En Thélème

Catch and Release repost of Friday, March 1, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 17:13:00 +0000

“Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love . . .

I'd stepped in it a few times.” ~ Rita Rudner. [i]

Advertisers use “love” to sell lipstick, cars, toothpaste, orange juice and disposable diapers. These ephemera are supposed to capture the shopping-induced bliss of love. And speaking of ephemera, or that which does not endure, you can find a society, a speakers bureau, and even a mentoring program dedicated to preserving these tangible things in, for instance, university libraries. With proper ID, you can check out some ephemera and fondle it in the comfort of your own home.

But love is more difficult to find. Like our cave-dwelling ancestors, we attribute to things magical powers. The right car or slipcover casts a benevolent spell ensuring love and happiness. Such bliss endures only until a new model or design emerges the following day.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of “love,” I don’t imagine it being so flimsy and fickle. More than an unstable state of being, love is a verb. Sometimes love originates from on high, in a moment of rapture. Other times, love’s expression may seem prosaic, anchored in everyday gestures revealing compassion for and acknowledgment of “the other.” Both kinds tap into the unseen but intuitively “felt” understanding that comes from the soul connected to the invisible and infinite world of spirit.

Photo from Public Domain

The moment of physical death, like physical birth, changes the earthly and spiritual landscape by one unit. When faced with a beloved dying, why is it that we resist letting go? When their body no longer responds to their demands, when it is time for them to transition, why do we want to keep them “here” with us? What are we holding onto and why?

A friend shared a video of a young grey whale tangled in fishing nets. A small boating party freed him. They were not “professional” whale rescuers. They did not have fancy diving equipment–just a snorkeling mask, flippers and a steak knife. They didn’t use a tranquilizer gun to subdue the frightened two-ton mammal. They didn’t have swarthy fishing gear. They were out whale watching with a toddler on board, enjoying the sea. When they encountered the creature, they thought he was doing a dead-whale float when a geyser of air and water shot out of its blowhole —a last gasp to breathe. The video captures the drama of the rescue and the spectacular finale – the whale breaching and tail slapping in a display of nothing less than pure joy.

Click here for the video of the whale rescue Valentine's Day 2011.

Humpback Whale shows AMAZING Appreciation after Being Freed from Nets!

This video illustrates how we could feel when someone dies. Freed from the mortal snare, free to cavort and join friends and ancestors on the other side, our dearly departed enters a spiritual realm as mysterious as the unexplored depths of the ocean. We humans resemble whales—not only as oxygen breathing mammals—but also as creatures that swim between two worlds: the world of air symbolizing the external elements exposed to the sun, and the world of water symbolizing the unseen world of the spiritual realm.

Some say we are born all knowing and that we forget as we live. We are born from the world of water and emerge only to respond to love. It is the same on the way out of this world: we emerge from the world of sun to the realm of spirit only to respond to love. The spiritual world does not require designer shoes, diplomas, money, or air; love is the only clothing, the only thing worth knowing, the only currency and oxygen.

If people have been birthing and dying for eons, why is this process still so mysterious? Why are we so often blind to our own heart’s desires? We cannot perceive our own soul’s journey. Great spiritual teachers throughout human history have told us over and over: true love is our common origin and destination. But we refuse to believe it.

Sunset in Bergerac July 14, 20007

Without a living will, as someone lies dying, instead of freeing the whale, we look on helplessly. Instead of removing the unnecessary net—the IV drips, mechanical lungs, and feeding tubes—we lament the whale is trapped. We write letters to Congress about the injustice of trapped whales. Attaching elaborate, mechanical life-support systems, we ensure the trapped whale can survive for years, unable to swim with friends or visit its favorite krill bistros.

Without understanding the origin and destination of our souls, we cannot understand what we need for our end-of-life voyage. As we release someone to the next realm, may we rejoice in their freedom from bondage in this world and their joy in returning home.

Photo from Public Domain

[i][i] HBO: "Born to be Mild"

Posted by Gingerlily En Thélème at 4:25 AM

Eight Things I Love or 329 Statistically Unreadable Characters

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Sat, 28 Dec 2013 06:08:00 +0000

Copes Gray Treefrog

Treefrogs crichiting after the rain

Dancing with my shoes off

Embarrassing my children

Laughing

A little boy and girl making ferocious dinosaur roars outside the library

Old friends

The gentle sloth that takes over the next day when you’ve stayed up late reading a good book in the middle of the night after a spider bites you awake

Zaz – Je veux

originally posted 2013-07-08

Celtx ate my play.

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 08:09:00 +0000

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Blog moving day.

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 02:48:00 +0000

Posts will continue at my new blogspot:

Ciphering inCyberspace

http://cyberciphering.blogspot.com/

12 Ways to Beat the Heat Thai Style

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 10:52:00 +0000

The village of Huay Sai turns out to help a neighbor irrigate his land.

As record-breaking heat cooks the Triangle in North Carolina, in the spirit of shared community, I'd like to offer a few tips on staying cool the way they do here in northern Thailand where my son, Jacob, and I are volunteering at the Warm Heart Foundation (more on that later). Here, air conditioning is more for luxury hotels than day-to-day life.

Jacob buying an ice cream from a mobile vendor.

1. Protect yourself from UV rays with a hat. Deliver ice cream with a motorcycle and don’t forget your gloves! Keep smiling and whatever happens, remember “mai pen rai”--Thai for “no worries!”

Pi-Tai's pup waggin' his tail under a parked Warm Heart truck.

2. Stay cool Thai doggie style. Dig a hole in the shade under the nearest pick-up truck. Stateside, you might retreat to the cooler regions of your home like the basement.

One cool cat vegetatin' at Warm Heart's Children's Home.

3. Remember that greenery is the cat’s pajamas. Water your houseplants and spritz their leaves to create your own cooling rain forest hideaway.

Cataloguing books for the Always Reading Caravan (ARC) at Warm Heart.

4. Find the nearest empty rice barn and create a community library. Join a book club, read with friends to keep ideas flowing and use fans to keep the air moving.

A seasonal cornfield that periodically goes underwater.

5. Watch the corn grow by a banana tree. Remember that without the sun, we’d become Ice Age fossils. Contemplate how the natural forces of nature cause roots to reach for the earth’s core and leaves to unfurl towards the heavens following the pull of universal yin and yang.

Drink fluids early and often.

6. In Thailand, most gas stations give you a free bottle of water with a fill-up. Don’t forget to stay hydrated! Drink plenty of water during the day before you are parched. Perspiration is nature’s natural coolant – don’t let your human radiator run dry and overheat.


Pi-Beuh's wife staking out a frangipani sapling.

7. Plant a tree to create shade. In Thailand, this frangipani will easily grow some 20 feet tall. Remember to baby your sapling for the first year or two by watering during drought. Protect young plants from excessive winds (here by staking). In the North Carolina Piedmont, protect them from rutting deer with a surround of chicken wire.

Waterfall in a national park near Phrao.

8. Cool off in a waterfall and enjoy nature. The soothing sound of flowing water – from a burbling brook, a lake lapping the shoreline, or ocean waves – is sure to refresh your spirits as well as your toes. Breezes rustling through the bamboo leaves and singing birds are a bonus.

Taking a siesta by the newly built Girls House at Warm Heart.

9. Take a siesta to avoid the extreme heat of the day. The Spanish word siesta derives from the Latin ‘sexta hora’ or sixth hour after dawn. The Thais also divide the day counting from dawn and many enjoy a noontide break. You might find monks napping in a nearby “wat” or monastery temple.

A wat overlooking the Phrao valley.

10. Visit a wat -- a Thai Buddhist monastery temple. Ancient temples are often good places to cool off. Stateside, a local museum or historic home might do the trick.

An Eri silkworm feeding up and preparing to cocoon.

11. Feed an Eri silkworm a cassava leaf and support local micro-enterprises like silk weaving. Don’t forget your local wildlife and put out water for birds during a hot spell.

Looking off the back balcony at the cow barn.

12. Pray for rain. And when it arrives, find shelter with friends to wait out the storm. These Thai Brahman cattle were a gift from the local monastery and are not for eating! Their manure, however, enriches the soil and is highly prized by local farmers who will buy it by the bag.

Thinking of ya'll down Carolina way from the Phrao valley. Stay cool! And as they say around here, "Sawadee-ka!"

The Warm Heart Foundation is an NGO founded by the husband-wife team of Michael Shafer and Evelind Schecter to help the people of Phrao help themselves. Read more about Warm Heart here:

http://www.warmheartworldwide.org/

Blowing Strawberries at Amendment One

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:03:00 +0000

To everything, there is a season, Ecclesiastes promises. Except in the US, where we are accustomed to having everything our way with immediate gratification. To assure this, we would take God’s rule into our very own hands to judge the living and the dead. We don’t think in terms of building a civilization that will endure for generations or even beyond the next local budget crisis. We don’t think in terms of the cycles of seasons that come and go, the wheel that crushed Hesse, or the eternal karma of our decisions. We absorb mass media input and want to generate instant output.

Ignoring the not yet mid-May date, I bought some strawberries this morning at the local Whole Foods. Knowing that the on-sale California strawberries would be flavorless, I bought local grown pyramids of saucy red juiciness. Their full-flushed cheeks promised me a taste of deep-hearted flavor, slightly tangy with sweet berries blossoming somewhere midway on my palate. They would satisfy the still-feels-like-spring crisp hope on my tongue. At the market, the gleaming mound of stacked strawberries was a treasure to behold, particularly this early in the season.

They stared at me beneath their green toupées with irresistible come-hither looks I could not ignore. They appeared to be the fully-fledged result of hanky panky amongst the bees and blossoms in a farmer’s field just waiting for me to harvest them. I wound up spending more than the cost of two Grande lattés on a pair of smallish containers of seed-freckled darlings. As my tires crunched upon the driveway, I listened expectantly for heraldic trumpeting as I returned home with my prize. I had high hopes for my investment. These berries would anoint our humble house with a riot of flavor.

Putting all other chores aside, I carefully washed them, drained them and scalped off their toupées for easy eating. One of the privileges of working in the royal kitchen is that one must taste test to assure quality control. Alas, berry after berry that detoured from swooping into the collective bowl into my mouth was naught but a waterberry – scarcely any flavor at all. I continued scalping and tasting, hoping I was mistaken or that a miraculous change would occur, turning waterberry to strawberry. Their fully ripe color predicted flavor-smacking sapidity, but berry after berry, my mouth went into mourning for what lacked.

Such is the Christian flavor expressed with the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina. Theoretically, it looks like a victory for moral values. Theoretically, it should enhance families to work things out and be strong in their love. Marriage holds within it the fecund promise of future generations. But in truth, the Amendment is empty of True Christian heart. It sounds the noisy gong and clanging cymbal of the dinner bell without serving up the fried chicken and biscuits.

While Amendment 1 appears to take notice of marriage, it actually harms many families. Who would deny their sister or brother the loving care they desire and deserve at end of life? Who would deny the value of helping children obtain health insurance? What of those whom this amendment leaves disenfranchised? What’s to become of no-longer-recognized civil unions of all sorts where one has promised to care for the other and perhaps fails to, or worse, abuses the other? It removes the gentle support that society is called upon to offer those who are vulnerable. It defines a society of haves where the have-nots no longer exist.

“You can’t legislate morality,” as my attorney dad used to say. Government is for all the people, not the privileged few. Repeal Amendment 1. Moreover, since Congresses can’t seem to function without riders on their bills, why not add that there should be warning labels on flavorless strawberries? Perhaps it would start a trend for truth in advertising religious and secular.

Social media and its discontents

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:16:00 +0000

New York Public Library archive (ca. 1910s)

I need to listen to Steve Almond's "The Writing Life" again. That is because I spent most of the day reading up on modernist writers, like Dorothy Parker, partially due to a Facebook posting on women writers who went to New York City to seek their literary fortunes. I also reviewed the Harlem Renaissance and Zora Neale Hurston and dug into the life history of Sylvia Plath. Silly me, I thought by reading about the lives of writers, I would find inspiration to write. However, it wasn’t drinking, depression, dogs, destitution or death that made them writers. It was writing.

What does not die

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 06:51:00 +0000

What does not die is that Michael is dead.

His absence persists.

No matter how many nights I spend

sitting around a kitchen table

with friends

drinking Bordeaux;

No matter that I’ve been to Northern Thailand and back

zipping stop-and-go through the streets of Bangkok

to magnificent palaces with their reclining, Lotus, standing and fasting Buddhas,

Meeting travelers from villages and cities worldwide—fascinating people

with wondrous and tragic lives;

No matter that I’ve meandered through the wats of Chiang Mai and

jumped in with a group of some twenty Chinese residents

to practice Tai Chi

at dawn

before the old wall,

He is gone.

Tinging temple bells, incense and chanting,

rice festivals and temple-gate dedication ceremonies,

squatting over a hole in the outhouse floor

in a village three-and-a-half hours

by single-lane-switchback, dirt road

through mountains;

pausing to shoo Brahman cattle off the road,

carefully honking around each bend as

our truckload of children and adults

gathered high in the back

like a bouquet of black-haired flowers;

in the truck,

pop-Thai crooners on the radio and laughing

over jokes

made

in staccato

syllables,

joyously sing-song,

and,

still,

Michael is gone.

I’ve hiked through the countryside

amongst orchids and chickens,

gazed over vistas of terraced coffee growing

between mango and lychee groves,

lingered by a babbling stream

overlooked by huge elephant-ear leaves

reaching skyward and sideways,

Cowbells softly sounding,

and

he is still gone.

I’ve hiked to mountaintop temples,

climbing thousands of stairs,

"Sawadee-d" monks galore,

Peeped into bat caves and shared panoramas

with friends

and huge blessing Buddhas

and

still he is gone.

I’ve painted with village children a new senior center

and photographed

countless cornices, villages,

markets with exotic fruits,

vegetables, and plastic-ware stalls with

altars to emaciated gurus

and always

a photo of the king

and sometimes the queen,

seen maggots and other juicy caterpillars for sale

for human consumption,

eaten fried bananas and black rice with coconut milk

from a hollow piece of bamboo,

but the taste of his absence never leaves.

And I am hungry to rejoin him

despite the beauty and need of life and lives around me.

The Pink Sweater

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:50:00 +0000

Originally written December 20, 2010

The wool pink sweater that waits folded by the door has seen me through six years of pain and sorrow. We were homeless in 2004; our house in Manahawkin was sold and the Howells took us in. My husband was in the loony bin and they helped tend the children while I visited him. Susan’s husband, Keith, bought me the sweater along with some other clothes to cheer me up for a fresh start. Eventually, we rescued my husband from the loony bin amidst a snow storm. My husband and I bought a house to settle in Hightstown.

During this time, my father got throat cancer and the pink sweater came with me to Florida where I signed the papers to release him from hospital so he could die at home – he wanted it so and told me. Mother was furious that I, rather than she, had signed the papers. The pink sweater returned with me when my brother, sister and I gathered at my parents’ house to do hospice. My shift was the 3:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. and at the end of it, my sister’s husband made good strong coffee to start the day. The sweater and I appreciated this.

Through the death of my father, around my shoulders, on the chair in hospital, on my back in the hospice living room in Florida, the return to New Jersey to be with my family and then the return to my father’s funeral—which my husband, still ailing from over-medication for depression, did not want me to attend—the sweater and the Howells stood by me. Afterwards, we repaired the house we found in Hightstown, homeschooled and got the piano tuned, ripped out the asphalt driveway to put in soil up to the old crabapple tree, planted a ring of dill and other butterfly larva-feeding plants, shoveled a literal ton of native gravel and laid stepping stones along a serpentine path to a garden in back. And the sweater stood by me, a reminder of the enduring love of God wrapped round me when times got tough and the people unreasonable.

I didn’t get the interview for tenure-track in New Zealand, but I did teach ESL at Rutgers and was poised for a fulltime job there, but Florida called. My mother was alone. My husband, prone to SAD, could use more sunshine. The children loved the ocean we had left in Manahawkin. We loaded up the jeep and moved. It was Christmas. My mother, so glad we were coming in theory, hesitated for us to stay with her at Christmas. No room at the inn. But my sweater embraced me. Ultimately, so did my mother and she calmed and welcomed us, even putting up a fake tree in the living room.

In summer, the frigid Florida air conditioning demanded one dress to not freeze indoors and my pink sweater comforted me. Despite the ocean and my roomy sweater, I felt stifled and claustrophobic in Florida. Missing the deciduous forest, I applied for work in upstate New York. Just as we were moving, my mother’s test results came back. She had colon cancer. She insisted we go, said she’d be fine with her brother in Georgia. After chemo, she drove herself to visit my brother and his family in Arizona. She visited my sister in Alaska. She talked with me on the phone.

The pink sweater embraced me as I taught French and Latin at Woodstock Day school, as the children went to public school. Our eldest hated it and called Saugerties “Soggy Cheese.” Our younger son won an essay-writing contest, “Why I Love My Library” and came home with a certificate and a bright yellow, square pillow with black letters that read, “CAUTION, Reader at Work.” The pink sweater embraced me in the cold air conditioning of the dentist’s office as my husband had to get all his front teeth fixed after falling face first on the cement basement floor of a church. He’d been running around with the Cub Scouts. Parkinsonism, they said, kept him from being able to break his fall. He was brave. I was afraid. The pink sweater hugged me as I walked to the town park to watch the sunset over the Catskills or when I walked the Labyrinth at Barrytown.

My husband’s father was ailing. We went back and forth across the Berkshire Mountains in our red jeep. The kids and the dog in the back. We would pause, for me to clear my head, for the dog to run, alongside a woodland stream in a park about midway. The pink sweater gave me confidence that I could keep it up, make the trip, keep the family together, and help take care of Grandpa. We’d been through this round already with Grandma, but that was before the pink sweater.

After battling with chemo for a year, my mother went to hospice. We had moved to Glastonbury to be near Grandpa. Eldest was at boarding school, a homeschool in Berkeley, California, to give him a break from death and disease. He hated it. The pink sweater held me tight and knew I was trying my best for the family. Grandpa died in the middle of the night. I spoke to him in total confidence a long while. Only God heard, so I thought. God and Charles, a hired caregiver upstairs, who probably still had the baby monitor on.

I cried in my pink sweater, feeling I’d lost my very best friend. Grandpa’s wife had had depression. He knew the beast I was battling with my husband. Grandpa’s heart was pure and his mind razor sharp. They had taken Grandma out the front door. I had been the one to find her. I put socks on her feet before they took her off to the crematorium. Her toes were curled up and stuck out from under the sheet. She went feet first out of the music room into the foyer. There, they turned the gurney around to load her into the hearse head first. My sweater told me the funeral parlor men didn’t know Grandma.

Grandpa was dressed. He went out the back door, passing through the kitchen and his beloved workshop, past the garage where we caught the gigantic skunk in a Havehart trap only for it to be shot by animal control, they said, for rabies, not smell. We would keep the family homestead we decided with my husband’s sister – keep it in the family. We got a loan to buy out her share. We would keep renting upstairs to cover taxes. We could live with the imperfections in the floor, the bathroom and gradually make repairs.

We had sold the house in Soggy Cheese. I flew to Florida to share the hospice rounds with my siblings. The gigantic sculpted paper flower I’d sent to hospital from an art shop in Glastonbury arrived after I did. Because of chemo, Mom couldn’t have real flowers around her. Under dim fluorescent lights, I unpacked the flower with my brother’s help. Perky Styrofoam peanuts leapt like agitated lemmings onto the puke brown carpet of the waiting room. We scraped them up and corralled them in a trash bag.

I was in my pink sweater to protect me from the hospital smells. Mom was able to talk, but she was dying. Everything that was supposed to be on the inside was on the outside of her. Machines blinking and dripping. Bags slowly filled with various fluids. My pink sweater held me as I held my mom. Husband on his own. I returned to Glastonbury. Things moving along on the loan. Set to close on Glastonbury. Sister would be happy to get her money. Husband happy to be in his old home. Kids loved the memories of the place. It was home. It was the anchor for the family, for the extended family.

Mom dying. I must fly back to Florida. Husband’s sister comes to stay with the family while I go. Plane delayed in Baltimore. For some reason, I am pushing around a couple of elderly African American women in wheelchairs who are on my flight; we share conversation during our delay. We eat together. We are making our way back to the gate. A downhill slope and I give one of the ladies a bit of a quick ride; we laugh. I get a phone call. My mother has died. I tell my ladies. They hug me and their great bosoms surround me. They pray with me and I feel relieved to be with them as God had planned.

When my father died, my sister had not wanted me to pray saying “can’t we just grieve in our own way?” I had gone to the neighbors and prayed with them holding hands in a circle under the crepe myrtle tree in their front yard. I felt my dad’s spirit with us there. This time, there was no hesitancy about prayer. It was allowed there in the BWI terminal somewhere in the middle of the D concourse, with giantess pillars of faith holding me like my pink sweater. I go to Florida and visit with my mother’s corpse at the funeral parlor before they start decorating her for burial. She looks natural. It is good. My siblings saw to it that I could get in to see her like this and I was grateful in my pink sweater.

We prepare the funeral that will be in conjunction with the Catholic Church. We meet the priest and the Sister who had befriended my mom. We are told what we are to do during the ritual. Sister gives me the cross that was on the coffin at the end. Mom had given a big donation to the church. The priest who officiated saw her off with gratitude.

Within days, we are preparing to go to the cemetery in south central Florida, a military cemetery. Dad wanted burial to be cheap so he cashed in on his service in the air force in Korea. He cooked. He instituted a 2:00 a.m. serving of pancakes for all the guys going on or off duty in the middle of the night. The Korean civilians loved him. Once, a superior officer was mean to my dad. The Korean civilians, who did much of the work around camp, put starch in that captain’s underwear. Dad loved the Koreans, but hated camping. Said he’d spent too many days living in a tent in Korea. We went up into the Rockies once for a woodland picnic. He insisted on bringing the hibachi and steaks to cook. He had this penchant for refuting the wilderness experience. He was heavy then, and sweat poured down his round, reddening cheeks as we climbed up the mountain with the iron hibachi. But that was all before the pink sweater.

I did not have my pink sweater on the day of my mother’s funeral. The night before, my sister-in-law confirmed three times by phone that I would be unavailable during the day due to the funeral. After the funeral, we did some miner sorting out of my mother’s affairs. My brother wanted the sketches of our dad from Korea. I, the eldest, was the only one of the three of us who remembered him thin like that. But brother got both pictures. I said I would be happy with a photocopy of them. But that was not to be either. Brother also got the round kitchen table. Again, I was the only one old enough to remember Mom stripping it with Red Devil in the basement in Westfield, sanding, staining and varnishing it and finding the pedestal to match.

But things were not the issue, my sweater advised me; love was the issue. I had the memories. Siblings took most of the things. Later I received in the mail a box of mom’s gloves like little corpses in a coffin—too creepy to keep. I was glad not to have brought back a lot of “stuff” from what was no longer my life. Later my sister would regret having brought back quite so much to Alaska.

I flew back to Hartford and took the taxi to Glastonbury to rescue my sister-in-law from caring for my husband. I returned to find she had manipulated him to sign papers to put the house back on the market and sell it even though we were already under contract. Already suffering from dementia, my husband did not know what papers he had signed. Sister-in-law had made sure I would be at my mother’s funeral and thus unable to talk with my husband that day. The realtor pleaded her innocence, said that she was just doing as she was told, although she had my power of attorney in her papers.

It had been years since my husband could handle his affairs or drive due to his dementia from Parkinsonism and his medication. I thought to be returning home, to stability, to family tradition and love. Instead, I found that we were to be homeless again. That I would face thousands of dollars in penalty fees for being under contract for a house that was now, once again, on the market. My sister-in-law was afraid for her money. We eventually sold the house to someone else, but she did not make more money than she would have had we bought the house.

We lost a good deal of money investing in repairs at the house we thought we were buying. I felt betrayed. Betrayed at a time when I was vulnerable just as my mother was dying. Betrayed by someone I had trusted, entrusted, with my precious family. Sister-in-law had been happy to keep the family house in the family, it seemed. We could still have reunions there, Thanksgiving or Christmas if people wanted. My husband would be content and safe to live as his father had for some fifty years, all of it but the last few shared with Grandma. The children loved the place. We all did. I didn’t feel that it would be “my” house so much as a gathering place, a public house. But sister-in-law did not see it that way. She had deliberately manipulated my feeble-minded husband while I was gone. I put on my pink sweater and got to work to find us a home to live in.

I checked rentals, but they were expensive. We settled on a cottage for sale not far from the homestead. We prepared to move making the best of it. But one morning our beloved Irish Water Spaniel couldn’t raise her head off the homestead floor. My husband, struggling with Parkinsonism, in a shot of adrenalin, managed to pick her up. With my back, I couldn’t lift her, even in my pink sweater.

I drove the jeep to the front door and opened the back, like the hearse for my husband’s mother. My husband, lurching, as his father had lurched putting Grandma on the potty chair, put Sadie into the jeep. I drove us to the vet. The vet said she was riddled with cancer and in pain. He could operate, but it would be thousands of dollars and at best would give her another six months. I couldn’t bear for her to be in pain. We held her head and said good-bye. The pink sweater was with me, but the grief engulfed me in waves of sorrow for years as I'd regularly miss Sadie’s boundless joy in simple daily routines, secret pleasures we two had shared even when the family was all amuck.

Even the dog didn’t want to lose Grandpa’s house and move to the cottage. Emptying the family homestead was a sorry business my pink sweater helped me endure. We sold the bed that Grandpa had made and hand carved from wood– a lovely double bed with graceful canopy frame. Grandma had insisted my husband and I sleep there when she and Grandpa were away. I felt safe and cozy there. I watched as the winged-back chair that Grandma had last sat upon was carried out after one more sit in it myself. Tears flowed as thickset men with heavy feet carried things out the door.

The new owners of the house, the church next door, would pave the backyard after taking out chestnut and oak trees hundreds of years old. They said they needed more parking for the church because people wanted to be “seen” going to church. They didn’t want to use the parking in the back. They were a Christian church without a picture of Jesus anywhere. But they had a very large oil painting of their minister in the main room. He towered over you like a black-robed Frankenstein. The church tore down the red barn out back that my husband had built with his own hands. The kids used to play in the hayloft. But now it was gone.

Eventually spring arrived. I had kept our dog’s ashes, but couldn’t bear looking at the plaster paw print Christmas ornament the vet had made. It seemed too morbid to my pink sweater and me. I took Sadie’s ashes and mixed them with good topsoil and planted flowers at the grave site of Grandpa, Grandma and Grandma’s parents. The flowers eventually bloomed and I placed a reading angel amongst them. Grandpa was always reading. My sweater said it was good. Before, the garden was only for Grandma.

Husband was getting about. Things were smooth. But I felt like the grave was calling to my husband next. I couldn’t bear to keep tending the graves and waiting to plant yet another family member. We’d already witnessed, my pink sweater and me, the deaths of Grandpa’s two remaining sisters, Grandpa, and Grandma in Glastonbury, and my mom and dad in Florida. For me, GlastonBURY felt shrouded with death and loosing Sadie drove the final nail into the coffin of happiness there.

We went to France and saw double rainbows over the Dordogne River in Mauzac—known for its prison, but the tiny village was home to a TEFL certification course, as well. We returned and went to Family Camp in the Poconos where I received a call that hired me to teach ESL in Hillsborough, North Carolina. We returned a couple of days early from camp to pack and left within a week having cleared out the entire household to Good Will or to storage with the movers. My pink sweater helped with all this, bringing luck, I felt.

Picking up Polly-dog en route, we moved to North Carolina. First move was into an apartment the realtor had assured us was impossible to find. Next, we moved into a house in Carrboro, where I was able to build a labyrinth, with the help of my pink sweater. But France called to me. If not now, when? We put our Carrboro house on the market and moved to Nice where I didn’t need my pink sweater.

The history, the town, the culture—all embraced me. I felt the rainbows in Mauzac were just the start of a new beginning. We returned earlier than I would have liked from Nice; the Carrboro house finally sold on the fifth or sixth contract after we returned. We camped out on the floor in sleeping bags. I found another place to call home while our youngest finishes high school. In this place, my husband has support in the community and access to transportation.

But now when I put on my pink sweater, it tells me its mission is done. For me to move on, it is time for the sweater to bring others through their grief with love. Our adventures as a family are not yet over. But the era of the pink sweater is past. And so it will go to Goodwill today to belong to another. May it bring the embrace of God’s love and the taste of hope its steadfast courage has given me.

February 18, 2012

Postscript: It has been a year since I donated the sweater. Since then, my husband died. The pink sweater was not with me. But he was. Maybe that’s why I didn’t need it. There are no earthly bonds upon my heart now that Michael is in spirit world. We are free to go anywhere, do anything.

Jiffy Lube Haiku

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:14:00 +0000

Passing Inspection

Sweet sun bath, berries glow

Shimmer above rustling leaves

Red Jeep takes me home

Why I write

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:03:00 +0000

In honor of the National Day of Writing :

I write to see in the dark,

To hear in the silence,

To feel the world in my heart.

pen & paper

Professionally, I write to serve others.

Why do you write? 

Sweet Resistance

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Thyme Honey - Kefalonia, Greece

Dear Universe,

Connecting online, the velocity of the earth spinning blows my hair backwards. We are careening through space and history: blood-curdling screams, shouts of joy, a baby’s first giggle, lovers kissing, hot fudge dribbles, camel bells jingle, and radio static muffles the news. How can I rest? As the world groans and heaves with sorrow, as the excitement of hope ignites nations recreating themselves, as a new generation finds its voice, will I be one of those who will cross over the hilltop to the promised land or will my bones settle to dust in the wilderness? Is this choice mine to make?

Waking up after a short night’s rest, I wasn’t thinking about any of this; my brain felt fuzzy from lack of sleep. Two words came to me: “cloying” and “drizzled.” The sheets turned back revealed a pillow beckoning my return to sweet slumber. So, after my morning duties tending family, disrupting chaos by running “sweep” through the house collecting detritus, plates and cutlery to wash, re-stacking books and junk mail, dislodging dirty clothes from dark corners, launching the wash and the dishwasher, feeding the birds, taking out the recycles, feeding and outing the dogs, I had a choice: return to my cloying bed, my unwashed eyes yet yearning to slumber, or challenge myself to stay awake for another day of activity sleep-deprived. Passing by the bedroom door, I felt like Dorothy at the edge of the soporific poppy field on her way to Oz. Knowing her story, I resisted entering and thought about “drizzled.”

Over food, “drizzled” invites a voluptuous feeling of abandonment, acquiescing to the sumptuous delight of a titillated palate tingling with delightful sensations. To combat “cloying” I needed something “drizzled.” Not being much of a cook, and even less of one at dawn, I could only think of my best friend in Manhattan, JB, a gourmet cook, and how she would have found something worth drizzling. And there it was, sitting on my kitchen counter, a gift from her: fresh Greek honey from thyme blossoms.

Upon returning from Kefalonia, JB had mailed me a package containing farm-gathered honey from Sami and luxurious bergamot tea from her stopover in Paris. Bergamot, it turns out, grows along the Ionian coast of Italy, so the tea sweetened with honey produces a full-blown, Mediterranean balloon of seacoast sunshine ricocheting in space, stopping time, and leaving a cool, azure mint aftertaste you can feel hours later if you draw in your breath. Add to the experience, toasted baguette with sweet butter drizzled with honey et voilà, the cure for a thick-headed, hazy morn. Maybe I have tasted the promised land after all. May we ever renew each day with the good and sweet blessings of hope.

A taste of the promised land.

What am I doing?

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:43:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

Working in academia, reading "my" satirists, I felt that I "knew" them. Maybe that is what good writing does, makes you feel a personal connection to the author the way the eyes of any portrait seem to "follow" you. But I felt their reality was more important than the dishes in the sink, kids squabbling, the car breaking down, and the brass band oom-pah-pahing down Main Street a block away. What grabbed my heart was a feeling of kinship with these writers -- not the critics, not the academic assessments, but the soul, the passion of the writer at work in a world gone mad. I identified with that. Over the years, professors told me, "You can really write!" and then critiqued whatever needed retooling to conform to the academic mold. I'm coming to terms with my writerly self to whom my practical self shouts, "Sit down and shut up!"

As for the dissertation re-write, it's been only slightly tweaked the past couple of weeks. I've combed through bibliography, looked at forthcoming conferences and who is writing what. Reading recent articles, few are the footnotes I find that reference texts written more than a year or two ago. What does that say about memory? Historicity? Continuity? The value of the critical canon? Perhaps the tsunami of current media causes people to forget that literary history harbors creatures and landscapes still undiscovered -- not only extant texts, but also extant meanings that our post-modernism shatters, deconstructs and reconfigures in its own temporal image. Drawn into kinship with the actual souls who wrote, I am revisiting not only their works, lives and ideas but also my own as I wrote my dissertation. It is not for popularity that I edit my little monster, but because the dead, or something alive in me, won't let me abandon the project.

He loves me.

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:37:00 +0000

Today, he was able to sit and talk a while, conscious, engaged. The lights were on and someone was home behind those big brown eyes of his that have been vacant all too often. He says, "I've gotta hang on and you've gotta become a famous novelist." Focusing beyond death, the precipice doesn't frighten him anymore. This is a tremendous victory.

I've always been the fearless one, well, except for heights. I challenged that with rock climbing. When I thought about my spouse, Custard the Dragon came to mind. He didn't realize his own true value or strength. My Beloved studied anthropology to make himself talk to people. He was a natural with little children, but grownups fundamentally frightened him. But as an Anthropologist, he had an excuse to interview them and find out their candid stories. As a Professor, he was Important because he was articulate and wrote interesting books. He had a little gold-plated sign with his name on the door to his Office. He went to Meetings.

As he loses bits of memory and physical adroitness, the veneer of his self-image tears away from his flesh, no longer clothes him in the comfort of socially acceptable behaviors. The curtain draws back to reveal the actor sans make-up or costume. His thin frame casts no shadow as the rafter spotlight engulfs him from a 90-degree angle. He sees not the audience, but himself, vulnerable, a soul scantily clothed in flesh. It is from this place that he becomes dauntless. Here, he does not cringe. And it from this frail, beating heart whose brown eyes, serene like a child's, gaze into mine that I feel the most fearless love I have ever known from him.

The One-Minute Writer: One-Minute Writing of the Week: Gingerlily

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:57:00 +0000

The One-Minute Writer: One-Minute Writing of the Week: Gingerlily

Pepper. A prompt for all seasons.

noreply@blogger.com (Gingerlily En Thélème) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:49:00 +0000

Friday, August 26, 2011

Friday Fiction: Pepper

Write a brief bit of fiction using the prompt "Pepper."

Eldridge put pepper, salt and butter on his grits, not sugar and milk. “Damn Yankees” used sugar, sissifying grits into something akin to rice pudding. Eldridge’s grits stood up proud like Bald Mountain with a buttery lava core and flecked like a coon hound in zesty black pepper. On Saturdays, he would arise as usual at dawn, but added to the sunny-side up eggs sizzled in sausage grease, grits and Jimmy Dean’s a toast, splashing vodka into his morning orange juice from his stash under the front seat of the silver blue, ’62 Chevy Impala.

I have enjoyed the One-Minute Writer and C. Beth's steady supply of prompts. This weekly win prompted me to get my blog going. Thank you, C. Beth!