Lucky was how I considered myself. Lucky to have never broken a bone. Lucky to have never been stung by a bee or wasp. Lucky that all four grandparents lived through my college years. These were the simple - if not at times childish - metrics by which I measured my fortune, my health, my future.
Of course, time passes and bones break. Insects chase the tender flesh of others, but death rattles the door knob and one by one three grandparents pass followed now by the fourth. If my parents follow in my paternal grandparent's footsteps there will be no nursing homes to visit, no tearful goodbye trips to arrange and no last ditch efforts to capture the genealogical history for the next 25 years (knock on wood).
Funerals bring obvious sadness but they bring joy too. They are impromptu family reunions for those who left the farm years ago. In central Illinois my family roots are grounded in the soil of corn fields and I smile hearing the story of how Dorothy drove a horse-drawn carriage to school each day. We all smile through tears to hear once more how a migrant farm hand from Sweden watched her drive by, telling his friends how he was "going to marry that girl one day." Married for 72 years, eight years have passed since his own death. Is he waiting for her with open arms on the other side?
We know these stories like the back of our hands, but how well do any of us know these near-Centenarians?
The wind howls. Temperatures drop to the teens outside the Hampton Inn on 51 and I ask my parents whether any of my grandparents were happy. Could one or all of them look back on their lives and conclude that they lived their lives without regret? What lessons do we take from their lives? Can we apply them to our own?
In my mind's eye I see my father's parents walking across the threshold of our Topeka trailer. The morning sun hangs behind them and light poors in as they greet my sister and me with cheerful hugs and kisses. Grandpa speaks with that charming Swedish accent, mispronouncing his G's and J's. I know at five that these joyful grandparents are different from the ones two states over.
Through the years the differences remain. One set grows melancholy and gives up by 75 while the other lives independently to 97. The latter pair isn't perfect. Dad's history of his life (and theirs) is strung with myriad threads of pain but funerals aren't a time for rehashing the could haves, should haves or would haves. In the end my mom and dad agree on this: my paternal grandparents never had much money, yet they lived lives rich in experiences, friendships and family. Mom says, "I never once heard them complain that they didn't have something. They never sat around wishing they had 'more'."
And her parents?
What mattered most to my maternal grandparents was working hard to make sure there was money left for the kids. They had to make sure their bills were paid. They spent their lives working and paying bills, working and saving, working and wishing for more.
My paternal grandparents worked into their 80's. They worked for the joys of working and having purpose. Their final months and years were bitter sweet. Both were more than ready to go, but it is the view of my mom and dad that Bertel and Dorothy could look back on their lives and conclude only one thing: that they lived happy lives without regret.
I reflect on Grandma's Korean minister speaking at her funeral. He butchers the English language and while I anticipate cousin Phillip's impersonation later at dinner I am struck by the fact that this man was more than some clown pulled in at the last minute from the nearest protestant church.
He recalls a recent visit and how at 99 she grabbed his hand, berating him for an attempt to cut their visit short without hymns. "You're not going to leave without singing are you?" she asked. She surprised him further remembering every note, every word, every verse.
Will I be like this at 99? Will I grab the hands of those nearby to recount with clear conviction the songs of my youth? Will I stand at the end of my days and reflect that I gave it my all with a joyful heart? Or will I lament over how I could have made different choices, should have pursued the really bold dreams and would have loved differently had I been confident enough to do so?
At age five I knew that if I could choose I would choose to model my life after my paternal grandparents. At 40 I feel off track as I consider my craving for more. Yes, times are different. Yes, TV, movies and fast food supplant square dancing, sewing clubs and potluck dinners. The more our society changes the more our desires grow; but the more our world matures the more our conscious mind evolves too, right?
Maybe. My grandparents with their Swedish connections and simple lives were enlightened without knowing the meaning of the word. They were masters of the now. My maternal grandparents? Puppets of the past and pessimists of the future.
The last grandparent crosses to the other side and I grow silent as I consider whose example to model my own life upon. It seems a given to choose hers and my immigrant grandfather's, but the genetic pull of more is strong. The habit of complaining even stronger.
My frustrations over relationship and money boil over and while there is a certain inevitability regarding my longterm happiness, I fret over the short-term management of it all.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Heroine with a Thousand Faces
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lighting Thief came out last Friday, February 12th and film critic, Kenneth Turan, reviewed it on NPR's Morning Edition saying, "Here we go again. A boy goes to a prep school, and a teacher tells him he has magical powers... [it's] about a young hero with parental issues, who is marked as the chosen one by his peers."
Another Harry Potter knock-off? Or yet one more movie about the male's heroic journey? Admittedly, my favorite movies include The Matrix, Lord of the Rings and - the latest - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Then there are the stories of mythology and classic literature with their emphasis on heroes recognized by Joseph Campbell in, "Hero with a Thousand Faces."
I can curse Campbell (and Hollywood) for his rejection of the feminine journey, but as he noted toward the end of his life, "It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths... [because] the women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories."
So where do we turn for our inspiration? Sex and the City, Bridget Jones or Titanic? Or worse, soap operas? Are our adventures boiled down to sex, drama and romance (both rompy and melancholy) because we're too busy building families while balancing households with careers? Sex and romance - requirements for a feminine future but also the cornerstones to our transformation? Do they net us the discovery of important self-knowledge?
Valentine's Night 2010 ends with a repeat viewing of Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw (Candace Bushnell) sets up the movie with a 30-second review of each character's life over the past three years. Her own review comparmentalizes her lovers into chapters. Is there a modern woman alive who can watch that without reflecting on her own biography of lovers? Is the seductive allure of someone new our call to adventure? Will we reach enlightenment if we survive love's trials in his "unusual world of strange powers and events?"
It sounds a bit pathetic. I mean, I'd like to think there's more to life than, "pursuing and getting a man," but my track record says otherwise. My life is a study in sex, drama and romance. Can I pass my lessons along to my daughters without sending them down the same watershed path? I am waiting for an inspiring heroine to show all of us the way but the promise of a phophet is an empty one. I -- we -- must carve out and share our own heroine journeys be they grounded in love or other more worldly pursuits.
Another Harry Potter knock-off? Or yet one more movie about the male's heroic journey? Admittedly, my favorite movies include The Matrix, Lord of the Rings and - the latest - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Then there are the stories of mythology and classic literature with their emphasis on heroes recognized by Joseph Campbell in, "Hero with a Thousand Faces."
I can curse Campbell (and Hollywood) for his rejection of the feminine journey, but as he noted toward the end of his life, "It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths... [because] the women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories."
So where do we turn for our inspiration? Sex and the City, Bridget Jones or Titanic? Or worse, soap operas? Are our adventures boiled down to sex, drama and romance (both rompy and melancholy) because we're too busy building families while balancing households with careers? Sex and romance - requirements for a feminine future but also the cornerstones to our transformation? Do they net us the discovery of important self-knowledge?
Valentine's Night 2010 ends with a repeat viewing of Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw (Candace Bushnell) sets up the movie with a 30-second review of each character's life over the past three years. Her own review comparmentalizes her lovers into chapters. Is there a modern woman alive who can watch that without reflecting on her own biography of lovers? Is the seductive allure of someone new our call to adventure? Will we reach enlightenment if we survive love's trials in his "unusual world of strange powers and events?"
It sounds a bit pathetic. I mean, I'd like to think there's more to life than, "pursuing and getting a man," but my track record says otherwise. My life is a study in sex, drama and romance. Can I pass my lessons along to my daughters without sending them down the same watershed path? I am waiting for an inspiring heroine to show all of us the way but the promise of a phophet is an empty one. I -- we -- must carve out and share our own heroine journeys be they grounded in love or other more worldly pursuits.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Drama of Mother
I used to wonder about the possibility of other siblings "out there" and always in my imagination I pictured this brother or sister as the product of some indiscretion of Dad's. I never expressed this fantasy to anyone in my family and then one day it happened.
Mom and Dad -- retired at 55 and traveling in an RV worth more than any house I ever grew up in -- were visiting from up North and we had just finished our Tex-Mex. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I prepared to leave when Mom said, "Before you leave there's something we want to talk about with you."
My stomach dropped and I returned my bag to the floor. I waited to hear one of them say the word cancer.
"Go ahead and have a seat," Dad said. I looked at Mom. Was there a grin playing at the corner of her mouth?
"Do you remember me talking about Roger?" Yes, he was that one that Mom let get away. He was the one Dad always referred to with great disdain, you could've chosen Roger. Roger ~ eternal man of mystery to my sister and me. He lived in Minnesota or Montana or somewhere up there.
"Well, before you were born..."
Holy crap! "Are you getting ready to tell me that I have a sibling other than Kim?" I looked for hidden cameras, sure this moment was being taped for Oprah or Jerry Springer.
Sure enough, that goofy grin on her face grew to a full-blown smile as she recounted the conception and delivery of her only son. The birth my Grandma forced her to experience alone, dropping her off at the hospital with a parting comment, "call me when you're done and ready to come home." Yikes.
He was born five years before me and one of my mother's greatest concerns over the years was that I would come home with a new boyfriend only to discover I'd slept with my brother!
Fortunately, that storyline was left to the writers of daytime soap drama. She disclosed the details of Stephen's entrance into the world and Roger's return to Vietnam, asking me whether I recalled her increased moodiness each autumn. Did I notice it? Was she kidding? My mom was a moody rag every season of the year. There was no way the month of October stood out separately from the others.
The evening grew surreal as her story unfolded. It wasn't that I was no longer the all-important oldest, but that everyone all around me (except for Kim) had known I wasn't the oldest. I felt - if only for a 24-hour window - that I had lived this lie, perfectly fostered by my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Then the surreal window closed and I realized that no change in birth order could alter who I was - even if I learned the truth at 31.
Ah, but something shifted that night. I watched and listened to Mom and for the first time in my life I began to see her as more than just this bitchy woman who nagged at me to empty the dishwasher and compared me to my father when she was particularly pissed.
She was more than a mom, she was more than my keeper... she was a woman who'd experienced more than the caress of one lover. She was a sexual being with a colorful past, more interesting than she had been the day before. The box I'd put her in was too small and I delighted not only in meeting my newly-found brother but in connecting with this other person I thought I'd always known but was meeting for the very first time.
Mom and Dad -- retired at 55 and traveling in an RV worth more than any house I ever grew up in -- were visiting from up North and we had just finished our Tex-Mex. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I prepared to leave when Mom said, "Before you leave there's something we want to talk about with you."
My stomach dropped and I returned my bag to the floor. I waited to hear one of them say the word cancer.
"Go ahead and have a seat," Dad said. I looked at Mom. Was there a grin playing at the corner of her mouth?
"Do you remember me talking about Roger?" Yes, he was that one that Mom let get away. He was the one Dad always referred to with great disdain, you could've chosen Roger. Roger ~ eternal man of mystery to my sister and me. He lived in Minnesota or Montana or somewhere up there.
"Well, before you were born..."
Holy crap! "Are you getting ready to tell me that I have a sibling other than Kim?" I looked for hidden cameras, sure this moment was being taped for Oprah or Jerry Springer.
Sure enough, that goofy grin on her face grew to a full-blown smile as she recounted the conception and delivery of her only son. The birth my Grandma forced her to experience alone, dropping her off at the hospital with a parting comment, "call me when you're done and ready to come home." Yikes.
He was born five years before me and one of my mother's greatest concerns over the years was that I would come home with a new boyfriend only to discover I'd slept with my brother!
Fortunately, that storyline was left to the writers of daytime soap drama. She disclosed the details of Stephen's entrance into the world and Roger's return to Vietnam, asking me whether I recalled her increased moodiness each autumn. Did I notice it? Was she kidding? My mom was a moody rag every season of the year. There was no way the month of October stood out separately from the others.
The evening grew surreal as her story unfolded. It wasn't that I was no longer the all-important oldest, but that everyone all around me (except for Kim) had known I wasn't the oldest. I felt - if only for a 24-hour window - that I had lived this lie, perfectly fostered by my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Then the surreal window closed and I realized that no change in birth order could alter who I was - even if I learned the truth at 31.
Ah, but something shifted that night. I watched and listened to Mom and for the first time in my life I began to see her as more than just this bitchy woman who nagged at me to empty the dishwasher and compared me to my father when she was particularly pissed.
She was more than a mom, she was more than my keeper... she was a woman who'd experienced more than the caress of one lover. She was a sexual being with a colorful past, more interesting than she had been the day before. The box I'd put her in was too small and I delighted not only in meeting my newly-found brother but in connecting with this other person I thought I'd always known but was meeting for the very first time.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Seven Dating Dramas
Here they are...
1. The Drama of Relationship and Career
2. The Drama of Self Pity
3. The Drama of Man's Sexuality
4. The Drama of Mother
5. The Drama of Competition
6. The Drama of Communication
7. The Drama of Woman's Sexuality
You know that saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all"? That's where I'm at tonight. I'm channeling Debbie Downer and seem incapable of escaping this negative field to say or write anything inspiring. I feel emotionally exposed and embarrassed.
More to come...
1. The Drama of Relationship and Career
2. The Drama of Self Pity
3. The Drama of Man's Sexuality
4. The Drama of Mother
5. The Drama of Competition
6. The Drama of Communication
7. The Drama of Woman's Sexuality
You know that saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all"? That's where I'm at tonight. I'm channeling Debbie Downer and seem incapable of escaping this negative field to say or write anything inspiring. I feel emotionally exposed and embarrassed.
More to come...
Friday, February 5, 2010
What is ~ Drama Queen's Guide to Dating
Dating did not come easy to me. I was (and am still) a late bloomer. I watched my teen girlfriends embrace the dating game with ease while I fumbled around desperately. Cheerleader Natalie played the cute card and knoodled (sp?) with John through 8th grade. Athlete Kelly leveraged her wholesome, girl-next-door card through 9th. Forensic Chris and Journalistic Carol played their sensible cards through junior and senior year.
I was a sophomore in college before a series of unfortunate events landed me in relationship. Alison died in a car wreck and the floor fell out from under my feet. Alison, the coolest freak with a rat tail I'd ever met that didn't have to pretend to be my friend. Alison, who lived life out loud and wrote naughty little stories with her boyfriend and passed them around the school. Alison, who demonstrated the proper way to eat a slice, experience the City 110 stories up and start from the top in the Guggenheim. Alison, who helped me pass algebra and who loved Sting more than anything else in this world. She was going to write for Rolling Stone. Instead, she took a road trip to Chicago and overturned her car while trying to change out a CD.
I received the news Sunday night after it happened and I immediately called Sean who drove me to KC to hear Alison's mother say it wasn't so. But it was "so" and I was drowning in denial.
Death draws a circle around those of us left behind. It unites us in a club none of us ask to join and gives us shared experiences with those we might not otherwise engage. Sean had been my friend since the start of school, but the drive home that Sunday night revealed our mutual loss and grieving became bearable as friendship evolved into something more.
There will be more to say about Sean, so suffice it to say that our story eventually (and dramatically) came to an end. Dating awkwardness -- temporarily diminished in college -- rebounded with a fury upon graduation and the search for "The One" resumed.
In my Definitions post (January 25th), I posed the question, what is a drama queen. Since its inception, I have struggled to reconcile whether "Drama Queen's Guide to Dating" is a book about drama queens or a book about dating dramas. The latter certainly offers the promise of a NY Times Best Seller with its seven-step, self-help structure.
Dating has been awkward in the best of times and dramatic in the worst. Everyone has their path toward enlightenment and mine has more often than not been the path of romantic adventure and finding "the one"... you know: the knight, the soul mate, the one who would complete me. I stand by my January 25th post and declare that being a drama queen is less about suffering with some borderline personality disorder than it is about living my life in the fullest and loudest pursuit of consciousness. It is about living my life in the most colorful pursuit of connection with a man.
The dating dramas are a pathway to relationship, marriage and family. They are the houses dotting the landscape toward partnership.
I was a sophomore in college before a series of unfortunate events landed me in relationship. Alison died in a car wreck and the floor fell out from under my feet. Alison, the coolest freak with a rat tail I'd ever met that didn't have to pretend to be my friend. Alison, who lived life out loud and wrote naughty little stories with her boyfriend and passed them around the school. Alison, who demonstrated the proper way to eat a slice, experience the City 110 stories up and start from the top in the Guggenheim. Alison, who helped me pass algebra and who loved Sting more than anything else in this world. She was going to write for Rolling Stone. Instead, she took a road trip to Chicago and overturned her car while trying to change out a CD.
I received the news Sunday night after it happened and I immediately called Sean who drove me to KC to hear Alison's mother say it wasn't so. But it was "so" and I was drowning in denial.
Death draws a circle around those of us left behind. It unites us in a club none of us ask to join and gives us shared experiences with those we might not otherwise engage. Sean had been my friend since the start of school, but the drive home that Sunday night revealed our mutual loss and grieving became bearable as friendship evolved into something more.
There will be more to say about Sean, so suffice it to say that our story eventually (and dramatically) came to an end. Dating awkwardness -- temporarily diminished in college -- rebounded with a fury upon graduation and the search for "The One" resumed.
In my Definitions post (January 25th), I posed the question, what is a drama queen. Since its inception, I have struggled to reconcile whether "Drama Queen's Guide to Dating" is a book about drama queens or a book about dating dramas. The latter certainly offers the promise of a NY Times Best Seller with its seven-step, self-help structure.
Dating has been awkward in the best of times and dramatic in the worst. Everyone has their path toward enlightenment and mine has more often than not been the path of romantic adventure and finding "the one"... you know: the knight, the soul mate, the one who would complete me. I stand by my January 25th post and declare that being a drama queen is less about suffering with some borderline personality disorder than it is about living my life in the fullest and loudest pursuit of consciousness. It is about living my life in the most colorful pursuit of connection with a man.
The dating dramas are a pathway to relationship, marriage and family. They are the houses dotting the landscape toward partnership.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Transition to ~ Drama Queen's Guide to Dating
Events from last month's annual meeting remind me of marriage's inherent upside: stability. In my mind the scene from Mr. Meditteranean's room plays out again and again, sitting in my stomach like a raw donut. Any day now I will move on, get over it and delegate it to a trunk of memories past, but a question pulls at my attention: he knew I was married before inviting me to his room, so why the invite?
Uhg ~ such misery. We take, create or force opportunities to get to know those with whom we'd like to be connected. Sometimes they reciprocate and sometimes they pass. In between there is that moment that hangs in the air... will they feel the same? And sometimes that suspended tension is better than the answer itself because it exists without judgment, without rejection. It is perfection if only momentary.
Perfection passes, gravity wins and even the most intagible falls back to Earth. If the moment passes with an unhappy ending we're back out the following weekend donning our sexiest shoes and accoutrements. Will the next connection transform into something beautiful?
Dramas unfold in pursuit of our happy ending. We date in an endless search for "The One" wondering why it has to be so hard yet failing to realize we're the ones making it hard.
Uhg ~ such misery. We take, create or force opportunities to get to know those with whom we'd like to be connected. Sometimes they reciprocate and sometimes they pass. In between there is that moment that hangs in the air... will they feel the same? And sometimes that suspended tension is better than the answer itself because it exists without judgment, without rejection. It is perfection if only momentary.
Perfection passes, gravity wins and even the most intagible falls back to Earth. If the moment passes with an unhappy ending we're back out the following weekend donning our sexiest shoes and accoutrements. Will the next connection transform into something beautiful?
Dramas unfold in pursuit of our happy ending. We date in an endless search for "The One" wondering why it has to be so hard yet failing to realize we're the ones making it hard.
Drama Queen Definitions - Addendum
Someone with a [pathological] need for attention (maybe):
Look at me!
Like me!
Love me!
Look at me!
Like me!
Love me!
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