Wondering

 

Carol Craig 9/32 ~10/5/60

Dudley Craig 10/11/59 ~ 10/5/60

No, I don't even know my mother's birthday.

I've been reading the two letters I have, two letters that she wrote to my (paternal) grandparents from the house on Vero Beach at which this picture was taken, mailed together on April 25, 1960.  I found them in my grandmother's attic decades later. Long, chatty letters in which she describes what we were all up to, laments some of the challenges of young motherhood, anticipates summer at home in Ohio, and reveals herself to have been a thoughtful and articulate young woman with a gift for self-expression:

"One of the things I really miss here [in Florida] is the freshness of spring.  Sometimes I think that's what a lot of the alcoholics here need ~ a change of season to sort of cleanse and re-charge their souls and spirits."

I wonder, sometimes, who she would have become.  She would not even have been fifty when we all finished college; I imagine her returning to school herself, reveling in the opportunity to study.  She and my dad had been planning a permanent move to Florida; maybe she would have become a master gardener, or a teacher, or a photographer, or a writer.  She had a beautiful singing voice; she would have been overjoyed to hear my daughter sing.

And Dudley, who might he have been?  No clue at all.  What if we kids had grown up on the beach, instead of in the midst of corn and soybean fields?   Would the two of us still here be different people? 

And me, now?  My mother would be 81.  Would she have come here and stayed for weeks after Josh died?  Would we be talking on the phone every day?  Would I be looking for a way to move to Florida ( Would I have ever left?) to live nearby and help her out?

What if we could have just skipped this particular day in 1960?

Non-Writing Writing Retreat

 

Yesterday at lunchtime, reeling a bit from the feelings and memories generated by the writing retreat, I suddenly realized that it had not rained as forecast earlier, and that there was nothing I needed to accomplish in the afternoon that could not be finished later.  To the marsh and the beach! ~ about an hour away.  The added bonus turned out to be that my friend Chris, who lives there, was home.  Although we live in such proximity, our schedules are such that we seldom get together. 

 

You might think otherwise.  She and I are part of a foursome of mothers who discovered one another through our blogs in the first couple of years after our children died.  We have been writing to one another ever since, first in a semi-formal blog retreat as we waded through Joyce Rupp's book Open the Door, and then in frequent emails and posts.

 

Chris made two points yesterday which have already had quite the effect on me.  I told her about my post earlier this week on Anger, and my . . . well, embarrassment, really, at having vented such a display of fury over ~ not much.  Especially after Karen, another of our moms, whose daughter died of cancer, wrote in her, as always, kind and understanding manner, to reassure me that I was not out of line.

 

"What if Josh hadn't died?" Chris asked. "How would the breast cancer experience have been for you then?"  I looked at her in surprise as I realized, "No big deal.  It would have taken a lot of time and energy and I would still have complained about the physical pain.  But I don't really care about the breast, I can do everything I used to do, and I have no reason to fear a recurrence.  I would have taken it in stride."      

 

I didn't add that my life's structure of loss was already so extensive that six months dedicated to breast cancer would not have been that difficult to endure.  (And here I apologize to all the women I am no doubt offending.  But in reading about breast cancer at that time, I realized that for many women in their fifties and sixties, breast cancer, either theirs or their mother's, is their first major experience of life-out-of-control and devastating loss.  For me, even without Josh's death, it followed the deaths of mother, brother, and two step-mothers, infertility, and a previous cancer scare.  One more thing.) 

 

For  me the trauma of breast cancer was losing a part of my body so intimately connected to the child previously lost.

 

"You have to remember," said Chris, "that all of your experiences now are through a Josh lens.  Things which would not have caused you to stumble six years ago loom large and crushing now."

 

We also talked about our challenges as a group in getting together and in maintaining any consistent writing schedule.  I commented that I think that we are each finally re-negotiating our lives and finding what they are supposed to be about. Chris reminded me that she had read an article, back at the beginning, that said it takes about six years post-child-loss to discover who you are and who you want to be.  (Since, I might add, who you were is long gone.)  Chris and Karen are now just past six years; the other Karen and I are just into the sixth year.  We have all let go of much that once seemed critical to our well being, we are all focused in our distinct ways on making the world a more generous place for those who live, and we are all learning to navigate lives in which we are surrounded by people who experience virtually every moment differently than we do, so that authentic connections seem few and far between.

 

I can't say that I wrote much this week.  But I do see more clearly why I so identify with and love Skyler White.

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Another Sabbatical

 

Lots of stuff going downhill these days. 

 

I'm thinking: a lot more silence, a lot more reading, a lot more walking (foot finally ok after a bruise has kept me mostly off it for a month.)

 

Unfortunately, I am finally getting away to a pastors' conference next week and really, a large crowd of people? - the very last thing I need at the moment.  Oh, well.

 

Look for maybe some photos, and maybe not.

 

Apples: Ashland County Farm Tour last week-end.

Anger

Here's the prompt I selected from today's writing retreat at Days of Deepening Friendship:

 

“The last time I felt a truly intense emotion was  - - - and this is what I felt . . .”

 

Last night I came across a blog written and photographed by a young woman who has chronicled her experience of breast cancer since she embarked upon her chemo regimen.  Apparently I didn't save the link, and I can't remember anything about how I found it, but I do remember the small flame of anger that it generated. 

 

An appreciative anger, I would say.  Appreciation for her laying it out there.

 

So often when people hear that a woman "had a mastectomy followed by immediate reconstruction," they think, in an exceptionally brief thought, that she had a surgery and  went home a couple of days later with breasts that look like they did before she was wheeled into the operating room.

 

This particular woman had what I had: mastectomy followed by implant reconstruction.  She also had a lot of experiences which I have been spared: both breasts rather than one, chemo (hair gone), and radiation (skin burned). 

 

What we share is the reality that this type of "immediate reconstruction" is a process that begins when the plastic surgeon follows the breast surgeon into the operating room, but continues for several months of procedures, at the end of which you look in the mirror to see a kind of lump with a scar where a breast once was.  (You can have some additional procedures to make it look more breast-like but, as someone whose resistance to pain meds is legendary, I myself have steered as far from further contact with surgeons, plastic and other, as possible.)

 

I have no reason to feel anger.  It's behind me, as far as I know.  And ludicrous as it sounds, three surgeries and the removal of a major body part constitute getting off easy in the breast cancer world.  I don't usually read anything having to do with breast cancer, and usually the most I have to say about breast cancer is that it was an experience that taught me what it means to eradicate stigma, and plunged me into suicide prevention work.

 

But I did feel anger last night.  Anger for the women whose bodies are mangled in an effort to respond to a disease which no one really knows how to counteract.  Anger at the doctors who minimize the pain involved and the dismay at the results. Anger for the women who die, and whose stories remain largely untold in the face of the optimism spread by pink everything.    Anger at the press, which fuels the notion that reconstruction is as good as the real thing.

 

So, yeah.  Last intense emotion.  Anger. 

 

What Do You See?

This week, I'm planning to give the online writing retreat over at Days of Deepening Friendship a try.

Today's post  invites us to try to write with attentiveness to one of our five senses.  Or 3.5, in my case, as I have no sense of smell and, therefore, little sense of taste.  I am surprised by how challenging this assignment is.  As I try to imagine various moments in my life upon which I might focus, it becomes apparent to me that I am intensely visual and that, nevertheless, it's difficult to write a description focusing solely on what I see.  Sounds and physical sensations intrude almost immediately.

I'm going to start with a list, visual only, as an experiment in recalling a particular morning:




Blue cross-hatches of nylon lightening from the purple of the night to the sky color of early morning.

Faded blue leggings, stone-washed blue jeans, gray wool socks, white long-underwear t-shirt.

Metal tent zipper.

Damp brown leather boots, laces left untied.

Grass shiny with dew, narrow beach sodden with night, lake lapping at the shores.

Streams of marigold, tangerine, lilac and rose running the length of the horizon.

In the distance they stream in skeins just over the water and rise into Vs above the sun, hundreds of them filling the northern sky.  Necks outstretched, wings beating in unison, a multitude of small dark silhouettes again the vast palest of pale blues.


~ Isle Royale Sunrise, October 1979

What I Was Thinking About

 

So this past week I wasn't writing much.  A church newsletter article, a Powerpoint for the college class I teach, a sermon that I didn't much like (but other people seemed to ~ go figure), and a very few emails and FB posts.  Mostly what I did was use that space usually taken up with communicating  as many of my thoughts as possible to reflect on things I haven't thought about in a long time.

 

When I was a girl, a teenager, one of the lives I imagined for myself was as the owner of a few horses.  I grew up out in the country, on the 25 or so hillside acres that my family and my grandparents owned.  About five of those acres consisted of an overgrown meadow along the road, on the other side of the creek below our house.  One year my dad had it mowed so that we could play baseball down there, but for most of my life it sustained itself somewhere between the range of grassland and young forest.

 

I kind of thought that someday I would take over those five acres and build a stable and a riding ring and maybe create a couple of riding trails through the woods.

 

I wasn't much of a rider.  I learned during my four summers of camp, and I rode most afternoons during my middle school years with the nuns; they had a few horses and a neighboring lady, the mom of one of my classmates, took us out on trail rides.  But skilled or not, like so many adolescent girls, I fell in love with horses, and had old horseshoes, once worn by some of my favorites, hanging from my bedroom wall. 

 

I was never interested in horse shows; I just liked the freedom of a ride over the fields and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go. Toward the end of my senior year spring at my second boarding school, a group of us who had been friends for all of those years discovered that we all knew how to ride, and that one of our day student classmates had parents who ran a stable.  And so as one of our last and best flings, we signed up for the school's cabin up on a mountain and rode the horses up there for the week-end.

 

I was surprised, two-plus decades later when my daughter took riding lessons for a couple of years, to discover that I could bridle and saddle and brush down a horse as if I'd never taken a break. 

 

I don't know why I've been remembering horseback riding all week.  I haven't given it a thought for years. But as the days opened up, I found my thoughts turning repeatedly to that dream of a small barn in the overgrown field, and early morning rides on a horse of my own.  I  was pretty sure that I would become a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist, but I thought that I would have that horse to keep me grounded and in touch with the outdoors.

 

I've been teaching my college religion students about symbol and myth, and so I decided to google horse symbolism.  I found this:

 

The horse spirit animal symbolizes personal drive, passion and appetite for freedom. Among all the spirit animals, it is one that shows a strong motivation that carries one through life. The meaning of the horse varies depending on whether this animal spirit guide is represented as wild, tamed, moving freely or constrained.

 

I found that to be an intriguing description for this juncture in my life.  I'm not sure why, not yet. I certainly don't want to be in charge of a horse!  But it's interesting to me that these memories and once-intense longings have surfaced.

Out and About ~ Oops!

The first time I ever made an eight-day silent retreat, I started to get restless around the fourth day. 

 

"Isn't it about time for a movie night?" I asked my director.  "Couldn't we all get together for some popcorn and a film and some conversation?"

 

She was a humorless woman, and she gave me a horrified look as she said, "No!"

 

"Just kidding," I said.

 

This morning I forgot all about my internet sabbatical, and posted a few things on FB.  I've noticed many posts, on FB and in blogs, on which I've wanted to comment, but I've restrained myself.  Such a habit, though!  Open laptop and start talking!

 

Going back to my bunker now.