Memories: Tuesday's Reflection

Meet Bennett. He is the almost one year old son of our niece Stephanie and her husband Justin. Pretty cute, huh?

We have not had the pleasure of a baby in the house for a long time, and as he walked on tiptoes around the coffee table or ottoman, I felt a surge of memories. Memories when our own children were babies. 

How sweet was the "mmmm" sound as his mother spooned food into his mouth or the light squeals as he turned page after page in a favorite book or the slap, pat, slap, pat on the wood floors as he crawled from dining room to living room. Baby sounds. 

My body remembered the post-nap cuddling and the feel of a small head under my neck just before bedtime. I felt my mind returning to a state of alertness, always aware of what our babies were doing or needing--or about to do or need. 

Throughout the weekend Bruce and I shared stories with these young parents--the waves of nostalgia were almost tangible. How pleasant to revisit the treasures of those earlier days through the gifts of the present moment. 

Macrina Wiederkehr in her book Gold In Your Memories calls these times "sacred moments, glimpses of God." and suggests ways to mine the gold of our memories:

              ...you will need to spend a lot of time with

              your soul. The soul thrives on remembering...

              there are soul prints in every fiber of your being, 

              even in the things you've forgotten. The soul is

              the keeper of memories. She knows where beauty

              is stored.  p. 13

Obviously, not all memories are happy. Some memories are not  golden. Joan Chittister points out, "Without memory we could go blithely on in life without ever really knowing what of that life was still unfinished, was still rumbling around inside of us, waiting for attention." Sometimes memory is the impetus to do the work of healing, releasing us from the trap memories can be. Instead memories can strengthen us, even open us even more to the present.

Having Bennett and his parents, such good parents, here allowed me to access a part of my life--not to dwell in it, but to remind me of its place in my life, my whole life. More words from Chittister:

                The wonder of being able to see life as whole,

                at any time and all times, is the great gift of memory.

                It makes all of life a piece in progress. With one

                part of the soul in the past and another in the present,

                we are able to go on stitching together a life that

                has integrity and wholeness. Because of memory life 

                is not simply one isolated act after another. It all

                fits into the image of self and the goals of the 

                heart. It makes them real. It makes them whole.

                                    p. 155 The Gift of Years

The present moment is a threshold to remembering, just as memories can heighten our ability to treasure the present moment.

An Invitation

What recent event or conversation has opened a door to memory for you? I would love to know. 

Memory Time: Thursday's Reflection

When you return to a location where you once lived, you are apt to
be flooded with memories. That happened when we were in Madison to attend the 50th wedding anniversary party of dear friends. We lived in Madison for six years prior to moving back to St Paul. 

During that brief visit we went to our favorite bookstore in Spring Green, Arcadia Books. Don't miss it if you are in the area. We had lunch at a favorite restaurant Villa Dolce and enjoyed the pear gorgonzola pizza once again. 

The day after the party we drove to Monches Farm, a favorite nursery and gift shop about an hour away from Madison. 

As we drove down familiar streets and roads, we reminisced about the many things we enjoyed during the years we lived there. I guess this was a memory lane time. 

Since moving back to St Paul, I have tended to think about the Madison years as a transition time between our years in Ohio and the return to where we had raised our family. It can be challenging to be present and live fully when the next big thing is looming, but not quite happening. And part of our life in Madison was consumed by the next step.

But those years were not only about being in-between one place and another. We lived there. We made friends there. Bruce had a demanding and meaningful job there. Our home was often filled with family and friends. We developed a list of "favorites,"and a comfortable loop of life. We created memories. 

How good it was to be reminded that we had lived there, lived as fully as we could. How good it is to be reminded of the gifts in one's life. 

An Invitation
Is there something in your life that can be viewed in more than one way? I would love to know. 

Memories: Thursday's Reflections

The other night I intended to make a second batch of cherry walnut

bread, but the butter wasn't soft enough yet. I wrapped a few presents, but then I turned in another direction: the past. 

My family -- father, siblings and their families, and our kids -- are gathering this weekend to celebrate Christmas, and knowing how much Dad likes to look at family photographs, I decided to find pictures of Christmases past. 

This is what I wish I could say, "I went to the shelf with all the photo albums, each one perfectly organized according to theme or chronology, and voila, how easy it was to find just what I was looking for." Instead, "organizing the family photos" remains on the retirement list and probably will for a LONG time. Instead, I opened a cupboard where there are small bins of loose photos arranged in no order, a true mishmash of time and place and people and events. 

And then I was sucked into a path called Memory Lane. Pictures from my growing up years, including the posed ones sent with Christmas cards. Pictures of our kids opening presents and visiting Santa. Sometimes I had to pause to make sure the picture was actually of our daughter Kate and not granddaughter Maren, for they look so much alike. Pictures taken Christmas Day at my parents' home--the annual grandchildren in front of the tree photo, chronicling their growth and change in hairstyles and clothes, too. 

The last family photograph taken before my Mother died. We knew it would be her last Christmas and marveled that she was still  with us, but there she was wearing her red blazer and Christmas shoes and holding her first great-grandchild. We were smiling, but we all knew what was coming. 

As I flipped through hundreds of photos, memories flooded my head and heart. Not all pleasant, I noted. Sometimes I recalled a conversation, a sadness, a regret, not apparent in the picture itself. The picture was a trigger, and how easy it would have been to sink into the past and remove me from the present moment. 

Carolyn G. Heilbrun in her book The Last Gift of Time, Life Beyond Sixty has this to say about the return of what she calls "inconsequential memories" or memories that have not been invited. "That temptation is to recall grudges, to dwell on ancient wrongs and miseries and betrayals, to allow these memories, if they are not properly controlled, to dominate thought and therefore life." 

As someone writing her spiritual memoir, I sit with memories often. I probe for the details, willing myself back into a certain time and place. Occasionally, I discover a rawness, an unresolved hurt, and I know before I can write about it in my book, I need to do some work. I need to let go of the hurt and find the growth, the wisdom, the deeper perspective. I am not suggesting we become Pollyannas about our lives. Rather, that memory, especially of what we might wish were different, make us more present in love and compassion toward ourselves and each other. 

Heilbrun says getting stuck in memories can cause us "to forget to look at what is in front of us, at the new ideas and pleasures we might, if firmly in the present, encounter and enjoy."

I gathered the stack of Christmas pictures, Christmas memories and placed them in a large crystal bowl on the living room coffee table. I imagine loved ones looking at them and I hope the visions of those previous times brings us closer together.  

Note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Gold_Heilbrun

Following The Memory Trail: Tuesday's Reflection

When I spoke with my father yesterday morning, Memorial Day, he mentioned remembering his father and Aunt Clara planting geraniums in pots at the cemetery on Memorial Day. Now did he say red geraniums or am I just filling in that detail? His memory made me think about pots at my parents' home planted with red and white geraniums. The front door was painted red, and my mother believed in Color Coordination. From that memory I jumped to a memory of a man who owns a small and delectable nursery. I recall his condemnation of geraniums, calling them "ordinary" and "Midwestern" and "unimaginative." 

That memory led me to a blustery, beyond cold evening in his home in which several gathered to read to each other from favorite books about gardening. How I happened to be there or what I or anyone else read, I don't quite recall, but I remember the evening's enveloping English coziness. I lingered in that memory for awhile, and then I meandered to our gardens at Sweetwater Farm where we didn't have any geraniums, but where the Head Gardener, husband Bruce, had open-ended space to indulge in his gardening fantasies, even if he didn't have open-ended time. He did have, however, his Undergardener, me, who weeded and followed instructions and rejoiced in his vision and hard work.

I could stay in those memories for a long time following the garden paths, feeling such gratitude for those years of privileged creativity. At the same time, I recognized it would be easy especially on a grey day like yesterday to feel loss, to detour into what I miss, but I decided, quite intentionally, to set those thoughts aside and instead return to the present. 

Bruce has planted geraniums, red geraniums, in the window boxes on the garage. And we even have a red door. I love the happy old-fashioned way they look, and I don't care if they are "unimaginative" or "ordinary." They remind me of a set of dishes I collected when we lived at Sweetwater Farm--a red geranium design. Whoops--there is another memory. This could go on and on, for that is what memories do. 

Memories lead us on meandering paths, similar to walking a labyrinth. One turn leads to another. One more time around and still there is more pathway ahead. How easily, however, a labyrinth, which has one way in and then you follow the path in reverse to where you started, can become a maze in which you can lose your way and still not find your way out even after many tries. Sometimes being lost in memories confines us, reinforcing what actually needs to forgotten and released. 

Recently, I came across a book that invites meandering, Consolations, The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by the poet David Whyte. Here's what he says about memory.

          Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past

          is never just the past, memory is a pulse, passing through

          all created life, a waveform, a then continually becoming

          other thens, all the while creating a continual but

          almost untouchable now. …

          We can be overwhelmed, traumatized, made smaller

          by the tide that brought us here, we can even be

          drowned and disappeared by memory; or we can spin

          a cocoon of insulation to protect ourselves and bob

          along passively in the wake of what we think has

          occurred, but we also have other more engaging

          possibilities; memory in a sense, is the very essence

          of the conversation we hold as individual human

          beings. A full inhabitation of memory makes human

          beings conscious, a living connection between what 

          has been, what is and what is about to be. Memory 

          is the living link to personal freedom. pp. 143-145

All that from red geraniums? Yes.

Memories as Spiritual Practice--Lectio Divina

Spending time in memory can become a spiritual practice when it leads us to deeper awareness of our own essence and our connection to something greater than ourselves. Perhaps you have heard of the spiritual practice, lectio divina, which is a contemplative way to read scripture, but I think it can be applied to memories that arise in us, as well. 

I am grateful to Christine Valters Paintner's new book The Soul of A Pilgrim, Eight Practices for the Journey Within, for introducing new language for the lectio divina steps. (pp. 23-24). Why not approach memories as an exercise in lectio divina? 

First Movement--Lectio: Settling and Shimmering. When you feel a memory arise within you, give yourself time and space to settle into it and become present. What image or words are shimmering for you? Walk around that image, getting a good look. Listen carefully to the words that may be part of the memory.

Second Movement--Meditatio: Savoring and Stirring. Look again, feel again the memory and let imagination fill it. Are there smells, sounds, tastes, touches, sights within this memory that invite you? Be with them and allow the memory to grow and expand.

Third Movement--Oratio: Summoning and Serving. Revisit the memory again and ask yourself why is this memory rising within me now? Where is it leading me?

Fourth Movement--Contemplatio: Slowing and Stilling. Know that this time of memory is also a time with God, the Sacred, the Divine. Allow yourself to be, with no need to understand or resolve. Just be. 

My lectio divina red geranium time led me to gratitude for the many gardens I have known: big and small, ones I have visited and ones at our own homes, friends' gardens, public gardens, gardens only seen in books and magazines. My heart opened to all the beauty in the world, beauty we participate in creating and beauty we are asked to nurture. 

An Invitation

I invite you to open to your memories and explore them using the spiritual practice of lectio divina. Consider journaling about your experience. I would love to know what you discover.  

Resources

David Whyte here.

Christine Valters Painter here. 

Thursday's Reflection: Happy Thanksgiving!

Vintage Thanksgiving Candles on my Kitchen Windowsill

What's cooking? Is your kitchen bustling with activity? Have you discovered yet what ingredient you forgot to buy in your many trips to the grocery store, for that seems to be inevitable no matter how detailed your lists? Let's hope you can borrow from your neighbor or you can fake it and no one will know it is missing. Are you one of those people who sets your table the night before and then needs to figure out where everyone will have breakfast this morning? Are there smells in the kitchen already luring other members of the family to wander into the kitchen and say, "What smells so good?" Are you chopping and stirring and blending and peeling and buttering?  (I don't care what anyone says, this holiday requires lots of butter.) 

Does your menu reflect old and new recipes, dishes that are required because they are someone's favorite and it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without x, y, or z or is your clan a bit more adventurous? I remember one year, decades ago, when my mother relented and said I could bring a salad. I brought a spiced fruit salad served on greens and I was never asked to bring the salad again, even though I thought it was delicious. What Mom meant by salad was what my brother calls "garbage salad," which is a jello salad of some sort, but not the kind with lime jello, carrots and celery--yuk!  In our family it was not good to mess with tradition. 

My daughter-in-love, Cricket, texted this past weekend asking for my recipe for sweet potatoes and pears. She said, "I know it's in your folder somewhere." Of course, it is. In my Thanksgiving folder are menus and lists dating to 2001 when we were still living at Sweetwater Farm. I wish I had noted who was sitting at our harvest table that year. I'm sure that information and other highlights of the day are in my journal, but please don't ask me to forage in the storage room for the bin of journals from that era. Was it the year Cricket's mom couldn't resist and turned over one of my vintage turkey dinner plates to see who made it? Was it the year my Dad and a dear friend's father sat in the living room and reminisced about Thanksgivings of their youth? Surely, our dear friends who were the first to reach out to us our first fall in Ohio were at the table. Yes, they were, for I see listed on the menu is Marcia's apple pie. Was this one of the years when along with the feast a main activity was the Animal Round-Up, which meant somehow moving the llamas and sheep and goats and donkey from the fenced meadow into the barn for the winter? Oh, how I wish I had videos of that annual action! 

Memories and stories. Thanks for indulging me. I could go on and on, but you have your own memories to share, and I encourage you to do that today, as well. While you are waiting for the potatoes to boil or while you are basting the turkey, let the smells and the sights and the sounds of Thanksgivings past swirl around your kitchen as well. I know this day is a lot of work for the hostess and host, and all too quickly, we push away from the table not able to eat one more thing, but I hope your day will include time to remember, to honor the past, and, of course, give thanks for what has been and what is, and what is yet to come. 

I know all memories are not joyful, and perhaps this year is one of those years when the past weighs heavy and the present is not easy and light either. Some years the biggest challenge is knowing when the turkey is ready, but this may not be one of those years. You may find yourself gritting your teeth if a family member says a critical word or you may discover yourself in tears, realizing this may be the last year you are all together. You may be exhausted and may not be looking forward to the weeks of holiday bustling --bustling that has already begun, in fact. You may be alone--by choice or because that is the way it is. There may be people missing from your table this year or you may not be at the table.

Still, dig deep, open your heart to a shining, glowing memory. One is enough, for in that one is a glimpse of hope and wholeness and connection. Rest in the one.

This year Bruce and I will join my sister's family for Thanksgiving dinner, and I am bringing the appetizers--my spiced nut mix, a pumpkin dip for apples and gingersnap cookies, and also pesto pinwheels made with puff pastry. I will miss not having leftovers for turkey sandwiches, but maybe soon I will fix a turkey breast and have a miniThanksgiving. What's most important is being with people I love and feeling love and gratitude for all I have in my life now, as well as all the memories of love in my life. 

An Invitation
What are your first memories of Thanksgiving? What memories are like leftovers that need to be tossed? Which memories most give you pleasure and need to be shared? What memories can lead you to deeper and wider gratitude? I would love to know. 

A Bonus

Casserole of Sweet Potatoes and Pears

6 large sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/2 inch thick

6 ripe pears, peeled cored and cut into 8 wedges each

1/3 cup pear brandy

1/2 cup orange juice

3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup golden raisins

salt to taste

1. Place the sweet potato slices in a pot and add water to cover. Heat to boiling. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered just until barely tender, 12-15 minutes. Drain well.

2. Preheat the over to 375.

3. Arrange the sweet potatoes and pears in alternate layers in a medium-size casserole.

4. Combine the pear brandy, orange juice, brown sugar, butter and raisins in a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Season with a little salt. Pour the sauce over the sweet potatoes and pears, stirring to distribute evenly.

5. Bake the casserole until lightly browned and bubbly, about 30 minutes. Serve hot. 

Makes 10-12 servings. 

Thursday's Reflection: The Family Home

Monday is closing day for my Dad's house. Once we cleaned it out and had it neutralized --wallpaper stripped and replaced with beige walls--selling it didn't take long. Dad has been living in his spacious apartment in a new senior living facility and is so happy there. No regrets. No yearning for the house he and Mom bought in 1965 after years of moving every two years or so. 

I returned to the house the other night to sell the last few items I had listed on Craigslist. One was a large wool rug from the living room--a rug in perfect condition because the living room was rarely used.  Holidays mainly. A parlor. My brother told a story recently about how when he was a young adult and his friends came over, one would call out tauntingly, "Mrs Jensen, I'm going in the living room." 

The woman who bought it wasn't sure about the dominant pink color, but she decided it was such a gorgeous rug and the price a true bargain that it would be worth painting a room to coordinate with the rug. My mother loved pink, and I was delighted her taste would be appreciated. Later two women came to buy a set of wrought iron furniture that had been on the three-season porch. They were thrilled with it and repeatedly commented about the beauty of this furniture. How pleased Mom would be! 

Then the house was empty. 

I had wondered how it would feel to walk through the house for the last time, especially with the last piece of Mom leaving the house. We moved to the house the spring I was a junior in high school, so I didn't live there full-time for very long, but that is the house I returned to each college break and where I spent the night before my wedding. Eventually my husband and I moved to Ohio, but this is the house where we had our son's confirmation party and where our daughter and son-in-love opened their wedding presents. For all the grandchildren this was Grandma and Papa's house. We gathered to celebrate Christmas Day there, and we have the annual pictures of the grandkids sitting in front of the Christmas tree to prove it. 

This is the house where we sat with my mother as she was dying. We all gathered around her bed and said our good-byes. This is the house where she said her last words, "I am so blessed." This is the house where she died, and where my father continued to live 11 years on his own. 

 Our daughter-in-love's family home was recently sold, and I asked her how she was feeling. She said something so wise. "Thank goodness memories are not sold with houses." 

This house has served us well, but it is no longer our house.  A young family with two young children is moving into our family home, bringing new life into this house. They will make it their own. 

As I walked through the house one last time, I said good bye once again to my mother, and I said good bye to this part of my own life, the life that was lived here, but I will always have my memories. 

An Invitation
Have you had to say good-bye to a family home? What was that like for you? In what ways is that home still a part of you? I would love to know.