One Sweet Journey

October 21, 2012 By

The last of Mom’s ashes scattered in Long Island Sound.

Two weeks ago Bill and I went up to Long Island, to scatter my mother’s ashes. I worried about the trip for weeks ahead of time, waking every morning with the same questions.  “Am I doing the right thing and why?  Will releasing her in this way really bring me peace and healing?”  And there were the two questions that I can never seem to leave behind:  “Am I a nut case and what will other people think of me for doing this? “

Every morning that I woke to these questions I’d answer them with a few more questions, “I don’t know and what does it matter?  I feel called to honor Mom in this way. So what if I am a tad crazy and what does it matter what anyone else thinks? “

The day I began the letting go it was chilly and blustery with rain showers off and on. We found the vacant lot in the town of Patchogue, where her house once stood when she was a just a teen.  Around the corner was the high school that she attended, and ten or so miles away we were shown the gravesite where her mother and father are buried. We also found the house that my dad bought for her after we all moved to Vermont in 1960.  She hated the long dark New England winters and when she couldn’t take the North Country any more, she’d escape to the more comfortable world of Long Island. I left a bit of her in all of those places.

The next day, we visited a beach on the north shore of the Island, where Mom often took my brothers and me to gather fresh clams for eating on the half-shell, for steaming and for her delicious chowder. My favorites were steamed long neck clams dunked in melted butter, strongly flavored with fresh garlic.

Above that beach still sits the pavilion where I’d occasionally attend parties with my parents. A square dance caller would move the adults about the wooden floor, while us kids gathered lightning bugs, played tag under the stars, and ran in and out of the pavilion for frosty bottles of soda pop, chips and slices of sweet, pink watermelon. Seedless melons hadn’t yet been invented and we’d spit the numerous seeds out of our mouths, trying to be the one who could spit them the farthest.

After lunch in Northport, where I graduated from high school, we enjoyed a treat at the soda fountain where I used to hang out as a kid.  It’s still owned by the same family that opened the business in 1929.  I swear the stools at the counter are the same ones I sat on when I lived not far from there over fifty years ago. Bill ordered a Black and White Malt and in honor of Mom, I chose homemade lemon custard ice cream, drizzled with hot fudge sauce, which was Mom’s favorite treat.  I have to agree it’s one of the best, especially when the person who dishes it out for you, makes the ice cream themselves.

Our last stop was out on Eaton’s Neck where we lived for about five years before moving to New England.  I scattered the last of her ashes in front of the house we lived in, at the tiny public beach nearby, and directly into Long Island Sound. As the last ashes blew into the salt water where I used to spend my summers, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction and release from parts of my life that were happy but also extremely painful.

I felt lighter and taller, having let go of a heavy burden I had been hauling around with me for years. Mom and I had a deep love/hate relationship, especially at the end of her life.  As I visited the places where she grew up and spent both sad and happy times, I felt an intimacy with her that I haven’t often felt. Her own upbringing had been abusive and I never would have been able to reach the understanding and forgiveness I felt that day, for both of us, had I provided her with a traditional burial.

Amongst the revisiting of place, I also had the opportunity to reunite with two cousins that I haven’t seen in fifty years.  When I was just a little kid, they were my favorite people in the whole world.  While Joanne is five months older than I am, Mary Anne is five years older. I always felt in awe of them and loved being with them. Though we’ve kept in touch via Christmas cards over the years, it hasn’t been enough to keep us in each other’s lives. Being with them was extra special medicine for me and I have no intention of allowing time to pass us by again.

At the end of our Long Island sojourn, Bill and I spent three nights in New York City. We saw several shows and a few movies besides visiting the church where my grandparents on my dad’s side were married and where I was christened. We also visited the addresses of where my dad once lived and where his father opened his cabinet shop a century ago.  There were no signs that they had ever walked those streets, but it was easy for me to imagine the horse-dawn carts and the narrower streets that have been replaced by our mad, contemporary world.

So here I am back at home in Virginia.  Those nagging, early morning questions don’t haunt me every morning as they did  just a few weeks ago.  They’ve been replaced with deep gratitude for the gift of the journey I’ve been privileged to go on and the sweet love of family that never dies. I may be a tad crazy, but to my knowledge, no one really cares.  They all have their own craziness to deal with and it’s what makes all of us humans one big nutty family. I hope your journey is as filled with love as mine has been.

Filed Under: Childhood, family, Gratefulness, Life, love, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, Time, Travels Tagged With: , , ,

Reid’s Barn, A Hint Of What’s To Come

October 5, 2012 By

The front of Reid’s barn, June, 2012. Photo by W.H. Rough

I often mention that I’m working on a memoir when I publish a post here.  I’ve been thinking that it’s time to share a little bit of what I’ve been working on.  The following piece will most likely be included in the final manuscript along with other stories about my brother, Reid and my family.

Reid, in 2006.

It’s a hot and sticky July night. The clock on the nightstand reads 2:15.  I get up to use the bathroom.  Five minutes later, back in bed, I’m more awake than I want to be. I can’t get comfortable and the sleepy, middle-of-the-night brain fog that usually pulls me back into deep sleep is nowhere to be found.  I search my mind, trying to uncover what I’m worried about so that I can tell it to get lost and that I’ll deal with it in the morning. But nothing rises to the surface. I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and pray for sleep to return.

A few minutes later, the deep rumbling of a truck outside on the street, gets my attention.  Our neighborhood, though only blocks from a major road and the University, is always extremely quiet. It’s not a place you’d normally find a big truck beeping it’s way up or down the street during the wee hours.  It’s not trash day and besides, they make their rounds during daylight hours.

When I open my eyes, I’m instantly aware of flashing red lights reflected on the ceiling, giving the room a surreal look. Anxiety begins to flood my core.  I always have an eye or an ear out for danger and am ever more on the alert since I live across the street from a frail, elderly gentleman, in his nineties. I can’t help myself.  I seem to be wired for worry.

Bill stirs. Opening the shutters, we see no activity, except for the disturbing sight of a fire truck parked in front of the house next-door. Its swirling red lights sweep through the night. Several firemen, dressed in full firefighting gear, emerge from the dark, get back in the truck and drive off.  Whatever the emergency was, it’s over.  I go back to bed falling into a restless sleep.

The next morning a call from my neighbors, away for the summer, explains the fire truck mystery. Their security company notified them in the middle of the night that their fire alarm had gone off and that the fire department was on its way to check it out. They found nothing. The alarm had apparently malfunctioned. George tells me the problem will be fixed in the next couple of days and sends apologies for waking up the neighborhood.

Later in the morning, checking my email and Facebook page, I stumble across an alarming post from my nephew’s former wife, and gather that there has been a fire at her ex’s home, but that everyone is okay. That would be the house that my brother, Reid, built and considered home when he was alive.  I try calling Jesse, my nephew, who lives there now, but no one answers the phone. I try to rest in the knowledge that everyone is supposed to be okay.

Jesse finally answers the phone at 9 PM.  Blessedly everyone is fine and the house was never in danger of catching fire. But the story he tells me is hair-raising. It seems that around 2:30 that morning, just about the time Bill and I were up and watching the fire truck outside our window here in Virginia, a thunderstorm went through the area of New Hampshire where he and his new wife are located. The big barn, I always referred to as Reid’s barn, was struck by lightning. Fifteen minutes later, when the fire department arrived to contain the blaze, the barn was fully engulfed in flames.  All that is left is a large, charred patch of ground and a hole, where the barn once stood.  That the fire department was checking for a fire next door to my own home, at the same time that Reid’s barn was burning sent a chill down my spine.

My grandfather’s workbench hidden beneath piles of Reid’s stuff. Photo by W.H. Rough.

Because there was little to no storage space in the house, Jesse and his new wife, Lisa, had stored most, if not all of their belongings in the barn, including clothing, family photographs, books and Jesse’s extensive collection of vinyl records.  All of it was lost, along with the remains of Reid’s things, his art work, several 12 string guitars, some clothing and the carpenter’s workbench our grandfather had built when he came to this country from Poland in 1912.  Lisa and Jesse had just begun putting the finishing touches on several horse stalls on the ground floor for her horses that were due to arrive the following weekend.  Thank goodness they were not yet stabled there.  They would have most likely perished in the fire. Both Lisa and Jesse, feel sad, but that no one was hurt makes all of us feel better and fortunately, the barn and its contents had been insured.

I don’t know when that barn was built, but it was a fixture on the property when Reid bought the place over twenty years ago.  After he built the house and his second wife died, he moved into the barn so that he could rent out the house to bring in some income.  It was there that he lived until 2008, when he was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer.  He then moved in with his lover, Lee, who took care of him until he died in June of 2010.

Prior to that, on my occasional visits to New England, Reid never invited me into the barn to see where he was living.  Bill had managed an invitation once when he was visiting there alone. He told me that the place was a mess. He described the barn as filled to the rafters with all manner of junk from scrap metal to cork floats that Reid had collected. There was very little room to move about because the stacks of lumber, tools and whatever Reid took a fancy to, just kept piling up. A number of old, dead Volvos were parked in the field next to the barn from which Reid removed parts to keep his ancient, Volvo sedan on the road.  Reid was a hoarder.

He lived in a quasi apartment he put together on the top-level in the barn. There was no running water. A wood stove tucked away in a corner kept the top floor, his living space, warm in the winter.  But in order to get up there, one had to make his way through unmarked passages, past piles of junk and then up a ladder.  After hearing this, my mother, who was by that time living with Bill and I, complained of repetitive nightmares in which the barn caught fire and Reid was unable to escape.

The first time I was ever inside the barn was just a few months ago on a visit I made to Vermont and New Hampshire. I’d last been up there in 2010, for the memorial celebration after Reid died. I’d been planning to make another trip to New England for over a year after that, but all kinds of excuses would present themselves and I’d sigh with relief that I didn’t have to do it just yet.  I apparently wasn’t ready to revisit my past life in Vermont, which was loaded with issues that I knew one day I’d need to address. As I began slowly writing and examining stories about my life for my memoir, I felt I needed to go, but lacked the courage to move forward until this year. Reid’s life and death were among the major items on my list that I needed to revisit.

During his last months, when Reid was very sick, but trying to make the most of his remaining life, Bill and I were moving into a new home.  I was dealing with severe anxiety and depression. Just a year earlier I had discontinued taking Paxil, and was still struggling with the effects of withdrawal. My deep sleep patterns had ended when I began weaning myself off the drug and I had been sleeping for only three hours a night, for almost a year. I was also seeing a therapist who was helping me explore the trauma I’d experienced as a child.  That I was losing my brother, with whom I’d had a deep love/hate relationship, didn’t help.

I was unable to be with him when he died.  The rushed, two-day trip Bill and I made to New Hampshire to celebrate his life was too short a time in which to wrap my head around the fact that I would never see him again.  Between bouts of tears, I walked my way through those two days feeling numb and unable to digest what was happening.  At home again, I blindly dove into each day, getting settled into my new home, and planning my first trip alone in years. Two months later my diagnosis of endometrial cancer sent me reeling.  I had set aside no time to mourn the loss of my brother or to connect with the deep compassion I had once felt for him, but was unable to express during the last year of his life.

Walking into the barn this past June, I was struck with all that I hadn’t known about him. For the first time, I accepted that Reid was a hoarder. Though Family members and friends had repeatedly told me about the way he was living, I couldn’t take it in until I saw it with my own eyes. Though Jesse had already begun getting rid of what Reid had collected, it was impossible not to feel Reid’s presence. I felt as though he had just gone out to do a few chores. There were notes he had left for himself on scraps of wood left over from his various woodworking projects. Lists of things he needed to buy on his next trip to town, to-do lists, and a list of friends and their phone numbers, that he needed to call.  On one shelf sat an unopened jar of mayonnaise, which over the two years since his death, had separated into two parts, a small glob of white solid matter, submerged in a pool of thick yellow oil.  His clothes still hung in a makeshift closet. A collection of tiny rodent bones and arrowheads he had found nearby were displayed in small baskets.  Pieces of his artwork and the whimsical birdcages he built were hung from the walls and rafters.  I was overwhelmed.

After leaving the next day on the next leg of my journey, I realized I had taken no photos of what I saw in the barn and had neglected to take a small memento. I had planned on taking one of his lists written in his big, bold handwriting, feeling that if I kept it in a pocket, I’d be able to connect with him, because for the first time, I understood who he was.

Though my visit to Reid’s barn helped my grieving process, I still find it difficult to comprehend that my brother, Zed, and I are the only remaining members of our family.  It was a family larger than life in so many ways.  The hurt and pain we caused each other has followed me through the years, scars that never completely fade.  The barn is gone, as is Reid and both of my parents, yet I continue searching for the love our family so rarely offered each other. Sometimes I feel terribly alone, wandering through the scene of a crime I will never understand.

I am convinced that the burning of the barn was not just an accidental act of Mother Nature. To me it is more than coincidence that on the exact night, at the exact time that the barn burned to the ground, a fire truck drove its way into my sleep. Within the flashing red lights, I can see Reid, in full rage, casting bolts of lightning with his hammer, breaking the shackles that bound him to his earthly existence. He is now at peace and has also freed me from the myths we created together as we grew into our lives.

Filed Under: Addiction, family, Fear, Life, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, Vermont, wonderings Tagged With: , , , ,

Letting Go

September 29, 2012 By

Perogies while being prepared.

Things Change.  One minute the sun is shining, the next it’s raining cats and dogs. I might be really sad at noon, and then find myself happy and laughing hysterically by four o’clock. When I have a day that makes me want to shoot myself in the head, the next day I may be filled with uncontrollable excitement to get on with my life. None of us ever knows from one minute to the next what is before us.  The past is done, never to return.  The future hasn’t happened yet, so how can we truly plan what we will be doing next? Changes are constant. They can be large or small, altering our lives in many ways. Some are good. Others bring on excruciating pain and suffering.  The one thing that never changes, is the need to let go of whatever we are clinging to, so that we can ride the waves toward new beginnings.  It can be hard. So very hard.  Especially when we are dealing with major loss.

Right now, there are lots of changes happening in my life, and lots of things I need to let go of.  Though there is nothing terribly earth shattering, they’re bothersome and sometimes sad.  For one thing, I’m aging.  Nothing works quite the way it used to.  I can no longer wiggle my ears or do fifty jumping jacks all in a row. It’s to be expected, of course, but I’m loving my later years for my ability to be more honest and to say what I need to say without embarrassing myself.

Just a little over three weeks ago, I decided to go gluten-free.  I’m feeling absolutely terrific.  All of my aches and pains are gone, food cravings are a thing of the past, my energy levels have risen to new heights, and I’m slowly losing weight … about a pound a week.  It’s miraculous and I love every minute of discovering the new me.  What’s to complain about?

I think of Christmas and the traditional foods we’ve always enjoyed in the past.  Like the perogies, forever my favorite holiday food, since the beginning of time.  Little packages of pasta, filled with a variety of fillings, like sauerkraut, mushrooms, or potato and cheese, are to die for.  We smother them with caramelized onions and sour cream, and spend our time eating them in food heaven.  But no more.  I do take solace in their sweet memory and know I’ll probably come up with something that tastes similar but doesn’t use pasta.

Seven weeks ago we adopted an adorable little terrier.  As of three days ago, he is no longer with us. We had to return him to the shelter because he began beating up our old guy, Sam.  He also turned out to be destructive, shredding a new chair cover, chewing on the woodwork, and then a table.  Sam was not hurt too badly the last time Terry started a fight, but everyone, including the trainer, the vet and Terry’s former foster mom, agreed that things could take a very bad turn if we didn’t do something. The amount of training he would need was something we couldn’t commit to. And my first concern was for Sam, who was already coming to us for protection, whenever Terry would get too rowdy.

We’re feeling pretty glum at this point and despite his problems, all of us, including Sam, miss the dickens out of him.  He was a very sweet little guy most of the time.  I’d recently discovered his love for water, when visiting with a neighbor. He’d stepped down onto the first step in her pool and spent the next ten minutes just sitting in the shallow water with a huge grin on his face. I promised myself I’d get him a small toddler’s pool for next summer, but then the last and most injurious fight took place.  I spent the last day he was with us in tears, hugging him and wishing for a fairytale ending, in which he suddenly sees the error of his ways and straightens himself out.  But the true fairytale will happen when he finds a new forever home, where he is the one and only kingpin, preferably with a few kids, whom he adores, and a large space to run in.  There has already been some interest in him from others looking for a small dog and I’m feeling it could happen very soon.

My Mom

My biggest letting go for now, will happen in a week or so when I take my mother’s ashes up to Long Island, to scatter them in the places where she was truly happy.  Some of her ashes are already buried next to my Dad in New Hampshire and some are under the Smoke Tree, we planted in her honor, here in Virginia.  She was not all that happy in New England, and after we, as a family, moved to Vermont, she went back to the Island often, spending her time staying in a small cottage, and visiting friends and relatives.  When she died in 2007, I was not able to plan a funeral or a memorial for her.  I was spent from years of being her caretaker.  I was also very angry with her, unable to find a middle ground where I would be ready and able to let her go with forgiveness and love.  Though it’s taken a while, I’m ready now.  I do miss her terribly and often find myself wanting to call her, to let her in on any exciting news I have to share.  It’s funny, but I do think she knows it all anyway and is up there, sitting on the edge of a cloud, still trying to run the show.

I don’t know how I’ll feel once I finally commit Mom to the earth and sea. Lately, I’ve felt a few second thoughts creep in, suggesting that maybe it would be better if she stayed in the closet where I’ve kept her all this time. But the thing is, I know I need to set her free, so that I can move on with my own life.  Mom’s hold on me began to die this past June, when we had to put her cat, Cleo, to sleep. That calico kitty was my last living connection to Mom. With her, I learned to forgive Mom and myself for the pain we caused each other.  Now it’s time to set myself free as well. I wish to go on living a glorious, rich life, and to enjoy every moment as they arise, without regret of any kind.

 What kinds of changes are going on in your life?  What do you need to let go of?

Filed Under: Animals I Love, family, Gratefulness, Healthy Living, Navigating Through Life Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Writing My Life

September 22, 2012 By

At five, standing in my grandparent’s garden.

When I told a friend a while back that I’m in the process of writing a memoir, she asked me what it was going to write about. I struggled with what to tell her. I wasn’t very clear yet myself, but trying to find words that I thought would serve the purpose, I said, “Well, it’s about my life, how I came to be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how I’ve brought peace into my life.”

Sufficing as a fair to middling, but far too general a description, it didn’t answer the deeper questions that had been rolling around in my head when I started the writing. “What am I going to include?  What do I want to say and why do I even want to do this?  Am I up to the challenge of reliving some of the darker moments of my life?”

In my first conversations with myself about writing my life, I didn’t have a clue as to how to start.  So I started with stories as they came to me. I published some here, on this blog.  I wrote the happy stories, avoiding the dark stuff, not ready to spill the beans and their big stink. Slowly, I started allowing the ghosts waiting outside the door into my studio and began digging deeper, becoming more honest with and about myself.

Many have told me that I’ve lived a fascinating life and should get it all down on paper. They told me it would be helpful to others who’ve suffered through undiagnosed PTSD. Many people don’t understand that it can be caused by lesser events than living through a tsunami or being a veteran of a cruel and arduous war.

But my first concern was just getting it all out of my internal storeroom, knowing that once I started getting my shame out, I’d feel lighter and happier. I could downsize my memory bank, just as I was downsizing my belongings and living space. I felt that writing through my struggles, I could begin to put the fragmented pieces of my life back together, reaching a new understanding of who I am and how I got to be me.  I knew it could open up the doors I’ve kept locked for far too long and giving me a new perspective on where I’ve come from.

As I was trying to get started on this project, I was diagnosed with Endometrial cancer, which grows in the lining of the Uterus. I was told by a number of doctors that if one has to have cancer, this is the best kind to have. It’s easily treated, depending of course, on its stage when it’s discovered.  Even so, I was extremely frightened. Cancer is the killer in my family. Heart disease has rarely been an issue. All of my relatives, who have passed on, died of complications and the affects cancer had on their bodies. We’ve had cancer of the lungs, bladder, esophagus, nasal cavity, and colorectal cancer.  I found it disturbing to think that unless I’m run over by a dump truck or die of some other external cause, my life would most probably end in the same kind of suffering that my forebears in death went through.  I did not want that for myself.

Treatment for my cancer was a simple hysterectomy, removing all of my reproductive organs. As long as it would be gone, I didn’t care about the loss of parts of myself. At my age, I wouldn’t be needing them anyway. I now visit my Oncologist twice a year to be rechecked and to date there has been no reoccurrence. I’m told that the chances of it returning are rare and should it show up again it is treatable.

While spending several months recuperating from the surgery, I decided that there was no time to worry about cancer and its potential return.  I had no time to feel sorry for myself or the events in my life that had brought me to this moment. I wanted a new a perspective on how to proceed through the rest of my days. Life has been hard and cruel at times and I still bear the scars of child abuse. I’ve struggled with depression, extreme anxiety and spent years thinking of myself as broken and unfit. I learned about and began to accept that I’m an HSP, or a highly sensitive person. Whatever the cause, whether genetic or learned over time, I am an introvert, who has continuously tried to be the extrovert that I thought everyone expected me to be.  I was constantly at war with myself, feeling unworthy of the good things in my life, wondering what was wrong with me, and why I couldn’t reach my unthinkable dream of being just like everyone else.  In a word, Normal.

My cancer has given me a second chance at life. With the help of a therapist whose specialty was treating trauma, I had already begun the journey.  There was much healing to be done, both from the surgical standpoint and from years of blaming, hating, and abusing myself, because I was different and didn’t seem to fit in anywhere.

I can say with confidence that the most effective part of the healing process has been my memoir writing and allowing myself to relive certain aspects of life.  It has been difficult, but I’ve also discovered the many joyful times I spent with my parents, who unable to cope with their own lives, abused me and my brothers.  I’m learning about forgiveness. I’m learning to love myself and that I am worthy, and a good person.

I’m still at work on my memoir and cannot say how long it will take me to finish it. I need time to navigate through my memories and often need to take breaks between the intense chapters in order to reground myself. Being able to laugh at myself and to be joyful about my newest perceptions is constantly rewarding me.  When I’m finished writing my life and it hopefully becomes a book, I will be most happy if those who read my words will find within them, peace and a new perspective on suffering.

Are you writing a memoir or keeping a journal?  Are you finding it easy or difficult to write your stories?  Do you feel that writing about your life is an opportunity to heal the most painful parts of your journey? 

Filed Under: Books, Childhood, family, Gratefulness, Life, love, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, stories, Time, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

In The Company Of Ghosts

June 2, 2012 By

Jamestown, May 2012. Archeological digs in the foreground and a replica of the structure of the barracks in the background.

Time can only disclose or unfold itself in our now, and as it does, all of time and all the world unfolds too.

Adam Frank,  Time and Again

One afternoon, not too long ago Bill said,” Hey, let’s go to Williamsburg next weekend. It’s been on our bucket list for years and I’m ready.”  We’d put it on our list of nearby historic sites to see thirty-three years ago when we first moved here to Virginia, along with those other in our back yard sites, like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Ashlawn, the home of President James Monroe, and Montpelier where James and Dolly Madison lived while our country was just a young thing.  We’ve already visited those places and always enjoy the opportunity to dig into local history as it plays into the history of our nation.

I hemmed and hawed, feeling somewhat lazy. I wanted to write and tend to the garden. Those two activities shine as regular excuses, frequently keeping me from living the more spontaneous life I want to live. But after a good night’s sleep I changed my mind, figuring it would be good to take a weekend off.  At my age, you never know how close you are to running out of time and it’s important to do enjoyable things. Besides that we’d be able to tick it off one thing from our massive bucket list, which includes “dream” trips to Hawaii, South Africa and Mongolia.  Williamsburg, being less than two hours away, is not in the same category as those other three, making it much more affordable.

So on a lovely spring morning we packed up the car and headed out for an adventure.  We took our time, choosing one of Virginia’s most historic and scenic routes rather than the Interstate.  Along that tree-lined corridor, huge plantations flourished and tobacco became king after the British began settling in Virginia. A number of those old homes have been restored and are open for tours. We’d once visited several of them on a quick day trip, always believing that in-person, hands-on visits to places of historic value make the everyday mundaneness of any era extremely enlightening.

With the exception of a history course in college, the study of the past had always been a bore for me.  All I ever needed to do was memorize dates and I passed with flying colors. In the classes I was forced to take in high school, it seems that the whys, hows, and wherefores didn’t matter a whole lot.  But as I think about it now, maybe I just wasn’t that interested at the time, finding attractive young men more to my liking.

In Jamestown, we went directly to the spot where British entrepreneurs arrived in May of 1607, establishing the first permanent colony in what would eventually be known as The United States of America. Wandering through the museum that houses thousands of artifacts as well as human remains gathered in archeological digs, we saw old tools, rusted knives, pottery, bits of jewelry and so much more, all used by those first settlers and those who followed in their footsteps.  A fascinating exhibit of a grave with the remains of a thirty-something year old man, showed how historians go about learning about whom the deceased might be. The kind of coffin a person was buried in, along with other bits and pieces found in the grave, and hand written, personal journals of the time, make guesses fairly simple.  But DNA not always possible is always the clincher.

Outside, on that sun-warmed afternoon, we went on a short but informative archeological tour with a National Park Ranger. We watched as fragments of the past were uncovered while we stood looking down into the trenches, where everyday aspects of life in the early sixteen hundreds came to the surface. Everyone we talked to, rangers and archeologists alike, spoke of how exciting it is to work in a place where history unfolds on a daily basis, bringing change to their perspectives on what life was like for those early settlers. It was impossible for me not to feel the presence of those long-gone souls as they went about their lives struggling to survive the difficulties they were faced with on their arrival in this new world: extreme drought, infestations of biting insects and internal unrest among the local Native American population who were at war with one another.

I thought of my father’s parents who came to this country from Poland early in the 1900s. My grandmother, Michalina Podhajecka, not yet seventeen, arrived at Ellis Island on March 16, 1911. My grandfather Wladislaw Zabski, later know as John Walter Zabski followed in September of 1912.  I felt their presence and those of so many others on a visit to Ellis Island several years ago. Their journeys were not trips of discovery, but a response to conditions in their homelands. They had heard the talk about jobs for all in the land of the free and made their way toward new lives, leaving family, friends and known reality behind them.  I can only imagine the mix of terror, heartbreak, hope, and excitement that must have accompanied them on their odyssey to find the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Though my forefathers did not face the same difficulties as the early British who came to an unknown land to discover natural resources that they could take back to England and to expand the British Empire, their struggles must have been similar in that they came not knowing what they would find.  It is one thing to venture out from familiarity, returning to it at the end of each day, and quite another to leave it behind forever, in many cases never experiencing it again.  Both are ventures into the unknown yet choices that effect every tomorrow like the expanding circles caused by dropping a pebble into a pool of still water.

Mesmerized and excited by what we saw, Bill and I reflected on where we might be today had we chosen to be historians and/or archeologists rather than the artists that we are. What ifs follow all of us all through life as we go about making choices based on the circumstances we are dealt. Frightening intersections in our lives where we must choose which road to travel are shrouded in mystery and though we make plans for the future based on which road we decide to take, we never know exactly where we’ll end up. And we have no clue how our actions will affect the future.

At my age I have no intention of crawling down into a muddy pit digging through soil and rocks to find a piece of pottery, a gold coin, or an old rusted belt buckle, but I certainly love the thrill of piecing together the lives of those who came before me.

Though we didn’t have enough time to tour all of the sites, we were equally enthralled the following day when we visited the location of the battle at Yorktown where in 1781, along with the French, we defeated the British in the last battle of the American Revolution, finally bringing independence to our United States of America. Though we celebrate 1776 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the year we gained our freedom, it wasn’t until the signing of the Paris Treaty in 1783, that we became truly free and out from under British rule. In this 2012 election year my bewildered perspective has become more hopeful by seeing what our forefathers were able do even when chaos and disagreement ruled the day.

At Yorktown, I found the peacefulness of that long-ago battlefield quite eerie as I reflected on what happened in that place where I was standing. Though I saw cars traveling slowly along a country road and other evidence of our 21st century world inserting itself in the distance, I found myself wandering all sides of the line of battle. British, American and French flags waving in the breeze across a large expanse of field indicated the positions of the differing armies. I thought about the men who fought here. On all sides, seven hundred and eighty lives were lost here. The number of those injured is unknown, but it must have been significant. What were their hopes, fears, and dreams? Where had they come from and what had they left behind? Where did the survivors go when all was said and done? What does it have to say about our world today? What will those who inhabit this place five hundred years from now think about when they look at what we have left behind?

Those questions naturally led me to think of my father who fought in Italy, France and Germany during World War II.  Married to him the day before he joined the army, my mom always said, “He came home a man I didn’t know.”  He obviously suffered what can only be described now as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He was moody, abusive, angry, and fearsome, making life difficult for himself and the family.  So that I could better understand who he was, part of me would have liked to be with him as he fought his way into nests of Nazis, killing them and watching as his own men were killed. Those of us who have never experienced war have no way of knowing what conflict is really like. All we can do is wonder and imagine our way to understanding and that is not the same as being there.

At home again, I still feel a pull toward immersing myself in the world of history and archeology. But I’m quickly reminded that my journey into writing memoir is similar to the work of historians and archeologists. As I excavate my memories and the lives of my family, I’m discovering relics that inform me of who I am and where I come from. I am a writer and an artist as well as an archeologist and a historian. I am all of those when I spend time talking with a cousin five years my senior, who knew me as an infant. I read through my father’s military records telling me how and where he courageously fought in World War II. I wander in and out of memories and wonder how he must have felt when he first walked into the concentration camps that he liberated at the end of the war. I wonder what exactly influenced my grandparents to come to this country from Poland. What did it feel like to leave their homes with only a few belongings, arriving in a strange, new land where they couldn’t speak the language?  Never having asked them those questions when I had the opportunity, I can only imagine what they might have said.

All I really know is that one day when we are grown enough, we set out on a great adventure. We go down one road and then another. We stop to listen at the crossroads to what our hearts tell us and then we move on. At times it’s a struggle.  At other times it’s less difficult.  It is never perfect and we don’t arrive where we thought we would.  We can never imagine what we will discover about the past or what we might contribute to the future. Each of us is like that pebble, dropped into a still pool, continually changing the status quo.

Filed Under: family, Life, Memoir, Time, Travels, War Tagged With: , , , ,