By The Fire Light
(Spring 2010)
For the second time today I have a visitor. Not the same one, though. My father has come to visit, his presence strong and comforting. Again, that soothing thing that Katie did earlier. Dad is often around, for moments here and there, rarely for long. I think sometimes he doesn‘t really feel a need to do much more than check in now and then. There is a lot that makes me think of him, much about me that must be like him in some ways I’d didn’t notice when he was alive.
The campfire is burning strong, the forest is alive with the sounds of the wild, the creek is roaring in the distance. The torches are starting to carry the burden of lighting the campsite, as dark slowly takes the place of day. Night, my favorite time. The whippoorwills are very active here, the owl was hooting over my tent last night, looking for the little mouse that comes when I’ve gone to bed to see what I may have left him. He comes to the edge of the light, I can barely see him there, trying to get a sneak peak by the torchlight. I try to be sure and leave something small, just for him, but not enough to draw in anything bigger than a mouse. I don't want to met the bear I am sure prowl these woods as well.
Dad liked this, camp fires and cooking outdoors. Perhaps he’s just enjoying the solitude along with me. It's the feeling of ease, the soothing that he doesn't generally convey that is new. The presence I am very used to and is always welcome. Katie is a more scattered visitor, she comes but once in a long stretch of time. This morning was only maybe the fourth time I’ve felt her so strongly. Dad comes more often and more regularly, every few months, just to check in, just to say hi, just to see how its going. Grandpa used to do that, but I haven’t felt him in a long time.
Tonight feels different as darkness approaches. But all is calm and still. Well, as still as the woods get anyway. Life moves here always, the day creatures give way to the night creatures, the light gives way to the dark, each a living thing like any other. The endless cycle, running in endless circles. I find it comforting, to know it all goes on, one thing feeding another. As everything dies it is returned to become something else and there is something to fill in it’s space, keeping the cycle going from the most minute levels to the largest creatures. From minerals to whales.
What has me on this train of thought? Life I guess, in general. When it came Dad’s end it was the little things that meant the most. Not that he never got to go back to Japan, if he’d really thought that was so important he could have done it. What he chose were the little things, sitting by the fire, watching the flames lick the wood and the embers glow. Sitting outside looking up at the stars at night, petting the dogs who came to lay their heads in his lap from all sides.
The time he had left he spent living, going to work, coming home, keeping up the business of everyday life and enjoying the little things within every part of that each and every day. The day he stopped living was the day he started dying. Once that happened it only took two days before he didn't rise again from his bed and five before he let go.
Maybe that's why he’s here, because today that’s what I’m doing. Tending to the business of living, watching the fire glow, cooking outdoors, sleeping in a tent in the woods. What would I miss if I didn’t have a tomorrow? I think tonight I will take the drape off the tent so that I can fall asleep looking at the stars and contemplating what constitutes my little things.
For the second time today I have a visitor. Not the same one, though. My father has come to visit, his presence strong and comforting. Again, that soothing thing that Katie did earlier. Dad is often around, for moments here and there, rarely for long. I think sometimes he doesn‘t really feel a need to do much more than check in now and then. There is a lot that makes me think of him, much about me that must be like him in some ways I’d didn’t notice when he was alive.
The campfire is burning strong, the forest is alive with the sounds of the wild, the creek is roaring in the distance. The torches are starting to carry the burden of lighting the campsite, as dark slowly takes the place of day. Night, my favorite time. The whippoorwills are very active here, the owl was hooting over my tent last night, looking for the little mouse that comes when I’ve gone to bed to see what I may have left him. He comes to the edge of the light, I can barely see him there, trying to get a sneak peak by the torchlight. I try to be sure and leave something small, just for him, but not enough to draw in anything bigger than a mouse. I don't want to met the bear I am sure prowl these woods as well.
Dad liked this, camp fires and cooking outdoors. Perhaps he’s just enjoying the solitude along with me. It's the feeling of ease, the soothing that he doesn't generally convey that is new. The presence I am very used to and is always welcome. Katie is a more scattered visitor, she comes but once in a long stretch of time. This morning was only maybe the fourth time I’ve felt her so strongly. Dad comes more often and more regularly, every few months, just to check in, just to say hi, just to see how its going. Grandpa used to do that, but I haven’t felt him in a long time.
Tonight feels different as darkness approaches. But all is calm and still. Well, as still as the woods get anyway. Life moves here always, the day creatures give way to the night creatures, the light gives way to the dark, each a living thing like any other. The endless cycle, running in endless circles. I find it comforting, to know it all goes on, one thing feeding another. As everything dies it is returned to become something else and there is something to fill in it’s space, keeping the cycle going from the most minute levels to the largest creatures. From minerals to whales.
What has me on this train of thought? Life I guess, in general. When it came Dad’s end it was the little things that meant the most. Not that he never got to go back to Japan, if he’d really thought that was so important he could have done it. What he chose were the little things, sitting by the fire, watching the flames lick the wood and the embers glow. Sitting outside looking up at the stars at night, petting the dogs who came to lay their heads in his lap from all sides.
The time he had left he spent living, going to work, coming home, keeping up the business of everyday life and enjoying the little things within every part of that each and every day. The day he stopped living was the day he started dying. Once that happened it only took two days before he didn't rise again from his bed and five before he let go.
Maybe that's why he’s here, because today that’s what I’m doing. Tending to the business of living, watching the fire glow, cooking outdoors, sleeping in a tent in the woods. What would I miss if I didn’t have a tomorrow? I think tonight I will take the drape off the tent so that I can fall asleep looking at the stars and contemplating what constitutes my little things.
Lucy’s Legacy
(written Spring 2010)
Sometimes I fear who I am becoming. Usually that distress is due to some unknown factor in a thing. It is the uncertainty that creates the element of fear. Sometimes it’s experience of pain that creates it, the knowledge that something inevitable is going to cause pain. In this case it is both. It seems to be destined that everyone I care about is sooner or later going to cause me pain. It is an undeniable truth. I can’t fight it, I can’t stop it, I can’t not care for them anymore.
In the same breath I fear what pain I might cause them and so I try very hard not to do things that others might find painful, but the favor is not returned. It is with blatant disregard that they inflict whatever suits them to inflict with whatever, if any, excuses.
Then there are the things I seem, though I try very hard, to be unable to avoid. My love life for instance. I remember hearing my grandmother run down by many for her wide and numerous variety of men. And I think of the long list of failed efforts and fear I am becoming her, but then what does that mean? Just because she loved many did that make her a bad person, or did they just run her down because in her day and time it wasn’t acceptable to not settle for good enough? Maybe she was just ahead of her time.
It is not that I, in any way, want people parading in and out of my life like it is a revolving door. The average lifespan of a relationship with me seems to be three weeks to three months. Surprising? Yes, it is. I try hard, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and no one can tell me, or will. I’ve tried not trying, I’ve tried not dating, I’ve tried just giving up and I’ve tried trying extra hard. I’ve even tried being nothing but the rawest version of myself so there is no question, what you see is what you get.
Part of it is that they do not feel needed. That I do know, because a man likes to feel needed. It isn’t that they aren’t needed. I am not a rabid feminist. I like a man who opens doors, who buys dinner, who bothers to pick a flower. I don’t want to carry all the weight, I just don’t think it’s fair for him to either. I want someone who will pull with me, not for me.
They are needed in a much more important way, in a personal way. I need someone to care, someone to help me hold the wall when the floods come, someone who can stand with me through the bad as well as enjoy the good. I need a mate, a lover, a best friend. Someone to ask how his day went, someone who cares how mine went. Someone who will care when I take my last breath, someone who is a reason to hold on to living. Someone who will enjoy life with me.
I see all sorts of people around me in all sorts of relationships. There is someone for everyone it seems, well I guess that would be almost everyone. Back to grandma, though. She was reputed as a drunk. I do not drink, but she went through relationships like delicate stockings. She was married eight times, then there were the ones in-between who didn’t make it to an alter. They came and went, as I understand it they’d last a very short while. I understand her pain.
The husbands all died, by the way, no divorces for grandma. They all died the same death but the first one, heart attacks and very young for the most part, for heart attacks anyway. She was a terminal care nurse, so yeah, it’s entirely possible that she was knocking them off. Then again, she was also a looker and if history has it right wild, so maybe she just wore them out, in which case, at least they went happy.
The truly scary part. I understand her. I know what she was looking for, I know what the search was about and I understand the horribly painful need that drove it and the crippling disappointment each and every time it failed. Not unlike me, many didn’t stay and then there were the ones who did. I don’t think there’s much doubt that she was knocking off the husbands. The truly sad part is that I understand that too. Ex-husbands come crawling out of the woodwork at the worst times and time does not change that! She was just cutting off trouble at the pass, making her life easier. I can so associate.
All my ex’s are still breathing, so no, I don’t see myself becoming that, but there have been times I thought hard on her approach. She would have made a good mobster or hit woman. So I guess I fear becoming her in the sense that she is so looked down upon, I am already that in the family and oftentimes others, especially people who have no right to judge, people who do not know me to have any right what-so-ever.
There was little doubt that she was a bad mother. I was always afraid of being that and so I over compensated. In a round about way I did become a bad mother. I didn’t put enough boot to ass. There was too much give when there should have been none, too much acceptance for what shouldn’t have been accepted. That was my crime and for it I’ll certainly do the time, a multitude of times over.
The same thing with being a wife, I was so afraid I wasn’t good enough that I had way too much give. In that way I lost myself and in the end him - to another woman. I pulled my own weight and so much of his that he decided he wasn’t needed. And I quote: “She needs me, you don’t.”
I did need him, he just wasn’t ever there. Turns out he was being there for someone else. After all the years of being there through thick, thin and everything in between, when I needed him he was already gone, with someone he thought needed him more. The price of being strong and independent. No one appreciates it in the end.
And now? Now there are no expectations laid out. I’m nothing in particular to anyone but myself. So the only expectations are my own and all I’m expecting of myself is to be myself. So that begs the question who and what am I?
That is simple enough. I’m human, one person on a huge planet full of other people. I have a voice and feelings and needs. There is empathy and sympathy for others, but I’m no longer anyone’s mat. Not a husband’s, not the children’s, not my family’s, not my friends. I’m creative and artistic. A photographer, writer, budding violinist (maybe, someday) and most of all a feeling, breathing, giving, human being. A good friend to have, a strong mother to love, an exceptional mate (to an equal mate), a caring sister, daughter and overall person. So what do I really fear? Not being myself, I think. Falling into the trap of being everything for everyone else again and nothing to myself.
That would be my fear, but I’m the kind of person to face my fears nose to nose, head on and I have a pretty hard head. So all in all there really is nothing to fear, but fear itself. And I’m graciously refusing to bow down to such a conceited and self assured beast.
Sometimes I fear who I am becoming. Usually that distress is due to some unknown factor in a thing. It is the uncertainty that creates the element of fear. Sometimes it’s experience of pain that creates it, the knowledge that something inevitable is going to cause pain. In this case it is both. It seems to be destined that everyone I care about is sooner or later going to cause me pain. It is an undeniable truth. I can’t fight it, I can’t stop it, I can’t not care for them anymore.
In the same breath I fear what pain I might cause them and so I try very hard not to do things that others might find painful, but the favor is not returned. It is with blatant disregard that they inflict whatever suits them to inflict with whatever, if any, excuses.
Then there are the things I seem, though I try very hard, to be unable to avoid. My love life for instance. I remember hearing my grandmother run down by many for her wide and numerous variety of men. And I think of the long list of failed efforts and fear I am becoming her, but then what does that mean? Just because she loved many did that make her a bad person, or did they just run her down because in her day and time it wasn’t acceptable to not settle for good enough? Maybe she was just ahead of her time.
It is not that I, in any way, want people parading in and out of my life like it is a revolving door. The average lifespan of a relationship with me seems to be three weeks to three months. Surprising? Yes, it is. I try hard, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and no one can tell me, or will. I’ve tried not trying, I’ve tried not dating, I’ve tried just giving up and I’ve tried trying extra hard. I’ve even tried being nothing but the rawest version of myself so there is no question, what you see is what you get.
Part of it is that they do not feel needed. That I do know, because a man likes to feel needed. It isn’t that they aren’t needed. I am not a rabid feminist. I like a man who opens doors, who buys dinner, who bothers to pick a flower. I don’t want to carry all the weight, I just don’t think it’s fair for him to either. I want someone who will pull with me, not for me.
They are needed in a much more important way, in a personal way. I need someone to care, someone to help me hold the wall when the floods come, someone who can stand with me through the bad as well as enjoy the good. I need a mate, a lover, a best friend. Someone to ask how his day went, someone who cares how mine went. Someone who will care when I take my last breath, someone who is a reason to hold on to living. Someone who will enjoy life with me.
I see all sorts of people around me in all sorts of relationships. There is someone for everyone it seems, well I guess that would be almost everyone. Back to grandma, though. She was reputed as a drunk. I do not drink, but she went through relationships like delicate stockings. She was married eight times, then there were the ones in-between who didn’t make it to an alter. They came and went, as I understand it they’d last a very short while. I understand her pain.
The husbands all died, by the way, no divorces for grandma. They all died the same death but the first one, heart attacks and very young for the most part, for heart attacks anyway. She was a terminal care nurse, so yeah, it’s entirely possible that she was knocking them off. Then again, she was also a looker and if history has it right wild, so maybe she just wore them out, in which case, at least they went happy.
The truly scary part. I understand her. I know what she was looking for, I know what the search was about and I understand the horribly painful need that drove it and the crippling disappointment each and every time it failed. Not unlike me, many didn’t stay and then there were the ones who did. I don’t think there’s much doubt that she was knocking off the husbands. The truly sad part is that I understand that too. Ex-husbands come crawling out of the woodwork at the worst times and time does not change that! She was just cutting off trouble at the pass, making her life easier. I can so associate.
All my ex’s are still breathing, so no, I don’t see myself becoming that, but there have been times I thought hard on her approach. She would have made a good mobster or hit woman. So I guess I fear becoming her in the sense that she is so looked down upon, I am already that in the family and oftentimes others, especially people who have no right to judge, people who do not know me to have any right what-so-ever.
There was little doubt that she was a bad mother. I was always afraid of being that and so I over compensated. In a round about way I did become a bad mother. I didn’t put enough boot to ass. There was too much give when there should have been none, too much acceptance for what shouldn’t have been accepted. That was my crime and for it I’ll certainly do the time, a multitude of times over.
The same thing with being a wife, I was so afraid I wasn’t good enough that I had way too much give. In that way I lost myself and in the end him - to another woman. I pulled my own weight and so much of his that he decided he wasn’t needed. And I quote: “She needs me, you don’t.”
I did need him, he just wasn’t ever there. Turns out he was being there for someone else. After all the years of being there through thick, thin and everything in between, when I needed him he was already gone, with someone he thought needed him more. The price of being strong and independent. No one appreciates it in the end.
And now? Now there are no expectations laid out. I’m nothing in particular to anyone but myself. So the only expectations are my own and all I’m expecting of myself is to be myself. So that begs the question who and what am I?
That is simple enough. I’m human, one person on a huge planet full of other people. I have a voice and feelings and needs. There is empathy and sympathy for others, but I’m no longer anyone’s mat. Not a husband’s, not the children’s, not my family’s, not my friends. I’m creative and artistic. A photographer, writer, budding violinist (maybe, someday) and most of all a feeling, breathing, giving, human being. A good friend to have, a strong mother to love, an exceptional mate (to an equal mate), a caring sister, daughter and overall person. So what do I really fear? Not being myself, I think. Falling into the trap of being everything for everyone else again and nothing to myself.
That would be my fear, but I’m the kind of person to face my fears nose to nose, head on and I have a pretty hard head. So all in all there really is nothing to fear, but fear itself. And I’m graciously refusing to bow down to such a conceited and self assured beast.
Why I Write
Someone once asked me “Why do you bother writing?” as if it were some gargantuan waste of time I could be spending doing something more important. She was being snide. As she was captain of the cheer leading squad I’m sure she thought it was time better spent plucking my bushy, out of control eyebrows or waxing my toes. It was her tone that elicited a defensive stance. It was threatening, as if she sought to rip from me something more precious than skin.
I turned on her, standing nose to nose, toe to toe, and glared down that smug look plastered on her face. “Why do you bother to breath?” I said matter of factly, not willing to give her even a cell of my well earned, thick hide. She stood dumfounded, mouth agape, then gave a huff, turned and walked off. The astonishment was not so much that I had given her a question she couldn’t answer or felt was irrelevant, but that for the first time ever I stood up to her. She could not enter that restricted area to pillage as she pleased.
That incident set off a question within myself. Why do I write? There is no easy answer. I have thought it over periodically for two decades. Writing is different things for different people; each of us must find our own way on the quest to answer the question of obsession, however weak or strong the urge.
At the time I made out a grocery list of reasons. When I was twenty I boiled those down to the important ones. At twenty five I refined it to the top five. After that my writing advanced and its purpose and product became more focused. The business end of that pen was eventually brought down to a fine point instead of the bold magic marker I’d started with and the list went out the window.
A new one took its place. It isn’t anything that I have ever put to paper. I kept it carefully wrapped up in my head where it was safe from scrutiny and of the Captain Cheerleaders of my life, until now.
The answer is as simple as rainwater and just as important. It occurs to me there might be others out there agonizing over the question themselves, tormented by their own antagonists, so I will get out on the end of the limb and share what I know.
I write because I must. It is like breathing, thinking. Automatic, unavoidable, necessary. Try not breathing. No, really, take in a breath, let it out and try not drawing in another. Can’t do it can you? That is how writing is for me. I could no more not write than I could not breathe.
It is as important to me as the air that I draw in and exhale out. The ideas seep in from the environment and are drawn in on the air that passes my lips, through my nostrils and into my lungs. They circulate through my body, providing sustenance to the most important muscles I have, the writing muscles. The ones that flex and stretch, lift and strain to a rhythm all their own, like the heart beats, pumping blood and essential oxygen throughout the body. Once fully exploited they flow out again as another product entirely, chemically changed as I drain from them nutrients I need to survive. They return to the world as a useful by-product for others, organized and processed, ready for consumption. Somewhere there is a reader for whom reading is as important to them as writing is to me.
Everything is game to fill the necessity. Every moment of my life, every tiny detail of anything or anyone observed could filter in to be absorbed. Whatever feeds the need. Sometimes people find this intimidating. My friends and family came to accept it long ago and trust me not to reveal my sources. No names please. New friends tread lightly until they’ve come to know me, then they relax, realizing that their secret identities are safe. Strangely enough I have never had anyone who said ‘Don’t write about me.’ Never. They are interested to find themselves, or more appropriately parts of themselves in my pieces and look hard so they will not miss it. Of course they only find the good pieces, not because that is all I write of them, but because no one ever recognizes their own bad components. But that’s okay; it’s probably what keeps me from being assassinated as I sleep.
Writing is viewed very strangely. There are always the ones who will ask the question like the snide cheerleader of my teenage years. Yet the same people will consume writing of all forms. Gossip columns to romance novels to thick books from Maine writers (they critcize him, too) that will keep them up nights listening for strange noises. They invest huge amounts of money and time in little bits and pieces throughout the year for these addictions in one form or another. Appropriately enough they could not do without those they like to torment. The rest of the world knows our value and clears the way for us to do what we do so they can do what they love, whichever form of reading it may be.
I have never felt a need to justify what I do, anymore than I need to justify why I think or breathe or live. I just do. It’s automatic, unavoidable, necessary. It is what wakes me in the morning, beckoning me to the computer to work on something that worked itself out while I slept. It’s what brings me back again and again to exhale my creations onto the page for consumption by someone who is just as addicted to it as I am, if in a different way. It is what I do and who I am and that is all the answer that is owed to anyone. This is why I write.
I turned on her, standing nose to nose, toe to toe, and glared down that smug look plastered on her face. “Why do you bother to breath?” I said matter of factly, not willing to give her even a cell of my well earned, thick hide. She stood dumfounded, mouth agape, then gave a huff, turned and walked off. The astonishment was not so much that I had given her a question she couldn’t answer or felt was irrelevant, but that for the first time ever I stood up to her. She could not enter that restricted area to pillage as she pleased.
That incident set off a question within myself. Why do I write? There is no easy answer. I have thought it over periodically for two decades. Writing is different things for different people; each of us must find our own way on the quest to answer the question of obsession, however weak or strong the urge.
At the time I made out a grocery list of reasons. When I was twenty I boiled those down to the important ones. At twenty five I refined it to the top five. After that my writing advanced and its purpose and product became more focused. The business end of that pen was eventually brought down to a fine point instead of the bold magic marker I’d started with and the list went out the window.
A new one took its place. It isn’t anything that I have ever put to paper. I kept it carefully wrapped up in my head where it was safe from scrutiny and of the Captain Cheerleaders of my life, until now.
The answer is as simple as rainwater and just as important. It occurs to me there might be others out there agonizing over the question themselves, tormented by their own antagonists, so I will get out on the end of the limb and share what I know.
I write because I must. It is like breathing, thinking. Automatic, unavoidable, necessary. Try not breathing. No, really, take in a breath, let it out and try not drawing in another. Can’t do it can you? That is how writing is for me. I could no more not write than I could not breathe.
It is as important to me as the air that I draw in and exhale out. The ideas seep in from the environment and are drawn in on the air that passes my lips, through my nostrils and into my lungs. They circulate through my body, providing sustenance to the most important muscles I have, the writing muscles. The ones that flex and stretch, lift and strain to a rhythm all their own, like the heart beats, pumping blood and essential oxygen throughout the body. Once fully exploited they flow out again as another product entirely, chemically changed as I drain from them nutrients I need to survive. They return to the world as a useful by-product for others, organized and processed, ready for consumption. Somewhere there is a reader for whom reading is as important to them as writing is to me.
Everything is game to fill the necessity. Every moment of my life, every tiny detail of anything or anyone observed could filter in to be absorbed. Whatever feeds the need. Sometimes people find this intimidating. My friends and family came to accept it long ago and trust me not to reveal my sources. No names please. New friends tread lightly until they’ve come to know me, then they relax, realizing that their secret identities are safe. Strangely enough I have never had anyone who said ‘Don’t write about me.’ Never. They are interested to find themselves, or more appropriately parts of themselves in my pieces and look hard so they will not miss it. Of course they only find the good pieces, not because that is all I write of them, but because no one ever recognizes their own bad components. But that’s okay; it’s probably what keeps me from being assassinated as I sleep.
Writing is viewed very strangely. There are always the ones who will ask the question like the snide cheerleader of my teenage years. Yet the same people will consume writing of all forms. Gossip columns to romance novels to thick books from Maine writers (they critcize him, too) that will keep them up nights listening for strange noises. They invest huge amounts of money and time in little bits and pieces throughout the year for these addictions in one form or another. Appropriately enough they could not do without those they like to torment. The rest of the world knows our value and clears the way for us to do what we do so they can do what they love, whichever form of reading it may be.
I have never felt a need to justify what I do, anymore than I need to justify why I think or breathe or live. I just do. It’s automatic, unavoidable, necessary. It is what wakes me in the morning, beckoning me to the computer to work on something that worked itself out while I slept. It’s what brings me back again and again to exhale my creations onto the page for consumption by someone who is just as addicted to it as I am, if in a different way. It is what I do and who I am and that is all the answer that is owed to anyone. This is why I write.
