California Roll

All new, who knew?

Deep connections are vital to me. Writing does that for me. When I can't tell people what I'm experiencing (because they're at work or shopping or seeing relatives), I can do ti this way.

Besides, even when I'm with people, I'm not sure they want to hear - or can understand and respond gently - to my intense feelings. These feelings swell and erupt often in this holiday season.

to a new city where no one knows or cares
for you, but Writing this poem on Sunday helped me understand what I felt and why. As I identified with the feelings I'm supposing Mary had on her travels, I no longer felt alone and came to a place of trust and contentment.

Poetry is my attempt to connect with you. I would love hearing a comment back - brief as it may be - after you read this.

All new, who knew?

Mary, soft and tender,
did you ache like me
to tell your stories?
After the angel spoke

of life within your womb,
and curious stares became cold glares,
as your secret further and further protruded,
did you ache to tell your story?

Mary so young (thirteen?) and vulnerable,
sent far from your mother's embrace,
to cousin Liza's place, how did that foreign
cot feel? eating others' meals? Did your faith vanquish

disgrace? Did you cry for your mother's gaze?
Mary, soft and full, when hormones made you
frail, who—what did you tell? Jehovah gave you
cousin Liza—a prophetess, she believed who swelled

your belly wide; she also bore one headed for
early demise. Mary tender and wise, you ride
with Joe beside you, to Bethlehem where no
one knows your name, but when time comes,

angels sing and shepherds bring
their sleepy sheep. Did the stable
owner hear or care? With babe in arms,
still you tell little to neighbor or baker—

you know the other Joseph
of old, who told his brothers his God-sent
dreams of glory. When envy and hate grew,
his beautiful coat didn’t save him.

You come with husband and Jesus to the temple
for the sacrifice Moses told to do—surprise: Simon
greets you as Mother of the Messiah. He tells,
“A sword will cut your heart.” You grapple

with your babe’s end from the start. Your fears you tell
to no one but Joe. For months he searches day
to day for ways to garner wages—you pray. Desperate,
did you know wise men would come with gifts

you need? Warned by an angel, you must flee from Herod
the king. So you tender gifts for the two-week long Egypt
road. In secret you leave, losing bed, neighbors, and
friends again, and go to Egypt, become a stranger

with few who know your God, your tongue.
You keep within who you know your son
will grow to be, your questions and your hope
in the promise of the angels’ song,

Mary, you make me wonder.

A New Kind of Christmas

On Friday morning I knew I'd be going to a Christmas party at a beautiful home that night. On the way home from tutoring English, the urge to drive in to Stanford shopping center almost overcame me. I wanted the newest fashion of holiday clothes--not my black top bought last year at Nordstrom's sale.

What kept me back was not the thinness of my wallet, but knowing that an hours spent shopping would keep me from writing my novel or having as much to give to people who needs basics, like groceries. These are truly hard times for many.

Saturday Collin delivered canned goods collected by MA highs school kids. I went on the first two of the six deliveries he made. When one woman opened her apartment I could see bunk beds in their living room. Probably six people in a tiny one-room apartment.

"God is always a giver" - one of the many outstanding points in the sermon by our pastor John Ortberg today. And when we give to others, God gives back. I needed to hear that.

You see, I'm tired. It's easy to believe the random thoughts like I've given too much and haven't spent enough time to people who can and will give back to me.

What I chose to give lies behind me and I was happy at the time of giving. I need to look ahead to what I can do in order to meet my own needs. I've scheduled a hike with a neighbor friend for Thursday--that's a way of planning for replenishment, a way that doesn't cost any money.

For Christmas our church is focusing on giving to those who truly need it, those who won't or can't pay us back. We learned that the 2nd Harvest Food Bank shelves are about empty, so for the next two Sundays we can bring goods to church and they will bring it to the food pantry. I'm going to make that opportunity known at the YMCA aerobics classes I attend and collect goods there.

I wrote a poem today and now I don't feel so tired. Weariness comes from emotions I haven't figured out, worked through, expressed to God. Writing the poem helped me do all that.

The Christmas season brings deep and complex emotions to me, but they needn't prevent me from giving.

Breaking Down Inside

    It's 6:20 pm on Father's Day. My husband and two daughters and I have finished our delectable barbecued steak, eggplant, and zucchini, and headed off to the Kepler's Bookstore where our 19 year old will buy him the book he's selected. I'm left with the dishes to finish up. I said I wouldn't mind, but now I wonder.  It's such a habit - to say yes to what will make other people happy, thinking that truly I am fine with it. Then often later I discover that I'm not so happy with it. I'm not doing this as much these days, but still. . .
    So I'm going to do something I enjoy - which is not bending over a bathroom sink to wash dishes and causing my aching back to ache more.
    Writing - that's what I enjoy.  I haven't been doing much of it lately because of the remodel project, my birthday celebration on Wednesday and helping my 17 year old develop her artistic talents by ferrying her to a class daily. It's only a fifteen minute drive, but that adds up to 30 minutes twice a day. (And, yes, she does drive half the time)
    On my birthday I wanted to spend some time reading favorite books in a quiet, peaceful place. Since there is no such place at my house, my friend had given me the key to her house to use in her absence. Unfortunately, the key didn't work.
    I decided to drive out to Filoli - a beautiful mansion with extensive gardens, both formal and woodland informal ones- so I could sit and read there.  Sounds fantastic, doesn't it?  Well, I cried a lot of tears there.
    Not loneliness, but remembering my mother. Filoli was her favorite place and we enjoyed it together many times. It's my second spring time since my mother died so grief still geysers up sometimes, shocking me and knocking me down with its force. 
    That day I regretted my decision to go to Filoli. But, in retrospect, perhaps it was good. The coiled spring inside relaxed afterward. 
    Today, my ninth Father's Day since my dad died, it's felt okay.  Maybe in eight years or so, the absence of my mother on my birthday in her favorite place will not release a waterfall.
    My birthday ended up elegantly with dinner at The Moss Beach Distillery (worth it for the wonderful view of the ocean, but only on special occasions because it's so expensive), then a walk on the beach with the thin waves lapping our feet and shining silver blue. I could even look directly at the luminous orange-gold globe, about to plunge behind the cliff at the bay's end. 
    I sang, "Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus," but still felt somewhat sad.  Not just about my mom being gone, but about who I am.  Yes, I have all those wonderful cards from people, but fresh in my memory was how I irritated I got lately with someone acting dominant in a group situation. I got irritated and it wasn't pretty. Oh, how I wish I could always be good - not because I love goodness, but because I'm afraid of losing people's love.  With trepidation I went back to that group and people were so kind - God's grace - I don't deserve it.
    I've been praying much more lately.  Often I've felt like my kitchen-- torn down and in need of reconstruction from the floor up.  It's good to see how much I need God's intervention in my life. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for they will see the kingdom of God."  Yes, this surprising pronouncement is true. As I see much more my neediness, how desperate is my need for God to transform me, I do experience more his strong presence and protection - ie. his kingship - in my life.

The Power of a Listening Husband

    I awakened on a bright clear Christmas morning with the nebulous sense of a dark cloud covering me, pushing down on my chest til I despaired.
    "I feel sad," I told my husband lying beside me.  He didn't ask, "Why?" or attempt to cheer me up.  He just remained silent.  So I went on to tell him of my anxieties about who I am and how I relate to people.  The irritation and criticisms  of my teenage girls felt the day before had started me down a slope and into a a cess pool of self-accusations.   He just listened.
    "I feel like there's a black hole inside me!"  I finally cried and he just held my hand.  I cried out to God, "God, please show your lovingkindness to me today. Please fill me with your Spirit and make me whole. Please help me to love those around me with your giving love, instead of needing affirmation from them."
    We prayed out loud together, including praising God, because essential part of this emotional and spiritual fight is praising God even when I'm feeling sad or alone. I read my Bible before anything else.
    Collin's act of just listening was powerful. It enabled me to talk my way through my sadness, to expose the dark thoughts to the light of his love and God's. 
    And I had a great Christmas day.  What creative and generous gifts my children gave me. The clear blue sky made our walk in a redwood forest on the way to Santa Cruz glorious. At SC we picked up a 25 year old Chinese grad student to whom I gave her a ride from SFO when she newly arrived. I enjoyed her presence with us yesterday. Her smile helped me remember that my kids' reactions to me is just their reaction. It's teenage stuff.
    All in all, it was a very good day

Home Coming

    Night before last I stayed still for nearly three hours in a gorgeous church listening to a flawless acapella vocal performance by Canticleers (a men's choir).  I attend this yearly and it's usually a high point of the season for me, spiritually as well as emotionally.
    Soon after the intermission I told my hubby sitting beside me, "I'm not responding emotionally. It's not touching me."  I felt dammed, emotions walled up behind a brick wall.
    I started praying, and admitted where I've had wrong focus, on friends things rather than God, and soon the emotions came.  Tears, lots of them, called for several Kleenexes.
    This morning as I've sat with God again the emotion have come and I find myself, as I did on the way "home" from the concert on Tuesday night, longing to go to my real home, my heavenly home.  I'm tired of striving ("Does Carol need a rest?"), of conflicts, of grief, of missing what was and no longer will be, of new people and the effort it takes to get to know them.  Don't get me wrong - I do still enjoy meeting new people, but I long for the security of people with whom I need not think about what I say, no fear they will misinterpret because they don't have a context or harbor some sense of fear, inferiority, jealousy or even hostility outwards me. And most of all, I long for unity. 
    Yes, this longing to go to my ultimate home is partially grief and partially the need for rest, but there's more to this.
    When I heard the pure, unified sound of the that twelve person choir, I ached to be part of that wholeness. I wanted to feel the pleasure of making that beautiful sound together through exquisite sensitivity to both the music and each other.  In heaven I'll do that.  God, I'm ready to go any time.  It will be good, soo good. And to think Jesus left all that for this "vale of tears." 
    He did it for me, and you, and all God's children everywhere.

Coming Far

I've gone from home but funny,
what wakens me -- tall liquid
ambers with leaves turning red, gold, drifting down
stir much within.

Mother collected foliage. Sometimes I find leaves
pressed, dry, faded to straw between hymnal pages,
She used to sing as she elbowed  a blackened pot. Her
melody drifts down now, "I Come to the Garden Alone.."

In my own yard I hear rustles of a presence.
Chirps speak, not she who spread
discarded bread on a fence ledge where
birds feasted.  While walking among

redwood giants, I glimpse a dull olive
canvas tent, smell sweet pork 'n beans heating
on a kelly green stove and I hunger. On this hot
October afternoon near the one year mark, I thirst

and find at camp's fountain a dark bar, the semi-
sweet she weekly bought, and a new soda,
       Henry Weinhard's.
Now I loosen its cap, discover its cherry scent, taste,
bubbles like I once drank perched on a bar stool beside

her.  I'm far, far
from home, yet sweet,
bitter-sweet home still travels
with me.

New Starts -- the before and after

      Have you ever met people who seem permanently stuck?  i.e. unable to flex with the time, culture or stage of life and often lamenting what they no longer have? Have you ever found yourself looking back a lot, longing for the good old days?  found it hard to see the good in the new phase of life you find yourself in?
    I'm definitely in a new stage, in fact new starts on a number of fronts - one teen off to college, and the other one looking for college and for relaxation, intimate talk times and recreation with peers.  Just last year she was content with spending Friday afternoons weekend nights with us, playing games, watching movies or talking.  Now I definitely feel like an onlooker in her life, blessed when I get to overhear her conversations with sister and friends and gain more knowledge of her thoughts and emotions than I can face to face.
    Plus, two groups which were a vital part of my spiritual life these last several years have died.  Not completely, but their old forms are put away and they are merging into other groups, taking on other skins.
    So this morning I needed to deal with that. During the time I set aside to be quiet before God, read and pray, I started with writing and found myself crying. As Henri Nouwen says (paraphrased), grief is a form of prayer.  Crying not just about what I mention above, but about being on the over 50 side of life and my vulnerability to losing forms of activity and ability I had before. 
    After all, a good friend of mine and younger than me just underwent radical surgery this week to remove cancer.  Now I'm one of those with high and higher odds before me of disease which radically alters my lifestyle.
    The words of one of God's spokesman, Isaiah, echo in my mind.  "Forget the former things.Do not dwell in the past.  See I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?"  ((Is. 43:18-19a)
I don't want to be stuck, and so I grieve.  When I face the sadness I feel about losing the old things, I can embrace the new.  I can fix my trust on God's love to be with me and directing the future events and course of my life.
    In fact, this morning I did just that.  I went to the practice/training for a new church site we are helping to start in October.  I met new peole and received hugs from familiar faces, Yes, I'll be losing continuity with many friends at my Menlo Park church site, but I'm excited and eager to launch into the new. God is doing  a new thing and I want to join in.

Remembering Mom

It's two days before my mom's first birthday since her death and I feel a rumbling in my innards.  I decide to stop working, seat myself on mosaic chair on our deck, reflect and feel.

As I listen to warbles coming from three different directions, I think of Mom. She loved the blue breasted robins who visited our backyard. She pointed out to me the changing tunes of the mockingbird as it mimicked different songbirds. For me now, the mockingbird's repertoire are better than the i-pod shuffle I have squirreled away in a red box.

The yellow calendula blooms and the hot pink petunias planted in the red clay bowls here on the deck remind me of her also.  How she loved flowers.

I see her with trowel or shears in hand in my childhood backyard wearing her faded cotton housedress with small flower print and snaps up on the front. In the morning chill she stands there, barelegged, feet in houseshoes rimmed with fur. I guess she ended up outside in her inside attire because she, like I often do now, got swept along in a plethora of chores as she saw things wrong, one thing leading to another as she followed a barrage of impulses.

So often I've thought in the past, "I don't want to be like my mother." Yet I am like her in many ways. Ways that bring joy and beauty to where we live. This too is my mom.

Grief Comes First

Here's what I wrote  a few weeks ago.  I've  been pondering whether I should put it on my blog - is it too personal?  Is my desire to reveal myself in such a public forum a  worthy desire, a helpful desire?

What helped me answer that question was reflecting on how Annie Lamott's writings have helped me.  When she writes she rips apart the shell and reveals her hurt, her longings, her grief and anger.  Reading her has helped me recognize those feelings in myself and find freedom and connection as I bring them to God and disclose more of myself to others.

It happened for the 2^nd time last night.

My husband's arms were around me and I started  weeping.  The sadness crashed over me like a powerful wave., like the seventh breaker.

“What is it?”  His voice was gentle. He knew, this second time, that it might not be about him.

“When I stop doing , stop thinking and analyzing, the grief comes.”

The tears were an answer to prayer also.  I hadn't been praying that I'd feel sad.  No, I don't want to feel that much and I've been largely unaware that the grief lay dormant.  My prayer had been, “Lord, help me want to have sex. Make it good sex.”

The Lord gave me this.  This grief, this anger, was in the way of the intimacy I wanted to want.

I didn't know where these feelings came from – was it the desperation and fury of the little child who couldn't feel her grief and anger when in her mother's house?  Or is it now it the child now, aware that something precious was taken form her. Her grief and anger that there is no woman who understands and walks besides her knowing her fully?

I don't need answers anymore. I don't need a mother to tell me the best way to go.  It know it's my own life to lead under your direction of God.  But I do wish for someone who sees me for who I am, who could understand me and not be threatened by either my intellect, my insight or my raw grief and anger.

I'm asking you, Lord Jesus, for such a friend who will stay close besides me. 

My counselor said a few weeks ago that I may be choosing woman as friends who are not emotionally available. Great. How do I change that?

I don't know who is available.  How do I find someone who could both understand, not feel burdened by me, can see or hear of my grief and not feel responsible for it and has the time to spend with me?

Is it too much to ask?

Those Eyes

Those Eyes

 
As warm chocolate on a goosebump morning
or a frappuccino on a pearls-of-sweat afternoon,
his liquid large brown eyes soothed me.
Now they are only a memory.
 
The first years when his big red tongue sallied out,
I pursed my lips, turned my chin up, cringed.
Dog licks – yuck . . .  but that hurt
in his eyes eventually compelled my changing,
 
trained me to take his slobbery kisses.
When I came home, he'd bark, venture out
past the kitchen despite my constant scoldings.
Seeing, touching, kissing was all that counted.
 
If I swept by with shopping bags he'd retreat
to his crate, until I remembered a touch, a word
for him. My morning sweetness and awakening
was the coffee of his eyes.
 
If I forgot the caress and warm words
he'd sulk – nose down, paws crossing,
praying.  So he gifted, and pestered,
with his incessant desire for me
 
as I was, whether in chic black dress,
or smelly gym clothes. He worshiped
still whether it was treats, stories or tears,
mistakes or trophies I brought home.
 
His second gift? A presence. 
Those chocolate eyes
followed me.  His desire
an infatuation never ending,
until his eyes closed yesterday.