.v. for one day a week in order to watch The Big Valley in order to have a way to communicate with me.  Sheez.  

It doesn't matter whether she acted intentionally or unintentionally, whether she meant to emotionally bind me to her or had no idea the impact of how she acted around me.  What's clear is that the certainty with which I once saw things was all wrong, that I spent a lifetime of being sure about something that could be totally wrong.  Or not.  Will never know.

This I do know, for certain sure.  Mim is an amazing sister with remarkable gifts, some of which she's shared & some of which she seems incapable of seeing, let alone embracing.  I might have spent a lifetime getting her all wrong, but at least it was a lifetime of appreciating her as the unique incredible exasperating person she most definitely is. 

both & neither

Talk about a cuckoo in a robin's nest!  The combination of my personal dynamic & the rest of my surviving family was disaster waiting to happen.  Where I've always had to sing out the situation in front of me  - so well illustrated by my question to Ken Stroh after Ian was killed - they were, as Kerry aptly put it, happiest with their heads buried in the sand.  Two extremes of the communication spectrum.

After teaching a Health unit based on four generations of my family - grandparents, parents, self & sibs, nieces & nephs - would ask the students, "MY style was verbal & very direct; the surviving others were non-verbal & triangulated.  Which communication style is right  & which is wrong?"  It always blew them away that the correct answer was "both" and "neither" - each style worked, in its own way.  

There are a bunch of core issues I'm working through in the here & now, some of which reach back into the long, long ago.  They involve my looking at the perception I had of things apparently done & said.  Some are easy to say, "Yes, I see this or that happened."  A lot are up for conjecture or interpretation or even individual memory.  All are important.  

It helps to know that probably NONE of what I might share agrees with what my sibs experienced perceived remembered.  Peter remembers leaving home when he went away to college - and never coming back.  Mim recalls that while I offered to do things for her, she never took me up on it & forge through life without my proffered support.  Kerry considers that the care I provided Mom was no more & no less than any one of the rest of the gave.  Mike agrees with whatever Kerry thinks.  Whitney  & Reynolds have such ghastly memories of me, she unfriended me on Facebook & he never accepted my friend request.  Who knows what Scott & Karen feel (am grateful for the warm FB friendships that have developed).  

Who are right, who are wrong?  Both & neither.  All I can say is that these will be my stories, and I'm sticking with them.

alternate realities

Okay, that "black hole rather than blazing sun" scenario - that's how I view my sister-to-sister dynamic.  What Mim recalls is sure to be a far different story.

Which is really what's it all about, Alfie.  Stories.  I tell you my experience, Mim tells hers.  Mom Peter Michael Ian Dad Kerry Whitney Reynolds Scott Karen Pam - all would have a different take from everyone else.  And they would all believe their version, utterly completely forever.

Unless they are the sort of person who holds reality lightly in their hands, as (if you ask me) is the sanest way to view life.  

My challenge is that I've always longed to hear my sibs view of our presumably shared family experience.  They won't.  And the reasons they won't usually (always?) revolve around my response to what they might say.  Because they don't trust me, they keep mum.  

For years & years, their steadfast silence kept me silent, too.  How could I speak out, it they weren't going to balance my view with theirs?  

How dumb was that?  They can write their own blogs, with their own truth.  Or they can write a totally untouched guest post on this one.  

But this blog is about my truth, a truth that I seriously do my best to hold as lightly in my hand as possible without refuting it.

So many families think THEIR dynamics are the worst ever seen in this or any other time.  The more I hear, the more this is clearly NOT the case.  My family had a truly funky approach to a lot of things, but I've heard so much worse about other messed up families.  In fact, it feels like my own family was at least pretty darn interesting, if more than a little challenged.  

Going to look at a bunch of personal experiences & even some stories handed down to me, primarily by Mom, who hadn't a clue they were in the least bit  revealing.  

My stay at Omega Institute got me mulling over how we'd all be helped if instead of silently holding them close to broken hearts, sure their peculiar family dynamics were the worst of this or any other time, we opened up about ,messed up experiences, inviting everyone to jump into the cauldron.  

Maybe broken-ness is part of what we're supposed to experience, maybe it's all part of the mish mash we're meant to ultimately make sense of for ourselves, not others.

Is it possible that truths seen by Me John Mim Mom Dad Peter Pam Mike Kerry Scott Karen Whitney Reynolds et al are ALL genuine?  Or NONE are?  

For myself, I stand by my whimsy - okay, by Lord Pete Wimsey, who commented, "'Truth, they say, was nobody's daughter; She took off her clothes and fell into the water."  That piffle is about as good a commentary on the whatever passes for truth as we're ever going to find.  In the end, it's all piffle.

So, read what I write or don't.  If my sibs have alternate realities to share, let 'em scribble away.  Here's where you'll find my whack at things seen heard experienced in a plethora of cuckoos' nests.

alternative universes

Let's admit it - my family & I inhabited alternate universes.

Got to thinking about this - again - after coming across another letter from Mim to Mom, back when she was attending the University of Houston, in the middle '60s.  Boy, do her letters home illuminate so much that befuddled me over the years.

Mim mentioned hearing from me "finally."  Wondering - how many kids in their early teens think about writing letters?  Frankly, I doubt that it sank in, then or ever, that any of them, including my idolized big sis, particularly cared about hearing from me.

In a particularly telling paragraph, Mim writes, "I don't know why she (me) misses me so - we only fight when I'm home.  I think she misses me taking her places and likes the idea of missing someone."

Fights?  I don't remember any.  But maybe she is confusing how disagreeable she seemed to have found me (which I only learned decades later) with actual fights.  Was she really that unaware of how I utterly had her up on an untouchable pedestal?  Hullo - right up through my early 20s, she was my sun moon stars.  And even then, it was she who turned away from me (having disagreed with her for the 1st time) rather than vice versa.  She never noticed my lack of friends?  Didn't need them - SHE was my everything.  

For some reason, am reminded of a quirky thing she did throughout my late 20s & early 30s.  (I've written about this before, but seems to apply here.)  She'd recommend going to Sunday brunch at the lushy plushy DuPont Hotel or the epic Plaza, or lunch in the Algonquin's legendary Rose Room - all buffets.  As we worked our way down the tables, she'd look around, then make a disparaging remark - about US.  Took several times before I responded, "Speak for yourself."  Couldn't understand why she'd intentionally target buffets if she felt so conspicuous, until Peter explained it - she set it up IN ORDER to point out we stuck out like sore thumbs.  Go figure.

In the same way, am still clueless at why she went to such lengths to ensure that my loyalties were to her & her alone.  Was it utterly unconcious?  The scathing remarks made as asides about other people & families, even relatives, she considered hopelessly bourgeois (learned that word at a very early age), the snide asides about a variety of things, the relentlessly negative comments about just about everyone & everything, while WE were forever painted as eternally outside the pale, something still held to be somehow above the common herd.  It all tied me too her, utterly & completely.

At the same time, the cynicism & snark I thought were the foundation of standard communication, held others at a distance, confused when the sunny gal turned into a dark soul.   

As for missing her because she took me places - almost right.  Missed the PERSON, not the rides.  

For almost a quarter century, SHE was the sun orbited by my sub-planet.  She never really GOT that?  

After Ian's death, consciously or not, Mim sucked me into her gravitational pull.  It was easy - she snidely trashed everyone else, highlighted our outsider status within a close-knit community, was the epicenter of every glorious moment of my life.  Yet, her letter paints her as unaware of my adoration & complete fealty, above everything, to her & her alone.  

It's quite possible Mim didn't consciously realize her impact - not the self-gutting brunch scenarios, not how effectively she instilled in her baby sister a ghastly communication style (would be decades before it dawned on me that how she spoke with me was nothing like the way she communicated with the larger world), perhaps not any of it.   
 

"I think she... likes the idea of missing someone."  

Guess that will always astonish me.  For almost a quarter century, I held her as the fabulously flaming sun around which my piddly planet did adoring orbits.  

Reading the letter, putting it in context with other similarly HUH? revelations, am thinking that it might not be that we inhabited alternative universes or that what I considered a blazing sun might well have been a black hole.

past

Is the past best left in the past?  This time a month ago, I sure thought so.  The last thing on my agenda for talking about with Kim Vargas was a return to family issues.  "The past is behind me.  From now on, it's the future!"  

Nice sentiment, but doesn't do a heck of a lot in scrapping off layers of emotional gunk, prying away dumb patterns, recalibrating messed up messaging.  The things that distract deter undermine.  

Sounds reassuring to state, "The past is the past!"  Alas, it didn't make sense when Mim said it thirteen years ago, doesn't make sense now.  Feels comforting, but I keep tripping over the blasted thing on my path forward!  

present

What a surprise to hear a voice on the phone saying, "Hi, it's Mim."  Had just gotten back from an early morning bop.  Her voice sounded so much lighter than I remembered, less guarded.

Strange, but true - someone had called her about a Mary Englebreit calendar & address book they'd found on the counter of the Southampton Post Office.  Called her, the first name in the book.

What a happy oops!  Fun talk with my big sis, for over 15 minutes.  Recalled some special moments in our lives, got an update on Peter.

Per Mim, Peter is going to be transferred soon to another medical facility.  She's not sure where he is right not, other than not at Mercy Hospital, and doesn't know where he's headed.  Reynolds is coming up from North Carolina to help facilitate the move.  What a good son!  Am sure it's a comfort to Whitney, way down in Melbourne, AU, to know her bro is doing all he can, in spite of the distance.

It was a zippity-do-dah-day call!  Have learned not to press for more information than I'm given.  Feels like that can be experienced as pressing.  Instead, it felt light-hearted all the way through.  And I didn't get off the phone wishing there was more.  Stayed in the present moment, which was the best present of all!

reframe the picture

On another blog - older2elder - I wrote about the advantage of bringing a mediator into potentially sensitive discussions between older parents & their adult family.  To illustrate my point, I shared a story about my own family, an unfortunate communication breakdown between my Dad & one of my brothers that resulted in Mike moving to Australia instead of remaining here in Pennsylvania, working at Lockhart Lumber.

Fast forward 40+ years.  John & I have a weekly date at Bell's Tavern, in Lambertville, NJ (good food at great prices, friends & staff who feel like family).  Every week, we park around the corner, at Niece Lumber. Every week, I get the opportunity to reframe what happened between two men I love, to put a happy ending by tweaking their story.

Niece Lumber is what could have been - in an alternate reality - the outcome of Dad & Mike's head butt over a path forward for what might have been a family business.  

In my reframed version, Mom reads an article in a Middle Atlantic Lumberman's Association magazine about professional mediators specializing in family businesses.  (This is my reframe, so it's moot that they didn't exist back in the early '70s.)  Over several days, when Dad comes home at night, he's greeted not only with a glass of sherry & a plate of cheese & crackers - it's Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry & slices of a lovely aged cheddar.  

Mom makes sure the magazine is within his sight range.  Later that evening, she wonders aloud if he'd read any of it.  Did he see the article about this thing called mediators?  Over the next few days, she builds off his grumbled "yes."  

Slowly, never feeling pushed, Dad warms to the idea.  

At the same time she was introducing the idea to Dad, Mom was also talking to Kerry.  Kerry had a lot invested in Mike becoming more established in the business - she wanted to start a family & it couldn't happen until the two of them had a more secure idea of what their future held.  

Mom believed that Kerry, a nurse (who would become a brilliant counselor back in Australia) & very practical person, would appreciate the advantages of having a disinterested person facilitating a productive discussion about what lay ahead for Lockhart Lumber.

After many sessions with the mediator, Dad & Mike come up with a business plan that satisfies both of them.  Mike would look for a new location - one they could buy - and Kerry would come on board as an office manager, leaving Dad free to do the millwork, design & cabinet-making that he loved.  Once they moved to the larger facility, they'd hire a second mill man & apprentice a designer/cabinet-maker to work with Dad.  Over time, most of the business decisions would be Mike's responsibility, leaving Dad time to step back from day-to-day management while still having an important voice.   

The new direction has Mom happy, because she & Dad have more time to enjoy each other.  Kerry & Mike are free to start their family AND grow the business in the visionary way that once seemed overly ambition to Dad.  Even Dad stops grumbling - not only can he take time to go on trips with Mom, the business doubles over the first year under the new business plan.  His confidence in Mike & Kerry grows  as their strong business partnership brings in greater sales & satisfied customers. 

In my reframe, the business ends up like Niece Lumber.  The main office building is Mike & Kerry's domain, where customers & contractors feel like their needs are understood & expectations exceeded.  Framed certificates proclaiming "Best lumberyard ...." decorate the wall, along with newspaper clippings.  

If anyone has a question about design or something Mike can't handle, they head over to the other office building, where Dad & other designers handle the special cabinetry orders.  They have their own set of "Best of woodworking..." citations on the wall, along with framed articles from Philadelphia, House Beautiful & Dwell magazines.  

The lumberyard itself is kept in the apple pie order that makes Mike's heart sing, and he steers clear of interfering when it comes to Dad's domain.

Dad finds himself happy to retire from full-time involvement in the day-to-day business.  Now, with Mom by his side, he's the one researching new techniques & visiting major suppliers, a personal touch that gives the business a key advantage over lumber mega stores.  

Lockhart Lumber builds on the reputation Dad established from the beginning - not the cheapest, but definitely the best.

When Dad dies at 68 (it's my reframe & I choose to give Dad an extra five years!, the transition is already completed.  Mom is not only left financially secure, she has the joy of her grandchildren & a strong relationship with her son & daughter-in-law.  

I get to run through a version of that reframe once a week, every time the car pulls up to the main office building at Niece Lumber, every time John & I stroll the tow path, past the tidy prosperous lumberyard.  

It doesn't change reality, but somehow makes me feel better.  And who knows - if family mediation had been mainstream back then, that just might have happened!

beth ann

My heart feels touched & a little tugged whenever I spot or see a photo of Beth Ann.  Several years ago, sitting in a side pew of the church, keeping an eye on a grannie client in the nave, was swept with an unexpected sense as Beth Ann & her husband of many many years walked toward & past me.

"That," an inner voice said, "Is the gal Ian would have married."  

What a lovely thought & one that came utterly unbidden.  I really like her husband, who seems like a thoroughly nice guy.  But I do savor the thought that here was the woman who would have been my sister-in-law.  Since Ian - much to my surprise - was like me in many important ways, maybe she would have loved, even liked me.

Wonderful thought...

not such wise fools

Here's my experience of the steps toward the highest form of wisdom - data information knowledge intelligence understanding perception wisdom intuition.  Data may be first, but it's also least.  

In my experience growing up in parochial schools, from kindergarten through college, the emphasis was on learning as much data as possible.  There was no space on any curriculum for meditation, not even as an elective.  

I think of what a difference developing meditation practices can make in every aspect of a person's life, including the home.  I don't understand how any religion can teach the edict of the God of the Old Testament to "Be still & know..." and NOT recognize the importance of meditation, of finding stillness in the midst of whatever is around us, in developing a genuinely spiritual life.

Seems the religion I was born into & embraced throughout my life is another aspect of inverted life practices.  The very things that were taught throughout the Old & New Testaments & in the Writings are the same that are shuffed aside in the teaching of them.  Even to this day, my church spotlights learning & relearning points of doctrine & ignores the essential value of finding stillness in the midst of life's clutter.  And so many American Christians seem to have totally forgotten that Jesus fed the multitudes without payment & gave life-saving free health care.  They could do with a little stillness in their lives, a little reflection on what was revealed v. what they teach.

Data information knowledge intelligence understanding perception wisdom intuition.  Our tech age takes unimaginable strides expanding the first three.  Many people ace the next two.  But the final three, especially the last?

who ya gonna call? myth buster!

The more I talk to folks who are the youngest in their family, the more convinced I am that the universally accepted "the youngest are spoiled rotten" meme is more or less a myth.  

Am astonished at how many youngest kids felt far from welcomed by older sibs, how many bore the brunt of providing family support, including but hardly limited to being the primary, even sole caregiver for aging parents.  

Maybe it's more pronounced when there's a significant gap between the youngest & older sibs, but found it can also a phenom for youngest kids with brothers & sisters as close in age as toddlers to their newborn.

Am getting seriously curious about all this.  

Gotta admit this is one of the things I truly madly deeply love about my life - the variety!  As a side interest, am engaged in debunking the myth of "youngest kids are spoiled rotten" while, on the professional front, am immersed in developing ways to disperse the vast variety of disempowering myths around aging.  

Little ol' myth buster, me!

reunion

Over on Facebook, a friend's post mentioned how much she enjoyed this year's family reunion, how much she already looked forward to 2015.  Got me thinking about our own Reynolds family reunion, the one we never planned & I'll never forget.

Looking back, can see that our wedding & all the days leading up to it were touched in so many ways by what's best called magic ~ unexpected, transcended any expectation, seemed e were many downright magical - as in unexpected, no logical explanation.  Beginning with John, of course!

Even at the time, I was fully aware that having ALL of my Reynolds (Mom's family) with us to celebrate love was nothing sort of a wish fulfilled.  And totally out of the blue!  Will always remember reading Peggy's letter to a just-woke-from-her-nap Mom.  Expected that she & Jack would come - they made it to my brothers' & got in a visit with Aunt Kay (Mom) every summer.  As nutty about family as I am!  But Mom & I did jigs of joy after learning that Jim & Renee & the girls would here, ditto Karen.  Over the moon with happiness.

THEN, we got the letter from the Ripleys.  Not only were Bob & Linda BOTH coming, so was their dad.  Uncle Paul was tearing himself away from the ranch?  Just didn't seem possible.  And David would be here, too.

In his remarks at the reception, Peter said that the vast number of people surrounding him - close to 400 (not a typo) - had come to honor Mom.  He was off the mark.  Some came because they were friends of Mom's & wanted the chance to share her happiness, some because they were friends of Peter or Mim or Mike & Kerry and it was a chance to touch base with each or all.  A lot came because of the bride & groom.  But the Peddicords (Uncle Al's family) & the Ripleys (Aunt Betty's) came thanks to a great, deep magic - love of family

wee small hours - MIM

Woke up in the wee small hours, thinking about my sister, Mim.  At 62 to her 70, I'm just as baffled as ever.  Will there ever come a time when thoughts of "What happened?" won't ruffle my rest?

When I was a very impressionable teenager, she totally rocked, was the embodiment of cool.  Did a summer workshop in Greenwich Village's Circle in the Square Theatre, went to far off places for college, traveled to Hawaii & Ireland (by herself!), batted about ideas & become great friends with brilliant professors, lived in San Francisco in the height of the '60s, was nanny to a large family in northern NJ whose Dad was remarrying.  Did amazing things.

But she never brought that personality back home.  At least, not back home to me.  When she was in her hometown, she blended as much as possible into the background.  She had the gifts to host discussion "salons" - friends coming for something to sip & wonderful conversations on a wildly wide range of topics.  Instead, we talked about politics & Pitcairns & the latest episode of The Big Valley.  

She was brilliant abroad, incredibly small at home.  From things she's shared, it seems that she felt confined within family, expecting that none of us expected anything brilliant or awesome from her, when the reverse was the reality.

To this day, am baffled by Mim getting her undergrad degree from NYU  & masters from Rutgers.  Not by her being accepted or graduating, but by HOW she financed such costly accomplishments.  NOT the sort of thing discussed at home - talk about ignoring the elephant in the room. How do you make virtually no money, have no apparent independent means of support, yet afford getting not only your undergrad, but a grad degree, one from a top tier & the other from a highly respected university?  I wondered, but it was a verboten subject at home.  It just happened. 

Woke up in the wee small hours contemplating the mystery that is my sister.  Not the sort of thought that welcomes back sleep.  Or, sadly, illumination.  .  

from triggers to prompts

It's reasonable that some folks might consider a blog that touches on "secrets of the home" to be a bit...  self defeating.  Why hash over all the old rigamarole?  Doesn't that perpetuate rather than resolve?

Those are interesting points to ponder.  And quite wrong.

Growing up in a family & a culture that seemed to espouse wilfully NOT seeing what was right before us, I saw the harm done by not seeing what's right under your nose.  It's intentional blindness that does damage, rather than an open sharing of issues & even sore points.  By open discussion, people can see where they are in agreement with each other, where they respectfully (or vociferously) differ.  

The intriguing things that happened throughout my life are no worse than a lot, maybe most people.  It is the rare family that gets through a generational cycle without sturm & drang of some sort.  We're supposed to use it as grist for the mill of understanding, not a millstone around our necks.  

By writing about things as I experienced them - which is not to say it's identical or even close to how others did - stuff that were stumbling blocks & triggers for distress can become illumination & prompts for better understanding.

amory

A dear young friend is bidding adieu to a massively beloved member of her family this morning.  My thoughts & hearts are with them.  Milhouse has four legs & fur, but that pup is as much a part of the family as my friend & her husband.  Her boys have never known life without their furry brother.  

Their preparation for the parting - looking at pictures, showering him with all the love they've felt & will feel, giving him a saucer of beer - has me remembering Amory, the best cat in the universe.  

We only had Amory for a year, but it was a year touched with magic & a deeper sense of all that animals bring to our lives.

Amory was our second cat.  Chessie took a LONG time to adjust to life with us.  We expected the same from Amory. 

Neither John nor I had any intention of getting another cat, but the same friend who connected us with Chessie called up one bitterly cold January evening to say that they had a rescue cat from Doylestown in need of a home & could we take him, if only until they could find a permanent place.  I'd just read The Christmas Cat, so was in just the right spot for saying yes, yes to everything.  Yes to welcoming this unknown, from her description half-starved cat into our home, family, hearts.  

When Leslie walked in the front door with this little, scrawny black cat, I thought, "This is going to take a while.  He's had such a hard go, he's going to be even more distrustful than Chessie."  HA!

John & I were surprised when Leslie put him down on the living room floor.  We'd prepared the front room as his "introduction" chamber.  No need.  That cat took one look around, looked up at us, and seemed to say, "How lovely - the Plaza!"  and made himself immediately at home.

Amory was a black short-hair of undetermined age, but everyone in the know agreed he was an older cat.  He was small & thin as a rail & the most social creature I ever encountered, man or beast.  With Chessie, he showed restraint & diplomacy, letting her make the overtures to something more than abject worship of her self.  The two of them would become the best of friends, happiest by the other's side.  

When guests arrived - back then, we had a lot of them & a lot of parties, which Amory loved - he'd greet them  Peter, with whom he had an especially close relationship, said that he felt Amory always greeted him with, "So happy to see you!  Can I get you something to eat, maybe a tweek of catnip?"   It brings happy tears to my eyes remembering Sunday nights, when Peter would stop by late in the evening to read the Inquirer - my brother on the couch near the lamp, reading the paper with a cat, all contentment, on either side.  When Peter stopped coming, Amory seemed quite heartbroken, like he'd lost a close friend & didn't know why.

Amory & Chessie shared the rare accomplishment of being published authors!  Not just published, but part of an anthology that gets five stars from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble!!  My heart is tender in telling you that their letter to Smarty Jones congratulating the local horse on winning the first two legs of the Triple Crown was NOT with the rest of the featured letters from humans & animals.  There was no description of their "owners" or describing them as "pets."  Instead, the letter is tucked in the very back, looking just as they wrote it, with the two of them given full credit, as deserved.  How many cats do YOU know who can add a publishing credit to their cv?

It broke our hearts to say our adieus so soon.  We took tender care with our boy's small, sweet body.  John dug a hole at Amory's favorite spot, under the rhododendron.  I layered it with fern, the rose petals.  With Chessie close by, we lowered him down, then laid another layer of rose petals over him, completely covering every bit of our sweet boy.

Writing this, tears are streaming down my face.  To this day - ten years later - either John or I will say to the other, "I miss Amory."  He is forever in our hearts, as Milhouse will forever be in the hearts of the Browns. 

poolside

People look like I'm joshing when I say that until last summer, John & I were both lifelong social loners.  Truth!

Last summer changed all that. Heather & Brett and Adrienne & Rick changed all that.  Two totally different, back-to-back fire pits changed all that.  

Now, we look forward to a long leisurely summer of going to the B.A. pool for supper at least once a week.  John asks hopefully, "Are Adrienne & Rick have fire pit tonight?"  (Alas, no lovely evenings over at H & B's - construction!)

We dangled our toes into the social swim & the water is great! 

a life that makes sense

There are certain things that have an utterly involuntary hold on my heart.  There is no shaking them.  

My utter belief - my knowing - that we are meant to be tribal wasn't learned.  It was in my heart since forever.  That meant sticking by Mom when she needed me, even if it was inconvenient, even if it meant heart break.  

I didn't give my support in an unthinking - "Anything you want, Mother." - way.  Part of my support included doing what I could to help her get a better, clearer, more constructive experience of herself.  In other words, I could be a real pain in expecting her to think for herself, which meant knowing herself - something she resisted doing.  

That's what I believe families are meant to do.  We didn't ask to be thrown together with these other people, some of whom we have nothing in common with other than shared genes.  But we were.  How can we help each other be our best self, meet our personal goals?  

My utter belief - my knowing - that John is my own true love didn't evolve & grow over time.  It arrived, full blown, on our first real connection, as close to "he is mine" & "she is mine" as you're going to get in this life.  

He wasn't in the least bit convenient - my life was just fine, thank you, without a love interest.  Just like my feelings about family & parents, I had no say over loving John.  It isn't easy, but it is.  I could no more part from John than I could turn my back on Mom - or Mim or Peter, for that matter, if I felt that what I could offer would really help meet their needs, without damage to mine.

My utter belief - my knowing - that life is meant to make sense to each of us has been part of my heart since forever.  John makes sense.  Being there in a healthy way for my family, especially for Mom, makes sense.  But a large part of my life doesn't make sense, has never made sense.  And I have been totally ineffective in getting it to make sense.

From my earliest days, I was a remarkably messy person.  Until my teens, I shared a room with Mim.  It was always messy.  Occasionally, Mom would wade in & clean it up, which delighted me as much as it bothered Mim.  But when I got my own room - which has been for most of my life - it was always a mess.  Today, you wouldn't believe how the computer studio looks.  It definitely does not work.  

From kindergarten through college, my areas at school were always a disaster.  Notebook, desk, locker, mail box - crammed with papers.  In elementary school, I'd regularly have to miss recess to clean out my desk.  You'd think that alone would shame me into doing better.  Doing better never dawned on me.  I was labeled "lazy," but it was much more.  I don't know what, but I know.

it boils down to this - messy doesn't make sense.  it just doesn't.  When you're the sort of messy I am, life unravels.  Important messages are missed, important dates are forgotten.  it goes beyond not looking good - deep down in my heart, it doesn't feel good.

It's not laziness.  It feels like a giant NO sign is in me somewhere.  In the marrow of my bones?  In my mind?  In my heart? In my soul?  In my spirit?  Don't know where, but it's in there, aggressively keeping me from doing what makes sense.  

And I really hate things that don't make sense.  

My reality is that my norm didn't make sense.  Not in my childhood, not in my adolescence, not in my adulthood.  My norm didn't begin making sense until I did the most insensible thing of all - fell in love.  Fell in love with the right guy.  Fell in love with someone who embody healthy communication.  Fell in love with someone who wanted me to be me, whatever that might be.  

Now, most of me & my life makes sense.  But something has clamped onto  the part that doesn't & won't be shaken off, like it's making its stand by throwing up resistance to my literally cleaning up my act.  If the mess goes, what will have happened to the Elsa who existed before this Deev appeared on the scene?  That makes NO sense!  But prying it out of my life...  Ah, that's the rub.  

Kim asked what I want to get out of seeing her once a month.  I couldn't, because it would be a guess.  It's not a question of what do I want to get from seeing her, it's what do I want, that seeing her is part of (confusing enough?).  I want a life that makes sense to me.  

That's not just some personal desire - it is an utter necessity.  Doing what I can to change our current day culture's view of aging is a desire woven into the very fabric of my being, an expression of my belief - my knowing - that we are here to help others be the best version of themselves possible.  And I won't be able to make any substantial contributions if I'm living a life that doesn't make sense.  

Maybe that's why I'm ready now to face whatever needs facing & change whatever needs changing.  Having life mechanics that don't make sense, that leave me with clogged living areas (the front room & car are tidy, which is a start) & whatever that does to the mind & spirit, will hamper what I feel called pulled pushed to do in the larger community nation world.

What do I want to get from Kim & other constructive influences?  A life that makes sense, whatever it takes to make it so.       .