poem by Margaret Mead

Remember Me:

To the living, I am gone.

To the sorrowful, I will never return.

To the angry, I was cheated,

But to the happy, I am at peace,

And to the faithful, I have never left.

I cannot be seen, but I can be heard.

So as you stand upon a shore, gazing at a beautiful sea - remember me.

As you look in awe at a mighty forest and its grand majesty - remember me.

As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity - remember me.

Remember me in your heart, your thoughts, your memories of the times we loved,

the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed.

For if you always think of me, I will never be gone ..

~ Margaret Mead ~

Art by Tanielle Childers

The loss of Noble Ideas..

There are noble ideas I have had of parenting.. Should s, woulds.. coulds.. I have once heard of these as guilt and shame words and if used with judgement .. They absolutely can shackle me with the weight of the world and that oh so familiar feeling of not being quite good enough.  So then I try harder.. pulling the self imprisonment of the emotional balls and chains .. along with me.. holding so desperately on to the ideals and loosing a bit of reality. 

In my discussion with most of my friends and even some strangers or as I like to refer to them minute acquaintances because who knows maybe I will meet them again..I note that many of us maybe even a majority have had this type of experience.. What feels great is when I drop the weights..I hold the keys or are the shackles even truly locked.

I look at the moment and realize.. gain and good, loss and cost...  Don't get me wrong loss is not always negative and gain isn't always good.. (note the 40 lbs this past year gained perfect example of not necessarily good gain).   So I move toward emotional gain.. and investment.. And I let go of those "noble ideas" 

Noble idea: Ittie needs to go to bed on school nights between 8:30 and 9:00 PM.  I hold to this on most days.  I am proud of our schedule.  As a mom I feel that I am helping my child be prepared for life and be energized for school.. (pat pat on back) However, after a week of Avery having the stomach flu and missing out on making her tree (optional assignment) for class to hang with all the other kids. Other homework and house activities brought us up to the bedtime ritual hour.. As I started to give the nightly routine I looked at her.. At the paper that lay waiting to be cut into a tree.  I felt the fight of the noble idea.. She is to go to bed.. she has school.. She may be tired.. yet without the tree.. she will be excluded.. "Ittie brush your teeth, put on your pj's then lets do this tree."  I attempt to cut out the tree.. Well lets just say my attempt at realism in artistic expression ends up more like an abstract.. Harriet to the rescue.  A perfectly cut 2 foot tree.  I pull out buttons and old cards, an extra picture of Papa and Ittie, glue sticks and stone marbles, glitter.. All the things you need to make a paper tree come to life.  We cut presents out of wrapping paper.  The smile on her face as we create this masterpiece and the pride she has in her work.  I know that tonight that the noble idea is more of a guideline.. Tonight its about us, this tree and her sense of belonging, creation and sharing.

Noble idea:  I should bake for all the school functions/ parties and just because.  Along with becoming the oven master, I need to get up and make breakfast.  My mother made the best from scratch sugar cookies.  She baked on weekends for us and we devoured the dough, the cookies.  She made a mile high french toast pile on Saturday mornings with smoky links  to be accompanied by a lake of Mrs. Buttersworth maple syrup.  Enough that if you weren't sticky down your chin to your elbows then you hadn't had enough french toast and links.  Michelle and I had patterns cut into our pb and j sandwiches. She also held a full time job.   It was truly amazing.  MY ideal.. I should do this for Avery .   What this creates for me is a sense of guilt every time I fail, when I substitute the Eggo for the french toast even if Avery prefers the Eggo.  (nutrigrain got to work in a bit of nutrition).  I feel bad when I had her a banana to eat as we run out the door in the morning.    My reality.  Avery isn't me, I am not my mom and this is our life.  She likes Eggos.  A banana is a good food and Avery has no complaints.  I do on Valentines day wake up and make heart shaped pancakes.  Some weekends we randomly make cookies, brownies, pie dough cinnamon rolls for the fun of it.  I let go of the Idea and the guilt and now I am learning to enjoy us. 

Noble Idea:  Keeping up with the house..the outside.. the pond must be pretty.   Honestly I am pulled to reality with something has to give.. I work 8 hours a day,  I come home to usually work around the farm in nice weather another 6 to 7 hours.  When Ittie is home and during the school year add time out to help with homework, dinner.  any extra curricular activity..  Laundry.. Dishes..  Again something has to give and often its the dishes or floors.. laundry waits until the weekend.. The fridge is a project that happens on Saturday mornings with a strong cup of coffee.   And there are still those boxes in the rooms that are waiting for me to go through them.. I am waiting for the first good snow..

I have fretted over and over about being the good mom.. and what defines that.. being the good partner and what Noble Ideas define this role.. At the end it breaks down for me like this.. I am doing all that I can and some days more.. some days I fall short.  I assist, I call I try to keep up with my nieces and nephews.. Friends and family.  I help with homework while putting something in the oven because that gives us more time then the stove top or grill.  Math is practiced while cooking.. Reading is practiced from a recipe as Ittie calls me out on MOM too much Vanilla.. and I say.. well a little extra vanilla can't hurt.. (I have kept that Noble Idea.) 

I love earnestly and deeply and hug my kid every night I have her and on the nights she is with her father I send her a virtual squeeze and love.  I look over to Harriet.. appreciate that this wonderful person puts up with my neurotic self and the heavy load I sometimes carry with all my "Noble Ideas".  I am grateful for her calming presence that refocuses me to say what is possible today.. what is the most important.. She reminds me to balance all of this weight with levity of humor and that it is OK to let go of the ideas of the past and make my own today..

Divides..

I am tormented by the degree of divide in the country.  I wonder if this is how it felt before the civil war, civil rights movement.   Fear, Accusations, Anger, a powder keg waiting for a match to be thrown close enough.

Did my mother feel this same tension when she lived in DC in 68?

My teachers taught me a solid lesson about history it wasn't to remember the good old days it was to understand and learn from so we did not make the mistakes as our forefathers did.

But it seems that we are.  

The Roman's slaughtered Christians and others that didn't fit their mold , The Inquisition, The Nazi's killed Jews, Homosexuals, Jehovah witness's.  In Ireland Protestants and Catholic's collided, Apartheid, KKK, Bosnia, Albania, Stalinist and that is just in the short history..

Why is it that we have to have the Samaritians.. The out group.  What is it about our nature that keeps us from tolerating differences.  Note not harmful/ taking advantage of holding power over differences.  But lifestyles.  Why do we need to feel "right"  what is it about this short lived notion that compels us to judge, condemn and deny?

My erroneous privilege

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.”
― Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing: A Play

A couple years ago .. I in my stupidity said something that was incredibly "WHITE" to my friends of diverse back grounds.. and I it slipped out from my lips .. the awareness grew but I could not even take it back..

My friend Claudius promptly summed it up.. as "Gretchen you can try to put lipstick on that pig .. but it is still a pig. "  Thank God for Claudius and Andrea's love acceptance and look of she is white .. which is a look I have tried not to get..   My intent was not racism, slander, bigotry.. But my  laziness in challenging myself, filters .. scripts and filters, these things  I believed I had conquered .. slipped..    I can not even tell you what it was but I have the look of my friends faces burned into my memory.  People I love and never want to disappoint.

I slipped .. and then I tried to put lipstick on that pig in embarrassment.

Learning moment for me.. humility.. and a note about what I represent even when I am earnest  in my intent.   But a truth about latent scripting  which I need to continue to challenge within myself.

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 there were more than 20 million children under 5 years old living in the U.S., and 50.2 percent of them were minorities."
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/07/06/its-official-the-us-is-becoming-a-minority-majority-nation

There are all types of data that can be sited like above.. Some use it to justify bigotry, hatred, gentrification.  For me it means finally the playing field may become more equal.    I hope just by the masses minority goes away .. its such a crappy term and human , culture.. dignity, worth.. comes into focus.   And I hope that I continue to fight my "whiteness" to continue to become more human.. To realize that I come from German Lutheran marrying and Scotch/ Irish Methodist.. (Scandal) for my grandparent.. That I continue to teach the lesson that if we can find such silly things as "skin, religion, sexual orientation " to hate each other .. then we can also pick more silly things to Love and Like each other.... Favorite Movie,  activity.. .. sports.. food, values..

i will probably have more lipstick on pig moments if I am being realistic..  I am trying not to.. I have no excuses for them .. I am trying not to let past scripts interfere with current beliefs and values.. And I am sorry.. for each moment

It is ever so important in this moment in history.. while those 5 year old.. now 8 .. are watching that those of us who are white.. admit humbly our errors and work with effort for values of true equality, worth and dignity for all ..  Which means we can not tolerate the tasteless joke.. We must challenge each others scripts and attitudes.

40s. Not where I thought i would be

43 keeps buzzing in my mind.. where am I.. what does my life amount to?  Why do I wake up at 2:30 in the morning almost every morning and will this dark shading ever leave my eyes.. ??

It is an existential moment.. Ittie is 12 , Sam 29 .. Harriet and I have been together for 7 years.  I get that I am blessed.. it is not lost on me. maybe this is why I feel more stress today then I have ever..   Knowing what blessings I have in my life, knowing how fragile the balance is.  Knowing that we are struggling and succeeding at the same time..

It is in this avenue of existential crisis .. maybe its midlife that I am finding my new rebellion and voice.   I find myself reacting will righteous anger to the assumption that people on SNAP (Food stamps ) are takers.. That SSD and SSI are entitlements.  That medicare and medicaid are for takers not givers... beliefs.. conjectures..labels:  laziness, drug users, the degenerates of society, or only those deserving pity use these systems..

In my years of social work, most of the people I met that received subsidized assistance, were honestly hard working good people that were just trying to make it.  The local economy could no longer support them, they didn't have the money to move or the resources to move due to the higher cost of where the jobs were located.  These were people that got family, honor, blood and bonds. Church and God.   These are the same people I grew up with , the families that worked in the factories, until the factories left.  

We are each one step away from a catastrophe.. My family fully gets this.  When both Harriet and I were working, when all was well and magical.  We made 6 figures, going to Wolf Lodge for a weekend was easy a no brainer,    The girls had big Christmases, Birthdays .. We didn't stress.  There was enough money in the bank to survive the first 3 major crisis... We actually made it a year after the Quad Bi Pass without major issues financially.  Things were OK .. tighter but OK.

As it started to crash and we had to make decisions.. pay the credit card that you could pay 6 months ago or the Cardiologist .. You pick Cardiologist.   Meds.. or the second  house payment that we are trying to rent/ sale in a market that  was inundated with properties.  When meds with Insurance and coupons .. deductibles .. are 400 a month for one person .. and for two 500 add 3 we are at 600 .. Then add each copay for each specialist .. (there is about 4 visits to the Doctor per month).  This is all maintenance.   We actually have a primary physician who cares and is tracking H care, coordinating between the providers.  I contribute H's success to her grit and our continuum .. Do we give that up ? All evidence based practice says NO.. Coordination of care is critical to the added life expectancy of any one but especially those with chronic congenital issues. 

So when I hear people say this phrase:  "Live within your means.. "   I am  sick I am angry ..  I want to shout from the rooftops.. We did .. We were .. the debt was paid.. We had savings ..For the first time in years I had 3000 in mine .. H had over 20000 in hers.. ..When healthcare is 44% of your expenditures, when debt from buying the house.. debt we could pay when we both worked, when bankruptcy isn't an option because liquidation isn't an option due to rent being more expensive then our house payment and utilities. When you have too much equity but no credit  How do we live within our means??

So I sit back.. I discuss the benefits of a single payer system and then opt in insurance like other countries.   I believe we need to reform big "pharma"   I am for medical marijuana.. it could replace like 3 of the meds .. and have less side affects with more positive impact.  So I challenge and talk to whom ever I can get to listen and if you sense there is a passion of life or death for me.. Well there is .

My wife sits before me.. in pain.. trying to be the joyful, gritty soul she truly is.. but the pain takes over .. her heart the physical one.. doesn't fully deliver the blood and oxygen through the body like it is suppose to and her face pails.   I smile trying to be strong.. sometimes the anxiety crosses my face and I just end up annoying H.because I am too "can I do anything for you" .   She believes I see her as weak in these moments and it is more of a reflection of my helplessness.   i can't fix her heart.. I can't vanquish her pain.. and I am trying to fix what I can .Yes i hear the world on my shoulders cracking my back..    Other care-givers you get it .. Yes?   

So mid way into 43.. the first of my friends crossing the bridge to 44 .. our mid 40s .. this is not the place I had imagined my life being.. Of course many other 40 somethings are saying Preach.. we aren't were we imagined either.  Others will contribute my landing to poor choices.. I can own some of that until I met H.  

Now at 43.5  I have the world before me.. choices to make .. paths to be taken .. paths to say no to and never look back... I have 3 others that travel with me and my decisions are not my own.   I am blessed .. I have profound love, sense of connection and purpose.  I have a beautiful family.. I guess I truly struggle with what keeps every other 40 something up at night.. How do I continue to keep these people safe, when I fully understand how fragile and resilient life is ?? 

Hero's Legacy

With all the super hero movies out lately.. I must weigh in and say I have always weighed in toward our mperfect darker heros.  Batman, most of Marvel Comics.  

They are forced into positions that make them often choose between what they want to what they need to do and utilzing their "special" powers to go beyond.  However, there are moments where as fantastically they succeed .. they often fail, fall short.  

I like this because it feels more real and more like life. it is a metaphor for the hero's in my life.  Complex, human, as great as they are with fault.  I am OK with this.. I love them all the more for it. 


One such woman is my grandmother.  I have always said I am so happy I was born into the grandchild generation for Mary Myers for to be her child .. well had to be daunting with the way she has governed out family and laid out expectations of behavior, norms.  Her enabling of some destructive behavior, her rigidness with others.. And for me absolute acceptance and support.  

For many years, we were the four grandchildren.  Each of us loving her, respecting her,  I was partially raised by her, school pick ups, rescues for the latchkey kid that locked herself out, reese cups in the fridge, a nurse to banged up knees and elbows with peroxide and neosporin from the medicine closet, pie dough cinnamon roles on Sundays, the

mashed potatoe beaters, french toast made on the sleep over mornings because that was my favorite.    

Seamstress extrodinair.. sewing a prom dress for my sister and all of my sundresses that I loved when I was little, patches to the knees of my jeans that wore out so quickly.  

No pressure to play 
with dolls or other stereotyped toys, a stern warning to get out of the cherry tree.. (again and again)  "you'll break your noggin", " Are you to big for your britches to not listen".  On my most serious offenses . I would get to read the paddle that had a little deer and bear on it.. "For little deers with Bear Butts"  and then the "you are my Little dear .. do you want me to bear your butt".."No grandma" was my reply.   A few years ago.. Grandma gave me the paddle with a wink and said I think you have earned this.  

At the same time as I had absolute acceptance, I watched her rule of the family.  Her judgement, quick sharp words.  the trepidation of approach from others.  I knew that I was the exception not the norm.  I was her "Mert" she my "trouble" together we flurrished.  She is my hero.  Maybe she needed to be someones hero as much as I needed her to be mine.

She was a cleanliness queen, plastic runways from the front door to the kitchen were left down for family to walk on so the pristene mustard shag carpeting (that lasted from late 70s to 2005) would not be hurt,  These only came up for special occasions, card night, class reunions..etc..Sheets over all the furniture except grandpa's chair, shoes off by the door on newspaper over the air intake. Coats hung or place in the dowstairs bedroom.. Walls and banisters/ woodwork washed monthly, dusting and vaccuming daily.  The joke was grandma was white glove approved.. a white glove taken over any surface in her house would still be clean.   When friends came over she would apologize for the "mess" .. and the standare reply was "Oh Mary the house is lovely".  When my babyshower took place at the white house on Cole St. My friends looked at my aged grandmother when she said "well I washed the walls before you arrived" with astonishment that this 85 year old woman was up washing the walls that very morning.. (the plastic and sheets were also removed..  It was a special event.. )

She notoriously used me as a mule for smuggling "Rumballs" at Christmas to a teacher in my elementary school, this took place from my time in elementary school,  middle school and then to the church I joined with the same teacher in highschool years.  For years I as an underage mule took this liquor laced nutty winter treat as in a lovely christmas tin, wrapped in a ziploc to help disguise the "RUM smell" that would if not hid behind plastic make me smell like and 8 year old who had tied one off the night before with some bacardi and walnuts..  to a family friend.  with just the "I need you to take this package to Mrs.. " and me happily complying as I took the tin.. Grandma sternly with a voice I knew not to cross.. "those are for her .. not you".. " Yes Grandma" in confirmation

When I called to tell her I was having a child out of wed lock, and I had no intention of Marrying the man.  That we had issues and I was not going to tie myself financially as well as by a child at this point.  My grandmother was truly worried.  It is the first time that she "spoke about tradition" and this isn't what we do.  She spoke to my aunt, my mother.. but not me.. So when I heard these things I called... "Grandma I heard that you have concerns"  ( She had been at my grandfather's grave tending it, plunging the spade into the ground:  "Carl do you see what our granddaughter is doing.. The baby will be a bastard.. Do you see?"  )  This idea of a "bastard" in the family and hardship was bringing her great distress.  So i confronted it:   I simply said.  "I hear you are concerned about the baby being labeled a bastard, grandma they don't put that on the birth certificate anymore, and Avery will have her father's last name, she will know where she comes from on both sides, I won't let her be a bastard"... a sigh came from the other end.  

"Gretchen, we just didn't do it this way in my time... I know times have changed.  I am glad she will have her fathers name on the birth certificate. "  I  followed up with a quote from my sister.  "Well, grandma as Suzanne said when I told her.in reference to me ".You have never done anything in a conventional sense.. why start now"    ... My grandmother said "true" and then "I love you"  Grandma;s and my conversation then turned to the pregnancy itself, how it was going, how was the room for the baby progressing, did I need anything so on and so forth.  I called my sister to tell her about my attempt to allieviate the fears.... My sister upon telling her the story stated.. "You told her I said that... ahhh.. what did she say"..   The stabbing at my grandfather's grave ceased.  She wasn't especially happy that I wasn't married but she again accepted me.

Two years later.. I called her.. with a familiar phrase "Grandma.. because I love you and respect you I want you to hear this from me before anyone else.. .. "   a pause a "yes drawn and lingered with a good... " I said "I am dating a woman."  This was my scariest coming out moment.. But this woman who only expected honesty from me.. then proceeded forward with "Am I to love you any less?"  I retorted well I hope not .. which is why I am calling you.. She went on with "Well I don't, this isn't what I would have chosen for you.. but I love you and when am I meeting this girl."  She then follow up with the line from years earlier  "you haven't done anything in a conventional sense, and every family needs one of those thank God you are ours."    The healing, empowerment.. love covered the distance.. My fear of being out truly was stripped at that moment.. 

Here this Conservative, Methodist, Matriarch who loves me and accepts me.. Be wary world because if Mary Myers could see all of me, then your judgement is nothing..  Maybe that has been the truth the entire time for me.. My grandmother's forgiveness, strength, belief and ability to let me live has fostered this faulty, strong enduring loving soul. 

The times I would sit at her table and have talks about my parents, my anger, my sadness, confusion.. hurt.. My successes, my passions.. My joys.. over a coke, a snack on brown vinyl and bronzy steel chairs, wood paneling on the walls and love mingling around me.  In the midst of all of this was my hero,  she helped create part of the chaos and turmoil, she had her flaws but we me.. she was my launching point, my safe harbor.. My Marvel comic star.. No cape necessary.. Apron, polyester slacks, blouses,  glasses, lipstick.. her costume.. Her soul radiates from her eyes.. even today as she slips away from us in moments.. When she does lock on .. you see her.. sparkle of rebellion.. and of love..



   

Playing in the Shadows

All the coolness and ease of the dark,  I slump down on the top stair, feet firmly planted on the plank board below.  my knees are my elbows resting place.  my arms outward triangle , hands clasped , fingers entwind, thumbs crossing then uncrossing rubbing ever so slightly.. hmm a bit rough and warn.. lines have deepend some on this hands.  

the light below slips onto the bottom steps and landing in jagged rays.  It is a warm yellow.  I know I should go there, I should move both metaphorically and physcially move.. but I linger here in the shadows.. 

Blue light radiates from the open doorway to my side.. making twilight shadows dance upon my back.  Enough that my fingernails pick up the hue and this tint amuses my soul for a second pausing the stream of thoughts which have brought me to this silent place.. I am looking for solice.. 

Shoulders react to the figuretive boulders that they have been carrying for weeks.. and I buckle some beneath the weight.  Neck aching .. my head throbs and I raise my hands to meet my head.. Thumbs pinching the bridge of my nose.. index fingers vertically pressed as if in prayer against my forehead.. as if this pressure and sybolism will stop for a second the thoughts that try to press on..

" Breathe" says my inner voice..and I do.. air goes through my nostrils .. deeply.. chest rises and falls.. my shoulders relax some.. and then it happens.. I was trying to hold this back but this is why I am here in this darkness.. The fear, the pain, the anxiety come crashing from my chest .. exploding out through my body .. I close up.. almost into a fetal sit.. and the tears cascade down my face..   That breathe was the key to all that I have kept tucked in  and i came to the shadows to let it go.. 

"What are you doing out here" comes a voice to my side.. H has emerged from the bedroom to find me sitting in this place.  "Praying" is my answer.. 

My return to the present consciousness allows me to hear the little tune that has start down in the world of light.  It bounces , not to be muted in the darkness up the cavern to my ears.  I can not help but smile and wipe away the tears.  Ittie sings in the shower, soon there will be a "mama. <fill in the question and bed time delay>"  

I do not have time to live or linger here in the shadows .. on the edge of light.  I am called to be more, This weight I carry is shifted now because I have a bigger and brighter calling.  I rise.. walking creekly down each step not sure if its the wood , or me that is making those sounds.  I enter the brightness just in time.. "mama" is a elfish voice in the bathroom.

"Yes, Ittie" my usual reply as I walk over to meet these greenish / blueish eyes that hold a very important question: "Is my hair OK"   .

.I take my hand rub it over her wet locks and ask.. "I am checking for shampoo?" .. a nod of confirmation.  "yes, your hair is good."

A look of success crosses her face.  a quick "thanks" and the door is shut, the song begins again as she brushes.  And I am in the light.  No shadow dwelling for me.. My prayer was answered.