Mining Nuggets

Family season

Quote of the day

A happy family is but an earlier heaven - George Bernard Shaw

No doubt about it. It is family time. And I cannot wait for it to begin. 

It starts next week because my son is coming for Thanksgiving. Our little band of four (life partner, my son, Ada and me) will gather around our table and give thanks for the meal we will all (except Ada) prepare together. I am sure we will give thanks, because life partner knows how to cook a turkey and all the trappings. Son and me? We will help out by chopping and cutting, dicing and slicing, washing dishes, and doing as life partner bids us. Gilad will play the piano - I cannot wait to hear the home filled with his music. I will cry softly because some of his compositions touch deep in my soul. Sometimes, I will sing along, when he plays show tunes for fun, timeless old songs, and especially with old Israeli songs we left behind so many years ago. Tom will bring out his guitar too, and I will find it difficult to sing, because inevitably I choke up with happy emotion when we all get together to make music. We have our standards: Innocent Times, and Across the Great Divide - to name just two. Gilad and I will take long walks by the Wissahickon and talk about our lives, childhoods, life angst, and we will laugh and laugh, even as I cry sometimes to hear how my life choices hurt his early childhood experiences. And he will forgive me gently, kindly, as he always does.

For Christmas, life partner and I fly out to Seattle to spend time with all the Jacobson clan. Oh me oh my, I cannot wait for that either! There will be very good food because everyone knows how to cook really well. And I imagine there will be salmon - from the North West - the best kind! Nelle, Dick, JJ, Missy, Randy, Jared, Mikhaila, Madeleine, Milya ... wow! Gifts will be different this year, because we are planning on pooling our funds to buying some kind of live stock for a poor family in Africa. But, perhaps, we will sneak in one or two small, personal presents for each other. Christmas trees and gentle lights. Huddling in the cold evenings with arms around each other as we go to Unitarian services or take in a Christmas play somewhere. We will smell the sea, watch the otters and seals, and wonder at bald eagles flying across Puget Sound. Love abounds when I am with any member of life partner's family. They are my dear, dear family, listening and accepting, validating and encouraging, celebrating in each other's happiness and accomplishments with full heart.

Yes indeed, there is much to look forward to, be hopeful and thankful for this year. We will all raise our glasses and give thanks for the new political era, that we all worked so hard to make happen. Our intimate family units can now feel part of the larger humankind community. Exclusion and divisiveness is not part of the tone-from-the-top any longer. Political affects the personal, personal affects the political. We are all in this together.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Me and my drum

Ada Mae

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Do you have it?

Self Disclosure

 

This past month, I found myself reaching out, writing to, and, even, sending gifts to two people who have made it abundantly clear that they do not want to have anything to do with me. As I did it, I knew they would never respond. I was not doing it for their reply. I was doing it to feel shunned and excluded - to confirm my belief that I am an undeserving low-life. Wow! What's that all about? Whenever I start to spiral backwards, life partner has the tendency to remind me that, "Hm ... perhaps you are approaching feeling successful and happy? Time to punish yourself? Hm ...?" 

I guess that self alteration work takes time. With every few steps forward, there are those backward steps that creep in unconsciously ... but, oh dear ...

... Good grief! I cannot believe I was doing it again! Just after I gave my son a whole huge load of advice about how to break the paradigm of loving, or wanting people who do not want him. And there I was - doing it again - myself: Loving or wanting people who do not want me. 

I hope my son comes to visit for Thanksgiving. Because I want to make him an offer - that we both break the paradigm together. For, somewhere in his childhood, I fed him my psychic patterns, and he, dutifully, imbibed them. Was it through imitation? Mother's milk? Genes? Observation? Vibes? Who knows. I want to say to him: "Take my advice! I don't use it!"

All I know is ... it is time for both of us to give it up.

Becoming strong to say goodbye

Quote of the day

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

From Alice Walker's open letter to Barack Obama, which I found at Frank Paynter's site.

Lately I have been thinking about aging. I cannot help it. After all, in six month's time I will be turning sixty. Yes. 60. And to me it feels like "the big six-OH!" As I have always looked to the sixtieth decade as the age of wisdom, inner beauty, and maturity, somehow, I just cannot wrap my mind around the thought that I am capable. privileged or honored enough to turn into such a silvery, shimmery, shining age. I struggle with allowing myself to become mature, wise, or certainly possessing anything like "inner beauty!" Me oh my. After all, it seems to me that for so long, I chose to be child-like, and pushed back against maturity in case it would turn me into a conformist, boring old woman - as if that was a very bad thing to be.

As I walk briskly four miles each day, I notice that my legs, arms and torso are becoming stronger, and that since losing almost thirty pounds, not only do I feel lighter and more supple, I have so much more energy. I like the sensation. Long ago, I used to lose weight to feel sexy and worthwhile. Nowadays, it feels healthy and wholesome. It does not detract from my sensuality or sexuality as a woman, but I do not feel the need to prove my self worth through being sexually appealing any longer.

On one of my walks recently, I realized that, in fact, as I become older I need to become strong and flexible. In order to say goodbye. 

As I fortify my legs and arms with free-weights, or stretch and bend with daily yoga practice, I feel the strengthening of my physical body permeating my emotional and spiritual self. I need to develop the inner fortitude and patience to say goodbye. For, aging is connected to parting in a deeper, ever present way. It becomes more immediate the older I become. For, at any time, this could be my final moment. 

Living is all about losing and grieving. And, I have surely lived through my share of losses, through the typical life stages, death of loved ones, or divorces - mine or those closest to me. Losses of: childhood, expectations, countries, towns, states, humility, integrity, dignity, adolescence, youth, jobs, standing in the community, ideas, opinions, health, feelings of mortality or omnipotence, ego, innocence, boyfriends, girl friends, dearest friends, siblings, virginity, life stages, husbands, parent, attitudes, states of being, unborn children, baby from my womb, son leaving home, regrets, paradigms, continents, outlooks, love, habits, in-laws, step-children, dreams, youthfulness 

... more will surely come to me ...

However, the notion of losing life looms larger now that I become older. I want to be really strong for that stage, for it will be very sad for me to part from my son, life partner, dearest friends and family members, animals, plants, good food, companionship, blue skies and rainy days, joy, sorrow, snowfalls and walking by the ocean, in the woods, or up high on a mountain ridge against a stormy sky. I will need to stand firm and face it so that I might also give strength to those around me as we bid farewell to one another. I think it must take courage and strength to die - let go - move into the unknown and the inevitable.

Now, I am sure there are those of you out there, who will cry out, "Oh, Tamarika! You are still young! 60 is the old 40!" Believe me, I have those thoughts, too, that cry out in my brain as I reflect on all of this. To those conflicting cries, I reply quietly and firmly, "It takes time to build up the strength and courage - understanding and wisdom - patience and acceptance - to face my final life stages. So, I am starting - must start - right here and now. Before it is too late."

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Becoming an adult

Election anniversary

 

 [Found at Frank Paynter.]

Quote of the day

Choose happy over right. Sent to me from Susan

From JFK to Barack Obama

Quote of the day

 Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans ... John F. Kennedy

Yesterday, I visited the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Along with a number of other people from all over the nation, we wandered through the exhibits listening and looking through the history of John F. Kennedy's 1000 days as President. My friend Mira accompanied me, and as we walked through the winding hallways, our audio guide told us the story of a young charismatic man who connected with people and inspired them to change the world. Looking at the photographs and hearing Kennedy's speeches, I could not help but think of Barack Obama and this great election. It was deeply moving. Indeed, we are living through one of those great historic moments of time. One that will be looked back to in the future just as Mira and I did, along with tens of others yesterday in the Sixth Floor Museum. At one point, I was standing by the very window that Kennedy's assassin had prepared to fire his gun, looking down on the very road, opposite the famous "grassy knoll," that the motorcade had passed. Tears welled in my eyes and a lump rose into my throat. Suddenly, I noticed another young woman standing at my side. She was wiping tears from her eyes. We stood close to one another in silence, wiping tears together. From that point on, we wandered through the rest of the exhibit quietly together, stopping to listen and pore over the photographs, now and again wiping tears from our eyes - almost at the very same moment.

As we rounded the last corner, we came upon three or four memory books where visitors are encouraged to write their feelings or memories after experiencing the exhibit. In the last book, there were still some empty pages left for us to write our own. I read through a number of the pages and discovered that everyone was writing almost the same things that I had been feeling. The similarity of the moment. The hope and inspiration we were all feeling with the election of President Obama. It was amazing to me. Wiping more tears away, I wrote down my own version of the experience I had. My heart and mind were filled to overflowing with gratitude that I was able to participate in our own time, our own moment in history, our own healing after the pain of so much past history. 

Mira and I were overwhelmed with emotion. At one point, as we were reading the quote from Kennedy's Inaugural address: Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, we spontaneously turned to each other and slapped our palms together in a "high-5" sign. Our faces were beaming, eyes brimming with tears. We went down the elevator to the museum gift shop and bought all sorts of memorabilia. I love my fridge magnet that Mira bought me, with yet another timely and timeless Kennedy quote, so very suitable for this, our own moment in time: 

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

I voted for Barack Obama!

Standing in line. Polls opened at 7:00 a.m. I was there at 6:40 a.m. and already a line of 100 were there.

Life partner met me soon after and brought us a mug of coffee to share.

Excitement was palpable. People were talking to one another, smiling, laughing, and happy. As we stood in line Obama volunteers distributed fliers explaining how to vote. Some people had brought their very young children with them, and were explaining the procedure and showing them who they were going to vote for. Even the children seemed excited. We entered the polling booth and I cast my ballot. I have to admit, tears of excitement were streaming down my cheeks as I stood alone in that booth.

Here I am, after voting: Amandla!

The Obama volunteers generously took a picture of me and life partner after we cast our ballots. Today, at 7:30 a.m., we voted for Barack Obama.

And, as we drove off, I sent text messages to my two sisters in Israel: "I voted for Barack Obama!" 

And now, I pack my bags, not forgetting to take my Obama Cookies from the Night Kitchen Bakery, and head out to Dallas for a conference. 

(I have some books to sign, and presentations to make) 

As Sky said in her comment: "... and there will be some dancing in the streets tonight!" 

And when I return home on Saturday, I will have participated in electing: 

President Barack Obama.

Today's the day

Good morning, America, how are you?

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA

TODAY IS THE DAY

 

Shine a light

Quote of the day

... dare I really say it? - President Barack Obama. Patricia Williams

[Thanks, Sue]

 

Fired up ... ready to go

Remember this?  

 

And, if you are from Philadelphia, check out what you need to do to vote ... Make sure that the light next to Barack Obama's name is solid and not wavering.

Remember: a solid red light means you're all right!

Ooh, I am SO ready to VOTE, already!