I’m back. What? You didn’t notice I was gone? Sure you did.
Where was I? Overwhelmed and discouraged when the spammers found my webpage and infested it. Details and drama will be skipped over – I’m back and just watched a large seagull swoop past my window. All is good. What have I discovered in the last few months? For one, that dandelions are smarter than I am. Yes, spring is here and I am back to mowing my lawn after four months of not doing so. I mow over the dandelions with their sunburst flowers on long stems. Within 48 hours, the blossoms are back and right next to the ground, too low for my mower to reach them. Who knew dandelions had such survival instincts?
For another, raccoons sit in the fir trees and watch what’s going on around them. Why does this matter? Because when I take my boisterous, curious Siberian husky/ German shepherd pup outside for his morning business, the raccoons seem to think he can climb the tree after them. They scurry down and take off running. So does my pup. Completely unheeding my commands to come back to me. So I am off chasing him up the street. Sometimes in my jammies.
Some of my foxgloves. Photo by MDessein
Oh yeah, and that having a boisterous, curious pup determines about twenty hours of my day. Is he a good soul, smart, affectionate, and non-aggressive? Absolutely, yet he being my first dog, I had no idea what I was getting into. What a teacher he has been. I’ve learned to rein myself in, practice patience, and be consistent. Things I thought I already knew.
I was also reminded I am a strong, tenacious soul. A computer tech person told me that dealing with spammers is a fact of life nowadays. Okay, I will prevail. Note to you wondrous subscribers, please stay subscribed. If you are in the ‘notify of comments’ list, if you unsubscribe from that and get on the regular subscribers list, you will not get the spammer comments.
My book will be published on Amazon in June! Yay-hoo! More on that soon. It will be a collection of my amazing blogs and essays. I will be contacting everyone I can to support me with my book. I am excited.
Sunset at Admirals Cove. Photo by MDessein
What else have I learned? That people do what they do, based on their own experiences and choices. That I can mostly manage myself, nobody else (even my dog!). That deer don’t eat foxgloves or lupine. That as a parent of adult children, it is usually best to wait to be asked for my opinion. That bald eagles make the most amazing squawk. That I am grateful for every day. And you.
Rejection. Who needs it? Mary Buckham says we do. In an interview I did with the accomplished writer and successful writing teacher, she spoke about dealing with rejection and managing the uncertainty of a writer’s life. She shared an encouraging reality: those challenges prove you’re in the game. You are truly in the business of writing. You have engaged the clutch, the car can move forward.
When she told of losing one of her sons to SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and how she had to follow her dream of writing not only to fulfill herself, but for her son and what his dreams might have been, tears welled in my eyes. And a dormant bulb ticked on in my mental chandelier.
Of course, pursuing her dream also included her five other children, as they were there for the sacrifices, balances, compromises, collaborations, late dinners, and undone laundry that is part of having two artists for parents. Yet, ardently, rigorously structuring her life in order to write was directly related to honoring her son.
Am I respecting Rosie by living my dream? We were sisters yet I don’t even know what her dream was. She checked out at the age of forty-nine years and four days, over16 years ago. She had worked on Alaskan fishing boats, in a busy studio as a photographer, and was in optician school when she died. She had drifted, looking, never seeming to find an answer. What did she give up on? And why? Do I honor her by staying the course, no matter how difficult? The African folktale, “The Cowtail Switch,” says a person is not really dead as long as they are remembered. Does that go for dreams too?
My father died relatively young, a bit shy of age sixty-six, the decades of smoking had done irreparable damage by the time he quit in his early sixties. He resented quitting, actually, but his emphysema gave him no choice by then. What about his dreams? He gave up on a dream of professional golfing in order to take care of his wife and three children. At one time, he was a ‘scratch’ golfer, meaning he had a zero handicap, meaning he was really good. I shake my head remembering one occasion he tried to teach me a ‘natural’ swing when I was around thirteen. After a series of golf balls hit our Great Dane/Labrador dog, knocked over a couple tall droopy sunflowers, and ended up lost in the blackberry bushes, Dad gave up and went in the house. Do his and Rosie’s dreams live on in me when I pursue mine even though I can only guess at what theirs were?
Crystal sunset March, 2021
My Mom was ninety-one when she died. She, and my dad, told me I could do anything, being President was just one option. She wanted to be a social worker. One of her teachers strongly encouraged Mom to go to college. Yes college was a nice idea – yet regular people got jobs and got married. Will I carry her dreams with me now that she has passed on by living mine fully, as she would want me to? Have I already done so without making the conscious connection, as I worked many years in social services and graduated from college in my forties.
By living my dreams, pursuing heart-driven goals, and delving into what I feel passionate about, do those other peoples’ wishes find a path as well? Am I the vessel for more than just me?
Storyteller and sublime harpist, Patrick Ball, tells about going to college in pursuit of a law degree. Then when his father died suddenly, he walked away from that legal career as he realized that law was his father’s dream; Patrick went looking for his own, and found it in music. Yet by doing so, did he carry his father’s even further?
Grandpa Alfred, my Mom’s father, died at age thirty-nine of tuberculosis. In 1937, all that could be done then was put TB patients in a sanitarium and wait. Like Doc Holliday fifty years before him, there was no cure for TB. In fact, Doc was about the same age as Alfred. What a mysterious scourge TB was: Doc’s mother had also died of it.
Dreams. Alfred married a French girl he met in eastern France where he was stationed in World War I. Big dreams when he brought her back to the U.S. four years later and started a family, as well as a furrier business in downtown Seattle. Then died when his children were thirteen, nine, and four. Dreams. My mother tells of the family moving to Cle Elum to be near the sanitarium; Mom, being the eldest, usually fixed dinner as her mother was over at the hospital every night till dusk. Then one evening, her mother came home, sat down on the porch step and remained there. Mom watched her mother through the screen door, then after a few minutes, she came out of the cabin. It took a moment or two before ma Grandmere’ quietly said, “He’s gone,” as she looked over across the field on the other side of the road. Wondering where the dream had gone?
Dreams in the laboratory, dreams in the courtroom, dreams in the typewriter, dreams over in the next valley, dreams on the stage, dreams taking off on a journey, dreams unspoken in the secret place in one’s heart.
Where do dreams go that are released, abandoned, forsaken, or denied? Are they inherited? Do they collect in a big pool somewhere? A gigantic cosmic canning jar?
Can others’ dreams live on in me even if my dreams are different than theirs? Yet, maybe all dreams are much the same: what makes us feel alive, what gives us hope, what compels us to tell the stories about them, what pulls our eyes to the horizon? What makes us aspire to better? What keeps us in the game? Dreams.
Sheep Rock, OR. photo by Mary Dessein Most people would throw it away.
I take the seemingly empty toothpaste tube, cut it open, and get every bit of toothpaste out of it, easily five more uses before I throw the absolutely 100% empty tube away. The stick of deodorant is seemingly empty, the container is flat across the top of the stick. No… I scoop out the remainder inside the stick, clearly a couple weeks more deodorant still in there.
And the lipstick tube? Why it has a good 1/8th of an inch of usable lipstick in the bottom. I thought these were normal practices, until it was brought to my attention that not everyone does these things.
We won’t go into Christmas bags and bows…
I was born a good twenty-five years after the Great Depression. Yet my parents were raised during those years.
It appears my, shall we say intense, frugality was carried forward from them.
Another belief that I have struggled with since I was a teen is ‘men are authority figures and are to be obeyed.’ The struggle was that the belief was firmly implanted, yet my intuition resisted all the time. Looking back as I recognize this falsehood, I am lucky to be alive as being obedient included backseats of cars, saying yes when all my insides shouted No, getting in a VW bus and driving to Yugoslavia with a stranger from the Venice train station, not asking questions when dicey situations were presented, allowing abusive behavior to go on yet saying nothing.
Here’s one for you: food is solace and comfort for whatever troubles you. Oh my. I have dealt with overweight since I was young. Something that tastes good will make the problem and uneasy feelings go away, right? Related to that, here is another recipe for life-long eating issues: “There are starving children in China – you must eat every morsel on your plate whether you are hungry or not.” These over-rode a child’s natural response. Kids are truth-tellers and instinct-followers: they make candid reports (“You smell funny. You have a big nose. I don’t like that.”) to avoiding people and situations they are uneasy about.
So who’s stories were those? Old stories happening through me? If they are not my stories, what are mine? I have a right to my own stories don’t I?
In thinking about my parents this morning – my mom, Josette, gone three and a half years and my dad, Kenney, gone thirty-three and a half, I wonder what they would tell me now that they’ve had a long distance view.
Then a mental shazaam followed: what would my sister tell me? She died fourteen and a half years ago at the age of forty-nine and four days of “undetermined causes” as there was no clear explanation for why her heart stopped. What would Rosie tell me? Was she living her own story, or someone else’s? I have often wondered since that difficult time, was she looking for her own path, what was her dream? She had drifted along, trying various occupations such as working on fishing boats in Alaska, photography, office work, and was in optician school when she died. Virtuoso pianist in Montreal playing Bohemian Rhapsody
What I am learning about my own story and my own path is that I create it, albeit standing on the shoulders of those before me. I watch the magnificent thousands of geese arching above me and the hummingbirds flitting about my porch at the feeders even as it is snowing. True to one’s self, true to one’s heart really is survival. The ‘shoulds’ are falling away as I recognize them. Byron Katie’s work is reflected here on being with what is.
Being true to myself and true to my heart’s calling is my survival and the path to writing my own story.
Kenney & Josette 1944 Last Thursday would have been my parents’ 74th wedding anniversary. This coming February will be my grandparents, Marguerite and Alfred’s, 96th wedding anniversary. My mother has only been gone three years; her dad, Alfred, died eighty-one years ago.
My, oh my, where is my place in time? Now, for sure. At least I like to think so. This is an abundant time in my life as I reach out to friends, new friends step into my life, my creativity has moved to the forefront of my priorities. It was a luxury before, now that I admit how quickly my earthly clock is ticking, I realize it is now or never to write that novel (and the ones in the idea pipeline), ruminate and publish these blogs, choose the gigs I want to accept, and get my next award-winning CD done!
I am learning to release the things I wish I had done: been more present for my Mom when my dad was dying, then later when she herself was dealing with a cancer. When I did not follow up with a friend, who died before I got out to visit her. Talk about my, oh my: the times I did not protect my children. My son at a young age had to do many things on his own, including as a first-grader to ride a bus to daycare with older, mean-to-little-kids kids, and later, catch the bus way early a quarter mile down the country road we lived on.
Actually, that ‘what I failed at’ list is getting pretty long, so the things I did right is the list I’m thinking about now. And even better, the above to-do list. If I had known then to be more attentive, to ask more questions, to be more compassionate… famous last words.
“Commitments that are broken are those where there is non-alignment among mind, heart, and action, when one or more of these parts are not willing to participate fully,” Angeles Arrien.
I have come close to that understanding by saying when someone, including myself, didn’t follow through, it was because they were not ‘invested’ in whatever the project or commitment was. Dr. Arrien gave me a deeper understanding of this. And my commitment to others has often taken precedence over a commitment to myself.
This path of finding my place in time interests me more all the time. This is a path most of us revisit over and over at different stages in our lives.Alfred & Marguerite 1923
The 74 year anniversary got me thinking. I have kept so many things, linens of my great-grandparents’, paintings of my grandmother’s, and keepsakes of my mom’s that I have no specific attachment to, however I think I am obligated to keep them because of my attachment to the people who were precious to me.
Surprise! Guess who was keeping all these things before me? Bonus prize: you’re right, it was my mom.
I am coming to realize what is mine and what is not. Big light-bulb for me. The precious part of those people is within me, which I can’t lose. It seemed the cardinal sin was to forget someone. God forbid I do something I am not supposed to do. Mary always does what she is supposed to do.
Sure, I have done well at lots of those things: my boss, Marcia, thought I’d do well in Drug Court. She was right, I did great. I also was a good optician, a good receptionist, a good office manager, a good counselor and advocate. I enjoyed doing those things, and know I did my best to help others; every now and then, a voice from those times will find me. I love that. Yet, those jobs were usually someone else’s idea. Even as I bloomed like a rose, which helped me learn and develop, it now seems I had been planted in someone else’s garden. If that was my apprenticeship – I’m good with that. Where is my place now?
In my own garden – of friends, stories, music, novels, CDs, and blooming again as my true self. The richness of all those previous experiences will deepen my creativities. I am learning to say Yes or No without worrying what others will think. I am learning to take nothing others do personally (oh yeah, this is ongoing!) I am learning to listen more deeply. I am learning to release judgments (okay, this is ongoing, too.) I am learning to trust and follow my heart’s calling.
Where is my place now? I’m not sure, however, I am delighted to follow the path. You are so welcome to come along~
Peninsula College photo by Mary Dessein It is the most gorgeous fall I can remember.
Now that could mean this is the only fall I can remember. It could mean I am truly amazed by the flamboyant oranges, golds, yellows, russets, ambers, corals, titians, hennas, coppers, and saffrons I see across the park in the one hundred foot tall cottonwoods and maples.
It could mean I have been so focused on going, doing, finishing, scheduling, herding, supervising, parenting, balancing, cleaning, and meeting that I did not take time to look around me. No matter how the wind blew or how high the tawny maple leaves piled up in the corners of my carport, I had tasks to complete, dawdling in wonder was not on that list.
In the fall that I started first grade, I could hardly wait for the first day of school. My mother bought me a dress. It came in a plastic bag, was folded neatly and flatly like the shirts on tables at Penney’s. She probably got it there actually. I clearly recall the pale steel blue background with little gold and dark blue pinwheel designs in an orderly pattern of rows, similar to a chain link fence. I kicked through the leaves as Mom walked me the nine blocks to Central Elementary School, delivered me to Miss Winan’s first grade classroom, then took my little sister’s hand and walked back home.
In driving southeast on I-90 through Sammamish, by Preston, over Snoqualmie Pass, alongside Keechelus Lake, and past Cle Elum a few days ago, I again thought, “This is the most gorgeous fall I can remember.”
How much have I skimmed by without taking the time to really see? Oh my, I don’t think I want to start a list. What I do want to do is start anew. Hear the Canadian geese flying over head and stop to listen to their honking. Ritter Ridge, OR photo by Mary Dessein
See the jagged edges of ice along Camas Creek, white against the dark creek bed; watch the fuchsia leaf dangling below the hanging basket on my porch by a mysterious thread twisting in the breeze; watch a toddler pulling at the handles of a paper grocery bag and laughing in delight while she sits in the shopping cart; pull my car off to the side of the road of Ritter Ridge and gaze into the forever distance over the hills at the gathering soft pink and orange dusk; play fetch-the-stick with my grand-puppies and be in their joy, not my to-do list.
Indeed, this is the most gorgeous fall I can remember.
