tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32649927246662820252024-03-12T19:18:08.291-07:00Wabi Sabi WordsTeresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-13498129961167253452021-05-29T09:09:00.007-07:002021-05-29T09:52:36.615-07:00Presumed Innocence <p><br /></p><p><img src="blob:https://www.blogger.com/8ed6b07c-e47b-4736-a5a2-6261c16c3dd0" /></p><p><br /></p><p>When I look at an “innocent” human life at four to six weeks gestational age, I think of Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy (so *cute* as babies), because so often the word “innocent” is applied to zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. Human development, like cancer, is “staged.” Because important things happen in every stage. Also, like cancer, smaller is better in terms of how likely it is to kill you. But I digress…</p><p><br /></p><p>I’ve wondered about this a lot, the “innocent until…when?” Are they innocent until they can have a conscious thought? Until they have an ugly thought? Until they experience physical desire? Until they intentionally hurt someone? Until they become sexually active? Was the Virgin Mary perpetually “innocent” but for the rest of us, does simply being born annihilate all our “innate innocence”? Is there any such thing?</p><p><br /></p><p>Isn’t innocence a lot like happiness? Fleeting, spotty, and randomly occurring (among the “living”)? Are we only innocent while standing still and incapable of having thoughts? </p><p><br /></p><p>And what is “good”? </p><p><br /></p><p>Psychopathy can be physically demonstrated on an MRI of the brain. Which means that if an embryo had a fully formed brain, we could scan it and predict who’s at risk of becoming a serial killer. But we wouldn’t be able to scan for sociopathy or narcissistic personality disorder, because these are “nurture” events, not “nature” conditions. We also can’t divine which embryos will later develop tumors in their left temporal lobes that may cause them to do heinous things like murder other humans. </p><p><br /></p><p>Some of the worst serial killers had as many as thirty victims, maybe more. In the context of a conscious human being murdered, a being capable of laughter and tears, hopes and dreams, memories and musings, “innocence” makes more sense to me. Because on the whole, these humans were realized potential, animated beings who dreamed out loud and suffered when they died. </p><p><br /></p><p>A woman is born with ovaries housing every egg she’ll ever have — one to two MILLION potential people. Only a handful will become actual people, and some of these will become miscarriages or bundles of anomalies inconsistent with “life.” Which is another interesting word: Life. </p><p><br /></p><p>Is a single-celled amoeba alive? Is a single cardiac cell, capable of beating on its own, “alive”? Coral reefs? Plankton? Atoms? (I hear the audience screaming, “Souls! They gotta have souls!”). And to that I say this: The Greek word for soul is “psyche”. So can we call the SOUL a MIND? And a mind lives in the brain. And when does a brain house a mind? When can it “think/feel”? Third trimester of pregnancy. But I digress again…</p><p><br /></p><p>I don’t think we can know when life “begins” because we haven’t meaningfully defined “life.” If conscious life outranks unconscious life, whole minds outranking mindless/soulless life forms, and if no one can discern which embryos are “good” versus bad, then “innocence” is no longer a useful defense. Especially since no one can really define it. </p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, Jeffrey Dahmer converted to Christianity before he was murdered in prison. So if you’re “good,” you’ll meet him in “heaven.” 😁 I’m so excited! (IF I make the cut…😬).</p>Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-12851925850408107952017-04-22T10:55:00.001-07:002017-04-22T12:08:23.067-07:00Belief<div class="comment-body">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
was once asked to state a belief that will not change. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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Only one came to mind, that the only permanence <i>is</i> change, that our
beliefs must grow as we do, evolve as we do. But this isn't the sort of belief I was
asked to write about. The belief had to be solid, cohesive, perhaps grandiose, mainstream, connected to a movement and rooted deep in popular culture. It had to have a documented history. But all I had was a concept, a way of seeing. It wouldn't answer prayers or grant immortality, so what good was it?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="comment-body">
Countercultural ideas are threatening. Just ask Jesus.<br />
<br />
So many of my beliefs have been
challenged in the past two decades -- that love conquers all, that my children are
protected by the crazy intensity of my immense love, that God will protect me
because I'm as special to <i>Him-with-a-capital-H</i> as my children are
to me, that there's a super cool heaven after death, that we each have one
ultimate soul mate. But I grew up and away from all that is safe and soft. After that, there wasn't much left to cuddle up to, hold tight. The old beliefs, like the comforting plush toys I slept with as a child, fell apart, from their button eyes to the thin stitched mouths. These comforts were replaced with reason in a process both painful and freeing.<br />
<br />
I do believe in love, but don't believe it conquers all. It can't conquer
addiction or infidelity, mental or physical illness. But it helps. For me, love is like the idea of God (or whatever you prefer to call your higher power). Love,
like a higher power, can only ease the pain. We can love the addicted, love the
unfaithful, love those suffering with illnesses of the body or mind, but we
can't love the wrong away. God doesn't "cure" people. God is an energy field of possibility, similar to those plastic toy mazes that little bb's roll around in, the sort you get
in a Cracker Jacks box. The choices made tilt the maze in various directions, rolling our unstable bb's toward various outcomes, toward fate. </div>
<div class="comment-body">
<br />
Sometimes circumstances beyond our control roll us toward hell.
And no, it's not fair. But we can't blame God anymore than we can blame gravity. If we didn't have to wrestle
with gravity and imperfection, if our wills had wings, we could float fate wherever we wanted it
to go.<br />
<br />
But we're not in control. Prayer doesn't work like a letter to your
congressman. It isn't a red order button at Sonic. It's not a wants/needs
vending machine. Prayer is a meditation, a listening inward. We often have an
answer we're looking for, but not the courage to face it, the quiet to hear it, nor faith in our own
wisdom. When we pray to get centered, to pause our movement within the maze, we usually feel better. We think
better. We empty our vessels of thought junk, the lies we tell ourselves,
unnecessary barbs of fear. Prayer is good, but it's not a way to win a lover
back, cure someone's cancer, or win a game for your favorite basketball team.<br />
<br />
Belief. I don't believe in much. In a way, that's freeing. But for a long time it made me feel like less, like when all the candy is gone and the Waterford dish is empty. <br />
<br />
I once loved the occult, all that convoluted mystery scented with nag-champa incense and patchouli candles, full of bright crystals and gypsy palm readings, bejeweled psychics and handmade dreamcatchers. I believed that supernatural
influences were behind everything, working on our behalf. I believed that our
fate was known in some far away heaven, our destinies written by a divine author in flowing white robes, that our soul mates followed us across
lifetimes. Life was beautiful in an incandescent way, an emotional stimulant and kaleidoscope of everything I most needed to be true, and like the high of any addictive drug, it became more and more difficult to sustain.<br />
<br />
Nowadays life has more realistic hues, still beautiful without the shades of Unicorn White or Psychedelic Silver. Life isn't what I wanted
for Christmas, and Santa is just a fat man, maybe even a pedophile. But
there’s power in learning to accept reality. It builds serenity, courage, and wisdom. And reason makes you sound like less of an idiot.</div>
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: small;">We don't have to give up beauty or meaning. The universe is exquisite just the way it is, adorned only by nature's laws and the evolved ethics of love. The real world provides <i>real</i> furry creatures to love and hold (and feed and walk and clean up after). There's plenty to believe in without embellishment. The universe doesn't need a grandfatherly persona to win popularity or respect, nor does it need to <i>love</i> us per se, though in a way it does. The universe wants us around, not because of any sentient wizard behind it all, but because </span><span style="font-family: "cambria";">life's instinct is to create, to preserve itself.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: small;"> Life seeks life, not obedient minions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: small;">That is enough for me, even without the promise of an afterlife; <i>especially</i> without the promise of a forever <i>ME</i>. I came from star matter. Stars die. But life's finitude is essential to its worth. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: small;">And now that I think about it, reason does not make us less in the metaphor of the crystal dish sans all the addictive sugar; there’s clarity when the vessel is clean, an unobstructed view of
the light. And the cool thing about light? It's constant.</span><br />
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<!--[endif]--><!--EndFragment-->Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-77144338142796014682016-04-23T12:12:00.004-07:002016-04-23T13:19:28.846-07:00And This I Promise...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-84SqGbpk40U/VxvJ4tTFSZI/AAAAAAAAANc/qur6Krw9uecHzncDMRKHxgy-4jTZjmdtgCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-84SqGbpk40U/VxvJ4tTFSZI/AAAAAAAAANc/qur6Krw9uecHzncDMRKHxgy-4jTZjmdtgCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B25.jpg" width="279" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The first alarm went off at midnight, a shrill continuous thrusting of sharp metal through our eardrums. Then we heard what I knew was coming, my autistic son's screams.<br />
<br />
He wasn't hurt, just filled with terror, the kind that erases all rational thought. His mind was on fire, not our house. He screamed my name when he saw his father's image in his bedroom, "No!! I need Mom!!"<br />
<br />
He calls my name when he's afraid, as though I am omnipotent, the panacea for any ailment, any assault. He has not yet learned that my skill set is limited.<br />
<br />
~~~<br />
<br />
A few months ago my nine year old son began having nightmares and developed a fear of fire alarms and thunder, of the electricity being cut off during a bad storm. He hates shrill sounds and the absence of light. These feelings are mostly universal, but the intensity of his emotional reaction is not. His autism exacerbates these reactions, blows them far out of proportion. He becomes paranoid, so much so that no matter where we go, he's watching the skies and assessing the risks, scoping out the ceilings and tops of walls, looking for the nearest fire alarms, looking for fire pulls. If he can't find them he asks me to help. I assure him that no storms are coming, that any rain will be gentle, that the fire alarms won't go off. Unless, of course, there's a fire. But there will be no fire, until there is one, but... Don't worry, my love, Mommy's here. <br />
<br />
For now.<br />
<br />
When these fears began I decided to purchase a small crucifix for him, a crude rendering made of natural stone. I placed it in a wooden treasure chest along with a small keychain flashlight. I told him the stone cross would keep the nightmares away, and that if the electricity were to go out, there was a source of physical light in the treasure box.<br />
<br />
I gave these crucifixes and treasure boxes to several boys who have autism. They all attend a sacrament preparation class I co-teach at our Catholic church (a position taken to protect and keep an eye on my son). All of the boys had tearfully described bloodcurdling nightmares and it broke my heart. They think literally, so I knew a physical talisman would help, despite my lack of belief in the supernatural, no matter what form it takes. <br />
<br />
It was no surprise when the boys' mothers reported later that the nightmares had stopped.<br />
<br />
I'd known the crucifixes would be effective, not because of their shape or intended meaning, but because of the power ascribed to them. My daughter had a similar item to sleep with when she was younger, a purple "dragon tooth." We'd purchased the three-pronged "tooth" from the Texas Renaissance Festival in 2008, an item we had to take with us on every trip away from home lest she refuse to close her eyes at bedtime.<br />
<br />
I glued the Dragon Tooth back together many times once her little brother was old enough to discover and break it. At some point a tip of one of the prongs on the tooth was forever lost, which didn't render it any less potent. The magic remained intact, and even now that my daughter is nearing her eleventh birthday and no longer needs the magic (or has assigned it elsewhere), she still keeps the Dragon Tooth for sentimental reasons. It sits on her dresser beside a stack of dragon fantasy books, near her favorite jewelry, a few inches from a mirror she pays much more attention to these days.<br />
<br />
Last night the alarm went off multiple times as my husband struggled to identify which battery was defunct. There were several, it turns out, so I let my nine year old sleep in our bed, his cheeks still wet with tears. He remained close to me all night, a part of him always touching a part of me -- a foot on a foot, his hand resting on my arm or gently holding my hand. He needed to feel safe and secure, to attach to a more powerful source that would drive down the volume of his terror.<br />
<br />
This morning we're all tired from last night's drama, from being awakened at midnight and again at 3 am. My neck is stiff from remaining in the same position all night, stuck at the edge of the bed, stationary so as not to disturb the fragile tranquility of the sleeping child beside me.<br />
<br />
The 9V batteries in every fire alarm will be replaced today. They won't last forever, of course. One day this or next year, per much experience, one or more batteries will fail. At that time my son's terror will likely return. There will be storms in the interim, our home rattled with intense thunder, the inevitable wrath inherent in nature, squashing our minuscule ration of power. <br />
<br />
There will be darkness, which I cannot control.<br />
<br />
All I can promise is my best effort, that I will be here to protect him as much as I can for as long as possible. But my son knows deep in his bones that one day my energy will fail. I will lose power and my physical light will burn out. Until then I must teach him that his treasure is an abiding trust, an unyielding faith in something greater, an ideal held in our figurative hearts, or perhaps genuinely ascribe to something physical we can touch and hold, no matter its shape. <br />
<br />
The goal is to feel safe, to be seen and loved by a warmth we can we can touch in our most vulnerable moments. It is a universal prayer that crosses all divides, this reach for tranquility, for enduring light, no matter how ephemeral the source.Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-78616643535195817272016-02-15T12:23:00.003-08:002017-02-10T17:47:55.352-08:00Abandoned Places<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">I’ve always had a
thing for brokenness. I’m drawn to broken people, broken lives. I love the Japanese aesthetic, Wabi Sabi, which is a
way of seeing beauty in brokenness. Nothing is perfect, nothing lasts,
nothing is finished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">This is probably
why I’m so drawn to abandoned places. I have a board on Pinterest for
abandoned places — mansions, mental institutions, amusement parks, nuclear
plants, farmhouses. Every place has an essence, even unoccupied. There’s something about an empty place, a place stopped in time,
humans taken out of the equation. The stillness of inanimate objects and
invasion of dirt, leaves and even trees, creates an echo of the past, creates the same melancholy in me as a long baleful train whistle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">Time has stopped
in these places. Memories have stopped. But life is not stopped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">I can’t help but
try to imagine the lives that once moved there. I’ll imagine mentally picking up the trash,
cleaning and straightening the curtains, fluffing pillows, vacuuming. I add people, television
sounds, music, stories, drama, and love. But I can never get it
right. What came before is a mystery. Where souls go when
they abandon the body is even more of a mystery.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">In most dream interpretation books, houses represent spirituality, like
the home of the psyche. Multi-storied houses are vast and perhaps more
accommodating for old souls, etc. There is meaning in
hidden </span><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17pt;">rooms, behind
locked doors, down below in the dark of the basement.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">When I look at
abandoned places, it’s like looking at a postcard from death. The souls have all gone elsewhere and now
there’s just stuff, soulless matter. If the house were a repository for
the soul, now the soul is gone, and the house is empty. Like the body
when we die. The body is just </span><i><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">stuff</span></i><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">. I want to
donate my stuff when I die. Why leave it to waste?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">Anyway, here comes
a segue… Since I live in Autism World, I see a lot of disabled people,
every kind of disability. I see broken minds all the time, broken bodies,
broken lives. Some can not contemplate their own lives. Which makes
me wonder about the mind, the soul, the part of us that is believed by some to
live on after we die. Some believe that this part that lives on will
inhabit a new and improved body, will have a new brain. </span><br />
<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">Will my son be whole in
heaven, if there is such a place? Will he no longer struggle? Will
there be a forever home for his beautiful spirit?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">Such a scenario
would bring me great comfort, but I have my doubts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">If things are
above as they are below, then who’s to say we don’t have abandoned houses in
heaven? Even stars die, and the rate of star birth is slowing. The
universe is full of black holes, black throats swallowing anything nearby, an
emptiness so deep as to have tremendous mass and gravitational pull. Not
even light can escape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">Julian is starting
to worry about dying, about me dying. He says he wants to be with me
forever. The first time I tried to comfort him with talk of heaven, of us
being there together one day, he thought for a moment then asked, “Will we play
Angry Birds?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">In other words,
will we have corporeal lives? Things around us to knock on, taste, wrap
our arms around? I think not. But I won’t be telling my son this.
He needs reassurance, to be certain there’s a place for us, a forever
home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">A place is never
just a place to me. The older, the better. I feel the rich texture of
history in the oldest places. I’ve been known to put my nose to the walls, to reach as far as my mind is able to sense the lives that came before, to honor them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">I did this once in
an abandoned hospital. The x-ray department was the only part of the
building left operating and I was the sole employee. Because I was rarely busy, I often took walks around the empty building. The eeriest place
was the surgical ward. There were overturned tables and gurneys, a few
tourniquets and empty glass canisters. The walls were turquoise ceramic
tile, still shiny. The large domes of overhead lights were darkened,
covered in dust. Straggly wires protruded from broken intercom systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">I stood for a long
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taken place there. I also imagined how many lives were lost, then
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">In that moment I
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">Maybe this was just me feeling sorry for the dead, feeling sorry for </span><i><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">my</span></i><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;"> dead, feeling sorry for myself and everyone else slated to
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">No life</span><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;"> escapes death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V1FiZWrItNk/VsI0jl5IESI/AAAAAAAAANA/lqZr-OwiGmI/s1600/doll.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V1FiZWrItNk/VsI0jl5IESI/AAAAAAAAANA/lqZr-OwiGmI/s320/doll.png" width="182" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">We’re told over
and over again that the </span><i><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">stuff</span></i><span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;"> of life doesn’t
matter. We’re told that our bodies will die, that we can’t take the stuff
with us, that only the soul matters — the soul and love. Which may be why
that’s all I can think of when I look at an empty place, where neither exists.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">I pine for the
knowledge of what came before. Were there children? A father?
What was the last meal prepared in the empty pot on the stove?
Where did the sounds go? The laughter in the amusement park.
The screams in the asylum. The conversations about nothing, whispers
in the dark, secrets and ‘I love you’s’. The steady hum of unanswered
prayers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;">The blemished
walls will never tell me. But there is life there, in the cells of the inanimate, in the secrets the walls keep.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #292725; font-size: 17.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-39639604614186754012016-02-07T11:31:00.003-08:002016-02-23T10:15:40.359-08:00Shrine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iIxvRus2TpY/VreRAPHku7I/AAAAAAAAAMo/_TqcFgslK-w/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iIxvRus2TpY/VreRAPHku7I/AAAAAAAAAMo/_TqcFgslK-w/s320/FullSizeRender%2B18.jpg" width="242" /></a></div>
<br />
My collection started in 1983, the year I graduated from high school, the week my mother died. <br />
<br />
I'd gone to the house where it happened, 1307 Bellgrove Avenue in Seabrook, Texas. I'd moved out of this home six months prior, to start my own life. Returning to gather things to remember her by was difficult. The day her body was found police asked me over the phone, "Do you want to see her?" But I couldn't. She'd been dead for more than twelve hours, her body already rigid. My imagination had already provided sufficient unwanted images. I didn't want to see her that way. <br />
<br />
When I returned to collect a few things the following week, I feared the police and coroner had left some remnant of that horrible event, perhaps part of the sandwich she hadn't finished, the glass of curdled milk or dried vomit on the chair. It would be hard enough to view this recliner my stepfather had insisted on keeping, <i>her</i> chair.<br />
<br />
I suppressed my fear and returned to the scene. I moved toward the bookshelves behind the favorite chair where she'd been found. My eye went straight to a prescription drug reference book. I picked it up, saw that she had redlined the information on the drug that killed her. I took a handful of other books, one by Dr. Wayne Dyer, <i>Your Erroneous Zones</i>, and another by Erma Bombeck, <i>If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits?</i>.<br />
<br />
I avoided looking at the recliner.<br />
<br />
In her dust-free bedroom I found favorite perfumes neatly aligned on a white dressing table -- Cache', White Diamonds and Este'. On the master bathroom counter was a blue elastic headband once used to hold back her hair as she applied Merle Norman foundation, loose powder, and her Cover Girl signature green or blue eyeshadow. There was a clear plastic hand mirror, a green bristle brush, a black ratting comb, a tall can of VO5 hairspray. <br />
<br />
I opened the medicine cabinet, noticed immediately the empty prescription bottle once containing the tricyclic antidepressant, Amitriptyline. <br />
<br />
I closed the cabinet, picked up the blue headband and moved to her closet.<br />
<br />
Her clothing still smelled like White Diamonds. To be close to her, I gathered my arms around several colorful blouses, buried my face in handfuls of soft perfumed fabric, and sobbed. I'd held it together until that moment.<br />
<br />
I pulled two of her favorite shirts from their hangers and folded them neatly, closed the closet door. I moved back to the white dresser to collect a teddy bear pin I'd passed over earlier. It was part of a pair, similar to one I had at home. She'd bought these for us only two weeks earlier, asking, "Which one do you want?" Now they could be together.<br />
<br />
Thirty-two years later I still have these items. I studied them the other day, noticing for the first time that the shirts came from JC Penney, one blouse hippy, the other Holly Hobby. I could envision my mother wearing them, her cat-like elegance gliding from room to room in the Bellgrove house, down the narrow hall away from me, her head held high to conceal the chronic terror she numbed by self-medicating, overindulging, sacrificing her own power.<br />
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<br />
There are other saved items unrelated to my mother. There's a stuffed bear commemorating a fundraiser for AIDS research; this in honor of my friend, Dr. R, who died of the disease in 1996. There are small clay pieces crafted by my now grown son, perhaps to represent a childhood lost. His lost teeth and those of his older sister are kept in colorful bamboo boxes lined with red silk. <br />
<br />
There are two photographs, one of deceased cats, Max and Madison, and the other of a Vietnamese woman I never knew. A friend took the photo in the mid-'90s during a trip to Vietnam. When he showed me his photo album, I found this particular picture so mesmerizing, haunting, the brightness of a yellow doorway and her gracious smile belying the weariness in her eyes. He said I could keep it.<br />
<br />
The photo is in a jewel-toned frame which was a gift from Deedee, my best friend for eighteen years. <br />
<br />
Deedee died in a car accident in Friendswood, Texas, 1998. For her I keep a small Indian headdress she made from safety pins, red and black beads, strips of leather and weightless gray feathers; a rock totem of a snake representing birth, death and regeneration; a card once attached to a friendship music box which reads: <i>Your [sic] right there, </i>a private nod to our soulful connection; a purple calla lily lamp with a bronze frog at the base. The lamp, like my mother's bear pins, was a pair, one for her, one for me.<br />
<br />
A few years ago my youngest daughter came home with a Spanish assignment to celebrate Dia De Los Muertos. I asked if she wanted to honor the grandmother she lost twenty-three years before her birth, so she did. She decorated a small square box with a photo of my mother, brightly patterned tape and colorful glass stones, then we added cut tissue paper, dried flowers and other personalized essentials: a Butterfingers candy bar, a copy of my mother's favorite Serenity Prayer, a brief description of this lovely 5'2" woman who wrote songs and poetry and who, for as long as I can remember, took in countless stray dogs and people.<br />
<br />
The following year my daughter honored my brother, David. In his box we placed photographs of Bruce Lee, hot sauce, nunchucks and a photo of the Beatles album, <i>Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band</i>. Since learning more about his life, I would add photographs of the Mojave Dessert, its Joshua Trees and creosote bushes, the slate strips of endless highway cutting through a land of contrasting succulence and barrenness.<br />
<br />
These remembrance boxes are kept with the other items I've saved for decades, with dozens of photo albums and journals, crates of baby and childhood mementos from each of my four children. <br />
<br />
These tangible objects help me remember the dead, recall lost childhoods, summon ephemera. They are physical reminders of the people and things, times and places I have loved. Once in a while I need to <i>touch</i> that love, to steady my heart and the sputtering reels of memory.<br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-81523831082156832732015-12-30T16:40:00.002-08:002016-01-29T10:01:16.548-08:00New Address<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wqy8_FSeJAM/VoRUZDOxNTI/AAAAAAAAAL8/gF6amEjXKao/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B14.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wqy8_FSeJAM/VoRUZDOxNTI/AAAAAAAAAL8/gF6amEjXKao/s320/FullSizeRender%2B14.jpg" width="275" /></a><br />
<br />
An address can never truly be permanent. We will move again or die, right? Maybe not. <br />
<br />
My husband, children and I moved recently, to a lovely rent house 2.4 miles from our former address. We sold the former house to build our dream house, and during the eighteen to twenty-four month period of construction we'll live in this borrowed space.<br />
<br />
Renting feels kind of nice, like volunteering or working a temp position. We're not fully responsible for this space we don't own. There's no forever commitment, so it feels like play, with a slight degree of anonymity. We can enjoy the space, the way a candystriper enjoys strolling down hospital corridors as though she's officially on the payroll, when her only duties are refilling water pitchers and delivering flowers to the correct rooms. Sure, a temporary space does feel somewhat borrowed, but it provides a pleasant, albeit false, sense of possession. It's like a nice hotel room stay while on vacation. Who cares that we can't paint the walls when we've got complimentary comforts like soaps, shampoos and lotions, even a coffee pot in the room. We can hang our clothes here, sleep here, take a hot shower, watch TV. We have a key. But because we're only here for a little while, and because the room is part of a larger dream we've worked hard to achieve, we will not tire of the place. Instead, there's a sustainable newness, renewable anticipatory energy.<br />
<br />
The borrowed space is a symbol of what is to come.<br />
<br />
To celebrate building anew I've made other changes -- a new (leased) car and dramatically different hair color. I've lost 25 pounds. I've gotten comfortable in this larger, more accommodating home office where I now write, so unlike the claustrophobic and doorless nook I left behind at the former address. Now I have space for my big black writer's desk, my massage table and chair, manual camera and tripod, photography manuals, essential oil collection, an enormous armoire to hold mountains of books/notes/files. I have space for more bookshelves, keepsakes, a comfortable chair where I can read in peace or journal. <br />
<br />
I was able to rescue everything from the storage facility where my possessions had lived far too long, objects of creative expression and sentimental value. They are personal effects, define who I am, and they now accompany me in this temporary space. I find myself falling into temporary love with the clean vanilla walls and warm hardwood floors, with the ample light shining through large windows, with a door that locks.<br />
<br />
I can't tell you how happy this makes me, how whole and secure I feel. I'm no longer scattered between two floors, several rooms, closets, drawers and an offsite storage facility. <i>Finally</i>, I have an adult room of my own. No more living in pieces.<br />
<br />
I have an ambitious goal during this eighteen to twenty-four month period of building our dream home. The goal is to finish writing my memoir. The rough draft is nearing 80,000 words. It's a mess but has a discernible shape and is mostly breathing on its own. My family of origin has never felt more alive, present. I don't believe in ghosts, so I attribute this warmth and communion with my deceased or far away parents and siblings to hard-won healing, to methodically assimilating memories, lessons, pain. Writing about my first loves has taught me more than sharing a life with them could. There was much I hadn't seen before cradling all their letters at once, their report cards, birthday cards, photographs, shirts, before folding these impressions into deeper meaning, into words. <br />
<br />
I've now walked the streets of my loved ones, studied their footsteps. I've collected every available piece of them, every note, essay, photo. I've gathered them here in a temporary space, a pocket for each family member inside a fuchsia and burgundy cloth crate. They live there for now, each in their own compartment, as well as in the bright pixels of their evolving story.<br />
<br />
All this collecting and storing is like a prayer or meditation, an adoring psychical embrace. I'm holding them in thoughtful remembrance while recording their story. They are no longer scattered between years and stray pieces of paper, too many miles of disjointed memories. I have secured pieces of their lives in this temporary but spacious room, so that they may be released again, free as the dream I have always wished for them. Their new home will be among pages of contiguous story, <i>their</i> story, safe and whole. <br />
<br />
Their permanent address will be titled <i>Pieces</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-22558952158937090982015-08-01T14:24:00.003-07:002015-08-01T14:30:41.493-07:00Dear Sister Amygdala<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i>Originally published 2/12/2015 This is a work of fiction...*cough*</i></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So I understand that you slapped a
seven year old across the face. My son. Your student.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You know he is disabled, that he has
autism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What's that? You're saying the
slap came from the almond shaped mass of nuclei deep within your brain? That
your amygdala was trying to do what it does, process fear and anger, maybe a
few old memories from your childhood? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Were they <i>painful</i> memories?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Oy, Sister. He touched your
veil, tugged on it even. Yes, it came off, and this was the end of the
world <i>how</i>? Yes I know that you were humiliated, mortified.
But you should never, ever-ever-<i>ever</i> slap a student, especially an
autistic seven year old.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Especially <i>my</i> autistic seven
year old. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You're his first nun. He met
you only six months ago when school started. He had no idea what the
significance of the veil was. But more important than discussing the
obvious, I have a question: Would you have told me yourself about the
abuse? Or did you think losing the veil was more significant than
slapping a disabled child, so therefore not worth mentioning? Were you so
angry you felt he deserved a good hard slap and then, at best, hoped he wouldn't
(be able to) tell anyone?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">This morning I learned that you've
been terminated. My son would have been withdrawn from your school if the
principal hadn't terminated you immediately. And I must admit I'm a
little sad about this, as puzzling as it sounds. I don't really think you
understand the gravity of your actions, which is part of the problem.
Someone who lives in a bubble shouldn't work with disabled children,
especially when that someone has such a short fuse, a fuse lit by imaginary slights.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Yes, I understand that your cultural
roots and naïveté contributed to your actions, lit up that tiny amygdala of
yours like a roman candle. With your emotions in overdrive I'm sure you
felt there wasn't enough time to think of my autistic son's limited capacity to
understand what he'd done, his unacceptable crime against your habit. You
only had time to think about your own feelings, right? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">That's pretty messed up, Sister. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You described your emotions well:
"For a moment, it felt like an electric wave rushed over me."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Shock, perhaps? Yes, you felt
shock. This is how I felt as well, when I learned you'd struck my son.
I'm still in shock. Are you? Is your amygdala still burning
with rage? Or are you feeling better now? Maybe I should pray for
you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Not</span></i><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You know what's funny? We've
been down this road before. Back in 2010 my son attended the preschool
across the street from the school. He was three and a half, had attended
the program since the age of eighteen months. He had a new teacher that year,
Ms. Wormer. She told me that she thought there was something "not
quite right" with my son (her exact words). Then a few weeks later
she held my hands, looked deeply into my eyes and said she had joined a prayer
group "to cope with having him in [my] class. It's going to be a
tough year." She was, in essence, begging me to withdraw my son.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">And so I did, immediately.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fast forward three years later, when
after a successful stint in a special school for children with autism, we
decided to return to the Catholic education system. With great
trepidation, we enrolled my son in your school. On the way to his
"visiting day" he appeared nervous and said, "I don't like St.
They're-All-The-Same. The teachers are mean."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Really? I wonder now what Ms.
Wormer did to my son besides insult him in front of me? And how did my
son feel yesterday when his greatest fear came true? His <i>and</i> mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Shame on you, Sister. You and
Ms. Wormer should have tea sometime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I'm concerned that all the progress
we've made over the years has been compromised now. You've slapped the
trust and confidence right out of both of us. How many times did it
happen, these slaps? Just once? Or have you been slapping him down
for the past six months?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Yesterday, when I talked to him about
never pulling on your veil again (as you'd asked in your hastily handwritten
note, complete with exclamation points), he suddenly slapped himself across the
face.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">"Why did you do that to
yourself?" I asked him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">"Sister hit me like that.
Hard. It hurt."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I didn't want to believe such a thing
could really happen. I hoped my son was just acting out another scene
from a favorite movie, but we don't really watch movies about nuns assaulting
disabled children. That's just not my favorite genre. Then I
watched the tears well up in his eyes while my own amygdala twitched and
burned. In my mother's gut I knew. I knew you'd hit him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A few minutes later you emailed me,
asked a second time (just as emphatically) that I reinforce your lesson to my
son, to make sure he never touches your precious veil again. I emailed
back, explained my son's reaction to our little talk, his inadvertently ratting
you out. To be fair, I asked you to elaborate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Hours went by with no reply. I
imagined you lying prostrate before God, begging forgiveness while careful not
to let your veil touch the floor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Three hours and fifteen minutes later
you wrote back: "Yes I did. And I am sorry for any hurt it may
cause him. I [sic] was more of a reaction to something so shocking on my
part. I understand that it was not the best response at the time."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">An understatement, don't you think
Sister? Don't you also think my child was shocked to be slapped senseless
by a woman in God clothes? What a lovely shade of off-white. I
suppose each piece of your clothing has significance, perhaps even its own
prayer as it is donned -- <i>God bless this holy habit, and the institution for
which it stands.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You are unaware that you've been
terminated. You are in training classes this morning, social skills
training, I believe. How ironic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Tomorrow the school principal will
hand you your walking papers. You'll never hurt my son again, and he'll
never again put his hands on your holy habit. But I can't help but wonder
where you'll go next. Will you be transferred to another school?
Will you hurt others? Will your career follow the course of abusive
priests who were secretly shuffled from place to place, their egregious
behaviors never properly punished? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">No, you're not a pedophile, not even
close, but you behaved inappropriately, a delicate word for a nun who hurts children.
And it wasn't just some kid you hurt. It was <i>my</i> kid.
This incident has completely severed our faith in "the
faithful." I was already full of anger and doubt regarding religion,
especially the Catholic Church. The list of reasons is very long, but
yesterday was the topper. If a nun can't behave, a priest, a church, a
teacher, what's the point? Who can we trust?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Bottom line, Sister Amygdala, you
chose a habit over a human. That's not what Jesus would have done.
That thing on your head is made of cloth. But my child is flesh,
bone, blood, heart, and a mind that won't forget.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-31865967728947818672015-07-24T09:10:00.001-07:002015-07-24T09:15:56.959-07:00Fishing For Adjectives*<i>Written from a recent HoW (House of Writers) retreat in Tualatin, Oregon.</i><br />
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Once in a while I'll hear splashing, here lately, something leaping from the still surface of the Tualatin river and slap-crashing back into it.</div>
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That's so like how words emerge, that perfect word, the noun, the verb, the adjective.</div>
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Which is more elusive? In greatest supply? Are there more people, places and things, action words, or words we use to describe these?</div>
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And what about the words to describe what we can't see, hear, feel with our fingers or taste with our tongues?</div>
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What about the invisibles? </div>
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Show me love. Show me rage and grief and feeling alone in a crowd. What is that moment in the middle of the night when the distractions sleep, when that army of secrets we keep from ourselves rises from the darkness? How do we show the closing of the distance between ourselves and the bent woman in torn clothes, or the battered infant limp in his abuser's arms, or the man in the Bob Marley t-shirt ready to leap from a bridge or into a fresh bottle of Xanex? </div>
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What is the word for the encapsulating moment we realize: <i>We are everyone</i>. </div>
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It takes more than a word or ten to gather the invisibles, to show the tenderness of a mother's nails gently raking her daughter's arm, the soul of the collective, an ephemeral place or moment. Sometimes it takes an ineffable journey, an every conceivable cover to cover trek from Big Bang prologue to dust-settled denouement, a first to last breath of all nouns, verbs, commas, periods, pauses, breaths; a leap of infinite space where the words are left out, where they retreat.</div>
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Sometimes adjectives aren't words at all, but in the ghosts of what we don't say, can't begin to say, just beneath the surface.</div>
Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-5390617135356154012015-07-14T16:06:00.003-07:002015-07-14T19:15:42.288-07:00Amazing Grace"I hope our faith isn't just a bunch of bologna," said my nine year old daughter.<br />
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Heavy thoughts for a fifty-two pounder.<br />
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What do I say to that? I had the same concerns and doubts at her age. My conclusion was formed incrementally over the next forty years, after trying on different religions, after struggling against my suspicions, praying then refusing to pray, after reading and re-reading the Bible, quizzing priests and pastors, asking questions until my lips turned blue. <br />
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My conclusion? That Catholicism and the Bible are, for <i>me</i>, bologna. All deities are the adult version of Santa, a kind higher power, a force for good. Something pseudo-sacred.<br />
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This was never what I wanted. I fought so hard to hold on to faith, but the truth beat me down.<br />
<br />
As I type there's a prickly heat in my belly, an angry fire tinged with anxiety. It's the result of stuffing sadness and grief for the past several years. I'm grieving the loss of God, only rather than acknowledge my sadness and grief, I've squeezed them into a tight fist of anger, a fitful response to the loss of psychic comfort.<br />
<br />
I never wanted to be the one to take that comfort away from my children. My plan was to show them the Catholic bag of tricks, then let them find out for themselves that it was all bogus. At least that way they'd have a comfortable childhood, a safe passage toward adulthood.<br />
<br />
But my nine year old is too smart. She smells that funny odor of falsehood, the not-quite-right stench of a lie -- well-intended or not. It's her intuition nudging her common sense, and she's too self-aware to ignore it.<br />
<br />
There's another emotion at work here: fear. I'm flying solo as a parent when it comes to losing my religion. My husband is 100% Catholic, EWTN solid, Bible study strict, a proponent of transubstantiation, the saints and sacraments. So you see, I'm in a precarious place, a situation I must ultimately confront. <br />
<br />
Love is definitely putting others' needs before your own. Which is why I've signed up to assistant-teach catechism to my youngest son who has special needs. He wants to receive the Eucharist. He needs my help to make it through the education process. I will do whatever it takes to help him achieve this goal. I will encourage what brings him peace of mind, encourage prayer and belief in all Catholicism has to offer. And I will continue to attend mass every Sunday with my family, genuflecting, kneeling, reciting prayers, bowing my head when the Nicene Creed refers to Mary's virginity. <br />
<br />
Because it's my duty to make my children feel safe, even if it means promoting an impossible world in which humans beat death and miracles happen, biting my tongue as my child begins to see the less appealing truth. Until my daughter is ready to embrace what she already knows, I can only hold her, tell her how much I love her.<br />
<br />
Despite everything, I still tear up when I hear <i>Amazing Grace</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-7289419820442834772015-07-06T15:15:00.004-07:002015-08-12T21:21:53.558-07:00It Sucks To Be YouDisclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. More or less. Sort of.<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
"It sucks to be you," Rebecca Wolfe said laughing as she leaned forward in her office chair. I'd just told her something personal and emotionally charged. I wasn't laughing.<br />
<br />
"And I thought you had it all..." she finished.<br />
<br />
"Well, people aren't always what they appear to be," I said.<br />
<br />
This was a woman in a position of power, and I was alone in her office without witnesses. She'd requested a meeting via email on a Sunday night. She wanted to know if we could meet the next day. I knew it must be serious, her asking for a meeting late on a Sunday.<br />
<br />
I suspected she was angry at me, or perhaps <i>disappointed </i>that I'd written a piece about an incident which took place at her business. The incident involved violence against my child. <br />
<br />
She had to delay our meeting for a couple of days, which gave me time to become more convinced that this was indeed about my blog. I checked the website for any unusual activity and noticed a significant increase in traffic. I saw a "referral" from Rebecca's business. That was odd, I thought. I labeled it as SPAM. <br />
<br />
The next day as I sat in the reception area waiting for my appointment time, I imagined being face to face with Rebecca, her looking down at me from the top of her little empire. I felt strangely guilty for "getting caught." But "caught" doing <i>what</i>? Telling my own story? <br />
<br />
To ease my nerves I pictured Rebecca as a floating face, like the holographic head of the Wizard of Oz, except made of glass. I imagined repeatedly smashing this face with a wooden baseball bat. Over and over again, I crashed through her ornamentation, shattered her mask, her fragile front. This uncharacteristically violent reverie built up my courage to face someone I'd actually admired up to that point. <br />
<br />
When she finally emerged from her office to escort me back, I noted how briskly she moved toward me, her shoes like heavy metal clogs sprinting over ceramic tile. I mentioned this jokingly, but she didn't seem amused. Her face didn't seem fragile at all. It was hard and fixed.<br />
<br />
This was gonna be bad.<br />
<br />
Sure enough, I'd been called in about the blogpost. I initially let her do most of the talking, nodded quietly while she told me about incidentally finding my blog (nobody reads my blog). I struggled to keep my facial expression as blank as possible, telling myself to keep nodding, to look down at the table, to avoid making eye contact. I'd rehearsed this, letting her tell a story I'd already anticipated. I'd decided that she probably Googled me out of curiosity, or maybe habit, a ritualistic gathering of dirt to use against those who might transgress against her. <br />
<br />
Her story of how she found my blog was different. She claimed to have been looking for information on autism, and lo and behold there I was, keeper of a blog about a Japanese aesthetic. Not a very solid connection.<br />
<br />
She was hurt, she said, that I'd written about something so confidential, something that could hurt her business. She asked me to take down the blogpost, which I agreed to do.<br />
<br />
What specifically didn't she like about the post? <br />
<br />
That it was damaging to her reputation, that it was shocking, that it was true.<br />
<br />
"I thought you believed in us," she said. "Don't you trust us?"<br />
<br />
I hesitated, glanced left then lied, "Yes." I apologized for hurting her, said that I felt ashamed because she's "such a good person." I'd always needed her approval for some reason.<br />
<br />
"No I'm not," she blurted.<br />
<br />
Ah yes. People aren't always what they appear to be. Right before my eyes, a former saint became a bully. What I'd felt toward Rebecca Wolfe wasn't admiration; I was <i>intimidated </i>by her. That walk, those shoes, the hard fixed face; the way she sat at the top of the heap. She was a Viking in a dress, driven and on a mission to succeed. At almost any cost, I would later learn.<br />
<br />
I'd named no names in the post, and when I wrote it, I hadn't expected any traffic beyond my meager 36 followers, none of whom live in my state much less give a damn about this woman, her heap or reputation. The post wasn't even about her. It was about an employee of hers who broke the law and was quietly escorted out of sight, out of mind. No incident report. No notes. No paper trail.<br />
<br />
The only indelible mark was what still remains on my child's psyche. His <i>and</i> mine.<br />
<br />
She made the point that people would still know who the post was about if they know me at all, and she wondered out loud again why I would want to hurt "the business." Why write about these things publicly, she wanted to know. "Why not just put it in a private journal?"<br />
<br />
I'd wondered that myself. I had no ready answer for her, so I agreed to take down the post.<br />
<br />
I would come up with an answer much later, which was that although I've kept a journal for forty years, this incident wasn't something I wanted to talk only to myself about. I needed some<i>place</i> else, a small quiet corner in space, like a cyber broom closet. Nobody really notices a broom closet, except maybe the few lost souls who open the door by accident. <br />
<br />
I hadn't wanted to be alone with what had happened to my son, so I whimpered within this small cyber closet, shared my stained rags and dirty mop water, just me, enough of a nobody to fly under most radars. I named no names in my post. Writing online was about a need I couldn't satisfy any other way. I <i>needed</i> to scratch my message somewhere more visible than a private diary, less visible than a giant billboard; I needed to pour bleach on my wounds in the company of a few disinterested eyes. <br />
<br />
Rebecca suggested that maybe I'd been trying to reach out to others in my circumstance, others with children who'd been hurt. Perhaps.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the incident I wrote about isn't rare. <br />
<br />
What else could I have done with this pain? Called the media? The police? My attorney? I'd considered these options at first, when my rage was out of control. Without a doubt I had -- <i>have</i> -- a very strong case (with a five-year statute of limitations, by the way). The guilty employee confessed, in writing. She was terminated for injuring a disabled little boy. At first this seemed sufficient. Then it wasn't. So I shared. <br />
<br />
I took down the post immediately following the meeting with Rebecca. I felt better, cleaner, but the next day I felt duped. I'd been silenced. And laughed at. By a bully.<br />
<br />
Who and what are we allowed to write about? Who has the right to tell us to take our words down? Someone who quietly shuffles a child abuser out the back door? <br />
<br />
I still wake up every morning feeling angry and unsettled, like I failed my child, like I gave away my own power at his expense. The incident is more than three months old. The evil employee was removed from the system, albeit quietly. Why don't I feel better yet?<br />
<br />
Perhaps because it's very likely that the incident was never reported to the proper authorities. By law, Rebecca should have called CPS or the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, or police. <br />
<br />
Failing to report this type of child abuse is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment of up to 180 days and/or a fine of up to $2,000.<br />
<br />
My intuition has been screaming at me: <i>Something's not right. Why did Rebecca ask other employees to keep quiet? Why did she vaguely answer, "It's been handled," when I played dumb and asked how these incidents are reported? Why didn't any staff members suggest that perhaps the increasingly distressing behaviors of the injured child prior to the nun's admission were due to frequent or repeated incidents of abuse? Wasn't that a possibility? </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Yes it was. And what do we know for sure? <b>That</b> <b>if this crime wasn't properly reported, the offending employee will go on to work with other children.</b><br />
<br />
I called CPS myself within 36 hours of the incident, then again eight weeks later. I called TDPRS as well, and General Counsel for the _____ of _____ _____. They can't talk about cases, even those involving my own child, but they had no record of any other reports made. <br />
<br />
Well, well, Rebecca. Looks like it sucks to be YOU.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-59769692065656037282015-03-29T13:58:00.001-07:002016-02-23T10:06:45.279-08:00Why Dogs Don't Commit SuicideGeorge Carlin once described dogs as having a simple philosophy: If they can do it, you can watch.<br />
<br />
Their decisions are simple. They're either eating, drinking, barking, peeing, playing, pooping, mating, licking, scratching, or sleeping (my Ratcha actually barks and poops at the same time, which I call <i>sharking</i>). Dogs do have thoughts, but nothing like, <i>Should I go with the gold or the indigo blue eye shadow? Should I break up with Amanda, become a Buddhist, or take a fencing class? </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I was wandering around the lower level of Neiman Marcus the other day, searching for the restroom. This lower level was for men's clothing and fine housewares. Odd combination, don't you think? Anyway, I was looking at a whimsical furniture line and thinking to myself, <i>This might go well in a small English cottage, someplace Beatrix Potter might have written </i>Peter Rabbit<i>.</i><br />
<br />
Then my phone rang. It was my 9 year old daughter saying she had to stay after school because she'd failed to finish a social studies assignment on supply and demand. Just after I hung up, a heavyset woman asked if I needed any help. I was bent over, trying to see a price tag of $285 on the underside of a crystal decanter. I told her that no, I was fine. Just looking. Then we discussed the types of items on display, including the whimsical furniture with it's black and white checkered patterns mixed with grandma floral upholstery, how much my husband would hate it, and I said, "It all boils down to what's soulful and what's not."<br />
<br />
She agreed, although I don't think either one of us knew what the hell I was talking about, not yet at least.<br />
<br />
My husband insists that dogs don't have souls. I don't agree. I think all living things have souls, that to be alive is to breathe, to inspire, to have an essence. My husband thinks that only humans have an essence, a soul, that only they get to go to heaven.<br />
<br />
Heaven would be boring with only humans. We're too unnecessarily complicated, too petty, too stupid. It takes us too long to learn the most important things, how to love well, how to live and die well. Dogs don't have to learn these things. They just know them.<br />
<br />
I think it's significant that humans were created last. Almost an afterthought. God created all of nature, the flora and fauna, the planets and stars, and <i>then</i> he made the messed up people, the <i>only</i> part of creation to fail. Why is that? Why would anyone create creatures with a known failure glitch? A surefire trigger to fall? That's like using playing cards to build a skyscraper.<br />
<br />
What was he thinking? <i>I'm gonna make these big, hairless, talking mammals that mess up all the time. It'll be fun.</i><br />
<br />
Considering all the choices we humans have, it's no wonder we make the wrong ones. There's too much going on around us, social media, thousands of religions to choose from, deliciously unhealthy foods, and cable channels galore. Dogs don't have this problem. They don't have to decide what they're in the mood to eat or Tweet, which god to follow or movie to watch on HBO. Dogs don't have to search for the down escalator to find a place to pee within a mega-commercial-worship-complex. They just....<i>Go</i>. Need to eliminate? Nature says, <i>Not a problem.</i><br />
<br />
Dogs live in the uncomplicated moment.<br />
<br />
Not humans. They go nuts when making decisions, either too impulsive or indecisive. Sometimes they have to research how to make these decisions, with the head or the heart, whether to follow their intuition or make pros and cons lists. They even ask trusted friends for advice.<br />
<br />
Why would we ask other people what <i>we</i> want?<br />
<br />
Henry Miller once wrote, "The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But freedom leads to infinity, and infinity is terrifying."<br />
<br />
People aren't free. We're too mentally untethered to be free. We've either got thoughts scattered all over the place, like a train wreck, or our heads are so crowded we have to go to classes to learn to focus on what really matters, our own breath. We meditate to get away from our own minds. We have to clear out space, find a focal point of nothingness in order to pray, to listen, to hear. <br />
<br />
Again, dogs don't have this problem.<br />
<br />
I have a great coffee table book titled <i>A Home For the Soul </i>by Anthony Lawlor. Lawlor introduces the reader to the soulful connections found in all homes, how a stove expresses the transforming power of nature, how clothes closets reveal our inner personalities, how to find the mythological and archetypal meanings within common objects of daily life -- beds, bathtubs, shoes, loaves of bread. He explains how to use wood, tile, brick and stone to express qualities of the spirit, how to create meaning with furniture and personal objects.<br />
<br />
This is just another example of humans trying desperately to find soulful connection, to locate the pulse of their own souls, or connect with others.<br />
<br />
But check out Fido, taking a nap, snacking, licking himself or his poor anxious owner. Dogs aren't feeling any existential angst, looking for their lost souls or struggling to keep them out of the mud of sin. For dogs, there's no such thing as sin. There's no such thing as evil or a haunting Devil. For our canine friends, there's just nature, biology, instincts. Dogs feel no shame, have nothing to apologize for, no reason to ask forgiveness (unless we yell at them for peeing on the synthetic carpet). <br />
<br />
Dogs are just hairy, stinky, uninhibited creatures full of natural joy, which must be pretty awesome. <br />
<br />
Maybe the problem with humans is that we have too much supply, of <i>everything</i>. We have too much time, too many choices, too many unnecessary decisions to make. All these choices, and we <i>still</i> demand too much. The opposite should be true. Demand should go down, but it doesn't. Humans are never satisfied. Our minds are fragile, inflamed, eternally stunted. <br />
<br />
Maybe it's us humans who are soulless. Maybe we're here to learn from the dogs. Maybe we've got it all wrong. After all, Dog <i>is</i> God, backwards.<br />
<br />
We have this vast complex world all around us, exquisite beauty and mystery, but we always ask for more, bitch about no WiFi or why <i>Seinfeld </i>had to end, why there's not more leg room on airplanes or Doritos chips in a bag.<br />
<br />
Maybe some day we'll figure it out, how we're supposed to go about this life thing with less misery and complaint. We'll learn how to be consistent, how to cooperate with each other, how to be free without getting stuck or running over each other, killing each other. <br />
<br />
Life is life. It's a gift. It's not meant to be squandered or broken into pieces. We've been poisoned by ego and endless layers of soulless stuff, the Jimmy Choo shoes and $285 decanters, political hierarchies and "reality" TV, warring religious views, superstition. We're stuck on which brand of deodorant to buy, how many cents per kilowatt we pay, who's kissing whom and what's for dinner. <br />
<br />
We've become terminally distracted and suffocated beneath mountains of heavy, <i>heavy</i> stuff. Now we can't breathe, and forget finding a pulse; we don't have one.<br />
<br />
Pay attention to Fido. He's here to teach you what you once knew. Take it easy. Romp and play. <i>Shark</i> if you want. Really <i>live</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-79972376813971324722015-03-16T09:24:00.000-07:002015-03-26T11:46:02.183-07:00Pieces<div class="MsoNormal">
There are four plastic crates on the floor of my
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each is full of photographs,
notes, personal journals and short pieces written about my family, a few of
these published in local Houston newspapers and magazines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are five Jumbo Hefty bags filled with
letters from various family members <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each
letter is still tucked inside its original envelope, some dating back to
1972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of these voices have been
forever silenced. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Only a handful of the oldest journals remain, two years worth
salvaged from a fire intentionally set by a deranged man in 2001.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I had them all today, the journal made of notebook paper
and bright yellow yarn would speak first, that first entry penned from a pink
bedroom in Crowley, Texas, 1974.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those
pages would lead to 1984 and a red spiral notebook, unsteady words describing a
violent immeasurable loss. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That particular shock was paralyzing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It took three days to write such a difficult entry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shock is like a tourniquet, to keep a mind
and heart from hemorrhaging. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t
speak, eat, or breathe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Writing this memoir will feel just as difficult at times,
but the stories and characters won’t rest until I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their chains rattle in my head daily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This story involves my parents, Joseph and Beverly Williams,
my siblings, Charlotte and David.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our
family reached completion on East Crenshaw Avenue in Polytechnic Heights, where
I was born and my family lived from 1964 to 1973. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We then splintered off in separate directions,
toward others, toward drugs and alcohol, the streets and
homelessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mental institutions,
hospitals, halfway houses and jail cells received a few family members who
wrote letters from these and other temporary addresses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home</i>
meant a cluster of trees near busy highways, a roach infested motel or halfway
house, a trailer without electricity, or a clapboard shack on a hog farm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We each had adventures, lost and found each
other over and over again along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some were luckier than others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s quite an undertaking to connect the heavy crates, faded
photos, reams of notes and essays, to piece together the letters and journals
as one continuum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s even more
difficult to blend the voices of both the living and the dead into one song.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And where does the song begin?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the one-bedroom house on Crenshaw with my
father’s red, white and blue guitar?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
at the Houston morgue where one mystery became two?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do we open with the bloated body discovered
by a neighbor, or with the wailing sirens of emergency vehicles racing toward the
Crenshaw house, my family gathered in the front yard to escape the fire my
mother started in her sleep?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My father has given me what he can to help solve various
other puzzles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve exchanged letters
for twenty-two years, sometimes in a question/answer format. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We haven’t seen each other since 1998, for
reasons I still can’t put into words. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My sister Charlotte is also my memory, her almost nine years of
back story preceding Crenshaw Avenue, kindle for that first
fire. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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My task is to paste until every piece has a home, to trust
the story to know where to begin, which is like throwing a dart at a Jupiter. <o:p></o:p></div>
Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-36229973887793528902015-03-10T09:42:00.000-07:002017-02-10T17:00:46.137-08:00Soul GlaucomaGlaucoma runs in my family. My dad has it. He puts medicated drops in his eyes every day, to lower the pressure on his retina -- the light-senstivive tissue at the back of the eye. Lowering this pressure prevents further damage to the optic nerves which connect the retina to the brain.<br />
<br />
If he didn't use the drops, the vitreous humor (fluid) would build up and cause extreme eye pressure, damage the optic nerve. Eventually, he would develop tunnel vision. Then the tunnel would get smaller and smaller, until it disappeared altogether. <br />
<br />
He would be completely blind.<br />
<br />
I have high pressures in my eyes too, since my early 20's. But the optic nerve still looks good, so no drops yet. But I do worry about my vision, a different kind of seeing.<br />
<br />
I used to think of depression as seeing only the negatives in an envelope of photographs. The images on the negatives are real, but they're the dark version, the ghosts of familiar objects floating with eerie shadows. It's the creepy side of reality. <br />
<br />
But today I revised this metaphor. I think depression is more like glaucoma. We're still aware of our surroundings, what they're supposed to look like, but we can't see beyond the small tunnel. Our spiritual vitreous humor is backed up, creating extreme pressure that chokes our vision, shuts our soul windows.<br />
<br />
I've been struggling for months to keep a positive outlook. Life has been challenging, and I've worried considerably about my most vulnerable loved ones. Even when the pressure has been siphoned off, I've still had trouble seeing. <br />
<br />
I couldn't find the crock pot or my auto insurance card. I lost shoes and a jacket. There were missing hand towels, medical reports, car tags, house keys. I couldn't find joy, the light or my future.<br />
<br />
Then today I woke up happy. No particular reason. Of course I embraced it. But I noticed that it felt a lot like when we fall in love, how that high suppresses any negative reality. The joy supercedes worry and pain. We can get a speeding ticket or a late fee, stub our big toe or forget to pick up a prescription, but that's okay. We're in love, and when we've got that, we can handle just about anything.<br />
<br />
Even soul glaucoma, at least when it's in remission.<br />
<br />
When it's not, I can't handle the slightest hangnail. All obstacles, even the tiniest blips that very few radars would ever pick up, feel like a horrendous assault on my spiritual being. And it's all because I can't see. I'm blind. And what I can't see, even though I know it's still there, feels lost forever. <br />
<br />
Today when my joy returned, I found many other lost items. I found the crock pot in a lower cabinet. I remembered that my lost shoes and jacket had been relocated to a storage unit to make space in my closet. I found my auto insurance card, right where it'd always been, in my wallet. My hand towels were near the crock pot, the medical reports were in an accordion folder, and the car tags were where I'd left them six weeks earlier. So were the house keys.<br />
<br />
These items were never lost. I just couldn't see them, or remember where I'd put them before I lost my joy. It was as if a life recorder had stopped where my vision ended, and the useful tapes were just out of reach. The recorder stopped creating new memories, at least ones I wanted to remember. <br />
<br />
Depression is very real, and can be as debilitating as complete blindness. Even worse, once that tunnel completely closes off, so does the human. Because it isn't only a sense of light we lose as our retina ceases to measure it; our life energy stops registering. The life force never makes it to the brain.<br />
<br />
I'll hold on to this joy for as long as I can, this light I can feel and see. I'll believe it's permanent, just as I often believe the darkness is. Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-74087300412298579632015-01-01T12:56:00.000-08:002015-01-01T13:00:38.178-08:00Baby, It's ColdHappy 2015.<br />
<br />
While walking the dogs around the neighborhood last week, I thought about deoxyribonucleic acid. It wasn't the type of thing I normally think about while watching my dogs relieve themselves, but I'd just ordered James D. Watson's, <i>The Double Helix</i>, a personal account of how DNA and its structure were discovered -- the messy human version. Science isn't so neat and distinguished at the onset. Sometimes it's ugly with turf wars, papers to endlessly edit, credit to give and fight over, and the decision has to be made: What do we call this highfalutin thing we've just discovered?<br />
<br />
DNA is complicated enough, and the length and difficulty of the word makes it even more so, more intimidating and apart from the everyday. But we carry our DNA around wherever we go, pass it on to our children, leave bits of it all over the place. Why does it have to be such a long difficult word? Why make something so everyday so far away and inaccessible?<br />
<br />
What if we simplified the complicated? What if we renamed DNA, 'The Twisted Ladder'? <br />
<br />
What I'm getting at is, what if we had fewer parts, more wholes? What if things could be reduced not to their smallest parts, but to their poetry, deeper meaning, their art?<br />
<br />
Maybe I'm dreaming. Life may be too complicated to simplify. <br />
<br />
When does life get simple again? Like when we were eight and mornings meant throwing on a t-shirt and shorts, grabbing a snack and riding our bicycles all day?<br />
<br />
PB&J has been replaced with DN&A. Life is a tall, tall place, too high to reach, too far to climb. We'll never get to the top, and maybe we don't want to go there, but how far is high enough? How much do we need to know? How much do we really need?<br />
<br />
Last night I stayed home. Very few people in my circle of friends and family went out to celebrate New Years' Eve. We all have small children and care less about partying. We were content to stay in comfortable clothes, light fires, snuggle with our partners, kids, pets, and watch old Simpson's episodes.<br />
<br />
Others dressed up, attended wild parties, drank too much, screamed until their throats were raw. They drove in the cold to get where they were going. They left home to find something else -- fun and adventure, a 'higher' plane. What they were seeking was somewhere else, a place they had to dress up for, a thing they altered their senses to achieve, a realm beyond their comfort zones.<br />
<br />
Did they get there? Did the parties take them where they wanted to go? Was it worth it? Were there longterm gains? Is a party moving toward or away from something? Are we celebrating life, or trying to forget life?<br />
<br />
I think those of us who were hibernating last night feel that all the partying back in the day was just a prelude to the real party, the true prize in living. We've got our prize now, the security and love of family, a short distance that feels like forever. There's nothing "out there" we need. We don't have anything to run from or to, nothing we need to forget. What's worth remembering is right here, at home. All this, and no hangover.<br />
<br />
Why go long when we can just chill? Why go to Times Square when there's buttery popcorn, a warm fire and a thick alpaca blanket at home? Why leave home when, Baby, it's cold outside?<br />
<br />
Maybe some are still trying to find <i>home</i>.<br />
<br />
Popular Alcoholics Anonymous sayings are teaching the same message: <i>Easy Does It </i>and <i>One Day At A Time</i>. <i>Keep It Simple Stupid</i>. We've all been addicts of one stripe or another, always running, leaving one place for the next, looking for that special elusive 'other'. <br />
<br />
There's a place for the complicated, the kind that can simplify our lives. I love my iPhone, my Mac and Kindle Paper White. I'm all for being plugged in when I want to be. But at the end of the day, I don't want to be. I just want simple, to snuggle, be warm, feel safe. Let the Watsons of the world play with the double helixes, fight over who gets credit and what names to give all the pieces. But at the end of the day, even they want to go home. We're built for wholes. And what's the highest whole? What do we call this hifalutin thing we're all hoping to find?<br />
<br />
Love.<br />
<br />
This year I hope you find it, your whole, your simple, your home. <br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-23545060934757354562014-12-12T18:23:00.001-08:002014-12-12T19:12:44.250-08:00Heartbeat Of The WorldIn a blogpost dated 4/16/2012 I wrote: <br />
<br />
<i>Today my daughter texted the answer I'd feared, the answer I knew the way mothers just know: <b>'+'...</b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>She is my first born, the most anticipated child of four. She arrived in the winter of 1987, three years after my own mother passed away.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>On ultrasound the beginning looks like the glowing rim of a full moon, the inside hollow except for a pulse, the heartbeat of the world.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I sense this first grandchild must be a girl because she will come in winter, a favorite season for our females, another gypsy.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>So I ordered Anne Lamott's book, </i>Some Assembly Required<i>, to quell my anxiety and laugh about this grandmother thing. But I still want to crawl into my daughter's womb, pull up a chair and sit beside this unique pulse to monitor intricate vitals, to wipe away the fever and sweat of becoming</i>.<br />
<br />
L was born seven months later, 11/1/2012, and was indeed a girl. She's now two years old, but only chronologically. In spirit, she's just shy of seven centuries. 'Old Soul' doesn't do her justice, and neither does 'smart' nor 'funny'.<br />
<br />
But I won't brag you to death. In fact this post isn't even about my most precious genius granddaughter; it's about her unborn brother, G. He's due by scheduled c-section on 12/17/2014.<br />
<br />
Who is G? Well, he's not small. We know this much. We also know he'll share a birthday with a former club bouncer, His Holiness, Pope Francis. <br />
<br />
That's just <i>cool</i>.<br />
<br />
I haven't been as fearful this time around. My daughter's got this mama thing down to a perfect science, complete with her own brand of moxie and a personalized Citrus Lane subscription. She has a vast collection of vogue baby clothes and cloth diapers, earth friendly and state-of-the-art everything. She's a cooler mother than I ever was, maybe even a <i>better</i> mother, period.<br />
<br />
Isn't that the goal of reproduction? Of <i>any</i> production line? To make better product? <br />
<br />
I've got to stop reading the <i>New York Times</i>. It's killing me -- the wars, ebola and U.S. government nonsense, abuses of power and people. My brain freezes over every morning when I see the headlines, then my heart skips and overheats as I scroll down the list of atrocities. What kind of world will my grandchildren inherit? I don't really want to know.<br />
<br />
When I sprouted in 1964, we hadn't yet put a man on the moon. Today, we're gearing up for space tourism. We can transplant faces, hands and uteruses. We can make a baby in a test tube, or clone one. <br />
<br />
In 1964 the term <i>terrorism</i> was most often used domestically in the context of violence against blacks and civil rights workers in the South. Now we use the word to mean something else.<br />
<br />
In 1964 we were a different people. Or were we?<br />
<br />
There was no internet in every back pocket, no Keurig, microwave, electric car or Kim Kardashian. We've doubled our vaccination schedule, can treat erectile dysfunction, enhance our anatomy and alter our gender. We have a drug for EVERYTHING. <br />
<br />
Have we malfunctioned, or are we equal parts messed up and progressing sloppily toward evolutionary maturity? I honestly don't know. We're either going down, or this is that terrible moment just before dawn. I can't help but hope. I still have young children to raise, grandchildren too. I have to keep my mind open, but wrapping it around this world is a challenge.<br />
<br />
The reason strangers <i>Oooh</i> and <i>Awww</i> over babies, besides the fact that most babies are so stinkin' cute, is because a baby represents hope. Every new life is another possibility, a casting of fresh DNA into the world, our round asylum on its wobbly axis. <br />
<br />
A newborn doesn't have a criminal record or a leaked sex tape floating around the internet. He or she isn't a member of ISIS or Westboro Baptist Church. A baby is, as far as anyone can guess, "good". Infants are the closest a human being will ever be to sacred. And that's what we want, something sacred, or at least something better that what we've got.<br />
<br />
~~~<br />
<br />
I'm not as worried about the health of my daughter or second grandchild this time around (lie), nor do I have any concerns about my daughter's mothering ability (truth). I also know that I can be a pretty decent grandmother. L has confirmed this with her explosive enthusiasm when we see each other. So we're good, and aside from a wee bit of anxiety regarding standard surgery risks, I'm comfortable with what will happen next Wednesday, 12/17/2014. <br />
<br />
G will be lifted out of his cozy gestational nest, and he will cry because the room will be cold and the overhead fluorescence glaring. He'll have to process strangers' gloved hands, the sudden shift in gravity and proprioception. A stranger will weigh his bigness, and measure his longness. They will listen to his steady heartbeat, wrap him in a warm but unstylish blanket, and hand him to his fabulous parents.<br />
<br />
Someone will then find the slightly (extremely) nervous grandmother waiting nearby and tell her that everything is better than okay. Baby and mother are spectacular.<br />
<br />
Beyond this bright beginning, the journey depends on G's particular genome, his parents' influence, this place and time, his future choices, and circumstances beyond his control, most of which are the choices of others. <br />
<br />
Fate is a committee.<br />
<br />
For now, G is a new heartbeat in the world, the most important heartbeat there is: <b>HOPE</b>.<br />
<br />
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<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-61915456399529920452014-11-17T09:17:00.000-08:002014-11-17T09:23:15.848-08:00Living & Dying TidyBrittany Maynard's brain tumor was the size of two fists, a large chaotic cloud disturbing her otherwise beautifully symmetrical brain. Her doctors were surprised the twenty-nine year old functioned so well for so long.<br />
<br />
I read about Brittany in the October 27th issue of <i>People</i> magazine, intrigued by her decision to end her own life rather than ride out the cancer storm for the next few months which meant more expense, pain, and the inevitable loss of her mind. "My [cancer] is going to kill me, and it's a terrible, terrible way to die," she told <i>People</i>.<br />
<br />
Brittany wanted to die on her own terms, so she, her husband and family moved to Portland, Oregon which has a right-to-die law. Her plan was to dissolve 100 capsules of the sedative secobarbital in water and, surrounded by loved ones, slip into a permanent sleep. The proposed date was November 1st.<br />
<br />
I watched the calendar after reading the story. Her life had been magical. She was smart, accomplished, beautiful, happily married, well-traveled. Now her days were numbered, and she knew the count. We all did.<br />
<br />
On November 1st, as planned, Brittany passed away. Although her death was an assisted suicide, the official cause of death was listed as a brain tumor. She'd written in her final Facebook post: "Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me...but would have taken so much more."<br />
<br />
Three days later a top Vatican official condemned her decision to die, calling assisted suicide "an absurdity".<br />
<br />
Was it? Was it ridiculous, foolish, incongruous or unreasonable? Did Brittany's action manifest the view that there is no order or value in human life or in the universe?<br />
<br />
A friend just lost his young wife to the same type of brain cancer, a glioblastoma. The prognosis is most often 99% grim. The young wife lived one year then died in hospice. Her children watched her suffer. I juxtapose the two cases, Brittany and the other young wife, and I can't tell you what I would have chosen, but I can say that I'd like to have a choice either way.<br />
<br />
Hopefully I will never have to consider suicide or palliative care, but chances are the subject will come up. Dying will most definitely come up. So the question is, what now? How do I want to live? What's more frightening to me than dying is dying unprepared, dying with a life in limbo. There are not only things I haven't accomplished yet, but things in the way. My life is cluttered. This must be how purgatory feels, to be neither living nor dying. I'm stuck.<br />
<br />
I've been reading and thinking about purging my house for the past six months. I've gotten rid of a few bags of clothes and toys so far, but now I'm getting more serious. I've noticed that when my house is tidy, so is my mind. Both worlds, which may be mirrors it turns out, are more peaceful, clear, balanced. Once fully purged of the things that are no longer useful, things that no longer bring us joy, there's a sense of ineffable freedom and lightness of being. We lose those final ten pounds or complete unfinished projects. We quit the dead-end job or loveless marriage. We move again, finally able to see the wide open spaces beyond the choke hold of clutter.<br />
<br />
In the end, if we're lucky, all that remains are treasures. We're surrounded only by the things we need or love.<br />
<br />
I've been surrounded by clutter for more than three decades. There are clothes that don't fit, irrelevant stacks of papers, books I'll never read, broken Christmas ornaments and stray pieces of junk rattling in forgotten drawers. There are drawers filled with makeup items that seem to have duplicated themselves over the years. I keep replacing what I already have, stacking taller and taller mountains around my life. I no longer know what I have, need or want. <br />
<br />
<i>My soul can't breathe.</i><br />
<br />
Brittany gave away her possessions just before she died. When she moved to Portland, I'm sure she purged thoroughly with the help of friends and family. There were boxes to keep, to donate, to throw away. There's a picture of her sparsely furnished bedroom in <i>People</i>. In the photo is a four-poster bed, two matching nightstands and lamps, photographs of Brittany's husband and family. The flooring is a light honey-colored hardwood. The white window blinds are drawn up, completely open. The bedspread is white, walls sand, ceiling fan a buttery cream. The room is flooded with golden sunlight.<br />
<br />
This is where Brittany died. In this clean room full of light and loved ones. She did not die in a hospital bed beneath harsh fluorescence. She did not die with plastic tubes snaking in and around her head and body, with needles in her arms or neck. She did not die surrounded by strangers, mechanical beeps, ventilators, the smell of plastic and Clorox.<br />
<br />
She died at home, surrounded by love. Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-20104360816324891952014-10-27T20:14:00.000-07:002014-10-27T20:14:30.372-07:00Your Number, Not MineTomorrow is my birthday. I'll be fifty, 5-0. Freaking fifty. Tonight I say goodbye to forty-nine, thirty-nine, twenty-nine, nineteen, nine, and nine minutes.<br />
<br />
Who was I at nine minutes old? Who am I now?<br />
<br />
Being fifty won't change much about my life, but the age reminds me of words like <i>Ma'am</i> and <i>Loss Of Bladder Control</i>. The sound of <i>fifty</i> is not a beautiful sound, not the sound of twenty, thirty or even a spunky spike-haired forty. Fifty is a <i>Fifty & Older</i> online dating site, routine colonoscopies, the pendulous and wrinkled reality of gravity. Even when a person looks, feels or acts younger than their fifty years, they're still fifty. The number is what it is, <i>not</i> so young.<br />
<br />
How did this happen? Just yesterday I was twenty-six<i>, I swear.</i> <br />
<br />
Fifty years is half a century. I'm a rotary phone years old, <i>Romper Room</i> years old, smoking as many cigarettes as you want in the doctor's office years old.<br />
<br />
In a perfect world, we'd all make it to one hundred in good health. We wouldn't look visibly older until thirty seconds before death. Our sex organs would still function optimally, our minds would fire in our nineties as they did in our twenties. Passing through life wouldn't mean passing beyond our best years.<br />
<br />
But let's be honest. We <i>do</i> pass our best years, our "best" meaning the ability to walk without assistance, remember what day it is, recognize our own faces in the mirror. Some day I will miss my best days, and I know that turning fifty means getting perilously close to that day.<br />
<br />
So I'll enter the <i>The Not-So-Young Zone</i> tomorrow. Maybe I'll forget to feel old. I certainly hope so. Why do we measure years instead of moments? Why all those dumb candles?<br />
<br />
Why not count Kodak moments instead of years? Kisses, laughs, memories? What's a year? It's 365 days, many of them not very special. A birthday is an obligatory same-as-always day. What's the point of remembering how "old" we are?<br />
<br />
I'd rather remember how many times my mother rocked me to sleep, how many dogs I've had, or boyfriends (Freudian slip). I'd rather remember best sunsets, best kisses, best cheeseburgers. Why not count the varied ways others have made us feel special, without the added weight of feeling older? Why not count what really counts? <br />
<br />
So how many moments am I? How many smiles? Giggles? Hugs? Loves?<br />
<br />
Tomorrow will be a struggle, because I don't want to think of myself in terms of years. I'm four great kids and some new tires; a bamboo box full of pure essential oils I'm learning to use, and a new iPhone 6 Plus. I'm the Iced Cookie wax melts I can smell downstairs, a pair of orange sandals made by a company that donates profits to AIDS research. I am and always will be green eyes, too much sugar, not enough vegetables. I'm silver, not gold, and a mid-morning person, a fan of dark chocolate, too many books and not enough time to read them all.<br />
<br />
I'm <i>now</i>, not tomorrow or yesterday, this morning or an hour from now, but <i>right now</i>. <i>Now</i> can't be measured, counted, numbered. You'll never find it on a calendar, in history books or the 6 O'clock News. Blink and you'll miss it. <br />
<br />
I'm anything but fifty. What the hell is fifty? It's two digits, a long tick in time, a random number that belongs to somebody else.<br />
<br />
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<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-11639167179893232372014-09-10T08:18:00.001-07:002014-09-10T08:20:09.162-07:00Beware Of Sea ZombiesFog can be amazing. If you didn't know any better, nothing else exists beyond the dense white cloud surrounding your immediate environment. Of course you know your world is out there, the usual streets and stop signs, the corner Shell station and the Starbucks two blocks away. You generally know where the landmarks are, so you navigate by memory and fairly solid faith.<br />
<br />
But if you're in a strange place and trying to navigate in fog, it's not so easy. It's like crossing the Mexican border after dark and not speaking Spanish. If you've ever visited Nuevo Laredo at night, and know zero Spanish, you're in trouble. Life moves with lightening speed, traffic and people. There are street lights, headlights, everywhere lights and movement, flashes of what you know to be humans and cars but you can't compute the images, or understand the street signs. You're completely and utterly lost.<br />
<br />
It's like a speeding carousel within a cotton thick pyrotechnical fog.<br />
<br />
I've read that when a woman has PMS, she literally has "water on the brain". It's more difficult to think. She feels dense, foggy. This can be terrifying and frustrating (hence the handgun). We can't find the words we're looking for, or leap from one thought to the next, because we can't see through the mental fog.<br />
<br />
I'm hearing that menopause feels about the same way. Goodie.<br />
<br />
Back in 1980 there was a horror film, <i>The Fog</i>. The plot was basically that sea zombies, the vengeful ghosts of mariners who were killed in a shipwreck 100 years earlier, traveled within a supernaturally glowing fog that rolled across a Californian coastal town and killed the living. They ship's crew had perished because they'd followed a false beacon, a fire lit by conspirators, which caused the ship to crash into rocks.<br />
<br />
Residents of the small coastal town knew the zombies were coming when machinery began turning on by itself, or payphones rang simultaneously, and then they would see the glowing fog, moving eerily over hills and streets, until finally closing in on a home or place of work. But they were in acute trouble once the creepy white fog rolled beneath their doors. That meant "adios". <br />
<br />
It was an <i>okay</i> movie, but a little stupid, like when the driftwood sends messages to the buxom Adrienne Barbeau then bursts into flames. But looking back, I see that the horror aspect of the movie was fueled by fears similar to fog-camouflaged sea zombies. These fears are about anything believed to be dangerous that we can't see clearly, can't understand. We deeply fear the monsters under the bed, in the closet, around the dark street corner. It's anything we can't control or make sense of, spray dead with a can of Raid.<br />
<br />
Fog can be old age, dementia, disability. It's anything that slows or shuts us down, blinds us, holds us back or cuts us off forever. Little deaths are still deaths.<br />
<br />
Woody Allen's psychiatrist once told his little brother, an agoraphobic radiologist I used to work with, that all fears are related to the fear of death. Death is the big grandaddy fear, the ultimate ending. Beyond death is essentially a blind spot. All we know for sure is that death means inevitable loss, darkness, physical and emotional pain. And we want none of that.<br />
<br />
If your Uncle Niles from Bardstown, Kentucky wrote back from the afterlife to gripe about the food, weather or sleeping arrangements, we'd feel better about dying. Anything like normal, like life as we know it, even a less than ideal version of it, is comforting. It's what we know. But as things are, we can't see what's on the other side of this life. We know something happens, that energy cannot be created or destroyed. We become one thing or another, maybe scattered, or we go back to square one and start over again as an amoeba or paramecium. We just can't know, not with sufficient incontrovertible detail. And for our own sanity, we have to navigate this not knowing, rein in this fear with some kind of explanation or story to tell ourselves, because we're gonna think about death, and we need to know how to think about it.<br />
<br />
So for now, just move slowly through the fog of not knowing, and try to avoid violent collisions with immovable solids. Go ahead and trust that your familiar world is out there, or some not too disorienting version of it. And do your best to remember where the curbs are, the ditches, guardrails, cliffs and rocks -- especially the rocks. Don't be deceived by false beacons (and um, good luck with that one).<br />
<br />
The other option is not to risk wondering or wandering through the fog. Just stay home, binge on '80s movies or shop endlessly on Amazon, and pretend you don't see the glowing supernatural cloud. Just ignore your television turning on and off by itself. What's that annoying ringtone? You'd better answer your phone.Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-51808395626527380522014-09-07T16:40:00.002-07:002017-02-10T17:00:53.630-08:00HandsI remember my mother's hands, the olive skin moisturized with Vaseline Intensive Care, her long piano fingers, the nicotine stains on her right index finger. The veins were large and spongy, swollen green anatomy snaking along the backs of the hands that caressed me, held me when I was afraid, held me when I was hurt, held me for no reason.<br />
<br />
The veins were large, as if trying to escape, or maybe her skin was just very thin. Way too thin.<br />
<br />
Her nails were always painted. I never saw them otherwise, or any color but a light honey frost to match her full lips. Maybe she kept her nails painted because they had yellowed. She smoked all her life, from age sixteen to forty-four. Her autopsy report would state that her lungs showed signs of early emphysema. Already, at age forty-four. <br />
<br />
Her hands were shaking the night she came home after a three day absence. I'd been praying in our yellow bathroom, picking out shapes in the peeling paint. I promised God that I would never ask for anything else as long as I lived if he would just bring her home.<br />
<br />
Moments later our heavy front door swung open, hitting the wall hard. She lurched forward, her blouse half-buttoned. She stumbled into the kitchen. I tiptoed behind her, trying to avoid the areas of the floor that creaked. I found her swaying at the kitchen counter, holding a lit match to the nozzle of a Dristan bottle to make its opening larger. Her hands were shaking, causing the yellow light of the match to tremble.<br />
<br />
Those three days she'd been sitting in a grassy field, she told us later. She wasn't sure how long she was there, but remembered trying to decide whether and how to kill herself.<br />
<br />
Her hands fed and dressed three children. Her hands kept a clean house. Her hands shook a tambourine at an old Baptist church, underlined what mattered to her most in the books she read. Her hands played an upright piano we kept in the dining room, wrote poetry and songs about God, heaven and hell. Her hands lit cigarettes, opened beer cans, pill bottles. Several times these thin-skinned hands were cupped full of pills, pills swallowed all at once.<br />
<br />
I remember her hands softly scratching my arm, a comfort we both loved. We took turns caressing the arm of the other, lightly raking the skin's surface with thin trimmed nails. I'd snuggle up close wherever she was sitting, our legs drawn up beneath us, then one of us would take the arm of the other and begin the ritual.Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-85759996642007028412014-08-29T11:22:00.001-07:002016-01-29T10:10:09.641-08:00Are There Tuesdays In Heaven?<br />
<div class="comment-body">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
never had to physically view the bodies, but I've imagined the death scenes
many times, my mother slumped forward in a recliner, my brother in pieces on an
Arizona highway. <br />
<br />
I faced their autopsy reports. The medical examiner got the color of my
mother's eyes wrong. They were green, not brown, but by the time her body was
found, and because of all the retching, blood had obscured the true color. <br />
<br />
My brother's body was no longer recognizable. There were extruded brain
fragments on his t-shirt, almost every bone broken, his once handsome face and
muscular body distorted. The human I grew up in the same house with, played
cowboys and Indians with, listened to the Beatles' Blue Album with, was reduced
to lifeless pulp. <br />
<br />
Just like that. We fall off the planet. <br />
<br />
It was these autopsy reports in particular that brought my agnosticism into
sharp relief. Nothing could be further from the "Jesus Saves" and
"God Listens" bumper stickers than the very real and grisly images of
my loved ones in death. It was how they died, and when they died, and why they
died. Not death itself. Death is part of life, but not torture, murder, or the
irony of someone chronically suicidal finally succeeding by accidentally
choking on a ham sandwich. God can't possibly be that ironic. Paradoxical,
maybe, but not ironic. That's just cruel. <br />
<br />
Any confusion about life after death can be summed up in this burning question:
Are there Tuesdays in Heaven? I'll come back to this later. <br />
<br />
For a instant this morning, everything made sense. I had an epiphany after
glancing at a book on my kitchen counter, <i>Hyperbole And A Half</i>. It's a creation
of part web comic, part blog, by Allie Brosh. The comic is drawn in Paintbrush
and is described as "intentionally artistically crude." It's about
everything from intellectually disabled dogs to debilitating depression. The
colorful pages are inspiring, and the humor, even when it addresses all that
isn't funny, makes one take life less seriously. I mean, what else is humor for? <br />
<br />
So I decided right then and there in the kitchen that creation is an infinite
explosion of colorful confetti. All this, our lives and what we've put into the world, is an amazing gorgeous blast of paper bits -- every flower, poem, song, star, laugh. We argue
over where the confetti originally came from, when it came into being. We war
when we can't agree on the answers. <br />
<br />
It's everybody's confetti, but that's just not enough for some. And confetti
alone doesn't satisfy. We have to paste and glue it, dye it, drown it, own it.
We turn it into money, churches, walls and dungeons. That's just how we roll. <br />
<br />
We've ruined everything. But that explains a lot. <br />
<br />
Jesus saves. Saves us from what? Certainly not ham sandwiches, monstrous murderers
and heavy vans that kill best friends (a death I left out). What's that I hear
way in the back row? Hell? He saves us from hell? No, I'm afraid not. He might
hold your hand, apologize profusely, but there are no surefire hell
preventions. The best Christians I know have frequent flyer passes to hell. All
they have to do is close their eyes, and there they are. <br />
<br />
God listens. Hear that? Hear the warmth of being heard? That's all the warmth
you're gonna get, because after God listens you're on your own to deal. He never
promised bad things would never happen, that you'd never get cancer, that
you'd live a long happy life and end up with a condo next to his. <br />
<br />
Here's the hardest thing to face, which I've almost mastered: It's not meant to make sense. Sometimes it
seems to, in a wonderful My Little Pony for Christmas kind of way, but other times it's
just ugly black confetti everywhere. And it doesn't always clean up well. <br />
<br />
Are there Tuesdays in Heaven? No, love. There aren't. There aren't Mondays,
Mays, Groundhog Days or s'mores. But here, in a wondrous world that won't last forever, there's confetti, lots and lots of
it. Life is intentionally, artistically crude, which is usually a pretty good thing. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Try and celebrate it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-81594464286557250092014-08-09T15:53:00.004-07:002014-09-07T17:10:45.497-07:00Rapers & Rape GuardsWhatever his name is, he's still out there, raping 1 in 4 women living in Sweden. It's 1 in 5 in the US. And get this, about 35% of women raped as minors will be raped again as adults. So yeah, you can get struck by lightening <i>and </i>raped twice, more often in Democratic Republic of Congo.<br />
<br />
Why are rapers called <i>rapists</i>? Rapist sounds like special<b><i>ist</i></b>, gynecolog<b><i>ist</i></b>, psycholog<b><i>ist</i></b>, psychiatr<i><b>ist</b>.</i> Raper is nothing special, but you'll need at least one special<b><i>ist</i></b> when Raper gets through with you. <br />
<br />
I recently read an article in the New York Times about rape kits sitting for years on shelves, untested. Law enforcement's excuse was that the testing was just too expensive (meanwhile, they're polishing their new shiny semiautomatic weapons). I bet they wouldn't say that if more men were raped.<br />
<br />
Men do get raped (1 in 71), which isn't far from their breast cancer odds (1 in 100).<br />
<br />
Women are also more likely to be raped (1 in 6) than get breast cancer (1 in 8). <br />
<br />
My own rape kit, which is an assortment of hairs and body fluids collected in the emergency room, sits on a shelf in Houston, Texas. It's covered with thirty years of dust, never tested. Raper is 30 years older than he was the morning he broke into my apartment. If the fact that he raped someone else one week before me is any indication of his usual frequency, I don't want to do the math to determine how many more victims he assaulted these past 30 years. Even if he were caught, only 3% of Rapers ever see the inside of a jail cell.<br />
<br />
Quail Walk Apartments let me out of my lease after the rape. It was simple. I walked into the leasing office the next day, sat in a chair across from Lisa-the-apartment-lady and said, "I can't live here anymore. I was raped." That last word got tangled in my mouth for a minute, just like it did when I called the police the morning before.<br />
<br />
"I'm afraid," I'd told Lisa-the-apartment-lady, but I stopped there. The rest of it was too weird, that I was afraid Raper could still get into my apartment through the tiny air vents, that no matter how many times I checked the door and window locks, I feared Raper could unlock them somehow, perhaps with telekinesis. The apartment just wasn't safe anymore, especially since many Rapers return to the scene. Plus, everywhere was a memory, the kitchen where he searched for a knife, the bedroom where I fought him, the floor where he bound my hands and mouth with electrical tape, the bathroom where the rape occurred, or the end of it anyway. Worst of all was the living room I crossed to unlock the front door when my boyfriend, a policeman, called to say he was on his way.<br />
<br />
The boyfriend was late. He had another girlfriend, I would later find out. He gave Raper his opportunity, he and I, the ditz who unlocked the door. <br />
<br />
Raper raped another girl down the street, in a local park beside a recreation center. There were no Rape Guards on duty. They should have been stationed as frequently as fire hydrants and flagpoles, churches and Starbucks. <br />
<br />
A Rape Guard should have been alerted had the girl pressed a little button implanted somewhere on her body, a place Raper would never find it, perhaps under her right clavicle or beneath her bellybutton. Maybe hers was a dental implant, a lever she could flip with her tongue and bite down. Silently, the nearest Rape Guard would have been notified, could locate this latest victim by the signal of her rape prevention implant (RPI). <br />
<br />
But Rape Guards didn't exist back in 1984. Oh yeah, they don't exist now either. One can't even Google "rape guard" and see it appear as one word, like "lifeguard." There's a RakeGuard.com website which is, ironically, a poker tournament site.<br />
<br />
She hugged her Raper, that other girl. She hugged Raper, maybe to save her life or miraculously, out of compassion and empathy. I remember being shocked by this. She mentioned it nonchalantly as she and I sat with a sketch artist working with the police. We were there to describe the 5'9" white male with frizzy blondish hair. He had a tan. He smelled almost sweet, like exertion sweat, not nervous sweat. He wasn't nervous at all. Just determined. <br />
<br />
He's still out there, probably forever, but let's at least get his name right. Raper makes rape sound more common, more everywhere, like a bad rash, like it is. Raper sounds more like dangers waiting to pounce, like they are. It sounds like both acting alone or in a group, one big party or a genocidal war game -- Let the rapes begin... It's bride kidnappings, honor killings, bride burnings, acid attacks, female genital mutilation, human trafficking, ritual servitude (sex slaves). It's all rape.<br />
<br />
Raper is what we call him now, like driver or baker, shooter or taker; loser, hater, killer. Raper is ancient, patient, and nowhere near retirement. He can't tell you why he rapes, why women, especially, have it coming. We won't forget his name, but he'll never know ours, the 1 in 4, the 1 in 5, the too many to count because not all want their names on kits collecting dust, collecting stigma and shame. Why the shame? There's a lot in a name.<br />
<br />
What was the name of that other girl in the park? Oh yeah, same as mine. Nobody. <br />
<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-32045777609410852452014-07-01T20:17:00.002-07:002014-07-01T20:20:22.241-07:00Belief-O-MaticIn eighth grade my aptitude test results came with a warning: <i>Interest patterns too varied</i>.<br />
<br />
There was a little bit of this and that, and the only professions even close to my interests were: TV/Film director, teacher, social worker, nurse, writer.<br />
<br />
Today I took a test on a website called <i>Belief-O-Matic</i>. It's a place to test your religious personality and beliefs, to match you up with the perfect religion. It's like Match.com, only it hooks you up with the right god(s). <br />
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I scored the highest (100%) with the Unitarian Universalism religion. If you visit their "What We Believe" website, there are a lot of "diverse beliefs" and "it depends" and "many believe it's unimportant or irrelevant." The beliefs are all over the place, just organized confusion. Like me. <br />
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My lowest score was 11%, Roman Catholic, which is -- <i>cough</i> -- technically what I am. Next to Roman Catholicism, also in the bottom 11%, was Orthodox Judaism. Which means I'd more likely be a Muslim (20%), or a Scientologist (53%), than a Catholic. <br />
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I wanted my #1 religion to be Theravada Buddhism, because it sounds cool, or maybe Transcendentalism, because either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson chose that one. The latter didn't even make the list. Atheism wasn't on there either.<br />
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Aside from Unitarian Universalism, my top five religions (out of the 27 listed) were:<br />
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1. Liberal Quaker (84%)<br />
2. Secular Humanism (79%)<br />
3. Taoism (78%)<br />
4. New Age (66%)<br />
5. Theravada Buddhism (61%)<br />
<br />
So I'm essentially screwed. I'm going to hell, or I'll be reincarnated as a leech or leper, and I'll be thoroughly confused every step <i>away</i> from Nirvana. I'll never find inner peace, a savior, or ultimate enlightenment. Screwed.<br />
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I guess the simplest way to deal with ambiguity is to break things down to their smallest parts. What exactly am I looking for? <br />
<br />
1. I need a belief system (or do I?).<br />
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2. There are many, too many to choose from without definite guidance from a superior expert, those being Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Ron Hubbard, etc. But they're all dead, and God won't answer the phone.<br />
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3. All I know for sure is that it's important to do no harm in life, to be kind, treat others as I want to be treated, tell the truth (when it does no harm)... There's a little bit of good in almost every religion, and I think I'm enough of a grownup to choose the buffet and make the right choices.<br />
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4. I don't really believe in life after death, in the sense that consciousness is involved. I might be a dust mote or a water bear, stardust or ash. Whatever it is, it won't be me, so I would only be good for goodness's sake, not to get into anyone's idea of Heaven or Happy Hunting Ground. I think Heaven and Hell are states of mind, perhaps <i>estates</i> of mind, if there's any truth to cumulative Karma, which there might be in some weird cosmic butterfly effect sense. It's just best to be good, what good means to me, which is doing no harm.<br />
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5. I need to be an example to my children. Can I be this good example without a religion? Or can I call myself a Catholic to keep the peace in my family, to keep my husband from violently erupting in fear for my soul, and just quietly walk my own walk?<br />
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6. Do I believe in a higher power? Yes. But this power has no name, and there is no appropriate pronoun, certainly not "he" or "it." This power doesn't care to have a name, isn't built to care, doesn't have a language that involves "care." Math doesn't "care." Math just does what it does, quite well too, and Math doesn't ask for any praise.<br />
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A higher power caring would mean the power is human-like, which isn't what humans want, or is it? We at least want better than us, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. We want a power that isn't petty, moody, unstable, weak. I prefer something like "The Force" in Star Wars. There was no pronoun to grapple with, which was quite nice. It was an equal opportunity power. No consciousness involved. It's like a power source, magic soul fuel, and some kick-ass levitation. <br />
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We're asked in Catholicism to "denounce Satan." For me, Satan is right up there with ghosts and aliens. I guess I get stuck on the fact that God was supposed to have created everything, including Satan (formerly Lucifer). Therefore, if humans were made in the likeness of God, so was Satan. So Satan is God/God is Satan. Heads/Tails. Am I the only one who sees this?<br />
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Henry Miller once said something to the effect that the only way to peace is to accept that God and Satan are two sides of the same coin. Just like The Force and The Dark Side. There are two ways to go. Why do they need names? Be good. Do Good. Show good. Follow Good. How hard is that? Why do we need a gazillion religions to follow? Powers with names. Powers with egos that need praise, names, arbitrary rules and complicated rituals? <br />
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Keep it simple, and sane.<br />
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I apologize if I've offended anyone. I've spent at least forty years thinking/fretting about all this, trying to sort it out, but every truth I think I've found crashes eventually, splits on impact, like mercury. There's no solid, no constant like Pi. Except maybe Love, beautiful crazy Love. It isn't particularly constant either, but that doesn't seem to matter, does it. <br />
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May The Force be with us all (and no, there's no need to capitalize it).... In fact, The Force could be represented by a symbol only, something like <b><i>the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince</i></b> uses. Then again, we'd probably argue over what that symbol would be.<br />
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May the<span style="font-size: x-large;"> <<b>\+/></b></span> be with you. Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-83685545586341658072014-06-30T11:04:00.002-07:002014-06-30T11:08:52.210-07:00The KissI watched the little boy and his family during mass this evening. I know his mother. The boy is her third child, the first and only boy, probably a boy longed for by the father who held him during the entire service, who kissed the boy's soft cheeks with aching tenderness.<br />
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The child has Down Syndrome. The kisses were saying: <i>I love you. I love you in spite of, because of, no matter what. I love you for the world to see.</i> They were the perfect kisses, whole, real, infinite.<br />
<br />
He walks on his toes. He can't sit still. His almond shaped eyes are light blue, hair surfer blond. He is maybe four years old, possibly five. His tennis shoes were decorated with Spider Man.<br />
<br />
I compared him to my own son, now seven. My son is handsome, dark hair and Hershey's Kiss eyes. He is funny, affectionate, adorable.<br />
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And he is autistic.<br />
<br />
He has trouble sitting still, staying on task, understanding language. He has the social skills of a three year old, gets stuck on ideas and movie scripts. He may never live independently, have a job, drive a car, marry or vote.<br />
<br />
I kiss him a lot, an inordinate number of times each day. I kiss him in an almost desperate way, breathing in his cookie smell, the sweet of his doughy cheeks. I kiss him to disappear from my world, to enter his. I kiss him to seal the moment, a perfect eternity.<br />
<br />
The other mother and I were disappointed when we learned that our sons weren't the sons we'd hoped for, expected. Was it wrong to expect a healthy child? Her third, my fourth. We'd only known success, healthy, the usual. We took these things for granted, believed that nature only screws up other people's kids, not ours. We were special, different, protected. Our lives were lucky, cocooned.<br />
<br />
Not so.<br />
<br />
Tonight, with my eyes half focusing on the alter and two priests, one with a cane, I saw a glimpse of my future. My son was in his early twenties, strong, maybe a little too strong. I was Medicare age, not so strong, still caring for the son who wasn't the son I'd hoped for, expected.<br />
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Some days, this image doesn't scare me. I love him. We'll be okay.<br />
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Other times, the image is too terrifying, like tonight. I didn't want to look at it, so I refocused my eyes, stared at the slain Jesus, the priest barely able to walk, his blood red vestment and stole, the white alter approached with reverence where the ordained solemnly bow and kiss the clean white linens.<br />
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They have a ritual. I have a ritual. We have days, which begin and end about the same. We wake up, every day, and live. I feed my son, literally and figuratively, walk beside him in a world made for others, not the disabled. He is different. I've heard all the sugary words, the platitudes meant to comfort. Platitudes don't work, except when they're true, on good days, when I believe that his differences make him special, special in a good way, not the ways the world laughs at, points and stares at, and I struggle to stay here, where the good things are true, on the bright side.<br />
<br />
I'm a better person, mother, human, because of him. I've made more friends, real friends, living in Autism World. I can write from the bottom of despair, parental despair, write my way from bottom to top. I can make another mother of a disabled child smile, because it's not over, even if it's not the adventure she'd hoped for, expected. I'm right there beside her, and we'll find ways to laugh at the absurd, to squeeze our strange outlier lives into a new Spanks-like normal. We can have normal, just different.<br />
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But still, I sometimes feel disappointed when I remember what might have been, when I forget how much I love him, when I compare; when I focus on the cane and not the human, on the white and not the alter, on the cross and not the kiss.Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-37402085638108595162014-05-11T18:41:00.001-07:002015-10-13T12:04:49.122-07:00Breakfast With Beast, Washing Feet, & Liquid Zoloft My former father-in-law, an eighty-four year old I often refer to as "Beast" in my journals, came to visit last weekend to attend my eight year old's first communion.<br />
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We've gotten along better over the years, but sometimes he still tests me, like he did at breakfast the day I took him to the airport to fly home. He asked me to pray over our pancakes at IHOP. I reached across the Formica table for his hands as I mentally reached for the right words to decline his request.<br />
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"I want to hear you," he said, as if this were a job interview, a test of my worthiness, my holiness.<br />
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"I don't feel comfortable," I answered. I never have felt comfortable praying aloud. I struggle enough praying on my own these past few years, uncertain where to direct my prayers, worried it's all just a silly waste of time. Besides, I don't like the sound of my voice. The distraction makes it impossible to hear myself think.<br />
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So Beast began to pray out loud, something simple, good enough. I could have offered something similar, but it still would have made me uncomfortable. After the "Amen" he said, "I don't have to think about what I'm going to say. It just comes out."<br />
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Bravo. Must be an annointing or something. I'm out of the loop, I guess.<br />
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The same weekend Beast came to visit, my husband bought me a CD lecture series, an RCIA course titled, "Welcome Home". It's narrated by Father John Riccardo, a charismatic man, well spoken, intelligent. You might even say he's <i>cool</i>. He's handsome and young for a priest, maybe in his mid-forties. He often does speaking engagements, recruiting new Catholics and urging those who are lapsed to come back "home." <br />
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The CD series is <i>long</i>. Seventeen CDs. I'm on #4. I listen as I drive the kids to school every morning, and I catalog the information, wait for satisfying answers, convincing arguments. I'm not buying any of it yet. And this is unfortunate. My life would be so much easier, if only.... <br />
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But why is it necessary to teach the parts of a faith, step by step, rule by rule, symbol by symbol. Why doesn't it happen naturally? Why so much <i>convincing</i>? Apologetics? Seventeen CDs?<br />
<br />
Do we need seventeen CDs to attract us to Love? Do we need props, prayers and formulae? No. We don't.<br />
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It all seems very contrived to me. If it requires this much explanation, so many apologetics, there's something inherently wrong. This is way too many steps to God. Too many predetermined steps toward an ultimate and equally impossible goal: divinity. If there's a heaven, we might achieve perfection there, whatever perfection is. I'd have to lose my mind, my self, my power of thought to reach a state of absolute purity. Rendered neutral. Neutered. Hollow. Whatever Adam and Eve were before they ate that damn apple.<br />
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When we're hungry, we eat. When we're thirsty, we drink. When we're lonely, we reach. When we're scared, we turn to a complex intellectualized fantasy called religion, a distraction of symbols and "holy" scripture, stories and promises, guides, gates, and a goal of eternity. It's all suspended from a massive scaffolding, a dream we build out of a desperation to live forever, all glued together by some vapor called faith.<br />
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Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Seventeen CDs sounds like what Shakespeare was trying to convey in <i>Hamlet</i>, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." In his day, "protest" meant an attempt to convince. <br />
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Add to Beast's prayer test and the long lecture series, a foot washing invitation last week from a church lady. Yes, a foot washing.<br />
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Maureen is more of an acquaintance than a friend, someone I've volunteered with at our Catholic church. We're both involved in the social concerns program and have lost a parent to suicide, but the comparison ends there. If she knew me better, she would never have invited me to a "foot washing."<br />
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"We will get the experience of both washing each other's feet and getting our feet washed. Come at 8:30 am for coffee and light breakfast, then from 9:00 to 10:00 we'll have the foot washing," she'd written in her invitation email.<br />
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Of course, this is supposed to be an exercise in humility and devotion, patterned after Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Jesus with her hair. I get that. But wouldn't it be more pragmatic to deliver blankets and food to the homeless? Or offer babysitting to the exhausted parents of an autistic child? Sitting around having coffee and washing each others' feet sounds self-indulgent, narcissistic. I couldn't even bring myself to respond to the email.<br />
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I thought of Maureen though, during my daughter's first communion, when the priest said, "You can tell when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit. They're filled with joy. Their faces light up." Really? Maureen takes about three different types of antidepressants. Without them, her face definitely doesn't light up. Is this her fault? Of course not. Do we blame a lack of the Holy Spirit, or worse, Satan? Do we blame Satan when a baby is born with two heads, when innocent children are casualties of war or die from an atrocious birth defect?<br />
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My sister-in-law and her husband were also present at my daughter's first communion. We don't see them often since they live three hours away. To prepare for their visit, I had to find a picture frame for an image of their deceased infant. He was diagnosed with anencephaly during her eighteenth week of pregnancy. Being Catholic, Syliva couldn't opt for abortion, even though the infant would not live beyond a few minutes or hours after birth. The pregnancy was difficult on her already fragile mental state since she already suffered from depression, had had at least one nervous breakdown prior.<br />
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When the baby was born, his heart was beating, but he never took a breath. He lived three minutes. She and her husband took pictures. She gave everyone in the family an 8x10 of the lifeless child, airbrushed, his blue eyes glassy and fixed. I couldn't offend her by not displaying the photograph, which I'd put in a closet until I figured out what to do with it. I dug around for a suitable frame, then placed the picture among others of family members, in a prominent place on the fireplace mantel. <br />
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Who do we blame for these things? Sister Angelica touched on this during a program on EWTN yesterday (my husband watches frequently). She didn't offer any satisfying answers. People are desperate to know why they suffer so much. God watches. Satan trips us. Bad crap happens. Jesus hasn't returned, two thousand years later, but devout Christians still wait. <br />
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Why do they wait? Without the promise of everlasting life, would they still wait? Do they really love God, or are they desperate not to die? Not to be some touched up photo on somebody's mantel?<br />
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There are five pill bottles on my kitchen counter. Three are for the dog. He came from a puppy mill. He has allergies, anxiety, and is still recovering from sego palm seed ingestion. So he takes two pills a day, one on an empty stomach in the morning, one with a meal at night, and he gets antibiotic eye drops twice a day.<br />
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The other two bottles are for my seven year old son. One is liquid Zoloft. We started him on the antidepressant a week ago Tuesday, to combat the OCD, tics and anxiety that come with his autism. The liquid Zoloft didn't work out. He could taste it in the yogurt, his juice, applesauce. We switched to pills and he took them like a champ. We'll know by Tuesday if it's working, the psychiatrist said. We hope to see that he's no longer repeating lines from Dr. Seuss's <i>Cat In The Ha</i>t or <i>Green Eggs & Ham</i>. We hope he's no longer afraid of growing up, that he no longer cries at the prospect of having to drive a car one day, move away from home. The idea of adulthood terrifies him. I can understand that. Adulthood terrifies me sometimes.<br />
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Autism drugs, a picture of anencephaly, the price of anxiety, seventeen CDs of apologetics, a morning of washing feet and being asked to pray over pancakes -- this has been my life lately.<br />
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My children are watching the movie <i>Frozen</i> as I type. During the movie, the trolls sing a song about being a fixer-upper, and a lyric about making bad choices when we're mad, scared or stressed caught my ear. They were referring to Anna agreeing to marry Hans immediately after they meet. She was desperate. She'd been lonely. No one else was asking. Is this how we choose our religions? Do we simply reach for the one next door? The first one that asks that we seek salvation, divinity? Don't we all want to be saved, in one form or another?<br />
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The only time I don't think about these things is when I listen to music from a time when I wasn't worried about anything. When I hear old Earth, Wind & Fire, or America, I feel firmly grounded. Revisiting the past makes us feel better. We know it. We lived it, survived it.<br />
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There's no such feeling when we imagine tomorrow. Even with religion, there are no guarantees. Even if you're in the best possible position to enter Heaven, you're still gonna have to die to get there. And there are no postcards from your deceased loved ones. No brochures on heaven. No infomercials. Just faith. And a few rules, like not fornicating, masturbating or using birth control. No supporting gay marriage or abortion. No living together out of wedlock. Stuff like that. And you have to memorize a few dozen prayers, receive a few sacraments (after receiving months of classroom instruction). You have to go to confession regularly. And pray. Out loud.<br />
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I've been imagining Beast on his deathbed lately, not out of contempt. I can just see our saying goodbye. We've actually learned to get along over the years, have come to some understanding. He's actually expressed to me some of his own doubts about Catholicism and what we can expect after death. I can imagine our final conversation, low whispers as I sit on the edge of his hospital bed, the air around us thick with the smell of plastic and bleach. I would tell him not to be afraid, that he won't be alone, that we'll meet him wherever he's going.<br />
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People have been dying for as long as they've existed. We've "survived" death in a sense, have gotten pretty good at it. What's to fear? Aside from the pain that sometimes comes with it, or the idea of no longer <i>being</i>? The thing is, I can't promise Beast or anyone that there's a heaven waiting for them, or that they're loved by God and heaven's angels. I can't understand such a hands off love.<br />
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I can only express my own love, hold someone's hand. And if on his deathbed Beast asks me to wash his feet, I will.<br />
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<br />
<br />Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3264992724666282025.post-7206412853038163392014-03-23T16:35:00.003-07:002014-03-23T16:48:33.933-07:00Paper ThinMy seventy-four year old dad called last week, just as I arrived at Texas Children's Hospital. He called not because he'd learned that my sixteen month old granddaughter had had a seizure, a child he's never met. He called because I hadn't written him in a while.<br />
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I haven't seen him either, not since 1998. <br />
<br />
I still owe him that letter, which I'll get to after this writing exercise. There's not a whole lot to say to him, except that my granddaughter is okay, that her name is London, that her seizure was febrile. When I told him what happened to her over the phone last week he seemed disinterested, as thought he was watching the clock. I mentioned that I planned to visit this summer with my younger children, to spend a week so I could see everyone, including him. I heard the faintest disbelieving grunt on the line. I've said this before. <br />
<br />
I might tell him in my letter that my husband and I will break ground soon for our house, that we've finally selected the exterior color: HGTV's White Duck. Or that my son will be leaving his school for autistic children and mainstreaming in a Catholic school. Or that my skin biopsy came back benign. But I don't think these things would really interest him. <br />
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I recently typed up all the letters my family has ever written to me, to archive them. I needed to preserve the span of over forty years, remember who we were then, what life looked like when Nixon was president, when the Beatles were traipsing through Strawberry Fields, when Remco was a household name. We're not the same people now. It's not the same world. Some of us died long ago.<br />
<br />
I feel closer to my father when I read through his letters. All the pieces make more of a whole, or at least a bottom and couple of sides. But I still don't want to see him, despite that at some point I may succumb to an overwhelming sense of guilt. He might be on his death bed, or worse, in a coffin. <br />
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Now I want to stop typing. It's a depth I don't want to dredge up. Better stay close to the surface, like waving to a neighbor you've never really met. And that's terrible on so many levels.<br />
<br />
I have reached out to my father before, reminded him of good times, assured him that just because Mom died doesn't mean it had been the wrong decision to divorce her ten years earlier. She and her addictions would have brought him down with her.<br />
<br />
I've asked him hard questions about our family, for details I was too young to remember. But I've never asked him the other, equally important questions, like why he ultimately gave me to his sister to raise, or what happened the night he came home at 3 am with stitches in his forehead. I've never asked about the unfamiliar corner house where he once parked his car all night, the house my mother and I watched until I finally fell asleep in her lap. I never knew for certain what she suspected. I'm still afraid to ask my father anything hard about our personal history, to shatter the delicate glass slipper, wave through the shimmering ruse, destroy the possibility of magically becoming what a father and daughter <i>should </i>be. Real.<br />
<br />
Like my mother I'm ridiculously addicted, to hope. <br />
<br />
A psychiatrist once told me, regarding my father, that sometimes we have to let go of people, even when they're family. I'm still trying to decide whether that's what I want, but first I have to decide why I'm afraid to face him. I thought I knew last year when I abandoned an attempt to visit him. I got as close as Fort Worth, Texas, to the tiny house in Polytechnic Heights where I grew up. But I couldn't move beyond it, to my father's house in Burleson where he lives alone after three failed marriages. I then decided it was his long ago cruelty to my siblings and mother that justified my discomfort. Why should I honor this man, our tenuous relationship, when he deeply hurt the people I love, no apologies? But now I'm not so sure.<br />
<br />
Opinions differ, my sister saying one thing, my father another. I'm stuck in the middle; the two don't speak anymore. But I'm haunted by what I do know, the night I saw him beat my sister, the afternoon he struck my thirteen year old brother in the face with a white-knuckled fist. I remember the day not long after when he lunged at my brother, chased him out of the house for saying he wanted to move out and live with our mother. My brother lived in the streets for the next nineteen years, and died there. <br />
<br />
My mother and brother can't corroborate any story. I'm left with only pieces. <br />
<br />
So I go with my gut, remain on my side of the ruse, continue writing to my father about the present, but never about us. I don't want to face him, in words or physicality. I don't want to risk finding out that confronting my fears might result in nothing but an awkward moment, empty talk, hollow sounds masking raw wounds. He would disappoint me. I can't accept his destroying the fantasy we've built out of thin pieces of ourselves, out of paper and minutiae. I can only live with disappointing myself, with facing him too late. <br />
<br />
The letters are insulation, and a substitute for the father/daughter relationship that is most likely impossible. I just need to know that this is enough, for <i>both</i> of us. <br />
<br />
In the past I invited him to see me several times, but his excuse was always that he didn't "travel much." I remember these words when I go through his letters, the post cards from the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. He couldn't travel 257 miles, 3 hours and 53 minutes to walk me down the aisle in 2003. He declined when I invited him to see my last two children when they were born. He just couldn't.<br />
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And now, neither can I.Teresa Cortezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11403003093710064376noreply@blogger.com0