Mnemosyne: The Goddess of Memory

My father's hands always hold some rich literary supplement. The New York Review of Books. The London Review of Books or The New Yorker. Always something with substance and depth.
I recall a while ago I escorted him to the upstairs bathroom at Lunds. As we passed the cheap pulp novels I said to Dad: "Avert your eyes, these books are not even worth your gaze!!!

As I lounged around at my parents house I came across a photo tucked inside the New York Review of Books that captivated me for a long time. I will share that with you.

There is the photo. A black and white photo of a woman reclining with her back to us. A marble woman who is the Goddess of Memory. The photo is an old one and one can see people in the distance in this park that in on the Upper West Side of New York City. I would have put money on a bet that this was a European photo, but no, it is New York City.I get a sense of old New York in this photo.

She reclines with her back to us. Weathered by time and wind, rain and sleet, the folds of her garment are darkened. I gaze.

My father's memory is not what it could be. He often does not know the date or time or place. There are holes that need filling.
If I could stretch out a magic carpet now and place it beneath my father's feet as he sits reading The New York Review of Books, I would take him up, up and away. I would take him up above our house on 3220 Hennepin up above the back yard where my parents spend their days in the summer as the red cardinal sings to them. Up above the trees that are bare in winter, with a rutted, iced over alley far below. Up up above Lake Calhoun where we walk to for our short walks. Yes, and then we would drift east over Wisconsin's lush green hills. Drifting with the wind we would swish over Chicago and Lake Michigan. Maybe touching down briefly in Detroit or Philodelphia, but pushing and drifting with the wind, up where the birds fly by.

There among the eagles and the herons, there we would gain speed until New York City was in view and finding our direction and wending our way delicately among the tall buildings we would find our soft landing in this park. There we would walk, the two of us towards this lovely statue. Not knowing what her face looks like I imagine we would look upon some lovely visage.

There before the Goddess of Memory we would stand. Gazing at her I would beseech her to restore my father's memory that has failed him now, off and on. Gazing at her, we would reach out our hands.

And waiting, I would liston as my father turned to me, quoting his favorite poems, making lively jokes and laughing with his marvellous turn of phrase. His angular features would be filled with expression. Soon, I imagine a small crowd would gather as they heard his discourse. Animated conversation has always been the anvil he pounds his opinions on in the most animated way. There!! Yes!! The sparks fly. He quotes, quips and we marvel at his brilliance. The still lyrical statue, the odalisque of memory smiles a mysterious smile. Yes, we have come all this way to worship at her feet.
To ask and beseech her for her gift of memory. She has answered our plea.

My dad's memories pour forth; times in Japan, life on the farm in Texas, picking cotton in the heat of a long hot day. Poems he's written flutter about. He picks one up and reads it. Then goes on to recite a sonnet he loves by Shakespeare.

Memory is mended somehow.....

I drift and awaken from my slumber on the couch. Looking over, I see Dad reading away in The New York Review of Books. I point out the photo of Mnemosyne. He smiles and quotes his favorite poem to me.

Dreaming and drifting

Today I attended a workshop on Attending to Aging Parents. The speaker was excellent and the power point presentation covered so many practical aspects of caregiving and the needs of elderly parents. I think the only thing I would have added was the need for a good sense of humor...unless you can find humor and laugh..you will cry for a long time.

The presentation underlined my present concerns and ongoing angst about my parents. Sometimes I just feel like I am trying to outrun time, to somehow get ahead of the merciless tick of the clock.....and what it forebodes.And yet, I realize I am doing the best I can...as the kids said in the Chinese Opera last week..(see middle photo!)
"You did YOUR BEST!! and THAT WAS GOOD ENOUGH! You did your best!!"
and
"Work Hard and Play Hard and Do Your Best!!Truth~ Truth was the Test!!

Other times I just wish to dream and drift like a mermaid...away from troubles and cares...into a place of pure art, beauty, joy and reflection...but then I awake and here I am, at the urologist, at the cardiologist or just sitting with my parents in their living room....I drift within these moments and I draw. (When I get my scanner up and running I will be able to share more...)


I do draw a lot and record each moment, each doctor visit and each subtle and not so subtle moment...Drawing has helped me navigate this unknown terrain... I shared my comments about all this briefly at the end of the workshop today...noting that drawings is a way to navigate the difficult terrain of aging and that Nothing is so
Scary you can't draw it...

So now spring is here, tulips poke up through the brown debris, time is moving on, another season is here...I drift with it and dream...sitting in front of my favorite tree.....it's wide embracing branches remind me to keep my heart of compassion open....even if it feels hard...to do so, to do that.

An Aria for my Mother ( Poem)

An Aria for my Mother

my mother grew up
in Vienna, Austria
home to opera
and many a triumphant aria
sung by passionate singers

now, there's an aria
I sing for my mother
hoping to lift
her spirits
as she walks through
the valley of the shadow

these long winter
days have held
her captive

and the loss of
the car
has been challenging

I try to sing a
sweet sure aria
from an opera
of her choice

something she
remembers
and loves

from her early
days in Vienna
when weekly
visits to the Opera
were her family's habit

I sing a very high
sweet tune
as I hold
her hand

I try to sing long enough
and hit the high notes
confident
that my singing
will bring a smile

there's an aria I sing
when I'm home alone,
thinking of my parents,
it's a song of grief
as I witness their
aging and the
passing of time

I sing each stanza
carefully
as I water the amaryllis
on the kitchen table
with my tears

that flower grows
slowly and
persistently
even when the thermometer
outside the window cannot
register the morning temp

I trust that
when it blooms
my mother will
be blossoming
too.

there's an aria I sing
made of memories of other times
I spin those strands
upon the wheel of time
and allow its turning
rhythms to give me strength
to sing the aria
that accepts times
turning wheels
with grace and wisdom.

written last year. 2009

Apprehension

I take my mother to see the urologist. Another visit, another day. Complicated news after the cat scan.

My mother is completely anxious and even the Book of Miracles that we glance at is not enough to calm her.I think we need a miracle.

I have her breath deeply. It almost helps. She is frantic and out of her skin with anxiety.
Perhaps because she knows and I know that we have to face difficult news.

The doctor examines her and finds something else.

It all gets to be too much to bear, to think about. As we leave I ask a nurse for a Kleenex.I cry and cry walking down the hall. I turn to look at my mother. She walks behind me with the most radiant happy smile. Calm, happy and radiant.

The Cat Scan

The Cat Scan

(First I will put some melodic Chopin music on in the background as I describe this moment)

She lays there, her young green eyes darting nervously about the room. I quietly hold her hand and reassure her, that yes, she will be fine.

My dear mother is in for a Cat Scan. Laying on the bed she looks small and thin. I stroke her face and hair. To me she looks both young and ancient. There’s an eternal liveliness to her eyes. I go sit in the hall while she goes through her procedure. It is both completely factual and it is a mystery. Health. 88 years old, soon to be 89. Yes, there she is, laying on the gurney looking so intact, so complete, so fragile and so strong. I marvel at her.

I sit in the neutral hall while the computer voice tells her to breath, or raise her arms or do something else. I sit under a perfect circle of light in this completely neutral environment. The circle of light is calming to me and it mutes my growing apprehension as to what will be found in the cat scan. Under this neutral light I allow meditative thoughts to emerge, to quietly flow while I look ahead.

Of course part of me is scared and wishes to just drift off to some safe fetal position somewhere away from here. But I am called back to the room and there she is, my own dear mother laying there on the white bed. So helpless, so strong, so wise.

The procedure is almost over. I gaze past this moment, past the sterile environment to muse on the richness of my mother's life. We pack up and leave. I hold her arm as we walk together under the calm pool of light into a future of questions and more doctor visits.

Bikkus Cholim ( for an old friend)

It's winter and here I am at Abbott Hospital again.It smells just as I remember and I know my way around. I hardly need to ask for help. There have been so many times and so many visits.
Today I am here visiting an old friend who I have not seen for years. I heard through the grape vine that he was in the hospital after major surgery. Ostomy and colonoscopy.Long words that mask a very long condition for him.
I think I've been in this room before, or have I? All the rooms blend into one long memory.

There he is, tubes and bandages.It's been a long road for him. We connect at once and regale each other with true tales and philosophical ramblings that come to the crossroads of tears and laughter. It's easy to go down either road. The road to laughter is wet with tears and the tearful road makes us really crack some good jokes.
Life has handed him these complexities and it's been tough. He is no stranger to pain and pain is his companion.
Yet he laughs and we make bad jokes.

Bikkur Cholim is the hebrew word for the mitzvah of visiting the sick. There is the feeling that through visiting the sick one can take away one sixtieth of their illness.
I enter his room feeling overwhelmed by the problems of my life. Family, finances, future...what? what? what? I ask.

I leave feeling light and happy. Somehow my problems have been put into perspective and I feel like I have wings.

There is a mystical light that shines through our most difficult situations. It is not easy to find, but it is there. It is like the streetlight on a snowy night, shining out and illuminating the hidden spiral of insight traced in the snow. You have to really squint to seet it...It is so hard to see, but just look, it's there.
You really can walk that inner road, yes, you can reach that inner destination. Just look, it's there.

Difficult moments have their own brightness and illumination. Not by the light of day, but the hidden light of intuition and insight. Look up. Look in. It is there.

Phone Conversation

"Hello Mom..

"Dad wants to get on the bus and go downtown and go get a car."

"Oh"

"What should I do?"

" Put him on the line."

"He'll only yell at you."

"I'll try."

"Hello Dad....I have really enjoyed putting your poems on the blog and honoring you in that way....
Dad, the roads are really bad now, why don't you wait until Spring to get a car??"

Pause.....

Long pause...

"Okay, Darling."

End of conversation.

I do not want to be a dictator and I feel my parents need and desire to get a car. I see how cooped up they feel. But..........

Thank you Peter M.

Today I happened to run into a former student of my father's. There, as the afternoon sun fell on us as we stood by the ATM card machine at Wells Fargo he recalled my dad and his love of poetry and how he quoted poems.....Yes, he remembered him as his teacher long ago.., as did his wife.

It was a lively and solemn moment for me...as I turn to honor Dad and his wide, brilliant life as a lover of words, books, poems, wisecracks, and jokes. I am grateful to Peter for remembering.

I see the tide of old age coming in and with it the painful onset of dementia...and the attendant loss of memory as to the present moment.... So we swim against the tide my father and I, even though it's pull is so strong.....and we go out into the deep waters . There we dive deep retrieving memories, and poems....all the good things.....

Back on shore we see memory slowly being erased...I hold onto the goodness, the abundance in my hands....

thank you Peter...for remembering as well.

It is five weeks since my dad rolled his car. Every moment I see him is a blessing, every conversation is a gift.

read all about him as I hold onto, celebrate and enter the abundance of his inner life:

jamescwhite.blogspot.com

shalom Anita

To Life!!! A celebration for my father

Greetings. I am happy to celebrate my father's survival from his car accident by starting a blog that features his poems, quips, quotes, and Texas humor. The title
is
James C White's poem, quips, and quotes.

The blog address is http://jamescwhite.blogspot.com

I am just in the process of adding pieces to it.

Enjoy!!

L'chaim!! To life!!

JACOB'S LADDER

JACOB’S LADDER

Ladders and angels and a stone for a Pillow. Even though that Torah Portion has passed I find myself thinking about a lot. My second graders are using the images from that Torah Portion for the Collage they will make for their presentation in a few weeks.. I find myself returning to that imagery as I contemplate the weeks that have passed since my father crashed his car.

It’s been a hard. I think I can relate to the stone for a pillow most of all. It feels like I have been trying to rest on a stone of stress for my pillow. Despite returning to the frailty of old age and the onset of dementia my father is intact. Even if he thinks he went off to Wilmar, and not Northfield it is such a relief to have him here.
We awake from this time and mark the place.

Anything is better than having to arrange shiva. It is so clear to me that he has been given one more chance.
Jacob. Stone. Ladder. Angels. As we rest on the hard stone of the aftermath of his accident I like to think that there are metaphors for us to hang onto. For that is how my dad thinks. Metaphors and poems. Let’s say those angels are going up and down the ladder holding poems he has written. Let’s say that mysterious forces combine to help him at last get seen.
When he held out the scribbled sheet of his writing after the accident I bent in close and listened. He feels low. He feels frustrated. His work has not been seen. He has not been published the way he would like.

And yet he sit there unharmed voicing these feelings. I can’t help but wonder about the unseen hands and angels that attended to him.
When I look closely at the map on Google I can see the roads surrounding the place where he had his accident. There is a Kerrville Trail, a Marion Lake and a Anita Road.
So did his sister who once lived in Kerrville, Texas come in close on angel wings and hold him so he remained unharmed. Did my Jewish relatives whose last name is Marion swoop in and hold him so he remained unharmed. Or was it just me and my intense worry that icy Thursday that held him as I phoned hospitals wondering where he was and filing a Missing Persons Report. We’ll never know. But seen and unseen forces were there. Did his Baptist preacher father Charles H. White hold onto him. Did the thunder from one of his sermons about Jacob keep the ground clear for Dad to land on..Who knows…it is all a great mystery.
As the car rolled was his father also there in that moment. Both holding onto him and pushing him away from death. My dad’s father was a farmer who got the call to preach and became a Southern Baptist Preacher. Later on in life he was obsessed with Jacob.
It’s been a hard time. I’ve had my usual financial stress, the roads are icy, winter. There has also been the maze of phone calls and worries to attend to. Sometimes you wake up and you realize that just a stone has been your pillow. Nothing soft or comforting. And then you mark that place and know that G-d has been with you and had held you for his own. When you wake up and your stone has been a pillow, know that it is a holy place. Know that it is holy ground. Know that from now on out nothing will be the same.

I look up into the mystical sky. I see angels going up and down a ladder. They are holding poems my dad wrote. They are holding them up so all can see them. We awaken and say, now, this is holy ground, this hard place we have been in. and now it is time for his work to be seen.

Once upon a time I had a stone for a pillow when I lived on an island of stone far away in a Gaelic sea. I was there because my father helped me stay there. He supported me financially so I could live out my dream. I lived in the house of the storyteller and yes I had a stone for a pillow.

Now it is time to tell his stories. We mark this place and call it holy ground.


Weeks pass. Regular family tumult resumes. There are hassles here and hassles there. The $3,000 from the Insurance company for the totaled car is deposited into my parents bank account. It will help.

It is grey and wet and drizzling out. I look out at the shiny snow and inward to the Torah scrolls as they are put away. We sing the song I love:

“It is a Tree of Life for all that hold fast and all its supporters are happy!!”
I see mystical mysterious tendrils extending beyond the physical scrolls. They wrap around me, illuminating my life with light that shines from an ancient source. I feel courage to navigate the mysterious road that lies in front of me.

This Ground You Stand on Is Holy Ground

NOTE: REVISED POST 1/14/2010

"Now Moses was tending the flock of his father in law Jethro....an angel of the lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush...he gazed and there was the bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. The Lord said to him...

"Remove your sandals for the place on which you stand is holy ground."



The Cycle of The Torah Portions rolls round and round. There are times I am drawn to favorite stories or powerful images and this week is one of them...

The moment is when Moses confronts the Burning Bush speaks to me this week.

Every time I have rushed off to Abbott Hospital with someone, my dear husband and now my father I go with great intrepidation and anxiety. I grab my sketchbook, my pen and I run. So afraid of what the coming hours will bring. And so I stand there in the rooms that have held so much pain attending to the one I love.

It is holy ground, those hours of vigil and worrying and waiting. Those moments of prayer. The prayer evoked by a hopeful drawing as we wait for answers. Yes, that is the holy ground I stand on. The plain gray floor in the busy emergency room. The place I have stood again and again.
And the burning bush...the flames, the fire. G-ds voice. What and how is that? It is the metaphor for the intense pain one must sometimes witness on the holy ground of the emergency room. There in the intimate sterile setting one comes face to face with mortality. There are times you pass through narrow portals. Wondering. Will he make it? Will we make it? When the fire of suffering flames up, you feel it. Every empathetic feeling fuses to the one you love and compassion is the cooling fountain that cools the fire of pain...yes there one hears G-ds voice. speaking to you directly in those moments when you hold onto the one you love for dear life.
Through drawing that moment I somehow make my peace with huge fears and am able to pass through to faith and hope....faith...such a tiny seed... as small as an amaranth seed...yet something to hold onto in the knowing that a tiny bit of faith can grow up into something large, beautiful and sustaining.
That ground I stand on is holy ground. And I am not alone. The wonderful nurses, the kind doctors, the orderlies who joke and make things comfortable. They are all part of that holy ground. There is the relief of humor and their deep well of compassion that we draw from again and again. We are blessed.
Nothing is so scary you can't draw it. This ground I stand on in the emergency room is holy ground.

Rollover January 8, 2010

Rollover

Star Tribune Friday January 8, 2010

“ Hundreds of accidents were reported on state roads, including many in the metro area, but none involved fatalities or severe injuries. Overnight temperatures-and windchills- were expected to plummet even further.”

Officer Kaiser stands in my parents dining room. Despite the freezing temperatures he is dressed in his uniform with no coat. He is a stocky muscular man who’s seen it all. He smiles when I point out the array of books in the house.
“See officer,” I say, My dad’s read all of these books. When you find him he may be disoriented, but he will recite poetry for you.”
I am filing a Missing Person’s Report. My dad has been gone for over 4 hours and we are so worried and anxious.
After calling all the E.R.’s the Jail and Detox it is now time to file a Missing Persons Report.
I feel like I’m in that movie Black Orpheus where Orpheo searches the afterlife and makes pacts with the spirits and the dead. I don’t know what to think and hesitate to think the worst, but I do in order to prepare myself.

Then the phone rings. “This is Pete with Lakeville Ambulance. We are taking your father James to Abbott Emergency Room. He rolled his car in Lakeville, but is coherent and does not have any injuries.”

We all go into shock! He is alive. And then we begin the nervous rush to the hospital.

I recall all of my times in Abbott E.R. with trepidation. My bad joke about all this is that if there is one place I know how to get to, it is Abbott E.R. in the winter.

When we get there we quickly go back to his room. There he is in his gown, smiling with a very small scratch on his nose. I am furious but relieved. There he is, my brilliant, sarcastic, humorous, intelligent father. My Texas Dad. There he is, alive and well.

Our nurses are wonderful and I see my favorite nurse from many visits ago.

So how do miracles occur? How does the car turn over through busy oncoming traffic on a very icy roads and not kill him? Not kill someone else? How? Whose hands guide these moments?

Today I will go over and see him. My fear has transformed into gratitude. Grateful that he is alive. Grateful that he has not hurt anyone. Grateful that he is not on Life Support. Grateful that we are not planning a funeral.
Grateful. Grateful that he has the gift of life.

Recalling New Year's Eve Night: The Provocation of Memory

The Provocation of Memory

New Year’s Day Evening 2010
Our here on the tundra where I live people plunge into an icy lake on New Year’s Day
Wearing only a swimsuit they dive into the icy waters….and emerge teeth chaterring and exhilarated….. And so it is with memory…memories…I dive into the past, ready to withstand the shock or realization that all this happened and now I also emerge exhilarated from deep waters to tell you these tales of long ago and how they relate to the moment I am in.


On New Year’s Day evening we are taken to Vienna via a beautiful program on TV. The minus below temps and the unyielding frozen ice mountains lining each side of the street are forgotten. We leave to visit my mother’s place of birth via TV show and memory.

There in the Music Hall where my mother sat we have a camera’s birds eye view of the richly carved balustrades and opulent statues that rest like indolent cosmic being, gods of some sort high above the audience and musicians. There is a sculpture of a marble woman that the camera rests on….I see it as a muse and a good omen for the New Year. Yes, I will let this marble muse of an indolent wise woman guide me as I gaze upon the televison set and plunge into my mother and father’s memories. Surfacing with a few insights of how I came to be watching new years now in 2010.

Strauss’s ineffable melodies weave around us. Light, nostalgic and beautiful. The house is full. Once upon a time, a long time ago my mother sat there, in a box or in the audience listening to these very melodies. She grew up in Vienna and was born there in 1921. Don’t ask the exact date It’s cloaked in mystery. Every time we check in at the hospital or the clinic we just go along with the fake one her mother put on the birth certificate so long ago .It’s a long story…………we don’t try to change it.

My mother was not raised with religion. She says proudly that she was raised on Opera. So this was her life. To sit listening to music under the ornate ceiling of the decorated Music house in Vienna.
The music cuts away to let Julie Andrews show us the amazing desserts of Vienna.
Demel’s. We see mouth watering close-ups of desserts made with precision. Cakes coated with chocolate frostings that are folded around like the rich cloak one would wear to the Opera. Small round cakes have chocolate dribbled over them. Colorful sugar concoctions are folded around and around…then pressed into a mold that transforms into
An array of candies. So that’s how they are made!

Whipped cream and history. Violet candies made as they were for an empress. Rich fruited delights for a king. Layers of sweets and then glasses of champagne.

Then as the music plays we are treated to the rich spectacle of the beautiful dancer in her frothy red dress dancing on toe among the marble statues of the art collection. Perfection and art and dance marry. Dancing, dancing along. Later a flock of pink cotton candy ballerinas perform on point with their handsome dancers lifting them up high. We too are lifted up high and forget winter.

At last the Blue Danube is played with such depth and emotion. As the music swirls around us we take a visual journey down the Danube….watching its eddies and flows with aplomb…..watching…as it moves through the small towns of Austria that my mother pronounces with ease and the perfect German inflection.

***************
My dad leans over the table, his false teeth slightly ajar as he tells us in great detail how he packed fresh tomatoes in crates for 10 cents an hour. He was walking along somewhere in Jacksonville east Texas with his brother Dan carrying a Tom Swifty book in his hand. A man called out…”do you want a job?” and so he gave the book to his brother and started working. 10 hour days in the hot shed, packing tomatoes. All day long he watched to make sure the crates were packed just right. Finally he got paid. He looked in the envelope and saw three crisp new dollar bills. Three long days of work. My dad thought they were fake and started to cry…His mother told him they were new bills and that he had earned his weeks pay.

One story leads to another. He’s a Texan you know. He relates a tale of how our great grandfather lived in Tennessee. He had three huge bales of cotton that he wisely put in a dry cave. After the Civil War was over he sold those bales of cotton for a fortune and moved to Texas. He was the father of L. R. Futrell, my grandmother’s father.
So, I say to my father. I am sitting here listening to tell me this because of three bales of cotton that stayed dry in a cave, that did not mold?
And I tell you now, it’s all true and it all happened. My mother later heard beautiful music played on the radio as the Nazis took over Vienna in 1938. She and her brother have recently published a small memoir that describes that time and their subsequent lives. There’s a family photo of her in a white dress, hands at her side as everyone around her salutes the Nazis in a large public address.
My dad left the South and later spent time in Japan. Those stories fill him as well. My parents met in California and later moved here to the Minnesota tundra.
There I sit watching the Vienna Music program, holding onto the tales of my dad’s upbringing in East Texas and my mother’s upbringing in Vienna. I am the weaver of stories, the teller of tales. I am the listener, the spinner, the one who takes the raw material of these lives and spins it into a story for you. I sit here on the humble bench by the lowly fire listening and imagining. Letting memory fill in the story line between the tales I hear. Come reader, listener, vagabond of tales. Come, come sit down beside me here in the old stone cottage on an island far away. An island of memory so far away in time. I relate these fragments of stories to you. I am the teller of tales, the weaver of stories. That’s all I have are stories…
I use cotton thread to pass across the shuttle of tales today. As I weave these stories a Viennese waltz plays. I am here to tell you these stories because of three bales of cotton stored in a dry Tennessee cave. I am here because of three bales of cotton stored in a dry Tenneesee cave.