mulberryshoots

You know how sometimes you’re just going along, listening to what you think others are telling you, relating in a way that’s just like always? But, something doesn’t sound right. Or, it echoes something you thought was taken care of. Or a situation within the family dynamics has shifted quietly but rather dramatically. Like when you’re playing the card game called Hearts and you pass three cards to the right. And your new hand reveals that you aren’t in a position to “shoot the moon” because the Queen of Spades is in someone else’s hand.

Yep, that’s the way it feels today. Something has shifted but it isn’t me, it’s been there all the time: it’s just that I didn’t notice it as much before. But, that’s the way life is sometimes. I look at someone like Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper’s mother–who appears in his new daytime show with the most glorious haircut, serene and collected. After all the strife and tragedy in her life, it hasn’t embittered her. In fact, she’s open to the next good thing around the corner, and she’s eighty-seven years old. How remarkable!

Now, SHE is a role model to look up to. A little correction like the one I am describing wouldn’t phase her a bit. Neither should it bother me for long. Once I get used to it.

I had a good day yesterday after a long string of bad ones. I sometimes get an idea in my head that I’m intensely engaged in but the next steps seem out of reach. I try different things to reach that end. I explore taking lessons, for example. It doesn’t feel right, or it’s too costly, or I can’t justify it to myself. There are lots of reasons why it’s not working. This kind of process can go on for weeks, sometimes months. I have learned that these periods of stagnation serve a purpose and that they too shall pass someday. Even knowing that times change, though, doesn’t help when you’re enmired in this kind of trough.

Yesterday, things shifted. Solely by listening to my intuition, answers emerged. Not just on one front or idea but on multiple fronts on the same day. I was in a flower shop and felt a strong urge to walk into a secondhand book shop down the street in a town far from where I live. I had a feeling that there was something waiting for me there. It was still raining after a sudden cloudburst had dumped torrential water from the sky. The air conditioning in the bookshop was still turned up and it felt chilly on my damp clothes. I didn’t know what it was that I was looking for (which is the case most of the time) and I picked up one book after another, paging through them.

Then, I knew I had found it. A paperback collection of short stories written by a minimalist writer. FINALLY! someone who wrote in a way that I had been searching for without knowing it. I had plowed through a list of writers whose work I was supposed to revere. But I didn’t get what they were trying to do; and I was puzzled by what all the fuss has been about. I had begun thinking I was so out of it in my understanding and taste that I’d never be a good writer. Or even a good reader. So many trips to the library with hopeful books only to be put off and returned unread. I paid for the book and slipped it into my bag.

The other thing that came together yesterday was somewhat different. I like figuring out how to reposition things that I already own so that they are not wasted. I think they call this “repurposing.” Weeks ago, I had seen something that looked beautiful on my hand but was so outrageously expensive that I dismissed it from the front of my mind. Yesterday, it resurfaced when an idea I had in the morning mushroomed during my drive into town. I had proposed the first idea to an artisan whose shop is nearby. We were on bartering terms now, turkey pie and farmstand corn on the cob for supper in exchange for some small repairs that he would not let me pay for the last couple of times. When I visited him the second time, his quick grasp of what I envisioned (and coveted) out of pieces that were languishing in my drawer felt like a trifecta of satisfaction: a) waste not; b)fulfill a dream; c)manifested by a magician/helper who is also a friend. It’s as if pieces of wishes and thoughts floating in the air suddenly clicked together once their magnetic fields got close enough to each other. This has happened before: alchemy that turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

I feel lucky today. More importantly, I have been reminded by the Universe that the magic is still working. I’m so grateful knowing I don’t have to do everything myself. And that help is usually on the way.

I’ve had an interesting recognition today. As I reflect and write about women my generation being hidden from themselves due to the culture we grew up in (see my other blog, www.uncommonhours.org); or due to the amount of time we spend raising a family, it hasn’t occurred to me as intensely as today that one of the ways that children, or progeny, grow up and become individuals is to leave home. What I mean by that is that they are so attached to you and your protection that one of the only ways they can grow up is to rebel completely and denounce your parenting forever. Sometimes “home” means you as a mother, once and for all. This primordial separation occurs sometimes benignly but often with harsh finality as well. That’s how much you mean to them, the good, the bad and the ugly, as they say.

This is a story that has been around forever. Parents who love too much, over-protecting and wanting their kids to be free of hurt and to help them whenever it’s needed. Kids who depend on that help, support and nurturing and resent it at the same time, knowingly or unknowingly. People sometimes think the biggest hurdle in life is to get your kids into college and out of college, educated and ready for life. Anyone who has been through it knows that this idea is sadly mistaken: that the hardest years of all are those from the mid-twenties to, let’s say, forty-five or fifty. THAT’s when we look for our place in life; looking for work that is meaningful and remunerative; finding the right partner, perhaps more than one or two before the right one comes along, or not at all; raising children which becomes all-consuming while trying to do the other things already listed. It’s the hardest part, at least it was for me, because you think you know what you need to know. But that comes later. In fact, it comes so much later that it’s laughable, once you get there, around the age of fifty. That’s when you really know how little you know, relax and begin to enjoy life a little bit. That’s how long it takes for some of us.

Anyhow, the internecine struggle to become yourself and to behave in a way that reflects that truly takes a long time. Lots of railing and fretting and trying new things on, like new looks in the way you wear jewelry or dress. How you decide you really want to eat: part-vegan mostly, for example or how your hair looks. You do things to be like your mother and you do things not to be at all like your mother. It comes and goes in waves. People say that sometimes you are not free to live your own life until your mother, or your parents have died. I hope it doesn’t take my daughters that long because I’m in my own way living more like myself than ever before. And it’s awhile since I was fifty.

Realizing that this large cycle is the stuff of human nature, life immemorial, and that fate didn’t pick on us to perpetrate these kinds of life cycles helps when we feel we, as individuals, have failed in some gross way. If we have been sincere and tried to do the right thing most of the time, it’s time to sit back and watch the panorama of life and family unfold. It’s kind of a relief in a way not to be at the heart of things anymore.

There seem to be two kinds of approaches to life that I’ve observed in people around me: those who take responsibility for their actions and those who can’t. I’m part of the first group in that I tend to feel over-responsible for lots of things, a tendency to blame myself first. I tend to worry about the effects of my behavior or my thoughts as I go along. Sometimes to my own detriment. Sometimes to others too, I think.

On the other hand, there are some who see themselves as “victims” first and ask questions later. That is, they never do anything wrong. Or at least, not on purpose, they tell themselves, as a way to excuse bad things that happen around them. Along with feeling like a victim, nothing is ever their fault. There’s always someone else to blame. Or something that couldn’t be helped. Or worse yet, there’s nothing wrong to do anything about. For example, when things are bad and you want to talk about them, their attitude is, “yes, but think of all the people who are worse off than we are: end of a non-discussion.” I don’t like to label things when I’m not schooled in the jargon, but maybe this is a kind of avoidance. Insecurity even deeper than my own.

The I-Ching notes that there’s nothing that stirs people’s ire more deeply than feeling they have done something wrong. Their enmity is re-directed back to the object they have wounded, compounding situations into a hardened mess no one can go near, much less try to repair. The more they justify themselves in order to feel better, the more slippery the slope becomes.

These days, it feels a lot like we are all looking over the edge into a bottomless chasm. We could avoid it before but the negativity and apprehension in the ether in which we breathe is so pervasive these days that I wake up feeling ominously like the other shoe is going to drop any minute now. Maybe it’s because tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the attack on 9/11.

That being said, I guess it’s also possible to pick ourselves up and look at the upside of things. We are really not going to hell in a handbasket. At least, not today. We are able to put food on the table. Our family is healthy for the most part. We have work to do. We haven’t lost our marbles either. The sun comes out after lots of rain. The year and the calendar moves forward, day by day. Just as it always has. We are little ants on our own little anthill. We can say “yes” to living our fullest, including taking ownership over the good and bad in our lives. Or we can hide in our anthill and say “no” to anything we feel uncomfortable with. I don’t know if there’s an equilibrium between too much yes or too much no. But, at least, it’s something worth thinking about.

September is a good time for a fresh start. For many of us, the beginning of the school every year and the cooler, dry air signals a time that we remember well with excitement, optimism, fresh notebooks and pens. What we learned when we were young has gotten us this far. Now, I’m thinking it might be time to go deeper, to listen and learn from others and to find the kind of learning that works for me personally.

Because we all learn differently, it can take quite awhile to find the right fit. I’ve signed up for so many classes (tai-chi, ink-painting) that I tire of after a few classes and the resistance to get into the car to go somewhere is stronger than my desire to get my money’s worth. Voila! after exploring a few more “outside” classes that were vaguely attractive today, I’ve come upon something that works with my resistance-style: online classes with podcasts, class chat follow-up and short assignments with seasoned writers. I can attend class in the comfort of my own chair, have water or tea by my side; go to the bathroom if I need to. Schedule where I want to be to attend the class–here or at our other place on the North Shore. After listening to a sample podcast that lasted an hour and a half, I was very impressed by the quality of the observations and the dialogue. Very smart of these folks to provide such a long sampling for prospective listeners so that we can decide whether to sign-up or not.

I’m stubborn about learning. Or to put it another way, I’m picky about the way that I learn. I don’t like to just be “told” things. Like most people, I think I like to be “shown” so that I can integrate it in my own way. I also squirm when teachers dumb down a topic which to me, represents a lack of respect for the topic as well as for the students. Maybe they think it’s a way to make people feel comfortable–not to take things so seriously. But in this day and age with money being so spare, why do anything at all if you don’t take it seriously?

So my new direction is to go deeper, to take more time to understand and to increase understanding so that what has already been meaningful to me, will now take on greater meaning. I think it takes a certain degree of giving-up to sign-up for this. Because one admits one’s limitations. And that’s probably a good thing too.

I’ve always thought there was a secret about me that others knew and wouldn’t tell me, and that I couldn’t see for myself. Have you ever felt that way too?

At first, I thought it was the reason that my mother treated me badly; or that my father ignored me. Or the reason that the love of my life in college suddenly quit on me. Later on, I realized it was more about them and what was going on in their lives than it was about me. I think that I wanted love too much. And when things didn’t work out, I blamed it on myself. It’s easy to do that and the desire for and loss of love makes the world go around, doesn’t it?

Life went on and I did time in a first marriage that was subversive, went nowhere and was radio silent. It lasted a very long time, partly due to my own lack of will to rock the boat, even though I wanted to be on dry land.

Later on, I thought maybe it was due to the intensity of my personality or maybe because I was too strong-willed. Now, I don’t care anymore. I don’t think there’s anything hidden that I haven’t dug around or dug up somewhere along the line. In fact, I think that fearing that there was a secret made me slightly paranoid and defensive; erring on the side of spending too much money on things and wanting to please other people in order to over-compensate, willy nilly. It seems rather silly that I felt I had to pay a surcharge in order to be accepted. Sort of like having to work harder for less credit than everyone else because you’re a woman and also a minority, a throwback to the last century.

What a waste of resources. Mostly a waste of my own sense of self, I think. You can’t change other people, they say, only yourself.

But on that one, I think I’m fine just as I am. Or, in today’s jargon, “I’m good.”

Getting a life of my own is not so easy. Not at my age. And not after all this time of project managing everybody else’s. Almost thirty years of that time has been spent in a career of basically telling everyone what to do and when to do it so that corporate deadlines in the biotech industry were met. Usually, it was in an environment of “Do or Die” so that the very effort took a toll on everyone; and the rewards were not always apparent. Nevertheless, being depended upon in that manner went a long way. Plus, it allowed me to recoup financially from a first marriage that ended in bankruptcy.

Coming from a highly driven, demanding family heritage for excelling in everything that one touches didn’t help either. Once, someone said to me how bossy I was, even though her telling me that indicated she was even more bossy, which didn’t seem to bother her at all somehow.

So now, after a lifetime of “doing for others” more than I have done for myself, I’m feeling that it’s time to let my raison d’etre go. People don’t want to be taken care of, really. Everyone wants to do their own thing, in their own way. It’s now up to me to figure out what that is, exactly, and what that would look like for me. It’s not so easily apparent because there are filters that shadow my outlook. So peeling them away might take a little time. On the other hand, maybe not.

I guess I should stop being a Chinese mother. Or in today’s vernacular, a “Tiger Mother.” One who protects her cubs no matter what. They don’t seem to want or need it. And I’m too worn out from their lifetime of worrying over them. There comes a time in a parent’s life when the kids just want to do things their way–this starts from an early age, but one scurries about nevertheless, placing a safety net under them, just in case.

When they stop telling you about what they are doing and go their own way, that’s a sign to let them go. Not just physically, of course, but mentally and emotionally. If they want to lead their lives in ways that you would not consider yourself, your job is to stay silent. Past a certain age (theirs and mine) your opinion doesn’t count for very much anymore.

Holiday plans are set up without my input, even though unvoiced expectations are still in place (“go ahead and do what you want, Mom”) but it’s not the same anymore. I still get to provide and pay for the venue (the “magical” setting, decorations, food and drink) but they do what they please (arriving late, rushing away.) How did this happen? Respect and regard somehow got lost in the shuffle. Once gone, it’s gone forever.

What does one do with this loss? If you figure it out, let me know.

Postscript: I think I’ve found the answer: “get a life of my own!”

So it occurred to me just now that maybe I’m trying too hard. Trying to clean up things so that it’s not left for my daughters to deal with when I’m no longer around. Trying to be creative all the time. Trying to be less materialistic while satisfying yearnings that I have had all my life (like wonderful things for the kitchen.) Then remonstrating with myself for buying more things. Endless repeats.

Trying to make peace with the past by telling myself no one is to blame and also not to blame myself. Trying to make the most of the time I have left. What if that’s a long time–say, ten years or more? Wouldn’t this pace be exhausting and humorless to boot?

But what if it’s tomorrow? So what, I say. I won’t be able to “catch up” or “do more” whether it’s tomorrow or a decade from now. I think I need to chill out. Enjoy this gorgeous day with soft breezes, cool, dry air, the sun out–the house is quiet. Not looking for advice. Not giving advice, for once.

Just feel the pleasure of my life and all the riches it offers up, taken or not. Give up the unhelpful habit of eating the acrid dust of the past. Give up trying to control anyone’s actions but my own. What do you call that? Doesn’t matter because I’m there.

And, I’m here. In my place.

I’ve been reading Stephen Mitchell’s new English version of the Tao te Ching. His approach is clear: not a translation from a language point of view because he neither reads nor writes Chinese; but a new English “version” of what SM thinks Lao Tzu would have said, had his words not been misintrepreted or understated by others throughout the eons.

Well, I’m glad he thinks he knows what Lao Tzu was all about and would have wanted to say. I majored in history so I have some knowledge about historiography: how events are interpreted and re-interpreted through the years until there is no semblance of what really happened or was actually written or said at the time. All that’s left are the footprints of people who wrote about them from their own point of view, one layered upon or next to another.

I remember meeting Stephen Mitchell who was in the same class as my ex-husband at Amherst College. He had long hair then, like many others. He’s come a long way since then–and after divorcing his first wife, an Asian acupuncturist named Joyce to whom this volume is dedicated, embarked on a second marriage with the very visible, Byron Katie, who espouses a methodology called “The Work.” What a change! Katie’s “work” requires that you turn every negative and ugly thought you have about someone back onto yourself (as though it’s only a projection in your mind.) I’ve tried it when I first read about it and found it a stretch at times. An odd combo, (the Tao and “projections”) it seems to me. But what do I know?

In any case, I read the Tao te Ching paperback in a relatively short time. I liked Mitchell’s alternating use of the gender “he” and “she” to represent the Tao. Many women, he says, appreciated this device of making the omniscient female as well as male.That’s a first, I think. In any case, reading this writing does take me out of the realm of usual thought. Refreshing actually. Calming too. Here’s one I thought might be appropriate to post, given the thread of thoughts, reactions and sentiments expressed in both my blogs recently.

Number 79:

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.

With this reading, I’m ready to head into the weekend. What about you?