Gathering Wisdom

We're back from the Meeting the Parents trip...and, as is bound to happen, I'm in that place of reflection, pondering things in my heart.

When I'm in this place, the above "Gathering Wisdom" bronze by Mark Hopkins speaks to my soul.  She was the one I brought with me from the States to my new home here in The Netherlands.  [She actually was one of three Mark Hopkins bronzes I had to choose from and you can see here why I chose to keep her.]  She reminds me of what's important...and the work I must do to put the pieces of my puzzle together.

Speaking of which, my daughter's eyes were bigger than her stomach when she took a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle to the cabin with us for the long weekend.  We all LOVE puzzles but with everything else we did, we were lucky to get all the border pieces found and put together.  But that's a start and a lesson in life:  Go find the edge pieces and set a frame/boundary around the image you're trying to create.  The rest will follow.

Which reminds me of what Clarissa Pinkola Estés says in Women Who Run With the Wolves.  We are the Wild Women, the strong, healthy Wolves, who know instintively and intuitively how to go out into the desert to collect our lost bones...to recover and resurrect them, breathe life into them, and sing over them.  This "old woman" in each of us is The One Who Knows how to change and transform us, to keep our souls and tell our truths:

That's why we do all the things we do.  It is the work of gathering all the bones together.  Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn.  And the truths we tell will make the song.

When we took grandson Nicholas (age 10) to the same Fair he's attended every year since age 2, I pondered how he still knows what rides he can and cannot ride.  "No, G'ma.  That one's still too scary."  And I thought to myself, when did I lose that ability to say NO with such certainty to something I knew instinctively was not good for me!

This Wild Woman, by the way, also knows what needs to die and what needs to live inside of us.  I'm noticing this with my children.  I'm getting better about what to keep and what to let go.  What to cry about and when to laugh.  How to sing my own song, letting it resonate throughout me.  MY song, not theirs.  I ask myself, Where is my own voice?  Is it out in the desert still buried or have I finally found it and breathed life into it?  And if I have a song to sing, what is that song and does it make me alive once again?

Yes, I say.  I do have a song to sing that comes from out of the depths of my wilderness journey.  It resurrects me and makes me whole.  I howl at the moon and see a way prepared before me.

If a woman holds on to this gift of being old while she is young and young while she is old, she will always know what comes next.

On Meeting the Parents

...or When Your Children Have Two Mommies.

Today, as we speak, Astrid and I are in Atlanta with my kids for a week-plus, celebrating birthdays, carving pumpkins, taking my grandson to the fair, and enjoying autumn in the North Georgia mountains.

Astrid is now the 3rd live-in 'parent' they've met, not counting their father.  Actually, the 4th parent, if you count G.  When Bill and I divorced in 1990, I thought I would be with G the rest of my life.  Seriously.  But her own divorce decree forbade her kids to ever see me if she wanted to retain joint custody.  That meant we could never live together.  Two years later she left me for another woman who was not part of the decree.

Within a month I rebounded and started a 5-year relationship with J.  As they say, hindsight is better than foresight, but the short version is we were from 2 entirely different zipcodes!  I truly believe everybody who knew me, including my kids, was glad when I left her because they didn't see us as a good fit.  However, it was still very hard on my fragile children who were finally getting used to the break-up of their original family while learning to accept their mom in a gay relationship.

When I left J for D (are you confused yet?) and started what was to become a 12-year partnership, I wanted to believe my kids would never have to go through another break-up.  Notice that I said my kids.   How very telling!  Everyone loved D and truly believed we were a match made in heaven.  Because of her I had a dream life of exotic travel all over the world...and enough financial security for 3 lifetimes.  But in the words of my favorite U2 song, I still hadn't found want I was looking for.  We, too, were from 2 different zipcodes.

How do you explain any of this to your kids?  And do you stay in your 'bad marriage' to keep them from bleeding yet again?  A friend years ago had said, "When you do what is right for yourself, it will be right for everyone else concerned."  So it was with fear and trembling that I left D and a year later moved to The Netherlands to become legally married to Astrid, the love of my life.

I have known Astrid for over 3 years now but this is the first time my kids have met her...because they weren't ready.  Can I guarantee to them I will never go through another break-up?  No.  Can I protect them?  No.  I want them to see how she is different from the others.  I want them to experience our love and happiness.  But it takes Time and has to find its own course.  It's part of the quiet pain in being their mother, still learning how to be a parent.

Why am I giving you Way Too Much Information?!  There are gay people all around us whether we know it or not, many living with a lot of pain.  My personal theory is our maturation process is much longer and more complicated than that of  'normal' straight people...because of the proverbial Closet and because we haven't learned to accept ourselves yet.  How then can you?  Or our kids?

Not to make this a band wagon (before midterm elections?), but maybe you can be part of the process that breaks down these barriers?  Maybe you can vote for Astrid to one day be free to move with me to Atlanta as my legal wife so that my kids can get to know her better?  Maybe?! 

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

...for tomorrow we die.
[Ecclesiastes 8:15 and Isaiah 22:13]

Lately I've been trying to pay attention to this thing called Life...and what it means to live, in spite of the economy or my wallet.  Years ago someone told me to live as though there were no tomorrow but to save as though I'd lived forever.  But often to my own shame, I have worked hard on the latter at the expense of the former.

How does this happen?  To have money in the bank but to think twice about spending it on a café coffee while walking out-n-about any weekend afternoon?  That's easy, you say:  it's because of the economy right now or because you came out of a conservative preacher's home.  But not all my brothers and sisters are that way.  Why am I?

Astrid and I live in a senior-living complex here in The Netherlands (minimum entry age is 55) where we are surrounded by residents who are in their sunset years, as we say.  It's not earth-shattering whenever we hear that Mevrouw So-and-So has just died.  It's the reality of this place.  And yet, at the same time, it's nothing for us all to get together once a month and live it up, eating, drinking and having fun.  I LOVE IT.  Watching 60-, 70- and 80-year-olds letting down their hair and laughing a lot.  I sit there trying to catch all the Dutch I can pick up...and laughing right back.

Eons ago when Bill and I were 'missionaries' to college students and had little money, he'd sometimes say, "Let's go out for an ice cream!" I'd immediately say, "Do you think we can afford it?" For God's sake, Ginnie, they only cost 5-cents a scoop back then.  Shouldn't I have asked, "How can we NOT afford it?!"  We always went, of course, because I talked sense into myself, but I'm so ashamed when I think of that memory.

The rare times we took the kids to a restaurant, maybe twice a year on their birthdays, they'd always choose the most expensive entre on the menu.  I got smart and quickly made the policy they could choose anything up to a certain amount (that I had fixed in my head).  WHY?  Since it was a rare thing, why couldn't I just say "To heck with it.  They can have anything they want!  It's their birthday, for God's sake!"  Why didn't I trust the way Life works.  Why didn't I accept the ebb and flow, the give and take, the saving and spending, the living and the dying?  Both and.  Why didn't I talk sense into myself!

While I still have a lot to learn on the subject (surely most of you are way ahead of me!),  in my own way I'm making headway.  The older I get, I don't weigh and measure and calculate every single thing anymore.  I'm more willing to take my chances and trust the outcome.  What is it we say...moderation in everything.  If we're not guilty of the alternative, why worry about tomorrow, which may never come anyway!  Besides, I don't have to leave ALL my money (what I have of it, that is) to the kids.  I can enjoy my own life for a change, right?

So, hang on a sec while I go get a bottle and a couple of glasses.  I can hear you saying "I'll drink to that!"  Please do and PROOST, as we say here in The Netherlands!

Eat, drink and be merry...for tomorrow we diet!
[2001 New Scientist 22/29 Dec. 45]