12.5.15 Taking care of business

    I have a friend I haven't seen for awhile, who let it be known, after a year or so of friendship, that they had been part of The Family.      
     At first I wasn't certain what they meant, and then I got it. The more I understood, the more they told me what it was like.

     Being addicted to risk taking behavior is something we don't always realize can happen. It's like we compartmentalize, often trauma, sometimes just unwieldy childhoods, until we are one person in most of life, and the other in some instances. We all do this to some degree; some more than others.

     I saw this mild mannered middle aged person be kind and thoughtful and easy about all sorts of things, and then once or twice, when we were talking about things that really upset them, they kind of blossomed....into a very powerful charismatic person...who you would think twice about messing with. 
     Months later, I mentioned to them how cool it would be if, with EMDR and EFT and awareness, they could slowly infuse their waking normal self they walked around with...with the oh so powerful direct charismatic aspects that were kept hidden away.

     With reflection, I realized that we all do this...somehow compartmentalize parts of us away to be polite, to be acceptable, to be accepted, and because we don't really know how to be an ok person, while letting the lion out of the cage. But see how full of self we become, when we begin.
     Sometimes they would talk about working with young people at their job; how the kids would think they were so cool and dangerous and right on the edge. Now and then this person would let out the lion, just quietly, and the kids would sit back in shock, that kind of shock of seeing the real thing.
     Other times in their work, a 'wise guy' would come in, and after awhile, would begin to recognize them. Asking telling questions. And they'd have to explain that they retired. Let 'the life' go. Which I didn't realize one could do, but what did I know? And besides, I asked them how that was...so they explained the how and when and ifs.
     Once someone near and dear to me had a real problem with risk taking behaviors, and a certain illegal handgun and semi automatic, both of which I came upon by accident. But when you know someone like this person, you can give them a call and then meet up for tea and ask what the hell to do, and they'll set it all out in front of you, clearly.
     They'd often go to GA meetings, which are quite popular with The Family, of course, as the gambling comes hand in hand with the addiction to risk and danger and power. They'd bump into all their old friends, and talk about old times, and come away with their Italian somehow all spruced up.
     But more often, they learned to stay away. From the life. They had learned to go about normally, without all the fancy stuff and the fanfare and the notoriety and the extraordinary power.

     And live the quiet life of a mere mortal instead. And get this; this person was a woman.

12.5.15 38 years ago

38 years. Thin and thick, worse and better, poor and enriched, sickness and then health. I never was drawn to those words at all, until a few years ago. 
But yeah, 38 years ago, after hanging out together at Umass, starving working working students like many of us, talking for hours in the coffee shop many days a week, about Woolf and Marx and sex roles and activism and class and Feminism and our idealism blossoming in waves across the land; 
where I would find excuses to lay my hand on his shoulder or thigh, while we debated and laughed, we finally had one of the best long long dates, the first of the rest.

12.5.15 Something terrible

       When I'd been with Kevin for a year or so, I started going to his family's weddings and funerals. His dad's family came over from Italy,  a huge traditional working class family, with a million siblings, and cousins from here to eternity.

      So off I'd go, prim young WASP, to some ornate Catholic Church, with so-high ceilings and all the rest. Of course, raised a Unitarian, where anything and everything are just fine to do, thank you very much, the beautiful dramatic stained glass windows and Mass and other ways were amazing.
     As a teenager, I'd snuck into Episcopal Churches sometimes, enamored with the concept of ritual and communion. Far from the stark plain white with nothing at all ornate, that my church had been. Where there were no sins, where as far as I could see, so much was AOK it was troubling.
     With his extended family, during funerals, would be groups of enormously muscular, huge dark men, with beautiful dark suits, gold bracelets, and fine watches. Slicked back black hair, subdued movements and serious faces.

     Along would come the old women, all in black, with black veils and dresses, and the huge young powerful men would usher them, would be at their beck and call, as they bustled about and settled themselves in. Making order, wherever they went.
     This being the time before cell phones, messengers would quietly come in, lean close to some big guy's ear, whisper something, and several would be told to go off somewhere. It was evident to me that they relished the intense call of what they were living.
     So I sat there, newly pregnant, watching everything, wondering what it was like to grow up a small child, as my husband did, visiting these churches. Going to Mass. To Catechism School. The culture a million lights years away from so much I'd lived.

      At the time,I was young, my faith something I hadn't even set eyes on yet.
      When he first brought me home to meet his parents, I was still a bit wild. When I was done with my part time job and my Umass schoolwork, I'd race myself up the winding roads to the house he and his friends rented, clocking to see if I could beat my Montague-to-Conway 15 minutes-in-the-winter time. I was big time itchy and no time patient.

     His mom took me aside, out in the breezeway, and sat me down. She said "I hear you've had other boyfriends. Are you ready to settle yourself down? " She inferred that hurting her son was not an option.
     But I'd known the first moment I'd seen him, somehow. Hard to believe. But something like the essence of him shot right through me, like lightening.

As if I was the pinball machine, and just looking at him set off all the bells and whistles something terrible.

12.5.15. Out we went

early, diving into the morning, waiting there with all it's glistening frosted light 

12.5.15 The afternoon's rising moon

Down the road , on the way to picking up Kevin, the cloud covers of the day converged, slightly breathtaking , on by one of the farms peripheral to suburban sprawl. All those houses slowly sprouting up , pressing up against fields and crops and the shifting array of cattle and cows and goats.
     A few years back, I was in the same place, paused to take a shot of this tree by this stream and meadow. A young cow was lying on their side, belly big. I went round various houses til I was told that the farm down that dirt road was the one who had these cowlets. 
     So round I drove, discovered the tiny Victorian with of course the extended barns out back. And who should answer the door, but the sister of an Amherst neighbor of mine. The sister of a delicious guy I once had a passing crush on . The daughter of a local grocery owner.
     Her parents owned one, and then two grocery stores locally , had ten or eleven kids; I forget. Worked hard hard long hours. 
     They had a huge long long house up on the hill , right out of town, and I first started going by the store when I was a 23 year old wild one , working at a youth center in a pretty impoverished nearby town. Breaking up fights with my arms and feet, and flushing out the pot smokers before the cops went round. Going to the station to make nice and look out for picked up kids. 
     There were no jobs, the school system sucked, and generally the kids ended up pregnant on welfare, in the service, dead or in prison.
I drove too fast , drank too much, slept too little, and wilded away the struggle to settle myself with what life often is .
     I'd go by the store for this or that , and the mom and I would talk. About the day. About her 1,000 kids! About how she kept a barn full of more horses than her husband knew about, which was her big reward... Those huge creatures. We were works apart , but talked nearly every day.
     In Amherst several years later , I was 30, grown and more sane, a beautiful four year old and a beloved I'd just married there in my front yard, in a house we bought the year before , across the street from her store .
     Ten years later we were renting a house in North Amherst, across from a house she owned and rented out . Across from a field and stream with herbs my three kids would help me gather and the stream I'd bring them to all throughout the long hot muggy summer days, and then the freezing cold deep snow days too , to tromp about in the frozen beauty .
     Across the street also lived her older daughter, in a small small house with her six kids. She took care of kids and raised vegetables to sell and in between she'd escape, and go for a long run. In the past, she'd been a long distance runner, and after all those sweet kids, packed into that three-bedroom cottage, she retained those long powerful sinews, and always her broad shy smile.
     So it was with some delight that, while looking for the farmer of this small cow, I came upon a younger daughter of that clan that day , and introduced myself , an old neighbor of her sister. 
     She had the same long sinews, the same broad shy smile , and directed me out back to where her husband, this big loud man, was on coffee break with his hired help.
     He thanked me for the news about the calf , said he'd get over there directly after his coffee and doughnut , turned and went back into the dark cold shed where they all sat.
     So with a wave at her , in her quiet life as I left, off I went , past the long low dirt roads and the afternoon's rising moon.

12.5.15 Far within

Within our present

 lies the solidity and wisdom 

of all we learned from our past .