Month: November 2021
The other road November 17, 2021
How is it that life scripts are set shortly after a baby is conceived? A more interesting question might be: how long does one look over one’s shoulder or pause long enough to stare back at the road not taken, “to where it bent in the undergrowth.” The answer to …
July 14, 2021 Another I I Am
My daughter thinks I’m fearless, and with her I probably was. My son knows that his safety depended on my fearlessness; my fear that I wasn’t parenting him well enough scared him more than any mistakes I may have made, so with his therapist’s help, I sucked up my fear …
Something you do not know about me October 8, 2020
My neighbor here Pilgrim place told me once that what she liked about me was my “wry sense of doom.” She and I share a love of words, and she listens well, and I took her words to heart. For the last 10 years or so, I’ve been aware that …
Surviving Covid in a closed community
Some years ago, I worked in a fairly large department. On a good day, we could be fairly contentious. The boss was frequently absent for several weeks at a time, and whenever that happened, chaos ensued, and he would return to quell the uproar. One day, as we were attempting …
Transcendence versus fear/folly
September 20, 2021 Onlookers might not know this about me, but I have a fairly active compliant streak in my being, as befits the eldest daughter in a 1950s vintage Catholic family. We didn’t look at all like the TV commercial families, but God knows we tried. So when Erickson …
How does my sense of place shape who I am?
Most of my life – – all of my life so far, actually – – I have been – – am – – painfully and exceedingly shy. As an introverted feeling intuitive perceiver, my inner place occupies so much of my attention that I often miss concrete facts and details. …
Reaching beyond a safer self?
“Where are you safest, Maggie? Helping others? Teaching?” Jim __ I was rather much up a creek without a paddle, as the saying goes, with this week’s writing group prompt. I did have my hearing aids in, and I was very much paying attention, but I could not “get” one …
If I Could Just Listen
If I could just listen… October 1, 2021 Like a growing number of elders these days, I have chosen to live in a retirement community. We are an active community. The members all have vocationally or avocationally dedicated their lives and resources to social justice and the environment as a …
And the still living?
October 8, 2021 Every family has its own emotional tasks to work out. I suspect that when those are not approached fairly openly in some way, either in conversation or by ritual, the tasks are divided up among the members who then deal with them separately, and each in their …