Author givingbeyondthebox

Not my kind of Saint

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

When I was a child growing up in the fifties, it seemed that everyone in my life – my parents, my teachers, my aunts and uncles, and grandparents – and everything in my life – from the movies I watched to the books I read to the things I dreamed about – were all aligned in a project to make me a very good person. I resisted these influences in my childish ways but overall, I bought in. I embraced their hopes and dreams for goodness for me, but that wasn’t enough; I wanted to be a Saint.

My little sister and I shared a tiny bedroom and, on those nights, when my mother had a late shift at work, I would read to her at bedtime. I had the upper bunk and with the streetlight falling brightly onto my pillow, I could read as late in the evening as I wanted without detection. Our favorite book was given to me by my aunt Gaby. Without her own children, she had plenty of time and energy to devote to my development and guidance. She gifted me The Children’s Book of the Saints for my First Communion.  Every day of the year, there was another story of a Catholic saint, a simple guide for us to inspire goodness and courage. It was perfect for my dreams of sainthood. We loved best the stories of the saints who were martyrs. Stories of Saint Ignatius who was a rich boy and a soldier who then repented and found the Society of Jesuits did nothing to excite us. Saints like him seemed to us good enough but not bold or inspiring. We need saints who had visions and who suffered. We loved stories of saints like St. Bartholomew who was skinned alive, St. Ignatius of Antioch who was fed to the lions, or St. Lawrence who was burned at the stake. Never denying their faith. We relished stories of saints, like St. Juthwara who’d been beheaded and walked away with her head in her arms, on her way to church to pray. Our favorite was St. Thecia. When they tried to burn her at the stake, it rained. When they fed her to the lions, they laid down and licked her toes. She kept trying to kill her with snakes and swords but protected by her faith, not torture not the work of man could kill her. She lived to her eighties. As a child, I hadn’t yet worked out just how I would get myself into situations where I be given a chance at martyrdom but my mind was firmly made up to do whatever I needed to do to become St. Sandra of Rhode Island. 


Recognizing the power of movies over our generation, the nuns gathered us together in the cafeteria every month to watch an inspirational film like Boy’s Town, Captain January, or The Miracle of Fatima. When I was in the second grade, we watched a film about the Maryknoll Brothers doing missionary work among the pagans in China. At the end of the movie, the Chinese marched a Maryknoll Brother up a hill and crucified him – “He refused to deny his faith”, the narrator intoned.  We were stunned; I was inspired. Our nun talked with us about the movie and about our faith and passed around the little metal box where we were supposed to drop our change to support the missions. Some of the kids had spent theirs on candy; not me. Then, she asked, “Children, how many of you are willing to die for your faith?” Almost all our hands went up. “Me, sister! Me, sister!” I was so proud of myself for offering my life for Jesus Christ.  I never told my Mom, although maybe she would have been proud of me, as well. She knew about my sainthood thing.

From that moment on, I have never doubted for a minute that children could be recruited into Brown Shirts or an army of child soldiers or into the Children’s Crusade. Children may be innocent but they are engineered to be socialized into groups well-intended or evil seeking. I gave up on sainthood when it seemed the pagans were disappearing from the planet and emerging as Buddhists, Muslims, Hindis, and people of other faiths. There were other diversions from sainthood, as well, but that is a much more common story.

COVID Lessons

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

Even though I keep a daily journal, my notes on the pandemic are sparse. I recall best those very early days when neither science nor faith could stem the tide and terror, fear, and dread of the virus. As an older person, I felt my age for the first time, as both a high-risk target for the disease and as a vulnerable elder requiring careful watch and extra protection. I’ve learned that children can be just as paternalistic as their parents in that caring but condescending way. 

I do have an entry in my daily notes for Sunday April 5th, a few weeks after the federal government declared a national emergency, just a week after the U.S. had more COVID cases than anywhere else in the world. We were in the early days of lockdowns, travel bans, shortages. Fear of the disease and of each other. Daily briefings. Panic. On that day, I spoke with my sister in Florida.  A few weeks prior, we had set up bi-weekly check ins. That Sunday, we talked about how these could be our final days. That sentence sounds melodramatic when I write it, but it rings true to my experience. On that day, we broached the subject of final plans. She had organized a box full of important documents with my name on it on the second shelf of her guest room closet. All her contacts– professional ones and personal ones – to be notified when she passed away. Emails, phone numbers, passwords, online accounts. She had thought of everything – so kind. I committed to doing the same thing as soon as possible, yet still to this day, four years later, I have left most of this undone.

She considered almost everything. I asked her about her eulogy. Had she thought about who would say those final words? As soon as the question left my lips, I knew what I wanted to hear. As her older sister, I prayer it would me. She confirmed that hope. I would deliver her eulogy and she mine. We wondered together whether we knew everything we should know about each other. I made these notes in my journal. Committed to writing Marcia’s eulogy. That sent me down a rabbit hole of wondering. Was I really the best person to write this? Did I really remember the important points in her life?  Did I underestimate how painful those early illnesses were for her? Did I comprehend how deeply she at age twelve felt my father’s early death? Did I know the whole story about her marriage? Did I appreciate how deeply others loved her? Did I know only my special sister-side of her? Did she know I’d nearly been hospitalized for depression? That I came close to suicide more than once? Those eulogies may reveal more than we have told each other so far. These can be reckonings. 

I delivered my first eulogy for my mother. I asked her parish priest if I could say a few words after Mass. He told me that this wasn’t the custom in his parish but since my mother was a parishioner, he’d allow it. I could have three minutes. Three minutes? For my mother? And then I thought of her, so hating attention in any of its forms. She would tell me to take no more than two minutes, more than enough to say what needed to be said. So, I delivered that eulogy from my heart as I knew my Mom to be, underestimated, full of broken strength. I learned during the reception in the church basement how much I didn’t know about her. How kind she was to a neighbor. How much attention she paid to a lonely resident in assisted living. How crazy funny she was. That she was a wonderful dancer in her twenties. How she was a complete person separate from me—a richer, deeper, more complex story than I knew. I wished I had done better for her. Reaching beyond what I know or think I know; I will do better for my sister. 

V and me….Sandra Enos

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

In space capsule years, 47 is a long time; Voyager I and I have spent the best of those years together.  When Voyager was launched in 1977, it was the heyday of space exploration. The public was dazzled with flights to the moon, astronauts were heroes. Nowadays, any clown with a billion dollars can send up a rocket or satellite. In fact, there is so much traffic in space that we need rocket tow trucks to remove all the junk in orbit. 

V, my nickname for Voyager I, is an antique in terms of spacecraft and technology. It is the size of a Volkswagen Bettle, the car I drove when I worked at NASA in the seventies. It has a tiny computer. My iPhone is 235,000 times more powerful and 175,000 times faster than the computer on board V. The power it needs to transmit messages is equal to that of a refrigerator light bulb. It sends radio signals with a 3-watt transmitter, much weaker than a typical radio station. It takes ten hours for a message to get from V to the earth where it is picked by special antenna designed by NASA and by me. Right now, V is 15 billion miles from earth, traveling through the solar system, through the heliosphere and is now traveling in interstellar space. 

There are just a few people like me who can speak to V with our outdated programming languages – just a few lines of code – but the younger engineers have no interest in their grandfather’s spacecraft. We used to be able to do miraculous things under great limits but no more.  am thinking that our great riches have spoiled us; we seem these days to require enormous resources from our planet and from other humans to do stupid things. If our iPhones are hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the computer on board on Voyager, then we should I be doing some important things than watching cat videos and ordering avocado toast delivered to our door. This is the measure of our age, it seems. 

I hacked myself into a special arrangement with V. I receive all those images that NASA gets — moons around planets alive with volcanos, craters full of sulfur, oceans buried underground, gaseous rings around Saturn – and much more. V sends me images of black holes, of extraterrestrial spaceships, of dwarf planets, of solar storms and hurricanes. The scientists predicted that sailing through the stars would be quiet and majestic. V reports to me that the noise and tumult and wind are deafening. 

V has stopped communicating with NASA early in 2024; this may be the end of its “official” life. But last week, I received a message from V that the Golden Record had been removed from its front plate. The Golden Record was our generation’s tossing a message in a bottle out into the universe. It was compilation of messages from the earth to other civilizations that may encounter Voyager. There were greetings from earthlings in 55 modern and ancient languages. Music from across the planet. Images of the earth and its people. Stamped on the record were instructions for its use in simple graphics. Evidentially, according to V, it easy enough for another civilization to take back home for closer inspection, like we did with moon rocks.  Also, according to V, they weren’t impressed.

The last message that Voyager sent to NASA was a simple one. Because its computing power is so limited, V has kept his comments brief. At this stage of its life, it sent a simple “Hello. By the time you get this message, I won’t be here any longer.”  It’s been silent ever since hurtling through space at 375,000 miles per hour. My V.  Where else will we go?

Across a crowded Zoom

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

I posted this on Instagram and received several comments about the poem being “touching” and “lovely” and “heartwarming.” This little poem is meant to be funny and goofy. Could I have missed the mark? Maybe, no one really reads a poem on Instagram. In any case, this poem is best read aloud.

Across a crowded Zoom                                 

I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places 

Because now that I’m older, I can’t remember faces 

Which causes a problem in communication and connection.

I’m just looking for nice. I don’t need perfection.

I’ve tried going to church and meeting the congregation

I tried traveling the world on expensive vacations

I even ventured into learning ballroom dances

Maybe, I’ll meet someone, what are the chances?

Desperately, I tipped my toes into internet dating

But that feels like shopping, not at all like mating

So, I took an online course in romantic poetry

Thinking that certainly my love would there be. 

I signed into the class, with twenty other students

Many speaking loudly, others simply muted

And I saw you in your square, your grace filling the room

And, all of a sudden, I fell in love on Zoom. 

You looked so happy and pleased to be there

You sent us a chat message just to show how much you care

I was smitten and enchanted, just by your smile

And wondered how long I’ve waited to be so beguiled. 

The class began with hellos and intros of all

You were a poet (I knew it) living in Sioux Falls.

With me here in Boston, our romance may be doomed

But if we really fell in love, we could zoom and zoom and zoom.

You were brilliant and insightful but when I tried to speak

I kept muting myself, like a clumsy teenage Geek

I scanned your screen background to learn a little more

And on your bookshelf, what do I see? Is that Mary Olivore?

Please, please don’t turn off your screen, we’ve only just met

Would I be too forward, to call you, My Pet?

I could send you a zoom invite for just we two

Gosh, I’d upgrade to premium just to spend more time with you. 

Or should I go on looking for somebody special for me

Surely there’s someone perfect, maybe algorithmically.

Are you lonesome tonight: Assignment #5

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

The Beatles burst onto the Ed Sullivan Show just three weeks after my father died. This set off secret operations in our so-called music room. This was the back half of our living room with the piano that nobody played and with our record player, a significant piece of furniture with the console on one side and storage racks for albums and 45s on the other. Until I was a teenager, the only music we had in our house were my parents’ records, music from the War that they used to dance to, and our mother’s records, which we were not to touch. Records and the record players were in the “No Children Allowed” zone in our house. 

We loved watching my parents dance to music from the forties. They would glide across the floor with great grace, I thought. My father was a smooth dancer and after practicing the foxtrot and waltz with him, he accompanied me to the Father Daughter dance at our high school, clearly the most handsome and charming man in the crowd. That evening, one of the happiest nights of my life, happened just two months before he passed away.

We processed grief privately in our house. My mother simply couldn’t bear to discuss the loss of our father with her children. Much later in her life, she said to me that she had no words of comfort or consolation for us. My father would have known what to say to us, she said. So, my mother dealt with the anguish of loss she couldn’t voice through her records, stacked up for play one after the other.  How Great Thou Art by Mahalia Jackson, Don’t You Know by Della Reese, Full Month and Empty Arms, Moonlight Sonata, and Elvis Presley’s Are You Lonesome Tonight?

We would watch her expression, see her tears, and sometimes sit with her on the couch when she probably would have appreciated some time alone. Elvis really tore her up. I hated Elvis. I hated how sad he made her, how he kept pointing to her loss, and how much she missed my father. He kept making her cry asking, “Are you lonesome tonight?” With the full force of my teenage sarcasm, I would reply under my breath, “Well what do you think, Elvis. Her husband just died!” “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?” And from me, “Would you please just stop it!” I really did hate him. 

The underground operation – the secrets — began when my favorite aunt bought me the first album, Meet the Beatles. It is hard to explain six decades later the sort of effect the Beatles had on me. Their music was full of hope and fun and hand-holding, of the sweet innocence of love and flirting and dancing. It was perfect early teenager music. It seemed like the world changed when they arrived. My friends and I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to play their music all the time. My mother worked a long shift during the day but there were a few hours between our coming home from school and her returning home from work that we could use the off-limits record player, playing our music, and being careful to keep everything in its place and just so, remembering every tiny detail that could set off an inquiry.  During those magic hours, we would sing and harmonize and dance around the house, feeling free and crazy. Always in the back of my mind was whether all of that youthful exuberance was somehow a betrayal of the grief I felt in the loss of my father.  We hid the Beatles from my mother as long as possible. We covered our tracks as best we could. 

When the Beatles made that first appearance in early February 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show my little sister, my tiny brother, my Mom and I were seated in our usual spots in our living room watching TV. I was apprehensive. Could the Beatles cheer up my Mom? Would she tune them out? Would we have to dampen our enthusiasm to honor her grief? I wanted her to love them, as I did, to see them as love and joy.

My mother loved the Beatles, these British young men with long hair.  She loved other English bands, too. We surprised her with the Beatles album which she added to her playlist and every once in a while, she would join us in a crazy dance. We had broken through the no-permission zone and into sharing music with my mother. It was all quite surprising to us. That was a new Mom. Maybe, we gave her a respite from her loss.

When my first true love moved away to college, my mother put up with my playing the same broken-hearted Dionne Warwick ballad over and over and over again. She never once told me to get over it, or to stop playing that miserable music, or that there would be other boys. She let the music pull out my tears, to feel the loss as best and as deeply as I could, even though I couldn’t talk about why this boy meant so much to me. 

We played out our grief and our happy times in common prayer of music.

Announcement New of Policies from British Airways: The Regulation of Seat Behavior

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

 

It has come to our attention that as the size of passenger seats has declined that the number of complaints about passenger behavior in those seats has increased. While not rising to the level of a terrorist threat, these complaints have been the subject of an inquiry by Her Majesty’s Commission on Good Order in Seats under the Dominion of the Empire.  Accordingly, today, we are issuing draft regulations that we hope do make our expectations clear about the right order and decorum in the passenger seats. Such regulations only apply to the leisure traveler and neither to those in business nor first class where order appears to be maintained by a more genteel breeding. The timing of these regulations is a matter of urgency as increasing numbers of people all over the globe are turning to the British for guidance in these troubled times on matters of decorum and manners. How else to explain the popularity of Downton Abbey?  We British simply have the market concerned on civility and good manners, despite some recent high jinks in the royal family. These simple rules can surely return to the plane cabin some of the glamour of jet travel that existed before too many people could afford to fly.

Rule #1

The arm rest

In a typical seating arrangement on a flight, there are fewer armrests that there are arms. For example, for a three-seat wing accommodating three passengers with two arms each, we would expect six armrests. However, to save money, the airlines install only four armrests, leaving an undercount of two. This is not our fault; register a complaint with Boeing and Airbus. This shortage requires that EVERYONE share. The occupant of the middle seat bears this especial burden since that individual has no armrest of his own. Despite a common belief, the first person to arrive in the seats has no right, under national law or Geneva Convention, to claim the armrest as his. Neither does membership within a racial group or religious organization constitute such a claim. Similarly, the larger arms found on most men does not bestow upon them any endowed right to the armrest. It is our policy that all the arms of our travelers have equal call and claim to armrests.  Accordingly, a timing device has been installed. A small really negligible electric shock will be administered every ten minutes to assure proper sharing of the armrest. In the event that this fails to move the recalcitrant resistant arm, the cabin attendant can adjust the current. Technology has evolved to allow this system to work efficiently and effectively.

Rule #2

The rightful allotment of seat space and its environs

Contrary to U.S. law on this issue, British law and custom argue for a circumscribed space that is purchased with a standard airline ticket. In other words, under the British system, one buys his seat but that does not allow one to claim the penumbra around the seat. This stands in opposition to American jurisprudence and practice which suggests that it is not only one’s seat that one is purchasing but the area around and into the other’s seat if one is big and pushy enough. Clearly, we see the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny still rules the American traveler. Our seats are NOT selected to accommodate your specific height and weight. For that, you buy a wet suit. Our seats perfectly fit the average male in Great Britain (determined by the British census of 1920) and so should fit women as well. 

Overwhelmed by complaints from passengers that other passengers were taking up more than their fair share of breathable air and seat real estate, we are hereby providing enhanced procedures. A passenger may request from the cabin attendant a PROOD, a passenger-restrain-of-other-device. This instrument fits in between seats in accordance with British law on property and boundary rights on an aircraft.  A full-body version can also be requested to guard against passengers whose body frame leaks into another’s as well as those passengers who fall asleep with their heads on the shoulders of strangers.  Such activity is seriously disapproved by this airline. 

Rule #3

General communication protocols

It should be noted early in this paragraph that we were one of the earliest airlines to accommodate digital devices in our cabins. This is despite our deepest reservations that this move would lead to a further diminution of civility and correct behavior. We had expected nothing better than the worst that has emerged.  We have waited as long as we could before issuing guidelines.       

  • To game players. Despite the fact that you have your earphones on, the rest of us can hear the guns, the shouts, the senseless music, the crashing cars. Please lower the volume or risk having your gaming device tased on our armed staff. 
  • To the viewers of pornography, this should be done in your home, in your bedroom, if at all. Our cabins are full of children and people of good taste who really have no need to see what turns you on.  
  • To traveling salesmen. Do not coyly bring up your latest website so you can cleverly poke your neighbor in the ribs, saying “Oh, man. Look what the IT guys have done. Our next Turbo Filter looks awesome. It replaces the older mode.” Blah. Blah. No one cares.
  • To grandparents. Only one person on the plane wants to see hundreds of pictures of your grandchild and that person has just locked himself in the restroom after seeing hundreds of pictures of someone else’s grandkids.

Our overall advice: keep to yourself. Pretend you are carrying state secrets and imagine that this is the case for your seatmate, as well. Imagine that he will have to kill you if he reveals anything at all to you. Who knows? It may be true.  

Enjoy the flight. The cabin attendants will be serving refreshments if they think you deserve them. Thanks for flying British Air.

What’s Going On: A play in four acts before intermission 3 of 6 assignments

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

Setting: September 1971 to May 1972, rural Alabama

Characters: Twelve northern-born VISTA Volunteers sent to the South to fight poverty. After a week of training, they cut their hair, put away their bell-bottomed jeans and prepare for work as teacher’ aides, family planning specialists, construction supervisors and community organizers. They are full of idealism and brotherhood and the wonderful feeling that they are doing something important. However, their ideas about doing good, about being comfortable in the world are challenged in this culture that is confusing, frightening, and disorienting. They spent that year and the rest of their lives wondering what’s going on.

Soundtrack; Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On

Act 1. Three days after arrival. The VISTAs are placed with host families while they look for housing. The third night one of the women is raped by a teenage boy. She tells her friends. They debate what to do. Reporting this to the police guarantees that the boy will be arrested and may pay with his life. It will also mean the VISTA site is shut down. Not reporting it means that the violation goes unpunished, that the other women may be targeted for other attacks. It is just three days and already they are in over their heads. They make up an excuse to the supervisor to move her to another host family. This event has repercussions all year. 

Act 2. End of September. A cell in the local jail. Sheriff Wilkins welcomes the VISTAs to Lee County. He tells them he can recognize a Yankee at a half mile away – the walk, the swagger, the clothes. He wonders why they would come all the way to Alabama when they have so much trouble with the “coloreds” up north, rioting and all of that. He knows that as outsiders, the VISTAs will be troublemakers and that he will be watching them carefully. Her reminds them that last year, the house that the VISTAs were living in in Beulah, a Black community, was firebombed. He sure hopes they doesn’t happen to them. 

Act 3.  Early October. Three women are renting an old farmhouse from the Belks, a prominent family in Lee County. Bubba Belk, the youngest of four brothers and like the VISTAs, a recent college graduate, visits and brings along the gift of a rifle so the women can have some protection. They refuse his generosity. He insists, reminding them that they have no phone, that the nearest police station is twenty-five miles away, and that everyone knows that three white girls are staying together alone in this house. He reminds them that they are living in Alabama, not where they come from.  He walks them to the backyard, shows them an old whipping post and has each of them learn to load and shoot the rifle. They each take a few shots. They thank him and promise each other to hide the gun away. 

Act 4. A warm May late afternoon, three VISTAs and six Black families gather together to work out the day’s schedule at the self-help housing site. A young man arrives in a pickup truck, yells at them to gather around, jumps into the back of his truck and says, “the Governor’s been shot. Governor Wallace has been shot!” One of the men leads the group in prayer and song. They are praying for the soul and deliverance of the Governor. The VISTA volunteers are quiet, wondering how these folks can be praying when their own hearts are so full of hate.  

Do You Believe in Magic? An Older Woman’s Brush with Beauty. 4 of 6 essays for writing prompts

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

I came from a family where wearing makeup and caring much about one’s appearance was frowned upon and considered vain. I knew that I was not a great beauty. I was one of those “she has such a nice personality” girls, encouraged by my mother to develop my brain and housekeeping skills because youthful good looks wouldn’t last forever. She failed to tell me that my brain and housekeeping skills would also fade with time. (Thank goodness for the latter.)

I successfully resisted makeup and even paying much attention to my appearance until much later in life. Then I relented in my early seventies. Maybe it was my very pretty dermatologist. We had tried lotions and cremes for aging spots, and nothing worked. One day, she suggested a chemical peel. The results sounded promising. Clear skin! My heart swelled with expectation. I remembered what Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, said about the cosmetic industry. “We don’t sell lipsticks. We sell dreams.” Or “Perfume is made in the factory, ‘hope’ is sold in the store.” So, I bit the bullet, believing in magic. The promise, dream, and hope of a better me. 

Even after bottle after bottle and tube after tube fails to make us beautiful, we again and again put our faith in the magic of potions and creams and procedures, resting on a shaky foundation of that improbable fix.

I signed for the least intrusive chemical peel, as I called it, the baby peel. My lovely dermatologist and her aide prepped me with alcohol and brushed the peeling agent over my face, paying special attention to the darkest areas. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes. I went home with discharge instructions and suggestions to stay out of the sun and take it easy. I should be back to normal with some redness in just a few days. Imagine that!

The discharge instructions and the calm counsel from my dermatologist were completely inadequate for what followed, like the instructions that Marie Antoinette might have gotten before her beheading, “You feel a sharp pinch in your neck that will end quickly, and you will fall into a deep state of rest and relaxation.”  Follow-up instructions generally fail to describe what really happens in post-surgical recovery. Doctors are woefully inadequate in describing pain. Maybe, they figure no one would sign up for any surgery if they told the truth or maybe they resolve to leave the theatrics to the fiction writers of the world. If I wanted to really know the truth about a chemical peel, I could watch a Lifetime movie.

I resolved to catalog my agony and suffering. I took photographs and maintained a log. I have had several surgeries, some quite serious and nothing was as painful as this. I was actually crying in the anguish that I had gone through this suffering for vanity and nothing else – my punishment for believing in magic.

In the follow up visit to the pretty dermatologist, I am eager to share my misery. I have photographic evidence on my phone and paper documentation. However, before I can answer her question, “So, how was the recovery?”, she interrupts, looks kindly at me, and says “Horrible, right?” I nod in disbelief. All that was normal? I suggest to her that she needs to rewrite the discharge materials to more accurately describe the burning, the tightness in face, the frightening peeling of the skin.  

 Before she can disagree, I begin, “Here’s my version, Doctor.”

First, they pour acid on your face. 

Then your skin lifts off your face and dies right in your hands. 

Then your face burns no matter what you do. 

It will seem that the procedure has gone completely wrong but that is entirely normal.

And please don’t sneeze because we have no idea what will happen. 

Clinical results will vary.

We suggest that your loved ones take a short trip while you are recovering because some partners may suffer from nightmares from seeing the patient on days three and four.

Results will vary and are unrelated to your suffering.

The procedure may be repeated in six months because the spots are likely to reoccur.

Abracadabra.

Inspired by Do You Believe in Magic?

Where have all the flowers gone: Two of six

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

Her days were undistinguished except for the afternoon sun. As the seasons passed, she watched the shadows shorten and lengthen gliding across the floor in her tiny sitting room. At her side, a basket of knitting sat untouched. The last time she picked it up, she had no memory in her fingers of how she once made blankets and hats for every member of her family and many of the babies at the church.  

She felt the warm June sun and looked out to the garden. She struggled to recall the year when she. was strong enough to dig a two-foot trench for the asparagus bed. It thrived for years when the children were small and began to fail when she could no longer tend it lovingly. Where did that lovely asparagus go, she wondered. 

She surveyed the yard, once resplendent at this time of year — every bed a surprise of color and form, her peonies with the grace of ballerinas, those dahlias uncompromising in their bold colors and shapes. Where had all those flowers gone?  Or maybe, she didn’t recall this so clearly. A fleeting thought poked into her mind, perhaps this beautiful garden in her memory was actually someone else’s garden. Not hers at all, perhaps. 

The neighbor’s children, the age of her great grandkids, were screaming with delight, splashing into their backyard pool, celebrating the birthday of the youngest, Liam. She recalled such parties when she was young but not much about them. She couldn’t recall the name of her favorite cousin or remember when she had last seen him. Had he died? Maybe so. Could that be that I wouldn’t remember? She knew she had a happy childhood but the details, of it like so much else these days, escaped her. 

So much had passed by in her long life. Friends. Wars. Struggles. Great joy. Great books. Love. Being a mother. A productive career. Losing a husband. Losing all but one of her siblings. She tried not to dwell on the past, but her future seemed short to her. She did remember her high school friends. “We were such a gang of girls, full of energy and delight and not a little sassiness” she thought. “We were so lovely although we didn’t know it at the time.  Where did those girls go?” When she saw the few friends that remained, she saw old women, with their youth like phantoms beside them. 

She was willing to accept that life was full of loss; that fact she could accept with equanimity. More than anything, she missed her words, her clever mind, her intellectual power. Once, she could summon a rich vocabulary and choose words that delighted her, like a captain commanding his troops to attention, those words bold and perfectly fitted to her ideas. Now, those words were fewer, wandering, and remote and painfully slow to appear. That loss she felt deeply. 

But even as others saw her depleted and elderly, she felt something else. A favorite author of hers wrote at the end of her life, that she was herself, as never before, with fierce energy and intense feelings. Everything was profoundly beautiful to her. Even her own children weren’t as captivating as the children she saw these days. Last year’s Mother’s Day flowers drew her attention like never before. Music brought her to tears. She wanted to draw the world close, to live each minute with all the passion and light that was remained. 

Stumbling into beauty

givingbeyondthebox Leave a comment

Have you ever been so dazzled by the wind in the trees

That the voice of your friend chatting about last night’s dinner

Seems muffled and small

Remote and distant.

Is she really there at all?

Or so enchanted by the birds at the feeder 

That the whine of that leaf blower next door

Evaporates into the air

As sparrows and finches arrive, you consider each one

Wondering where they have spent the winter

You waiting just here for their sunrise chorus.

Or so awe-struck by the sweep of afternoon’s clouds

That you go hurtling over a large stone and

Find yourself face down in the sand 

At the edge of the ocean

Eye-to-eye with the sandpipers 

Scampering around you

A giant in Gulliver’s world.

That you lie there for a just moment

At rest in the magic of it all

Capturing your breath

As the sea brings another wave

Leaving you mystified by the power 

And the wisdom of the tides.