Missing Thereness

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Lin Ennis

Lois Florence Goodrich BettsAs I drifted to sleep last night, a voice brought me back to this plane.

“I miss my mom!” Ellen cried out her pent-up loss.

“I know, Sweetie. I know.” I patted her and handed her a couple tissues, dutifully remaining quiet to let her express grief her way. I counted the month since Mom died, then drifted off again.

“She didn’t even ask me! She didn’t ask if it was OK for her to go now. She didn’t ask anybody. I wasn’t ready.”

I patted her arm again and gently stroked her back. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to hear one of the most profound – and most memorable – statements of my life. It will grab you, too, and wrap itself around your heart with fierce tendrils of passion.

Ellen sat up and said she thought she would need a whole box of tissue. I handed it to her, and she cuddled back into her pillow alternately sobbing and bawling.

“I wasn’t through loving her yet.”

I hadn’t thought about ever finishing loving someone. I was still loving Ellen’s mom…maybe more as the irritability her back pain stirred in her faded from memory. I thought of my beloved lifelong friend  Ruth, whom I haven’t spent as much time with as I want to. And of course Ellen. As she said earlier in the day, the more of these life changes you go through together, the more unfathomable it is to ever not be family to one another.

“She loved you hard,” I said. That was a phrase I’d used to describe my own love for people, especially Ellen. It means fast, and deeply and passionately and often without sentimentality. A fireplug’s gush. So much it’s difficult to take in.

Ellen’s mom was like that, too, I realized for the first time. Not affectionate nor sentimental, but fierce in her desire for her family and their happiness. She never wanted gifts for special occasions, nor parties with all her many friends. She said each time we queried her, “Just all my family to be around me. That’s what I want.”

Ellen’s words moved me deeply, “I wasn’t through loving her yet.” Ellen told her mother she loved her, and told her over and over as Mom lay dying. I knew Ellen missed her mom. Now I knew she also missed loving her. The ongoingness of loving someone.

“I miss her, too. I miss the thereness of her.” We both did. We had talked about the importance to us of knowing she was there!

Mom lived 500 miles away, in another state. We got over to see her and Dad once a year and they came here in between times. But we always knew she was where we pictured her, sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette. Eager for a hug and a kiss when we saw one another, her sparkling eyes and nearly constant smile…

Ellen and I talked into the night about where mom might be now and what she might be doing. Wherever she is, wherever there is, we miss the thereness of her. We aren’t through loving her yet.

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Awaiting Profundity

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Lin Ennis

I’ve delayed posting, hoping to find a neat, poetic way to tie up the major events of this last year. It’s been about letting people die, helping people die, and honoring people who die.

In April, my mother died. I’d braced myself for it for years, because I knew I would grieve the mother I didn’t have as well as the mother I did have. The one I wished to have. The one she thought she was and the one I hoped she was or wasn’t – take your pick.

This month, February, my mother-in-law died. She was so full of life and adventure, we fully expected her to go on another five or more years. Move to the independent living community near us and get a new lease on life, with new friends, card games, stimulating conversation, outings, etc.

My father-in-law is also dying. We thought he was the weaker of the pair. His body is stronger, but his mind, and even his will to live, seem weaker. I’ve heard of this paradox – that the weaker outlives the stronger because the stronger expends himself or herself carrying the weaker.

Is Dad’s dementia so great that he could survive this blow without realistic sorrow? Can he compartmentalize his loss and carry on five or so years (he’s 92) as someone we cannot recognize after depending upon his wife for seventy years?

I’m looking for a motif, or at least bookends. How can I open and neatly close this chapter?

We said good-bye to Mom, on what we knew was her deathbed. We hugged and kissed and filled every wordless void 10 days before she drifted off. We were complete. She was complete.

At the same time, we saw we were losing Dad, but not to death. Worse. To dementia. He cannot care for himself fully and healthfully. Nor does he acknowledge need for assistance. Reluctant to infantilize him, we try reason. Reason fails. He is incomplete. Yet that’s all there is. Does that mean he is complete?

I like closed circles. The cycle of life. A reason for living, for dying.

This story is unfinished. I know not how it will end. I know only it has been challenging, and on some level resplendent. I picture Mom free, soaring, in no pain, laughing and relishing how much ice cream she ate in her last two weeks on earth. But Dad is shackled to a sooty black ball and chain. Do we have to have one in order to have the other?

Perhaps my mother was the coalescence. The depressed, forsaken soul who also chose when to let go and be free. Hers was not a happy passing, but a relief nonetheless because of the torture she endured. Torture Dad is experiencing with frontal lobe dementia–fears, paranoia, and realization his “brain is scrambled.”

I’d like to sew it up for you in this blog – sew it up for me. But life is messy and unsymmetrical.

Not easily coaxed between bookends.

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Smart Superstition

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Lin Ennis

I celebrate Friday the 13th as a lucky day. It is for me, because I declare it so, and live my day looking for serendipities. I walk under a ladder on purpose, practically daring a black cat to cross my path and knock the ladder down on me.

But I loved the rabbit foot key-chain I had as a kid, and I still wish for the birthday boy or girl to extinguish all candles in one breath so the wish made will come true! “Cold hands, warm heart”? What else are you supposed to say when someone apologizes for cold hands before shaking your hand? It’s a pleasantry, not a superstition.

Like everything else in life, we choose our superstitions. I picked up one a few years back – one that brings order and joy to my life.

My conscious, life-affirming superstition is: The orderliness of your house as you enter the new year predicts its orderliness throughout the year. That may not have even been what the person said. She may have said “it forecasts how your year will go.” Like eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve for prosperity in the coming year (because I like black-eyed peas and can use tradition as an excuse to serve them), I’ve chosen to organize my environment to a much higher degree around New Year’s Day.

I don’t trouble myself to get it all done before the stroke of midnight Dec. 31. I give myself a couple weeks into January. For example, the spice cupboard is still such a wreck, it takes me five minutes to locate the crushed red pepper flakes.

To me, the superstition is about order more than cleanliness, but if you’re straightening up your office shelves and drawers, why not dust them at the same time?

This year has been particularly fantastic for me. I did my main office cupboard a month or so ago–the really messy one. It’s beautiful inside now. (The unimportant ones have not been sorted.) Sorting. That’s the main reason for reorganizing. It’s a chance to clear clutter and items that no longer serve.

Last year I was so busy, the turtle necks stayed in the dresser all summer, and the sleeveless tops lounged there all winter. This year, I was motivated to downsize. If you don’t know me well, you may not realize in the last 18 months I’ve downsized myself by 82 pounds.  That reduced my shoe size as well as my sock size, let alone blouse, slacks and dress sizes.

I’ve cleaned out all of my dresser drawers (except the scarf and glove drawer, which is still neat from last New Year’s). Not only were wrong-sized items eliminated, so were ragged items (socks with holes in the heels). All of my drawers have cedar lining showing from being “not full.” The closet got the same treatment. Shoes and hanging clothes were sorted and reduced, by both size and season.

The pantry is cleared every time there’s a food drive.

It may take awhile to address my entire surroundings, especially since it’s so cold the tool shed has become a bit tumbled. But I persist, because I love the calm feeling I get when I look at a neat bookshelf or orderly cupboard. I go back again and again just to admire it and feel the joy of accomplishment and revel in the intelligent design (clothes hung by color…yes, I do that.)

And this year, I’m especially enjoying all the space my dresser has for new things. Eighteen dollar socks anyone (they’re so puffy, padded and well-shaped!)?

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Willing to Change Your Mind About Islam?

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Lin Ennis

muslim-womanHow often do you think of major changes in your beliefs over the past course of your life? It could be science or money or an ism…Take religion, for example. I started out being driven to church by a neighbor, then dropped off at church by my mother, then the whole family going together – except on quarterly communion days, which Mother skipped.

By 12, I’d joined a group of kids who went door-to-door giving Bible studies. There was much more to come. Over the next decade, or nearly two, I became increasingly religious…ever stricter in my practices. For example, I gave up chewing gum because it had no redeeming value, it took money from our pockets, and every time I wanted to chew gum, I was reminded of the God for whom I gave it up.

Such was the childhood and upbringing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, beginning in Somalia and carrying through to 20 or 22 in Nairobi. The difference was, she was surrounded by people encouraging her to become more religious. As I reached for an extremist peak, around age 20, most everyone I knew chided me to back off and live in a more realistic world. They said my purist inclinations were fantasies. Ayaan was told her higher than highest aspirations were required of her.

She was forced to marry an insipid man with the depth of interest in life and knowledge as a horned toad. I, on the other hand, prayed for a godly man to marry. En route to Canada to join with the man chosen for her by her father (after a 5-minute exchange in a mosque), she emigrated to Holland where she received refugee status, with only slight massaging of what she was really running from.

My mistake was praying for a “man.” He was godly…and handsome! That was not my destiny, but naïve as I was, I asked for the wrong solution to the burning in my loins and a desire for “family.”

Ayaan rose to a position in the Dutch Parliament. I, on the other hand, started businesses, the first of which succeeded mightily, and subsequent enterprises were so-so. (The current one will knock a home run, some day, then I’ll build a better one…something I like even more.)

Cutting to the chase, Ayaan ultimately renounced her Muslim faith, as I renounced my Christian one (bolt of lightning, anyone?). Neither of us is saying we gave up all that we believe or relinquished all of our practices. It just can no longer be said of us that we want to be “lumped together” with the most visible, evidently newsworthy, patrons of these religions: the extremists.

We’re both embarrassed by the same recognition: that “holy” people torture those they deem unholy, with no factual basis for the designation. In my tradition, the saying is “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Unfortunately, that translates to “remind the sinner, at each encounter, that you disapprove of this unholy behavior.” Hardly seems loving! (Never feels loving…)

If you’ve ever questioned your beliefs, changed your perspective, or just wondered whether all Islam is as extreme as the extremists who violated the United States, then click this link to my affiliation with Amazon to order and read Infidel.

I dare you!

__________

I read this in two days. It is a “cannot put it down” account of a young woman’s journey from birthright to thoughtful contemplation and even criticism. You will be forever changed after reading Infidel

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Happy Birthday Mother

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Lin Ennis

It hasn’t been a year since you moved on, but the annual celebration of you and who you were has come and gone. I thought about you the entire week of your birthday.

I was too busy to blog you a birthday card. Growing up as I did poor – and as you did dirt poor – I focused my will and skill on making a living, scratching, as your papa did out of the ground oil. It was out of the Internet for me, the lugubrious challenge of drawing attention amidst spams, shams and scams.

I missed your birthday, the same way I missed weddings and funerals, because I didn’t believe they were important enough to offset the cost of travel. After all, you were born in a tent with a dirt floor. Why should I hope for linoleum or cheap carpet, and the ability to cover an extra $350 for a plane ticket? My business didn’t cover expenses during the week of your birthday.

Always short of money yourself, you taught me at 10 and my brother at 11 to say, “No, she’s not here right now; No, I don’t know when she’ll be back.” I didn’t realize until this very moment the truth of the latter part of that statement. We never knew when you would be back, even if you were there.

We managed on our own during your drug overdose, or suicide attempt, when we were 3 and 4. Yes, you were tired, raising kids on your own and working dime-a-dance for the soldiers just to buy us milk and a little oatmeal.

When you didn’t wake up for 2-3 days, and a stranger pounded at our door…a stranger we knew we were not supposed to talk to…my life disappeared. The next thing I knew I was four and living in East Texas with Mrs. Tackett and my brother. Probably a social services placement, which I didn’t realize until a psychologist mentioned it a couple years ago.

You had a way of landing on your feet. I don’t know how you did it. Sheer willpower I think, because I have a strong will, too, and I don’t know how else you could have done it. Maybe with your brilliant intellect and expert verbal virtuosity (though you confessed in your seventies you never learned how the game of life was to be played).

I do tasks instead of caring for people just like you did. And I push through and do whatever needs to get done, just like you did, whether or not it destroys part of my body, or whether or not there’s a man around to help. If one needs a man, you showed me over and over, just flirt with one to get that cabinet moved or that room added on.

You were a woman of steel and velvet. You died like you lived: scared, but strong. Pushing ahead to do what you believed had to be done. You checked out when you thought it was time. April Fools Day, 2009.

I am stronger because of you.

In memory of Virginia Dawn Akerman Ennis, November 3, 1926-April 1, 2009.

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Feckless

Posted on October 10, 2009 by Lin Ennis

Songs get stuck in our heads…possibly worse yet, a single phrase or two of a song. (I’m forcing myself to resist giving examples we can all relate to, such as a song from Disneyland that is so poignant, it’s nearly impossible to stop singing for days, especially if those lovely grandchildren are still piping on about multiculturalism and the size of the world.)

feckless...without power or effectivenessSimilarly, a word can squirm and fidget its way to the surface, demanding to be used. I’m in just such a verbal insistence experience right now. It began last Thursday.

Feckless.

I wanted to say the word feckless. Say it out loud. Use it in a sentence. I wasn’t certain I could define it or use it correctly, but I had to say it. Was my subconscious reaching back to a word not heard or used for decades but that perfectly described my concurrent experience? Or was feckless a random syllabic urge?

I had the sickening feeling it referred to a relationship…fairly new, not romantic, but a new person in my circle.

Feckless is a fun word to say. Feckless. Less familiar than reckless. More common than neckless…after all, how many folks do you know with no neck?

A shaman sat in our kiva five years ago and proclaimed FEEeee a fun word to say. He got it from his grandson. FEEEEE, feeeeee. (Maybe more fun if you’re a lawyer or any professional who charges by the hour.)

Now that I’ve taken the opportunity to say feckless, feckless, feckless…should I trust the emergence of this semi-mysterious word as a warning to remove the ineffectual person from my close associates…or was that a comment on only the day; thus, days to come will be much better?

That remains to be seen. The individual may emerge speckless. Or may surpass the value of my necklace. Meanwhile it would be reckless of me to break the association completely checkless.

So I will check.

Wouldn’t if be cool if one could feck?

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The Parental “Conversation”

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Lin Ennis

This seems to be the year for parent-issues. Last weekend we drove to Los Angeles to celebrate a parental 70th anniversary–my in-laws’. Also on the agenda was discussing with them their opportunity to make a decision to move into an independent living apartment before the need to move into assisted living is forced upon them.

No matter that the anniversary party was supposed to be festive, because as soon as their third-born blasted in and discovered lunch wouldn’t be for two hours, 90 minutes at best, not a shred of peace remained.

Mom said, “I love it when you come, but I love it more when you leave.”

In other words, there was no reason not to tackle the difficult conversation we’d rehearsed. Yes, on the way to their house, Ellen and I bought a super-sized courage-producing beverage to pass back and forth as we role-played possible scenarios while stopped next to a park a few blocks away. Feeling we had several approaches at-the-ready by the time the bottle was empty, we arrived with calm confidence that lasted all the way into the kitchen.

We set up a long table in the living room, with table cloth, plates, plastic ware and paper cups all in silver. It was the loveliest 100% disposable layout I’d ever seen. The deli tray and salads were carried in and the party was joined. Somewhere between my getting but half of the only vegetarian sandwich on the party platter and later sitting on my hotel bed eating pistachios, I suppose “the conversation” took place. It was a blur from the moment we sat down at the table till it was over. Till now, actually.

My older brother-in-law provided soft drinks whose meaning was immediately clear around the table–too soft to support ordinary family dynamics, let alone talk of nursing homes and dying. Ellen retrieved a half jug of wine from the cooler in our car. Salads were passed. Comments were made about roast beef. My younger brother-in-law took his family home as soon as the plates were cleared.

The much-planned-for family photo was not taken. We’d hauled the tripod 500 miles for nothing. In fact, no pictures were taken that included Dad except for the back of his head. The never-still children were blurry. Mom looked angry. Or was she exhausted by our presence? (Of course, there’s never a photo record that I make any of these family trips, since I’m usually behind the camera!)

Professional colleagues I lunched with yesterday confessed to the same strains on their parental relationships. We’re all having “the conversation.” One’s mother said, “I want you to move back to New Jersey so you can take care of me.” He asked us, “What am I supposed to do, wipe her butt?” Another confessed the only way she’d gotten her mother to put the house on the market was to tell her, “When you’re sitting there in diapers, I’m not coming over to change them!”

It’s been stressful over the last few months while researching options the parents asked us to help with to figure out ways to engage in dialogue once Mom flip-flopped and said she wasn’t leaving her house. She declared that the end of the conversation we’re continuing at the risk of her affection and her faith in our affections. We know Mom will leave the house, one way or the other, as will Dad. We’d prefer they walk out together.

Meanwhile, they’ll be here in a week, and we’ve arranged lunch at an independent living complex.

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A New Wrinkle I Can Live With

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Lin Ennis

Do you notice physical changes in yourself that are associated with age like I do? For example, do you remember finding your first gray hair? Noticing when your smile first seemed enclosed in parentheses?

I always thought it would be cool to record the changes. There are baby books. Why not aging-people books?

This week I had several snapshots taken so I could send off a head shot to promote an appearance in a couple weeks on how to slash your mortgage interest in half by changing the way you pay.

The photo on this page didn’t make the promo cut, but if you look closely to your left of my excessively fleshy grin, you may see what made me happy. Or rather a sign I am happy. See the leftmost wrinkle that doesn’t curve like its smiling relatives? It has its own crinkle. I’m calling it a precursor to a dimple. (Why do dimples make their bearers look happier than the rest of us schmucks?)

I like to think that I am happier than I used to be. I want to believe that maturity, centeredness and gratitude make one happy. And the best part about it is, all these traits are choices.

It seems easier for most people to be critical–displeased with their own shortcomings and disgruntled with everyone else’s. That must be the path of least resistance, because few people seem truly happy most of the time. (Why not?)

We know smiling puts people at ease, improves relationships and increases sales. It can relax the smiler as well as others.

It may not be possible to grow a full-fledged dimple by grinning, but there are other advantages of trying. I discovered – and tested – smiling during a workout increases my endurance. I can squeeze out a few more reps by forcing the corners of my mouth outward.

According to Dr. William of Fry of Standford University, smiling stimulates the human brain to release chemicals which inhibit infection and lessen pain. from The Women Warriors

If smiling not only makes me and everyone around me feel better, but also lessens pain and enhances productivity, that’s a wrinkle I can live with!

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Chasing the Dragon

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Lin Ennis

There is (or was) a mysterious objet de’ art in our family. We call it “The Dragon.”

My grandfather, an ornamental iron worker after blacksmithing no longer supported a wife and five children in the early 1900’s, made The Dragon for my grandmother, just before they separated.

The first time I saw The Dragon – in the late 60’s – Grandpa (Arnold George Akerman) was already gone. But from the moment he died to the present, The Dragon has seduced its children and slain its admirers.

The simple story was that Grandpa made this for Grandmother (nee Mary Zula Graham, who refused to be called ‘Grandma’) for her Nasturtiums. I imagine she buried nasturtium seeds in soil in the dark orange bowl of this wrought-iron stand.

Nasturtiums tolerate heat and bright sunlight, and could do well in their Texas Hill Country locale. (There may have been more heat than light in the marriage and divorce of the A-to-Z Akermans [Arnold and Zula], times two in case the first time was a fluke.)

Mother brought The Dragon home, though she insisted the only thing she took from her father’s house was his Bible, which Grandpa’s second wife, Juanita, insisted Mother have. Uncle Dale drove down from Oregon with a Pickup Truck, prepared to take away as many tools as possible from Grandpa’s workshop.

Aunt Hazel, who lived in the same town with Grandpa and Juanita, deserved her due for all the care she’d provided over the ages.

All five adult children stood on the front lawn, screaming epithets toward one another, throwing $20 bills to pay off this or that debt – gas for the drive from Oregon – and crying to extricate themselves from the tangle of the interlocked offspring of a distant father.

For the second and third generations, it was all about nasturtiums. Edible, both the flowers and the leaves. Or, as I like to call these beasts, oedipal.

Isn’t it all about the fathers and the children, unto the third and fourth generations?

So why do all of us, to a person, as the grandchildren of this blacky-turned-ornamentalist, grow in our gardens nasturtiums?

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TSA – the Most Hated Part of Freedom to Travel

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Lin Ennis

Land of the free and home of the brave feels more like land of the hassled and home of the knave if you travel anywhere in the United states by air.

Meanwhile, we all have stories of confiscated bottles of water (even a sealed can of tonic water), cosmetics, nail files, cuticle scissors, shampoo, shaving cream, hairspray and so forth. This blog isn’t long enough to list everything we millions of US fliers have lost. (Ironically, right after 9/11, a TV news report ran a segment on how to slit someone’s throat with a credit card or the seat pocket safety card. I can see how it would be problematic for airlines to prevent carrying credit cards, so that notion gets no press!)

I don’t even like to stand barefoot in a public place like an airport security line!

Krystian Zimerman in 2004.
Photo by S. L. Judd

The worst case of confiscation I’ve heard of came through on National Public Radio this week; although, it occurred shortly after 9/11/2001. Krystian Zimerman, the great Polish concert pianist, always took his own Steinway grand piano with him for concerts. It was confiscated by customs officials at New York’s JFK airport, who thought the glue smelled funny. Ostensibly, like bomb-making materials.

They destroyed the $200,000 instrument.

Zimerman continued to travel and give concerts (a better person than I!), transporting only the mechanical insides of his piano and installing them in a local Steinway shell. In 2006, he tried again to travel with his whole piano, only to have it held up in customs for five days, thus disrupting his concert schedule.

What can one even say about this ignominy?

But do you feel safer?

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