Hearing Through my Mother’s Ears
Joy had us working on the things we felt most uncomfortable, uncertain about teaching. She had all the trainees doing various Sun Salutations and abdominal series over and over. I may ache in the morning.
I hadn't volunteered for anything since I feel pretty steady with teaching all of those things. I've been teaching them for months, if not a few years now. When she put me on the spot about which one I wanted to practice I said really the thing that makes me most nervous is chanting and "Om" at the beginning of class, something I was doing today.
I practiced it with my training class and Joy was commenting about how to go beyond that nervousness. She was noting that she didn't want to "play therapist" but was alluding to the ways in which we're told we're too loud, etc.
I said that it wasn't all that hidden. That during childhood I was repeatedly told I was too loud, talked too much, and no one was interested. When it came to music I was told I "couldn't carry a tune in a bucket" and, except for one embarrassing talent show (all my peers thought my performance was completely, laughably lame) was actively discouraged from any interest in music. It wasn't until I was in college, over 2000 miles from home, that I took some vocal lessons.
I never got comfortable with it. Never have felt like I could just sing and get over it. Chanting service after zazen at the Dharma center has been excruciating but I've gotten a little more comfortable with it. Chanting at the beginning of a yoga class feels closer to singing and everyone looks directly at you, unlike chanting service where no one really looks at me.
What I noticed was how I'd curled up into a protective ball talking to my teacher training class about it. I'd gone from sitting cross-legged, body open, to a tight posture with knees drawn up and into the chest and my arms wrapped around the shins. Several of my co-trainees and Joy noticed the incredibly protective, defensive body posture I'd moved into.
But I chanted Om at the beginning of class with 8 co-trainees, 1 teacher and 18 students looking at me. It was OK. Not comfortable, but OK. I felt better once I moved into teaching pranayama and a meditation on the breath.
And on that theme, today's poem:
My Mother's Ears
My voice sounds
Too loud.The ears that hear
my voice belong
To my Mother.
Her ears that
Decide the voice
Is too much,
Too often,
Too loud, and
Tuneless.Not sure when
I began to listen
To my voice through
My Mother's ears.
When I talk about
Singing I hear
Pure tension and
My body curls into
The smallest
Possible ball.
40
This summer, August 28 to be exact, I will be 40 years old. A nice round number, as I've have taken to saying lately.
A couple of days ago I was recalling my Mother turning 40. We were living in Vancouver, Washington in a old rambling apartment building that served a lot of low-income residents my Mother was the manager of. It had a collection of strange and interesting people that I would hang out with.
Several of my Mother's friends got together and threw a surprise birthday party for her despite her express wishes to entirely ignore the occasion. She was depressed about where she was in life and she hated her body (I'm sure she has always hated her body to some degree or the other).
I recall her crying. Not in joy or delight that her friends and family so wanted to honor her that they threw the party anyway, but in abject misery. I remember her laughter that bordered on hysteria throughout the event and the hard, sharp words she had later when everyone had left.
As I'm approaching this point in my own life I've come to realize that the older I get the more uncertain I feel. During the Dharma talk tonight Chozen asked us all what age we feel like in our minds. It occurred to me that lately I tend to feel somewhere between 9 to 14 and painfully aware of my uncertainty about ever attaining the state of being a so-called "grown up".
I don't know that I've become more comfortable with the uncertainty, I'd like to think that I have. What I do know is that I'm not approaching 40 with the same level of dread and horror as my Mother. I know that I want to great that occasion with a deep appreciation for my life, how far I've come. In a way it is just one more instance where my Mother has shown me the way by providing an example of what not to do.
Fast and Slow
I finally tracked my Mom down on Monday by way of calling her husband and asking him to make sure phoned me. My Mom gets into the habit of either a) not calling or b) avoiding calling me because she has bad news. Given the rather serious news she shared with us I was beginning to get worried having not heard from her in over two weeks. She'd also not returned a voice mail I'd left.
When she phoned she said she was doing OK. She doesn't see the opthamological oncologist at the Casey Eye Institute until the 20th. Having had cancer before she prefers to see an oncologist at Kaiser she's seen before, however, he's on sabbatical for February. She should him the first week of March.
There's all these ways in which I'd wish life would slow down. I find myself surprised that it is February. That it is 2009 seems fantastical at times. Whoosh! The weeks just fly by at an ever increasing clip. The precious hours of doing nothing but resting, enjoying some down time, I wish those times would lengthen out, get to where I can just linger.
Here I was on the phone whit Mom wishing those days and hours gone, done and at least some more information. I'm impatient with waiting for these appointments. This limbo state of
"tentative diagnosis" is uncomfortable and I feel my patience for life itself stretched thin with effort.
She apologizes for not checking in with me. A part of my mind observes how easy it is for her and I to live our very separate lives without talking often. She sometimes remarks at how I used to tell her everything. Only I didn't, but I don't break the fondness of her idealized memory. I am aware of the distance there is between us, the unresolved issues that will never know closure.
I am delighted to find out she is still trying to do Nadi Sodhana. She notes that she's practically stuck her finger in her nose a couple of times. I told her that concentration was the only fix for that problem.
I am truly delighted she is doing this and rather surprised. It is a bit strange, but she's really trying it out. I didn't actually think she'd do it without me there, that's why I'd been looking at recording myself guiding her through the breath practice. It is a pleasant shock to find out she's doing it on her own.
Speed and Slowness
I wanted to write a proposal for OSCON. Since it has been moved to San Jose I thought the best way to convince work to let me go again would be to be an invited speaker. I've talked about it since last year, giving a presentation either on change control or yoga. But the deadline is tomorrow and for the past couple of week's I've felt just entirely uninspired to come up with anything at all.
Tonight I feel burned out and exhausted. We went to have all the dissolution (divorce) paperwork reviewed and discovered we'd done such a good job it was pretty much ready to file, minus a couple of check boxes and final signatures. Suddenly the clerk was saying to us, "and you can go around the corner to the cashiers and pay the filing fee..."
There we were. So we shrugged and nodded, stepped over and paid to file all the paperwork. I'd been so stressed just going to have it reviewed, I figured there would be things missing and we'd have to take care of them first. In fact I hadn't listed the complete legal description of the house, but the clerk just had me phone over to the County Assessors office to get the information. Done. He commented on how quick this would be, the job we'd done was very thorough . I felt a little tight with shock at the unexpected speed.
Finally talked with my Mom some more today. Nothing but waiting -- she doesn't see the specialist at the eye institute until the 20th and won't see the Kaiser oncologist for her right lung until the beginning of March. I feel impatient for her to be seen, to have confirmation or perhaps the knowledge she doesn't have cancer (wild optimism).
It was a lousy day too. I am so keenly feeling the pressure from all of this already and today was yet another day that started with a panicked jolt at 5AM followed by dozing off for another two hours. I just don't feel like I'm resting, my brain is back to busy, anxious dreams so I wake up feeling just as tired as when I went to bed. On top of it I'm taken aback by both the quickness of something and slowness of others -- in quite the opposite arrangement than I'm comfortable with.
I am just going to give up the idea. I'm enjoying the ideas I'm sharing with someone from Dharma Rain Zen Center to offer teaching on yoga and meditation to the Portland tech community. I like the idea of it, but I think just letting it go this year is for the best for me. Maybe I'll work on something for the local conference and next year propose for OSCON, maybe there will even be a travel budget again by then.
JW told all of the teacher training students on Saturday that our homework this week was to do something nice for ourselves. She said it especially applied to me, that I am the worst of everyone. Practicing self-compassion is not my strong suit. The past several days have been an on-going reminder about it. Maybe letting go of some of the things I want to do, like submitting a proposal for OSCON, are part of practicing doing something for myself. Not sure JW would think it counts, but cutting myself some slack without judgement is so contrary for my usual behavior I feel how it counts.
Chanting and Breathing
I've haven't felt a lot of light these past several days. Consequentially I haven't felt like writing, working on any art I have in mind, knitting, or doing much of anything. My energy feels pretty low this week and I feel like I'm reached the overload point of things to work with in my life.
Last Sunday after teaching yoga at Dishman I went out to Corbett, out into the thick of the windstorm to my Mom's. They had no power and a tree and lines were down on the road to them, forcing a detour around the back. I saw a tree down over a house and other trees down all around, even one nearly on the road I was driving. The wind was howling at gusts between 60-70 mph. It would have been easy to imagine Dorothy flying past a window. It didn't occur to me until later, when someone exclaimed at my going out there in the middle of a windstorm, that I'd done anything that unusual.
When I got there I saw that Mom looked pale, scared and tired. I just listened to her for a while as we drank tea made with water heated on a kettle a top the wood stove. I opened the Christmas present she'd got for me. The whole time I felt tight inside, aware of all the muscles around my heart locking up, the coldness in my chest.
Finally I got Mom to settle in a chair and taught her some Pranayama. I could tell she was breathing in the top of her lungs only out of pain and fear. I coaxed her to take breaths that were as deep as possible, to learn to feel how the body moves when the breath moves into the whole lungs, just feeling the breath breathe the body.
I told her as far as any meditation goes, just to keep coming back to what the body felt like breathing. That's all she needed to try to do, that and to scan the body, finding the places that do not hurt as much. Like Hogen told me as a technique for sesshin, when my chronic pain gets really bad. What hurts is obvious, the noise of the hurt is so loud in the body & mind, find what doesn't hurt and take refuge there for a while. Feel the breath in the parts of the body that do not hurt. I told her to try this even it was only the top of her right ear that didn't hurt!
I taught Mom the most simple form of Nadi Sodhana (alternate nostril breathing), just a breath on each side. I was pleased to see doing this left her looking a little more clear in the eyes. Although I have great faith in Nadi Sodhana to restore calm and balance, some part of me was tensing against my Mom not really trying it, dismissing it as silly. She nearly did stop, not liking the feeling of breathing through one nostril that was a little congested. Much to my surprise she kept going for a while and said she did feel a little better afterward. I'm going to record this for her, I think she'll be more apt to practice if it is guided.
It was hard watching her. It felt like being a kid again, sitting waiting for her to be finished with chemo treatments. Feeling anxious and scared myself, watching all the other faces taut with fear around me. Trying to immerse myself into a book while I waited and waited, through so many appointments, until she would come out ill & frightened and we'd go home. At least I had something to do this time, teaching her to breathe and be still in her body, that is more than I've ever had when she's been sick.
This latest scare feels somehow larger and more frightening than ever before. I'm terribly aware of the ill-health Mom's experienced over the past year, how she isn't as strong. I'm trying not to actually call it cancer yet. Neither has been diagnosed, just suspicions... more tests are needed, results are inconclusive. I'm trying to hold onto that, to not react in fear to what is not yet certain. I'm finding it difficult not to tighten around the fear, to keep opening to what arises in the present.
Since last Sunday I've felt drained all week. It has felt dark to me and the momentary joy of Tuesday morning's inauguration has felt tarnished by the disappointment in Mayor Sam Adams for lying. Even worse than feeling disheartened by the lies I've felt great irritation with the media for whipping the whole thing into a frenzy that's a distraction from the real problems facing Portland. Work has been extremely frustrating all week. It just felt extra hard to generate much light at all, even for my own small corner. I've been sustained by the light others shining around me, for which I'm truly grateful.
Just this afternoon something, someone just reminded me about the light I offer. Just by my being open and receptive to the suffering of others, to being present to it. Just by offering to chant a persons name.
I maintain the list of names we chant during service with the Portland Sangha of the Zen Community of Oregon sits zazen together. Service contains a part called the Transfer of Merit. We recognize that we generate energy when we practice together and dedicate that merit to people who are ill, in distress, or who have recently died.
Most weeks I get names from people. Emails, people chatting with me at the Dharma Center. Whispers of Stage IV cancers, old age, failed business... Sometimes nothing other than a name, which list it belongs on (in distress or died). I set the list out on the table before and after zazen on Thursdays, so at times I merely see new names appear, handwritten on the page I bring each week.
This week, this afternoon in particular I've been able to tell people that I'd add a name to the Merit List. Even after performing this service for the Sangha for a year now I remain a little surprised at how so small a gesture means to people. A friend said to me she was so touched just by my offer of support for her fear for her father's health, just that I came forward at all. Another sent me a message to let me know how much it means to her and her friend to add a name to the list. A complete stranger, brought to me by way of to me by way of the Internet (friend of a friend of a friend...) emailed to ask me to chant for his brother who just died, how it was of comfort to him. It is merely my open offer to acknowledge the suffering of others that generates light.
Some days it doesn't feel like much, I think I forget how much this small thing can mean to someone suffering in grief, anxiety. It is merely the act of being open to the suffering of another person, not wishing it would go away fast and not getting too caught up in my own fears of potential, inevitable loss, just being present for their suffering and offering to formally acknowledge it.
Once a week I chant all of these names, there are other people who chant them during the rest of the week. I recite each name carefully and clearly into the silence of the zendo. Giving time to each name so everyone there can all hold the names of each person in mind. It is this small thing I can do, even when my own light feels very dim, just show up each week and say the names, even when it is tremendous effort to do so. Using my voice to make the container for the grief and worry we all carry with us.
Sustaining Light in Darkness
The day after writing about the necessity of creating our own light I got some pretty dark news. First the news a dear friend's marriage has turned abusive. She's in Kentucky, his idea, and arranging to try to move back to Portland is pretty difficult. Immeadiately after getting off the phone with my friend I called my Mom back.
Last year they gave us a real scare by telling her that her chest pain might be due to a suspicious shadow on her right lung. Then suddenly everything changed and the cause was congestive heart failure and over 20 pounds of fluid in her chest cavity. They explained the shadow as interference due to all the fluid.
Only her chest still hurts and it isn't her heart, the congestive heart failure is under control. Several x-rays ahve revealed the spot is still there on her lung, right about where she's been saying her chest hurts all along. She is being scheduled to see an oncologist this week.
She's also been going through a lot of very serious procedures to help with her vision loss. Last week they told her that they didn't believe the loss was due to her diabetes and gave her a tenative diagnosis of retinal carcinoma. There's some additional tests needed, but it is rare so arrangements are being made for her to be seen at the Casey Eye Institute up at OHSU.
My Mom has had several forms of cancer: cervical, breast (twice), skin. She's had several other major health problems too. Since I had a lot of problems with asthma as a kid and was sick a lot, between my health and my Mom's I spent a lot of time reading in waiting rooms at doctor's offices, clinics, and hospitals.
It is hard, difficult news to hear and I feel the instinct to draw in tight around myself, close up around the pain. Hogen told us recently that this is the very thing that must be resisted, this reaction to shut down into the darkness. This is where the energy of practice is at once the most needed and most difficult to sustain.
What Good is Revisiting
I woke up feeling heavy, cold and anxious this morning. I got out of bed early thinking I'd take a hot shower, sit zazen a little, and then I'd be up to going to work. Instead I felt worse in the shower, no amount of heat seeming to help the cold grief I felt. After drying off, feeling small, I crawled back into bed, crying.
I'd gone through yesterday feeling tight with the tension of the news I'd received in the morning. A close friend's marriage, which has taken her into isolation in Kentucky, has turned abusive. My mother's received tentative diagnosis of retinal carcinoma and a suspicious shadow on her right lung. She'll be seeing a Kaiser oncologist for the right lung and arrangements are being made for her to be seen at the eye institute at OHSU. I just felt a kind of shock at it all. On top of getting ready to sign the divorce papers it is a lot to take in.
Visiting with my therapist yesterday we talked about my ability to compromise myself out of something I really need. How I'd felt really shut down when AM wasn't able to share my practice with me. How I have a weakness for being talked out of my needs, for being convinced that something else is just fine. She pointed out that I was going to compromise my sexuality, not experience a fulfilling relationship with a woman because I was able to not look at my needs.
In part it is conditioning for often being told that something else was good enough and I was being selfish for not seeing it. I grew very adept at knowing the good in situations, trying to focus on that because the times I didn't my Mother could be very angry with me, even striking me across the face once.
I can feel that part of my brain, immediately upon noting how she once hit me. Instantly going to re-frame, make that sound better. I note how it only happened once, minimizing the damage. It is the part of my mind that will insist that I was never injured by any of my family members, never had to seek medical help for anything. Like somehow the the lack of greater trauma made it all OK.
I asked CK to come to my physical/craniosacral therapy appointment with IW, trying to listen to the voice that needs. It was good to have her there and IW taught her a few releases for some of my recurring trigger points in my back and left hip. I decided not to write at all last night nor did I end up sitting.
This morning, crying in bed I decided to take the day off. Well, CK helped me to decide, helped me listen to the ways in which I just needed to cry, to rest, rather than listen to my inner critic who kept telling me to get up, get dressed, and go to work, be a grown up. Even suggesting that I was selfish and stupid for being so upset, that I was going to waste a potentially happy vacation day in the future I could spend with CK. An endless stream of reasons as to why I shouldn't just tell work I was taking a day off.
After logging in and seeing I had no meetings, I sent out a message that I wasn't feeling well. CK made me some toast and tea. After finishing those I slept for quite some time, utterly exhausted. I've resisted the urge to do more work beyond logging into my email a couple of times. I have knit a little and we're going to go for a walk out in the sunshine soon. I may even take another nap.
GM noted yesterday that she still thinks I'm expressing grief I've felt and held back for a very long time. I asked her, especially from my Zen perspective, what good is this to go back and look at this, to revisit these things. She said that in going back an feeling the grief I didn't, couldn't allow myself to express I can also look at why I felt that way. In the case of not getting to share a practice with Andy I can look at my need to share a spiritual practice with someone is important and use that experience to remember why I must express my actual needs, rather than rationalize myself, or be rationalize out of them.
Making Do
With a day of reflection acknowledging the disappointment I'd felt back in 2006 when I was wanting to share my Zen practice with AM I've been brought round to how I so easily look past my needs. Something that CK has called my attention to. Just tonight the way she did something called my mind to this. There's a "Full Moon" yoga practice tonight at Prananda that she'd been planning to join me at. For several reasons she isn't going, but she checked in to be sure I was really feeling OK with that or if I would benefit or just want her there with me tonight for support.
At what point does the ability to be good at compromise turn into letting go of what I feel is important?
I can think of instances large and small where my memory and my Mother's collide. Where she talks about making sacrifices, and to be fair she did try do things I wanted. It was just so often there was some part of it where it was what I wanted, done to her specifications. So maybe not exactly what I wanted, but I was always pointed to how it was just as good, if not better than what I wanted. In the face of such little support, and sometimes outright threat of punishment, it is no wonder I became an accomplished compromiser.
Going to Beloit was something I really wanted and I didn't get to finish that, a decision that was lead by my Mother. Sometimes I'm still amazed that I listed to her, but I then remind myself that I'd been having a year-long emotional breakdown. I suppose it comes up when I think about it because I still feel some sadness over just leaving suddenly like I did, over not finishing something.
Just layers of having my wants undermined, second-guessed. Yes, it taught me how to see the positive in all kinds of situations. It has also taught me to ignore any disappointment or sadness I felt around something. I spent most of my first marriage doing it. When there started to be disconnects between AM and I, we both looked away and I reminded myself that things weren't bad, I wasn't that unhappy. That it is entirely fine to make do, make the best of what is there.
The depth of contentment, happiness I feel sharing my practice with CK turns me around to look at not sharing a spiritual practice with AM. When I began practicing with a Zen community there where a couple of years where I asked him to share this with me and he said he couldn't because he had his own practice, it wasn't the same as mine. And this is so completely true. Buddhism reminds us again and again, we must make our own way on the path. He also noted that he also tried to pull back so I would have space to have something that was my own.
Yet, I felt hurt about this even though I did understand his reasoning and even agreed with it. What I need to be mindful of is how I also dismissed my hurt and just reassured myself with reasonable compromise. I realize now that what I was craving was the feeling of Sangha, the community of people practicing together, supporting one another on their solitary way. When I practice with my partner I feel how we two make a very small Sangha, giving synergy to our individual practices as well as to the practice that is our relationship.
Recognizing Truth
I had a session with GM today. Spent some time discussing the whole situation with DW. I said what had finally settled in me was recalling how unsupported I felt at that time in my life, how quick my Mom was to get me out of the house and working even though I was clearly at a loss, depressed after breaking my ankle. I remembered listening to a woman at the Dharma Center give her Way Seeking Mind talk to us, noting that when the memory came back to her that she'd been raped by her father she just shut down and spent six months just healing, crying, screaming, and coming to terms with it. I recall feeling a little envious that her friends and mother and supported such a period of recovery for her and immediately felt a little guilty for it.
Energy Work
Today felt productive even though I stayed in my PJs until 2:30! Hmm, maybe it was productive because I stayed in my PJs all day? Needless to say I worked from home and after the assorted Wednesday meetings finished up I threw myself back into the MySQL problems from the day before. Another bonus in being at home today -- I was able to instant message chat with CK and get technical advice on my problems.