The Best Laid Plans

October 27, 2012 By

A bit over a week ago, I was hit with what felt like a ton of bricks … a cold/flu that according to what I’m hearing has had others in and around Charlottesville, dropping like flies.  It started with a slight sore throat one morning. By 4 pm that afternoon, I could barely stand.  I spent two days in bed, sleeping, reading, and feeling very sorry for myself.  My head was stuffed up, I went through a box of tissues in one day, and my throat was on fire.  I had a headache, and when I got out of bed, I felt light-headed, and had to move slowly so that I didn’t fall over.  Bill had to be away for some of the time, so I had to get my own meals and walk the dog.  Thankfully by the third day I was feeling somewhat better and if I rested between chores, it wasn’t too bad.  I was mad at the world for allowing me to get sick, I missed my mother who took good care of me when I got sick, and tried hard to make the best of it.

Over a week later, I’m still not 100%, but feel well enough to go out to shop and finally get to my desk.  Needless to say writing has gone by the wayside for quite a while and I’m feeling a bit frustrated.  But this too shall pass, as did the disappointment I felt when we had to cancel plans for a visit from my daughter, Lisa, her partner, Deena, and the two best grandkids a grandmother could ever have.  At 7 AM this past Thursday, when they were about to leave home and trek up to Virginia, Miss Zoe had a bad sore throat and a fever.  So we all conferred and decided that staying put in North Carolina was the best thing for them to do.  We did get together later in the day on Skype.  Zoe looked just the way I had felt earlier in the week, unable to keep her eyes open and rather weak.  Noah was full of mischief, smiles and happiness, but kept saying he was really missing us.

It’s actually turned out to be a blessing in many ways.  Canceling the trip gave me some extra recovery time and I’ve been able to catch up on a few things I’ve been wanting to do for weeks.  Also, that Frankenstorm, Sandy, is making it’s way up the coast and will bring big rain and winds has left us feeling grateful that the trip was called off.  Lisa and Deena would have spent the whole  time here worrying about their trip home, and I would have been concerned until I got a call telling me that they had arrived home safely.  So we’ve all been spared of worry and uncertainty, though we are also feeling sad that our plans had to be postponed.  We will see them all at Christmas and look forward to spending a good week together.

The forecast this morning said that starting sometime late tomorrow we’ll see the winds pick up. The worst day here is supposed to be Monday when we could get from 1 to 4 inches of rain and sustained winds of 35 to 40 miles per hour.  On Tuesday, we could see some wet snow flakes but only the higher elevations should see any accumulation of white stuff.  Knock wood, it sounds like we are going to be very fortunate.  Things could get extremely difficult the further north you are and the coast line is supposed to get a real beating.  I’m sending love and light to all of my friends, family, and everyone else who might be in harm’s way during this monster storm.

We’ve stocked up on batteries, filled the cupboard with fresh fruit and will ride out whatever we happen to get staying tucked in here at home.  Please stay safe this weekend.

Filed Under: Childhood, Christmas, family, Gratefulness, Life, Travels

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: , , ,

All You Can Do

October 12, 2012 By

“All you can do is all you can do, and all you can do is enough.”
A. L. Williams

I got this fabulous quote from my brother, Zed.  It’s perfect for someone like me, who is a perfectionist and an overachiever, especially when it comes to wanting to fix the world and all of the people in it. Fortunately, I’m not one of those who goes around telling everyone that it’s my way or the highway, though sometimes it’s easy to think that way. I’m the kind that tries to keep everyone happy, as though it’s my job to make sure that every person in the room never gets depressed, gets their feelings hurt, or feels anger.

I learned to do that job well when I was a just a little kid. I felt I had to do everything perfectly and exactly as I was told to do it.  If I didn’t do things the prescribed way the first time, I usually had to do them over and over until I got the results my parents were looking for.

I remember spending a long evening when I was about eight years old, learning about fractions. Dad made me stand on a chair at the kitchen sink, filling measuring cups until I learned that four quarts equaled a gallon, four cups equaled a quart, and two cups made a pint, and so on.  I remember how annoyed he was that I didn’t get it quickly enough for him.  I recall that it was snowing outside and all I could think about was getting outside in the morning to build a snowman. Cups, quarts and gallons were not of interest to me.

During one of my “How to Clean a House,” lessons, Mom, wore a white glove to show me that I hadn’t dusted in every little nook and cranny.  Because it felt like I failed to do things exactly right, I began to compensate by trying to do more than I needed to. I felt that I could never do enough, which led to the belief that I, myself, was not enough.  It’s taken me more years than I’d like to admit to figure out that doing more and more and more to satisfy everybody else’s expectations doesn’t make me happy.

It’s been a lesson well learned. I’ve been on a long and delicious journey this past week, learning more about myself and that letting certain things go is well worth the effort it takes to put them to rest.  I’ll be back in a week, but in the meantime, take a whiff of the lovely roses I’ve sent your way. (-:

These roses are especially for my granddaughter, Casey, who at twenty-four has breast cancer and is an inspiration as she travels down an uncertain road with courage. 

Filed Under: Addiction, Childhood, family, Healthy Living, Matters of the Spirit, Mental Health, Navigating Through Life, Perfectionism, The Garden 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: , , , , , , , ,

Home

September 15, 2012 By

My home sweet home

“Home is not where you have to go but where you want to go; nor is it a place where you are sullenly admitted, but rather where you are welcomed – by the people, the walls, the tiles on the floor, the followers beside the door, the play of life, the very grass.” – Scott Russell Sanders  

Last Sunday, Bill and I returned from a trip to Niagara-On-The-Lake, in Ontario, Canada.  It is one of my favorite places to sneak away to.  It’s a beautiful small town on the western shore of Lake Ontario, which  hosts the George Bernard Shaw Festival every summer, and is also home to over twenty vineyards, where you can spend your days tasting superb wines.  This was only our second trip to this outstanding community, but it’s beginning to look like it could become an annual late summer destination for us.

We spent four nights at Brockamour Manor, a sweet B & B, where I’ve always felt pampered.  Having launched my gluten-free diet on the day we arrived, Colleen and Rick, the owners, quickly made adjustments to the breakfast menu for me, providing me with gluten-free toast to go with their delicious eggy dishes. On the morning they served pancakes, Colleen made gluten-free ones for me, topped with crushed strawberries and some maple syrup.  This is the only B & B to my knowledge where you’ll get dessert for breakfast.  My favorite is a rainbow sorbet pie, with a nut crust. I plan on making  that one here at home next time we invite friends for dinner. Fresh local peaches still in season, were served other mornings in a variety of ways.

We saw four shows at the Shaw Festival. My favorite was, A Man and Some Women, by British Playwright, Githa Sowerly.  We also saw the musical, Ragtime (fantastically great), Shaw’s own, Misalliance, and Ibsen’s, Hedda Gabler.  You can read Bill’s reviews on his blog,  View in the Dark.  We also had time and space to work a bit on our own writing projects, sip wine, take naps, go on morning walks, and enjoy well prepared food.  No stress. Just relaxation. My favorite kind of vacation.  I felt very much at home there.

What is home exactly?  For me, home has always been the place where I eat my meals, sleep, work, and share space with the people I love. Having lived in at least eight different homes by the time I was thirteen, home was where ever we happened to be. I found moving extremely difficult. It meant a new school and making new friends.  It meant I had to figure out where I was and how to maneuver in a whole new world.

My favorite home of all time, is the one I am in right now, in Charlottesville, Virginia.  I’ve lived in this area since 1985, but have lived in three different houses.  Each one was always perfect for us at the time, but as the years passed our needs changed. This last move, two years ago, was to downsize and place us in town within closer proximity to entertainment, healthcare facilities, and community.

I guess I’ve never stopped moving. As adults, we’ve moved as a way to shake things up in our lives as we’ve searched for our own end of the rainbow. Perhaps when you continuously move from location to location, it simply becomes what you do. It becomes your habit.

One of the things on my life long wish list has been to “feel at home” in the world, no matter where I find myself. But I’m beginning to understand and accept that it’s a wish that I will never fulfill.  I visit New York City, several times a year, but I rarely, if ever feel at home there.  For one thing, there are too many people to share a relatively small amount of space with. It is difficult for me sharing the sidewalks on Fifth Avenue around four o’clock in the afternoon when everyone in the city is on their way home from work. There is also too much noise, and the energy level in the city is way over the top. I can comfortably stay four nights without losing myself, but after that, my nerves begin to rattle and I get anxious.  Being an introvert, arriving home to the peace and quiet of this town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is my reward for stepping out into the great big crazy world.

Big cities of any kind are not as inviting to me as places where I can connect to the natural rhythms of the earth.  I love being by the sea, watching and listening as the ocean pounds the shore.  The air smells and tastes salty. There are magnificent birds to watch as they make their living along the beach.  And walking barefoot in the sand is one of the most healing things I’ve ever experienced.  I almost always feel at home there.

Next month I will be taking my mother’s ashes, “home,” to Long Island. She was born there, and though she spent much of her youth in trauma ridden situations, it’s also where I believe she spent her happiest moments. Though as a family we moved from there to Vermont in 1960, she felt restless in New England and went back to the Island frequently to spend time with old friends and family.  When she moved here to Virginia after my father died, it was to be close to me and my family. She liked it here, but it wasn’t home for her.  Had she been healthier and younger, I know she would have moved back to Long Island in a heartbeat.

It will be a homecoming of sorts for me as well, as I was also born and raised on the Island. I’ve been back to visit once before and I love stopping to see the houses I once lived in and the schools I went to. But I love where I am right now and I consider this to be my home of choice.

What does home mean to you? Would you feel at home anywhere in the world? What do you love most about being home?

Filed Under: Childhood, family, Life, The Sea, Travels, Vermont Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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