my sweet momma was at the grocery store the other day.
well, ok, she wasn’t.
but as we turned to walk down the aisle near the candy section – cutting over to the aisle with the green olives we needed for our mediterranean dinner recipe – there she was.
it was a huge display of peeps – those colorful marshmallow chicks and bunnies – i could feel momma’s glee.
this was the very first year i didn’t include junior mints in my grown children’s christmas gifts. the very first year. they didn’t seem to miss them. at all. i, on the other hand, had to deal with the grief of not including this box of mints that i had included in their stockings – in person or shipped to them – for evvver. it was not easy to let these go; my thready heart struggled.
but it explained why – even though i do not like peeps, really at all – every year my sweet momma would send a box in spring and always – always – she would include peeps.
it wasn’t about me.
it was about her – continuing a tradition she had started, a ritual that meant something to her, sharing something that was a precious memory – an unwavering, ceaseless thread – part of family tapestry, even in its obvious inconsequence.
each year when i received the box i enthused to my mom – not because i loved peeps, not because i even understood at that point. but because i loved my mom and i loved that she thought about me enough to pick out whatever color – or shape – peep she wanted for me and then she set about sending it. that was the part that counted. even though i didn’t really know the part that counted. until much later.
so turning the aisle while heading for the olives i stopped abruptly…so abruptly d plowed into me. i pointed at the big display and we both laughed.
and i blew a kiss to my mom who i knew was right there – on the other side of this plane of existence – blowing a kiss back.
she pointed at the artisan-crafted wooden sconce and said, “did you see the heart?” one of the wooden discs was in the shape of a heart. i hadn’t noticed, which is saying a lot since i always notice hearts. i was thrilled, though, because the thought of her having this heart-infused sconce on the wall of her newly-purchased “dream home” was, well, totally heartwarming. this person was the right person to have these family-handed-down scandinavian birch sconces – and that was the moment i knew it.
each day i am finding something else of which i am ready to let go. it’s not always easy. sometimes the connection is hard to break. but i am trying to make decisions based on the unlikelihood of our actually using a piece versus the chance that someone else might be able to use it, has been searching for it or is just charmed by that very thing. storing something ad nauseum seems completely silly now. despite its charm, the beauty of something hand-crafted, the ancestry strands connected with it, if i haven’t used it in decades, why would i expect to use it now?
it is a tad bit overwhelming – i realize i am redundant-beyond-the-beyond here – to go through everything. the bins, boxes, closets, attic, storage rooms seem neverending. and yet, there are some great stories i am able to tell david, some history of these relics, with mixed emotions that accompany them.
as i move them on, i begin to see that the artifacts of the past – though some laden with positive or negative emotion – are not that which holds the emotion. the curio is merely the vessel of what jolts my memory, pokes at my heart, the physical thing that – when i see it or touch it – brings up whatever the emotion might be.
there are a few things that still don’t pass muster. even if i smudged them with great amounts of sage, they would still be too much for me to hold onto, too much for me to tuck back into a bin or box, a closet or the attic. some things must move on – and there is no reticence whatsoever.
it’s been a big learning. and it has gained momentum for me. as i unearth each bit of relic for release, i see yet another and know it is time.
some of it i send out with bits of my heart and some with a deep exhale. and, either way, i know that – eventually – it all remains anyway. even when the bins and boxes and closets and attic and storage rooms are way less labored with stuff.
i have connected with the memory, acknowledged it, felt it, and stored it back away. i have wrapped my heart around it or dealt with processing it.
and the fragments of memory – now invisible remnants of all the stuff – are now my souvenirs.
and so i have some hesitancy on this. it was on the bottom shelf, tucked back into the shelf unit in the storage room, next to the blow-up pool floaties. it didn’t seem like i had thought about it for years. ok, for decades. i listed it for sale – after researching its ‘value’ as a vintage (circa 1980) cut-glass punchbowl set.
but part of my research brought me to a few blogposts others had written. and in those blogposts were these absolute gems about all the ways to use a lovely punchbowl. not just for punch.
the one that really stuck out for me – and debilitated my quest to sell-sell-sell – was the story about a lovely summer gathering where the person served gazpacho and crusty bread, glasses of chilled sauvignon blanc. yikes. i immediately wanted to have a lovely summer gathering where i serve gazpacho and crusty bread – each attendee ladling delicious soup into their handled cup and visiting on the deck or the patio under warm sun and blue skies.
so, yup…hesitancy. i mean, it all fits conveniently into a box – the base, the bowl, every last cup and hook – so why not just keep it a while longer…?
the power of story, eh?
i cried this morning. it wasn’t about the punchbowl. it was about seeing a post by my very own sister that made it obvious – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that she is completely on the other side of the current dangerous political divide.
gauging by how overtaken i was by grief, i guess i was holding out hope that the stories that are now reality in this country might have changed her mind, the minds of her immediate family members. because every story we are hearing breaks our hearts ever more. every story makes us question what in the hell is going on. every story makes us absolutely sick to our stomachs that this country has devolved into such a cruel and bigoted, sadistic and extreme place.
it is impossible for me to wrap my head around anyone – any.one. – finding acceptable any of these stories of the realities of this kind of depravity.
yet i know that there are media outlets that so many subscribe to – leave on in their family rooms, their florida rooms, their kitchens, their living rooms – for hours on end. these outlets distort the actual truth – to the nth degree. these outlets obfuscate. these outlets lie. and people are watching them, soaking it all in, pompom-ing them, lost in them.
lost.
and i feel totally crushed.
crushed.
the power of story.
used and misused.
i’ll probably eventually decide to keep the punchbowl. it is not likely to sell.
i will make gazpacho or vichyssoise and serve it in handled cut-glass cups. there will be glasses of chilled white wine and sunshine, laughter and conversation.
(about this week: there is a peril, it seems, to writing ahead these days. we had decided that this week – the first full week of a new year – we wished to use images of light as our prompts, we wished to linger on the possibility of light, of hope, of goodness. though our blogposts might stray from that as we pen them, it was without constant nod to the constant updating of current events – a mass of indefensible, unconscionable acts. we pondered what to do about these blogposts we had written and decided to keep them. we hope that – whether or not any absence of the happenings of the day, whether or not the chance these written words seem somewhat inane at this moment – you might know that those events – of corruption, illegality, immorality – do not distill or distort our intention – to bring light and hope to this new year – the first days of which bring more insanity and unnerving instability. we are still holding space for light.)
and so…
it is almost a week prior to this day that i am writing this.
i just found out that my cousin tony died. my dad’s sister’s son, we had only reconnected in the last few years and had not – yet – re-met each other. this makes me inordinately sad today. in a busy world that sorted its way through the pandemic and then hence, a visit together had not yet happened. time did not wait.
i didn’t know he was ailing, and maybe he wasn’t. maybe it was sudden. either way, it came as a shock to me and i could feel it contract my heart, squeezing it and eliciting regrets.
i hope – now – that we will someday meet cousin tony’s family…his children, his grandchildren. i hope to hear some more stories. i hold onto his older postings, politically in alignment with my own thoughts and beliefs, grateful for his assertiveness and candor. i hold tenderly onto those moments we had on the phone together – two cousins who missed out on sharing life together.
my dad’s sister – my aunt helen – had four children. with the exception of cousin maria, they were all older than me by years. that rift thing that fractures families sometimes – that I’ve written about before – took most of the years. the remaining years and months and days that have passed have taken three of my cousins. my cousin linda remains. in a tiny family, it seems important to travel east and spend actual moments together.
this has been a season. there has been much loss for many people around us. every single time we think we have time – in the future – with someone, i feel as if we learn that might not be so…we are reminded that there is no lock on – no tenacious hold – we have on life itself. we can try our best but these moments keep ticking and we are just lucky enough to be in them.
the sky was brilliant out the front door. i called d to come and see it.
the phone’s camera doesn’t really capture it. the colors were so much more vivid. the dusk so much more palpable. the intake of breath so much more visceral. falling into the pause – a moment of the infinite.
and we got to see it.
that’s the thing. it’s all there to see – always. connection, beauty, love.
it boils down to standing on the front porch, gazing at the sky.
though i haven’t worn them out-out yet, i have new boots. with a rubber outer, they will keep my feet dry and, hopefully, warm. as i write this – ahead of the calendar – i’m not sure what i am saving them for or why i am saving them – it is a quirk – this save-it-for-good-thing – i’d like to give away at some point – but, since it is still mine, i am still saving them – at least at the time of this writing (way ahead of today).
it seems it will be a white christmas. at least partially, with bits of snow. though it has warmed up a tad since the polar vortex came through, there are still the ever-present piles of snow in parking lots and along the edges of daily living.
so far, we haven’t walked in the snow as much this year as in past years. i’m guessing the combo-platter of the frigid temperatures and the fact that we have been consumed with – guess – yes! – ice-damming have taken the zeal out of our zealous hiking-in-the-snow. i am hoping that more mild temperatures both melt the rest of the ice and rejuvenate our outdoor juju.
last weekend – when the vortex was at its most vort – we stayed in. we wrote, we researched, we read, we decorated, we made soup, we overplayed george winston’s december and hans christian’s door county christmas albums, and we watched the denver broncos squeak past the pack. it was – frankly – too cold to go out. plus, big red had just gotten home from its new fuel-pump-installation and we were less than anxious to test it or our confidence about not having to wait for yet another tow truck. littlebabyscion was way too pleased about staying in the driveway so that iced the cake on staying in, so to speak.
and as i went up and down the stairs, picking through holiday decorations and sorting through stuff, i fell into the unavoidable review of time and life.
the viewmaster of my mind’s eye threw me back: into ice storms and nor’easters on long island, crab meadow beach in the snow, footie pajamas, my parents’ living room, the den fireplace and my growing-up family, eggnog and krumkake, midnight christmas services, caroling, luminaria around our block, open-one-present-christmas-eve, christmas in florida for a few years, arriving in december ’88 wisconsin without a winter coat, being warmly-adopted by linda and bill, our tiny babies, christmas cantatas, a donkey in the church, christmas tree lots, sewing and crafting presents, plates of cookies for santa, 3am gift-wrapping, running the videocamera on christmas morning, wrapping paper and boxes in the fireplace after chopper-dog tore them all up, toddler stocking glee, noisy morning-of mayhem, recording christmas albums in NYC, shipping gifts, shipping albums, concerts, christmas eve brats, choirs, teenagers, santa-lists, cranberry-orange relish, greenbeancasserole, too many decorations, non-stop christmas radio, and then – christmas-tree-on-a-stick, tiny trees, happy lights, more cantatas, more choirs, ukulele carols, more pipe organ, turkey roulade, luminaria and bonfires, more shipping, facetime, quieter mornings-of. and so many other things mixed in.
it has seemed to be a time of some review, a time of serious thought, pondering and ruminating, wistful rising every so often.
looking back – far and near – the long view and what-seems-merely-seconds-ago – and i step into an array of emotions that change like iridescent bubbles in the sun. held by all the memories of before, i glance in front of me, in front of us. i look forward to what’s next – even to this holiday when we are just the two of us on the morning-of, when our grown children celebrate elsewhere, happy for them they are with their dad and stepmom on this day.
if we take a walk – and if there is snow – i will turn around and photograph our prints – steps at a time we have discovered is fluid like all the rest.
the world isn’t stopping. the axis keeps spinning. the moments arrive and then quickly disappear into the eddy of our memory bank.
there’s just so much. there’s just so little. it’s all sooo fast.
in a very, very long-ago life i wrote a song for a youth choir called “harvest the love“. i recently found the arrangement i composed. it is a bubblegum kind of song – full of rhyming idealism. “…we are all one fam’ly under the sun, we are brothers, we are sisters, we are one...”. wowza.
one of my closest friends in high school – marc – used to make fun of me (in the kindest way possible). he’d poke at my embrace of rainbows and sunrises and bubbles and sunsets. i was all-in on that stuff, believing it was absolutely possible to be “all one fam’ly under the sun”. “…for aren’t we really crops in the sun and aren’t we ready for work and for fun, as all one fam’ly under the sun…”. (it’s ok to laugh.)
we had a quiet thanksgiving. it felt good to store away the deck furniture and rugs, to complete prepping the backyard for winter – for (as i write this) we’re due for 6-10 inches of snow over the weekend (which, incidentally, we did get about 10). we wrapped happy lights around the giant tree branch that used to be in our living room, now fastened to our deck. on a timer, we look forward to this tree greeting us as we arrive home in the dark. we neatly tucked everything else away and the snow shovel is in its at-the-ready place by the back door.
we had the good fortune of visiting frank over the holidays. in a rehab facility, exhausted and challenged from a serious health event, he roused to tell us stories accumulated over the nine plus decades of his life. he – most definitely – lived a life ready for both work and for fun, just like my giddy song lyrics.
and then – back home – between sending out thanksgiving greetings and receiving them – we prepared a big stockpot of irish stew for our meal. with george winston playing in the sunroom, we chopped and sautéed and, ultimately, simmered our way to dinner. it was just us, but as we gathered, we talked about the people in our lives who have meant so much to us, about memories of thanksgivings, about our gratitude for our home and each other. two weeks ago our children and their partners gathered around our dining room table and i am still holding fast to how it all felt that day, stretching it out like good taffy.
most of the lyrics of this old song are really indicative of my age (late teens) and where i had come from – you can tell i spent a lot of time sitting in my tree outside my window writing poetry. “…isn’t it time now to harvest the love in your roots and splash in the puddles around you. from dawn of the day and its dew, we bask in the sunshine surrounds us...” yikes.
then there’s: “…dig our holes in fertile soil of living and hope that it will yield us as giving...” that would seem an innocently metaphoric way – full of autumnal reference – of saying we reap what we sow. and…i still agree with that.
and then, after the song – predictably – in late 70s fashion – modulates up a full step to a new key, it ends: “harvest the love within your heart, harvest the love. harvest the love within your heart, harvest the love…(with repeat signs)...”
which is – really – i think – still what i believe. love. harvest the LOVE. gather with those you love. LOVE one another. we ARE all one fam’ly under the sun. we ARE brothers, we ARE sisters.
in a really rare moment, we had the amazing chance to have our children and their partners gather around the dining room table with us. to say i was thrilled would be an absolute understatement. it had been six years since we had actually been together – my two children and us. it was a giant gift and i am grateful for it.
plates, pasta, wine, bread – all were merely props as i gazed around me, watching these beloved faces, listening to laughter and conversation. i tried hard to memorize all of it. these brilliant, creative seeds of tomorrow, bright lights of real humans, of good people.
the next day we hiked, just d and me, after everyone had left. we talked about our blink-of-an-eye time with our adult children, about the fun chaos in the kitchen the night before, about the teasing and the ribbing. and i found myself holding onto the filmy threads of each moment before they flew away.
the photographs will help, of course. they will be posted in our kitchen and i will pass by them, often looking at them and smiling. but inside, i will hold onto the way it all felt, the heart-stopping hunger i had felt longing for a moment together, the breath i could exhale as i sat at the same table with my children and their partners or as we all clustered together in photographs.
but i know i won’t be able to hold onto all of it. time tugs at memory like that.
and the clustered fluffs of seeds will be tugged out of the pod by gentle breezes and fierce winds. they will swirl about and land somewhere, planting. another milkweed.
and i hope there will be another table-sitting somewhere soon – all together – as these brilliant humans go about their all-grown-up lives, swirling about with gentle breezes and fierce winds at their backs.
they were luminescent as the noon sun caught them in its grasp. magical. glowing. each individual seed seemed poised for takeoff, ready to catch the breeze, twirl and fly.
it is much like how i am feeling as i painstakingly go through the house … the bedrooms, the attic, the basement …
the memories all gather on the plume, ready to catch the next breeze and twirl in front of me, bringing me back to moments a long while ago – many decades or even just a few years.
they are golden, these memories, and i give them time as i touch the relics, leftovers saved. i’m trying to go slow, even as i wish to accomplish much quickly. my thready heart relishes what i can remember, even when it sorts to sadness, even when it sorts to tears. in the timeline of life, i am bobbing around like the crazy super balls we had as kids – the ones with bouncing trajectories you couldn’t predict. the wham-o super ball would zig and zag and i am zigging and zagging through time just like that.
sometimes i have to leave a box or a bin or a pile for a bit, step away and breathe through it. i have found that touching these objects – the tactile – makes it all real and up-close, almost like it’s now. and, because i am the sensitive, emotional type, i have to step back … back into the room, straighten up, look out the window, pet the dog, sip some water. it can be overwhelming, this going back stuff.
as the bins empty and the sorting keeps going – this is merely phase one – i can feel the space opening. i can feel the air of whatever is next. i will still save many things, though i know that perhaps some will be relinquished in phase two or three. it gives me a bit more time with the artifacts of my life.
and the treasured antiquities nod as i put them in the save pile. they know it is their golden moment – their chance to twirl for me, their flight with me. they are as luminescent as the plumes, ever so countless, glowing in the noon sun.
if he were still in this plane of existence, my sweet poppo would be 105 today.
as much as i miss my dad, as much as i would love to sit with him, to talk with him, to be quiet with him, to hug him, under the circumstances that we find ourselves in this country at this time, i would have to say i am glad he is not here.
because my dad’s heart would be utterly broken.
my dad fought against all this. he fought for the freedom of this country. he fought against fascism and authoritarianism. he fought against cruelty. he fought for democracy.
my dad’s own freedom was stolen from him when he was taken prisoner of war in WWII, his army air corps b24 shot down over the ploesti oil fields, his fellow dedicated airmen parachuting out, taken into camps by bulgarian forces.
my dad persisted through all of it – his injuries, his solitary confinement, his fear.
my dad came home, back to the country he loved, the country for which he fought and sacrificed, the country with a democracy about which he was zealous, the country where he and my sweet momma would build their own family.
so if my dad were here now, he would be crushed by what is happening. he would be crushed by the evil and deliberate intentions now set in place. he would be crushed at how his country is being severed. he would be crushed that anyone – any one! – in his family would champion any of this horror. he would be crushed that his family – his very family – had broken apart because of that. he would be ravaged by utter sadness.
my dad would be unable to celebrate his big birthday.
because no chocolate ganache cake could make it all better.
“the powerful, loving bonds formed between individuals who are not biologically related but who choose to be family…highlighting the strength of these non-traditional family units and the unconditional love they provide.”(the trevor project)
so, dna ain’t everything.
i, for one, have found it personally shocking at times to be related to my similar-dna-stranded relatives. particularly now. for one – incorrectly – assumes that one is aligned with those in one’s family – with values and love and respect leading the way. this, however, is not always true. and – shockingly – families, like friends or colleagues, are quite capable of throwing others under the bus. shocking, indeed.
so we seek those who support us, who support our world view, who challenge and push, who protect, who encourage others to be their best and most authentic self.
in this – incredibly the 21st century – with a twisted administration – we are faced with making decisions of estrangement – boundary setting that is squarely focused on the upholding of each other and our rights and freedoms. it is impossible to pretend to be “family” if members have chosen to undermine the rights and freedoms of other members. dna schmee-n-a.
a week ago we spent the weekend attending milwaukee pride events at which our EDM artist son performed. his friends welcomed us with hugs and dancing and conversation. we were embraced and felt the love. i cannot imagine why anyone would reject or endanger such a community – LGBTQIA – so inclusive of all. it is incomprehensible.
one of his friends came up to us while we were dancing and drew us close in to talk above the music. “if i had parents like you, i’d have everything,” he said into our ears. i cried as he walked away.
my grown children have a wonderful father. they have a generous-of-spirit stepmom who cares about them. they have me. and they have david, who has been supportive in every way that a caring father can be. they are every much his children in this last decade. we all share them and join together as the circle of one-generation-previous people around them who want them to be their best and most authentic selves. isn’t that what parenthood is? they are just lucky enough to share dna with two of the four of us. but we are all their parents.
these are days of non-traditional. we are fortunate to live in these days – days of wisdom and cultivated illumination – when love is simply love and the bonds of family extend beyond ancestry lines. i can only hope that we all celebrate each other – in our differences and in our sameness. we can seek family with bonds based on unconditional love and support. if we can look at our biological families and freely choose each other, we are lucky. if our own families endanger others or refuse to see or value them, it is incumbent upon us to draw lines in the sand. this life keeps ticking. it would seem infinite love – acceptance, inclusion, belonging – would be the way to live these tiny lives we get.
be the people whom others choose. “chosen families have helped queer people survive and experience radical love and joy at a time when their rights, and in some cases their very lives, are threatened.” (alex welch)
radical love and joy. life is too short for anything else.
reverse threading 