Mother's and Daughters

Many years ago, I wrote several essays regarding the “sandwich generation.” The topic got as far as a few lunches with an agency director about a book. Several times during my lifetime, I was ahead of the pack but did not do much with the work and watch several good best sellers make others wealthy. My focus was on the young adult trying to raise a child while being children who also had major responsibility for a parent or parents and hence became the meat in the sandwich.
I witnessed in my own life a parent who never expressed a negative view re my abilities to get out of a paper bag. I usually stepped up but often did not get the job done until “The End” sign was coming down. My Mom would have been much happier if I were not flying in the door at the last minute.
In the past year, I have watched the interaction of several mothers and daughters and have come to the conclusion it might be easier to solve world peace than resolve family conflicts. Years of a poor non-productive communication between strong women, a mother and daughter, can really heat up boundary and control issues and does not get resolved when roles are reversed and the parent becomes dependent.
In the past few months, I have been called to reconnect with an old friend. I knew her in a professional capacity for many years and have heard her talk of a daughter and other children and her view of the trauma of the relationships. Now at the end of her life, when she is a dependent and with a brain tumor, I am meeting The Daughter.
The burnt bridges are everywhere. There is the usual feeling of being alone and yet there are children. In reality, at the time of our passing, we are always alone. For most of our life we are alone. When we are the most real – honest – we are alone. For many of us, our personality or ego wants to prove we are Right. My way is the right way...to live...to engage with others... to interact. and finally, .to die.
The Mother, my friend, died this past week and last night I walked about The Daughter’s Community Church and paused before each of my friend’s paintings. They are bright and full of light and life and details- usually of nature or inanimate subjects. I would love one to have in my life as a reminder of her spirit for she succeeded as an artist far beyond her parenting skills and may well be remembered more as a character than a Rembrandt. The daughter that she spoke about so often in our group settings had called family and friends together to celebrate the life of her mother. There was a religious tone, which was not really typical of the mother and the event was in the manner of the daughter - the remembrance card and program presented with the daughter’s church family. Not all the children came for the chard from the burnt bridge runs deep. There were few family pictures to show since my friend had thrown them out as she often did with people and places when coping and going through something was harder than the cut and run. There was an air of exhaustion over the end of life process and the last minute attempts to connect. The mother had reached out and made phone calls, who know what was healed. The eldest grandson said, I am glad it is over for my parent’s sake and I was glad for everyone’s sake for there was no more painting and no more life.
I came home and watched the ice skating at the Olympics. The winning couple’s team have worked for 18 years and sacrificed a great deal for this end and event. It was a great performance but there were still a few major flaws. And that is it I said to myself, you do the best you can and hope others and particularly your children can accept your humanity and flaws for in many ways, we are still looking for the perfect mother.

Fully and Deeply

I think I am happiest when I am a student and observer. Maybe that is what helps my composition in photography. In high school, I was the photography editor of the yearbook. We had some very exciting young writers and creative production staff. Our yearbook was going to be “cutting edge” different. The individual pictures were just oval shots lined up and there was nothing to do with it.. and we actually had a professional photographer come and take almost all the photos, but I staged them. To get ideas, I got a hold of some award winning college yearbooks and sketched out the shots. When the time came, after careful experimentation on paper and cut out dioramas – set up the props – ladders, risers, etc.. and staged the shot. The photog person just had to snap with the big pro camera. We submitted the yearbook and were selected as one of the top ten in NY. It was all about the purpose and intent behind the shot...what were you trying to say .. the essence of the Latin Club. In truth I was probably trying to say, get me out of the room with these nerd, but my job, according to the editor, Kathy Isker, was to create the image of Latin Club as well as take the pic of the members. Many of the high school friends did not go to the college I selected. I was the 10th graduating class from the college and most of the intellectual gals in high school wanted a known intellectual climate and selected a well known school. In college, I continued my civil liberties efforts, worked at getting the young senator from MA elected and got more into causes than the cerebral. Over the years, I have fallen farther from the “tree” or my essence and in trying to “belong” have often gone along with and suppressed my quest for answers to the big questions. In trying to run someone else’s race because everyone runs in the this direction and runs this way (like a girl, I might add), you walk by the obvious. Yesterday, I went to a gallery showing of some interesting photos and was struck by a new technique and one of the subjects. As I stood there, I realized that I spend the summer flapping around like a dying fish feeling badly because my yard and garden don’t come up to the standards of the self appointed authority of my street. As I got out of the car after my gallery and Komodo experience, there it was.... I have a great garden .. and in the winter, it is full of splendid art - silver dollars - the vary "picture" the photographer was asking $150 to take home... there is was.... just growing in the garden and I smiled again as I thought.. the more fully and deeply I am living, the less it matters,

Secretary of State

You can call me madam secretary if you like for I am becoming the secretary of my state. I can appreciate the Middle East conflict since I feel I am always in a battle between my emotional child and my rational intellect. The secret in being a great secretary is to recognize that you cannot continue to push square pegs into the round hole, unless you change the shape of one... bigger hole, smaller pegs. While that often is compromise and not a bad thing, it is only ok when neither the peg nor the hole has become so distorted they have lost themselves. I find I jump from trying to please by giving back what is expected or wanted, trying to look the other way when I feel rudderless in someone else’s boat, or being angry about years of scenes of injustice in my historical eyes. We all come with a box of preexisting categories which we try to put most of the things/people/experience in our life into. I thrive on my energy, much of which has been fueled by my passion for a cause and not by any refueling emotional station where you could go for refuge. My mother’s lap was really only there after I had been ill on the bathroom floor for hours or days. The people in my life rarely have recognized that I also have a need for tenderness and occasionally a little slack. I have disappointed more times than I have been disappointed. At one point in recent weeks I felt to have “world peace” in my soul, I had to give up ego, tone down some of the color – not so.
When you have a glimpse of being a steady and unobstructed presence in your own life, it is really not the difficult. Acceptance of myself and be present in my own life really changes your heart beat. Stepping out of life to experience the quiet calm of mediation, stops the busy-ness and distraction, We are all fragile and vulnerable and often live in fantasy and fear. But every once in awhile you find you are walking your path of the ordinary life – with your ego, your fears and the richness of the landscape of the everyday...and the beat goes on.