Catching up

I haven't added anything to this blog in some time.  Life has gotten ahold of me again.  Since my last entry I have been unexpectedly unemployed.  My third "retirement" and my first uninvited.  I feel like I am coming out of the shock now.  It is spring and although it has always been a hopeful time of year for me, it is also one that brings up some of my deepest losses.  April is full of landmark dates.  The first is the anniversary of my brother's death in 1995.  He died of cancer at the age of 46.  The 10th would have been my mother's 90th birthday if she had not also died of cancer in her mid 40s.  The 16th is my older son's birthday.  He will be 34 this year and I miss him a thousand times a day.  He is strong and healthy and living in Seattle, and I speak to him on the phone occassionally and see him maybe once a year, and as adult children and relationships go, I suppose we do okay.  But nobody told me how hard it would be to lose that closeness I felt when he was growing up; when he looked to me for understanding, love, compassion.  I had no parents to have experienced this need to "break away", establish myself as completely separate.  My parents were gone way too young and I was cast adrift to maneuver on my own...I didn't even start to blame them for my failings until I was almost 40.  Instead I have struggled to resolve the loss of closeness with distance.  He left for college on the opposite coast at 18 and he never came home again.  When he found and married the love of his life, I thought we would regain some of our connection, that he would be more comfortable with his adulthood more defined.  But he said he felt like he had to make a choice between us and that he could not be close to both of us.  So I stepped aside and accepted what he could offer; and tried to redefine who we were to each other.  I accepted his statements and recited the "if you love it set it free" mantra several times a day for a loooong time.  And for the last year or two it is better...much better...maybe I am finally growing up?

Why Memoirs

Why do I have this blog of memories?  I suppose it has to do with the fact that I have lived 3,000 miles from my family of origin for all of my adult life; that my parents were dead by the time I was 22; and that I needed to put some structure around a chaotic childhood:  a childhood that I often dissociated from and therefore made no sense to myself or others.  In my 40's, I worked hard with therapist after therapist to put back together the feelings unfelt and the visions unseen.  I thought it would make me sane.  They told me it would make me whole.  I wanted to be sane and whole for my kids.  I thought I could make their lives less chaotic and smoother like I believed others to be:  the "normal" people I saw everyday at work and school; passed on the street; chatted with in line at the supermarket.  As crazy as I knew their father's childhood to be; it made much more sense than my own.  He at least knew where his pain came from and, after sobriety, why it could never be medicated enough.  His fear made sense...to me anyway.
Now I know we all have pain and we cannot compare one to another...it is too personal.  Anyway, this is the first time I have found joy in writing about my life.  I suppose that says something.

The Cow Story

I used to participate in an Utne Reader "Salon" or less formally, a discussion group, in the '90s.  It was a philosophically diverse group; although primarily white men; who met once a month, rotating discussion leaders among the participants.  Topics ranged from political to theoretical; science fiction to spiritual.  We met at the same place each month:  the home of Bob, a retired government employee with advanced diabetes that was slowly taking his eyesight and mobility, but not his irrepressable spirit.  Because there were 2 other Bobs and a couple of Eds who attended regularly, I sometimes called it the BobandEd group.
Once, when it was my turn to pick the topic, I asked the group to describe an experience that had impacted their view of the world:  perhaps something that had formed a base for future decisions or beliefs.  I had a story in mind of my own to tell, but was taken by surprise at the similarity to it in one of the stories shared in the group.  One of the Eds was a mid-sixties Jewish doctor and gentleman farmer.  He related how one day he and his wife were out mending fences in a pasture where he kept several cows.  One had recently given birth to a calf.  As they were busily working, this new mother began to moo repeatedly at them.  Each time they would look up in her direction, she would turn and walk away from them.  After several instances of this, his wife said, "I think she wants us to follow her."  The doctor was dubious, but after a few more times, he realized that the mooing sounds were becoming more agitated and desperate sounding and that her calf was no where around.  They decided to follow the cow.  She moved quickly over a small hill, to a spot in the pasture where an old well had been covered over with lumber.  As the 2 walked closer, they began to hear what he described as crying, coming from the old well.  Her calf had fallen into the well and could not get out.  They were able to rescue the calf and reunite mother and baby.

Dr. Ed, being a man of science, related how he had never believed that farm animals were sentient beings.  This cow changed his mind.