Cider Season

November 13, 2011 By

© Joan Z. Rough

Once upon a time when I was younger and my kids were very small, we’d spend sunny afternoons picking apples in our own ancient orchard.   I’d cut the good ones into big chunks and place them in the barrel of our cider press.  The result was a sweet and tangy quaff meant for the Gods.  I’d bottle it up in quart containers and with a sign in our driveway, invite those who were interested in buying this seasonal treat to our door.  It sold well.

Those were simpler days.  In today’s world, I long for those quieter times when I took great comfort in everyday gifts, like the making of cider.

Cider Season

The last of the crop dislodged                                                                                                            I gather windfalls firm and rimy                                                                                                       Rake the bruised into piles                                                                                                                 Where pincered earwigs crowd                                                                                                       Droning yellow jackets sample the brew

My children pretend not to hear                                                                                                When I ask for their help  prefer                                                                                                    The rustle of leaves  tumbling                                                                                                          And diving  scattering yesterday’s work

With sharpened knife I quarter                                                                                              Blushing rounds  pack the barrel                                                                                                      To overflowing  lower the plate                                                                                                        ‘Til it resists  pressing sweet amber liquid                                                                            Buckets of gold

I’m drunk on October apples                                                                                                      Swishing mare’s tails                                                                                                                      Against a blue field of sky                                                                                                                Wood smoke greeting the cold                                                                                                      A threat of snow by morning

jzr

Filed Under: family, Life, Poetry, stories, The Seasons, Vermont

Be Careful What You Wish For

November 10, 2011 By

Buddha, Photo by Sharon Martinelli

When I was preparing to move to Virginia from Vermont, back in 1979, a few of my friends said I really needed to be careful down here in the Bible Belt.  They were sure I’d be swarmed by Born Agains wanting to save me. My off the cuff remark to them went something like this: “Don’t worry, when they knock on the door to invite me to church, I’ll just tell them I’m a Buddhist.  They’ll never come back again.”   I mean no disrespect.  It is just that I’ve had my tangles with organized religion and don’t want to go through any of it again.

I planned to use those words the same way I often tell people that I’m a poet when asked what I do, mostly when I travel and don’t feel much like talking.  It’s generally a real turnoff and the questions end.  Thankfully, I’ve never had the person say, “Oh, I’m a poet too!” or “Where can I find your books?”  

It’s not that I’m don’t want to be kind or friendly.  I love talking to people I don’t know. It’s just that I am a bit of an introvert and when I’m belted into my window seat, hurtling through the sky at a gazillion miles an hour, I love watching the landscape unfold below me.  I find myself doing some of my deepest wonderings about the Universe and how I got here.  Perhaps that sounds strange or even crazy, but that’s how it is with me.

When I was moving, I was not a Buddhist and had no desire to become one.  Nor was I poet when I first started saying that I was. Virginia seems to have some strange, magical power, because it is here that I started studying Buddhism and also began writing poetry.  I’m still studying Buddhism and have a meditation practice. But I’m very much a hybrid when it comes to spiritual matters. Though I’m still writing, it isn’t poetry, at the moment anyway.

I’m extremely happy that some Entity saw fit to introduce me to Buddhism and to help me start writing.  But I’m even more happy that I never told anyone that I was running from the law, a prostitute or a banker.  I wonder where I’d be if I had?

Filed Under: Matters of the Spirit, Navigating Through Life, Poetry, stories, Vermont, wonderings

The Big “C”

November 5, 2011 By

Praying, © Joan Z. Rough, taken with a plastic, toy camera.

Cancer … it’s everywhere.  Young, old, or middle-aged, few seem to be spared.  And if not cancer, it’s heart disease, Alzheimers, diabetes, some or all of the above. I hear less these days about people dying just because it was their time.

When we sign on for this gig, we are told the day will come when we will leave our bodies behind and move into the next world.  Some of us call it heaven, and others believe in a hell where we will be tortured for all of the nasty-bad things we did in our lives.  But none of us has any idea of what or where we’ll end up. In accounts from those who have had near death experiences, there may be lots of light and many friends and relatives who have already passed, waiting to help us cross.  The evening before she died, my mother acknowledged an invisible (to me) gathering crowd.  Annoyed she said, “Why don’t you say something instead of just standing there?”   When I asked her what she meant, she said, “Not you, them!” pointing to the empty wall in front of her.  The next morning she died after I had gone home to take a shower, and she sent a mourning dove to let me know she was gone.  It was enough to make me believe in the after-life, whatever it may be.

Cancer for my family of origin has been a huge, fearsome word.  Three of my grandparents died of cancer; My father died of bladder cancer; my mother died of lung cancer; and my brother Reid, died of esophageal cancer just over a year ago. He was nine years younger than I.

I didn’t grieve for my grandparents.  I was quite young and didn’t like them much except for my grandmother on my mom’s side, who was playful and fun to be around. But that’s another story. When my parents  died I was relieved. Their lives had been filled with anger and unhappiness. I do miss my mother now, especially when there is exciting news I want to share with her. Reid’s passing left me feeling a huge hole in my heart.  When he was just a tot, I spent hours taking care of him. He was way too young to die.

This past week, my daughter Lisa found a lump in her breast.  But after a mammogram and other tests she was declared free and clear of cancer. She had recently lost a lot of weight while doing a wellness program.  It seems the lump was just a bit of fibrous tissue/fat that didn’t want to leave just yet.

Over a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus.  I had been spotting off and on for a couple of months.  I didn’t pay any attention since we were moving, and my brother was in the last stages of his disease.  Late in August, I suddenly realized that I was hearing and seeing the “C” word everywhere … in newspapers, magazines, email and on TV and radio. I was being sent a message.

I made an appointment with my primary physician, who told me my PAP smear showed abnormal cells.  She sent me to a gynecologist who found cancer in the lining of my uterus.   Her recommendation was to see a doctor at the University of Virginia Medical Center, who came highly recommended for her skills in the da Vinci System, the least invasive surgery of its kind when it comes to hysterectomy.

I was scared out of my wits, and if the Cancer diagnosis didn’t scare enough crap out of me, my anxiety and fear built to a crescendo the morning of my first appointment. Being in the University Hospital felt like being in the thick of a major city, with thousands of people wandering about, most of them sick.  Stern-looking doctors in long white coats gave me goosebumps, and the noise of the place completely overwhelmed me. I’m not generally of fan of Western Medicine.  I usually search out alternative practitioners, but in this case there was no alternative.  I regressed back into a tiny child, surrounded by dragons and demons, poking needles into me for blood samples.  The tremors I usually experience under major stress came on big time.  They didn’t begin to fade until some weeks after my surgery.

I felt terribly alone, unable to focus on much except the question of what was next. I didn’t want to die, nor did I want to spend years in a rocking chair, slowly fading into oblivion with invasive treatments. Gradually the hospital did become a bit less challenging and I began to realize that I had phenomenal support from my Doctor and the nursing staff.  Family and friends sent prayers of wellness. Everyone was so kind. It was impossible to be angry.

But fear was my constant companion. I began bargaining, just as I had when a child, telling God I’d be a good girl from now on if only She would keep my father from beating me. Having a strong foundation in the Buddhist way, I decided that for whatever amount of time I was given, whether it be a month or ten years, I would spend my days giving back the kindness and love that had been gifted to me over the years. Regardless of how much pain and sorrow I had experienced in my life, now was not the time to be angry and blaming.  It was the time to be grateful for all that I had been given despite any difficulties I had endured.  It was time to concentrate on the important things in my life … family and friends, art, writing, and being present in each and every moment.

After my hysterectomy rendered me cancer free, in early October, I spent several months recovering. I was in some pain. I slept a lot, complained about not being able to go to Pilates class, and started taking short walks around the neighborhood. I also began to appreciate the time for deep relaxation. Despite the loss of my missing reproductive organs I still had my spirit. I had just come through one of the most frightening times in my life with flying colors.  To me, that was more important than the loss of organs I was no longer using.

By mid December I was almost me again, and feeling that I had been given a second chance at life.  Things had changed for the good.  I was more in touch with myself and others around me.  The pace of life slowed down and I woke up mornings without what I call the dreads: short but extremely painful moments of being afraid to get up, because of the bad things that might happen that day. If people were unkind, I wanted to smile and simply let the thought of hurt feelings go.  Like Scrooge in the Christmas Carol, I had seen the end and I wanted only to be forgiven for what I had wrought during my lifetime … to forgive myself and others that had caused pain and suffering.

Now I try to I celebrate each day with new promises to be kind to myself and others, and to stay healthy. I’ve also made it known to every Saint, God and Spiritual Master out there, that I want to die quickly doing something I love, like making art, or else very quietly in my sleep.  And I wouldn’t mind one of those joyous New Orleans funerals with good food, squealin’ jazz, wailin’ blues and dirty dancing.  We do need to be celebrated when we move on, no matter where to and no matter how bad or good we’ve been.

Filed Under: family, Life, Navigating Through Life, stories

Holding Back

October 28, 2011 By

Letting in the Light

“I think we are embarrassed by how much pain we have been in throughout our entire lives. Because we are embarrassed, we don’t share this truth with one another. But the embarrassment is just that— embarrassment. We need to have mercy on ourselves. We all feel embarrassed. Actually, when we do share our embarrassment, we experience relief. The holding back is what is hard.”

-Stephen Levine, “Living the Life You Wish to Live”

Recently, a good friend who knows a lot about me, double-dog-dared me to start writing the meat of my story. I told her that I had just realized  that I’ve been focusing on what I call the sweet stuff.  You know, the stories that don’t take into account the times when life was a bitch, when the pain was unbearable,  and when I believed that all those bad things that happened were my fault.

Sure, I’ve mentioned my dysfunctional family, hinted at the traumas I’ve experienced, but it’s all been lingering in the background haze that is my life.  I’ve been aware of it, but unwilling or unable to share it.  Perhaps not ready is a better way of putting it.

I came to this realization during Writing Your Life Story class one day when the teacher had us do a ten minute free write on what family means to us. That request stopped me in my tracks.  I couldn’t get the pen moving across the paper.  I felt a rock growing in my solar plexus where anxiety always hits me first.  It was an I don’t want to go there moment.

What finally made its way to the page was the following:

“Family has always been a puzzlement for me.  I know what I wanted it to be, a    beautiful group of loving people who cared endlessly about me and were always there to kiss a boo-boo, to help with homework in a patient way.  A unit of older and younger people who always dressed-up for dinner on Sunday, lived in the same place forever and had large family gatherings where everyone got along.

I always envied my friends whose dads hugged them and told them that he loved them.  Dads who were there for all kinds of activities and who took their kids on special outings.  I always imagined my family as being all that.  I had some of  those  things.  Mom was very loving when I was small, kissed my wounds and tried to protect me from the world at large.”

It took me ten minutes to write those few lines and I became aware that I’ve been living much of my life in my imagination, making it better when it was worse and worse when it was better.  But most of all, unable to unwind the string I’ve kept wound in a tight ball, tucked in my back pocket, where it bulges out like an overgrown cheek.

Much of it made it’s way out during therapy after my mother died when family secrets started spilling out during my hour-long sessions, sometimes several times a week.  At the time I knew that I was beginning to integrate all it into my being but also knew it would all become clearer with time and that words on paper would bring closure to the pain.  Hence this blog which I began a year ago on November 30th.

One Rich Life, is still the container for my stories.  It has kept me writing and has helped to clear the cobwebs away.  For a long time, I believed that I had no stories to tell.  If you had asked me to recall an event in my early life, I would have said that I don’t remember or it never happened. But the more I write here, the more stories rise to the top of my consciousness, like cream on fresh, raw milk.

Somedays it feels like it might become a book.  Other days it’s unclear where I’m going with it.  Whatever it becomes, it is clearly a healing mechanism for me, helping me understand where I have come from and how I got to be me.

In coming posts I hope begin to venture into the down-and-dirty stories, that are difficult for me but that need to be aired out so that I can continue to move forward.  I hope you’ll continue to come along on this journey.

Filed Under: Classes, Navigating Through Life, stories, Wise Words

Dreams And Horses

October 24, 2011 By

Beautiful granddaughter Zoe, during riding lessons when she was around seven years old.

I’ve been thinking about my dreams. Not the kind that come during sleep, the kind that come in my waking hours. Often my daydreams are about happy things; remembering someone I love or something that made me laugh. But they can also be remembrances of sad times.  Or they can be sheer fantasy, about what I want, or something that I want to accomplish, like writing a book.

I daydream a lot and I call those moments staring into space time.  It is often when my best ideas come and I jump into action to bring what I want into fruition. So it was many years ago, when I was a small, naive fourth grader.  I was in love with horses, begging and pleading with my father to please get me one.  Earlier, as a second grader, I believed I was a horse and would gallop across the potato fields near our home, snorting and pawing the ground when approached by some of my friends.

Precious grandson Noah, during his first riding lessons, about age 4.

Those were the days of early TV with shows like Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and The Merry Mailman.  The sponsor of one of them, advertised a contest that I jumped at the chance to enter because I knew I would win. The trick was to send in the winning name for a small Shetland pony with silvery mane and tail and a golden coat, similar to Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger.  The only differences were that the pony was much smaller, and lacked the blaze down the middle of his face.  Instead he had a white patch, the shape of a star, on his forehead, right above his eyes.  If the name you sent in was the one chosen to be the winner, he’d be delivered to your home in a fancy pony trailer pulled by a pick-up truck that looked like my dad’s.

I knew I could build a stall in one corner of our two-car garage because mom never parked her car in there anyway.  I knew my dad would have a fit, because whenever I asked if we could get a pony or a horse, he said “no, we can’t afford it.”  I figured that because the pony didn’t cost anything and because I won it, he’d have no choice but to accept the fact that the pony was mine. I owned it!

I thought and thought about the perfect name. Staring out the window above my bed, when darkness came and the Milky Way glittered in the night sky with billions of pin-prick lights, I made a wish upon one of them. I knew that the name I chose would be the winner.

I sent in the entry blank and waited for the phone call that would tell me that Star would be delivered tomorrow.  I kept the whole thing a secret.  Every night as I was falling asleep I searched the dark sky for the star I had wished on and then dream about the pony who would soon become my life companion.

Weeks passed before the lucky winner was finally announced one late afternoon. It was perfectly clear that someone had made a terrible mistake.  I was heartbroken.  When I finally told Mom about it, she laughed and told me that not all of our dreams come true.  I responded with, “it was not a dream, I KNEW I was to be the owner of that pony and it is soooo unfair that somebody else has won him.”

My horsey daydreams continued into my teens when I was sent away to boarding school for a year, where I took riding lessons.  I learned to jump, and won a couple of blue ribbons at the school’s horseshows, competing in the novice class.  I also learned a deep respect for horses as well as fear when one of my classmates was thrown from her horse during a brief thunderstorm. She ended up in a body cast for many months.  But, the companion of my dreams never materialized on my doorstep and life went on its merry way.

I got married, had kids and living in a tiny community in northern Vermont, got into raising chickens, sheep and Angora goats on about 20 acres of open land.  One day, a friend asked me if I’d like to have one of her horses.  I had ridden Haggerty several times at her farm. He was a nice enough bay gelding, just a little skittish. I thought, why not?  I had the barn and the space.  I was a stay-at-home hippy mom with energy, time, and an aging dream.  If I was ever going to own a horse, this would be the time.

I was very excited and started preparing a stall. When Haggerty was delivered, he didn’t feel at home in his new stall and his skittishness turned into terror.  Whenever I approached, he’d back away and start to rear up or run off to the opposite side of the pasture.  One day he jumped the fence and ran into the wilds.  Randy, his former owner came to help me find and capture him.  He was clearly not happy and my fear of him was growing.  He was simply not the horse meant for me.

Haggerty went back to his old home and I gave up the dream that a horse was in my future.  But I still find myself dreaming about horses. This time, I’d just like a gentle old mare like myself.  I wouldn’t ride her or make her work.  We’d just chat across the fence and dream about what it might have been like had we found each other sooner. The problem now is that my yard is only one-third of an acre.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Childhood, Dreams, Life, stories, Vermont
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