On Forgiveness

September 6, 2011 By

At The Heart Of The Matter, Joan Z. Rough, Copyright, 2005

This is what I do know:  until you forgive someone as close as a mother, you are at war with yourself, you continue to gnaw that leg of yours caught in a trap.  Why are you at war with yourself?  I think because to hold a grudge against another person you have to recognize in them a quality that you yourself possess but can’t admit to.

Mary Rose O’Reilley, The Love of Impermanent Things, A Threshold Ecology

I’m reading this book for the second time.  Although I loved it the first time around, I don’t think I was ready for it.  I was in the midst the final year of my mother’s life. I was gnawing on my own leg. Blind. Unable to see what was before me.

I refound this marvelous book a few days ago, going through one of those unpacked boxes left from our move over a year ago.  Still trying to purge, I was looking for books I could part with.  Books I could take to the library for their big sale in March. But this one will stay with me. Within it, the words speak to my heart and I am finding myself.

Filed Under: Books, Uncategorized, Wise Words

I Can Hear You Now

July 12, 2011 By

It’s hot! I stick my head in the frig to gather ingredients … half an onion,  freshly gathered carrots, crisp red lettuce, cukes and one perfect avocado that I plan on tossing into a big salad for a cool and refreshing meal.  I think I’ll add some Feta and a few pitted Kalamata olives.  In the background I hear Bill speaking to me, but the whirr of the refrigerator gets in the way and I end up shouting, “I can’t hear you!”  I pull my head away from the frig and he’s raised his voice, repeating whatever the message is he’s trying to get to me.  He’s right there, in the kitchen with me.  Never mind that we often try to have conversations when we are in different parts of the house.  Visitors might find it hilarious to hear us going back and forth with, “What was that you said?” while the decibels rise.

The other night, we were having a conversation at the dinner table, when I misheard what he was saying and attached a whole new meaning to his words.  In crowded, people-filled places like theatre lobbies, cocktail parties and the like, I find it difficult to hear what the person right next to is saying.  Background chatter builds until I finally have to give up, move outside into a less noisy environment or just shake my head, agreeing to whatever is being said to me.  Could it be I’ve agreed to some judgemental comment my friend has just made?  Have I agreed to help her kill her husband?  I’m left not knowing and often wonder why people look at me questioningly after such a conversation.

It’s been coming on for years.  I had my hearing tested a while back, and was found to have good hearing. But I still felt that I was missing something.  It could be either my head or my hearing.  Then someone pointed out to me that we often hear only what we want to hear.  So I let it go until a month ago. I asked my doctor for the name of an audiologist she would recommend.  I was simply tired of missing out on what was being said around me, tired of agreeing to things I didn’t understand and ready to find out what was going on.

So yesterday, I found myself in a booth, pushing a button when sound waves of different pitches were sent through my earphones and I heard them.  I found out that I have mild hearing loss in both ears, particularly in the high frequency range.  It’s not too bad, she told me, but still I’m missing hearing consonant sounds like ess and tee.

I thought of Bill’s Godmother who died recently. Her hearing had been compromised for years.  We would visit, sitting in her living room having to shout and repeat over and over again what we were saying in order for her to be included in our conversation.  She had found hearing aids to be too uncomfortable and after one or two tries, simply refused to use them. I thought of not being able to hear my grandkids on the phone or in person as the years go by.  I thought of not being able to enjoy the early morning bird chorus on warm, summer days, and I thought of not being able to hear Bill say, “I Love you.”

I came home wearing a tiny hearing aid in each ear that had been programmed just for me.  I am enthralled with the difference in what I can hear.  I now hear esses and tees and the directional blinkers in my car.  I hear clearly what is being said to me.  It will take a while to be really comfortable with them and I’m only to use them two or three hours a day to start. Best of all, they are practically invisible and almost weightless and I don’t need to use them all the time.  I have thirty days to try them out at which time I can return them for a full refund if I choose.

My hearing helpers!

The only thing left to do is to get Bill to have his hearing tested.  He, too, is beginning to repeat, “What did you say?”

Filed Under: Navigating Through Life, stories, Uncategorized

About the Bus

March 29, 2011 By

 

 

When the history books are written in the future somebody will have to say there lived a race of people, a black people, fleecy locks and black complexion, a people who had moral courage to stand up for their rights, and thereby they injected a new meaning in the veins of history.

Rosa Parks

After we saw the film Freedom Riders, and considered joining Julian Bond’s civil rights tour of the south, I thought long and hard about the required travel by bus. I wondered if I could  manage sitting in one place for long stretches of time without encouraging lots of aches and pains which set in when I am not moving about.  Bill and I needed to make a decision quickly because there were only “a few seats left” and it was going to be the “last trip” Julian would lead.  So, I decided that I’d trust the Universe and just get on with it. It seemed like an important trip to make to further my understanding of the world as well as myself.

I have always considered myself a student. I’m curious and like to know how most things work and why.  My school experience ended when I graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Elementary Education.  Since that time I’ve found that learning by experiencing was the way for me to go.  Why sit in a classroom and read a book if an opportunity to see the world, near or far arose? When traveling to places where people don’t speak my language, are culturally unlike me or are in situations I’ve never known, I gain a new understanding of the world, who I am and where I fit in.

But back to the bus.  It was an image that stayed with me throughout my preparation for this trip.  As the day of our departure drew nearer, the bus became a symbol that haunted me as we traveled. Back in the early days of segregation, buses were one of the easiest and sometimes the only way to travel.  Not everyone had a car.  I thought again of  those courageous freedom riders, who risked their lives in the process of trying to end segregation.  I thought of Rosa Parks, who one day in 1955, simply got tired of being humiliated and doing the things white people ordered her to do.  She refused to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when the driver told her to move further to the back to make room for a white man, even though there were other seats available to him.

Mrs. Parks was arrested and the next day black citizens of the city and county met in mass meetings at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (where Martin Luther King Jr., was pastor at the time), and in other churches throughout the city.   After a one day boycott, the people came together again and agreed to continue with the boycott until the city  agreed to desegregate the bus service. Blacks and some whites found other ways to get to their jobs. People who owned cars drove others to their destinations free of charge. They walked, rode bikes and helped each other out.  The city bus company started losing money and they gave in to the demands of the black community.

With that in mind, I decided that to travel by bus was the only way to make this journey.  It was the only way to get as close to history as possible. It was a way of sitting with the ghosts of those who had forged the way to freedom. They were humiliated, beaten, and sometimes killed, but in the long run, they won the right to sit where ever they wanted, to eat in any restaurant they wanted to and ultimately to become voters. Yes, I was uncomfortable at times. Yes, I wasn’t getting the exercise I normally get.  But my aches and pains never came close to what those ghosts had suffered.  I was happy to listen to their stories and the pain they experienced as we rode the bus through the land where slavery had been a way of life for too many years.

Filed Under: stories, Travels, Uncategorized

Spring Fever

March 2, 2011 By

Daffodils blooming in the neighborhood. Copyright Joan Z. Rough

Spring seems to be upon us here in Virginia.  Daffodils, Winter Jasmine and Witch Hazel are splashing the still brown land with yellow.  Next month forsythia will follow.

I wrote the following poem remembering what spring, particularly March, was like when I lived in Vermont.   It was still a season for snow but it also held the promise of emergence.  While I trudged to the barn in the middle of the night to check up on my pregnant ewes to see if they had given birth, here in Virginia daffodils were blooming.  I travel further south on Friday for our civil rights trip, wondering what other flowers might already be blooming in those places I have never been.   I will be gone for a week and hope to post a few lines every day about what I am experiencing.  If that is not possible I will write about it when I return.

Spring

Snow spits                                                                                                                                             ewes bulging                                                                                                                                         with promise                                                                                                                                       are cloistered                                                                                                                                       inside

I count days                                                                                                                                         watching bags swell                                                                                                                           vulvas blushing red                                                                                                                             by night patrol                                                                                                                                     the wind riddled barn                                                                                                                         filled with the silence                                                                                                                         of sleeping hens

At dawn one ewe                                                                                                                                 shifts and strains                                                                                                                                 feeling the whisper                                                                                                                               soaking her body                                                                                                                                 small hooves emerge                                                                                                                           in purple blue satin                                                                                                                             that rips rushing                                                                                                                                   the lamb to the straw

Tumbling legs harden                                                                                                                          he readies his burden                                                                                                                          butts pokes                                                                                                                                            finding the teat                                                                                                                                    dripping colostrum

Somewhere                                                                                                                                           to the south                                                                                                                                           daffodils push                                                                                                                                       toward the light

jzr, 1990

 

Filed Under: Poetry, Travels, Uncategorized, Vermont, wonderings

Happy Valentines Day!

February 14, 2011 By

 

copyright 1996, Joan Z. Rough

May You Love and Be Loved On This Special Day and Always!

Filed Under: Uncategorized
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