The Celtic Weave

I won’t leave him. He is the only man I won’t ever leave. I am learning tolerance. I am learning to embrace the faults of another with compassion and love. Whenever I think of going I remember our mutual birthday. There is something about coming into the world on the same day that binds us more strongly than I would have imagined. It’s like being separate roots on the same tree. We are sun and moon. Our differences repel, attract and bind.

The Celtic weave on our wedding ring is knotted, but not a tight knot. It does not suck the air from a room or become a hand closing the flow of freedom. No, this pattern is a loose open weave, expansive, and solid.

I have come to allow his forgetfulness and distractibility, and have learned to embrace his child-self who bounds into each new day with excitement and expectation, but resists domestic chores and limit setting.

He has stretched to love me also. He is an excitable extravert, who had to incorporate my solitary nature, my need for electronic-free living and my shunning of his boisterous friends.

This man belongs to me and I to him. We are different and the same. We are a pair of shoes together and apart. My granddaughter, Britan, says, Grandma, you married one of a kind!  She shakes her head at his quirky eccentricities, all the while being drawn into his orbit by his open-hearted generosity and playful acceptance.

He is patient with me, endlessly patient, while I am more often impatient and short-tempered with him. When I call to apologize, he waves me off. Oh Karen, Your moods don’t bother me at all. You’re wonderful and amazing just the way you are. Really, don’t give that another thought.

He thinks I’m a rock star, an undiscovered gem. He holds my identity with a full respect that I have trouble affording myself.  If I said, Gib, I need you to drive across the United States for me, he would reply, when shall I leave?

I have been with many men, all chosen for the wrong reasons, or attracted from father pain. Gib came after a drought and a desire to live alone rather than continuing to hurt myself in that way.

Oh, don’t get me wrong! The man has put me through hell with inconsiderate actions, dysfunctional family and a very real fear of being close, but somehow this is different. I love him and can stay, because his actions are not born of abuse, rather they are signs of adjusting to a life together after many years of living lost.

I am not his wife in any traditional sense. I won’t take his name or his diamonds.

I just want to be ‘us’ together, two people, caring and walking side by side for as many days as we have left.

written July 16, 2008

Naked in the Bath

When I was divorced the first time - still a virgin to divorce - I lost all sense of reality. My house was being sold, my goods auctioned, and my life shattered into a million sharp lethal pieces. I had no way to move forward. The land was too foreign, threatening and unknown. I lost half my body weight.

The night before the auction I went out alone and drank a full bottle of wine. I have a system that does not tolerate alcohol, so a full bottle took me to even more unknown places, all dismal and not numbing enough. I somehow made my way home, opened the car door, spilled out on the lawn, and slept the night.

In the morning people began coming to buy up my life. I rolled from the grass, pushed through the crowd and locked myself in the bathroom. I listened to my life being physically dismantled from the cold enamel of the tub, one material object at a time. Who would I be now, I wondered?  No home, no identity as wife, no job skills, no child support, two small children and a backlog of depression.

My body did not want to participate in the ordeal that lay ahead, but somehow I lived through the day. I rose again and lived through another, and another still.

I met a woman at the library. Her name was Joy. She asked me if I wanted to go for a ride on her motorcycle.

Oh boy, do I ever!

Joy was getting divorced too, from an engineer; mine was a highway patrolmen, neither man a good match for free spirited women.

Joy and I moved in together. She got a job modeling and selling Leggs pantyhose. I sang in the clubs, fronting a rock and roll band.  Eventually, I worked with a classical guitarist, who was a much better fit for my quiet spirit.

At night, Joy and I had long conversations, me perched on top of her refrigerator, her being the more responsible one, and setting limits.

Karen, I don’t like it when you give away my toothbrushes to your friends. They need to buy their own.

We stayed up all night laughing, talking and often crying. We understood and loved each other.  We were full of smiles and raw open pain.

That was 36 years ago. We stay in touch, because I’ll never stop loving her for the way she filled my heart during those lonely confused beginnings. She helped me out of the bathtub and into the world.

 

Multiple Personality

Today I was a:

Housekeeper

Bed maker

Shower taker

Laundry woman

Therapist

Psychic

Dream consultant

Safe place for children

Typist

Correspondent

Care taker for dogs

Care taker for cats

Burial person for a bird

Radio audience

Motorist

Library patron

Grocery shopper

Check writer

Postal patron

Mother

Ashram visitor

Dinner Guest

Friend

Gift receiver

Student

Artist

Writer

Traveler

Chef

Wife

Listener

Sleeper

written May 28, 2008

Stitches

I was playing on a steel framed hide-a-bed as Sunday morning stretched into a lazy afternoon, just tipping back and forth, back and forth. I was young, bored and testing. To my surprise the bed gave way and came crashing over, its metal frame embedded in my nose. The blood gushed, poured over my cheeks and landed in big red blotches on cotton pajamas.

My father was in the next room deep inside his easy chair. He looked up from his National Geographic as I stood stunned in the entrance.

Jesus Christ, what did you do now?

Nobody went to the doctor in our family. There was only one to serve the whole county. You could wait all day long in his office without any guarantee of treatment, so families dealt with emergencies by themselves.

My dad laid me out on the table, put ice on my seven-year-old nose and gave me a shot of scotch from the cabinet. When my skin and emotions were numb, he grabbed a needle from the sewing basket, sterilized the point in a flame, and added black upholstery thread.

This will just take a minute, he said. Longer if you can’t hold still.

I watched the point of the needle move back and forth, back and forth toward my eyes in my father’s careful hands. I made it though three stitches and could do no more.

That will hold, he said. Better lay there until you’re strong again.

I studied the ceiling tiles, the molding that joined the cabinet to the wall and finally the blood that smudged my hands.

I don’t ever want to do that again, I decided. I need to be more careful.

written April 30, 2008

Refuge

Have you found your refuge yet?

Are you wondering, father, from the realm of spirit, if I am safe, happy and fulfilled? Are you caring to inquire from the realm of light about things you carefully avoided when your feet were planted on the earth?

This question goes to my soul with resounding force.

The truth is that I am lost in this place. Oh, my needs are met, I have a man who loves me, picture perfect scenery outside my window and children to honor and embrace.

But no. No, I can’t believe that I will ever know happiness in this time, in this place.

My spirit is not comfortable here.

If I were to speak my deepest truth, I ache to be gone. I feel mis-fit, out of time and place. This reality is strange and foreign to me, beyond all imagining. I say things like, Isn’t it odd that we have to eat yet again today? And, I can’t believe I have to go to bed and get up over and over again. It is so tedious. My husband smiles, understanding and not understanding at all.

There is no flow to my river. I hover above like a bird, jealous of those who walk in this place like a bear. What good is a bird on the earth? I offer perspective, and a  broader vision, but would leave in a heart-beat to go back home, if only I knew where home was.

And you, father? Have you come to peace?

No need to ask. I know that you have.

It’s all good once we take our feet out of this too-tight shoe.

written April 30, 2008

The Tablecloth

One of my earliest memories is the billow of a red and white tablecloth drifting slowly to the ground under the broad sheltering leaves of a maple tree. I had been riding on the fender of my uncle’s tractor, my young fingers grasping its rounded lip in hot dusty compliance. I had listened intently to the terrible things that befell children who could not hang on tight as the tractor lurched forward. I was determined not to be one of the maimed or injured.  I held on with aching hands as everyone else gathered hay bales, tossing them high and hard to my cousin, who stacked them on the long flat wagon, his black hair sprouting from a white sailor cap, while pieces of hay stuck to his bare chest and oil-stained jeans.

My aunt crossed the fields in her worn cotton dress and long apron, high temperatures slowing her gait as she forged through noon day sun. Small drops of moisture escaped from the strands of gray that curled near her ears and forehead. She wiped at them like pesky mosquitoes. It was the arrival of the picnic basket to the welcome shelter of the tree, and the wave of that red and white tablecloth floated slowly from air to earth that signaled an end to work.

Lunch on the farm tasted different, because the food was laced with sweat, hard work, long hours and welcome release. The men moved bone-tired from the fields or slid from the wagon, eager to yield to the pull of gravity. They pushed back their caps, wiped their brows with bold red handkerchiefs, and dropped like heavy weights under the tree. Lunch meant tall pitchers of iced tea or lemonade poured over fiery throats, ham and cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, and pies made from whatever berry was in season. Each ingredient was colorful and dense, so rich or sweet, it seemed to explode with each bite. The men relaxed, ate and told stories, their easy laughter filled the air.

Being outside made life real and significant. I was significant too, but not because of anything I learned or had become. I was important simply because I existed and belonged. I was made real in the broad honest smiles of the men, and the way my uncle grasped the wheel with the two fingers that remained on his leathery right hand. I was made real in the flour and sticky sugar that clung to the corners of my aunt’s apron. I was the chatter box on the fender who was my uncle’s ‘niece little nice.’ In that place, I was embraced and included for all that I was, and all I was not.

I belonged to the farm. I belonged to the scent of fresh cut fields, the cows in the mud, acres of corn and sun-ripened berries along dusty roads. I belonged to all of it and it belonged to me. Going inside hid me from that. Buildings kept me safe and sheltered, but separate.  In open space, I knew myself through and through. I filled my lungs with the definition of life. I felt real and liberated.

All my finest memories are out of doors; the memories I am eager to forget live behind darkened walls and in caged rooms.

written July 19, 2008

Believe

Your life is moving toward you

Your dreams are opening like little parachutes in a spring sky

Open your hands

Embrace what comes

Bring it into your body

Breathe it  ~ Own it

Why not?

You’ve waited long enough

Believing is the key that opens the door

To believe allows you to stand in the center of yourself

To burn at the core

To doubt is to create division

To stand next to yourself

To become weak with the energy it takes to move back and forth between separate minds

Be

Believe

Be

Be of one mind

Welcome yourself home and celebrate your arrival.

written March 12, 2008

A Beautiful Pretending

I was taught to perform, an interesting occupation for an introvert.

We all were. My voice was in compliance. It ran clear and crystal in its range.

My body was acceptable. I knew how to smile when I didn’t feel happy. I was looking for love, so acceptance in the form of applause worked well.

I loved being different characters. I could be anyone, channel the essence of another person so completely it was like having them in the room. I could make other people laugh or cry with my skill and intention. But eventually I began to lose track of myself, of my central character. I lost track of the essence of me.

Ray, the man who built our costumes, picked me up in the theater company’s dirty van each morning, the one that said, Storefront Theater on the side. Ray was a rotund gay man who could build a stunning wardrobe out of cast-off clothing in seconds. Ray would study me for a moment when I walked from the house, wondering not so subtly just who he was picking up that morning.

Would it be Anna, the man-hater who made a life in men’s clothes and hiking boots? Or maybe Olga, the Swede, who wore her golden braids wrapped around her head, a rayon dress below and a shawl thrown across her shoulders. Maybe it was the ditsy Energy Godmother, who appeared in roller skates and felt good about everyone and everything. She was all sunshine and love.

I put on new characters each day, the way most people select different clothes from the closet. It wasn’t, What do I feel like wearing today, but who do I feel like being?

I once met a man at Harvard when I was pretending to be a woman from France. He was a third generation attorney named Percevial Harkness Granger the Third. What began as a simple conversation in a coffee shop turned into much more than I intended. Each time we went out, I thought I’d tell him the truth, but he was so captivated by everything about her, this ideal exotic perfect woman, that I could not bring myself to do it. Finally after a full year, I revealed the truth of my pretending. I simply had to stop it, because he was falling in love with her, and she was not me, not even close. He was appalled when I told him.

“Sorry! Didn’t mean for this to go on so long! I just did not know how to stop it.”

Theater companies loved my work, but I was shy, the audition process painful and tense. I didn’t want my characters to be judged and evaluated. I didn’t want other people’s words coming out of their mouths. I just wanted to give them life. It’s been a challenge to choose a central character and be her, to let her be all that I am. It’s also a little boring. When you’re the same person for too long, life gets stale.

I once had a party where we all came as our over-seeing angels. We addressed one another that way and stayed in character the whole evening.

So, how is it going with Karen? someone would ask.

Oh you know, the usual. She’s doing really well on many fronts, but I still have to give her a kick in the butt to get her out of the house. How’s it going with yours?

John’s been a problem lately. He’s stuck in that same job, you know and still dating those unavailable women. Maybe you could come by some time and take a look. Give me some new ideas.

I used to live next to my friend B’Lou, short for Betty Lou. We had a community of houses on 11^th and Thompson in NE Portland, all occupied by artists. B’Lou was a tall thin dancer who smoked long brown cigarettes and found it hard to smile. She covered her dining room walls with mirrors, polished the hardwood floors and made it a dance studio, then turned her pantry into a costume closet. A piano greeted you when the door opened; a piano, her art work and a hand carved chair from Belgium.

B’Lou and I gave great parties together with lots of theater, music and dance. The neighborhood kids wore ivy crowns, dressed in long gowns and handed out programs. When you walked into B’Lou’s house, you stopped being yourself, went immediately to the pantry and became whatever character you felt like being.

B’Lou was an exercise nut who lived on the edge. Those long brown cigarettes finally did her in. Her funeral was the same as her parties, with one difference. This time there was a sign on the front door with her photograph. The sign said, Come in and play. Be somebody else for awhile and smile. I only died.

written July 26, 2008

Eggs

I remember piles of broken china and figurines half buried in mounted earth near the small shed by the front porch. I used to sift through them with my young hands, each shattered piece a treasure of discovery.

The farm house was my safe place. I would wake from the chaos of my home, go to the stables, saddle my horse and ride six miles through unfenced terrain until I reached the welcome land that defined my aunt and uncle’s farm. The pond was the first to come into view. It lay quiet on my left, like tea in an unmoved cup. Herds of cows milled behind barbed wire fences on my right, as bright red barns with tall silos beckoned me forward.

I was going away to boarding school. This would be my last visit for a very long time. I was terrified to leave the land and move into an English academy in Vermont, where my days would be alien, structured and organized. I was being sent away for my health. When I neared the barn, I saw my aunt herding cows toward its shadowy interior. I stripped my horse and set her free in the field.

Aunt Ethel, I shouted, I’m leaving for boarding school this week-end.

She barely looked up.

I don’t know when I’ll be back.

She fingered the cloth hankie that slept in the pocket of her apron. Her red print dress hung above black rubber boots, a splash of mud marked her forehead below short curly hair. She slapped the rump of a cow into the stall and motioned me inside.

Don’t go givin’ yourself airs now, she said, Just cause you’re going to that fancy boarding school. Don’t come home callin’ horse shit, manure.

My heart ached at the thought of leaving. I did not want to be ripped from the four a.m. mornings, when we turned on the radio and danced around the barn together; me balanced on my uncle’s boots, Aunt Ethel squirting warm milk into the mouths of the barn cats, who were lined up waiting and mewing. I did not want to leave the symphony of clocks that ticked and chimed in every room of the house. I wanted to keep smelling black tea served in blue willow cups that warmed my fingers each afternoon. I wanted to keep seeing their reflection in the polished silver sugar bowl that sat on the large oak table.

I put my arm around her.

I’ll come back, I promised.

No, you won’t, she said. Once kids go away, they’re gone. Too bad though. You were the best of the lot.

I lifted the handle on the egg basket and walked to the hen house. Warm tears splashed against soiled brown eggs, as I carefully lifted each one from the safety of its nest. I fingered their fragile vulnerability, as I positioned them layer by layer inside the cold metal wiring of the basket.

written April 16, 2008

Absolutely!!!

I got an email a few days ago from my friend, Dorie, whom I have not heard from for more than a year. The subject line read, Absolutely!!!

She was responding to a thank you card I had mailed after our last luncheon, probably unearthed on her desk, while doing her annual guilt-driven clean-up. Dorie is a painter and designer. She also creates unique handbags and whimsical mittens. Her spirit is fresh and optimistic, as she divides her time between art, grand-children and caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s.

Absolutely!!!

I had requested we meet again for lunch, soon. The word ‘soon’ being relative in her busy world. I searched my emails to see if I had written her recently and forgotten. Then, I remembered last year’s thank you note. I imagined my card being lovingly read and discarded on her craft table, slipping with the best of intentions below new fabric samples, buttons, shimmering yarns and products that didn’t meet her standards. She emailed her reply like I’d sent the card in yesterday’s mail; as if no time had gone by at all.

Absolutely!!! Karen Dear Friend, let’s meet for lunch, for coffee or everything. Getting together with you is an enormous treat. I miss you. Then she went on to say that a friend of hers had died recently so she was waking up to the value of friendships and wanting to keep in touch.

Ah yes. Death ~ nature’s wake-up call.

I was a new bride in my twenties when I had a similar experience. An older woman helped us find our first house in Circleville, Ohio, home of the pumpkin festival… we won’t go down that road. I wanted to have her to dinner as a thank you gesture and to deepen our connection into friendship, but not until the house was perfect. I thought about her often, but the bedroom needed paint. I wanted to replace the sofa. The house needed to be just so when she came, so she could ooh and aah, in appreciation of all we’d done. A year had slipped by before I learned she died.

Suddenly, it all felt very shallow; the rugs, the paint, the dust in the corners, all just stuff. I had missed her without knowing, as I preformed my vain attempts at perfection. She was a ship leaving the shore of my life with treasures of spirit I would never see again. A hard lesson, but a valuable one. I wish I had sent her a letter, or better yet, knocked on her door. I wish I had said, Absolutely!!! Dear lady, Come over for lunch, for coffee or everything. Getting together with you is an enormous treat. I would miss you if you were not here.

written August 14, 2008