Page 101 of 524

Long Memories Aren’t Just an Elephant Thing


Making an SVG to replace - Image:Certain Eleph...

Image via Wikipedia

Found a great quote on Twitter today:

“…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou

It doesn’t get more true than that.

Specifics fade or morph. They take on lives of their own. But in the end, what drives the things you say or do into another person’s soul like nails into the proverbial coffin are the feelings that resulted.

Good, bad and freak show ugly, what matters at the end of the day is how people feel.

Last evening a friend of Will’s mother contacted me on Facebook.  I haven’t heard from her in five years.  In fact, the last conversation we had concerned her calling on MIL’s behalf to inquire about Will’s burial.

Which I had not invited anyone to attend given the fact that his mother and friends hijacked his visitation and made it all about them and their loss.  Dee and I weren’t even afterthoughts.

At the time, this woman had been acting as a go-between for about six months.  MIL moved shortly before Will went into hospice and refused to allow anyone to tell me her new address or phone number.

And no, there wasn’t any trauma-rama incident that led up to my being persona non-grata.  She just hated me and preferred to let others talk to me and relay information to her.

In our last conversation, I told MIL’s friend that in the future MIL was to contact me herself if she needed information.  I wasn’t catering to her Queen of England fetish anymore.

Okay, I didn’t make the “Queen” comment but I was clear enough.

I didn’t hear from MIL for 8 months and last evening was the first I’d heard from her friend.

“I was searching for friends and thought I would try to find you. I am curious to see pictures of Will’s daughter to see how she is growing up.”

And yes, she referred to Dee as “Will’s daughter”.  I don’t imagine any of his friends remember that Dee is a separate entity with a name of her own.  She’s simply a legacy.

Some Facebook buddies responded to my slightly ranty status update bemoaning having been tracked down. They’d been there and advised using the various privacy tools to limit access to my personal page while still relaying information to interested parties about Dee.

But my sister, DNOS, was more to the point in her reply,

I wouldn’t Annie, you owe them nothing!!!! or completely block em!! It is time to end it!!! All they will do is bring you and everyone else misery!! I know that is mean but I had watch them and that is all I can say!!!!!Well I could say more but can not here.

DNOS is still a bit indignant on my behalf and she is a fierce mama tiger. It was all I could do to keep her from ripping his family and friends to shreds during the funeral.  She did lay waste to one of Will’s pool league buddies who wandered outside for a smoke and ran into her.  He, according to her account, “blubbered like a baby and boo-hoo’d about how he should have been there for Will. And I just gave him a look of disgust and told him he should have before I walked away.”*

My sister is a strong person.  She has no use for the weak, indecisive or those who look back on their poor behavior expecting sympathy. “Fuck ’em” is her motto. You have ample opportunity in life to stand up and be worthy in her opinion.  Regrets are for the useless.

MIL asked me once to forgive her for the slights, dishonesty, malicious attempts to undermine me with the staff at the nursing home and again at hospice.

But I can’t forget what the Social Worker at hospice told me after one such attack,

“She hates you. Be careful.”

I am not at all sure what prompted the friend’s request for photos. I messaged back that she should inquire with MIL for photo access as I have sent her pictures recently.  She replied with a “thank you” and not much more.  I suspect that MIL sent her looking for me on FB with the intent of gaining access to real-time information via my page.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the hunt has even led them to this blog or the others for which I have written.

I have enjoyed five years of pretty much total anonymity from Will’s family and friends on the Internet.  Longer than I should have expected but given their mercurial temperaments and historic lack of interest in how Dee or I was faring, perhaps it’s more of a surprise to be found at all.

I haven’t forgotten the feelings associated with dealing with a single one of them. I was the Cinderella of care-taking and then of widowhood, and I broke all manner of polite society (which is funnier if you know the people I am taking about) rules by moving on and eventually remarrying.

Gut instinct says this is first contact.

*On a side note, DNOS informed friend and MIL’s sister that no way in hell would they ever see Dee again after the funeral. I knew nothing about this exchange at the time. In fact, DNOS was under orders from me not to start anything with the in-laws, whom she held in great contempt for their failure to be much help. She especially disliked MIL for her antics while Will was in hospice and when we arrived at the funeral home to find that MIL and friends had set up camp and taken over, it was all I could do to hold DNOS back. I wasn’t in the mood for a Finnegan sort of wake.

When is a Foot Really a Penis? And Other Things the Bible Taught Me.


Mary Magdalene

Image via Wikipedia

When I was about seven or eight, I had a coloring book that retold stories from the Old Testament.

I know what you are thinking.

Huh?

I am fairly certain it arrived in my Easter basket along with a Skip-It, a new box of Crayolas and some chalk. The Easter Bunny was flush that year.

One of the stories was from the Book of Ruth, and as that is my mother’s name, it caught my eye. The drawings depicted a woman who also reminded me a lot of my mother physically though her obedient behavior and willingness to be a follower was not something I have ever associated with Mom, no matter what she may say about her demeanor back then.

Dad thought the story of Ruth‘s betrothal and marriage to a man named Boaz was a hoot because Boaz essentially seals the engagement by offering one of his sandals to Ruth’s kinsmen. He shared the story with all of his friends and some of them loved it so much that he was forever after known as “Boaz” in particular circles.

But I have told this story before.

What is interesting enough to prompt me to bring it up again springs from a couple of book reviews on two works soon to be published on biblical interpretation.

Fascinating stuff? More than you know.

In the days of the Protestant Reformation, one of the big deals the reformers sought – and the Catholic Church fought against – was printing the Bible in common language instead of Latin. Reformers believed that even the lowest rungs of society would benefit from being able to read the word of God for themselves. Rome cringed and declared that ordinary folk weren’t capable of interpreting scripture correctly. They would inevitably read the Bible wrong and heaven only knew what would come of that.

Ironically, the old school Catholic Church was correct to be concerned. The Bible is probably one of the most poorly understood and badly interpreted texts ever.

The authors of the new books want to set a few language and interpretation issues straight because they feel that the Christian right and the political right in the United States are deliberately promoting non-ideas and values based on faulty knowledge of the Bible.

Which brings me back to feet – Boaz’s – and Ruth.

In the story of Ruth, she pretty much puts the moves on Boaz at the insistence of her mother-in-law, Naomi.  Naomi’s late son was Ruth’s husband and Ruth had left her own tribe to be with him. Upon his death, custom dictated that Ruth could/should return to her own people but Naomi had no one immediate to help her and Ruth felt obligated to stay.

But when Boaz showed up on the scene, the wise Naomi pushed her daughter-in-law to move along. She knew that a second marriage for the childless widow was a better long-term plan for Ruth than staying with her.

My favorite “revelation” from the review talks about how sex is hidden in the Bible.

Basically there is sex on every page, but only if you know where to look for it.

As an eight year old, I had no idea that people had sex beyond kissing, and my Catholic school training certainly never covered Bible porn. Still, I knew there was more to Mommy and Daddy interactions than what was apparent to my eyes, and when I read that Ruth spent her wedding night sleeping at Boaz’s feet, I was puzzled.

“Why did she sleep at his feet when they were married?” I asked my Dad.

“Because in the old days, women were trained better, ” he quipped.

But according to scholars, there are more than a few places in the Bible where a foot is not a foot at all.

When biblical authors wanted to talk about genitals, they sometimes talked about “hands,” as in the Song of Solomon, and sometimes about “feet.” Coogan cites one passage in which a baby is born “between a mother’s feet”; and another, in which the prophet Isaiah promises that a punitive God will shave the hair from the Israelites’ heads, chins, and “feet.” When, in the Old Testament, Ruth anoints herself and lies down after dark next to Boaz—the man she hopes to make her husband—she “uncovers his feet.” A startled Boaz awakes. “Who are you?” he asks. Ruth identifies herself and spends the night “at his feet.”

My. My.

Now I wonder what the whole sandal thing was really all about.

Naturally this begs a bit of further exploration in terms of the rather famous New Testament incident involving Mary Magdelene washing Jesus’s feet and drying them with her hair.

As I remember, the disciples were quite scandalized and if the feet in question weren’t feet at all – that makes sense – and really sheds a different light on the Saviour.

But sometimes feet are feet. Like a cigar is just a cigar.

I won’t be telling the real story of Ruth’s foot worshipping to my mother, but it’s too bad Dad isn’t still around to hear the tale. That would set his ears to wiggling and earn me a look for sure.

Related Articles

Happy Year of the Metal Rabbit


Happy New Rabbit Year!

Image by jijis via Flickr

As I have totally pushed the silliness about my zodiac sign disappearing into some unpronounceable and decidedly undesirable “lost sign” out of my mind (despite the fact that my husband thinks the new one suits me better), I must confess that I much prefer the nuance of Chinese astrology anyway.

I am a Rabbit, so this is sort of my year. Born in a water year with an ascendant Dragon (that’s the equivalent of a rising sign), I have found that the Chinese seem to know me a bit better than the Greeks. Though my daughter persists in her belief that I am a daughter of Zeus when she’s not reimagining her family as an alpha wolf pack.

Alpha, not Omega.

“Omegas are just silly and play all day, Mom,” she said.

She was born in the year of the Horse. A cause of great despair to have a daughter born in a Horse year. Sis’s youngest was born in the sign of the Horse and having observed her from birth to college – I am going to have to agree. I shudder a bit at the future.

Curiously, in both astrological universes I tend to gravitate towards completely unsuitable mates., a Virgo born in the year of the Metal Ox and a Scorpio Water Ox. Oxen though are grounded, stubborn and get the job done types and Rabbits? Probably not so much. I must be pretty awesome for anyone to pick up the cross that is me.

But today is the beginning of the new year in many Asian cultures and countries. It’s so much more festive and fraught with symbolism and possibility than the staid Western new year, in my opinion. There are dragons and parades and predictions for everyone and thing.

In the West we get top ten lists up the ying-yang and drunkenness.

Hmmm. I think we get gypped.

So anyway, I read that life in the year of your Chinese sign is anything but smooth. Up and down. Conflict. Possibly pestilence and revolution. Which confuses me because these are all things that Rabbits avoid like the second coming of another Bush dynasty. But Rabbit years have a mixed history.

Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in the summer of 1963, a Rabbit year, but JFK was assassinated that November. And I was born in the last weeks of the year though that’s probably neither here nor there.

1975 saw the end of a horrific recession. Score one for the Rabbit. But 1987 saw one of the first Wall Street crashes that have plagued us ever since.

Hard to tell what might happen this year. But with fascism’s slow creep across the United States and it being the kick off of yet another election cycle (its small wonder that no actual governing is ever accomplished in a country where officials mostly run for office and never really settle in long enough to work), things look bleak. And that’s minus the Four Horsemen like weather that’s occurring at the moment.

Oh yeah and there’s that revolution thing that appears to be sweeping the Middle East.

Conflict.

We hates conflict. Witness my tooth issues as prime example number one. I changed dentists because I loathed the hygienist I was assigned to instead of simply risking hurting the guy’s feelings (it was a sure risk by the way because the guy is very sensitive), I tried out someone new.

The hygienist was awesome. The dentist screwed up my bottom molars and I am probably going to lose the back one at the very least.

And I am still ducking the question of having my teeth cleaned. They ask. I hedge.

This is how much of a Rabbit I am.

Rabbits look cuddly. But they are not. Although some Asian cultures refer to the sign as The Cat. I think cats are too aloof and disinterested to really convey the personalities of those of us born in those years.

Although I love that old Al Stewart song, Year of the Cat, don’t you?

I secretly like to think I am this incredibly awesome, but sadly, I think not so much.

Middle daughter, Mick, has a rabbit. Cunning and destructive. She could be a character in a Stephen King short story. The rabbit. Not Mick. However if Mick were a character in the story with the Rabbit, it wouldn’t end well.

Mick’s rabbit “escapes” periodically and disappears.

Nothing could induce me to drop an animal out the window of a moving vehicle on a deserted Range Road faster than a bunny that occasionally turned up missing and then just as creepily – reappeared.

But despite the bunny’s destructive ways and eerie vanishing acts, Mick believes that one day it will come to love her.

If it doesn’t dispatch her one night as she sleeps and then opens the window to let the magpies in.

Shudder.

But back to the Year of the Rabbit. Don’t get comfortable. Don’t imagine Peter Rabbit. Think something along the lines of fur balls returning from the Pet Semetary. And you’ll probably be okay.

 

 

Related Articles