Birthday

Yesterday was my younger brother’s birthday.  We’re all pretty good about keeping in touch, and making birthday calls within 24 hours of the day.  This year I sent him a few things from our mutual childhood.  A few photos, newspaper clippings from the tornado were in, a tattered New Testament Bible our Mother had when she was in the Navy during WWII.  Going through the memories, in the context of his birthday brought back the memory of how I found out a new baby was coming.

I was five years old and in kindergarten, definitely too young to have noticed anything about Mama’s increasing weight or fashion statements.  One morning when I got up and went downstairs for breakfast, I saw a bunch of little clothes and things on the spare bed.  I started looking at them and Mama came in and explained that they were gifts she had gotten the night before from friends because there was going to be a new baby coming to our house.

I was really excited.  The little clothes and blankets were so soft and pretty, I remember looking and touching them and wondering about what it would be like to have a baby wearing and using all those wonderful things. 

“Does Daddy know about this?” I remember asking.  “No, I don’t think he does," she answered. 

“Then can I tell him?”  I waited expectantly for her reply. 

“Yes, I think that would be nice.”  It was what I wanted to hear.  “But you have to go to school first.”

I remember nothing about that day in school, but the moment I got home I ran into the spare bedroom and looked at each of the little gifts separately.  I then arranged them as neatly as I could all around the edges of the bed so they looked like a store display.  I patted and fluffed and straightened until I felt they were perfect.  Then I closed the doors to the bedroom and waited for Daddy to come home.

I knew it was nearly time, because I could smell the coffee perking on the stove.  They always sat down for coffee the minute he got home, but this time, I knew he had to wait.  I met him at the door and grabbed his hand and told him I had a surprise for him.

We got to the bedroom and I made him close his eyes, opened the door and led him in.  When he was standing at the foot of the bed with the wonderful baby things so carefully arranged by my toddler fingers, I said, "Open your eyes!"  As he looked in wonder at the display I shouted, “We’re going to have a baby!”

He did a double take of surprise and then just beamed at me.  He must have said something to the effect that it was wonderful, and I could see that he was excited that a baby was coming.  I led him back to the kitchen table so he and Mama could have their coffee, and I went back to play with the little clothes some more.

Neither one of them ever said anything to let me know that I actually wasn’t the one to break the good news about the baby to Daddy.  Not ever.  Eventually I realized that of course he had known, but I have always loved them both a little more for giving me those moments of pride and excitement, and playing along so completely.

What’s Zen got to do with it?  This experience is about love, and the special moments that help define us and those we love.  Even after so many years, I can still feel that joy and excitement, and be glad that “we” had that baby.

Happy Birthday, "little" brother! 

Transitions

Sunset

It’s been a year of transitions, large and small.  The first one was my transition from full-time worker to unemployed and then to budding consultant.  Things in that third realm are moving slowly-but-surely in the direction I want them to go, so perhaps that role is not only one of the transitions, but a continuation of my hopefully ongoing evolution.

The most dramatic example of life transitions was the near juxtaposition of the passing of my oldest relative, Uncle Paul who died at the age of 99 and the advent of the newest relative, my great niece Amelia June, born just a few weeks later. 

When I think of what transitions and transformations my Uncle Paul saw in his 99 years, and project what possible changes little Mia will see in her lifetime I am both awed and excited and maybe just a little frightened.

He lived through two world wars and countless armed conflicts, some named wars others less honest in their descriptions.  He saw diseases that uniformly killed conquered.  He saw polio, diphtheria even some cancers go from fatal to curable, to preventable.

Mia will grow up learning to read on a computer.  She may never hear the word polio.  She’ll take her first plane ride before she’s a year old, and get to know her grandparents as much through Facetime as she will through face-to-face time.   I won’t even try to project the changes she will see.  The only certainty is that changes there will be and someday she will see look back in wonder at those changes.

What’s Zen got to do with this?  A key tenant of Zen is that everything changes.  It’s easy to see that concept as helpful when times are bad, but good times change as well, don’t they?  It’s not so great, in the middle of something really good, to think that someday that will pass and there will be bad times.  For me the key lesson in this is to focus on the present moment.  Ultimately, that's all there is anyway.  

If I could wish anything for my newest little niece, her brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and of course parents, it would be that she will be present in each moment of her life, celebrating to good times and learning from the bad. 

One of my favorite quotes, it’s been around so I’m not sure where it came from originally, but I heard it from Carolyn Myss is:

“Yesterday is History, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that’s why we call it the ‘Present.’”    I wish you all the joy of this precious present.    J

Sunrise

Christmas in July

I’ve always had a thing about Christmas.  Not exactly the religious part, although that was certainly a part of my early upbringing.  It’s more that the season can bring out good things in people that don’t always emerge on regular days.

Not surprisingly, I even collect books about Christmas.  I may have one of the most extensive collections of books about Christmas this side of the North Pole.  I’m not sure how many, somehow counting them seems too business-like, but I have nearly three-quarters of a four story bookshelf that I had as a child filled with books with the holiday theme. 

This is just the beginning...

I won’t deconstruct this love of Christmas, but maybe telling you a little bit about some of the books will be enlightening.  Some stories tell about an unexpected detour to a different holiday than the character planned.  Getting snowbound before the final destination is a favorite of many writers.

There are also those stories where an animal is involved.  A dog or cat, or in one story a donkey needs help from a human to find its way home.  Or in others, a special animal might do the same service for a human.

In many stories there is an emotional or behavioral change on the part of the main character, a la Scrooge.  It's good to be reminded that we can learn and grow and become better.

Then there's simply the idea of people being around family, giving and receiving gifts, or just being loving and positive.  I must admit that I’m a sucker for happy endings, and I’ve never found a story involving Christmas that had anything other than a happy ending. 

So I will continue to search new and used book stores, Goodwill, the library’s sale area for any book that even hints at a Christmas theme.  Even if the story is a bit simplistic or even hackneyed, I know I will find elements that meet my need to enter the Christmas season even, maybe especially, in July.

By the way...We keep our stockings hung up all year.  We never know when something will show up in one of them.  

What’s Zen got to do with it?  What you focus on becomes larger in your experience.  So I have chosen on some of the very hottest days of the summer to concentrate on my favorite holiday.

If you are a someone who likes the positive feeling of Christmas, regardless of your spiritual tradition, why not hang a stocking up now and see what happens?  In the immortal words of that Zen Master, Auntie Mame, perhaps you, too "...need a little Christmas, right this very minute!”  There's a good chance you'll feel happier and maybe even a little cooler.   It sure worked for me!

A New View

Sunrise on the salt marsh.

As I typed in the title of this, I had one idea.  But a couple of minutes later I realized that it isn’t the sunrise on the Eastern Shore of Virginia that I wanted to write about.

It hit me as I went into the kitchen of a home I hadn’t been in until yesterday, making coffee with a pot I had never seen.   It became even clearer as I took a piece of lemon pound cake as my morning meal.  Like my attitude about chocolate chip cookies, (they're not just for breakfast anymore,) this morning just like I do at home, that piece of cake will be breakfast and I’ll enjoy it.  The fact is, with all of the strange things I mentioned there is something else surrounding me that I have been blessed to recognize in a number of different places all of my life.  It’s that feeling of “home.” 

Here I am in a new place, with over a dozen people spread out over two houses at this moment, only five of whom I knew before yesterday, yet I feel totally at home.  Where am I and why do I feel so comfortable and connected? 

It’s a story that started two-dozen years ago, but one that is as old as friendship.  In this story, one woman is the keystone.  But I hope and believe that anyone reading this will be able to identify someone similar who has touched his or her life.

Mary Copes came into my life those two-dozen years ago as an angel’s helper.  I was between houses, living away from Mitch only because we had sold our house in Stone Mountain and weren’t able to move into our new place in Atlanta for a couple of months.  Mitch sneaked our two cats into his “crash pad” in Charlotte and I needed a place to stay while we waited to close on the new house. 

I had been acquainted with Mary Copes since starting the Atlanta job.  She was an executive assistant in the main office of the organization, and I would have known her for that reason alone, as did everyone else.  But it was her unwavering aura of friendliness and patience that made her stand out.  It also led to me having the courage when someone suggested it, to ask her if I might be able to stay with her while I was between homes.  And that was where our relationship moved from being cordial acquaintances to a beyond life-long friendship.

We sat down over coffee, for the first of literally hundreds of times, and she invited me to stay in her basement bedroom until Mitch and I had our place together.  That was her way…she took in strays.

When I moved in, I found to my surprise that also staying in this “safe house” was her ex husband.  At first I was taken aback.  But she was matter-of-fact in explaining that his new place wasn’t ready for him to move in, and like me, he needed a temporary place to stay, too. 

“No matter what else has happened, he’s the father of my children” she told me, to explain his presence.   And as I got to know her, it did.  That was her way, graceful and generous always.  I got to know and appreciate him, and before he moved out, we had many enjoyable dinners at his favorite buffet restaurant.  To this day, I can’t pass that brand without thinking of those days, and how I came to see that the end of a marriage didn’t need to be the end of civility and compassion.

There are literally hundreds of stories that bring me to today here at the Eastern Shore.  Most of the memories are wonderful, but the reason I am here is to honor her life, a life that was tragically cut short by a driver who lost control and crossed the median into oncoming traffic.  In a moment, her life was ended and many lives were changed forever. 

I can still remember and very much appreciate the call about the accident from her granddaughter.  While so difficult for me to hear, how much more difficult it was for Ashley to have to say the words, “...she didn’t make it.” 

 Because her passing was so sudden, and coupled with the very serious injuries of her husband, there wasn’t a public memorial.   I heard from Ashley (who by the way has turned into the extraordinary woman her grandmother had envisioned she would become) that in July they were going to sprinkle some of her ashes in the water at the Eastern Shore.  I asked if the family would let me attend.  She asked her mom and her aunt, whom I have known through all these years and thankfully they said yes. 

My GPS deserted me without a house in sight, but with my call for help, the girls hopped in their car to come and find me.  Her son, whom I knew of for years, but had never met, welcomed me with a hug, as open and warm as his sisters had been.  And, also special, when I got into the house I received a big hug from a burly, teddy bear of a young man I would never have recognized as the toddler I had played with on the floor of his grandmother’s house so many years ago.

The granddaughter I had watched grow up in photos and stories, a new daughter-in-law, and the step grandson, who she would most certainly have loved as her own, also welcomed this stranger that was me into the family with barely a ripple. 

So here I am at their vacation home rental at the Eastern Shore of Virginia, a welcomed member of the family.  That’s one of the things I have been given the opportunity to see…that her ability to welcome people into her home and into her heart was passed on to her children.  Immediately I felt I belonged, in this place, at this time, with these people.   

So my new view is not of the marshland of the shore at sunrise, as beautiful as this setting is.  My new view is that family extends beyond birth and blood.  I know that my family has been expanded, even at a time when I am formally acknowledging the loss of the physical presence of the special woman who is the loving energy that connects us all.

A dolphin pod, not seen before by anyone in the family, appeared just as we prepared to spread her ashes on the sea she loved.

I will forever be grateful that Mary Copes was in my life, and that in spite of, or perhaps as a compensation for her passing, she has given me a wonderful gift.  It’s the gift of a new branch grafted on to my family tree.  

I can remember the last words we said to each other, just days before she died.  “Copes, I love you bunches!” I told her.

“I love you too.”  She’d replied.  And now, because  of her, I continue to feel that that love through her family. 

Sunset.  The ebb and flow of life continues.

What’s Zen got to do with this?  Zen teaches that nothing is permanent.  We will have times of suffering.  It also teaches that when we are given this “precious human life” we have the ability to make a positive difference.  The precious human life that was my friend, Mary Copes, indeed made a difference. 

May I live up to her example.