Lion and Magic Boy

First, a couple of points of business:

Just so you know, the word “hill” when referred to as having anything to do with bicycles, me riding bicycles, cycling, or any of the above refers strictly to anything above a gentle 1% grade. Or to be more specific, especially later in the ride, “hill” means anything that’s actually level, or isn’t actually down. Such hills are often glimpsed from afar and as such in their distance look possibly tiny, but after Sisyphus is sighted rolling a boulder up it, such hill becomes decidedly larger, progressively so.

Next: It was a little eerie and certainly unexpected tonight when, walking into a local restaurant, I was suddenly finding Serena coming over to hug me because she’s there with The Ex and Eric, having dinner. What are the odds? Eric was decidedly displeased that he was not going with me, poor boy.

On to the business at hand:

Earlier today I had a compelling memory of a woman I knew last year in Colorado. Her name was Karen, and when I met her she was recovering from some really invasive treatments for a rare form of cancer. Her children were both classmates of my children: one in Nathaniel’s class, a truly fine cellist, and the other in Serena’s kindergarten, going on to the first grade that Serena would have been in had we stayed there.

Karen was amazing. I liked her instantly, as she was warm and welcoming when we all came over for a playdate one afternoon despite her very delicate condition. She had an energy about her that I liked very much, and I imagined us becoming friends. Karen had a lot of friends in the school, as she turned those same sparkling eyes and warm attention to everyone she met, as near as I could tell.

Months later Karen wasn’t doing so well, and it was clear not long afterward that she wasn’t going to make it.

Incredibly, her husband Jonathan blogged the entire process for all Karen’s many friends and acquaintances to read and stay connected. I’m sure it was therapeutic for him as well, but it really gave everyone a sense of what the dying process is all about.

Karen died in her home a little more than a year ago. I regret that we never became the friends I had hoped to be, but her life became too full of death in order to have time for new beginnings other than her own. Even with my perceptions of death and life and the meaning it has, I was still greatly touched by watching this family gently traverse a process few really get to see up close, let alone touch and be a part of.

I can’t help but think that was part of Karen’s gift to those around her.

I have a confession to make.

I have a mistress.

Oh, she’s a sly one, she is. That’s right, out of the blue she’ll appear and whisper in my ear, whisper things so insidious that at first I don’t hear them.

“What?” I say, straining to hear her better.

My mistress obliges me.

“No one likes you,” she breathes, oh so softly, into my waiting ear, “You’re a failure, and people don’t like you, and nothing you do is right.”

Soon I find myself nodding along with her. After all, my mistress has been with me for so long. She must really know me, right?

She knows me, all right, and all too well.

Her name is self-deprecation.

It’s been defined as being the Fear of Not Being Enough, or Fear of Inadequacy; not being able to live up to your own or someone else’s standards, leaving one feeling weak, insecure, and incompetent.

And oh my does it ever have a hold on me, sometimes. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, because if you have this mistress it can eat you alive. It can make you give up before you ever start trying. It can make you want to crawl into a deep dark space and live there forever. It can make you quit jobs, end relationships, self-medicate, give up on your dreams, give up on life.

There is a bright side to all this, however.

It turns out that everyone has a main fear. I happen to have two, aren’t I lucky? One is the fear of Missing Something, and the other is as above, the Fear of Being Found Wanting. Fun stuff, huh?

The trick is to realize that these fears protect us from something, and once you know what that is, it’s all downhill from there.

Working on it. Sometimes, noticing something is half the battle.

Recently in my work as a channel, I had the opportunity to access for several people information about their platforms for the year. A platform is like an underlying theme that a person chooses to examine (mostly subconsciously; we all do this even if we’re unaware of it) for a year or period of years.

It turns out that my platform for the year is Truth.

Hmm, Truth: your area of focus this coming year is about TRUTH. Learning to find and honor the truth that lies inside you has been an area of difficulty. Truth hides in many ways and it has not always been easy to determine what is true and what is not. It is your focus, then, to find it wherever you can.

So since then I’ve been thinking about ways in which this might manifest. (I was actually a little disappointed when this came through, because it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting and I wasn’t sure it actually fit.) I remembered that I’ve been thinking a lot lately about people’s words, how there is often a message behind their words that can in fact belie their words.

Let’s think about that for a moment.

I wouldn’t say that this is outright lying. In fact, I think that those underlying messages are often hidden even from the person giving them. We send out messages all the time that may or may not coincide with our actual words. So it makes being able to use your own intuition, to really trust what you hear and feel, all the more important.

Let’s examine some of the messages, on a single theme, that I have received over the years.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had body-image issues for a long time. In the 4th grade I remember learning to hold in my stomach on a constant basis, something I have done ever since, relaxing only in pregnancy. Can you imagine? Surely this has affected my ability to take a deep breath.

So that, coupled with mixed messages I received about how I looked, did quite a number on me for years. (It’s getting much better now, by the way.)

Here, then, is a phrase uttered to me by various people, along with the hidden messages behind their words:

1. You are beautiful.
Except you’re not as smart as I am, so it really doesn’t count.

2. You are beautiful.
As long as you don’t get old and gain a lot of weight.

3. You are beautiful.
And I’m not entirely comfortable with it because I have insecurity issues of my own, so eat a lot and don’t talk to other men, okay?
(This was a popular one, shared by several.)

4. You are beautiful.
And I really mean that. You are!

See what I mean?

It’s important to listen not just to people’s words but also the words-behind-the-words. Explore how you feel when someone talks to you. Do you feel really clear about what they say, or is there a feeling of discomfort? Learning to be aware of and explore that feeling of discomfort can be difficult; after all, often these hidden messages come from those we love and “should” be able to trust implicitly.

It’s also important to realize that frequently, a person giving off a hidden message will be unaware of it. They may feel that they are being completely sincere, and may be completely unaware that they have their own issues surrounding those hidden statements. I’ve had little success changing someone’s perspective by pointing out the discrepancy I feel between the actual words and the hidden words, so unless I’m missing something (and I may be; I’m no expert here), this concept is mainly only useful for you yourself.

What hidden messages are you hearing in your life?

It hasn’t escaped me that there is an incredible generational and multi-directional sense to the day, a day which has been arbitrarily assigned as one honoring mothers (but which began as a war protest, how about that!). I am a mother; my child is going to be a mother; and of course, I have a mother.

My day began much like many others: Eric’s singing and growling awoke me, ignorable for only so long. Then I made breakfast and cleaned up after breakfast. Pretty much a regular day: no breakfasts in bed at this house!

Not that I would want that, necessarily. The relationships I have with my children are unlike any other I have with anyone: intense and demanding maybe, but sweet and incredibly rewarding at the same time. I wouldn’t change a thing, except perhaps to clone myself because there’s just not enough of me to go around. Being a mother and being a person at the same time sometimes seems mutually exclusive. But my relationships with them are are too precious to worry about meeting someone else’s idea of proper motherhood or fitting into boxes that are easily definable.

It turns out that my mom likely struggled with some of the same issues, though I was largely ignorant of it at the time. I remember standing next to her in a department store when I was about 13, trying to appear that I was randomly in the area instead of related by blood: me in the studied disdain of bershon, her beaming because someone told her that they thought we were sisters. When I was 18, she surprised everyone by announcing that she had had enough of her marriage and was instead in a relationship that pretty much everyone in the universe considered to be highly inappropriate. The fact that he was about 15 years her junior was the least of its inappropriateness, at least in my view. Sad to say, I was one of those who judged her and her situation, seeing the face of it rather than its heart. For many years it kept our conversations rather to a minimum. I reflected for a long time as to how much closer I was to my father than my mother, and avoided any attempts at intimacy with her.

After I became, at 20, a mother myself and continued to grow older, I also continued to push away what I regarded as the unwelcome approach of the “I’m turning into my mother!” wail. I tried to be different, tried to be what I thought was myself, but at every turn there she was, silently (in my mind) mocking me, coming closer while I pushed her away.

There was no judgment, however. It’s interesting to note that after all this time.

After Nathaniel was born, my mom seemed to take to the Grandma business with new energy. I’m sure she was a little taken aback by having Grandmahood thrust on her at what must have seemed to her to be a prematurely young age for that sort of thing, and her relationship with Jess had to grow from that uneasy beginning. With Nathaniel, and then later Serena and then Eric, she had already moved into the energy of the relationship and so it was likely easier for everyone. She began visiting us about once a year, making the trek to Pennsylvania from California, a long travel day that probably seemed longer to her than it did me.

Along this time she began having trouble with joints, specifically her hip. Eventually she had hip replacement surgery, and later another. She bore these events with a stoicism that I find admirable. Having few people on whom to rely, she simply did what she had to do, did it and got over it and went on. I saw this process even more clearly last fall when she had her third major surgery, a knee replacement. Could I do the same without a lot of whining? I hardly think so.

At the same time, I was processing a lot of issues from my childhood that kept rising at odd times, unbidden and unwelcome. It turns out that there’s a good chance I was sexually abused by a babysitter’s husband, and I’ve carried with me feelings of abandonment relating to that. My memories of this are of course hazy and unclear, but the related feelings were there, asking to be looked at. So I looked at them. Now they are gone. Whatever may have happened to me wasn’t my mother’s fault. I need to say this out loud, in print. It wasn’t her fault.

Somehow, with all this processing, the inner work that I was doing without a lot of conscious intent, with all this, things cleared between me and my mom. I finally saw her for herself, not as simply the person I call my mother. It was amazing.

Her name is Jane.

Jane grew up in a loving household in the midwest, attended by a large extended family. She has lots of wonderful memories of this time, which she is preserving in writing to be available for future generations. At 72, Jane knows her mortality.

Jane was immensely talented both as a concert pianist and a singer. She likely could have gone on to study either and have become fairly successful professionally. Instead, she chose to marry my father and to go into education. She was a pretty good teacher (speaking from the perspective of a kid who had her for a teacher in the 4th grade) and enjoyed watching the children blossom under her tutelage. She got out of the teaching biz after more than 20 years, though. That divorce changed a lot of lives.

Jane continues to work at a job she mostly likes. It gives her the opportunity to interact with people on a quiet one-on-one basis, which is where she shines. What people don’t realize about her overtly is that she leads simply by example. And she no longer cares a damn about what people think about her. After 25 years of maintaining her “inappropriate” relationship, she’s done worrying about what other people think. Jane pleases herself, but in a quiet unassuming way and without thrusting her values in anyone’s face. If anything, she’s incredibly respectful of what others feel, but at the same time she simply continues to lead a life that pleases her.

I want to be more like her.

She’s one of a very small handful of people I know who are living their lives mindfully and with love, holding themselves to their own inner highest ideals. I don’t think it gets any better than that.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom. I love you.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that kale represents the new direction my life has taken in so many ways.

Kale, you ask?

(What the hell is kale?) HEY!! I can hear you whispering there! Kale is a hard leafy green vegetable! Like if cabbage and lettuce mated!

(By the way, the kale was gently sauteed with lots of garlic and some sesame oil. It was remarkable. Nathaniel’s comment: “Can I have some more kale?” I think he’s my new favorite child.)

But back to kale and its personal symbolism.

1. Better eating. Although we do eat well, my motivation waned somewhat this winter. I do cook for an audience, and the children don’t always provide as enthusiastic an audience as I’d like. So (don’t tell anyone) there were a few meals served that didn’t actually include a vegetable, unless you count onions, which appear everywhere. But don’t tell anyone. Now there are salads! Which they eat! And brown rice! We are working all this in gently, and so far they haven’t noticed.

2. The sugar. I know I have said before that my coffee these days resembles a confection as opposed to the punishment that it used to be for me (with many coffee-free years in between), but I’ve decreased the amount of sugar necessary in my coffee for enjoyment to zero. Who knew! Which means that having a small piece of dark chocolate from time to time really makes a difference.

3. Here’s where it gets boggy. (Is that a word? Who cares, I can make them up if I want to.) How do I explain this? I channeled some information for myself about 2 months ago that upon recent reflection makes remarkable sense. (Hold on. You’re still on the word “channeled,” I can tell. Let it go. It’s okay.) Basically, there was a path of marked change that was beginning at about that time, symbolized as it was by a short trip I made with much foreboding. The trip was okay despite starting weirdly, but already so many things have changed about my perception and focus since then and as a result of that trip that frankly, it’s hard to remember who I was then. I just know who I am now, which is the me that always was. In other words, the scales fell away from my eyes and I stand here, shining. And look for many, many changes to come. Big ones! I’ve made a list.

The list, you ask? Patience. All in due time.

[tags]kale, vegetables, macrobiotic cooking, life changing events, ch-ch-ch-changes[/tags]

Yesterday my daughter called me. Not Serena, who appears here frequently, but the daughter I don’t mention much here because:

a.) it’s difficult to keep up the self-created image of being much younger than I am when you can easily do the math after knowing I have a kid who’s 23. Not that you were fooled if you’ve seen my photos. Not that it should matter.

b.) we’re not exactly Lorelai and Rory. In other words, there’ve been some issues over the years. Like when she moved out abruptly over her prom weekend. And a bunch of stuff that happened before that. Or after.

Still, she’s my kid, and I love her.

So yesterday she calls me, doesn’t leave a message. This in itself isn’t unusual; she works a lot, she’s busy, doesn’t like messages, maybe. Still, I happen to know that she’s on a mini vacation in New Jersey (the vacation destination of dozens!), and besides, I already talked to her once this week, so what’s up?

She calls again. Then she tries my home phone instead of the cell. Something’s up.

“Hi Mom!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes there is, I can tell.”

She sighs. Lorelai and Rory we may not be, but I still know my kid. And she knows I know her. Some things you can’t erase with distance.

Then she tells me that the older brother of her best-friend-from-high-school was killed this week in Iraq. A nice kid, not even a kid anymore at, what, 25? Former high school football captain (these things generally are of little importance to me but for some reason they take on new significance now), lacrosse player, nice older-brother-guy at what was for a while my daughter’s second home, is dead.

And for no reason. Because he shouldn’t have been there.

His mother, a nice woman who kindly hosted my daughter’s bridal shower, will never think of Mother’s Day in the same way again.

I don’t know what to do about this, except maybe hug my kids more tightly. Or go bake a Peace Pie.

[tags]war, Iraq, war is stupid, pointless, Mother’s Day[/tags]

I took a long-overdue long walk with Eric today. It was a glorious spring day and the trees are bursting into bright green leafiness. There was a breeze which cooled Eric’s toes, the toes he had refused to allow be covered with anything mundane like socks. Or shoes, for that matter.

So I pushed Eric in his newish red stroller that did a little four-wheeling last week on some muddy wooded trails, but today we decided to go see the horses.

We live, like I have said before, in a new townhouse development that must have appeared overnight amid the cornfields of this mainly rural area. All around us are winding country lanes, a few farms, and large house placed in amongst the trees and copious undergrowth of eastern Pennsylvania. So I can walk out my door and be on a quiet country road in just a few minutes, the kind of road where cars come few and far between. I like it that way, and it’s nice for cycling as well, that is if it weren’t for all those damned hills.

The road goes exactly through the middle of an old farm populated by an old farmer and some very skinny and spavined horses, their hip bones jutting out like hard wings. I hate seeing the horses, usually covered with mud or just standing in their field. They must be quite ancient, these horses, because I refuse to acknowledge the other possibility, that they’re being abused.

Still, it was a pretty day, and as Eric and I descended the steep hill on the narrow lane that bisects the farm, a flock of Canada geese crossed the road in front of us. I stopped the stroller to watch them, and to give them space without disturbing them, because along with several adults there were eleven fuzzy babies toddling along in line.

I wondered — eleven? That’s a lot of babies for a, what is it, a litter maybe? Of geese? No, that can’t be right. Maybe these geese raise their children as a village?

Who knows, but I watched them. I’ve always loved Canada geese, which are so much prettier and with so much more character (to me) than domestic geese. Plus there’s the whole migration thing, which always fascinated me. Not that these geese likely migrate anymore, as it looks like they have a pretty good deal right where they are.

So there they went, crossing the little road, to the bank on the opposite side. Up they went, the adult geese, one by one. Then came the babies. Ehrm. That’s steep, that bank. But they made it, there they go! No, some didn’t. They can’t get up the steep bank, and there they go, tumbling down again. Where are the parents? A couple more of the babies made it up and over, but at least two looked like they gave up.

Eric and I went on. I decided that I’d look for them and help them if they were still there on the way back.

AsI walked I began to think about my good deed, helping those poor little baby geese. Once I was inadvertantly semi-responsible for a baby duck falling into a storm drain, and maybe I owe something to the poultry community. I began to imagine what it would feel like to lift a little goose up and place him gently on the bank, watching him happily scamper away to his parents, aunts, and uncles. He’d feel warm, and soft, and I’d hold him so gently so as not to scare him. I was a little concerned about touching a wild animal — would his parents reject him afterward? I wouldn’t want to cause that.

I wrestled with this for about 45 minutes while we walked, and after we turned around for home I began to walk faster, thinking about those poor little geese stuck there on the bank, which, was it in the sun? Are my baby geese baking in the hot sun?? I’d better hurry! C’mon, Eric, let’s go! LET’S GO SAVE SOME BABY GEESE!

O CANADA! WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE!

C’mon, Eric, let’s run and get our geeeeeeese!

Oh. They’re not there anymore.

I guess they didn’t need me after all.

(Ungrateful geese).

[tags] Canada geese, farms, bucolic Pennsylvania living, baby geese, ungrateful[/tags]

It’s my birthday today, so I can write about what I want to. Oh. I do that anyway. Right. Well.

So anyway, I wanted to talk about what has been going on with me lately. I know you’ve been discussing it amongst yourselves (mumblemumblemumble), and I can hear you, feel you, thinking to yourselves, What’s different about Karen lately? I can’t quite put my finger on it. Haircut? No… Lost weight? Maybe… What? What can it be? What??!

We all change. In fact, change is about the only thing that’s constant about life. Mostly change occurs slowly, without us realizing it, and then one day we wake up and say, Hey, I’m taller! or maybeHey, where’d all these kids come from?, when in reality the changes were happening all the time. Sometimes, though, the changes are conscious, noticeable, and deliberate. It’s been said before that this is a year of change, and I for one have been embracing it.

So lately, for me, it’s been coming down to this: Who am I? Who do I wish to be? What changes do I wish to make in my own life, knowing that anything that changes within me also sends ripples out into the rest of the world, making changes there as well?

I’ve been having the most wondrous immersion into a world so filled with love and connection, a world I somehow knew existed yet that always seemed just out of reach. I cannot tell you how transforming this experience has been for me, and I know that this is just the beginning, that the changes occurring now as I shift more firmly into that world will continue to reverberate around the globe and back to me again, transmuted, transformed, transforming.

Here’s my birthday gift to you, then, a little something from Lao Tzu that sort of sums up where I’m headed:

Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.

Here’s hoping that today is a day of birth for all of you, the birth of something new and wonderful, just for you.

And because I like you so much, here’s a little more wood, too, for your happy contemplation:

[tags] Lao Tzu, kindness, transformation, change, happiness [/tags]

The second-longest stretch that the children have been away from me is ending today. The longest took place last August, two weeks of hell (during which I did fly in and see them for a day and a half), so maybe this was the longest after all. Nine days.

Eric came home this morning, delivered by The Ex, and we spent about fifteen minutes just hugging, with me telling him over and over how happy I was to see him, how much I missed him, how much I love him. I do this now every time he comes home after having been with his dad, and I think it eases the transition a little. He’s happy to be home, my boy, and it feels good that he’s here. He looks smaller, though, which I didn’t expect. Has he grown in the dreamland we share when he’s away?

So he clung close to me, asking for pancakes about eight times. Then he fed himself some applesauce, and then he looked tired so we went upstairs, but not until fulfilling Eric’s request that he ride up on my back.

Serena comes home within the hour, and Nathaniel this evening, since he’s at a school function. Which gives everyone some alone-time to ease back into being home.

Ahhhh…

[tags] family, love, children, home [/tags]

This has been a week of transition, which culminated in several days at a wonderful retreat with a lovely group of like-minded people in a tree-infested technologically-bereft commune at which my cell phone and laptop were virtually useless and I spent the first 24 hours in total withdrawal, lamenting my lack of a wireless connection.

I wish I was still there though, and I can’t wait to go back.

I found it amazingly freeing being with a group of people, only a few of whom I had met before in real life, who mostly knew me from online communication. Suddenly I could be *anybody*! How cool is that? I found myself, though, giving up worrying about who I was or how people saw me, and instead just relaxed about it all and did whatever pleased me in terms of my interactions with people. All those years of being uncomfortable hugging people, for instance, went right out the window. I could say anything about what I was feeling, and no one would look at me like I suddenly grew a new head.

I return refreshed and exhilarated, and filled with the deepest and purest love imaginable. In fact, I have so much love flowing that here’s a little bit of it here just for you:_____.

Have a wonderful day.

P.S. So, you know, a while ago I bought this camera? (thank you, Ken Rockwell.) Yeah, that’s the one. It enabled me to take some great photos, like this one, and these, and these, plus many more. So, since I’ve become a MWAC, I obviously had to take along my camera this past weekend to this momentous event to record it all for posterity with my wonderful and insightful personal portraits, right? Right?

So you wanna see the best photo I took?

Sure you do:

And all the ones of people that I was going to take and then later amaze everyone with my mad photografick skillz? I actually photographed one person. One. And a lot of wood. And some trees and flowers. Oh, and fruit. But people? No people. And the people were what it was all about.

[tags] Michael teachings, transition, change, happiness, love [/tags]