Tag: Authenticity

Digging at the roots

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Pexels.com

It’s hot as I write this.  Very, very hot – for San Francisco, and more so for most of our friends and family across the continent.  It’s not the time of year to plant in the garden – in fact, with water restrictions, I have had to let some of the container plants go, awaiting the proper time for planting, in the fall, or perhaps spring.  We do not have air conditioning in our 19th century “Victorian Cottage” on a hill, where cattle belonging to Leland Stanford use to graze, on property he purchased from Adolph Sutro – they would be amazed at what their city and region has become, in more ways than one.  

I often find a kind of inspiration in working in the garden, going out early today to water before the hose became too hot to hold.   There is never ending change in nature, and in the plants and insects that visit our little space, and in the sky watching us all quietly.  They take little notice of the chaos and confusion that our airwaves batter at our souls with, endlessly; they have their little time on stage, doing as they were designed or created or evolved to do, depending on how you see our world.  And then, they are gone, as we shall be as well one day.  

When it is so hot that there is little escape for us, we close the curtains and shades to wait it out; yesterday, at the height of the blistering oven awaiting outside the door, I spent some time on a different kind of roots – my family tree.  As I have shared before, my heritage amazes me in a way that is difficult to put into words; as life would have it, the bibles and diaries and stacks of photos of ancestors from all sides of my family found their way into my boxes and crannies, and even when I neglect them for that “someday” when I will pull it all together, they call to me.  Services last Ancestry, Family Tree, My Heritage and others flood my email with “clues” and “discoveries”, and they make it so easy to click “accept” so that, boom, hurrah, you have 15 new ancestors!!   But that is not really learning, or understanding – it is just data piling up.  As a friend asked me last week (who also enjoys dabbling in their family research), “What are we doing all this for”??   The only answer I could provide is that it speaks, to my heart; they speak, from long ago, and I lean forward to hear their lessons, their secrets, hoping for answers to my own questions. 

It will take a great deal of work to really develop the research skills, writing, photo restoration, and technical understanding to create a meaningful history of my family;  my hope is that it will have meaning for others, my nieces and nephews and cousins who sometimes ask little questions but whose lives and interest lie elsewhere. I feel a kind of stewardship over these lives lived before mine, their faces looking at me through faded torn photos, their scrawling words on tattered pages.  In a way, it is ironic that the gay childless man has taken on their heritage, but as I age, I come to see more and more than life is filled with irony; our expectations of what the future would look like fall to whatever fate decides, our prayers if any might seem to be unheard.  But I am aging; my memory is starting to blink on and off like a “battery replacement needed” indicator, my body is telling me things I really do not want to hear, and my heart is drawn more and more to reflecting on what is the best way to make something useful of whatever time I have remaining. 

So there is the garden; and there is the family tree, which needs tending; but there is a third set of roots that need my attention.  They are old, and perhaps if not forgotten, I wanted to ignore them.  They are the foundation of the garden of my mind, my spirit;  the lessons I was taught, the seeds I planted slowly over years – beliefs, behaviors, habits;  and the choices I made that brought me to where I stand today.  We all have those hidden gardens, and perhaps we are reluctant to open the gates and see what lies within, and beneath;  it is easier, surely, to find something else to focus on.  Somehow, now that the running to and fro of a career and the unfulfilled wishes of a young man are behind me, and I move into what lies ahead,  I know in a way that has nothing to do with my intellect that those roots, those foundations of so much of my life, need me to find them, and sit before them, and listen to their stories, and under the quiet skies of dawn or the shiny carpet of stars, renew my soul garden, clean up the refuse, give it the sun and food and water to bloom anew. 

When I started this blog, I felt I had a message to share.  In a way, our lives, our daily acts of kindness or anger, giving or selfishness, speak much louder than words.  But words carry power, amazing power to change our own world, and those around us; I felt, perhaps with a false sense of having some wisdom worth passing on, that being open about my life might give someone else who faced struggles of their own, some hope.  I called this blog “my journey towards authenticity” – not “to”, because I haven’t made it.  In fact, as I have grown (fighting all the way) and opened my eyes to see things a little differently, the truths that I have seen are not always pretty about myself; I am realizing how far I have to go in terms of acceptance and forgiveness, responsibility and giving.  It might sound wonderful to say “I am going to be authentic in my life and relationships” but you have to be willing to look in the mirror and really see the truth about what you yourself have to work on, what you have to take ownership of and have the strength to admit you have a very long way to go.  Honesty isn’t always pretty. 

Is blogging about this part of my life appropriate? I am this first to admit, I don’t know.  I spent nearly all of my life from my very earliest years (talking about roots) in hiding.  I hid because I was afraid of being hurt emotionally and physically in a home environment where threats were very real; I hid because those who cared for me taught me that I needed to be someone that I was discovering I was not.  I buried my heart and worked hard to conform, to achieve, to be seen as a success – but in hiding from others, I closed the door on myself as well, and even after reaching a place in life where I could be more honest about my feelings and my orientation, I still tried to fit a mold, instead of letting what was inside my soul garden blossom.  

I was surprised recently to learn of a quote attributed to David Bowie.  I know little of him – my own taste in music tended towards people who were old when I was born, and contemporary artists generally didn’t sing those kinds of songs.  Still, from what I know of his life, he had struggles, he walked a different path than many around him, and his creativity touched lives.  Perhaps he did say these words, or repeat them, but whatever their source, I see their wisdom now more than ever.  He said – 

“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been”.

As attributed to David Bowie

Of course, we all have different opinions on what that “should” might look like – but I think there is some truth in saying that each of us inherently have unique characteristics and gifts, drives and desires – and that it is never too late to be open to discovering, and sharing them, more fully.  I see this in my garden, and in my family history, and in my own spirit harmonizes as though this truth remains – whatever designer and design there may be to our lives, the greatest gift each of us has to offer is to be fully ourselves, human, imperfect, unashamed and without blame towards ourselves or others.  This is the heart of grace and forgiveness, however we might seek them – to be loved and to love one another for who we are, not for who we want to be seen as or for what we expect one another to become later.  Love is for today, as is. 

Friends and strangers who read this, I am a terrible example of any such principle, but if I wait until I can be who I wish I already was or always had hoped to be, there would be no reason for sharing.  Our souls may not be as pretty as we’d like to pretend; we may choose to close our eyes to the light of honesty; but at the same time we shut the door to being ourselves.  Sitting under the branches in my “soul garden”, it is far from the promise of beauty and love that I long to share.  In realizing what I portrayed to the world (through my filtered eyes) needs renewal and refreshing to be any kind of oasis or inspiration, there is a temptation to shut the gate, put up the stage backgrounds again and try to forget the lessons that life is asking me to acknowledge, to live with pretense instead of honesty.  What a tragedy that our world makes it so difficult to trust, to be honest and know we are accepted – and what a powerful gift we each can bestow by becoming that source for others in our lives. 

Just as the seasons require me to care for the plants in our yard through their cycles, year after year; just as the challenge of discovering my family tree of life, my ancestors lessons and gifts and sacrifices to preserve to those who follow; It will take my lifetime to tend to this garden of my soul.  But I sense this realization, as daunting as it seems to loom ahead, is a gift; to open my eyes and know that aging does not mean only closed doors and memories, but paths to discovery and sharing, contributing and creating joy.  Change and growth is not just for children, or perhaps we all remain children even though our bones and muscles age and our brains slow, children in a garden, looking for beauty through aging eyes.  My life has always been called to a path of differentness, I have fought it and tried to walk the road that others picked for me, but I am forging my own way, and will continue to write about that here.  I hope that, occasionally, for someone, my words will resonate and the lessons I am trying to live out can somehow, help them as well. 

Thanks for visiting … until next time!

Root removal and garden renewal

If you were to look at my facebook feed, or visit any of my homes over the years, starting with my childhood in Southern California reaching now to the chillier climes of the San Francisco bay – you would discover that I always worked to transform whatever spot of soil I tended into something a little more green, a bit more colorful. To create a little spot of refuge that would bring joy, peace, and a sense that here, nature is welcome, and appreciated. I find being in a quiet garden a spiritual experience; digging my fingers into the soil, planting something alive and nurturing it hopefully into bloom, giving the birds and bees a place to feel welcome; it gently reminds me I am a part of something larger, and yet I can still accept that, like all things, my creation is only temporary.

In our SF home – where I have lived a little more than 3 years, but my husband has been for more than a quarter century – over the years, occasionally some trees have become too large, and they were removed.  When I first moved here, the small strip of soil immediately adjacent to the front of the house had 4 large olive trees so overgrown I did not even know there was cement under them;  climbing a ladder to try to trim them from reaching to block out the front windows on the main floor was a joint effort.   Eventually, we decided to have them removed – but, as was the practice in earlier such attempts, the gardener engaged simply cut them back, and cut them down to the ground, where the stumps remained.

In another small spot, immediately by the first few of 30 steps leading from the street to our front porch, a much older stump protrudes from the small rectangle where my efforts to get other plants to prosper have been futile.  In fact, my planting of climbing roses where the olive trees had been failed so miserably I had to remove them, as well – they, of course, left no residue behind.  Soon, I will begin to search for a resource here who will, hopefully at a somewhat reasonable price for this expensive city, come and grind the stumps down, at least far enough to free up some space for new growth. While those roots, lifeless as they may be, remain – new growth will still struggle to make it their own.

I remember as a child of perhaps 6 going with my older brother to the city park in our little town of Corona, California more than 55 years ago, and picking up an acorn from the great oak trees there – I am sure, now, it looks very different but hope some of those trees still stand.  I planted it in our little back yard of that simple 60’s tract home … and it grew, slowly, at first just a little few branches.  I grew, also … into high school, and college, and my first job, moving away. In that 20 years and more, the seedling became a mighty tree, so large it created problems with power lines and neighbors, and had to be removed.  In the years after my mother aged, and became unable to be at home alone, I returned; as she spent her final years in a nursing home, I began the process of renewing  that home, where she, as a disabled parent, raised us with limited income and was unable to keep things in repair.  It gave me a sense of wholeness to create a garden, and to bring new life and comfort to the house itself, so that someone who would follow would be happy to call it their own.

The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities … James Allen

Regretfully, roots take a great deal of effort to truly remove – particularly if they are dead, and run deep.  Sometimes, as with our olive trees, shoots emerge from the roots, life struggling to survive, the cells programmed to reproduce and reach for the sun. Cutting off that which was seen resolved the visual issue … but left stumps and roots that I cannot, on my own, remove.   As I have spent time the past few weeks of the new year, trying to use a saw to cut through that deadwood, trying to dig somehow into roots that run at least 15 feet below where the plant emerged from the surface, down below the stone foundation of our home that withstood the 1906 earthquake – I am defeated.  But nothing new can truly thrive there – the opportunity for beauty to bloom anew cannot be fulfilled while those stumps, those roots, dead as they be, take up the limited space that new life needs to come forth.

Excerpts from Oscar Wilde’s “The Selfish Giant”

The same is, of course, true of our hearts.  My heart.  There are still deep roots, as I am reminded constantly by my struggle to channel my emotions positively, to heal the deeper gashes in my soul from the trees that no one can see but which were planted in my spirit from the earliest years of life.   We all have gardens in our hearts; I have always loved the symbolism of “The Secret Garden” children’s story, but also – Oscar Wilde’s “The selfish giant”.  In the first story, a young orphan taken in by a distant relative discovers a walled garden shut off for years, where, by entering and letting in light, love grows within that new family to replace the pain that they had tried to shut out behind locked gates and overgrown shrubs.  In “The selfish giant”,  the title figure returned from visiting his ogre friend to find the local children had been playing in his garden; he angrily shuts it off, walling it away from the.  One day, he finds a young boy visiting there, and his heart begins to open, until … the events of the story are best left for you to discover, it is freely available online.

In my postings of 2020, my first year of writing here, I shared about some of the events of my life, very personal events, writing even of things I had not told to many of my closest friends and family.  I titled the blog “my journey towards authenticity” – because that journey is really only begun.  Discovering who we are – especially when, for whatever reason, we have been somehow denied that opportunity, afraid to accept ourselves, and traded the seeming approval of others for embracing what cries out in our own spirits – it is a process that takes a lifetime, much like a great oak takes decades to grow from that tiny acorn I held in my hand as a child.  My shortcomings and foibles constantly remind me there are roots running deep in me still that I have not yet removed – or time, perhaps, has not yet wrought its power to dissolve sufficiently to erase their presence.  I recognize they may always be with me – but in acknowledging they linger, present but unseen, I can at least embrace honesty.  As Pinocchio repeatedly proved, one cannot become real without honesty.

In the past two weeks, I have been graced with the opportunity to join an online book discussion with strangers.  They are all men;  they are all people who, for whatever reason, learned in the course of their lives that, like me, they were different – they had feelings others did not share, and in many cases that they were taught to deny, or fight, or erase.  And, like me perhaps, some erased their own ability to grow, to become the great trees they were born to be in spirit – denying those around them the shade of their caring in times of heat, or the song of birds nesting in the branches above.

Perhaps, like these roots in our garden I cannot dig out without help, we each need help from others to uncover those deeply buried residues in our hearts – they block the ground of our spirit from new life, and perhaps even sprout up in new ways, refusing to be buried forever.  Today, I shared with the group, as we discussed how the factors in our own, unique histories and lives and backgrounds had common threads, that I was learning – slowly, painfully, and unfortunately often at cost to those in my life who loved me, some now gone – only by coming to continue to grow into accepting myself as I am, like you – flawed, imperfect, selfish at times, discouraged and afraid at others – only by believing that others can in fact love us, as we are NOW, can we begin to be the channel for a greater love through us to those around us.   

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com

So, another year has begun, and the first month nearly over – change is happening around us. Soon, here in the northern hemisphere, it will be spring … new life will start to emerge from the seeds. Daily, we plant seeds in our hearts, from what we read, what we hear from others, what we listen for in the quiet of the night when the wind and darkness wakes us and the distractions that keep us occupied during the day are not as present in our consciousness. And daily, over the years, we reap the fruit of what we planted before. I am working on my own root removal, in both my gardens. Whatever season it may be – a time to sow, and a time to reap – we can stroll in the garden of our hearts, ask what we see there, and begin to dig, and plant anew.

Your comments and sharing are welcome … hope to see you again, friend.