Category biography

biography

The Price of Magic

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I was sitting, tucked into the corner of my room at my little desk, a wooden bookcase to my left. I was writing, I don’t recall what. As it moved in, my sight opened up. My heart beat so strongly and so deeply I had to lift my face, to give the blood more space to move through my head. That was when I saw it. I’ve never seen it before nor since but it changed everything. I understood that this was what the Zen Buddhists call satori. I was awake for a moment. The clear thing I retain is a sense of awe.

Turning, I put my hand out to the bookcase and as clear as the air on a snowy mountain side I could see it. I could see that my hand, the bookcase, the books, the wall, my desk, the air were all one. To touch one was to touch everything. I knew I couldn’t hold onto that vision long. I opened myself to the change it was making in me so that I could carry it with me. I dwelt in the awareness of how, just as every drop of water that has ever been still is, what I am has been a part of every other thing and holds its memories, its knowledge, its wisdom, its life. That I am, just adds to all of life. My job became honoring those ancient understandings.

Years later we were camping by the bay with our kayaks. It was a full moon night and we decided to go out and watch her from the water. We set a lantern on the shore in case we too got too far away to recognize our spot. We paddled out but didn’t stop for long. It was like being called to paddle out farther. The water was undulating silk, dark, soothe, and washed with the moonlight. It was like paddling in a trance. There was the moon in the water around each boat but I could see nothing of the water beyond that circle of light. If I looked up I could see the shadow of the distant shore ahead, lights dotting the black. The only sound was the lap of the water on the shore somewhere and the plink of water dripping from the paddle as the other blade slid into the water. It was another of those experiences I knew I couldn’t hold for long so I settled into the magic of the rhythm of the night, the full moon light, the pull of the paddling and shushing of water on the shore.

We paddled until we got into a nest of crab pots that required some attention so that we didn’t get tangled in the lines. Coming out the other side it had been lost. I knew looking for it was futile but did try for a bit. We where now just paddling in the dark towards the sleeping town we didn’t want to reach. The glow that had embraced us was lost, the water was slapping instead of caressing the shore. I tried to find it again but maybe it’s only to be found as the full moon first come to bloom over the horizon, or over the trees in this case. The world had returned to its usual cold water, sharp lines and intent. We had had no intent when we first set out, only allowing ourselves to be lured by the experience. Time returned. We paddled a bit farther then turned and headed back. We figured we had paddled about six miles in two hours. The only time I was really aware of was of the time after we lost the magic.

I had to pay a token price for that trip. I had been wearing earrings that were a gift, that I was particularly fond of. She took one and I had to just say thank you and let the sacrifice go. I’d gladly pay again but I suspect that is a once in a lifetime trip.

In my life I’ve been brush my magic and enchantment many time. Some are extraordinary and transforming experiences but most of the ones in my life have been transporting. I’ve been taken to a place of such pleasure and peace that I notice how amazing it is. They are moments of seeing the shine around something ordinary that demands that it isn’t ordinary. Most of these times have been out in the woods or on the water. Like the experience paddling the willingness to be taken by the unknown, be moved in places I’ve never been without fear is magical. Outside it’s easier to see because of the nature of our awareness and attention out of doors. Inside we assume our surroundings and will fail to notice even the most amazing thing that happen right under our noses. The very awareness of the extraordinary is transformative or enlightening, a thing that I call magic.

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Search For Wisdom

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I wasn’t such a bad looking girl, just overweight so figured I’d never be beautiful. My sister was a lot prettier than I was but I was smart. That was what I had going for me. But I was harangued by my parents for my bad judgement. I they convinced me that this was something I could get better at. How do you make better decisions? I didn’t know. I needed to know.

I have alway had a deep, tender heart. I’ve had to exert control over what I showed outside. I was so easily manipulated by those who knew how much I cared. I had to make sure they didn’t know. But I knew. I had this feeling that good judgement came from wisdom. Since I saw myself as so smart, I figured what I needed was to become wise. How do you become wise?

Anything I’ve ever wanted to know about I read about. This was the 1960s and the rise of the self-actualization movement. There was the women’s lib movement, the rise of the use of drugs like LSD and mushrooms to get in touch with your inner being, the rise in groups that met to support each other in their journeys of self-discovery. I read Hugh Prather, Carlos Castinada, Heinlein, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and all those cool books of the 60s, 70s and 80s. I found them fascinating but wasn’t sure I was getting anywhere with this search for wisdom. It occurred to me that maybe my problem was a lack of clarity about what it was I was seeking. What is wisdom?

I can find definitions of wisdom in every dictionary. Wikipedia says: the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise. OK, but something is missing. When I meet someone wise I know it. I hear it as they speak. I know lots of people with experience who are just plain crazy, not wise. I know people with what is called good judgement who are the most boring people in the world. They don’t make mistakes because they are so afraid of making them they are mummified by their constraints. I know plenty of people who know a ton of stuff but seem a bit out to lunch. So who is wise, how are they different from others with these qualities?

When I meet someone who seems wise they appear to know a lot, their understanding of the interplay of events and feelings is deep. Tell them a story and they can predict the outcome and more importantly, why. They have a special gift of syntheses. Their vision doesn’t make them afraid but curious.

I was about 50 years old when I finally recognized what I was looking for. I had wondered in passing for years and years about this idea but only in my late 40s did I actually make it a priority task, to identity wisdom. We talk about it like it was some fixed point that you could just hike to and it would be yours forever. The idea that I could achieve or capture wisdom was probably the thing most in my way of recognizing it.

What I’ve come to believe is that wisdom is a nexus that creates a synergy. With all the things that happen to us we come to an understanding what those experiences meant for us. I’ve come to believe that everything has some meaning, even the small things. Often that meaning is as simple as that I’ve found something that gives me joy or pleasure or disappointment but there is something to be recalled.

It took me 2 years of some consistent thought about it but I decided the definition that worked for me is, wisdom is the intersection of knowledge and understanding. That means everyone has some if they learn from their choices. Making good choices really isn’t wisdom but the result of wisdom and discipline. It is like the really great doctors who smoke or abuse drugs. They know better but can’t get a grip on themselves. Knowledge becomes wisdom with the addition of acceptance of meaning and consequences. That requires the heart.

Heart-wisdom demands deep listening, deep silence, and space between thoughts and words. It isn’t judgmental, doesn’t stretch too hard to make assumption outside of what it knows. Watching people closely over time is essential to being able to take true meaning of experiences, yours and others. We know from our experience that certain things hurt, certain things are frightening, certain things comfort us, and each of those feelings can manifest in a whole range of behaviors from running and screaming to deep stillness.

At this point I feel like I’ve reached the point of being closer to the heart wisdom I seek. With age one has to hope. No one can be totally wise because we can’t know enough. We can know some, extrapolate some, and guess at some but we never really have the whole picture, even of ourselves. Wisdom doesn’t assure good choices but it can help. It makes you more cautious about hurting others and hopefully yourself. Wisdom avoids martyrdom in most cases. Giving your all is a thing lovers and parents do but that isn’t called wise, only loving or dedicated. It doesn’t keep us from making financial mistakes when we believe the wrong things.

Perfect judgement can’t exist. If perfection is in safety too much is lost. In being perfectly safe perfection is lost because it is in taking risks that we grow and expand. Safe judgement would avoid the decision points, the opportunity to take a risk, situations requiring taking risks. No, taking risks is how we get rich. We take a risks by caring, by competing, we risk loss and pain. But avoiding life isn’t wise. Those who chose to quit taking risks are seen as smart in money, or plants, or some specialized thing. Smart and wise are two different traits. Smart isn’t always wise but wise is always smart. The heart-wise  are willing to take the risks, being open to pain and to joy.

Answering the question about what wisdom is has been helpful because I understand what I’ve done was actually exactly what I needed to do to get better at living. Chasing wisdom is useless, like trying to put light into a box to keep it. Being open to everything, taking it all in is the path. Being an active participant and observer is how we learn to use what we experience. The experience and the efforts to understand those experiences is the way.

bio-Father’ Ghost

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The day of his funeral or maybe the day before all the drama that was to come, I lay down on my bed in the bedroom off the basement rec room. Dad built that bedroom around me when I moved back home when I separated from my husband.

Dad’s chair was in the rec room. He spent 23 years sitting in that room watching TV. I’d spent a good portion of my teen years in their with him. Today when I picture him he is sitting there in front of the TV or out on the deck rocking, thinking as he liked to do. I tried asking him what he was thinking one time and got that, nothing, answer so I would look at him and wonder what thing was making him bit his lower lip as he did when he was upset.

So I’m drifting in that mellow sleep before and I start up at the clear sound of his voice calling me from the rec room. He’d do that because I was handy, being so close. I started up, and sat there a moment, got up and went to the door. I put my hand on the knob, then stopped. Oh my god, I wanted to go out there. I was terrified but I still wanted to go there. Being in that half sleep I stood there with the pull of his voice in my heart and the rational part of me rearing up. Finally, I let my hand drop and I whispered to him that he had to go. It wasn’t that he wasn’t passionately loved or desperately wanted but because it was time. If I went to him he’d have trouble doing what he had to do and so would I. I literally feared more for him. For me I’d have risk it but not for him. I knew he had to go.

I sat on my bed and weeped tears that needed to be shed. Over the years I’ve thought about that. Reason tells me he wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. But what would have happened if I’d gone to his call? I wonder if anything would have changed. What if . . .

I was so rich to have grown up with his loving, steady presence. He is much of the reason I’m alive and only normally crazy. I had said everything I ever needed to, to him. There was no unfinished business. There are regrets that I didn’t accept his invitations to things like riding the brand new Metro, the DC subway, the day he went. He was all dressed up in a suit and tie for the event. I was too lazy to get dressed and didn’t realize the point wasn’t riding the Metro but doing it with him. Another thing I wish I’d done is to have gone to see Superman with him. I was sleeping and he called me from upstairs phone on my new bedroom phone to invite me. I didn’t want to get up, I wish I had. There is now a whole string of things attached to Superman, Christopher Reeve, falling off horses, and back injuries of one sort or another. These are the treads between the anchoring strand.

The web of life is a marvel and my parents are anchors without which the whole would crumble. In many ways I’m lucky and even with the hard parts I’m content. I was loved by a father who was with me from the day I was born to the day he died. Some threads are more durable than others, his was the strongest and still is.

bio–Questions to Mom

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When my father died and I realized there were questions I wish I’d asked him about his life that would go unanswered. I decided to ask my mother those questions about her life. I really didn’t know a whole lot about her life, only surface things like you’d find in a public biography. I found that I really couldn’t. It wasn’t her unwillingness to answer but that when I probed her past she often broke into tears she didn’t feel comfortable prompting her to shed. I now wish that I had gone ahead and asked some of them because those questions reflect on my own past, not just hers. I will never know some things about myself that would give my heart ease just to know. I don’t know that they would make a difference but they might have.

Maybe I did ask and forgot the answers because I don’t have a mental file drawer with that label on it so I just can’t find those answers. I have a huge amount of information in my miscellaneous drawer. I filed a lot of what Mom said in that drawer because I didn’t know what to do with it, do I believe it, trust it, want it? With Mom, because I had so little trust in her good will, I didn’t listen to her with my heart. I was so very ready to defend myself at the drop of an adjective. It took so many years for me to be able to let down my guard.

What I’ve come to wish I’d found out is about my childhood behavior and specifically looking at ADHD and my relationships. I’ve said for many years that I was ADHD but never really, really thought about the implications of that idea in my childhood and relationship with my mother. On the other hand I have wondered if I didn’t sour the milk for my sisters. How much of what happened can be laid at my feet, how much was all her, and how much was just incompatible personalities? Those are questions I’ve asked myself all of my life. She certainly blamed me for most of it for our 59 years together.

Mother told he she realized she hated me when I was 18 months old. The way she said it made me totally believe her. I so wish I’d asked her more. For her answer to be so specific and me, so young, I wish I knew what it was that she identified about me that would lead her to say that. But I was afraid to disturb the pleasant balance we had finally found with each other and I was going to ask her to go back to such painful things? No. It seemed the price of the current peace between us was the answer to that question, but I wish I knew.

When I look in my baby book Mom wrote so many glowing things  about how I was always happy, babbling away, constantly in motion, cooperative, anxious to please and so on. But I wonder if this was a lie for public consumption when they she showed the baby book to friends or maybe so she wouldn’t have to face what she probably felt were her failures as a new mother. At 5 1/2 years old she wrote about her concerns for me that I was not tractable, wouldn’t be guided by her. She called me aggressive and uncooperative then, so I tend to believe the rest was wishful thinking on her part. I suspect she didn’t hate me all the time, but in waves. I probably was adorable at times but often enough I was difficult and willful that it made me very hard to parent. She didn’t seem to be the kind who questioned herself about motives or method so didn’t look to herself for solutions. As far as I ever remember, she blamed something or someone outside of herself when issues arose. At home is was usually me.

Mother never accepted that she did not have a patient personality. She was not only impatient with getting things that she wanted completed, done but she was incredibly and increasingly impatient with those who didn’t agree with her, who didn’t know as much as she thought she did about a subject, and especially she was impatient with children. She had this idea that children were little adults capable of reasonable, rational decisions. She thought children could make good decisions, meaning do what she said, and that children were there to wait on adults without demur. That all sounds harsh but as she aged the veneer of sociability and good manners she had cherished as a younger woman wore thin and her impatience sometimes came out and over rode good manners to a point even I found embarrassing. When I’d say, “Mother!” she’d say things like that’s just the way I feel or something else you’d expect out of an old lady.

I recall one time she had a business acquaintance staying with us for a few days. He was a nice, middle-aged guy from Australia. As usual the talk turned to politics and he said something about being ashamed of his country’s milk-toast attitudes and lack of activism about Viet Nam. Mom jumped on his for his lack of patriotism. I was astonished that she’d do that to company, and someone she didn’t really know. I saw his reaction, it wasn’t good. She just stuck her nose in the air. She truly astonished me at times because of the mantra she had about manners, breeding, propriety and so on. I don’t think she ever saw that her behavior violated that standard she had set.

Even her best friend, Ad, would comment on how “difficult” Mom was at times. They decided to go on a driving tour of  North Carolina one time when Mom was probably in her early 70s. Us three kids talked about betting on the durability of their friendship for this trip. I thought they might end up coming home early but they managed. I’m sure it was more about Ad’s loving, forgiving heart than anything else. Ad was not spared Mom’s sharp tongue  and bad temper but she usually just let it roll off with the occasional humph and, “well I never …!” I always internally cheered her on. There was no reason for her to put up with Mother’s ill manners. I really never understood why Ad did it but was glad she did. I loved her so deeply. She was the one I looked to as a loving, female adult in my life.

In reading Anne Lamot’s work she talks a lot about her mother and what an awful mother she had. Our mothers were similar in some ways in that they were neglectful, self-centered, and unsupportive. Reading her stuff got me to reading other women’s thoughts on their mothers. So much of the stuff that came out of the self-help movement of the 70s and early feminist work of that period was about mother to mother, how this conflict about child rearing played out. I didn’t relate to it at all, having no children. The current crop of women’s literature is so much more one-on-one with our mothers about what happened to us as children and how it as informed the women and mothers we became. As we have grown older the deeper schisms are being examined and as our parents have died we are freer to tell the truth we know about our own childhoods and the parents we feel we had.

My view is from the bottom up. I always feel like I’m looking up to see both Mom and Dad. In a way I saw the part under the surface, under the dress-up clothes and after the party but my point of view is also from a child’s eyes, a child’s expectations and needs. That makes me a much harsher judge because their emotional, intellectual and spiritual wrinkles, freckles, and shiny spots are amplified. They stand out more for me because I didn’t have a context in which to judge them, only my needs that were met/unmet. I had no tools to be compassionate or understanding that they had failures and successes, that they were winging-it. I didn’t know that adults didn’t know everything. Just as my mother expected me to know how, what, when, why to do things I expected the same thing of her and she let me down. She failed to be the adult she was supposed to be. I had to find the loving grown-up mother outside of my family. I grew up on this precarious ledge outside, not in the warmth of my mother’s home.

I’m lucky, my life has been good and I am happy now. I know I miss my mother so much now because of our unfinished business. I totally love my father but don’t think of him as often. He’s been gone 20 years longer than Mom but also I don’t have the conversations with him in my head like I do with Mom. When he died I had made sure there were no things left out, unsaid.

bio–Mother’s Days

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Page 1 is Life-A Work In Progress 
.....(find next in order)

Parents are myopic. They see only what is right in their face after it filters through their hearts. Being a teacher of other people’s children is a totally different set of lenses. Any parent knows kids are not nice, they are not kind, they are not smart about things like money and friends. That is why they have parents.

Offspring need training in both the skills of survival and as social beings, how to be part of the “group.” The most important thing parents give kids is a balance between trusting themselves and trusting others. If young people haven’t learned to trust others like peers, parents and teachers then they have a horrid time with relationships. They have trouble working and even playing with others and romantic relationships can’t thrive without trust. If children don’t learn to trust themselves to solve problems or have good judgement they are really unable to do it. Their decisions are default decisions because they don’t see themselves as able to know what to do and often they hold a low opinion of their skill.

Of course there are the parents who go too far and never let the kids learn from their mistakes, they do as someone said just today, they smooth the road all the way to adulthood and then don’t understand why their kids can’t stand on their own two feet. Consequences are the learning tool, mistakes are the environment for the learning. They think someone else will fix things so they never become truly independent adults. All their failures will be blamed on something outside of themselves because they never learned the base lesson of personal responsibility.

The wisdom of the day when I was born was Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care, in which he said that children learn by example, you don’t have to push your kids or tell them what to do. He later retracted that and deeply regretted the anguish that advise caused so many parents and children. My parents had the philosophy that children knew what was right or wrong, you just corrected the wrong stuff because they should know it’s wrong. So my sisters and I only heard about the bad stuff. We never knew if we did things well or right. We never learned to trust ourselves, we lived never quite sure what was expected of us. To top that off our mother was inconsistent in what was going to piss her off. Some things we had no doubt about but often times she just came out of the blue at us.

One of my earliest memories is of my father telling me I had to do as Mother told me to do. My reply was that I didn’t want to do what she said, because she was mean. I had to have been about 3 years old then. I remember she put in the closet when I was bad at least a few times. I remember having screaming fits at her. We just didn’t hit it off from the beginning. In retrospect I suspect there was what is called these days, a failure to bond. I suspect the foundation of the problem was that I was a very independent, ADHD kid. My memories fit the classic pattern of non-stop movement, real smart, being called bossy, more comfortable with adults than kids, problems getting along with kids at school. When I was 40 my father died and it was at that point that she and I managed to establish a more loving relationship. Up until then we had built up so much anger, fear, and resentment towards each other we could hardly share, it usually ended with both of us upset. I think I heard, “I resent you so much,” as often as any other statement of feelings from my mother. Mothers really shouldn’t give in to the desire to yell, “I hate you,” at their small children no matter what they have done.

At one point a few years after after Dad died I asked her when she knew she hated me. Without a pause she said, when I was 18 months old. I was blown away by that answer. It came so quickly she had obviously asked herself the same question. She didn’t deny hating me as I kind of expected her to do. My reaction wasn’t surprise but gratitude because, if I was that young it couldn’t have been my fault, even if it was about me, which I’d suspected all along. She was supposed to be the grow-up. I had never been able to understand what I did that was so wrong that she hated me when I was so little. It had to be about who as much as what I did. It was more than just me being a willful, hyperactive child who was too smart for her own good, it was that she didn’t expect and didn’t know how to mother a child like me. This just wasn’t what her child was supposed to be like. It was about her as much if not more than it was about me. If her kids weren’t perfect it was a reflection of some failure of hers and she was much about appearances. It never seemed to strike her that she might need help coping with me. It was all on me to change.

I would tell her fantasy stories to try to get her to approve of me about how I had friends and did this or that with them. She just thought I was crazy and at 8 she took me to a child psychiatrist. That was in the days when psychiatrists actually treated patients as therapists not just as pill pushers. I saw Dr. Olshaker for maybe a year, maybe less. The last time I saw him was the time when he met with my parents, I assume to talk about my treatment. I have always suspected Mom didn’t like what she heard so pulled me out. I recall she was mad when we left that day. Years later, when my dentist recommended I get therapy for stress because I was grinding my teeth at night, she said she wasn’t happy about it as she was sure they would put the blame on her. I figured that what what she was told by Dr. Olshaker all those years before.

Now in my late 60s, and she has passed on, I am working more diligently on the legacy of what she gave me. I am shocked at times to see my mother move my hand, or say something, or I see her in the mirror. We eventually came to a fairly comfortable relationship but not anything near the ideal mother/daughter relationship. I couldn’t confide in her or trust her to really care deeply what happened to me. It was enough that I could honestly say “I love you,” without thinking caveats. She specifically told me she really didn’t want to hear my problems. Of course we did talk about some on a superficial level because as a teacher, school was my life and as a teacher, the system was my problems. But I didn’t seek her advise and she really didn’t offer any, just some sympathy, which was probably good.

I don’t think I would ever have been ready for much advise from her, I never have believed she actually understood me. She and I were so very different in our approaches to life and politics. She was poor listener and that was one of the “problems” between us. I wanted a mother who understood me and wanted me happy. She wouldn’t listen to me. She’d hear my words and then try to tell me how I felt or what I meant by what I said. It infuriated me. How could she every know me if she couldn’t listen to me. It always seemed that any time I tried to talk with her, it always got turned to what she wanted to say, what she thought, or what she believed. It didn’t matter that I had gone to her for help with my thoughts and issues. She seemed to always turn so that it was really about her, not really about me. She was so much less than helpful. I felt so isolated. As much as I loved and trusted Dad, he wasn’t any real help in the daughter’s problems department. When I did try to talk with Mom I suspect that I was so defensive I really couldn’t listen well to what she said. She made me so angry with no place to spend it. She cared to little about me. When Dad was there I’d just go hug him and cry, I resented her so deeply. In retrospect it was probably a bit of a set-up, I looked for her to do the things that reinforced my beliefs about her. If I let my guard down and tried to talk with her, her first slip-up would close me off in a flash.

Mom was very social and liked to have parties. My sisters and I were the help, and at times she treated us with the same distain she had for all servants. She ordered us around and if there was an empty glass that needed to be filled she’d be haughty in commanding us to do our jobs as “hostesses.”  Of course clearing dirty dishes, cleaning the kitchen, and making sure everyone had their after dinner coffee and drinks was our job. I liked the parties but the way she treated me in front of her friends took a lot of the pleasure out of them. I didn’t mind helping but in her cups she’d say awful things about me. She did it in front of company or to people at these parties she gave or the family went to, just to embarrass me. She even admitted to intentionally trying to humiliate me.

What saved me was the very thing that made Mom so upset, that I was totally me from the beginning. There was no artifice. I did what I wanted and really didn’t care what anyone said. I didn’t recognize authority that I didn’t grant, even as a small kid. That was the abrasion the turned into the wound of resentment and hate. I wasn’t a tractable kid.

The greatest grace was my father. I have said often that he saved me. He taught me to love and to trust. He defended me to, and from Mother, he argued for me and really tried to find a way for the two of us to at least peacefully coexist. I was his favorite and I believe that made Mother resent me even more, that Dad took my side instead of her side against me. I was his first child and he wore his love for all of us on his sleeve, especially me.

Mom used the words “propriety” and “breeding” a lot as we were growing up. She wanted us to be the proper, sweet, perfect children in cute dresses and black patent mary janes a true Southern Lady, as she saw herself, would breed. Patti, who is 22 months younger than I am, tried to be perfect, sweet, and happy but could still never please mother. Robin, I’m not sure how she saw things. She never saw much advantage in being mother’s favorite but she would lord it over Patti and me at times.

One of the things mother did was to place on my shoulders responsibility for  anything that went wrong in the family. I was the carrier of the entire emotional life of the family including between her and Dad. She held Robin, who is 4 1/2 years younger than I am, up as the one to emulate. My opinion was, right, my baby sister is the one I want to be like? She seemed smart enough but was so ordinary and boring and totally self-centered. On Robin’s part, she accepted Mother’s judgement of me and blamed me for anything and everything wrong in her life until she was in her 30s. There has never been more than a blood bond between us. We never did learn how to be friends.

Mom always talked about how important family was but actually was the one who tore it down by pitting us against each other. She told them not to trust me, not to follow me, not to do what I did. I understand why she did that but the consequence was much broader than I suspect she ever really thought about until it was way to late to repair. In the end, a couple of years or so before she died we were talking about problems she was having with Robin and her husband who were supposed to be caring for her but weren’t. I was telling her what I was trying to put in place to protect and take care of her. She said to me, “I guess I was wrong about you.” I couldn’t say anything. I was grateful that she had come to that conclusion but it was so late in the game for us. There was relief in it but little joy.

Life-A Work In Progress

I’m attaching it here to TRY to keep the bio in order. It is next to impossible with the existing structure of this web site. This is a repeat of the separate entry in the top menu.

Page 1 of my bio

When I read something I really feel a need to know more about the writer. What biases does the writer travel with? How does she see the world? What loves/hates/frustrations/passions tint his life? So, in that vein I will reveal a bit of me.

I kind of want a space to talk about my history because it has so much to do with what I write. I don’t want this bio to be overwhelming and I am wordy so I’m breaking it into bits, I don’t know how many but some. This one is about the facts of my early life. It isn’t in any depth. That will

I was born in Oakland Calif as an early baby boomer. I am the oldest of the kids. I have sisters only, so no experience in growing up with brothers. My dad was a writer and in my early life there Mother was the classic housewife. She had gone to college with the specific intent of getting her Mrs. and after the war came (on the day they got back from their honeymoon) she became Rosie-the Riveter in LA while Dad was stationed in the Pacific. When Dad returned he started working in San Francisco as they spent the usual period struggling to save for a house. Dad had a degree so didn’t use the GI Bill for college, instead went back to work for the Associated Press, which he’d been “on loan” from, to the army during the war.

Two more daughters later Dad thought San Francisco was boring so asked for a transfer to Washington, DC, where the actions was, and it really was back in 1950. We moved here at the end of 1951. The image of Ossie and Harriet pops to mind. Mother took that for 2 years and had to get out of the house (apartment). There were many causes and I can’t speak to all of them or even the order of importance to her but no matter what mothers were supposed to do in the early 1950s, this Mother was going to work. She hired a maid to take care of us and the apartment. I have a blurry memory of being walked to school for kindergarten but really don’t remember much except the first few days I was in the wrong room and when I left I was sad because the teacher had a parakeet that I liked. I remember taking my kitten to school for show and tell, and naps, and liking school. I never outgrew naps or kittens or liking school. I suppose that is how I got to be an elementary school teacher. Or maybe not.

Mother had taught us to read as small children and she got into this battle with the principal at our school because the wisdom then was to leave teaching to the teachers. The other thing was that the school was taking it on itself to place us in special instruction for speech and I’m sure I was seeing a school psychologist. I suspect they thought I was being abused. I recall in 3rd grade being given anatomically correct dolls to play with. I am guessing the results of that was really why Mom pulled us out of public school and put us in parochial school. I went to a child psychiatrist about that time. At some point, I don’t recall how long I went to see him, the doctor had a conference with my parents. Mother was less than tolerant of opinions that she didn’t like, it didn’t matter who held them or how expert they were. That was the last time I saw him. Mother diverted the shrink money to my horseback riding lessons.

I come at life and faith through a lens of need. I was a lonely child, over weight, disliked by my mother, undefended as far as I knew by my her. I grew up saying I didn’t understand what the problem was. I was a nice person. Why didn’t kids like me? My mother told me it was because I was “fat” and bossy. Well, yea, and I also felt I was right. I usually was, which made me less than popular. I was in fact a rather classic ADHD kid. I was constantly on the move, jiggling and bouncing, talking non-stop and I was a bossy know-it-all. I suspect that was the core of the conflict with my mother when I was very small. She had no idea what to do with a girl who didn’t want to be frilly and dainty. No young girl was allowed opinions, and you didn’t disagree with your mother. I don’t think she ever imagined having to pull her daughter out of trees, yell about keeping shoes and clothes on, worry how it looked when all her daughter would wear was jeans and shorts. Were girls supposed to live on their bikes? I didn’t give her any options, I was doing what I was doing and I didn’t like her so I didn’t want to do what she told me. One of my earliest memories was a conversation with my father where he is telling me I have to do what Mother says. My response was she was mean and I didn’t want to do what she told me. I never really changed my mind and after while it became a reflex to resist her.

My dad was my savior and idol. He loved me as I was and that made it bearable even if it was more confusing. I was his first child and it was clear I was the apple of his eye as a small child. It was very important that my dad was there. I have no idea if I would have survived without his love and faith in me. I suspect he felt a bit adrift with all the females in his life. My mother was a hard woman to live with a lot of the time but I think basically they loved one another. They were a private couple, even from us. There was little hugging only the briefest peck between them in front of us. But there was lots of hugs and kisses between us and them, especially with Dad. We would throw ourselves at him to hug him and kiss him. We gave each other kisses good bye and even hello. But on reflection neither of them shared a lot of their lives with us, especially Mother. Dad was more open, talking about his childhood and war experiences. Mother talked a little but I learned more in one trip with her to Memphis for her 50th high school reunion than in all the years before. By that time we had reached a point of wanting to make things better between us.

Now my 50th reunion is this year. How strange to think of that. I’ve had next to no contact with any of Mom’s family since that trip in 1988. I never heard from them when Mom died a few years ago. Maybe they didn’t know at the time as I had no way to contact them. They had Mom’s address but they didn’t use it. When Dad died his brother and 2 cousins came for the funeral and stayed with us for a few days. The aloofness of Mom’s family kind of reflects the difference between Mom and Dad. We grew up without extended family. We are all the family we have.

We grew up in Maryland, for the first 10-11 years we lived in a townhouse style apartment. When I was in high school we bought a house and when I think of growing up it is more of living in that house than the years in the apartment. I had what I thought was normal childhood. Besides the running battle between Mother and me there was school. At first the nuns were intimidating but quickly became a focal point for me. I watched the way they talked quietly together. The way they put their hands up their sleeves when they were standing around. I wondered what the convent was like. I wondered how they became teachers, was it the same as the lay teachers? I wasn’t popular but I did have friends, the girls I hung out with at recess. I had one friend in 4th grade but she didn’t last much past that. There was something so alien about me that I couldn’t have real friends. But on the other hand I wouldn’t be picked on. I was big, 2nd tallest in our class, and I was a good 20 pounds over weight. I didn’t take any shit. I had no compunction about telling obnoxious boys what to do. I could face almost any of them down. They gave up messing with me because I mostly ignored them and if I wasn’t they would back down. It wasn’t worth the risk I’d get really mad about something.