LOST: reading from a new memoir and reflecting on Buddhist teachings — #UU #amreading #fathers #govegan

This morning I am reposting a section of my memoir LOST: a daughter navigates father loss and discovers what it means to belong which was part of a service on life and death at the Unitarian Universalists of Mt. Airy in Philadelphia. The YouTube video of my part of the service is above and the text is below.

Good morning

     I am going to read the opening two paragraphs of my memoir which is now titled LOST: a daughter navigates father loss and discovers what it means to belong. 

Above the Washington Crossing National Cemetery—its squat white markers on even green grass flanked by low walls that would soon hold my father’s ashes—the blue sky, with white whisps of clouds, was vast. It seemed endless— I would say eternal, but my father was not religious. He was agnostic and along with my atheist mother, had raised me secular. But now I was Unitarian, with Buddhism selected as my root religion because it felt most natural to me.

     Buddhists believe that energy is eternal. The death of a father has been compared to a cloud. The cloud becomes rain and then eventually returns to the sky and so on. The energy of the cloud never dies, and the father’s essence doesn’t die either. It is a comforting theory. But I was too upset that day to be thinking of Buddhist theories. Grief had carved a hole the size of the universe through my chest. I was on automatic pilot. My only thought was to get through the day.

It seems like I have been working on this memoir forever. Maybe I have because it is about my father’s life and my life which adds up to a lot of years. It has been five years since my father died. I was close to sixty when he died, and he was nearly a hundred years old. I have been through a lot a changes since my father died. In many ways, I have become my own parent.

The late Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhất Hạnh was and continues to be an important influence on my revision process. I have been particularly influenced by his teachings about how a parent lives on in the child. He has said that it is hard for a son to be angry at his father because the son is the father—an extension of the father. I would say the same thing goes for daughters. This scientifically accurate statement might explain why so many are at odds with themselves.

Working on this memoir has not been easy. In fact, there have been times when it was physically painful. But working on this memoir has forced me to drill down into the marrow of my bones and uncover the forces that shaped me. And I find a certain satisfaction in self-discovery.  

Recently, I was talking to an old friend about my father living so long. I explained that he had lived twenty years longer than most people. I described him as a tough old bird.  Like me, he was stubborn, strong, and when he still could, did exercises every morning and night and took a walk nearly every day.

A few days after describing my father as a tough old bird to this friend, I realized I had been describing myself.

I am fast becoming a tough, old vegan bird.

–Namaste–

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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

To learn more about my latest published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery (also from Adelaide Books) click here:

The Unicorn, The Mystery now available from Adelaide Books — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT

To read other excerpts of LOST, my memoir in process,

click here

and

here

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A #UU Labor Day reading of Tea Leaves — #amwriting #laborhistory

keeping our dreams intact when we are forced to work mind-numbing jobs

This morning, Sunday September 3rd, I co-led a Unitarian Universalist service on Labor Day Weekend.  The theme was labor.  As part of this service, I read from my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters (Bella Books, 2012).

You can view my reflection below on the YouTube video or read the reflection below that.

 

 

Good morning.

 

Today on Labor Day weekend our theme is labor.  I immediately thought of this section of my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters. This is a story about the survival of how we keep our dreams intact when we are forced to work mind-numbing jobs.

                      ________________________

My mother and I both stared at the iron legged ottoman, covered with a faded tapestry that my grandmother wove more than a half century ago.  Whenever I looked at the patterns of the ottoman, the faded edges and the lines of darker colors, I saw my grandmother, a single mother who worked in the Kensington section of Philadelphia in a textile factory.

My grandmother was a woman of great dignity.  The Episcopal Church, especially after she had divorced and returned to the city, was one of the major pillars in her life.  I don’t know, in fact, that she was particularly religious.  But I remember visiting Saint Simeon’s with her, and I could see the appeal of the church, especially to a poor woman who had little, if any, luxury in her life.

She might have been saying prayers that she no longer believed in as she sat there, her head bowed and covered, next to her two girls—my mother squirming in the aisle seat and my aunt sitting next to her daydreaming as she stared at the stained glass windows. The shiny brass organ pipes reached to the ceiling and looked as beautiful as sound.  The pews were polished mahogany, the wood smooth and cool. The scent of incense and flowers permeated the air.   All St. Simeon’s needed was some red-velvet seat cushions and gilded cherubs on the ceiling and it could have been easily transformed into the sensuous lair of an opera house or, perhaps, a bordello. Sundays at St. Simeon’s was a respite from the rest of my grandmother’s life.

Her days in the textile mill encompassed her like the full spectrum of shadow falling from a sundial.  The morning light filtering through the small windows of the dark mill would have been diffuse.   Her hair would have been tied back into a bun as the light fell around her.  She would have bent over the heddles that kept the warp lines in place as she threaded the machine.  The colors on the ottoman— rust red, dusty blue, olive green, black—would have filled the spindles that unraveled furiously into the automated looms as her hands kept pace.  When the morning light turned into afternoon and the heat rose in rivulets of sweat dripping from her skin, my grandmother would have reminded herself that she was lucky to have found a job.  The soup lines were getting longer.  The unemployed and the homeless were marching in the streets.  Even if my grandmother didn’t know anyone who committed suicide, she would have read the listings in the daily papers.

I wondered what it was like for my grandmother, a woman with dreams and aspirations, a woman whose life dictated that her only option was to work in a mill or to clean someone else’s house, which was what she did after she left the mill. Did her dreams keep her going through the tedium of her life?  Or did knowing that her dreams would never come true make her life close to unbearable?  And if her life was unbearable, what kept her going?  Did the thought of her girls having better lives make it all worthwhile?

When my grandmother worked at the textile mill, she was a woman who was no longer young but not yet old.  She still had her girlhood daydreams as an escape from the pure tedium of her life.  At the same time, the features of her face would have been hardening themselves into the lines of her future.  Her lips may have opened easily in laughter, but they were on their way to becoming a stitch in the center of her face.

My mother told me that when she was a girl my grandmother would tell her stories about her own childhood when she and her cousin took bit parts in the People’s Theater, the local community theater.

My grandmother’s memories would have swirled through her mind as she stood sweltering in the textile mill, reloading the spools that needed to be filled faster than her fingers could go. Her back might have been aching and her fingertips numb—she might have been wondering how she could afford to pay the rent—but in her dreams she was stately as a queen as she stood center stage.  Her imagined green chiffon dress was a waterfall cascading down her.  A diamond tiara sat on her head, sparks of light reflected in Romeo’s eyes.

Sitting in the living room with my mother, I could hear the distant applause, replaced suddenly by the din of the mill.  The noise of the loom, the thud, the thwack, entwined with a ceaseless rhythmic tramp—the tread of hundreds and thousands marching through history.

————-

Namaste

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In Atlantic City, an evening of jazz — Chicken Bone Beach — Photographs!

 

 

One of our favorite things to do in the summer is to go to the free jazz concert series on Thursday nights in Atlantic City.  The music is at the Pavilion, across from the Convention Center.  This is the lower-part of the boardwalk (largely casino-free).  I found myself wondering what the boardwalk would be like without the casinos.  Maybe not so bad!

On a break between concerts, I took and stroll on the boardwalk and found to my delight, bubbles!

 

 My partner Barbara sitting in the audience at the Chicken Bone Jazz Series in Atlantic City.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The gull on a green clay rooftop reminds me of antiquity!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone is searching for something on the boardwalk — there it is floating by in the sea air!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pure glee!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mimi Jones on acoustic bass.  She rocks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the beach, near the convention center – a lifeboat, guard stand and the horizon.

 

 

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