The Memoir-Writing Journey

Last week, I laid out the health issues of this past year. As I did so, the word fallow came to mind: the seed of my life lies dormant within dark, rich loam. In the weeks ahead, I hope the seed will crack open and that from its broken shell a sprout will inch its way upward to the freshness of air, the warmth of sun, and the vast view of what is possible for me in the coming year.

If that doesn’t happen—if the ill-health continues—then what I know is that I need not only to live the day, but to embrace it. All truly is possibility if I look for the good within the fallowness. I’ve tried to do that this year as first the pain captured most of my attention and then the months of recuperation slowly—ever so slowly—helped me reclaim the activities I’d once done so easily. Now, I am hoping that the recent eye operation will help my sight stay stable.

As we all know, we can control only how we respond to the fluctuations of life. I know I’ve quoted my mom to you before, but I want to share her words again: “Dolores, you find what you look for. If you look for good, you will find it. And if you look for bad, you will surely find that too.”

Given that Mom said this to me repeatedly as I was growing up, I learned to look for good, Mostly I have found it. Some events, some years have been challenging, but one of the advantages of aging is that I can look back over a long life and see that all—ALL—has worked out to good.

Now, having wrapped up my health report, I want to spend a few moments sharing my writing life with you. I’ll be blogging about that off and on for the next few weeks, perhaps months, as I prepare to self-publish a memoir entitled Prayer Wasn’t Enough.

Two friends and my oldest niece are helping me with the intricacies of self-publication. One artistic friend designed the cover of the book. It pleases me mightily! Another friend is going to format—through Create Space, a subsidiary of Amazon—the print and the e-book that will be available on Amazon at some future date.

My niece is trying to help me figure out Facebook and Twitter. We’ve had difficulties because when I first began my Facebook account I didn’t know what I was doing. (Do I ever???) Consequently, I messed up the author page, the Timeline page, and another page as well.

It’s a real muddle as to what I presently have and how I can establish one of these pages as the place where readers can contact me. My niece has spent hours sitting in front of my computer trying to make sense of what I did and also talking to fellow computer whizzes about this. So far, we have no solutions.

I’ve begun Twitter and have to admit that I’m puzzled by how all these things connect. None of this makes much sense to me. Would it, if I were younger? Was my mind more eager to solve a challenge then? I’m not sure. I know only that I now dwell in social-medium-confusion-land.

Have any of you experienced difficulties in understanding how to use Facebook or Twitter? If so, please share your confusion with me OR how you met the challenge of the Facebook-Twitter Alps and conquered it.

Today I wish for you peace, pressed down and overflowing.

Photo from Wikipedia.

A Poem + A Print + 10 Rugs = Equilibrium

Nearly fifty years—during the years of psychedelic painting—a friend showed me a print of a dense, deep, almost black green, fir-tree forest against the broad sweep of a turquoise sky. A path of pink splotches wended through the trees.

A poem by St. John of the Cross was painted in calligraphy across the sky, among the trees, and along the path. The print and the poem have remained in my mind’s eye and my heart all these years.

The poet, known today as a mystic, was born in Spain in 1542. He studied with the Jesuits—esteemed teachers then and now. At twenty-one, John entered the Carmelites, a contemplative monastic order. A few years later he tried to reform the order, considering it too lax. When that attempt failed, he and several other men established a strict monastic society in a farmhouse.

Because of this, he aroused the animosity of the first Carmelite order he’d entered. This resulted in his imprisonment, during which he wrote the poetry for which he became famous. The poem I’m quoting to you today came from those lonely years of captivity. The “he” of the stanza is, I think, Jesus of Nazareth, whom I think of as Yeshua—his Jewish name.

Pouring out a thousand graces,

              he passed these groves in haste;

              and having looked at them,

              with his image alone,

              clothed them in beauty.

That treasured poem and the rugs in my house brought equilibrium to me this past week. Here’s how that happened: Because of the possibility of falling after I left the hospital on March 23, the rehab department asked me to clear my carpet of any throw rugs, furniture, or boxes that might hamper my walking. “Get rid of anything that could trip you,” I was told.

I’ve always liked wall-to-wall carpeting, but I enjoy having thick, Persian-like, throw rugs scattered here and there on the carpet—in the hallways, under the tables, by the bed. So when my eldest niece brought me home she rolled up ten throw rugs and stacked them on a large table in the garage.

That same afternoon, she took from my cabinets, storage areas, and pantry any food items, pans, or dishes I might need and placed them on the extended counter and the round table in my kitchen. Having everything at waist level would keep me from bending and twisting, which was a no-no for the next several weeks.

I hope you are getting the picture: clutter, clutter, clutter on every table top and counter, and no lovely rugs on the carpet. The poem comes in here. Ever since learning the poem and seeing the print, I’ve thought of throw rugs as the bright blotches of color in the forest through which Yeshua walked, strewing beauty in his midst. Those Persian-like rugs were my path through the forest of my home. They were a path of beauty on which I sought to walk with grace.

Last week I wrote of physical and emotional imbalance. This past week a sudden realization came to me: I was partly imbalanced because my home didn’t seem like mine anymore: All that clutter on the counters and tabletops. No path of beauty on the floor.

My home seemed stripped of who I am and try to be.

Thus it was that two friends came, put down all the rugs, put away the canned good, pans, and dishes and left me with a home that breathed contentment: Space. Beauty. Balance.

So today I’m posting in a much better frame of being than has been represented by my past three postings. Equilibrium has come to my life. I feel as if I truly have come home to myself.

Life is good. Peace.

Imbalance

Perhaps, if you’ve read the two recent postings on this blog, you’ve wondered why I seem to be examining my life so minutely. The answer I think lies in the major back surgery I underwent in mid-March. During my time in the hospital rehab unit, I had an Easter experience.

For four days I was unable to eat anything. The nurses encouraged me to at least eat applesauce, but I simply couldn’t swallow. The fifth day—a Monday—went awry. My blood pressure fluctuated disturbingly. I fainted and was out for some time. I could answer only “Anna Dolores Ready” to all the questions the nurses asked while trying to revive me. Repeatedly I vomited. My spirits plummeted, imprisoned in a gray cloud. I dwelt in a miasma of nothingness.

In late afternoon, my eldest niece visited after work. Seeing me pitch forward and nearly fall, then faint, then throw up, she stayed several hours. She asked the nurse to monitor me closely during the night; the nurse assured her I would be well taken care of.

Needing to feed her cat and dogs, my niece kissed my left cheek and reluctantly left. As she passed through the doorway, I thought, “I’ll never see her again.”

The nurse turned off the light. I lay on my right side and began to talk inwardly to all those who had already entered Life beyond the reality I knew—all those who had raised me, taught me, befriended me. They and I dwelt in Oneness.

Trusting their infinite love for me, I said something like “I’m scared that I’m going to die. If living is for my good and the good of the Universe, then I trust you will wake me in the morning. If not, then I embrace death. Not my will, but the will of Oneness be done.”

I began reciting names: Mom, Dad, Jan, John, Jim . . . name after name after name of those who have touched my life with goodness.

Several times during the night I woke, still feeling lost within myself, still praying to Oneness to keep me in this life or to welcome me to the path of Light. More names: Florence, Al, Mary, Annette, Nicole, Mary Alice.

I slept again. When next I woke, I thought of all the cats who'd blessed my life: Dulcy, Bartleby, Tybalt, Noah, Jeremiah, Eliza Doolittle, Laz, Raissa. I called on each to be with me.

Once more I slept, then woke again and invoked name after name after name of those for whom I felt deep and abiding gratitude. The names passed like ticker-tape through my heart: Miriam, Robert, Andrew, Lon, Scholastica, Dunstan.

The next morning, I awoke to sunlight. I was alive.

Two days later I came home.

Now what does this have to do with the introspection evident in this posting and the last two?

Since that March morning, I’ve found myself feeling not only physically, but emotionally, imbalanced. The doctor tells me that this is a common response of patients who have serious spinal surgery or whose chest has been cracked open for open-heart surgery. I, myself, think that the possibility of saying good-bye to life as we know it can accompany any major surgery. 

I am alive, yet I find myself reevaluating my whole life.

Perhaps the anesthesia has something to do with this. Perhaps my age. Perhaps the weariness resulting from the months of pain before the operation. Perhaps all of that.

And perhaps what I’m experiencing is the opportunity to truly let go of the past and embrace something new in my life. Time will tell.

Peace.