In a Picture Mood

Another Josh and Mom image ~ Josh headed to Rennes, France for 11th grade -- together at JFK in late September 2001 (after original flight from Logan on 9/12/01 was cancelled, for obvious reasons).

Pictures, Misc.

This past week-end it was my delight and privilege to lead a women's Lenten retreat in Dearborn MI, put together by the pastors of (left to right, me in black) Baptist, Lutheran, and Episcopal congregations for their members.  They all did such a beautiful job of pulling everything together and leading us in worship; I'm hoping the retreat was worthwhile for the

women who showed up. 

Looking at some other old photos I've recently put on CDs.  Josh graduated from Chicago in March of 2007 and he and I made a little celebratory trip to the Virginia shore, replaying a family vacation of many, many years previous.  I had always hoped that we would all return together and, as I look at this photo, I think of that quote that periodically makes the rounds: The problem is, you always think that you have time.  Thank God we made time for this ~ even if it was cold and windy all week, we spent a wonderful week together riding bikes through the wildlife refuge and walking the beach and eating seafood and

talking things over.

 

*****

 

Life mostly unbloggable these days.  Guess there will be photos instead. 

Paying Attention to Young Women - Part I

I've been doing a lot of that of late.  I've been taking note of the fact that the young(er) women I know are rather extraordinary.

 

When I was a very young woman, there wasn't a lot of support for the kind of woman I was trying to become.  Just last night, I was telling my almost-law-school graduate son about the same year in my own life.  While my law school class was 25% women, enough of a critical mass that we didn't really notice our small numbers in contrast to the men, we stepped into a world in which only 4% of attorneys were women.  My grandfather laughed throughout my three years of post-graduate education at the idea of "lady lawyers" (his youngest son, my uncle, is a brilliant and prominent trial lawyer, and personified my grandfather's definition of "lawyer") ~ until I came home with my certificate of membership in the Bar of the State of Ohio, after which he made a sudden change of course and began to introduce me as "my granddaughter, the attorney."

 

Not all men were my grandfather, however. ~ although some of them drew closer.  A male senior attorney in the corporate law department where I worked for a couple of years used to tease the women lawyers mercilessly.  And then his daughter went to law school, and started her first summer job, and one day he said to a couple of us, "I owe you women an apology.  I can't believe some of the things the men partners at my daughter's firm say to her!"  "Oh, really?" we asked. 

 

To be fair, I can't say that I was the boldest of young lawyers.  I was often cowed by the sense of authority exhibited by those around me, and I struggled to find my place and voice as a lawyer.  I wore beautiful silk blouses rather than the then-standard white shirts and floppy bow ties that many women adopted, and I gradually found my way away from the corporate world and into the realm of representing both adults and children in family and juvenile matters ~~ but it was difficult, via both appearance and clientele, to stake out my own authentic place in a world in which dark gray suits and corporate clients represented the pinnacle of achievement.

 

There are so many stories . . .    .  Ask me sometime about the front and back doors to the local men's club.  Never mind.  You don't want to know.

 

Today, I see that young women don't seem nearly as burdened either expectations based on gender or by expectations at all.   You know, you might critique the baby boomers for many things, and justifiably so.  But we must have done a few things right because, let me tell you: our DAUGHTERS!!!! 

 

Tomorrow, or later today, some links.

 

Women

Two Women Seated ~ Charles Malcolm Campbell

Today's Cleveland Museum of Art Facebook Image

 

Why did this painting strike me so today?

 

I think, as I reflect upon it, of three immediate reasons.

 

Yesterday, another woman made a humorous and yet serious remark ~ we all know what those are ~ about the behavior of women in groups.  A remark which revealed an inner adoption of a disturbing and belittling stereotype.

 

A few days ago, I listened to a sermon in which a young man made a joke ~ received appreciatively by his congregation minus one ~ demeaning to women nurses.  I am sure he would be appalled to hear what he said as I heard it, but there it was.

 

And on the sites I am visiting for Lent, I am a little over-inundated by Father language for God.   OK, more than a little.

 

***

 

I've had a number of reasons over the past few weeks to consider the formative experiences of my life.  And among them, the friendship of women looms as a sunny, serious, and sometimes stormy theme.

 

In my family of origin?  Not so much.  No sisters and mother gone much too soon.

 

In my own family?  Oh, that daughter of mine ~ grown into such a beautiful and wise friend and companion.

 

And in between?  All those years ~ eight! ~ of single-gender schools.  Brilliant and funny and compassionate and effective women in almost every place and situation since.  Today, a group of women who have shared life in our community for 25-plus years, an internet group of friends who have done the same for . . .  how long? I don't know . . . and the bereaved moms who have been my lifeline countless times in the middle of the night.  Plus women here and there who have become great friends in all sorts of ways having to do with writing and birding and photography and ministry and politics and spirituality.

 

***

 

I love this painting.

 

 

Tilted

Yesterday an acquaintance posted on FB looking for help with a costume from other mothers with "dancer daughters."

 

I read it as "cancer daughters."

 

Life has moved on.  Husband, surviving children, me ~ all at work, all productive, all moving forward.
 

I know; I've said it all before.  La-dee-dah.  I have to remind myself.

 

Because, in many ways, time stopped for me on the afternoon of September 3, 2008 at the Jesuit Retreat Center outside of Detroit.  In many ways I am still standing there in my bedroom, phone in my ear, floor and room oddly tilted and dangling in the air, no longer tethered by gravity.  The entire world still slants askew, and I often feel as if I am walking along a ridge, one foot firmly planted on the path following the crest, and the other constantly slipping down through the dirt and mud eroding the mountain and sliding down  . . . to where, exactly?

 

I don't think it's too noticeable, although I could be wrong.  I do my stuff.  But I am so alert to this other world, the one in which mothers clutch bodies of children to their hearts and wail silently through the rest of their lives.  The one in which it will always be that late summer afternoon.

 

And so I see the words "cancer daughters" in place of "dancer daughters."

 

 

Lower Lake

Shaker Lakes ~ Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, Ohio

 

It's the first week of March and the red-winged blackbirds should be here.  If they are, I doubt that they're excited by what they're finding.

Looking Toward Eighty

 

 

As I believe I've mentioned (!), my sixtieth birthday is coming up in a few months, and it's the first one that's made a significant impression upon me.  As I ponder that big one, and decade markers past, I find that my thoughts are turning not to sixty, or seventy, but to eighty.  I'm wondering who I will turn out to be, and who I will turn out to have been, should I reach that advanced age.

 

Herewith, some disjointed thoughts (maybe by July they will have formed themselves into a coherent whole):

 

*** At the beginning of this year, thanks to some RevGal recommendations, I purchased a couple of life planning books.  On the whole, they've been more useful than not.  One concept in particular leapt out at me ~ and when I find the book and the quote, I'll be delighted to give credit where credit is due ~  that being that we tend to accomplish little on a year-by-year basis, and we should think in terms of longer time periods.  The Quiet Husband and I were discussing this last night in terms of recognizing that decisions and actions have long-term consequences, some of which we were intuitively aware when we were in our twenties, and some to which we need to be more consciously alert in our sixties. 

 

There's an Ignatian means of discernment connected to these concepts of long-range planning and consequences.  Ignatius suggests, among other things, that when we are considering alternatives,  we imagine ourselves many decades hence and ask: What will I wish then that I had decided now?  That may have been the key to my decision to leave my job and go to seminary,  and perhaps also to my decision to return after Josh died.  Both times I was sure that, as a frail ninety-year-old sitting in the sun on the nursing home terrace, I would be grateful if I had changed course and gone to seminary, and very sad if I had not.

 

So ~ five or ten important years, not one, or a few months.  A crucial consideration for someone like me, still operating under the tremendous weight of grief and very easily discouraged by the slightest negative comment or outcome.

 

***It's been my privilege to spend a lot of time with Old People.  My brother and I were four and seven when our mother and baby brother died, and our grandparents next door became THE key figures in our lives.  (Of course, they were younger then than I am now!  But they seemed plenty old to us.)  They adored us and were heartbroken for us and exerted themselves in every possible way for us but, most importantly, they were very real to us.  We always got to see, up close and personal, the triumphs and defeats of the last several decades of life (and my grandmother lived to the age of 100, twenty years past my grandfather's death), and as we grew up, they became increasingly open with us about their experiences and feelings.

 

These days, I spend a lot of time with elderly parishoners and their relatives.  I am always asking about their hopes and their disappointments.  Many of them are not too forthcoming.  I don't think they're asked too often about how they really feel.  And so I remind myself: Think long term, not short term.  Maybe they will open up a bit more.   Sometimes, already, the long term has not been long.  But others may be here a good many more years, and I am slowly beginning to feel my way into the spirituality of the elderly.

 

I consider it a stoke of either remarkable good luck or more Holy Spirit delirium  that spiritual director emeritus was ~ well, he must have been 73 when I met him, because he is about to turn 83.  And, like many of his Jesuit brothers, some of whom I have also come to know, he continues to take on new assignments and to travel the world.  I remind myself sometimes that there are certain advantages to life without the responsibilities of home and family, but: still.  Those men, and the Catholic sisters I know as well, are all beacons of light in the form of engagement with the life of the mind and the life of the world,  long after many people have settled for the golf course.

 

***So: Eighty.  Who do I want to be?

 

Some things are certain, irrevocable now.  One morning in seminary, a few months after Josh died, a guest lecturer made a joke about suicide.  (Yes, really; that did happen.  And he is actually a minister of word and sacrament.  There is no explanation for some things.)  I lasted about five minutes before realizing that I was in no way required to sit there and listen to any further drivel coming from his mouth.  I exited for an empty classroom, whereupon I burst into tears.  Two of my friends showed up almost immediately, and I wailed that I simply had no idea who I was anymore.  One of my friends said, "You are a woman whose son has died of suicide.  That's part of who you are now."

 

He was right.  I am that now.  And some other things that cannot be undone.  But there might also be some time ahead of me, maybe even two decades worth.   

 

Who do I want to be, at eighty?  What do I want people to say, if they are describing me when I am not around?  For what in the previous two decades, the two just ahead at the moment, will I be thankful?  What blunders will I have made, and which ones will I somehow have steered clear of?  Will I be able to say that I learned one or two important things, and how to act upon them as well?

 

Will I be grateful to have made it that far?