The Peaceful Parts of the Day-

 

I am the peaceful parts of the day.

Early morning, standing under streams of hot water which wash away the worries while steam clears my head- ordering the day’s events without thoughts of more than one day.

Most mornings as I shower I let the hot water wash over me and concentrate on simply relaxing and not thinking about the things that will cause me stress during the rest of the day. I often try to feel as if the water is not just washing over me but through me, relaxing me and washing away my cares. It is calming and soothing breathing in the steam and helps to clear my head to deal with whatever tasks lay ahead in the day.

Late evening, I greet the moon each night with a brief walk outside. Tracking its silver orb through each month of its cycle; counting the stars and watching their seasonal trek across the sky, while murmuring affirmations of health and well-being to the dark sky.

One of the last things I do each night is walk briefly onto my lawn to look above. It is a wonderful peaceful time of the evening when I walk quietly outside alone. I spend time just looking at the sky and making verbal affirmations to the stars and moon. “I am not ill’ “I like my job” ‘I love my life” “I will not be afraid” It is very relaxing and doing it each night I can track the phases of the moon through the month and track the progression of the stars and constellations through the year. I can observe the weather, cloudy or clear, warm or cool. It keeps me in touch with nature and the movement of the seasons. It gives me the chance to just slow down and breathe deeply.

Nighttime, lighting a single candle to express hopes and fears. Lie down in soft covers with the one I love to listen to the sound of wind chimes while drifting off to sleep.

Each night as I go to bed, having gotten my clothes ready for the next day ready, the last thing I do is to light a single tea light, in the same special safe location, and ask the powers that are higher than I am for peace and health and wellbeing. I ask them to give peace to those I love who are going through difficult time, and ask assistance to me in staying healthy, happy, and preserving the parts of my life which I love. I voice thanks for the things for which I am grateful. It is a quiet way to end the day. As I go to bed I practice feeling relaxed and same with deep breathing and mentally relaxing my body to fall asleep, have peaceful dreams, and awake refreshed. Hearing the wind chimes outside the bedroom window, reaching out to touch my partner as I fall asleep, and letting the soft bed and clean cool sheets envelop me finishes my day.

Early morning comes again, and starts a new day…

Historic Structures and Memory

When a structure reaches 50 years of age the National Trust for Historic Preservation considers it old enough to have possible significance for preservation.

Having worked in the museum field for so many years I know that their value is in the stories they have to tell about experiences in the past and the sense of comfortable nostalgia they can bring to today’s busy world. They tell us where we have come from to help us understand where we are going. They may even be able to help us understand the stories of older structures that have gone before, now missing, and that helps bring the past alive.

Many older structures can have issues-

• Structural joints may have sagged or failed causing the building to creak and shift, some may have given way and need to be replaced entirely.
• Original siding may have sagged and buckled, with peeling paint and popping joints.
• Window glass may have become wavy, hazy, or scratched making it hard to see through.
• Insensitive remodeling over the years may have obscured the original design and altered its appearance. (How often have I said, “What a beautiful building, it has good bones. Too bad it’s been remodeled so often at all the wrong times.)
• Mechanical systems from wiring to plumbing may have become outdated and ceased to work properly, requiring some replacement. The climate control systems, such as they are, may not seem to function as well as they used to.
• Even the roof may have worn thin and not keep the elements out as well.

Approached with love and care all of these issues can be dealt with sensitively and in a manner that enhances the structure, assures its functionality and longevity for years to come, and preserves its history and what it has to say about life in the past.

Today on my fiftieth birthday I feel a sense of camaraderie with these older building. We are all like the buildings our society has built. I wonder at how the human body shares their commonality of problems. I share their nostalgic sense of the past and their memories of how things used to be, both within my life time and before. Finally at 50 I guess I am now I am a Historic Structure! (How did I manage to not get torn down before now?)

It makes me thankful for every day. I want to remember the past, but not to live in it; to preserve and cherish its lessons and graces but apply them to the present; to step into the future building on the stones of those gone before. I do treasure the sense of nostalgia though.

Now if I can just keep moving fast enough so that no one plants a plaque on me I guess I’ll be happy!

Patience and Compassion -

"I feel that compassionate thought is the most precious thing there is. It is something that only we human beings can develop." -the Dalai Lama 

A friend of mine recently posted the above quote from the Dali Lama to her page and it made me begin to think about a personal change I have been actively working to make in how I interact with the world around me.

Several months ago I attended a candlelight vigil in a public park for the victims of a terrible disease, where two women got up as a part of the program and offered a prayer and meditation asking G-d to grant us all compassion for those around us and it made me begin to think a lot about how I react to people in my daily life. Not just patience and compassion for people in a single group or who may have a single illness, which can be any easier thing to do, but to develop patience and compassion for individual people I encounter in general.

In today’s busy world how do any of us know the conditions, circumstances, or motivations of strangers we encounter? People often appear thoughtless or self-focused, but how do we each know if they do not in fact have some underlying concern filling their mind.

The woman in the grocery store line who is taking a long time to argue with the clerk about the price of each item or whether each of her coupons is good or not can be frustrating when you are caught behind her. But how do you know if she is shopping that way because of financial stress, to buy for a local shelter, or because of other problems in her life? Is she really impacting my life by take three or five or eight more minutes in front of me? Not knowing the circumstances that brought her to that spot at that time shouldn’t I exercise patience for her and compassion for the situation?

The person who cuts you off in traffic- do I know what burdens may be on their mind? Could they be ill or have an ill loved one? Could they be in the position of loosing a home or job? Are they distracted by the everyday worries of life and just getting by? Which one of us has not driven in a distracted mood or honestly made a lane change that perhaps wasn’t the nicest, but without any malice intended to those drivers around us because something serious that was on our mind? Has that person really ruined my trip or day by making me seconds later getting to the next intersection or light? Usually not. Why not treat them with patience and compassion- it costs me nothing but a moment in time.

When you see a homeless person on the street begging for change at a light it is far too easy to make the quick judgment of ‘Why doesn’t he/she just get a job and get off the street?”, but can I really know what has brought them to that place? Loss of a job due to the economy in spite of years of good skills? Addiction to alcohol or drugs which they have been unable to conquer? Mental illness of which they are either unaware or for which they have not/can not seek treatment? While I may not have the ability or desire to hand them money from my passing car do they not in fact deserve my compassion and patience rather than my dismissal and scorn? There but for grace could any of us find ourselves.

This whole process can be the most difficult when it is someone with whom you are acquainted who appears to be trying to cause a frustrating problems, or being unwilling to help themselves. Take for example the elderly mother of a good friend of mine. She always seemed to be the bitterest and meanest person I had encountered in many years, going out of her way to make people around her feel badly and belittled. Then it occurred to me- here is a woman who after being able to live on her own for many years has been relocated out of her own home to another city because she could not take care of herself any longer. As an independent individual she had now become dependant on the daily care of other people, from the preparation of the food she ate to the cleaning of her home, and virtually every move she could make. She was lucky to have had a loving child willing to care for her, but how hard must it have been to give up almost all independence after years of life as a functioning adult. Suddenly it became easier to have compassion for her and those around her. After all who of us would easily accept having to admit we could not perform the basic functions of life for ourselves any longer. Working to build compassion for her in my mind did not make her any easier to be around, but led me to think much better of her before she died quiet suddenly- and caused me to pray that she had finally found peace, and that her family can find solace in the fact that she is no longer suffering..

I am not advocating allowing people to take advantage of us as individuals and walk all over us, I am simply suggesting that we each take a breath, step back from each and every situation that may irritate us, and consider what the circumstances of the other person may be. It only takes a moment, a mental pause, and wouldn’t we want people to do the same for us? I am not so self-centered as to think that every stranger has added me  personally into the equation of each move they make around me; I am, not the center of their world or anyone else’s. In fact they may not even see me.

Taking time through the progress of each day to stop when I have the common reaction of being annoyed or angry at something a stranger does, to temper my thoughts with “No, I don’t know their circumstances and should have patience and compassion of them’ is making me a calmer, less stressed, and more spiritually aware person.

Remember, there but for grace goes you or I…

What children know-

Children know when they are raised and cherished in the midst of a loving family. I was lucky to be raised by caring adults, both immediate and extended relatives. Adults who took the time to really talk with me, not to me, and took an interest in what I liked.

Holidays were spent with family members from both my father’s and mother’s sides- from gala Christmas Eve parties to peaceful Easter dinners. The two sides of my family were not close and often didn’t seem to understand each other well, coming from such different backgrounds and places, but they were always there standing on both sides of my life enclosing and defining my world with love and affection.

Every Sunday we visited my mother’s mother and in those golden afternoons I enjoyed her small town home and learned about her parents and the farm we owned from 1846 until the early 1960s. Time and time again she would take out the old box of photos and tell me who they each were. Years later when those photos passed to me I realize I knew them as “Aunt Ida & Uncle Pete” or “Aunt Minnie and Cousin Nix”. It was unexpected when I realized those names were of course in relation to my grandmother, so that Aunt Ida was in fact my great-great-aunt. They had always seemed current relatives just out of view. It gave me an appreciation for the love my grandmother had for her family and its history. I had never really given it a thought before- her people were simply my people regardless of when they lived

On Saturday’s as a child I was almost always collected by my father’s unmarried sister as they hurried home from beauty shop appointments. Those days were spent with extended family giving me my heart’s desire, with trips to parks or zoos or museums, wherever I wanted to go. They would deliver me to my parents home in the evening, a tired and excited and happy boy. In summers they took me on vacation trips to caverns and historic sites until we hurried home a few weeks before school would start, often in a car loaded with souvenirs and memories.

What children do not know naturally is to judge based on the prejudices of society or personal politics. They take at face value the affection and pleasant times they experience and don’t question why or how or who.

I took for granted that the happiest and youngest of my father’s sisters, who carried me around on Saturdays and took me on those trips, was always accompanied by her friend Wilma wherever we went. They had known each other for decades and to everyone Wilma was simply a part of the family. Very young I used to laugh when waiters in restaurants always called Wilma “Sir”, not thinking about her black pleated pants or starched dress shirts. She never carried a purse, but a wallet like my father’s, that always seemed to have just enough cash to do whatever we wanted. I never thought it odd that on the rare Saturdays when I got to spend the night at The Aunt’s home that Wilma didn’t stay in the guest room but always with Aunt Liz, sleeping in white tank tops and boxer shorts. I took it at face value that all was as it should have been and we all loved each other as members of the same family.

It never occurred to me until Aunt Liz’s funeral my first year of college; the first occasion that I ever saw Wilma in a skirt. Suddenly the light came on to me and I marveled that their relationship had always been hidden in plain site. That day Wilma said the most amazing thing to me. As we left the graveside she pulled me aside and said, “Don’t ever let them make you unhappy, always follow your heart.” It was amazing to suddenly know what I had in front of me and didn’t see until it was gone.

Afterwards I sometimes wondered, would my mother’s mother have recognized or understood Aunt Liz and Wilma? Would she have approved or even seen what was there? Probably not, but those kinds of facts did not enter her country view of the world. It was not something that she could have even seen or comprehended, and certainly never would have discussed. It didn’t make her any less of an accepting person, she only knew what her life experience had shown her. For my grandmother, and for Aunt Liz and Wilma, all was as it should have been within their own worlds.

What I knew as a child was that I had a family that loved and cherished me, in town and country, at all times. That unconditional love gave me the ability to dream and become whatever I wanted to be, for which I owe them all a debt of gratitude forever.

Wilma,  Aunt Liz, and One Happy Boy

Beginning in the Past

Somehow I think it appropriate that I am starting this live journal on El Dia de los Muertos in my 50^th year of life. My ancestors are always with me, from generations of their images looking down from my walls, to items I handle and love that they used daily over the last one hundred years, to dealing with the same illnesses they faced as I grow older. I live with my ancestors every day.

For twenty years I lived in an old family home surrounded by generations of things collected from various branches of my ancestral tree. Dusty rooms where there were sometimes faint whispers of old conversations and half-glimpses of movement caught in the corner of an eye, or perceptions of those I loved who have gone before around the beautiful garden. A virtual shrine to our past in which variations of the same annual rituals they had carried out for years simply continued- parties at certain times of the year, familiar recipes cooked the ways they had always done, what china and flatware had to be used for the holidays- the texture and formula of the past simply recombined for the present. I left that house and yard when necessary for the workaday week or essential errands but always hurried home burrowing in like a turtle into its shell in the one place I truly felt at ease and comfortable, often welcoming and entertaining my friends there in my ‘safe place’- my home.

Change has always been hard for me; comfortable and familiar rituals and forms brought me reassurance and a sense of always knowing what would happen next. When Paul came to live with me that all began to change. He helped me begin to realize that I couldn’t pretend to only live with and in the past. He pulled me, sometime kicking and screaming, into the world of our future and the possibilities it held. My friends even commented some time after he moved in that it finally felt like someone actually lived in that house rather than just existing there, among relics that never moved or altered.

Over time I came to realize that old house, with its half acre of gardens, had for all of its comfortable sameness become a burden rather than a joy. I was living FOR it, not IN it or merely WITH it. With the help of my love and my friends I was able to move on, up and away from that phase of my life. Certainly the generations of pictures still hang on my walls, and some of the family furniture and items still grace my days, but I let go of many things as I came to realize that they were not what was important. In our new home the fine china and silver are still here, carefully packed away though, instead of bearing down the holidays with their care and use- no longer taking my attention away from spending time with the people I love on those special occasions.

It doesn’t mean that my ancestors are any less with me on a daily basis. After all would I have grown into the person I am without their history and influence? Would I be who I am if my mother’s family hadn’t farmed the same property for a hundred and twenty years in stable companionship with the land? If my father hadn’t had six siblings, hearty and affectionate, most of whom I grew up around and loved? If my father’s family hadn’t been exuberantly Roman Catholic while my mother’s was reserved Southern Baptist?

Of course I would not; but I have come to realize it is the stories they passed down, their collective memories and experiences shared throughout my childhood, and their very blood in my veins that allow me to have them with me always. Some of the trappings of their lives are nice to have to evoke their past but it is what they gave me that I carry inside which will always keep them present to me. It’s what’s inside that matters the most. I am the continuity of their lives while adding my own experience to the collective pool that is Die Familie.

On this All Souls Day, as I think of the generations who came before me, I bring to mind what the vodooienne Minerva says in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, “To understand de living you gotta commune with de dead.”

Mary Myers NIx and her children, circa 1900