GROWING 05.18.2013

There is a growing unease inside as I try to write this post. I sit in front of my computer screen

and wait...

and wait...

 and wait...

And nothing is coming. Or there is too much coming--thin, billowy strands but nothing lands. There is no anchor to the thought. Writers block? When I tell my neighbor Annie about it, she suggests lying in the hammock under the trees with a gin and tonic. Not a bad solution. I wish I would have tried it. Now it is too chilly and too late to be outside. 

Late. 

Growing up I remember the struggle with being on time. Whereas my Dad was always punctual and early even, my Mom was rushing around despite the precaution of setting all the clocks 15 minutes ahead. (Granted, there were three kids, all within one-and-a-half to two years apart, to gather and then herd into the car). My Father is a scientist and doesn't practice any organized religion. So I was raised Catholic by my Ma. I remember many a Sunday racing to get to Church before the consecration. Otherwise, it didn't "count" and we'd have to go to mass again. There were times we'd file in--just in the nick of time--as the priest was raising the Eucharist and saying, "Do this in memory of me." Phew, we made it! By the grace of God and my Mom's fancy driving, double Church time was avoided once again! 

It's not that Church was so bad. As a kid I loved praying to God and feeding my spiritual self. It's just that there were all sorts of other things to do that were outside--not in a building. Like climbing my favorite tree in the backyard. I loved that tree. It was a safe perch from which to view the world. 

So, it was the natural place I ran to when early one morning my Mom and Dad called the three of us to the dining room table and told us the news. My Mom started, but couldn't finish. She erupted into tears. My Dad told us that our Grandma Josephine had passed away the night before. 

Grandma Josephine with her Easter Basket

At first I didn't feel anything. I was more concerned with seeing my Mom so grief-stricken. But then it slowly sank in. That I would never see my Grandma again. 
Never again. 

I was 9 years old at the time. 


My grandparents on my mother's side had emigrated from Poland. English was not my Grandma's first language. Love was. Growing up I remember a plump and jolly woman who would make me feel all grown up by letting me have coffee with the adults. 'Coffee' was warm milk with one scoop too many of white sugar and just enough coffee to turn the concoction the slightest tan color. I'd sit at Grandma's kitchen table, trying to sneak another scoop of sugar, listening to the adults. Except I didn't understand anything they were saying since most of the conversation was in Polish. But I didn't care. I was having coffee! Not water, not Tang, not milk (well, I really was having milk) but COFFEE!

I remember all of us sitting on the couch for the weekly ritual of watching the Lawrence Welk show. To be honest, I was bored except for the dancing of Bobby and Cissy. But it was a clean, wholesome show that the entire family could watch together. A show where there was music and dancing, universal languages that we all could understand.

The Saturday before Easter, my sister and I would dress in our Polish costumes as it was our custom to go to Our Lady of Bright Mount, the Polish church in Los Angeles. Here, in keeping with tradition, Easter baskets would be placed on outside tables. Rows and rows of them. Big, small, elaborate and simple. My Grandmother's baskets were always beautiful. They were filled with staples such as kielbasa and sauerkraut. There were hard-boiled eggs that we would dye the night before. Sometimes using a Paas kit, but more often than not, my Ma would boil onion skins and use beet juice and we'd dye our white eggs a soft pink and golden brown. 

My job as a child was to carve a lamb out of a stick of butter. This symbolized the Lamb of God. I'd cut a little swath of red fabric and put it around the greasy lamb's neck for a collar. I'd use peppercorns for eyes. And always in it's butt a toothpick with the Polish flag. My rendition looked more like a dog blob than a lamb. I remember walking along the tables mesmerized by some of the butter sculptures.  They were true works of art. 

My big sister and I in our traditional Polish Dress

And there was always Babka, the most typical Polish Easter cake, often in a 'bundt' shape, reminiscent of womens' skirts. The name translates to 'Grandmother's Cake.' Our chocolate Easter bunnies were also put in the baskets. This was a cruel tactic as we weren't allowed to eat the food until the next day, after Jesus rose from the dead. When morning finally dawned however, before eating chocolate bunnies, my Ma would peel an egg (we couldn't throw the egg shells in the garbage because they had been blessed, so we saved them for burning later) and cut it into as many pieces as people present. Symbolizing new life, it was the first thing we ate together. 

But it was a long wait until then. Sometimes it would be quite hot as we all stood around the tables waiting for the priest to come with a scepter and vessel of holy water. The lamb artists would glance nervously at their diminishing sculptures. Finally the priest would arrive, praying in a language I didn't understand, sprinkling holy water, a baptism for our food. I always relished the errant sprinkle on my face that would give momentary relief from the heat.

I also remember the piano at my grandparent's house where instead of sheet music there was a picture of Jesus Christ. But it wasn't just any picture. It was Jesus' face with his eyes closed and a crown of thorns on his head. The mystifying part though, was if you stared at it long enough, all of a sudden the eyes would open! It creeped me out but I would return again and again. Jesus looked so sad and uncomfortable, the crown of thorns digging into his skull. Why have you forsaken me?

But as uneasy as I felt, I could always return to the safety of my Grandma's fleshy harbor. She'd hold me, stroke my long hair, sing to me Polish. She was jolly. A twinkle in her eye and a contagious smile.

By the time my Grandma passed away, she had withered down to skin and bones,  refusing to eat. She stayed in our house for a while. I remember one evening my Ma asked me to bring food to her. She thought Grandma might eat if I brought it. So I did. Grandma was in bed and I spoke to her softly and gently. She looked at me. Can I even say with recognition? I don't know. Her eyes looked so different. I tried to offer her food. Tried to put a spoon to her lips. But she said, "Nie" with such force I soon left, feeling like a failure.

The morning of the news, we didn't have to go to school. I don't know what my sister and brother did, but I ran to my tree. I climbed up...and up...and up. Higher than I had before. It was my first experience with death and I didn't believe it. I sat in those branches for hours. I don't know how long it actually was, but it was long enough that the air became cool. I was waiting and praying. In my child's mind, I thought if I could climb high enough, I would be closer to heaven and my Grandma would see me, talk to me, come back to me. I waited and waited for her. I remember my Dad going into the backyard and calling my name. I was so conflicted. I wanted to be a good daughter and answer back, but if I did, he'd make me come down and I would lose my Grandma forever. I knew I should answer, but I didn't say a word. I was as still as a branch. I even felt a guilty pleasure at this trickery. But I had no choice. I had to wait for my Grandma. I knew she would come.

So I waited...

                                                   and waited.....

                                                                                              and waited...

And nothing happened. I finally was too cold to stay in the tree. Reluctantly, with the ominous feeling that things would never be the same again, I climbed back down to earth. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GROWING 05.17.2013

7:38 pm.  Where is he?

I’m sitting here.  I’ve got my routine down.  6:45 pm I turn off the lights.  I get my tea from the dank little kitchen in my 8th story three room apartment.  I sit on my bed facing the window that faces his window across the street.  I’ve got my camera, my notepad, my pen, my binoculars.  Binoculars are the newest addition to my arsenal.  I had to.  His apartment is long, deep.  The kitchen at the back.  I can’t see his subtle movements that far back.  Every egg crack, every dish scrubbed.  I had to see.  He needs me to see.  To be here for him

7:39 pm. I get anxious.  Different from the anxious I get when 7:28 comes.  When I know he’ll be home in two minutes.  That is a sickening, wanting anxious.  This anxious is more of a break-in-pattern, fear of losing him anxious.

He moved in two months ago.  It was fateful chance that I noticed his new residency.  I was sitting here, on my bed.  I was watching the birds above, the people scampering like ants at task below. Between the glances down to up I saw him with boxes.  I saw her leave him there with a final hug.  I saw him crumple to the ground and cry.  That’s how I knew he needed me.  He needs me.  

7:40 pm.  Where IS he?

I look down below.  I don’t see him.  I stand up.  I start to pace.  I start to scratch my forearm.  I feel a tear trickle down my cheek.  The contact of the warm fluid to my cool flesh and I break.  I never bend. 

I can’t wait. WHERE is he?  I hurl my mug of tea across the room leaving shattered clay pieces sprinkled over the furniture. WHERE is HE?!  I take the length of my arm and swipe the stacks of photos and notes from my ritual watchings off my drafting table.  Some sheets fly and float like feathers and some plummet to the floor with severe haste.  WHERE IS HE?!  I run to the kitchen to grab more things to hurt least I turn on my self.  Then I’d be no good to him.  I smash a plate into the sink.  

Another. 

Another. 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! WHERE IS HE?!  

7:41pm.  In my fit I catch the glint of a lamp flick on across the way.  He’s home.  I slide my finger under the top tissue in my kleenex box and pull up on it.  Gently, I wipe my face dry.  As the tissue comes down over my face a content smile replaces the panicked twisted lipped grimace.

I sit on my bed.  I grin wicked.  I collect my binoculars.

He came home. He came back to me.  I love him so much.  I love him to death.  And what’s best about our love?  It’s growing more everyday. 

GROWING 05.16.13

"What would you like to hear? What would I tell you about growing if we were sitting across from one another? What would you tell me? I think of that tarot card. Is it the seven of pentacles? Hard work and harvest, pride at your efforts."

___

I spent all of my childhood summers in North Bennington with my grandparents. They live on a quiet, one-way street lined with tall pines. When I started riding a bike, I was allowed only to the end of our neighbor's white fence. Later on, I could venture to the end of our lane, and later still I could take a left onto the back road, as long as I stayed on the paved portion. Beyond was still off limits.

Just a few years later, my friends and I were allowed to ride down the back road and beyond. It was about a mile into the village center for candy and another half mile to Lake Paran, where we ate chips and fast-melting ice cream under a shade tree, and where we stood at the shore, preparing ourselves for the water's shocking embrace.

___

"I guess growth is always hard won. It's not necessarily an autonomous process. Well, no. It can be. I mean--plants and trees can grow wild and free, needing only the help of the elements. The beauty of forests comes from this process overlapping itself in all its stages, abundant life and adundant decay."

___

The Adirondacks were created when the land forms now known as Africa and North America collided. Their peaks rose slowly over millenia. They were sharp and high, like the Rockies in the west, or the Himalayas in the far east. Over time, they've been worn down by erosion, by water and wind, by changes in temperature, pebble by pebble.

___

"But if you want a particular result, some work must be done. If you wish to dream up a harvest, you must put the work in to sow and reap it."

___

When I was studying to be a teacher, I learned of a psychologist named Lev Vygotsky and his theory of the "Zone of Proximal Development." Very simply, it's a model that shows how you can't push a student to learn too much all at once, especially if you deny the context of their abilities and experiences.

You must first understand your students through careful assessment and observation. Given the topic at hand, you must discover their comfort level. From there you can push, but just a little. You want to offer challenge but not too much. 

Too much can turn a student's enthusiasm off, pushing him or her away from learning. Too little may elicit boredom or, even worse, laziness--offering success too early and with little effort or aspiration. You must encourage a healthy appetite for challenge and curiosity, but also offer the requisite skills and knowledge to overcome them.

From there they can seek out their own challenges. Learning is not an outcome but a process. 

 

This could be said of many things, I suppose.

___

"There was a stagnation of growth in your life. You felt as though you were at an impasse. I don't know what you thought or felt. I may never know. Did you lose faith in your own ability to grow, even as you marveled at the beauty of growth around you?"

___

A student of mine recently told me, with obvious awe and fascination, that Gingko trees can live up to a thousand years and beyond.

GROWING: 5.15.13

 

"I don't want to grow up," he tells me.

And I understand, believe me, I do. 

"I want to stay like I am, and just play."


I thought there would be this Magical Transition, you know, when I grew up. I'd know exactly what I wanted to be and exactly who I was, and that's how I'd know I was grown up.

I even thought it happened a few times. Like, when I realized that being an actress was something a lot of other people wanted me to be, and that the need to hide in the folds of its cloak had left me some time before. I changed my major unofficially and took classes like Humanism and Mysticism, journalism and poetry. I was quiet about all that, and it felt very rebellious and grown up.

The feeling happened again when a passion stayed with me long enough to earn a degree. It was somewhat anti-climactic, in the middle of the school year, but there was this piece of paper that said I'd done it and now I could feel like an adult, truly and officially. I think I had the feeling for a full five minutes before it floated up out of reach because I still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

The piece of paper...it was supposed to mark that Magical Transition, the one that I was waiting for, the one that would tell me who I was. Something was supposed to happen when I held it in my hand. Oh, I was vulnerable when I didn't feel it right away and I took to heart something that was implied to me...that I could be an artist, but only in my "spare" time.  I had to do something else to make a living. Somehow, setting my personal fulfillment aside seemed like the most grown up decision to make, at the time. Ha. 


Eleven years later, my son tells me he doesn't want to grow up and I wonder if it's because he is a constant witness to our esoteric struggles, spoken of in tense whispers. All those damned grown up responsibilities that weigh us down with stress and worry while we burn with the desire to create and wonder why we didn't just build that gypsy wagon we talked about when we used to sleep outside every night. It makes as much sense to me as it does to him and suddenly I know I don't have to keep pretending I'm grown up, or rather that being grown up means I have to be something measuring up to imaginary expectations in order to have worth.

And then I wonder..when, exactly, did I stop having fun? When did I stop playing and why did I ever believe the person who told me I had to be something other than myself and pursue paths that were not marked for me?

He always shows me what I need to see.

"Me, too," I reply.

I want to stay like I am, and just play.

Growing: 05.14.2013

November 8, 2010

“Like this, Daddy?”

“Yes! Just like that, perfect.”

I watch on as my daughter and my husband try to recreate a photograph he took nearly three years ago. This time, it is a bit more challenging. She is questioning his every move. Instead of peacefully nursing like she was the last time, she flings herself headfirst down the nearest slide. It takes a while but he gets the shot. The difference between them brings tears to my eyes.

Our little girl is growing. And fast.

I am completely unsure of where the time went. It seems surreal that our little person is so big.

33 months today.

We have grown, too. As parents. As a couple. As humans.

Confidence has replace the uncertainty of adolescence. Complete and utter happiness in the space that angst used to fill.

May 14, 2013

We started out as two semi-broken, very young, people. Today, we are a blissful, content, family.

In the beautiful chaos of life, I don’t noticed the little moments of growth that accumulate to our present. I think my next step will be to slow down. Acknowledge those moments. Live in them. Breathe them in. Surround myself in them, then, let go.

Change, growth, progress. Without it, we would go nowhere.

“Mommy!!! Dinner is ready!! You hun-grr-ee?”

Her sweet voice, the one I once dreamt about hearing someday, snaps me out of my daydream.

“Yes, sweetheart, I am on my way.”

GROWING 05.13.2013

Growing up, I played in the Drama Corner, wrote in my journal, and then feverishly recorded stories into my Dictaphone. I made up fake radio shows, discussed politics with my dad, and improvised many swooping ballads about heartbreak and heart yearn. I wanted to grow up and be an actress and ride motorcycles. I wanted to be Punky Brewster. Once, a cute boy on the jungle gym, thought I was her, and asked me for my autograph. Though this flattered me deeply, I was more concerned with being honest, so I refused. I was obsessed with Martika on Kid’s Incorporated and then Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, and then Audrey Hepburn in everything.

David’s friend Bob started calling me Uma, after he saw my performance in my high school play. Bob was a tall, shiny faced, bald, radio DJ, who was very convincing when he spoke. He joked about being my agent every time I ran into him on the street. I wanted to grow up and be an actress in the theater, so this joke was very encouraging. At that time, I hadn’t seen my father in 7 years, so I sent him the VHS tape of the play. I had a solo right in the middle. I can’t remember the name of the song, but my father told me that he watched my singing bit over and over again. I can just picture him watching me sing on a loop for hours; he was so proud and so sad. He told me I was his magic child; the best thing he ever made happen. He was a singer, but he was a mess, and he wanted to live out his dreams through me. We used to harmonize to Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley and some Hall & Oates songs. He loved knowing that I was growing up to be a little bit, like the best part of him.

I studied theater in college but only auditioned for two plays. They rejected me, and I began rejecting traditional theater. On the campus lawn, Milo told me he could see me as an independent film actress, so I gave him a mixtape. In costume design class, my concept and final sketches were for fruit and vegetable themed pieces. They were totally un-functional, highly impractical costumes; they were dripping with dye and juice sap. I liked imagining mango peels with plump bits of fruit as shoulder pads, skirts stitched together with plum skins, and corsets ribbed with celery. I was not interested in being historically accurate. I was not interested in learning how to sew or make models to scale. I was not interested in being Juliet. I created a Butoh performance piece about the sudden death of my father which brought my stern, very German, Japanese Art and Culture teacher to her knees, and made it emotionally possible for me to finish college.  I wanted to grow up and make a mark; and thoroughly seep my essence into everything.

Any which way we go, let us feed the parts we want to see grow.

GROWING 05.12.2013

I was sitting on the edge of the tub, watching him shave, when I fell in love with him. He tilted his head to glide the razor along his jawbone, and-- just like that-- I was smitten. Staring at his reflection in the mirror, I saw him in ten years, twenty, fifty. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be sitting on the edge of a tub watching him shave when we were old and saggy.

A few years later, I found myself lying in a tent, high up on a mountain in Utah. After a long day of driving in the desert sun, I was exhausted. Instead of sleeping, though, I listened to him breathe, deeply and steadily. Turning my head, I could barely see him in the diluted stream of moonlight, but his silhouette was lovely and familiar, even though I hadn’t seen him in months. I thought about all of the nights I had spent lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling in that same diluted moonlight, wondering what it would be like to have him all warm and breathing beside me. And there he was.

I had half-expected this adventure to be excruciating. I had worked hard to get over him, to move on and move forward, and I knew this would be a test. I was scared that maybe I hadn’t made as much progress as I thought-- that being friends with him was impossible, and that I wouldn’t discover that unfortunate fact until we were deep in the desert, with no way out. As he groaned in his sleep and rolled onto his side, tugging his sleeping bag up to his chin, I felt a wave of relief. In that moment, I could see how much I had grown, how much we had grown.

There he was, all warm and breathing beside me, and it felt good.