A Letter to My Father

Dear Dad,

Now that you're gone I see your life in perspective like I never could before.

It's been 10 years. You would have been able to count that much quicker than me, because you always carried memories, dates, names, and historical happenings in your head. I didn't. And so often I say, "I wish Dad were here. He'd remember."

I'd like to thank you for a few things that seem more precious the longer you've been gone.

Thank-you for:

Loving me unconditionally.

Being a person that loved other people, cultures, languages. It was hereditary.

Teaching me to wrap a Christmas gift.

Being a calm, safe driver.

Having grandiose ideas.

Writing music. Making sure there was a piano in our home.

Taking pictures.

Marrying my mother.

Moving to California, three times.

Speaking from the Bible so much that it is the voice in my head.

Teaching me to dig a hole and plant things.

Being the reason I have a peach tree in my backyard.

Building things with a hammer and nails.

Loving my husband and my kids.

Understanding that I've gone on with my life without you.

I feel somehow that I am a part of you and that even though you're not here, we still exist together, on some father-daughter plane. It happens especially when I say things you used to say, when I eat black licorice, when I put my towel back on the rod without jamming it in too tight (you always said that would loosen the screws so I never do it).

One more thing. Thank you for not being perfect. For having glaring faults. I have them too and it takes some pressure off.

I love you, DAD!

A Lifelong Love Affair With Words

Few people who know me fail to see my passion for the printed word.

It becomes painfully obvious to several people in my life, namely, my husband, my children and the clerks at the library desk that I love to read.

I also love to write. Writing to me is just another form of reading, a narcissistic one, to be sure. My lifelong commitment to my husband was clinched when I heard him say in answer to my complaint that he's not a 'word' guy, "That's why I need you." For me, it's all about the words. He charmed me with my own needs. I'll be the first to admit that writing gets less attention than reading because writing is plain work, whereas reading anything (and yes even the back of a shampoo bottle) is pure pleasure (read obsession here). But it's not for a lack of ideas. There are those spending ledgers of a compulsive budget-er that my mother-in-law sent me waiting to be made into a story. The two novels I've almost finished but not quite. The musical that needs scoring. The recipes with background stories I'm planning on giving my girls someday. My father's memoirs he entrusted my mother and I with publishing and that friend whose memoirs I'm committed to helping with. And the list goes on. I'm not going to divulge everything, just in case...

I realize that I often push down this need to write because, well, life is so insistent. My regular job as a piano teacher and accompanist is scheduled daily and whatever falls between the cracks must keep the household going, and that consists of cooking, and a moderate amount of cleaning.

Also there is that nagging voice that says. "You're too old to begin writing." I think just exposing this nasty little voice helps it to dissipate, doesn't it? I'm not really just starting. And anyway, every day I procrastinate only gives weight to this fear. And so, I won't.

I am soon to be an empty-nester. Although the usual grieving is following me around like a hungry cat, it occurred to me today (light bulb moment) that perhaps now is the time for my writing to blossom.

I'm committing to you, my dear blog readers that I am not giving up on my dream of being published. Thanks for being the first to get splashed with my ink. Someday, please remind me that you read me first:-)

Post T Day

Well, it's over again. Thankfulness piles on top of thankfulness. It's a glut of good things, it's overhaving.
We are the recipients of so much, and to whom much is given, much is required.

So let's get busy. What are we waiting for?

Empty Nest Full Heart

No, I'm not quite an empty nester, but I'm so close it scares the tears out of me.

A surprising thing has happened. I find that I am as awkward and fumbly at this stage as a new mom. I'm a baby to the 'parenting adults' stage.. One day I'm giving advice and praying like mad they're ok and the next I'm relishing having more time to myself, and trying not to feel guilty. I cry as much as I did postpartum.

It has dawned on me with horror and with a bit of wisdom gained purely from having lived to see it that I only got the usual time to raise them and now whatever gaps, omissions or glaring mistakes we made as parents will go down in history. It's a wrap. But it's far from over.

I remember the first week of parenting when everything was new and I was in awe of my new baby. I have similar reactions to my new adult children. I am learning things from them. The primary lesson being: THEY ARE NOT ME. They are all refreshingly different from me and from each other. There is something delightful about having adult conversations with your children in which you sometimes hear yourself, but not always. In spite of our faults as parents, they are becoming productive adults who enrich others. I am so proud of them and so excited for the future, their future.

As for me, the future will hold more learning, more understanding of my own parents and grandparents. (At this point in the narrative, my mother smiles.) It is what I hope for them as well.

Perspective

On the outside of a certain wall I know there is a dirt field. Weeds have grown up and died, trash has accumulated over time and the entire area seems an unfit place for any growth or prosperity.

If you stood on this side of the wall for any length of time, you would be hungry, thirsty, and would reap no benefit from any form of civilization, excepting the well built wall, of course. The wall is too tall to see over, so you could not see what was on the other side--

--Unless you were able to fly up above the wall and see over it to the other side. 

On the other side is a thriving center of prosperity. On the other side, people bring their pets to have them groomed. They donate clothes to the needy. They dine in and have pizza, wings, and enjoy coffee at an outdoor cafe on a beautiful patio. They buy groceries, have medicines dispensed, get pedicures, manicures, haircuts and drop off clothes to be dry-cleaned. Teenagers skateboard around the lot and neighbors often chat congenially when they meet in this square. No one gives a bother about the dirt lot on the other side, except to wonder when  it will be developed.

It's all a matter of perspective. 

This is how life can be. Often we are so close to a healthy and wholesome existence, and don't know it. We must pass by and even through the empty barren dirt lot to get to the other side, the side where health and wholeness are so obvious that we almost forget about the dirt lot. 

If you are walking through the dirt lot right now, or even have been stuck there for a while, do not lose hope that there is something on the other side. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. 

I've been learning that we are so ever-loving impatient to have things our way that we often forget that God has the perspective of all of time. We do not. We want things, and we want them now. Sometimes not getting what you want is a gift in itself. Trust the One with the bird's eye perspective. He sees through all the walls.

Let the Cycle Be Broken

I made my mother curse yesterday.

While I admit that first sentence was a cheap literary hook, it is nonetheless true. I was asking her about her father and more pointedly how he talked to her. I wanted to hear the actual words, not just the ‘blankety-blank’ she’d said before. Apparently he had quite the dark vocabularic collection. I’m not sure where my grandfather learned to talk in that way but I’ve heard his father was a sailor. Maybe it was passed down. One thing is certain. It did not pass down to my mother.

While I appreciate the many traits that both my grandparents passed on to my mom, it is difficult to understand why the mere sight of my mother seemed to incite her father to anger. In his defense it seems he had some mental issues and even checked himself into a mental health facility for a rather drastic treatment of a frontal lobotomy. As he seemed unable to keep regular work, due to this or because of the times – it was early in the Great Depression - there was seldom adequate food, clean clothing, and no semblance of a regular schedule of mealtimes or bedtimes. My grandmother, although a self-educated woman only formally completed  the eighth grade.

Studies show that children who are raised with this kind of abuse dole it out to their offspring. By all rights my upbringing should have been similar or even worse. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you had speculated on what kind of life my mother was going to have after growing up in a home where absolute squalor and verbal abuse dominated, you would be off the mark.  That is why I never heard her repeat those words until yesterday, and only at my urging.

You see, at a young age she transferred her affection to her heavenly Father and imitated Him instead of her earthly father. She was a pastor’s wife during my growing up years, and a gentle loving mother. She has maintained a warm relationship with her siblings. In what could be her retirement, she owns partnership in a local Business College, teaching and giving encouragement and guidance to students who have lost their way, both in life and employment. She hosts coffees for the neighbors in her community, encouraging the women, often giving money here or there to people who need it. She holds a bachelor’s degree and is by far the most well-read in her peer group. My mother, a soft-spoken and extremely articulate woman has spent her 84 years in giving back to the world and her God. Not only that but all four of her children are successful, upwardly mobile citizens who have followed her example of faith and altruism. I’d call this breaking the cycle.

Always Mercy

Being a new devoted Doctor Who fan, I can't resist a stab at some thoughts on Episode 2 of Season 9. Aficionado's may wish to go and fetch a cup of tea whilst I give a little insight to the rest of you.

The Doctor Who series is a BBC original television show which began in 1963, went into dormancy in 1989 and experienced a revival beginning in 2005. It features the Doctor, a Time Lord who travels through time in a  Blue British Police Box called the TARDIS (acronym for time and relative dimension in space).

The vulnerability and ultimate triumph of mercy is showcased quite brilliantly. The Doctor responds to an ominous and pitiable summons from Davros, the creator of the Daleks, robotic machines who are quite possibly the biggest evil threat he faces. We are shown a flashback where the Doctor has saved Davros' life as a child, and during the course of the episode we learn that it is the Doctor's compassion for this boy-turned-evil-mastermind that has allowed the birth of so much evil, and indeed been the primary reason for the predicament that the Doctor and his friends find themselves in at the moment. We are drawn in horrified fascination to the Daleks whose individual and collective mantra is 'EXTERMINATE!', but we are also drawn to the Doctor because he is good, and it doesn't hurt that he is usually able to get out of fantastically bad circumstances, managing to also rescue his companions and any other such innocents.

As Davros begins to tighten the noose on the Doctor he makes a pitiful plea for the Doctor to help him see the sunset and even sheds real tears. There is some cheesy comment about how they are in this moment on the same side, and the Doctor's compassion once again leads him to offer help by giving some of his lifeforce to the (apparently) dying Davros. He finds himself, in his attempt to help, led into a trap, being drained of energy which is used to strengthen the Daleks even more.

This tragedy is then turned to victory when the Doctor's current companion Clara, trapped in a Dalek's apparatus is able to articulate 'mercy' through the Dalek's voice box - which concept is unknown to the Daleks, but enabled by the Doctor's sacrifice of energy - to recognize her and save her. 'Always mercy.' the Doctor says, in what appears to be a spiritually teaching moment.

At one point a question is posed, 'Davros made the Daleks, but who made Davros?' As far as I can determine, the question is never answered, within this episode anyway.

You connect the dots. I did.