Now, From Antiquity — a memoir debut, #amreading #ammeditating

My colleague Sandy read this debut of my memoir Now, from Antiquity — tracing my father’s line back to forever.  This reading was part of a larger service on veterans at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. You can the excerpt on YouTube or read the excerpt pasted below that.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l99Mgj_yGhs?start=1&w=560&

My father was a veteran. He was in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, and since he was blind in one eye avoided being in direct combat.  I grew up seeing old black and white photographs of my father – a broad shouldered young man with curly blond hair – smiling into the camera when he was stationed in New Guinea and hearing my mother’s anxious tone telling me that he crossed the Pacific in an un-escorted ship. Two years ago, on May 7^th, 2017, when he was ninety-eight, he passed away. When my father died, it was like a library burned down – his life and wisdom contained that much history.

A year later — thanks to our resident realtor, Chrissie Erickson – I sold the home I grew up in.  His death and the sale of the house prompted to write a memoir titled: Now, From Antiquity – tracing my father’s line back to forever.  For today’s service, I am going to read a part of the memoir where I meditate on the flag he was buried with.

I was always proud of my father, but from an early age I did not trust the American flag. This meditation was written when I began to examine my feelings toward the flag.

There is nothing in the history of the American flag – from Betsy Ross onward – that makes me detest the American flag. It was when I was travelling in Greece – about 20 years ago — that I really appreciated being from a country where women could be independent.

My thinking leads me to the conclusion that I don’t really detest the flag. I am enraged by what it has come to stand for. What angers me is nationalism and the idea that I can only salute one flag. What angers me is when one flag is said to be more important than another. In the eyes of some, I might be described as un-American. But the fact is that the flag represents me too. I’m just skeptical and careful about whom I pledge allegiance to.

Every American flag does not evoke feelings of anger in me. One flag also evokes great sadness.  My father was a veteran of World War II. His cremated remains – as he wished – were installed in a veteran’s cemetery and members of the military came and did a flag ceremony for him. A very dignified young military man presented me with the flag after he had folded it.  When I got up to give my tear-filled eulogy, I handed the flag to my partner who doesn’t cry easily. It is the image of Barbara hugging that triangular folded flag and crying that I think of most when I recall that day.

Barbara bought me a triangular case – with a wooden back and sides and glass front — to keep the flag in. The flag in its case sits in my home office bookshelf. For an experiment, I brought the flag in the case out of the bookshelf and put it close to me when I do my morning meditation. The Buddhist teacher on YouTube talked about the value of “softening” toward the thing that causes you to feel aggression.

I sat in front of the flag and meditated with my eyes closed. The first thing that I noticed when I opened my eyes is the American flag from my father’s service. It is folded into a triangle in its wooden case with its white stars displayed on a navy background. On closer inspection, I saw that the white stars are embroidered and raised. They rest on a woven navy background behind them. There are six stars displayed. Two are in the top row and four are in the bottom row. Of the fifty stars all together (each one representing a state), these are represented in their blue triangle of night sky.  I see now that the stars are beautiful, brilliant, and limitless. They represent what is known as “the wild mind” in Buddhism, the vastness of what is possible. I felt myself soaring between them in the midnight sky, reaching new heights and then coming back to myself as in meditation I breathed in and out and wished this kind of freedom and compassion for all who encounter the stars of the flag.

I breathed in and out, doing the tonglen “taking and receiving” practice of Buddhism. I breathed in my own feelings of hostility toward the American flag. I breathed out feelings of compassion for myself. Then I breathed in any fear or hostility that might be stirred up in others by the sight of the flag. Then I breathed in fear and breathed out compassion for all who feel compelled to armor themselves with the American flag.

I exhaled the vastness of the white stars in the night sky. I exhaled my journey through the stars and into the higher realms that they inhabit. I exhaled joy. Then I inhaled again, wishing this feeling for everyone who encounters the flag.

Namaste

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

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A Memorial Day memory — Albert Mason

“When my father died, it felt like a library burnt down.”

–Laurie Anderson

My father, Albert Mason, Jr., died on May 7, 2017. He was ninety-eight years old.  He was born on March 28^th, 1919. There is much to be said of his life which lasted nearly a century.   A decorated veteran of the US Armed Forces (Army/Air Force), he served in World War II where he unloaded the dead and wounded off of helicopters.

H e was already legally blind in one eye – a surgery to correct his cross eyed condition blinded him at the age of eight. (As my mother always said, the military at that time would take anyone who could hold a rifle.)

He also (my mother told me with a shudder decades ago) was a passenger (as a soldier) on an unescorted ship in Japanese territory.  I remember the photographs of him as a young man serving in the armed forces in Guam and the Philippines.

After coming home from WWII, he married my mother.  They were both twenty-five years old.

After a stint as a roofer’s assistant and a plumber’s assistant, he took a job at Rohm and Haas (since bought by a different company), he worked shift work his entire career – more than thirty years – in the boiler room at the plant. (My mother told me to say he was a ‘stationary engineer.’)

He was one of the Great Generation and one of the lucky ones.  He got a union job when unions were still in vogue and was able to support his family. A few years ago, a childhood friend of mine (really a friend in adolescence) Alec Klatchko, read my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters and remarked that the life I led was made possible by having a stable and secure father.

I acknowledged that this was true – but it really hit me after his death.  Even though he was ninety-eight, he was mostly independent and wanted to live a few years longer.  He told me this in the hospital on his where he went the third time that he was having problems breathing.  He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, a condition that people can live with – at least for a while.

I lobbied for him to go to a physical rehabilitation home which is where the hospital discharged him to.  There he started to get better. He was able to walk with the help of a walker and he did well in his physical therapy sessions. He was a lifelong walker (except in recent years when his eyesight worsened drastically due to glaucoma and he was afraid of falling) and he was very strong.  But he lost his ability to swallow in the rehabilitation home – and was losing weight drastically.

My partner (who is my rock and who is remarkably like my father) and I were with him on the Saturday of May sixth. (He loved Barbara like another daughter.)  He was rushed to a nearby hospital (St. Mary’s) late that night and died Sunday afternoon.  I went to the hospital that morning. Before his death, he told me he was not in pain. He was very emphatic about this. After he passed, the house doctor came in and told me that when he “went to heaven” he was not in any pain.

I was raised secular. My father was an agnostic, but before I was born he was a lay reader in his church (a branch of Protestant-ism).  I always considered my secular upbringing a gift, even in recent years when I have become a Unitarian Universalist and a lay minister.

My father’s death hit me like a ton of bricks.  I just turned fifty-eight years old and that’s a lot of time to have had my father. He was a good father and a good man. The goodness in me was born from the goodness in him.

One way I’ve been coping is to keep a list of the memories of my father – things both my father and mother told me and things that I remember. Like my father and mother, I am a walker.  I am also strong.  According to my partner, I am obsessive as my father – except about different things. I attribute my success as a writer to this streak of stubbornness and obsessiveness that I inherited from my father.  (Sometimes it’s important to persevere and not to take no for an answer.)

Also to heal from this loss, I’ve been laying on the floor doing yoga and at the same time listening to Buddhist videos on YouTube.  Tich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, was very helpful in talking about life and the afterlife.  He talked about the life of a cloud – how it doesn’t die but just changes energy.  First it might be a pond evaporated to the cloud.  After it is a cloud it may become rain.  It never dies – it just goes away. It changes energies.

My father was my cloud.  He rained down on me and I grew from the earth that he watered.

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