Dad & Me

What is Memory?

Is it a slice of thought residing within the recesses of our mind, and if so, where is that?

Here & now in the Present as I determine my Self qua Self do I remember playing in the water with my Daddy OR do I remember looking at pictures of me, playing with my Daddy in the water. . . recalling family commentary, telling me how I felt, what I wanted,  what I understood. . . ?
 
 
Could it be both?  If memory exists in a stream, moving  through a life either along with or as a result of time, then it would be not only the event that makes up who I am (a daughter who played in the ocean with her Daddy), but also a girl and then a woman who remembers remembering the anecdotes and pictures based on the event. Is that so?
 

Is that also Memory?

 
 
In an Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke wrote of the stream of consciousness which makes up a sense of our individual self.  He declared Memory a part of that stream, and essential to understanding identity.  According to Locke, we negotiate our past and anticipate our future based on the process of remembering.
 
 

Me, Learning to Walk

Gabrielle-ness, then, is more than a culmination of the events of my past, arriving at the Present Self.
 
 

People like to remind me that my father will always be with me in some way, and perhaps this is what they mean.  I cannot separate those layers  of memories from the Me-Who-Exists-Today, nor can I undo the Understandings I have processed about Myself-and-the-World that have created the path I’ve trod.  Like learning to walk, once accomplished, one has arrived somewhere, somehow, and in a certain way.
 
 
Remembering times with my father is an integral part of what makes me who I am today, and this explains a part of my struggle with his death.
 
 

 
 
Whether or not I am drawing upon a specific activity that sparks a particular and distinct memory, innumerable impressions of being in and near the water flow together in my mind as the most natural habitat for this creature that is me. I look at photographs of Baby-Gabrielle and Girl-Gabrielle  . . and  the satisfaction I felt then, I know now.
I nod to myself knowing the feel of wind lifting and pulling my hair into aerial patterns, and the inevitable tangles.  The sun is my friend, and gives me a dusting of freckles across my nose and a perennial tan; I love storm clouds–when I’m on dry land.  The ebb & flow; or the rise and sudden dip that is automatic rythym to a sea child causes a yearning for dark blue water that never leaves the. . . mind?  . . . soul?
 
 
Surf. Sand. Towels. Seagull cries.  Buckets & Shovels. Tide Pools. Sandcastles. Kool-Aid. Sand crabs.  Jellyfish. Seaweed. Whale Watching. Laughter. Shivering-Cold-Chattering-Teeth.  And always the surf.  And the sand.  Even now, I feel the itchy-scratchy residue of sand, alien to my Little Girl skin, which must be washed away.
 

After. . .

Again.

I ask again: What is Memory?

• Layers?

• A Stream?

Amanda and Me in Chartres

 
 

I am in Chartres with my beautiful daughter who is so much a part of me but also so much better and more. . .  yet my lingering memories stick to me like seashore sand.  They scratch at the corners of my mind as I wake up early and tiptoe as I check on Amanda, sleeping.  I am transfixed just watching her, and delight in every moment of her first time in Europe.  Her happiness makes my heartstrings grow and glow, and yet. . .  and yet. . .

Paratrooper Donald Sutherland, over Munich

“There’s nothing like that kind of pain.  It never goes away, but time makes it better somehow.”

Donald Sutherland

They say the words aloud, but they appear to be talking to a private self.  They each say they didn’t expect it to feel the way it felt.  It caught them unaware.  I see in their self-awareness now projected outward that they were forever changed by the experience.
 
 
The death and dying of my father are now a part of the Stream of Memories upon which I’m forming the Understanding of Life which leads to my Everyday-ness and my Future Self.  So many things to think about.  So much to revel in.  Contemplate.  Discover anew. Gaze at the Horizon.  Leap. Get Swept Away.

Dad and his friend Frank on their morning walk on the pier

I heard someone say today:  “I need to go home.  My roots need water.”  I might not have paid particular attention a few months ago, but my ears perked up as we passed each other, and I thought about my recent journeys to my father’s hometown; to my origins; to what has become a locus of rediscovery and balance.  I smiled instantly at the juxtaposition of roots and water, and now reflect on the strength and primal nature of the feeling tied to the tidal pull of Eastport’s coastline.  I feel it even here, in Central Texas as a yearning deep inside.  I guess my roots need water.

I’m sure I’m not the first child who has negotiated the death of a parent in this same way, asking questions of herself and where she belongs: how much of my father’s path is also mine to trod– consciously or not?

As I sorted through my father’s books last month, how interesting it was to find so many shared titles, along with the Tom Sawyer edition with the Norman Rockwell illustrations that he gave me, then took back, which I then took back, which he then took back, which I then took back, which he then took back, which now I have. . . . permanently.  Oh, how I miss that game!  And Daddy, I didn’t know you read so many of my favorite books. . .  along with all the rest.  Did you first give me Richard Bach?  I see him on your shelves. Bach wrote:

“You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.”

Dad, the history books on your shelves, and those many conversations we had –or should I say discussions, debates, and even arguments— did they and you contribute to my vocation as an historian?  Does my craving for the atmosphere of archives, the smell of musty tomes, and the feel of limestone walls have anything to do with this thirst for knowledge and understanding which you instilled inside me?  I suppose my journey is more than just a discovery process, a hunger for roots or even a return home.

I keep thinking back to one January when I was 9 years old and you came and found me before dinner each night to say “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”  It was chilly in that nice, California evening sort of way.  I clearly remember your impatience as I grabbed by little red cape (which I loved)  because we needed to “get on with it!”  We had places to go and things to talk about, which in my memory’s eye is a blend of fast walking, deep talking and even deeper listening, passing by the little butterfly tree (empty at this time of year), with me, holding together my cape so you wouldn’t guess that it wasn’t quite warm enough, and possibly end our discussion.  You and your intensity asking and answering all at once, not just allowing, but encouraging and accepting me at the same time while we both skipped over puddles.  My mind raced, in that wonderful calm feeling like rocks skipping over water, enervated by the chase for what might be said. . . next, if we could just talk hard enough.  You felt it too, I know.

A journey towards a seemingly elusive goal partly because the journeying is so very delicious and sweet, and partly because it never ends: there must be movement towards an answer.  And now. . . I’m circling back to my current journey, which somehow fits.  I find myself in dialogue with the father I knew, simultaneously with the man I’m getting to know through the eyes of others, and it becomes a different kind of passage.

This kind of journey fits with the idea of pilgrimage and all that it means. I love contemplating The Path, and The Way and how in historical pilgrimage, folks gathered to make a statement about themselves both individually and as a group, and with the open declaration they made in traveling to some place specific. Will I sound too trite if I emphasize my point by saying that it was never as simple as arriving at a destination, but about the dialogical relationship they discovered and entered into along the way?  When I first began meeting the pilgrims from my father’s journey—those who came after my childhood—I went through a series of emotions.  At first, I felt like he had hidden himself from me, but I followed him the way I did when I was a little girl, trusting.

My father had an adventurous spirit and I’ve mentioned before that we spent a great deal of time camping in remote places.  On one spelunking expedition, we went into an abandoned gold mine in an old ghost town.  Besides the pure enjoyment, the motivation was turquoise: he was looking for the underlying color qua color and the movement of turquoise in its essence, and of course gold mines are the best source for rich veins of that semi-precious stone.  We descended into the mine shaft, and it was deep.  The rubble under our feet did not allow us to stick close together because of the frequent slipping, but I followed his flashlight and his voice.  The recollection of his voice: the hushed tone, the sharp mixed with the soft, beckoning sound when he was in teaching mode….oh, how I miss that!  He kept me apprised of the conditions we were encountering, and also why he was choosing which passages.  Sometimes we stopped and he made me choose –with his guidance– through a series of questions.  Understand, he was relentless, and there was never any room for wavering or what he called “silly behavior.”  That was ok, because I was never a silly child.

We wound through the passages, sometimes quite easily, and sometimes narrow and difficult, and eventually we came to a giant cavern.  When we stepped through the opening, the sight was one of the most amazing of my life.  What was once a natural cavern had been worked and enlarged by the miners into a multi-story mining extravaganza worthy of Hollywood.  Whatever and whenever the mine closed, they apparently just walked away, and everything was still in place.  If I squinted away the dust and grime of the previous century,  it looked just like a movie set.

There was a ladder that stretched across the entire cavern, and my Dad suddenly announced:  “I’m going to climb it.  I need to see where it leads!  Keep your flashlight trained just ahead of me.”  My mind said “Noooooooo!!!!” but my voice said “Ok.”  I was certain the ladder would crumble into the dust of a hundred years if not in the beginning of his climb, then certainly right about the middle when he was suspended up in the air, so tiny that I wouldn’t really be able to see him as a person, but just a traveling speck in the dark.  I held my flashlight as he directed, but I imagined him falling, and me, dragging him back up, through the cave.

Once again, as he climbed he kept up a steady stream of reassuring words by telling me what it felt like and what he was thinking as he negotiated a ladder-bridge that started swaying the further he went.  When he said “Keep it steady,” I don’t know if he was talking to me with the light, to the ladder, or to himself!”  He stopped in the middle and said, “I’m completely suspended in space, honey, look.”  He didn’t need to tell me; I’d been thinking that already!  Then he laughed that glorious laugh of his.  The real one, no holds barred.  He disappeared into the dark, and I had only his words to guide the light I held, and I worried that it wasn’t reaching him, because eventually I couldn’t hear him—only guess.  I wish I had a picture to show, because words fail, but I don’t need a picture for my own memory: it is indelibly imprinted, as is the smile he wore when he came back down.  Pure satisfaction.

Now that he is gone, I have these memories, yes, but I have more.  After my initial shock of discovering the lives he’s lived with other people which I never knew (or even guessed at), I’m now simply following him.  Sometimes it’s rocky, with rubble underfoot as I don’t always know what to expect.  The twists and turns have been unexpected!  But it is indeed a joy to meet the people who knew him and want me to know the Donnie they knew.  How great is that: the community which surrounded him, which is reaching out to embrace me, his daughter?

And yet and so,  at the end of the day, he was a man on a journey like all of us.  As Homer writes in the Odyssey:

Nothing feebler than a man does the earth raise up, of all the things which breathe and move on the earth, for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future, as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows too to pass, even these he bears, against his will, with steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly men are like the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.

One of his art pieces displays this idea so well. A life sized sculpture he named Equipoise and Counterpoise.  It represents a series of adjustments which distributes the weight of the workload or balances the stress and tension of the time and place.

Movement.

Reaching out.

Being Human.

In my adult years, our contact was mostly over the phone.  As he and I discussed and debated human history we agreed that there is so much more that is glorious and mighty to report from our collective past than the wars and deprivation that yes, must also be admitted.  We often disagreed over the nature and details of what constituted advancement or progress, but we both marveled at the breathtaking innovations representing marvelous technological developments in which individual people employed techniques and skills which were simultaneously correctives and adjustments to the previous innovations and improvements . . .  which would cause additional, necessary inventions to counterbalance the weight and pressure of ever increasing splendor.  Is it important to understand how each innovation and advancement made it possible for the next, or just note the occurrence?  Or is it, rather, about being part of the tradition?

Equipoise and Counterpoise:  Which one or both?

But, but, but . . . is reveling in human achievement that somehow transcends the here&now what I really want to focus on, or is this more about a desire to reach for more and then  go and do? And is that the legacy my father gave me?

Movement.  That “thing” that occurs in a community where there is movement.  It’s something singular and unique–almost indescribable–involving inside jokes; quick smiles, teasing; easy camaraderie; and shared joys and pains.  We notice the ups and downs of those with whom we’re close —in proximity or otherwise—and sometimes even cause the suffering.  The joint endeavor is partly about pain and suffering, don’t you think?  Is it because my community has seen my pain that makes me trust them, or because they smile when I join them and I feel a sense of belonging? Cicero tells us that in true friendship pain is diminished and joy multiplied because of the process of sharing.  I’m fascinated by the thought, and I think I’m like most people:  I’m actually on a journey to find my true friend.  Forget EVERYTHING else:  this is my true purpose in life.

As I move along I am learning what my father lived and how he chose his path.  Back to Homer once again:

Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.

Life seems to consist of a series of balancing acts. . . of equipoise and counterpoise.   . . .and the ability to choose.  Perhaps we also need diversions to relieve the tension or redirect the stress that accumulates.  Like the piece of art made by my father, undoubtedly I am a product of many corrections and adjustments along the way.  I’m thinking (hoping?) that my beautiful friends who make up what I would call communitas distribute the weight of the burden I carry, and I hope I sometimes do the same for them.

The actual bottomless glacier lake

I cry a lot these days.  I’m a pool of sadness, and I wonder at the depth.  I say that because I sometimes imagine a bottomless pit that I will fall into in this despair I feel.  Is there a limit to sadness?  I once climbed a glacier mountain: a 9-mile hike upwards with a perfect picnic spot before the last mile at a memorably beautiful flower field surrounding a glacier lake with no known bottom.  The deep blue water was so penetratingly cold, that “cold” is not the correct word.  Maybe the loss of a loved one is like that.  My Dad is gone from my life and the place where he existed has been ripped out of me.  I was unwilling.  No one asked ME: “Excuse me, Ma’am, is it ok if we take your father away forever?!”  The hole that was left behind the place he used to be –wherever and whatever that is/was feels bottomless, and there’s nothing to fill it with but grief.  At least that’s what I feel.  People ask me how I am, and I say “ok,” meaning “as well as can be expected,” but do they know about the bottomless pool of sorrow?   The nothingness.

Maybe it’s like a piece missing from the center of a puzzle which becomes forever unrecoverable.  Try as one might, there’s a hole in the picture, and if we want to say there is not, we must change the nature or boundaries of the original configuration.  Right?  It’s a puzzle.  Configuration.  Conundrum.  Enigma.  Challenge.  What it was is no more.  Daughter-ness.  How much of my daughter-ness self depends upon my Dad’s corporeal existence?

People proffer platitudes and pleasantries which are meant to placate.  Pain is part of the process, though, and their words fail to penetrate.  It’s not their fault; they are sincere, and so am I,  Plain and simple: the sadness is as inescapable as the fog I see outside the window in the morning hours.  East coast fog is not like Carl Sandburg’s that “comes on little cat feet . . .”  This fog is more like a blanket or a shroud.  It just is.  Like life and death.

I miss you Daddy.  I miss your jocularity and your intractability.  I miss your laugh and your growl.  I miss your code of honor that I search for in every man I meet, and I miss your sense of adventure.  I miss your stories and your ability to “go there.”  I miss the twinkle in your eye, and I miss the piercing glare when you were about to explode at some inanity in the world or closer by.  I miss your little ditties, your clever stories, and our deep discussions and analyses of political ramifications rambling the globe through time and space.  I miss all those missing years when you went to find yourself and forgot to perch in one place long enough for anyone to grab hold. . . why did you do that, but how could you not?  You are / were larger than life.

You always called me Darling Daughter, and just last night I was going to call you on the phone to verify a story that someone here in town told me. . . .and then of course, I stopped short—because you aren’t on the other end of the phone, are you?  Once you told me about a man who was so mean, he shot Santa Claus. . . . Now, in the present, I have the sleigh bells [you gave me] from the horse of that Santa-shooting-man. . .  and you’re not here to tell me the missing piece of the story.  Missing pieces equals more grief, because I miss that part of myself, I feel lost.

I look out the window at the shroud of fog that is the sky, and see the ground covered in moisture, and think that something here is wrong because I feel so dried out.  I cried myself out yesterday.  And the day before.  And the day before that.  Maybe there is no such thing as a bottomless pool of grief.  Perhaps grief is a desert.

Death Valley

Once, when I was about 10 years old we went camping in Death Valley.  My Dad was  on a quest to develop a glaze that had a lichen-like quality, and he was also interested in the deep colors of the desert found only in the crevices of certain stones: burnt, yellow ochre; deep, red umber; and variegated turquoise.  We went with our friends the Pattersons, and Janese was just my age.  Janny and I wanted to go exploring, and we called out our plans to my Dad from the rise of a dune.  He waved his arm in reply and answered something about having left his hip pack of chisels over that dune, would we please pick them up on our way back?  We thought we knew what he said.  Unfortunately, the tricks of the wind sprites of the desert fooled both us AND him, and neither of us heard what the other was truly saying. . . Janny and I took off, enjoying each other and the desert in the way that little girls can, while looking for the chisel pack.  No sign.  We thought, maybe he meant the next dune, maybe the next one, or the next. . . .  We were collecting little stones and talking, and eventually our canteens went dry.  We decided we better go back to camp and report our inability to find the chisels.  When we returned, camp was empty!  (We found out later that what my Dad had really said to us was to keep walking over the dune, because they were going to relocate the camp.)  Who knew?

Back at camp, we found retreating tire tracks of the dune buggy and land rover from our family and the jeep from Janny’s, but the wind was already wiping it clean, so it was not a help.  We called out, but the wind was especially strong, and we could tell our yelling was thrown right back at us.  We climbed the nearest dune and looked around.  No sign of any cars or people.
We yelled at the top of our lungs, then listened intently.  Nothing.  We triangulated the dunes and tried again.  Nothing.   We set up a pattern, and climbed to the top of each dune, yelled, waited to hear nothing.  The sun was climbing and it was midday.  We had no water.  We were lost in Death Valley.  We decided to go to the tallest dune and wait for our Dads to find us.

The winds were strong and the sand stung our skin.  The sun was blistering.  Every once in awhile we would yell “Daaaaaddyyyy!!!!!”  but it felt like our words were instantly carried away.

Six hours later, we heard a shot!  We looked in the direction of the sound, and several dunes away was my Daddy, standing on top of that sand mountain with his arm raised and a gun in his hand shooting into the sky, hoping we would hear it.  We did.  Apparently it was not the first shot, but it was the first one we’d heard.  We stood up and started dancing and yelling.  He came running and sliding down his dune, up and over, and up to us to encompass us in his giant arms, tears and laughter mixed together:

“I thought I lost you,” he cried, smothering his voice into my neck, kissing my cheeks, my ear, my forehead, and looking at my incredibly burnt, chapped face.

“I knew you’d find us” I said, hugging him tight. I don’t remember the walk back to camp.  I think he carried me, because I vaguely remember Janny’s Dad appearing shortly after that, and swooping her up and taking her quietly down the dune.  I wanted to apologize about not finding the chisels and I remember my Dad hushing me and telling me to sip some water and not to worry about the chisels; to rest my voice.

Now I’m lost in this desert of grief so full of aloneness, and there is no Daddy to find me, no matter how long I yell, wait, or wish. Obviously I have to find my own way, and because others have done it, it must be possible, but it’s difficult to understand that.  The fog is thick in my mind, and I don’t know what I’m going to be like without that missing piece that was my Daddy.

Words have meaning, and so . . .

Sorting through his paperwork, I come across a list, scribbled in his hand:

• Catacombs
• Labyrinths
• Subtracts
• Gates
• Doors
• Portacles
• Windows
• Fenestration
• Hinge

What were you thinking about, Dad?  Going in or coming out?  Openings, closings, passages, or just the process? The practice is familiar to me, as I do this very same thing, so I can almost jump in like Alice through the Looking Glass, and I want to.  I wonder about your trail, and I listen for your voice that no longer resonates in this world, and yet I hear it.  Where were you going with these words?  Seems like you left yourself open to possibility . . .

Just last month you told me we would pick blueberries this summer, so I will.  I’ve fallen in love with Eastport, you know.  I want to make a home there.  Even with the fog and the desert.

Gabrielle in Eastport

I spent my first years in Eastport, Maine, and I have lovely images filled with tulips, my Gramma Bea’s kitchen, her Siamese cat, Michael, and a vague sense of merriment.

In later years I would hear adults call me a “reserved child” and I don’t think I was serious so much as one who spent time thinking.  Listening to my father’s friends, I get the feeling that he did that too. 

Later, growing up in southern California, it didn’t get chilly very often, but I remember a few cherished days when the fog would roll in, and my Dad would call me to come walk with him  on a

“Misty Moisty Morning

When foggy was the weather.”

I was always happy with myself that  my little legs could keep up with his long strides.  He pointed out each bird, and told me stories, and of course recited poems.  Nonsense poems were a favorite.  I think I could quote the Jabberwocky well before I went to school.  I had a red cape when I was young, which was it’s own sort of story, and I recall many a time, walking with my father in the fog, listening to his wonderful voice, with me, chiming in where appropriate.  Life was a bit outrageous growing up in my household, but it was brillig, and on days like those,

All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

On the Monday before he died, my father was lucid for over 2 hours.  I sat next to his hospital bed holding his head when suddenly, he opened his eyes, and said,

 “There you are!”

I responded, “And you’re here too!!”

He smiled his REAL smile and I knew my Daddy was in the bed instead of that other guy who was just a pile of bones wrapped in skin.  He said “We’re both here.  How nice.”  I asked him if we had a quorum, and he looked at me with the old twinkle in his eye and said, “I think so.”

 He grabbed my hand with both of his, using that familiar strong potter’s grip he had, and said,

“Tell me a story, honey.”

I asked him if he wanted me to read to him, and he said, “No, tell me a story.”

So I did.  In the very same way he did, once upon a time:  “Once there was a man named Don who had a little girl named Gabrielle. . . “ I told him a true story about spelunking in the California desert where the cave was so dark, that even when we put our hands in front of our faces we couldn’t see them. I was following him, but he was never the

kind of father who coddled.  I held out my hand to guide myself by way of the closer-than-close walls, but I touched something furry/bristly.  My mind imagined a monster spider, and I immediately withdrew my hand. YIKES!  I also worried that I might step into a hole and disappear forever, but then I thought that my Dad was in front of me: “Daddy, are you there?”  He grunted.  Ok, so far, I was safe.

With a Dad like that, life was always an adventure, and I learned to fare forward, eyes open, even when I could not see. There are many things to be afraid of in life, but the scariest are always those which cannot be predicted or named, right?  Maybe giving them names in advance helps:

“Beware the Jabberwock, my [daughter]!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

My Dad would cite these lines with me as if they were full of wisdom, and perhaps they were:  Shun danger, but not by avoiding it.

We used to go camping in the Santa Rosa mountains. We found a wonderful spot that boasted a granite slab, fortuitously tilted to resemble a stage. All it took was our Dad’s comment: “Well, look at that: a stage!” and we were off!    Deirdre, Gavin, and I put on marvelous productions, which often evolved into fantastical dances wearing our blankets as capes or wings as we flitted and leapt about.  Life is so magical in the woods.   Higher up the mountain, long before we came along, someone built a giant tree house with an even larger staircase to ascend into the redwood tree.  I love tree houses, but those stairs!  They surely were carved by long ago giants because each step was so far apart that standing on one, the next was at waist height with the nothingness of air and the height and fear of falling in between each riser.  Ohhhh, that was a long climb.  About halfway up, when I was sure I felt the reality of gravity pulling me back, down towards earth, I complained to my father that this was not a do-able enterprise for a girl who was not yet 10 years old.  He stood there at the top, so tall against the sun and looked at me, thinking.  He asked me what I was going to do the next time something wasn’t easy?  And the next?  What if you had to do something in a hurry, he asked, will you hesitate like this?

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

I distinctly remember thinking that the stairs and HE were equal foes.  Which one would I rather be defeated by?  And then I realized that conquering one meant beating both…oh Frabjous Joy.

I climbed to the top.  My Dad nodded at me, and we went inside the treehouse.  Trees, mountains, caves, boats–my Dad was an explorer.  Many of you can speak to that aspect of him

I think I am, too.

Over the years he would call me occasionally. He would express delight over my victories.  Nothing seemed too small, everything was worth celebrating by way of song or verse.

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish [girl]!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.”

Who doesn’t want to be beamish?  I say this, and yet, Frabjous was a distant joy, because it was always a telephone conversation, and then he had to move on.  Or perhaps that’s what Frabjous means….just a few minutes– that’s all you get– and then it’s time to keep going.  Other places.  Other people. . .Callooh!  Callay!  Flit and leap on a stage made of tilted granite or any other plane of existence, and then. . . and then. . . move on.

Meanwhile, the world moved on too. . .

and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

 And then. . .  I arrived one day in a hospital room, where my father was no longer a hero who could fight every foe and grimly laugh in the face of unpleasant reality.

On that AwfulWonderful Monday when  my Daddy was lucid for over two hours and I got to be with him–really with him–we talked and smiled and it was real.  And then he slipped away.  I had to talk to the doctors anyway—I’d kept them waiting—and then it was time to go back to his house & studio to keep sorting and managing the other part of life. Reality. Existence. Imagining what is next. I’d been thinking about Eastport and what I felt there.  It’s difficult to describe what a coming-home like feeling I had experienced in the few short days  I was there.  In comparison to the only other place I’ve felt  so comfortable, Assisi Italy, that other place that has more to do with intellectual & spiritual planes of existence .  In lovely Eastport I think it just felt like HOME. Belonging.  Community.  Peace.

Actually . . . I wasn’t going to go back to his room, but I did.  I suited up in all the anti-infectious gear: the gown, the gloves, the rigamarole, and I went to his bed.  I leaned down and whispered a few words in his ear.  He said “Gabrielle” but he was asleep.  I crawled into his bed with him as best I could and then the flood started.  I couldn’t help it.  I just began to cry a little bit, and then more poured out.  How could I have known a gushing river would burst through the dam of appropriateness and strength that I try to exude and mix with the ILoveYous coming from my mouth and the giant tears I didn’t know were waiting behind my eyes?  How do anyone’s eyes stay in their head with such pressure swimming and bleeding onto a pillow?  I love you Daddy.  I’m going to miss you.

“Good-bye” I said.

“Good-bye honey,” he said.

 I stood outside my Daddy’s hospital room, looking through the Glass Window, watching him sleeping, thinking about leaving, knowing I would not see him again.  I had other people’s stories in my mind now.  I knew about his friends who were beginning to be my friends too.  I ruminated, I cogitated, my head reeled, the world roared in my ears, and I realized why he’d fought for Eastport’s survival and revival . . .  because he LOVED that town.  Some of his friends in California wonder, still, why he went back to his hometown and also why he stayed.  I don’t.  The loyalty and sense of belonging he felt for that DownEast locus was fierce, and I understand it.  He thought about it a lot.  He made a conscious decision to make it his final and only home.  To also make it a cause as best he could.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

In the end, something else happened.  One can beware the Jabberwock, I suppose: “The jaws that bite, the claws that catch”  One can even beware the jubjub bird;

But well, I think it got him, and that’s all a part of life.

Apparently bladder cancer is a side effect of people who work with dyes, and my brilliant father was a MASTER not only of clayworks but he mixed all his own glazes.  We all know that.  We know about his famous book of glazes and how he mixed those potions like no other human being ever has or will.  He understood his art.  I would be willing to say that there’s a good chance that in the end, the Frumious Bandersnatch was the culprit .

So he died.  But boy did he live!

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Gabrielle, looking ahead (1967)

Friday, April 15th. I sit in conference with three doctors and a social worker, calmly discussing my father’s “case.”  My eyes bore into theirs as if understanding can be found better in their intent than in the words they speak.  The hospice doctor never varies from his script, even when I interrupt with my particular queries.  When his sloooow response fails to address my question –or re-directs my focus–one of the other doctors jumps in to provide the necessary information.

Thank you Dr. Hodap, for the fast forward and for understanding that not all patients are the same, nor are their daughters.  Thank you for taking us past the slow motion: let’s-figuratively-hold-her-hand-and-pretend-we-don’t-all-know-why-we’re-here-so-we’re-speaking-in-euphemisms-in-order-not-to-risk-hysterics-from-what-we-assume-is-a-delicate-daughter.

Delicate daughter?  I’ve been a daughter to tHIS father all my life, thus I have learned that life is about looking outward and for more.  Thank you Daddy for teaching me the Adventuremental Life.

Back to the doctors. . .

I listen and try to guess at my lines, so that I will be sure to say what is appropriate and

at the proper moment.  Presumably I mouth all the right words, yet hot, unbidden tears stream down my face, because this is my Daddy we’re talking about, and he is lying just down the hall.  Gone is the Daddy in my mind and I am confused.  My Dad is virile and oh-so-alive!  Don’t they know that about him?

“The patient is etherized, lying on a table [approximating a bed],Let us go, Let us GO! “

I leave the doctors and walk down the hall to my father’s sterile room, outfitted in layers of antiseptic gown and thick blue rubber gloves.  I lean over his bed.

“How should I begin . . .and how should I presume?”

I walk into his hospital room and don’t want to recognize him.  “That’s not my father!”  Who put that shrunken man who is mostly bones in my father’s bed?  It’s him of course, but how can it be? I’m scared to touch him. I feel his arms, and I worry that I will ruin them/crush them maybe.  His skin is not just paper thin, it is no longer pliant.

He opens his eyes and knows me instantly:  “Gabrielle”

. . . and he smiles.  He says “I love you.”  He says my name again.  I whisper a joke in his ear and he looks right at me with his fading blue eyes.  I laugh.  LOUD.  I call him Doggy Daddy. He says “Gabrielle.”  He really knows me now.  I clumsily climb in the contraption of his hospital bed, and I lay my head on his pillow. He nods and smiles, and I tell him a story about cutting through the water with the wind in his face.  He used to race yachts to Ensenada.   I talk to him about standing tall in the spray of the water; the crack vs. the snap of the sails; the cry of the gulls; the silence.

When I quote T. S. Eliot he smiles again.  He nods because he knows.  We have been on an adventure or two.  Yes.

I whisper in his ear, and he knows me:  “Yes!” he says.

“The [nurses] come and go, and it seems as though there will be time.  Time for him and time for me.  Time for indecisions and visions even, as the [nurses] come and go.”

I tell him I love him.  He fastens those light blue eyes  on mine, those eyes so used to gazing out to sea.  I do not wonder if I dare.  I always dare.  I kiss his forehead and notice how thin is his hair as I brush it off his forehead.  He closes his eyes and I bend down to his ear and tell him  I know he loved me and I also know he loves me now.  His eyes fly back open, wider.

Did I dare say that?

Disturb the Universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

I am standing now. His lips move and I bend down to my father’s face.  “I love you” he says in a raspy, hushed tone of voice.  I stay close, and smile up against his face so he can feel it/breathe it, and he repeats “I love you.”

“I know it,” I say.  “I so love you.”

I say I understand:  “and I shall tell you all.

“. . .I grow old . . .  I grow old . .” He smiles at the reference, and his eyes sparkle as his lips move in time with me as I recite the poem.  He nods and smiles.  I laugh.  His eyes tear.  He says “Gabrielle.”  He falls asleep and I finish the poem:

” . . . but that is not it at all,

That is not what I meant at all.”

is it?

Who is that etherized man in my father’s hospital room?
I did not expect to be making decisions like these alone,about a man I hardly recognize….but that’s just it–it’s hard, and I can almost understand why people want to avoid the situation.

Almost.

I want to turn my head to a trusted person next to me and ask “what do you think?“  I want a sibling to chime in and ask the question I have not yet thought of.  I want a loved one to say those OTHER things–that I forgot –in a voice that’s different than mine.  Instead, it’s up to me to think of every contingency and be all those voices and people.  Have I sufficiently listened to my father during these past few months and noted his wishes, despite his unwillingness to talk about death and dying? Despite his skill at dodge and parry?

Last week he told me we would go picking blueberries this summer.  This was a particular reference to a

cherished story from childhood: Blueberries for Sal. Robert McCloskey’s books are  more than fabulous stories.  Not only did  they depict childhood in Maine, but in OUR family they were written especially for me, about me (and later also about my sister Deirdre too).  It was not Sal who went picking blueberries and could never seem to fill her little pail…..because she ate them faster than she saved them!

And when she was surprised by a bear–oh MY!!  Of course, Gabrielle was not afraid, it was all part of the adventure!

Thank you Daddy for teaching me to approach my fears with questions, face forward.

Last week, my Dad expressed more than a desire for blueberries;  he wanted the accompanying adventure .  Surely the adventuremental life was not yet over?

Indeed his life has been a series of adventures.  I guess he’s ready now for the final quest.

Dad, three weeks ago, you told me you wanted five more years.  The doctor says they have a term for that: negotiating with death!  Ha!!!  that makes me laugh because I don’t need a doctor to tell me about the Grim Reaper and his style of humor (or what should we call it?)  Now, you lie there, and the doctors tell me you only mumble incoherently.  Thank you for waking up and talking to me now. I no longer fear to touch you and hold you.  I know you.  You will not break from something so mundane.

 The balrog called Cancer?  That’s a different story . . .

And yet and so. . . .

What happened to that outlandish man I know knew?  I was thinking recently how you used to insist we keep the house at ridiculously cold temperatures in the winter, lecturing to

us about something called “The Depression”  (what do little kids know about these things?) and we would shiver while we dressed for school, sitting on top of the floor heaters.  We never guessed  it had something to do with saving money or “thriftiness” because that was never your style.  We thought– maybe–?  it was part of your dramatic flair, and we were playing a part in the drama.  Why would we EVER think it had anything to do with a budget?  In that same time period, you came home with a glitter-gold dune buggy with a white leather top!.  Oh, it was beautiful, and the adventuremental times associated with that car were plenty!  Do you remember sitting in one of those perennial traffic jams of California with rain POURING down–and in through all the myriad cracks of the leather top–and the radio playing “It Never Rains in Southern California” which you cranked up full blast, laughing uproariously.  We all sang along, dripping wet.  YES!  Do you remember, Dad, do you? Are you deep inside remembering the adventures? You were part of my earliest adventures and discoveries. 

And now I’m sad because I will never be able to tell you about the mermaids I have

heard singing. . . and even found.

 I miss you before you’re  gone, and well…in so many ways you already are.  Sleep, now.  I hear you begin mumbling about your dreams, and before long you disappear into thoughts that belong only to a dream world of your own.

Of course I am more than certain you have  heard the siren song yourself , and qualify as “an attendant lord, one that will do/ To swell a progress, start a scene or two. . . “

Today a hospice volunteer is playing folksongs for you with a banjo.  You are sleeping, but I know somewhere, deep inside, you love listening to the tunes.

Thank you for an early world full of quotes and for giving me childhood friends like T.S. Eliot and all the others.

Thank you for the rich gift of poetry, Dad.

Thank you for living it; for leaping into the abyss.

Donald Sutherland – in his hospital room

Increasing numbers of my father’s friends email and facebook me, asking about him.  Some are strangers to me, and some echo in the corridors of my memory banks. Their words ring of genuine concern and longtime friendship.  Apparently they haven’t heard from him for awhile, and wonder how he’s doing; what’s the prognosis; how does he feel?  Every time this occurs, I ask myself the same questions: I know what the doctors tell me, but how are you Dad, really?  What does it feel like to be in this state of un-health, and in the hospital for oh-so-long, and oh, yeah, while I’m asking . . . what does it feel like to be you?

I’ve watched various friends and acquaintances say good-bye to a parent, and now it’s my turn.  There’s no way to prepare for this, and I’m thinking that saying good-bye is as unique as the individuals involved.  It’s part of growing up, isn’t it?  I’m learning about myself as I learn about my father.  Who is he/was he?  I don’t know this man whose friends have plastered his hospital room with cards and bouquets.

There must be many adult children of divorced parents who attempt to piece together the family story to decipher what it says about personal identity.  My father left home when I was 12 years old, and after that I saw him only occasionally.  How do I know who he is?  In the process of learning to say good-bye to my father, it seems I’m learning who he is.  I’m saying Hello.  Sometimes it’s difficult to reconcile the Father I’m meeting now, with the Daddy of my childhood.

I stand in the present awash in memories wondering how much that stream of memories makes me who I am today. When I was a little girl, he was full of silly songs like the Johnny Rebeck song or the many verses of “So Long it’s Been Good to Know You.” Or this little dittie which was one of my favorites:

What a pwetty little bird the fwog are.

When him walks him hops.

When him don’t hop

him sits on his pwetty little tail

which him ain’t got at all

. . .almost hardly.

These memories are wrapped up in giggles and delight.

If I close my eyes and imagine  a perfect locus, I think of walking along the bluffs overlooking the Bay.  We called it Back Bay.  I wonder, was that its real name?  My Dad could skip rocks with ease, and I knew that it was important to count as the rock skimmed across the water landing on the shore, across the Bay.  He was always at home outdoors, and I can hear the hushed tone of his voice when he answered my questions.

He taught me how to catch dragonflies, and then let them go. . .

When I was 10 years old he took me trout fishing  at Navajo Lake.  I caught a golden trout, and at first I was so excited!  It was big and gleamed in the sunlight, resting in my palms like a prize.  I didn’t know that fish could cry, though, and when the trout started wailing, my heart wrenched in two.  I looked up into my father’s face, and he told me to RUN– back to the lake, and I did, as fast as my legs could fly.  I tossed that golden fish ahead of me, and I fancied it had a thought or two as it swam away.  My Dad told me a wonderful story about a grandfather fish who had eluded capture for many years, until a girl named Gabrielle came along. . .

What I really remember about that day, is walking along the lake and him looking at me with his head cocked to one side, smiling, and telling me that someday I would be a beautiful woman.

So time passed, and the father of my memories who was simultaneously and afterwards friend and lover of people I never knew, acted out his story in ways I could not have imagined.  I don’t know if I’ll get to know this person in the way he thinks of himself.  Does that matter?

Now he lies in a narrow hospital bed in a sterile room with a team of doctors and nurses for his everyday companions.  He can’t eat due to a secondary infection, which doesn’t have much to do with the cancer (which continues to spread), so much of his battle is tied up with the hospital-ness of being hooked up to tubes. The man of mirth who is my father is too solitary.  He has too much alone time, which means he broods. He enjoys hearing from his friends, even second-hand. It lifts his spirits, and he forgets his pain for awhile. When I tell him who has contacted me, he responds with a story. That’s the Dad I know. . . but it’s only a facet of a complex man.

And aren’t we all?  Complex, I mean.  My father says he regrets missing out on so much of my life. I regret it too. I don’t think he’s going to get to know me in the short time we have left, but what is time: a human construct that describes the way we move through space, right?  Will I learn more of who he is in ways that make sense?  Maybe it’s all part of saying Good-bye.

When I was a growing up and well into my teen-age years, calling Eastport, Maine meant going through the operator:  “Oh, it’s little Gabrielle!” she would announce to those who were present, and presumably they cared.  “How are you deah?” she would ask in that wonderful Down East accent. After a few niceties, she would connect me to my Gramma Bea—WHEREVER she happened to be in town, because of course everyone knew everyone else’s business.  I miss that.

 This year –2010–began with an abrupt acknowledgement of my father’s mortality, when he was diagnosed with cancer.  In one day, my father—my sister and I call him Doggy Daddy—went in to the doctor healthy, and came out with a diagnosis of cancer.  How did this happen?  Daddies aren’t supposed to become less than; they just “are.”  He is far away in Eastport, Maine, and I am here in Central Texas, and there is no switchboard operator to tell me where he is at all hours of the day.  In an age of cell phones, my father refuses to be that available.  He has a routine, and those who know him know where to find him, but it requires physical presence or patience.  Although his art studio is also online, he has only in the past year started using e-mail, though he goes to the local coffee shop with his laptop, and he jokingly refers to e-mail addresses as “call signs.”  I picture the twinkle in his eyes that matches his WWII stories about radioing HQ from the field, and I know he believes we are a primitive generation for replacing civilized letter writing and real conversation for the shortened half-sentences of delayed messages that are e-mails.  Nevertheless, he has complied with his children’s wishes for “Please, Dad, we just want to hear your voice.”  He raises his eyebrows, I know.

That man who lives so far away, a Dad who still feels oh-so-present and maybe even larger-than-life despite the decades and the roller coaster ride that is life. . . .is that how fathers are?  I think of my baby pictures, and of Baby Gabrielle standing on his outstretched palm as he lifted me to the sky….. Wow!  When I was a little girl, I took a great deal of comfort in thinking I had the strongest Daddy in the whole wide world! 

I laugh when I think of my healthy, handsome Dad who hung up the phone with an abrupt “click” the day he called to wish me love and happiness on my 40^th birthday, when it suddenly occurred to him that time was passing.  . . “So how old are you today, Honey?” he asked me.  “I’m 40, Dad” I replied.  Silence.  “Then how old am I?” he asked.  I told him.  Click.  Dial tone. . . . . .

His initial bout with cancer was so easy, we probably didn’t realize how dearly Fortunata had smiled upon us.  We talked about how blessed we were to live in a day and age with the miracle of modern medicine, blah blah blah….and we all went back to Life—whatever that is!  And then…..and then….WAM!  This Thanksgiving he went into the hospital with all the alarm bells ringing, and now here we are again, but this time it’s quite serious.  Now the real questions begin.  How do I deal with the end times of my father, knowing that this is a normal part of life?  I’ve been on the other side of this:  the hugs & hand-holding, the reassurances & affirmations.  I know that people I love & admire have walked this path before, of course!

Now it’s my turn to be a daughter with a Daddy who is finally, old.  Strange to think the words “old” and “Dad” in the same thought strand.  He’s lost 20 pounds on a frame that was already light.  He is weak, and at times his mind wanders.  He cried for the first time, ever, in my hearing.  At the signs of my father’s helplessness, my heart feels empty, cavernous, even, and I wonder sometimes where to place new & tender feelings.  I am learning to know a different “version” of my Dad. 

Dads change.  They grow old.

I have a good friend whose father joined Facebook about a year ago, and I friended him.  His long status updates read like what someone would say as he walks out to fetch the mail, or what we might say in exchange to a neighbor over the garden fence.  I can’t imagine my father adjusting to Facebook.  In fact I tried to explain it to him once, and gave up.  E-mail is probably going to be the extent of his reach.  My friend’s father, however, is a delight, and I admire his ability to carry-over his sense of a former time into the new media tools of a present time.  His Facebook posts remind me of my childhood . . . of a different time, of neighbors and a neighborhood when & where every “mom” in every house was present in a welcome home.

I start thinking. . . summer nights and kick-the-can with all the kids in the neighborhood gathered right up to the moment of suppertime when the dads came home from work and all the moms called us from the porch, and we hopped on our bikes until the next day.  I think of winter days and paper dolls, or playing games indoors with friends where the negotiations for the “rules” of the games would sometimes take longer than the actual games themselves!  We learned so much about ourselves and each other and I can’t imagine it any other way.  I wouldn’t trade any of that for modern video games, and I have to admit I don’t understand the draw.  On the other hand, I can’t say that my generation learned how to get along with each other OR “the other” through all that play or negotiation time either.  Perhaps there is no “right” way to play or make friends.

I was struck by a comment in a New Media Seminar I attended this year from a participant who said that she looks at the status updates [on Facebook] from friends, and she only talks to those who aren’t listed.  Wow.  I wonder how many people use Facebook as a distancing mechanism?   I’ve thought about Facebook a lot this week.  How public is something like the sickness of one’s father?  How do we project “mood” on Facebook and does it matter?  How do I announce something so private and yet also important, knowing that others actually DO care and want to know?  (I know that I want to know these things about my friends. . . . )  However, at a time like this, I find myself hiding from the superficiality.  Maybe, I just exist in a private sphere at the moment, and social networking tools seem to exist for a more public use?  Maybe the efficiency of it just seems suspect.

In real time, I want the physical comfort of hands-on presence, and the people who actually know me and know my Daddy.  I want to reminisce and sometimes rant and rave.

Life’s Journey:  we determine the path and embark.  We ponder where our path will lead.  Who will we meet and Who will we be when we get There (wherever “there” is)?  We often think we know where “There” is, but like Petrarch in hisAscent of Mt. Ventoux, in our folly we sometimes imagine that we can ascend a summit unchanged by the journey.  Maybe we want to arrive at some faraway peak without the hard work it takes to get there, avoiding the risk of failure and the inevitable bumps we’ll encounter along the way.  We might consider the hard work—even relish the heroic thought, but don’t imagine how it might change us, unable to fathom the heights and depths to which our journey will lead. How can we anticipate the valleys and vistas; road blocks and epiphanies; the stretch marks and laugh lines; disillusionment and ridiculousness; disappointment and hilarity; sorrow and delight; spills and upsets; yet also the approval of old women, children’s kisses, dandelions, ice cream, and the ever-changing nighttime sky, imagined up-close while we gaze in wonder at the cosmos.  How can we predict our individual experience of life and the part we’ll play? Here’s to the age-old question of being vs. becoming: will it matter more Who we are or What we are?  Will we be able to separate the two?  I wonder How we’ll name ourselves along the way . . .

 Many of these issues come alive in the story of Rumpelstiltskin.* A poor miller presents his daughter to the king, hoping to entice the monarch with an outrageous (and false) claim that his daughter can spin straw into gold.  The miller is probably motivated partly by intentions to do his best for his daughter.  Should we blame him for her predicament when she’s locked in a cell, crying inconsolably due to her inability to perform?  If her father had been a rich man, he could have presented her at court actually wearing all the gold he claimed she could spin.  Arrayed in costly attire and jewels, with her makeup perfectly in place and hair just right; would that have been a better representation of who/what she was?  Would it have been any different if she were placed in some kind of gilded cage due to her appearance, than the cell of the story?  Would her imprisonment have been less intolerable that way?

We are familiar with this teaching tale:  to extricate herself from a seemingly impossible dilemma, the miller’s daughter  sits crying, when a little gnome-like creature appears.  In exchange for her necklace, he spins enormous piles of straw into gold. ** When the king requires further proof, and the maiden returns to the refuge of her tears, the same creature appears.  Again, she turns to magic, and pays the little gnome with a ring.

In true epic tradition, gracious princesses give gifts that ennoble heroes–especially rings–but in this tale it is clear that she offers no gift.  Her ring is part of an exchange for services rendered.  The gnome is not GIVING gold, but manufacturing it, as he spins the straw that saves her life, or at least her reputation.  What does this say about the path we take to reach our goal, or rather the actions we take to become who we are going to be when we arrive at the summit of our existence?  We might also consider the link between the ability to bestow a gift and the desire for gain.   The notion of gift-giving might be an important question, having something to do with both who and what we are.  What do we have to offer and then choose to give, and to whom, and what do we accept (or demand) of others?

The tale of Rumpelstiltskin is redolent with magic, and it’s interesting that the maiden doesn’t seem to consider her choices. When she’s asked for payment (by the creature) the third time she’s required to prove her worth to the king, she demands the magic man perform!  It never seems to occur to her that she has any part in where she is; it’s as if she imagines she is still the same person she was when the story began.  “You MUST help me,” she tells the little gnome.  I wonder why she thinks that way?  Where did she get this idea of entitlement?  Had her value increased in some way that changed who or what she was, necessitating a change in others’ responses to her needs/desires/wants/ requests?  Would it be others’ actions that would propel her forward on her Journey, or her own decisions and deeds?

Another thought:  In reading this tale, are we getting a sense of the maiden’s feelings, or is this rather, a societal reflection on the inability of women (or certain people) and their relative ability to choose to “be.”   
 Tolkein offers a startling perspective on this idea, showing the reader that virtue and strength can come from the most unlikely or unexpected places.  Frodo offers a clear example.  When placed in a dangerous and life-altering situation through no fault of his own, he reveals who he is through his choices, followed by action.  In possession of a ring not meant for him, he actively seeks to right the wrong that has been perpetrated—even to the point of continuing the journey alone if necessary.

In another tale, the Epic of Gilgamesh, we are confronted with a king who is deeply concerned with the legacy of his name.  The narrator claims that great buildings and monuments speak to the monarch’s accomplishments.  The king’s subjects think that prosperity and peace speak to what their ruler has given  them. Thousands of years later, however, we know that the reason we still read about this time and call this king by name has nothing to do with either of these kinglike accomplishments.  Yes, Gilgamesh is a GREAT king:  he feeds and protects his people, and does it well.  That’s not why we know him though.  We know him—and want to know him—because he embarked on a quest and lived through real hardship.  He suffered, loved, lost, and prevailed.  We understand the pain and the sorrow along with the feelings of duty and commitment.  We revel in the lesson he learns about friendship and about life.  Like Gilgamesh, we rejoice in those glorious and wonderful moments, relishing all that is good and great, unwilling sometimes to accept the other parts.  When Siduri says to him, “Gilgamesh, why are you in such a hurry?  Don’t you know that man is born to die?” we are like him; we want to rage at the easy acquiescence.

Gilgamesh grieving over the death of Enkidu

When he shouts “Noooo!!!!”  his voice reverberates down through the ages, and we raise our fists with him.  Life and the living of it can feel cruel in any millennium, or century, or decade.   Surely we are not meant to traverse this path alone!?!?

In a different time and in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, the strange little man asks the maiden what she’ll offer in exchange for spinning a third time, and then makes the inevitable request for her firstborn babe.  With no hesitation, she accepts the deal.  This is not about relationships or ties that bind.  A year later, when she gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, however, her imagined future suddenly becomes all too real.  She is faced with a new dilemma.  How can she fulfill her NEW role as queen without the the product she is supposed to produce:  a son and heir?  She reneges on the deal with the gnome-like man, and claims she didn’t know the terms.  She didn’t mean it.  If she had realized what it meant, she never would have/could have. . . .

How do we anticipate where we’re going to be when we have not yet arrived, especially when we aim to get there instantly, magically, or using the work of others?  How do we move forward when decisions keep us mired in the past?  What happens when WHO I am is unable to offer the gifts normally associated with WHAT I am?  How can I change the parameters and how will I lay claim to the ability to bestow when I’ve concentrated only on gain?  So very many layers to work through. . . . whew!!!   Can I claim a summit when I cannot tell anyone else how to get there, or if I don’t know the names of all the roads I traversed to reach the top?

So. . . . .now what? 
Having arrived at the top of a summit, the queen finds herself in a brand new dilemma.  Reminded of the paths SHE traversed, she cannot reconcile them as paths that led her to this place.  This is interesting.  Not only will we never learn her name, but we wonder about this time in every new mother’s life when she would normally be thinking about all possible names for her newborn son.  Instead, her present and her past have become inextricably intertwined to become one and the same and it appears she has no future, or at least not one that matches what she is as a queen!  Obviously, someone will have to pay.  What will be the currency of exchange?  She wants to re-negotiate, and the gnome says, ok, if you can guess my name, you win:  you keep the baby.  Can she name him?  She has three days.  On the first day, she guesses every name ever named in the history of the kingdom– with no luck.  On the second day, she guesses every name ever thought or dreamed– with no luck.  On the third day, one of her spies reports having found a dancing creaturely-man in the woods, singing out his name:  “Rumpelstiltskin”!  Just in time she is able to guess her tormentor’s name and wins the bet.  In his fury, Rumpelstiltskin stomps a hole in the ground through which he disappears, down into the bowels of the Earth.  Has justice been served?  Order preserved?

When we think about it further, we wonder about the names.  Rumpelstiltskin is the only named individual in the entire story:  a story about greed and deception.  A story about shortcuts.  A story about people in identifiable roles, who do not know WHO they are.  Magic is about illusion, and once the glamour is cast aside, nothing remains.  Shortcuts ignore the daily exigencies which form the paths of life.  The dynamic process that we call LIFE is not dependent of whether we are a miller’s daughter or a queen, a strange little gnome, or a king.  We certainly don’t want to end up in some version of a cell, attempting to prove our worth based on what we can do in order to be valued as a person!  But do we want to be at a pinnacle ignorant of the path?  Do we want to inhabit a role, or be worth remembering for who we are?  Does that circle back to the original question of the possible inability to separate the Who and the What?

Perhaps the question is How.  How do we venture forth, without being placed in someone else’s version of a cell or cage?  How do we pay attention to the path, mindful of the view, being careful not to Hurry past our own life?   t.s. eliot provides one answer in the Dry Salvages:

Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or ‘the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)

Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being
The mind of man may be intent
At the time of death” – that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which will fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare Forward.

O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.”
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

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* Rumpelstiltskin is a tale of spinning and weaving, and probably initially came from the Chansons d’ toile or Working Women’s Songs.  These songs are particularly interesting because the one place in a castle, chateau, or villa where no barrier between classes existed was in the spinning and weaving.  All women sewed, spun, embroidered, etc., so these stories and songs are especially significant for our knowledge of previous times.  By the time the Brothers Grimm get hold of the tale and simplify it/ alter it, of course, it takes on a much different pattern and tone, so it is our task to get underneath it.  

** This tale comes from a time period when the idea of “money” was something new.  This was a startling discovery, and changed everything in the lives of workers, because now their WORTH could be quantified.  This idea was both good and bad as society adjusted, and much of the underlying message can be seen here, almost screaming off the pages.  Maybe that should be what this blog is about?  The relative worth of an individual worth of an individual human being in changing times?

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty intrigues us.  She is romantic and beautiful and we sigh at the thought . . . .ahhhhhh, how lovely she is!

What will wake her up and when?  Not only Walt Disney provides an eager Prince Charming, anxious to come save the maiden with a kiss.  And then what?  Apparently, it doesn’t matter because that’s not part of the story.  Beauty lies at the threshold of her life, waiting to step through the doorway into What-is-Next.  Instead, she sleeps.  Questions should be asked:  How responsible is she for STAYING AWAKE?  It’s an important part of the tale that when Beauty sleeps, everyone else in the castle–EVERYONE ELSE–also sleeps.  Is she responsible for their slumber, too?  How much difference can one Hero -Princess make?  If I wait for a Prince to come along and kiss me awake, then what?    What happens next. . . . Happily Ever After?????

Prince Charming kisses Beauty awake

Is this how I want my life story to be written/family identity to be formed/the legacy of my people group to have an impact on History?  How long will I wait for a Hero-Prince to arrive, and will it matter what kind of kiss he has planned, or will it only matter if he successfully  climbs the fence, chops his way through the brambles, kills the dragon (or other monster/evil/natural disaster, etc.), finds me in the labyrinthine castle and then kisses me awake?  WAIT A MINUTE!!  Why would a hero-prince be interested in a companion-for-life who is asleep?  What will happen when the princess wakes up and starts talking/having opinions?  Or, maybe she won’t have any REAL opinions, having been asleep for so long.  In the story, the doorway to the rest-of-her-life beckoned, but instead she climbed into a tower and chose an activity that led to slumber.  What-was-next for Beauty?

Angelus Novus by Klee

In his writing on the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin used the term Stillestehen, or Zero Hour.  The idea surrounding the term–which was Benjamin’s own unique invention–was of a giant dramatic pause, as when the   audience holds its collective breath in anticipation of What-is-Next.  The Imagined Future:  what will it hold?   Benjamin was  fascinated with the Angel of History.  He wrote: 

 A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  This is how one pictures the angel of history.  His face is turned toward the past.  Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.  This storm is what we call progress. 

Indeed, the history of humankind seems to speak of a Destiny of Doom but What If?  What if standing in that wonderful moment of Stillestehen as the product of all that has brought us to this moment and looking forward to the Imagined Future, we actively move FORWARD, considering the direction.

The Cheshire Cat gives directions

When Alice comes upon the Cheshire Cat, she asks him for directions, but he responds ambiguously, telling her that directions are linked to the desired goal:  “That depends on where you want to get to.”  In other words, the path we take will determine where we arrive.  How often do we embark on Life’s Journey as if the Destination and the Path are conflated?  Like Alice, we can be confused at the suggestion of there being a possible separation between the two. Wishing myself in a particular place does not make it happen.  Phrases like “Everything happens for a reason,” or the presumption that “History Repeats Itself” as if History is an entity independent of human action binding us to actions with which we can then excuse ourselves from the responsibility of the consequences might be a little bit like sleeping through events that pass us by.  If I’m asleep in my castle, then I’m not responsible, right?  If I never know anything other than what happens within my own safe walls, am I accountable?  As long as everyone around me sleeps with me, is everything alright?

Perhaps we sleep because of the awful conditions in the world!  How many imaginations are doomsday predictions of destiny comfortable with Walter Benjamin’s view of Angelus Novus?

I love the scene from The Princess Bride, between Wesley The Dread Pirate Roberts and the Amazing Frazzini: The battle of wits.  Because Frazzini can only conceive of the world in his own twisted way, he Imagines a grim future which indeed comes to pass. Thank heavens Life’s Journey is not a Scantron test with only one set of answers. Rather, life is an Uncertain Journey, best undertaken one step at a time.

Thank heavens that Life is an Uncertain Journey!

An unusual mountain "summit"

 What if somewhere along the way we come to desire something more than climb a mountain for a beautiful view . . . and perhaps stay for awhile?  Mahatma Gandhi wrote and practiced the concept of Satyagraha, or the art of making oneself Zero.  Gandhi taught of Love and of the elimination of enemies through unique methods.

Tolkein's conception of the idea

Francis and Clare of Assisi wrote and practiced something similar, and we can also look at Gandalf for a beautiful portrayal of this simple yet subtle ideal.  Gandalf practices this concept well, for he knows something, understanding that “magic” often presents a shortcut that leads nowhere real.  True Life is about something much more important and requires a depth that only comes from really living and loving.  Light can only exist where power is unexercised.  When we meet an enemy (as an enemy) we have immediately limited our self. If, like Frazzini, I have defined my boundaries by determining my response I usually—at this point—limit myself to my enemy’s strength.  In reality I’m fighting myself because:

• I’m actually meeting what I perceive to be my enemy’s strength.
• I’m then limiting it to myself and my own conceptions based on the Other.
• When we fight or engage an enemy we imbue him/her/it with perceived power–limited by our imagination and personal experience filtered through our perceptions.
•  The very way we fight or approach “the enemy” gives it the power we think it has.

What happens when the FUTURE is perceived as “the enemy”????

PRAXIS  

To live life–to not have it lived  . . . . it is to stand and to be.  “Winning” or to be strong has nothing to do with sprouting muscles.  Rather, it has something to do with meeting one’s own liminality without fleeing or going in the other direction.  When we look into the complexities of History, including the Memories that make up our own Identity, hopefully we are looking with Light:  shining a light in dark places for better clarity into the Human Condition.  The vision we see is better served if we also stand, facing the Mirror of True Seeing, actively living with our True Self in ways that make a difference in the World.  Establishing a sense of the self in History is about finding meaning which means being able to learn and then being able to stand with what we know.

What is next?

Light is important.  When we journey with light, we can not only Stand, but see enough to take a step forward into the  light.  Yes, often there is darkness beyond, but we will be able to see enough of the path to take a step.  We can also hold the hands of those who travel with us.  Once we take that step, carrying our light with us, light will once again illuminate the Path, and we can once again decide the Direction.  If our Path leads through a Doorway and beyond, all the better.  Life begins anew.

It is not about Happily Ever After.   It is about WAKING UP, Staying Awake, and LIVING , and then helping others to do the same.