I’m reading a great book. Inventing the Rest of Our Lives – Women in Second Adulthood by Suzanne Braun Levine is like a guidebook for our midlife journey. [Read more…]
You Have the Power. You Just Don’t Know It.
I had a rough childhood, with a dad who was overwhelmed with work and financial stress, and a mother overwhelmed with him and four small children. How can I say this gently? Dad was violent. I grew up angry, and even into my late forties I had nightmares about punching him in the face. I’d wake up crying at the futility of it, and so pissed off I wanted to break something.
Around the time I turned fifty, I wrote him a letter saying his brutality and scorched-earth behavior was wrong, that he hurt us terribly and the least he could do now is apologize.
A great silence emanated from his part of town. Three weeks later, my sister told me he was pouting. He assumed I had severed ties, so he would sever ties longer. Yeah, of course he would interpret it that way. He always had to win every argument. So I called him on some business pretext and we talked politely, as if nothing had happened. Then we said goodbye and hung up.
The phone rang.
Him: “I want you to know I got your letter.”
Me, heart pounding: “Okay.”
Him: “And I want you to know I’m not offended.”
Me: (biting back astonishment, which corroded to mirth, which died in bitterness on my tongue). “Great.”
Him: “I’m sorry you had to carry that around all these years.”
Me: “Thank you.”
The End
The nightmares vanished. Our relationship improved overnight. I felt sorry for him, instead of hating him. For the next seven or eight years, until he died suddenly of a stroke in 2008, I was able to love him like a regular dad, to appreciate all the good stuff he did for us. All it took was that one sentence.
Now here’s the quirky thing: a few years later, I wondered, what if I misinterpreted his apology? This man NEVER apologized. What if I heard what I wanted to hear? What if he didn’t mean it the way I took it? What if he really meant he was sorry I was so stupid as to let a little thing like a broken eardrum or bloody nose bother me? Because that would have more been in character.
I’ll never know, so I chose to believe the first interpretation. And that’s what I’m thinking about today, a few days before what would have been my dad’s birthday: sometimes the prison in which we live is self-constructed.
The implications are staggering.
I just finished reading a memoir about a woman who had a rough childhood. Adopted as a toddler by inadequate parents, she was poorly nurtured and emotionally abandoned – and having survived that, she became an adult who was forever doomed to seeing every development in her life through that filter of rejection, of being unloved. Then, in her early sixties, she had an epiphany: she realized her parents had done the best they could, even though they should never have been given a child to raise. This caused her to rethink everything. She wasn’t trapped anymore. My friend was much happier from that point forward, but what a terrible waste.
In her case and in mine, our parents relinquished some information late in life, thereby freeing us. You can accurately say this wasn’t within our control. But what if either one of us had made up some excuse of our own and freed ourselves sooner? I could have told myself Dad was sorry and moved on. She could have done the same. Instead we waited, seething (in my case) and pathetic (in hers).
To this day I don’t know if I read Dad correctly, but I’m free. I should have done it thirty years earlier. Freedom was within my power to achieve, but I didn’t realize it.
In next Friday’s post, I’ll give you another example of self-entrapment, in this case how older people limit themselves.
(If my words seem less polished than usual, or if you notice any typos, I apologize, but the baby’s waking up and he doesn’t permit multitasking! Stay-at-home moms, I feel ya.)
Just for Fun: The Goddess in You
I need a break. How about you? No more heavy thinking. Let’s let our minds drift. Let’s get above the clouds.
Let’s talk about goddesses.
I never gave them much thought, but a friend who is a retired psychologist suggested I take a look at Goddesses in Older Women by Jean Shinoda Bolen to understand female archetypes as an aid to my writing. At first I wasn’t sure. Goddesses aren’t my thing. I tend to lump them in with divas.
Then I read the book and found out that, for a gal who’s always seeking balance in her life, the goddesses could be a big help and a lot of fun.
Different goddesses might be seen to represent different aspects of your personality.
- Metis: wisdom combined with expertise
- Sophia: intuitive wisdom
- Hestia: hearth and home
- Hecate: the wisdom of old age and courage when facing a crossroads
- Baubo: humor and laughter
- Athena: the masculine, business-minded side of you
I like Athena. She’s the strategist, the brainy warrior.
Athena was born as a fully-grown woman in golden armor, carrying a spear, and she announced her arrival with a mighty war cry. Mount Olympus shook when her feet hit the ground. Isn’t that a great mental image? If I have to do something that requires all my courage, I channel my inner Athena.
I don’t see the goddesses as deities perched in the heavens. Rather, they put a face on aspects of my personality, encouraging me to utilize all my strengths, and not be narrow. For example, if I need to turn off the computer and pay some attention to my family, that’s a nudge from Hestia, goddess of the hearth-fire. Hecate gives me wisdom and courage as I face the challenges of my age, and Baubo inspires dark humor as a friend and I grieve over a diagnosis.
We know about the male gods, like Thor and Zeus, but what do we know about the female dieties? A lot of what we hear is bad, like Medusa with the snakes writhing around her head. Most of the goddesses were originally seen as powerful forces for good, but they were demoted when ancient lands were conquered and dominated by patriarchal sects. For example, Hecate was the goddess of midlife, for people at a crossroads, having to make a big decision. But over time, Hecate was portrayed as a hag or a witch who resides in the underworld.
Nice going, fellas.
One of the most important goddesses was Sophia, who represented wisdom. Michelangelo thought enough of her to paint her right next to God, held close. Sophia was said to have given moral support while God created the universe. According to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Sophia spoke these words as she watched Him work.
The Lord created me at the beginning of his works, before all else that he made, long ago. Alone, I was fashioned in times long past, at the beginning, long before earth itself. When there was yet no ocean I was born, no springs brimming with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, before he made the earth with its fields…When he set the heavens in their place I was there, when he girdled the ocean with the horizon, when he fixed the canopy of clouds overhead and set the springs of ocean firm in their place, when he prescribed its limits for the sea and knit together earth’s foundations. Then I was at his side each day, like a master workman, I was his darling and delight, rejoicing with him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in mankind.
Isn’t it nice to stop a minute and revel in that which is purely spiritual, artful, inspiration, or beautiful? Thanks again to Dolores for this respite.
Backstabbing Women, Part 1
People like to say bad things about women competing with each other, and stabbing each other in the back. Every fiber in my being resists these petty stereotypes.
But.
Nora Ephron Left Us Sleepless
Like you, I was struck by the death of Nora Ephron. I kept saying to Bill, “I can’t believe it.” Tears surprised me.
Nora spoke to me through her books (Her last one, I Remember Nothing, is reviewed in the left sidebar.) She made me laugh, and I passed her books around to my friends. Like you, I felt as if she and I were friends. I can’t believe such a vibrant, creative, insightful, witty, valuable life is gone.
And yet.
I’m unhappy now, made so by feelings of disagreement with my old friend. As I reread I Feel Bad About My Neck, I was struck by the negativity in her words. Here are some examples:
Every so often I read a book about age, and whoever’s writing it says it’s great to be old. It’s great to be wise and sage and mellow: it’s great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can’t stand people who say things like this.
That would be me. Here’s another:
Sometimes I go out to lunch with my girlfriends — I got that far into the sentence and caught myself. I suppose I mean my women friends. We are no longer girls and have not been girls for forty years.
Sigh. What a worldview. Lastly:
But the honest truth is that it’s sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere–friends dying and battling illness. A miasma of melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact that your life, however happy and successful, has been full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big ones. There are dreams that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that will never quite be realized. There are, in short, regrets.
I Feel Bad About My Neck was published in 2008. We now know that Nora was suffering from leukemia at the time, and I’m flattened by the fact that she could write (at all), write things that were funny, and keep her illness a secret while ensuring that her show went on. What a champ.
But a certain part of me wants to – needs to – live in denial of mortality, so for my mental health, I’m going to keep referring to myself and my friends as girls, or even the hick-ish gals. I’m not “full of regrets” even though I’ve experienced (and caused) great pain in my life. I respect the pain, but I need to sublimate it and move forward with anticipation and excitement.
Nora, I’ll never be half the person you were. Rest in peace, girl.
Wok This Way
Tony Bourdain was recently in Penang, Malaysia enjoying street fare with a guide. The guide, a woman, looked to be around late 40s, early 50s. She seemed very wise, with a fun sense of humor. They watched a street vendor cooking a blazing stirfry in a time-seasoned wok. The guide said these woks are heirlooms, very prized and highly valued. They can be over a century old and are handed down from family member to family member.
They’re prized because they’re old. The new ones don’t cook the same. They can’t take the heat. You have to cook more carefully with a new one because if left unsupervised it will burn the meal. On the other hand, the old ones cook evenly and they tend to caramelize the food, adding their own extra layer of flavor.
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