Gifts of the Mother
hand painted terry cloth robe, 1986
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I fell the other day.
It happened in a dirt parking lot which was rutted and sandy.
I was not hurt.
I slipped in the gravel next to my car as I was negotiating the narrows I had left between a railroad tie and the car in an attempt to give my dog some shade.
Needless to say, it was not a handicapped parking spot.
As I sat there in the dirt, I looked at Olivia who was sitting in the driver’s seat with a mixture of confusion, compassion, impatience and love on her face.
We chatted, my beloved dog and I as I sat there in the dirt.
“Well, Livvy… here I am sitting here and I can’t get up.”
Her eyes go half mast as they do when she feels love toward people.
I tried to turn myself over but my feet kept slipping underneath the car, not able to get a foothold in the dirt.
“Let’s try this again… hmmmm… if I hold on here and twist here, I might be able to do it..”
This went on for 15 minutes without a tear in sight.
Yes, I was swimming in humility.
Yes, I was frustrated.
Yes, I wanted to be ‘saved.’
But most of all it felt like a challenge far from the spiral of darkness it could easily have attached itself to.
What does this have to do with MOTHER?
I am the eldest of four.
I saw an old family movie recently where I was impossibly innocent and cute.
There was light there in my eyes.
I lost that at 5 years old when I got buck teeth and a new, blonde sister.
Something happened, then, that put me on a very gritty road I actually am not sorry about.
I was… believe me..
But not now.
Because I really am enjoying who I am these days and know she came forward BECAUSE OF choices I made in the midst of a challenging childhood.
My mother and I parted emotionally supportive ways early on.
Pretty much at birth.
She wasn’t ready to be stripped of the possibility of getting her own enormous needs met.
Forgive her? No.. not there as yet.
My sister got to ‘have’ her.
I have sometimes hated my sibling for the injustice of it all.
My sister became my mother’s confidant and ballast and empty space-filler-in-er.
They gathered in the kitchen whispering and judging.
A covert comment.. then the weird ‘cover’ of silent cooking or cleaning or: “Just LOOK at that crabapple tree in bloom.”
Needing a place of my own, I learned how to change myself around to charm, entertain, soothe and mollify my alcoholic FATHER.
She got mom; I got dad.
This arrangement served us well in the ability to survive a very dysfunctional family.
But my sister and I lost each other in the process.
I became a juvenile delinquent as I spun around, trying to finding a place in the world that felt free and mine.
I spent hours and days in the woods behind our toxic house, soothed by nature and the blessed non-humanness of it all.
I smoked cigarettes, pot, did drugs and skipped school.
I got a semblance of the attention I was so hungry for.
My mother and I got so far apart that when I was raped as a college student she did not show up at all.. a cursory “I’m so sorry” on the phone was the extent of support.
I asked her why? years later and she said: “I just didn’t know what to do or say.”
My sister and other siblings have created healthy and happy families, marriages and lives.
I am so proud of us all for surviving what we did without hurling our unhappiness outward toward whoever was there at the moment and creating good lives for ourselves.
I see that my sister knows how to be in relationship in ways I don’t.
Watching her in family and marriage inspires me and instructs as well.
This ability she has is the thing I envied for so long and can only happen as a transmission from ‘the mother.’
When I was struggling in the dirt of the parking lot after my fall, I was using all the skills I learned as an independent and rebellious forsaken child:
I know how to work my way through challenge by entertaining myself with a shift in point-of-view.
My movement toward Life includes the ability to NOT COLLAPSE and trust myself to know I can figure a way to achieve the thing.
I find myself and Life eternally interesting as I watch the ways in which people (and I) negotiate the shadow; society’s and their own.
I have learned to find solace and inspiration in the smallest of things.
We protect the things we love.
I grew up without that sense of safety that should have been a given.
I have had to learn to lick my wounds and choose now to enliven in each moment because it feels good.
This is an EARNED skill and truly one of my greatest achievements.
These abilities are the things I love and protect.
Here’s where duality comes in:
I know what LOVE feels like BECAUSE I also have been privy to it’s absence.
I can get over myself and love my sister,
And keep those away from my sphere who want what I have without putting in the work.
Because work it is
And truthfully, I’ve had enough.
I open myself now,
As a healthy, emotionally sturdy
LOVER OF LIFE;
Albeit a bit grimy on the backside.
Daffodil Hill
detail of painting on textile
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When I was in High School
There was a place on the grounds I would go called DAFFODIL HILL.
I went there to reclaim myself
During days of mind-numbing
Classes
With too many girls (girl’s school..)
I smoked pot there,
Laid down alone
Or with a boyfriend
But mostly alone.
I stretched out
And closed my eyes
To let the fragrance
Of yellowness
Take me.
Hiding in the middle
Of this riot of
Harbingers
OF SPRING!!
I let dogs
And their owners pass me by.
I kept still and held my breath
So not to be discovered.
I let English class,
Math
And History
Survive without me
And the most movement I could manage
Was to cross my legs
At the ankle
And prop my head up
Away from the damp. dark ground.
I became yellow.
And hummed the tune
I thought the bendy stems
Might enjoy.
I was happy then..
And now am still..
Remembering the liquid sunlight
Pouring on me,
Holding my hidden self
There, in the new dirt
And innocent grass
Long ago,
On Daffodil Hill.
..And We All Fall Down…
detail of monoprint
___________________
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit
Which housed the army of those employed by the automobile industry.
‘Cars R’ Us’ was our motto.
We drew them
Screamed over them
Dreamed them
Loved them
And hated them
As the case may be.
That industry affected us Michiganders differently as individuals.
My family was wrecked by the alcohol
That ran in the blood
Of the decision makers
Trying to appear jaunty and carefree.
Even so..
I ended up having cars in my blood, instead.
Detroit is in what we call a ‘decline.’
Artists, like me, often prick up our ears
When we hear such words.
It means nothing less than OPPORTUNITY.
We know how to take the dregs of something
And juice it up.
And so I have an odd take on the landscape..
Which extends to my own body, too,
IN DECLINE.. as they say…
When something as we know it
Changes, dies, falls down, is blown up,
A vacuum is left
To be filled, created, remade, re-thought.
That space was never there before
So the possibility never existed till it did.
And THAT kind of thinking excites me
And keeps me curious
And steppin’……
Hush, Mummy…
detail ceramic sculpture
_______________________
Growing up being ‘mothered’ by an extreme narcissist was work.
Every part of me was in hyper-drive
Trying to figure out how to get her love
Or how to get away from her.
One lasting parting gift she left me
Is the tendency to experience a conversation in 3-D.
A hologram might be a better description.
The front side of a seemingly simple exchange
Also (in my experience) has a back side;
An up and a down as well.
I trained myself
Out of self-preservation
To ‘read’ minute pauses
And barely detectable inflections
Or a sort of baseline kind of jitter
In order to decipher the truth of a thing.
It was all to feel safe;
To have as much information as I could glean
In order that I might be able to feed her
The thing she wanted
And get the love
I needed.
I do this hyper-vigilant screening of conversation even today
When I don’t need to
Or want to
As she is passed onto other pastures.
It is a valuable skill
And I trust myself in it
Except all the times I am wrong
Which really aren’t that many, actually.
I get exhausted by this sensitivity
And yet..
It has kept me alive and swimming
With the rest of you
And for that, I am grateful.
Secret Place
“FOREST THROUGH THE TREES”, 2002, 40″ x 72″, m/m
_____________________________________________________
A friend told me yesterday that she really hesitated before calling me to ask if she could stop by as she was in the neighborhood.
I really felt for her as I have put up very distinct boundaries about disturbing me at home.
I have ALWAYS had what I call ‘a secret place’ in my life
To go to when I need to feel safe and ok just as I am.
In my youth it was a grassy field
Rimmed with huge trees
I would lie down in
And be lost to the world
And protected by the spirits of the place.
I’ve had forts in my youth
And a few as an adult.
I have my special and sacred ‘go-to’ places in New Mexico that never fail to soothe me with their particular salve.
When my friend mentioned her trepidation in even approaching me
I really understood
And had to look at the question:
‘Am I becoming a dyed-in-the-wool weirdo?’
Have I been challenged by a faltering physical body for so long
That I am more comforted by aloneness
And a sort of ‘secret life’
Than exchanging breath with the life happening beyond my driveway?
Have I made my home the secret place du jour?
There are two parts to this line of inquiry:
Yes,indeed.. I need a safe and nurturing place to heal.
And
Yes, I do believe when I really look, that I may have lost some muscles in the social interaction realm.
I guess the trade off for me
Is the fact that one of my greatest and most necessary choices in my own healing has been to lessen the cultural ‘static’
Which seems to severely affect my nervous system.
I see that pulling out of usual levels of cultural participation
Makes people around me nervous.
But I can not really worry about the results of my choices
Except to make sure they cause no harm.
I see that there is a bright and mostly shiny
Woman behind the eyes looking back at me
From the bathroom mirror.
She seems to exude health
Until she reaches for the wall to balance.
My choices seem to be serving me
And a great litmus test I use for health
Has been to watch to see that the secret place only holds my attention
For just so long
And then I must emerge
And tell all the tales
I’ve heard, there in the shadows;
The songs sung to me
The drawings in the sand.
Jennifer’s Flowers
detail of painting
________________
My sister sent me flowers for my birthday.
She knows me.
She knows that stargazer lilies send me.
She knows that I adore curly willow.
She knows alstromeria lilies are my thing.
Now, how many people on the planet have that all-important information
At the ready?
It soothes me that she knows these things.
We love each other deeply.
And we are very different.
She has a brilliance to her mind capacity and abilities.
Because we share the same blood line,
I actually recognize I have similar capacities in the mind department
Though I chose another path this time around.
Our parents were both intelligent people.
I really thought for years
That I was not.
In my sister’s shadow I crouched.
And yet… today I know different.
She shares the creative urge I acted on in my lifetime.
I see it in her style, her cooking, her parenting.
We both share good minds
And our access to the forest
Has been by following different paths.
Today,
Instead of feeling less intelligent
I feel smart in a different way
And cheer her successes
Wrapped in the colors
Of the life I chose for myself.
That separation I created
So long ago
Has taken alot of energy.
I am putting it down.
How Do You Spell ‘YACHT’?
untitled,30″ x 30″, 2001,m/m
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When I was a little girl growing up in the suburbs of Detroit
I led a small band of adventurers.
We would search out the huge (to us)
Drainage pipes being installed below
The many new roads in process of being carved out
To handle the encroaching masses.
We’d light a candle and crawl into the cavernous black
On our hands and knees
Never knowing what monsters lay in wait.
It was absolutely thrilling.
And oddly soothing to me to be underground
Away from my family and making my life follow
The direction I was choosing.. me.. little Cath…
I was captain of my own ship down there
And I loved it.
The dirt, the power, the mystery, the dark, the smells, the secrets.
I came across this amazingly futuristic design of a 100′ yacht the other day.
I find it interesting from a design standpoint
But laughed out loud to myself
As it made me think of my past underground adventures
And my preference for what they offered me
Over any thing this super-yacht might have to give.
I was glad to feel the tug of the underground
And wowed by the boat in the water
But, the pleasure quotient of smell of good dirt
And the perfume of the sea
Are equal to me.
As I recall, traversing ground on the humble power of my own hands and knees
Opened me to worlds beyond what I knew.
I think it was pretty good practice for
My life these days;
Closer to the ground than I ever thought possible.
The Return
untitled, 60″ x 40″, 1999, m/m
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Forgive me the periodic breaks in my posting continuity.
The flu really knocked the ‘bejeezus’ out of the girl
And I am only today inching toward the land of the living.
Here is something that came my way which took the edge off..
6 minutes of ‘happy pill’…..
Dirt
untitled, 2006, 40″ x 40″, earth, rocks
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One reason I do not keep a cache of pre-written posts
At the ready in case I face the great vacuum
Of writer’s block
Is the fact that the small and hidden currents
Which get overlaid with more glittery flotsam
Are highly interesting to me.
Today, what surfaced is
Dirt.
It snowed here last night.
I slept with the sweet love of a friend’s phone call checking on me
Before I huddled in for the evening.
This morning, all I can think about is earth, strangely.
Wet and turned, perfumed Michigan earth.
The smooth, clay fortified sheen my dirt road gets
After the grader (named Phil) passes through.
That time I was hiking
Years ago
With strong, tanned thighs
And I came across a mini garden of sorts:
Arrowheads and man-made stone tools rested on small pinnacles
Of sand eroded
And undisturbed
For eons, probably.
All this is happening under this new snow.
I find it interesting what migrates to the fore
And becomes something of value
When I lose
Abilities I didn’t even know
I loved.
Lying
untitled, 16″ x 16″ x 4″, m/m
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Truth be told, in the 10 years I have dealt with MS
There are few times I remember catching the proverbial flu or cold snaking their way through the general population.
Because my immune system is in hyper-drive
I seem to have skirted most of the maladies which befall my friends.
Except I have now been pretty much in bed for three days with the flu.
I am pretty good at lying to myself
About stuff which might very well keep others hunkered down
And playing it safe.
Safety has never really been that interesting to me
As I am drawn to the wider view
And, for better or worse,
Am less taken by the
“In-your-face’ realities
Vying for my attention.
I laid down for three days
Because I couldn’t do other than that.
The thing was insistent
And I hadn’t the interest nor the energy to argue.
And so I gave in to the between-the-worlds
Sort of giddy delirium
And slept.
And I tell you..
I am better for it!
I don’t mean the obvious thing of: ‘when not feeling well..lie down…’
I’m talkin’ the gift of shucking the ego.
(All the ‘shoulds and coulds and maybes and ifs and buts’)
And leaving it at the side of the road
Or at least in the laundry room
And naked in your need
Lie down.
And stay there until you are done.
Really done.