Welcome to the 14th launch of BlogBlast For Peace aka Dona nobis pacem in the Blogosphere.
Our theme this year is Change Your Climate. Many are choosing to write about global climate change. Others are choosing to write about the need to change their own personal climates in order to create peaceful spaces for themselves ( ie: eliminating stress, self-care). I have chosen the latter.
Please sign the Mr. Linky at the end of this post so that others may visit you and see the beautiful peace globes throughout the Blogosphere. Remember to tag me on Facebook or wherever you are on social media. Thank you for being a part of this community of peace bloggers. Your words are powerful and important to all of us. May we lift and encourage in our quest for a peaceful more sustainable planet earth. Grant us peace!
Bathing In Persimmon Trees
As she got older and more introspective, my mother would spontaneously start talking about random things from her faraway childhood. On this day, she began to weave invisible spinning yarn in the air in front of her. "There are these threads....you see....threads...." as her hands moved in and around them, making sense of mysteries in her mind, weaving and talking as she spun, connecting branch to branch to branch. Except she wasn't really sitting there with me. She was somewhere back in time playing dodgeball with the curse.
"I can see them going back generations."
"What kind of threads?" I asked.
"Poverty. Brokenness. Abuse. Depression. Alcoholism. Divorce. Conflict. Addiction.
Bad threads....don't you see them, Mimi?"
Yes, mama, I've always seen them.
Like shadows on trees in a cemetery, cast long from eons of time and generation, I had always seen them.
If you want to go mad,
cover them up.
If you want to break the curse,
stand in the Light.
Generational threads can tie together what desperately needs to be broken. They are inherently binding and strong.
Made of flax. Faith. Fiber. Custom. Tradition. Tribe. Toxicity. Untruth.
Even and especially love.
Whether they remain tied and woven into the next generation depends not on the strength of the cotton, but on the spinning of the pattern. Twisted legacies take whole life spans to unspin. It requires laser-sharp discernment and a willingness to plant a new field. To begin a better story. Harvesting new tribes is not for the faint-of-heart. My mother was anything but faint.
And that's when I began to remember...
warm water washing down my back.
I felt the heaviness of long tangled hair.
Soap.
And her hands in my hair.
Scrubbing and soothing at the same time. Bare feet on a dark linoleum speckled floor, bent over the kitchen sink in the middle of a fifties wood frame in the heat of summer and the only running water in the house. Daddy hadn't finished the bathroom yet.
My mother stood untangling the mane that was always tangled and drying me off with a ragged towel.
And then I started to cry
Uncontrollably. Sobs from an eight-year-old that should never be heard by a mother.
She knew. I could see it in her eyes. She knew. From the covering of shame I felt underneath the thinness of fabric that could not cover could not cover could not cover the confusion and tremble of a skinny little girl who had just been reminded of more than innocent suds running down the back of a dark-haired freckle-faced me with grownup questions swirling in her mangled head.
She looked straight into the dripping freckles and raised her eyes to meet mine.
It was my mother's greatest gift to me.
Unwavering trust. Unquestioning acceptance. She believed what I was about to tell her before I said it. I can still taste the shampoo on my lips and see the horror in her eyes, the quiver in my voice. I remember the way my eyes wanted to only stare at the linoleum while she gathered herself. Standing there dripping in a torn towel while she called someone to tell them what she'd seen in her daughter's eyes.
I never had to see him again.
She saw to it.
She sacrificed family and relationships to protect me.
Had she chosen to look the other way, I am sure without a shadow of an oak tree doubt, I would have crumpled into a broken twig on the sudsy floor and never recovered.
Instead, it was the moment that defined me.
In the deepest part of me that day, she taught me to trust the sacred places that no one should touch. I owned every nook and crevice again before she even finished with the tender drying
because my mother believed me
she gave me permission to trust myself
She had no idea that she'd just given me my voice.
Of all the trials that came later - our arguments, her quirky temper, my stubbornness - our differences growing wider in the middle of our lives, then circling back to unconditional love, as happens with mothers and daughters - I'm not sure she ever fully recovered from the sadness of that moment.
Threads
You see them, don't you Mimi?
I wanted so much to know her and understand her better and all that mysterious weaving in the spirit. Those strands had names. They had stories. But there wasn't time and she was gone. What made her so unbreakable? What stopped her from untying the last piece of tangled life and freeing herself? What kind of woman knows by instinct and love how to run straight into battle for her daughter? That's the indestructible mother I longed to fully know.
When I felt she had no faith in my endeavors or no understanding of my independence, in hindsight, now, I wonder if the moment under the towel defined the way she would forever try to keep me from straying too far into unfamiliar territory. As I spread my wings to fly away, perhaps her holding on was the only way of protecting me. Perspective.
I went through some things this year that broke my heart. Multitudes of unkindness and wholly undignified days. But the more vile they became, the more grace I received.
My body is recalibrating. Balancing. Resetting. Changing my climate, my environment, is not just necessary for peace of mind, it's mandatory for my survival.
I am ready to put this decade behind me but not without the wisdom it contains.
Standing under the canopy of trees gives me courage and strengthens my vulnerability - that delicate balance between authenticity and prudence. It resembles the act of protection and trust. Intimacy and connection. You might not have a lifetime or even a decent swath of moments like these with the people you love.
But it only takes one.
Divine grace echoes on the walls of my heart.
My mother's grace reverberates decades later.
And she is the reason that I can stand uncovered in a field of persimmon trees
without fear
without shame
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Photo credit: Mimi Lenox
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