Aunt Meryl

Aunt Meryl was not my favorite aunt.  Sometimes she was my least favorite aunt. However, Meryl Richardson has silently been with me all of my life in my neurons and my facial structure.

"Ha!" Exclaimed my older brother once.  "You look just like Aunt Meryl."  And yes, he's correct.  No matter how much I wish I looked more like my mother or her sisters, my father's oldest sister Meryl is definitely implanted in my genes.  

If she had been college educated, Meryl might have been an English teacher, or maybe a professor of  art or music.   As it was, she became a pianist in a band, a writer, and a well known landscape artist from Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco.

Childless, Meryl doted on my cousin Linda, who was admittedly adorable and sweeter than I ever wished to be.  I was the niece who wore my brother's jeans and climbed trees and didn't like my hair combed.  But I was also the niece who spent winter weekends and summer weeks with my aunt when my mother was ill, which was often the situation until I was ten.

I remember these visits with my aunt like vinegar and sugar.  Diane, brush your hair. Delicious apricot pies. Why don't you wear a dress?  Lavender scented bubbles in the bath tub.  Sit up straight.  Scrabble games. Don't be rude.  Art lessons.  Where have you been!?  Music jam sessions. Hush!  Camping trips in Yosemite. 

Memories of the annoying nighttime rhythmic tick rock of the mantle clock and my uncle's snoring mingle with the daytime delight of painting beside my aunt on her tiny back porch.  My Uncle Wayne and Aunt Meryl took weekend excursions to places where she would paint plein aire in watercolor. Later when she would render her watercolor sketches in oils, I watched --fascinated.  I imagine these were some times when she said, Hush!  But more often than not, she would set up an area for me with a large sketch pad and some paint.

"Draw with a paint brush," she'd say.  "Paint whatever you like."  She never criticized my immature paintings.  Instead, she taught me how colors mix, about perspective and composition -- patiently, kindly.

She was always her best self when painting or playing the piano.  Her nervousness, her obsessive worries about propriety,  her perfectionism, these issues simply disappeared when she was occupied with her talents.  

She lived a long life, outliving two husbands. In her later years I  admired her zest for living.  I think she had a good time in her later years:  traveling, playing the piano for a swing band, playing bridge, and painting small scenes and flowers.  When I last visited her in her senior care home, she determined that we were served lunch in a grand manner with warm hospitality.  Her hand painted notecards were on display in the lobby, purchasable for a nominal price.  I'm told that when she became bedridden, she practiced her music on the bed sheet, her fingers moving through trills and chords.

You never really know someone, but when you can feel someone's presence in your own nuerons, you have to be grateful. Or else, what would you be saying about yourself?!

Picking Up the Pieces

This post is a parable.

Last month while Herb was constructing a gravel pathway he dumped some of the gravel in the grass.  Grass will grow in gravel, here and there where seeds find a grip between pieces of gravel, but such a result doesn't match our standards for a lawn. After all, we contract with Trugreen to achieve a green, virtually weed-less expanse of fescue.  Gravel is for paths, not for lawns.

I felt a stab of frustration.  I wanted to say, "Why didn't you lay down a tarp?", or worse....   Somebody was going to have to pick up that gravel.   Herb saw I was looking at the spread of gravel under the truck's tailgate.  "I'll take care of it," he said. And then he walked to the house to clean up.

 He had been working for hours in the heat.  And the path looked great.  The sun was dropping beyond the tree tops.  It was time to make supper.  Droplets of perspiration dampened my t-shirt.

But again, somebody was going to have to pick out the gravel.

I sat down in the grass and began scratching out each nugget of gravel.  At first it wasn't easy.  I was resentful.  How could he have been so careless?  And then piece by piece my unaffectionate, accusing attitude lifted, until I began to feel pride in what we could accomplish together.  I was the clean up crew.  My fingers aren't arthritic; I'm limber enough to crawl on the ground; a scrub brush would clear the dirt from under my nails.   It took an hour.  I filled a large bucket and then dumped the gravel onto the path. In the end my spirit was light.

This is what healing is like, my friends.  It doesn't attack, or blame, or gossip.  It isn't resentful. And it isn't accomplished with systems of governance.  It is accomplished one by one, individually,  by taking responsibility for our own emotions and thoughts and by serving one another, with our fingers, piece by piece, if it must be.

 Philippians 2:3 ESV
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

2 Corinthians 13:11 ESV
Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

Here Come the Weeds!

Our yard is a green canvas, thoughtfully planted in every shade of green imaginable, with flowering shrubs, graceful trees, and flowerbeds.  From the deck visitors see an orderly sprawl of long lawn carefully lined with flower beds.

"This must take a lot of time," said a guest recently.  Another said, "When do you sleep?" I'm always astonished at such questions because a labor of love isn't remarkable.  

Our pie shaped one-point-six acres began as a subdivided plot in the early 1940's, purchased by an engaged couple before he left to serve in WWII.  The plot would be the couple's site of their dream home; only he never came home and she, devastated by his death, never married.  When she was seventy, she decided to sell the lot.  

I think of her often, how she had wanted a family to fill their home with laughter and life, for its vibrancy to spill out into the yard, for children to chase each other and take turns at the tree swing.  How she could have grown tomatoes and picked beans or filled vases with roses and peonies in May.

Instead for thirty years she had a vacant lot bush-hogged while she held onto a vision that never materialized -- at least not for her.  I was the one who sculpted the vision, crafted the design, photographed the playful children, laid the paths, hung the tree swing, picked the vegetables, and filled the flower vases.

Many players have had a hand in the results seen from our deck.  I alone cannot claim the labor involved.  My first husband played an important part with his enthusiasm for the property. We built the house.  He mowed, he tilled, he dropped trees.  A friend's daughter helped me plant our first landscape.  A neighbor taught me how to use a chain saw.  My son cleared the last half acre of wild shrubs and trees.  Cambodian refugees cleared a fence line.  

And then Herb.  It was a second marriage for both of us.  I said I'd like a berm in which to plant perennials.  All he asked was where did I want the berm? I came home to a huge pile of dirt beyond the walnut tree.  "This ought to test us," he said, as we began shoveling for days and days until indeed we had a berm.  That same berm is now bordered by a flagstone path and filled with oriental lilies and peonies.  

I'd like a bigger deck, I said one day.  A son-in-law and Herb built a huge deck.  I wished aloud for a waterfall and two miniature ponds, a greenhouse, a holly garden, a cut flower garden -- these wishes slowly took shape year after year.

I wondered if we could clear the privet shrubs encroaching on our lot.  I wondered if we could take out more than twenty trees one summer.  "Mark and I can help," said a daughter.  

This year, we removed a gravel path we no longer needed.  The grandchildren have outgrown imaginary games along garden paths.  They will play frisbee on the lawn and still swing in the tree swing, as do I, but evil witches and space invaders no longer dwell behind the hydrangeas or beneath the cedars.  

May has arrived, and with it, weeds.  Seeds from redbuds, hackberries, and maples have bombarded the ground and taken root. Wild grapevines are shooting upward into the cedars. Bindweed clings to the hydrangea stems and dances above the false indigo.  

Rain has loosened the soil.  The weeds are having a party in the yard.  I pull on my heavy jeans and loose t-shirt, slip into my garden shoes, and collect my garden gloves and a weeder.  I will be crawling along the ground for a couple of hours while the birds entertain me and my dog follows.

I really don't mind at all.  

  

The Puzzle in Easter

At 5:30 on Easter morning, my cell phone's alarm stirred me from a dream.  I was not going to miss this year's sunrise service, where I was to be one of the women at the tomb, in this case, a real tomb in a historic cemetery.  

I have always puzzled at the oddity of Easter with its declaration of resurrection, its mix of bunnies and eggs, its costumes and customs.  To admit this is not to reveal a lack of faith but to admit the certainty of contradictions.  People I love dearly may not grasp why I might consent to re-enacting the scene at the tomb of Jesus.  For them "He is risen" is explained away as sheer chicanery, a public relations scam, hallucinations, death denial.  Dead is dead.  

Would I rise for a sunrise service, just because I was asked to play a part?  I might.  I don't voluntarily walk about to see the sun replace the moon.

I parked in the Napa Auto Parts parking lot, crossed the street, and took a service bulletin from my friend Tom.  Walking along the winding path through the cemetery, I noted how grave sites dipped and grandfather trees gripped the earth.  Water and age had erased names and dates from limestone markers.  My companions and I wondered which tomb to approach; there were so many that matched the description, "It's the one toward the fence on the right."

I was thinking, It's odd to be walking among worn grave markers looking for some sign of what is called Lapsley's tomb, where it is said, the first Presbyterian church was established in my city.  I wasn't attending to where my feet might stray when suddenly my right foot slipped off the sidewalk's high edge, and I went plowing forward into the muddy grass.  Covered by a long black raincoat, my Easter outfit was spared.  I looked around to see who had witnessed my indignant fall. Using the service bulletin, I wiped away the mud on my hands.  I wasn't hurt.  I had fallen in a graveyard, in a garden of stones beneath oak and maple trees--me, the one who avoids cemeteries in general, the one who relishes a lazy two cups of morning coffee, the one who eschews attention.

During some wait time when I could have been praying or remembering hymns,  I intentionally tried to escape from a mental collage of contrary images.  On one hand, a celebratory pageant unfolded before me, and on the other, flashes of odd Easter memories competed with the given moment.

***

I was eight years old in a yellow Easter dress and hat. After church, my family had arrived at my Aunt Meryl's place where my father's family planned an Easter picnic, the old fashioned kind in the yard, blankets on the lawn, a potluck of fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, cole slaw, pickles, and cherry pie.  The apricot trees were blooming and the blue wisteria hung over the pergola. My aunt hugged me while I secretly squirmed.  "How nice you look in your Easter outfit. You are so pretty when you wear a dress.  I don't think jeans are becoming on girls."  She lifted my hat.  "What a lovely hat."  She ran her fingers through my hair.  "I don't like your hair short like this.  You must ask your mother to allow it to grow longer."  

I was nine.  It was early.  I was waiting for breakfast and thinking about our planned Easter egg hunt.  I heard a strange scream, not quite human.  Our second story breakfast room had wrap around windows that overlooked a lawn that fell away to a terraced garden filled with spring flowers.  Looking through the windows, I searched through the apple tree's leaves for the cause of the eerie scream.  Our beloved dog, a spaniel mix, had in its mouth my pet rabbit Snowball and was shaking the life out of it.  Red splattered snowball's white fur.  "Mommeeeee!"   I cried.  

I was thirteen.  My mother had been dead six months.  For Easter my father had bought me a navy and pink cotton dress and my first heels.  We waited in the car for my brothers to reluctantly emerge from the house in sports coats and ties. They hated dressing up and church bored them.  Daddy was sad but determined.  This was the first Easter following our mother's death in an airline crash.  To feminize me and soften the day, Daddy had enlisted a motherly friend.  And mostly it worked though the lilies gave me a headache and I worried over resurrections and struggled with life after death fears and wishes.  My brothers looked miserable but behaved.  It was the best we could do.

My children were young, my son just a toddler, my daughters three and five.  My friend Mildred had made smocked Easter dresses for my girls.  The girls jockeyed for Easter eggs hidden in the grass and ate chocolate eggs for breakfast.  We laughed because our cocker spaniel had sat among the daffodils and sniffed them.  The Easter service resonated love and hope.  We held our own picnic in the sunshine of our backyard.  I felt lifted, surrounded by love and life.  That week I painted our cocker sniffing the daffodils.  The painting is still a family favorite.

Life played out. I divorced.  The girls went to universities.  My son was waiting for scholarship offers.  Herb Simmons and I were dating.  On Easter Herb and I went to an outdoor sunrise service, the day began brightly and grew warm.  I had learned to live as they say "in the moment."  I had no idea what lay ahead but had accepted God's constant presence.  "Do not be afraid. I will always be with you."  This is what I heard in my head as Herb and I walked hand in hand that morning.

***

And now, here I was standing before Lapsley's tomb while waiting on our pastor to arrive, and again I was aware --"Lo, I will be with you, always." -- even though my thoughts were split.

I suppressed an urge to laugh: our pastor in his flowing white robe had suddenly retreated to his car and driven away. He had forgotten the copies of songs for the service.  And now we waited, Lapsley's concrete vault before us, our cold hands in our pockets, our shoes wet with dew.

Later, over coffee at church a friend from my previous life introduced me to her husband as Diane Eison.  Standing with us was a mutual friend who at church has known me only as Diane Simmons.  "You're Diane Eison!?"  As in the Diane Eison.  Well, sometimes, it's best not to ask too many questions, so I did finally laugh at that truth and all the rest, the absurd contradictions and the absolute certainties.

 

Agendas

I have an agenda.  Everyday.  I go to bed with one and I wake up to it.  

This morning my agenda points me to this writing, a doctor's appointment, a visit with a friend, and a meeting.  

I have agendas within agendas.  Today's agenda is within a weekly agenda, within a monthly agenda, within a yearly agenda, within a life agenda.  Doesn't everybody?

Apparently not.  "We want people without agendas."  What does that mean?  Fence riders, indecisive types, unbiased leaders, followers, innovators, risk takers?  It could mean we want people whose agendas we haven't discovered yet.  Hmmm.  Would it be helpful not to know what people believe or desire if you wanted them to join a team for problem solving?

If the candidate supports universal health care, I want to hear about it. I don't want to discover later that he or she quietly wished to undermine the program.  So you see, not only do I make my views known but I wish others to speak up as well.  I don't want to be blind sided by, guess what, hidden agendas.

Tricky word, agendas.  

My husband makes a to do list and puts it out where I can see it.  I see he plans to start some caladiums in the greenhouse today.  I know not to interfere with his plans.  I also know he likes to be home at night, not go out too much or have people in.  So he has agendas around which I maneuver.  It's helpful to understand people for the sake of cooperation and respect.

People without known agendas are difficult to trust.  You wonder what they might do or how to work with them.

I once worked with a man whose agenda was driven by security.  Everything had to be tightened down under his control.  He feared circumstances might get away from him and he wouldn't be able to solve the problem.  I, on the other hand, wished to take risks, to learn how to do things I'd never before tried.  We had to find a way to work together or we weren't going to accomplish anything.  Over time we found avenues of trust.  Since our shared arena required access to technologies and passwords, I was careful not to make mistakes that would elevate his suspicious nature.  He learned he could use me to experiment with programs he didn't have time to explore.  He couldn't advertise for innovations, but I could.  It wasn't easy, but it was doable.  It had to be.

As a teacher, I learned that arranging people in groups to solve problems requires finesse.  A handsome, muscular blonde seventeen year old student experienced a change in attitude when I put him in a group with a feisty dark skinned girl with kinky hair, a girl he had openly disdained for her assertive and saucy stance.  The situation was electric with racial and gender bias.  Their task was to uncover evidence of bias in some documents we were studying.  Before long, he was speaking her language and joining her tune. She had discovered how easy it was to work with him.  And here's the point, they knew their task and they each understood each others' points of view.  Their arguments were lively and productive.

Give me people with agendas.  I want all the news out on the table.  I already know people don't  agree on everything. Isn't that a healthy thing?  Isn't that how change happens?

The Day the Sea Could Have Swallowed Me

Waves rolled over blackened rock ledges.  Seaweed, salty and bulbous, swayed in tide pools.  A strong breeze stirred my hair.  Sand squished under foot.  Gray clouds traded with sunshine.   My friends and I, warmed by summer and sand, faced the waves.

We waded in the tide pools and, like lizards, basked on the soft sand.  The scene offered enough entertainment without challenging any unseen forces, without risking our lives.  We were, by any reckoning, already winners.  After all, we had convinced our parents we were capable of managing a getaway to the beach, that we would be careful during the one hour drive to and from the coast.  Our parents, although probably wary, hated to discourage our independence and adventurous spirits.  Teenagers, yes , but also a stellar group of excellent students and responsible youth -- we could almost taste our freedom in the salt air.

Gritty sand mixed with our lotions and flew onto our blankets.  Our sand castles sprawled along the tide's edge.  Our footprints trailed toward sand dunes and cliff caves.   A rhythm of undertow and rolling surface, a swirl of reality and imagination stirred us.

Aware of the pull of parental caution -- sand gets in your sandwiches, sand fleas bite, sun burns skin, undertow kills -- youthful curiosity lured me to wonder if I could climb the cliffs or how it would feel to sleep all night on the sand.

My friends and I were challenging the surf, sometimes body surfing.  A confident swimmer, I began swimming out further and further, waves crashing over me, currents tugging at me.  This is all memory: dark water and foam, the receding shoreline, my suspension of fear when I should have been terrified.  With what fate was I toying?

And then, I decided to return.  Here was the struggle I had not imagined.  I could swim and float but not so easily determine my direction.  The currents delivered me toward shore and then drug me deeper into the sea.  Desperation's bile rose in my throat.  I swallowed sea water.  Fear chilled my limbs.  I rolled onto my back to rest.  A wave crashed over me, flipped me, and pulled me under.  I fought to the surface, coughing and spitting.

If I use the currents, I can make it, I thought.  I rolled onto my stomach and cut diagonally toward a point to the south.  My limbs ached; my lungs burned.  Finally, my toes touched a sand bar. My lungs sucked in the salty air.  I waded against the surf to a rocky shelf and lifted myself up to safety.

As I walked around the point, the waves hushed, the gulls floated overhead, and my heart beat steadied.   I could see my friends sorting shells and munching on potato chips.

"Hey!  I made it."

They looked up. "Hey.  Where ya been?"

"Swimming."

That was it.  I made it.

What was this about me, this odd suspension of self and circumstance, this challenge of dark and deep boundaries of fate?  It's a question for which I have no answer.  An indelible memory of verve, struggle, and escape -- the event could easily have taken me with it.


“for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

   

The Taste of Hope

A week before Christmas, Diane helped purchase food for 30 Angel Tree families:  5 cases of precooked hams, 80 pounds of oranges, 60 pounds of sweet potatoes, 8 pounds of butter, 6 cases of canned vegetables and fruit.  In Sam's parking lot, a man offered, "May we help you?  Those look heavy."  Indeed, each case of ham weighed 40 pounds.

On Saturday before Christmas, church youth will deliver gifts and meals to the Angel Tree families. The surface of this charitable event looks simple enough.  Pluck a paper angel from a tree.  Read the names.  Shop.  Wrap up the gifts and  deliver them to the church office.

For a family to land on an Angel Tree, it must qualify as "needing help."  Imagine what needing help might mean:  alcoholism, health disabilities, lay offs, divorce, abandonment.  These very terms imply complexity and confusion or desperation, and more significantly, children at risk.

As a teacher Diane witnessed impoverished adolescents raising themselves.  One young man fell behind in his studies because he was caring for little sisters, dressing them for school, feeding and bathing them, putting them to bed.  He was sixteen; the girls, five and six.  The mother was in and out, mostly out.  Teachers sometimes drove the boy to the grocery store.

A recent article in The New York Times featured a New Jersey family on the edge of losing their home.  A company had pink slipped the father when he reached the eighth year qualification for pension benefits. The mother worked for the IRS, which provided health insurance.  The father worked any jobs he could find: pizza delivery, school janitor, Quick Stop clerk, part-time low wage jobs, two or three at a time.  A car's transmission went out.  A child became ill.  A local food pantry plugged the creeping gaps of hunger.

The face of need isn't always easily recognized.  The home may be in a nice neighborhood, the kids playing in the yard, the mom washing the car.  The mom, a divorcee, pays the bills but has trimmed out vacations, air-conditioning, and roast beef.  The ham in an unexpected care box of food will be the family's holiday meal instead of a hamburger casserole.

Born in 1932, Herb knows how steamed wheat and lard gravy can quiet rumbling bellies.  Today he will eat anything put in front of him.  After Diane's father graduated from high school in 1932, he worked on farms for shelter and food. At 21 years old, he weighed only 115 pounds.

The refrigerator might be low on food in our family households, but probably because Mom didn't have time to go to Kroger.  Our grandchildren might have soup for dinner tonight but baked salmon tomorrow.  They thrive on scrambled eggs, hamburgers, grilled chicken, salad, pizza, smoothies, ice cream and cookies.  For this we are grateful, but we also don't forget how hunger robs the spirit of hope, how difficult it is to weigh more than 115 pounds when crops fail and chickens die, how delicious an orange from a church care box tastes on Christmas Eve after a week of steamed wheat and gravy, how comforting a stranger's assistance was for Diane and her children one lonely, hungry night in Mono, California.

Love came down at Christmas.  This isn't a belief; it's a life.  Here, here is love, in a box of food for your family.  Eat and know you are loved.

Postscript:  Today after writing this holiday essay, Diane met friends at church to bag donated rice, which comes in 50 lb. bags.  The women attempted to drag the heavy bags from a pantry closet, across a lobby floor, to the fellowship hall where they planned to measure and pour the rice into small bags.  A disheveled man clad in soiled winter wear and resting in a lobby chair, looked up.  "Let me do that for you."  He didn't look like he had enough energy to stand, much less hoist a 50 lb. bag over his shoulder, but that's exactly what he did, as if it were no heavier than a feather. His smile revealed missing and rotted teeth, his greasy hair needed washing, but he didn't hesitate to do what he could do, lift heavy bags.  This holiday essay seems quite appropriate in the light of that simple act.

December 18, 2014.