On This Day

I could work on being clever, cutting edge, or predictive in this post since it is my birthday. Instead, reflection is my menu choice.

I am a product of many things.

• Depression-era parents who married late and were often the oldest parents in the school audience on Parents Night.
• One older brother and no sisters with an almost 6 year gap between us. He never knew it but he was - and is - my hero.
• Thousands of checked-out books, first from the Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, library, and then, every library in every town in which I ever lived. First choice genre: crime and mysteries; close second, crafts.
• A small southeastern Pennsylvania town where the doors were always unlocked, bikes stayed out in the yard, and we often sat on the corner of the main road to watch the world go by, pumping our arms to get the trucks to respond with a horn blast.
• Survivor of a twenty-eight year marriage that while not ideal, had many positives, most notably three children and a legacy of wondrous grandchildren.
• A four year stint in an a capellla choir which included yearly United States tours and one European month-long trek. I've sung in many choirs.
• A liberal arts education at Gettysburg College where I majored in English and Education, but also dabbled in so many diverse courses of my own choice. Go, Sigma Alpha Iota, Sigma Kappa, and Alpha Phi Omega.
• The ultimate foods in no particular order: East Coast Italian hoagies; huge hot pretzels sold on Philly street corners - you rolled down your window and bought them on the fly (tasting far better than those from our ovens); artichokes loaded with garlic and parsley, rarely shared and enjoyed slowly; Italian water ice; and four inch melt-in-your-mouth peppermint sticks. Ah, I miss the sugared treats of my youth.
• I am an incurable animal lover, species not important. I raised my children with that love and it makes me proud.
• I fear snakes, spiders, and heights, my favorite number is 8, and if I could stay awake 24 hours a day, I would.
• My friends, my enemies, my acquaintances, my healthcare professionals who have cared beyond measure at critical times, my colleagues, my teachers, family friends, in-laws and everyone yet to cross my path.

A Trek Moment

I have done many things (perhaps things you never knew).

• I practiced endlessly in the yard, tossing the baton higher and higher. I was a baton twirler.
• I was a dancer, taking ballet, toe, tap, and acrobatic dance, for 10 years. Recitals scared me but oh, I loved the stage.
• I was a swimmer for more years of my life than I can count, it seems. I qualified for National competition, took my first airplane trips for the team, and learned so much about inner and outer strength, When I close my eyes, I can still remember exactly how it feels to be in the middle of an individual medley race in an Olympic-sized pool. Coach Dick Shoulberg defined my life.
• I was a musician and singer. Music was everything. I learned piano, organ, guitar, and yes, accordion. I even played in an accordion band for a brief time! And I can still sing large sections of the Latin Mass. "Panis Angelicus..."
• By the time I was 12, I had 126 pen pals from around the world. I catalogued them, organized their incoming letters and stamps, long before spreadsheets would have made it oh, so much easier. I wish I could relocate my pen pal, Colin Healey, who at 15 told me he loved me. As British entertainers came to our shores, I thought I was in heaven that I knew someone from England. I have searched without success.
• From the first time I remember printing my name at the indoor picnic table we used for art projects, my love of writing and writing implements has never waned. My favorites? Fountain pens that fill from an ink well and flow with the beauty of calligraphy. Exquisite decadence!
• I have taught thousands of young people and adults. And truly, they have taught me. Being an educator is a passion, a privilege, and a sacred trust. I love my students still. and always will. They have, indeed, made the ordinary extraordinary in my life.
• If it is a word game or puzzle, I love it. I won Spelling Bees in my youth. Twice. David Masiak was runner-up. Twice. My wining word the second year? "Acetate."
• I did 1000 piece puzzles with my grandmother weekly for years. We'd work on one for hours and she'd leave it for me to finish. I always did because I didn't want to disappoint her and her praise was profuse.
• I have spoken in front of thousands about education, leadership, integrity, AIDS, and more, using my teaching passion to inform, excite, enlighten.

And I am also a product of what I haven't done or been.

• I have never seen the West Coast, even though I hoped to travel there to receive my Master's degree. I have been to Alaska, so perhaps that has to count.
• I have never stolen anything that wasn't mine.
• I have never been a thin person by society's determination. When I swam, my shoulders were muscled from focusing on the butterfly stroke. I was good at being an athlete, but I didn't fit into the trendy dresses the other girls could wear. As an older adult, I just need comfort food too much.
• I have never been a corporate, ladder-climbing opportunist. Integrity is everything.
• I am not pushy, some say to my detriment. I listen, I encourage, but I never learned to make demands. Maybe it is because I have seen the pain that type of behavior brings.
• I have never tried escargot or squid, pickled pigs feet or head cheese. No, thank you. Not even on a dare. Not even doused in my favorite flavoring: anything citrus.

I will return to this post as I think of more things to include, It is a good day to consider, reflect, and share. I hope you agree. Maybe you will share some of yours with me. I'd love to hear!

 

Pious Amen

Please share a young person's view of the weekly responsibility of the Catholic faith in the Seventies. The confessional "booths" were priests in folding chairs in the high school gym. When our line arrived, we knelt behind whichever priest was without a supplicant. Youthful minds wandered and oh, those sinful sins! With a thankful nod to St. Pius X High School, now closed and only a memory.

L-R: Peggy, Rebecca, Marybeth, Sr. Teresa Urda

Lines
Lines
Everything
in
lines.
First class first, second class next,
Lines,
More lines.
          Alphabetical
          Academic
          Boy-girl
          Girl-boy
Ssh...SSH! Quiet, please!
Down the hall,
To the gym,
To confession...
To confession?
Kneeling,
Kneeling,
One    after    another
Quick
   headshift left,
              headshift right
To check...
Anybody listening?
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned..."
(I can't believe Mary French-kissed!)
"...it has been six days since my last confession..."
(Look at how short Judy's uniform is!)
"...these are my sins..."
What do I say?
How much do I tell?
Will he be shocked?
My God, he's a priest!

The ordeal is over;
Obligation fulfilled.
"Three Hail Marys, one Our Father, and a Glory Be"
Genuflect
Cross myself
Return to
Lines
Lines
Whispering
Chattering
"Sins forgotten" lines.

Missing Memories

I am haunted by things I remember and by things I don't remember. Perhaps the latter is even more disturbing because those things I can't recall sit just on the edge of my grayed out memory and taunt me.

Stark, life-altering memories are jarring in their clarity. I have spent decades of my life expunging the threads of events which determined my life course, I didn't want to remember everything...that was made obvious by how painful the memories were when restored. But remember I did, losing and gaining almost simultaneously. Grueling work to go through the process, but now, as those memories have moved back into the tapestry of my life, existing as facts but not in control my every move and thought, I look to the periphery.

The periphery contains the forgotten things, those events which touched my life but were not remarkable enough to be engraved for future recollection. Yet here I sit, futilely scratching the sand to release the details.

Emma Valenteen and Reginald Stabilit

My mother talked about her parents, the grandparents who were gone before I was born. I didn't listen, I guess. I try to pull up the details and there are none. I have pictures, but not stories.

My father told us how his father and stepfather were brothers. Not all that strange a circumstance in families in the early twentieth century. My grandfather died of tuberculosis (or so I think), and his brother stepped in to care for his sister-in-law and married her. That's all I know and it might not be the whole story or the right details at all. I just know my grandmother is buried between two men who have the same last name.

Residing in that gray area is how I ended up at Gettysburg College over others closer or less expensive. No one I knew chose Gettysburg, but that decision changed my life in so many ways. It led to a choir tour within the United States each spring; a month-long choir trip to Europe in my sophomore year; and such diverse courses as Eastern Religions, Music Appreciation, Sculpture, and Albert Camus seminars, all choices made in a nod to comprehensive and diverse education within my English major.

www.isolatecyclist.bostonbiker.org/

I remember I biked throughout college, but have no memory where. As a young mother, I left the apartment often, to escape the cooped-up feeling it gave me, but don't recall where I spent my time or how. For all the journaling I have done, these bits of life didn't make it into those pages, and while not life-altering, the fabric is torn, incomplete, unsatisfying.

I often wonder what determines those things we remember and how we remember them. Trauma has dictates all its own, but the commonplace, the normal....where do those things go to hide? I am at a point in my life where I want to recall the days playing in ocean waves, the random exploration of shops and restaurants in small towns I would pass through. I need to put a face on the woman who shared her heart-wrenching story of losing her first child to stillbirth, a story that changed forever my empathy for people suffering loss.

I won a cooking contest once. I remember the recipe, the surprise, but have no recollection of the cooking event, the interview, the other contestants, and the fleeting notoriety. I owned a cake decorating business, have photographs of many cakes, but have little memory of the long work days and client appointments, creative design sessions and delivery and set-ups. I want to remember.

Will memories continue to pile up just outside the edges of remembrance? Or maybe it is normal that even significant events can be blurred, then forgotten. As a writer, it would seem I should have known which ones to capture and hold, which ones to set free, and have been the keeper of that decision. Of course, we don't always know the importance of something until it is gone whether a memory, a trauma, or a feeling.

I will continue to reach into those recesses in the hope of shining a light. All of these things are a part of who I am and I need to remember, to connect the threads, complete the picture.