The Little Ones

There are those who are meant to work with children and those who are not. Unfortunately, I am in the ‘not’ category.

My daughter, Kristen, has a child on her lap, longing to be adopted seconds after being introduced. She is the pied piper of little ones; they trail after her like baby ducks, because she sees into their soul and shows them their beauty. 

Amy is a slender woman with a long braid trailing down her back. She is in my writing group and teaches kindergarten in a Japanese immersion school. She comes to our group with stories of glue sticks, muddy boots, carp kites and little raincoats. There is a tender intimacy in the broadness of her love. 

My sister, Kristen, took her skills from the performing arts and shuttled them into a school library in upstate New York. She makes stories come alive with music, character voices and puppetry. The children think she lives in the library closet and owns every book. They have no idea how lucky they are. Her spirit is gentle, reverent and embracing.

I was not blessed with that gift. My need for quiet and aversion to chaos has limited my desire. But, before I knew that, I applied for and received two grants to work with children as an artist in residence. The first grant came from the city of Portland.

On my first day at school I met a little girl in the hallway and decided to get acquainted.

 Hello Sweetheart, I said, how are you today?

She stopped walking, looked up at me, and kicked me as hard as she could.

I hate you, she said and walked away. That was pretty much how it went.

I got busy creating a theater piece on the stage. I expected the kids I was not working with to be still and watch, instead they began opening the windows and crawling out. I had no idea how to stop them. There were too many of them and I was stunned. I had to request help from one of the teachers. When I went to school in Vermont, students sat quietly, never moved an inch. It was formal; the boys wore shirts and ties, the young women wore dresses. This was very different.

The next grant was at the Waverly Home for Emotionally Disturbed Boys.

I know, I’m a slow learner, but reasoned it would be better since the children came with room counselors who were obviously trained to keep order. I’d brought large vats of paint in white plastic buckets and lined them along the edge of folding tables for days of creativity and puppet building.

Turns out it was not a painting day for Darren, who was one of the last to arrive, so he picked up a paint bucket and sent bright hues of liquid purple into the air, which landed on the walls, windows, across my favorite skirt and over my apron. That was a moment of significant insight for me. 

In that moment, I knew with complete certainty that my place in the world was working with grown-ups. I wanted quiet people, people who did not climb out of windows while we were working together, people who did not leave my clothes dripping with purple paint, or kick me in the leg when they were having a bad day, and you know what? I’ve never really changed my mind.

Elmer

Elmer was one of the evening bartenders who worked in my parent’s restaurant. His shift began at five, but he walked through the parking lot door at four thirty dressed in black pants, polished shoes, white shirt and tie. His hair was combed to the left and his cheeks were scrubbed and rosy.

We lived above the restaurant, five kids, mom and dad, a crow, raccoon, dogs and too many cats to count.

I’d filled a metal bucket from the barn with cold water and hauled it upstairs slopping it wet against my bib overalls and over my feet. The bucket was cold and hard to grasp but I managed to hoist it to the second story window.

I was eager to try a trick I’d seen on a morning cartoon show, the one where the cat fixes a bucket of water over a door, so the dog that’s chasing him gets drenched when it opens. Now Elmer had done nothing wrong, he was not chasing me; I just wanted to see how this worked and he was the first person I thought of. I didn’t have long to wait, he was punctual. 

Elmer straightened his tie as he left his Ford and took a quick peek at his image in the side mirror, then gave a little grin of self-approval. I studied him like a hawk. When he put his hand on the restaurant door, I tipped the bucket and let it go. A perfect bulls-eye!

I’ll never forget the way his hair plastered against his scalp and the transparent flesh tones of his shirt. He looked up at me with wide eyes, and an expression of horror and surprise.

I hoped he might compliment me on my daring and ingenuity, but he took a different view. God Damn you, he said, you little unsupervised shit. He walked in the door of the restaurant, had a talk with my dad and walked right out again. Elmer took the night off. 

A few months later I was walking barefoot in tall grass when I ran across a rusty fish hook. It lodged in the tender fold between my toes and had barbs that made it impossible to pull out. I don’t remember moving, just hollering for help. Elmer was on his way to work. When he saw me, he just smiled and walked by. I guess he still had the water incident stored in his grudge pile. I don’t remember how that one was resolved, but doctors were as hard to get to as outer space so they weren’t called. Someone cut that thing off me, but I no longer remember who.

You might think there were consequences for my actions with Elmer, since my dad lost a bartender that night, but there were none. We were spanked a few times, but mostly it was a case of live and let live.

Equal Measure

Oh, last week was such a hard week. Everything went wrong; I was overwhelmed and found lack of harmony at every turn. Ugh!  I wanted a ticket to La-La-Land where everybody gets along and life runs smoothly all the time.

When I get stressed I try to maintain a positive attitude. But when the hard times keep coming and positive thinking starts to look like a band-aid over a tumor, I allow myself to surrender. I give myself permission to think what I think – and feel what I feel – as completely as possible, no matter how ugly or unwanted it is. I measure my mental health by the time this takes. Can I move through feelings in a day that used to take a week? Can I allow in a week what used to take a month? 

I find a kind of beauty in suffering that goes straight to the heart, because pain pulls away pretense and takes us to the raw truth of our being.

I received a letter last week from a woman in Kansas who had traveled to a graduation and returned to find that her horse of twenty-six years had died in her absence. He had a heart attack and was buried by the time she returned.

“I needed to find closure, and found it difficult as I was not able to see him one last time before he passed, so I have been walking around the barn to find his smell, to smell him one last time. There was nothing there, and then today my son said he cut some of his mane and tail for me and put it on a shelf in the barn. I found it and stuck my nose deep into the mane. It smelled just like my horse, the horse smell that is calming, peaceful and safe. I cried again, it was helpful to smell him one last time, now I have closure, now I can begin to heal.” 

How beautiful is that?  The communion of spirits and depth of love in her honest pain is profound. 

Today I find myself embracing the dark and the light in equal measure. I sit with my feet propped up on a ledge at the library, where I gaze out at sunshine, pink dogwood blossoms, water lilies and a long legged crane. A little girl in a blue dress is crouching near the ducks and walking as if she were one of them. They allow her to mingle only inches away until she tries to place her hand on their backs for a soft feathered embrace.

A little girl with golden hair,  duck-walking with her animal friends,  that’s enough to make my week.

Anatomy

My kids both went to The Metropolitan Learning Center which is an alternative school in Northwest Portland. They grew up in a bohemian single-parent lifestyle with an artistic mom who was away, in rehearsal or touring with theater companies.

When teacher conferences rolled around, nobody wanted to be stuck inside, so we all agreed to meet at the naked beach on Sauvie’s Island, where we could talk, tan and enjoy the sun. 

The teachers discussed their latest field trips to Mexico, whatever art project they were working on, and how the kids were doing in school, while full scale volleyball games were  played on the shore and tugboats motored up the Columbia River.

The naked beach was relaxed and easy. Those who were fearful soon learned that their bodies were just bodies, like everyone else’s, nobody had a perfect one and nobody needed to feel ashamed. Being there was liberating.

My son was an adolescent at the time and uncomfortable on a naked beach, but felt inspired to hide on the hill with his friends to enhance his knowledge of human anatomy and upgrade his education from lifeless playboy centerfolds to the real thing. 

I walked the shore with my friend, B’Lou on my right, who was busy smoking long brown cigarettes and listening to the walkman she’d strapped around her waist. Carolyn was on my left, with a large straw hat and lots of proof that her bright red hair matched the hair on other parts of her body.

Clay and his friends were lying on their bellies in the hills, like soldiers on a spying mission, as our threesome approached.

Hey, check out those women, one of them said.

Clay smiled until he realized the woman in the middle was his mom, then jumped back like he’d been kicked by a horse.

Hey Guys, this isn’t cool anymore. Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to do this anymore. The whole thing is grossing me out.

The boys were reluctant to leave, but Clay insisted. It took him a few days to tell me what happened, and he never quite looked at me the same again.

Sanctuary

 

I have always loved the Catholic Church, not the religion, the philosophy, or the services, but the shelter of the sanctuary.

My level of sensitivity is extra-ordinary. A loud voice or shrill laugh can be physically painful, groups of people are over-stimulating. I can’t lay my head on a hotel pillow without knowing the character of the person who was there before me.

While other kids clamored from their desks for recess, I couldn’t wait to slip across the street into the quiet shelter of the Catholic Church, the only building that kept its doors unlocked, and welcomed all people at all hours.

Once inside I was transported into gentle stillness, a world I longed to live in and never leave. Light filtered through colored glass, frankincense and holy water filled my lungs, and banks of candles flickered in neat little rows near statues of Mary. The only sound was the occasional creak of golden oak yielding under the weight of a bent knee.

There were never loud voices in the church or groups pushing, shoving or competing. The people who came and went were few, and always internal and reverent. The Catholic Church was my oasis and sanity. It was a place I could breathe and rest until the school bell rang and I was summoned back inside to endure.

Last weekend I went to a baby shower. When it was time to return home, something in me recoiled. I pointed the car in the opposite direction and kept on driving until I reached Mt Angel Abbey, which sits high on a mountain with a panoramic view of pastures and forest.

Being away from civilization, computers and conversation was just the medicine I needed. I had not realized my exhaustion until I sat near the bell tower and looked out into the serene fields of the Williamette valley. The quiet was tangible; I could reach out and touch it. A few Benedictine monks walked by in silence like black shadows, humble and privately engaged, while the sun rested on my shoulder like a friend’s hand reminding me to unwind and let go.

That was all I needed. I picked up my cell phone and called my husband. I won’t be home tonight, I told him. I’m at the Abbey and it’s too lovely to leave.

Father Vincent was in the garden among a symphony of goldfinch. He was filling the birdbath as they darted over stalks of yellow and white iris, and on to the budding branches of mimosa trees. Father Vincent has been at the abbey for forty-seven years. He tells me he’ll arrange a room, so I go back to my car for my checkbook and hair brush, the only luggage I have. When I return he is gone. The woman at the gift shop hands me my room key. I ask how much I owe and she says she doesn’t know. It’s Saturday. Someone should be around on Monday. Call when you get home and find out. You can mail us a check then. I’ve gone to the Abbey for the past twenty years. It’s the way they do business.

The room is simple, a bed with white sheets and spread, cream colored walls and windows that look into a sky dotted with tiny cotton clouds. There is a desk and gold lamp. I look out and watch a red-necked hummingbird feed on small blue flowers nested in rambling ground cover.

 I unpack by placing my hair brush on the bathroom shelf and walk to the church for vespers. The monks chant five times a day. When I sit down, the sound of it travels through the pores of my skin and settles at my core.

I stand looking up at the domed ceilings, the pink front wall of the sanctuary and the aqua and purple colors that grace the side walls above arched chanting stalls. The room is full of white linen and candles above a foundation of marble and oak. The organ is one of the finest in the world.

Being there is filling me up, it’s filling an empty space I didn’t know I had. How strange to be so at home in a place I have no business being in at all.

Mother’s Day

I don’t know about you, but I find Mother’s Day a little on the loaded side. My mom lives in New York and will be 94 in June.  She can no longer hear on the phone so I send presents and write, but don’t call. My family of origin feels like a foreign country; one I have a passport to visit but would rather not.

My daughter and I have this communication thing that drives me crazy. If I say Good Morning in the wrong way, she feels criticized and launches an attack that would level a small country. We decided to do separate things that day.

My son called from California. That was nice. I know he hates talking on the phone, but he calls, bless his heart. To ease the pain of duty, he’ll multi-task, usually working on the computer as we speak, so there will be long moments when I wonder if he’s still there. But not this year, this year he was shooting crows with a new BB Gun to keep them from pooping all over his yard.

Hang on a minute, Mom. I gotta take this shot. Oh crap! Missed him!

I opened a magazine on Mother’s Day and read an article about this mother and daughter that looked so enchanted in each other’s company, you’d think they’d just gotten married. One of the things they do together is cook.  There was a recipe at the end of the article that shared a batch of carrot coconut muffins glowing in shades of golden brown. 

I made them this morning, thinking that if they turned out, I might be transported into their picture perfect kitchen - and their picture perfect relationship - and their picture perfect world. But mine did not turn out, of course! I forgot to soak the dried coconut first, so there were little hard things where yummy soft things ought to be. 

I don’t know. There is something about holidays, families, expectations and lack of perfection that turns my smile to a scowl and propels me to the garden, where I pull weeds with a little too much passion.

Flight Pattern

He walked in my door in that way people do when their life is falling apart. He married the wrong woman so they battled and tore at each other, until they turned into people they didn’t want to be. He is a fine man, she is a fine woman, but they are not fine together. 

The pretending is over now, the pain is too great. Their foundation can no longer support their lives. They are at the place of no return, because they know too much truth and can’t put the broken pieces together again. He came today with eyes full of sorrow and courage, with words full of failure and fear. 

But this breaking open, this new place is the healthiest he has been. Of course it doesn’t feel that way to him. He no longer sleeps. His mind races towards an unknown future; he can’t eat and is drinking too much wine. 

He is stepping into the void now, that crack in the universe that teaches us so much.

This is the shamanic initiation, the ultimate letting go, the final test of faith in the face of darkness. But I know this man; I know the fabric of his character and the integrity of his soul. He has to let go. He has to let himself fall so he can find his wings. 

He approaches the cliff now, knowing that it means death, the death of an old self, an outmoded consciousness and a way of life. He walks toward this change because he must. The wise man in him is saving his life, while the personality grabs and claws and rails against his fate. 

Any day now he will jump – and he will fly - and he will find himself, as he floats slowly and helplessly toward the new ground that will heal and free him to start again. I will have the pleasure of being his witness.

Spring

Today I saw spring in my granddaughter’s eyes as she carried fresh soil, white pansies and lavender alyssum to fill a flower box outside her bedroom window. She was excited and intent, but took time away from gathering gravel to climb high into the limbs of a sheltering tree. 

I felt spring in the buckets of water that fell on my head, as I walked down the steps to the garden to see how many of my State Fair Zinnias were left standing. The slugs have been busy turning the leaves from sturdy and strong to a fragile hole-ridden lace. 

I heard spring in my husband’s voice as he described his students outdoor tennis match, and his hope that the window of billowing white clouds and blue skies would hold long enough for them to finish. 

Dark blankets of rain push against Oregonians, who are already soaked to the core, then pull back for moments of sun, to tease, invite and send messages of hope for better days to come.

Spring is like a new puppy that sits in your lap, all warm and cuddly, then goes to the corner and eats your best shoes.

Skill set

Gib left this morning to play tennis, while I did the dishes. I was thinking it was kind of a lame trade-off, since he was getting fit and healthy, while I was getting tired and splashing soapsuds on my apron. I wanted him to stay home today and help me design another audio book cover. I already have the ideas; he would just be the middle man between my imagination and reality. He was supportive and interested, but in the end, out the door he went, smack dab into the middle of his own obligations.

I hate having to rely on other people to do what I can’t do, but part of my sanity has come from admitting that there is a whole lot I can’t master and never will.

My friend, Anthony taught me a phrase I can use whenever my eyes start to glaze over and feelings of inadequacy knock on the door. He taught me to say, that’s not my skill set. I love saying that! It gives me great permission to be who I am without beating myself up. Unfortunately, I seem to have part of me that believes I should be capable of all things.

You need a little brain surgery? Sit down.

Want help with a calculus problem? Bring it over.

Pile on the contracts with the fine print and the twenty minute on-hold calls to the insurance company. I’m your girl.

 Well, not really. The truth is I’m exceptionally good at what I can do and rather hopeless with the rest. It’s the real-world left-brain stuff I struggle with. That’s why it’s so hard when I have a new creative idea and the stand in for my left brain walks out the door to play tennis.

Today is an easy day. My schedule is light. I find myself wanting to write something good, something that will provoke conversation, a good laugh or a shift in consciousness, but none of that is coming, because mainly I just want to lie down and take a long guilt-free nap.

Healing Ritual

I was collecting rocks at the beach. Wind blew hard against my face and I was glad to have the many layers of clothes I had worn. It was time for a healing ritual, an unloading of unwanted accumulation.

I sat on the sand like a kid, examining and fingering each rock. Some were perfect and round, others jagged with veins of white running through the center. They were every shape, variety and color. I unzipped the pocket of my fleece and pulled out a magic marker. Each rock would represent a burden I carried that I wanted to release.

On one rock I wrote the name of a friend whose connection had become strained and heavy. I wanted to keep the friend, but not the troubles surrounding us. On another, I wrote the word, stagnation, sighting my desire to travel and my feelings of being stuck. I wrote the names of foods I needed to stop eating, foods which pleased my taste buds but harmed my body. I went on this way choosing the right rock for the outgrown belief or trouble I carried.

When I finished, I piled them in two plastic grocery bags with the intention of walking as far as I possibly could to bring the reality of what I was doing emotionally into a real world understanding. I hefted the bags from the beach and began to walk. I had only gone a few yards when both bags broke open and spilled on to the sand. Determined to finish, I took off my jacket and bundled them inside. It was more difficult to carry as one bundle, but I managed.

I looked around. The beach was fairly empty, a tall man in an orange coat with a golden dog walked in front of me, and a handful of people who played by the parking lot entrance disappeared behind. The wind encouraged my efforts as it blew against my back, making it easier to walk. I thought about all I carried as I made my way down the shore. I thought about how heavy it was and how tired it made me feel. There was a moment which mirrored my life, when I actually felt proud. Wow, look at me, I thought. I am so strong and can carry so much. I wanted to celebrate my strength. Emotions rose and fell with each new step.  After awhile I slung my bundle on to my back and realized how familiar that felt. I looked so normal from the front. No one would guess I carried such weight out of sight.

When I could bear that no longer, I shifted the rocks from shoulder to shoulder and finally pulled them in front of me, where I acknowledged them for the troublesome weight they were. At one point, I noticed a sand dollar and wanted to pick it up, but had to ask myself if I could do it. I wondered if I could hold my burden and reach for what I wanted at the same time. I studied it. It was small and beautiful and would add no weight, but there was the juggling of the load to consider. Would it be easier to pass it by? How symbolic that moment was, as I remembered my recent desire to book a massage and how easily I had over-ruled it, sighting lack of funds or too much work. I carefully lowered myself near the prize, plucked it from its resting place and tucked it in the pocket of my shirt.

After walking three miles, I came to a path that led away from the shore and up to a cliff where I could perch on the point and rest. The path was sand covered, steep and shifting, a challenge on a good day. I struggled to hold my bundle as I grabbed tree roots for balance and leverage. I pulled myself to the top exhausted and panting,  dropped to the earth and gratefully took in miles of shore line, seagulls, fishing boats and the distant orange speck of a man and his prancing dog.

The mountain served as a welcome protection from the wind as I waited for my breathing to descend from chest to belly. The sun warmed my face. I pulled each stone from the bundle, thought about its shape and size, and the words I had written. I cried about some and settled into my willingness to release them.

I knew from my healing practice that it was not enough for my mind to decide things; my body had to decide also. This ritual was making my decision both integrated and real. I remembered a client I had seen a week earlier who felt he had lost his masculinity in an overbearing marriage. He had complied so much that his essence seemed to have disappeared all together. It had been helpful to talk about his feelings, but it wasn’t enough. What worked was a physical ritual that placed a knife in his hand, called his warrior self from memory and brought rage up and out of his belly in great howls of self-claiming. Ritual is the missing spiritual piece in our ability to heal. 

Finished on the cliff and ready to head back, I prepared to leave. I picked up my bundle and was surprised to feel my body recoil in resentment. But my ritual was not complete, so I picked up the rocks, made my way down the mountain and walked to the ocean’s edge.

Waves lapped at my feet as I pulled each stone from hiding.  As I threw them into the water, I spoke again of releasing the energy they carried, but this time I invited new energies to take their place. Where there was conflict, I invited harmony, where there was stagnation, I invited invigoration, and so it went stone after stone until my hands were empty. 

I finished with a great feeling of liberation and peace, but the wind was no longer at my back. I tied my empty jacket over my head to shield my ears and walked the three miles back to my new beginning.