Puzzling Over Mama

It's Thursday evening. I'm usually 45 minutes into my Anthropology of Media class, but I was given a welcome gift of having my class cancelled. While I regret the illness of the professor which caused the cancellation, the unplanned-for bit of space/time allowed me to go and do a good food shopping. I've been running on empty all week because of the non-stop work schedule, which includes copious amounts of reading for this class. I've been eating take-out for days and days!

As I was putting away the fresh food, I discovered a bag of brussel sprouts. It's what was left of a big stalk of them I'd bought at the last of the season's pop-up farmers' market that comes each Wednesday from May to early November. The brussel sprouts needed cooking and so, as I write this, I'm roasting them and they'll be the centerpiece of a dinner whose other parts I have yet to devise!

The farmers' market sets up in the little playground I used to take my now 30-something kids to when they were toddlers. My neighborhood, which I love for its urban beauty and relative quiet, has many such reminders of the passage of time and the stages of life. This very park is the one where my mother enjoyed sitting when she could still be social; and which she could look out on from her kitchen window -- watching the kids playing. She loved that kitchen window. Now someone else's mom has taken up her position there. A good legacy, I hope.

Will my mother's death ever stop puzzling me? On my next birthday -- at the end of November, it will be 6 months to the day she died. It will be the first birthday I've ever had without her in the world. Not that I've spent each one of my soon to be 67 birthdays in her presence, but it means something to me -- this first one, out here on my own. There'll be many firsts in the 12 months following her death. Thanksgiving, Chanukah, New Year's Eve, and oh yes, Mothers' Day.

Mama, c. 1954

I don't remember a time when I wasn't sad or angry at how it felt like she never loved me, how I always seemed to be disappointing her, how she was sure I didn't love her -- though I did. So here's the puzzling thing: as my brussel sprouts roast, as this early darkness turns to night, as I wonder what else I'll have for my dinner, I notice that my heart hurts and that I miss my mother, who loved brussel sprouts and probably, in her fashion, loved me.

I think perhaps missing the woman who birthed me shouldn't come as such a big surprise. Her body housed my body. I suspect that that right there is a forever-and-ever bond that psychotherapy doesn't really need to "fix." Even if our lives together went badly from my very first breath, here I am nearly 7 decades on, relatively healthy, with wonderful kids, friends, and talents. Somewhere, being grateful for my life got lost in a shuffle of what it seemed she wanted in return for giving me that life. But I am grateful. And I love her. And it's puzzling.

My prayer is that Mother-love becomes simple for me and for so many others who struggle with it; may we be able to simply honor these beings who gave us birth -- whether they raised us well or not, whether they raised us at all. I mean to walk the rest of my days in a way that honors the memory of my mother. May she rest in peace, if there's a place of awareness where she is now, may she feel my love for her.

The Horse I Rode In On

Recently, at a private session with an extraordinary healer and teacher of Energy Medicine, I expressed my frustration at how much, after a lifetime of personal work of all kinds, I still suffer. For all the healing work I’ve done, I can, on a daily basis, fall into states of self-hatred that seem like it’s all there is, was, and will ever be. And while I know this is a feature of clinical depression, I am remarkably high-functioning for that to be an accurate or complete diagnosis. It’s as if it’s my default setting — triggered by the slightest breeze that might ruffle the forward movement of my day…. letting the oatmeal catch, not getting the laundry done, finding an hour has passed when all I meant to do was glance at Facebook; or, if nothing in my local life gets me there, thinking about the rich getting richer, about war, global catastrophes, my mother, and all the other mothers and fathers, in dementia. There is always something.

My teacher said to me, “Riva, you came in on the Suffering Line.” Oooof. The feeling of a blow to the solar plexus, but then, the exhale of recognition, the light of understanding, of hearing Truth. I understood her to be saying that it’s my design to see through the lens of suffering and that it’s my lineage, it’s in my DNA, the collective memory to which I am most powerfully connected. And then she asked me this: “So who are you?” Typically, this sort of question brings me to a deer-in-the-headlights state of being. Frozen terror. She spoke some more, describing her own experience — who she is in relation to her lineage story. She said, “All those who came in after me on the same line as I did are able to change the story of that line because I did.” And then, with an easy certainty that is also ferocious and always gets my attention, she said, “I did that.”

What we do and who we are as individuals impacts everything.

For all my mystical ways and my belief in magic and the unseen, my habit of mind when I feel “caught in the headlights” is to try to figure my way out of the oncoming danger with logic and linear thinking. In this case, I put together a quick analogy that looks something like this:

My teacher’s lineage is to who my teacher is as my lineage is to who I am.

Resting in the logic for a moment, a clever formula that I imagined would yield up a result and answer the question “Who am I?” without my having to suffer and struggle, got me unfrozen. I took a breath, still hoping that before I'd even taken in the full import of what I'd just learned, a story to match hers would emerge. 

And then she went on to say that we must start our healing work from where we actually are. “Most [which included me — and oh how I hate to be typical], begin at a distance from the true starting point. She said, “You must start from where you came in.” Reframing it for myself, I thought, “I must tend to the horse I rode in on,” and as a person with 4 planets, including Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Chiron, in Sagittarius, it’s really a pretty good way to frame it.

So, I make a beginning at learning who I am, having come in on the Suffering Line. What I know for sure is that I am a gifted and accomplished sufferer. And I am also someone who can see/feel when others are clinging to their suffering stories like it was the only thing keeping them tethered to life. Every once in a while, I am able to shine a light on that clinging in a way that helps them loosen their grip and to shift the suffering as only compassionate witness can. So there’s that. Without having consciously known why suffering is such familiar ground for me, this familiarity, coupled with a pretty good, if dark, sense of humor, has fueled the service I do for others. Perhaps, to begin at a slow, steady walk down this road, the better question might be “What are the gifts of my lineage?”

The horse I rode in on — the lineage of Suffering — when I bring my awareness to her, when I take time to tend to her coat, lovingly stroke her beautiful face, give her a tasty apple — I see she carries with her certain other qualities, easily missed in the compelling pain of the suffering. What I see is Survival, Empathy, and Compassion. I can work with this. I can honor the truth of the suffering. There is, after all, reason to suffer. But just maybe I can change my relationship to the suffering when I pay attention to its fruits. Taking a page from my Buddhist sisters and brothers: There is suffering. 

I am an expert. Now What? 

Mounting up and ready to ride!

Getting Down To It

I'm amazed that nearly two years have passed since I've posted here. It felt like only a few months. This, it would seem, is how life goes. Just as my parents and grandparents said it would.... you blink at 17 and you're 65, which is exactly what's happened. At this writing, I'm 5 months into it. My half-fare metrocard that says "Senior Citizen" continues to shock me.

Me, 1964, sitting on the back bumper of (I'm told) a 1957 Pontiac, traveling down to D.C. for a March on Washington.
The Civil Rights Act was about to be passed, and I was about to turn 17.

But here's an interesting thing — an awareness bubbling up out of the turning of the years; the continued self-reflection; the growing belief in forces, powers, and Spirits greater than myself: when I am standing squarely in this moment, my relationship to time changes completely. There is no regret over roads taken or not, no concern about how long something will need in order to get accomplished, how even more senior I'll be by the time I get there. A life composed of one moment following the next becomes timeless. The more times I experience timelessness, the fewer times I'll blink my life away.

What I also know is that as often as others have said things like this — Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, all the Wisdom teachers I've been privileged to read, hear, receive transmission from — until Present Moment awareness arrived in me, it was only ever an idea to me. Mostly, I thought it might be a bogus bit of mind game.

And so, I understand now that some things can be described, but "getting it" is a completely individual matter. What I know to say about this is that with just the right combination of books read, relationships had, diapers changed. bills paid, dishes washed, meals cooked or ordered, with just the perfect blend of miracles observed and experiences of wonder, well, one day you could be folding laundry, answering email, or cleaning the cat box and you realize you're neither old nor young. You simply are and you've gotten down to it — this business of being fully alive.

Bright blessings on that moment when it comes!

Travelogue

Halfway through the journey
You forget which way
You meant to go. You
Stop, and slowly turn toward
Each direction till you feel
A tug. It’s this way: North.
And though you dread the
Darkness and the cold,
You know by now it’s
Better just to listen when
You’re called.
You move through woods
And cities, mountain ranges,
Rivers, valleys, farms, and villages.
Through fox dens,
Rooftop pigeon coupes,
A beaver dam, McMansions,
Cardboard boxes. Till you reach
The Condor’s Cave where
You are welcomed.
You spread your wings
As though you’ve had them
All your life and you begin
The next leg of your journey
Soaring on­ the thermals,
So close to the sun you
Start to laugh because 

You worried you’d be cold.

A New Chapter

As happens every few years, I have been seized by the poetry muse. And so begins a new chapter. I'm happy as can be to be writing poems good and bad. Much gratitude to those people in my life who support me in this activity, along with my genes, which would predict that I'd be doing this. The poems have started to surprise me because the subjects are things I'd never have imagined would inspire me, like the following offering. Written today, it is the second poem I'm sharing in this space. Thanks in advance for reading it. xR

Breaking Training

With Gratitude to Julianne of Norwich,

Christian mystic, died c. 1416

I let myself believe

that all is well, and

all is well, and all

manner of thing

shall be well.

How contrary to

my upbringing,

this notion is,

as if to see

this troubled

world and feel

around inside it

for the healing,

is to be

boring, vapid,

born without

imagination, or,

worse yet,

a traitor to

my ancestors.

But I take comfort

in the certainty

that we mystics

have no need of

adjectives, and that my

Sister Julianne

would recognize me

not as Jewish mystic

but as a fellow celebrant

at the dawning of the day.

An Offering

My friend, Maya Stein, has been on a journey she's calling Type Rider. She's cycling from Amherst, MA to Milwaukee, WI -- 40 miles a day for 40 days, beginning on her 40th birthday, which was on May 5th. Today is day 39. She's carting along with her, in a little trailer attached to her bicycle, a turquoise Remington typewriter. Everyday, she sets up a workstation with a chalkboard that says" Write Yourself Here." She provides passersby of every type of human there is with a writing prompt and has been collecting what she's calling "The Great American Poem." She's also posting those prompts to a google group for those of us who are following along without having left home. 

The poem below comes from the writing prompts from Day 37 
(I choose to believe...) and 38 (I am...). 

The Hope

    with gratitude to Patricia Monaghan

What is this unending love
I choose to believe will heal me, 
and you, and the planet, 
will heal the madness that’s stealing 
my grand-children’s future? 
I feel it in the constancy of
the sun coming up in the east, 
the moon waxing full every month, 
the change of the seasons, 
the shifts in the tides, and 
in the certainty that all things pass. 
I am that crazy old woman 
in the middle of Times Square, 
laughing and pointing at the sun 
as it rises over the city, 
as it streams its golden light
across 42^nd Street. I am the one 
who calls out to the rushing people,
“Behold! Behold!”

Encountering Starling

Gorgeous Spring weather, a week before the Equinox, has my windows open and the screens not yet in place. I come home from an early outing to find a starling frantically keeping out of paw's reach as my cat, Lucy, in full hunting mode, is tracking her. The starling, whose home, typically, is in one of the big oaks on my street rather than in the confines of my little fifth floor apartment, seems to have established a route through the house; various perches from the top of my bookcases in the living room to the top of the big framed mirror in the entryway, to the top of the kitchen cabinets, then back the other way as Lucy stalks her. All very exciting (for Lucy), and frantic (for the trapped starling). I am happy for Lucy. Not much adventure in her life these days, but I am distressed for the starling who I have no idea if I'll be able to coax out of the house. And then there's the inevitable deposits of birdshit I'm likely to be finding.

My first task, much to her consternation, is to get Lucy into the bedroom and close the door. Then, I make an effort to send a wave of calmness to the bird. I assume an attitude of complete indifference, keeping my focus away from her as I begin to plan an exit strategy. I am already grateful for whatever powerful message Starling medicine holds for me. When the bird is free, I'll be looking at my books and online for information about Starling medicine! But first things first. Free the bird! My kitchen window is the biggest window in the house. It opens onto a fire escape so getting to it involves unlocking the gate I have installed -- a sad reality of city living. Gate open, I pull up the bottom half of the window as wide as it will go, which seems plenty wide. The bird flies directly into the top half. Somehow, she regains her perch on top of the kitchen cabinet and, sitting with its beak wide open (is this starling for "I just bashed into a not terribly clean window pane. I'm embarrassed, pissed off, and my head hurts...."?), seems to be waiting for my next move. Continuing my attitude of disinterest, I close the bottom half and open the top, kicking myself for not thinking like a bird. What must it be like to actually fly!! Up! think "Up!". I step away, all the way to the door of the kitchen which is the farthest point away from the window. I hold up the sweater I’ve been wearing to discourage the bird from heading this way. I have the pleasure of seeing her take her leave. I cheer and clap and feel jubilant. This has all taken, perhaps, five minutes, from my walking in the door to the the bird gaining its Freedom.

I let Lucy out of the bedroom and watch her as she searches the house for the intruder. Ultimately, homebound creature that she is, she's distracted from the prowl by her food dish where she makes short work of what remains of her breakfast. The house settles down. I close some windows, put screens in others and go to my computer to start work. But first Starling Medicine. What wisdom, what story, what instruction, does this encounter hold for me?

Starling – birds that fly in great flowing swarms, creating living waves in the sky. Surely, they are masters of community. What caused this individual to pierce the veil between our worlds? I will be thinking and dreaming on this encounter for a good long while. Right now, I find myself focussed on what Starling offered me: an opportunity to take action without thinking, to move quickly, efficiently; to be fearless and precise in the care of three different species; to have my attention brought to bird-mind (Up, silly! Up!); to be an agent in a story with a happy ending involving freedom.

I know there's more here to know from this encounter. I'll be watching for how Starling shows up in the coming days. Stay tuned.