Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see my mother.
She is gone now, passed into another dimension.
I heard her voice once when I was gardening.
Her wind chimes send messages when I least expect them.

She is gone now, passed into another dimension.
I inherited her cheekbones and stubborn disposition.
Her wind chimes send messages when I least expect them.
I hear, “relax – don’t worry – all will be well.”

I inherited her cheekbones and stubborn disposition.
She was fiery and often showed it.
I hear, “relax – don’t worry – all will be well.”
I am grateful for all she taught me.

She was fiery and often showed it.
I like those reminders when a breeze is blowing.
I am grateful for all she taught me.
Our lives so different; I learned from her.

I like those reminders when a breeze is blowing.
I heard her voice once when I was gardening.
Our lives so different; I learned from her.
Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see my mother.

Phebe

written in December in the poetry class led by Mary Pierce Brosmer at Women Writing for (a) Change

……..More

I came out in the early 70s with her beautiful voice & music in the background of my life. Debi and Margie, two friends & lovers, and our experiments with loving in tiny Oxford, Ohio, home of ‘mother’ Miami U.

From time to time, I rediscover Laura on YouTube. This song, “Serious Playground,” is on her final album, published posthumously.

“My boss is the Muse!” ~ her words of wisdom.

With winter solstice just upon us and the days of dark gradually, imperceptibly becoming light, I vow to take my own muse more seriously — in the playground of words. Poetry is my most beloved playground but this blog means something to me as well. So I plan to visit this blog playground more often.

Married to my mother
her last ten years of life,
she was your older woman,
you her younger man.
You were a Vietnam vet,
not much older than I.
Damaged,
your injuries were many,
some unseen.
 
We had this conversation once:
if we had known one another
in the 70′s
I’d be marching in the street
and you’d be in those jungles.
Believe me, we were both
impacted by that war;
granted, your wounds
were deeper.
You drank some of them
away.

I said I was on your side,
against the killing and
all that was unnecessary,
not about you
and the role you had to play.
I don’t think you
believed me.
 

Now I stand before your coffin
draped in a American flag,
closed
because you wanted it
that way.
 
An honor guard
came to your visitation,
the funeral home
transformed into a
little Army moment.

They saluted you
with words, a cross, and flowers;
they gave your youngest son
a special Bible.
I know you would have liked it,
been proud,
felt fulfilled.
 
You outlived that war, Dave,
but it never left you.
I could sense your
scars over the years.

Even though your
coffin didn’t allow a final look,
I swear your smile
was bittersweet.
 
 
 

My grandmother stands behind me in the photograph. She is smiling. I’d do anything to please Grandma Katie. I was her favorite grandchild.

I have a strange grin on my face as if I’m not quite sure what is going on. I wonder if the rifle is still warm to my touch. I wonder what I am thinking—or did I turn numb and go outside my body?

I always loved animals. My Grandma’s farm included Laddie and Boy-Dog. Did I identify with the fox so recently shot? I can’t believe I was not upset—me who hated even to step on ants!

I wouldn’t doubt that this was the beginning of my becoming a pacifist and animal rights advocate.

Phebe
May 2005

Reflections six years later…..

I know it’s a story. I realize I can’t literally know what I was thinking and feeling back then. I do believe that time is a human construct for our convenience. I’d bet my intuition that this present day “I” can, at times, intuitively connect with my younger self. That’s why I wrote the story the way it spoke to me in 2005.

Now I’m grown up, I know that foxes eat chickens and that nature is often about survival. I still don’t wish that fox dead. Or at least made a big display of, an achievement, a rite of passage for the man who shot it. I know we all have to die but I still don’t like it when some of them are grandmother, mother, friends—and animals unnecessarily.

But this is also about my relationship with Grandma Katie. She adopted my mother from the Children’s Home after her biological mother died. When my mother became pregnant with me in 1949, she married and her college education ended. My mother wanted to be an artist and attend the Art Institute of Chicago. My grandmother expected her to be a teacher like her and go to nearby Miami University. So the torch was passed to me, the malleable 5 year old. Barely in kindergarten and my future was laid out before me.

I was all about pleasing Grandma Katie. She was like a second mother. She adored me and I adored her. She saved money to pay my college tuition. I never did become a teacher in a traditional sense. After I retired from the public library, I taught using Women Writing for (a) Change processes.

But back to the wanting to please: it’s a disease. For most of my life, I’ve wanted people to like me (is this not a natural human condition?). It is only when I came out in the 70s that I risked displeasure and sometimes hatred from the larger world. I’m still here; I made it! But this urge to please others has had an impact: I get tired. Never to say no is downright unnatural. It makes me wonder if I can set my own priorities. I also have a bodhisattva complex but that’s another story. My early New Year’s Resolution is to say . . . . . no, and no, and no so when I do say YES! it will be so deeply true.

Reflections written August 2011

Right now, in my home–with a/c–it’s 82 degrees. Yes, I know the A frame looked “cool” when I bought it but it was November, after all. Although science claims heat rises, I swear the cool air in my house rises to the top.

I am sitting here in my undies; my dogs and cats don’t mind. My partner is at work. She’s hot (but that’s another story). I have a rotating fan blowing on me, the ceiling fan on high, and still it is humid. Much worse outside, though! The local news says the heat index is in the 100 – teens, so suddenly 82 doesn’t sound so hot by comparison.

“Feeling an uncomfortable sensation of heat” ~ Thus saith the Oxford American Dictionary. That’s one kind of hot, the kind people usually mean when they say the word.

Sunday in downtown Cincinnati was hot. I was at Fountain Square in the afternoon. It was the annual Pride Day and Festival. LGBT people of all ages and persuasions were strolling the square, hot in their own unique ways. Young lesbian couples, rainbow capes and hair. Drag queens. Clean cut guys, holding hands. Some on the square were not too hot to enter a dance contest.

Hot: “good-looking, sexy, attractive.”

I was just feeling kind of old, tired after a long morning and walking half a mile to the square. Friends and I had been relieved to find chairs in the shade across the street from the Westin and in front of the Human Rights Campaign Fund booth. I had been hot once, wild and energetic in my 20s and 30s in those early years of coming out. Now I’m just her-storic.

Hot: “passionately enthusiastic.” I think of opera—the music and my love for it. My friend Vic once said, “You act like you discovered opera!” I replied, “I did . . . for me!” So much that I took myself to NYC for a Metropolitan Opera Trio—three operas in three days. When I visited San Francisco, I saw an opera. I subscribed to Opera NEWS, bought CDs, learned hungrily of Handel’s countertenors and Verdi’s baritones. I chased a big name mezzo down the streets of Chicago once to let her know how hot she had just been on stage.

I love Indian food. I like it hot, those spices that give new meaning to food and a new adventure for my taste buds. Hot: “consisting of pungent spices or peppers.” I also get urges for Mexican food. Not to mention Thai. Well, that may be the hottest ethnic food of all. I am not a bland meat and potatoes girl though I was raised that way.

Then there’s the definition “angry, indignant, upset.” I accompanied my partner to her metaphysical church. Afterwards, there was a membership meeting—not any ordinary membership meeting for there was to be a vote to keep or get rid of their spiritual leader. During the proceedings, I felt numb, the spectacle unreal. They voted her out. I was sad since I liked Rev. Doris. Later, I got in touch with the anger I felt. Hot. Yes, I felt hot that so many men complained about the Rev. being “tough.” Had it been a male minister, would they have remarked about their leader’s toughness? I think not. It seemed akin to a witch hunt, and I had a sour taste from being a witness. Something was terribly wrong when a group who believed in choosing either fear or love chose to crucify their spiritual leader. I felt the heat rising as I sensed the love dissolving.

Five definitions of hot . . . . .

It wasn’t until the yard mistress was digging ground for a vegetable garden, putting unwanted rocks aside for some yet to be discerned purpose, that she remembered playing rock store with her brothers and sisters back in the 1950’s. They were storekeepers–independent business kids, trading rocks with one another. In the family driveway, there was merely gravel (seen from a grownup’s point of view) but to them there was beauty in those tiny flecks of color on the stones. Children decided what was beautiful; it was all in the perception. Parents had no say with the stones.

Half a century later, a grownup remembers her fascination with rocks. Of course, she now has a zen reason to justify her longing for a rock garden. There is truly no real need but she is retired and has time to create her own projects. She could use the stones as an excuse for work in her backyard. A rock garden would cut down on mowing. It would be a point of focus from the garden bench. The row of rocks along the back fence could be used for walking meditation. She saw her rock garden forming a microcosm of the creek beyond, with its rocks providing stability for the roar of the water.

Then there is the statue—female, some honored goddess. She believes her to be a form of Kwan Yin. She had been the centerpiece since the house in Northside years ago. She’d been moved from the front to the back, her stone head’s fallen off and been glued back—it hadn’t been the easiest journey for this goddess. Still, she cannot be ignored when one is sitting on the bench: a person comes face to face with her own divine self (it can’t be ignored). Now, besides the circle of stones surrounding the goddess, behind is a landscape of small calico rocks (for that’s what they’re called in their bags at Home Depot).

Working out at Victory Lady surely helped. Even though the 50# bags got wheeled across the yard with a dolly, they still had to be transferred from the car to the ground. Now the yard mistress got in touch with her Amazonian roots. Although she could hardly move the following day, she was grateful for her health to do this work, her rightful place in the universe, and rich material for sharing this story.

Once before when this had happened, I’d taken an old broom handle and, speaking softly as to a parakeet in a cage, slowly offered the stick near its feet. The bird had trusted me enough to step on the stick and allow me to gently motion it toward the opening to freedom.

This bird was perched too high, on the garage door opener above. I looked more closely—a cardinal, female. She was quite beautiful! Her brown body was tinged with reddish orange. Her beak, however, was bright orange, as if she wore lipstick. For a moment, we looked at each other–one species to another. It was a direct look, honest and sincere. I was trying to convey sympathy and she seemed calm about being in this new space.

I realized my partner would be arriving home soon from work. I wasn’t going to close the garage door on the bird. After all, we’d just shared a sort of satsang between species.

I found myself going through scrapbooks of photos. Granted, most of them were me as a child or young adult but, hey, just who took most of the photos, saved them, then gave them to me? Mom. Since I was the first born, I have tons of pictures, even a baby book!

I found the pictures Mom gave me after our trip to the San Francisco Bay area after her husband (my step father) died. So glad we did that! We traveled as two adults. She had never flown before so our roles changed slightly; she had to accept me as an adult as I booked our flights, made reservations, and served as self-appointed tour guide.

Was she happy? I mean, throughout her life? Some of the time, I’m sure. Will this be the year I learn, truly learn, that I am not her confidant, I am responsible only for my own happiness? I believe Mom was sad much of her life. My opinion is that she chose poorly regarding husbands. Three of them (one much later, when I was an adult). But that’s not my business now. My biological father and mother’s divorce when I was three became a shadow theme of my life. Thank god/dess for Landmark Education! This organizations’s seminars helped me see some patterns that had remained hidden for decades. I had taken her side. I believed relationships didn’t last, in fact, they were painful and not worth it. I might have been to blame; after, all, I was the oldest — shouldn’t I have known better, whatever was wrong in our family? I knew her story about dreaming of going to art school in Chicago but instead attending Miami University to become an elementary school teacher like her adopted mother Katie. She became pregnant with me at 20 and the rest is 1950′s “Leave it to Beaver” facade, the dysfunction lying just below the surface.

I’ve been working on a memoir. Surely mom will be in the acknowledgments. I loved her. I still do, maybe more than ever. There’ve been a few times when I’m in the yard among flowers that I almost hear her voice, feel her contentment. Lately the wind chimes I gave her (which came back to me after her passing) have been especially noisy out on the deck.