Another Version of Family II

Flo and Dorothy were best friends. Their mothers were friends, too. Naturally they raised their daughters to be best friends. Well, more like sisters.

When they were in their late 30s, they bought houses next to one another. They grocery shopped together, reprimanded their children together and, in the evenings, wandered over to one another’s houses in fluffy pink (Flo) or blue (Dorothy) bedroom slippers and wrappers (Southern-speak for “bathrobes”) to watch the 11:00 news and sip Bloody Marys together. Sometimes they’d sneak cigarettes together, too.

The children (there were 4: Amy, who was a few years older, Stephen, who was a few years younger, and The Girls - Junie and Connie - who were nearly the same age) never noticed they weren’t really related, since family isn’t always easy to define, even when there’s shared blood. They played and fought together, they went to school and church together and they just generally grew up – sure of their places in the world and in their momma’s hearts.

On summer evenings, the kids would all sneak outside in their jammies into the steamy southern night. Spotless peanut butter jars with holes punched in the lids by screwdrivers detained captive fireflies as they slowly blinked out. Too soon, Flo (or Dorothy) would call out, “Ok, kiddos, your time’s up. C’mon inside now.” “Come in and wash your feet off and run some cool water over your wrists. It’ll make you feel better.” “C’mon, now! It’s time for bed!”

In a pre-cell-phone-pre-teen world, The Girls strung shiny, scrubbed-clean tin cans on a clothesline cord across the lawn and into one another’s bedroom windows. “Hello! HELLO! Can you HEAR me?” Their giggles floated through the windows, but not through the cans. Later they snitched Stephen’s Cub Scout knife and snuck out behind the hedge to cut small slivers into each other’s fingers and press bleeding finger tips together, declaring themselves blood sisters. Sometimes they’d sneak cigarettes together, too.

Years of sultry summer nights turned into crisp autumns, frosty winters and hopeful pink springs. Flo had surgery on her blind eyes and Dorothy finally acquiesced to hearing aids for her deaf ears. The world and the children grew up, as children will, even in the south.

Flo and Dorothy are gone now, and are probably sitting on a pink heavenly cloud, wearing fluffy pink (Flo) or blue (Dorothy) slippers, sipping Bloody Marys and sneaking cigarettes as they watch their kiddos – and grandchildren – and great grandchildren – continue to grow. Still friends. Still family.

Iron Man

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~ Lao Tzu

Love Games

We play this game, he and I. I think we both like it. Well, I do, anyway.

“I love you,” one of us will say.

“How much?”

The answers are never the same – it’s part of the game. Sometimes the answer is “As much as there is water on the planet” or “From here to Venus and back again.” Sometimes, when it’s my turn, (because I am a brat) I answer “3,052” or “7.5.”

“I love you.”

“Why?”

"Why not?"
“It’s chemical.”
“Because you’re cute.”
“Because you’re sexy.”
“Because you love me.”
“Because you tolerate me.”
“Because you’re a good cook.”
“Because I love the way I feel when I’m with you.”
“Good sex.” (Yep. We both really like that answer.)

I guess the truth is that I have no idea why he loves me. A mystery. I’m just glad he does. Really glad.

I don’t think I’ve ever given him the Real Answer. I feign indifference or befuddlement. “Because the dog likes you.” “Beats me. Just do.” But I know the answer. Right down to my toes, I know the answer.

He makes me feel as though I am his chosen one. After a lifetime of looking and disposing, the one he chooses is me. Me? Wow. It’s electric to be chosen and to be established as unique within the confines of a loving relationship. It’s addictive – this feeling that I am the center of his world. I am the sun. He revolves around me and basks in the light of my happiness.

I don’t think many women will find what I happily stumbled into, because so many men seem uniquely incapable of giving the two ingredients of chosen-ness – namely, primacy and exclusivity – to make a woman the one and the only. Funny that I never asked either from him, stuck as I was in my “me first” world and no longer able to believe in monogamy. A freely given gift.

I choose you, too. Over and over again. For all the days and nights of my life.

Happy Anniversary. Again. I love you. And I know why.

When I Die

When I die

Plant a tree close to me.

Hemlock, holly, buckthorn, oak –

it will not matter which,

when I seep through the earth

like slow rain sipped by roots

I’ll rise

skyward pulled into branches, into twigs,

I’ll feed unfolding leaves, I’ll flower,

fruit and fill with seed.

I’ll transpire

and with each green and glorious exhalation,

I’ll become

The air you breathe.

Aging

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. ~ Anaïs Nin

Happy Birthday to me!

To Flo & Dorothy with Love from Junie & Connie

"Your Mother is always with you. She's the whisper of the leaves as you walk down the street. She's the smell of certain foods you remember, flowers you pick and the perfume she wore. She's the cool hand on your brow when you're not feeling well, she's your breath in the air on a cold winter's day. She is the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep, and the colors of a rainbow. She is Christmas morning. Your Mother lives inside your laughter. She's crystallized in every tear drop. A mother shows every emotion: happiness, sadness, fear, jealousy, love, hate, anger, helplessness, excitement, joy, sorrow...and all the while, hoping and praying you will only know the good feelings in life. She's the place you came from, your first home, and the map you follow with every step you take. She's your first love, your first friend, even your first enemy, but nothing on earth can separate you. Not time, not space, not even death." ~ written by Frank Ferreri upon the occasion of his Grandmother Flo's death.

Balanced Family

I know why families were created, with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed. ~ Anaïs Nin













Happy Birthday little brother. I love you.

What Happened Next

So I went to Peoria to visit my brother and his family. Peoria.

(It might be useful here to read the “One Version of a Family” post dated Wednesday, April 19^th. It’ll fill in the blanks.)

We grew up as city kids. I stayed that way, moving from city to city. He gave it up, moving from city life to the middle of nowhere, which, loosely defined, is Peoria.

The travel wasn’t so bad. I do so enjoy getting out of my warm and cozy bed at 2 A.M in order to start my traveling day. The drive to the airport was insignificant, made up for by the more than significant lines at the ticket counter and security checkpoints. But I’m a well-seasoned traveler, and had a book to read and little carry-on luggage, so I experienced no personal delays. You asked whether or not I saw any racial profiling during this journey – I was completely unaware of any. You see, there were no (NO – as in zero) people of color at my airport. None. When I arrived in Detroit, I saw one or two people with skin darker than my own, but I was rushing from gate to gate, so have no idea how they fared. And of course no one of any color other than pale pinkish white was going to Peoria.

Neither of my nephews recognized me when I came in the door. The eldest is 12 and hadn’t seen me since he was 5, and the youngest is 8, so can’t be expected to remember me from his 1^st birthday. My beloved niece is older, the product of an earlier marriage. She’s the reason I acquiesced and traveled to Peoria – I adore her, and hate that I live so far away from her. She’s nearly an adult now, tall, strong and beautiful.

For a while, we were all on good behavior, but eventually everyone settled down into standard patterns. My brother and I easily revert to tweaking reactions from one another, but it’s relatively benign. No one broke a chair over anyone’s head this time. There wasn’t even much tension when I explained to him that it would be broader minded of him to at least acknowledge other points of view different from his own. (This was a discussion on how religion has changed his life. Not that I don’t accept the fact that it’s *possible* that his god helps him out when he needs extra strength to turn a stuck oil filter, but I would like him to acknowledge the possibility that it’s a fluke. This is, perhaps, just me poking at him to see what happens. I am a brat.) I even found the strength to walk away when he tossed out bigotted salvos about homosexuals and racial minorities, allowing myself only the briefest of disdainful glances as I shook my head in disgust. I understand that he doesn’t believe his own words, but is just trying to poke at me until my head spins off. But since I still had several days of my visit left, I tried to keep my spinning to a minimum and to spread it out over the several days I was there. If I don’t spin, he will (probably) stop trying to get me to. Perhaps. It’s an old game. He tweaks me, I tweak him. There’s continuity, familiarity and safety in old patterns.

The kids and I watched videos of Shrek and Dr. Doolittle. Video games and cap guns are everywhere. I suppose this should be disturbing to me since I haven’t owned a television in many years, and have spent my life with my nose stuck in some book or other. But the simple truth is that they all seem to love each other. Affection abounds. You just can’t get around it. The kids and the grownups actually seem to like one another, and love is in the air. Even the golden retriever smiles. Very Norman Rockwell America.

Of course, Norman Rockwell only painted heterosexual white people.

Got Any Change?

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. ~Andy Warhol

October 22

Drip
Drop
Trickle
Plash

Ruby
Red
Drizzle
Lash

Black
Blue
Shiver
Ash

Soft
Still
Quiver
Sh!

Dead.

Courage

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. ~Anaïs Nin

Growing Pains - for TDE

She shattered.
Scattered on a twister-wind,
Like a freight train casualty.
Flattened.

When the consequences of past, present, future
Conquored,
He gifted her the power to stand,
In turn fixing, comforting, ignoring, jabbing,
An illustration of his own miraculous strength.

Sometimes they longed for who they used to be,
With each other. By themselves.
In the old times they clung to each other alone.
Scared,
Like flowers dying in the rain.

As time whirled past them,
They reached,
The grappled,
They grasped,
They expanded.
They grew.

Together.

Apart.

They Became.

Finally they loved.
Really loved.
Each other. The others. Themselves.

Another Version of Family

Family violence is a global and pernicious problem. It takes many forms, and affects all spheres of society and all aspects of human development. The links between violence in the family and social, structural and political violence are often overlooked, and the problems therefore dealt with in isolation. Not only that, but family violence is frequently denied as a problem, but until it is openly acknowledged and tackled it will not be eradicated. ~http://www.bahai.org.uk/dp/evif.htm

Survivor

Are you a “survivor”
simply because you outlive them?

Does longevity make you the winner?

They stay, like it or not.
Dead or alive.

They stay.

They’re the operating system.
Can you re-write the software?

Bound

Red shadow dancers
Drift
Through my daydreams
Like ribbon
Winding through the empty spaces
In my thoughts.

In and out
The dancing red ribbon
Cinches tight
Keeping me in bondage.

Becoming a Wise Woman

Somewhere in your mid-forties, if you paid attention to your life, you may have accumulated enough experiences to have gained a litle wisdom. This mostly because you've made so many mistakes so many times you finally get it and stop repeating them - maybe. A wise woman has learned to cherish her mind. She reads, she listens and challenges her mind with new information, new ways of thinking, new experiences. She learns to form opinions of her own that are worth listening to. The fact is, she's an avid student, hungry for all life can teach her and she's confident that she can learn anything she puts her mind to. A wise woman hones skills, first by learning to listen more carefully; she listens to her own voice, then to her body and finally, making efforts to suspend judgement, to other voices. A wise woman is stronger than ever, and softer at the same time. She moves furniture and she cuddles. ~Holly Fordyce

Autumn

The years will take part of him from her.
Some of him will fall off her
naturally,
like leaves.

In time
some of him will turn into other men,
and later
to lines below her eyes.

She'll lose a lot.
But even so,
I know she'll keep the sound of him
calling
her name.

Life's Gifts

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift -- in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!"

And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"

And Life said, "Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand.

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep." ~Olive Scheiner

Truth or Consequences

Paradoxes and ironies.
Truth is never neat.

I finally understand
that there is no such thing as Truth with a capital "T."

There is only one's own truth,
and it is - or should be -
a developing concept,

a sort of Truth-in-Progress.

Gift of Fate

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."

~ Anaïs Nin

Anaïs is right, you know. That’s just what I did. Well, I didn’t really do it consciously, but luckily that’s how it turned out.

After a lifetime of relationships I didn't understand, I’m finally loved by someone who loves me for the Me I Really Am, not as the Fantasy Me drifting around in a lover’s daydream.

I’ll (probably) get around to telling the story of our beginnings, but of course that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the rest. That it’s finally “enough.”

This man expects me to be strong, and never doubts that I am. Courage is something he sees behind my eyes, like a warm and steady fire, even when I don’t know it’s hiding there. He believes me brave and so I am. He sees courage in the simple act of rising to face each day’s thoughts and in the quickest beat of every heart.

Never let fear stop you.

His own bravery shines out of him like a bright knight's shining courage, joyfully alive. With him, for the first time, I feel safety, and his peace at last releases the clenched fist of my brain.

Life’s current brought me here by accident and happenstance, and I’m glad. To want more would be to say to the air, “Please. Give me more air.”

No one is promised happiness. When life goes well, it’s a sudden gift.

Freedom Flight - a Japanese proverb

A man watched as a chrysalis began to pulse with the violent struggle of the butterfly encased inside. She thrashed against the hard shell of her prison, and eventually exploded a tiny hole in the shell and began to slam her wings against the chrysalis walls.

The man saw the thrashing and worried the beautiful butterfly would be damaged by her struggle. He feared for her. Gently and carefully he incised the opening of her private cage and helped her out into the warm sunshine. She was radiant in his hand, and he felt pride, knowing he’d eased her path into the sparkling sun.

She tried to flex her wings and fly to freedom, but as hard as she tried, she could not. The fierce beating of butterfly wings against the hard chrysalis shell strengthens her muscles so the delicate wings support her body in flight. Without the struggle, the butterfly had no power to fly. There would be no fluttering in the morning sun, no slipstreaming in the afternoon breeze.

The man saw that by easing her struggle he doomed the butterfly to death, and so wept until he could weep no more.

Baby Blue Eyes

It's hard to realize
That the babies I still see in my dreams
Won't be born.

They have his eyes.
They have his smile.
They have his dimple.
But they don't have me for a mom.

Gemini

There were always in me, two women at least. One woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest. ~Anaïs Nin

Air Brushed Love

I remember when you’d stare at me
The way mothers stare at sleeping babies.

You saw me through a magic lens
That airbrushed all my imperfections.

God, I was beautiful then,
Because you loved me…

Still Missing You

Dear Mom,

I was lonesome for you tonight.
Lonesome for the old house,
My old room,
My old covers.

How could you just go and die like that,
And leave me here,
With all these strangers?

Break a Leg

Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

So what do we do?

Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

How?

I don't know. It's a mystery.

~Conversation between Hugh Fennyman & Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare in Love

The Gym

Persistence can (sometimes) make things last
But it doesn’t always
Make things
Work.

Muscle will harden
Wherever you
Give it
Exercise.

But.

Endurance isn’t always
Enough.

Practice makes anything
Perfect.
Even grief can become
An art.

Nuts

I'll admit I may have seen better days... but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.

~Margo Channing
"All About Eve"

Feeding the Hungry

Well, yes, I can cook, thanks for asking.

Once upon a time I actually had a modest career as a high-end caterer. Owned a catering company called Cooking from the Hearth. Was a chef for a wealthy family on Boston's North Shore for a while, cooking for weekly dinner parties, and stocking their fridge and freezer with meals they could reheat for themselves. Catered weddings and parties. Catered an insurance company’s monthly 35-person Board of Directors meetings. (What Board of Directors needs 35 people??) Food for the rich, food for the soul.

The idea that sparked the business into life was that real folks need decent daily food to stave off the onslaught of obesity, heart disease and diabetes that our American culture is gleefully and mindlessly running toward. No one usually has (or takes) the time to provide themselves with a proper meal, finding that take-out egg rolls, fast-food-hamburgers and Meat Lovers Pizza fits into busy schedules better than homemade roast chicken or vegetable soup. So I created a menu of healthy and homey food my clients could choose from every week, and tailored meals to suit their personal dietary needs. Most clients stocked up on frozen soups, casseroles, stews, side dishes, whatever. Oh. And chili. Lots of chili. When their freezers emptied, they'd order again.

It didn’t make me rich, but the whole business worked well enough, especially for the client who didn’t know you actually had to add chicken to the Chicken Helper she prepared one evening to impress a potential beau. She thought it “just formed itself” out of the ingredients in the box. And who can blame her – the box didn’t actually say she should also buy chicken. I’m sure her potential beau never forgot that date, and I suspect she achieved her goal of impressing him, one way or another. I cooked for her for a long time after that. Well, of course I was always cooking for somebody and always exhausted.

Then friend Don took me to Italy for 3 weeks and I had a little epiphany. (Italy is a terrific place for an epiphany to strike. Just ask the Catholic Church.) Of course while I was basking in Italian sun, my stock pots and my coffers were empty. No cooking, no income. More importantly, when I broke a bone in my foot on the rocky beach on the sun-drenched Amalfi coast, I realized I wouldn't have any income for most of the time my foot was in a cast. I stood (barely) at the crossroads of either growing my business larger so that I wouldn't have to be on my feet foot so much, or climbing down off the food carousel. So I sold the business to another local caterer at a small profit, sat down, and stopped cooking for about 5 years. Well, of course, I didn't really stop all the every day stuff, just stopped the fantastical. Became queen of the take-out and delivery restaurants, just like all the clients I started with. I've only recently started cooking in earnest again. I used to be able to Really Cook. Now my skills are a bit rusty, lurking below the surface of the simmering pot. But I had to stop for a while until I could find the joy in it again.

As I think about this, typing to you now, I suddenly realize it's much like the way I dealt with relationships past. After frenzy, exhaustion and pain, I jumped off the relationship carousel entirely until I was sure I could find the joy again. Then, with rusty skills simmering below the surface, I found you, wanting to be nourished.

Huh. Whadda ya know? Another little epiphany.

Bloom

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anaïs Nin

Op 31, No. 2

I envy your visit to the steamy gray mists of Scottish winter. Conjures up wonderful, spirit-memories and wanderlust. No, no, I've never been. The memories are only ghosting in my genetic code – perhaps placed there by generations of Scots before me.

My mom certainly read me many book stories. I think she started reading to me before I actually arrived on the earth, and later, as I grew into a Real Live Girl, we cuddled in her rocker for hours as she read me tales of shoes and ships and sealing wax, introducing me to the world outside my pink painted room.

But her favorite thing (and of course mine, too) was to play me piano stories. (I've told you she had 2% hearing, haven't I? The closest thing to deaf-as-a-doornail.) Her passion was piano – classical and jazz – the bolder and more dramatic, the better. Sensible, I suppose, since her lack of hearing must have been like putting a soft pedal on everything. I learned the meaning of allegro tempestoso at a very tender age. She'd practice for as many hours as she could carve out of her abundantly busy life, but when frustration hit over a difficult passage, her fingers would invariably find a minor key and slide into a jazz riff – an all-out, stripper-hot version of “St. Louis Blues” her particular favorite.

As I sat on the mahogany piano bench with her, wrapped in her love and songs, she’d play, making up stories to fit the music's heat or fancy. Some pieces, like Cole Porter's, didn't need any new stories, just to be (perhaps) cleaned up a bit for a 10-year-old daughter. (I was in my late teens before I finally understood the real context of “It’s Too Darned Hot,” “Why Can't You Behave?” and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.”) Other tunes got stories of castles and kings.

My particular favorite was a piece by Edward MacDowell, Op 31, No. 2. It's thundering and tumultuous music that changes mid-stream into an ethereal and tender air, then rolls back again to the boiling crescendo of a crashing sea. The story (which is printed on the sheet music) is:

Far and away on the rock coast of Scotland,
Where the old gray castle projecteth Over the wild raging sea,
There, at the lofty and arch-ed window,
Standeth a woman, beauteous, but ill,
Softly transparent and marble pale;
And she's playing her harp and she's singing,
And the wind through her long locks forceth its way,
And beareth her gloomy song Over the wide and tempest-tossed sea.

Well, as you know, the Scots are not usually overly cheerful people, so naturally when I was a child I thought this was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.



The piece remains my favorite, and is wholly responsible for my love both of mists and of boiling seas. Perhaps, too, it was also the first seed of my melancholy acceptance of life’s wounds – and of my sure knowledge that nothing is so dire that a good musical soundtrack can’t help.

I hope you get the mists and the boiling seas while you're gone, and I hope you have a lyrical soundtrack crashing around in the distance.

One Version of Family

Alas, I am a half-breed.

Her fair-skinned, black-haired, twinkling blue-eyed Scottish gentility was attracted to his swarthy, roguish, black-haired, bedroom-green-eyed Sicilian intensity. Their 2 children reflect their genetic melding.

My brother and I both have dark brown hair and pale green eyes, are both Scottish-tall, are both intense but with (mostly) lovely manners that allow us to behave in public – although we share little else. My softly curling hair is lit with red, his is sleek and nearly black. I am light with freckles that don’t protect me from the burning sun, while he is dark and tans deeply on the first sunny day of spring. I grew up to be my mother’s politically and socially liberal shoot, while he became my dad’s conservative sprout with immovable roots. I moved from city slick to city slicker; he left the city behind for the farm-quiet of country life.

We are only now in the process of repairing a seven-year rift during which we have had very little contact. September 11, 2001 gave him the desire to call me, and me the desire to answer. We’ve both mellowed a bit through our seven-year silence – he seems willing to acknowledge that my world will always be filled with people and cultures of color, homosexuality, and a freedom I think he envies. I am willing to understand that all he probably wants is to pull the wagons around his family, guarding them from whatever attack on them he fears.

Can’t wait to see what happens next.