January 2011 Essay
Moving On
By Susan Traugh
So Mary started college this year. And she hated it.
After
suffering debilitating pain for eight years, Mary had life-transforming surgery
at sixteen to correct the condition and bring her life back to normalcy. But,
while her health improved, her feelings of loss and life’s betrayal did
not.
Mary had lost her childhood. She’d never had her dreamed-of carefree days of youth and playfulness. She’d never learned those eight years worth of social skills as she’d spent those years alone in and out of the hospital, and now everyone was asking her to grow up and move on.
I
was thrilled when she graduated last June; for years we never believed she
would. Mary, on the other hand, was angry. Everyone was pushing her
to move on when all she wanted was to go back to age eight and get a “do-over.”
After graduation, Mary’s immediate goal was to stay in her jammies and veg all summer. She wallowed in depression over her friends leaving for colleges all over the country, her lack of money and inability to find a job, her sadness that high school was over and the fact that she seemed to be the only one not willing to move on.
And then, college began. After her first day of classes, she could barely breathe and knew I’d lied.
“You
said I would love college,” she sobbed. “You said I would find
friends. But, how can I make friends when there is so much
work. All those years I was sick I hung on for this day. I knew if
I could get this far I could achieve my dream (of becoming an anime
artist.) But, it is overwhelming. I will never be able to do all
this work. I can’t do college. I can’t find work. I can’t go
back to high school. I can’t do anything. Where do I belong?”
How
many times do we ask ourselves the same question?
Life
offers us many pivotal moments; many jumping off points where we have to start
over and reinvent ourselves. For some of us the blind jump is
exhilarating; for some of us, it is terrifying. For the Marys of the
world—it is paralyzing.
Stay-in-your-jammies-and-pull-the-covers-over-your-head-time.
But, there are no do-overs. Oh, we can put the breaks on. We can stop and refuse to make a decision. Refuse to make a move. But, refusing to decide is still deciding. It’s just deciding that we won’t be the force of change in our own lives. It’s just deciding that Fate, or circumstance or luck will guide us instead of that wee inner voice inside of each of us.
I’m
not sure who invented the happily-ever-after story. But they didn’t do
anyone any favors. Happily-ever-after is, of course, a fairy tale.
It takes everything after the first kiss and glosses over it until we reach
“The End.” Yet, life doesn’t fade to black. Real life is made of
the next step, and the next, and the next. Some of those steps glide,
while others stumble. And sometimes, we fall, or jump or whatever, and
lose big chunks of it. But, we don’t get do-overs.
So there sat my girl—overwhelmed, paralyzed, appalled by what she sees before her. In her sobbing lament, she claimed she needed to wear a sign that said, “Doesn’t transition well.”
In response, she put on her jammies, took to her bed and played on her computer when she didn’t absolutely have to get up and go to college or work. Her world got smaller and smaller as she dug her heels in and refused to move on.
Soon, the anxiety started; then full-blown panic attacks. Next came her terrors of dying. One night she scared her sister out of sleep when she began screaming and sobbing, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
“Mary,” I said as I held and comforted her, “You are not going to die anytime soon. You’re young and healthy with your whole life ahead of you.”
“But, I WILL die, someday. I will lose Mary. And, I’m not ready to do that!”
And, as a listened to her cry and lament the loss of her life it occurred to me that it wasn’t death she was mourning, but something deeper.
“I don’t think you’re afraid of dying,” I began. “I think your panic attacks and night terrors are your soul’s way of telling you that you aren’t living. You’ve cocooned yourself here in your room and refused to live your life. You’ve refused to use your gifts. You’ve refused to discover the plan you and God worked out for your time on earth. It’s not that you’re afraid to die. Your pain is because you’ve refused to live.”
It
took a moment, but Mary stopped crying. She sat up and just looked at me.
“That’s
it,” she said. “That’s it.”
Nobel prize winner Andre Gide once said, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Mary’s manifestation may have been dramatic, but how many of us are like her? How often do we pull in, shut down and refuse to live our most authentic lives? How often do we assume that everyone else has a happily-ever-after and that, since we don’t, opting out is a viable alternative? How often do we forego that magnificent new ocean and choose jammies and our blanket instead of stepping away from our bed’s safety and out toward that distant shore?
Always a remarkable child, Mary immediately began taking steps to move on. She is embracing her new semester at school. She has begun to make new college friends. She’s become the president of the local anime club. She’s going out on job interviews. She’s exploring new mediums in art and pushing herself beyond her comfort zone.
Her night terrors have stopped. Her anxiety is lessening. She’s begun to navigate the waters of her new life. She’s become the deciding factor in her own life. She’s charting the course. She’s directing the voyage. She’s the captain of her own ship. Each day she brings home a tale of a new insight, or holds up the artwork that attests to her new vision. She’s not sitting around waiting for the fade-to-black “happily ever after” ending. Instead, she’s creating the adventure that is all those middle chapters in the novel of her life.
And that’s the joy of living. Once we can get unstuck, once we can embrace that new ocean waiting for our exploration, there is so much beauty and adventure awaiting us. We just have to get out of bed, take off our jammies…and move on.
Grace Happens
By Susan M. Traugh
Published in Teachers of Vision and Lutheran Digest
When I began teaching in the inner city, I was a shiny new penny, eager to be spent. My first assignment came three weeks into the school year. My class had already been through thirteen teachers. When I walked in the door the kids were, literally, hanging from the light fixtures. Several mothers sat in the back of the room with belts in their hands.
My room was stripped save a box of broken crayons, a half ream of paper and some bent scissors and I was told that there were no supplies to be found, so I had to “make due.”
Determined to change lives and “save the world,” I immediately began to build a rapport with my unruly students while I used the majority of my first few paychecks to buy supplies for my kids. I could live on beans…they needed books and pencils.
So I was disheartened when my best markers disappeared within a day.
When I complained to my fellow teachers, they hooted at my naiveté.
“You can kiss those markers ‘good-bye’!” laughed one veteran teacher. “Some kid has long sold that little pot of gold!”
But her cynicism simply made me more determined to prove her wrong. “Class,” I implored, “we’re ‘family.’ We don’t steal from each other. If you want to earn something from me, I’ll help you get whatever you need. But, don’t steal from all of us.”
I then told the culprit to come and confess and all would be forgiven.
“You really are green!” crowed the veterans when I explained my plea. “You must think you’re in the suburbs!”
Each day for a week, I made the same request. Each day my pleas were returned with silence.
Then, one morning as I pulled into the parking lot at school, Byron was waiting near my parking space. Always quiet and helpful in class, Byron nevertheless had been suspended twice for fighting on the playground. His father was in prison and he was often teased. A gifted artist, he drew all over all his papers, but refused to use crayons or paint in any of his pictures.
“Ms. Traugh,” he ventured, eyes downcast, “looky here.”
He opened his jacket and there, tucked inside, were my pens.
I stood in silence—astonished. Byron was the last person I would have suspected. Crushed that this boy (whom I thought loved me) had, in fact, stolen from me I took a breath and asked “why?”
“You see,” he began, tears rolling down his cheeks, “I never seen colored pens before. I’m a good drawer, but I can’t color. And I didn’t want the kids to tease me, so I took them home to practice. I didn’t really steal them. I was gonna bring them back. I just wasn’t ready when you asked.”
I made a deal with Byron: if he could keep out of trouble on the playground for a week, I’d buy him his very own set of crayons. We shook and cemented the deal.
For the next four days Byron was as good as gold. I shopped for a nicest, biggest set of crayons I could find on Thursday night. But on Friday, Byron wasn’t in school. Nor Monday. Nor ever again.
Byron’s dad had gotten out of prison and kidnapped the boy on his way home from school on Thursday. When they were found, Byron was put in foster care and moved to a new town. Two months later I received a notice to forward his file. When I did, I sent the crayons with a note to his new teacher about our deal and the circumstances feeling like this was yet another failure in, what was turning out to be, a year of defeats.
That was it.
Byron’s story was not unique. During that first year there were more tragedies than triumphs. More crying than congratulations. Not a night passed that I didn’t question my ability—or sense—in continuing a clearly impossible job. But, I limped through the year, crawling to the finish line so that I might go home and lick my wounds…and often wondered about that lost boy.
Two years later, I was the veteran. No longer green, more sure in my ways, I was still fighting the good fight. I’d moved to another school, but had come back to visit my friends when this tall, slightly familiar boy approached me.
“Ms. Traugh,” he smiled, “do you remember me?”
I searched his face for some sign of recognition while he grinned at my uncertainty.
“I’m Byron!” he laughed.
And then he told me a remarkable story. He said, “I was real sad in my new home, and then I got your crayons. I just want you to know that I haven’t stolen nothin’ since then, and I never will again.” Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a broken, mangled crayon. “See,” he continued, “I keep this to remind me what I can be.”
As much as I’d like to take credit for the lessons here, I can’t. For the biggest lesson was mine. You see, I learned that day that grace doesn’t always come in nice, neat packages…and seldom comes as we imagine it.
When Jesus told the parable of the scattered seeds, he left out part. In his agrarian society, he didn’t have to spell out that germination must take place in the dark. But, in our urban society, we have to be reminded that we can’t stand around and watch grace happen. Throwing our seed, walking away, and trusting in the outcome is “faith.” Sometimes we are blessed to come back around and see the fruits of our efforts. But, usually not. Usually trust, or hope, or...yes…faith is all we have to hang onto that the seed will germinate; that our efforts will bear fruit.
But then, every once in a while, the Byrons of this world come back…and that, in any form, is grace.
Why I Write
By Susan Traugh
I write essays. I must write essays. As I lie in bed at night and fall into that twilight place between wakefulness and sleep, they come. Full blown. Insistent. Repeating and shouting their existence until I get up out of bed and write them down. So, here I am again, in the wee hours of the morning…writing essays.
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, John Steinbeck noted that William Faulkner had said “the understanding and resolution of fear are a large part of the writer’s reason for being.” Sometimes, I think it’s the only reason.
My husband is bipolar. My son is traumatically brain injured. My oldest daughter has Asperger’s, is bipolar and has a bleeding disorder. My youngest daughter, too, is bipolar, has the same bleeding disorder, plus Grave’s disease and has spent the last two years at home while we try to figure out what else is causing her debilitating fatigue and pain. With so many physical and mental illnesses running in the family, my life often pin balls from one crisis to another. Often, when too many fires are demanding attention from too many quarters, I feel at a loss as to how to take the next step or where to locate the next fire hose. It is then that I must write to find the understanding. It is through the writing that I can find resolution to my situation and escape from the fire of myfears.
A friend once admiringly asked how I deal with my life, how I handle my full plate. And yet, her son had died several years before, and I marveled that she could still breathe in and breathe out. My plate feels empty compared to hers. Another friend’s husband has left her and she struggles to feed and clothe her family on less than $200 a month. Another had the luxury of marrying a multimillionaire so she had no worries about money. But then, he died, leaving her with a small child to raise alone. I’m awed by the grace of each of these friends as they struggle against situations I would find daunting.
A minister once asked his flock to look around. He noted that every person in the room had their own plate full of pain. Some were on the brink of financial ruin. Some had debilitating disease. Some had a heart that was breaking. Yet, he said, no one in that room would exchange their problems for anyone else’s in the room.
On the eve of Matthew’s brain surgery, we sat awake in the hospital holding our baby, unable to sleep for fear. As we walked the hall, we met a father with his tiny son awaiting the child’s heart surgery in the morning. We exchanged stories and listened in horror as he explained how they’d stop his baby’s heart to try and repair a defective valve, hoping to fix it before his tiny body gave out, or his brain died. In confident denial about our own situation, we expressed our encouragement and admiration to the father for his trial ahead. Then, that dad snapped us into reality when he picked up his own boy and sadly smiled, saying, “Pick your poison.”
Life is suffering. That is simply the human condition.
I once dated a man who lived by the adage “Life is hard: then you die.” In his fatalism, he used the belief to justify all sorts of bad behavior. Yet, while I believe in the first part of his philosophy, I disagree with his conclusion.
For while life is hard, I believe that our job is to explore that suffering and fear to find its meaning. Unlike my agnostic brethren, I do not believe that life is a crap shoot with evolution’s pieces falling haphazardly into the magic of life only to end in dust and decay. Nor do I believe that all our behavior is preordained by some heavy-handed cop in the sky. Free will plays large into my personal beliefs and that willfulness can only choose toward the good when that will understands where it is and why it got there.
In his speech, John Steinbeck goes on to say, “…the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
While I cannot declare that I have attained any rightful “membership in literature,” I can mirror Steinbeck’s belief in humanity’s greatness of heart and spirit. I see it in the widow, the divorced mom and the survivors who are my friends. I see it in the lives of each of you who receive this essay as you strive in a spirit of grace under the most difficult of circumstances.
I have no choice but to explore the meaning of my own suffering and fears, both for myself and for the hope that my revelations will in some small way spur on your own; that my own hopefulness will strengthen your fight against despair.
Along the way, I’ve found some truths. I understand that my years of suffering with endometriosis and infertility burned within me such a passionate desire for motherhood that I can bear and accept the difficulty of raising not one, but three special needs children. I understand that the hopelessness of those years of pain gave me insight into the hopelessness of the inner-city moms I worked with when I taught, help me to lend an understanding ear when my fellow-sufferer needs to talk and give me a clue about my children’s despair as they face their own disabilities and disappointments.
In an early artificial habitat, scientists created a domed world where only gentle breezes and soft rains fell on the trees and animals below. Yet, in these ideal conditions, when the trees fruited, all the nearly-ripe fruit would fall to the ground. It turned out that, without thrashing winds and pummeling rain, the trees' limbs could not become strong enough to support the life-giving fruit.
Without my previous suffering I could never have gained the fortitude to deal with my children. Without that earlier loss, I would never have seen the precious gift my life is now beneath the raw, uncut wonder of the moment.
I now understand that the “Leave it to Beaver” model of the perfect life is as colorless and flat as that black and white screen it played upon. In fact, even those writers of banal comedy can’t sustain the joke-on-us more than 30 minutes—after that, it’s time to write drama. For while many try to force their lives into that onscreen sitcom model, the only way it can be accomplished is with half-truths and deception. Life is more than a 30-minute sitcom. Unfortunately, it is filled with suffering and fear. But, our human fortune lies in the fact that that same suffering is what makes us strong enough to bear fruit, it’s what gives life its color and depth…and, yes, its meaning.
I passionately believe in the perfectibility of man. But, like Michaelangelo’s David, that perfection comes from chipping away our excesses and grinding down our rough edges. And, it comes from understanding where that excess and rough edge lies. It comes from looking at our suffering, opening and cleaning those wounds and rejoicing as the healing and growth begin.
And so, I write essays. I write because I can only live once I find those bright rally flags of hope.
I write because it is only then that I can sleep.
AUGUST ESSAY
School is beginning, and my thoughts are about my children's futures. Ironically, since I first wrote this essay, I now have three special needs kids and now firmly live in a parallel universe. But the blessings of this different world are similar with my daughters as with my son. My teens teach me every day--and the world, through their eyes, is wondrous.
My Parallel Universe
By
Susan Traugh
When my son was one he fell from our second story, crashed his skull bone through his brain and changed my world forever.
My husband and I thought we’d done everything right. The weekend before we’d spent fully twelve hours “baby-proofing” our bungalow. But our baby found a spot where the netting wasn’t stapled closely enough, pushed his head through and fell before his frantic father could run to his rescue.
We’d named him Matthew, meaning “gift from God.” For days we stood vigil in the hospital wondering if God was taking back this precious gift. They told us to say “good-bye.” They told us that, if he recovered, he’d be unable to walk, talk or comprehend much, if anything.
Our child only made animal sounds. He shrieked in pain or thrashed and fought. His head swelled to over twice its size, puffing his eyes shut and folding his ears closed. But suddenly; three days later, he opened his eyes, got off my lap and started to walk. We simply cried. We had our miracle. We’d been given a second chance.
Six weeks later an ominous throbbing bulge on the side of his head indicated that his fractured skull was not closing but rather expanding as spinal fluid seeped out with each heart beat, corroding the bone and exposing his tender brain under his scalp. Within days he began to lose control of the right side of his body. His foot dragged, his arm went limp, his face sagged. Without brain surgery, our baby would die.
But he did not die. In fact, at that time, he recovered better from that surgery than any child ever had with such extensive damage. A year later we were given a clean bill of health and “released” from neurological supervision. We’d dodged a bullet.
Or had we?
For while Matthew’s arms and legs moved well again, and while he laughed and talked and learned, something was different. And that difference dragged me out of the world of “normal” people, and into the parallel universe of special needs.
It’s illusive. Everyone who doesn’t live in my universe sees us and believes that we’re sharing the same planet. But, we’re not. Our lives are not the same.
When Matthew turned three, he started to “throw his plate.” The tiny titanium plates that they’d used to piece together his skull were being rejected and began to bore a hole from the inside of his head out. He was the first child in the country to have plates made of titanium and, when I called, the doctors couldn’t believe what I was saying…and put me off. For two months I made frantic calls about the open wound in my preschooler’s head (a child who loved to throw sand, by the way) and the snaky metal strip inching out of that wound which kept catching on the furniture.
While other moms were helping their kids play with clay, I was unhooking mine from the curtains and making macabre jokes about alien antennae. I was praying that an infection would not set into that open wound and compromise my boy’s already-damaged brain. I felt like I was forever trying to save my child’s life.
Another surgery later, and we were back on this wobbly, unknown path.
By five, Matthew still couldn’t hold a fork, or use a pencil. We held him out of school while we continued to work on his fine motor skills. A good boy, we seldom had to correct him about ANYTHING. Soon, it became clear that an anxiety disorder was fueling his “goodness” as he strove to be “perfect” so the innumerable demons that lurked in his imagination couldn’t get him.
His two younger sisters became his guardians. They would sleep on either side of him each night to protect him. My older daughter would dutifully walk him to the bathroom in the middle of the night and “stand watch” so he would stay safe. In stores, he would grip my clothing with both hands so I would not “forget” I had a son and leave the store without him.
In second grade he lost “F.” He suddenly couldn’t write it, or read it, or tell us what it was. So went his education. If spoken to, Matthew was one of the most articulate, intelligent, knowledgeable students in the class. But he could barely write and could not read. He’d learn things, then “lose” them as much as a year later.
When we talked to the teachers, or the specialists, no one knew what to do for Matthew. Standard therapies for learning disabilities didn’t take my son’s extensive brain injury into account. Yet, therapies for brain injured people assumed that Matthew’s abilities were far beneath where he actually functioned.
When we traveled back to the neurologist, they’d tell us how blessed we were with our son. They’d tell us that we were exploring new territory—that kids with Matthew’s injuries didn’t used to live. They’d remind us that he wasn’t supposed to walk, or talk, or….
For my part, I read everything I could get my hands on about brain injuries. While other moms took their kids to T-ball, we tried “cross-crawl” to connect new brain neurons. While other kids signed up for arts and crafts, we signed up for cranial-sacral sessions. Every new learning method, every new technique was tried out on my son. I jumped, head first, into to the world of “alternative.”
Clearly it was true that my son was a miracle. But, that wasn’t good enough. In so many ways he was “like other kids.” I wanted him to have their same opportunities. He was bright…no, he was brilliant. (In fact, our neurologist says he probably had a genius I.Q. to be able to function as he does with so much of his brain damaged or destroyed.) But, he couldn’t function in the “normal” world if he couldn’t read, write or add.
From the inside, my world became measured over the years by small steps. Did he make it through the grocery store without an anxiety attack? Could he sleep through the night without coming to me at
From the outside, we looked like everyone else. I was a mom with a good kid who had troubles in school but appeared a little overly protective.
And, for me, that’s the danger—the looking normal. When other moms or school authorities think they “know” what they’re seeing, they’re quick to tell me that I shouldn’t coddle Matthew by pulling him out of karate just because the coach yelled at all the kids. What they don’t know is that, while those other kids let that scolding roll off their backs, mine pulled a blanket over his head and threw himself at the wall for an hour. Mine had night terrors for weeks, thinking that the coach was going to come after him or his family. Fifteen years later, my boy still will not participate in group activities because of that day. It’s different.
So here we are, living in our parallel universe. Today, my son is a lifeguard at a local water park. He drives. He works. He goes to college. He looks, acts (and is) a very successful young man. Yet, recently he “lost” our city’s map in his head, got lost a mile from home and nearly had a head-on crash as he panicked trying to sort out his directions. Despite “A’s” in most of his college classes, he may not get his A.A. as he has too many “F’s” because his disability gets in the way and he’s embarrassed to tell his professors he needs help or seek out his counselor drop the class. Here we are, so close, and yet so far away from “normal.”
Yet, I’m grateful for my universe. There’s no room to get caught up in superfluous things. There’s no energy to sweat the small stuff. Because of that, we have an intensity of relationship and depth of gratitude that makes everything more “real.” I’ve looked Death in the eye. I’ve said “good-bye” to my son’s life and life-as-we-knew-it. I know what a gift this new life is, not just for Matthew, but for everyone involved.
And, while I would wish no harm to anyone, I would wish that more people could visit my universe. In many ways, life is better here. There’s the ability to cut through society’s static to hear the clear, crisp sound of that which is essential, and eternal and true. That’s a real treasure. That is a gift. And just maybe, like my son, it’s a “gift from God.”
JULY ESSAY
By Susan Traugh
My new book came out today. Another will be published next month. A new publisher has just asked for my latest manuscript and I’m setting up a website to sell my latest curriculum series. But, I bet you didn’t know that.
I belong to a published writer’s group and watch as these women encourage and congratulate each other for their hard work and fine accomplishments. They don’t know about my book. I just put it on the shelf. I never told anyone about the last one or the one before that.
And, this is not a new pattern in my life.
I was at yet another business function for my husband, Steven, when a woman we know walked up. A colleague of his, the woman wore her Ph.D. like body armor while her tongue shot poison arrows—and I was her favorite target. As she sidled between us and asked about him, Steven took the opportunity to brag about my new book agent for a biography series I was working on.
“What?” exclaimed the woman as she spun to look at me—maybe for the first time. “I didn’t realize you were somebody!”
So, there it was. Invisibility.
In the next days, she was all I could think about. I wanted to make her wrong. But, I couldn’t. I couldn’t because, despite what she said, I was the one who had made me invisible.
As a wife and mother of three disabled kids, an enormous amount of my energy is spent just averting crises and keeping our lives afloat. Because of the kids’ unpredictable needs, I can’t work outside of the home. My writing is vital to paying the bills while still allowing me to run to the hospital, school or doctors as needed. But, while I don’t work outside the home—I do work. And I have dozens of published works to prove it.
Yet, everyone knows me as “Steve’s wife,” or “Katie’s mom.”
Nobody sees me as a writer because nobody sees me write. My books sit on the shelves or in the boxes that they came in because I don’t share them.
I write while the kids are gone, or on weekends, or in the middle of the night. I take my manuscript to the hospital while I wait. I listen to research books on tape in the car. And I cook, and clean, and do laundry, and grocery shop. I’m chair of too many committees, volunteer for too many events, and take on too many projects because I don’t honor the writing I do as “real work.”
Despite contracts and deadlines, I vacuum, cook, help with homework and run carpools first. I drop everything to do the mundane because I feel like I owe everybody but me. Then, I panic in the night and work until
At seminars, I watch as writers with less experience and no better skills teach the classes that I could easily teach. At book fairs, I see authors with fewer titles under their belts garner long lines of devotees while I anonymously walk the aisles.
I’m not alone here. My circle includes many accomplished, talented people. And yet, every one of them can relate to my haunting question: “Am I an imposter?”
I’m GOOD at writing for kids. My curriculum is sought after for its clarity, accessibility and accuracy. I’ve known for a long time that I have a gift of reaching kids that are hard to reach and sparking something in them that others can’t. I’ve even won awards for that gift. I’m also good at collaborating with my husband’s music, fleshing it out, filling it up and making our finished product better than the sum of the parts.
Why is it, then, that some little voice in me says that I’m not “real” unless I write the great American novel? What is it about me—about us—that makes “yeah, but…” so much a part of our craft that we sink into the shadows of invisibility?
That woman didn’t know I was “somebody” because I didn’t let her know. She defined me as “Steven’s wife” because I didn’t define myself any other way. I was invisible because I made myself invisible.
As I pull her poison arrow out of my heart, I realize that her barb has infused me with a new kind of strength.
It’s time I step up. It’s time I honor myself and my talents with the acknowledgement they deserve. It’s time I stop being invisible.
At home, I’ve made the kids start doing their laundry and cooking dinner, for my family too needs to define me as someone other than their wife or mother. They won’t take my career seriously if I hide it in the night.
And, I’m going back to the published authors group. I had gone to only one meeting as I was intimidated by their talent and confidence. When I walked in, a woman I didn’t know said, “You’re Susan Traugh? It’s nice to meet you, although I find you a little intimidating. I saw your website. You’ve written so much!” Her honesty and reflection of my own feelings had been shocking, yet hadn’t given me the courage to go back. Yes, my daughter had been very ill again. Yes, time had been a slight commodity. But, courage was the real root of my reticence.
Their picnic is in July. Their invitation has been sent. So, this is the month that I declare my independence from invisibility and step into the bright sunlight.
As I step out of the shadows, this new phase of my career is still unclear. I’m feeling my way, step by step, out into the light of visibility and, hopefully, greater success. With each step, I’m hoping that my confidence builds as my platform does. But, however it turns out, I’ve taken charge. I’ve made a statement about who I am as a writer. I’ve stepped out of my invisibility to declare, not that I will besomebody, but rather that I am somebody.
JUNE ESSAY
For Mary, who has overcome more challenges in her young life than most people face in a lifetime. We didn’t think she’d live—we never dreamed she’d live so well.
Graduation
By Susan Traugh
So the marathon is over and graduation is at hand. The cheers have begun. Well deserved handshakes have been given out. Newspaper highlights have been written.
Like schools all over the country, my daughter’s school was honoring its best and brightest with scholarships and awards. But like other special needs students all over the country, she would be getting no recognition. Like most special needs kids, she’s not a sprinter. She’ll never finish first in the marathon. She’ll never own “the resume”—achievements like hers aren’t noted that way.
But, make no mistake: there are achievements…hers, and the myriad achievements of all those unsung heroes of special education.
The numbers tell the story. High school is hard. Estimates range from 25%-50% of all kids drop out. School is even harder for special needs kids. And the effort they must put forth to stay in school and succeed is overwhelming.
I’ve blinked back tears as my daughter, whose disabilities caused her excruciating pain, would ask me to read to her so she could study between pain pills. Her goal was always to work through a pain level of 7 on a scale of 10.
I’ve watched as her brain injured brother would take 4 hours to do a 30 minute assignment. He’d read until his brain would hurt so badly he had to spend the next 2 hours in silent darkness, cool compresses over his eyes. But, as soon as he could hear again, he’d ask me to read the rest of the assignment so he could finish. Granted, this study method isn’t very effective and his grades weren’t stellar—but it was not for lack of trying.
I’ve seen another, brilliant child continuously play catch up when his frequent hospitalizations for diabetes kept him permanently behind despite his IQ and effort. To assure he’ll graduate, this child does twice the work when he’s well so he can bank the grades for his inevitable illness.
Another boy in class sets a timer for every five minutes to “call him back to reality” when his ADD meds wear off before his homework is done.
I’ve sat next to my youngest child as she’s worked on her laptop to finish homework while she receives an infusion in her hospital bed.
On more than one occasion, my son has thrown his work across the room in sobbing frustration at his disability only to cry it out, pick it up, and finish the work.
These kids didn’t participate in extracurricular activities. They’re not often sports stars. With extra hours of homework, doctor, hospital and tutoring sessions, they don’t do much community service. They don’t carry the resume that the stars of the Senior Banquets have so impressively put together.
But these are people who persevere. These are kids who defy enormous odds to finish, what for them, is an insurmountable task.
They may not be your molecular biologists or rocket scientists…but, with their drive and fortitude, they will be honorable, contributing members of society.
No, they won’t complete the marathon first, sprinting across that victory line, arms raised triumphantly. These are the kids who hobble along…limping, falling, sometimes crawling. But they finish. They graduate.
And we are honored to have them in our midst.
March Essays
Eternal Spring
You can’t go back home again. I know it. And yet, I couldn’t help myself.
We’d moved into the house in the winter of our lives. Investments in our own television show had proved disastrous and we lost everything—the house, the car and even our unborn babies. Bankrupt in body and soul we searched for a place to live before the bank could throw us out in the cold. After touring rat-traps, hovels and crack houses in our price range, Steven was convinced that the five of us would have to live in our car. I, on the other hand, sent up a prayer for a lovely three-bedroom in a nice neighborhood.
My prayers were answered and then some. It wasn’t just the angle of the light pouring through the windows that made me love the place. The four-bedroom, three bath house sat between a quaint kiddie park and a community pool. A fixer-upper when we saw it, it was littered with three feet of junk everywhere. But, it had good bones…and a colorless back yard just waiting to be transformed. A definite sucker for the world’s underdogs, I was in love.
Like all our homes, this one needed healing. So, I set out to work the soil and plant the seeds. Along the way, we also nurtured friendships and neighborhood comradery. Having moved from a little mountain village, my children soon learned the joys of pizza deliveries, ice cream trucks and learning to ride their bikes on the broad avenues of surburbia. Having come from trauma and loss, we welcomed the warm comfort of a neighborhood ripe with young families and impromptu picnics.
As we laid down roots in the neighborhood, I also nurtured the seedlings in my backyard. Soon, jasmine covered the side wall. Lavender, geraniums, irises and carnations clustered along the wrought iron fence. Tomatoes, artichokes, beans and lettuce graced our table from the side yard. Abundance ran riot.
But, it was the roses that fed my soul. They were the first things I planted. Blood red and twining, I guided and laced their branches through the fence for the five years we lived there and was continuously rewarded with a vibrant show of life that literally took my breath away. The fragrance was intoxicating; the beauty could make me swoon. Each day as I sat at my desk to write, I would look out the window and let those roses inspire me. Hummingbirds came to tap on the window and remind me to fill the feeder, sparrows bathed in the fountain, my children blossomed in their new neighborhood and all felt right in the world.
I had gotten my life and my garden in order and was looking forward to enjoying the beauty and abundance of my efforts when the landlady called. She needed money. Housing prices had risen so dramatically; she needed to pull her equity from the house. We had to move. There would be no summer leisure. It was time to start over again.
In thirty days, we were gone.
That was seven years ago. Since then we’ve lived in two other houses, having been uprooted from the next house when we again became inconvenient for commerce. But, I was in the old neighborhood and the house was empty and for sale, so I had to look. As I slid along the side of the fence, I searched for the first explosion of red. After all these years, my roses had to be a massive wall of life.
But there was nothing. Nothing.
The entire garden was gone. The soft, undulating hills that once held lavender and pansies were laid flat. In place of that riot of color and texture lay a flat, unkempt lawn. Not one plant. Not one flower. Not one shred of the beauty or life that I had left behind.
I came home and fell to weeding my new garden. Tears burned my eyes as I jerked the ever-oppressive weeds from between the plantings. Unlike the blank canvas of that old house, this garden was a jungle of competing life. And, with so many writing projects and four teenagers in the house, it was a jungle I had scant time to tame. Always just beyond my abilities, it was a riot of wild colors, textures and utter disorder.
That old garden had been “done.” It simply needed to be maintained and enjoyed. This new garden was so big, so fertile, so abundant that I would never have any sense of completion. I felt cheated. So, I pulled weeds harder.
But, as I pulled, my tears turned to a smile. The joke was really on me. Because you can’t go back home. That garden was symbolic of my life then. I had to plant it from scratch. I had to tend and nurture it through its springtime of growth as I built a new life for my young family.
But this one reflects my life now. It is full to bursting with possibilities—for myself, for my career, for my family. My children are nearly grown. They are out finding their ways in the world—reaching out to create then falling back into the cocoon of family. We are a cacophony of promise—planting all kinds of seeds in every direction and waiting to see what germinates.
No, it’s definitely not manicured or contained. But my garden, like my life, is full of richness, beauty and life itself. It will always be a spring garden—growing, changing and bursting forth—and I’ll never have the lazy summer to just sit back and enjoy it.
But, I’m not sure I would want to. I’m not ready to rock on my porch and enjoy the fruits of my labors. I still have seeds to plant and branches to guide—in my garden, and in my life. Maybe life has given me that eternal spring because I like it. Truth is: I need it.
So, okay, I can’t go back home again. But, I can plant red roses along that fence over there.
Letters from the Leprechauns
Published in San Diego Family Magazine, March 2006
When my son finally learned the “truth” about Santa, it wasn’t the jolly old man’s demise that upset him…nor the Easter Bunny nor the Tooth Fairy (who both succumbed in rapid succession with fairly a whimper).
No, his real loss centered around a figure you probably never heard of. “Not Branneghan, Mom,” my distraught boy whispered. “Please say not Branneghan, too!”
Who is Branneghan? What is it about him (and his band of compatriots) that makes St. Patrick’s Day my children’s favorite holiday and has given birth to a decade-long relationship?
It all started innocently enough. I wanted to celebrate the magic of St. Patrick’s Day and the wonder of the unknown, but I didn’t want to get into another expensive holiday, or abandon it to the green-beer drinking binges of adults.
So, I sprinkled a little sparkling confetti from my kids’ beds, down the hall and out to a plate containing a few gold-coin chocolates and a shamrock cookie. The fact that the leprechauns had “stolen” one of my fanciest plates to put the cookies on just added to the fun, (and in later years those tricksters would knock over books or stack shoes in the night).
That was it. Or so I thought.
The next year, my then 5-year-old son, Matt, wanted to write to the leprechauns. Mary, then 3, drew a picture. We tucked the letters in with the cookies. The leprechauns answered.
A Ritual was Born
In the beginning, the letters were simple and light. My husband and I named a leprechaun for each child based on the illustrations we downloaded from the computer. We found an unusual font and wrote back, noting something special about each child. It was quick, easy and fun for parent and child.
But as Matt entered second grade, something began to change. As St. Patrick’s Day approached, Matt had been quiet in school and we’d had trouble getting him to talk about it. He came to me with a paper and pen and asked that I write a letter to Branneghan. It seemed his schoolwork was becoming very difficult for him. He knew he wasn’t reading well and was looking for advice on how to handle his problems.
And he’d turned to a “magical source” for answers.
I dutifully transcribed his dictation then asked him if he wanted to talk about it. “No,” was his answer. So I let it go.
That night, I began Branneghan’s answer to my son. I asked him to trust his mom and dad’s guidance, suggested he approach his teacher, and asked him to pray for help in his struggles. In the meantime, I talked to his teacher and we set up a date to test Matt.
On St. Patrick’s Day morning, Matthew pulled me into his room with his scrolled letter in his hand. “Read it to me!” he cried as I unfastened the ribbon. As I read, tears flowed down his cheek. Then, all the fears, shame and hopelessness poured out of my boy.
His teacher pulled him aside later that same day and explained that she was going to get him some help with his reading. He began to smile like it was Christmas.
Magical Advice
As the years went on (and our brood grew), the meaningfulness of St. Patrick’s Day also grew. The kids began to have a year-to-year dialogue with their individual leprechauns and ask for help and advice on a myriad of subjects they hadn’t yet discussed with their parents.
Matt once confessed, “We were going to catch you but we wanted you to be our friend. So we left you this card for you.”
Mary dug deeper, “Do Leperons get stressed? Other than stress and pressure, I’m okay. I’m in a play…Katie says that you guys give presents, but I thought only the Easter bunny and Santa do the gift thing. But if you do, I only want two things, courage to go through the play and I’d also like safety so I won’t get scared or worried about my state of being.”
With each new crisis, “their leprechauns” would advise them to approach their parents, minister, teacher…and they always would. The leprechauns would tease and cajole about messy rooms: “Lassie, do ye not know a wee little leprechaun can drown in that pile of clothes?” They would congratulate: “The wee folk have seen the effort ye be making. We be proud. We be proud.”
As the years went on, our children sometimes would keep their letters “private.” And I never let on.
At 15, my son long knows “the truth.” Mary, now 13, refuses any conversation about “reality,” still writes to her leprechaun, Rosie, throughout the year and swears she will until she’s 25. And Katie always finishes spring-cleaning her room before March 17 ever since the time “Lucky” teased her.
Their leprechauns are a constant force in their lives, and the children’s letters are now small novellas. Each holds his or her “magical friend” dear and I appreciate the gift of childhood these magic beings have given my children. Katie’s last letter sums it up:
“…As I am getting older I am acting way different…No one believes in magic any more the world is all caught up in gangsters and fighting. But I believe in magic, in Santa, the Easter bunny and you guys. I wish I could think of more to say. I love you all, Katharyn”
The Ties that Bind
Yet, my own gift from the leprechauns has been enormous. The letters have opened up a window into my children I would never have been privileged to see without magical intervention.
They have strengthened our lines of communication and reinforced my desire for my children to come to me, to pray, to seek guidance from strong role models. The leprechauns can say things I cannot. My children say things to them I might never otherwise hear. And they have provided my children with a powerful communication tool.
While driving my son to school recently, our conversation was telling. Now a fine young man with graduation looming in his near future, he nevertheless still relishes his childhood.
“Mom,” he said, “I sometimes still miss Branneghan.”
“Me, too,” I said. Then, looking at my son’s thoughtful profile, I asked him why, and was rewarded when he responded to all my hopes.
“Because he taught me how to trust.”
February Essays
Valentine’s Day is
a wonderful time for me to look back on all the blessings of love in my life
and all the different ways those blessings manifest in my life.
Lightening Strike
I’d already kissed a thousand frogs. But no one had turned into a prince. One by one, I’d watched my friends find love and marry. One by one they’d moved on while I stood alone and rejected. I was thirty-three; craving marriage; dreaming of happily ever after. Yet, a national woman’s magazine that year said a woman my age had a greater chance of being struck by lightening.
And, then, I was.
The irony was: I’d given up. I’d moved in with my brother so I wouldn’t have to be alone. My cats cuddled next to me at night so I wouldn’t notice the cold emptiness on the other side of the bed. Teaching in the inner city provided the babies I longed for and the world-saving service that made me feel needed in the world and not just that eternal fifth wheel who showed up at married friends’ dinner parties. I’d created order and service out of my loss and moved my life along in a measured, if dully predictable, step.
Then Heaven interceded.
I was the music expert at school. I coordinated the plays, wrote the curriculum and planned the festivals. So, when he was supposed to come to the school to teach the teachers a whole new music system, I was unimpressed—so unimpressed that I didn’t show up for the workshop. I’d had the flu and was just coming back to school. I needed to get back to my students and dreaded spending the day with this artist-in-residence. I already had my music program nailed, and didn’t need guidance from some so-called expert. So, I stayed home another day and skipped his workshop.
When I returned, “Mr. Tra-la-la” was the talk of the school. The teachers were all atwitter with the funny, clever, talented Mr. Traugh. I wanted to gag.
Glad to have missed the workshop, I got back to work with my kids and forgot about the near miss. But, he returned.
Every week for six weeks, he’d come back for a workshop. Every week for five weeks, I avoided seeing him. And then a fellow teacher grabbed me. “You’ve got to meet him!” Lynne cooed. “He’s so good at what he does. But, you have to see his book. It’s self-published curriculum. You could do that. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
Later, she confessed she knew it was a lure I’d lunge at, and that, really, she just thought it was a match. But, back then, I just wanted to learn how to publish the books that floated in my head. So, I followed her.
He was bending over his MGB when we got to the parking lot. His black trench coat obscured his body and his head was deep in the trunk as he arranged his books. Lynne caught his attention and asked to introduce us. Mr. Traugh straightened up and turned around.
Have you ever seen those movie special effects where the boom zooms in at break-neck speed, like the eye of God coming from the universe to the center of your iris? That’s where we were as the electricity between us actually made Lynne take a step back. “Oh, there you are,” whispered the knowing voice in my head. All those silly movie clichés about rainbows and shooting stars and lightening strikes suddenly weren’t silly, suddenly weren’t cliché. Our souls instantly knew each other and, in that moment, they proposed and accepted. I shook his hand and, then and there, the deal was sealed.
Our first date was the day after Valentine’s Day. Always-a-bridesmaid, I would be the Maid of Honor at my kid sister’s wedding the day before our date.
I would be the bride in October.
I’ve been Mrs. Traugh for twenty-three years now. We still have the china we picked out on our first date. We also have dozens of published books between us, having learned to coordinate our talents to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. And, despite dire predictions from infertility specialists, we have three of the most precious children to ever walk the planet.
But, happily-ever-after doesn’t mean fade to black. Happily-ever-after is about life’s adventures. It’s about infertility, and miscarriages, and tragic accidents and financial ruin. It’s about wonderful triumphs and devastating defeats. It’s about holding each other up as we tread water as fast as we can. And, it’s about knowing where the port is during life’s most tumultuous storms.
Just when I thought there were no more men left for the taking, I took the best. Steven is loving, spiritual, funny, intelligent and self-deprecating. We’re that old couple on the beach, holding hands, looking more and more alike each year. He’s strong where I’m weak and weak where I’m strong. We hold each other up, kick each other’s butts, kiss each other’s wounds, stroke each other’s cheek.
Now, my bed is never cold—those babies I wanted are nearly grown, but we five still cuddle and kiss and talk in that big family cocoon And, working with my husband, I have the creative, service oriented career I’d always dreamed of and the happily ever after that felt so elusive.
I suppose the magazine was right. I was old. I needed to be struck by lightening. And I was. On our wedding day, I gave Steven a ring with five diamonds. Inside the ring an inscription reads: Worth waiting for. Amen.
Grace Happens
When I began teaching in the inner city, I was a shiny new penny, eager to be spent. My first assignment came three weeks into the school year. My class had already been through thirteen teachers. When I walked in the door the kids were, literally, hanging from the light fixtures. Several mothers sat in the back of the room with belts in their hands.
My room was stripped save a box of broken crayons, a half ream of paper and some bent scissors and I was told that there were no supplies to be found, so I had to “make due.”
Determined to change lives and “save the world,” I immediately began to build a rapport with my unruly students while I used the majority of my first few paychecks to buy supplies for my kids. I could live on beans…they needed books and pencils.
So I was disheartened when my best markers disappeared within a day.
When I complained to my fellow teachers, they hooted at my naiveté.
“You can kiss those markers ‘good-bye’!” laughed one veteran teacher. “Some kid has long sold that little pot of gold!”
But her cynicism simply made me more determined to prove her wrong. “Class,” I implored, “we’re ‘family.’ We don’t steal from each other. If you want to earn something from me, I’ll help you get whatever you need. But, don’t steal from all of us.”
I then told the culprit to come and confess and all would be forgiven.
“You really are green!” crowed the veterans when I explained my plea. “You must think you’re in the suburbs!”
Each day for a week, I made the same request. Each day my pleas were returned with silence.
Then, one morning as I pulled into the parking lot at school, Byron was waiting near my parking space. Always quiet and helpful in class, Byron nevertheless had been suspended twice for fighting on the playground. His father was in prison and he was often teased. A gifted artist, he drew all over all his papers, but refused to use crayons or paint in any of his pictures.
“Ms. Traugh,” he ventured, eyes downcast, “looky here.”
He opened his jacket and there, tucked inside, were my pens.
I stood in silence—astonished. Byron was the last person I would have suspected. Crushed that this boy (whom I thought loved me) had, in fact, stolen from me I took a breath and asked “why?”
“You see,” he began, tears rolling down his cheeks, “I never seen colored pens before. I’m a good drawer, but I can’t color. And I didn’t want the kids to tease me, so I took them home to practice. I didn’t really steal them. I was gonna bring them back. I just wasn’t ready when you asked.”
I made a deal with Byron: if he could keep out of trouble on the playground for a week, I’d buy him his very own set of crayons. We shook and cemented the deal.
For the next four days Byron was as good as gold. I shopped for a nicest, biggest set of crayons I could find on Thursday night. But on Friday, Byron wasn’t in school. Nor Monday. Nor ever again.
Byron’s dad had gotten out of prison and kidnapped the boy on his way home from school on Thursday. When they were found, Byron was put in foster care and moved to a new town. Two months later I received a notice to forward his file. When I did, I sent the crayons with a note to his new teacher about our deal and the circumstances feeling like this was yet another failure in, what was turning out to be, a year of defeats.
That was it.
Byron’s story was not unique. During that first year there were more tragedies than triumphs. More crying than congratulations. Not a night passed that I didn’t question my ability—or sense—in continuing a clearly impossible job. But, I limped through the year, crawling to the finish line so that I might go home and lick my wounds…and often wondered about that lost boy.
Two years later, I was the veteran. No longer green, more sure in my ways, I was still fighting the good fight. I’d moved to another school, but had come back to visit my friends when this tall, slightly familiar boy approached me.
“Ms. Traugh,” he smiled, “do you remember me?”
I searched his face for some sign of recognition while he grinned at my uncertainty.
“I’m Byron!” he laughed.
And then he told me a remarkable story. He said, “I was real sad in my new home, and then I got your crayons. I just want you to know that I haven’t stolen nothing since then, and I never will again.” Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a broken, mangled crayon. “See,” he continued, “I keep this to remind me what I can be.”
As much as I’d like to take credit for the lessons here, I can’t. For the biggest lesson was mine. You see, I learned that day that grace doesn’t always come in nice, neat packages…and seldom comes as we imagine it.
When Jesus told the parable of the scattered seeds, he left out part. In his agrarian society, he didn’t have to spell out that germination must take place in the dark. But, in our urban society, we have to be reminded that we can’t stand around and watch grace happen. Throwing our seed, walking away, and trusting in the outcome is “faith.” Sometimes we are blessed to come back around and see the fruits of our efforts. But, usually not. Usually trust, or hope, or...yes…faith is all we have to hang onto that the seed will germinate; that our efforts will bear fruit.
But then, every once in a while, the Byrons of this world come back…and that, in any form, is grace.
Published in Teachers of Vision, and Lutheran Digest.
January Essays
Indoor
Rain
New
Year’s Rituals with Life’s Small Miracles
“Mommy! Mommy! Come
quick! It’s a miracle—it’s raining
in the house!” My daughter could
barely contain herself as she hopped up and down with the exciting news.
I
ran to the family room to discover she was, in fact, correct. Like little natives, my children were
dancing, chanting and whooping with joy as they paid homage to the miracle of
indoor rain. Horrified, I surveyed
the buckled ceiling and copious amounts of water spilling from under our second
bathroom. Indoor rain.
Let’s
face it: it’s been a difficult year.
Getting through a difficult year is an amazing feat that deserves
celebration and ritualization.
And, New Year’s Night is a wonderful time to do that.
Although
a decade ago, the year of the miracle rain was also a rough one for our
family. The last thing we needed
was a costly plumbing bill. We
were already teetering on the edge of disaster.
We
didn’t fix the leak. Instead, we
opened up the ceiling to let it dry out.
Then we all doubled up in our remaining bathroom.
And,
that’s when the true miracle happened.
Suddenly,
we were all together. As I
rearranged toiletries and crammed us all into my one private space, I was
angry. What next? We were honest, hard-working
people. Yet, we couldn’t seem to
catch a break. The bathroom was my
one moment of privacy and now, that too, was gone. Life seemed to be handing me
lemons one after the other.
We
did what had to be done. But, I
wasn’t happy. Crammed together, there was no time for individual bathroom use.
While I did my hair, the girls took their bath, or my son showered.
But,
behind that curtain, we were still together.
Yet
suddenly, there were stories.
Stories of hopes and dreams.
Stories of friendships gone awry or bad decisions narrowly averted. Without eye contact and with the
pleasant warmth of the water, my kids seemed under the spell of some truth
serum. And I was the
beneficiary.
Day
after day, I began to relish that time as the rich tapestry of my children’s
lives began to unfold for me. That
curtain served as a buffer so I could question and advise in a way that would
be impossible face to face.
As
the stories unraveled, those threads intertwined with my stories and my
guidance to form a new tapestry and a new kind of bonding.
The
truth is: we changed as a family during that time. And the change was good.
I’m
not recommending that you go wreak your bathroom. What I am saying is that, in the midst of a real financial
loss, a great gift was born.
Set
backs, big and small, can have silver linings. I was shocked when my teenaged son stated how glad he was
that he was brain injured. “Why?”
I asked as I reeled through all the pain and loss I’d experienced since his
accident. “Because I’m very smart,
Mom,” he said. “And, if I’d never
had to struggle, I’d have been real arrogant. But now, I understand people better.”
In
fact, he’s now a psychology major.
He thinks he wants to be a therapist. Some gifts come oddly wrapped.
The
year of the rain was also the year that we began our New Year’s ritual. We needed to put the year behind us. Or, that’s what we thought.
We
all spent the day listing things we were grateful for and put each item on a
slip of paper.
That
night we read our items. As each
memory was read, it spurred stories.
The kids remembered things I’d have never thought of. The adults’
memories triggered kids’ stories we never knew. Suddenly, our sad, hard year turned into a joyful,
laughter-filled time.
What memory did everyone cherished the
most? The miracle of indoor rain.
Today,
we still usher out the year with ritual.
Sparkling cider, cheese and crackers, and a little candlelight sets the
stage. Our gratitude cannot be for
things, but for times and lessons learned. We put each memory on its own slip of paper, then burn it in
a bowl and send it up to heaven.
As it burns, we talk.
Everyone jumps in to share their memories of the event…and miracles (of
disaster averted or serendipitous events) are revealed.
And, we’ve realized, we’ve never had a bad year. Oh, to be sure, there have been losses, and set-backs, and disasters. But, that’s different. For over the years we’ve learned that those losses and disasters are all the stuff of miracles—like the miracle of indoor rain.
Copyright
2009 Susan Traugh
____________________________________
Life and the Zen of House Painting
It’s quiet except for the joy of the Beatle’s “Love” album floating in the background. My paintbrush is making a steady “whoosh-whoosh” sound as it spreads a rich “balsam beige” along the edges of my dining room wall. Although I’ve lived in this house for a while, it is not yet mine. My furniture may be in the place, but the colors and energy are those of the landlord and the former tenants.
Inch by inch, however, that is changing as I paint out years of grime and fill the room with the earthy colors of my life. This is becoming my house as I explore each corner and curve of the walls like a new lover. It’s becoming my home as I dress this new child of mine with the careful touch of my hand, relishing the beauty, noting and filling in the flaws, creating a relationship.
Like some forty percent of San Diegans, I rent. And like too many folks lately, I’ve become an unwilling vagabond when one landlord after another sold my home (but their gold mine) out from under me so that, with a phone call and sixty days notice, my family’s life was uprooted and we were forced to move on.
And so, we paint. We paint to color this new world to match our souls. We paint to wipe out the old and start fresh. We cover everything in sight, wear our t-shirts inside out and jump in with good music and hot pizza. We paint so that when my children feel their life is out of control, they can, at least, control the color of their room. And, that experience becomes a bridge to keep me connected to their hopes and fears about their lives.
We always paint secrets into our walls. Over the years, we’ve hidden hearts, happy faces and flowers. My daughter must always paint her name into the wall so she can claim the space as hers. My son once painted “No gosts” into the first room he’d sleep in by himself. Each word, each picture starts a story, then a conversation, then an embrace as we tangle our brushes and our lives into this new space and start collecting the memories that make a house a home.
With no TV or video games to distract them, and the steady movement of the roller to hypnotize them, painting is a wonderful way to fall into thoughtful conversation. As they explore their new spaces, it’s a time when I can help my kids move into this new phase in their lives—and not just a move—we’ve painted away their “baby-selves,” we’ve painted away their fears. We’ve explored the life-lessons of attending to details, doing the prep work, and dealing with unexpected spills. My too-serious youngest daughter has learned to laugh at an unintentional Three Stooges moment. My son has learned to face his fear of failure. We’ve prepped and painted and rearranged our lives inside the walls of our various houses.
“We” is the operative word here, for as I revel in my movements, memories and my music, the world erupts. Bounding up the stairs are a half-dozen teenagers. With their faces painted with red-clay masques, they look like escapees from some tribal fertility festival as they laugh and push and trip over each other to pick up brushes and rollers. None of these children are mine—my own son being at work and leaving these helpers with me, my daughters off taking a break. But, then, they are mine. As they fall into the rhythm of the brush and paint, the conversation moves to their hopes and dreams. Will they explore Europe? Can they afford car insurance? What do I think about culinary school? “Us” gets written on my wall then hidden. And we are family. In a few moments they slide the china cabinet back into its place, load the dishes and glasses inside, asking for stories surrounding the flowered bowl or crystal goblet. And the dance begins. Our stories intertwine, our lives mesh as our individual experiences become shared lives. The boys jump down the stairs again, but Liz stays to talk about painting. Her mother does it too, she says. “She says it’s her ‘Zen moment’.” I agree as Liz speculates whether she should learn to paint more so she can learn to cope with the stressors she’s sees coming with adulthood. “Maybe,” I say, as she wanders into my daughter’s freshly painted bedroom. I hear her flop on the bed and then the peel of laughter as Liz’s voice mingles with my daughter’s. Feet hit the ground, a door slams and the laughter dances away.
And, so I work alone. The soft brushing sound echoes the quiet beating of my heart. The rooms are close to done. The fresh, clean smell of paint fills the house with the promise of our future life within these walls, and my mind swirls with the memories of past paint jobs and the journey they punctuated. Hidden in the walls are the hopes and dreams of my wide, extended family. With each section of color I see the wide strokes of love and caring of those whom I love. And in that sweep of motion, this house has become our home.
Copyright 2009 Susan Traugh
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