The Power Of Connection

“Come to Cal’,” my younger brother, Brandon, urged me on the phone in March of 1979. “Come and look for a house for the summer. Just think about the summer, nothing else.”

Brandon, a TV executive in California, had been divorced for about six years. Spending some time with him seemed like a good idea. Spending time with B—as we called him--had always been a good idea. Although he was three years younger than I, B was my “spilt-apart” soul. Even as children we had shared the same innate sense of the outrageousness of life: our laughter bubbling up simultaneously.

Only I wasn’t so good at laughing these days. I had been separated from my second husband for seven months and consumed by misery and shame, I was living on baked potatoes and cigarettes, rail-thin and hollow-eyed. 

Nonetheless, the realization had been creeping up on me, as slinky and drag-ass as an inchworm, that I would not survive living in the same small Ohio town with what would shortly be my two ex-husbands.

I knew I had to at least think about leaving. Leaving? After twenty-three years of life and friends in Perrysburg? I was petrified.

“Come on, Ces,” B persisted. “You have to get out of there.”

I headed west.

B had organized a realtor who took me straight to the Pacific shore at Malibu. “You need the water,” Brandon reminded me and I knew he was right. Water is healing for me: soothing, always shifting, the colors changing constantly. Rough or smooth, water is my element.

 But Malibu was not. I simply wasn’t up to Malibu.

 Alta Tingle, a friend of Brandon’s, had planned a dinner party for me. I didn’t want to go. “Don’t worry about it,” B chided. “It will be very casual. You’ll like the people. It will be fine.”

It will not be fine, I thought, as I dressed in jeans and an old shirt and some sneakers. 

“No!” B shouted when I emerged from the guestroom. “I said casual, but you are not going looking like that. You looked better when you got off the plane. Put that stuff on.”

The dinner party was OK. The people were welcoming and friendly and I did my best. It was a buffet supper and we sat around Alta’s living room, some on chairs, some on the floor. My brother was sitting next to Alta on the couch and I was on the floor nearby.

When most of us had finished our food, B suddenly stood up and announced, "I’m done with this plate!” And then, in one swift motion, he backhanded his white china dinner plate into the fireplace, where it shattered into a million pieces. 

Conversation stopped. People were gape-jawed over what had just happened. Brandon fell back into the couch, he and Alta rocking with laughter. Then B caught my eye with that old look, that naughty, utterly familiar look from our childhood when he was urging me to do something outrageous. He didn’t say a word. He just gave me that gleeful, dare-you look.

 Without thought, I rose to my knees and winged my empty plate into the fireplace. The pieces flew all over the carpet. We were all  laughing now and plates were flying across the room. Over the racket I heard my brother say to Alta, “You see? I told you. She is going to be all right.”

On the way home B confessed that he had planned the whole thing. He had seen the set of white plates at a yard sale and had the idea. “Ten dollars,” he grinned. “Small price to pay to see you light up like that.”

A day later, flying home, I recalled the giddy rush of freedom that I had felt as I winged that plate into the fireplace: the satisfying sound of pottery breaking against stone, and I smiled. I had done it, I thought. I had stepped up—at least gotten to my knees--and tossed that damned plate.

  I knew then that I would leave Ohio. With his extraordinarily creative wisdom, my wonderful brother had reached right into the core of me and reignited the pilot light of my life. 

Where I would go, I didn’t know. It would take a while, that was certain. But one way or another, somewhere, somehow, I would begin again.                                          

                                                ***
Written with great love and gratitude for the life of my brother,                

Brandon Stoddard

                             March 31, 1937- December 22, 2014

It's The love And Light That Counts

It’s the Holiday Season: a time when preparation creates a busyness in us that feels like a relentless buzzing bee. Have you noticed that?

Let’s quit: let go of striving for perfection. If the candles aren’t the right blue or green, let’s shrug our shoulders and honor our intention. If a wing on one of our favorite angels is lopsided, since when is a lopsided angel less beautiful? (Come to think of it we are all lopsided angels, so it works fine.)

Having snatched up a wreath for my door on my way out of the super market, I discovered when I hung it that there was no red ribbon on the wreath. OK. It had some red berries on it so I hadn’t gone completely off the rails, but I’ve always have a red bow on my wreath! I thought about chasing one down and then decided to just get over it. A friend, who came by the other day, said, “I love your wreath; it smells so good! I muttered something about “no red ribbon,” and she exclaimed. “It’s so natural! You don’t need a red bow.”

Right. Breathe in and out.

We are all operating from longer, more complicated lists. Let’s find more ways to allow others to help. Thirteen of my family spend Christmas Day at my daughter’s house. This year Taylor sent an unprecedented email entitled, Christmas Chores, in which we were each given an assignment. Everyone weighed in with enthusiasm.

 Instead of moaning about it, let’s relax, breathe and smile at the people in the check-out lines and in the slow-moving traffic, acknowledging that all of us are in the same boat: A boat piled high with errands, but a boat aimed directly toward a celebration of love and light. 

 And we all know that it is the love and light that counts.

Love in a manger

Happy Holidays to you all!

***

Happy Holidays to the readers of this blog who live in in other countries. I am grateful to you. May your New Year be filled with Peace and Joy.

In no particular order, these are the foreign countries that generally show up in my stats:

Germany, United Kingdom, France, Ukraine, Canada, Indonesia, Netherlands, Taiwan, China, Israel, Jordan, and Italy and Japan.

Across The Country To Say Goodbye.

 I am just back from a turn-around trip to California where I went to see my brother who is very ill. Literally a turnaround. My oldest son, Lock, went with me.  We flew out on Friday, spent the night in a hotel, visited my brother on Saturday and flew back to Connecticut early Sunday morning: a test of 80 year-old physical and emotional stamina if there ever was one!

We went to say goodbye. We went bearing messages of love from other members of our family. How long his transition will take, I do not know, but my wonderful, talented, funny, younger brother is well into it and I doubt that it will be long.  After visiting with him for an hour or so, my son and I sat outside on a red bench in the bright California sun and wept.

A single cheerful diversion occurred when, in order for my brother to nap soundly, we left for a while. Holly Goldberg Sloan, writer of lovely books: I'll Be There and Counting By Sevens, and friend of my son's,  picked us up in her bright orange car and took us for a long walk along the Pacific Ocean near where she lives with her illustrator husband, Gary. We stopped to drink coffees. That is, I did. Holly drank a juice made from cucumber, parsley, kale and spinach. Ack! It tasted like liquid salad and positively screamed GOOD FOR YOU! Even Holly thought a bit of apple juice might have helped.

Sitting at the wobbly round table, our knees pressed together, Holly showed Lock and me--both I Phone novices-- how to photograph our next-day boarding passes for Delta Airlines. At 6:00 AM the next morning, he and I both executed this maneuver successfully and stood in line, our cellphones at the ready for scanning. The young man in  front of me was struggling to find his pass on his phone and was impatiently waved aside by the security person, who reached for my phone to scan instead. And it worked! 

A silly splash of victory in an ocean of sadness, grief and helplessness. 

Where Were You Joel Osteen?

A few days ago, while walking with a friend, I heard myself say a snarky thing about a woman we both knew. Later, at home, I thought: Joel Osteen! Where were you when I needed you to keep me from being unpleasant about a perfectly good person?

And why does this Episcopalian/Buddhist/interfaith minister think of Pastor Joel Osteen when she has just been a bit bitchy?

It’s simple. He’s a wonderful preacher, deep thinking, articulate and uplifting. (Sunday, 9:00 AM, Channel 5) He leaves me feeling full of possibilities: that I can be a better person: that I have only just begun to realize the potential that God holds for me: that I will be able to fulfill whatever it is that I came into this world to express.

How great is that? Joel Osteen inspires me to believe that I am worthy in every way—in spite of my contrary behavior.

And just last Sunday he raised this question: are we sowing honor or dishonor in our lives? And there I was walking along with my friend—a perfect example of someone sowing some gratuitous dishonor.

Osteen spoke of the way in which we store up honor and admiration of others. We “withhold” it, he said. We think nice things about people, but we don’t bother to let them know. We tend to be compliment lazy and often parsimonious with praise.  

Sometimes our holdback is more than just laziness.

Compliments can become frozen inside us because unconsciously we fear that if we release that praise for another, somehow we will be the less for it. As if, in praising someone else, we risk losing some esteem for ourselves. So we don’t share our kind thoughts. (Have you noticed this behavior  showing up where certain others are concerned? A spouse? A sibling? Someone with whom we feel a bit competitive?)

Osteen reminded his millions of listeners that, actually, it’s exactly the opposite. “We reap what we sow.”  Instead of losing, when we honor another, we gain. We thrive when we become “generous with compliments and stingy with complaints.”

 “Pour the oil of honor everywhere you can, by speaking well of someone even behind his or her back,” he urged. “There is great power,” he went on to say, “in a second hand compliment.”

How many sincere compliments can we offer in any given day? Let’s challenge ourselves to find the good wherever and however we can, and then share it, express it, make it known.

Then, if Osteen is right, along with Jesus and the Buddha—who teaches the same thing, but says it very differently—we will only need to keep our hearts open and our generosity flowing. As we soften, the oft-spoken spiritual promise is that miracles will begin to happen, both within us and in the world around us.

***

Check out Unleash Potential, http://www.unleashpotential.us/events/ offering personal growth groups in Fairfield every third Thursday. Caroline J. Temple and Lisa Jacoby are the compassionate leaders of Unleash Potential and my companions on this journey of reflection and self-discovery. Call Caroline: 203 866 9331for the details of the workshops.

Perfect However It Turns Out.

 Do you remember the weather prognosis for Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving? The wintry mix along the coast, the wind, the cancelled flights and the travel warnings for I 95: to say nothing of the prediction that there would be a record number of drivers on the roads because of the drop in gas prices. Even in good weather the Thanksgiving traffic toward Hyannis, where I was headed with my youngest son and his family, is horrendous, so this weather prediction was daunting.

The thought of the six hour drive north and east on Wednesday toward ferries that might not even run and, if they did, would be madly rocking to and fro during the two hour crossing, began to make me more than somewhat nervous. To go or not to go: that was the question. I didn’t have the same determination to get to their house on the island as my son and his family did. I wanted to be there with them; I just didn’t want to get there.

 Letting go of the outcome of it all, my prayer about Thanksgiving became, “Let this Thanksgiving be perfect however it turns out.”

On Tuesday evening I had a conversation with my daughter, who said, “Come to our house” (in New Canaan) “and see the boys.”

On Wednesday morning I spoke with my daughter-in-law, who admitted that the whole Thanksgiving in Nantucket thing was very stressful even for them. “I can get pretty snippy about it,” she told me.

That did it. I opted out.

Instead, I spent Thanksgiving with the six-member, New Canaan contingent of my family. A treat to see the older boys, all of whom are working now so glimpses of them are rare. I cooked with my daughter and held my favorite grand dog in my lap. On the way home I counted myself blessed to have had such a wonderful fall back plan.

And the blessings didn’t stop.

A childhood friend of my oldest son, who lives in Wilton, CT, and whom I have known since she was born, has just begun to read this blog. She had read The Privilege Of Pies and therefore was aware of the pending Nantucket trip. Our families were good friends during my married life in Ohio and Peggy emailed to say that if, due to the terrible weather, I did not go to Nantucket, her mother and older sister were visiting her and they would all like to see me.

A chance to see her mother, my friend, Kay, who was my tennis and paddle tennis and bridge-playing pal of twenty years? And two of Kay's three daughters, whom I watched grow up and who were so much a part of my children’s lives? Yes!

We met on Friday for lunch. When I saw Kay, I couldn’t stop hugging her. She has been through some medical issues so she is a bit frail, but there is no change in her bright eyes and spirit. The girls--no longer girls, of course—are attractive, smart and interesting and, above all, as they always have been, they are loving. The four of us caught up; we laughed and we remembered.

“May this Thanksgiving be perfect however it turns out.” 

Isn't it amazing how often when one plan folds, something totally unexpected and wonderful takes it's place?

The Privilege Of Pies

On November 20 my daughter-in-law emailed me to ask if I could get pies from that “wonderful bakery”—she meant The Pantry—to bring to Nantucket for Thanksgiving.

Oh dear! The Pantry, I knew, would no longer take orders for Thanksgiving food, but I phoned anyway—just on a chance— and was advised that if I queued by 7:00 AM on Tuesday I might be able to get my hands on a pie or two. Hmm…

I called Isabel and Vincent—a good bakery—and found that, yes, I could still order up to Sunday before Thanksgiving, but that they were making pumpkin and apple tarts.

“Tarts?” I queried? That isn’t the same thing as a pie and my daughter-in-law had specifically asked for pies.

I emailed her with The Pantry news and the tart news and she replied, “Don’t stress. Get the tarts if that is easier.”

OK. So later in the day I am walking with my young and resourceful walking partner, and I tell her about the pie problem. She, bless her heart, offers to be at The Pantry at 7:00 AM on Tuesday for me. “I get up early anyway, “ she tells me.

We agree that I will buy the two tarts at Isabel’s on Tuesday and if my friend can make it to The Pantry on that same morning by 7:00 AM and successfully snare two pies there, I will give her the Isabel tarts for her family to devour and she will give me the pies.

A plan is hatched, a bit scruffy, but a plan nonetheless.

However, later in the day, to my amazement, my friend emails me with the name, phone number and email address of a bakery in Nantucket, which she found online and which, she says, is still accepting orders for pies for Thanksgiving. She knows this because she has already called them!

I immediately text my daughter-in-law for approval of this bakery. (Anyone who is a mother-in-law will understand this move.) Approval is secured. I call the Nantucket bakery—Petticoat Row--and order the pies which will be picked up by a local friend who is joining us for Thanksgiving.

Whew!

Did you make it all the way through this? Have you been wondering why I am taking up so much of your precious time with what my older son would rightly call “a white girl problem?”

  Here's the "why." It suddenly  occurred to me how very blessed I am to have my only fret this week be about something as simple as pies.

Thanksgiving is a family holiday often honored by attending our places of worship. Although we have serious gun control issues to resolve in this country, in America we will not be anxious that we might be slaughtered in our pews as we pray.

We are so fortunate. Americans are spared the anxiety of wondering if, at any moment, a bomb will explode near or on our houses. We do not live in the omnipresent terror that suddenly our front door will be bashed in and our loved ones dragged away. We do not have to hear the cries of our babies grow thin and weak as they die of starvation. We have no foreign tanks churning at our borders.

  At this moment I am filled with gratitude for the privilege it is to be able to live in a country free from constant fear. Instead, on our Thanksgiving holiday, we can joyfully focus on family, turkeys, gravy and pies.

***

Thank you American readers of this blog. I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

 To those readers from foreign countries to whom I am very grateful, I wish you peace. I wish you borders that are secure and free of threat. I wish you and your children long lives, safe and protected within your own cultures.