When I started Team QueenPrincess, I had envisioned checking in every single day with a blog post.  That hasn’t happened.  I have warned you that consistency and discipline are not my greatest virtues.  And if my guilt over not checking in at MoJo’s Kitchen everyday weren’t bad enough, today I saw the evidence of my lack of consistency and discipline in my short temper with my children.  I was a bit yell-ier today than usual – especially than I have been in the last few weeks while being showered and showering others with as much Mojo as we all can handle.  But, I stepped back quickly from myself today and realized that I haven’t had a really hard workout in a few days, I haven’t been practicing my yoga, I have not been meditating and I’ve been staying up far too late every night.  So, there you have it.  Self care, out the window this week. 

And on top of the lack of self-care, something triggered a little grief storm last night that raged through this early afternoon.  Last night, I was putting away the pearl necklace I wore to an event on Friday night and I caught a glimpse of the little jewelry box, tucked back away inside my jewelry drawer, that I inherited from my mother and that is now filled with various bits of her.  Literally, it has her ashes in it.  But, figuratively too, little odds and ends from her life, her last bedroom, her last kitchen.  I don’t know what possessed me to take these pieces out and lay them over my bed and cry over them last night.  I just did. 

A grief counselor told me last September that I needed to make appointments to be with each of the family members that I have lost for a certain amount of time – give my mother 30 minutes on Monday at 1pm; my brother, Robert, 15 minutes on Thursday at 10am and so on… – like a date with the dead.  She said this would help the grief and the mourning stay within manageable limits rather than cropping up at unexpected times.  This makes sense to me.  I believe this is something I should do but there’s something in me holding on to the grief storms.  It hurts when they take hold – especially when I’ve had a really good run of happiness, like I have these past several weeks – but there’s something strangely comforting about them.  A lot like a real thunderstorm that can be scary and calming at the same time, a grief storm causes a lot of big noise in my head and through my body but there’s something soft about it too, like it belongs there, like its natural. 

Last night, the thunderclap through my head sounded for my mother.  This morning, of course, because it’s father’s day, I couldn’t help but think about my father.  

A few weeks before he died, my father called to ask if I would drive the easy two and a half hours up north to see him and to can tomatoes with him and my mother’s sister, Aunt Jo.  My husband and I had some vague plans with friends.  I knew I could break those plans without doing much harm to anyone.  My friends certainly would have understood my wanting to see my father and my aunt, particularly after the fairly recent loss of my mother.  But I told him no.  I told him, “some other time.”  He said, “maybe next year.”  And then there wasn’t a next year. 

I regret refusing that invitation.

My father, though, was an extraordinarily difficult man.   For you, dear reader, to fully understand just how difficult my father was I would have to enumerate for you the many painful ways he has upset me and my family throughout the years.  This, I will not do because it would make my family members feel a shame that they do not deserve to feel.  Let it suffice, please, dear reader, for me to say that he was an extraordinarily difficult man and let’s leave it at that. 

Still, remarkably, losing one’s father is hard, regardless.  There goes the knight-in-shining-armor, even if he was only a dream that you held onto despite all evidence to the contrary.  There goes the ultimate teacher, the role model, the man beside which all other men are measured, for better or for worse.  There goes one of the two people in this world who are supposed to help you make your dreams come true.  

My biggest dream in life until just recently (even though it's embarrassing to admit because it sounds so juvenile) was to live and make the rest of my life in New York City.  When I was in the Peace Corps in 1998, in my mid-twenties, I applied to the Masters in Creative Writing Program at NYU.  Because I had just successfully completed my BA at University of Michigan with a high gpa and because I was successfully admitted into the Peace Corps and successfully fulfilling my Peace Corps assignment, I had an inflated sense of myself when it came to academic and intellectual endeavors.  I had convinced myself, after applying, that I would get in. 

I received all of my mail at the high school where I taught in downtown Rzeszow – a town about the size of Ann Arbor, Michigan, two hours straight east of Krakow.  I saw the rejection letter sitting on the table waiting for me in the teacher’s lounge when I got in that morning.  I knew right away that it was a rejection because it was one thin envelope, one thin folded piece of paper.  If I had been accepted, there would be paperwork to fill out, notifications of financial awards, etc… but there was none of that and I didn’t even have to open the envelope to know.  I taught all of my classes that day in a mental fog.  I probably ran into the bathroom in between classes to cry a bit here and there.  When I was done teaching for the day, I put the still-sealed envelope in my bag and walked to the bus stop.  When I got off the bus, I made a quick detour into the grocery store near my apartment building and bought a bottle of vodka.  When I got back to my apartment, I poured a glass of vodka and took several drinks then opened the letter and read it and allowed my disappointment to flow freely out of me in the form of desperate and hopeless tears. 

Oh it was very dramatic.  It actually makes me laugh now, thinking back on that time, how very over I thought my life was when I didn’t get into that school and when I realized that I would not be living in NYC upon returning to the states.  To be fair, I think my failing marriage played a big part in this feeling of hopelessness.  I saw a possible acceptance to NYU and beginning a life in NYC as a chance to either make things better in my relationship or make things better for myself while giving myself the energy and courage I needed to leave my relationship.  So, when the rejection came, there was a little more at stake than just graduate school and the fun life I thought I could lead in the big city. 

Whether it was justified or not, I kept re-reading the letter and taking sips from my glass and working myself into a pathetic self-deprecating, self-pitying little puddle.  And, suddenly, in the middle of all of this, my father called me on the telephone.  This was unheard of.  This might have been the single time in my whole life, while my mother was still alive, that he called me himself.  This call was also strange because I rarely spoke on the phone with anyone from the states.  This was well before cell phones.  International calls weren’t that difficult but they were a bit of a pain and often the connection you could get was faulty so it was just sadder and more frustrating to even try.  But here I was, in the middle of a self-loathing vodka haze, speaking to my father who was coming in loud and clear all the way from Michigan. 

I told myself to keep my news to myself.  He wouldn’t care, I thought.  He’s just going to tell you that graduate school doesn’t matter, that it’s stupid anyway, I told myself.  This was the man, after all, who told me that girls shouldn’t go to college just seven short years prior to this moment.  But despite my telling myself not to tell him, I told him.  Through my tears, I explained the whole thing, beginning, patiently, with an explanation of why it was so important to me and what graduate school and New York meant to me.  I told myself, as I was speaking to him, “don’t’ expect him to care.  Don’t expect him to say anything right.”  

I don’t know if it was my explanation or the fact that he heard genuine pain in my voice and was moved by some basic, biological urge to rise to the occasion but he did say something right.  He said exactly what I needed to hear.  My father told me that if NYU didn’t want me, they weren’t worth me.  He told me that I was amazing and that if they couldn’t see that, it was their loss.  He encouraged me, in his own awkward words, to keep looking for a school, a place, a dream that was worthy of me. My father had never in my entire life spoken so encouragingly and so lovingly to me.  In fact, he never spoke so encouragingly or so lovingly to me ever again. That was it.  Just that once.  But that once, he made it clear that he loved me in no uncertain terms, that he loved me unconditionally.  And he loved my dreams – even if they seemed to him so very different from his own.

That one moment in my father’s life and in my life made a small bridge between us that made it possible for me to forgive him even though he never believed or admitted that he ever did anything wrong.  This one moment created a love and bond between us that makes it possible for me to miss him.  This one moment made it possible for me to look at other moments between us, though not filled with as much unconditional love, and begin to see the glowing edges of that hint of love that might have been there after all.  This one moment is the biggest reason why the sharp pangs of grief resonated through me while thinking about my father this morning.  Not that I think, “oh there was this ONE time my dad actually cared about me” but because in that one moment, he made it clear that he ALWAYS cared about me.  

And now, struggling with how to end this post, it dawns on me that my patterns of self-care are modeled after the patterns I learned to accept in my relationship with my parents, particularly my father.  A brief run of perfection, a great deal of love and respect and doing-what-needs-to-be done followed by neglect.  I neglected myself this week.  I let myself down.  But just like I can forgive my father, I can forgive myself and move on.  Tomorrow is a new day.  This week is a new week.

It is just nine short days before I will have this surgery.  If I want Team QueenPrincess to be a success, I have to accept the Mojo everyone is sending me with a commitment to use it toward my own consistent, disciplined happy practices.  If I want to create a happiness advantage for myself before going into this surgery, I’ve got to start doing the work like I mean it – because I really do. 

I know – because I am now a parent – that neither of my parents wanted their love for me or my siblings to seem haphazard or inconsistent.  They wanted for us to feel cared for all of the time, every day, consistently.  If any of us were capable of being our best selves every moment of every day, this is what they would’ve been able to give us all.  But we aren’t.  I can’t give myself constant perfect care anymore than they could… but I can be mindful of those times when I’m letting my self-care slip… and I can try harder… and I can try to care for myself in the way my parents’ best selves would have, if they could have.  And in more consistently caring for myself, I can become more mindful of how to continue to create that kind of consistency for my own children.  

So tomorrow is a new day.  This week is a new week.

It was a good, busy, sunny, tearful, revealing day in  MoJo’s Kitchen.

Happy Father’s Day – especially to those fathers who still struggle with how to show their children their unquestionable, unconditional love – may you figure it out soon and make it clear at least once before you no longer have the chance.   

& Happy Father’s Day to those children, young and grown, who have father’s they can’t count on – may you give yourself the gift of forgiving him one day and come to understand that you were always worthy of unconditional love



Vaya Con Dios

Namaste

I saw this on a friend's timeline first thing this morning.  It spoke to me.  I began crying and then I saw this... 

on another friend's timeline and I started laughing hysterically.  And I thought, while the first is serious and the second silly, they are both equally true.  We need to be gentle with ourselves, allow ourselves the time we need to be and to mourn (if we need to) and to heal.  But, without humor and fun, it's all for nothin'.

Before I started this Team QueenPrincess campaign I would wake in the middle of the night in fear of this upcoming surgery.  The fear has been squashed down like an itty bitty grape because of your Mojo and your Memes and your messages.  The last three nights, I have been awake buzzing with your good words and your kindnesses.  Now, I'm going to get a good night's rest so that tomorrow morning I can begin siphoning the love I'm receiving most effectively.  You all have helped me put this surgery into clear perspective and everything you are giving and you are allowing me to give back to you (that's for my teammates, specifically) is going to be THE difference on June 25th and after.  I am so grateful for you!

Sweet dreams!
Sleep in love,
Namaste

Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote, “not people die/ but worlds die in them.”  Each person we lose is a universe unto themselves, filled mostly with stories and elements we never knew.  All people create works that live outside of themselves that tell pieces of their stories and manifest shadows of their brilliant elements.  Sometimes those works are stories, poems, memoirs, essays, paintings, sculptures and sometimes those works are children, homes, recipes, memories.

I am keenly aware now that I began looking for mother and father figures at any early age.  Teachers fit the bill beautifully.  My third grade teacher, Mrs. Levine.  My seventh grade teacher, Mr. Sutherland.  Then poets began widening that circle when I was fourteen and hiding in the library every day during lunch at my new school – to avoid the practically cinematic “new kid” bullying.   Anne Sexton.  e.e. cummings.  Strange parental figures, perhaps, but nonetheless…

The year my mother died, I was asked to read two poems at the Peace Pole Dedication Ceremony at the College where I teach. One of the poems I read was the one I mention above, “People” by Yevtushenko.  There was another woman at the ceremony who was widely known for her long-term volunteer work in our communities.  She had my mother’s face.  She had my mother’s smile.  When she spoke, it seemed to me, she had my mother’s voice.  She spoke about the importance of community and helping one another. I thought about my mother’s volunteer work throughout her life.  Soup Kitchens.  Elementary school reading programs.  I thought about how my mother most likely would not be asked to speak publicly at a Dedication Ceremony.  It hit me that the major difference between this woman speaking and my mother was self-love and self-confidence.  I thought about how quietly my mother’s own personal story moved through the world, not demanding or commanding much attention – and yet… how important she was to me, how powerful, how gracious, how beautiful.  I wished desperately that she could feel those things about herself. 

When I was in my first year at college, I found a book in the poetry section at a bookstore called I Shall Not Be Moved.  I have no idea what attracted me to it.  Probably the same thing that used to make me buy albums: the shiny interesting cover.  I had already immersed myself in so much poetry but as I began reading Maya Angelou’s poems, I heard a slightly different, more secure, more forthright voice that wasn’t just “powerful” but literally full of some kind of power that felt to me like magic.  At that time, it was my habit to read most (and sometimes all) of a book of poetry right in the store before I bought it.  I stood between the shelves with Angelou’s book in my hands and I began reading.  When I had made my way through every poem in that book, I found another And Still I Rise.  I felt hungry for more of this poet’s words.  I couldn’t have said why then.  What attracts us to certain words is the same thing that attracts us to certain music or certain faces or certain bodies.  There is something we need in them, something that comes from someplace inside of us that we are usually not even aware of at the time.  I kept reading.  By the time I was done reading the poem, “Still I Rise,”, I had found yet another mother. 

“Still I Rise” is a poem spoken in the face of the oppressor, the person who wants to see you down, who wants to see you broken.  For me, that “oppressor” was a ferocious self-hatred created by years of abuse – some physical but mostly emotional and sexual – that had left me full of misdirected rage, an amorphous and constant terror, and plain-old confusion.  And into that face, that presence, Angelou declares an immovable self-love and refuses to be a victim.  There was so much in me I was utterly unaware of when I began reading that poem, so much that brought me to that poem and through that poem that once I read I could no longer ignore.  It was the moment Ranier Maria Rilke describes in his poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” “for here there is no place / that does not see you.  You must change your life.”  I felt seen.  I felt spoken for.  Angelou’s voice grabbed me by the chin and lifted up my head and said, “stop letting anyone or anything steal your joy, baby.”  And I finally started listening.

What I didn’t realize until only recently is that my real mother’s messages were not so very different than Angelou’s.  My mother wanted me to love myself and be strong and “rise.”  She wanted this for all of her children.  Any decent mother (I know there are plenty of indecent ones) – if given the chance to access her highest self-- does.  But some mothers are so deep down in their own self-hatred that the message doesn’t get through.  My mother was wise. She possessed a wisdom that I almost always overlooked.  She possessed a strength and perseverance that I grossly underestimated while she was still alive. I connect most viscerally to this strength, this unwavering spirit and the love my mother wanted me to feel when I am in the kitchen with her. 

And so here we are, in the kitchen, beautiful Ramona and I, unashamedly shedding tears for the passing of another beautiful mother.  There has been and will continue to be an outpouring of grief and mourning for Maya Angelou (let this be a lesson to the critics and uptight, pretentious academics who failed – and still fail-- to see the value in Angelou’s work – your opinion is small and insignificant and rooted in your own inability to feel compassion for the world around you or understand those people living outside your limited, privileged sphere) and, though the social-network-media-circus web we communicate in will undoubtedly annoy many of us (this blog post is no exception, I realize), I believe this outpouring of grief and mourning is natural and reasonable for a woman who was able to reach across every possible boundary and “mother” us all. 

It is, of course, Angelou’s own, biological family that has the worst work to do now.  This morning, while the birds are waking in darkness and my own daughter stirs and calls me away from the kitchen, I am adding my prayers to the universe that their grief is softened in some small way by the profound light their Maya offered the world. 

Namaste.

And with love.