Yesterday's Promise

She held all the pieces.

For years and years, she held them all

And she promised that they somehow fit together.

At first, with fear’s reluctance

I gave them stingily.

But faith grew—chiseled and molded with well-intentioned cultivation

Until I couldn’t wait to hand her every scrap.

I gave her all the pieces

Trusting they were safe.

And they were… for a while.

I didn’t know that,

In the end,

The jumbled bits would scatter on the wind.

I snatch the fragments from the air

Lost jigsaw pieces dressed in my emotions

Complicated

Delicate

Subtle

Elusive

I study the painful gibberish

Longing to fit them into something real

Something whole

But seeing only how each shard reflects

The dark place where she will never be again.

Just Be

Sand clings to the wheels, brown on black. He matches his breath to the rhythm of their gritty squeak.

It’s come to this. After years of hiding. Pretending. Denying who they really were, even to themselves. Slowly succumbing to the reality but still enduring set-up-dates by business associates and well-meaning friends. Family dinners without each other. Keeping up appearances.

And then, finally, defiantly “coming out” before the term even existed. Waiting for the oh-so-gradual shift in society to catch up. At last, that trip to the Cape. Saying their I-do’s. A pedi-cab ride through the streets of Provincetown in matching tuxedos. A kiss that seemed to say they had arrived.

A rare smile comes at the memory and he lets it stay. He puts the future on a shelf. Closes the door to the harsh, finite reality. They have this weekend—maybe as long as a week.

For now, they can just be.

Just be.

Two women pass by. Glistening with oil. Sandals slapping wood.  

He pushes the wheelchair to the end of the boardwalk.

Stops.

Puts on the brake.

Deep breath and then another.

Breeze thick and salty-sweet.

The screeches of gulls competing with volleyball cheers.

Typical travelers.

Tropical drinks.

Waves rising and falling.

Rising and falling under a radiant sun.

He bends down.

“You good here?”

A nod. Gray eyes still holding the flicker that first drew him in.
Hold onto this moment.
Slip it in a pocket.
Fragile as a sand dollar. 

He nods in return. Adjusts the blanket. Stands to face the sea.

For now, they will just be.

Lessons in Powerlessness

This has been a week of releasing control. Multiple lessons, each bringing up their own flavor of discomfort, have presented themselves relentlessly. Lessons in letting go. Lessons in powerlessness.

Some were minor irritations.

Meetup.com was attacked by hackers. It was down on-and-off for a couple of days this week, making it very difficult to download the files I needed for my writer’s group. I knew I had a busy weekend, but I couldn’t do the editing without the files, so instead of getting to it on Thursday or Friday, I was up late very late Saturday night, getting it done just barely in time for our Sunday morning meeting. 

Another huge snow-storm followed by yet another blast of below-zero arctic air roared in for this first weekend of March. This has been a winter for the records in every category – snow, cold and duration. I love the changing seasons here in the Midwest, but this year has worn me down. 

So this weekend, each time I donned my parka, scarf, gloves and  snow boots, I took a breath and let it go. For me, that's easier when the upset is just about my own discomfort or aggravation. 

When it comes to those I love, it’s much harder.

Both of my sons came home this weekend, arriving Friday night before the most recent snow began. They came home to see their younger sister in her final high school play. My sons have busy twenty-something lives, so the fact that they made this effort made their homecoming all-the-more sweet to me.

The show went perfectly, but brought tears for both my daughter and me. This whole school year has been a time of “lasts”. All four of our kids went to this high school, and we’ve been through the letting-go process three times already, so I know what each senior-year milestone is leading up to. I can hardly look at my youngest daughter without remembering that she will be walking out the door and into her own life in just a matter of months.

Breathe… breathe

We drove home from the show at a snail’s pace in near white-out conditions. Almost as soon as we were in the door, my older son started packing up for a sixty mile drive in the height of the storm. He's twenty-four years old. I have to admit that I wouldn’t have let a snowstorm get in my way at his age. Still, looking at it from the wisdom of almost fifty-five, it was very hard to let him walk out that door.

The thing is, hard or not, I didn’t have a choice. He’s an adult. 

I took a breath. And another. And another.

No matter how old my kids get, they still look like children to me. My husband seems to have the same affliction. He was running through his own repertoire of tactics to try and get our son to change his mind and wait until morning to leave, voicing futile arguments and sometimes going beyond the scope of reason (in my opinion). Frustration radiated off of both of them as our son packed up his stuff and his dog and headed out into the night.

Even my husband’s reaction was outside my control. Another lesson in letting go.

Breathe… Just breathe…

As frustrating as this was, it was much easier than the lesson in powerlessness my husband and I shared two days earlier.

On Thursday morning, my husband was peeing blood. Not a dot on one occasion, but a steady stream, repeatedly.

He’s a doctor. He knows what blood in the urine can mean, and so do I. He called his doctor and they scheduled the necessary tests for that day. The word cancer was not spoken that morning, but it loomed huge in both our minds. 

You want to talk letting-go? You want to talk powerlessness? 

Many people have gone through this process, waiting for the doctor to give them the thumbs up or thumbs down while the specter of the Big C haunts their thoughts. That period of time between the first inkling that something is wrong and the final word may be the biggest lesson in powerlessness I’ve ever dealt with.

I held his hand. I looked into his eyes—eyes I’ve looked into for thirty-seven years—and saw a kind of fear I’d never seen before.

Breathe. Breathe.

And then, the tests were back and they showed nothing. Not a single unusual thing. This doesn’t tell us what the problem is. All they can do is rule things out, and thankfully cancer was one of those things. Cancer advanced enough to produce his symptoms would have shown up on the CAT scan, and it wasn’t there. Suddenly breathing was a lot easier again.

We still don’t know what caused my husband's symptoms but he seems to have returned to normal.  I hope he’ll follow up on this with the rest of the work-up his doctor suggested, but I have no control over that either. My husband has an amazing ability to compartmentalize his thoughts—to put those things he doesn’t want to see in a closed box until needed—and by the time he was chastising our son for wanting to leave in the middle of a blizzard on Saturday night, the mortal terror from a few days before seemed to be completely forgotten. He'd moved right back into a much-more familiar feeling of frustration.

We were powerless to change the behavior of our adult son.
There is no rational thing anyone can do to prevent another adult from moving along the path of their own free will.

Later, after my son had texted us that he’d arrived safely at his destination, I broached the subject of powerlessness with my husband. He’s a pretty amazing guy in a lot of ways. For all his old-fashioned bravado, I’ve found that even when it seems he hasn’t been listening it often turns out that later—usually much later—I find out he’s not only heard me but taken my words to heart. 

So, for now, I will breathe in the calm of this quiet moment and I will find some peace in my own belief that there is a time for everything, that all things are possible, and that the universe will continue on its path with or without my input. It’s a funny thing that seeing how small I am in that big picture can be so much more comforting than believing I am big and powerful myself. I don’t have to work that hard. I don’t have to force my own beliefs on others even when I’m certain I’m right. 

I don’t have to worry about everyone and everything.

I can step back.

Let go.

And just breathe. 

Seeds

I want to become

Who I’m meant to be

But the seed knows not the flower

So I must be open

To new understandings

To all possible notions

And even what I can’t imagine

Without hesitation

Uncertainty

Or distrust

I want to become

All I’m meant to be

But the seed knows not the flower

So I must be willing

To let go of everything

Every truth I think I know

Everything I think I own

Illusions of scarcity

Security

And control

I want to become

The ultimate me

But the seed knows not the flower

So I must be ready

To break free of this tiny shell

To push through life’s heavy burdens

Trusting that beyond their darkness

A life-giving light

With everything I need
Awaits

The Dark Side of the Coin

I am so incredibly blessed. I have two sons and two daughters, and I have relished my role as mother even more than I thought possible.

My oldest daughter is twenty-five, and married with a baby of her own. She is the one who taught me about the three levels of separation.

First, she went off to college. Driving away without her felt like the hardest thing anyone should ever have to do.

Then, after her third year of college, she became too busy to come “home” for the summer. She took summer courses and worked near school. I cried as we planned a “family vacation” without her, for the first time.

And finally, that third level of separation—when she graduated from college and got her first real apartment, and I knew she’d never live with us again. That piercing mix of grief and joy... telling myself, she is exactly where she’s meant to be while concurrently thinking, how can I exist without her?
But I did exist. At first, that's all it seemed to be—existing. In time, I made her joy mine, and when that was too hard, I smiled through the tears.

My younger son finished his third year of college this month. He came home for about a week—most of which he spent with friends.
He has an internship, near his school, so for the first time, he’s not “off” for the summer.
He left last night.
Level two, achieved.

And at the same time, we have "level three" with my older son.
Last May, he graduated from college. He found a job about an hour from our house. For the last year, he's lived here with us—a brief reprieve for his father and me.
Every night, he called me as he left work, asking what was for dinner as he started his commute.
He bought a car of his own, and then saved money so he could get an apartment, closer to work.
He and his girlfriend have been looking at apartments since early April.
Last night, he slept in “his” room for the last time.

When I went downstairs to turn off the lights, last night, I moved through echoes of the day we moved into this house.
How can that be eighteen years ago?
My husband and me and three little kids, seven, five and three years old.

It was such a long day, with the whole move taking place in a cold November rain.
My daughter was so excited to have her own bathroom. (Of course, we didn’t know that was temporary, at the time. Her little sister wouldn’t come along for another year.)
My older son chose his bedroom because he liked the windows. I can still see his big dark eyes as he looked over the room that would be his and his alone.
My younger son was just thrilled to be sleeping in a big-boy bed for the first time.

Another wave of memories washed through eighteen years in this house. I relived all the times I tucked my little ones into bed . The bedtime stories. The tears. The irritation when they didn’t stay in their beds. The warm compassion I felt when one of them crawled into our bed after a bad dream.

This morning, my sons’ rooms feel very empty. While their unmade beds scream out that they were just there
just there
such a short time ago, a million things have shifted in irrevocable ways. Long gone is the dinosaur wallpaper that lined each of their bedrooms—one trimmed in blue and the other in green. Bath toys and baby shampoo have been traded for deodorant and shaving cream. The smudges and hand prints have been washed away along with the laughter and cries of “MOM!” from the top of the stairs.

Today, I sift through it all, not yet able to smile through the tears.  I know things are exactly right—that my kids are thriving in their lives. But, before I can really move into that reality, I have to allow myself to feel this moment, painful as it is. I can’t move on until I’ve thoroughly appreciated the masterpieces that have appeared on the canvases of my children’s lives—appeared despite a lot of mistakes… coaxed out with enough love to make up for all that was lacking.

And, I know my baby has only one year of high school left and will begin her journey away so very soon. And, I know I know the day will come when I will get used to the quieter house.
But not yet.

Grief and joy are two sides of the mom-penny, flipped high in the air the day I first found out I was going to be a mom. Ever since, I've had no choice but to shift with that twisting coin. As it turns, I will eventually come to comfort. I will learn to revel in the time I am allowed to share with my children, and in the unwavering knowing of how amazing they are.

But right now, I'm in the shadow of the underside of that coin. Right now, there is loss.

Every transition opens space for something else—I believe that—but I am excruciatingly aware of how hard it is, how empty it feels, when that space first appears.

And today, I miss my boys.
I just miss my sweet little boys.

Forest Wisdom

I walk in a nearby wood, surrounded by the rich, full color of autumn and perfect “Indian Summer” weather. Recently, a friend of mine told me about a question her five-year-old grandson  asked.

"Do the trees know what color their leaves are gonna' be?”

I smile at the innocent wisdom and wonder, too.  Does a tree miss its green newness as its leaves shift to crimson, orange or ochre and then to brown? When the last of its covering is blown away on a strong November wind, does it mourn?

They say it’s darkest just before the dawn, but it also seems things can be at their most beautiful just before the end. The strong, resilient trees nod in the wind, but also whisper, "There's nothing to fear."

I lift a spotted leaf from the ground and hold it up to its mother. Branches sway above me as more bits of color rain down. I lay a hand on the coarse bark of its massive trunk, and listen as it explains. 

 “It’s okay to let go. It’s safe and right and really, it’s all you can do.”

I turn in a full circle, searching maples and ashes, saplings and ancient oaks. They all agree..

I turn around again, and stare accusingly at the steadfast evergreens, who remind me that while they will keep their all- season trimmings, their final summers will one day come.

"But," they say, "in this moment we are as we are."

A breeze pushes my hair back from my face, allowing the sun to speckle my face as it trickles through the leaves.  Eyes closed, I inhale the loamy musk of optimism.

"Yes," I tell the trees. "I understand. Whether or not I'm about to flame into splendor, some form of Spring awaits me after the sleep of Winter. Thank you for helping me to know, and trust that it will be exactly as it’s meant to be. "

Christmas Mourning

Painful growth... as I go through the past a piece at a time, I'm coming to finally release the last of my denial and see my mother's part in all of it. It's hard. She has always been the "good" parent. Yet, where was she when I needed her most?

I twisted my ankle Saturday night. When I mentioned this to my mother - a fall down the deck stairs and a sprained ankle - what do you suppose her response was?

She told me of her dinner plans with my brother.
That's it.
And the thing is, while I felt hurt, dismissed, unheard... I wasn't surprised. It was the catalyst for the grief I'm entering into.

I know - I've always known on some level - that her concern is really only with herself. Even her constant support of my father is selfish in that it is fed by her fear of abandonment.

When given a choice between my father and me, well... there's never been a choice. No matter what he was doing, she stood by as if the world was a perfect place and never said a word.

It is what she has not done that cuts the deepest, and her lack of compassion this weekend was the straw that broke the back of a camel called denial.


Christmas Mourning


The child wants
The child needs
And so the child must believe

Anticipated fancy’s flight
Pledges of a daybreak bright
Hope, a beacon in the night
That never sees the morning light

Hurt and fear and sorrow fade
Promises divert the pain
Longed-for wishes softly prayed
This time let it be okay

The child wants
The child needs
And so the child lives the dream

Words of comfort, Mother’s touch
Doesn’t really hurt so much
Her back is turned, her smile a bluff
It’s what she doesn’t do that’s rough

Keep dreaming child, suckling malaise
While mother seems to proffer grace
With offerings prepared in haste
To keep the world’s eyes from your face

The child wants
The child needs
Watch closely and you’ll see her bleed

Cold as wintry blizzard drifts
Are Christmas morning’s promised gifts
And foiled and failed family trips
Bring about another shift

Mother’s eyes are vacant holes
As empty as the child’s soul
As the fractured walls explode
What does she have; what can she hold?

The child wants
The child needs
The child is grown and she is me

The pretty ribbon’s ripped and cut
The wrapping paper's torn apart
The open box, my fissured heart
At hope's end I must learn to start

Like storefront gifts on Christmas morn
Disguised, empty, and timeworn
True concern and care, stillborn
So sad there’s nothing there to mourn

Grace in My Garden

From people in the meetings, and in books on Co-Dependency, three terms seemed to be used as synonyms:
Acceptance,
Letting go,
and
Forgiveness.
When I first came to CoDA, I heard people speak these words and my heart would immediately close. I would hear that these things were things we needed to do.
It was explained that forgiveness was not for the person who had committed the offense.
Forgiveness was for the victim.
I’d think, “How is that possible? It makes no sense!”

Over time, I began to object to the way people used these terms interchangably.
Acceptance seemed like something I might be able to achieve. Letting go was still out of reach, but the idea that I could accept that my life was how it was and move forward from there was very different from forgiving those who I blamed for putting me on the course I'd been following. To me, it felt like forgiving was the same as saying what had happened to me was okay. It was like saying, “I’m not that important. It’s okay if you hurt me.”

I told my sponsor, last summer, that I would never forgive my father. A defiant child inside me screamed, “You can’t make me!”

In the garden of our lives, the wounds of the past are barren places. Many of us avoid looking into these dark deserts of despair. Fear of these bleak, infertile spaces haunts our thoughts, dreams, actions and aspirations. No one showed us how to care for our garden. We allow ourselves to be victimized and avoid the things we need most. As the sterile darkness spreads, we find ourselves in smaller and smaller cages of denial, but still we refuse to face that which is preventing us from becoming what we can be - what we are meant to be.
It feels hopeless.

In our hands, we hold the seeds to Acceptance, Letting Go, and Forgiveness, but until we take the time to step into the barren places, push the dirt aside, and place the seeds in the ground, there is no hope for them to grow.

For me, I believe I began to bury those seeds in March of last year.
If I had a bottom, that was it.

I recently heard this question asked at a CoDA meeting:
When does one hit bottom?
The answer: When one stops digging.

I looked at the holes I’d been burying myself in and decided, instead, to plant those seeds I’d been hanging onto. Continuing my Inner Child work in therapy has let sunlight in my garden. Working the steps in CoDA has been the much needed rain. In the last year, I believe the seeds have grown into something tangible, something I can almost taste, but still there is something missing.

Acceptance.
In my garden, acceptance is a tangy, not quite ripe orange. It is hard to peal, but I have been working at it for some time. The sections I have free are not as sweet as I would like, but I can get them down without too much discomfort.

Letting go.
With the first sections of orange inside me, the green limes of letting go have become thin-skinned and ripe. I can open them up and breathe in the citrus smell, but the tartness puckers my mouth before I can swallow a mouthful.

Forgiveness.
Yellow lemons grow in my garden. They are forgiveness; beautiful to look at, but impossible to digest. Just opening them makes my eyes water.

I am writing out my eighth step, this weekend. This step is:
“Made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”

The timing on this seems perfect. My “Acceptance Ceremony” is only ten days away. What better time to begin to take responsibility for my part in it all?

I have not been perfect. As Melody Beattie says in “Codependents’ Guide to the Twelve Steps”:

“It is hard to be nurturing, loving nonshaming and present to...if we have never been nurtured or if all we know is control and shame, and if we ourselves are doubled over in pain. Being without boundaries, not being able to set appropriate limits… is doing harm.”

I could continue to play the victim and relieve myself of all responsibility because of what has happened to me in the past, but does that really serve me? Even if it did, wouldn’t this kind of attitude mean that I also have to relieve those who have harmed me of responsibility? Surely their behavior has stemmed from unmet needs and abuse in their own lives….

As suggested in the Beattie book, I am taking breaks to “find peace” when it feels overwhelming. I wrote the first part of this blog post during the first break, and now I am coming back to finish it.

I think I understand what was once missing in my garden.

I believe there is more to creating life than sunlight, water and earth. For my seeds to grow into something I can ingest, something nourishing and sweet, I need divine intervention.

As I said, I have not been perfect. How unbelievably lucky I am that there is a thing called “unconditional love”. If there is anyone who can love unconditionally, it would have to be God. Since I feel the presence of God in my life anytime I sincerely look for it, and since I believe in unconditional love, I know that God loves me unconditionally.
I am not meant to live in shame, anger and fear.
I am not alone.
I have been forgiven.
This kind of presence, forgiveness and unconditional love has a name.
It’s called Grace.

Grace is the final ingredient I need to make my garden flourish. Grace is like sugar, sprinkled generously on the tart and tangy fruit I am finally harvesting. Sweetened, watered and warmed by the sun, what was once impossible to swallow is becoming something too sweet to resist.

An Awareness of the Grace of God

One of my odd quirks is that I have a very hard time understanding metaphors or allegorical speech. I know it's odd. I create metaphors all the time in my writing and so some people find this surprising. 
Because of my concrete view of the world, I have a hard time knowing what is meant by simple "old sayings" like:

A rolling stone gathers no moss (well, it couldn't possibly while it was moving, but, it can't roll forever, and eventually, when it stops, moss might grow on it... right?)

Don't cry over spilled milk (it’s only milk, why would I cry, unless it was the only milk I had and I had a hungry child, and then we both might cry...?)

Don’t burn your bridges behind you (well, no, that would be stupid. What if I wanted to go back? But if the bridge was dangerous, maybe there's a way around…?)

You get the idea. For some reason it seems to me that people are purposely saying something other than what they are trying to say, and then everyone but me seems to get know what it's supposed to mean.

So, I have trouble with a lot of what I read, and it seems to be especially true when I read books on religion, philosophy, and spirituality. The language sounds pretty and deep and intriguing, but I don’t know what they are trying to say.

Recently, someone I admire gave me a book called “Practicing the Presence”, by Joel S. Goldsmith. She suggested that I read it one paragraph at a time, and meditate on each paragraph until I understood it.

Today I read the first two paragraphs (they were quite short). I read them both about a dozen times. I thought deeply about each word, phrase, and sentence for quite a while.
I pulled it out again, about an hour ago, hoping that some meaning would have seeped into my brain, but if it did, it was like water running through a sieve. (See, I can come up with a metaphor and likely you know what I mean. If I look at it too closely, I wonder how thoughts could be water, and where they would go if they ran through my mind and out again... but that's beside the point.)

So, I spent the last hour deciphering the words and rewriting what I think it means in a way that make sense to me.

Here are the original words from the book:

The secret of harmonious living is the development of spiritual consciousness. In that consciousness, fear and anxiety disappear, and life becomes meaningful with fulfillment as its keynote.
The degree of spiritual consciousness which we attain can be measured by the extent to which we relinquish our dependence on the external world of form, and place our faith and confidence in something greater than ourselves, in the Infinite Invisible, which can surmount any and every obstacle. It is an awareness of the grace of God.

Here is how I broke it down:

The secret of (What I am searching for/trying to understand)

harmonious living (feeling like I am living the life I want to live/knowing that I am exactly where I should be)

is the development of (develop/grow)

spiritual consciousness. (a connection to God.)

In that consciousness, (When I feel connected to God,)

fear and anxiety disappear, and life

becomes meaningful (feels worthwhile)

with fulfillment (I had to look this up because I didn’t have a clear idea of what was meant by fulfillment in this context)

Fulfillment: a feeling of satisfaction at having achieved your desires
• the act of consummating something (a desire or promise etc)

• fulfilling - Which causes fulfillment; emotionally or artistically satisfying


with fulfillment (hope/contentment/satisfaction)

as its keynote. (at my center)

The degree of spiritual consciousness which we attain (My closeness to God)

can be measured by

the extent to which we relinquish our dependence (how much I can let go of)

on the external world of form, (the physical world)

and place our faith and confidence in (and trust)

something greater than ourselves, in the Infinite Invisible, (God)

which can surmount any and every obstacle. (to take me down the path I am meant to be on.)

It is an awareness of the grace of God. (Again, this phrase – the Grace of God – I had heard numerous times but still was not sure what it really meant.)

From wikipedia: The New Testament word that is usually translated "grace" is in Greek charis (χαρις). which literally means "that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness".
From a website about faith: When we speak of God's grace, we mean all the good gifts we enjoy freely in life. There are so many. We could spend a lifetime celebrating them: blackberries, buttercups, moonlight, salamanders, etc. A more summary approach is to affirm that life itself is the fundamental gift, with all its delights. For us, the gift of life includes the wondrous gift of being human, finding ourselves plopped down in the midst of the larger gift of creation. That is the bedrock of grace—creation, life, human being. As humans, we are given a unique place in the created order. The creation stories in Genesis are ways of celebrating this original grace. In the stories, God pronounces all creation, including humankind, very good, that is, full of grace.


It (my connection to God)

is an awareness (is knowing/trusting)

of the Grace of God (the gifts God has for me)

And this is my final interpretation of the passage:

The way to be who I am meant to be is to grow in my connection to God. When I feel connected to God, fear and anxiety disappear, and life feels worthwhile. When I feel connected to God, hope, contentment and satisfaction are at my center. My closeness to God can be measured by how much of the physical world I can turn over to God and how much I can trust God to take me down the path I am meant to be on. If I trust in God I will receive the gifts he has for me. I will find my true path and feel peace in knowing that I am exactly where I need to be.

I put this all here because I am hoping that some of you can tell me if this feels right? I still can’t seem to look at what was written in that book and read it to mean what I wrote… so did I embellish and invent what I wrote or is that what others would also find in these two paragraphs?