Lesson

noun

• an amount of teaching given at one time; a period of learning or teaching
• a thing learned or to be learned by a student.
• a thing learned by experience
• an occurrence, example, or punishment that serves or should serve to warn or encourage

• a passage from the Bible read aloud during a church service, especially either of two readings at morning and evening prayer in the Anglican Church.

verb

[with object] archaic

• instruct or teach (someone).
• admonish or rebuke (someone).

 

Origin:

Middle English: from Old French leçon, from Latin lectio

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/lesson?q=lesson

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I learned to speak to the universe because I couldn't speak to anyone else. And now I realize, I am grateful to have learned. The conversation we have is filled with miraculous synchronicity. And when I converse with the universe, I speak gently and respectfully, as I would to a child or an animal, and the animal part I learned from you. I needn't hear the universe answer back with words. Frequently, she only blinks and I feel the dark followed by the light. I see the flash of color and the image therein and I inhale the breeze off the bat of her eyelashes and sometimes, only sometimes, do I wait for one of her eyelashes to fall close enough that I can pick it up without anyone seeing me do so in order to cast a wish upon it and blow it back. I learned that I should not let anyone see my wishes.

There is both pain and joy in these lessons.

I also learned that speaking when silenced could be done through music, specifically through singing in the car. It was a lesson someone must have taught you as well, because music in the car was a constant and, in a way, the car time during which that music was shared was likely some of the only time we communicated in a way that I recognized your humanity and saw, still there in you, the child in myself I wasn't allowed to accept. I'm certain you know the expectations of me as a child were beyond what one could expect of an adult and that I've let you off the hook in my heart but not in my mind because something in our shared life or from the life before me silenced you too.

I learned the danger in following. As with the others, there is both pain and joy in the lesson. The fear of following has lessened my ability to trust because I am always afraid of where I'm being led. I believe, through what I've learned and lived, that I will be trapped, hurt, or left alone, with the potential for all three to exist simultaneously. And the fear isn't just in following another, it is a fear to follow myself as well. Yet, as I've said, there is pain AND joy in the lessons. This same lesson, this learning the danger in following, has opened my eyes wider--I see much more. I evaluate much more. I try quite hard to establish a position that is my own and is one with which I am both comfortable and proud and with which I feel little need to justify. It is why I know I can lead but feel such fear in potentially hurting anyone who might follow. Sometimes people follow anyway and I try to push them away because I don't want to lead them somewhere in which they will feel trapped, or hurt, or alone so I, for the most part, try to go it alone.

I learned that learning, broad learning, expands the connections we can make and that the kind of learning that comes when you listen but stay silent, is best. Watching Sunday Morning or listening to talk radio in silence reinforced that often the lesson or learning you need is given in the moment you need it.

I learned creativity is born, in part, from trying to mold what is given into what you need. The duality of joy and pain in creativity is not unlike the duality that is the sadness of surviving.  What was given was not what I needed. Not having what I needed taught me to find other worlds in books and art and music or in my mind and body apart from the mind and body of the moment. I learned to dissociate and self-protect. I learned to slow my breathing and my responses.  While it helped then and still helps now, it makes being truly here very difficult.  It made being with cancer hard and so I wasn't really, until it was gone in the same way that I wasn't with the hurt of home until I was gone. It is a part of the sadness of surviving. It is why when I can't hide from it all, it all manifests other ways and I'm left unable to get a solid night of sleep free of dreams filled with negativity, why I wake nauseated, why eating is a game of nothing or everything, why my muscles and bones and skin can hurt so badly and why I don't feel I can take or do anything to feel better. It makes me wonder if what I've taken in out of expectation was responsible for growing cancer inside me. It's why I wake wondering what I'd have to do ahead of time if I ever gained the courage and follow through to die ahead of my prescribed time.

I learned to expect the worst and so I'm always fearful and I'm always prepared.

I learned that if your pants are long enough and your shoes are comfortable enough there exists no need to wear socks and that, if at all possible, going barefoot is best. Going with bare feet is genetic and sometimes, though I know wishes should be kept secret even outside of the scope of extinguishing the lights placed on a cake to celebrate birth by exhaling upon them a breath out, I wish that I had more power to take the best of the genetic and leave behind the rest because sometimes I want to make people feel the positive way you've made me feel-- the quiet moments in which there's been no expectation other than sharing space--but I fear that I'll make them feel the negative way you've made me feel-- the moments where I was made an adult when I wasn't, or when I was made to do things no one should have to, or when I was threatened, or hurt, or left alone, or when I watched the hurt and the anger and the fear they told of ooze out of you.

Last night, I dreamt you gave me a flower not yet bloomed. You told me it would bloom in a month if I had no guilt and no shame. And when you told me, my heart sunk because I knew that this present, this child-flower, would not bloom because I'd be unable to get to that place. You told me if I'd been fair and honest, that the flower would bloom in a month, and my heart sunk further because I've been neither as fair or as honest as someone should. You taught me what wasn't fair and yet helped me believe it was and you taught me that truth should be held inside and that when it wasn't, it wouldn't be believed as truth anyway. 

 

And so I woke, aware that you'd set me up to see that you either believe me capable of tending that flower so that it grows or that you already know I'm incapable and just needed me to know with the definitive proof of the stunted flower. And my head begins the logic-driven task to determine which is true while my heart and body and soul are already busy figuring out how to let the flower die before it's begun to grow.

I learned that it is possible for something to die and that, in the death of the thing, something else can start to live. Because every lesson taught has at least two sides and many lessons are full of striations into which other layers leak.

I am afraid I won't be able to make the flower grow and that you'll know and be disappointed and I'm afraid that, should I figure out a way to make her bloom, that you'll still have the power to cut her down, pull her out, drag her by her roots up the stairs and throw her into the window where she'll die anyway. I'm afraid you'll still be able to neglect her into the place where she's alone when she really wants or needs company because she wants to feel love and support but expects love and support to feel like pain.

I'm watching the day break this morning. I'm thinking about how, years ago, I'd still be laying in bed, and you would put on your work clothes, covered in grease and full of holes, and sneak downstairs while it was still this dark and leave not long after and pull away. When you were gone, I'd sneak downstairs to soak in the rest of the breaking day. I learned the peace that is a morning alone by example. I've also learned that mornings are colder than any other time and that as we try to start ourselves up, many of us die because it takes a certain amount of energy to bring ourselves into the day with the sun. So I wonder if, like years ago, you are up early watching day break or if you are struggling to start up your engine on this cold morning, heartbroken.

 

 

 

 

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Perspective

noun

• [mass noun] the art of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other
• the appearance of viewed objects with regard to their relative position, distance from the viewer, etc.
• [count noun] a view or prospect.
• Geometry the relation of two figures in the same plane, such that pairs of corresponding points lie on concurrent lines, and corresponding lines meet in collinear points.
• a particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view
• [mass noun] true understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion
• an apparent spatial distribution in perceived sound.

Origin:
late Middle English (in the sense 'optics'): from medieval Latin perspectiva (ars) '(science of) optics', from perspect- 'looked at closely', from the verb perspicere, from per- 'through' + specere 'to look'

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/perspective

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At 3 AM, pain is terrifying. When I wake during the 3 AM hour, as I have the last few evenings, curled into myself with my abdominal muscles (yes, even my fat body has them somewhere under the rolls) and my upper and lower legs in tight cramps, I'm terrified. I don't wake as though I've had a nightmare. I don't wake remembering anything from the dream I'd assume to be the cause. Still, I wake anxious and upset and hesitant to go back to the sleep I'd like to have assuming I'm able to straighten my body out in a way that the cramps can be eliminated.

When the alarm goes off at 5:55 AM, and I stand for the first time, I'm given an instant reminder of 3-something AM, courtesy of the then-tight muscles from a few hours before. I still don't have a sense of what started them curling in the middle of the night. I wake exhausted.

As I near 10 AM, sitting at work or doing whatever the weekend plans dictate, anxiety sneaks in.  Like the cramping, I don't have a sense of where it comes from. All I want to do is lay down. The 3-something muscle tightness is replaced by a pervasive dance of negative thoughts and fears and it becomes a 10-something tightness in my breathing. I find a full breath rather difficult unless I deliberately make an effort to breathe one. Shallow, nearly non-existent breathing is the default. It isn't that I can't breathe, it's that my body won't let me have a breath until I somehow will my body over my mind.

As I near mid-day, something in me eases. That ease becomes exhaustion by 2-something. By 3 or 4, the 10-something is back again and it fluctuates for the rest of the evening. As I start to feel sleepy, it eases, pushing me to get changed and head to bed. As soon as I lay down, 10-something is back until my body wins over my mind and the victory lasts until I wake up with it replaced by 3-something, when my mind controls my body against my conscious will.

From the lens I attach to my attempt at understanding, various pictures develop.  But what does one do when the camera that is your understanding is defective?  What if the tool to which you attach those lenses--the same tool you've been using since you've been 5--doesn't do a good enough job?  What if its perspective is too narrow or too toy or too old or too colored by someone else's vision? 

In truth, what happens is that a perspective emerges--a familiar perspective--and the familiarity of the perspective is comforting but the picture from that same perspective is upsetting. 

While I look for a new tool, I attach various lenses to the old one. 

Lens #1-- The sick lens
Lens #2-- The fat lens
Lens #3-- The flashback lens
Lens #4-- The overtired lens
Lens #5-- The you're-not-worth-more lens
Lens #6-- The mental-patient lens
Lens #7-- The bad-mattress lens
Lens #8-- The maybe-it's-job-stress lens
Lens #9-- The I'm-just-like-my-mother lens  
Lens #10-- The you're-just-dehydrated lens

When I look at 3-something AM through each, the images hold at least partial truth.  Almost without variety, though, the image snapped using each looks the same.  All capture something closer to waste film than an actual image.  And I recognize the familiarity of waste.  I collect them, add them to an old album, and turn page after page after page after page seeing the same thing.  It is this constant backdrop-- a constant story where dates and ages and times don't seem to matter as much as they should.  I view waste film. 

When the tool you have is defective but you're still looking to fix a problem, you first try different lenses.  When the different lenses don't work, you remind yourself the tool is broken and you set out for a new tool.  You carry the album with you.  Your body and mind try to find something in the waste film images, each working to different degrees at different moments, but nearly always resulting in the same picture. 

And believe me, please believe me, I do look for different tools.  I do look to be taught how to use different tools.  When I find them or use them they feel so wrong and I worry about offending the new teacher as I express doubt and so, I try to stay silent because offending opens options for the offended to retaliate against the offender and I am that person unless I'm quiet. 

Say nothing...always say nothing... or say it and then take it back.  Go back to your old tool.  Keep playing with different lenses... and remember insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, means you're either looking through lens #6 or lens #9. 

Metaphor

noun

• a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable
• a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract

Origin:

late 15th century: from French métaphore, via Latin from Greek metaphora, from metapherein 'to transfer'

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/metaphor?q=metaphor

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Always have soft mints on your table and an animal to pet.

I've been thinking about the metaphor of soft mints and pets for about a week now. When the phone rang last Monday morning letting me know Aunt Fran, at 92 years of age, had passed away less than an hour before, I felt relief on her behalf. After waiting 25 years to marry and having only 13 married years with my Uncle Bill before he died, I knew deeply that she longed to reunite. I watched the spirit gradually sneak from her eyes over the last few years. Though she never rushed away from this life, she carried a strong faith in the life waiting for her on the other end of here.

When I was younger, long before Aunt Fran lived in an assisted living facility near my parents' home, when she was still living in Philadelphia with Uncle Bill, we went to see them frequently. Aunt Fran would serve crackers of some kind and tiny glass bottles of 7-Up. My Uncle Bill sat in the other room smoking his pipe, a smell I still love. When we'd all sit in the living room, I sat one of two places-- either in front of the stairs to pet Max, the 'family dog' or in front of the coffee table from which I ate soft, pastel mints out of a glass dish.  I'd pet Max for a long time.  I believed he was real-- the alive at night kind of real.  I recalled him as a heavy, concrete statue that I never lifted.

I recall my brother and I getting dressed in our Halloween costumes and loading into the car to go see Aunt Fran and Uncle Bill, and later just Aunt Fran long after Uncle Bill's medical bed was removed from the dining room. We'd sit on her front porch and watch Philadelphia-- watch the neighborhood breathe in and out in a way that neighborhoods aren't living and breathing any longer. I'd run my hands up and down the iron railings, feeling the swirl of them twist my fingers. When we'd leave there, we'd drive to see her sister, my Grandmom Grove, where the scent of cinnamon brooms and Wizard air fresheners, in seasonal shapes, filled the air.

When Grandmom Grove died, my mother sent my brother and I to school on a half day before we'd return home to attend the funeral. When we left the funeral home for the cemetery loaded in the limo, I started to cry. It was Aunt Fran who put her arm around me and told me to let it all out.

Though I'd done reasonably well  maintaining composure this past week, the day of the funeral was far more difficult than I imagined it would be. I cried, quite hard, complete with giant tears and lip quivering. 

As I listened to the chaplain speak, and then my mother speak, and then recited along with the prayers, I thought of Aunt Fran's fascination with the sponge creatures that grow from tiny gel capsules and how she'd laugh at an Easter toy-- a bunny, that would hop until it would stop and do a back flip.  She laughed, surprised, every time. 

Sometimes I hear that laugh come out of me.  It is the only time I experience hearing someone else's voice come out of my own body.  But it is her voice-- her laugh.

At the service, the chaplain spoke of Aunt Fran's wit and hospitality, the warm twinkle in her eye, and her love of music and animals.  In a few short months, Aunt Fran passed on all the beauty of the things I loved most about her to the chaplain and many of the staff and residents of the hospice unit.

The mints and the pet, then. What of the mints and the pet metaphor?  

• Always have something soft for those you love.
• Expect that loved ones will be there but don't expect that they'll stay too long. 
• The longer, sometimes, you need to 'chew' on something, the more it 'sucks'.  Sometimes it's better just to get a taste of what you 'chew' on knowing that, when you'd like more, there are always more 'sucks' in the dish. 
• Stay 'fresh' and true to yourself.
• Smell like mint and you won't have to put up with the smell of other people's 'shit'. 
• Welcome people, unconditionally. 
• Believe in, and be, real.
• Sometimes we assume things heavier than they are because we are afraid to pick them up only to find later that they aren't.  And sometimes, it's all from the perspective of the moment. 

With Aunt Fran's passing, I've lost the last connection to family beyond the immediate family of my mother, father, and brother.  For 35 years, Aunt Fran has been a fixture in my life.  She's been what's made family time feel as you'd hope family time should.  She was a buffer-- a witty, sarcastic, tough-cookie buffer-- to my mother's interactions with me especially.

A couple years back, Kim and I went to my parents' house for Christmas Eve.  My father went to pick up Aunt Fran not long after we arrived.  It was, to say the least, a difficult evening.  My mother, exhausted and supremely over-medicated, continued to pass out and slur her words as she talked to us.  Not long after that, she got angry and stormed away to the bedroom.  We decided to make the best of it and try to have a peaceful, loving family dinner.  My mother ended up angrier that we would have dinner without her.  She screamed and yelled and turned into a person I remain terrified of.  I did my best to diffuse the situation.  Aunt Fran, sitting in the confrontation chair (the chair I would always sit in when I was 'brought up on charges' as a child) turned to me and said, as though she was five, "I'm afraid."  I told her I knew...I understood... and it broke my heart.

So, as I move forward, I'm going to try my best to remember that arm around me telling me to let it all out.  Because as much as I hear Aunt Fran's laugh slip out of my body every now and again, that day I heard my fear--my voice--slip out of Aunt Fran.

I'm going to do my best hold the metaphor of soft mints and pets.

P.S. After the funeral, we went with my parents to Aunt Fran's apartment to see if there was anything there I might want.  The only thing I knew I wanted, if it was still around, was Max-- the aforementioned 'family dog'.  He was still there, guarding the front door. He is not concrete.  When I first held him I was shocked at how little he weighed.  When I returned home with him later and picked him up again, he felt so much heavier.  'Weight' is part of the metaphor.   

P.P.S. Aunt Fran was buried wearing a wristlet of 6 pink roses-- one for each of her animal family members-- my brother's dog, our four cats, and Meg.  With Max, our family has grown by one, and he sits in my space.