Still Sundays

May 8th.

The color of dreams. Gifts of stillness are for your own mantelpiece. Truth can be served with sugar or a sting. Mothers like nature must continue evolving.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

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New York City this morning is bright with reflective dreams that belong to all.

Sometimes I think the color of dreams is green. I don’t mean a specific dream. I mean when we encounter the emerald, olive, asparagus, lime, shamrock, pear greens as we walk through spring. The vibrant, lush, greens spread beyond the leaves and takes us to woolgathering about dreams that we barely recall. As if the leaves want to exhale the oxygen of memories that we want to forget but need to remember.

An article about the ‘anxiety of influence’ took me back to two different Sundays some time ago. I read through some old “Still Sundays” and felt very much how one feels when looking at a collection of shells one has collected from a walk along the shore. The ocean of stillness is deep and vast and the shoreline has all sorts of trinkets and shells. Some feel rather ordinary, others unique. Some have value according to traders and others have no value although they still mean the world to you.

The gifts collected from the sea of stillness are for your own mantelpiece.

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I was speaking to author David Weedmark about the warped, pretentious maze that is the publishing industry. I told him I am not interested in anything else but the act of writing. He said, “Think of it as being paid nicely to do what you love.” My brain didn’t register the words.

“Do what I love?”

He replied, “Yes. Think of it as doing what you love and being paid for it.”

I said, “I don’t know.” I couldn’t believe I said that. I finally added, “I think I just have a compulsion, an obsession; I am not sure if it is love.”

I thought of all the interviews where some author (well-known or otherwise) is passionately articulating how much they love writing despite the hard work and I couldn’t help thinking: when will I love you? If I have to ask, it is not love, right? When will it no longer feel like an obsession or compulsion but transform into some kind of love? I love words, I know that much, without a doubt. But words are like stars, I can only see so much of the sky.

Someone said that my ‘process’ is so transparent given I share quite a bit, either here or over at my online Vault, from what I am researching, what authors I am re-reading, to music, art and photography I like.

What is there to hide? Besides experience has shown me transparency can lead to invisibility. Poof. Vanish. No one can really see anyway, everyone sees what they want to see.

Sometimes I feel my father was right after all: my sister and I are like honey bees. We don’t really want much but fly flower to flower, smelling, appreciating, buzzing, creating some nectar. But bees can and do sting. Bees can even kill. Truth can be served with sugar or a sting; hopefully no one is allergic or suffers from diabetes of the mind.

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Mother’s day. Another set-aside commercial holiday. One day set aside to honor the woman whose food you shared while you were living inside her for some months. One day. As if we are not capable of honoring every day. Or are we not?

What if on mother’s day we also honored all those who turned out more than just fine despite having self-absorbed mothers who didn’t know what it meant to have a baby? Mothers who felt their own wants were more important than the impact of those wants on their children. What if on mother’s day we also honored those who learned compassion, love, strength, and much more through some other source having lost their mother at a young age?

What if on mother’s day we honored fathers who have had to step in the role of a mother due to women who were unable to fulfill that role? No, father’s day doesn’t suffice because they had to be mothers too.

I am very blessed to have my mother. I don’t take this for granted.

I can still recall when I was very young and the teacher asked the class who was our hero to prepare us for some assignment. I heard other students’ answers and due to a cultural gap I was not able to tell that they were not naming people they knew but “famous” people, dead and alive.  When my turn came to answer, I confidently said, “My mother.” The teacher thought it was cute and asked me again as if I hadn’t understood. I thought maybe I should say spider-man or wolverine but decided to answer the same, again. The teacher said, “Oh that is very sweet and good but other famous people like your classmates have mentioned that you and the world look up to.” I thought to myself: but I don’t know those people! I did feel stupid but I also knew that when I know I know; I didn’t change my answer.  The teacher moved along to another student who named someone famous. For the assignment I was assigned Helen Keller.

Another time, now in my early 20s, a teacher myself, I was quite offended when someone said, “Oh, given what you say about your father and what I know about him and the rest of your siblings, it seems your mother is a wonderful supporter” as if it was beneath whatever image this woman held of who my father was and how we were.

I replied, “I could win the most prestigious awards and accomplish all that I desire and it would never amount to as much if I could only be half—just half—as great a woman, friend, wife, mother and above all else, human being, as my mother. If that, I would have accomplished all in this lifetime.”

The unpleasent woman retorted, “That is quite some pressure, no? To always compare yourself to your mother?”

I had never compared myself to my mother. She had always encouraged our differences and for me to be me.

I stung, “I guess if there is any pressure it is to be myself, compassionately but without apology.”

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Most people know that I have a very close relationship with my mother that is neither intrusive and nor overbearing. We travel together when there is an opportunity; we enjoy doing nothing together when we can be in the same city. We miss our sister and sister-in-law when those two are not with us. What most people don’t know is that our relationship wasn’t always like this. Growing up it was almost good enough for a mother and daughter relationship, but no, not like this.

What has made it like this is personal development. I have grown up because the woman I admire has grown up too. She can’t expect that her children grow and develop if she is not willing to. She has done more than her share to deconstruct and learn anew.

Two things I admire most in my mother: her ability to be in the present without any new age wisdom or religious dogma (it is as if she was born in the now and it is always now!) and the other is her desire to learn and grow, which means releasing her attachment to much she once knew or as she once understood.

My mother says life is all about relationships, for they teach us who we are and about living. She says the danger is people think they need to be ‘in’ a particular relationship (she doesn’t mean only heterosexual partnerships) in order to learn how to relate, learn about themselves, or others. But being ‘in’ does mean opening up.

My mother is constantly reminding us to let go of who people no longer are and accept them for who they have become and decide in the now if that is an acceptable relationship.

My mother is my hero because she is the sunlight that doesn’t need photoshop.

This morning I asked my mother—-the eternal question I have been asking since I can recall—“How does she—how did she—manage without her mother?”

Mama says nature is a mother; it doesn’t take away without giving you what you need to make without.

Mama says all nurturing, caring, creating is a form of being a mother and we are offered many relationships other than our biological ones to nurture our and others’ potential if we so choose.

I am grateful to my mother every day for reminding us that when unconditional love doesn’t enable but offers reflection, it can provide the grandest shield against a world that no longer believes love triumphs fear.

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