Memoir: A Memory of Watermelon

Even today the smell of watermelon will take me back to all those years when it was my first food of the day.

After my meditation and daily yoga routine, getting Lanai dressed and ready for the day, I juiced watermelon for breakfast. Whether we were living in the tent outside my parents’ house in South Jersey or living on the Island by the beach, juicing part of a watermelon was the first task. Drinking the juice always got my peristalsis working and then some pain yogurt finished off the early morning routine.

A few years earlier, before Lanai was born, I used to juice the rind. Drinking a quart of it made it so I would then eliminate three quarts of fluid over the following several hours.

I remember one night, staying with friends Bob and Donna, at their house by the bay. I juiced some fresh watermelon rinds to clean out my urinary tract. After drinking a quart of it, I went out for a walk. It was early evening in the fall, somewhat darkening up, a few stars already visible in the night sky.

The beach community neighborhood I walked through, I had been walking through for years. It was a weekday night so even the die-hard fall vacationers were long gone and most houses on the block stood empty and dark.

As the urge to pee became an insistent feeling, I would duck behind an empty house, squat in the gravel and stones most people used to keep weeds down, and give my water to the earth.

Several times I dashed behind a house, looking both ways before leaving the sidewalk. There were hardly any cars about so it was easy. I just didn’t want to meet one of the local cops cruising up and down the small town streets during one of my dashes.

So every time I cut a watermelon or am at a pot luck where someone has brought one already cut open, my stomach begins to rumble because it knows what’s coming and is getting ready. And interestingly enough, it’s rumbling as I write, a body memory come to light.

Jyoti

The Cedar Bog - memior

Every child should have a secret place.  Mine was the cedar bog just south of the field coming away from the swamp.  The cedar bog fed my child soul.  I went to the bog to feel alone.  I went when six siblings and a screaming mother got the best of me.  I went when it rained.  I went to feel safe.  I went to put my hands in the cool spring water as it came up out of the ground beneath the great cedar tree. 

That old cedar tree’s roots hooped up out of the ground creating a little cave just big enough for a small girl.  In my little cave the world was mine.  Blue robin’s egg shells fit into one another and sat in a little notch on the rough wall.  A bird’s nest, stones, a broken arrowhead, acorn people and abandon snail shells kept me company.  Right next to my tree cave was a tiny spring.   The spring and the tree were the true pieces in my eight year old life that belonged to only me. 

I remember slipping out the back door to run across the field away from my mother’s voice calling me to come back… but I was already away.  

In spring the bog ran little rivelets and streams.  The ground was soft and would suck my boot right off my foot.  Then I would pull it out filled with earthy smelling water, dump it out and rest it next to a tree with its mate while I waded in the cold boggy mud.  It would suck me in up past my ankles halfway to my knees.  Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I didn’t pull out in time . . .

 

 

A WONDERING MIND

“Don’t let your mind wander ~ it’s 2 little 2 B left alone.”
(On the billboard in front of the Abundant Life Church)

The first time I saw this I cracked up. The second time I drove by I started laughing before I got to the end ‘cause I knew the punch line. I was sad when they rotated the bill board as this slogan had made me giggle every time.

I have been thinking about it lately and it reminds me of an experiment I have been working on. You see, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life daydreaming. I am the quintessential Queen of Daydreaming. Especially in my car. I don’t know how many times I have arrived at my destination and I couldn’t tell you a darn thing about the actual trip. Or those times when I am driving and there are cars all around me ... then I "wake up" and look around ... and the cars are all gone. Where did they go? When did they leave? Do they know something I don’t know? It is a bizarre feeling.

My issue is, I do not always day dream pleasant thoughts. In fact my imagination can carry me away, ruin the moment and even bring on anxiety attacks. I see this as a pretty destructive habit. I have spent way too much time thinking of the worst case scenario. Let me give a couple of examples. While I am hooking up my horse trailer, I imagine something going wrong with the equipment and losing the trailer down the highway. I have a meeting set up with a new client and on the drive to their office I imagine that they are going to see me as an imbecile. I have also spent a lot of time making up excuses in my mind ~ just in case I may miss a deadline. I have lengthy imaginary conversations with my clients practicing how to tell them. It goes on and on, ad nauseam.

I slowly began to realize that these worst case scenarios never evolved they way I imagined them, and for the most part, my made up conversations were never spoken out loud. I made a conscious decision that I would not spend another minute making up excuses for my life. I am doing the best that I can. And for the most part, it has worked. Now, if I catch myself thinking up an excuse for anything I ask myself out loud, “Who are you talking to?”

Since I am the only one in the car or my office, this is a very short conversation.

As I cannot see a single positive reason to keep up the negative day dreaming, I decided to see what I could do about this (?) addiction. It is taking precious time away from enjoying life; it is something I believe I can modify. If I can’t totally quiet my mind then at least I want to spend more time thinking pleasant thoughts. So I came up with a strict routine. When I find myself thinking a destructive thought or my heart starts to race with a worse case scenario ~ I immediately stop. I visually wrap up the thought in a piece of white tissue paper, blow it gently towards the light and offer it up to be transformed into …… a totally positive image. It sounds crazy, but it is the routine that helps me move out of the moment.

Driving down Boulder Canyon one day, I must have gone through my routine at least a dozen times. I was flabbergasted; but I doggedly continued. Recently I realized that I did not have to do it nearly as often. It’s working. I may have to play with this the rest of my life, but it only takes a second to run through my routine. I am willing to do this. I am worth it.


So, “Don’t let your mind wander ~ it’s 2 little 2 B left alone.” But if it does, guide it towards a field of wild flowers beside a gently flowing stream and advise it to stay there and enjoy the moment.

Annette *

Postscript. For what it is worth, I have read several books which helped a lot. Ekhardt Tolle, in his latest book The New Earth, does a swell job of guiding those who do indeed want their own brain back. Another one of my favorite books on the subject is, Loving What Is by Byron Katie. I am now reading Zero Limits by Joe Vitale, and am enjoying it immensely.

Willingness

Willingness

Every once in awhile a word or phrase sticks out, as if some cosmic hand highlights it for you. Instead of bright yellow catching your attention its more like your brain can’t let it go. I try to read on but keep hearing that word or phrase. I put the book down and it pops up. Today’s word……..willingness. Used in the general context of “you don’t have to be perfect but only have a willingness to respond with love, to be open.” To not bring the usual suspects of judgments, pre-conceived ideas or patterns, agendas or fears to the table but to be willing. Gentleness and softness get ignited as you think of it, as well as openness, openness to possibilities not yet tapped.

It also illuminates what was once not possible or just a plain old closed door. Something that now a voice is pointing to and asking would you be willing to consider…..whatever it may be in that moment. When before a mind was made up….or shut…now you are being asked to reconsider…to be willing to see anew. Be willing is much easier to listen to then you should, shall, have to or know better. It assumes a respect for where you are with just a gentle nudge toward opening to something else. “Yes I know you have this position but would you be willing to consider something else?” Respect...................
Acknowledgment………Nudge………..New Possibility………….all get awakened within a sense of willingness. New possibility also lets you tap into that there is something bigger…..something else….a perspective you may not have considered. Something to trust, see, experience or open to if only you would be willing.

All this got generated from being willing to sit with willingness. That quality that struck some cord, awakened and wanted to be heard and magnified to see what else lived in there with it.

Mary

Memoir: MACCHU PICCHU

We were standing with our chins resting in a stone box, chanting OM. This simple act was created by the Incans to help open a human to their higher power and the Divine. It was a heavenly experience working with the higher chakras in this way. Magic was dancing all around us, every direction we turned.

A blissful day unfolded before us, filled with awe-inspiring views as we arrived at the Sun Gate above Macchu Picchu.

We had hiked the Inca Trail, the hardest physical task I have ever performed. Four days had been taken to walk this ancient land. At times we were stepping sideways onto ever so steep stone steps. Imagine their abilities putting this wonderland together. I cannot fathom. If you were panting, you were walking too fast. Eventually, a porter even takes my fanny pack. The time on the trail was subsidized by coca leaves, chewing almost constantly, a mainstay for energy and relaxing the digestive system. We were also ever so grateful for our doctor friend who brought along liquid oxygen. And was also our great entertainer, singing songs at the drop of a hat, to fit the situation, some made up. He was also the first and only one of us to sacrifice himself on the human altar.

We were coming more to the Rain Forest as we trudged on. More and more butterflies, birds, and plants were becoming most incredible, wild begonias, orchids, and ferns of all kinds. It became more necessary to linger, to observe every level of fauna in its glory.

The energy was building, nature was exuding her aliveness, enveloping us as we ascended to our last destination, The Sun Gate, overlooking this village of ancientness, that has gone long before and now we can barely imagine who they were. Yet, we gaze in wonder. How has this become what it is?? The mysteries are abounding!

The guides and porters leave us at the Sun Gate to descend down to Aquas Calientes, the town below which holds our hotel with showers.

With exhaustion and equal elation and awe, my 4 companions and I sit close in a circle and give thanks and gratitude. We soon move to an outcropping of rocks in the sun to rest and process all this has meant so far.

The next morning at 6:30 we meet our guide at the bus to go back up. A different group we are altogether, bedslept, showered, we were civilized citizens again. Mixed feelings coursed through our veins of also missing the ruggedness of what we had experienced the last few days, except for the intense bites that stayed with some of us for months.

We explore a wonderment of stone, all different sizes and shapes fitting together, done by ancient man with no machinery. The waterways, elaborately winding, artfully efficient, presented with such wisdom. I loved the astronomical connections, of the reflections of the planets and the stars in all the different stone hollows holding water, the celestial mirrors. The places where the light from the sun and moon shone through spaces at certain times of day or year. Many, many symbolisms awakened our senses that September day of l998.

It’s a place one would be so lucky to stay the night, to begin to feel the vibrations of that other time, without the tourists around. To be able to hear how much more they have to share with us. Many have listened, and many more are beginning to allow the understanding of what is lasting from our ancestral brothers.

By Patricia

In Memory- Clues to My Father's Life

Clues to my Father’s Life

My father’s name was Alben Berg Moan. He was born in 1925, the fourth of five children. His parents were Peter and Bertha Moan, both immigrants from Norway living in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. The name “Alben” means “pale one” and I wonder if he was pale at birth –later in life he was bronze-skinned, especially in summer. “Berg” might have come from the Norwegian mountains or from Bergen in Norway. He was known as “Al” by some, “Ebby” by others. We don’t know where the Ebby came from, it started before Mom met him.

Dad’s dad, Grandpa Moan was tall and thick without being fat. He had pale skin and blue eyes—seemed very Scandanavian. But I often wondered at how un-Scandanavian my Grandma Moan looked. She was short, under 5 feet tall, thin and with the same concentrated, dark brown eyes as my father. Her skin was also darker with an olive tinge. Once she told me that “we are part Gypsy.” When I asked Dad about it later he insisted she was joking – but it somehow rang true to me. And he was her body type.

The only childhood story my Dad told me was that all too often he had to go fetch his dad at the bar.

His high school year book provided some clues to teen years. He was in Boy Scouts, basketball and baseball. In basketball he was “known for his speed and a deadly shot from the outside.” His handsome senior photo listed his activities next to it and his senior quote,” Girls are bothersome and I like to be bothered.” Old report cards showed passing but not stellar grades.

Another clue is the two ancient grass skirts from his time in the army unit based in New Guinea. He turned 18 in 1943 during his senior year and received his draft letter, ordering him straight into the Army after graduation. He never spoke much about that time but a photo shows him shirtless, with his army pants and boots on, hands on his hips, in front of a Quonset hut.

Dad put us on skates at an early age. He was a strong ice skater. He’d played semi-professional hockey for several years in Minnesota. That quick action game, like basketball, suited him.

Dad met Mom at a dance hall in Wisconsin. Mom said, “He didn’t really dance but my friend Millie was dating his brother Gordon and I met him through them. He was real good looking and I got hooked. We started dating after that.” Her mother loved my dad also. When they had dated awhile another guy came over, who mom used to date. Grandma Johnson told him “You can quit coming around. Dorothy has a real good boyfriend now.”

Mom said, “We got married in April—you were at our wedding! It all was good. We married at the Pine city church with my sister Betty and his brother Gordon as our attendants.” As a child I’d wondered why my mom got married in a suit, while my aunt Betty had a big white wedding dress. Dad lived & worked in Eau Claire, Wisconsin then and she briefly joined him there before they moved to the Cities for a better job. That’s where I was born, in Minneapolis.

There are so many photos of Dad with babies. Dad loved babies. That’s one reason he had so many kids-when one grew out of being a cute little baby, it was time for a new one! We had six in all. He loved to talk with, play with, and hold every little baby that came his way.

Dad was a hard worker to support his family. Only a hard worker could hold 3 jobs at one time, which he did at one stage when Mom was still home with little kids. He worked full time as a warehouse worker at Coast-to-Coast stores. It was very physical work and kept him lean and strong. He was there over 20 years until Coast –to –Coast was bought out and then, eventually the warehouse was closed. His part time work was cleaning office, in the evening after working at the warehouse all day.

I remember Dad going fishing. At different times he had a small fishing boat. That unique smell and slippery feel of newly, caught fish stays with me. Dad would fillet them on an old board, and I can still hear the sound of him scraping off the scales with his knife. That fish would taste better because he had caught it himself.

Once, when I was about 5 years old, I was sitting on my Dad’s lap, and he rubbed his stubbly, morning beard on my face. He said, “Someday your boyfriend will do that to you.”

Dad loved to work outside in the yard. When we moved into our family home in 1959 he planted seeds rather than sod in our yard. It took some nurturing and time, but that grass was so thick and so soft to walk in barefoot. Weeds couldn’t grow in it, it was so thick.

Dad was not a big reader, although he usually read the newspaper until his eyesight gave out. He’d call me a “bookworm’, “always having my nose in a book.” We were different that way.

Dad and I argued a lot when I was a teen. Before that age, his temper and propensity to spank kept me in check. As I got older I knew that he was unlikely to hit me as a teenaged girl. I was a good girl myself and didn’t get into trouble in what I did. But we often fought over his comments about “those jews and niggers” or his stern treatment of my brothers, who just wanted to grow their hair out like all the other boys.

Dad was goofy sometime—he liked to joke and tickle. I remember seeing him tickling Mom and her laughing until it too much. He did silly things sometimes, like tell us to pull his finger and then fart when we did.

Dad’s memory was always different. He often repeated things. The one time during my college years that I was high on marijuana and in his presence, it seemed like his way of talking was perfect for when I was stoned. Maybe he had some brain damage from earlier in his life. But then his memory got worse. Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimers.

His last few years, Dad lost not only his memory but his fiery anger, his sparkle, and his eye sight. He didn’t know me but whenever he heard my voice on the phone he would start to cry. When I was in Minnesota for my summer visit he told me how hard his life was, and cry.

After a few years, he couldn’t care for himself any more, would wander when unsupervised, and he didn’t remember who even my mother was. Finally, to save Mom from the stress, he had to be put in a nursing home. After over 50 years together this was a hard decision for her. She went to the nursing home to feed him his lunch most days, often bringing him ice cream, which he continued to love to the end.

The last time I saw Dad alive, I went with Mom to the nursing home. He was only about 90 pounds, his muscle all gone, leaving just his skin hanging on his bones. After Mom fed him lunch, I wanted to connect with him somehow. He had complained about tightness in his neck and throat so I asked “Would you like a neck and shoulder massage?” He agreed. As I gently rubbed his now frail body he relaxed some and said, “That feels good.” We helped him shuffle back to his room to rest. After we got him situated in his bed and he closed his eyes to sleep, I kissed my Dad goodbye on his stubbly cheek.

The day he died, the nursing home called my Mom to say that he was slipping away. The family went to his side. When every one else had left, my sister Cindy lingered behind. She told him,”It’s OK to leave Dad- We’ll take care of Mom. You can rest now.” A couple of hours later he finally let go of his depleted body.

When I got the call that he had died I was so sad that I couldn’t have been there with him. Two days later though I had a vision of him—he looked strong and vital again, he was smiling and I knew he was sending me a clue from heaven that he was happy.

By Terra

Poem: The Chase

The Chase

Colorado sky blue
Brilliant!
Over the house,
Swift as the call,
Into the fir tree,
Hawk chases Hummingbird.
Then,
In a moment,
Spread out in glory,
Sun filtering through feathers,
Suspended in time,
Hummingbird pursues Hawk!

Prema Rose