My dad’s eight kids are having a family reunion at the end of April, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going through 500+ photographs (which need to be scanned for the images to be preserved anyway) to make a 20-minute slide show as a gift to my siblings and their families.
No less than four times, using the slide show program which is supposedly so user-friendly, I have lost my work entirely. Each heartrending, hair-tearing time had to do with an option I was supposed to choose BEFORE I could save the file, and the directions didn’t really explain that part. I’m not the world’s brightest computer user, and the nuns in Catholic school used to say I had trouble listening to directions, but I don’t usually lose stuff into which I’ve put 16 or more hours of labor, which I estimate is the amount of time I lost groping my way through this gauntlet.
ANYWAY—glass half-full, princess, glass half-full—every time I had to start over, I miraculously ended up with a slide show better, funnier, lovelier, and more characteristic of not just my dad, but all of us, our spouses, and our children. One thing I’ve come to appreciate in this tedious process is what a HUGE family we have, and that every part of this machine that started with one humble, funny, kind, brilliant, difficult, theatrical man is integral to the whole. In other words, there’s not a person I could possibly leave out without feeling his or her absence, from the littlest to the biggest. We are each cogs in the wheel, and one cannot do without the other.
Poring over the photos made me miss my dad, who died in 1971. I miss what little I remember about him, poignant details like his voice, his smile, and the raucous, creative way he played with us. I remember the coins in his pockets he would give me when he came home from work; I remember playing the piano with him, which consisted of me sitting on his knee and banging away with my sister in noisy accompaniment; I remember my mom chasing him around the bedroom because he had a threadbare pair of holey, peach-colored pajamas he wouldn’t part with, and she was determined to grab hold and rip the existing holes to the point where he wouldn’t WANT those awful pajamas anymore. I remember how hard they were laughing as she chased him and how my dad leaped like Peter Pan up on the mattress where three wide-eyed kids sat as an audience, bounced us around and flew down again, then around, up and down again, but not quite fast enough to escape Mom’s clutches. The pajamas were soon and predictably destroyed, and so were my parents—from hysteria.
I had my dad for three years. Three-year-olds retain the strangest details. I remember playing on the swing set with him, my brother, and my sister in the backyard at our new house in Bethesda. I remember him wearing his sunglasses on his head the day before he died, and that he had squinty eyes because he had a migraine. And I remember the cobalt blue Ford Pinto that took him away from me forever.
Now I will tell you how God is good. I don’t recall the day of Dad’s accident, or anything really, until two weeks later, when Mom gave my sister and me a joint birthday party because Dad had died one day before my birthday and three before my sister’s. As a proper widow in 1971, Mom wore a simple black dress…and a bright orange ribbon in her long, red hair. She was so beautiful, so ethereal, as though she’d been lifted free of sadness, if only long enough to entertain ten little ones for her daughters’ birthdays. She was the Great Comforter, and always will be. But I wonder--who ever comforted her as she did us? I think she stood alone from the moment he died.
I also remember parts of that Christmas—like my disconcerted five-year-old sister gathering my brother and me under the baby grand piano where it felt safe to her. She’d accidentally caught Mom crying quietly in the kitchen—Mom was always so careful—but that first Christmas was especially hard. Thereafter, our mom rarely cried, except at Christmas, and only then after we, and the world, were asleep. I never knew this until years later.
This essay might be regarded as depressing, but there’s a point. Bad things happen to people. To good people. To EVERYONE. In this, the world is a family, and there is no such thing as ‘alone’. We pick ourselves up, and if we’re little, we not only do that, we GROW up, despite the dark occasions when we wonder if it’s worth it.
It’s so worth it.
Today, having finally finished the slide show, I feel blessed and uplifted, not sad. Sure, there’s always that bittersweet element stitched into my emotional make-up, and in the last few days it’s been a part of every hour. But the photos—oh, those photos! They are full of life and silliness, laughter and color and love, and the most beautiful, amazing people I’ve ever known. At times like these, when I study the beloved faces of Dad and Mom, sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews, I thank my God for the richness of my past and path. At times like these, I believe my father never really left us at all.
No real words today. Just images of loving moments that make me smile.
I found these photos of Mom and Dad taken in a photo booth. In my skeptical twenties and thirties, I thought the reports of their love affair's magnificence were greatly exaggerated. Now I know I was wrong. These snapshots sum up the humor that limned a forever love.
My favorite photo of my sister and her husband.
Jim going through his mail after a 15-hour work day. I made him wear the glasses and nose. He loved me enough to accommodate me.
Some people won't let their dogs kiss them. Sillys.
We never feed Buster from the kitchen or the table, but after 10 years, he's never given up hope. I like this picture because I know how much love is in the conversation Jim's having with him.
That's it for now. I'm building up words/issues/experiences for the blog. They'll come later.
After all the sweetness and light lately, it’s time to talk about something definitely iffy.
Okay, ladies, what’s the general consensus on boudoir photos? (I can already guess how most guys feel about this topic.) I’m not talking Playboy Magazine, either. I’m talking about those ultra-feminine snapshots your husband wouldn’t necessarily put on his desk at work.
I think there’s something really wonderful and freeing about being brave enough to try a boudoir session. This said—and because I have an opinion about every little thing—I’ll tell you that I’m not a huge fan of the fishnet stockings/corsets/teased-hair portraits I’ve seen some photographers do. Of course, I think all photo sessions of a person should be inherent to his/her personality, so if you are all about the woman-of-the-night persona, then more power to you. If I were the subject, though, a boudoir portrait would be less about dress-up and more about me. Simplified, stripped down, so to speak, with no adornments. This would be an amazing boudoir portrait of anyone. Let the beauty of the woman shine through. One of my friends posed for photos in her husband’s unbuttoned button-down shirt. They were so exquisite, I was speechless when I looked at them. Of course it helps that she’s the world’s most gorgeous fitness model, but when a photographer can capture personality and sensuality while simultaneously elevating the female figure to an art form…THAT’S a boudoir picture I’d like to see.
I’m turning 43 really, really soon. To celebrate my dance on the cusp of middle age, I’ve been thinking about finding a photographer who will take a single photo of me with no makeup, no jewelry, no pomp and circumstance…and the rest of me wrapped in something. (Not a boa constrictor, either. So not funny.) Maybe a cotton sheet. Not naked or corseted or wearing spike heels or any of that lacy-sequin-y stuff. Because that’s not me. Wrapped in a cotton sheet is me. I hate to disappoint anyone who thought this was going to be a jog down Scintillating Lane, but I will never be a person who relishes exposure on Kodak paper. If the photographer can take the modesty in me and somehow make it sexy, though…if that photographer can make me beautiful in that special female way, despite me being wrapped in a sheet and unadorned, despite me being 43 and self-conscious and imperfect, I’d be over the moon. A true celebration of the slow morph from girl to woman to art form. What a lovely way to honor one’s self. What a nice birthday gift from me to me.
P.S. Feel free to stay anonymous or to Facebook or email me off this board, but I’d love to know if you’ve had boudoir photos done, and if so, how was your experience? Just between us girls…?
If we look for joy in little things as a habit, does that make us sappy, sentimental dreamers who refuse to acknowledge more brutal realities while we’re mindlessly waiting for the bluebirds to drape flower garlands around our shoulders?Fine, then. That’s me. Today was a bluebirds-with-garlands day for me. If you asked, “What could possibly ever go wrong again, you glass-half-full princess?” I’d be hard-pressed to tell you. I mean, I could list some possibilities, but I’m too busy adjusting my flower garland to bother right now.
Here are some of today’s flowers. I sang to my three-month-old niece and she sang back. At first I thought she was fussing, but she was just concentrating with her little brow furrowed, and singing long, drawn-out notes. It was hilarious and touching and so cute I thought my heart would burst. After that, I talked to my brother on the phone while he was stuck in DC traffic (of course! When else?), and he made me laugh really hard, and we swapped deep thoughts, and I felt very close to him. He’s my best good buddy. Then I got to watch my sister in action at a teaching workshop, and I witnessed her reveling in her calling to teach. I was beyond proud of her; she is a beautiful, talented woman with so much to offer the world. Then, of course, I talked to my mom, and I have no idea why, but we ended up boo-hooing on the phone over something really good, and it was a happy Snow White moment. I felt like a doof, but I am a doof, so that was fine. After a day filled with family, my friend Gayle came over for no good reason other than to hang out, so we sat at my kitchen table and ran our mouths, and I just love her. She’s one of those people game for any of the silly stuff I like to do. Yes, she makes fun of me, but she’s almost as silly. Actually, I’m proud I can ‘silly’ someone as formidable as Gayle into the ground. And last but not least, Jim brought me home some Atomic Fireballs, my favorite candy. Little things, this list of gifts that fell into my hands between sleeping, eating, and breathing today. Sweet flowers on my garland.
Now here’s the big stuff. Jim’s store corporation gave him an all-expense-paid trip to a gorgeous Miami spa resort and we’re going down for four days in April. The timing couldn’t be better. He simply has to stop working or his head is going to explode. The man is wearing a hole into the floor behind his counter. Of course there’s a huge agenda of things to do at this resort, but you know what we’ve planned? NADA. ZERO. ZIP. Soaking up the diamond sun and lounging on the silky sand is all we’ll muster the energy to do, most likely. I’m packing shorts, T-shirts, a bathing suit, and a pretty dress for a reception one night. I can’t wait! Maybe….maybe…I will WRITE while on the beach! Or not. Because I don’t have to do ANYTHING except enjoy being Somewhere Else for a change.
Soon after that, it will be time for the family reunion up north. My dad’s eight kids haven’t all been together since 1990, and I just can’t wait. I’ll be ringing in my 43rd birthday while I’m there, and recently I’ve come to see that being in my forties is the best thing ever. Flowers in the garland, I tell you! Lastly, I’m coming home and going to AmeliaIsland with some girlfriends for a weekend of historic sightseeing and more seashore lounging, and of course, laughing. That’s a given with those nuts. If I hadn’t moved back to Gainesville from Kentucky, I never would have known them. God works in such mysterious ways. He rains flowers on us for our garlands.
A quick glance at the flip side will show I’ve had a migraine for several days, and sometimes the pain exhausts me. But I have a choice. I can think that the headaches are destroying my life, and gnash my teeth and kick my feet at the unfairness of it all, or I can recognize this single day for what it was, a lovely, flowery, birds-singing kind of day. There is something in the beauty of 'now' that pulls me even from the darkest places, and I’ll always find something to blog about that fills my heart. I’m very proud to be a glass-half-full princess. It’s taken me a lot of years to see that no amount of harsh reality is worth giving up the sweetness of counting, and appreciating, the little things in this life, down to the tiniest flower. Sew it to your garland and be happy.
People who know what they want and who they are, people who have goals and can identify the path in front of them because they have put it there on their own, GET THINGS DONE. Michelle Heinselman knows this. She’s a Jacksonville life coach who offers an amazing workshop on mapping not just your visions, but your actual self.
Here’s how I fell into this awesome garden of enlightenment, self-realization, fun, good company, and good food. (An aside, but still…macaroni and cheese and Harvey Wallbanger cupcakes? Yet more visions!)
My friend Valerie signed up for a workshop on “vision mapping,” where you design an aid that serves to remind you not just of your dreams and goals, but your strengths, your character, and your individualism. Valerie takes this class once a year, and it was interesting to see how her map changed from last year to now. Even more interesting was how many of her goals she had achieved and how truly her maps characterize the very best parts of her.
So Valerie being Valerie—a most generous person--she invited me to join her for this year’s workshop, and I jumped at the chance for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I adore her. She looks like my sister, and apparently I look like her sister, and when I met one of her other sisters last year, it felt like we were all family. That’s beside the point. Also off-topic is that yesterday I got to meet Valerie’s boyfriend Marcus. While waiting for Valerie to get ready for the workshop, I sat at the breakfast bar, talked and laughed with him, and watched him bake cupcakes. For Valerie. A man baking cupcakes for his girlfriend, for no other reason than that he loves her. *thud* By the way, I’ve never heard Valerie refer to Marcus as Marcus. On their first date, he charged into her house on his white horse, wielding a shining sword of masculine courage, and killed a giant spider that was blocking the path between her and the front door. Henceforth he has been dubbed something even cooler than “Marcus”…
Spidey.
Spidey is SO AMAZING.
Back to the workshop. When we arrived at Michelle’s office/giant craft room, we chatted with the other students, got to know Michelle, who was a terrific hostess, and then we had dinner. I’m trying not to talk more about those Harvey Wallbanger cupcakes except to say that I’m putting a photo of them on my next vision map.
Michelle spoke to us about the project and showed us her own most recent map. Then out came magazines, scissors, glue sticks. It took about three hours (partly because I was running my mouth about WashingtonDC with some girls at the next table) to bring my vision map to life. I found myself throwing away a lot of phrases, words and pictures I had clipped because they didn’t quite fit on the board. Physcially, theoretically. They didn’t belong. When I was done, it looked like a collage from fifth grade.
Don't laugh--everything on this holds incredible weight! I was happy at the thought of hanging it in my office. I like to be reminded of my dreams, and I can always use a tool to remind me of my own value. We all can. I like the idea of staring at it when I hit the proverbial wall with writing.
However, there was a trick to this project I didn’t see coming. As it turns out, sections of the map correlate to sections of ourselves, like what we’re trying to do in this life, the center of our focus, what grounds us. It astonished me how I inadvertently made each section blend into the other so that it became a map of my dreams, and maybe some of my soul. One of my favorite parts was learning how negative words and phrases are a no-no—and Michelle has been known to swing by your table and blithely rip the offending word off your poster before it can ruin the magic. It made me realize I’m not as much a glass-half-full princess as I initially thought. It made me determined to be happier and more positive.
I was facing a two-hour drive to get home and a migraine rumbling on the horizon as I finished my map, so I had to slip out of the workshop early. Before I left, though, Michelle explained to me what each part of my map meant, and what touched me most was how she validated dreams I’ve never discussed with anyone. In those three fun, throwback-to-fifth-grade-art-class hours, I really worked through some inner “stuff.” I went home feeling loved and inspired. The migraine hurt, but I was better than fine when I left the company of my beautiful friend Valerie, my new friend Michelle, and the other wonderful students busy mapping their souls. It wasn’t an exercise in locating lost ones. It was an exercise in recognition, appreciation of yourself, and spreading your wings.
I’m impressed—and loving my map!—enough to include Michelle’s information here.
She’s wonderful, not just as a skilled life coach with fantastic, fun ideas, but as a human being who knows she was put on this earth to help other people understand their value. I can’t wait to take her workshop again.
And this time, to complement my Harvey Wallbangers, I’m stealing one of Valerie’s chocolate cupcakes from Spidey. She can’t have the guy AND the chocolate. That wouldn’t be fair.
Recently I blogged about the drift of things. How I don’t really relish it. How I wish things could stay the same and yet, childishly, that anything new that happens will only be fabulous, and my present, status quo. A giant temper tantrum of the soul, but hey, isn't that what blogs are for, at least once in a while?
Today, though, I'm doing a much better job of welcoming the dichotomy of my life. I mean, TODAY. For March 20th, 2011, I'm committed to embracing my reality and its mercurial nature. Allow me to tell you what that dichotomy is, quick, before it changes:
It's the pick-ax pain of a migraine headache and a concurrent, joyful awareness of God.
It’s loneliness because Jim's gone so much, and cups of love runneth-ing over when he's home.
It’s silence loud enough to hurt my ears, and laughter so effusive it trips over the stave of the heavens.
It’s reveling in the too-quiet early mornings, and the long, silly cell-phone conversations with my brother while he’s stuck in DC rush hour traffic at 9 a.m..
It’s the sadness of watching my dog limp because he forgets he's old when squirrels venture into our yard, and the enchantment I feel when he brings me a worn-out toy just to “show me,” and then does his crazy-legged dog dance of joy.
It’s spring emerging in its shy, beautiful Florida way around me, while on the other side of the world, an earthquake and tsunami bring seasons of fierce agony.
It’s spending last weekend at a conference with my friends and laughing until I was sore, then coming home that same day to cry at a funeral.
It’s feeling frustrated and frightened that life is so brief, too brief not to honor the people we love, and even those we don’t. It’s feeling, at times, like I could live forever and never grow tired of a single moment.
It’s what happens when we don’t stare at the big picture. It’s the miniscule changes brought by the tide when you stop long enough to simply watch the waves lap the shore.
That’s what I’m doing today, in this moment, in my present, without a truce or a white flag or anything so dramatic as that. I’m merely sitting in the sand and watching the waves, and keeping every gift, even the broken ones, which the inexorable ebb and flow so graciously leaves at my feet.
Rush Correvia Steele, born in 1853 to a prominent Georgetown family, Warrant Machinist aboard the USS Dolphin and Chicago, husband to (and widower of) a woman from a well-known Alexandria clan, traveler of the world, father of two beautiful, intelligent children…
...was not a very nice man.
He drank too much. Beat people. Neglected his children. Tried to kill his second wife. And died a death that…well, was a fiasco, and maybe somewhat karmic in nature.
But what made him go bad in the first place? I, of course, have some thoughts on this.
From what I understand, seeds of disagreeable dissatisfaction were sown in the very genes of his parents, my great-great grandparents, who, along with their other children, lived out their conflicts in the local newspapers, and even had their antics printed in the rags of other major cities like Baltimore and Richmond. John and Charlotte, Rush’s parents, had a public divorce case for a while based on the fact that Charlotte wouldn’t perform certain wifely duties which shall go unmentioned here, but were elaborated upon with phrases such as “marital congress.” Rush was a teenager during all this; not long after, he met and married Virginia Buckingham, whose family members were political figures in Alexandria. I believe Rush’s reason for marrying so young might have been to escape his family.
Despite being on his own and with a lovely new bride at his side, things started going wrong for Rush almost immediately. Virginia died, possibly in childbirth with their second baby. Rush either began drinking at that point or had always been an alcoholic; I only know that the brief newspaper article below was the first indication to me that problems were afoot (Well, that, and the fact that his nose looked like it had been broken more than once. Here’s a photo).
Doesn’t his nose look like someone smashed a fist into it?
But I digress. Here’s the little article.
_____
Officer Steele Resigns
Private Rush Steele of the Sixth Precinct, who got drunk while on duty last Friday night and assaulted John Joachim, a saloon-keeper of H Street northeast, has sent his resignation to Lieutenant Kelly. It is understood that the warrant for assault against the officer will not be pressed by Joachim.
______
After reading this, I did a little digging. Okay, a LOT of digging. And I discovered that while on hiatus from being a warrant machinist in the U.S. Navy, Rush had taken up duty as a cop. Here’s what happened on that fateful night mentioned above, according to the venerable Washington Post (I took the liberty of condensing the article. I hope no long-lost journalist is turning over in his grave):
CLUBBED BY A POLICEMAN
August 21, 1887
_____
Northeast Washington was thrown into quite a ferment of excitement by the peculiar and somewhat startling conduct of Police Officer Rush Steele. Officer Steele patrols a beat on H Street northeast. On Friday night he entered the saloon of John Joachim, and looking at that gentleman for a moment, asked him how he dared to keep his saloon open at in the morning. As the clock in Mr. Joachim’s bar marked a quarter-past ten the officer asked this question. Mr. Joachim was somewhat surprised and immediately retreated behind his counter. “If you don’t shut up this place,” continued the officer, “I will take you to the station house.”
“Well, arrest me,” said Joachim.
At this, the officer seized him, and Joachim, fearing that he might be hit with a club, grabbed the officer’s baton. As they went out of the door, the policeman slipped and fell, carrying Joachim to the pavement with him. This seemed to encourage Steele, for he drew his pistol and began beating the prisoner over the head with it. When he finally got tired of this amusement he jerked the now helpless Joachim to his feet and started for the station house.
On the way, they met a friend of Joachim’s, who followed the two to the station house. Arriving there, the policeman put a charge of assaulting an officer against Joachim and then turning to the friend, who had not interfered in the matter in the least, he put the same charge against him. Then he conducted the friend to a cell and on getting him there he drew a pistol and, pointing it at his terrified prisoner, said, “Now I am going to kill you.”
The man’s cries of “Murder!” brought the station keeper to his assistance and Officer Steele was disarmed. Then Steele amused himself running after citizens in the street until a sergeant and a night inspector came along and put him under arrest.
Yesterday Officer Steele did not go on duty as usual, and it is probable that his career as a policeman is ended. Whether or not Joachim has him prosecuted for assault and battery, Steele will be tried by the trial board for intoxication and conduct very unbecoming to an officer.
________
Yeah…far be it from me to judge, but it was probably the most prudent thing that Rush quit that job and went back to being a warrant machinist on a ship way out in the middle of the ocean.
Which brings me to the fact that because of his constant traveling, his two children were placed in homes as boarders and raised themselves.
Which brings me to the second woman he married, Sophia, who tried to help with the kids but found them like wild animals—Sophia, who lived in fear of Rush’s occasional R and R, when he would come home and beat her senseless. It all came to a head when he strangled her with the obvious intent to kill, and the fact that she went into hiding from him was all over the newspapers, and then he refused to pay alimony, threatened some more, with great relish, to stalk and murder her, and a warrant went out for his arrest, and I could list all the unseemly details of this particular soap opera, but it would make this blog entry waaaaaay too long.
Despite Rush’s awfulness, for some reason, his sisters and children loved him. They worried about him. They stayed apprised of his whereabouts. So when he sailed to Mare Island, CA on the USS Dolphin in 1906 and then disappeared, they were besieged with fear.
It took weeks of one sister hounding the Navy to finally uncover that Rush had disembarked and gone into San Francisco, where he went into cardiac arrest on a city street. He was unconscious by the time witnesses got him to a hospital, and died shortly thereafter, alone, with no identification upon him.
The authorities buried him in Potter’s Field, a pauper’s graveyard. Mass graves. Not a happy place.
His sister had the Navy DIG HIM UP and ship him back to Washington, where he was given an honorable burial at ArlingtonNationalCemetery. Some kind soul in Virginia took this photo for me, which just goes to prove that genealogically-obsessed people are the best in the world.
In all seriousness, I think about this man and wonder what short-circuited in his soul, and not just him, but his siblings. I know some of the details. Rush was the brother of Hester, Estelle, Carrie, Alida, Hannibal Hamblin, Marshall, and John. Ultimately only Hester, Estelle, and Alida escaped unscathed from the transparent skeleton closet in which the Steele family lived. As mentioned in previous blog entries, Carrie and Hannibal killed themselves. Hannibal’s son, a handicapped doctor, did the same. John died young from sickness. Marshall, a swindler in every sense of the word, tried more than once to commit suicide and probably eventually succeeded. They passed their agony on to their children. More suicide, trouble, tragedy. Somewhere along the way it ended, thank God. I don’t think much of the Steeles made it to the Smiths. We have more of a tendency to live, laugh and love until there’s nothing left of us.
Rush’s sister Estelle, my great-grandmother, married Leo McGraw. She was lovely, a happy spirit with close ties to her sisters, despite the obvious turbulence they’d endured growing up. Then, in 1891, Estelle’s 12-year-old son Harry drowned in the TidalBasin where the Jefferson Memorial stands today, which at the time was a newly designated public beach.
He was the light of their lives. Estelle suffered a nervous breakdown. Leo sued the city and lost because Harry had been trespassing on the beach before it opened. Five years later, their other son Harvey died suddenly. He was not yet twenty.
The bank tried to foreclose on their house (oh, thank you for these tidbits, Washington Post). And Leo died, so VERY unnecessarily, when he had surgery on his pancreas, and against doctor’s orders, got out of bed while the stitches were still fresh to make sure he had money in his wallet. He pulled the stitches just crossing the floor. Infection set in. He lost his life over a handful of bills and some coins.
Ah, well.
I forgive you, Great-Great Uncle Rush Steele, for abusing your power as an officer of the law, for running drunk in the streets and scaring people, for neglecting your children, for hurting your wife. I hope, when you were so alone on that night in San Francisco and dying, that you forgave yourself.
In closing, I’d like to speak as the shade-tree genealogist I have become. At some point, the drive to uncover the past stops being about you and starts being about everyone who wants to know his ancestors. I live near a small church that was established in the 1930’s. It has a cemetery. I stopped by the other day, talked to the pastor about my habit—er, hobby—of looking for dead people (mainly taking part in the US GenWeb Cemetery Project), and got his thumbs-up to walk the small cemetery, create a record of the burials, and share my findings with the US Gen Web people and, of course, the little church’s congregation.
Many of the people buried there are descendants of slaves. “There will be a lot of blank spots in your chart,” the pastor told me. No granite stones, no crypts the size of guest cottages, no Finger-of-God obelisks to mark the way. But no blank spots in my heart, either, because by being there, clearing away a few weeds as I go, studying the faded, cracked concrete pieces that used to be a cross, or the gnarled tree that was planted as a pauper’s tombstone 70 years ago…simply by acknowledging that once upon a time, a person lived in the same place of imperfection, grief, joy, laughter, as I do…as we ALL do… I will honor his memory, and that of his family.
So onward I go, walking with the dead, and in doing so, help the living out there who are looking for their past—and perhaps, more importantly, themselves.
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Robert Frost
The rambling shall now commence.
I don’t always like the drift of things, the static condition of this planet. I’d like everything that makes me happy to go on and on and stay exactly the same. In this, I know I’m not alone, but lately I feel particularly bound to the good times in my life—past AND present. I also anticipate future occasions of fabulousness and am sincerely crushed when those occasions fail to materialize in balanced time. I’m a glass-half-full princess. I can’t wait for the next wonderful event to befall me. But it doesn’t happen fast enough about 75% of the time, and so I have to abide the wait, and sometimes it seems like life isn’t nearly as sparkly as I had initially decided it was some thirty years ago.
My friend Beth says our goal in this life should be not happiness—which is a fleeting emotion, like sadness—but PEACE. Okay, that’s all fine and dandy, and she’s right, blah blah blah, adult stuff blah blah. But I want happiness AND peace and I want to have it a lot. Does that make me immature? Well…does it make YOU immature? This whole world must be one giant playpen filled with toddlers who want their happy and want it NOW.
Being an adult doesn’t hold half the magic and joy for me that being a child did. It’s not that I haven’t been blessed or filled with bliss many times over as a grown-up—and I have, truly, known so much joy in the last thirty years. I guess it’s that I know too much as an adult, and knowing the reality of things ruins my good time. Does that make sense? (If not, stop reading now because it’s only going to get worse.)
What happens to our innocent, bright-eyed perception once we grow up? Bad things still happen when we’re little, so it’s not necessarily that. Why did we abide misfortune or tragedy so much better when we were three feet tall, with such blithe and resilient spirits? And while I’m on the subject, what is this death thing that falls upon us, children and adults alike? I didn’t lose many people in my childhood, except my dad, of course (I handled THAT by calling God on my toy phone and demanding He send Daddy home right now), and but I lost my beloved playmate who lived up the street when I was five. I remember as my nanny walked me up the road to visit the family right after my friend passed away, she asked me, “Do you think they’ll be crying?”
“Why would they be crying?” I asked. What was wrong with her?
“People cry when their loved ones go to heaven,” she said, and in that moment I learned an adult rule. It didn’t matter that up until that point I had pictured my little friend no longer suffering but happy with Jesus, who loved all children and would take good care of my buddy in a place where he would never be sick. Now, all of a sudden, I saw that the appropriate thing was to cry. And suddenly I felt the loss of my friend on a personal level. I connected with the realization that he was gone physically, which must mean he was gone completely, and even though the priest at his funeral said I would see him again one day, it wasn’t the same. So I cried. The door to my innate child’s wisdom had been closed by human emotional tradition.
My grandmother died in 2007 at nearly 100, and I miss her terribly. I never considered that she would leave. Her life force was bigger than big. Even now, for no reason at all, I’ll hear her laugh in my mind and it always makes me smile. When I was eight or nine, she used to watch The Jeffersons after I went to bed, and I remember her just laughing like I’d never heard her laugh before, and that was a another rule I gleaned. It’s okay to laugh until you cackle, but best to do it when everyone’s asleep. She tried to hush herself, but she couldn’t. And I would lie awake and laugh too; it was impossible not to. Even when she became senile and no longer knew who any of us were, she had a strength and presence about her that drew everyone around her—a spiritual magnetism. I miss her presence. I miss her laughter. I want to picture her joyful and laughing, but all I see when I think of her right now, sans the memories, is her lovely granite gravestone.
I’m an adult, you see. So Grannie dies, and I go to her funeral and cry. The five-year-old would have skipped through the cemetery to her graveside service, but the 39-year-old Jamie’s tribute came in tears instead of a mindless little dance that spoke of knowing all is as it should be; all is well.
In the summer of 1992, when I was in Europe finishing my degree, I met a friend who left an indelible impression on me. This friend was a fine, fine person, funny, self-deprecating, erudite, beautiful, imperfect in that perfect way so few people know how to wear with aplomb. Life circumstances eventually took us down different highways and we lost touch. After that, adulthood brought new things and people to me; my life has changed, I have changed, always undergoing the process of building my grown-up life. But the girl in me, the silly one who believed in magic and forever friends at 24, still wonders why anything has to change in the first place. Why do friends take different paths away from each other instead of being a part of each other’s lives forever? Why do these friendships float off into the ether when they made us so happy? Why can’t I have every happiness that ever crossed my path, bake it into a cake, and eat it too?
Well…because I’m an adult. That’s how the world works. Children don’t know that, though, and they don’t really care. Thank God for their temporary blinders. If I had it to do over again, I’d believe in Santa Claus until I was fifteen, instead of finding out the (*GASP*) truth at nine when I read an article written by some blockhead journalist who decided to discuss the Santa phenomenon on the cover of The Washington Post.
I’ll be 43 in May, and currently I’m waiting, proverbial breath held, for the next wonderful thing to happen in my life, those wonderful things we have no control over, the ones that just appear. It could be something little—laughing really hard with my friends or husband; having lunch with a friend from high school (it’s actually happening next week—I can’t wait!), or something even bigger, like the moment I held my little niece for the first time. At times like these, I wouldn’t trade being an adult for anything. But I know—I KNOW—it’s the child in me, the magical, joy-loving kid—that makes me capable of grabbing onto those precious, fleeting moments, and though eventually I must let them float into the ether, I feel their forever imprint on my heart.
Okay, amidst my rambling, I suddenly see that it turns out I DO still have every happiness that ever crossed my path. Baked into a cake. Ready to savor.
When I get lonely or sad, all I have to do is take a bite.
I’m going to answer that for you. The whole WORLD needs a princess. Here’s why.
1)With her confidence and resilience, she’s a good role model to children AND adults.
2)She has pretty clothes. Even Cinderella, pre-princess days, made rags look better than grunge in the 90’s.
3)She’s willing to kiss frog after frog until she finds her prince, and sometimes her prince is still a frog, but she sees a prince.
4)She believes in magic, and if she doesn’t, once she experiences it, she embraces it.
5)She likes extraordinary beings and accepts them at face value—fairy godmothers, dragons, talking mirrors and mice, dwarves, tortured beasts, evil stepmothers, nasty stepsisters…
6)She might be good-natured, but she’s also forthright. If you put a pea under her mattresses, she’s going to let you know it’s not a good idea for future guests.
7)She makes it possible for little girls everywhere to play, and play, and play.
8)She has happily-ever-afters, no matter what the future brings. She’s a glass-half-full person.
9)She appreciates the beauty of the earth. Deer follow her around and eat out of her hand. She’s an animal rights activist.
10)She doesn’t mind chores.
11)She can sing like nobody’s business.
12)She can sleep for 100 years and wake up just because some cute guy kisses her.
13)She looks GREAT after a century of sleep.
14) She can dance in glass slippers that absolutely MUST hurt. That's probably why Cinderella ditched at least one on the palace steps when she ran for her carriage at midnight.
15)She’s not afraid to stand up to bullies, like the Beast.
16)She forgives everyone who hurts her, including an evil stepmother and step-sisters. She even invites them to live in her castle.
Who needs a princess? We all do. She reminds every woman of the beauty of being a woman. She reminds ME that I’m happy to be the girly-est girl around.
Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up. ~Ellen Goodman
My name is Jamie D., and I’m an insomniac.
I don’t mean the occasional toss-and-turn, stare-at-the-ceiling thing. I mean full-blown, panic-invoking, no-sleep-for-three-days kind of wakefulness; the kind that makes you crave the sunrise so that a night of torment will be over, and yet you dread it at the same time, because once you’re up and out, at some point the exhaustion will clobber you. You’ll be somewhere like at Sam’s, which happened to me the other day. I bought a huge box of granola bars that I can’t stand.
I know I’ve talked about having insomnia before but I’m mildly worried now. Everywhere I turn lately, I see reports on how deadly lack of sleep can be to the body. We don’t just need sleep, they say, we need uninterrupted sleep. Seven to eight hours.
HAHAHAHAHAA!!
This barrel of fun started about two years ago when we moved to Kentucky. We were living in a furnished townhouse on a PGA golf course, but the neighborhood had stopped in mid-construction because of the housing market crash, and it was relatively deserted. I would lie awake into the wee hours, listening to the wind, which whipped the shutters against the brick, which made a crash…crash…CRASH sound. Believe it or not, though, the silence of the neighborhood was noisier than anything. I couldn’t even hear cars go by. Meanwhile, Jim slept like a baby, and I was grateful. Somebody in our household needed to have his head on straight.
I tried taking some herbal sleep remedies, and for a while they worked. Then they stopped working. Then we moved back to Florida, and woe was me. I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t want to live in Florida. I had the Ambien experience, tried some more herbal medicines; drank several gallons of chamomile tea…
Did you know that migraines are irritated by erratic sleep patterns? Yes! That is correct!
Two years later, I have embraced living in Florida. I’m no longer sad, I’ve given up on herbal stuff, won’t touch Ambien with a ten-foot pole…and here I am at writing this little blog. I have to either talk about this or explode.
I know there’s a means out there by which to put myself to sleep. (I’d better not hear any suggestions involving anvils or rubber mallets.) The new and more killer problem, however, is failing to stay asleep. I wake up after three or four hours, and I’m so tired, but I can’t go back to Hush-a-byeMountain. That means I’m awake when Jim gets up to go to work at 5:30, so I usually make his coffee, do some housework, and after he leaves, I crawl back into bed…only to stare at the ceiling.
In short, I can’t sleep. I don’t sleep. While I do exercise, it's not as consistent as it should be. I’m going to pick up the pace and see if that helps. And if it doesn’t…maybe THEN I’ll consider the rubber mallet.
