A Woman of Mystery

I know just how Bea feels as she peers through her magic magnifying glass at an ever-more-mysterious world. How can things be so blissful one moment and so terrible the next? We will have to teach her (as if we ourselves knew) how to roll with the punches.

I was stunned to hear about the destruction of the city of Port Au Prince, Haiti. Why would an earthquake strike the capital of one of the poorest nations on earth, where people are already struggling for existence? If I were a traditional believer, I'd be asking, "Where was God when this was happening?"

But as I look at the photos and videos coming from Haiti, I know that God is there--in the hearts and hands of people helping each other, and in the generous donations and prayers offered by folks of all nationalities and beliefs for the relief of the stricken. Most of all, I behold the Christ spirit in the people who are coming from other countries to set up hospitals for the wounded and to reconstruct the homes and buildings that have been destroyed.

God doesn't make bad things happen. Sometimes (often) people make terrible things happen. And sometimes it's just Nature. We are spiritual beings in human bodies and we are subject to the workings of our planet. What is a disaster for many is also an opportunity for many to reach out with kindness and tenderness to our fellows.

In this photo, Bea is the watcher and Monkey and Paco are her children. She is only a little child now, but already she is conscious of a world bigger than her home, bigger than her yard, even bigger than her city. I pray for her that she will be a generous and loving woman, and that she will be God when there is help to be given to others. And I pray, too, that she will be forever under the protection of the Universe, where the Mystery dwells.

Here is a photo of Bea with her cat Tutu. Tutu used to be named Chloe, but after Bea came along and started calling her Tutu, now we all call her Tutu. And she couldn't care less.

I have to admit that all the women in our family are pretty commanding. If you were being held hostage in a foreign land, with a knife at your throat, no sight would be prettier to your desperate eyes than the women of our family coming to your rescue.

We are simply tough and determined.

Recently an old friend said to me, you are too independent to tolerate a husband. Tolerate a husband?

Is that what I'm supposed to do?

Surely not!

A husband is someone to cherish. I have, in my lifetime, cherished not only husbands, but several lovers and boyfriends. I have cooked for them, done their laundry, paid their bills, remembered their family's birthdays and treated them with all the tenderness I could muster.

However, I have never tolerated any of them, and perhaps that is my failing.

This is a new year, and I believe that it is going to be a great one. I believe that all of us are going to move forward in our lives, and if we've been stuck in a rut since last Fall, we're going to break free and strike out in a new direction. I have never been afraid to reinvent myself, nor have I quailed at seeing my daughters reinvent themselves. Sometimes it's necessary and lifesaving to just pull up your roots and plant them in healthier ground.

I pray for my children and I pray for my country. We haven't always lived up to our own standards. We have gone astray (or ganged agley, if you're Scottish) and we have self-corrected and started over. This is a good a time as any to do it again. Forward!

Even the dinosaur is laughing...

This photo of my granddaughter Bea and her dad was taken on Christmas Day. You can see the happiness in their faces as Bea discovers how to make her new little train run along its 8-shaped track. Tim is holding Bea's new guitar, something she especially asked for. Just like the butterflies on her pajamas, she is an emerging spirit--growing every day in comprehension and the ability to modify the world into which she was born.

In a larger sense, we're all emerging from the ratty old cocoon of 2009 and bursting bright and new into the new decade. It's an exciting time to be alive.

It's also a huge challenge. The United States is a nation at war. We tend to forget this in the pageantry and parading of the holiday season. I complain constantly about being out of my own home dog-sitting. It really bothers me. But at least I'm not out on some desert in a tent, expecting to be blown to bits any minute.

Then there is climate change that no one's seriously addressing. We're just going on about our business and hoping that it will go away. Al Gore did his best to scare us into making some major leaps into conserving resources, but even he has been silent lately.

Finally, there is health care. The big problem as I see it is that the American Medical Association and the big insurance companies are not willing to clean up their acts. They won't change their wicked ways without being forced. The doctors are over-treating and over-medicating us, especially the older generation, because they can. We are not able to discern which medications are really necessary and which are just money-makers.

Old age is not a disease, people. Old age is perfectly natural. And we who are old are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful people with strong hearts and a lot of wisdom. We don't need to be prematurely buried by folks who don't have our best interests at heart. We don't need even to pay attention to our children when they tell us we are repeating ourselves. Repeating ourselves. Repeating.....

The Cheddar Bunny Girl

Under Bea's arm, you see a small stuffed bunny. This is Paco. Although Paco has been through the wash any number of times, he retains his status of favorite toy. I don't know why Bea named him Paco. It sounds Spanish, but I can't find a translation for it. She named one of her dolls Loco. I think that means "crazy" in Spanish. Maybe there are things about that doll she knows that we don't. Paco and Loco have very special places in Bea's heart and therefore in ours.

Bea named her stuffed doggie puppet "Yuppio." Remember when "yuppie" meant "young upwardly mobile professionals"? But Yuppio doesn't seem to have a great deal of ambition, and seldom speaks unless spoken through, so I am guessing his name means something like "delicious sherbert" in Transylvanian.

Like most 3-year-olds, Bea is fond of asking questions. Yet, to my knowledge, she has never asked her mother, where did I come from? Rather, Bea accepts her place in the world as a beloved person as an established fact, too familiar to be questioned.

Perhaps she will be like me, and won't even begin to wonder where she came from until she gets to be about 40. Then her existence will be an intriguing mystery that will keep her tossing and turning at night. Like me, she'll say, "I know where my body came from, but where did my spirit come from? And who am I, anyway?"

And even more intriguing, "Where was I before I was here? Or how did I just get here from nowhere?"

Once I asked my first husband, "Would you still love me if I lost an arm?"

"Yes," he replied.

"And would you still love me if I lost both my arms."

"Of course," he said.

"And would you still love me if I lost both arms and one leg?"

At this point, he began to waver. "Yes," he sighed, "but I probably wouldn't marry you."

But what I was trying to get at was, what exactly did he love? Was it the me that he could see and touch or the me that was invisible? Is it only God that loves the invisible me?

Nowadays, I am getting old and all my potential mates are also getting old, and they do not love the invisible me, because they only see the visible me, who is getting shorter, fatter and wrinklier by the moment. (And have you seen the photos of Hillary Clinton in this week's Newsweek? Oy vey! And she's younger than me!)

Too bad, you guys. But like the Cheddar Bunny Girl, there is more to me than meets the eye, and always has been, and that soul-mama is not going away any time soon. Me and Hillary are just getting started. Our spirits are not afraid of wrinkles!

So Merry Christmas to everyone, and thanks, Beasie, for sharing your own beautiful, accepting, cheddar-cheese-bunny eating spirit with all of us. Like your name, "Beatrice," you are blessed, and always will be, even when you are 110!

It's nice to be nice!

Here is another photo of Bea on the New Hill Railroad's Santa Train.As you can see by the look on Bea's face, she is blissed out. My daughter Amy, Bea's mother, also went on a Santa train up in Connecticut when she was about the same age. (She's probably remembering that as this photo is being taken, because she looks blissed out, as well.) I will always remember that when the bell-ringing Santa on the Connecticut train asked my little Amy what she wanted for Christmas, Amy replied shyly, "I want to ring your bell." And so he let her ring the bell and she was very happy.

The Santa in the current photo is a very good representative of the Santa clan. He has the requisite twinkly blue eyes and a lush beard and mustache. It's hard to know whether Bea is into believing that he's the real Santa. We haven't emphasized Santa and getting presents. When I asked Bea a few weeks ago what she was going to do for Christmas, she exclaimed, "We're going to get a big Christmas tree that goes all the way up to the ceiling." Clearly, that was what Christmas meant to her--helping to decorate the tree. I'm glad she thinks that way. She'll never be disappointed if she doesn't get sucked into the commercial side of Christmas.

When I was a small child, I didn't see a lot of Santas. I think having Santas was not very popular in the society of the 40s. The Depression, with all its miseries and woes, was too recent. My father told stories of bleak Christmases past that would wring tears from a stone. He got one orange a year--always at Christmas--and he would eat the whole thing, rind and seed included. I always felt terrible about that, every time he told that story.

What I remember best about Santa from my own childhood was my grandfather, Papaw Williams, telling me to look out the window, quick! because he had just seen Santa peeking in to see if I was being good. I would race to the window and look all around, but I never caught a glimpse of Santa. However, I never doubted that he was out there, because I believed my Papaw's every word. And still, every December, I try to be nice -- just in case Santa's watching. I'm sure I passed that on to Amy, and she'll pass it to Bea. Be nice!

Dinner at Panciuto's

These are two of my best friends from long, long ago. I will not reveal their names for fear of starting a stampede, but let us just say, the three of us are not Peter, Paul and Mary.

We all grew up in what is now Knoxville, Tennessee, and after high school, went our separate ways. We had completely lost track of one another. But because of another friend in Knoxville, who planned some wonderful reunions for our class, we found each other and got together for a meal last Saturday night.

It's amazing, when your earliest memories of a person are of a little girl or boy, to meet with them in their seventh decade and start talking just as if all that time had never passed.

We toasted absent friends and one another's health, and we had a wonderful relaxing dinner. What could be a better gift for the holiday season than the opportunity of renewing friendships grown ever more golden with the years?

Taking the holidays easy

So far this Christmas season has been a mixed bag. There have been great days and not-so-great days. Sometimes I think it's all about expectations, and we should definitely lower our expectations if we don't want to get all frustrated.

What I wanted this year was some time to reflect, but I only got it after making a complete fool of myself at a conference on, of all things, lovingkindness and meditation. I had signed up for the conference months ago and paid my fee, which was a bit exorbitant, to start with, for a day-and-a-half with Sharon Salzburg. The event was a big disappointment. Like many New Age speakers, Sharon Salzburg spends a lot of the time when she's supposed to be teaching something just talking about herself. She does a lot of name-dropping: "The other day, I said to Ram Dass, I said... ." That sort of thing. I kept thinking, "For this, I paid $75?"

The worst thing about the conference was the venue, a local UU fellowship (I can't bring myself to call it a "church.") They set up the check-in tables and locked all the doors but one. Then after participants checked in at the check-in table, they had to be checked in again at the door of the meeting room. So I felt from the get-go that this event was all about money, and it really made me mad.

Anger is a natural part of Christmas. People make each other mad. If you don't believe me, try driving at the rush hour to any destination in the Triangle. People get mad in the stores. They get mad in the restaurants. There is no peace, because every one has so much to do, and everyone is rushing.

Everyone except the blessed Bea, who was photographed recently taking a break in a recliner from her work and play. She is such a great role model. I want to be just like her when I grow up. I want to put on my stripey socks and just chill out for a little while. Thank you, Bea, for shining the light of your three-year-old wisdom on your frazzled old Grammy. (And may all of us be free from suffering, just as soon as possible!)