Do Unto Others

Posted on December 20, 2015 by spiralwoman

I am not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Nor am I Buddhist or Hindu. Labels seem too small and regularly shaped to accommodate my spirituality, which I came across in my own way, having been raised by atheist ideologues.

This essay is not really about spirituality, mine or anyone’s, but rather about morality. Probably because I was raised by ethical people who believed in no higher power, it never dawned on me that morality required religion to exist.

The concept still strikes me as absurd, though I know that many cannot conceive of a morality outside the very clear constraints of their religious beliefs. There are people who believe that morality is externally imposed by a doctrine or credo, and that it does not come from inside. Thus, they imagine that all the people who don’t go to their church or pray to their god cannot be moral. Many religions lay claim to specific beliefs that predate their faith by millennia.

When I taught Eastern religions for a few years I learned a lot. I learned that the phenomenon of “there is only one true religion” is somewhat unique to the Judeo-Christian world. I am no expert and there is much I don’t know, but I know that the Bhagavad Gita teaches that people can find their enlightenment in their own way, and need not adhere to Hindu ideas or believe in the Hindu “source” to end up there. I know that Muhammad respected Jesus as well as the prophets of the Old Testament and considered himself a latecomer to the Axial Age.

But the interesting thing to me is that the religions that arose around the time of Christianity (the aforementioned Axial Age) were responding quite specifically to social injustice.

‘Tis the season of political campaigns being led by men (mainly) who loudly proclaim their devotion to Christianity, and so I am inspired to peek at a few of the more basic tenets of that religion.

Love thy neighbor. Most everyone living and learning within the Western tradition has heard this moral teaching and most people know that the whole sentence reads: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” (King James Bible) And the greater context is (to paraphrase): Love God with your entire heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as you love yourself and P.S. there are no teachings ANYWHERE more important than these. Which means that loving God and loving your neighbor trump anything from Leviticus that requires stoning your wife, burning a bull in your yard, or calling homosexuality an abomination. This teaching seems pretty simple. Don’t act out of hatred, but out of love.

Love your enemy. Related to the above, but interestingly different. I guess someone who is loving his or her neighbor won’t have any enemies. So maybe Jesus thought, “Well, if they slip, and end up with enemies, I’ll teach them to love their enemies and then we’ll be back to ‘it’s all about love.’” Seems a logical line of reasoning for him, since he wanted to teach love. So he said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” There are many who claim Jesus had the copyright on this teaching, but two thousand years before him, a Babylonian council was on record with this: “Do not return evil to your adversary. Requite with kindness the one who does evil to you. Maintain justice to your enemy and be friendly to him,” proving religion has no corner on morality and that government councils can teach loving kindness. There is a Buddhist teaching that is similar, that I won’t fully quote here but I love this part: “Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us.”

Turn the other cheek. The quote goes like this (again King James, my favorite translation): “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” This always bothered me because I thought it was about passive acquiescence to evil. But then I learned something important from a scholar and social historian who explained to me that Jesus in that teaching is advocating political resistance –the non-violent kind. According to the customs of the time, the left hand can only be used for personal and unseemly uses, so any blows to the right cheek must be made backhanded—it’s just an anatomical thing. If you use your right hand on the right cheek—it’s gotta be that way. And a backhanded blow is the way superiors struck peasants. Thus Jesus is addressing a theoretical peasant who is being beaten and he is saying, “Give that asshole your left cheek and make him hit you with the flat of his palm as if you were an equal.” So… either the beating stops (unlikely), or he treats you as a peer, which is almost better. The result is a delicious awkwardness and a way to deal with social injustice without violence. (For a very cool explanation of this, including the part of the passage about walking the extra mile and giving the cloak AND the coat, check out this link: turn the other cheek.)

The Golden Rule. Hugely popular with parents and teachers everywhere. My atheist parents used this dictum as the cornerstone of their ethical teachings. I knew the quote—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”— long before I read the Bible (in middle school English classes). It made perfect sense to me. Where does this genius bit of ethical absolutism originate? Matthew 7:12, you say? Sure. But it was around waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before Jesus explained it to his flock. Also known as the ethic of reciprocity, it can appear in either the positive or prohibitive form. Jesus used the positive: do. The prohibitive, used for example by the ancient Chinese, is more like this: Don’t. Aka, don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Like when your mom said, “Do you want Johnny to push you down? No? Then don’t push him!”

Around 2000 BCE, the Egyptians had a thing that went like this: “Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do.” It goes along with the concept of sacrifice—give a gift to the gods so they will bestow gifts upon you. Later, around 675 BCE the Egyptians had a negative or prohibitive form of the Golden Rule: “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”

Then there is Confucius and Lao Tse in ancient China, each of whom has a version. The Hindu precept, “Make dharma (right conduct) your main focus, treat others as you treat yourself,” is another very ancient example. Then there’s ancient Greece, and ancient Persia… and finally—FINALLY—we get to the Judeo-Christian tradition which chimes in on the Golden Rule.

Where am I going with this? Jesus was a good teacher and his precepts hit at a good time, but he did not make most of this stuff up from scratch. There were people teaching moral behavior before he cast his light upon the Middle East and, eventually (thanks to some great marketing strategies and a few wars credited to his followers), the rest of the planet. But the ancient Egyptians or Chinese from several millennia BCE were not sending messages via bottle or smoke signal halfway across the planet and into the future. The ideas of love, reciprocity, and peaceful co-existence arose independently across the globe over time. Morality is not linked to any particular political or religious system, location, skin color, gender, class, sexual orientation, or social strata. It is simply human.

The social injustice of Jesus’s world created a system ripe for change. His followers, Jews and pagans, managed to incorporate his wisdom into their own religious traditions. It did not seem particularly odd to do so as many of his messages were considered more political than religious.

How many religions have fought holy wars in order to wipe out the non-believers? No history is bloodier than that of a church founded on the teachings of a simple carpenter who taught universal love and peaceful resistance.

How many nations have been founded on religious teachings and turned around and banished, exterminated, or forcibly converted anyone who believed differently? Jesus was a Jew, but I’m pretty sure he did not ask for an identity card when people followed after him to hear what he had to say.

Every president of the United States – a nation that in its founding separated church from state—has to swear an oath on the Judeo-Christian Bible. So how did it come to be that “devout” candidates are allowed to wage holy wars on women’s rights, religious freedoms, and the poor? Their guru, Jesus himself, honored the poor above all (remember the thing about a rich man getting into heaven being harder than a camel’s transit through the eye of a needle?), preached unconditional love (that means no conditions, yo), and accepted independent women among his closest followers. Some believe Mary Magdalene was his first and most important disciple and it is a matter of historical fact that she was not a prostitute at all, but an independent and sexual woman, which the Christian fathers had to translate into “prostitute” to justify their patriarchal religion and its systematic debasement of women. (For more on that check out my blog titled “Scarlet Words—How Women’s History and Power was (partly) Stolen by Changing the Language.”)

Not only does the current crop of talking heads in the Republican debates not advocate loving their neighbor, let alone their enemies, they in fact demand anger, hatred, and retribution. They incite us all to carry our guns and shun non-white, non-Christian people fleeing from tyranny. There are even hate groups out there (I can’t help wondering what Jesus, Buddha, or Muhammad would have to say about the very CONCEPT of a hate group) who believe that we should torture and destroy the children of our enemies. They also insist that citizens who love “the wrong people” or identify as “the wrong gender” or, an old favorite, have “the wrong color skin” or religion—that those people should be tormented, banished, killed. The large majority of these hate groups identify strongly as Christians. I want to ask them: “Have you met Jesus?”

What happened? A planetary evolution of millennia upon millennia, a species with no end of wise teachers to guide us and we are still in this place?

Many people may not love themselves enough to love their neighbors and enemies. Yet there are plenty of people out there living good lives, motivated by love and acceptance, guided by the Golden Rule. Spreading love starts at home. A challenge for me and mine this New Year.

No disrespect intended to anyone. This cartoon just fits too darned well with my blog.

Bubbling Gratitude

Posted on November 22, 2015 by spiralwoman

When I was a little girl, happiness would visit me in the form of bubbles. That’s what it felt like to me, anyway. Bubbles inside my chest.

They did not come often, but I was always dazzled and delighted when those bubbles tickled my heart behind my small ribs.

I know I have felt lots sadness in my life, but that’s not what I actually remember.

I remember this. A sunny afternoon—any one of many. I left school to walk to the crosstown bus stop. The East River glittered, and the leaves – green with spring—rustled secrets to me. At such a precise moment, a profound feeling would seep through my body. I could feel it, like juice mixing with my blood and changing every cell.

I realize now what that was. I called the bubbles happiness. But now I believe they were about gratitude.

My daughter likes to tease me about the time I burst into tears in the car when a bobcat was loping along in the long grass beside the road one morning. I felt I’d been slapped in the heart, hard, by the extraordinary beauty of that sight. It hurt—in a good way. I could not believe how lucky I was to be there in that moment, and see such a thing. My reaction may have been a little over-the-top, but it was the real thing.

Right now, the cat sits in a trapezoidal pool of sunlight that is just her size. Or rather, she fits her tiny body into the small shape of that puddle of warmth. Her eyes are half closed and her sigh of contentment comes out in a rumbling purr. She is not thinking about what might be, what has been, or what she wants or doesn’t want. And I believe she is more than just content. She is grateful. Warmth and light are, in that moment, enough. They are more than she could have hoped for. They are perfect and life is perfect.

An exhausted refugee fleeing horrors feels, I believe, gratitude when a bowl of broth or rice is passed to her hungry child. In that moment, the juice of thanks floods her blood and her head lightens, for a moment. Gratitude for that moment and others that may come is what keeps her going, not fear.

In one of my favorite books, Night, Elie Wiesel describes a moment when he and fellow prisoners at Birkenau hear the plaintive violin played by a fellow prisoner who managed to keep his instrument through it all. The horrors of that moment, the hunger, pain, fear, degradation, all vanish for Wiesel as he experiences a perfect moment with gratitude. Surrounded by death, his focus is on life, or the hope of life. Reading that book I understood a tiny fraction about what survival was about. Those who feared they would not survive were not as lucky as those who saw each day as a chance for life.

How do we make our brains feel gratitude for one small beauty, instead of bitterness and anger at all the injustice? Is this a gift some people are born with? The gift of gratitude?

For some, the bad stuff is just more real. They can easily remember the slight, the horror, the terrible misfortune of yesterday but struggle to feel the beauty of right now. They see it, they know it is there, but they are sad, because it doesn’t permeate them.

I believe in the power of belief. I have read the science which confirms the anecdotal evidence we see every day. It says that reframing our thoughts will reframe our emotions and our very beliefs. Those reframed beliefs subtly and not-so-subtly shift how we act and behave in such a way that our experience of every moment can be different and the weight can be lifted.

The bubbles behind my chest are not something I can control. I have to allow them to be. The perfect moment of sitting down at my desk in the morning with a hot cup of coffee. The perfect moment of hilarity on the phone with my sister when laughter erupts from my belly. The perfect moment that will be, when both my children sit down with me for Thanksgiving. The perfect moments, all of them, when with all my blessings I can live in hope and without fear.

I am grateful.

I Remember You, Girl

Posted on October 17, 2015 by spiralwoman

When I started teaching in 1988 I was 27. Despite being a grown up and the veteran of an entirely different career, I was utterly unprepared for the emotional and psychological toll the first year of teaching was going to take on me. And physical, too. Within a month I had pneumonia so bad I missed two weeks of school.

I kept my head up by keeping it down. Down, as in hard at work 18 hours a day. Ask my new husband at the time who forgot what everything but the part on the top of my head looked like.

Liz had a classroom down the hall. She taught math to the same students I had for English. She was older, a veteran teacher, a mother of three middle-school-aged kids, someone who juggled 10 balls in one hand while smoking a cigarette and checking her manicure.

Somehow, Liz took me under her wing immediately without my realizing it. Somehow, I poured my heart out to her before I consciously realized I needed to do that. Somehow, she always knew what stage of disbelief/stress/excitement/anxiety/overwhelm/enthusiasm/celebration/love I was in during that first year of school. I ended up sitting at her kitchen table with some regularity, after school, sometimes even before school. Her humor and very non-cloying warmth, combined with her experience as a teacher, her unromantic appreciation of the job, and her being what I considered a “real” grown-up, all came together in one irresistible package. I was grateful to her every day.

Unsurprisingly, when I had pneumonia during those first weeks, she brought food over more than once to help me and my husband keep our shit together.

I learned a lot from Liz during the few years we were colleagues. She was a true friend. Our paths diverged at some point and yet she never really left me. I went to her funeral about fifteen years ago, truly shocked in some deep recess that anyone that feisty and full of grit could ever die. I’m sure her sassy self is ruling the roost in the afterlife. Just a few days ago, one of Liz’s daughters wrote to me (and I’m sure hundreds of others who loved Liz), asking for memories, anecdotes, snippets. I was brought back, immediately and easily, to a time when Liz was large and in charge, and very much alive.

So I got through that first teaching year, triumph outweighing the occasional sense of disaster, partly due to my stubbornness, determination, and general refusal to succumb to despair, partly due to the fact that I actually did kind of love the job, and in very large part thanks to Liz’s (oh-so-unobtrusively constant) supportive presence and love.

On graduation day, I remember waking up that morning hugely relieved that the year was over. I was looking forward to stripping wallpaper and paint in my newly purchased house and mulling over the year and all the things I’d do differently starting in September. After the ceremony and luncheon, Liz suggested I come over to her house for a while, just to hang. I gladly agreed, looking forward to celebrating a successful completion of the schoolyear. She did not seem at all surprised when, about fifteen minutes after I sat down next to her on a porch chair, I burst into tears. She put her hand on my shoulder, then stood up and gave me a one-armed hug. She whipped some tissues from somewhere, shoved them at me, and let me cry.

When I started blubbering about how much I loved the students, how much I’d miss the 8^th graders-now-graduates, how hard the year was but-I-didn’t-care-it-was-amazing, and finally how surprised I was at the flood of grief that was washing over me—Liz was not fazed in the slightest. She murmured, “I know,” and “That’s normal” and other soothing words until I stopped sobbing, no doubt with a few ignominious hiccups or slurpy snorts.

We talked for a long time about each of the students, about some of the things that had happened, about our indomitable colleagues, and the backroom drama of the administrative offices. I felt so free and easy in her company. I knew she would not judge me. She was incapable of that. She cracked me up with her sarcastic side-comments, and impressed me with the comfy, competent way she parented her children as they passed through the room, despite having me and my ridiculous mess to deal with.

The rest of the afternoon was full of laughter and silliness, as I recall. I went home eventually, exhausted, purged, renewed.

Liz at my 30th birthday, about to say something super sarcastic.

Identity Crossroads

Posted on September 5, 2015 by spiralwoman

I sat in a beautiful rural church on a recent warm Saturday. A woman who once lived, had died. I remember her very clearly. She was big of personality, voice, and opinion. She seemed to care not one whit about what anyone thought of her. I admired that. When I knew her, I was in my late 20s, she was maybe 25 years older—old enough to be my mother. But she wasn’t.

Although Katherine was being honored that day, she was not the reason I was there. I was there to honor someone else.

The year I met Katherine was my first year of teaching 6-8^th grade English. My 6^th grade that year had only 7 students in it. One of them was Katherine’s daughter, Kit.

Teaching was, like babysitting or nannying, both of which I’d also done, a precursor to parenthood. I found out, almost by surprise, how much love is involved. I discovered how much a group of 7 kids in a classroom every day can worm its way in. By the time they were in 8^th grade, we were sitting around discussing The Scarlet Letter while everyone took turns feeling my first baby thump around under my sweater.

I taught Kit and her classmates for 3 years. I knew at the time that she would always be a powerful memory for me. There was something about her. She knew herself, I could see. Or was on the way to knowing herself. And she was only 11.

Kit grew up, moved away, began a career as a midwife, married, had children. I stayed in the background, like a good former teacher, proud and admiring, happy for her growing and achieving, but mostly for her happiness. All this thanks to the power of social media, where I walk a fine line between stalking and benevolent awareness. (Thankfully, I have a busy, rich life so stalking is not really an option for me. But I am alertly and fondly cognizant of many, many of my former students, and in touch with them at appropriate interludes, thanks to Facebook and other cyber-land “realities.”)

In the intervening years, between Kit’s 8^th grade graduation, at which I cried (I always cry), and the memorial of her mother, I lost mine.

Mother-daughter—it’s a complicated bond. Teacher-student—less so, but also multi-layered, very lasting, and potentially very rich. Kit and I shared what I recently described as a “history of entanglement/anguish/difficulty” with our mothers. The loss of a parent is always hard. The loss of a mother has its own layers of complexity. The loss of a mother with whom the relationship has been fraught, painful, guilty, or in other ways complicated… well, it’s the worst, or at least the most difficult to navigate.

Fast forward 25 years from graduation day for Kit and her 6 classmates, and I received a message. Kit stretching out a hand in my direction and saying, well, lots of things. Part of it was just this: “I find myself wanting to reach out again all these years later and for your support . Although I am no longer a child and need so much less than the 11 to 13 year old me needed. It feels comforting to know you are out there, regardless. Thank you for helping me find my way all those years ago. I will be in the dark for awhile with this grief but less scared knowing you are there if I feel the need to call out.”

When Kit lost her mother. When she reached out to me. When the memories of my own mother’s death in 2004 resurfaced during that exchange with Kit. When I sat in the small church listening to the carefully worded eulogies about a woman—a force of nature who was hard to love but easy to admire (so like my mother). When I heard Kit speak of, and to, her mother, back stiff and eyes dry, her complicated pain a stunning echo of mine, 11 years before. When I saw Kit in the flesh for the first time since 1990, holding her two babies close, a boy and a girl (like mine). When her smiling face reminded me of the eternal grace I always saw in her, even in those awkward adolescent years, and that lovely soul that shines out to this day. When her beautiful face brought back those first years of teaching and all the hard work and the crazy impossible aspirations and the valiant heroism of kids and the bond that forms and the teacherlove.

Sitting in the church I was briefly in a powerful crosswind—a very real moment when several pasts intersected with the present and an idea of the future in which Kit-as-mother, me-as-mother, Kit-as-daughter, me-as-daughter, Kit-as-student, me-as-teacher, sparkled like the facets on a universe-sized crystal.

Not all intersections are where clandestine meetings take place. Sometimes they are just moments in time when our different identities intersect unexpectedly, and immediately stop mattering. When the only thing that does matter is love.

The Family Thing (it’s the thing)

Posted on August 17, 2015 by spiralwoman

Cozy reunion house.

Family has been a lifelong journey for me. When I was two, my mother removed me from my father. Life was now rearranged into “regular”—in New York City with my mother—and “visits” –in the summer, to my dad. Though I often spent 4 months a year with him, my mother’s terminology had its intended effect. “Home” was with her, not him. But I felt more “at home” with him. Which meant I was homesick no matter where I was.

Those precious visits to my father invariably involved forays from his home in western PA to northern Ohio and our extended family there—including 13 first cousins. I lived for those visits.

On my mother’s side, it was like we were in witness protection. As I grew up, I knew she had a sister and five brothers, aunts and uncles, two parents— but I’d never seen them, except once when I was three months old. By the time I met them all (my mom finally got over being mad at her mom), when I was about eight, I acquired 13 more cousins. Jackpot!

There was something so powerful in knowing I had people. Every day I spent with my cousins and other extended family was about creating and discovering history. That shared history—of DNA, generational memory, and memories forged in cousins’ back yards— has sustained me in many ways over the years.

I’ve since realized that DNA, and even fond memories, are not always enough to carry a relationship into maturity. But sometimes, you just get lucky.

Partial group shot 2015

What are the odds, I wonder, that the 14 offspring of 4 people born in the 1920s + spouses, the chosen life partners of said 14 offspring, and a combined 22 from the next generation (and even their spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends), would like each other enough to spend 3 days together on an island in a big house? Like…24 hours a day. Did I mention: on an island. (AKA no easy escape route.) And not just once, but over and over again? I don’t know. Maybe it happens a lot. But that’s what we do—my dad’s genome pool—the Park clan.

Richard Bach (remember him?) wrote: “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” I’ll go with that. But what a blessing when the two converge, and the respect and joy and the blood go together?

There are 5 basic things that cement this bond, every few years when we gather together on an island in Lake Erie. 1. PLAY 2. FOOD 3. WORK 4. TALK 5. LAUGHTER.

Play

A deck of cards, a baseball bat, a volleyball, a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (or three in one weekend, one done twice). A massive game of trivia played by all 45 of us, in teams with ludicrous names. Who cares? To play is the thing. (Apologies for a faulty reference to a famous quote by Shakespeare that has nothing to do with playing.) How often do we play in life? If you are not under 10 or on a team of some sort, you probably do not play as much as you should.

#puzzlemadness

65 year old cousins and 50 year old aunts, and cousins-in-law, 20 something second cousins– a collection of sorts, all tiptoeing into the expansive, sea-like Lake Erie with floatation devices and water shoes, to swim, or just hang—literally—on noodles, and chat, laugh, wash their hair. Play and the time to play.

Talk and walk and swim.

I’d sit willingly for 3 hours straight on a blanket under the trees beside the lake, playing Spades or Hearts with any and all comers, from my 10 year old niece (not to be underestimated) to my 30-something first cousin once removed who calls me “Aunt Vanessa” because he can and I love him so.

Cards, cards, and more cards (with talk, talk, and more talk).

This year there was a bit of edgy competition in some of the contests, but balanced nicely with those willing to poke fun at a slight overabundance of wanting-to-win when half the people on a team are either under 12, over 60, or never played volleyball/baseball/trivia/spades before. Laugh, wink, fade to sunset, a glass of wine, and arms around shoulders.

Volleyball in the hot sun.

Food

Never underestimate the power and influence of good food. We bring a truckload of fresh groceries over on the ferry to stock the house’s 2 refrigerators. Pre-arranged teams comprised of 5-7 family members of multiple generations, and none of them from the same nuclear unit—each team is responsible for one meal from preparation and presentation through clean-up. One. That’s it. The menu is prepared ahead, but the inspiration, timing, insouciant je-ne-sais-quoi-mystery of the meal’s creation is a magic that happens within the team itself….

Meal time is happy time.

And the food. Is. So. Good. It probably helps that everyone has worked up an appetite swimming or hitting balls with a bat or laughing so hard the tummy ache of laugh-muscles just fades into hungry belly. It also helps that the few foodies in the family plan the menus (my sisters and me, basically). And that smart people (and this family does have smart going for it) make good decisions. And then there’s my bro-in-law-aka-secret-weapon Joe who can grill or smoke anything and is willing to wake up at 6 a.m. to do it. But whatever. 45 people finding a seat on one of two porches, the living room, or the kitchen to talk and eat and groan with satisfaction. Feeding and being fed. That’s a family thing, right?

Work

A happy, gorgeous cog in a meal team wheel. #vital #worthit

For our reunion weekends, food and work go together. Those meal teams work hard. Knowing this is their one responsibility, and that the rest of the food will be made by other teams, releases all kinds of motivation, not to mention team spirit and lots of creative problem solving. Over the years (we’ve been doing this since the mid-90s), I’ve noticed that the work binds us together. Pride and accomplishment and camaraderie all go together with getting-the-job-done focus.

Bacon gets made on the porch. #itsarule

Whether it’s making or stripping beds, cleaning a bathroom, or doing laundry, we benefit from the fact that we are NOT in a hotel, at a resort, or on a cruise. The tasks are few enough, and the rewards of being part of it all… are many.

Early birds make beds!

Talk

Porch schmoozing. #cousins

Like minds. That’s part of it. And the fact that we like each others’ minds. Talk is a major part of the mirepoix that makes those family weekends so delicious. A bunch of curious, thoughtful, and articulate (not to mention funny) people who manage to be great listeners (recipe for conversation Nirvana?) with loads of time to spend just plain schmoozing.

Blanket schmoozing #auntandniece

Where shall we go to have our next in-depth convo? This is not a question we ask ourselves. In the hallway outside the bathroom is a good place. Standing in front of the stove while one or more of us is flipping pancakes. In two or a few of the 8 zillion rocking chairs on one of two porches. On a blanket by the lake. In the lake. In a hammock. Standing at the edge of the grove as the sun blinks below the horizon. I even had one cousin call me at home a week before the reunion to get a head start on conversation. He was worried we might not have enough time when we got there.

Under-a-tree schmoozing. #brothersinlaw

Sometimes no words are necessary. #secondcousinsrock

Laughter

As good as the food is, if I had to give it up to keep the amount of laughter that happens in 3 days, I would.

Best laughter pic from any reunion. 1996, my sister and my dad. #outofcontrol #laughtillyoucry

Family is worth any effort. I have a cousin who flies in from Texas every time. One from Colorado and another from Georgia. We start talking about the “next time” before the weekend ends.

My niece, Jane, was in tears on the last night of our weekend. She is 12. She doesn’t want to wait two or three years for the next family reunion. She wants one every year. (The practical issues and expense for people was not factoring in to her calculation. Nor should it.) Time’s passage is as vivid to Jane—if not more so—than to those of us on the other side of 50. Change happens. It happens to her (probably daily) and there are no guarantees, no promises, no sure things. “Please, Aunt Vanessa. I don’t want to wait.”

Neither do I.

#LakeErieSunset

Brief Reflection on a Daughter’s Graduation

Posted on July 24, 2015 by spiralwoman

When she was four, she graduated from Hayes Nursery School. She was growing up fast. The children sang their songs, got their little certificates, and we eased into summer.

The next 9 years were reassuringly graduation-free. Time seemed to stand still a little bit because of the lack of ceremonial transitions. For a number of years, she would stand alone on the talent show stage and sing, a cappella, one of many multi-verse Irish rebel songs she had learned by osmosis from her dad. Standing stiff and straight, she’d launch into a song, crisply enunciating lines like:

“What will my local brethren think, when they hear the news
My car it has been commandeered, by the rebels at Dunluce”
“We’ll give you a receipt for it, all signed by Captain Barr
And when Ireland gets her freedom, boy, you’ll get your motor car”

When you have a small daughter who does that, as you, her dad, and everyone else in the room stares in awe, you sort of get the idea that things are special around here. That tradition—of singing a rebel rousing song at the end of May every year—became a kind of passage-marker as she “graduated” from kindergarten to first to second to third and on up through the ranks.

I have been blessed to know many children who really liked school. As a teacher at a very special school, I saw them every day in my classroom. The ones who did not like school were quite rare. My son really liked school. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the sports and the hours spent in the art room or the science lab or learning guitar with a cool jazz musician on Thursday mornings.

With my daughter, it was different. If living life is partly about finding “the flow”—school was definitely part of her “flow.” She stayed in the flow through her 8^th grade graduation, at which she spoke, with wisdom and a droll humor that kept everyone laughing, her high school graduation, cum laude etc. etc. and then, ever the educational traditionalist, college, after a mere four years of #crushingit.

It’s a funny thing to sit, surrounded by strangers and family, as several hundred names are read out, and several hundred beautiful 22 year olds stride proudly across a stage at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where, for a variety of reasons, your daughter’s college holds commencement.

All those years ago, we chose a name for the baby who got herself born in record time due to having “been there, done that” so many lifetimes’ worth (I am convinced). We gave the name to a small human we made. It was our second gift to her, after life itself.

She wrote that name on her pictures, poems, and papers, on her notebooks, baseball gloves, riding helmets, applications, résumés, water bottles, and social media accounts. Then one day someone says that name into a microphone and yet another birth happens, as the human we made moves through yet another passage from what came before, to all that still awaits.

Hairdresser Goddess Guru Kindred Spirit Soul Sister

Posted on April 19, 2015 by spiralwoman

She’s about six feet tall with the face of a goddess, yet nothing about her intimidates. Radiating warmth, Molly (not her real name) is a woman in touch with herself as much as with others.

My relationship with Molly started the usual way, through the recommendation of a friend. Despairing, I had all but given up on my once lush, silky hair that had turned into sparse straw on my head. My fall from “great hair” status had taken its toll on me, I’ll be honest. I was struggling, as I passed deeper into middle age, to come to grips with lots of stuff, but when my hair betrayed me it was almost too much.

At first my interactions with Molly were entirely professional. She exuded confidence and set about fixing me, hair-wise. And she did. Not all at once (after all it had taken years for life and me to destroy my hair). But within a year, I was a new woman. And my hair looked better and better. It was obvious that this woman is very very good at what she does. As well as very good at… being a person.

Molly trusts and honors her own instincts, always. She dresses the way she wants too. Confident style. When I first knew Molly, her hair was shortish, and sometimes white blond and sometimes shimmery brunette. Eventually, her hair grew long and she used it as an art medium when she took it to full, glorious dreadlocks. That transition made me fangirl even more, if that’s possible. But her beauty, tawny youth, and loving smile are nothing compared to… what shall I call it? Okay, her soul.

She is an incredible single mom. She is a seeker. She is an artist and she loves life and her own journey with powerful feeling. She has deep wisdom that has been forged, at least partly, in the cauldron of busy past life cycles.

The more we talked, the more we realized how profoundly we understood one another on many levels. I have opened up to her about things I have not told anyone else. And it’s not just that she’s safe, because she doesn’t know the people I know, blah blah blah. You know, the dynamic you get when people open their guts to the bartender, realtor, or, okay, well… hairdresser. It’s not like that. Once a month I show up in her chair and we pick up wherever we left off. We both share from somewhere deep inside. We both listen. We are interested. I want to know about her process, her journey, her exciting view of the world from where she is.

We support one another with clips of wisdom, fit into the time slot allowed—between the color and the wash, the snipping and the blowdrying. She has texted me once or twice, at crucial moments, when she knows I’m about to face something particularly difficult. She has seen me at my very worst. She’s seen me high on life. She’s seen me cry. Hard. She gives hugs, and accepts them too.

She got a call from me one afternoon as I sat by the side of a road in Texas deeply afraid I’d never be able to drive again, so shattered did I feel in that moment. Yes, I called Molly. Somehow, she was tuned into a particular part of my inner journey in a way no one else was, or could be. She talked to me for an hour, probably. Got me back on the road. And then we did not see one another till I was back in New York and had my next appointment. Another effortless chapter in our serialized relationship.

Molly is young enough to be my daughter, but mine is not a motherish feeling, and hers is not a daughterly vibe. Sisters find each other in the most unlikely places, at the most serendipitous of moments. She is a healer, a visionary, a friend. Molly’s gifts come in all colors and work in all seasons. She has a lust for life and she is simply determined to make the best of the one given to her. She is a competent, independent woman with strong ideas, a superb mind, and a huge heart. I am her biggest fan. Not only does Molly have a vocation, she has a big round universe full of everything else—all the things you might not realize when you see her standing behind the chair, scissors in hand. Unless you are really looking.

Road Trip Yummy

Posted on March 25, 2015 by spiralwoman

Crossing the GW bridge.

On the road.

I can do anything. Stop at every Starbucks on 95, even when the latte I got at Vince Lombardi’s rest area is still half full. I can take a pee break every 45 miles with no one making wise cracks about how much water (and coffee) I drink. I can get off the highway in favor of local roads and less convenient conveniences. Listen to Classic Vinyl on Sirius for three hours straight. Pull over at a rest area to take a nap or write something down I happen to be thinking about. Randomly decide to stop halfway to my destination at a funky motel with lavender shutters and no wifi. Change my plans! Make new plans! ANYTHING.

As Ms. GPS ticks down, reminding me when I’ll arrive at my “final destination” (at least for this leg of my trip), I might throw the little minx a curve ball. Ask her to find a nearby Apple Store. The glitches I’ve been living with on my phone are suddenly two exits away from being solved. While I’m strolling across the strange parking lot, I think about what living in this city would be like. “Wow, this mall has an Anthropolgie. I can see living here.”

I like to drive past university campuses. Work, read, or write in local coffee shops. Type local coffee shop passwords into my computer and tell it to “log in automatically.” I could be back here one day, after all.

Friendly barista.

I imagine that, instead of driving south into the lowering sun, I head to the lecture tonight about the “emergence of eco-critical art history.” I ask the barista for directions to Mitchell Hall. As I walk out with my tall black decaf he says, “Enjoy the lecture!” I get back in my car and head for the highway.

The sun falling low in the sky is almost as thrilling as the sun on the rise, glamouring the horizon at dawn when I launched this trip. Long, long ago this morning, or yesterday…. Or last week. Long shadows make me sad, but mostly happy.

When I am on a road trip by myself, I pull over often to get out of the car and take pictures. The trip I’m on as I write this, spring emerged before me as I headed south. Any roadside bush with its branches fuzzy with baby leafbuds is worthy of my attention and immortalization via iPhone. The sun falling slantwise on a clump of crocuses or the green-gray of an awakening field. Sometimes these small moments feel like a fist slamming into my chest to awaken my heart.

The gift of crocus.

Getting there might be the best part. But being there—that is wonderful too. When I am there, I am elsewhere. Mysterious and new, or familiar—a place from my past, perhaps, elsewhere excites me. Later on, when I head home again, elsewhere will whisper in my ear, “There is noplace like home.” By then, I’ll be tired of my road trip and ready again to believe that truism.

But while I’m in the sexy arms of another city, another state, or another stretch of road, I’m damned fickle.

Oxymorons for a New Age

Posted on March 16, 2015 by spiralwoman

This is my now.

Living in the now has become a buzz-phrase lately. A standard bearer for logic and linear time might wonder, “If we are alive, and unable to time travel, what other damned moment would we be living in?” To someone so tapped into “the flow,” even “now” might be too fluid a concept to pin down and actually live in.

But let’s not overthink this. The point I’m trying to make is that buzz-phrase or not, there are plenty of helpful bits of advice being turned into memes and tweets and book blurbs all over the place these days. There are driven people out there who actually think that being busy equals being important or being stressed is somehow cool, but who want to be up on all the latest trends (like “living in the now”). They have heard stress will kill you, and they get that. But the killing part comes later, after they have retired from being stressed and thus can stop death in its tracks by hiring a meditation guru or learning Qi Gong. They’ll live in the “now”… later.

A strange conflict emerges as smart people try to put relaxation and now-ness on their to-do list.

I’m trying to play more.

It seems to me that play just sort of happens, or should. I mean sure. We can head to the gym for that weekly pick-up game of b-ball and play our guts out. Or we can put “game night” on the calendar and invite our most irreverent and funny friends over for a rip-roaring round of “Screw Your Neighbor” but play is so much more than that. Play is a state of mind. You can play in your mind, with yourself, as you re-wonder about things you’ve already wondered about. I think that laughing out loud at your own clumsiness is playful, or turning spilled coffee into a game to see who can get to the floor first, you or the drips. Play is by definition impractical and gives pleasure. I need more of it, that’s for sure. Here’s what I think: don’t try. Just play.

I’m struggling to let go.

Believe me, letting go is often not easy. Whether it is letting go of lost love or a bad habit, easier said than done. But it seems to me that the struggling and striving we do to let go causes us to hold on harder than ever, without meaning to. I picture someone (like me, many times) straining under the burden of …letting go, so that nothing at all is released and implosion is the only natural outcome. I’d prefer to lie down on the sand inside my mind and open my palms to the sun, until whatever I am holding onto just drifts off on the wind. No struggle necessary.

I’m straining to understand.

Strain and strife are antithetical to understanding in many ways. Most of my “aha” moments come when I am open, mind, body, and heart, to the messages available to all of us. Believe me, I’m as guilty as anyone of squinching up my face in an effort to make a round thought make sense in my triangle brain. If I just wait till my brain gets a little rounder, it all makes sense. Suddenly and completely with no squinching. I’ve decided that instead of “trying to understand,” I’ll just allow understanding to fill me.

So much of life today intrudes on the very concept of today. I want today to be itself, a whole 24 hour moment of now that fits nicely with yesterday’s now, and tomorrow’s now. I’m working on it.

Big Rambling Houses, Cliffs to Jump Off, and the Power of Flight

Posted on March 7, 2015 by spiralwoman

After more than a decade during which I almost got used to the fact that access to my sleeping mind had been cut off, I’m remembering my dreams again. There is more than one way to tap the unconscious, but dreams were always my fallback. The membrane was reliably soft and easy when I awoke, and I could ease back through it, take a look, and know what my message for myself was that day.

Well, it is all there for me again. Over the years, I had invited my dreams back now and then with not a lot of success. They say you can train yourself, but I think there is more to it than that. I guess I’m ready for them again. Ready to hear what they have to say and see what they want to show me. (In other words, ready for what my higher self needs to teach me.)

Lately, my dreams have had three common threads. Aside from a series of dreams in which I see someone I badly miss, I’m dreaming about rambling houses, edges off which I jump, and the power of flight.

As a child, my dreams of flying were so constant and so real to me that I spent a few years around the ages of 6 or 7 secretly believing I really could fly. I just though I wasn’t good at controlling it while I was awake the way I could when I was asleep. I have not flown like that in my dreams for over 30 years and I have missed it very much.

Flight. In childhood, I usually flew to save myself, in an often-narrow escape from someone or something. And sometimes I flew just for the joy of it. Now that I’m flying again, the frequency is reversed. The occasional “good thing I know how to fly so I can get out of this freefall” but with a lot of “damn, I can FLY” kinds of dreams that I wake from feeling good and filled with a glorious POWER.

Big rambling houses. In one recent dream sequence, the staircase to the basement was made of empty wine crates. (Hard to navigate but begging the question: where did all that wine go?) I made my way down that scary staircase, without fear. My cats are occasionally with me, familiars even as I sleep, and they often do a good deed or exhibit impressive supercat skills, sort of the way I superhumanly fly all over the place. Not to be sidetracked by the props and minor characters — these dreams are about dank basements, endless hallways, doors…and me, always faced with a CHOICE.

Precipices. In one badass dream lately I took a bad guy (faceless, nameless, but menacing) by the hand and jumped with him off a cliff. Even though it looked like the edge of a porch, it was indeed a very intense cliff, and we ended up plummeting through dark bottomlessness until I conveniently let go of his hand and flew to safety. Though I made the choice to exert my power and avoid termination at the bottom of that particular precipice, cliffs are about risk and facing fears and, in my mind, they are about MAJOR CHANGE.

The recent full moon (which was ruled by Virgo, as it happens) still holds sway over us all. And over me, telling me that change is inevitable, that it is time to live truthfully if I’m not already, that everything I’m going through inside and outside of me is prepping the stage for my future. Sure, I know that every act and thought and feeling is, in a sense, doing that. But we all know when the shit that’s going down is BIG and when it’s not. This feels big.

So I look at the dreams (and so much more) and conclude that I have the power to fly. I can fly away, I can fly up, down, or in. I can save myself, and I can let go of what is not serving me. And I can fly just to fly, for the joy of being weightless and free. And I have choices and they are forcing themselves into my consciousness so I’ll make them. Not all of the choices are easy, not all of them are safe. Just like the big houses. Scary basement or door number three? And I am on the brink—of something. The very knife-sharp edge of whatever it is, I can make the leap… and be okay.

spiralwoman

One woman trying to pull all the pieces together.

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