A Mother Pie of Gratitude

When I was in Junior High School, after my parents' divorce, I encountered a book by a Young Adult writer, named Helen Cavanagh, that was life-altering in the perspective it provided me, and I have shared its wisdom with a few close people. Now that most of my mothering days are behind me and will be reviewed by my progeny with credits and demerits, it feels like a good time to spread the message of the book to a wider audience. The message holds up over time and also in my personal experience.

The book's title is simply Honey, and the cover merely shows a girl with honey-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail with perfect glowing skin and a cute yellow t-shirt. I wanted to look like that girl, and its sweet title was an easy draw, so I checked it out of my English teacher's classroom library. Thank you, Mrs. Gordon, wherever you are.

As I read about Honey, the main character, though, I no longer thought of her as the model on the cover. I began to identify with the girl of the story, because her parents were also separated, which, in 1980, wasn't as commonplace as it is today. The details of Honey's life were very different from mine, but close enough that I could relate to some of her feelings. Yet I also felt relieved that I couldn't relate to all of them.

For instance, Honey's father has abandoned her mother and her, and is simply a vanished phantom throughout most of the book. Her mother is nearly comatose with depression, and Honey is obligated to care for herself, and sometimes both of them, through relationships she has formed with various people in their small town. We're introduced to the helpful and encouraging librarian, as well as a kind but nearly-blind widow who needs Honey's help with reading and small tasks. There is also a neighboring family with two sisters around Honey's age, and her boyfriend, Danny, who is long-suffering and devoted, despite Honey's mercurial mood swings.

The character who is the most intriguing, and who belongs to a literary trope, is the black maid to the neighbor family. She's designed to be intriguing, because-- like all solitary black individuals in a story peopled by white Americans-- she is the one who delivers the essential insight to Honey, and to the reader. With the legendary mystical wisdom which will serve the main character by being a bit exotic, a bit other, and a bit like Mary Poppins, she shows up in the story possessing a nearly magical competence and shrewdness, as well as stern and amusing personality quirks that will save the day. Helen Cavanagh does avoid a few traps in the character of ... wait for it ... Vanilla, by making her a young, politically-conscious college student with an unapologetic afro and a sassy impatience for her charges, which often includes Honey, who hangs around their large home and lawn with the two sisters who have everything Honey does not.

This benevolent family provides Honey with an escape from her own somewhat bleak existence on the other side of a forest of pine trees that separates the gracious lifestyle of one part of town with the working class desperation on the other. Honey will traverse this forest many times throughout the book and sometimes takes home hand-me-down clothing and leftovers from the large meals that Vanilla cooks for them. The mother of the girls is perfectly groomed and always welcoming to Honey, but remains at an elegant remove from whatever travails Honey and her mother are going through.

Toward the end of the book, Honey's absent father returns unexpectedly, her mother is suddenly happy again, as if nothing had happened or changed, and they announce to her that their family will be moving to another town. Honey is not having it. She presents herself to each of her friends as an orphan who needs to be taken in, and will work and be perfect in every way if only she can stay. One by one, the friends explain to her why this would not be good for her, nor for them. She racks up disappointment which begins to fuel resentment toward them and hatred toward herself. The final dashed hope comes when she discovers that the cast-off clothing of the neighbor girls did not come from their thoughtfulness, nor their mother's, but from Vanilla, who has been compassionate toward Honey, but not entirely sympathetic. After all, Honey does have parents, shelter, friends, and a future that could get better with time.

While I no longer have the physical book, and should probably get myself a replacement copy, I can paraphrase the advice that Vanilla gives to Honey (And yes, I, too, am now noticing that these names seem fitting for two showgirls talking backstage): Motherhood is too big of a job for one woman, and so it needs to be somewhat divided up, the way you would apportion a pie. Anyone who has nurtured you, even if they aren't all that maternal, is part of your Mother Pie. While your mother might make up the largest piece, offerings from fathers, other relatives, teachers, coaches, partners, friends, and even lovers (although they are young, her boyfriend Danny regards her tenderly and is patient with her flashes of coldness, even when she doesn't understand them, herself) are the ingredients that may be recognized for what they could give, rather than resented for what they could not.

There may be people who have Mother Pies made from lives that are smooth as cream. But that seems unlikely and maybe a little suspect. Even the neighbor girls must eventually grow from sheltered innocence to experience that will add texture and the necessity of the unexpected. The assortment that can make up a pie are people of all kinds: the fruits, the nuts, and the cheesy. While children can often teach us about life, I don't think they should be part of this pie. The effect on Honey, of parenting her mother, is what brings on her emotional storms of guilt, self-doubt, and anger, which hovers over a self-destructive bitterness.

I would be feeling a little uncertain about this whole Motherhood ideal, too. 

Not all of the people in your Mother Pie will necessarily agree on what you need, or how they feel about you or each other. Opinions and judgments won't always mix well to provide the perfect whole. There may be times when things bubble over, or some patches of crust fall away. It may not be a pie that wins a blue ribbon at the fair, but it can still be rich and filling, and most importantly, real. A fantasy of the perfect parent into which we fold all of our expectations doesn't serve us well.

And now, if you really want a mashup, your mother pie might be part of your higher power, but that can be a thought for another day. Also, I don't know of a book that has an extended metaphor for what makes up Fatherhood, but there probably is one, and that may be an interesting quest for anyone who wants to find it or create one.

Andy MacDowell singing a paen to the unique pleasure of pie, from the overtly saccharine 1996 movie, Michael

For the practical among us, who have had their sweet tooth tempted by this post, here is a good recipe for pie crust from Allrecipes.com:

1 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, chilled and diced
1/4 cup ice water

In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

MY NOTE: As with most things, don't overwork, and if it's not handling well, start over.

Poem: Sun Moon

Artist: Veronica Radelet, Abstract Landscape 13

At the mid-point of the year,

mid-summer,

mid-life,

in the night

the Moon rises

to show half her light.

The Sun will roll over in his bed

and breathe in his own heat

and rest easy

knowing that She

will wax into her fullness

in darkened plain sight.

For a time,

He need not

scorch nor burn

the pathways

across the earth

set down for lions

in tall, sharp grasses,

and He need not

boil the ocean

with the sting ray

and the eel;

the mountain tops

need not melt

and flood

into parched ravines

lined with curling leaves.

Artist: Sharon Cummings, Divine Solitude

Instead, She will suffice,

and in softness

step lightly away from

Him, in quiet freedom 

unveiled

and invite

the luna moth,

the plopping seal,

the snowy owl

to a midnight

of peace

and sighs,

as the sea

pulls up

the foaming

hem of her

dresses

to reveal

her tidal bed

of gleaming shells

and stranded weeds

until

song rises

into vapor

and the Sun must

have his way

once more,

battering

against

glinting

windows,

glaring at orange cranes

that swing

the stacked

objets d’effort

that have traveled

from another

hemisphere

of strife

and poisonous clouds.

Artist: Simon Kenny, On a Day Like Today, 2012

And then She 

will cover her face

and weep

that He sees

the flecks

of glittering

sand in the

pavement

but never

sees Her,

or the man

on her curve,

fashioned from deep mares

of tranquility.

He, deaf and blind

from both

refusal

and preservation

of the righteous,

who tread along

lush rows,

blundering

standard bearers

who

trample

out vintages

of sleep

and dreams

to the end

of their days.

                                                                                                      –Lizbeth Leigh

Artist: Nataera, Paris, France 2009 Original Landscape with Flowers

© copyright 2017 by Guilded Lily Press

The Mid-life Crisis That Wasn't

I wrote down the first part, and then I surprised myself by the finish.

"When I think of all that I have thought, felt, said, written, cried over, laughed off, gone without, run for, packed up, traveled to, bought, lost, worn, made up, brushed out, painted on, squeezed into, balanced on, and pressed together… I realize that’s what made it so fun."

I wish I could attribute this quote to someone famous and revered. But it's just me.

Dorothy Parker was known for her sharp tongue and witticisms. But there's always a little something sad underlying her jabs, and I guess that's how I like my snark. Not too proud, not too bitter. Hers is a good vintage, coming from the Rothschild line, born to a Scottish Protestant and a German Jew but taught by Roman Catholic nuns. I don't know how one could escape that childhood without having a mind full of wry observation and angst tempered with a sense of the absurd. When I read her, she strikes me as the Oscar Wilde of her time, or maybe he was the Dorothy Parker of his.

Some of these one-liners and verses are well-known, and seem like precursors to Twitter:

"Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart."

"What fresh hell can this be?"(whenever someone rang the doorbell)

"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

"Never complain, never explain."

"A hangover is the wrath of grapes."

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

And here are a few for self-knowledge and acceptance, to stave off a crisis of identity:

"In youth it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you."

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"And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned."

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Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."

Here is one about writing, that I feel the same way about, having come to discover myself a writer and poet. Although I have a degree in Creative Writing, and have been published and paid, I've only ever thought of myself as someone who writes, rather than a Writer. She touches upon the great fear that comes along with a professional title:

"If you have any young friends who aspire to be writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."

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"If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn."

Honestly, I do give a damn, many damns, and I would love to see more young people (having been one for several years) take up writing along with their damns. But I would filch their copies of The Elements of Style, "a book not to be tossed off lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

I love her irreverence surrounding death, which, for me, removes its sting so satisfyingly.

"That would be a good thing to cut on her tombstone: wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

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"It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
Aha, my little dear, I say,
Your clan will pay me back one day."

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"I never see that prettiest thing--
A cherry bough gone white with Spring--
But what I think how gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree."

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Resumé

Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful,
You might as well live.

A Glass Eye That Never Breaks

If you’ve made it this far in life without a bag of tricks, then get one. But, remember, you get to be the one to fill it, and to decide what goes in it. If some whatsit doesn’t work, then you can spend time trying to master it to endless frustration, or you can just let it go and let someone else have it. No need for self-blame, defensiveness or explanations. It just didn’t fit in with everything else you have to carry.

Some tricks come to us fairly easily, and their secrets can be passed along freely. The big reveal is that if you’re still here, then you have learned how to recognize the ways and means that help you and those that don’t. That’s pretty much the essence of resourcefulness and trusting your instincts.

Here’s a trick I picked up from the movie, Big Fish, starring Ewan MacGregor and Albert Finney. As a kid, Edward Bloom takes a dare from friends to ask a local witch for a look into her glass eye. In it, a person will spy the moment of his own death. The other kids take in their fate with horror and dread. But Edward takes this foresight as a gift. He says:

“I was thinking about death and all, about seeing how you’re gonna die. I mean, on one hand, if dying was all you thought about, it could kind of screw you up… but it could kinda help, couldn’t it? Because everything else you knew you could survive.”

He then lives his life according to this principle, and when he’s in danger he reminds himself, “This isn’t how I go.”

Starry Night handprinted art glass by Harry and Leslie Besset found at Marblebert.com

Well, we don’t have crystal balls or glass eyes to give us this confidence by way of foreknowledge, yet you can turn the idea into a different trick. Imagine, instead, that the glass eye will tell you not the manner of your death, but what will have the power to permanently break your spirit before that. And the eye shows you nothing. You can meet catastrophe upon disaster upon loss, and if you remind yourself, “This isn’t how I break”, then your spirit is safe with you.

If this notion doesn’t appeal to you, then just roll it along, and it can find its way into another bag that has been waiting for it to show up.

If you like tricks, you might like riddles, too:

"The Riddle" by Five for Fighting 2006

There was a man back in '95

Whose heart ran out of summers

But before he died, I asked him

Wait, what's the sense in life?

Come over me, come over me

He said,

Son, why you got to sing that tune?

Catch a Dylan song or some eclipse of the moon

Let an angel swing and make you swoon

Then you will see, you will see

Then he said,

Here's a riddle for you

Find the Answer

There's a reason for the world:

You and I

Picked up my kid from school today

Did you learn anything, cause in the world today

You can't live in a castle far away

Now talk to me, come talk to me

He said,

Dad, I'm big but we're smaller than small

In the scheme of things, well we're nothing at all

Still every mother's child sings a lonely song

So play with me, come play with me

And Hey, Dad

Here's a riddle for you

Find the Answer

There's a reason for the world:

You and I

I said,

Son, for all I've told you

When you get right down to the

Reason for the world:

Who am I?

There are secrets that we still have left to find

There have been mysteries from the beginning of time

There are answers we're not wise enough to see

He said, You looking for a clue? I love you free

The batter swings and the summer flies

As I look into my angel's eyes

A song plays on while the moon is high over me

Something comes over me

I guess we're big and I guess we're small

If you think about it man, you know we got it all

Cause we're all we got on this bouncing ball

And I love you free

I love you freely

Here's a riddle for you

Find the Answer

There's a reason for the world

You and I

Elijah May Come in or Not

Living in an arid landscape makes Middle Eastern scriptural imagery accessible and immediate. During my Sonoran Desert days, my feet were nearly always hot. Ritual foot washing, as described in the New Testament, seemed like a good custom to revive for family and guests alike. The water streamed from an easily turned faucet in my climate-controlled bathroom as my swollen toes whitened a shade less pink, and the beige dust swirled down the drain. I felt a little more human, a little less hot-headed, a little more peaceful. If this water had been less plentiful and harder to draw, as it was for previous desert dwellers, then foot washing would indeed have been the zenith of relief and hospitality, and a priority offering for all visitors.

Another aspect of my life there, and my thoughts surrounding the tending of guests, were the two French doors that opened from our dining room out onto the patio and scrubby vegetation beyond. I had harbored a small but persistent longing to have doors like this, where I could seat friends and family in a sheltered air as the sky retreated into dusk. Although our house was a hastily constructed frame and stucco replica of the California style that had mushroomed everywhere across the Southwest, I insisted on the more expensive, and impractical doors in place of other amenities. 

They were installed in the bedroom, as well, where I could see the moonrise shining in through the clerestory window above them, and only needed to step outside to immerse myself. Now that I no longer live there, those doors are only memories for me; portals to past dreams, to a time when all around me was a flood of yearning, sighs, wishes, tears, heads in hands in dejection, hands uplifted in petition. All of these deferred desires became blisters upon the soul.

I look back on that groundswell of longing as being universally human, but also being locally specific to the desert. There is no longer such a tension quivering around me, because the air of a Pacific Northwestern forest doesn’t rise in waves. There are no mirages here, and no teasing. All is sated greenery, and pooling, slippery rivulets leading to still more dripping green and more water, until you’re all the way through a forest and out the other side. You can stand on the edge of the ocean coming at you: water behind, water ahead, water taking you, water setting you back again. There is an uplift and a contentment in this.

Anasazi polychrome bowl found on prehistoriccollector.com

The desert, by contrast, is too much and never enough, and everyone in it is hard to please. The sun is too bright, the shade is too far, the lawn is too small and needs too much care. The summers are too long, the towns are too far apart, the drives across glittering roads meet up with the ignoble end of beetles flying into the glass. The riverbeds are choked with sand, but can flood in an instant, too high to cross. Animals and cars are stalled in the washes after a monsoon rain. The showy birds have long since flown, leaving only those that can perch above the sand. An Easterner plants iris bulbs under a tree and we smile at the their childlike hope. All of the desert’s problems are just barely solved, and yet, if we pushed a little harder, it could be more like it was back home, to the drumbeat of “if only, if only, if only.” 

The hope never dies, in spite of the evidence. Here is the graveyard of Howard Hughes' ingenuity in row after row of retired warplanes. Here are many thieves, but rarely a moth has eaten, and never has rust destroyed. Not for nothing is the infamous town called Tombstone, yet still they came, hellbent for leather. It’s all godforsaken and accursed. Yet, there is nothing that can be traded for such a wide vista and a clarity of vision and purpose. It makes you still, like a lizard on a rock, and you can wonder yourself to death, not at the why of it all, but at the how of it all. The land of enchantment is harsh and stony and towering in its vastness, but with the most delicate and fragile survivals scattered across it, both ephemeral and timeless at once. The light falls over it, an unblinking dare to show yourself.

"Bliss" from Desert Sun

On one especially dry and dark evening, I sat at my dining table alone, under the brightness of the simple glass chandelier, and thought of the custom of the Passover Seder, and of setting an empty cup at the table before an empty chair for Elijah, in the unlikely but anticipated event that he should appear at the door to foretell the coming of the Messiah to the people of Israel. I've never enacted this unfamiliar ritual, but I thought of him that night, making his way up from the sandy arroyo below, through my gate, and standing before me upon the threshold of both French doors, flung wide to receive him. He seems suited to a place where foot washing is appreciated. He may marvel at the convenience of a garden hose coiled nearby. He may see the neighbor’s palm tree waving its fronds in silhouette over a pool and say in weariness and recognition, “Yes, I am come, and this is home.”

So, if Elijah were to sit at my table, and even though I were not fit to loosen the strap of his sandal, how would I entertain him? Would I gesture him into comfort, and then sing to him while shutting the door behind him? Would he then be mine, forever seated with a cup for me to fill, over and again? Would the mountains change each day from blue to lavender and then to russet and charcoal, while still he sits and is quenched, and still I stand and pour out? That would be an enchantment of the sort that holds one captive in the damp, mossy, primeval forest on my island home, and not a spell cast by cacti and a thousand-starred sky. 

The desert is for seeking, the forest is for finding, and the sea is somewhere between and all around, ready to fool you into believing you’re always headed in the right direction.

And so I think that Elijah may dip his feet, come in as he pleases, and I will unfold myself like a linen laid across his lap: to hear his voice, his tidings, and to see with his eyes, staring down into his cup of wine at the reflection of all of the evening lamps yet before him, and not shut the door. I will not hold him to more blessings than are mine. He may go, until a day when he says, “I have knocked at them all; now, come with me and let’s see who has answered.”

Photo: Doorways Kolmonskoppe Namibia found on mrsmithworldphotography.com

How to Save Face

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Borda.deviantart.com

Some days

begin with

So many faces

to face.

We awaken to digits,

our delta hands

spreading to find

the pulsing alarm

to still it back

to sleep

The brain is yet

in mid-howl

of night terror

as the mind

rushes in to 

shush and

soothe

or fill with dread

by logos

and memory

of the hours

ahead.

Do not face

your own

or another’s

arrangement

of eyes, nose

mouth, chin

and their morning song:

the blink and sniff

and cough,

before

you face

a better page,

not bolting

straight from

sheets still pressed

into the cheek.

This page

of your own making

has come to you

softly

like a pair

of satin slippers

set down before

your bed, before

the royal feet

hit wood, stone, 

fiber, or soil.

This is your kingdom

of pulp and ink

to ride across

on a mad tear

of scribble

and illegibility

The lines of your

sovereign heritage

surround you

even as the first

toe pokes through

the hole in

this humbled

state of hearing

either

whisper or bustle,

first thing.

No matter which, 

you can suspend

their animus

just long enough

to remember

who you are

before the

daily being told

begins

The grace of your

exalted domain

announces you before

you recall your name,

that foreign word, 

attached to

the who of you,

mercifully

to be momentarily forgotten

as a curled slip

from a past night event

left in a best coat

pocket.

If need be,

set a fiery beast

to guard this 

morning note

as it quivers in

the air before you,

or simply draw a circle of chalk

on the floor around you,

or throw your apron up

over your head.

There are so many ways

to greet your lover within,

and the soul

conspires with you

Put hand to page

and feel its

smooth salutation

even before lids

open

and pull it close.

Your pen stirs up

a whirl of leaves

so that you can

see what you seek

hear what you call

find your courage

there, the sticking point

of your sword

that you will

come to gladly

fall upon

each

day

and wonder

at how you lived

before you did so

And now, all the faces,

Let them come

                -- by Lizbeth Leigh

                    

© copyright 2017 Guilded Lily Press

from a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by Casey Wilder Mott, kickstarter.com