Book Review: Of Human Clay

October 14, 2013 By

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

IMG_0801It was with great excitement that I recently received newly published memoirs written by two of my friends.  The first to be delivered to my doorstep was, Of Human Clay, the making and breaking of a nun, by Aimee Wise, a lovely woman I met in 2010 at Jennifer Louden’s writing retreat in Taos, New Mexico.

It is a glorious read. I had a difficult time putting it down when I finished reading the final pages. I wanted more. It was like a delicious meal that you don’t want to end. The first words that came to mind when I finally let it go were beautiful, stunning, and heartbreaking. It’s a remarkable love story, not only between a man and woman, but also between a woman, her God, and the people she loved and served for seventeen months as a medical missionary in Malawi, one of the poorest nations in Africa.

Aimee’s story  begins with her Irish Catholic upbringing and her search for a meaningful life as she enters the convent to become a nun. She spends years preparing herself to become a medical missionary. Later, finding herself in a small, forgotten nation, living among people who have been virtually ignored by a patronizing  church, Aimee finds herself facing a patriarchal governing body regulated by Rome and its often hypocritical views of what caring for others is really all about. When she shares her thoughts with a young priest whose feelings are similar to her own, they fall in love, lost in a world of diminishing returns as they each, singularly, try to maintain their balance, vows, and the passion they feel for each other and their work.

Filled with important questions about life, love, and caring for others, Aimee’s story led me back to my own experiences as a child in the Catholic church and my families dismissal when priests in our parish discovered that my parents had been married by a justice of peace in Maryland, on Valentine’s Day in 1942. The next day my father went to war and eventually became a hero in our country’s fight to bring peace to a world at war.  Told that they were living in sin and that my brothers and I were bastards, my parents left the church never entering the doors of any religious organization again. Even as a child of eight, I felt the stigma and inaccessibility to those who wanted to teach me what and how to believe in a spiritual deity.

I highly recommend this book to anyone immersed in their own spiritual journey. It touches the essence and hearts of all of us whether we follow a traditional faith or have invented our own way of believing or disbelieving.

 

I will  tell you about my friend, Shirley Hershey Showalter, and her new memoir, Blush, A Mennonite Girl meets A glittering World,” as soon I’ve finished reading it. Stay Tuned.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Compassion, love, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, Quotes, The Journey Tagged With:

Shouldering My Shoulds

September 17, 2013 By

DSCF0623A few days ago as I was working on my memoir, I wrote, “Though he has broad shoulders, I should not lean on them as much as I do.”  Seeing the words “shoulder” and “should,” just one word apart from each other stopped me in my tracks. They are words with different meanings. Their spelling is alike, except for the “er” in shoulder.  And they are very much related, especially in the way we use them today.

I  looked up the meaning and origin of each word. According to the Merrriam-Webster Dictionary, the word should comes from “the middle English word, sholde and the Old English word sceolde.”  One of its many uses is “in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency.”

Shoulder on the other hand “in Middle English is sholder from Old English sculdor; akin to Old High German scultra.”  We of course know it to mean the part of the body between the neck and the tops of our arms. It can also mean to carry a burden or to push through.

I first heard the expression, “Don’t should on me,” years ago at one of the first Alanon meetings I went to.  Dealing with my mother’s alcoholism and another family member’s drug habits, I went to those meetings to find my way through the maze of how to live my own life while being a family member with concerns about my loved ones. My mother-in-law had also been an alcoholic when she was alive and I’d successfully made her into my worst enemy by telling her that if she really loved her son and her new grandson, she shouldn’t drink.

It was years before I learned that “should” doesn’t mean anything when it comes to addiction, whether it’s to alcohol, heroin, or food.  Addiction is a disease that is genetic and runs in families.  It is a biological urge that is difficult, if not impossible to overcome.

I have always been a “shoulder.” Should is a frequent part of my speech no matter who I’m talking to, and especially when it comes to myself. “I should go to the gym four times a week, I shouldn’t eat too much dessert, and I should be more patient,” are always on the tip of my tongue. It was a family pattern I grew up with. I was constantly being told I should or shouldn’t, as in “You shouldn’t be seeing that boy. You should be seeing someone closer to your own age.”

I’ve also been one big “shoulder.” I’ve carried a lot of stuff belonging to other people on my shoulders so that they would feel less pain. I’ve always hated watching people, especially my family and innocent creatures like dogs, cats, and horses suffer. So in order to keep those I love from painful predicaments I often try to carry their baggage for them. When it came to my parents, I was their go-between when they fought. I became the family “fixer” who knew just what to say to calm everyone else down, while I broke apart from the weight.

I’ve been known for taking the reins when someone falls off their horse and lies on the ground broken and in pain. I took my mother in during her last years, caring for her as best as I could, often at my own emotional expense. I know now that I shouldn’t be carrying anyone else’s baggage but my own. But it’s still a tendency and I’m working hard at being less prone to that way of life.  I’m being fairly successful, though now and then I find it particularly difficult to pass up taking in a stray dog or cat.

The pinched nerve in my neck/shoulder area is almost 100% better. I think it had something to do with a should.  The one in which I said I should have my first draft done by October first.  Well, it’s not going to happen and that’s fine by me. I’m learning to listen to my body when it tells me what I should and shouldn’t be doing.

Are you a “shoulder?”  If so, what makes you want to take on the weight of the world?

Filed Under: Addiction, Compassion, family, Memoir, Navigating Through Life Tagged With: ,

On Being Hit Over The Head With A Two-By-Four

September 3, 2013 By
Chippy and Mildred Blaming the dogs for my broken leg was never an option.

Chippy and Mildred
Blaming the dogs for my broken leg was never an option.

Every now and then when I’m moving through life at too fast a clip and I think I have all of my problems licked, the Universe sends me a BIG, HARD message.  I liken it to being hit over the head with a two-by-four.

It happens when I haven’t been paying attention to the many small hints I’m sent on a fairly regular basis. When I listen and act on what my “gut” is telling me I do okay. And for the most part, I pay attention and take the advice I’m sent seriously. When my head is drooping and I can’t keep my eyes on the screen, I know it’s time to turn the computer off and go for a walk … or take a nap … or pull a few weeds in the garden.  When “something” tells me I need to go in a different direction than the one I insist on, I need to listen.  If I take too long catching on to what is being suggested, the two-by-four comes out.  And it’s usually in the form of a health problem.

The first time it happened was a long time ago in the late 70’s, on a January first. I had been pissing and moaning about how I hated New Years and what a boring day it was.  I was glad the the old year was gone, but I was hoping for a year filled with all kinds of excitement. I hated looking back at what looked to me like an uninteresting life. I was hoping the big calendar shift would bring some exciting new thing to get me up and moving toward something big and bright that would peak my interest and the passion that I’d been missing for a while.

At the time, life was a mishmash of being a mother, a wife, a daughter and whatever else came my way.  What ever it was didn’t matter, as long as I was busy and time passed quickly. I was stuck, overextended, and not appreciating the small things in life that one day turn out to be big deals.

Just moments after bemoaning the dullness of the cold and sunless day, I heard my two dogs, Mildred and Chippy, having a knock-down-drag-out fight out in the field in front of my house.  I envisioned major injuries and blood loss.  Without thinking, I ran like hell down the driveway to break them up, forgetting that there was a cattle guard between me and the dogs.  By the time I realized what was ahead of me it was too late to stop.  One leg landed between concrete piers and I heard a snap.  There was no pain at first, but I knew I was in trouble.  Both bones in my lower right leg were broken and I was in a cast of one kind or another for four months.  If I thought life was boring before the event, it was really bad afterwards.

I got the excitement I wished for, but it was the wrong kind. Within the dark clouds over my head was that often spoken of and highly celebrated silver lining in the form of time. Time not only to heal a damaged leg, but also time to think about where I’d been and where I was going. I changed a whole lot things and became a better person.

The second time it happened was three and a half years ago when I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer.  I had recently lost both my mother and brother to cancer. I was scared out of my mind. I’d been hoarding all sorts of raw, hateful feelings toward both my mother and my brother. I felt broken and unhappy, wondering what would happen next.  Surgery removed all of the cancer and brought the promising prognosis that in all likelihood it would not return.

Again, my gift was time. Over the days, I figured out that I needed a major make-over.  Not a new hair style, makeup and wardrobe kind of makeover, but a new way of looking at life and recognizing the lessons that keep coming my way. Since then I’ve worked hard learning about love, forgiveness, and my own ugly warts. And since I started writing about my my healing journey with my mother, I’m feeling like a new person.

That is until three and half weeks ago when the unimaginable pain of a pinched nerve set me back from the self-imposed deadline of having the first draft done by October first.  For a full week all I could do was stay in bed.  I felt as though I couldn’t hold my head up, and the excruciating pain radiated from my neck down into my left arm and into the palm of my hand.  Working at the computer was impossible.  During the second week the pain lessened but I was told that sitting all day in front of the computer screen, writing my book was the most likely cause of the problem.

In my rush to get that first draft done, I’d forgotten to take care of myself in other ways.  I’d decided not to travel over the summer, became a recluse, and kept on writing.  I wasn’t exercising enough and even my usually healthy diet took a hit. That’s all well and good for some I suppose, but for me those were the wrong decisions.  I was lonely and wanted to get out of here.

I need more socializing than I thought I did and the continual revisiting of dark days in the past wore me down. Something was going to give, one way or another. It seems more than a coincidence that this problem in my left shoulder and arm happened as I was writing chapters about my mother’s last few months of life, when she broke both her left shoulder and her left femur.  I considered them among the worst days of my life.  Is it so surprising that I was having these symptoms as I relived them?

So again, I’m being taught something and am surrendering to the lessons.  I continue to write a little bit every day, but it can only be for an hour or so. Within that hour I’m supposed to get up and move about every thirty minutes.  I’m seeing a physical therapist, doing lots of stretching, and there is an MRI in the works. But my pain in the neck, shoulder, and arm has given me plenty of time to read and get caught up on filing, and rethinking how this person needs to go about her work.

I am being given the gift of time once again. Time to work more slowly and deliberately, in order to get out the best story I can tell.  Before my pinched nerver,  I was rushing through the darkness so that I could get out from under the clouds.  Now I’m taking both the light and darkness together, slowing down and paying attention to where I am.  It feels so much better.

Filed Under: Dogs, Gratefulness, Healing, Health and Wellnes, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, The Journey Tagged With: ,

Writing Poetry As Memoir

August 27, 2013 By
Dziadzio My father's father

Dziadzio
My father’s father

I’m in the process of recovering poems that I  have written over the years. I thought that I had lost them when I transferred all of my data from my old computer to the most recent one.  But with the help of the folks at our new Peach Mac Store, I was able to find them again and now am saving them as word documents.

Some of the poems fit into the genre of memoir.  The one I’m sharing with you in this post, is what Sundays were like when I was ten or eleven years old, when we would go to my grandparents home for Sunday dinner. Sometimes we arrived early enough to help with all of the preparations. My grandparents were from Poland and they did things the way they would have done in the old country.

The word Babcia is Polish for grandmother and Dziadzio is Polish for grandfather.

Babchia My father's mother

Babchia
My father’s mother

 

Pozywic

(pozhí-veech), is the Polish verb to nourish, feed, refresh

Babcia rises early   kneads loaves
foaming with yeast set with amber jewels
scrubs spent trousers  socks and sheets
feeds them between clenched wringer jaws

She holds a squawking hen
against the block   the body flies
searching for its own lost head and then
hanging upside down from the apple tree
paints the grass below  I pull fists full of feathers
watch with sickened awe her hand disappearing
pulling ribbons of yellowblue guts  unsown seed

My brothers and I gather baskets of beans  lettuce
she collects dried shirts  socks
punches dough  pressing pockets
for mashed potatoes  farmer’s cheese
sauerkraut with caraway  stuffs sliver
of garlic beneath fat blanketing the roast

The chicken swims with carrots
onions  parsley  filling the kitchen
wisth Sunday smells  I stand
on the table under the arbor
picking grapes  then in the garden
where rhubarb hides me
fill on gooseberries and currants

This feast takes all day  we gallop
in and out playing Lone Ranger and Tonto
waiting for Dziadzio to carve the roast
share crackled fat  crusty rye dipped in pan juices

Joan Z. Rough

Filed Under: Childhood, family, Memoir, Poetry, The Garden, Time

Rejuvenation On The River

August 13, 2013 By

DSCF0305I’ve had time to myself for two weeks. My husband went off on his own adventures, while I decided to adventure further into my writing. Doing that helped me to discover new things about myself.  About being alone. About what I can get done when I decide to do it. And how the work, the writing, can leave me gasping for air.

I’ve always known that I’m an introvert, but often wondered if I could go a bit further and be the hermit I once thought I’d like to be. When I first visited the shores of Ireland back in the ‘80s, I thought how wonderful it would be to spend a winter on the rugged, windswept, west coast, in a tiny cottage overlooking the Atlantic.  There were few houses in the area that I loved most. The only sounds were of the sea, the wind, sheep calling to one another, and an occasional barking dog. I  felt that this would be the closest to God that anyone could ever get.  I dreamed about trying it.

But all it took was one week here at home without the love of my life, to convince me that I’m not made for that kind of life. I’m not introverted enough to dream again of crawling into a cave somewhere on a lonely cliff watching waves pummel the shore, spending every moment alone, contemplating God and his linty home in my navel.

Though I’ve been alone for two weeks a number of times, it has never been at a time when I’ve been so drawn up into myself as these last two have been. I’ve not written memoir before and didn’t realize how reliving difficult times might affect me. But I had a mission to write as much as I could during the time that Bill was away, hopefully finding myself closer to the end of my first draft.

In my first week here at home, I wrote some 6,000 words in three chapters.  They are three of the toughest ones I’ve gotten through and there are still a few more to go before I can concentrate on the good parts … finding myself and beginning to make major changes in my life. Reliving difficult times is hard enough just letting them flash by in an instant. But spending one week all alone, writing about incidents that were some of the worst moments of my life broke the bank. I’m one  who likes to edit as I go along, hoping to get as close to an imperfect, perfect draft as I can.

On the fifth day out, I knew I would need a break. I did not realize that my self induced hermitage would leave me feeling so low. I needed some time out. I spent more time fantasizing about what I might do to have some fun than I did writing. I thought about all of the things that might bring me back up from the past into the present day where there is fresh air, funny people abound, and I could begin to refill my now empty tank of energy. I made a dinner date with a friend, went to a movie, and wished I was with Bill or a bunch of friends who were gathered together out in New Mexico.  But I had made a deal with myself and I knew I had stuff I needed to do.

Still daydreaming about what else I could be doing to make myself feel better, I remembered the kayaks that Bill and used to have when we lived in our last home on the river.  Early summer mornings were the best time to be out on the water, before too many fishermen and rowers made it feel like rush hour and the wildlife all disappeared for the rest of the day.

Remembering that the kayaks are still at our disposal,  now owned by our son, I decided to give him a call to see if he’d like to join me for a morning excursion out on the river. Living here in townfor just a bit over three years, I haven’t thought of my little yellow boat until then.  And knowing that Bill was spending some quality time with our daughter and grandkids in North Carolina, I thought that kayaking with Mark would be a great way of being with just him, without the rest of the family taking up so much of my attention.

Great Blue Heron © Mark Rough

Great Blue Heron
© Mark Rough

Sunday at 8 AM found us on our way to the river.  By 8:30 we were on the water. It was warm, sunny, and the surface of the river reflected every leaf and blade of grass along the shore. There were few fishermen about and no rowers. I decided to take Mark up Ivy Creek, which feeds into the South Fork Rivanna River, where I used to paddle when I felt like being completely alone.  He’d never been there before and enjoyed the abundance of wildlife we saw … several bald eagles, herons, both Great Blue and Green, an Osprey eating its breakfast at the top of an old dead tree, turtles by the gazillion, kingfishers, and so much more.  Mark was a super paddling companion.  Not in a rush to get somewhere, just casually paddling to see what we could see and being in the moment as dragonflies and butterflies flew near.  I was touched by those old mother feelings,  being with my son and being able to share with him a place I’ll always love. It was a beautiful morning in every respect and when I got home I was ready to plow back into those three chapters. I edited and rewrote them several times, then sent them off to my writing coach for his approval.

I miss the river and being able to go out the backdoor and into the watery world of rivers and streams any time I

Osprey © Mark Rough

Osprey
© Mark Rough

choose. Still I love living in the city where I’m finding it easier to balance my needs. I’m within walking distance to the University, can hear the marching band warm up for the coming football season, while sitting in my garden. Yet I’m able to able to drive a short distance and find myself peacefully floating through wooded countryside for the rejuvenation I so desperately need as I work my way through this ongoing, sometimes difficult project.

I’ve spent years searching for this balance. It could be my age, but I no longer dream about that cottage on the coast of Ireland. I have everything I need right here.  Next time I’m having difficulty keeping at my writing, you’ll be able to find me in a small, yellow kayak drifting down the river.

The bird photography above was taken by my son, Mark. If I ever had a dream for him it was just this, to love and respect the natural world around us, as he does.

The photo of me at the top of the page was taken by my friend, Susan Preston.

 

Filed Under: family, Memoir, Mental Health, Navigating Through Life, photography, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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