Unfading Beauty

On Facelifts and Forgiveness

It started with a poem: Pretty, by the talented slam poet, Katie Makkai. I posted a link to her performance on my Facebook page and wrote, “wow... talk about words with power,” as much an invitation to my writer friends as an exclamation. Later that day I had plenty of “likes” and comments such as: “wow, I had to share it too;” “pretty awesome;” and “Hell Yeah!”

Then Joan posted this: “Saw this verse this morning and reminded me of your link, 1 Peter 3:3-4 (New Living Translation).”

Scripture? Really? I didn’t even finish reading it; I went immediately to Facebook’s help page to find out how to drop her.

I knew Joan from my old life; we went to a New Jersey community college together; neither of us were “religious” at the time. I moved to Pittsburgh to go to medical school; jumped the bisexual fence; adopted a son with my beloved, Pat; broke legal ground for his right to two parents; and lost track of Joan. She married Ray, her high school sweetheart; had two children; found religion; and then, some twenty years later, ‘friended’ me on Facebook.

I guess my reaction to block her posts came from my feeling peripheralized by the bible-quoting religious right. I’ve heard that I’m an abomination in their eyes, which makes me angry, and who has time for that? When asked to articulate my beliefs I say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” In practice, I find God in nature. I rarely go to formal services, and if I do it’s to a Unitarian Universalist church, with an occasional yoga class or meditation session thrown in.

But life being what life is, it didn’t end there. The next morning, I found this email from Joan in my inbox:

Subject: peace

Dearest Janice,

I am so sorry if the scripture I felt paralleled the video offended or hurt you in any way. I have a little calendar my brother gave with daily verse it just happened to be the verse for the 28th, and that video just came to mind when I read it. That little video really got me thinking (pondering). I have actually been thinking of a face-lift for quite some time. (Always looking in the mirror tugging on my brow pulling back my face. Ray can tell you, Ha) I found it odd I would be obsessing over this and muttered a little prayer, god if you don't think I should do this then take away the desire for it. Then I saw this video, which gets to the core.... One of the things I have always loved about you is the depth and vulnerability of your soul, it's a gift of character you do not find often and it can be intriguing, refreshing, uncomfortable, cool, thought provoking. Anyway please do not feel bad at all about FB thing, it should be a joy for you and if anything disrupts it...let it go. I would.

Busted. I guess I’d been naïve to think she wouldn’t know that I’d blocked her. Now, I had to face it directly. I went for a walk, a long walk. On my return I collected my scattered thoughts like the piles of crisp fall leaves I’d just been swishing through. Here’s what I came up with:

Joan, thanks for the kind words. I guess I didn't know that you'd know I blocked you on FB. Now that you do, and since you were so kind as to write a “peace note” to me despite it, I’ll tell you about why. It’s simple, really. As a lesbian and life-long worker in women's rights, I have been hurt (and, maybe more importantly, many of the people I love have been hurt) seriously by, if I may, "the religious right". Honestly, I do not count you in that, as I have never, ever felt judged harshly by you. But I must admit quoting scripture does scare me; I think that right around the corner there will be a very hurtful statement (including, though it is not always obvious to the person who says so, "forgive the sinner not the sin"). So, once I saw scripture quoted, I felt it safest for my mental health (and the friends who see my page) to block it. Sorry if it hurt you in any way, 'cause I understand spiritual, I understand inspirational readings (my favorites happen to come from the Buddhist tradition), and I believe with all my heart you have a right, maybe even an obligation, to live your life in a way that makes you happy inside, cause if you're happy inside, "at peace" as it were, you're likely doing well by the world (and this includes, by the way, a facelift).

Later that day, I had lunch with Kathy, my bible-quoting sister-in-love. [Since I’m all about the power of words today, bear with me while I deconstruct that last sentence. I want you to notice that I have to invent new words for my life; she’s not my sister-in-law, because marriage to my love of 27 years is not (yet) lawful. This is due, for the most part, to those whose religious beliefs bleed onto their politics. Also, “bible-quoting” is an easy summary of Kathy for this piece, but it is constricted and somewhat derogatory and required a pre-blog email where I tried to excuse it. She said “…if that is the worst thing someone could say about me than I'm not doing too badly! :)”]. At lunch I spilled the beans to Kathy about my Facebook faux pas. I’m indebted to her for my embryonic ability to see the situation with Joan in a new light. She told me that Joan might feel peripheralized by me, by my leftist politics. That was a revelation for me; it seems like “they’re” always in charge. In my own mini-search for sanity (ironically all this happened while Jon Stewart held his March for Sanity), I went back to Joan’s post and read it:

“3 Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. 4 You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.”

Well, I basically agree with that. Her religion isn’t mine, and my politics aren’t hers. I’ll continue to be nervous when I hear scripture quoted and I’ll go on fighting for GLBT and women's rights. I’ll fight for her right to a facelift as I work towards a culture where it is not needed. Just as I suspect she’ll work toward a culture where human and civil rights prevail and the need for abortion goes down.

And I hope she’ll hit Accept when I re-friend her on Facebook.

---

Pretty, by Katie Makkai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother “What will I be? Will I be pretty?” Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill of fluorescent floodlight of worry.

“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty? But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dry add: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting my poor mother.

“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.” “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ” “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six, otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”

Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage she might buy. But, this is not about her. Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable appearance.

By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs, laying in a hospital bed. Face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.

Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist, like my body screaming at me from the inside out “What did you let them do to you? ” All the while this never-ending chorus groaning on and on like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood.

“Will I be pretty? ” Will I be pretty like my mother, unwrapping the gift-wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.

And now I have not seen my own face in ten years. I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me! This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those two pretty syllables.

This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? , ” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no.

The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but you will never be merely “pretty.” Katie Makkai

A world apart

I have been visiting a world in which I do not belong. A right brain world. A world of real writers. A world where given a prompt of “chain linked fence” one ends up with an intriguing riff of exquisite words. Sites and sounds and scents appear. Souls are revealed. And civilizations come to an end. All this in twelve minutes.

Upon initially visiting this world (back in, let’s see, the winter of 2008?) I met warm and welcoming writers: Laurie, then Marc and Libba, and, the young woman who told me what I had written enhanced her own reaction to a friend whose professor had made unwanted advances. Along the way, I met inspiring teachers: Sandy and Sheryl, even Amy, who liked what I had to say, even if she never liked how I said it. It was fun roaming around there. While it lasted. While I believed I could write something worth the work of writing, and reading.

Worth something. It had to be worth something. Even now, if I talk out loud about what I've been trying to write, it sounds worth doing: small t trauma (as in PtSD) happens, and often; denial is a misunderstood coping mechanism, one that can exacerbate small t trauma; there is a parallel to physical trauma that might elucidate emotional trauma; but mainly, it might be worth knowing that PtSD can come from a relatively minor assault, like getting grabbed or groped on a bus or knocked down on the street for your purse.

I’m not talking about large T trauma, like rape, or old trauma like child abuse, or ongoing trauma like domestic violence, because people seem to get that already. I’m talking about a full blown grief reaction to an early miscarriage; a shattered self-concept after a birth experience that appears “normal” to an outsider; or a compound reaction to an attempted strangulation at work, where one would expect to find large T trauma, but finds instead that the difficulty lies in internalizing the trusted boss’s reaction – “what did you do (read: to deserve it)”?

This sounds worth writing about. Maybe I should hire someone with better skills. How bourgeois is that? Being a homeowner, I spend much of my time hiring people: contractors, roofers, painters, plumbers; why not hire a ghostwriter or a regular writer who can spin a story of exquisite words? A story that shows what I have just told. Because, after an enjoyable trek through my own right brain, I've returned to my left, from where it seems clear I do not have what it takes for the task. For today, at least, it feels as simple as that.

Faith

A Eulogy

Two years ago, when my mother was eighty-five, she required major surgery for the ovarian cancer that led to her death. She came through the operation amazingly well – she was awake and alert within hours. But, after being discharged home from the hospital she developed a 'post-op ileus,’ which meant her gut stopped working and just stood paralyzed. This is why doctors always ask if you've 'passed gas' after surgery. (Which she hadn't by the way, a result of the quick discharges encouraged by our broken health care system; but don't get me started...)

The ileus caused her hours of unrelenting nausea and vomiting, a type of suffering I wouldn't wish on anyone. My two sisters and I cared for her, and each other, as best we could. First we unpacked, quickly and quietly, then set up the bedside commode designed to minimize pain from her three-day-old, seven inch wound. While one ate (in the hallway outside of Mom’s apartment, so we wouldn’t make her nausea worse) another dropped homeopathic remedies under her tongue, and the third delicately massaged her belly to help her gut start working again. We taped a sign on her door so her many caring neighbors would know she was home, but not well enough for visitors. We even went shopping for something, anything that might help - prune juice, antacids, laxatives.

Between the waves of nausea Mom tried to rest, but when they came she moaned - with an occasional “Oh honey.” At these times we all stopped what we were doing to attend to her. We had an assembly line to deliver clean moist cloths and basins, and were always at the ready for the next episode. It was the least we could do after the many years of her tending to us. Eight hours and two calls to the doctor later, we were told to take her back to the hospital.

As Mom sat in a straight back chair outside of her bathroom, pale and weak, we ran around like squirrels repacking and preparing for the 45-minute car ride. Once everything was set in the apartment, washcloths and basins ready, we slowly walked her to the elevator. She experienced a particularly bad episode of retching just before getting in. On the way down, she moaned "Oh, God, please help me" and leaned her head onto mine. I gave her a gentle hug. The elevator door opened and we walked her towards the curb, a daughter on each side and the third with the car ready.
Mom stopped on the sidewalk and announced, "I am passing gas…"
"Really?" we said, shocked and excited.
"Yes," she smiled, amused at our astonishment, "and it’s a good one!"

And, by God, that resolved her symptoms! We still climbed into the car but with the nausea gone we talked and laughed during the ride to the hospital. Mom was readmitted, but for only a brief stay.

For years we kidded my mother about her ‘direct connection’ to God. She sat in conversation with Him every morning. She thanked Him for all the good in her life, her health, her wonderful new ‘independent living’ community, she even thanked Him for my hands (I am blessed to be able to attend births for a living). Then she ran her list, asking God to keep people, so many people, in His care. Of course this included her children, her grand and great-grandchildren. But it also included our in-laws, her priest, my sister’s house cleaners, my son’s teachers, people on drugs, the president, the soldiers. The list went on and on; if you’ve met her, and certainly if you’re here today, she’s probably said a prayer for you, too. She did this every single day, although, she did tell me once that if she was ill, she’d cut it short saying, “…and You know the rest.”

In all the years of knowing this, I was never so close, so present for it - the simple yet genuine “…please help me” prayer in the elevator, answered moments later. When my sister acknowledged how hard it was to bear so much discomfort, Mom replied simply, “Well, we do have to suffer some on this earth.”

She had a way of leaning on her god, asking for help (usually for others) but, and this is the key, she was always willing to accept what she could not change. It wasn’t easy but it’s how she got through everything life handed her over her 87 years.

Accepting what is… We’re going to need that to get through what life hands us without her here to cheer us on and keep us in her prayers.

Lessons of the Pie Crust

LESSONS OF THE PIE CRUST

Everyone loves a fresh baked pie, especially the buttery crunch of the crust. In our family, we would fight over an orphan piece of crust, the six of us, and our Dad, who taught us this appreciation.

Once, when I was about ten and sweetly unaware of the life pressures that prevented Mom from finishing a pie, she let me, well, my sister, Theresa, and me, eat a whole crust! We had smelled the golden treat baking two days before in the kitchen of our Baltimore row house. Small and simple, the kitchen had a table with only three chairs, but a large window with a swag curtain that gave Mom easy access to holler us home from the alley, or yell, “Donna, tie your brother’s shoe.” Of course, once we knew she was watching, we’d holler back, “Hey Mom, look at me.”

I had watched my mother flip and gently press the tender dough on the Formica counter. She sprinkled white flour like fairy dust and rolled her pin this way and that, ball bearings jiggling with each new run. Once it was thin and round, she flopped it into the glass pie dish and tucked in the unruly edges. Then she fluted it into a perfect zigzag, a skill she’d eventually teach to all of us, and to our kids. After a quick rinse of her hands and a swipe on her apron, she tapped fork holes, just so, all along the bottom. “So it can breathe,” she said as she popped it into the oven for the pastry gods to bless.

The rich aroma filled the house, but Mom never finished it. No strawberries, no apples. No can of pumpkin in sight.
“When will it be ready?” we whined after the golden brown pie shell sat on the white corner cabinet for two days. It begged to be eaten, and we begged back.
Mom stopped sorting laundry, pushed a loose hairpin back into her dark French twist and pleaded, “Please, girls,”

What was it, I wonder now, that prevented her from finishing? I asked her once - was it the endless financial pressures? Was it the time my older sister one almost eloped? Or when another wrecked the company car? Or, perhaps it was when the youngest, a dog lover, was attacked in a neighbor’s yard because he didn’t (or maybe couldn’t?) read “Beware of Dog”?

She didn’t remember. And it was not likely to have been one of those memorable events, it is more apt to have been the everyday heaviness of life … running the household on a shoestring; raising six children, polite and nice but self-centered and full of their own angst; or attending to a neighbor’s need.

I guess life can simply get in the way of itself. She couldn’t fit in finishing a pie, and couldn’t see when she might.

So, two days after she baked that crust, while Theresa and I did our homework at the kitchen table Mom peered over at us from her sink full of dishes. Before I could assure her, “I am so doing my homework,” she asked, “Would you two like to eat that crust?”
Our eyes lit up. “Yeah!” we said in unison.
“Oh, go on and eat it,” she said. I can almost see her smile as she returned to her work -- barely a break in the rhythm.

Oh, we were thrilled! We began to gobble it up quickly. After all, things in our family were never given without methodical division. And we knew someone could walk in any minute wanting to share a piece. The first bites tasted scrumptious and melted in our mouths. But as it disappeared we became uncharacteristically generous.
“You finish it,” Theresa said.
“No, you can have the rest.” I said, and wandered away from the table.

It’s taken me fifty-some years to realize just how many lessons I learned from that simple experience. For one, the crust tasted good because of the contrast it offered the filling -- without the filling the pie lost its balance - all yin and no yang. And “special” presumes limited opportunity. While eating the whole thing felt special, and memorable, the crust itself ceased to be. I ate most of it, of course, but deep down I began to see just how small of a jump it is from not quite enough, to far too much. But most of all, and I might say, best of all, I began to recognize that it was my mother’s attention that was the real gift.

So now - especially now - I find myself deeply grateful that we had so many days with fewer burdens. Days, when, after a meal with meatloaf and mashed potatoes, she could present us with a fragrant, fully baked pie to fight over.

Fiction

I’ve written a piece of fiction.

And now I feel like a little kid who just got a new bike. Not any new bike, but one I’ve built - with my own hands. It’s a simple bike, no gears or fancy hardware, but it works. I’m totally psyched. The pedals make the wheels turn and the handlebar allows me to go around in a circle between boxes in the basement. A thing of beauty. I’ve even named it, and the name incorporates its essence: complex mechanics, potential energy, my ticket to ride.

But … what will happen when I go outside with it? Will the brakes work when I’m going down a hill? What about bumps at high speed? Will it hold up?

I’ll find out tomorrow when my classmates put it through the “workshop” process. And, of course, I’ll post it on my blog if it passes inspection.

The Yearling, A Review

I was never much of a reader. My parents weren’t highly educated. Mom made it to eighth grade and Dad through high school, and then they met, had six kids and no money. Reading was low on their priority list. It doesn’t explain my lack of reading completely though, because one of my sisters reads like a madwoman. I guess I never had much interest, plus, I’m a slow and deliberate reader and can’t seem to sit for long periods at a time What I did read as an adolescent was teen romance magazines. Oh, the drama, the longing, the love … it was all I needed - on a single page. But, whole books? Unlikely. And the classics? Never.

The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was my assigned precursor for what is now termed Young Adult Literature and it took me three solid days - all of Labor Day weekend minus a movie here and a breakfast there - to get through it. Difficult? yes, but worth it. The Yearling was a long, luxurious meander through a year in the backwoods of Florida in the early 1900’s. Thematically a coming-of-age book, Ms. Rawlings skillfully intertwined setting and character development to give us a glimpse into the rough and laborious entanglement between the natural world and the Baxter family. Respectful encounters as well as intense struggles with the earth and its animals allowed the reader an intimate view of the rambunctious, animal-loving protagonist, Jody, and his kind-hearted (what we would now call) naturalist father, Penny.

There wasn’t an overarching plot per se, and so, for me at least, there was not a strong drive to read on for most of the book. It was more like a series of plots, popcorn plots, little arcs of drama as Jody and Penny would go on a hunt for large or small game, or deal with severe weather or an animal intruder, or even just go off together to haul water for the family. Conflicts came up within his family, with other families- like the family of brutes nearby who lacked the spirit and knowledge of Penny, or within Jody himself as he wrestled with his own conscience, a common theme in young adult literature. But, these issues were usually resolved within a page or two.

However, these experiences built on one another to form a foundation for a final, more intense, set of conflicts/plot found in the last few chapters. It was here that the drive to read on picked up. One minor plot was a feud between two of Jody’s older friends over, naturally, a girl. Jody had to repeatedly decide with whom to place his allegiance until one started the other's house afire. This brought both the best and the worst in human nature into clear focus for Jody. The major plot (which was a little long in coming, in my opinion) peaked when his adopted and beloved fawn, Flag, had to be killed to prevent him from eating any more of the food on the family farm than he already had. This was a great challenge for Jody and it was magnified, another common theme in young adult literature, by the fact that he blamed it on his parents, who, in Jody’s mind, couldn’t possibly know what was right, let alone understand his perspective. So, of course, he had to run away, during which time he faced discomfort and danger.After he cried and starved out his grief over the loss of Flag, who he actually had to shoot after his mother’s poor aim only wounded the animal, he realized how much he missed his home and loved his parents. He returned with a clearer understanding of the meaning of, and a willingness to take on, a more grown-up role in the family. If this wasn’t a precursor, I’d suggest it was all just a little too, well, cliché.

The language and use of dialogue was my favorite part of the book. Ms. Rawlings used specific and accurate dialect and historically interesting words, both of which helped to develop both the setting and the characters. For example, Jody had spent all day building a pen to house Flag, his new fawn, so Flag wouldn’t continue to eat the growing potatoes. Flag jumped out of it as soon as he was placed there and Jody started to cry. Penny said, “Don’t git in a swivet* boy. We’ll work this out, one way or t’other. Now the ‘taters is near about the only thing he’ll bother, do you keep him outen the house. They’d ought to be under kiver anyway. Now you just take down that tipply-tumbly pen, and build a coop to kiver the ‘taters.” (*A swivet is a flustered or agitated state.)

Ms. Rawlings made delightful and abundant use of metaphor, most of which referred to how nature can represent the common relationships and situations in life. About half way through the book, Jody finds his fawn, Flag, and he’s surprised that Flag had stayed put after his mother had been killed. Jody said to Penny, “Pa, he wa’n’t skeert o’ me. He were layin’ up right where his mammy had made his bed.” Penny responded by saying, “The does learns ‘em that, time they’re borned. You kin step on a fawn, times, they lay so still.” I think this can be interpreted as part of the human condition, one Jody discovers by the end of the book, that none of us, ultimately, stray very far (at least, emotionally) from where (how) we were raised.

The Yearling was first published in 1938 toward the end of a lengthy economic depression in this country. It’s not surprising then, that the author held in high regard a poor family who made way in the world solely on the land. And the role of women could be appreciated in the historical perspective as well -- primarily good or bad -- wife and mother or “one of them leetle chipperdales”. While not originally from the rural woods of Florida it is clear that once Ms. Rawlings moved there she studied in detail the local people and culture in order to bring it so alive in her writing. She won the Pulitzer Prize for the Yearling in 1939.

As for me, I’m grateful to have one of the classics under my belt. The slow pace, use of metaphor, and detailed description of place will all be useful for my own writing. And I will not soon forget the back woods life in Florida or the wonderful characters, especially Jody with his new grasp of animal and human nature and (maybe even more so) his patient and loving father, Penny. I enjoyed this so much, not in the reading of it necessarily, but in the having read it, that I find myself looking forward to reading other “classic” books of young adult literature. Huck Fin, here I come.

Not Just Yet

Nectar leaks slowly from the dark red center of each waxy Hoya bloom this morning. The large old plant sits in my sunroom, in front of the sliding glass door that leads out to the second story deck where the birds await their seed and the grill needs to be cleaned from last night’s chicken dinner. The sun breaks through the branches of the tall maple and lends the deck and the sunroom the feel of nature, unusual this close to the city. I write here in the mornings, kicked back in a yellow flowered recliner with my laptop and a cup of coffee. But, in truth, I haven’t written for quite awhile. My last blog was four months ago - that’s a long dry spell. Of course, I have all the right reasons: real life gets in the way; I lack inspiration; my inner critic is winning … the usual.

Today, I will start here, with the Hoya. A cutting from my mother’s plant, it is a vine with deep green leaves that wind round and round the handle of the basket that holds its pot-bound roots. The rich fragrance reaches as far as the kitchen, but only in the evenings and only when it blooms, which is rare. I’ve had this plant for over ten years but found my first bloom just two years ago. That it blooms at all is the envy of my sister, Kathy. She waters hers religiously and keeps it in a good spot, but, still, it never blooms.

The drops of nectar can last for days and this morning they appear like tears. Perhaps they’re for my mother – she’s eighty seven and has ovarian cancer. She’s endured multiple bouts of chemo but is now ready to say ‘enough’. I’m proud of her for choosing that path now, at a time when she’s still up and around. She’s able to walk to the dining room and does chair-exercise every day at her independent living center. Still, she depends heavily on Kathy, the sister who lives nearest to her, making it all the more unfair that it’s Kathy’s Hoya plant that won’t bloom.

I wonder what’s next for my mother – in all likelihood it will be a steady loss of function and friends. Already, I’ve watched in awe as she’s incorporated the deaths of many whom she’s loved - three in the past month alone. One of her chemotherapy agents has made her already thin skin exquisitely sensitive to heat so she rarely bakes her loving gifts of apple pie or strawberry cake anymore. Her day-to-day memory is diminishing along with any hope of watching her great-grandchildren grow to maturity, including my own son’s newborn daughter. And every day she deals with dizziness and pain, abdominal swelling that requires periodic needle taps, and of course, the foreboding loss of appetite … even for ice cream.

I can barely stand it. But she can, and does – with grace. How she does that is my question. She is Catholic and her faith in God is strong, so that helps, but it’s more than that. Her ability to accept what comes her way would impress the most devout Zen Buddhist. Honestly, she counts herself as extremely lucky. Where I see that she grew up poor and without parents, she’s grateful that her older sister and brother kept the family together and “raised ‘em up right”. Despite the deaths of her granddaughter in a house fire and her daughter from Hepatitis C, she sees only her five remaining children and multiple grand- and great grandchildren who are healthy and happy. And there are times that I wonder how she can live another day without her life-long love and best friend, a man who was kind and smart and fun, who took care of many of the details of living. She tells me not to worry; he’s holding a spot for her in heaven. He promised.

So, while I watch her stare down the throat of death, she simply smiles and taps it nonchalantly on the cheek and says, “OK ... but not just yet”.

And me? I stand next to the Hoya plant and swirl in my own discontent. The litany seems long this morning but on top is the impending loss of my mother and my own lack of direction: I’m fifty-four, my life is half over; I’ve changed my career path so I can write, but I’m not writing. What am I doing?

The clear and tenacious nectar simply waits for me. Finally, I touch a drop from one of the waxy blooms and ask the universe - the vague godlike energy of truth and love and nature - to help me find and be the best of me. Aiming for what I vaguely understand to be my chakra energy points, I rub cool fluid between my thumb and middle finger above my head, to remind me that I’m connected to everything and inspiration and comfort are available. I place another drop on my forehead to pull out trust in my own intuition, a third on my lips and throat so I may cut through fear and ego to communicate a respectful truth. I note the hint of sweetness and take a few slow breaths before I place a fourth drop on my heart to remind me to both nestle and release the gift of love. The next drop goes on my skin at the level of my adrenals, my solar plexus, for the energy and the stamina to take on whatever life offers. I linger here long enough to notice the fluid gets sticky as it dries and I know I’ll have little reminders of this blessing all day. Two drops are left. The first of these I rub onto on my lower belly, near my ovaries, to draw out creativity and openness to the new and sensual, and then, warmed by the dappled sunlight and an inner calm, I aim the final drop for the base of my spine as I sense myself connected to the earth, whole, and, in fact, exactly where I need to be.

There, I am blessed. Not by the Catholic God my mother loves, but no less so. It’s different, I know, and in a future blog, I’ll detail my connection with spirituality through nature. But in this moment I’ll simply notice that I feel shored up, more able to emulate my mother’s resilience, at peace with my place in the world. I can wait for the blooms and will breathe in their intoxicating fragrance when I can.

As for today, I’ll upload this writing to my blog, despite its imperfections; and then, after I feed the birds and clean the grill, I’ll email my sister, Kathy, to share what I’ve learned about the Hoya plant while writing this – turns out a long dry spell between watering will actually increase the chance of a bloom.

Upload revision 9-28-09