When Morning Is Soft

When morning is soft and the mountains look like teeth in the jaw of the land
and gleaming lights
of man and industry in the distance shine
we’re reminded: this day appears independent of us and our efforts
This day goes on regardless of our concerns and interventions
This day is full of chirping and growing and things in nature
We can be with or against but never without the constancy of today
Take this time to return to yourselves
Return to hope
Return to joy
Return to loving minute by minute and the artistry of creativity

I wrote the above poem on seeing the mountains in advancing light. And by this afternoon, I’m editing the poem I thought so acceptably appealing when published this morning on my author page on Facebook @SharonDuerstAuthor

In these times of Covid-19, I dawdle and tinker. Things can wait for tomorrow. Or the next day. I’m in holding pattern. Holding myself steady. Holding safe. Holding still. Held by a state of inertia like experienced as a young adult back in the parents’ home for a holiday or family weekend. Nothing mattered: what we ate, what we did. We were there only to be together, to experience each other. All the energy for life beyond those walls was sucked out and drained away. It was a phenomenon I thought of my mother’s making to keep us close and safe if only for a few hours. Back in her care. Under one roof. All together. Siblings and parents making chatter, eating, laughing, recalling past incidents, acts of love. We were witnesses to the creak of the refinished oak chairs around an oval table also sanded and stained in dark walnut. Our feet bumped around the solid pedestal and legs below a white tablecloth ironed and placed and smoothed while still steaming. A radio played low: country songs for a canary in the cage hanging in the corner.

Time with family precious, in the best of times. Longed for in the worst times, when separated by miles, disease, death.

We have only now. We have only today, as it is. And we can only be thankful, hopeful, and glad for what is dear.

Calling Mom

The night before my mother’s 11/11 birthday, I slept restlessly.

I woke to see 11:11 on the digital clock. Again at 2:22.

I consider repeated numbers to be signals, little “hellos” from my mom who left her body years ago.

I finally slept, and dreamed.

My husband and I, and a number of strangers, were in the outdoors on wilderness adventure.

We climbed higher and higher on rock hillsides then across wet and mossy ledges. We slid on our seats, maneuvering with our feet to keep from going off the edge.

I tried to keep up, but slid over off. I slowed my pace, lost sight of them. I eased over an oddly situated shelf constructed of wood. Underneath were supplies for the journey ahead.

A man appeared to assist in making selections, but I wanted to consider the items myself.

I rejected a heavy automobile tire, various boxes I couldn’t carry.

I found a large hood with attached headset. I put it on.

“Want to call your mom?” The man asked.

“Of course,” I responded.

But the wires dangling from the headset weren’t attached to anything.

Would Mom have a headset wherever she is?

How do I reach her?

That’s when I woke from the dream – on the morning of her birthday: fifteen years after she passed.

I’d love to talk with her.

But I know I don’t need an ill fitting hood or headset to reach her. I’ll make it through. I’ll navigate the slippery cliffs of life ahead. Love will guide me.

I know my mom is not “gone.” She’s not here in her body.

But sometimes, we still communicate. Especially in the outdoors I believe nature assists us in realizing our fondest hopes.

Thank you, Mom, for the dream about calling you! I love you.

#outdoors, #nature, #love, #adventure

Books and Heartfelt Gifts

Books and heartfelt gifts keep delivering joy long after the holidays! I am so thankful for a year of happiness and the thrill and satisfaction of bringing out my fourth novel in the Possibility Series – Blossoming Dream! It might be my favorite! I believe it could be yours as well!

Follow the wondrous story through Mending Stone, Catching Rain, Seeding Hope, and Blossoming Dream! Most readers start reading and can’t put the books down until finished – usually 8-10 hour reads each and every minute engaging and enjoyable!

These books began as a strange dream. They travel from the Pacific Northwest, to Texas and far into Mexico and back. Your heart will be launched on an adventurous journey of heartache and questions, but you’ll find your way back in the sweetest ways!

Possibility Series book 4 – Blossoming Dream

Possibility Series book 3 – Seeding Hope

Possibility Series Book 2 – Catching Rain

Possibility Series book 1 – Mending Stone

Find additional and interesting posts on my Facebook Author Page

Sharon Duerst Author

And contact me there if you’d like to purchase an extra-special, coordinating, handmade-by-me gift!

Thank you for reading! And thank you for buying the books on Amazon:

Possibility Series Books

You can also order them from your favorite outlet!

Give the gift of words! Share the gift of joy and hope!

Happy Holidays!

 

 

Spirit Travel

Ever wonder if your wants and needs and pleas are heard? If spirit—or someone—will answer? Does spirit travel like our love and prayers to protect us and keep safe those we adore?

I’m sure my relatives must have wondered this as they embarked on a trip of a lifetime. John and Mary Lorang left their Genesee, Idaho ranch in the early spring of 1910. They traveled by buggy and train across the country and boarded a ship for a six month tour of Europe. Left behind, perhaps never to be seen again, were ten children, including my grandfather, ranging in age from eight to twenty-six.

I heard little of these great grandparents while I was growing up. I didn’t see photographs of their trip – over 300! Nor did I hear of their stories, or see their diaries and memorabilia saved in attics and closets of the old home. But in 1960, I did hear my grandfather traveled to Europe to follow his parent’s journey. He took photographs and bought back his own trinkets. I remember a delicate dolly – four inches high, made of wire and felt – a larger carved wooden camel. These captured my imagination of foreign places!

The trip was not all good for my grandfather. He did see many sites visited by his parents fifty years before. Much had changed. And the long trip was taxing for a man with emphysema. He became ill – was suspected to have typhoid and was detained in Turkey. It was many months, interventions of diplomacy, and legal adoption by my uncle before my grandfather was released! After hearing this story, I marveled over his courage and wondered if someday I might travel abroad…

Fast forward from 1960 to 2004. A second cousin I’d never met, and my Aunt Janet who now owned the family ranch, successfully had it designated as a National Historic Site: White Spring Ranch Museum/Archive Library. A ceremony was held to celebrate. We gathered in the yard outside the Victorian ranch house beneath shady trees planted by the great-grandparents. I sat at a picnic table covered with a plastic cloth. As I listened to a blessing to the four winds, I set down my empty coffee cup, and reached for the hand of my Aunt Pat beside me.

“My dad would have loved this!” I whispered.

Tears sparkled in our eyes as she responded, “I miss him.”

“Me, too,” I said. The words were still on my lips when my styro-foam cup scooted several inches and stopped in front of Aunt Pat.

“He’s here,” we said gawking at the cup and squeezing each other’s hand.

My dad loved coffee. The last thing he did on earth before dying the previous summer was take a sip of decaf vending machine coffee, smile, and quip, “AHHHH!”

Spirit seemed to send me a clear message with the empty styro-foam coffee cup not blowing over or tipping, just sliding sideways!

Something special happens whenever we go to White Spring Ranch where my great grandparents farmed and raised their family, where my father grew up, and I went every year as a child. Though this was the first time I visited without the physical presence of my parents, I felt their spirits travel with me!

I felt a strong kinship with all those gathered there that day, many relatives I’d never met in our large family with Catholic roots. We were witnessing our heritage with collections of photos, diaries, letters, and possessions now on display and being archived as historic treasures of not only generations of our Idaho farm family, but also lives shared across the nation.

A desire rose in me then to learn more of my forebears, and possibly follow in their footsteps on a similar journey across the sea on the hundred year anniversary of their journey!

Oh, but sometimes, life develops differently than one might hope or plan!

As 2010 arrived, that trip was on my mind.

Did I have the courage to go even though my husband declared he wouldn’t go and didn’t want me to go either! I stewed about how I could negotiate through his objection and also allay my bigger fears of foreign travel! It was silly! My great grandparents had gone with only letters and a few telegrams to connect them to home and family left behind!

But could I leave mine and go?

I continued to stew as winter months were passing and I was not finding a way clear to go without great difficulty. My husband of over thirty years was not seeming himself. And I was afraid to go without his blessing or accompaniment. Then in early spring, we were cutting firewood of bug kill trees at our mountain cabin in the Oregon woods just 60 miles from the family ranch in Idaho. Suddenly he turned off the chainsaw, limped to the four-wheeler, and barked, “Let’s go.”

We weren’t finished stacking the wood! And he is…well, you could nicely say he likes to finish what he starts! We silently returned to the cabin and went inside. Then, my husband shocked me with announcement: “My hip hurts! I’m going to see a doctor about it! And, I’m having heart trouble!”

“What heart trouble? How long?”

“Over a year.”

What? How could this be? My strong, can-do-anything husband is only 57! Had the spring wind been warning me of this? (See my post about the wind: Unleashing Passions at http://carolcassara.com/unleashing-passions/ )

 

 

 

That summer 2010, I did not go to Europe for the adventure of a lifetime. I nursed my husband back to health following a full hip replacement.

Our daughter was away house sitting in Santa Barbara and experiencing life in California. Our son, who was finishing his first year of law school at ASU, was away on a six-week exchange program in Italy. His studies allowed time for numerous short trips around Europe. We were thrilled when he returned home for a visit in August;  he brought me a glimmering volcanic rock pendant. As a kid, I’d taken a big chunk of identical and colorful carborundum for show and tell at school, but never told him about the stone or where my dad’s rock-hound friend got it.

“Wow! Beautiful!” I said.

“I bought it for you at Mt. Vesuvius,” our son answered.

“Pompeii? My great-grandparents visited there 100 years ago! And my grandfather did fifty years ago. Up at the ranch, they have pictures and samples brought back from their visit!”

 

 

 

The next month, September 2010, our daughter’s helicopter pilot friend she’d house sat for offered a thank you, all-expenses-paid vacation overseas. Quick plans were made and soon they were off on a big adventure and our son was back at law school in Phoenix.

Prescribed medications to treat hubby’s irregular heart rhythm had rendered him incapable of working or functioning at more than the level of a very old and sick man. So after he’d recovered from the hip surgery, he opted for cardiac ablation. It was terrifying for him to go under the knife again so soon after his hip surgery but he was determined to get everything repaired and back to full health! He had excellent doctors and almost no issues with his recovery! I breathed sighs of relief and prayers of thanks!

It was hard going through all of it with just the two of us together, but that is what we pledged when we married. We were growing closer with fun adventures and not so fun health scares! (I’ll write more in a follow-up post about MY health scare I mentioned previously in the post Unleashing Passions at http://carolcassara.com/unleashing-passions/ ) But don’t worry, spirit has a clever way of answering prayers and fulfilling our desires.

Our daughter enjoyed her “once in a lifetime” trip overseas. She brought back several gifts: a sliver Cartouche of my name, and a chunk of quartz to make into a necklace. (She hadn’t known her brother also brought me a beautiful stone souvenir though they both knew I love stones and believe in our connections to the earth.)

 

 

 

I was struck by an odd sense of serendipity and peace as I worked that fall on edits for my debut novel: Mending Stone – a story of heartache and longing, family, and foreign travel!

In 1910, my great grandparents, and fifty years later, my grandfather, had traveled around Europe as our son did in 2010! And our daughter had traveled to another place they stopped and posed for photos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My body did not journey to foreign lands on the 100 year anniversary of my grandparents’ trip, but my blood did!

Spirit travels like prayer, and answers.

 

Silent Truths

Silent truths…I have a few. Do you?

#MeToo

Recent #MeToo posts on social media and comments in the news have caused me to revisit the issue of sexual abuse and harassment. A friend’s daughter recently learned: 1 in 10 children will be sexually abused in some way, usually by someone they know!

Twenty some years ago while employed in crisis intervention, I attended a seminar on that topic. Afterward, in the privacy of my own home, I had a disturbing vision: a man’s face, and hands reaching out to grope me! Who was he? What was that? I was not a victim of anything really. But shaken, I made a call…

“Mom, remember when I was eight? Remember when some neighborhood girl had to testify about a fondling incident by our playmate’s grandpa and I was SO relieved I didn’t have to go to court because it didn’t happen to me?”

Silence hung too long on the phone, then Mom responded, “Why are you asking?”

I told her about the creepy vision, how it had “felt” so real I physically pulled back and I shuddered.

She replied gently, “The fondling incident didn’t happen to the other girl. It happened to you.”

Realization rushed through me. Splintered images of an incident hidden in my mind for thirty years came together like a puzzle! I quickly combed my memory for other upsetting incidents.

I was three when we moved to the neighborhood. My sister started first grade at the Catholic school. My brothers were two years old and newborn. Our “real” grandparents were still employed full time and lived hours away. But a seventy-something couple in the neighborhood was seemingly always available. Mom let me visit “Grandpa and Grandma” often.

While Grandma enjoyed beading, hand sewing, and crocheting on the sofa, Grandpa let me sit on his lap in a cushioned chair with wide oak arms. He read aloud children’s stories from books in their library. Sometimes I fell asleep and he sat holding me until Mom came to fetch me hours later. Sometimes we went outside to their flower garden with plants as tall as me! After watering and pulling weeds, we rested on painted wooden benches in the shade. Sometimes we went inside through the mudroom with a cupboard holding a candy dish filled with orange candy “smiles.” I laughed when Grandpa grinned with one over his teeth. Sometimes I sat at their round oak table and helped with mail: wetting envelope glue with a sponge-end bottle. Sometimes I peeked into their flip-lid desk at compartments filled with rubber bands, sticky glue in a glass bottle with a red rubber top, envelopes, rolls of stamps, a silver letter opener, pads of paper for letters. Sometimes we rode the city bus downtown or to the grocery or take items to shut-ins.

And I adored their favorite hobby: repairing discarded and damaged dolls they donated at the holidays to children in need. I fell in love with the beautiful dolls and gorgeous clothes Grandma made. Though our family did not have much, we did have toys so I was never allowed one of the precious dolls.

At six, I started school late due to having tonsils removed. And Mom was confined to a hospital bed in the living room due to rheumatic fever. Several live-in sitters looked after us. I didn’t visit Grandpa and Grandma for weeks, months. Grandpa got sick and was hospitalized. Died. I was crushed. When I finally did visit Grandma, the house was too quiet. She didn’t read stories or let me sit on her lap like Grandpa had. Sometimes I sat on a tiered kitchen stool and watched her cook. The clock on the wall ticked loudly.

I struggled through that year. Though reasons were unclear, we weren’t allowed to enroll at the Catholic school the next year. My sister and I and younger brother went to public school!  We didn’t ride the smelly bus! We walked eight blocks and made new friends.

By third grade, I sometimes played at houses of friends in the neighborhood. One girl was bratty and bossy, but had several Barbie and Midge dolls with store-bought clothes! Once while playing in her room, she said we should play tether ball. (She was good and always beat me!) I kept dressing her dolls so she went without me. A while later, her grandpa who lived with them called me over. I was uncomfortable, but was taught to obey elders. Somehow, when I got close, his hands strayed where they didn’t belong! And he said something disturbing. I pulled away and ran home.

I remember fiddling with a towel on a rack next to the stove where Mom was cooking. Words squeezed from my throat. Her face paled. I don’t remember what was said. I only recall the look on her face. What was it? Shock? Sadness? Dread – having yet another difficult thing to handle?

“It happened to ME?” My voice was shaking. “But I didn’t have to testify?”

“No. You were so upset. And the man ‘left town’ so there was no court hearing.”

The playmate’s family moved from our neighborhood to a house across from the school playground. After Christmas, looking to show someone my new bike, I rode there. Her dad answered my knock. He said she couldn’t play with me, then shut the door.

After the holiday vacation, I rode my new bike to school and proudly parked it in the metal rack outside. But at the end of the school day, my bike wasn’t where I’d left it. Upset, I reported it missing at the office, and walked home. The principal soon called requesting my return. A bike was found in the bushes. Several wheel spokes were bent. Other items were found some distance away. 

Is that my cute little striped bag torn off? Is that my headlight dented and scratched? Who would do that to my beautiful new bike? I asked myself.

The next day I was horrified to learn my playmate’s brother and his friends had done it.

And later, I was confronted by him on the playground.

“Why’d you make our grandpa go away?”

I wouldn’t want anyone’s grandpa to go away! I was still missing my neighborhood grandpa! Had I caused him to go away, too, by not visiting him enough? Was I guilty of other wrongdoings: coveting pretty dolls and clothes, using my playmate to get to her dolls, “showing off” my new bike…

At eight years old, I struggled with anguish, slept fitfully. I was plagued with nightmares of being chased, stabbed, shot in the back as I flapped my arms and tried to fly from danger. As adults, my sister once commented how compulsively neat I was as a child, how I’d even gotten up in the night to straighten my bedcovers.

“Do you know why I did that?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Because I wanted to look sweet, like a good girl, when they found me dead.”

“Why would you be dead?”

I shrugged. Maybe I feared it. Maybe I hoped for it.

I don’t remember what was said about the incident. I only remember the look on my mom’s face. Why don’t I remember anger, outrage, fighting for justice? Why don’t I remember care and concern? Somehow the incident was silenced, splintered, tucked away.

“The Trouble With Angels” movie came out in 1966 when I was 11. I wanted to be “good”, a nun cloistered away, safe from upsetting confusions of life. A new best friend’s mother died. Another friend moved away. A neighborhood teenager was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. My sister was deluged with attentions from men and boys, and she didn’t seem to want me around. But no one talked of these things. No one talked about other struggles in our family, or other families.

A few years later, I deflected unwanted advances from a relative. And then again from dates, coworkers, bosses. I eased out of these situations without making a big deal. Just get away. Say nothing. Don’t call attention to anything. I told myself. But did pressuring comments and intimidating actions do harm? Did I cower to bullying and harassment? Did I change my personality to hide my silent truths? Why did I not find the strength to stand up for myself? Why did no one else seem to either?

Last year on the day of the Women’s March, I was suddenly compelled to walk. There were too many unacceptable actions and words! I was walking in protest of mistreatment. I was walking my own silent truths into daylight. Each step was a word, a shout, a scream, a demand, a courageous, “No!” My reasons are my own.

Every person who marches has their own motivations and points of view. Do not judge those who march, or don’t. Judge those who hide behind deceptive words and harmful actions. Judge those who take narrow points of view and refuse to mitigate damage even when they have the power to do so.

Silent truths spiral out like petals from our core, escorting us from darkness. Releasing our silent truths sets us free. We are all walking our own paths into light.