AUTHENTIC ADULT WOMAN

NO TIME FOR TEARS...

I don't cry much these days, except in movies.

So this morning, walking purposefully along the ocean path, listening to Al Green singing Time Just Slips Away, I suddenly paused*...

My body wanted to slow down, relax - just doddle along, maybe even stop and breathe deeply. The air was so sweet and summery...and so I did. Stop. And breathe.

Then, surprisingly, out of nowhere, a wash of warm tears swam down my cheeks. And down through my cells...cleansing, healing, melting tension. I wept quietly, sweetly, not really understanding why.  I wept tenderly for my dear old aging body, my 'stiff upper lip', the sorrows of the world...

My tears felt precious.  They remind me to pause and let myself  BE... 

I feel refreshed now.  And my body is like a a child's ...natural, responsive, true to itself.

 

 

 

It was like a little revelation...I need to pause long enough to know how I'm really feeling...a need greater than the other 'necessary' things that crowd my days.  

 

*There is a 'should' - even about walking.

Walk faster to get that heart rate up, walk longer to get those pounds off, walk with waist back, ribs up, shoulders back and down!

I know discipline is great, but so is pausing to listen to my body.

It has deeper things to say.

 

Download 07 Funny How Time Slips Away

RECOGNITION BY ASSOCIATION

Fifty years ago I wrote a short magazine piece on the hidden agendas of conferences.  I argued that "for professional people personal satisfaction at conferences depends on the fulfillment, or movement toward fulfillment, of three familiar needs:

*Recognition - respect, status

*Affiliation - belonging, communication

*Audience - a platform, witnesses

I think this is still more or less true.  But in the area of recognition, I may have cheated a bit. Looking back on my career, I notice that I often hung out with presidents and deans and leaders of organizations. I was pleased and a bit surprized to be seen and sought out by them.  But I didn't risk running for high office or accepting terribly responsible positions myself. Unconciously I basked in prestige by association.

Lots of ambient glory, plenty of cocktails in penthouses, and without the blood, sweat and tears.

When people asked why I didn't try for any of those important jobs myself, I always said "I hate administration' or 'I wouldn't want that responsibility', or 'I hate marketing myself'.  And that was true. Or maybe I was not ambitious enough, or fearful of failure?  

                     

In any case I often satisfied my need for recognition, affiliation, and audience... by association. 

But over the years I've become  ENOUGH - all by MYSELF!  Its been nice to have something of my own to say, to make my own contribution - without adding the credentials of my accomplished friends.

Finding OURSELVES....what a concept.  And finding that we are quite ENOUGH...just as we are...with our own unique gifts and styles...and our own senses of humor !! ...NOT DEPENDENT on 'kings and queens' to anoint us with their blessing and their fame - by association! 

CREATING WITH LOVE

CREATING for me is like falling in love...

I am totally alive. Completely immersed. Time is irrelevant. Every cell buzzes.

Hands move intuitively. My heart sings. My mouth smiles. 

A warm glow fills me. I have endless patience and love.

I can't bear to leave my emerging creation and I can't wait to get back to it.

 

Memories of these past loves surround me in this house.  

 STICKS: for example -

 

 

I could sit for hours holding a piece of wood, waiting for it to tell me how it wants to be transformed by my sharp steel blade...sanding with quiet patience until the heartwood gleams soft as silk.

 

Sometimes its  a hand...sometimes a foot...

 

 

 

Who knows what will come of it...of all this patience and adoration and love?

It doesn't really matter. It is the precious moments of utter absorbtion, centered and curious.

 

 

And STONES:  

I collect stones from everywhere. The small striped stone from les Invalides in Paris, the round pearl-like stone from Rodin's garden. The wildly colored stones from Ebys landing on Whidbey Island. And these days I sit on my pebbled beach..sifting thru the tiny wet gleaming stones to find a bit of turquoise sea glass or a milky moonstone.

 

 

 

 

When you discover the treasures of nature...and create new homes for them...or see them through different lenses, it isn't really your creation.

I know that.  But it still feels deeply creative.

 

 

 

 

The carved tree branches, the bowls of stones, the sculpted clay, the painted gourds...

Each inspired me in their turn.

I love to photograph nature's beauty.  Like these bits of vari-colored sea flora. Believe it or not the vivid images here were just lying on the shore...waiting for me to gather them and marvel at their intricate mystery.

                                                                 

What gifts...the creative moments...purity, innocence, quiet, concentration, patience, radiance, joy!

I am in love.

 

MODELS, MAPS & METAPHORS!

I love models, maps, and metaphors! I enjoy visualizing life's journey in different ways. As a PATH - thru the woods, by the river, into the cave - on the way 'home'.  Or as a STAIRCASE taking one step at a time - or leaping up 3 steps and perhaps falling down :(  

Or as a SPIRAL with opportunities to learn and re-learn at different curves on it, but generally moving (plus slipping/sliding) onward and upward.  

I forgot about 'the spiral' the other day when I had that brief illumination about taking the next step into Eccentric Cronedom. 

I speculated that I could/should find inner peace by stepping away from the fray of worldly chaos - away from the predictable agonies of being human.  Fat chance!  It is quite clear that I STILL have to choose which people and problems I will give energy to...which will feed my soul and fulfill my destiny. And some of those choices will be stressful and difficult...not peaceful. So much for my retiring into serene nunhood.

And I know better than to imagine that life is an orderly (if invisible) progression of steps into authentic adulthood or wise Cronedom!  It seems, rather, to be a series of opposites: knowing and not-knowing, thinking and not-thinking...living the outer life, living the inner life, embracing the ambiguity of living both.

Maybe being an eccentric crone is a crazy multi-leveled state...that one could experience with considerable amusement. 

I still rather like the spiral model. You slide up into some new stage of consciousness...feel enlightened and wiser but before you know it you 'go back to sleep'...and months or years later you have to learn the same old thing again. Each time you may 'get it' more clearly...until that knowledge is in your bones.

But none of those models fits me today.  Right now I see myself as just BEING in the center of a CIRCLE..aware of all the somewhat cyclical milestones of my journey, and revisiting them or reflecting on them as necessary...but staying quiet in the center...not consciously traveling anywhere...being there...where part of me always was!

I'm not a Buddhist, but I love what Buddhist nun Pema Chodron said about retreating from outward distractions: "You quickly learn that distractions are not just phone calls and emails and outer phenomena. Our own mind, and our longings, and our cravings, and our fantasies and everything are also major distractions. And, as time goes on, and you're feeding it less ... You begin to sink deeper into the undistracted state. And then you begin to realize that life is always pulling you away from being fully present." 

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ECCENTRIC CRONISHNESS!

                     

 

Hard to believe, but I'll be 80 in a couple of years.  I just realized today, over a steaming cup of lemon ginger tea, that I no longer have to hang around with people and problems that focus on phases of life I've already climbed through! 

Apparently I have a whole new life assignment with it's own rigorous tasks and curcuitous routes.  

It seems natural to get caught up in the troubled lives of our children, or the crazyness of the current world.  I empathize.  But I'm not there.  

Maybe I'm supposed to excuse myself from the fray?  I need to step up to the well-earned spot where I can look back at my wounds and struggles with compassion. And put my energies into taking the next step...into eccentric cronishnes.

TV seems banal these days; inane, silly, chaotic and superficial.  Politics is as usual.  I just read a fabulous history of Cleopatra; queen, brilliant strategist, ruler of the intellectual center of the known world in the century before Christ. Alexandrian society was highly sophisticated, full of scholars, philosophers, libraries, artisans, warriors, lavish celebrations, intrigue, chaos and wars.  So there is NOTHING IS NEW UNDER THE SUN.  Empires come and go.  Human nature is predictable. 

What if my next lesson is to finally allow myself inner peace? to stay centerd and keep calm...to aim for Eccentric Cronedom...which seems to be another whole level of detachment from past psychological and societal prisons.  

We all have to make the long trek to become ourselves. We each come to the starting gate with unique genes, personalities, families, environs...etc.  But the tasks are similar.  Others are at different places on the path...and I'm in no posiition to judge them.

I would be very nervy to call myself a realized authentic adult woman or a wise crone.  But I'm working on it - and delving deep to find a map for this next part of the journey.

MASKS...and why we need them!

Masks get a bad rap!  We sometimes confuse them with inauthenticity or deceit.  But in the search for our 'true selves'or our essence, we have to try on a bunch of personas (Latin word for masks). As infants we have to find out if screaming or cooing gets us the most attention. And in our work, we either learn how to schmooze at parties (even if we're introverted)...or be seen as unsociable or worse.

Sometimes we malign our personas or adaptations as 'learned' rather than natural...we might say "I'm not really like that. I was a very shy child. I hid behind my mother's skirts. I hated to be introduced to new people. In boarding school, to cover my shyness, I found an unexpected persona as a humorist.....telling crazy stories, making jokes...always scanning the environment for what was needed to help me feel accepted/OK.  And who knew that my career would require lots of public speaking?  At first that mask felt frightening...but soon I took the mask off and found I could do it naturally. A great old saying (anon, alas) is: WE DISCOVER WHO WE ARE BY DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY!

But what is the cost of expressing yourself from behaviors that feel like masks or facades?  After awhile you can lose sight of who you are at the core. The way I can tell if I'm wearing my convenient and very well developed masks too much...is the loss of spontaneous energy. Sometimes I need to relax back into my original preferred introversion.   

Nevertheless, I am grateful for the opportunies I've had to aquire and express unexpected parts of myself and integrate them into my wardrobe of options. They make me feel more confident and competent. And less likely to retreat into an introverted hidey hole.  

By now I own that my learned behaviors are genuine parts of me.  Maybe I was always capable of extrovertish behavior but had been socialized early to repress it?  Maybe it only needed necessity, permission and practice to flourish as part of my personality?

                              

Other 'abilities', like putting up with sh*t, tolerating boredom, telling little white lies just to keep the peace...are also part of my bag of tricks.  But they DO NOT REFLECT my current Cronish values.  Even pretending to enjoy soul-deadening gatherings wearing a false mask of pleasure, patience or gratitude...grates on my new nerves.

Here's how my masks, or personas have helped me :)

*they let me audition for parts I couldn't imagine I'd be able to play

*they let me explore shadow parts of my personality that were repressed or previously unacceptable

*they let me play vivid and daring roles outside my comfort zone

AND, IF those masks didn't fit, weren't a genuine part of me, I could toss them

So, I'm glad we all have chances to try on different ways to present ourselves.  We can use those that make us feel more whole and discard those that shrink us. 

BAH - HUMBUG!!

I’m not mean, like Scrooge, and I don’t sit around counting my pennies...but I do notice a tendency to be GRUMPY...maybe it’s an old age thing?

For example:  Christmas seems like too much trouble.  Travel takes too much energy.  Gift wrapping is a waste of paper...and Traditions, in general, seem empty of meaning.  

Am I becoming emotionally lazy?  A curmudgeon?  Is the 'world just too much with us'...draining our energy?

Or am I just less willing to put up with things or people that don’t feed my soul?  I don't know.

 There are antecedents, however.  My mother, Gladys Palmer Anderson, was the original Mrs. Scrooge.  And she had to be...during the depression.  Somehow, through her clever planning, and prayer, and ‘making do’ she made us feel quite rich in ‘what matters’.  But she certainly didn't encourage needless celebrations.

As a child I would beg Mrs. Scrooge to let us have a Christmas tree.  She was tired I think...and her message was, essentially, “why go to all that bother?”. 

Yet, reluctantly, she’d haul out the old decorations from the attic...the faded red paper half-bell which opened out into a full round bell we hung from the chandelier in the middle of the living room...and ropes of green interlocking crepe paper loops strung from the bell across to the four corners of the room.  And boxes of thin flat strips of silver “icicles” to hang from every branch of the glowing tree.  

And I’d go out into the crisp blue night air and skate under the northern lights....skimming the ice in wide swaths - long glides - almost ecstatic with solitary joy.

These days I seem to have internalized mother’s careful spending of ‘energy'.  I find myself resistant to festivities, carnivals, circuses, big concerts, and MAGIC in general.

So I am always surprised when, in spite of all that conditioning, I spontaneously fall under the spell of holiday happiness...when the twinkly lights and the roaring hearth and the savory smells and the laughter of friends and family fill the air with warmth.

                        I love the magic of a whole town lit up in celebration of the season.  

              

VAINGLORIOUS!

Webster says vainglorious is: boastfully vain and proud of oneself...YUCK.  Who likes someone like that?  Nobody.

SHOWING OFF...was one of the many cardinal sins in my family.  You couldn’t even LIKE yourself or your pretty dress or your little watercolor painting. You were humble.

For example, I was shocked when my dear older friend Elizabeth (who was indeed quite famous) came home from Nieman-Marcus in Chicago and said, “Aren’t these shoes adorable, I think they look great on me”.  I was 27. She was 58. I still remember that I thought she lacked character by ‘showing off’ that way.

But honestly, isn’t it a temptation - when one is rather down, or unrecognized, or undervalued or demeaned or diminished in some way, or overlooked...or old and wrinkled...isn’t it human to drop a few hints into the conversation that remind folks of your moments of glory, your publications, or your famous friends, etc.  :)

Speaking of famous friends...did I tell you that I once rode in the Presidential cavalcade of Richard Nixon, of all people?  I was driving a red buick convertible with a 4x8 sheet of plywood propped up in the back seat...when, by accident, I entered an on-ramp the security people had failed to close off and suddenly I'm forced to merge between the huge black presidential limo with the stars and stripes aloft and a station wagon with 3 armed security guards sitting facing me... gesticulating wildly for me to get out of the cavalcade.  But all the off-ramps were closed...so, with heart racing I sped along Pennslyvania Avenue at 60 miles an hour - past the tidal basin, past the White House ... almost all the way to the Capitol...where I am questioned, and released!

Another silly remarkable moment was seeing Liberace about 1’ away from me in a pink blazer outside of Woolworths on Michigan Avenue in Chicago!

 

Once, about 50 years ago, they ran an article about me in the Chicago Sun Times...and the photographer who took the pictures won an award for 'best photojournalist'. 

 

Here’s one of his pics in which I now think I looked quite glamorous - for a librarian :)  That's hard for me to say 'out loud'.

 

Did I mention that once, in the 60’s, I was a speaker on the same program with writer Clifton Fadiman (is anybody old enough to remember CF?) at the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco?  Yep. 

 

It is actually a bit of fun to SHOW OFF - on purpose.  A bunch of us old crones threw a ‘shadow party’ up in Canada one year, and we all came dressed as parts of ourselves that we daren’t express. 

 

One friend came bearing her dissertation abstract, a picture of herself with the Dalai Lama, an award trophy and a book she’d written ....we loved it.

It is such a relief to be just a wee bit proud of yourself!  But don't let it go to your head.  And let's encourage our friends to strut their stuff too...why not?  

 

ROCKED IN THE CRADLE 'O THE DEEP...

It was the fall of 1911, exactly 100 years ago, that my 26 year old father set sail for Canada from Glasgow, Scotland. The old sailing ship met with a furious storm in the Atlantic and while wild waves crashed and shipmen frantically lowered the life boats, young Garden Campbell Anderson scaled the main mast, and, in his rough Scottish accent, sang out over the screams of the passengers...

"ROCKED IN THE CRADLE ‘O THE DEEP...I LAY ME DOON IN PEACE TO SLEEP...

                            SECURE I REST UPON THE WAVES....”

 

Watching the waves bashing against our rocks this morning I remembered Daddy’s oft-told tale of his perilous climb up the slippery mast...and how the terrible winds tore the song from his lips...  

 

Mother and I heard this story with a grain of salt. But more than 40 years later I was walking with my father on the streets of Regina, Saskatchewan, when, out of the blue, another old man stopped us...stared at Daddy, and said, “Could it be you, Gardy...you who sang Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep...when we were almost lost at sea!???”

 

Well, they fell into each other’s arms, and wept and re-lived that long-ago moment of panic and bravery.  

 

Daddy went on to serve for Canada in World War 1, 1914 -1918.   As a Sargent Major Instructor, he set aside his pacifist preferences and taught bayonet fighting and fencing in ‘THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION’.

 

He was a Victorian...(Queen Victoria herself being on the throne in 1885 when he was born), and, as such, he never truly believed in all the fancy modern things, like the automobile (which mother always drove, when we finally got one)...or the television which he saw as an abomination and pure nonsense. 

 

After years as a business man, and then a preacher, he finally opened his own bookstore, a dream come true for my bookish Scottish father.

 

TIME JUST SLIPS AWAY...

Where did this year go?  How can it possibly be almost Christmas? I can't even remember the summer...it certainly wasn't warm and lazy.  Will time just keep slipping away faster and faster as I hurtle toward the END???        

There's a lot of talk out there about savoring every moment, loving the life you live, etc. BUT what does that really mean...in an ordinary day?  For me, 'LIFE' keeps getting in the way of LIVING. There are so many things to do...and MAINTENANCE!  I hate maintenance.

Body maintenance; teeth cleaning, spinal adjustments, cholesterol labs, refilling prescriptions. House maintenace; the gutters, the furnace, the sprinkler system, the leaks, the termites.  Relationship maintenance; thank you notes, gifts, inquiries, little lunches, emails...And the everlasing dishes, garbage, laundry, cooking, eating, and shopping.  As Wordsworth says, "GETTING AND SPENDING, WE LAY WASTE OUR POWERS".

So how on earth can we carve out TIME FOR OUR SOULS?  And what would that look like if we could? What if we carefully scheduled time for our 'soul's' and then just sat there thinking about what we SHOULD be doing instead? 

I think we have to ALLOW time for our souls. Like when we feel the soft fur of a beloved pet, hear the deep strains of a favorite piece of music, see the eyes of a loved one, sense the slowing of our breath when we lie down for a nap...we need to notice it, stay with it. Experience it...

That's what I thought when I watched this seagull...just sitting there calmly amidst the wild chaos of the waves bashing on the rocks.  She seems to be 'gathering herself'...quietly holding her still-point, her standpoint.  

Maybe, as someone said, "The days of our lives must become precious..enjoy the perfection of what you are doing..."

Take YOUR time".