The Road to Home

Home is a word which historically sparks little emotion for me. Growing up in the military, as an "army brat" we had no home. We lived in a lot of places, and in a lot of houses, but none that ever felt like home.

The closest I ever came to having those feelings was returning 'home' to visit my in-laws after I was married. They lived in New Jersey in the same town where I went to high school and held every intention of making home someday, so I allowed myself an attachment I had never experienced before. But even my in-laws sold that house and moved to Florida.

Growing up without grandparents, my parents had no home base. Of course we would go 'home' to West Virginia where my uncles lived, and to Illinois at times where other family lived, when we were stationed somewhere close by. Never did those houses feel like home to me. Never was there one house where whenever I crossed the threshold I knew this was it, home.

More than a few years back I went to Italy with a group of friends. We rented a house outside of Florence for two weeks and used that as home base. After traveling around the countryside, to both small towns and large, we finished our trip with four days in Rome. Walking the streets of that city, along the banks of the Arno I had a sense of belonging. But the feeling that was most striking to me, that I remember very clearly all these years later, is getting off the plane in Rome when we first arrived. The plane was parked on the tarmac and it was necessary to walk to a trolley that would take us to the terminal. The moment my foot hit the ground, early in the morning after an all night flight, I had the strangest sensation. Home. I felt as if I had come home. I have held that as evidence of the longing for, and recognition of, what I am missing.

My husband bought this house twelve years ago, before I knew him. Stumbling upon it after graduating from law school and moving to Augusta, before he was married, before he had children, he told me how, when he first drove past this house he thought 'I'd like to live there someday.' It was an unusual aspiration for a young lawyer; a small bungalow on a nondescript street, with none of the glamour one might expect would engender that kind of yearning.

Almost thirty years, and two marriages later, my again single husband drove by this same house. Finding it sporting a 'For Sale by Owner' sign he jumped from the car, knocked on the door, and began the process of ownership and renovation. A small two bedroom bungalow is now a three bedroom stunner, with three fireplaces, a 'cook's kitchen', a library and a garage-bungalow out back. The garden is a work in progress but holding its own in the neighborhood. And yet from the street it still has an understated, hundred year old, curb appeal. Still it is not home.

I wish it was because it so home for my husband. So much so that he never plans on moving again. After a lifetime of moving, first with my father's career and then with my first husband, I cannot imagine that kind of loyalty. Although I do believe houses deserve loving ownership and think they respond to it. How that relationship, between home and owner is measured I do not know, but I believe it is a fact. And while I do love this house, an outer manifestation of my husband's creative self, and I do take care of it, it is not home. Not yet.

I don't really expect to feel at home, I realize. Two of my favorite childhood books were Black Beauty and Heidi. Reading them both repeatedly, I lingered over every word. The theme they have in common is constant displacement and uprooting. Only late in life does Black Beauty come home; Heidi is luckier and returns home to her grandfather when she is still young. I identified with both; hopefully, with longing, finding comfort in the idea that one could survive such upheaval.

Four years ago, after looking at houses for three summers, we purchased a small cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. It is technically my house; my name is on the mortgage and I pay the bills. But we found it together, chose it together and love it together. And suddenly, surprisingly, I feel like I have come home at last.

I am not sure I would have found it by myself. I am not sure I would have bought it by myself. I don't even know if I would have been looking for it by myself. But for my husband I might not even have come to the realization that I could have a home. But I have, and I do, and it has started me down the path of finding the mountain woman in me. The roots of my tree revealing themselves perhaps. Time will tell, but it is a good beginning as beginnings go.

Roots and Trees

Years ago I kept a journal. Writing almost daily I kept track of my dreams and thoughts filling on the average three books a year.  I am not sure when I quit that practice, I could go back and look, but at some point it fell by the wayside. Today those journals sit on a shelf in my mountain home, rarely read, never shared.

Journaling became a way of life after my mother died; returning from her funeral I sought therapy to deal with the panic attacks that began the summer before and again at the funeral. Writing was not the suggestion of the therapist, but a natural outflow of having kept sketchbooks while getting my fine arts degree. Very quickly, upon entering therapy, the sketching turned to the recording of dreams which followed the panic attacks. And the recording of dreams led to a recording of thoughts.

I have always been a thinker. For the longest time I assumed everyone had an interior life like mine, just like as I kid I assumed everyone could draw. Growing older I have developed close friendships, people with whom I share my private thoughts; at times I am met with blank stares and the changing of subjects but occasionally the response is just a straight forward "I don't think about things like you do." And occasionally there are the kindred spirits who welcome the exchange.

As I begin writing again I am not sure of my motivation; I do wonder if it is egotistical. But I think there is some obligation to pass on observations and experiences we find meaningful. A blog is easier than keeping a journal for sure, but wanting to share my thoughts, it is a vehicle providing access to those who desire to read them both now and in the future. I have been wanting to have a ceremony to burn my journals but have been reluctant because they seem so much a part of me, my process, and what I have to leave my children. And now grandchildren. With a new writing tool I find it easier to imagine that bonfire.

I don't know those who preceded me. I know where my father was born and lived until he joined the military in WWII, but I know very little about the people who raised him. My father was a fifth generation member of a family hailing from Raleigh County Virginia, now West Virginia. Thanks to a distant cousin I learned that my great, great, great, grandfather Thomas Dickens was born in 1785 in Montgomery County Virginia. He had one brother, Ephraim, two years older who was also born in Virginia. No one has yet determined the names and birth places of the parents. There isa book listing every known descendant of those two men, but very little detail of their lives or interests. No stories.

My mother was Hungarian, also born in West Virginia. Her father, my grandfather, Stephen Gyovai came from Csongrad, Hungary sometime in the early 1900's seeking a new life after his wife died. Leaving a family of children behind he brought his new wife, my grandmother Ethel Papai, to live with him in America. Together they had thirteen children, eight of whom survived childhood. The reason he left Hungary or what happened to the children he left behind, is a mystery to me. I don't know if they were grown or just left with relatives. Thanks to the internet I know the name Gyovai is popular in and around Budapest.

The circumstances surrounding our family history never mattered to me until I had a family of my own, and even then I was too busy to seek answers to the questions. It was when my grandchildren began to be born that I wanted to know about their family, to share those stories and facts with them when the time came.

As a child, like many children I imagine, I did not like my parents. More than that I had a deep dislike of them and the choices they made. At some point I remember making the decision to not be like them, to not need them, in fact to not need anyone. It was the way I propelled myself out of the bog in which they seemed mired; education, marriage to an educated person, was the vehicle I used to move away from my family. Interest in where they came from seemed like so many tethers keeping me down.

Over time my perspective of family has changed. I better understand my parents' dreams and the obstacles they encountered. I know that my family will always be part of me. And I have forgiven them, and myself, for that shameful fact. Currently I am reading the book Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi. My son offered it to me thinking it might lend some perspective on my father, but also on the men I married. It is certainly interesting in that regard but at one point the author discusses a conversation with the leader of Promise Keepers wherein he, the leader, is talking about his son:

" I didn't understand that then." Referring to his relationship to his own father. "I do now as a father. There's something of me in that boy, a mystery beyond all mysteries. As a father, I am the root, the trunk, upon which my boy is the branch. My history is his history.Who I have been is who he is. My heart is the boy's heart."

Reading it, the passage burned in my brain. Because isn't it something that we all feel as parents, and again as grandparents? And don't our children, and grandchildren, deserve the opportunity to know the tree, or trees, from which they spring? We can deny them, as I did, or we can embrace parts and deny others, which is also tempting, but the truth is that we come from all of it. And it is a mystery, and mystical. And while we are all different there are times when children are so different from their birth parents, or even grandparents, that knowing something about those who came before might be enlightening and comforting to the little oddball that seems to come out of nowhere.

I am a bit of an oddball. Taking hold of myself as a child I determined my own path with little assistance from my parents. Making mistakes along the way I was still able to move into a world unrecognizable by the family left behind in West Virginia. I have become an educated person, vital and interested in the world with great empathy for the people who reside in it. Some of that curiosity comes from the way I was raised, as a child tagging along as my parents moved around the world, and some of it probably comes from ancestors of which I have no knowledge. I know it did not reside in my parents. For them I am deeply saddened at times, but no longer angry or hurt. They did the best they could.

So I too endeavor to do the best I can. At every stage along the way I have struggled with my fears and desires to be someone worthy of being called mother, wife, teacher, but most importantly human. I have hoped to create an imprint that inspires and energizes those who know me, or who will know of me in the future. But most importantly I want to find meaning and joy in the daily comings and goings of my life. Writing is, and always has been, part of that endeavor. More now than ever.

Communion

Writing is a chore; truly. It is like counting calories. You make a pledge to do it every day, and very quickly you fall off the wagon and find yourself in the dust and dirt of some road you didn't even know existed. Straying onto random roads seems to be my life right now.

Yesterday we drove to Birmingham to have lunch with Al's cousin, his wife and daughter.  The very same daughter who lost her husband to cancer last Saturday. A week ago today. Which would all be fine if I knew the daughter, but other than saying "Hi" when we met at one family reunion or another in the last seven years, I am not sure we have ever spoken.

It is a strange feeling sharing a meal with someone you barely know, but it is particularly strange when the other person is in obvious emotional distress. In the southern way she was polite and made us comfortable but I could tell it was not easy. And because I did not know her husband it should have felt even more awkward. Except it didn't.

The daughter was incredibly gracious, asking questions throughout the meal, questions that helped her get to know me, giving me permission to do the same.  In the midst of three other people we focused to this task and a couple of hours later when we got in our car to leave I felt a kinship that was, and is, not really explainable.

I meet people in all kinds of circumstances. Rarely these days do I feel a connection. It is an odd thing but it seems to me that as people get older they close in the walls surrounding their psyche and admit fewer and fewer new players. So meeting this woman and finding her wide open, maybe because of her recent loss, her new grief or her gentle nature, I was surprised. I was even more surprised at my willingness to step in. Because I too am more closed off than I used to be.

I read a book recently by a Canadian author entitled The Impostor Bride. Late in the book two tangential characters, older women who share a grandchild, meet for the first time. They fall into polite talk but at one point one says to the other "What were you like when you were a girl?" and a dialogue opens. Later, in thinking back over the exchange, one of the two muses about how surprised she was by the connection. She knows she is loved, but very few people really care who she is or what she thinks anymore, and certainly she didn't expect to meet someone new who would care.  But here it was; a surprise. That is how I felt yesterday. Not only by the other's genuine interest, but by my genuine response.

I wonder if in the presence of grief, or any raw emotion, it is easier to cut through the societal boundaries to real discourse. If at those times we recognize, or admit, the unseen in the form of a stranger who genuinely cares. Because my caring was genuine; that my caring was welcome was what I found surprising.

I believe I am someone who is comfortable with death, and perhaps that is unusual. My grandparents were all dead and buried before I was born; I wasn't around older people until I went to nursing school and was confronted with elderly patients. That was short lived because my subsequent work as a nurse, and as an art teacher, centered around women and children and families. It was where my wounding occurred and thus it would be where my healing would commence. I did not recognize that at the time but certainly at some unconscious level I was seeking a safe, somewhat remote, place to nurture myself.

Not many people die in the areas I chose to work but occasionally, as a NICU nurse, I would deal with the death of an infant and thus the emotions of the bereft parents. Those instances were few and brief however; the deaths were often expected and the parents were often absent. The process of saving some and loosing other sick infants awakened me to the randomness of life and death. It was this awareness that helped me cope when I was confronted with my mother's death at the age of thirty-eight, a year older than the current age of my eldest son, and the passing of my father a year and a half later.

It was in the presence of my father that I had my first experience of not just death, but dying.  He was an alcoholic, a veteran of three wars, and courted death throughout his life. But it wasn't until my mother unexpectedly passed away that my father seriously begin moving toward his own demise, as only an alcoholic can do. It took him a year and a half. We had moved to West Point the summer before the winter of my mother's passing so I wasn't present for much of that time, nor was I aware of how lost he had become; the short visits home after my mother died did not allow much of a window into his intent.

A year and some months after we lost my mother, as we were on the road moving back to Augusta, I was tracked down by a sibling asking for my consent to a DNR for my just hospitalized father. Do not resuscitate. The joy of moving back 'home', which was Augusta, where not only had I lived for five years but where my parents and two of my siblings resided, was quickly extinguished.

My father did not die immediately, the call came in July and he died on September tenth, twenty-three years ago this past week.  That summer was horrendous; moving into a new house, transferring children into new schools once again, daily visits to the VA hospital, all contributed to a sense of displacement. There were times when he recognized me and times when he didn't. Times when he was kind and times when he was incredibly cruel. There were moments of hope that he would recover enough to return home and the moment when we knew that was no longer possible. And then there was the movement to a nursing home and, one week later, the call informing us that he was on his way back to the hospital in an ambulance.

Three of his four children gathered at the hospital that morning and stood by his bedside as he struggled to breathe. My father was a son of a bitch, a brutal abusive alcoholic much of our growing up years, but he was still my father and I had to play this out.  I had been at many births in my years as a nurse, and I am now aware how that work formed my thinking about death. We do not come into the world alone and I was determined my father would not go out alone. I stayed by his side as he drew his last breath.

Later I would have the honor of helping my father-in-law, a kinder man, as he lay dying. I was able to use my nursing to ease his pain and open the passage to his death.  My mother-in-law died seven years later and I was with her almost to the end, singing hymns as we waited for her son, by then my ex-husband, to return from out of town. But it was my older brother who taught me the most about dying.

Three years ago my brother Michael died shortly after his sixty-second birthday. He was only two and a half years older but he was my big brother in every sense of the word and deserves a whole post to do justice to the relationship we shared. But it was in his last few months that he was most excellent. Having recovered from throat cancer only two years earlier, his thoughts about living and dying were greatly formed by the time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was generous in sharing them with anyone who cared to hear.

A month before Michael died I was able to visit him in Texas where he lived. Unlike previous visits we didn't do much, although at that time he was still trying to live so we walked a little and even went to a movie; but he was coming to terms with his death and he shared a lot of his thoughts. It was a mystical time for me and returning home I felt a sense of peace. Still, when I got the call telling me the end was near, I hopped a plane and returned to Texas.

Michael, thinking he had more time, had asked me to return after giving my other brother and sister a chance to visit. He asked it in person as I departed from my previous visit and on the phone a week before he died. When I arrived at his home at three in the morning I was not sure what to expect but was certain it was the right place to be.

My brother died that evening after a pain filled day. Hospice failed him. We were all very distressed by that failure. But when the help finally came, and he was at last able to rest, he died within moments. And I was able to be there with him and for him. And for me.

Being in the presence of death, of a human dying to this physical reality, is an experience of sadness but also of wonder and awe. And because I have been able to do that I think I was able to be with this new widow, a relative stranger, in her fresh, raw, grief. I don't know what that means for any future relationship but I know we connected on the physical plane we found ourselves yesterday, and that we held each other in love and regard. It was a wonder-filled experience and one for which I will always be thankful.

Life is a miracle. Death is something onto itself. I am sure it is part of the life experience and that if we shy away from it, remain afraid of death, we are missing out on some aspect of living that makes us fully human. After all, life may be about many things but most importantly shouldn't it be about becoming human? Within the human community? Communion is what I think about when I think about death; a communion of saints, a communion of angels, a communion of brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren. Communion in its purest form.  And if we fail to enter into communion with death I am not sure we are ever fully alive.

Life is a gift we are often told. It was in the presence of my brother as he died three years ago and, again yesterday, with my husband's cousin's daughter and her grief, that I was reminded of that truth.

A Longing for Wide Open Spaces

This morning's coffee has come and gone in a flurry of unforeseen activity.

It is Thursday.  We returned home yesterday from spending the previous night in Atlanta babysitting three of our grandchildren while their parents went to a Mumford and Sons concert.  Racing home, my husband packed up to go hunting and I got ready for my bridge group (I am only in the loosest sense of the word a member of this group) to play at my house for a change.  Later, after the break-up of the bridge game, I totally collapsed. Luckily dinner was leftover eggplant parmigiana, better for being leftover, and my husband contributed bounty from his afternoon hunt for an appetizer. The remainder of the evening was a blur.

After a hard night's sleep I was looking forward this morning to my leisurely coffee. Al was off to work and my intention was to head to my studio to sew. But in life plans often go askew. Expect the unexpected has become my recent mantra.  "What are you doing tomorrow?" queries my husband as he dresses for work.  "Nothing specific. What did you have in mind?" I reply, imagining an outdoor cafe and lunch for just the two of us.

"Well, I thought we might head over to Birmingham to visit my cousin Calvin and his wife Shirley."  he responds casually while tying his tie.  "Could you call Calvin and work that out? I wish I had more time but I gotta run to this mediation, And maybe you could check and see if we can get tickets to Carole's new play for tomorrow night."  Carole is another cousin's wife, and well worth whatever effort it takes to watch her in a performance. But this truly ends my leisurely morning.

My husband is a retired judge who still sits on the bench from time to time and also has a solo mediation practice. With the same secretary for over thirty years, one who did everything for him in the way of secretaries of the past, Al is very spoiled.  When he retired eight years ago he lost his secretary and with our marriage coming a year later he quietly began trying to shoehorn me into that vacant seat.  I chafe at playing that role; sometimes quite violently.  But today is not one of those days.

In the way of our rather nomadic life we are going to Montgomery this weekend to visit my son and his family, and admire the latest addition, four week old Andrew. Originally we had planned on spending two nights but knowing how exhausting a new baby can be, not to mention the three other children who make up the family, I had changed the plans to just one night.  Changed the house sitter. Opened my mind to another day and night at home, in my own bed.

It seems like lately we sleep in a lot of hotels. With four children in four different cities and ten fairly new grandchildren we stay on the road. And who ever sleeps well in hotels?  Strange sounds, smells, and lights all interrupt sleep patterns. And then there are the beds. Too soft, too hard, too scratchy, too, too. For the last four years there have been the additional transitions between our Augusta house and our mountain house. The change between the two totally different sleep experiences always causes at least one bad night, if not more. It seems I am always catching up on my sleep. I sigh in response to my husband's request, suggestion, inquiry. But today it is an inward sigh.

One of the many things that attracted me to my husband is his love of family. Being raised in the military, always in transit, never close to family, it is something I sorely missed growing up; even though I didn't identify that longing until I met people who had those close connections. And it was something I wanted for my children. My first marriage was to another army brat who never really felt the emptiness that seemed to define my life. Al is my second husband and his love of place and people has helped me to understand that deep void in myself and how to begin to fill it. So how could I say no.

Several of the relations that define Al are cousins; a handful of cousins who live, or have lived until recently, in Birmingham. Initially, with my son living in Montgomery, we delighted in the convenience and thought we would spend a lot of time visiting them; that was before the nomadic lifestyle set in. Even though Birmingham is only ninety miles from Montgomery it still requires another day to spend any quality time visiting there. Another day in a different bed.

This past week we got news that one of Al's cousins lost his son-in-law to cancer. It was unexpected.  The memorial service is planned for the end of September, a time when we are going to Virginia and Washington DC, with two other cousins, on a history tour. The son-in-law is not someone to whom my husband was close, a cousin's child's husband stretches even his familial bonds, but there is a need in him to attend the memorial service, to share in their sorrow. Hence the solution of this visit. And also the loosening of my restraints in tending to my husband's seemingly ever constant requests.

As I sit here writing I am not sure quite what I want to say. It is necessary to have boundaries. Mine are formed in reaction to childhood experiences, as are most peoples I think, and they got stronger as I got older. But it is also important to know when to let down those walls and fences that keep us from joining others in their experience. My husband's attempts to mold me into the void left by his secretary are annoying. At times I cannot separate what a secretary would do from what a wife and partner can and should do. I am getting better but it is still a struggle. But I do love this marriage for providing me with the opportunity to grow beyond my boundaries, to open myself to the wide open spaces of a partnership where boundaries are not necessary. Even if only for an instant.

Now I need to text the house sitter; like many people of his generation he does not answer his phone.

Quilting in a storm....

Sitting in the library my husband built I drink my coffee and ponder my day. Having returned from the mountains a few days ago I have visited friends by phone and in person, gone to several movies, and caught up with the laundry. I have picked out fabrics to begin a new quilt, cut and laid out the pieces. Today is the day I start sewing.

My first experience with quilts was through a gift my father gave me when I graduated from high school. I think it was to make up for his not coming to my graduation. It was a small quilt made by his Aunt Nancy, my great aunt. I don't remember her, I am sure I met her at some point, but she was my dad's favorite. With his mother dying when he was seventeen, my father spent much time at Nancy's house and always visited her when he went home to West Virginia. So on one of those visits he returned with two quilts and I got my pick. A black and white twin size blanket that I would take to nursing school and around which I decorated my room.

I don't know what happened to that quilt. I did not value its worth, I am sorry to say. Having no idea of the labor that went into making that simple covering, it passed out of my hands. I am the opposite of a hoarder, so it is not surprising, but that is a discussion for another time.

Many years later while working on my art degree I was invited to attend a sewing group. They met once a week and many of the women had children my sons ages so I went whenever I could. I did not sew at that time, although I had sewn since I was a child, so I would take my sketch book and work to fulfill the requirements of whatever class I was taking at the time. Sometimes it was painting, sometimes figure drawing, sometimes wood carving or metalwork; all required keeping a sketchbook.

Periodically the group would halt whatever individual work they were doing and gather to create a quilt. It was usually a going away present, as many of the attendees were temporary residents; the military and the medical college brought many transients to town. At those times I would stop drawing and join in sewing. The quilt would be framed at my across the street neighbor's and we would come and go throughout the weeks adding our stitches to the project. It was through this effort that I was introduced to the art of quilt making and understood what I had so lightly let pass through my hands many years before.

That sewing group was almost thirty years ago.  All the children we shared stories and concerns about are now adults with children of their own.  My oldest is thirty-seven with three of his own, my younger son and his wife just had their fourth child. From that time I remembered the desire to make quilts of my own and began when our first grandchild was born.  Now there are ten and while I have not made ten quilts, as some were made by other grandmothers, I have made six. The last stitch was put in place in a hotel room not so many weeks ago. Now I endeavor to explore my own art of quilt making.

Quilts are significant on so many levels but to me they speak to process. The process of selecting the fabics new and old; the process of selecting the pattern, traditional or free form or some variation in between; the process of cutting the fabric, laying out the top and slowing piecing it together. Then there is the making of the 'sandwich' which consists of the top, some filling and the backing. It is at that point that one begins the long hours of sewing that sandwich together.

I am somewhat of a traditionalist. I piece by machine but I sew the quilt together by hand. I don't have a frame; I want my work to be portable to take it back and forth to the mountains so I use a hoop. I gather old fabrics and new and try a different design with each quilt I make. I am a process person. I love the process involved in art and have always engaged in forms that require a lot of process over time. Sometimes I forgo the product in favor of the process; once the process is achieved, mastered, I may move on to the next endeavor. It drives others crazy at times.

What I love about quilt making, and functional art in general, is the rich history behind the various forms. All art was initially functional; whether it served in the function of daily living or for ceremonial purposes it had a specific purpose. Rugs, blankets, dinnerware, clothing, over time all became more and more decorated as we had time to pursue that ideal. With the industrial age many handicrafts have been lost, replaced by machine work, their value minimized. For me, the problem with machines is that they are cold, coming between the creator and the creation; they tell no story.

Handmade artworks, whether they be functional or purely decorative, carry the energy of the maker.  The many hours that went into creating the object required love, attention, concern and care.  Laughter accompanied the groups that came together, whether to fire clay or create a quilt, laughter was woven into the fabric. And oftentimes tears accompanied the laughter.

Life is a process. We are conceived and carried to fruition in the bodies of our mothers wherein her laughter, tears, joy and fears are woven into our very being. We are born, live and die in a process laden culture. And we often fail to notice it is the process, not the product, that makes life worthwhile. If we valued the process, we would value the product so much more, that life that we let pass through our fingers as easily as the quilt my great aunt made for me, if not with me in mind, so many years ago.

Writing in the Shifting Sands

I write all the time.  I write weeding the garden.  I write while washing dishes.  I write while walking the dogs. Where I fail to write is here at my computer.  I am not sure why, but no matter how I express my determination to sit down daily and write I cannot  follow through. What is this failure of follow through about I wonder?

I am an artist.  Years of work, of pursuing a fine arts degree, entitles me to call myself ARTIST.  My determination to get my degree was legion; with two children, a husband, and a house to manage it was not an easy endeavor.  Married to a career army officer I often found myself alone managing the household; despite the obstacles I enrolled in school, no minor feat, and begin furthering my education.

My first effort at becoming educated, after high school, was to enroll in a school of nursing.  Not to be confused with a college education, a school of nursing is a three year program attached to a hospital whereby students are afforded many, many hours of on the job training.  The education was restricted to the sciences and practical aspects of nursing.  At seventeen I recognized the learning would be limited and impoverished compared to what I had come to expect from my high school curriculum, but the attraction of being done in three years, with a full scholarship, was very powerful.  Particularly after my mother told me that there was no money to send me to college, and even if there were it would be reserved for my brothers.  My two, just bordering on being juvenile delinquent, brothers. So it was nursing school for me; being twenty at graduation would allow plenty of time to pursue an art degree.

So, twenty I was when I graduated and, surprisingly, in love with the field of nursing. Joining the army, I married my first love who had just graduated from the military academy at West Point.  Off we went on the great adventure, living in Germany after our respective basic courses.  Fast forward five years and I was no longer in,the army, no longer working as a nurse, but a stay at home mother with my first child.  Again, not so surprising this time, I was in love; being a mother was a world unto itself.  Two years later when my second son was born I couldn't have been happier.  And yet lingering in the shadows was a dream of something different, something more than being someone's wife and someone's mother.

During those intervening years my husband graduated from law school and passed the bar, while continuing his military career. He encouraged my desire to further my education and when I enrolled in my first college classes our children were two and four; the option for night classes seemed perfect.  I thirsted after the education and imagined getting a degree in psychology to further my nursing in the future. As an incoming student my status left me with few choices and the only psychology class available at night was in art therapy. It was good; perhaps I will be an art therapist I reasoned. After sixteen weeks it wasn't the nurse or the budding psychologist who emerged from that first class but the long silent artist.

The next six years involved several career moves for my husband and concurrent school changes for me. My children had to be nurtured through those moves, and as I lost credits I also lost semesters until finally I emerged with a bachelor of fine arts from Augusta College, in my now home town.  I was lauded and feted, winning several awards and engaged as an elementary art teacher. Having been an army brat, five years in one town was the most I had ever lived anywhere; I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. And then the army made its move, and giving up my teaching job we made ours.

Many things have happened in the intervening years since that relocation; perhaps the most significant has been my inability to pursue excellence in my field. Not true, I pursue excellence, endeavor to practice my work diligently, receiving numerous awards and recognition along the way, but the failure is in staying focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else. I am like the grasshopper surprisingly enough; nothing could shock me more as I write these words.

So today as I find myself divorced and remarried, grandmother to ten grandchildren the oldest of whom is six, homeowner of a marvelous mountain house, I am pulled in many directions. Daily. My art has changed from sculpture to painting to functional art to craft. My nursing has changed from obstetrical, to neonatal, to child psych services to none. My teaching has changed from elementary ed, to public service projects, to private instruction to none. All that has ever remained even a little constant is my writing; I have always written. But that does not explain why I write in my head and not on paper or keyboard. Fear of failure? More like fear of accomplishment.

My mother's words come back to me at times like this. "Who do you think you are?" she would ask.
"You are too big for your britches."
"You are not as smart as you think you are."
"You may get good grades but you are not as smart as your brother, you just work hard."
She has been dead now for over twenty years and yet those messages live on in my head; all those old 'tapes' that play and replay paralyzing one to to their worth.

My friend Jayne came to visit me in the mountains recently, where I now live part time, and she told me to write. "You have something the world needs to hear," she told me. "Even if it is a small audience, there is an audience out there who is waiting to hear what you have to say."

I don't know if that is true but I do know that writing in my head is making me a little crazy; all those loose words rolling around like so many marbles.  So for now I write. Again. No promises; just promise beckoning from the shadows.

Love, Love, Love....

Al is up early and off to work today so I am here; happily with my coffee.

I have been thinking lately about the nature of love. What is love? How do we know if we love someone? I have always thought of it as a feeling, a feeling over which I have no control, that comes and goes like a thunderstorm. With the drama of a thunderstorm. But now in my second marriage, with my seventh grandchild on the way, I find love quietly seeping into my thoughts almost daily. 

I have recently reconnected to an old high school friend. Her name is not important but for the sake of this writing I shall call her Maureen; the important thing is that she was my first adult friendship. That first close friend emerging at the end of high school when so many thoughts were needing expression. Maureen was that friend, the one I could talk to, that would form the basis for all my other adult friendships. But curiously, when she was in college and I was newly married I cut off the friendship, telling her cowardly through a letter that I didn't think we could be friends anymore.

That was in 1971. Earlier that summer she had traveled a thousand miles to be my maid of honor; by the next summer I had no idea where Maureen was living or what she was doing. Throughout the years I would often think about her and occasionally hear news through common contacts; then nothing for years. Last fall as I was celebrating my sixtieth birthday another high school friend reminded me that we had jointly celebrated our sixteenth birthdays at Maureen's house. I began to think about trying to find her.

Maureen and I have had several conversations through email now. She teaches educational psychology at a small college in Nebraska, and while she remembers me cutting off the friendship and the confusion around that, her memories are more of how confused and lost she was, not knowing what she wanted or what she was doing. Her remembrances of me are more fond that fraught with anger; in fact there is no anger.

We were in essence children in 1971 despite the fact that we had both just turned 21. I was married, working as a nurse and she was still in school in Texas having transferred from New Jersey at her parents insistence. I think that all my energy, graduating from nursing school, getting married and joining the Army was aimed at getting out from under my parent's control. In the face of a best friend who was floating, letting her parents direct her course, and unhappy in the place she found herself I thought we had nothing to offer each other so I cut the relationship off, completely.

When I look back it is so unlike me, the me of today, that it is hard to imagine my doing that. I must have had a very strong unconscious need to get away from that mirror, but at the time it  felt like she was drowning and I was in danger of going down with her. Cutting her loose and getting on board my husband's ship of well being turned out to be a good choice, even necessary, to keep the demons within me at bay. Now that I have faced those demons I can see that it wasn't Maureen that was the problem, it was me. 

So what does this have to do with love? Well, I loved Maureen as only that teenager on the verge of adulthood can. We did everything together. We talked about everything. She was beautiful; not in a classic kind of beautiful, but in a striking, every time she walks into a room, people stop and look, kind of beautiful.  I loved that and I hated that. But mostly I loved it. She was insecure and I was very secure and I loved that.  But she was honest in her insecurity and I was dishonest in my security. And that is where the rub came in. If I entered her world of being unsure, unhappy, lost even, then I might become those things too. And  I couldn't  afford that; my ship with my husband was sailing and like so many young marrieds it was the good ship. So she was cast adrift.

I think I lost a part of myself when I cut those ties. The part that was honest. And it took many years before I became honest about my own insecurities, my own unhappiness and my own sense of being lost. But here's the interesting thing, by being honest with myself I found the part of myself that was able to love. It was, and is, a simple love, pure and joyful, as only those first same sex love relationships can be. A love that hasn't yet been jaded by human faults and frailties, that is fully trusted and so tender that it fills the human heart to the point of aching and then beyond. A love that is easily lost and remarkable in the finding.

I think this must happen to us over and over again in our lifetime. The vulnerability that comes with loving unconditionally.  And while it is sweet, it is also painful; maybe that is why we cannot stay in constant connection with it.  So that is the thunderstorm aspect of love, the raw beauty and power of it. The rest requires the daily conscious effort to love and be loved.  It is the day after day of bitter cold, or the drenching humidity that makes it unbearable to go outside.  It is the sun that rises every day, so taken for granted that we sleep through the wonder of it.  It is the moon that waxes and wanes like clockwork. And like the ebbing and flowing of the tides we may not even be aware that we are in the midst of love until it is gone.

So do I love Maureen now? Of course I love her; not with the expectation that we will be best friends again or even have much in common, but with the tender memory of first love as a starting point. The proffer of a new friendship being born of renewed dialogue is putting the meat on the bones. Where that goes, what that means for the future I cannot yet imagine. But perhaps we'll share another thunderstorm or two along the way.