Freedom

Looking back, maybe that's as free as things get, Doris said, in between the clicks of the oxygen being pushed in syncopated puffs, into her lungs.  She looked out the window, perhaps remembering the feel of being behind the wheel of her convertible Oldsmobile, as she cruised south on Lake Shore Drive from Hyde Park, past the Museum of Science and Industry, past the South Shore Country Club, past Calumet City, past anything resembling the expectations of post war women.

She was born ahead of her time, choosing career and the single life over the silently dictated destiny of wife and mother.  With her brother at war, forcing her mother to help Father in the shoe repair shop on 57th and Woodlawn, her three sisters stayed home to do the cooking and cleaning.

This allowed Doris, who was always eager to amass large sums of money, to learn bookkeeping skills that led to her handling the finances of the shoe repair shop and then to the private finances of her parents, much to the dismay of her leery sisters.

Once she mastered her skills on her family, she headed to the banks, where Wally Mead became her banking guru and most likely, her first paramour.  With her earned monies, she bought a shiny black Schwinn bicycle and in her fearless, carefree and venturesome way, rode over a large curb one afternoon, with little sister in tow, and crashed head first into a brick wall half a block from her home.

Two weeks later, she awoke after doctors tapped her spine to drain the fluid that was swelling her head to the size of a small watermelon.  Her reflexes now slower, her joie de vie reigned in by family and doctors, her fears tapped, she resigned herself to the life she most dreaded, married the first man who asked and fifty-five years, four children and one miscarriage later, her beloved coupe de ville sold, living within the confines of five floors of a retirement home, she sits up in bed, a chronic lung disease slowly taking her breath away, and looks out the window at her freedom driving away, seventy-five miles per hour.  

More Thoughts on Foiled by The Thong

I was talking with a new friend last night after a poetry performance as we walked to her car. (Funny - I walked her to her car so she wouldn't be alone late at night in a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood and then walked back to the venue alone.  My husband said, "what makes you think YOU don't need a chaperone?"  And I said, "I am done with all assaults on me from now on and if anyone approaches, they will get "the look" that according to my children, can scare anyone away!")  Okay, sorry, a little digression here...

We were talking about the man who robbed me and being in court this past week.  I had been wondering why I was so intent on looking at this man in court.  Why would I ever want to see his face again?  I said in the last blog that I wanted him to look at me and see the strong woman that survived his attempt to scare and belittle me three years ago.  I wanted him to know that he lost and I was better for this experience.

But in talking through it with my friend, I realized that I also wanted to see where that hate, anger and need to dominate his victims came from.  I wanted to look at his face and see if I could find where that anger and possibly hurt came from.

My husband was with me and I asked him what he thought as he saw for the first time the man that did this to his wife.  He said he wasn't quite sure yet but what he did see was a man who was still cocky in front of the judge.  A "thug" is what he called him.   The realization came to him that what was neatly “finished”…the thief was gone, his wife was okay, no major damage done…was not; he realized how serious, how threatening this man could have been to his wife and family.

I think what my husband saw in this man was not cockiness, but fear.  This man's world is coming down on him fast and I believe he was scared.  Hell, I would be!  His disregard for protecting his identity during his crimes came back to haunt him.  He did not disguise his face or take care about leaving fingerprints, which is what ultimately led the police to him.  His list of crimes is long.  Did his confidence in getting away with so many of his crimes lead to this cockiness that my husband saw?  Is he just waiting it out to see what choices the state will offer him for his sentencing?  Oh, he is definitely going to jail and from what I have heard, for a long time. 

Digressing again.  I believe I was hoping to find what crime was done to him to turn him into this hardened criminal.  What awful thing happened to him early in his life to lead him down this path of drugs and crime?  Who hurt him so bad that he needed to harm women?

Oh, I am not feeling sorry for him.  He chose the life he is leading.  We all make choices, good or bad.  Even if the only choices in front of us seem bad or worse, we still individually make them.  We all have free will.  Even I had choices to make when he entered my life that day.  And I also had choices to make afterward.  I could have closed the store out of fear of another incident like this one.  I could have become angry and turned that anger inward or outward onto others.

So I guess I wanted both the other day; to try to understand how he became the evil, hurtful, angry man he is today and to let him see that his assault on me made me even stronger.  Every day in our lives provides us with lessons for learning and living by.  And having to relive that event has provided more insight into myself.  And as it patinas and ages and "cures", it will provide more insight for growth and understanding.  I am not angry about it.  Life continues to shape us daily whether we like it or not!

So, a plea to my guardian angels, goddesses, gods and whomever else is listening, PLEASE give me the likes on a daily basis from now on?  Thank you!

Seven Year Cycle

"The number Seven was esteemed holy, as is well known, by reason of the six days of creation, and of the seventh, which is the celestial man, in whom is peace, rest, and the sabbath..." - Swedenborg A.R. 657 The last post was about my dying smoke tree. Well, I looked out the window today and every single branch is dying. I resigned myself to letting it go through the winter and then cutting it back in the early spring and feeding it very well to encourage new growth and another year of life. And then it seemed to me that maybe I am being selfish. Maybe I should just let nature take its course and allow the poor thing to die peacefully with no life support of any kind. It blessed me this summer with the most beautiful blooms I have ever seen it its lifetime. And the blooms lasted throughout the rest of the summer and into the fall. It was breathtaking. And it should have reminded me that I certainly know that when a plant blooms this heavy and for so long, it is saying its farewell. Such a sweet thank you I received and didn't pay enough attention to. I planted that tree around 7 years ago. The Seven Cycle Year is the time to rest, to deepen your philosophy, to reflect and build inner reserves. It is the start of the fruition cycle. In the plant stage the plant rests from growth as it puts its accumulated reserves of energy into the blossoms which causes the flowers to unfold. The seven-year cycles are an evolutionary spiral. They belong to every being that has ever been created. There is no one who does not go through them. There is a natural release of energy every seven years which encourages you to move forward and make changes. Every seven years there is, within the system, a total change. If I look back, 7 years ago I had left my position at Garfield Park Conservatory. My swan song had been the county fair of September 2002. It was a glorious finish to my career there, an event coordinated with the City of Chicago's World Music Fest. Over 4 thousand people attended the one day event. It bloomed for a day and then I was gone.

And in the past seven years, I have changed careers, opened a business, lost two parents and other loved ones, lost some friends, and weathered an economic nightmare!

But I have also gained some wonderful new friends, been blessed with a business that allows me to create and expand in so many other ways. I don't know if the last seven years have been restful but they sure have been thought inducing, full of reflection and I have had to build major emotional and energy reserves to keep it all together! All to become the flowering/fruiting process. And that is what my tree did. It spent 6 glorious years building to that last gorgeous bloom and is stepping aside for the next tree, plant, project, etc. As for me, the last seven years have been of change, transition, building reserves, so that the next seven will be fruitful. I do feel that itch. It is an irritation that has no name yet. Just a funny little feeling that started this year, the sixth year. I've felt it before. It is that final push before the next big thing pops up. It used to bother me, that funny little feeling, and it still does. But I get it. I understand. Or at least I know it is temporary. And I look forward to what unfolds next. Because many seeds have been planted in the last seven years. And being a gardener, I know that not all the seeds will germinate. I will have to sit quietly and wait to see what pops up out of the ground. Who knows, maybe it will be a new smoke tree sapling next spring. Oh, I will tend to my dear plant as it fades. If I am diligent, I may be able to steal another year out of it, but I don't think it will bloom as it did this year. And if it quietly goes permanently dormant this winter, I will mourn the loss but celebrate a new season of growth, of change, of awe for the ever changing life around me.

Letting Go, Part 2

To “let go” is to fear less and love more.

Age 50 was a difficult one. 40 didn't do anything to my psyche. But 50 has been a very weird year. Very transitional as well. A new thought process has taken place. What once mattered no longer does. And the worst part is letting go of old thought patterns, dreams way past their prime and relationships that have outlived their usefulness and can't walk with me into the new place that is being forged as I write this. That is the saddest thing to understand. Dreams can be fleeting and can be replaced by new dreams, or refashioned into new versions. But relationships cannot perform in the same way. People don't change, at least not their basic traits and values. I look at people who have been in my life for a very long time who just don't fit anymore. It is sad because as much as I don’t want to let them go, I have no choice. We have no control in our lives anyway, as much as we think we do. And the more we try to control our lives, the more out of control we become.

Then I think of the adage, "Let someone go, if they come back to you it was meant to be". My fear is that they come back and I'm not interested. I read that letting go of someone or something feels like your skin has been removed and you spend a deal of time with it raw and exposed before it starts to heal up again. Letting go of something that has past its expiration date does two things. It opens you up t all sorts of new possibilities. That “thing” was taking up too much space and energy and nothing else could grow. Kind of like thinning out the forest so the new saplings can have light and room to grow. But it does another thing too.

Letting go forces you to look at what you are leaving behind with microscopic eyes. You see all of the flaws that were not visible earlier on. And a great deal of those flaws are your own. It hurts badly. I’ll be the first to admit it. It gives you the opportunity to live with those flaws, change them, let them work out their own issues without intrusions of your views and ideas, and last but not lease, work through the pain. There is always (at least in my world) the question of what I could have done differently to not have to be in this letting go place. Can’t help it – it is an ingrained, learned trait that I will fight with till the end. It also gives me the opportunity to lessen that trait a bit and let myself know that this is a normal pattern of life.

Things, people, change. Nothing is static. Someone told me that relationships are like a figure eight pattern. When you are in a relationship and everything is working fine, you are intersecting at the same place. Then over time or circumstances, one moves faster or slower and you aren’t intersecting at the same place anymore. Then you are out of sync. The question is if you will get in sync again or are permanently on a different course. The more you try to make something happen, the further away you get from it. Same with a dream. I have a dream of what I’d like to see happen but I’ve learned painfully that I must let it find its path (with a small amount of help on my part) and give it the freedom to change and grow. Just like a child, it wants its own freedom to explore.

Life changes course on a regular basis. Who am I to fight where it wants to go? I can put my wishes out in the collective conscious and sit back and wait to see what happens. The more I try to control or fight it, the further away it gets from me. All I can do is let it all go, plant the seeds and see what happens.

So I will try to fear less and love more, love myself more especially. To know that I am on the right path, whichever one it is, and to love where I am, accept the things I cannot change, and cherish the wisdom that comes from the pain as well as joy. For without the pain of change and letting go, one cannot know the joy of what is yet to be.

eden

Baubo's Garden