Thanksgiving

Is it true? Can we overcome by focusing only on the positive, on what we have to be thankful for? I think so. Will that stop bad things from happening? Of course not. We cannot control what happens to us, only how we react to it.

Ok, so I'm trite. I just have to say it as I see it. These are profound truths that I have learned over the last ten years. But that's not why I started writing this. I started this post to list all the things I am thankful for on this day of thanks. The first item on the list, I see, is wisdom. Here is the rest of my list:

My family. I have a husband who loves and supports me, three kids who are growing into adults that I can be proud of, and a sister with whom I am close despite the fact that my mother did all she could to tear us apart.

My friends. What can I say? I have been blessed with friends, old and new who know me, love me and accept me for who I am. Some of them even read my blog. What more can I ask for?

My job. Yes, my job. As much as I complain, I have an income and health coverage. I also have the privilege to teach, to spend my days with young people who will some day run the world. I can only hope that I am giving them the tools they need to be fair, kind, and gentle with each other and our earth.

My home. Again, I complain about taxes and say I'd move in a minute, but the reality is we are stuck here for now. So each day I appreciate the beauty afforded me when I look out my window and see our great river and all the creatures that populate it. It is a house that fits us perfectly as we are now.

My health. So far so good. I feel pretty good, despite my advancing age. I enjoy yoga and have the energy to do what needs to get done. What more can I ask for?

That's quite a list.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your day. Enjoy your life.

Michael Jackson - Beat It

My Latest Read

 

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

This is a wonderful book for someone who loves literature or who is curious about what life is like for Muslim women in Iran.  This is a memoir about Nafisi's experience teaching literature and living in Iran through the Iran/Iraq war.  She introduces us to her students who meet at her house after she lost her position at the University of Tehran.  She was raised in an unusual Iranian family who encouraged her education then married an moved to the U.S. for a few years where she continued her education.  This gives her the perspective from both sides and makes for interesting reading.

We see the world of Iran for Nafisi and her students through their discussions of Nabakov, Fitzgerald and Henry James among others.  Although I had not read all of the books they discussed, Nafisi writes so well that it does not matter.  I feel like I read three or four books at the same time.  That's a bonus. 

It is not light reading, but is very interesting and I felt like Nafisi was a friend and teacher by the end of the book.

The Circle of Stuff

I went yard sailing on Friday, something I usually only do on Saturday.  I went to a couple and did some other shopping and on the way home, found one that I had difficulty locating the first time around.  While I was browsing I overheard the woman holding the yard sale that this was for the youth group at her church.  I told her I had some stuff at my house and I would be glad to donate it. 

I have been doing my yearly cleaning out and had a pile of stuff in the spare bedroom.  I knew my local thrift store was not really in need of the stuff, but I hadn't come up with any other place to take it.  You see, the complication of my quest to rid my life of clutter is that I hate to throw things out.  I don't mind getting rid of it, but the thought of useful items in a landfill makes me crazy.   

I went home and gathered up the stuff and took it out to her.  She was thrilled, glad to have it.  That felt really good.   

Blast from the Past

I'm sharing the photos I found in the box of memorabilia from my college years.

This is a picture of yours truly.  I think this was taken by someone in one of my photography classes.  I was about 22.

  This is Erin at her senior prom.  Yes, she wore a tux.  Amazing, isn't she?

This is Me, Erin, Harry and Denny in front of my sister's house in Lenhartsville.  This was a Polaroid that I thought I had lost long ago.  I can't believe what good shape it is in.

Just after this picture was taken, I got into the Comet and backed it directly into a tree.

We were a fearsome foursome.

This is my high school graduation with my mom and dad.  Jean is almost smiling.  I have another one somewhere with Todd and Matt.  I'll have to find that and post it. 

Little Mike, my first Italian Greyhound




Okay, I have to admit, sometimes it's good to hold onto stuff. 

Oh No! More Stuff!

We finally cleaned out a storage unit that we have had for too long. We got the unit when we were moving to Pennsville and needed a place to put the stuff that we couldn't fit into this house due to my mother's refusal to give up her stored stuff. The unit was useful when we moved to Nottingham as I had a place to put furniture we needed for the new house. The rest of the time was just laziness. Nobody wanted to deal with the stuff. I latched onto my son's current unemployed status and paid him to get it cleaned out.

While I thought I had gotten the stuff I wanted out of there, I had some things I had either forgotten about or thought was here at the house somewhere. One of those things was a box of memorabilia from my college years. Apparently, I kept every scrap of paper that any of my friends put a pen to. I had about four boxes of letters in that plastic box. I found some great pictures, too, of myself and of my dear friend, Erin. I took those out to scan and share. The letters went back into the box to be read more thoroughly at some point in the future, before I burn them of course. Just scanning them was eye-opening in itself.

The letters are reminders of friends I haven't seen since those years and reminders of what dear friends I still have.

Every box contained letters from Erin, of course. I probably have boxes of letters from her from our childhood stashed somewhere under the rafters of this house. I cherish those as they trace our friendship that was interrupted by her death in 2004. I won't be getting any more letters from her, but I know that our relationship is not over. I'm sure she will be there for me when my time comes. The letters are a nice reminder, though.

Each box also contained letters from my now husband, George. Tracing our relationship through break-ups and reunions and engagement. We were together and apart for ten years before we got married and letters attest to each hill and valley the details of which have flowed together. It's been thirty years since we first met and it is nice to remember the boy I fell in love with with his own words.

Another surprise was that in each box was that in each box were several letters from my friend, Todd. I remember being friends throughout, but the number of letters was eye-opening. We still write to each other, but in emails now, which brings me to the subject of letters.

Friends today communicate in many different ways, texting, emails, facebook, twitter and not one of these things can you put in a box to find in mid-life and help you gain perspective on who you were and who you have become, and who the important people in you life were and still are.

I feel sorry for today's generation. One less box of stuff to haul from house to house, but how many memories and relationships lost to the delete button?

Grief

the dead flowers of myself
by Charles Bukowski from his book Betting on the Muse

bulls strut in pinwheel glory
rockets stun the sky
but I don't know
quite what to make
of the dead flowers
of myself
whether to dump them out of the bowl
or
press them between
these blank pages
and go on;
well, all grief comes down
to hard death
and weeping finally ends
thank the god
who made
it


I love Charles Bukowski, his poetry and his prose. Even if you're not "into poetry" don't hesitate to pick up or look up some of his work. I guess "gritty" would be a good word to describe him.

Back to this particular poem. I've been struggling with grief since the death of my dear friend, Erin. It's been six years. Has it really been that long? I have lost my parents in the interim, but neither death affected me like hers. Perhaps because we are meant to lose our parents, but not our best friends, not while we are still in the midst of life.

Does all grief come to a "hard death"? Does the weeping finally end? I know some grief does. I'm not sure I'll ever be "over it." Honestly, I'm not sure I want to be. She was (is) a part of my life, a part of me.

Today's Horoscope

Yes, I know it's just an online horoscope, but sometimes it says just the right thing at the right time:

Your horoscope for June 30, 2010
Your mind is more receptive than usual to messages from the other planes, Megan, and so you could find yourself feeling especially insightful right now. You might be more able than usual to tune into the thoughts and feelings of others, and you could be more attuned than usual to learning about your own motivations. Don't fight this tendency. Write down your thoughts. Even if you don't understand them now, they might mean more to you later.


Hmmm.

Enough about Stuff

It's time to move on with life and learn some new lessons. A couple of years ago, some Buddhist monks visited our area. The local papers ran a couple of stories about their activities while they were here. With the help of the public, they created an elaborate, beautiful sand painting. On the last day they were here, they destroyed the painting. The lesson they were teaching is that everything is fleeting. What I derived from this is that we should not cling to the physical. Life and beauty is to be enjoyed while it is here, but not to hold us back from moving on. What really matters is the spiritual, the soul, the spirit.

While this is easier for me to practice when I think about stuff, furniture, art, houses, property, there are other areas that are more challenging. One of the things I'm working on is enjoying the moment and not thinking too much about how I got here and what lies ahead. I think the hardest part of this lesson to learn involves my children. I can start weeping when I see pictures or think about my little children, babies, who are no longer little or babies. I have to learn to let that go and enjoy the beautiful young people they have become. We need to love them while we have them and let them go when it is time.

This is also true of others in our lives and our dear pets. We need to love them and treat them well while we have them and let them go when the time comes. And have faith that this physical life is not the end, but only a stage in our existence.

Practice

You might think that all of that would have been enough to teach me about the value of stuff. The Universe, however, thought I needed a little independent practice. By 2007, the situation in the household was becoming unbearable. Jean was a depressed narcissist with dementia, my husband was battling depression and my daughter had been diagnosed bi-polar in 2004, her sophomore year in high school. Jean was an unpredictable tyrant. You never know when pulling in the driveway what you would find.

You may be asking why we didn't get help. It was not for lack of trying. Jean was wily and evaded diagnosis. Her doctor was no help, the local mental health system was no help, the police dutifully wrote incident reports, but, in the end were no help. My sister was unable to help, my mother's best friend was unable to help.
We were in this alone. In fact, I felt like I was screaming in a dark room and no one could hear me.

The only help I did have was that of my friends. While I lost my oldest and dearest friend to breast cancer in 2004, I had Ginny, my friend since the seventh grade. She was the only one who really understood what I was going through.

We couldn't live there anymore. Jean was making our lives miserable and it was becoming unbearable. We decided to move. My husband cashed in an old 401K he had and we found a house on Nottingham in Penn Beach. Linda was our landlady and she was our angel that helped us on this particular leg of our journey. Linda was a hairdresser and I felt that maybe Erin, my friend whom I had lost who was also a hairdresser, brought us together to help each other out. Linda was unable to sell her house and decided to rent it to us after we contacted her real estate agent. Renting with three older kids, two dogs, and, at the last minute, a litter of kittens is easier said than done. Linda didn't even blink. She also had kids, dogs and cats and welcomed us. So we moved.

One large truck and 3 movers later we were safe and happy. We had some furniture, but not much. I filled in by shopping at yard sales. It was fun and our little house looked good by the time we were done. The kids had their own rooms, the dogs had a yard, we kept two of the cats and had a wonderful neighbor. Somebody was watching out for us.

One year to the week, Jean fell in the back yard and hit her head. She walked into the hospital but never walked out. We moved back with two truck loads this time and two years later are still working on things, but happy with a minimal amount of stuff and always working to make due with less.

That said, I still frequent yard sales, but buy only what we need, or what I simply can't live without, an example of which you can see in the picture that accompanies today's post.

It's Just Stuff: Part Two (Where things get ugly)

We moved to my mother's in July of '03. If you remember, it was a hot and humid summer. My mother didn't have air conditioning. My mother would not let us install an air conditioner on the first floor. Things went badly.

Let me explain our living arrangements. The house is a large one. The upstairs was originally finished off so that my grandmother could live there. She never did, unable to navigate the stairs safely and refusing to live "in somebody's attic." The space consists of a large living room with windows facing the river, and a bedroom off the living room. There was a closet which was planned to be a bathroom, but never completed. Installing the bathroom I will save for another post. When we moved in, we needed to finish off an upstairs storage room for the boys to use as a bedroom. This upstairs area was the reason we thought we could make this work; we would have our own comfortable living area and only Anna would be on the first floor in her own bedroom.

The first step was to clean out the storage room. Let me say my mother had not even been in the upstairs since my dad had died and this storage room was mostly full of discarded household items and assorted and varied pieces of junk. There was yet another storage room up there that held stuff from her antique business and family memorabilia. That room was left untouched.

While my mother wanted us to move in, she did not want to make room for us. Every old toaster and lamp was a battle. I have this memory of her sitting on the front porch weeping over a shoe. We got the room clear and thought the worst was over. We were wrong.

After a few months I realized my mother could not be dealt with rationally. She had undiagnosed dementia and was a raging narcissist to begin with. You might be thinking, "Then why did you move in with her?" Well, I'm still working on that. There was only my sister and I to care for her. She and my sister never got along and I was the "golden child." My mother and I had always gotten along and I didn't think things would be any different when we moved in. I was wrong.

I want to write that the stuff was always at the heart of the battles, but the real battle was about control. She wanted all the control, all the time. We thought that because we left the first floor untouched she would realize that we had to have room to live and let us do so. Again, wrong.

While I will be posting more about this adventure at a later date, let me just sum up what my mother taught me about stuff. People and relationships are more important than stuff. Stuff is just stuff, it can't love you or keep you company or help you grow. It's just stuff. It can be replaced, done without, or kept and cared for, but it will never replace people and relationships. She built a wall with her stuff. I chose to do without stuff and chose people, love and growth.

It's Just Stuff: Part One

This is one lesson that the last few years have taught me. It began with leaving our house in Elmer. We had lived there fifteen years, had our three children there, and loved it. The house had a large attic, a basement and an outbuilding. That allowed me to keep all the clothes and toys and what-not that can collect with kids. In addition, relatives looked at it as a dumping ground as they cleaned out their own messes. We were too young and too polite to say no. It's just stuff, right? We had room to cram it in. So we did.

In July of 2002 my dad passed away. That left my mother, then 83, in Pennsville alone in a big house. In April of 2003, we put our house in Elmer up for sale and the clean-out began. At first our end of the clean-out was rather easy. We took what we needed to my mother's house and left the rest to clean out later. This happened a little at a time on weekends. It seemed at times like the stuff multiplied while we weren't there. There was still a basement, attic and building full of stuff.

In February of 2004 our house sold. We went back one weekend to spend the night and have a yard sale. It was one of the most emotional times of my life. Processing all those memories and saying goodbye to a house we loved was devastating. The worst part was we still had stuff to get rid of. This is where God intervened.

The real estate agent for the people who were buying our house was also a pastor. He had his youth group come in for two days and clean out every last thing from the property. We provided a dumpster and they took what was good for fund raising. While the buyers were absolute pains in the ass from beginning to end, their agent proved to be our angel.

And that was part one of the lesson I learned about stuff: the physical and emotional burden that having too much stuff can be. The next part of my story will be about what my mother taught me about stuff.

Update

My last post was almost three years ago. I didn't think this blog would still be here, but I happened across it. Who knew?

So much happened in those three years. My mother fell in June of '08, hit her head and was dead within a week. So we left our hideaway nest on Nottingham and moved back to North River Drive. My sister and I hired an auction house to take away all of her stuff. The day they arrived I was in the hospital awaiting emergency gall bladder surgery. While I avoided having to be here on the big day, I also lost a few things I would have liked to hang onto. It is, however, only stuff. This left us with an empty house that we had painted and moved into to make our own.

I'll update and fill in the blanks in coming posts. Briefly, however, George opened his own printing shop, Anna is working at WaWa and doing well, Conor just graduated from high school and Sean will be a high school freshman this year.

Life is good and we are all moving on.