For years I kept journals -- in composition, spiral bound, and French graph paper books. This blog is an attempt to get back to writing and documenting the world around me using photos, newspaper headlines, and other articles.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter

Thursday morning Selim said to me, "Mom, you know what I want for Easter?  A golden egg."

I had not know that.  I think it stems from his disappointment that in last year's basket there was nary a golden egg to be found.  I had not thought much about Easter this year.  It is March, and not really on my radar.  To be honest, not much more than work and trying to make it through this month's assignment has been at the forefront of my mind recently.  My house is a mess... we've eaten take out both Friday and Saturday...I'm exhausted.  Anyway, communicating with the Easter Bunny on Thursday was suddenly pushed to the front of my to do list.

Yesterday, while I was sprawled on a beach towel in my front walk way, eyes closed but not sleeping, just resting, trying to absorb as much vitamin D as I could -- Selim was inside drawing a note for the Easter Bunny.



I love his drawings.  And the map.  A boy after my own heart and clearly related.  Director that he is, he had scripted a whole scenario for the event.  At night he put the note on the kitchen table along with carrots and a tea cup of water.  He requested that the Easter Bunny leave the golden egg under his bed. The other eggs could be put anywhere in the house, but the E.B. had to leave a red X on the map in each room where Selim should look.  When that task was complete, the said bunny should sign his name, eat his snack, and leave.



Imagine his surprise when the Easter Bunny did pretty much what he requested.  The only hick up, was a red X on the map that wasn't a room.  In his haste, E.B put a red X on a wall, not in one of the rooms.  Selim was quite perplexed.  I'm trying my best excuses -- he was late...it was dark...he didn't really look at the map... he had many more houses to go to so he was rushing...but it still bothered Selim.  How could he have put an X on the mark that was a wall?  Hopefully the Lego figures and other candy made up for the poor map skills.



I decided to paint my toe nails this morning to be festive.  I was taking a picture of my feet when Selim came up behind my and put his feet in between mine.  He had put a flower sticker on his big toe since he didn't have any polish.




This afternoon all three of us got out in the garden.  We took off the black plastic from the main garden area.  Nedim raked up the pine needles.  I cleaned out the raised beds and took out some of the dead grass around the edges.  Selim wanted whatever tool was in use by somebody else.  We had fun and it felt good to get dirt under my finger nails.  I'm thinking that I could plant peas pretty soon.






And lastly, I've been taking pictures of the amaryllis this week.  Mine isn't nearly the profusion of blooms that Mom and Robert have.  But today, all four flowers were open and I love the white.








Monday, March 25, 2013

Family Narrative

Last week as I drove across Route 4 on my way home from the Ashram, I thought about the brave women in my family.  Listening to Mom talk about Nana and how she made her way to America all by herself and telling the story of Grammy Louise packing up her car and driving to the East coast by herself after Grampy Marion died started my musing.  Grammy Bev took flying lessons in the 1930's and was in one of of the first planes to deliver air mail to the San Jose airport.  Later in life, when her husband was losing his mind to dementia and becoming abusive, a nurse told Grammy to have a bag packed and a planned escape route so that if she had to get out of the house, she would know where to go.  Excuse me?  A woman in her 70's or early 80's was having to figure out which neighbor she could go to and call 911 -- wrong.  She left her beautiful home and the marriage.

Then there is Mom -- packing up her house and two children and moving across country to marry a man she knew for 3 months; leaving her own extended family and the warm climate behind.  Gutsy doesn't begin to describe the courage that move took.  I've always thought that my Mom is the wisest  women that I know.  The older I get, the clearer it is to me that if I can be half as wise, patient, understanding, brave, compassionate, and spiritually open as she is, then I will be lucky.

The blog from last week prompted lots of conversation about a family narrative.  Susan Shannon sent me the link to this article from the New York Times, and Heather brought it up with her this weekend also.  So last night before I left, we were talking about the adjectives or themes that could be our family thread.

I had been thinking of brave and seeking.  Heather had thought about service.  One of her favorite family stories is the love expressed in service of Grampy Marion polishing Grammy Louise's nursing shoes every night.  Living at the Ashram and also teaching at the school is all about seva.  Sant Ji said that he appreciated the seva of the teachers.  They don't do it for money or financial gain.  It is a service to the students and their families.  And when Sant Ji was alive, the Ashram hosted retreats for the followers and all of us pitched in to help run the events.  After retiring, Dad has gone full steam ahead in service to others -- be it working with prisoners in non-violent communications, or tutoring in math to students from the church.



I had thought about seeking in terms of adventure, searching out a new and better life, and spiritually.  The Culvers left England in the 1600's and settled in Vermont.  Nana came over from Ireland in 1901 and her husband in 1903.  From Denmark, Al Stevenson (Dad's grandfather) jumped ship in Galveston when he was young.  And Nedim did the same in 1987 after leaving his family in Istanbul at the age of 16.  Our family hadn't stayed in one area within the US either.  Our family immediate and distant have crisscrossed this country.  We have not been afraid to pick up stakes and begin life in a new location.

And as I was driving home last night, I also added land stewards to my list.  Grampy Merrill farmed the Irvine Ranch before anybody else.  They he moved up to Salinas and grew fruit trees.  If I remember correctly, Uncle Art had tracts of land in the Salinas and Imperial Valley.  At the turn of the 20th Century, Al and Lulu Stevenson ran a "hotel" and gave tours of the Petrified Forest before it became a National Park in 1906.  Dad had the guestbook as a family heirloom and gave it to the Park in 1994.


Grampy Marion in Arizona

Petrified Forrest, circa 1899 

1904 entry in the "guest book"


On a smaller, more intimate scale, most of our families have had gardens and taken great pleasure in tending plots, small and large.  One of the first weekends after we bought our house, Mom and Robert came over and helped us start our garden.  Garden speak is always threaded through our family conversations, "How are your tomato plants coming along?" or "We made pesto tonight from our garden basil." and "I dug, raked, and planted so much today that I had to take a bath and take 3 Advil so that I could stand up straight tonight.  I'm just like our mother!"

I can't think of enjoying "nature" without thinking of Ed Schongalla.  All six of the Schongalla siblings learned so much from their father about camping, outdoor life, scouting, gardening and the importance of taking care of the environment.  I think of his canoe lessons, the ability to recognize an imminent thunderstorm, and long walks at Greenwich Point Beach.  Selim is so fortunate that Robert loves to take him out in the woods for walks.  They track animal prints in the snow; look for trees that porcupines have stripped of bark; check the stream flow in the summer; find where deer have bedded down for the night; and bird watch, timing the birds with a stopwatch to measure how long it takes a bird to land on the tree by the feeder, hop to the feeder, take a seed, fly away and return for another.




I think Selim will come to understand that comes from an extended family of hard workers. His Buyuk Baba, Nedim's father would go to Germany and work for nine months at a time, returning home for the summer holiday.  What to speak of his anne, who was left behind with four children in a two bedroom apartment in the city to raise while her husband was away.  Nedim starting working at age 10 and by 15 he was a welder on cargo ships and would make repairs while the ship was between stops.  I work hard.  My parents and step-parents gave me the example of providing for one's family through effort, diligence and perseverance.  I hope that in the stories we tell that we are able to demonstrate that work isn't always "hard" and doesn't have to be a chore, but that it can be intellectually stimulating, challenging, fun and full of camaraderie.  And there is an element of service in many career choices.

I'll have to be more conscious of how we tie our family stories into a narrative that can sustain him in times of difficulty.  For we are a family of hard workers, seekers of adventure as well as God, brave souls who do their best, and try to be of service to others.  And we love each other and can be counted on to be supportive when time is tough.  I think that is a pretty good legacy to leave a child.




Sunday, March 24, 2013

In honor of March birthdays

Super sweet 26 hours.  Yesterday my day was jam-packed.  I put in 3.5 hours of overtime.  Then I drove to Manchester to attend the opening of the Turkish Cultural Center.  Nedim was in his element making sure people were mixing and mingling, eating and having a good time.  I met the Consul General of the Boston Consulate.  I ate a quick lunch and left before our NH Governor arrived.  But I did my wifely duty and that was important.

Then I drove up I-93 and went to the Ashram.  Heather, Stan, Joshua, and Miss X had already arrived. Selim and Robert had not gotten back from a day of skiing at Gunstock.  Heather couldn't make it up last weekend for Mom's birthday so she planned a party for Sunday.  The party was for Mom and all the other March and early April birthdays.  Happy Birthday to Fletcher, Mom, Miriam, Russell, Nick, Todd, and Matthew.

Have I said before what a fabulous,



super organized,



awesome,



beautiful,



all around amazing sister I have?



She is the best.  And from 5 hours away, she planned the party.  I showed up with my bag of ingredients and baking pans, not yet having managed to actually bake the cupcakes and blondies that I had promised.  

Last night as we were sitting down to dinner, we looked at each other and realized that the three of us ladies were wearing pink shirts.  And we matched the amaryllis flower on the side table.  This flower is amazing.  I've never seen a one bulb produce so many gigantic flowers.  Gorgeous.  I would love a shirt in that exact shade.







Then today, while we were busy in the kitchen I looked around and we were in different shirts, but still the same pink theme.  Clearly, we are related.



After lunch, we rearranged the dining room table and chairs into a new configuration and it worked out really well.  We had 20 people in total -- 3 kids, 17 big people.  The boys played together out on the converted porch room for at least an hour with very little supervision and no screaming.  Robert had given them a bag of pipe cleaners and those turned out to be a hit.





I was impressed.  The party lasted close to three hours.  What can be better than drinking chai and eating tasty food with friends and family?




I've known most of the adults in the room since 1975 or '77.  These are relationships of long standing. At first several were my teachers, then colleagues, now friends, and still Ashramites.  It really is comforting to have these friendships of long standing. 

It was hard to leave tonight.  I wanted to spend the night and leave early in the morning.  But Selim said no we had to leave after bath because he, "didn't want to miss a minute of school."  Valid.  There was a chance that we would have encountered traffic on the road and we might not have made it to his school in time for the 8:05 bell.  Still, it was tough pulling out of the driveway in the dark, leaving the warmth of the family behind.


Sunday, March 17, 2013

Inner and outer meaning

Happy St. Patrick's Day.  I will hunt through my summer clothes boxes to find a green t-shirt to put on today to match my shamrock earrings.  I won't drink green beer or get drunk.  I will smile when I meet Mom and Selim in Concord later on this evening when I see my boy wearing his green jeans, green shirt and carrying his green pot o'gold filled with green beads and gold coins.



Last night Mom was talking more about her Nana.  She came over from Ireland in 1901 all by herself.  She went through Ellis Island alone.  In Pittsburgh, she worked as a lady's attendant and a seamstress. She was proud and fierce.  She was alive when I was a baby in Laguna and I don't remember her at all.  I was going through old pictures that last when I found this one.  I'm the baby with Heather, Mom, and Grammy Bev...and Nana?  I'm not sure.  The reason I think it may be is because the second photo has Grampy Sam, so we may have been taking pictures of that family tree.

Nana, Heather, Grammy Bev, Mom, me

Heather, Grammy Bev, Grampy Sam, Mom, me


So I will don my green today and think about the ancestral land of part of my family -- the motherland that I have never seen.  But for me, the day is really about an inner journey.  Early in the morning of March 17, 1979 I walked across the Ashram grounds, pass the Hall and down to Master's house to be initiated.  I wore my shawl that I had bought in India the year before and carried a blanket that I had picked up there as well.  I was nervous and happy.

The year before I had gone to India during projects period.  I have some clear memories of the trip, but not many.  I can look at photos and have vague recollections.  I remember landing at the airport and not taxing up to a building.  We deplaned and got on a bus that took us to the terminal.  On the bus were guys with huge guns.  Going through customs, the man opened my backpack and up popped my stuffed animal Piglet's head. The guy laughed and laughed.  He thought it was so funny that he stuffed Piglet back in and repeated the motion of pulling the cord at the top of the pack so that Piglet's head snapped up again.  Then he called over some other customs agents and did it again.  Everybody was chuckling and our agent didn't inspect any more of our bags, he waived Robert and I right on.

The Ashram was in the village of 77 R.B.  The mornings were cool and the days warm.  Sugar cane grew on the Ashram grounds and we used to go for walks and cut down the cane stalks and suck out the sweet juice.  I discovered that the smell of basmati rice cooked in large quantities makes me nauseous.  I would take an orange, a handful of cashews, tea biscuits and a cup of fennel tea and eat outside because I couldn't stand the food smell inside the eating area.  The water tasted a bit smokey, a leftover residue from the boiling process.



While I was there I realized that I wanted the full initiation.  But it took me the whole trip to work up the courage to ask Sant Ji.  On the last day of private interviews, I wrote down the question and brought it in to the room with me.  I couldn't find the words to vocalize.  But he said yes, that I should wait a year. After a year had past, I must have written and asked for a more specific date.  Last night I found His response to that question tucked inside an envelope of pictures from that trip.



I took really bad pictures  that trip.  I'd like to think that my photography skills have improved in the years since.  They were blurry.



Or taken from far away.



Or had other people's body parts in them.



But still...even though I can't recall that trip in minute detail, it was an important event.  I have benefited from the Grace I received for my whole life.  I can't change the lack of discipline in my spiritual practice these past years.  But I do know that the Path is at my core and that I am supremely lucky to have spent time in the company of Love and Grace personified.  Today I can say Happy Initiation Anniversary, happy spiritual birthday...to me.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Irish heritage

St. Patrick's Day -- yet another opportunity for my child to have desires around the marketing machine's paraphernalia surrounding the day.  Yesterday, he asked if we could go to our parish craft store where he had seen gold coins on their St. Paddy's day display.  It seems as though every March he adds something new to his themed collection.  When we went to day, they had run out of the desired fake coins.  So, on to iParty to see what they had available.  He needn't have had any anxious moments.  Their Irish inspired wall was chock full of green stuff -- some of it fun and other stuff yuck.  After taking his time moving down the display, he chose a bag of green bead strings and coins, conveniently labeled "leprechaun loot" and a green plastic container to put said treasure.  It was the pot of gold, without any gold in it and it wasn't black or a real pot.  You get the idea.  I picked up shamrock earrings that have flashing lights inside.  I will post pictures tomorrow when we get dolled up in our outfits.  He has a new pair of green jeans to model.

On the drive across Route 4 I told him that he was part Irish.  He didn't believe me a first.  As a family, we talk all the time on how he is Turkish because of his Dad, but we don't talk about my contributions to the gene pool that often.  Last month he studied fractions, so as I drove, I told him to imagine that he is made up of 8 parts.  I contribute 4 and his Dad the other 4.  From his Dad's side, all 4 parts are Turkish.  From my side, 1 of his parts would be Irish because Nan's Dad, Grampy Sam -- his parents came over from Ireland.  That makes Nan 1/2 Irish, me 1/4 and him, 1/8.  The other 3 parts of his geographic gene pool come partly from France from Grammy Bev's Mom and Scotland from her Dad; Denmark from Dede John's Dad and Germany from his Mom.  He seemed happy to think he was part Irish.

In honor of our British Isle heritage, we listened to Solas and Great Big Sea as we drove.  It was a nice break from our usual fare of Adele, Kenny Chesney, Allison Krauss, Warren Zevon or NPR or ESPN radio.  Some of the sea chantey songs don't have the best lyrics for an eight year old, but he loved the fiddle and foot stomping beats.  Meanwhile I'm trying to convey the words, "And if the Devil should take her / I'd thank him for his pain /oh I swear to God  /  I'd hang myself if I get married again" were OK to sing in the car, but might not be the nicest thing to go around repeating out in public.

The sight of four gorgeous orchid plants on the round table greeted us when we walked up the stairs to Mom and Robert's.  I whipped out my camera and went berserk.












In the past month or so, they put up a new bird feeder in the thicket area at the corner of the science classroom.  To get a good look at the chickadees, I climbed out on the roof, sat, and waited.  The birds did not disappoint.  But, they fly in to the feeder and leave so quickly, that I had a hard time trying to frame a nice shot.




I'll just have to try again tomorrow.