On Being 82

My mom was pretty amazing in a lot of ways.  One of her strengths was that she was a writer.  After she died, my family and I sifted through some of her few remaining things – she had given most of her possessions away.  I found this little notebook with book reviews in it for the last couple of years.  There were LOTS of books recorded in those pages.  Usually it was just the title, author, who recommended it, if it was shared with members of her book clubs, a very brief summary and a subjective sentence or two.  I never knew that she kept such a notebook.  It pleases me to have a reading list of what she liked.  Gold.  Because as I read her favorites, I will imagine what she thought, imagine our conversations.

I have several stashes around the house of personal stuff including the occasional letter from a friend.  You know how the mail is.  As I approach the mailbox I have no expectations of receiving anything personal.  Those days are gone.  But my mom was a letter writer.  While engaged in a little late winter cleaning this week (consolidating my piles), I collected all of the letters I received from my mom in the last 15 years or so.  I took them out of their envelopes, dated them and put them into chronological order. 

They tell the story of a life well lived.  I did not stop to reread many, but I will read them all again.  Perhaps over spring break or over a long weekend, for there are hundreds of pages.  Some of it is sad, some newsy, some are about dinners with old friends or missing my family.  There are bits about music – which she dearly loved, the weather – which she describes in delicious detail, wildlife – which she appreciated like few others.   Some, not surprisingly, are about books she had read recently.  I love those letters – they are my most prized possession.  Nothing brings back my mom’s voice to me like that tight, neat, slanty handwriting and those clear, spontaneous, but still somehow well-chosen words. 

Three years ago, I received a nice long letter from my mom.  In it she apologizes for her handwriting, describes the music she is listening to (Mozart’s C Major Concerto), and details the weather in Mexico where she and her husband Jim were staying.  She describes this beautiful little scene of watching Huichol Indians sitting near Lake Chapala with their babies painting pieces of bark.  She wrote of many things in that letter and ended with this post script:

This is something I read and loved – Forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.

I always looked forward to receiving letters from Ruck.  At the end of that letter, she added a little piece she wrote called “On Being 82”.  It is an honor to share it here.

On Being 82

Walking up from the lake one day I passed a pile of branches.  When I got to the top of the bank and looked back I realized what a significant thing that had been.  I hadn’t moved them out of the way!  Why?  I am 82.  I knew it would be hard to do – and my body was just too tired.  At 81 I probably would have moved them - and even found a few more tings to tug out of the way.

I am 82.  Three of my children will soon be over 60.  My baby is 46. 

If I had to choose just one day to last my whole life through it would be…

Maybe I would choose just one of those sunny days spent in and out of the water with my pals Jess and Pat.  Or the very special day my father gave me Lake Eerie. 

If I had to choose one moment to live in my heart it would be that tender time when shy, young Jack O’Keefe repeated his marriage vows and looked at me with love.

The keepsakes of my heart would be the first time I saw each of those seven beautiful O’Keefe babies and stroked their soft skin and held their tiny bodies close.

When I drift off to sleep at night I think sometimes about certain minutes of that day – or different times in my life – or old times of my childhood. I dreamed of having a big family.  So that I always send out the wish that my children will always be O’Keefes – banded by being their father’s children.  I hope they will always be loyal to each other.  That was so important to Jack O’Keefe and now it is to me.

I have lived 82 years now – So there probably won’t be many more years.  The most upsetting thing about being old is knowing I am not going to see how everything comes out.  I would like to know if Obama really changes the US.  I would like to know what happens about global warming.  I would like to know if efforts for peace will  develop in time. 

I would like to know what careers the youngest O’Keefes choose.  I would like to live to see all my children hang together no matter what.  A sad thing about being 82 is that I won’t be around to see everyone’s plan work out.

But no one has to feel sorry for me at 82.  I may not have the energy to move that pile of brush – but in total I have been REALLY LUCKY.  I could have been born poor.  I could have starved to death.

Or I could have been born a fly and been eaten by a frog. 

This is how I feel at 82 – I hope that you get to live until you are 82.  Or maybe 122.

Love, Mom

The Universal Soldier

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday I went with my class of third graders to the SC Museum’s Confederate Relic Room.  It was one of the most enjoyable and worthwhile field studies we have ever taken together.  In some ways, it was also one of the hardest.

Joe Long, our docent, lives and breathes history.  He went so far beyond the facts, the names and dates of battles and the numbers of people killed.  He told us stories of people’s lives, connected us with journal entries, and anecdotes about the life and death situations of the famous and not-so-famous.  He filled us in on interesting artifacts such as a coffee bean grinder that was used to grind anything-but-coffee since there was no coffee available during the blockade.  He told us of jewelry fashioned by human hair since it would be around far longer than the original owner of the hair itself.  He kept us on the lookout for binoculars with a bullet still lodged in them which no doubt saved the life of the owner as a Union sharpshooter would have surely hit him in the chest had he not carried the binoculars in his vest pocket.  Joe Long made SC History come to life.

But there were moments of sadness there for me as well.  On one wall of the exhibit hung a real musket carried by a soldier in the Civil War, the War Between the States, the war of Northern Aggression.  The gun was in sort of a cradle and was tethered to the wall with a steel cable.  It was not going anywhere. 

The children I was near picked up the gun.  It was long.  Longer than some of my students are tall.  It was heavy, probably 10 or 15 pounds.  They took turns hefting it and were able to swing it away from the wall just a bit.  I held it too.  As I lifted it, there was this eerie feeling of touching and instrument that may have been used to cause the death of other soldiers in that long-ago conflict.  It may have been held by a boy who was running for his life in a battle where he witnessed the death of his friends and comrades.  It was very likely owned by a kid who would rather have been anywhere but where he was ordered to be, protecting the ideas and "honor" of men he would never see, defending an indefensible way of life where the wealth of a few depended on the enslavement of many.  It was probably carried by a young man, maybe not much more than a child, whose family did not own slaves and may have been very poor himself, for although there was a draft, the wealthy could pay someone to take their place in the war.

 

You can probably guess what my students did.  Almost every boy tried to point it at someone (blessedly the cables were too short) and made well rehearsed shooting noises.  Of course they did.  They were imagining shooting someone with it.  They were staging in their minds themselves as soldiers.  When I was that age I would have done the same.  How could I not?  So much of my little-kid life I spent playing with toy weapons. 

When I was nine or ten I wanted nothing more or less for my birthday than the deluxe Man From U.N.C.L.E. spy kit which included the same kind of fully automatic machine gun used by my hero, Ilya Kuryakan.  And when I did get said gun, which made some pretty realistic shooting sounds, I shot everyone I knew, my parents (who gave me the gun with all of the cool spy gear), my brothers and sisters, my best friends.  For a while I was the kid with the coolest gun among all of my peers.  But then my friend Mike got a similar, but even cooler, Man From U.N.C.L.E. weapons kit used by the other even cooler hero of the show, Napoleon Solo.  Between us, we could have killed every Russian spy, every enemy of the state, every bad guy and bank robber around.  But we just organized games around killing our friends.

 

Heidi and I were careful when we raised our own boys never to get them wartoys.  And when they did get these as gifts from well meaning friends and relatives for birthdays and Christmas presents, we hid them and soon got rid of them.  We didn’t want our children playing at killing.  But you know they found a way.  I remember vividly being amazed at finding them blasting away at each other with L-shaped sticks or even their fingers.  It seems that a good imagination will do when realistic plastic replicas aren’t available. 

Think of all of the conflicts all over the world.  From local gang killings to large-scale oppression of entire peoples, violence seems to be a way of life for humans.  It is easy to think that it is simply the leadership of countries who draw us into these messes.  That, for reasons of religion, or history, or land ownership, or natural resources, we follow-the-leader into situations that ensure that we sacrifice our youth in our efforts to dominate. 

Consider the notion of the universal soldier.  What if people simply refused to fight and kill?  What if as a people we shouted “NO!” to our leaders who would have us go overseas and do our best to kill the soldiers of our enemy leaders?  What if citizens all over the world said we should wage peace, we should seek ways to overcome our differences, our prejudice?  What if the universal soldier just quietly said “no”?  What if, instead of viewing patriotism as blindly following our leadership into the cycle of violence perpetuating violence, we saw patriotism as working hard for peace and social justice? 

The other question that haunts me after seeing my students pretending to blast each other with that musket is - are we hard wired to kill each other?  Is that simply the way we are made?  Or do we create situations in which children grow up being comfortable doing that?  Are wartoys, violence on TV and movies, violent videogames, at least partly responsible for this positive reaction our children have to killing?  Is our fascination with violence and the availability of real guns contributing to the willingness of people ready to kill or be killed? 

My hippie-sister Ruthie turned me on to Buffy Sainte Marie way back in the 60’s.  A song she sang (written by Donovan), “The Universal Soldier” comes back to me as I write this piece.  Imagine how the violence in this world might be diminished if they held a war and nobody came.

He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,

He fights with missiles and with spears.

He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,

Been a soldier for a thousand years.

He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,

A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.

And he knows he shouldn't kill,

And he knows he always will,

Kill you for me my friend and me for you.

And he's fighting for Canada,

He's fighting for France,

He's fighting for the USA,

And he's fighting for the Russians,

And he's fighting for Japan,

And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

And he's fighting for Democracy,

He's fighting for the Reds,

He says it's for the peace of all.

He's the one who must decide,

Who's to live and who's to die,

And he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him,

How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?

Without him Caesar would have stood alone,

He's the one who gives his body

As a weapon of the war,

And without him all this killing can't go on.

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,

His orders come from far away no more,

They come from here and there and you and me,

And brothers can't you see,

This is not the way we put the end to war.

Have You Ever Noticed?

We would be appalled, crushed, angry and unforgiving if we thought our phones were tapped.  And rightly so.  No one has the right to hear our private conversations, our intimate thoughts with loved ones, our business transactions or professional talk.  We have a fundamental right to privacy.  Right?

So then why do people talk on their cell phones in public like they are in a cone of silence?   I’ve written before about overheard conversations where the speaker at my end seems oblivious to her surroundings.  But it happens all the time. 

When I was in the airport over the holidays, I couldn’t read and had lots of time to wait.  So I sat at the end of a row of chairs near my gate and wrote down snatches of conversations I heard from people walking past.  Yes, I admit I was eavesdropping.  But it was a challenge not to.  People are talking in a normal tone of voice, some even louder than that, as they stroll or rush past speaking to distant friends or relatives on their cells.  All I did was try not to ignore them.  I wasn’t prying – I just stopped for a few minutes trying to filter them out.  

“I have to call my broker because that totally sucks!

That’s exactly what I’m talking about – the frikkin’  bum!

We’ll figure it out, Mom, I promise.

Oh God, she’s a mess.   But what can we do?

She’s just plain weird – TOTALLY weird...  Where does she get off?

My mother lives in a different world from the rest of us…  I know, right?

Be serious, for God’s sake!  I’m getting on an airplane.

I HATE these small planes.  Can you believe they are making us ride in these things!? 

God, I miss you already. 

When I get back there’ll be HELL to pay!...  Whatever.

WTF (the words, not the letters) does he think he’s doing?  I’ll fix his @$$.

I know it’s not a good time, but I’ve got to go, baby.  It won’t be that long.

You don’t have to meet me.  I’ll just get a cab…  Really?  You’d do that for me?  You don’t have to.

They’d better be on time.

Give the kids a kiss for me.  Tell them I love them…  Love you too, honey.

(This one – a business suit – looking at his phone and actually shaking it then speaking)  Have you lost your mind!?  It better be straightened out before I get there.


I got all of this and more in about 5 minutes.  And just think, ten or fifteen years ago as people walked through airports (or down the street, or at restaurants, or waiting in line at the post office or the DMV) they spoke to the people around them, or just thought thoughts in their heads.   Don’t get me wrong, I am all for open and honest communication. 

But WTF?  (The letters not the words.)  Would you want your phone tapped?

Walk Off The Earth

These guys are freakishly good.  The schtick with the five of them on one guitar is just a tiny taste of their musicianship.  They are all so different, so talented.  This is a cover of a Gotye song called "Somebody That I Used To Know".  The original is amazing too.  But Walk Off The Earth has this connectedness among the band members that is almost haunting.  You may have already seen it.  44-and-a-half million views so far.  About a hundred of them are mine.

What do you think?

"Somebody That I Used To Know"
(feat. Kimbra)

[Gotye:]
Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

[Kimbra:]
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

[Gotye:]
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
And you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Somebody
(I used to know)
Somebody
(Now you're just somebody that I used to know) [x2]

The Rebel Jesus

It has been my tradition to write a few posts about Christmas every year.  Most years however, it is well after the Christmas season.  For one thing, it is hard to consider the actual Christmas message for me right at Christmas time.  Does that sound silly?

At Christmas we are inundated with creepy stories of people going into violent frenzies, hurting each other in Walmart or Kmart so they can get the best deals on Christmas presents for their loved ones.  Hmmm.

This is from the Christian Science Monitor on 11-26-11

ATLANTA

Aisle-bumping, line-cutting, and parking lot rudeness is to be expected on Black Friday, the annual post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza. This year's event, however, saw more mayhem than usual as throngs of competitive shoppers tussled and growled over waffle irons and Xboxes, with altercations turning violent in at least seven states.

As in years past, stories of "competitive shopping" gone bad abounded, but with a new edge.

In Los Angeles, a woman pepper-sprayed at least 20 fellow shoppers to save some money on an Xbox console, paying up and getting out before cops arrived. In Ohio and Michigan, women "came out swinging" over discounted bath towels. The results were at times serious, with several shootings reported and one confrontation ending with a grandfather lying bloodied and unconscious.

The hustle and bustle, the pressure for getting the right gifts, getting out Christmas cards, the regifting, the gift exchanging, the gift cards for those we care a little about but not enough to think deeply about a present.  There is a national sense of economic well-being from people overspending at Christmas and a darkness that falls when sales aren't what we expect.  If we, as a people, spend less than the year before it is a bad sign for our economy.

Even the term 'BLACK FRIDAY' is sort of creepy.   "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black". (Wikipedia)  

How many times have you seen signs that say, "KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS" or "JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON" or hear of people who get angry at stores because their employees are saying, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"?  To me, Christmas is the time when we wear our hypocrisy on our sleeves.  We may put a bumper sticker on our car or cry out against the commercialization of Christmas, but what do we really do to demonstrate our sincerity?  It seems to me that most of us go out and define materialism by our annual habits.  

At Christmas time this year, the Downtown Church in Columbia, SC stood out from the messages I have heard over the years at the many other churches I have attended.  The band played one of my favorite Christmas songs, Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus".   My son Colin played in that service.  

Realizing that I too buy into the materialistic aspect of the holiday season, I write this thinking about the real meaning of the season and in an effort to make myself more mindful of Jesus' message that we must all be about the business of making this world a better place.

  For everyone.  

Merry Christmas!

(I didn't get out my cards this year.)

All the streets are filled with laughter and light 
And the music of the season 
And the merchants' windows are all bright 
With the faces of the children 
And the families hurrying to their homes 
As the sky darkens and freezes 
They'll be gathering around the hearths and tables 
Giving thanks for all God's graces 
And the birth of the rebel Jesus 

Well they call him by the prince of peace 
And they call him by the savior 
And they pray to him upon the seas 
And in every bold endeavor 
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold 
And their faith in him increases 
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in 
From a temple to a robber's den 
In the words of the rebel Jesus 

We guard our world with locks and guns 
And we guard our fine possessions 
And once a year when Christmas comes 
We give to our relations 
And perhaps we give a little to the poor 
If the generosity should seize us 
But if any one of us should interfere 
In the business of why they are poor 
They get the same as the rebel Jesus 

But please forgive me if I seem 
To take the tone of judgement 
For I've no wish to come between 
This day and your enjoyment 
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil 
We have need for anything that frees us 
So I bid you pleasure 
And I bid you cheer 
From a heathen and a pagan 
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

My Mom's Porch - (unfinshed)

I wrote this piece in October 2011 while my 3^rd grade class composed their own stories about a favorite place.  A few times each year our district requires an “on demand” writing sample so we can score their writing with a rubric – or list of qualities we wish to see present in their writing.  So we all chose and wrote about one of our favorite places. 

This piece of writing is not finished.  “My Mom’s Porch” means something different to me now that she has passed on.  This writing is a time capsule, a window into thoughts of another time. 

A couple of weeks from now I’ll visit my mother’s home, and my mom’s porch, one final time, with my brother Dan and two of my sisters, Ruthie and Anne.  We’ll settle things with some banks, meet with the realtor, and likely finish up some painting and cleaning.  We’ll probably give her last few remaining possessions away and just enjoy time in each other’s company. 

We’ll spread her ashes. 

It will be the last time we meet together in that beautiful house, the final time we’ll laugh, and perhaps cry a little, on my mom’s porch. 

This piece ends without proper closure.  Just like life.

My Mom’s Porch

One of my favorite places of all is my mom’s back porch.  It is a simple structure in a magical place.  The floor is made of two-by-fours with enough space between to see the deck below.  Behind are the wooden walls of the house and large glass sliding door.  Ahead is a large screen.  Beyond is the canopy of mixed hardwood trees of the North Carolina mountains.  Beyond that is a beautiful, clear mountain lake with sun sparkling off its surface or the reflection of clouds or a shimmering moon.

 

A few days ago, when I awoke there on the living room couch, it was still dark and cold.  I sat on that porch alone, with a cup of strong black coffee, while the morning light eased across the low gray clouds.  The small lake below was covered with fog, which rolled over the dam as a slow motion liquid into the river valley below.

A great blue heron emerged from that low hanging cloud; a prehistoric ghost, silently pulling feathery wisps of fog behind it.  It was a scene so peaceful, so serene and real that I wish I could have shared it with someone.  But then again, maybe those few moments alone on that old porch are an important memory because I was alone.  My mom would be awake soon.  I would tell her about it.  She would appreciate it. 

The company kept on that old porch is also what makes it one of my favorite places.  My mom is my best friend.  The time we share there also includes other family members, but the time spent with my mom alone is among the most precious moments in my life.  On that porch we speak tenderly of the past and loved ones who have died.  On that porch we laugh until our faces hurt and we gasp for breath.  On that porch, late at night, lit by a single candle flame, with wine glasses between us, we cry and hold hands and wonder about the future and count ourselves lucky to still appreciate each other’s company. 

I never spend enough time on that old porch. It slants down – away from the house.  That has always bugged my mom.  But she is finally convinced that it was built that way on purpose.  There are always a few spider webs in the corners.  But I don’t mind.  They never bothered me. I sort of like spiders.  There is a glass table on that porch and some outdoor chairs.  The screen doors are a little uneven due to the slanting floor.  There are some two-by-fours stacked under them to keep out the chipmunks and other creatures.  I remember when there were nesting birds in there. 

The most important people in my life have spent time together on that old porch.  My own Devin and Colin and Heidi, my step-dad, Big Jim Burns, my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews – have often hung out on that old porch making each other laugh, one upping each other’s wise cracks, sipping wine and smirking, poking fun and getting serious.  We relive the old days when we were young and our folks were young.  We share stories of the crazy people we used to know and all of the ridiculous things we got away with.  My mom smiles and is forgiving of us all.  What else can she do?

We’ve shared many meals on that porch.  Big Jim’s famous goulash, Heidi’s grilled chicken salad, my pasta.  My mom was never crazy about cooking, so often it is sandwiches and salad and lots of fresh fruit.  But it isn’t the food that makes these meals among the best ever.  It is the company.  And it isn’t just the people.  We share that tree-top porch with birds and raccoons and squirrels. 

In the fall that porch is nestled into brilliant colors that can dazzle you and take your breath away.  When the leaves have fallen you can see the lake with occasional ripples from surfacing bass, or trout, or bream.  In the winter there is often snow and ice glazed branches and sun on that sparkling lake.  In the summer the light on that porch is just… so… green.  My folks often refer to their home as a tree house.  And it is. 

When we are on that porch we speak the truth in unguarded words.  There is such honesty and love there that it hurts my heart and stings my eyes to think about it. We talk politics and religion and news and all of the topics you don’t touch in polite company.  We are brash – we tease and make fun and share everything that is in our hearts and on our minds.  On that porch there is no pretense, few filters between us and what we really mean to say.

Perhaps the most important part of being on that porch is the loving companionable silence between the words, the time we spend together gazing out at that natural beauty, as we share that time, that space, that air…

When my mom and I said good bye to that old porch for that last time, just before she got on the plane with my brother Dan that took her from her beautiful tree house in North Carolina to New Mexico and her last few weeks - we held each other.  There was nothing we could say.  We looked out through the trees and felt the beauty and magic of that place. 

But she was strong.  Much stronger than me. 

There will always be special places in our lives, right?  Places where we spend precious time with people we love.  But that porch, in those mountains, will remain with me forever.  

Grieving

Heidi found this little pink slip of paper taped to my mom's window just in front of her sink when we went to her house the other day.  On it were words I'm sure she used for comfort when her beloved husband died last summer.  Now that she is gone, I find comfort in knowing just how natural it is to grieve.

I miss my mom.

Grieving is as natural as
          crying when you are hurt,
          sleeping when you are tired,
          eating when you are hungry,
          or sneezing when your nose itches.
It's nature's way of healing a 

          broken heart.