Gathering the Village

I knew I was in over my head. I was a newly divorced mother of a five-year-old daughter, Katherine. I had a full time job and a house with a very big yard to take care of. With all I had on my plate, I truly worried that I wasn’t going to be able to be a very good mother. Raising a child was a important job and I hadn’t been at it all that long. Of course, my family was very supportive. My parents doted on Katherine, as did my sisters (to this day Katherine calls them “Auntie Karla” and “Auntie Karyl”). There were fun uncles and scores of cousins as well. Unfortunately, however, they all lived in Colorado, 1300 miles away. I knew that if I was going to make it through this transition with any sort of stability for both myself and my daughter, I needed help. Lots of it.

I decided to assemble a group of people who would help me mother my daughter, thinking that if I surrounded Katherine with enough remarkable women, I would not only be able to cover areas where I might be weak, tired or inexperienced, but that there was also strength in numbers. The phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” was widely circulating at the time, especially in the counseling circles where I worked. It’s a notion I whole-heartedly adopted. I literally had the t-shirt.

I deliberately set out to create my own village. In addition to my own mother and sisters, my village had a few early members. One was Katherine’s Aunt Dixie, who stayed just as embedded—maybe more embedded–in my life even after her brother and I divorced. Dixie had a daughter, Casey, and treated Katherine like a second child. Dixie’s mother, Katie Bess’s “Nanny Jo,” was a constant presence, driving to my house from her home on the Oregon coast once a week to give me a night off.

Wendy, my dear friend and college roommate who was also Katherine’s godmother, would take Katherine to her apartment where they’d bake cookies or put together puzzles. Not surprisingly, Katherine’s first favorite letter was “W,” and Wendy hand-crafted an entire book of “W” words, which we still have.

And then there was Jill, or “Jilly Jill” as Katherine dubbed her. Just sixteen when I hired her as my very first babysitter, Jill apparently decided to take me under her wing, a decision for which I am forever grateful.  Jill settled in for the long haul and literally became Katherines’s “Other Mother.” (You can read about it in my  blog post). Because we somewhat resembled each other, Jill and I were often mistaken for sisters. It wasn’t much of a stretch, then, that she was also often mistaken as Katherine’s mom. I was fine with this. Delighted even. To make it an even better deal, Jill’s parents, Barbara and Tom, became another set of grandparents to Katherine, enlarging the village.

Other members came later. There was Katherine’s third-grade teacher, Ms. Reay, who really bonded with her and kept in touch over the years. And Ms. Romine, the TAG coordinator, a woman without whom, I think it’s fair to say, Katherine would have ended up hating school.

When Doug and I married  several years later, I not only  increased Katherine’s circle of parents, but expanded the village again. There was Nana, another grandmother to love her, and Doug’s sisters, Susie and Julie and Jane, all interesting, thoughtful women.

Just when I thought the village was pretty complete, a few more people came along. Katherine’s dad Kelly met a marvelous woman named Sabine. When they decided to get married, I was pleased to know that while Katherine was gaining another mother, I was gaining a friend.

Friends, it turns out, are a rich resource as well. While my friends are so important to me, keeping me grounded and sane, they nourish the lives of my kids as well. I know that my friends Elizabeth and Heidi would jump in in a heartbeat if any of my children needed anything.

Katherine is now 25 years old and is getting married this summer to a terrific man named Ryan. I’m thrilled. Not only are they a strong couple, but it occurs to me that Katherine’s village is exponentially enlarged. She’s gaining yet another mother in Ryan’s mom, Mary, who brings yet another voice, another vision to Katherine’s life. But this addition was Katherine’s own doing. I did my part early on, but she’s fully in charge now.

When I considered what kind of bridal shower I wanted to host for my daughter, my first thought was to have a celebration honoring all of the women who helped Katherine build the life she has now. Which is what we did this past Saturday. It seemed fitting that the date happened to fall on Mother’s Day weekend. Not everyone was able to attend, particularly those who lived out of town, but we had a good turnout, including many of the women I’ve talked about, as well as two of Katherine’s sisters, Kate and Sarah, and her best friend Jordan. The younger generation is now building a village all their own.

The day turned out just the way I’d hoped, giving me and Katherine an opportunity to publicly thank the remarkable women who helped me be a better mother, and who filled in the spaces I couldn’t reach. I looked around my house, filled with some of my favorite people in the world: smart, creative, talented, funny, and altogether beautiful women.

It took a village, and I somehow managed to find a good one. Every once in a while, however, it’s lovely to have a reunion.

The Patina of Age

I’m taking a stone carving class this term. Yep, stone. It’s really, really hard stuff, as you might expect.

And yet, I’ve learned that even really, really hard stuff can be manipulated with the right tool. As a result, I’ve become something of a tool junkie. I used to roll my eyes whenever Doug wanted to walk into a hardware store (I used to call them shoe stores for men), but now I’m right there with him. We’ve spent many Saturday mornings haunting wood shops, welding shops, and good, old-fashioned hardware stores hunting for tools. Once I figured out that Michelangelo carved stone with the same kind of chisels they sell today, I was completely hooked. The only difference is that his probably weren’t made in China, where most of mine were manufactured.

Until today.

Today, our class was visited by a stone carver’s version of Santa Claus in the form of a man named Tom. He drove up outside our classroom and unloaded hundreds of pounds of rocks, from which we were able to select and purchase stones to be used in our next sculptures. He had white marble, pink marble, black marble. He had alabaster in root beer and raspberry colors. He had limestone and chlorite and brucite. I bought a 43-pound chunk of soap stone, which is the softest stone we can use, carves easily with hand tools, and feels wonderful to touch. Talcum powder is made from soapstone shavings, or so I’ve been told.

What was even more delightful is that Tom also sold tools of better quality and lesser cost that we could find in any carving supply store. He basically brought the hardware store to us. We milled around in the parking lot, weighing the heft of different chisels, files and rasps in our hands. I swear, it was better than a shoe store. Tom was explaining to me the use of a particular two-toothed chisel when I saw a Rubbermaid box filled with a pile of rusty, obviously old tools.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Oh, those,” he said, his eyes glazing over with a dreamy look. “Those are really something else. They belonged to a sculptor named Pegot Stein Waring, who died some time ago. Most of her tools were gradually sold off. These are some of the last ones left.”

He showed me a few, their ends pounded flat by years of hammering, their tips chiseled and shaped  by years of honing. He talked about the beauty and utility of an imperfectly shaped tool, one that could carve out curves and spaces better than others that are freshly made and new. These tools had been tested. These tools had already worked in the hands of a much more experienced, accomplished carver. Maybe these tools had lessons they could teach me.

I picked up several of the chisels, selecting a variety of tip widths and shapes. I turned their dented, rusty forms in my hands. On a few of them, I saw the word “Italy” inscribed on the side, which made me even more excited. I figured that the country that gave us Michelangelo and Bernini would know best how to make a chisel. I’d take these over Italian shoes any day.

I’m happy to give these tools another home, another chance to work. I’m also glad to find that there is a place where shiny and new isn’t necessarily better. Well-used and well-loved can be an asset. I’m anxious to get out my 43-pound soapstone rock and start to work. I aim find out what old tools can teach.

The Rapture Comes on a Sunday

I wrote this story years ago and included it in the book I co-authored with my dear friend, Elizabeth Taylor (the Canadian YA author, not the movie star). We wrote the book Half Past Perfect to help people—even those who wouldn’t normally consider themselves writers—get a foothold in recording their life stories. We included sample short stories (just 2 to 3 pages) at the end of every chapter to illustrate that a story doesn’t have to be long to be meaningful. This story is a retelling of one of my most enduring memories from childhood. I was thinking about it this week and decided to share it.

Enjoy!

The Rapture Comes on a Sunday

by Barbara Allen Burke

“Hey, Barbie!”

I heard my mother’s stern Sunday voice calling.  I ignored it and continued to rummage through the refrigerator.

“Barbara JoAnna Allen!”

Ooh.  Now I was in trouble. I looked over the refrigerator door.  My mother glared at me from the kitchen sink.  I watched soap suds slide off her fingers into murky dishwater.  “You get out of that refrigerator and get your chores done. Now move.” She started scrubbing a pan. “I don’t want to be late for the service.”

My sister Karla stood beside her on a stool next to the drain board.  She was still wearing her church clothes from the morning service and had a dishtowel wrapped around her waist.  She looked over her shoulder and made a face at me.

I walked behind them on my way out of the kitchen and yanked the towel to the ground as I left.

I hung over the top of the corral fence, chin resting on crossed arms.  Sunlight glinted off the horses’ water trough. A breeze ruffled waist-high grass.  It was one of the first really warm days of the spring season. After four hours of choir practice, Sunday school, and the Morning Worship Service, it felt good to be outside. Usually, the prospect of another two to three hours of church in the evening didn’t bother me.  I’d never really known anything else.

Not today.  Today the sunshine called.  Today I was tempted to run barefoot through the field and tramp down a swath of grass to make a nest for myself.  There I would lie on my back and watch clouds.

I climbed down from the fence and started back toward the house.  Unaccustomed to my rebellious feelings, I slid deeper into them.  I deliberately scuffed my shoes in the dirt.  I stooped to gather a handful of stones from the gravel at my feet.

“I hate church,” I thought to myself. I threw a rock at the corral fence.  It hit the wood railing with a thud.  Anger had made me accurate.

I went in the back door, bracing for my parents to tell me to hurry.  I was surprised by silence.  I walked through the family room into the empty kitchen. Soap suds filled the sink. My sister’s dishtowel lay on the stool by the drain board.

“Mom?  Dad?”  Where was everybody?

I hurried through to the dining room – empty – and into the living room– also empty.  My father’s Car and Driver magazine spilled onto the floor.  My youngest sister’s blocks sat in a messy pile in the corner.

And then I knew with blinding clarity what had happened:  The Rapture.  The Lord had returned to call his faithful servants unto himself and I, Barbara JoAnna Allen, had been left behind.  I could just picture it.  While I was moping in the yard, my more righteous mother, father and sisters had been transformed into ghostly, light-filled figures and lifted straight to heaven.

I brushed away tears and trotted through the house, afraid to confirm what I already knew.  The bedrooms were empty, the beds rumpled, closet doors open.  I ran into my own bedroom and there, lying on the bed, were my Sunday clothes, set out by my mother.  They accused me of my mean-mindedness and sloth. And now the Only Train Bound for Glory had come and I had missed it.   How stupid could I be?

I walked more slowly, trying to remember all the sermons I had heard about the years of Tribulation that would follow the Rapture. I had to find a way to face it.

I headed toward the barn. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. The family station wagon sat in its usual place.  I stared.  There in the car sat my parents in the front seat, facing each other, talking.   My sisters leaned out of the windows.

“There she is,” called my sister, Karla.  “Are you coming or what?  We’re waiting, and the car’s getting hot.”

I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to run and kiss my sisters’ faces, curl up on my mother’s lap and let her stroke my hair.  I wanted to hug my dad and feel him hug me back.  I wanted to laugh out loud.  I wanted to apologize to God.

What I did was get in the car.  It was time to go to church.

Are You Listening?

Over the past several months of  art classes, I’ve had a broad range of teachers. Some are young (well, at least younger than I am) and some are closer to my age. Some are laid-back and relaxed while others are structured. They are sculptors, painters, potters and sketchers. All are artists, and all of them seem to have a similar way of deciding how to make art. Are you ready? Here it is:

They pay attention to what “speaks” to them.

Time and time again, I’ve heard these words spoken in different voices. It serves both as explanation for how they do what they do, and as advice for how I go about my own art. In fact, I learned very quickly that when critiquing someone’s work not to say “I like it.” Actually, in most classes, I’m not allowed to say these words. The phrase really doesn’t given any information to the artist, doesn’t tell her or him what works and what doesn’t or, more importantly, how the art affects me. We learn to say things like “I notice that you varied the material from the top to the bottom” or “I respond to the color red you used in the piece.”

That’s the way it’s supposed to work:  art speaks, we respond. We all know what it’s like to feel moved by art—a vivid painting, joyous music, a great book, a dancer’s movement across a stage. Still, it’s hard to pin down what it is that moves us. Why does my heart well up every time I hear George Bizet’s Adagio for Strings? Why does my favorite William Stafford poem, The Way It Is, bring tears every single time I read it? What is it that I am actually hearing or noticing when art grabs my attention?

It turns out, I’m responding to my own life.

At least that’s what I learned this week when I read an article week about scientists at New York University who just published research on the brain’s aesthetic response to art in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience. The subjects in the study were shown a selection of 109 pieces of art. These works of art came from a variety of cultural traditions, including American, European, Indian, and Japanese, and from several historical periods. Images were representational and abstract, and included several classifications (e.g., female, male figure, a mixed group, still life, landscape, or abstract). Using fMRI imaging as well as behavioral reporting, researchers were able to scan  subjects’ brains while they viewed a wide variety of art. The subjects also reported which art pieces elicited an emotional response. In other words, they shared which images “spoke” to them.

Not surprisingly, all the of subjects used the brain’s sensory, or occipito-temporal regions, to gather information about what their eyes were actually seeing, regardless of whether or not the subject reported being moved by the image. However, another pattern emerged . Although the subjects varied widely in which types of art appealed to them, when they did respond emotionally, they all showed a significant increase in activity in a specific network of frontal and sub-cortical regions in response to artworks they reported as highly moving.

What I found even more interesting is that these regions belong to the part of the brain’s “Default Mode Network” (DMN), which had previously been associated with inward contemplation and self-assessment. As the article reported:

The most moving paintings produce a selective activation of a network of brain regions which is known to activate when we think about personally relevant matters such as our own personality traits and daydreams, or when we contemplate our future.”

What is so interesting to me about this study is not that it confirms that art can and does speak, but that it speaks to each of us personally. My response to art gives me information about “personally relevant matters,” relying on the same transmission system used to give me information about my personality traits, my dreams and my future. When I contemplate art, therefore, I am in a way contemplating my own life. Information about my own aesthetic response can very well provide clues about ways in which I can contribute that are uniquely my own.

Maybe this seems obvious to everyone else. Perhaps it is a truism that we are best at creating the things we love in the world. I’ve learned that listening to art feels very much like listening for options in your life. It helps to be quiet and free of distractions. It helps to be curious and open-minded about what you will find. And then you listen. What pushes you to respond? What makes your heart well up, or bring you to tears? What moves you? How can you include more of these things in your life? What does it inspire you to bring to the world yourself?

There is a whole big world of beauty out there. It’s speaking to us all the time. It’s up to us hear it, to decide what it is saying to us, and how we want to respond.

Finding Something to Let Go

There I am, in a very warm, dimly lit yoga studio. I’m balancing on my right leg, left leg stretched behind me. My arms extend out in front so I’m roughly a “T” shape—and I do mean roughly. I’m trying to approximate something like a Warrior III pose. Sweat drips off my face onto my mat. I struggle to find my balance, my toes seeking better purchase on my yoga mat.

And then I fall over. Again.

Still, I keep coming back—to the pose, to my mat, to the class. Sometimes I wonder why. I’m not a naturally bendy person. Plus, I’m fairly clumsy by nature and have serious problems with balance—as I am frequently reminded in class.  But there are several reasons I keep showing up. The first is that yoga seems to be the only thing that keeps me from getting injured. I’ve noticed over the course of a couple of years that whenever I skip yoga for any length of time, my back goes out and I’ll be out of commission and on muscle relaxants for about 10 days. That is usually motivation enough.

The other reason is deeper. There are so many correlations to working my way through a yoga class and working my way through life that I frequently leave class with just the message or idea I need to solve some other nagging problem. When I fall over while standing on one leg, it reminds me how hard it is to maintain balance in any area. When my muscles are burning with fatigue I realize that I make a choice to stay with the struggle to build strength or pull away to rest and recover. When I reach the limits of my flexibility (which happens in nearly every pose), I recognize that freedom of movement comes slowly, incrementally but, with continued practice, inevitably.

Not surprisingly, there are often times when our teacher, Dena, will say something that especially resonates with me. This is what happened today. We were three-quarters of the way through the class, feeling tired and sweaty, trying to stay with a challenging pose through five more breaths. Dena reminded us that although there are always muscles that are firing and working hard, there are also places where you can let go. Do you really need the tension you’re holding in your neck? Can you relax the muscles in your face? In your fingers? In the midst of great effort, there is often a way to find some ease as well.

This concept is hard to wrap my brain around. I’m really good at gearing up for a fight, tensing to face the next challenge. I’m also pretty good at  collapsing when I’m overtired, turning off my brain and body and crashing into sleep. But combining effort and ease? This is as hard for me as balancing on one leg, as much of a stretch as a backbend.

When I am in the middle of a crisis or a struggle, everything in me is ramped up for the battle. I have noticed that at the end of a long day, the muscles in my neck and shoulders ache. There can be no more telling reminder that I am trying to carry everything on my shoulders. Not anyone else’s shoulders—just mine. And truly, does that tension help me? Does it help anyone? As hard as I may have to work to solve any problem, will carrying that worry and contraction actually help me? Would I be better off if I could release my hold?

So, in yoga and in life, I am looking for ways I can let go, for places where I can drop the tension. I’m looking for ways to combine effort, which is productive, and ease, which is restorative.

Not either/or.  Both.

Of course, it’s another type of balancing act. I will still fall over. I’ll find the tension creeping back into my shoulders and my neck. But I won’t fail if I keep going back to the pose, going back to the mat, going back  to my life and trying again.

 

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