50-28 – Like a Birthday or a Pretty View

High school was a time for friends and music and concerts. I still feel the ramifications of standing too close to a speaker in a closed building listening to The Stray Cats. Now that was an experience and an amazing memory.

There was Berlin, the Thompson Twins and others, but none more important to my life as the five Brits known (and still known) as Duran Duran. Named for Doctor Duran in Barbarella. With their hair and their makeup, their synth pop. The three unrelated Taylors, Nick Rhodes, and Simon LeBon creating music that was danceable and singable, but also moving and inspirational, a creative catalyst for my writing and exploring what was barely in my mind’s eye, but that wanted to come out in ways.

My friends and I would go to the park, climb up on the big stage at the amphitheatre. They would play their air instruments, and I would take their pictures using my air camera.

Click, whirr is the sound a camera makes, and I was the paparazzi following them on tour.

We were 100 Club, and we opened for Duran Duran. We wrote creative fiction, not song fic, maybe closer to fan fiction. Mine was a murder mystery – Murder at the Odeon. and it was my second moment of fandom and writing colliding.

Duran Duran also contributed to our creativity with their videos – The Chauffer, Night Boat. Their videos told stories that encouraged us to tell our own stories.

My current text notification is Late Bar, one of my favorite songs from them, conjuring up holes in walls, drinking, and mystey. It influenced a poem I wrote for the yearbook called Spies, which in turn encouraged a new Dungeons and Dragons game that was called Top Secret that was role playing for secret agents and government spies.

Their Hungry Like the Wolf was very much like Indiana Jones and New Moon on Monday reminded me of those undercover agents sneaking around foreign lands.

Thirty odd years later and I still listen to them. They remind me of high school, and college but they also fill me with new bouts of creativity and writing inspiration.

50-26 – Horsing Around

Writing Prompt – High School
I had three very close friends in high school. I am still friends with them today, seeing them daily on Facebook. Every high school class has its senior skip day and we were no exception. I don’t remember which one of them planned it but it was most definitely a conspiracy against me.

First, I should say that I grew up on Long Island. I can’t swim and I hate the beach. Maybe it’s all the water. Most of the senior classes went to Jones Beach for their skip day. The school had gotten wind of this over the years, so pretty much anyone who went to Jones Beach got detention. The assistant principal, Mr. Allen would drive down there and scour the sand for students, jotting down names, walking the beach in suit and tie and his school shoes.

We, however did not get detention. We did not go to the beach.

We got into Ds car and drove east on the LIE; the Long Island Expressway. It was forever in the car. I think I was in the backseat. It was a “surprise” but clearly I was the only one in the dark. I don’t know when I figured it out, maybe there was a road sign, but we were almost there when I realized we were going to a horse ranch – a stable. Of horses. I nearly jumped from the moving car.

Here is where I should probably mention that when I was in elementary school, I went with my cousins to a dude ranch in Peekskill. I loved it there. I loved horses. They are beautiful creatures, but I could not get on the horse. Not any of them. I cried. It was traumatizing.

I wondered if crying as a high school senior was appropriate now.

I got on with ranch hand assistance and off we went. The sky was that perfect blue, not a cloud in it, dust kicking up from the hooves as we set off from the corral into the wooded area. It became a bit darker under the trees and slightly cooler, but it was still a comfortable temperature – the shade keeping the heat of the sun from really getting to us, and our horses.

I had the gentlest horse, or so they told me. He was trained to follow the horse in front of him which was great, espeically when the horse in front of mine decided to trot along the edge of the cliff. It probably wasn’t a real cliff, this was Long Island after all, and I probably wouldn’t have died or anythihng but it was still terrifying. I fell getting off at the end, but I had still done it.

One and done.

50-25 – Charm Bracelets

Did you ever collect charm bracelets? Collect might be a bit strong of a description for mine. I’d get them at a variety of tourist spots on vacation, and then promptly lose them upon coming home. I remember looking at them in the gift shop, twirling them around my fingers, examing each charm. I’d wear it for a little while and then it would disappear into the netherworld of lost socks and board game pieces, never to be seen again.

I have vague memories of tricorn hats, moccasins, cactus, oranges, palm trees, revolvers, horses and buggies, Amish hats and other like trinkets in fake silver and gold.

After college, I made myself a charm necklace with pendant charms that I liked but no longer wore, strung onto a shoelace or a thick piece of twine, each separated by beads. It became too heavy to wear.

In recent years, I began collecting charms again; this time on a chain bracelet. I picked things out that were meaningful to my life now. I did lose one of a bow and arrow that I’d had since the SCA and archery practice in the ’90s, and that made me sad, but I substituted a bow and arrow that I found on a keychain of The Hunger Games.

Each one means something different and symbolizes some aspect of my life now.

The charm bracelet was the first place that I put a cross after I’d begun my RCIA studies.

The compass symbolizes the constant journey I’m on, and keeps me on the path and going in the right direction.

The salt vial keeps the demons away. Actually, it’s a symbol of Supernatural, a television show that is one of my coping mechanisms for depression (along with others). It reminds me that I’m part of the Supernatural familly and to always keep fighting.

The Tree of Life is nature, and life, and something that is bigger than me.

My griffin is from my original charm necklace. It is my favorite animal. Part lion and part eagle, they are both majestic and confident, and their golden feathers are gorgeous.

The feather is in place of a quill for all my writing.

Each one is special in its own way. It is like my secular rosary.

50-24 – Green Candy Dish

That candy dish came to our house when my grandmother moved in with us. I thought it was the most hideous thing ever. There was a mosaic tiled tray that didn’t go with it but managed to fit into the hideous theme that apparently my mother was going for. The green on it was the same color as my grandmother’s green velvet couch, two pieces that separated. When she moved in one half of it went into the basement where I wouold lie down on it, legs over the arm watching baseball and eventually the US hockey team beat the Russians.
Looking at the dish now, I don’t know what it was that I didn’t like. I love the shine of the green even under the specks of dust. The colored tiles seem like painted slate. Someone worked very hard on that art. When I pulled it out of the bookkshelf, I started thnking about where I might put it in my office instead of keeping it safe behind glass. Perhaps put it in my mother’s curio with her rabbi and upside down ashtray that makes him taller.

I also wonder how my grandmother came to have this piece. Was it a wedding gift? It’s proably not old enough for that. I don’t recall her ever going to Israel like other family members did on my mother’s side.

Maybe it was her new authority in our house that I transferred to her stuff. She lived with us now. She became mean, like a third parent, telling us when to be home, to wash our hands before dinner, you know, usual kid complaining stuff. I could have been better.

Maybe it’s true that we mature as we age, and despite not liking this candy dish as a kid, now that I’m older, I appreciate the fine work that went into it; the distance it traveled to come into my household, and wanting and asking for it when my mother died.

My kids have a better appreciation for their grandparents’ things. They appreciate where they came from and the lives that they lived as kids and young adults. They’ve each had the opportunity to interview my mother-in-law for biographical reports for school and so they talk about her and her experirences often. I wish I was more like them when I was a kid.

50-23 – Bike Week

We do not ride motorcycles, so imagine our surprise to find ourselves in the middle of bike week in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the summer of 2008.

I’m a meticulous planner.My oldest son was going to be studying the Civil War when he returned to school in the fall, so I decided that we’d visit Gettysburg and see some of the places that I went to as a child and that would correspond with his upcoming social studies class.

We planned to see the battlefields, the Jenny Wade house, and the interactive light up map that shows the battles in action.

For some reason, there were no hotels that we could afford in Gettysburg proper, so we ended up staying just over the border in Maryland. It wasn’t too far, and we were able to get into Getyysburg every day that we were there.

We thought it was weird. It was the first week of July, but it was after the Battle of Gettysburg anniversary and reenactment, so we couldn’t figure out what was going on in town.

We knew immediately once we arrived in Gettysburg that there was something going on in town.

Motorcycles.

Motorcycles everywhere.

Big ones, small ones, loud ones. Ones with flags, leather jackets, demin jackets, vests, every combination of bike and biker.

I have never seen so many bikes in one place before.

It was a great vacation and we got to enjoy somethng that we wouldn’t normally have been a part of.

We did all of the things that we planned on doing and a few extra.

While we were outside eating ices at Rita’s, the kids waved at the passing motorcycles and they waved back. I wasn’t surprised by that, but the kids were and they loved it.

We stopped by one of the battlefields that had an observation tower. My husband and oldest son climbed up while I stayed in the car with the two little ones, and suddenly a man got off his bike and began to play Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. The air was still, and there was a palpable feeling of nearby spirits. It was silent except for the occasional bike coming or going. It was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever experienced.

Had we noticed that the town was going to be so crowded we probably would have changed the dates of our visit. Luckily for us, I had no idea and we were able to enjoy things that we wouldn’t have seen.

Even without our own bikes, we still felt very much a part of the bike week.

50-22 – Applepicking and Fall

50-21 – Miracle on Ice

1980. US Olympic Men’s Hockey Team. The Miracle on Ice. Jim Craig wrapped in the American flag, looking for his father in the crowd, tears falling on his cheeks. Al Michaels screaming, “Do you believe in miracles?! Yes!”

The late ’70s, early 1980s were the heights of the Cold War. In 1969, we’d won the space race with the first men landing on the moon. Nuclear armament was at its pinnacle until START treaties and talk of Star Wars, which while mocked was a real defense initiative against the Soviet Union.

Today they are Russia, and a half dozen or so other republics, but in the 1980s they were the USSR – the United Socialist Soviet Republic. The Iron Curtain was firmly in place.

Defections from communist countries was happening so often it became a TV trope playing itself out on television from Murder, She Wrote to Mission: Impossible, MacGuyver, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and The West Wing. Russian spies were everywhere too, including our televisions on Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Remington Steele, Murder, She Wrote, and of course, Get Smart. It was all around us and television and pop culture reflected that.

In school, we continued to have drills in case the Russians sent their missiles to bomb us. I’m still not sure how lining up in the hallway or crowding under our desks in the classrooms were supposed to keep us from spontaneously combusting if it did happen.

We couldn’t travel to Soviet bloc countries, including Cuba, a mere 90 miles away from our border. Cubans climbed aboard dangerous boats and attempted to find a new life here. If you could reach the beach of southern Florida, you could be an American, but instead often ended up drowned or sent back.

Not to forget that at the time of the Winter Olympics, President Jimmy Carter was considering a boycott of the Summer Olympics that was to be held in Moscow later in the year. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, and they were not happy with our threat of a boycott. [We did end up boycotting, and our teams could not go to the Summer Olympics in Moscow, including one of my high school teachers who had been training for competition.]

This was the world we lived in when the world came to the village of Lake Placid, New York for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games.

The Russian Olympians were a powerhouse. They were amateurs in the sense that they didn’t get paid in the traditional sense, but they lived better than most Russians and several were full time military. They didn’t work apart from training and they trained with state of the art equipment and in arenas, and on the world stage they were the best. At pretty much everything.

Our hockey team was a ragtag bunch of scrappy college students and true amateurs (average age 22, the youngest team up until that point) mostly led by the plain-spoken, dour looking Herb Brooks, but Herb Brooks had something else. He had sayings, motivationals that were sometimes cliche, and sometimes corny, and for a long time after 1980, I compiled a list of them that is long since lost. Luckily, Wikipedia kept track:

Brooksisms

Brooks’ original expressions were known by his players as “Brooksisms.” According to Olympians John Harrington, Dave Silk, and Mike Eruzione, these are a few. [Herb Brooks]

“You’re playing worse and worse every day and right now you’re playing like it’s next month.”

“You can’t be common, the common man goes nowhere; you have to be uncommon.”

“Boys, I’m asking you to go to the well again.”

“You look like you have a five pound fart on your head.”

“You guys are getting bent over and they’re not using Vaseline.”

“You look like a monkey tryin’ to hump a football!”

“You’re looking for players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back. I look for these players to play hard, to play smart, and to represent their country.”

“Great moments are born from great opportunity.”

“You know, Willy Wonka said it best: we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”

“This team isn’t talented enough to win on talent alone.”

“If you lose this game you’ll take it to your grave … your fucking grave.”

“You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.”[14]

“Write your own book instead of reading someone else’s book about success.”[5]

“Boys, in the front of the net it’s a bloody nose alley.”

“Don’t dump the puck in. That went out with short pants.”

“Throw the puck back and weave, weave, weave. But don’t just weave for the sake of weaving.”

“Let’s be idealistic, but let’s also be practical.”

“You guys don’t want to work during the game?”

“The legs feed the wolf.”

“We walked up to the tiger, looked him straight in his eye, and spat in it.”

“Tonight.”

“Again.”

He pushed this team, and while they weren’t expected to do great, they were still our team.

We watched them beat one team, and then another. When they were matched up against the Soviet team, we knew it was over. We skated a good fight, but we were done. The Soviets had beaten them in exhibition a few weeks earlier by a score of 10-3.

I was huddled around my basement television, lying down on my grandmother’s half green velvet sofa, my legs hung over the single armrest, just like I’d watched baseball the summers before and after.

I know I drifted off to sleep, but woke for the final moments of the game.

Do you believe in miracles?

After this moment, we all did.

We beat the Russians! We beat the Russians!

Not they; WE.

The college trained, Herb Brooks led, no names who became household names had beat what the world called a professional amateur team, the Soviets, who lost at nothing. They had won the gold medal in hockey for six of the seven most recent Olympics. We won.

Most people forget that this game wasn’t for the gold medal. The US Hockey Team still had to go on to beat Finland in the finals, which they did, to win the Gold. But somehow, this was better than the Gold.

This….was amazing.

50-20 – Temple

I recently found myself in Temple for my friends’ daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.It is at once familiar and strange to me. As a child, I went to shul or school twice a week, but there were no services with them. It was the learning of the language, the history, the tradition, and I loved it. I went with my cousins who were my best friends and neighbors. When we all moved, they to Florida, we to Long Island, I went to a more religious center that I did not like, but was lucky enough to find my old teacher, Mr. Baran and went back to the traditional school that I loved so much.

This recent time in Temple was more enriched by my attending Catholic Mass than any other thing I can think of. I suddenly understood some of the ritual that was never explained to me as a child.

When the Cantor sang, Oh-ya-say-Shalom-bin-romav, I began to sing along. I was amazed to discover that I knew every word, and wished that the song would go on forever because it brought me to a childhood place that I thought was lost.

It reminded me of the High Holidays in Queens. The High Holiday services required tickets. All of us children were left in the parking lot while our parents went in to pray at the multi-hour service. I was one of the older kids at seven or eight.

We stayed on the warm asphalt, playing jump rope and hopscotch in our Saturday best. For a long time I thought I made up this memory, but in talking to my cousins recently they remember it exactly the way that I do, so it must have happened. We were left to our own devices and on occasion someone would come out from the temple and shush us. We had the foresight to look chagrined, but as soon as the doors closed again, we went right back to our playing, eventually getting loud enough for someone else to come out and chastise us.

It was like that every year until we moved.

50-19 – Ghost Stories

As skeptical and full of cynicism as I am, I still believe things. While it’s still in the mainstream, I don’t need to see G-d to know He exists, but I also believe in other spirits. I’ve seen them and felt them, and unexplained things are unexplained for a reason. Sometimes, it just is.

One of the reasons I never watched The X-Files or came so late to Supernatural and hated The Twilight Zone is how much of it I believe can be reality. The supernatural and unexplained aspects of shows like that, of seeing things in the corner of your eyes, of hearing things that others don’t – I could never accept it as fiction because I’m a believer in those spirits and happenings. Some of those types of stories are just too real. For me, there is no suspension of disbelief; my disbelief is already suspended and I clutch one hand to my armrest, and one over my eyes with barely separated fingers.

The first experience that I can recall was as a child visiting the Jenny Wade house in Gettysburg. Jenny Wade was the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg. A bullet propelled through her street facing closed door and hit her, killing her instantly while she was kneading bread. As a child, there was a mannequin of a soldier in the kitchen that told her story. They projected a talking face onto the mannequin that creeped me the fuck out. Even as a kid, I knew it wasn’t a ghost or ghostly figure, but it was still scary for me. The promotion of the house was that the walls could talk as the only eyewitness to the death.

I visited there again with my husband and later on with my kids when they were younger, and I remember a distinct feeling of not being alone in the cold cellar of the house. The simple act of opening the doors tilted and facing outside, and descending down the stone steps left a profound feeling.

Gettysburg is full of spirits, though. Out of all my encounters, three have taken place in Gettysburg or areas of the Civil War battles. I distinctly remember waking up to find a soldier in a Civil War era uniform standing at the edge of my hotel room bed. I still get shivers when I picture him; like now.

The third time, my husband took my son exploring some of the gravestones on the Battlefield while I stayed in the car with the two younger kids, and I could feel it all around me – the unrest.

I think of all the battles we’ve experienced as a country, the Civil War has the most unrest, the most restless, the most tragic spirits still roaming about.

Once, after college, I was driving my car and was stopped at a red light. I think I drifted off to sleep. My foot stayed on the brake and there was no one behind me to honk, but when the light turned green or just after, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It just nudged me and I was awake. I’m not sure, but it felt like my grandmother. She had recently died, and of course, no one was in the car with me.

In 2010, I kept a dream journal on post-it notes. I had been having odd dreams, and so I kept track of them at that time. I didn’t discover it until several years later, but one of those dreams was of my friend getting shot. When I looked at the date, it was exactly one year before he was actually shot by a mutual friend’s ex. That definitely gave me pause.

That mutual friend was murdered, and a few of us, some who knew her and some who didn’t, drank a variety of teas and wrote or journaled about them and/or our friend, B. There were five different varieties of tea that we were all sharing at different times and in different places, and I could definitely feel her presence during those tea drinking moments, and while journaling about them. She was very present for about a year after she died; maybe a bit longer than a year, but it was palpable, almost a tangible feeling of her spirit, encouraging me to taste the tea with all my senses and keep writing about the feelings. Her spiritual presence was one of the many influences on this blog coming together more consistently.

There have been others, including the moment that my belief in Jesus Christ came upon me in cliched and literal glowing white light and sudden understanding, but other than that the other moments were much less, just there nudging me forward, sometimes a comfort and sometimes a question, but my mind and my heart are both open to these and other encounters.

1/8 – Year of Mercy

The Jubilee Year of Mercy began on December 8, 2015 (the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception) and will conclude on November 20, 2016 (the Solemnity of Christ the King).

Pope Francis has, at the cornerstone of his pontificate encouraged mercy and forgiveness as well as reconciliation and communion between the three Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as well as all Christian faiths and tolerance for those who do not believe the same or believe at all.

The plenary indulgence may be gained by passing through the Holy Doors that are opened during the Jubilee Year in the Basilicas of Rome.

To make it more accessible to more people, Pope Francis authorized a Holy Door in all of the Cathedrals across the world as well as in some parishes and shrines, including my own home parish.

Pope Francis called for pilgrimage, but since I didn’t have to go to Rome, I thought of other ways to continue my pilgrimage of faith that I had begun two years before my baptism and welcome into the church.

This was something tangible that I could participate in. My faith and my writing intersect on many, if not all, levels. I did not want to simply walk through the door and have that be it. I discerned and meditated on when I would walk through the Holy Door, and what it would be the beginning of.

It took me weeks to feel the right feelings. I wasn’t sure I cared too deeply about plenary indulgences – I wasn’t even sure what they were, but I did know that I wanted to participate in the Year of Mercy, not only for myself but for the world around me.

Having mercy and offering forgiveness is so much more than not being judgmental and not holding a grudge, and I think as someone who does both, I wanted something spiritual that would teach me and let me expand what I was feeling and needing.

This year is also the year that I turn 50, and I’m not sure that was so much coincidence as fate to get me to this place at this time.

I stood in front of the Holy Door as parishioners went in the main entrance. I studied the picture on the left and the short prayer on the right.

I prayed the Holy Father’s prayer for the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy that he provided.

And then I opened the door and stepped in.
There was a whoosh of warm air as the outside air met the inside air, but maybe it was something more. I stood still for a moment as the warmth settled on my face, and then I sat in my regular pew for the regular mass.

During the course of the year, I’ve said the Pope’s Prayer for Mercy several times. I’ve attended the Divine Mercy Mass with the Bishop and recited the Divine Mercy Chaplet on the rosary beads. I’ve gone to reconciliation and said my confession, both on Divine Mercy Sunday and throughout the year when I’ve felt the need to be absolved. I’ve received the Eucharist. I’ve prayed for the Pope’s intentions.

My pilgrimage was a bit more complicated and I’ll talk about that in the weeks to come. leading to the conclusion of this Jubilee Year.

Join me as I post seven more of these, one each Sunday until November 20th.

Griffins and Ginger Snaps

-I write, and I have a blog because of course I do-

50 Year Goals