I just watched "August: Osage County".  I guess there are worse things than having your mother leave town forever when you are 19.

The cycle of abuse, the endless legacy passed from generation to generation, where, when and how does it end?

She left because she wanted to spare us the pain of her pain, the pain of her presence.

Shall I despise her for her weakness? In that case I shall also despise myself, for I am also weak.

Shall I despise her for her indifference? In that case I shall also despise myself, for I am also indifferent.

Shall I despise her for her judgment? In that case I shall also despise myself, for I too judge.

How can I ever be less than her? How can I ever be more than her? How can I forgive her with a forgiveness that will last for more than a minute, an hour, a day?   Is there a forgiveness that transcends the time it takes to rise from my knees in prayer and to turn and face the reality of my brokenness (and that of my siblings) each day?

Did she (or does she) feel the guilt of not being able to be positive enough to wish the past completely away, so that it blows away on the Oklahoma wind never to return?  I do, I feel it for us all.  There are times, for minutes, for hours, for days, even months; I know that I have done it!  I have finally captured joy and released the past! Who needs forgiveness!? I am clasping gratitude, love, and joy to my heart! Then one day I open my eyes: forgiveness and understanding fled in the night, dragging joy and lightness of being with it. Despair sits knowingly on the edge of the bed, grinning at me. I know then I am a fool, a blithe, happy-go-lucky damn fool. Everyone else must know it too. It is then I want to run, to go and go and go until there is nothing or no one who could ever be hurt by me.

She has 8 grandchildren she has never seen, the carriers of our ugly legacy. They are beautiful, bright shiny hopeful things full of potential.  They all weigh on my heart. Their beauty is so fine, so fleeting, I want to polish them all, to rub away all that we have weighed them down with. I look at them and hope without hope. Part of me whispers to let go, so that they all go their ways, struggling through the dark into the sun, dragging along their burdens just like me and my siblings did.  Another part of me desperately wishes I were a true hero, who could save them from themselves and from us, by sheer strength, intelligence, courage and fineness of spirit.  I am not a hero, I am my mother’s daughter.  I am flotsam on the river of life: summoning energy to move against the current of abuse mostly seems beyond me.

She left because she wanted to spare us the pain of her pain, the pain of her presence.  I chose (and am still choosing) to stay every day, and live with the pain of my presence, the pain of my pain. Over and over again I choose the joy of their presence. Over and over again, for fleeting bits of time, I grab on to forgiveness, understanding, love and I hold the sweetness of their being, my family. I pray that my pain will never be a burden to them, and that by some miracle, that maybe hoping without hope is enough.

“In the Holy Relationship, it's understood that we all have unhealed places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with another person. We don't hide our weaknesses, but rather we understand that the relationship is a context for healing through mutual forgiveness.”
― Marianne Williamson

 I am doing a lot of reading and soul searching about love these days.  I have glimpsed this before at different times in my life. I am currently comparing the difference between giving all you have in codependency.....hoping to heal or improve another because of a belief in the other's inadequacy (which oftentimes mirrors an unseen inadequacy of one's own self), or giving all you have because you know that all you have is boundless, unconditional,  and ultimately, enough, because you find your own self to be enough. In unconditional love the boundless love, once found in self, would echo and bounce back from every other being until self was no more and only love remained.  At least I think it would be that way: a perfect paradox. I am not anywhere close to this: mostly confused and far from where I wish to be.  Therein, I think lies the rub......I will never be enough until I am enough, and so others will never be enough until I am enough.

If I can forgive myself, then I will be forgiven by myself and I will free the others I hold in the bondage of judgement.  So be it.

Tonight a fine, fresh mist blanketed Norman and when I arrived home from work, the breeze stroked my cheek and the mist kissed my lips.  A restless longing stirred within me. I dressed warmly and went into the dusk. I ended up at the Norman Mardi Gras Parade.

As twilight became dark, the wind became insistent, pinching my cheeks and biting my lips. I didn’t care. A wild energy filled me with a sense of expectancy.

I stood to watch the parade alone. I made no effort to gather candy or necklaces.  I simply observed.

Then the space around me was filled by a group of young revelers. A young man in a plastic fire hat saw I had no necklaces and placed some around my neck as he breathed beer into my face.   After that, I belonged.  We gathered necklaces and candy and bestowed them on one another. We sang “We all live in a Yellow Submarine……” at the top of our lungs. We danced to the rhythm of the Jazz in June Jazz Band.  We twisted to “Let’s Twist Again” blasting from the Octopus Float. The man with the fireman’s hat turned and hugged me. “Bye!” he yelled. They left as suddenly as they'd arrived.

On the way back to my car, I gave all my necklaces to a woman with a little girl.  “You don’t want them?” she said, obviously puzzled.

“No, I’m going home.” I smiled.  So I did, strangely comforted.

Well after forever and a day, here I am back for more. Those life lessons just keep coming. Just as soon as I think I have some handle on life, here I go again, off on another adventure. The last four years have been a hard lesson in relationships. I still don't seem to be doing too well in that arena.

I read somewhere about life being a laboratory, a testing ground for the soul.  If that's the case I'd like to apply for a sterile lab, so I can test out theories before I need to use them in life.  It seems that sometimes I am the lab rat in someone else's experiment, other times to my great chagrin, I end up using others for my own growing.

I could say in theory that I would rather slit my wrists than hurt another person, with so much conviction that I marvel at my own sincerity.  Then comes a real-life situation and I find myself doing or saying things that are not congruent with my own philosophy at all.  I am improving with age, but not nearly fast enough to keep the ones I love and care so much for safe.

Poem by Hafez The Pearl on the Ocean Floor

This poem is by the ancient Persian poet Hafez.  The name for the documentary Pearls on the Ocean Floor was taken from this poem.  I borrowed it from http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/.

The Pearl on the Ocean Floor

By Hafez (1320-1389) Translated by Robert Bly

We have turned the face of our dawn studies toward the drunkard's road.
The harvest of our prayers we've turned toward the granary of the ecstatic soul.

The fire toward which we have turned our face is so intense
It would set fire to the straw harvest of a hundred reasonable men.

The Sultan of Pre-Eternity gave us the casket of love's grief as a gift;
Therefore we have turned our sorrow toward this dilapidated traveller's cabin that we call "the world."

From now on I will leave no doors in my heart open for love of beautiful creatures;
I have turned and set the seal of divine lips on the door of this house.

It's time to turn away from make-believe under our robes patched so many times.
The foundation for our work is an intelligence that sees through all these games.

We have turned our face to the pearl lying on the ocean floor.
So why then should we worry if this wobbly old boat keeps going or not?

We turn to the intellectuals and call them parasites of reason;
Thank God they are like true lovers faithless and without heart.

The Sufis have settled for a fantasy, and Hafez is no different.
How far out of reach our goals, and how weak our wills are!

Pearls on the Ocean Floor

Pearls on the Ocean Floor

I went to see a documentary that was screened at OU last night.  The documentary, Pearls on the Ocean Floor had a profound impact on me.  It was about Iranian women artists, both in Iran and living estranged from their home countries in different places around the world.  There were many different mediums the women used in their art work and many different styles and modes of expression.

When I lived in Iran I had several students who were also artists. One of them was a pharmacist and was taking watercolor classes from a male watercolor artist there.  She was a cheerful woman over 50 who had accomplished much in her life.  She was independent, an entrepreneur who owned one of the few 24-hour pharmacies in our city.  She was strong, outspoken and loved to gossip. Actually, she never knew it but gossip almost ruined our friendship.  I decided in the end that it was worth it to keep her friendship because she was such a fascinating person and ultimately I learned incredible things from her.  I simply steered our conversations away from things I didn’t want discussed in the neighborhood, and instead thoroughly enjoyed our conversations about spirituality, art, and the meaning of life.  We held our classes at the back of the pharmacy, and many times she would have paint brush in hand and we would chat merrily in English about the intrigues and goings-on in her art class.  It seems she had quite an eccentric in her artist teacher and he was surrounded by a bevy of scarf-clad lovelies who vied for his approval. She was an infinitely spiritual person, who had also suffered the death of a teenage son, and domestic abuse.  Once she told me about her prayer room, a small room in her house that she had painted green with a green carpet and green curtains.  Green is the color of spring, of spiritual matters, of saints, and of prayers in Iran.  It has a meaning and a life all its own in Persian culture.  Without having lived in Iran, or closely with Iranians, it is hard to explain the bittersweet, lovely, reverent emotion that green provokes in Iran.  One of the artist ladies in Pearls on the Ocean Floor did an installation that said in lovely Persian calligraphy, “My green isn’t your green.”  She lives in Germany and she was comparing the cultural significance of the color in that country to the meaningful, emotional significance that the word carries in Farsi.  Sabz. Green.  No, not the same in English.

Another thing that is so culturally different is the phrase, “Oh my God!”  and “Khodayah Man!” I’ve been watching a lot of stand-up comedy done by Persians lately with my oldest son.  It is so funny to us because we completely understand the context.  A lot of them will do a heavily Iranian accented English, and invariably it’s peppered with lots of “Oh my God!”s emphatically exclaimed.  It’s funny because probably two of every three Iranians I know will use this phrase passionately when speaking English.  Before I lived in Iran, my fundamentalist Christian upbringing had me cringing every time my Iranian friends used OMG so carelessly (taking the name of the Lord in vain), but when I got to Iran and learned Farsi, somehow it didn’t seem like a careless exclamation, but more a passionate invocation.   More like, God are you hearing this?  Depending on the emotion of the exclaimant, it could be awe or exuberance: “Khodayah Man! How Beautiful!” as in “My God, what a beautiful baby!”  Then OMG was a word of exquisite praise to the Creator.  Or it could be “Khodayah Man! Really?” as in “OMG.  This kid won’t eat!  I’ve worked hard all day cooking and now he won’t eat.”  It’s like saying God, I love you, but you see what I have to go through here?  Sometimes it’s used as a lament:  “Khodayah Man, na”  as in “Oh, no, my God, no”  I suppose that one is universal, we all really want God to help take things back and make things right at horrific times in our lives.  It’s crazy how OMG in Farsi rings in my ears as part of a passionate, everyday conversation with God, but that fundamentalist upbringing still makes me hesitate slightly when I hear OMG in regular conversation in English.   Have I lost something in translation or gained a richer vocabulary?  Depending on the day, time, and my level of nostalgia it could be a lot or little of both.  There are no longer fundamentalist black and white colors in my world, instead infinite shades of gray.

Hangin' Out With The Guys

One of the highlights of my year this year was when my oldest son invited me to play ball with him and some of the guys at work.  We went to the OU gym and I had a blast!  I didn't realize that this was such a big thing until a friend pointed out that there probably aren't a lot of 43 year old moms hanging out at the gym and playing basketball with college guys.  It made me feel way cool. 

I started playing basketball late.  I was a sophomore in high school.  People kept telling me that because I was tall, I should be playing basketball.  So I went out for the team.  I was put on the B-team of course, but really lucky because our A-team went to State that year and the next. I got to be with the best. We had a class hour set aside for basketball, and we also practiced after school during the season.  Our coach was a stickler for the fundamentals, and yet we learned advanced concepts too, plays and zone defenses and the particulars of man-to-man defense.  It all fascinated me.  The players on the B-team were all told they could come to the A-team practices and shoot on the sidelines.  I was at every single practice, shooting and watching the A-team run the plays over and over again.  Sometimes the coach would put me in the scrimmage at the end of practice.  I was really proud of my progress. By my Junior year I had improved enough to dress out with the A-team.  We went to state again and I had a blue and gold letter jacket decorated with patches.  I loved that jacket!

 All this was a grounding experience for me at a time when my home life was rapidly deteriorating. I had trouble getting to the games.  I'd walk miles home from practice, and yet I was determined to participate no matter what.   My mother never attended even one of my games.  Along the end of my Junior year, my mom stopped coming home, first for a night, then several nights, and then for two weeks.  I was the oldest of four children.  We were taken away from her and two weeks into my Senior year, just as I was poised to step up and hopefully become a starter for our team, we moved to a very small Missouri town, population 400.  I was now in a Senior class of 25 teenagers who had all known each other since grade school.  I played basketball there, but it wasn't the same.

After I graduated, I didn't play basketball again until I went to Iran. By that time I had two small sons at home. I mentioned that I loved basketball in one of the English classes I taught, and one of my students told me there was a basketball class in a nearby gym.  I went to a practice and was immediately invited to join the team.  I did and for the next eleven years we played ball!  We lost a lot in the beginning and went through a lot of trial and turmoil.  Basketball is not the most appreciated activity for a Muslim woman who is expected to be chaste and ladylike.  A lot of the girls had to really work hard to convince their families to let them play at a competitive level. Even I would never have been able to do it if not for my sons incredible aunts, who took care of them when I was at games and tournaments. Eventually we improved and were able to represent the city in different tournaments and eventually we joined the National League and worked our way up from Level 3 to Level 2, and then to Level 1.  We really worked hard for that. We even had a sponsor, Homa Air.  That was Awesome!  The next level is the Superleague.  The members of the National Women's team are chosen from players on Level 1 and Superleague teams.  They then play womens teams from other countries.  I credit Basketball with saving my sanity.  The cultural difference was stressful, not to mention the fact that I was trapped in Iran and not allowed to leave the country.  I would be at home, and upset with some crazy idea my ex-husband had, or something that had happened with my children that I couldn't control.  I would go off to practice in a huff, angry and stressed out. After 2 hours of running, jumping, drills, and scrimmage, I would arrive at home an angel, at peace with the world and clear about how I was going to handle the problem of the day.  Even to this day, exercise is my anti-depressant.  It allows me to serve myself and the world with energy, optimism, and inner peace.

It will be 5 years in March 2012 since I have returned from Iran.  I still play basketball 1-3 times a week, mostly one-on-one with my son.  It's funny, men were never allowed to see our games in Iran, only women were allowed in the gym because we wore classic basketball uniforms: tank top and shorts.  (I was always number 14)  Now we play here at the YMCA and it's our way to bond.  We talk trash, foul each other like crazy and love it!  Not many Moms can say that their son is not afraid to take them to the college gym to play with the guys.  I am truly blessed!