In this age of digital technology and ubiquitous cell phones, the lives of our family and friends are being documented continually through photos and video. I sometimes wonder what will become of all this data, stored on our computers and in the Cloud and on countless DVDs. Are we keeping all that content safe enough? What happens when we run out of space? What if the Cloud crashes and burns?
Fortunately, many brainiacs are working on these problems, with solutions like organic storage systems that are DNA-based, where you can theoretically store the entire history of mankind in something the size of a Rubik's cube. Or so I understand, with my limited understanding. :^)
Forty years ago, the technologies we take for granted lived only in the realm of Science Fiction. Forty years from now, who knows what it will look like?
My grandchildren will have their every step documented and stored. Many of those events will include me, so the last decades of my life will end up being captured as well, to a lesser extent.
But my parents' lives, especially before I was born, are mostly mysteries—kept behind a closed door in the corridor of Time, one that can't be accessed except through a handful of black and white photographs. Only one or two of these are of them as small children; the rest show adults. My dad is mainly on the farm with his family or on a ship in the Navy. My mom has nothing of her adolescence or teen years. There are photos of their wedding and then of their early married days while posted in Rhode Island. Then I begin to show up—but because of the fire that broke out in mom's moving van in 1988, there are only a few images of myself and my brothers as children or my parents moving through their married days. The rest are ash in the wind. It's so sad.
Did my grandparents have photo albums of my mother and her brothers? If so, where did they go? Did my maternal uncles take them instead of my mom? I certainly never saw any.
I used to feel annoyed that Mom didn't take better care of our memories. The photos were almost all on slides, in a silver metal case. Every now and then, we'd drag them and the old projector out and have a memory fest. They spent years on a shelf in the garages of various homes. Slides were considered so much better than photos; but in the end, we lost them. Technology wasn't quite there yet; we couldn't burn them to a DVD or CD.
My mother was never a big one for memorabilia, and tossed out the past (including my past) on a regular basis. I used to put this down to a lack of sentimentality but I wonder if there weren't other issues at play? I think my mom was escaping her past. She had conflicts with her family, bad memories of her youth, and a burning shame about her modest, blue-collar origins. She wanted desperately to reinvent herself. She even tried to bury her first ill-fated marriage and the child it produced, and kept these events hidden from us for years. (I wonder if my dad knew about them before he married her?)
When my son was a toddler, mom and I drove down to visit her mother in Arizona. It was the only time I remember Grandmom telling me stories about my mother's childhood—and they weren't flattering.
One of them went like this:
When Kay was a teenager in Eureka, she wanted a navy blue suit that she'd seen in a shop window. Grandmom went and looked at it but the cost was more than they could afford. Being a seamstress herself, she bought material and made Mom a navy suit, trying to replicate the store's suit as much as she could. Instead of gratitude and understanding, Kay was enraged by this offering. It wasn't a designer label, it wasn't the suit, and she wasn't going to wear it. According to Grandmom, Kay filched money out of their emergency cookie jar and bought that suit after all.
The narcissistic passion and steely resolve displayed by my mother in this tale was nothing new to me; I'd seen it many times over the years. What surprised me was how far back it started and what it implied for her family dynamics. Mother always told me that Grandmom was a stingy, mean, jealous harridan who adored her sons and hated her daughter. Conversely, Grandad was a kind, intelligent, strong, generous person who loved his daughter as well as his sons—but just kow-towed to whatever his wife wanted. Sort of Gary Cooper married to the Wicked Witch of the West.
When Grandmom told me this story, it was in a tone of bewilderment. She said she never understood my mother, never knew what drove her. That she came into life that way: hard-headed, temperamental, passionate, envious, competitive.
My mother always blamed Grandmom and praised Grandad—but upon probing, I learned that neither of them gave her the attention she needed. Neither attended her school play or music recital. Maybe they were too busy, holding down a variety of jobs—like sewing and hairdressing and house construction and phone line repair—to make ends meet for their family. Maybe they were too exhausted at the end of the day, after supper was cleared and night fell. Or maybe they did have something to answer for in missing their child's creative performances and causing her to feel unloved. Child-rearing was different back then in so many ways. (And BTW, my mother never came to our recitals and performances, either! What irony!)
Regardless, there still exist huge chunks of undocumented time in my mother's life that I will never know about or see. She told very few stories about her past, either. I know that she concurrently dated twins in high school. I know that she was popular. I've driven through Eureka with her, the town where she spent her adolescence, and seen the public buildings that remain. (But not her home.) I know she was an usherette in a fancy theater in San Francisco, with a uniform and a flashlight. I know she roomed with a group of girls in a big old house, and they had a nickname: the Glamour Girls. I imagine it kind of like the movie Backstage with Ginger Rogers: ambitious, highly social, full of themselves and their joys or woes. I know she went to UC Berkeley and majored in Art. I know she skipped a grade (as did I) and was young for her class.
But her timeline is a bit jumbled, because I also know she married at eighteen and moved to Wisconsin. So when did she graduate or did she? The Glamour Girls must have been afterwards, after she'd escaped marriage and motherhood, been denied the solace of her family, and fled to San Francisco. And that's where she met my dad. I wish I had photos of those days!
I also know, because she mentioned this about a million times, that she did some modeling.
That's not how she phrased it, of course. Whenever she said "I used to be a model," she implied that she was the Cindy Crawford of her day. The truth was that she modeled for a department store for a short while, along with some of her friends. Very 40's. She learned how to walk a runway, and she parlayed that experience into a secondary career later on, teaching "charm and modeling" to awkward girls and putting on local or military fashion shows. She even worked behind the scenes in a Miss America and a Miss Jacksonville pageant. I still remember my brothers and I being roped into a fashion show when I was about nine. We were on stage in our nightclothes and had to kneel by a prop bed and say our prayers as part of the tableau. I "used to be a model" too, briefly; I walked the runways that she was in charge of, using the gliding steps she taught me. (A very different technique from today's models, by the way, who stomp down on staggering platform heels like knock-kneed horses.)
Back then, I used to roll my eyes at Mom preening about her modeling career. But now, I recognize the enormous determination and smarts she possessed to achieve her reputation as a trainer of models and runner of fashion shows. Even if it was only for local causes or the Navy wives' benefit event.
How much will my child understand about my life? With such fragmentary evidence left, my childhood and adolescence are behind their own door, just like my mother's. I have journals, but if you've ever read someone's diary, you know what a load of rubbish they can be. I have stories and songs and poems. I guess, instead of photos, he will have to explore my words. Or maybe no one can ever really understand another person's life, the parts not lived together. We're just too busy taking care of the Now.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Death Poem
I wrote this for my mom and read it aloud as the family gathered to remember her.
Connection
I look out on the landscape of the world.
I search it with my heart, my spirit.
I strain to feel the invisible chain that bound us together,
even unwilling, even across the miles.
But it is gone.
Your end is empty.
I trail its links behind me like Marley’s ghost
and I grieve to feel the lightness left behind.
But perhaps, after all, it was not a chain.
Perhaps it was a tether.
And your spirit, like an impatient bright balloon,
has broken free and rushed into the sky.
I will search the sky for you sometimes and hope
to catch a glimpse of your color, dancing in the sun.
Connection
I look out on the landscape of the world.
I search it with my heart, my spirit.
I strain to feel the invisible chain that bound us together,
even unwilling, even across the miles.
But it is gone.
Your end is empty.
I trail its links behind me like Marley’s ghost
and I grieve to feel the lightness left behind.
But perhaps, after all, it was not a chain.
Perhaps it was a tether.
And your spirit, like an impatient bright balloon,
has broken free and rushed into the sky.
I will search the sky for you sometimes and hope
to catch a glimpse of your color, dancing in the sun.
Last Day Thoughts
October 2011: My mother died early the next morning.
I’m sitting in my mother’s room at the nursing home. The breeze is cool for a San Diego afternoon and I hear buses go by outside. There is a background cacophony of electronic noises, from patient buzzers to monitoring machines to elevators to televisions. The squeak of rubber soled shoes on linoleum. The rattle of wheeled carts dispensing linens and food and medicine.
The hospice nurse sits beside Mom's bed and writes notes, her back to the window. She is large and beautiful and her compassion shines through dark eyes like a gentle fire. She has bathed and clothed and washed my mother this afternoon, spreading her two-toned hair (auburn and white, so long and silky now) on the pillow to dry.
Mom is less responsive than I’ve seen her so far. Her heart is beating rapidly but ineffectually. Her blood pressure is almost too low for the monitor to pick up. Her breath is shallow and, every now and then, she takes a deeper breath. There are involuntary tics in her neck and shoulders but her hands are relaxed against the pillows and sheets. She is clean now, clean and dressed. A big change from three weeks ago when she was lying in her own urine and stinking of it, wet and rebellious about wearing clothes or a diaper. Stuttering to form words or sentences, the meaning of them flying from her eyes like birds through a window. The confusion and doubt. The crossed wires in the brain. Now her eyes don’t even flutter, and her mouth hangs freely open, trying to pump a little air into her lungs. She’s on oxygen as well. She no longer urinates. Her legs are sticks and her arms are twigs. Like a tree. Her hair is not leaflike but rather a bird’s nest in the branches.
It is autumn now and winter approaches, the cold deep sleep beneath the snow and ice. Life and heartbeats slow...stop...sleep...
Watching this process, I am as much a spirit as she is, invisible to each other through the membrane of consciousness. I hold her hand and talk to her, but her ears are like thinly pressed shapes of pie dough, and I wonder if she hears me. I’ve tried to say what I think she needs to hear: I love you, we all love you, let go, they’re waiting.
But who is waiting, or where, I don’t really know.
I’m sitting in my mother’s room at the nursing home. The breeze is cool for a San Diego afternoon and I hear buses go by outside. There is a background cacophony of electronic noises, from patient buzzers to monitoring machines to elevators to televisions. The squeak of rubber soled shoes on linoleum. The rattle of wheeled carts dispensing linens and food and medicine.
The hospice nurse sits beside Mom's bed and writes notes, her back to the window. She is large and beautiful and her compassion shines through dark eyes like a gentle fire. She has bathed and clothed and washed my mother this afternoon, spreading her two-toned hair (auburn and white, so long and silky now) on the pillow to dry.
Mom is less responsive than I’ve seen her so far. Her heart is beating rapidly but ineffectually. Her blood pressure is almost too low for the monitor to pick up. Her breath is shallow and, every now and then, she takes a deeper breath. There are involuntary tics in her neck and shoulders but her hands are relaxed against the pillows and sheets. She is clean now, clean and dressed. A big change from three weeks ago when she was lying in her own urine and stinking of it, wet and rebellious about wearing clothes or a diaper. Stuttering to form words or sentences, the meaning of them flying from her eyes like birds through a window. The confusion and doubt. The crossed wires in the brain. Now her eyes don’t even flutter, and her mouth hangs freely open, trying to pump a little air into her lungs. She’s on oxygen as well. She no longer urinates. Her legs are sticks and her arms are twigs. Like a tree. Her hair is not leaflike but rather a bird’s nest in the branches.
It is autumn now and winter approaches, the cold deep sleep beneath the snow and ice. Life and heartbeats slow...stop...sleep...
Watching this process, I am as much a spirit as she is, invisible to each other through the membrane of consciousness. I hold her hand and talk to her, but her ears are like thinly pressed shapes of pie dough, and I wonder if she hears me. I’ve tried to say what I think she needs to hear: I love you, we all love you, let go, they’re waiting.
But who is waiting, or where, I don’t really know.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Interview with my Mother
Jeffrey Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, an accomplished radio and television interviewer, and the author of an encyclopedic volume of consciousness studies, 'The Roots of Consciousness.' He hosted a television series called 'Thinking Allowed,' and interviewed my mother when she was living in the Washington, DC area in the 80s. I remember Jeffrey as a compassionate, highly intelligent, and (obviously) philosophical man. I know my mother respected and admired him, and valued their friendship. Below is the transcript of that 'Thinking Allowed' interview.
It's invaluable to me to have these words in her own voice...
Jeffrey Mishlove: Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our topic today is training intuitive and psychic abilities, and with me is Kathlyn Rhea, the author of several books including The Psychic Is You and Mind Sense. Kay is known as an intuitive consultant in the Washington, D.C. area, and her reputation is particularly extraordinary in doing concrete, practical work with police departments, the medical profession, and in business consulting. Welcome, Kay.
Kathlyn Rhea: Thank you, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Mishlove: It's a pleasure to have you here.
Kathlyn Rhea: It's a pleasure to be here.
Jeffrey Mishlove: You know, I might say at the outset that your reputation is most extraordinary in the law enforcement field. I've had the opportunity myself to interview law enforcement officials who have worked with you on cases where you've been able to locate missing bodies, for example, that had eluded them. You tend to view intuitive and psychic abilities in a concrete, practical way, not so much in the spiritual, mystical sense at all.
Kathlyn Rhea: I feel like if you can't use it, don't bother with it, and so it has to be practical for me. I think the law enforcement enabled me to sharpen my abilities, because when you're working with detectives, they want the facts, ma'am, and they don't want a lot of elusive things. So it really helped me sharpen my intuitive abilities over the years.
Jeffrey Mishlove: One of the interesting things about your view is you don't look at this so much as a gift from God, but as something that you work very hard to develop and to train, and something that's attainable by anyone who's willing to work for it.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. Let me explain how I see it. When you're born, if you're lucky enough to be a nice, healthy baby, you have the other five senses that we all accept. Now, you have eyes and the eyes can see, but the baby does not know what they see. So mother has to help teach them a visual vocabulary: "Baby, this is a cat. Baby, this is a chair. Baby, that's a man. Baby, that's a lady." So pretty soon the baby builds their visual vocabulary. And then the hearing. The baby had ears; they didn't know what they heard. So mother says, "The cat goes meow, meow; and the cow goes moo, moo," and pretty soon the baby develops a hearing vocabulary. The same thing with smelling the pretty flower, or "Eat your carrots, these are potatoes, this is lovely lemon custard;" the baby develops that taste vocabulary. So as the time goes by, it's nothing unusual that this child should identify things with their other five senses. Now, the intuitive sense is present too, but is not visual, so nobody exercises it for the baby. Nobody says that baby can sense whether they like that person or not; without any words or any vision, they can sense it. And so the poor intuitive sense just lies there and is ignored. If you develop it, I find that it's probably the most valuable source of information that you can plug in with your intellect, and it's only as good as your intellect. You go to the little lady along the road who has a palm on her sign, and she tells you something intuitive. Now, it'll be intuitive all right, but if she cannot interpret what she got intuitively she can't give you very good information. She'll give you something that you have to try to figure out what she meant by it. With me -- let's take a detective; he comes to me and he has a suspect he's looking for. Because I have been fortunate enough to travel most of the United States, I can say, "Well, he's left this state. Now he's gone to another state." And then my intellect takes over and says what I'm feeling is the same thing I'd feel if I were in the state of Arizona.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Oh really?
Kathlyn Rhea: Or I'm feeling the same thing as if I were by the Mississippi River. So my intellect has helped me identify what my intuition is telling me.
Jeffrey Mishlove: In other words, otherwise it would just sort of be a mass of amorphous sensations, but you've developed a very precise way of identifying, for example, how you would feel in Arizona.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. And by working with the detectives I got to where I could tell the difference if a body had been stabbed, in preference to a body being shot, or a body being strangled; whether the body's buried or not; whether the person's still alive or not. And assumption is a very dangerous thing, because in the beginning there were times when I would think, well, if the person hasn't come back, and I see them with blood around them, then they must be dead. But you must go further and totally finish looking at the picture and get all that information, and you may find that no, they're just not able to get back, and they're being held prisoner somewhere, and they're in very bad physical condition.
Jeffrey Mishlove: When you began in your adult life to train this ability, it took you a long time and a certain amount of perseverance, without any results, really, to get going at it, didn't it?
Kathlyn Rhea: The biggest thing I had to do was overcome the misinformation that was out there, Jeffrey, because there was nobody telling me what is intuition. It's a perfectly normal sense. So I went to all of the people in the field that I could find -- the crystal ball readers, the card readers, the palmists -- and they did not have the ability to tell you how they did it. Somebody realized they had an intuitive flash, and the next thing they knew they told them they were special, they were gifted, they were set apart from the rest of us, and so they would do it. And one of them would say, "Well, I can only do it on rainy days;" and another would say, "I can only do it if the moon is half full." They didn't know how they were doing it, and they did not know how to use it; they didn't know how to harness it, let me put it that way. We're all intuitive. I have yet to work with a child that's been murdered or is missing or had an untimely death, that they didn't try to tell the family that they had a fear of something that was about to happen to them. I have yet to see a child that's not intuitive.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, I suppose in our culture one of the problems is that a child could have athletic ability or mathematical ability or artistic ability, and there's encouragement from the parents. But we don't encourage this intuitive ability in children.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right.
Jeffrey Mishlove: In fact we discourage it.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes. So often their parent will say, "Oh, run along honey, that's just childish prattle." And they won't listen to what that child is saying to them intuitively, because they didn't read it in a book, a teacher didn't teach them, the parents didn't teach them this, so how can they know this? Well, you know; we all know. I find in my classes -- we have eighty to eighty-five percent professional businessmen. Now, why are they there? All they want to do is learn to plug intuition with their intellect in whichever profession they're in, so they make better decisions, because like Hilton said, "Bring me all the computer facts you want, but if the gut doesn't feel right about it, I won't go for the deal." Now, he's plugging his intuition in as the last decision, and it's the same thing with any business. A good surgeon will have intuition, not just the medical training, but intuition as to what he should do, and he'll perform that unusual surgery, and he stands out because of it. And many notable people in their fields who've stood out, have all acknowledged the fact their intuition helped them end up with what they came up with, in the way of helping humanity or the world.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, intuition is a funny word, and when we talk about a scientist using intuition, that seems very different from an individual such as yourself, who can close your eyes and begin describing information about a scene that took place perhaps thousands of miles away. RHEA: Well, I don't even close my eyes. Actually --
Jeffrey Mishlove: You have telescopes.
Kathlyn Rhea: As you say, there are some people who have more ability as an athlete, and some as a musician, and some as an artist. I happen to be very creative in my mind. Now, for the audience that is not creative in their thinking, they may only have feelings and never be able to take the feeling and develop a picture out of it. Because my major was art, I find it very easy for me to develop a picture from my feelings, and so that gives me some information to give to the law enforcement I'm working with. But remember this, most people who are great inventors and creators have always worked it out in the pictures in their mind. They don't realize it perhaps, but they've always seen it in their head before they did it. When I used to have a modeling school and I would put on big benefits, I would always have a theme, and I would sit down early in the morning when it was quiet, and I would suddenly start putting it together in my head, long before I put it on the paper, and I could see exactly what I wanted, and then I would do it. Now, I'm sure your great directors and your great artists, great musicians, all see it in their mind before they put it down. So my intuition helps me get a picture. Some people will not get pictures, and that's all right. They may just feel; it feels good or it doesn't feel good.
Jeffrey Mishlove: What you seem to be saying, though, is that where it starts is somehow in the body itself, that physiology picks it up. It's as if the body is somehow an antenna sensing information that the normal sensory organs don't get, and if you can learn how to translate that information that arrives in the body into something that you can grasp intellectually, that's how it works.
Kathlyn Rhea: Right. It'll start out with -- well, let's take people that are walking down a dark street, and somebody's going to ambush them. Seconds before it happens, they have a horrible feeling -- that they should either run, or turn around, or do something. Now, that was their intuition, before they knew it. When you almost have an accident, how do you intuitively sense what to do quickly? I mean, your intuition comes into play, and it comes right out of here. You know -- "It's that feeling I get in the pit of my stomach." Everybody describes that -- "I get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach." Well, it really is, but it's not any good to you unless you bring it up to the intellect and say, "What does this feeling mean? How can I utilize this feeling? How does it become a piece of information?" So I have built a very large intuitive vocabulary for myself, so if somebody says, "We have a business deal. Do you think it's going to work, Kay?" I may have an uneasy feeling, but then I have to go further than that and say, "I feel uneasy about it, but now, why? I feel uneasy because I don't like the man you're doing business with. I feel uneasy because your contracts aren't signed well. I feel uneasy because the product isn't developed like it should be. I feel uneasy because you're not reaching the right market." See, there's many different uneasy feelings. So I have learned you don't just feel uneasy, you have specific uneasy feelings to go with specific things. That takes time. It's taken me twenty years to get to where I can do that. And twenty years, as you know, to describe a face of a suspect, of someone they don't even know who has committed the murder or the crime, and I can sit and describe the face to a police artist, and he can draw the face, and we now have had numerous ones match the mug shots when they finally solved the crime. This was something that I had no idea you could do with your intuition. Now, if I can do that, think of how many more things we might be able to do that we haven't even tried in this field yet.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, my sense is that part of your success, since you didn't have anybody to teach you, is your dogged determination. Something propelled you into it.
Kathlyn Rhea: My mother accused me of being a very stubborn little girl, and if I get hold of something I'm like a little terrier; I hold on till I get an answer. And so often I would say, "Well, now, why is it this way?" And then I'd go to a doctor and say, "Now, why do I see this in a body? What does that mean?" And they will give me a medical term that I can now use to go with that feeling. Or I'll go to a detective and say, "This is strange. Do people ever do this, what I'm getting right now? It's so unusual. It's not what I'm used to at all." They'll say, "Oh yes, we have people that do that." And so they will help it make sense to me. And so you just keep building as you go along.
Jeffrey Mishlove: In a sense you're really approaching this, if I can sort of stretch the use of the word a little bit, like a scientist. You're constantly operating out of the feedback that you get, developing hypotheses, testing your hypotheses against feedback from the next trial in the real world that comes up, and modifying and developing your theories and cognitive framework, as you go along.
Kathlyn Rhea: Right. And in fact without feedback I would not be anywhere at all. I have to have feedback. I remember a chief of police sending me one of these detectives with a picture of a skull they'd found, and I said, "Just don't bring the skull. It's OK. Come over and talk to me if you want." So they did, and I called the police artist in, and we drew the person as we thought the skull had been. They didn't know if it was male or female at the time, how old, or anything else. I described what this person had looked like. Later they had a well-known doctor of anthropology who reconstructed the skull, did a complete reconstruction of it, and it matched our drawing. Now, this feedback really helps me know that I'm on the right track, to be able to add this as a usable tool when nothing else works.
Jeffrey Mishlove: And if the feedback were to come back that you were off, then you would just discard that approach, I suppose.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. It's like anything else. If a scientist is working with something, if this formula doesn't work he discards it and he works on this one. So by having feedback, you say, well, I have to perfect this more, or I have to add or take away from this. And so you keep working forward with it. My biggest goal is to make people realize they're all intuitive. It is not a separate thing. It is part of every human being, and they can use it as a very practical tool.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Now, there's a lot of concern, a lot of talk, many approaches to developing these abilities that have to do with altered states of consciousness -- hypnosis, meditation, dreams, channeling. I gather that you are very matter-of-fact, wide awake, just like you might be right now, when you do this work -- that the altered state is not at all necessary for you.
Kathlyn Rhea: Of course that is because it's taken me so many years where I can stop and soft-pedal my other senses and that information, and be very aware of what my intuitive sense is telling me. It took some practice, though. I used to have to really work to get to that point, and I don't mind how people reach there -- whether it's through self-hypnosis, whether it's through standing on their head in the corner. I don't care. What they have to realize is if their mind is working too furiously, or if they are distracted by what they see, or if there's a lot of noise that's distracting them, they are not going to be aware of feelings, and it's the feeling you have to interpret. So these other senses come in and take precedence, and they really overpower that sensitive, sensitive feeling. What they have to do is learn to say, "I'm going to deliberately not be distracted by my vision or my hearing or my sense of smell or taste or touch. I'm going to really say to myself, what do I feel about this situation? How do I feel if I go into that business? How do I feel about this person I've just met?" Because we all feel. You've met strangers where you immediately like them. Now where did that come from? It wasn't what they had on. You've met people you've immediately disliked, and this poor soul, it wasn't what they were wearing, but there was something about them that your intuition told you was not pleasing or was pleasing to you.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, I get the impression that in effect what you're doing is treating every moment as a kind of meditation.
Kathlyn Rhea: Well, you know, you don't even realize it any longer, and the word meditation to me means stilling the other senses and listening to the intuition. Now, some people think they have to sit for an hour and meditate. I used to, until I got to where I had it down pat, and now I can switch. If you were to ask me about a particular question right now, I could switch to that immediately and tell you what I feel, because I'm very aware of that inner feeling now, I'm very aware of what it's saying to me. So I have practiced it long enough to where I don't have to stop and go into any particular set steps or state; I can just say, "Hey, I don't feel good about that, Jeffrey, and I don't feel good because this is what's going to happen."
Jeffrey Mishlove: But isn't it tricky to distinguish between what's coming from some external source and what may be the result of what you ate for breakfast --
Kathlyn Rhea: Oh yes.
Jeffrey Mishlove: -- or the fact that maybe you had a fight with your husband or something?
Kathlyn Rhea: Or wishful thinking. One of my students was in commercial real estate, and she said, "How do I know whether I'm going to sell that property and make this big bonus, or is it because I hope I'm going to?" And I had to teach her steps. I said, "All right, wishful thinking of course is there. We all want to make a success of what we're doing. So what you do is look at the building, and then think about it a month from now. Does it look the same? Have the signs been changed? Any colors changed in the building? Who do you see walking out of the building? Does it look like the same people? Take a contract. Look at the contract. Do you see a signature on there? What type of signature is it? Is it a large flourishing one? Is it a little cramped one? Is it a man's hand that's writing the signature? Look and check and recheck your answers, to where you get rid of the wishful thinking and you get something you know for sure is a positive that will show you whether that building's changed hands or not."
Jeffrey Mishlove: It's sort of a delicate thing, because on the other hand we have the art of creative visualization, of visualizing it and then having it happen. And you're suggesting not that, but looking at it as it happens.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes, yes. You see, here's present, and here's future, and here's what I call free will. What you must do is go past the free will and look and see what actually happens -- not what you want to have happen, but what really happened.
Jeffrey Mishlove: What really happened in the future.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes, yes. Or the past. You know, I don't understand it totally in a scientific way, how can we do this, but I do it all the time, so we can do it. Doctors Puthoff and Targ can tell you how scientifically you do it; you can tell us how scientifically we do it. I can tell you how as a practitioner we do it, and that's why I wrote the new book.
Jeffrey Mishlove: That's the strongest statement of all -- I can tell you because I do it; you figure out how.
Kathlyn Rhea: I get so angry at the scientists who say, "You can't do this." Well, hey, come take a look at a picture, a mug shot of a crime that nobody witnessed but the person who was murdered, and I have drawn this for them on a piece of paper and told them everything about this person. Now, how did I do that if I didn't have intuition? I didn't just dream it up, you know. It had to be good proof.
Jeffrey Mishlove: And you're saying also that you're nobody special -- that this is an ability that other people can learn.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. I happen to be more sensitive, maybe; I have a creative mind that can help me. I use all my senses. It's been funny, because I'll even have the sense of smell. Now, when I'm doing, let's say, a crime scene, I'll deliberately see if I smell anything particular in that area. And I didn't realize either you could use these five senses with this intuitive sense, but now I do. One case, I said, "You know, there's the most acrid smell in the air in this area. It's strange. It's a real strange smell." The detective said when he arrived in that area, the first thing he smelled was that, and it was the burning off of the gas fields down there where these girls had been murdered. Or I will say, "Gee, I can feel the soil, and it's real dry soil, real clay soil, or, "It's rocky soil." So I'll use all five senses. Or I hear an accent that this person has, an accent that's not normal. Then I have to decide is this southern or northern or northeastern, or is it a foreign accent that we can tie into this person and give us one more piece of information. So I use all my other five senses in conjunction with it, and that's where the intellect helps me give more information than a person who's just saying, "Oh, I've got a native sense, and I'm special and different, and I don't have to work at it." So it's very interesting as you go along, because you find there's so many things you can do with it.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, there seems to be a paradox in here. If you're able to look at the future and see a successful or an unsuccessful business deal, in a way it almost negates free will in some sense.
Kathlyn Rhea: Oh, I don't think so, because I've had people come to me that will ask me about something, and I will tell them what I feel about it, and they will still use their free will and go against what they were told, and come back later and say, "Boy, were you right. Many thousand dollars later we found out you were right." I say, "Well, that's all right. That's your free will. You should exercise that." What I normally try to do is use it as a positive direction for them to head in; they still have to do the work. The detectives, I don't do their job for them. I give them information. They must then go out and do their job as a detective. I don't replace them. I don't replace the businessman who's going to start a new company. I give him guidelines that I see. I give him steps that he can take that he can bypass a mistake. But I don't try to say, "Hey, this is all me doing it for you." I say, "This is your life, I'm only going to give you a little information to help you."
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, one of the feedback systems that you have used in training your own abilities, and which is now widely available for people, are lotteries, gambling. I think you went to the dog races yourself in Florida.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Do you think that this is a method that people can actually reliably use for gambling?
Kathlyn Rhea: Oh yes, definitely, definitely. In fact, the commodity market is a great one. I've twice had a very strong feeling about it and done very nicely. You know, people say, "Well, if you can do this, why don't you just make lots of money and don't work?" I'm too interested in the field of educating this sense, to just stop and see how much money I can make in a lottery. But if I suddenly have a feeling about something, then I will probably go and make some dollars on it. But that's not what my goal is. My goal is to educate the public that from birth you have and intuitive sense to go with your other senses, and it is a practical, usable tool, and let's quit ignoring it. I speak to teachers' groups, and they all agree that the children in their class are intuitive, but they don't exercise it for them.
Jeffrey Mishlove: It sounds like what you're saying, though, and part of the application of intuition, then, is to look at the attitude with which we approach these things. That is, if you were to approach the lottery with the attitude, "OK, I'm going to use my intuition to make money," that might not be the attitude that would work for you.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right, or you could get so greedy that you wouldn't really have a pure sense of what your intuition is. Again, you would have your wishful thinking, and you'd think, "Oh, I'm going to make this money." Then your other senses are going to overpower that very delicate intuitive sense. So I don't see that it should be used that way. I think it has been used and made very wonderful business deals and made people millionaires. I'm not against that, because it's like using your eyes to read a good contract that makes you a lot of money, using your ears to listen to a good idea that makes you money. So it's not that you're going against God or yourself by making money with it, but I feel that you need to use it to where greed doesn't come in and overpower all discretion with it, where you're not really reading your intuition right.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Ultimately, I suppose, the finest use of intuition for a person is to look at what is my direction in life.
Kathlyn Rhea: Right, right. And because it's a personal thing, we can make our mistakes in those too. You know, one of the good examples is one day I was to go in and have my hair done, and I was going to have some new things done, and the night before I thought, "I don't want to go." And I thought, "No, it's too late, I can't call this man and tell him I'm not going to be there. I'm his first client in the morning. He marked off three hours, and it's going to be a lot of money for him." The next morning, brushing my hair, I had the strong feeling, "I don't want to go." I went ahead and went against it. I went down and he put things on my head so I became totally bald on the top of my head for a few months, and still have indentations where the burning went into the skin of my head.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Oh my goodness.
Kathlyn Rhea: Now, that was my intuition, very accurate, and my saying I can't be impolite and not go. So I went right against it. So I can make as many mistakes as you, if I don't stop and look at it properly.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, there seem to be numerous cases -- we hear of people who wanted not to go on an airplane, and the plane might crash.
Kathlyn Rhea: Well, that last big crash we had from up north was that. A young college student told his friend, "I don't want to go. We're going to be killed. It's going to crash." And his friend said, "Aw, come on, there's nothing valid to that. You can't see it, hear it, taste it, or touch it." So he went aboard and died. And that type of thing happens all the time. If people would stop and pay attention to that, they would avoid an untimely death.
MISHLOVE: I know for myself, every time I'm about to go on a trip I have that feeling; I don't want to go.
Kathlyn Rhea: Well, that's when you could stop and play it in your mind. You really can stop and see yourself get aboard the plane, make the plane trip, get off at the other end, and what do you do? What happens at the other end, and what are the results there? Get back on the plane, fly back, and you see yourself in the future in your home, doing some other things. Then you can say, "Hey, I can quit worrying, it's OK." I had one detective say -- he was also a pilot, and he was going to fly me to a scene -- he said, "I told my wife this morning that if you didn't get aboard, I wasn't going." I said, "I wouldn't be out here if I didn't think I could get aboard this airplane." It's a fun tool. It's one that you can have a lot of enjoyment out of, as well as a very serious tool, and if we could just teach the educational department: exercise their bodies, exercise their minds, their reading, writing, and arithmetic, but exercise their intuition. That's their creative flow. Exercise that.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, Kathlyn Rhea, it's been a pleasure having you here with me. You're really an individual who embodies exactly what you're talking about in a very concrete, down-to-earth manner. It's quite refreshing.
Kathlyn Rhea: Thank you, Jeffrey. Just everybody keep using your intuition.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Thank you so much for being with me.
Kathlyn Rhea: Thank you.
It's invaluable to me to have these words in her own voice...
TRAINING PSYCHIC INTUITION with KATHLYN RHEA
Jeffrey Mishlove: Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our topic today is training intuitive and psychic abilities, and with me is Kathlyn Rhea, the author of several books including The Psychic Is You and Mind Sense. Kay is known as an intuitive consultant in the Washington, D.C. area, and her reputation is particularly extraordinary in doing concrete, practical work with police departments, the medical profession, and in business consulting. Welcome, Kay.
Kathlyn Rhea: Thank you, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Mishlove: It's a pleasure to have you here.
Kathlyn Rhea: It's a pleasure to be here.
Jeffrey Mishlove: You know, I might say at the outset that your reputation is most extraordinary in the law enforcement field. I've had the opportunity myself to interview law enforcement officials who have worked with you on cases where you've been able to locate missing bodies, for example, that had eluded them. You tend to view intuitive and psychic abilities in a concrete, practical way, not so much in the spiritual, mystical sense at all.
Kathlyn Rhea: I feel like if you can't use it, don't bother with it, and so it has to be practical for me. I think the law enforcement enabled me to sharpen my abilities, because when you're working with detectives, they want the facts, ma'am, and they don't want a lot of elusive things. So it really helped me sharpen my intuitive abilities over the years.
Jeffrey Mishlove: One of the interesting things about your view is you don't look at this so much as a gift from God, but as something that you work very hard to develop and to train, and something that's attainable by anyone who's willing to work for it.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. Let me explain how I see it. When you're born, if you're lucky enough to be a nice, healthy baby, you have the other five senses that we all accept. Now, you have eyes and the eyes can see, but the baby does not know what they see. So mother has to help teach them a visual vocabulary: "Baby, this is a cat. Baby, this is a chair. Baby, that's a man. Baby, that's a lady." So pretty soon the baby builds their visual vocabulary. And then the hearing. The baby had ears; they didn't know what they heard. So mother says, "The cat goes meow, meow; and the cow goes moo, moo," and pretty soon the baby develops a hearing vocabulary. The same thing with smelling the pretty flower, or "Eat your carrots, these are potatoes, this is lovely lemon custard;" the baby develops that taste vocabulary. So as the time goes by, it's nothing unusual that this child should identify things with their other five senses. Now, the intuitive sense is present too, but is not visual, so nobody exercises it for the baby. Nobody says that baby can sense whether they like that person or not; without any words or any vision, they can sense it. And so the poor intuitive sense just lies there and is ignored. If you develop it, I find that it's probably the most valuable source of information that you can plug in with your intellect, and it's only as good as your intellect. You go to the little lady along the road who has a palm on her sign, and she tells you something intuitive. Now, it'll be intuitive all right, but if she cannot interpret what she got intuitively she can't give you very good information. She'll give you something that you have to try to figure out what she meant by it. With me -- let's take a detective; he comes to me and he has a suspect he's looking for. Because I have been fortunate enough to travel most of the United States, I can say, "Well, he's left this state. Now he's gone to another state." And then my intellect takes over and says what I'm feeling is the same thing I'd feel if I were in the state of Arizona.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Oh really?
Kathlyn Rhea: Or I'm feeling the same thing as if I were by the Mississippi River. So my intellect has helped me identify what my intuition is telling me.
Jeffrey Mishlove: In other words, otherwise it would just sort of be a mass of amorphous sensations, but you've developed a very precise way of identifying, for example, how you would feel in Arizona.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. And by working with the detectives I got to where I could tell the difference if a body had been stabbed, in preference to a body being shot, or a body being strangled; whether the body's buried or not; whether the person's still alive or not. And assumption is a very dangerous thing, because in the beginning there were times when I would think, well, if the person hasn't come back, and I see them with blood around them, then they must be dead. But you must go further and totally finish looking at the picture and get all that information, and you may find that no, they're just not able to get back, and they're being held prisoner somewhere, and they're in very bad physical condition.
Jeffrey Mishlove: When you began in your adult life to train this ability, it took you a long time and a certain amount of perseverance, without any results, really, to get going at it, didn't it?
Kathlyn Rhea: The biggest thing I had to do was overcome the misinformation that was out there, Jeffrey, because there was nobody telling me what is intuition. It's a perfectly normal sense. So I went to all of the people in the field that I could find -- the crystal ball readers, the card readers, the palmists -- and they did not have the ability to tell you how they did it. Somebody realized they had an intuitive flash, and the next thing they knew they told them they were special, they were gifted, they were set apart from the rest of us, and so they would do it. And one of them would say, "Well, I can only do it on rainy days;" and another would say, "I can only do it if the moon is half full." They didn't know how they were doing it, and they did not know how to use it; they didn't know how to harness it, let me put it that way. We're all intuitive. I have yet to work with a child that's been murdered or is missing or had an untimely death, that they didn't try to tell the family that they had a fear of something that was about to happen to them. I have yet to see a child that's not intuitive.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, I suppose in our culture one of the problems is that a child could have athletic ability or mathematical ability or artistic ability, and there's encouragement from the parents. But we don't encourage this intuitive ability in children.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right.
Jeffrey Mishlove: In fact we discourage it.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes. So often their parent will say, "Oh, run along honey, that's just childish prattle." And they won't listen to what that child is saying to them intuitively, because they didn't read it in a book, a teacher didn't teach them, the parents didn't teach them this, so how can they know this? Well, you know; we all know. I find in my classes -- we have eighty to eighty-five percent professional businessmen. Now, why are they there? All they want to do is learn to plug intuition with their intellect in whichever profession they're in, so they make better decisions, because like Hilton said, "Bring me all the computer facts you want, but if the gut doesn't feel right about it, I won't go for the deal." Now, he's plugging his intuition in as the last decision, and it's the same thing with any business. A good surgeon will have intuition, not just the medical training, but intuition as to what he should do, and he'll perform that unusual surgery, and he stands out because of it. And many notable people in their fields who've stood out, have all acknowledged the fact their intuition helped them end up with what they came up with, in the way of helping humanity or the world.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, intuition is a funny word, and when we talk about a scientist using intuition, that seems very different from an individual such as yourself, who can close your eyes and begin describing information about a scene that took place perhaps thousands of miles away. RHEA: Well, I don't even close my eyes. Actually --
Jeffrey Mishlove: You have telescopes.
Kathlyn Rhea: As you say, there are some people who have more ability as an athlete, and some as a musician, and some as an artist. I happen to be very creative in my mind. Now, for the audience that is not creative in their thinking, they may only have feelings and never be able to take the feeling and develop a picture out of it. Because my major was art, I find it very easy for me to develop a picture from my feelings, and so that gives me some information to give to the law enforcement I'm working with. But remember this, most people who are great inventors and creators have always worked it out in the pictures in their mind. They don't realize it perhaps, but they've always seen it in their head before they did it. When I used to have a modeling school and I would put on big benefits, I would always have a theme, and I would sit down early in the morning when it was quiet, and I would suddenly start putting it together in my head, long before I put it on the paper, and I could see exactly what I wanted, and then I would do it. Now, I'm sure your great directors and your great artists, great musicians, all see it in their mind before they put it down. So my intuition helps me get a picture. Some people will not get pictures, and that's all right. They may just feel; it feels good or it doesn't feel good.
Jeffrey Mishlove: What you seem to be saying, though, is that where it starts is somehow in the body itself, that physiology picks it up. It's as if the body is somehow an antenna sensing information that the normal sensory organs don't get, and if you can learn how to translate that information that arrives in the body into something that you can grasp intellectually, that's how it works.
Kathlyn Rhea: Right. It'll start out with -- well, let's take people that are walking down a dark street, and somebody's going to ambush them. Seconds before it happens, they have a horrible feeling -- that they should either run, or turn around, or do something. Now, that was their intuition, before they knew it. When you almost have an accident, how do you intuitively sense what to do quickly? I mean, your intuition comes into play, and it comes right out of here. You know -- "It's that feeling I get in the pit of my stomach." Everybody describes that -- "I get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach." Well, it really is, but it's not any good to you unless you bring it up to the intellect and say, "What does this feeling mean? How can I utilize this feeling? How does it become a piece of information?" So I have built a very large intuitive vocabulary for myself, so if somebody says, "We have a business deal. Do you think it's going to work, Kay?" I may have an uneasy feeling, but then I have to go further than that and say, "I feel uneasy about it, but now, why? I feel uneasy because I don't like the man you're doing business with. I feel uneasy because your contracts aren't signed well. I feel uneasy because the product isn't developed like it should be. I feel uneasy because you're not reaching the right market." See, there's many different uneasy feelings. So I have learned you don't just feel uneasy, you have specific uneasy feelings to go with specific things. That takes time. It's taken me twenty years to get to where I can do that. And twenty years, as you know, to describe a face of a suspect, of someone they don't even know who has committed the murder or the crime, and I can sit and describe the face to a police artist, and he can draw the face, and we now have had numerous ones match the mug shots when they finally solved the crime. This was something that I had no idea you could do with your intuition. Now, if I can do that, think of how many more things we might be able to do that we haven't even tried in this field yet.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, my sense is that part of your success, since you didn't have anybody to teach you, is your dogged determination. Something propelled you into it.
Kathlyn Rhea: My mother accused me of being a very stubborn little girl, and if I get hold of something I'm like a little terrier; I hold on till I get an answer. And so often I would say, "Well, now, why is it this way?" And then I'd go to a doctor and say, "Now, why do I see this in a body? What does that mean?" And they will give me a medical term that I can now use to go with that feeling. Or I'll go to a detective and say, "This is strange. Do people ever do this, what I'm getting right now? It's so unusual. It's not what I'm used to at all." They'll say, "Oh yes, we have people that do that." And so they will help it make sense to me. And so you just keep building as you go along.
Jeffrey Mishlove: In a sense you're really approaching this, if I can sort of stretch the use of the word a little bit, like a scientist. You're constantly operating out of the feedback that you get, developing hypotheses, testing your hypotheses against feedback from the next trial in the real world that comes up, and modifying and developing your theories and cognitive framework, as you go along.
Kathlyn Rhea: Right. And in fact without feedback I would not be anywhere at all. I have to have feedback. I remember a chief of police sending me one of these detectives with a picture of a skull they'd found, and I said, "Just don't bring the skull. It's OK. Come over and talk to me if you want." So they did, and I called the police artist in, and we drew the person as we thought the skull had been. They didn't know if it was male or female at the time, how old, or anything else. I described what this person had looked like. Later they had a well-known doctor of anthropology who reconstructed the skull, did a complete reconstruction of it, and it matched our drawing. Now, this feedback really helps me know that I'm on the right track, to be able to add this as a usable tool when nothing else works.
Jeffrey Mishlove: And if the feedback were to come back that you were off, then you would just discard that approach, I suppose.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. It's like anything else. If a scientist is working with something, if this formula doesn't work he discards it and he works on this one. So by having feedback, you say, well, I have to perfect this more, or I have to add or take away from this. And so you keep working forward with it. My biggest goal is to make people realize they're all intuitive. It is not a separate thing. It is part of every human being, and they can use it as a very practical tool.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Now, there's a lot of concern, a lot of talk, many approaches to developing these abilities that have to do with altered states of consciousness -- hypnosis, meditation, dreams, channeling. I gather that you are very matter-of-fact, wide awake, just like you might be right now, when you do this work -- that the altered state is not at all necessary for you.
Kathlyn Rhea: Of course that is because it's taken me so many years where I can stop and soft-pedal my other senses and that information, and be very aware of what my intuitive sense is telling me. It took some practice, though. I used to have to really work to get to that point, and I don't mind how people reach there -- whether it's through self-hypnosis, whether it's through standing on their head in the corner. I don't care. What they have to realize is if their mind is working too furiously, or if they are distracted by what they see, or if there's a lot of noise that's distracting them, they are not going to be aware of feelings, and it's the feeling you have to interpret. So these other senses come in and take precedence, and they really overpower that sensitive, sensitive feeling. What they have to do is learn to say, "I'm going to deliberately not be distracted by my vision or my hearing or my sense of smell or taste or touch. I'm going to really say to myself, what do I feel about this situation? How do I feel if I go into that business? How do I feel about this person I've just met?" Because we all feel. You've met strangers where you immediately like them. Now where did that come from? It wasn't what they had on. You've met people you've immediately disliked, and this poor soul, it wasn't what they were wearing, but there was something about them that your intuition told you was not pleasing or was pleasing to you.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, I get the impression that in effect what you're doing is treating every moment as a kind of meditation.
Kathlyn Rhea: Well, you know, you don't even realize it any longer, and the word meditation to me means stilling the other senses and listening to the intuition. Now, some people think they have to sit for an hour and meditate. I used to, until I got to where I had it down pat, and now I can switch. If you were to ask me about a particular question right now, I could switch to that immediately and tell you what I feel, because I'm very aware of that inner feeling now, I'm very aware of what it's saying to me. So I have practiced it long enough to where I don't have to stop and go into any particular set steps or state; I can just say, "Hey, I don't feel good about that, Jeffrey, and I don't feel good because this is what's going to happen."
Jeffrey Mishlove: But isn't it tricky to distinguish between what's coming from some external source and what may be the result of what you ate for breakfast --
Kathlyn Rhea: Oh yes.
Jeffrey Mishlove: -- or the fact that maybe you had a fight with your husband or something?
Kathlyn Rhea: Or wishful thinking. One of my students was in commercial real estate, and she said, "How do I know whether I'm going to sell that property and make this big bonus, or is it because I hope I'm going to?" And I had to teach her steps. I said, "All right, wishful thinking of course is there. We all want to make a success of what we're doing. So what you do is look at the building, and then think about it a month from now. Does it look the same? Have the signs been changed? Any colors changed in the building? Who do you see walking out of the building? Does it look like the same people? Take a contract. Look at the contract. Do you see a signature on there? What type of signature is it? Is it a large flourishing one? Is it a little cramped one? Is it a man's hand that's writing the signature? Look and check and recheck your answers, to where you get rid of the wishful thinking and you get something you know for sure is a positive that will show you whether that building's changed hands or not."
Jeffrey Mishlove: It's sort of a delicate thing, because on the other hand we have the art of creative visualization, of visualizing it and then having it happen. And you're suggesting not that, but looking at it as it happens.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes, yes. You see, here's present, and here's future, and here's what I call free will. What you must do is go past the free will and look and see what actually happens -- not what you want to have happen, but what really happened.
Jeffrey Mishlove: What really happened in the future.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes, yes. Or the past. You know, I don't understand it totally in a scientific way, how can we do this, but I do it all the time, so we can do it. Doctors Puthoff and Targ can tell you how scientifically you do it; you can tell us how scientifically we do it. I can tell you how as a practitioner we do it, and that's why I wrote the new book.
Jeffrey Mishlove: That's the strongest statement of all -- I can tell you because I do it; you figure out how.
Kathlyn Rhea: I get so angry at the scientists who say, "You can't do this." Well, hey, come take a look at a picture, a mug shot of a crime that nobody witnessed but the person who was murdered, and I have drawn this for them on a piece of paper and told them everything about this person. Now, how did I do that if I didn't have intuition? I didn't just dream it up, you know. It had to be good proof.
Jeffrey Mishlove: And you're saying also that you're nobody special -- that this is an ability that other people can learn.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right. I happen to be more sensitive, maybe; I have a creative mind that can help me. I use all my senses. It's been funny, because I'll even have the sense of smell. Now, when I'm doing, let's say, a crime scene, I'll deliberately see if I smell anything particular in that area. And I didn't realize either you could use these five senses with this intuitive sense, but now I do. One case, I said, "You know, there's the most acrid smell in the air in this area. It's strange. It's a real strange smell." The detective said when he arrived in that area, the first thing he smelled was that, and it was the burning off of the gas fields down there where these girls had been murdered. Or I will say, "Gee, I can feel the soil, and it's real dry soil, real clay soil, or, "It's rocky soil." So I'll use all five senses. Or I hear an accent that this person has, an accent that's not normal. Then I have to decide is this southern or northern or northeastern, or is it a foreign accent that we can tie into this person and give us one more piece of information. So I use all my other five senses in conjunction with it, and that's where the intellect helps me give more information than a person who's just saying, "Oh, I've got a native sense, and I'm special and different, and I don't have to work at it." So it's very interesting as you go along, because you find there's so many things you can do with it.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, there seems to be a paradox in here. If you're able to look at the future and see a successful or an unsuccessful business deal, in a way it almost negates free will in some sense.
Kathlyn Rhea: Oh, I don't think so, because I've had people come to me that will ask me about something, and I will tell them what I feel about it, and they will still use their free will and go against what they were told, and come back later and say, "Boy, were you right. Many thousand dollars later we found out you were right." I say, "Well, that's all right. That's your free will. You should exercise that." What I normally try to do is use it as a positive direction for them to head in; they still have to do the work. The detectives, I don't do their job for them. I give them information. They must then go out and do their job as a detective. I don't replace them. I don't replace the businessman who's going to start a new company. I give him guidelines that I see. I give him steps that he can take that he can bypass a mistake. But I don't try to say, "Hey, this is all me doing it for you." I say, "This is your life, I'm only going to give you a little information to help you."
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, one of the feedback systems that you have used in training your own abilities, and which is now widely available for people, are lotteries, gambling. I think you went to the dog races yourself in Florida.
Kathlyn Rhea: Yes.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Do you think that this is a method that people can actually reliably use for gambling?
Kathlyn Rhea: Oh yes, definitely, definitely. In fact, the commodity market is a great one. I've twice had a very strong feeling about it and done very nicely. You know, people say, "Well, if you can do this, why don't you just make lots of money and don't work?" I'm too interested in the field of educating this sense, to just stop and see how much money I can make in a lottery. But if I suddenly have a feeling about something, then I will probably go and make some dollars on it. But that's not what my goal is. My goal is to educate the public that from birth you have and intuitive sense to go with your other senses, and it is a practical, usable tool, and let's quit ignoring it. I speak to teachers' groups, and they all agree that the children in their class are intuitive, but they don't exercise it for them.
Jeffrey Mishlove: It sounds like what you're saying, though, and part of the application of intuition, then, is to look at the attitude with which we approach these things. That is, if you were to approach the lottery with the attitude, "OK, I'm going to use my intuition to make money," that might not be the attitude that would work for you.
Kathlyn Rhea: That's right, or you could get so greedy that you wouldn't really have a pure sense of what your intuition is. Again, you would have your wishful thinking, and you'd think, "Oh, I'm going to make this money." Then your other senses are going to overpower that very delicate intuitive sense. So I don't see that it should be used that way. I think it has been used and made very wonderful business deals and made people millionaires. I'm not against that, because it's like using your eyes to read a good contract that makes you a lot of money, using your ears to listen to a good idea that makes you money. So it's not that you're going against God or yourself by making money with it, but I feel that you need to use it to where greed doesn't come in and overpower all discretion with it, where you're not really reading your intuition right.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Ultimately, I suppose, the finest use of intuition for a person is to look at what is my direction in life.
Kathlyn Rhea: Right, right. And because it's a personal thing, we can make our mistakes in those too. You know, one of the good examples is one day I was to go in and have my hair done, and I was going to have some new things done, and the night before I thought, "I don't want to go." And I thought, "No, it's too late, I can't call this man and tell him I'm not going to be there. I'm his first client in the morning. He marked off three hours, and it's going to be a lot of money for him." The next morning, brushing my hair, I had the strong feeling, "I don't want to go." I went ahead and went against it. I went down and he put things on my head so I became totally bald on the top of my head for a few months, and still have indentations where the burning went into the skin of my head.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Oh my goodness.
Kathlyn Rhea: Now, that was my intuition, very accurate, and my saying I can't be impolite and not go. So I went right against it. So I can make as many mistakes as you, if I don't stop and look at it properly.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, there seem to be numerous cases -- we hear of people who wanted not to go on an airplane, and the plane might crash.
Kathlyn Rhea: Well, that last big crash we had from up north was that. A young college student told his friend, "I don't want to go. We're going to be killed. It's going to crash." And his friend said, "Aw, come on, there's nothing valid to that. You can't see it, hear it, taste it, or touch it." So he went aboard and died. And that type of thing happens all the time. If people would stop and pay attention to that, they would avoid an untimely death.
MISHLOVE: I know for myself, every time I'm about to go on a trip I have that feeling; I don't want to go.
Kathlyn Rhea: Well, that's when you could stop and play it in your mind. You really can stop and see yourself get aboard the plane, make the plane trip, get off at the other end, and what do you do? What happens at the other end, and what are the results there? Get back on the plane, fly back, and you see yourself in the future in your home, doing some other things. Then you can say, "Hey, I can quit worrying, it's OK." I had one detective say -- he was also a pilot, and he was going to fly me to a scene -- he said, "I told my wife this morning that if you didn't get aboard, I wasn't going." I said, "I wouldn't be out here if I didn't think I could get aboard this airplane." It's a fun tool. It's one that you can have a lot of enjoyment out of, as well as a very serious tool, and if we could just teach the educational department: exercise their bodies, exercise their minds, their reading, writing, and arithmetic, but exercise their intuition. That's their creative flow. Exercise that.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Well, Kathlyn Rhea, it's been a pleasure having you here with me. You're really an individual who embodies exactly what you're talking about in a very concrete, down-to-earth manner. It's quite refreshing.
Kathlyn Rhea: Thank you, Jeffrey. Just everybody keep using your intuition.
Jeffrey Mishlove: Thank you so much for being with me.
Kathlyn Rhea: Thank you.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
The Body Finder
That's what the press dubbed my mom in the late 70s, when she helped police discover the body of a missing 78-year-old man named Russell Drummond. He and his wife were camping in Calaveras County, California, when he left their campsite to use the latrine; he never returned. Frantic, his wife reported him missing to the local county sheriff's office and they organized a search party of some 300 persons. But after an intensive two-week exploration of the gold country foothills, the search was called off. The sheriff concluded that Drummond must have been taken from the county or left of his own accord.
Unfortunately, without proof of his death, Mrs. Drummond could not collect his pension or his life insurance. Six months after his disappearance, she decided to consult my mom.
I don't know how my mom got the clinical detachment to work police cases. This was one of her first, and the one that hit the papers big-time. But at this point, she'd been honing her intuitive abilities for over ten years, often on a daily basis with clients, and she'd developed a methodology, including charts, photographs from the client, and a tape recorder. Personal counseling sessions typically ran an hour, but cases might run an hour and a half or more per session. She'd look at photos, hold a personal object belonging to the victim, scribble on special charts, and dictate her impressions into the tape recorder. She usually made two copies of the taping, one for the client and one for herself.
Some critics said my mom shouldn't charge for these cases. I can tell you that, over the years, hundreds of hours of her work went without pay, especially if a police department had no budget or belief in her abilities. If a family member came to her as a client, she charged them her normal fee. I mean, lawyers deal with pitiful cases all the time, and so do doctors. Is it wrong that they are paid? Why should my mother's time and skill cost nothing? She made a living this way, she had bills to pay, kids to raise, and a roof to keep over her head. This reproach from self-appointed critics was annoying and unrealistic, but it cropped up quite often as she became more well-known.
She also did not seek out cases to work on, ever; she always had to be approached by a relative, friend, or detective connected to the case. More on that in another blog.
Mom told Mrs. Drummond that Russell was dead. He'd suffered a stroke prior to their camping trip, and she felt a similar disorientation as he wandered from the site in an easterly direction. She described a gravel path near a small cottage-like building amid trees and brush. She felt him suffering another stroke and falling beneath a madrone, a stubby, brush-like tree with reddish bark that is common to the Sierra foothills.
Surprisingly, she felt that his body was still intact—an anomaly for any flesh in an environment that included opportunistic carnivores like coyotes.
Mrs. Drummond took her tape to the (new) Calaveras county sheriff, Claude Ballard. Ballard listened to my mom's descriptions of the area and decided to have a look. If he could pin down enough of her details, then he'd consider organizing a new search party. He took his skeptical undersheriff, Fred Kern, with him. As it turned out, the description fell into place so well that Ballard was able to walk immediately to Drummond's body and find it without a search party. Fred Kern said the taped details were 99% accurate.
This story hit the news like a lit match to an oil drum, and Mom was splashed all over the newspapers as "The Body Finder." Her career went to a new level. She was romanced by various PR agencies. The phone rang off the hook, and from then on, her work included a large dose of police investigations.
It was a long way from "psyching out" greyhounds on the Florida dog track when I was a teen. Like any celebrity, her success was viewed as overnight and somewhat miraculous but she was quick to point out that she'd been sharpening her intuition for a number of years. Many called it a "gift," a term she dismissed out of hand.
"We all possess this ability, it's not a gift," she'd say. "It's like playing the piano: anyone can pick out a tune but not everyone is going to be a concert pianist. Still, if you played piano every day for years, I bet you'd get pretty good at it! That's what I've done. Practiced on my 'instrument'—my intuition—for more than a decade."
Mom tried hard to be called a parapsychologist instead of a psychic. Sometimes, this seemed to be an unnecessary distinction, and a bit snooty, but I understood her motivation. Psychics were stereotyped as crystal ball readers, palmists along the beach roads, spooky hoo-doo charlatans; my mother prided herself on being down-to-earth, conscious, and detail-oriented. She was as far from hoo-doo as she possibly could make herself and if semantics helped market that difference, she would use them.
Unfortunately, without proof of his death, Mrs. Drummond could not collect his pension or his life insurance. Six months after his disappearance, she decided to consult my mom.
I don't know how my mom got the clinical detachment to work police cases. This was one of her first, and the one that hit the papers big-time. But at this point, she'd been honing her intuitive abilities for over ten years, often on a daily basis with clients, and she'd developed a methodology, including charts, photographs from the client, and a tape recorder. Personal counseling sessions typically ran an hour, but cases might run an hour and a half or more per session. She'd look at photos, hold a personal object belonging to the victim, scribble on special charts, and dictate her impressions into the tape recorder. She usually made two copies of the taping, one for the client and one for herself.
Some critics said my mom shouldn't charge for these cases. I can tell you that, over the years, hundreds of hours of her work went without pay, especially if a police department had no budget or belief in her abilities. If a family member came to her as a client, she charged them her normal fee. I mean, lawyers deal with pitiful cases all the time, and so do doctors. Is it wrong that they are paid? Why should my mother's time and skill cost nothing? She made a living this way, she had bills to pay, kids to raise, and a roof to keep over her head. This reproach from self-appointed critics was annoying and unrealistic, but it cropped up quite often as she became more well-known.
She also did not seek out cases to work on, ever; she always had to be approached by a relative, friend, or detective connected to the case. More on that in another blog.
Mom told Mrs. Drummond that Russell was dead. He'd suffered a stroke prior to their camping trip, and she felt a similar disorientation as he wandered from the site in an easterly direction. She described a gravel path near a small cottage-like building amid trees and brush. She felt him suffering another stroke and falling beneath a madrone, a stubby, brush-like tree with reddish bark that is common to the Sierra foothills.
Surprisingly, she felt that his body was still intact—an anomaly for any flesh in an environment that included opportunistic carnivores like coyotes.
Mrs. Drummond took her tape to the (new) Calaveras county sheriff, Claude Ballard. Ballard listened to my mom's descriptions of the area and decided to have a look. If he could pin down enough of her details, then he'd consider organizing a new search party. He took his skeptical undersheriff, Fred Kern, with him. As it turned out, the description fell into place so well that Ballard was able to walk immediately to Drummond's body and find it without a search party. Fred Kern said the taped details were 99% accurate.
This story hit the news like a lit match to an oil drum, and Mom was splashed all over the newspapers as "The Body Finder." Her career went to a new level. She was romanced by various PR agencies. The phone rang off the hook, and from then on, her work included a large dose of police investigations.
It was a long way from "psyching out" greyhounds on the Florida dog track when I was a teen. Like any celebrity, her success was viewed as overnight and somewhat miraculous but she was quick to point out that she'd been sharpening her intuition for a number of years. Many called it a "gift," a term she dismissed out of hand.
"We all possess this ability, it's not a gift," she'd say. "It's like playing the piano: anyone can pick out a tune but not everyone is going to be a concert pianist. Still, if you played piano every day for years, I bet you'd get pretty good at it! That's what I've done. Practiced on my 'instrument'—my intuition—for more than a decade."
Mom tried hard to be called a parapsychologist instead of a psychic. Sometimes, this seemed to be an unnecessary distinction, and a bit snooty, but I understood her motivation. Psychics were stereotyped as crystal ball readers, palmists along the beach roads, spooky hoo-doo charlatans; my mother prided herself on being down-to-earth, conscious, and detail-oriented. She was as far from hoo-doo as she possibly could make herself and if semantics helped market that difference, she would use them.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Raise A Glass
As part of an ongoing effort to downsize the number of my possessions, I went through my glassware cupboard today. It was a modest effort, but my kitchen cupboards are small—so the extra room will be welcome—and every little bit helps in the long run. The piano's next!
Packing up glassware was a somewhat nostalgic process. There was a set of eight coffee mugs that match my current dinnerware but which I never ever use because they don't hold enough coffee. There were assorted novelty mugs: Homer Simpson, Garden of the Gods in Colorado, an historic general store in Bedford, VA, Mickey Mouse, and a couple of whatevers—none of which passed the capacity test and were also no longer used.
There was a set of cool cocktail glasses that I'd held onto because of their design, but which I finally admitted were obsolete since I don't throw dinner parties anymore. If I ever do, I won't be serving cocktails in retro glasses.
Finally, there were a few small, bowl-shaped crystal champagne glasses, inherited from my mom's cast-off stemware years ago; they still made a sweet ting! when I bumped two of them together.
The whole shebang fit into a cardboard box, swathed haphazardly with packing paper; I didn't do my usual mover's quality level of wrapping, because they were being donated to Goodwill and would only get unwrapped at that end and put on shelves. At least, that was the theory.
I remember my mother's glass-fronted credenzas, changing in furniture style over the years, but always glittering with stemware and treasured objects. Her wine glasses were transparent bubbles in the proper shape and size for white or red wines. Like my champagne glasses, all were made of crystal that sang when you removed a cluster carefully from the cabinet. She also had crystal cocktail glasses, tall and short, for mixed drinks. Then there were the liqueur glasses: fragile schooners for sherry or port, and snifters for after-dinner brandy.
Mom also kept an array of pewter steins for beer, many of which she picked up in the UK on her travels or ordered from Colonial Williamsburg. She also had silver or pewter baby cups, a kind of throwback to our childhood years that continued as a family tradition when grandchildren arrived. We seldom, if ever, drank out of these but they were all engraved with our birth dates and names.
Lead crystal was looked down upon by my mother, except in flower vases—which she also had in abundance, in a variety of shapes.
Unlike me, my mother used her good stemware all the time. She was a great giver of parties and a prolific Mad Men drinker, always keeping a well-stocked bar and hiring a bartender (or press-ganging one of my brothers) to mix and serve up libations at her events. We all knew how to mix a basic drink long before we were of legal age to imbibe. Bartending had its own issues, since my brothers would sometimes surreptitiously empty the guests' discarded glasses into their own gullets and end up sacrificing to the porcelain god after everyone left.
Mom's parties were always sparkling, noisy, and enthusiastic. So it's no surprise that many lovely goblets and glasses met their tinkling deaths in the melée. She replaced them periodically with different sets, evolving as tastes evolved (hence my too-tiny champagne stems). One set of champs flutes were airy as foam and carved with fine vertical furrows; another was oblong and stemless, with deep green crystal bases.
I don't know where those fragile mementos ended up; as her hey-day waned, Mom switched to more prosaic and sturdy cocktail glasses. The stemware broke or went into my siblings' home bars (I lived too far away to want to ship any to my house).
Today, I let the last of mine go. Pulled their dusty forms from the cupboard, washed and rinsed them carefully, and set them down in the box with my other cast-offs. The glasses themselves had little meaning for me, but the memories they evoked were rich and pleasant. I kept a tiny espresso cup and saucer that belonged to my grandmother, hand painted and made in Japan; I never use it, either, but perhaps my granddaughter will find a place for it in her make-believe tea parties.
When I got to Goodwill, I told the donation guy that my box was full of glassware. The lid wasn't even closed on it, and glasses were peeking out from their paper wrappings.
"It's very fragile," I said. "So you probably shouldn't put anything on top of this box."
"Okay, thanks a lot for bringing it in," he said, plopping down my paper bag full of t-shirts on top of the box and swinging the lot up and out of my car.
I started to caution him but he turned away, so I slid into the front seat. As I did, I heard—and I'm not making this up—a tinkling crash echo through the warehouse. I didn't turn around, I couldn't look. It didn't sound as if the box dropped to the floor, more as if it was plunked down hard on top of something else.
As I drove away, I consoled myself with the thought that at least they weren't cluttering up my cupboard anymore. Maybe those stems have joined their many former companions at some great cosmic cocktail party in the sky. It might even be one of my mother's!
Packing up glassware was a somewhat nostalgic process. There was a set of eight coffee mugs that match my current dinnerware but which I never ever use because they don't hold enough coffee. There were assorted novelty mugs: Homer Simpson, Garden of the Gods in Colorado, an historic general store in Bedford, VA, Mickey Mouse, and a couple of whatevers—none of which passed the capacity test and were also no longer used.
There was a set of cool cocktail glasses that I'd held onto because of their design, but which I finally admitted were obsolete since I don't throw dinner parties anymore. If I ever do, I won't be serving cocktails in retro glasses.
Finally, there were a few small, bowl-shaped crystal champagne glasses, inherited from my mom's cast-off stemware years ago; they still made a sweet ting! when I bumped two of them together.
The whole shebang fit into a cardboard box, swathed haphazardly with packing paper; I didn't do my usual mover's quality level of wrapping, because they were being donated to Goodwill and would only get unwrapped at that end and put on shelves. At least, that was the theory.
I remember my mother's glass-fronted credenzas, changing in furniture style over the years, but always glittering with stemware and treasured objects. Her wine glasses were transparent bubbles in the proper shape and size for white or red wines. Like my champagne glasses, all were made of crystal that sang when you removed a cluster carefully from the cabinet. She also had crystal cocktail glasses, tall and short, for mixed drinks. Then there were the liqueur glasses: fragile schooners for sherry or port, and snifters for after-dinner brandy.
Mom also kept an array of pewter steins for beer, many of which she picked up in the UK on her travels or ordered from Colonial Williamsburg. She also had silver or pewter baby cups, a kind of throwback to our childhood years that continued as a family tradition when grandchildren arrived. We seldom, if ever, drank out of these but they were all engraved with our birth dates and names.
Lead crystal was looked down upon by my mother, except in flower vases—which she also had in abundance, in a variety of shapes.
Unlike me, my mother used her good stemware all the time. She was a great giver of parties and a prolific Mad Men drinker, always keeping a well-stocked bar and hiring a bartender (or press-ganging one of my brothers) to mix and serve up libations at her events. We all knew how to mix a basic drink long before we were of legal age to imbibe. Bartending had its own issues, since my brothers would sometimes surreptitiously empty the guests' discarded glasses into their own gullets and end up sacrificing to the porcelain god after everyone left.
Mom's parties were always sparkling, noisy, and enthusiastic. So it's no surprise that many lovely goblets and glasses met their tinkling deaths in the melée. She replaced them periodically with different sets, evolving as tastes evolved (hence my too-tiny champagne stems). One set of champs flutes were airy as foam and carved with fine vertical furrows; another was oblong and stemless, with deep green crystal bases.
I don't know where those fragile mementos ended up; as her hey-day waned, Mom switched to more prosaic and sturdy cocktail glasses. The stemware broke or went into my siblings' home bars (I lived too far away to want to ship any to my house).
Today, I let the last of mine go. Pulled their dusty forms from the cupboard, washed and rinsed them carefully, and set them down in the box with my other cast-offs. The glasses themselves had little meaning for me, but the memories they evoked were rich and pleasant. I kept a tiny espresso cup and saucer that belonged to my grandmother, hand painted and made in Japan; I never use it, either, but perhaps my granddaughter will find a place for it in her make-believe tea parties.
When I got to Goodwill, I told the donation guy that my box was full of glassware. The lid wasn't even closed on it, and glasses were peeking out from their paper wrappings.
"It's very fragile," I said. "So you probably shouldn't put anything on top of this box."
"Okay, thanks a lot for bringing it in," he said, plopping down my paper bag full of t-shirts on top of the box and swinging the lot up and out of my car.
I started to caution him but he turned away, so I slid into the front seat. As I did, I heard—and I'm not making this up—a tinkling crash echo through the warehouse. I didn't turn around, I couldn't look. It didn't sound as if the box dropped to the floor, more as if it was plunked down hard on top of something else.
As I drove away, I consoled myself with the thought that at least they weren't cluttering up my cupboard anymore. Maybe those stems have joined their many former companions at some great cosmic cocktail party in the sky. It might even be one of my mother's!
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Lovelorn
The phone rang in our house all the time, day and night. This is why shrinks use an answering service—or maybe, in this day of cell phones, their voicemail—so clients can't reach them directly. Because everyone thinks their problem is the big problem and time is no object.
Initially, to protect Mom during business hours, I answered the phone calls. Yep, that was before answering machines and voicemail. Hard to believe we lived like that, but once technology offered a solution, I was off the hook (haha). Mom preferred an answering machine long after voicemail was commonplace. When times were flush and her career at a high point, she had a secretary with her own office space to take care of calls. But most of her life, she worked from home and on her own.
My mother's most loyal clients were people that needed frequent hand holding. They'd come for a counseling, get the information, go home, and then call her again. What was it she said? What were they supposed to do? Was it really going to be like she said? Did he/she/they really feel that way?
There is nothing in this world more painful than love gone bad. No one more emotionally desperate than a person who still loves someone and cannot have them. When you feel that isolated, cut loose from your illusion of happiness and control, you will grab at anything to stop the freefall. Lots of us find self-help books or therapists or good friends or family to support us through this time. But how much more seductive and hopeful is it to have a psychic that can predict what will happen, who will tell you that it's all going to be okay, that he/she will come back and give you a happy ending after all?
Which brings me to the dilemma my mother often faced: that of telling someone it wasn't going to work out or that the beloved was not their soulmate, or even their final relationship in this life. It was amazing to see how clients could twist or ignore what Mom actually said and create a consoling alternate version that fit their desires. When their delusion met reality, of course, there was serious crash and burn and they'd be back for another counseling.
"I told you he wasn't going to agree to that," she might say. "He's already moving on without you. I'm so sorry, but I can only tell you what I see—I can't make things happen."
Bingo. That's the crux of the issue. Being a psychic isn't being a wizard, there isn't magic involved nor any spell casting or love potions that will force a fading love affair to rejuvenate. But we want it so badly, we're deaf to good intentions and solid advice and blind to all but our heart's pain-wracked whimpering. We'll try any kind of mumbo-jumbo, believe in any sort of arcanery, if it will just give us hope for a while longer. Most of us see the truth in time.
Do we have free will? Can we change the future? If I knew, I'd tell you. As I've mentioned before, my mother was good at comparing possible paths and their likely outcomes, as she saw them. But she couldn't do anything to change what she saw.
"If I tell you that, should you turn left, you will be in a car accident...then you can choose to turn right and avoid it," she'd say. That would indicate a lack of predestination, a situation where free will trumps fate. But if you want to make yourself crazy, you could say that coming to her and receiving that advice was also predestined, thus avoiding the car accident because you were fated to avoid it. We used to have these circular conversations, but I'm not sure there were any hard conclusions. Who knows? (Only The Shadow knows, would be Mom's response. That's a generational reference, look it up if you don't get it.)
On the other hand, Mom was convinced that people go out of their ways to meet their deaths. She "saw" time and again how someone would defy the odds to be in a certain place at a certain time to make that happen. So are our lives really fluid, but our deaths set in stone?
Even the clients who got good news about their romances would return frequently for reassurance. Sometimes the outcome was way down the road, and they just needed to make sure it was still coming. It was always gratifying to hear from a client when things turned out well, as predicted; all of us enjoy a little appreciation of our work, and a psychic really lays it on the line to make these kinds of forecasts. I couldn't do it, it freaks me out. But Mom could.
Once in a great while, she would scold a client for not listening. She would reiterate her advice and tell them to pay attention or stop wasting her time. She would endure their crying and complaining and desperate phone calls—and then she would say, "I'm done. I can't do any more for you." My mom was ethical about these situations. She needed an income like anyone else, but she wasn't going to soak a client who wasn't getting any benefit out of her insights.
If there's an irony to this situation, it's that my mother was as fallible as her clients. Especially with one relationship, which she clung to long after it was obvious to all of us that it was over and done. As her daughter, she pulled on me to counsel her, read her cards, tell her what was going to happen. And, like her clients, she brushed aside what I had to say and kept hoping.
We're just not ready for the destination until we've completed the journey. Even then, it can really suck.
Initially, to protect Mom during business hours, I answered the phone calls. Yep, that was before answering machines and voicemail. Hard to believe we lived like that, but once technology offered a solution, I was off the hook (haha). Mom preferred an answering machine long after voicemail was commonplace. When times were flush and her career at a high point, she had a secretary with her own office space to take care of calls. But most of her life, she worked from home and on her own.
My mother's most loyal clients were people that needed frequent hand holding. They'd come for a counseling, get the information, go home, and then call her again. What was it she said? What were they supposed to do? Was it really going to be like she said? Did he/she/they really feel that way?
There is nothing in this world more painful than love gone bad. No one more emotionally desperate than a person who still loves someone and cannot have them. When you feel that isolated, cut loose from your illusion of happiness and control, you will grab at anything to stop the freefall. Lots of us find self-help books or therapists or good friends or family to support us through this time. But how much more seductive and hopeful is it to have a psychic that can predict what will happen, who will tell you that it's all going to be okay, that he/she will come back and give you a happy ending after all?
Which brings me to the dilemma my mother often faced: that of telling someone it wasn't going to work out or that the beloved was not their soulmate, or even their final relationship in this life. It was amazing to see how clients could twist or ignore what Mom actually said and create a consoling alternate version that fit their desires. When their delusion met reality, of course, there was serious crash and burn and they'd be back for another counseling.
"I told you he wasn't going to agree to that," she might say. "He's already moving on without you. I'm so sorry, but I can only tell you what I see—I can't make things happen."
Bingo. That's the crux of the issue. Being a psychic isn't being a wizard, there isn't magic involved nor any spell casting or love potions that will force a fading love affair to rejuvenate. But we want it so badly, we're deaf to good intentions and solid advice and blind to all but our heart's pain-wracked whimpering. We'll try any kind of mumbo-jumbo, believe in any sort of arcanery, if it will just give us hope for a while longer. Most of us see the truth in time.
Do we have free will? Can we change the future? If I knew, I'd tell you. As I've mentioned before, my mother was good at comparing possible paths and their likely outcomes, as she saw them. But she couldn't do anything to change what she saw.
"If I tell you that, should you turn left, you will be in a car accident...then you can choose to turn right and avoid it," she'd say. That would indicate a lack of predestination, a situation where free will trumps fate. But if you want to make yourself crazy, you could say that coming to her and receiving that advice was also predestined, thus avoiding the car accident because you were fated to avoid it. We used to have these circular conversations, but I'm not sure there were any hard conclusions. Who knows? (Only The Shadow knows, would be Mom's response. That's a generational reference, look it up if you don't get it.)
On the other hand, Mom was convinced that people go out of their ways to meet their deaths. She "saw" time and again how someone would defy the odds to be in a certain place at a certain time to make that happen. So are our lives really fluid, but our deaths set in stone?
Even the clients who got good news about their romances would return frequently for reassurance. Sometimes the outcome was way down the road, and they just needed to make sure it was still coming. It was always gratifying to hear from a client when things turned out well, as predicted; all of us enjoy a little appreciation of our work, and a psychic really lays it on the line to make these kinds of forecasts. I couldn't do it, it freaks me out. But Mom could.
Once in a great while, she would scold a client for not listening. She would reiterate her advice and tell them to pay attention or stop wasting her time. She would endure their crying and complaining and desperate phone calls—and then she would say, "I'm done. I can't do any more for you." My mom was ethical about these situations. She needed an income like anyone else, but she wasn't going to soak a client who wasn't getting any benefit out of her insights.
If there's an irony to this situation, it's that my mother was as fallible as her clients. Especially with one relationship, which she clung to long after it was obvious to all of us that it was over and done. As her daughter, she pulled on me to counsel her, read her cards, tell her what was going to happen. And, like her clients, she brushed aside what I had to say and kept hoping.
We're just not ready for the destination until we've completed the journey. Even then, it can really suck.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
All Night Craps
My mother resisted growing older with all her might. She gloried in her younger days, when beauty was more important than the brain she hid under all that flaming hair. She loved being impulsive, daring, naughty—and she loathed anything that compelled her to accountability, like budgets or rules or authority. If she'd been born in my generation, she might have been a hippie who did art, drugs, rock and roll, and palm reading. Or maybe not, since she absolutely loved high-end designer fashions, expensive shoes and purses, and really good liquor. Not something a hippie would aspire to.
Because my mom was Peter Pan with female plumbing, there were plenty of times I acted the part of Mother. I looked after her, did her errands, cared for her when she was sick, let her cry on my shoulder. I'm talking about her in her prime and me from about 10 years old and up, not in her dotage!
Point? Perhaps it's no surprise that I could be a priss-pot about my mother's behavior. I cringed when I saw her partying, dancing, drinking, flirting... maybe some of that's normal for any kid who sees their parent(s) "being cool" (as if!). Some of it was well-deserved, too, because Kay was one loose cannon full of herself and that always worried me. Consequences were more my thing than hers.
One of her great enthusiasms was gambling. OMG. It's too bad my grandparents sold off their piece of the Las Vegas Strip back in the day, because my mom would have had a blast running a casino. She could have sashayed around in flashy clothes, maybe done a little cabaret, had personal power and minions, a nanny for her kids, and lots and lots of nightlife, her favorite. Las Vegas would have appealed to the cowgirl in her, too, when she felt like trading sequins for a pair of good boots and a cadillac with horns.
It seems natural, given her personality, that craps was her game of choice. She didn't have the patience for poker and she poo-poo'd blackjack; but she loved the high-wire thrill of a craps table.
When my husband and I moved back from the UK to California, Mom had a boyfriend who owned a place at Lake Tahoe. We all loved the natural beauty: the smell of pines, the blue icy lake, the rising Sierras. Mom would buy summer flowers and we'd fill up huge containers on the deck with pansies and lobelia. It was like camping with benefits, fresh air and campfires and bathrooms and beds. But, of course, there were also casinos, right over the Nevada line.
I remember one night in particular. We had dinner and then hit the casino for a little fun. My idea of gambling, just so you know, was $30 worth of coins for the slots. I was happy as a clam to sit there, drink the free booze, and pull the arm. (These days, the slots are digital and you push a button and somehow, it's just not the same.) My husband had a flurry with blackjack and roulette, then he was pretty much done. After a couple of hours, we were ready to head home—but not Kay. One aside, in case you don't know this: drinking alcohol at high altitudes can knock you on your butt. A couple of free cocktails and I was woozy enough to sit down outside. We waited. And waited. Finally, we gave up and caught a cab home. My mom's boyfriend decided to hang with her, which ended up being until the wee hours of the morning. To our astonishment, Mom won $9,000 (fyi, that's the equivalent of more than $40,000 today) and was officially escorted from the casino to her car so no one would rob her on the way out.
I'd love to say it was Mom's psychic abilities that allowed her to win all that cash, but it wasn't. She might feel good or bad about a particular roll ahead of time, but in general, she was just hog wild, laughing with her fellow players and sucking up Scotch and water. Otherwise, she would have made a whole bunch more money. She did had a flair for commodities at one time—that's a blog for another day.
When our friends, J and B, decided to tie the knot in Las Vegas, they invited Mom and I to attend the ceremony. Mom had counseled them over time and predicted that their romance would blossom and J's career would take off—both of which happened—so they loved her to bits. We sometimes stayed at their place in LA. (They're still happily married after all these years and doing very well.)
The night before the ceremony, we cruised the Strip, had a lovely dinner, and went back to our hotel. It was pretty much a repeat of Tahoe, with different actors. I was sharing a room with my mom and turned in around midnight; the wedding was taking place at 11:00 the next morning. I didn't sleep well. Hours passed and my mom didn't appear. I tossed and turned. The sky paled and still her bed was empty. I thought of calling the manager. I didn't, though, because I knew where I'd find her: still standing at the same craps table I left her at the night before.
I look back on that event and wonder, why was I such a wet blanket about it? She was a grown-up, she had only limited funds and credit, so she couldn't get herself in too terribly deep, and it wasn't my problem if she looked like hell at the wedding. But when she dragged herself in around 6:00am, haggard and stiff from bending over the table for hours, I scolded her the way she scolded me when I was 18 and out all night with a boyfriend! Why did I bother? Why did I take that stance? Why was I such a party pooper?
I can only think that it was my job. One, ironically, that my mother assigned to me at an early age and who then became the victim of it. Growing up, my brothers referred to me as "the little Mom"—and that was no compliment, I can tell you!
She was so vibrant, so restless and hungry and impetuous...and the more she was that way, the more responsible and guilty and afraid I became. I needed stability but I wasn't getting it anywhere. Her marriages fell apart, her romances imploded, her finances soared up and down, and she still rode hell bent for leather through life. Sometimes I got swept along, giddy with luxury, indulgences, risk. You can't live beside a flame without wanting to stick your fingers in it at some point!
And, to use another metaphor, you also can't help but get tarred by the same brush.
I've never been the thrifty long-term saver that my brothers are. I may have been the ant to my mother's grasshopper, but my own legs were plenty long, too. I lived impulsively, romantically, without a plan. I didn't buy life insurance or invest in a 401K or consider saving for a mortgage. I craved stability but couldn't seem to find the way to achieve it as my own marriages and romances imploded. Even now, I tend to go for long periods trying not to spend, and then go on a shopping spree and feel guilty afterwards. The difference being that my expenditures are probably 15% of what my mother's would have been.
She never set aside anything for the future, for a rainy day. Not even her own funeral costs. She worried sometimes as she got older, wondering how she was going to make ends meet, but she also never stopped working. She knew retirement was not an option. She had windfalls, often just at the right time. She also had financially generous friends and clients, bankruptcies, and the luck of a...well, I don't know what. Something very lucky.
Worrying about my own life as the economy hits the crapper and I get older and less employable, I sometimes draw upon my mother as an example and an inspiration, ironic as that sounds. She believed that, as long as she was alive and had enough currency to stand at the craps table of Life and play the game, that was all that mattered.
I know how she felt.
If she were here, I wouldn't scold her. Not one bit.
Because my mom was Peter Pan with female plumbing, there were plenty of times I acted the part of Mother. I looked after her, did her errands, cared for her when she was sick, let her cry on my shoulder. I'm talking about her in her prime and me from about 10 years old and up, not in her dotage!
Point? Perhaps it's no surprise that I could be a priss-pot about my mother's behavior. I cringed when I saw her partying, dancing, drinking, flirting... maybe some of that's normal for any kid who sees their parent(s) "being cool" (as if!). Some of it was well-deserved, too, because Kay was one loose cannon full of herself and that always worried me. Consequences were more my thing than hers.
One of her great enthusiasms was gambling. OMG. It's too bad my grandparents sold off their piece of the Las Vegas Strip back in the day, because my mom would have had a blast running a casino. She could have sashayed around in flashy clothes, maybe done a little cabaret, had personal power and minions, a nanny for her kids, and lots and lots of nightlife, her favorite. Las Vegas would have appealed to the cowgirl in her, too, when she felt like trading sequins for a pair of good boots and a cadillac with horns.
It seems natural, given her personality, that craps was her game of choice. She didn't have the patience for poker and she poo-poo'd blackjack; but she loved the high-wire thrill of a craps table.
When my husband and I moved back from the UK to California, Mom had a boyfriend who owned a place at Lake Tahoe. We all loved the natural beauty: the smell of pines, the blue icy lake, the rising Sierras. Mom would buy summer flowers and we'd fill up huge containers on the deck with pansies and lobelia. It was like camping with benefits, fresh air and campfires and bathrooms and beds. But, of course, there were also casinos, right over the Nevada line.
I remember one night in particular. We had dinner and then hit the casino for a little fun. My idea of gambling, just so you know, was $30 worth of coins for the slots. I was happy as a clam to sit there, drink the free booze, and pull the arm. (These days, the slots are digital and you push a button and somehow, it's just not the same.) My husband had a flurry with blackjack and roulette, then he was pretty much done. After a couple of hours, we were ready to head home—but not Kay. One aside, in case you don't know this: drinking alcohol at high altitudes can knock you on your butt. A couple of free cocktails and I was woozy enough to sit down outside. We waited. And waited. Finally, we gave up and caught a cab home. My mom's boyfriend decided to hang with her, which ended up being until the wee hours of the morning. To our astonishment, Mom won $9,000 (fyi, that's the equivalent of more than $40,000 today) and was officially escorted from the casino to her car so no one would rob her on the way out.
I'd love to say it was Mom's psychic abilities that allowed her to win all that cash, but it wasn't. She might feel good or bad about a particular roll ahead of time, but in general, she was just hog wild, laughing with her fellow players and sucking up Scotch and water. Otherwise, she would have made a whole bunch more money. She did had a flair for commodities at one time—that's a blog for another day.
When our friends, J and B, decided to tie the knot in Las Vegas, they invited Mom and I to attend the ceremony. Mom had counseled them over time and predicted that their romance would blossom and J's career would take off—both of which happened—so they loved her to bits. We sometimes stayed at their place in LA. (They're still happily married after all these years and doing very well.)
The night before the ceremony, we cruised the Strip, had a lovely dinner, and went back to our hotel. It was pretty much a repeat of Tahoe, with different actors. I was sharing a room with my mom and turned in around midnight; the wedding was taking place at 11:00 the next morning. I didn't sleep well. Hours passed and my mom didn't appear. I tossed and turned. The sky paled and still her bed was empty. I thought of calling the manager. I didn't, though, because I knew where I'd find her: still standing at the same craps table I left her at the night before.
I look back on that event and wonder, why was I such a wet blanket about it? She was a grown-up, she had only limited funds and credit, so she couldn't get herself in too terribly deep, and it wasn't my problem if she looked like hell at the wedding. But when she dragged herself in around 6:00am, haggard and stiff from bending over the table for hours, I scolded her the way she scolded me when I was 18 and out all night with a boyfriend! Why did I bother? Why did I take that stance? Why was I such a party pooper?
I can only think that it was my job. One, ironically, that my mother assigned to me at an early age and who then became the victim of it. Growing up, my brothers referred to me as "the little Mom"—and that was no compliment, I can tell you!
She was so vibrant, so restless and hungry and impetuous...and the more she was that way, the more responsible and guilty and afraid I became. I needed stability but I wasn't getting it anywhere. Her marriages fell apart, her romances imploded, her finances soared up and down, and she still rode hell bent for leather through life. Sometimes I got swept along, giddy with luxury, indulgences, risk. You can't live beside a flame without wanting to stick your fingers in it at some point!
And, to use another metaphor, you also can't help but get tarred by the same brush.
I've never been the thrifty long-term saver that my brothers are. I may have been the ant to my mother's grasshopper, but my own legs were plenty long, too. I lived impulsively, romantically, without a plan. I didn't buy life insurance or invest in a 401K or consider saving for a mortgage. I craved stability but couldn't seem to find the way to achieve it as my own marriages and romances imploded. Even now, I tend to go for long periods trying not to spend, and then go on a shopping spree and feel guilty afterwards. The difference being that my expenditures are probably 15% of what my mother's would have been.
She never set aside anything for the future, for a rainy day. Not even her own funeral costs. She worried sometimes as she got older, wondering how she was going to make ends meet, but she also never stopped working. She knew retirement was not an option. She had windfalls, often just at the right time. She also had financially generous friends and clients, bankruptcies, and the luck of a...well, I don't know what. Something very lucky.
Worrying about my own life as the economy hits the crapper and I get older and less employable, I sometimes draw upon my mother as an example and an inspiration, ironic as that sounds. She believed that, as long as she was alive and had enough currency to stand at the craps table of Life and play the game, that was all that mattered.
I know how she felt.
If she were here, I wouldn't scold her. Not one bit.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
While I Wait
I've been out of work for a long time. I've been freelancing, but it's been a river that's slowly dwindled to a trickle, and it's just not enough to get by. I've been fortunate and sold some stuff to get by. I've looked for a job and I've finally gotten a foot in a couple doors—but how will it turn out?
This is when I really miss my mom. Like a smoker misses a cigarette, knowing it's bad for her, even after years of not smoking. Who still remembers the thrill of inhaling smoke and taste and nicotine; the power of exhaling, dragon-like, into the air. The business of something to do while waiting: the pack, the cigarette, the lighter, the engagement of hand and mouth. (Yeah, I still remember and its been decades since I touched a cigarette, and I was never a full-time smoker.)
Mom's psychic ability was my crutch, my personal peek into the future. Even when it was flawed or wrong, it was something to cling to while waiting for life to manifest itself.
Now, there's only me to whom I can ask the question, "What's going to happen?" And I'm not good at answering. I'm better at answering how I feel, what my gut tells me, but even that changes depending on how stressed or excited I am. I've consulted my cards, and they give me patterns; they reveal the confusion and fear I've been under. The guile and diplomacy required in job interviews. The potential of being a hardworking apprentice that makes less. The nebulous fluidity of mood that is the Moon. The competition I'm up against.
The cards have told me for a long time that I will work as an apprentice, either because I'm new at the tasks I take on or because my wages are going to be entry level again. Maybe both! At the moment, this could apply to either of the situations I'm pursuing. A man will be the boss. Ditto on that one.
What my mom was so brilliant at was traveling down both paths for her client. If she was here, she could tell me which job is the best fit, will make me the most satisfied, has the most potential for growth. Sometimes that information is surprising—because it might not be what you expect. It might be that the comforting, reliable, job is the best one, even if it isn't the most exciting.
However, just because she could see down both roads didn't mean she could predict which one would end up the winner. If it was a level playing field, then her advice could really facilitate a decision. But if one job was going to be offered and the other withheld, she might not be so good at predicting that—especially for me. She wanted me to get what I want.
As I've said before, you still have to endure the life that occurs until whatever happens happens. You have to make the journey. You may as well "give it up to God" and let it all flow, let go of the fear and stress and wait to see what will happen. You can't do much about it, once you've put on your best show, sent the thank-you notes, revealed your enthusiasm and capability.
I guess I still believe in destiny. If I'm supposed to get the job I want, I will. If I don't, there's a reason. Pattern-making human as always, justifying the outcome. If I don't get either? Well, that will suck. But it won't be the first time.
Sometimes I think it will go one way, sometimes the other. I don't know if my gut is telling me how it's going to end up or whether I'm just bracing myself for disappointment.—or if I just don't want to look at what I really feel because it's not what I want. Another reason to stop making myself crazy and just wait and see.
So, yeah, I wish my mom was here to tell me. But I know in my heart it would only be something to do while in the waiting room, a smoke to soothe my nerves. It wouldn't change anything.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Secret Garden
When the freeway was built in Marin county, it cut through the neighborhoods of San Rafael and San Anselmo, creating pockets of culture composed of artistic, aging hippies, affluent young professionals or older, more rural, residents. Shanna was an artist living in one of these pockets in San Anselmo. In the spring of '91, my mother and I went to see some of her work.
The street has a 1950s feel, lined with small clapboard houses sitting on tiny, manicured plots—all except for Shanna's. Her home is a rambling rural oasis, hidden behind overgrown shrubbery and a line of massive acacia and live oaks. A small, rusty wire gate huddles in a hedge, bearing a hand-scrawled sign that says, “Please latch the gate and bungie it. Beware of dogs.” These come running out as we enter: a young, brisk Sheltie-cross with a long, inquisitive nose, and a shaggy, older dog, greying around the muzzle and walking stiffly. His milky eyes peer at us, and he gives a mournful “Yowww” as we approach the house.
Shanna emerges from the house to greet us. Her handshake is firm and dry, but her voice is soft and her manner a little shy, although she has met my mother once before. It's hard for me to determine her age. She has a youthful shape to her face, which is fair, blue-eyed, and devoid of make-up. Her hair is long and thick, with bangs cut across a slender forehead. But there is a lot of grey streaked among its blonde, and her cheeks are lined and rough from being outdoors.
She leads us to her home up a sidewalk speckled with vivid emerald moss and surrounded by dozens of large metal containers filled with dirt. Most of them have small green spears breaking through their soil. A few lilies-of-the-valley are up in one, and a cluster of paper-whites in another; Shanna is an avid grower, if not a gardener. Certainly, I have never seen such masses of English violets in a California yard; they bruise the shadows with their rich, purple color.
The house is light blue and a mix of shapes. Some of it is square, with large dusty windows at yard level; they hang at odd angles. Parts of the house appear to have been tacked on over the years, none too skillfully. The whole place looks as if it would fall over from a single blow. The front porch needs painting and some carpentry on its stairs. It holds more plants, a scarred wooden end table, and a sagging couch covered in dog hair. Mother and I cast surreptitious glances at each other. Shanna has gone in to get her sculptures; we are obviously to stay out here and view them. Shall we sit on the couch and risk the furry web and possibly rich smell of dog? Mother, being more fastidious, decides against it. I brush quickly and hopefully at a small square of couch and perch cautiously on the edge.
The house is dark inside, Shanna explains as she re-emerges, too dark to see her work well. She puts down two large cardboard boxes filled with newspaper. Inside are all her current sculptures, carefully wrapped. The dogs lie comfortably at our feet as we begin the process of revealing her work...
I'm unprepared for the delicacy and warmth of her art. Palm-sized figures of creamy, unglazed porcelain emerge from their sea of paper, mer-animals of every species and pose: laughing pigs with curled legs and hooves; fat, happy cats, sleeping or playing flute; supine elephants, entwining trunks; goats, sheep, hippos in tender pas de-deux—all skillfully carved and lifelike, except for the fact that their nether halves are fish. Each scale is carefully tooled. Tails toss and curl like a sailfish's fin, or lie in rippling serenity. There are a few people, too: mermaid mothers playing with their babies, or cuddled up with mer-cats and dogs. Merchildren laughing and holding pets. I notice all the women's faces look a little like Shanna.
Soon the couch is a colony of strange and wondrous creatures. I am enchanted, and it's hard to choose between them. Mother decides on a pig and a small cat, licking its fishy tail. I choose a mer-cat that looks like my Duchess—fat, furry and curled on her back in blissful slumber.
Shanna tells us about an upcoming exhibition. She wants to design a display for her creatures, something that resembles a rocky beach but is light and easy to carry. She does not drive, she explains. She has no car. Through these intimations I also understand she has no husband, no lover, no steadfast friend to take her under his wing. She begs rides to the shows. She sallies forth on foot to shop in the nearby stores. In the heart of an affluent, mobile culture, Shanna remains a rural anachronism, contained by her own—what? Fears? Poverty? Artistic sacrifice?
After each piece is laboriously rewrapped, Shanna shows us her kiln. It's in an old barn, cluttered with equipment, hay and the strong smell of chickens. She picks up a mask, an interesting head made of equal parts of bear and crocodile. “It cracked, you see,” she says. “It was so thick, and I rushed the drying process. It was ruined. I do better with the small pieces.” She introduces us to her goats, two wall-eyed Nubians kept in a wire yard of hay and hard-packed dirt. There is an old orchard here, and its abundant apples hang on the leafless branches or lie on the ground, copper and bronze with rot. A large ginger-colored cat comes by, ignoring the eager interest of the dogs and allowing me to stroke it briefly. There is a vegetable garden adjacent to the goats, too; it contains some wilting cabbages and thick-stalked onions.
Mother and Shanna talk about the goats, and I wander back to the gate. There are ducks in the front yard now, flapping and quacking by a small pool. The cat follows me and sits beneath a bush. The overall effect of this aging, chaotic garden and ramshackle house unsettles me. I feel as if I wandered into a fairy tale—Rapunzel perhaps—where (unlike the Disney version) the King, gazing from his castle, is surprised by the wild, magical grounds of his neighbor, the witch. In the original story, he trespasses into those grounds to pick campion for his ailing, pregnant Queen. It is an act of courage, not just because he risks the witch's righteous anger but because he leaves behind his pristine world for something wild and strange. Something that lives by different rules. Something enchanted.
I sense the same enchantment here: the delicate spirit of Shanna, living behind a simple, lonely heart. The whimsical, engaging art hidden in the shadowed, unkempt home. The rural, fecund garden thriving among trim suburban yards. What must her neighbors think, gazing over the wire fence? What do I think, having braved the grimy porch and walked among the weeds?
I touch my little mer-cat, wrapped in paper, and smile.
The street has a 1950s feel, lined with small clapboard houses sitting on tiny, manicured plots—all except for Shanna's. Her home is a rambling rural oasis, hidden behind overgrown shrubbery and a line of massive acacia and live oaks. A small, rusty wire gate huddles in a hedge, bearing a hand-scrawled sign that says, “Please latch the gate and bungie it. Beware of dogs.” These come running out as we enter: a young, brisk Sheltie-cross with a long, inquisitive nose, and a shaggy, older dog, greying around the muzzle and walking stiffly. His milky eyes peer at us, and he gives a mournful “Yowww” as we approach the house.
Shanna emerges from the house to greet us. Her handshake is firm and dry, but her voice is soft and her manner a little shy, although she has met my mother once before. It's hard for me to determine her age. She has a youthful shape to her face, which is fair, blue-eyed, and devoid of make-up. Her hair is long and thick, with bangs cut across a slender forehead. But there is a lot of grey streaked among its blonde, and her cheeks are lined and rough from being outdoors.
She leads us to her home up a sidewalk speckled with vivid emerald moss and surrounded by dozens of large metal containers filled with dirt. Most of them have small green spears breaking through their soil. A few lilies-of-the-valley are up in one, and a cluster of paper-whites in another; Shanna is an avid grower, if not a gardener. Certainly, I have never seen such masses of English violets in a California yard; they bruise the shadows with their rich, purple color.
The house is light blue and a mix of shapes. Some of it is square, with large dusty windows at yard level; they hang at odd angles. Parts of the house appear to have been tacked on over the years, none too skillfully. The whole place looks as if it would fall over from a single blow. The front porch needs painting and some carpentry on its stairs. It holds more plants, a scarred wooden end table, and a sagging couch covered in dog hair. Mother and I cast surreptitious glances at each other. Shanna has gone in to get her sculptures; we are obviously to stay out here and view them. Shall we sit on the couch and risk the furry web and possibly rich smell of dog? Mother, being more fastidious, decides against it. I brush quickly and hopefully at a small square of couch and perch cautiously on the edge.
The house is dark inside, Shanna explains as she re-emerges, too dark to see her work well. She puts down two large cardboard boxes filled with newspaper. Inside are all her current sculptures, carefully wrapped. The dogs lie comfortably at our feet as we begin the process of revealing her work...
I'm unprepared for the delicacy and warmth of her art. Palm-sized figures of creamy, unglazed porcelain emerge from their sea of paper, mer-animals of every species and pose: laughing pigs with curled legs and hooves; fat, happy cats, sleeping or playing flute; supine elephants, entwining trunks; goats, sheep, hippos in tender pas de-deux—all skillfully carved and lifelike, except for the fact that their nether halves are fish. Each scale is carefully tooled. Tails toss and curl like a sailfish's fin, or lie in rippling serenity. There are a few people, too: mermaid mothers playing with their babies, or cuddled up with mer-cats and dogs. Merchildren laughing and holding pets. I notice all the women's faces look a little like Shanna.
Soon the couch is a colony of strange and wondrous creatures. I am enchanted, and it's hard to choose between them. Mother decides on a pig and a small cat, licking its fishy tail. I choose a mer-cat that looks like my Duchess—fat, furry and curled on her back in blissful slumber.
Shanna tells us about an upcoming exhibition. She wants to design a display for her creatures, something that resembles a rocky beach but is light and easy to carry. She does not drive, she explains. She has no car. Through these intimations I also understand she has no husband, no lover, no steadfast friend to take her under his wing. She begs rides to the shows. She sallies forth on foot to shop in the nearby stores. In the heart of an affluent, mobile culture, Shanna remains a rural anachronism, contained by her own—what? Fears? Poverty? Artistic sacrifice?
After each piece is laboriously rewrapped, Shanna shows us her kiln. It's in an old barn, cluttered with equipment, hay and the strong smell of chickens. She picks up a mask, an interesting head made of equal parts of bear and crocodile. “It cracked, you see,” she says. “It was so thick, and I rushed the drying process. It was ruined. I do better with the small pieces.” She introduces us to her goats, two wall-eyed Nubians kept in a wire yard of hay and hard-packed dirt. There is an old orchard here, and its abundant apples hang on the leafless branches or lie on the ground, copper and bronze with rot. A large ginger-colored cat comes by, ignoring the eager interest of the dogs and allowing me to stroke it briefly. There is a vegetable garden adjacent to the goats, too; it contains some wilting cabbages and thick-stalked onions.
Mother and Shanna talk about the goats, and I wander back to the gate. There are ducks in the front yard now, flapping and quacking by a small pool. The cat follows me and sits beneath a bush. The overall effect of this aging, chaotic garden and ramshackle house unsettles me. I feel as if I wandered into a fairy tale—Rapunzel perhaps—where (unlike the Disney version) the King, gazing from his castle, is surprised by the wild, magical grounds of his neighbor, the witch. In the original story, he trespasses into those grounds to pick campion for his ailing, pregnant Queen. It is an act of courage, not just because he risks the witch's righteous anger but because he leaves behind his pristine world for something wild and strange. Something that lives by different rules. Something enchanted.
I sense the same enchantment here: the delicate spirit of Shanna, living behind a simple, lonely heart. The whimsical, engaging art hidden in the shadowed, unkempt home. The rural, fecund garden thriving among trim suburban yards. What must her neighbors think, gazing over the wire fence? What do I think, having braved the grimy porch and walked among the weeds?
I touch my little mer-cat, wrapped in paper, and smile.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
The Real Rescue
Obviously, this was written before my mother died...
Mother talks about dying all the time these days. Well, she has for years. She longs for it sometimes, because she’s so f’ing bored and in pain from her arthritic knees. Sometimes I have a passing urge to pick her up, part and parcel, and move her into my home. To give her relief, to take away the worry of her self-supporting existence, so she would have enough money and not have to pay rent or work. A house without stairs to climb. A place for her dog and cat, where she could be pet-sitter for my own animals when I’m at work or on the road.
But the problem with sharing a home with my mother is that she takes over, just like bindweed. She wraps herself around your time, your rooms, your television shows, and twists them into whatever she wants and needs. After a while, there’s no space for you anymore. You can’t breathe. And she always wants more, and she takes everything you do for her as her birthright. Too proud to sustain gratitude, too critical to be polite.
I've talked extensively about Rescuing and the real irony is, my mother was my Rescuer of choice for most of my life, even when I was married. Because I ran to her for everything. We had our moments of separation, of discord, but eventually, we circled back into each other's orbit. When I was done with marriage, I moved back in with her.
I've likened us to two dragons, locked mid-flight in mortal combat, breathing fire on each other.
In hindsight, I realize that I've been my mother's Rescuer, too. Like me, she's gone through marriages and relationships, hoping but not finding. In the end, she's had to build her own business and pay her own rent, stand on her own feet—and through all those times, she ran to me just like I ran to her. We are the Important Relationship in each other's life. We've outlasted the princes and there are probably no more coming at this point.
But even though we've tried, it hasn't been possible to establish a healthy footing.
The last house we shared, I had a huge bedroom downstairs with it's own television and fireplace. Nice, right? A good solution for separate spaces. My mother was always calling down to me, "When are you coming up? What are you doing?" If I was playing guitar and singing, she'd interrupt me with this question (even after I asked her not to). It wasn't enough to be in the same house. She wanted my company there, next to her, watching what she was watching on television.
She also had the habit of talking to my animals while I was downstairs getting ready for work in the morning. "Hasn't she come up to feed you yet? She's a bad mommy, isn't she?" Like that. I knew if I stayed any longer, I was going to stab her in the neck and throw her down the stairs, like a cheap horror film. When the chance came, I packed up and moved—first to the East Coast, then to the MidWest. For almost the first time in my life, I stood on my own two feet. No man. No mother. No family.
This is the last part of the process: to live far away from her, on my own, and discover my spirit's natural shape. My brothers are not always happy about this, especially as her health falters. They are near, I am not. They have to deal with her, I can hang up the phone and go on with my day.
So now, when I feel this deep impulse to gather her in and take care of her again, I resist it.
Mother talks about dying all the time these days. Well, she has for years. She longs for it sometimes, because she’s so f’ing bored and in pain from her arthritic knees. Sometimes I have a passing urge to pick her up, part and parcel, and move her into my home. To give her relief, to take away the worry of her self-supporting existence, so she would have enough money and not have to pay rent or work. A house without stairs to climb. A place for her dog and cat, where she could be pet-sitter for my own animals when I’m at work or on the road.
But the problem with sharing a home with my mother is that she takes over, just like bindweed. She wraps herself around your time, your rooms, your television shows, and twists them into whatever she wants and needs. After a while, there’s no space for you anymore. You can’t breathe. And she always wants more, and she takes everything you do for her as her birthright. Too proud to sustain gratitude, too critical to be polite.
I've talked extensively about Rescuing and the real irony is, my mother was my Rescuer of choice for most of my life, even when I was married. Because I ran to her for everything. We had our moments of separation, of discord, but eventually, we circled back into each other's orbit. When I was done with marriage, I moved back in with her.
I've likened us to two dragons, locked mid-flight in mortal combat, breathing fire on each other.
In hindsight, I realize that I've been my mother's Rescuer, too. Like me, she's gone through marriages and relationships, hoping but not finding. In the end, she's had to build her own business and pay her own rent, stand on her own feet—and through all those times, she ran to me just like I ran to her. We are the Important Relationship in each other's life. We've outlasted the princes and there are probably no more coming at this point.
But even though we've tried, it hasn't been possible to establish a healthy footing.
The last house we shared, I had a huge bedroom downstairs with it's own television and fireplace. Nice, right? A good solution for separate spaces. My mother was always calling down to me, "When are you coming up? What are you doing?" If I was playing guitar and singing, she'd interrupt me with this question (even after I asked her not to). It wasn't enough to be in the same house. She wanted my company there, next to her, watching what she was watching on television.
She also had the habit of talking to my animals while I was downstairs getting ready for work in the morning. "Hasn't she come up to feed you yet? She's a bad mommy, isn't she?" Like that. I knew if I stayed any longer, I was going to stab her in the neck and throw her down the stairs, like a cheap horror film. When the chance came, I packed up and moved—first to the East Coast, then to the MidWest. For almost the first time in my life, I stood on my own two feet. No man. No mother. No family.
This is the last part of the process: to live far away from her, on my own, and discover my spirit's natural shape. My brothers are not always happy about this, especially as her health falters. They are near, I am not. They have to deal with her, I can hang up the phone and go on with my day.
So now, when I feel this deep impulse to gather her in and take care of her again, I resist it.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
The Good Ship Lollipop
Shirley Temple Black died yesterday at age 85. Like most of my generation, I enjoyed her movies as a child, her brightness and dancing, her timely sense of pathos or courage. Her movies were before my time but, like generations after me, we all enjoyed them via reruns or DVDs and have this shared legacy of a cheerful little girl who overcame being an orphan, a scullery maid, a kidnapped companion kept away from her goats...
If you said, "Grandfather! Grandfather" with an accent in our house, we knew just what the joke was. (For those of you who don't, it's a quote from "Heidi.")
But what if there had never been a Shirley Temple? What if, instead, it had been another little girl? What if, in fact, it had been my mother?
Here's how the story goes, according to the way my mother told it, although it's been some years since I heard it...
When she was a little girl, living God knows where (I don't remember but from the photo it looks to be in the Southwest somewhere), her family was approached by "a man from Hollywood." Probably a talent scout or a producer. He was looking for the next child star. Shirley was a no-name at that point.
My mother was tiny for her age, had a wealth of very curly red hair, and was probably pretty cute with her big green eyes. The only photo I have of her is when she's around two and she's frowning, so hard to tell from that. She was different from Shirley, but her mouth could be a similar rosebud and goodness knows it could pout like Shirley's did!
Anyway...this gentleman wanted to take her back to Hollywood with him. He wanted my grandparents to sign a contract. I guess he convinced them because things were set into motion and apparently everyone was ready to go. Only, just like something out of a tragic Shirley Temple movie, the night before they were supposed to clinch the deal, my grandparents' house burned down.
Mom never talked about all the stuff they lost, that wasn't part of the story. I do know that their collie, Laddie, perished in the fire. (I still can't really think about that and I wish she'd never told me, but I understand why that made such an impression on her tender, animal-loving heart.)
My grandparents, staggering under this tragedy, reversed their decision and Mr. Hollywood went to knock on other front doors.
I never understood why they didn't go ahead. I mean, yes, they'd just suffered a great loss. But on the other hand, little Kay might have been their meal ticket for years to come, and help to make up for that loss and then some. Couldn't Grandmom have climbed on the bus with her daughter and left Grandad to work on salvaging things? Maybe not. Maybe in those days it was different, and maybe it was too much.
All I know is, that was the end of my mother's shot at stardom. Shirley was found and cast, and the rest is history.
And maybe that's what started the whole deal. Maybe they recounted this twist of Fate to little Kay as a child. Maybe it made her think she was Somebody, and that she'd missed her chance to prove it. Maybe it was the foundation for all the ambition and haughtiness and desire for the Best in Life that burned inside my mother, making her a swan among the ducks, an alien changeling that didn't fit the rest of her family. Something sure did.
She hungered for celebrity, and she found it in many smaller ways throughout her life. She hit the big time in her 40s as a psychic and was even courted by the prestigious William Morris Agency. But—and here's another head-scratcher—she turned them down.
The flip side of my mom's drive to be famous was a fierce need to be in control. Of f'ing everything and everyone! It made her family crazed, it ruined her marriages, it spoiled some of her best chances. My mother would rather be a big fish in a small pond than the reverse. She feared that the William Morris Agency would "control" her, manage her, and she couldn't stand the thought.
"They'll take a big cut of everything I earn," she said.
"Yeah, but Mom, ten or twenty percent of a whole lot of money is worth it," I said. "A hundred percent of nothing is...well, nothing."
But that's what she opted for. So Sylvia Brown was all over the place with books and interviews and fame. My mom did lots of good stuff and made some impressive appearances. But her books were small potatoes, and she ground her teeth every time Sylvia came on TV. There but for Fortune...
Maybe we all make our own Fortune. We get these chances, and we turn them down, sometimes for a good reason—sometimes not. Mom could have been singing "The Good Ship Lollipop" and I could've grown up in the Hollywood Hills. We'll never know.
If you said, "Grandfather! Grandfather" with an accent in our house, we knew just what the joke was. (For those of you who don't, it's a quote from "Heidi.")
But what if there had never been a Shirley Temple? What if, instead, it had been another little girl? What if, in fact, it had been my mother?
Here's how the story goes, according to the way my mother told it, although it's been some years since I heard it...
When she was a little girl, living God knows where (I don't remember but from the photo it looks to be in the Southwest somewhere), her family was approached by "a man from Hollywood." Probably a talent scout or a producer. He was looking for the next child star. Shirley was a no-name at that point.
My mother was tiny for her age, had a wealth of very curly red hair, and was probably pretty cute with her big green eyes. The only photo I have of her is when she's around two and she's frowning, so hard to tell from that. She was different from Shirley, but her mouth could be a similar rosebud and goodness knows it could pout like Shirley's did!
This isn't the photo I was thinking of, but I'll have to try and dig up the other one.
Anyway...this gentleman wanted to take her back to Hollywood with him. He wanted my grandparents to sign a contract. I guess he convinced them because things were set into motion and apparently everyone was ready to go. Only, just like something out of a tragic Shirley Temple movie, the night before they were supposed to clinch the deal, my grandparents' house burned down.
Mom never talked about all the stuff they lost, that wasn't part of the story. I do know that their collie, Laddie, perished in the fire. (I still can't really think about that and I wish she'd never told me, but I understand why that made such an impression on her tender, animal-loving heart.)
My grandparents, staggering under this tragedy, reversed their decision and Mr. Hollywood went to knock on other front doors.
I never understood why they didn't go ahead. I mean, yes, they'd just suffered a great loss. But on the other hand, little Kay might have been their meal ticket for years to come, and help to make up for that loss and then some. Couldn't Grandmom have climbed on the bus with her daughter and left Grandad to work on salvaging things? Maybe not. Maybe in those days it was different, and maybe it was too much.
All I know is, that was the end of my mother's shot at stardom. Shirley was found and cast, and the rest is history.
And maybe that's what started the whole deal. Maybe they recounted this twist of Fate to little Kay as a child. Maybe it made her think she was Somebody, and that she'd missed her chance to prove it. Maybe it was the foundation for all the ambition and haughtiness and desire for the Best in Life that burned inside my mother, making her a swan among the ducks, an alien changeling that didn't fit the rest of her family. Something sure did.
She hungered for celebrity, and she found it in many smaller ways throughout her life. She hit the big time in her 40s as a psychic and was even courted by the prestigious William Morris Agency. But—and here's another head-scratcher—she turned them down.
The flip side of my mom's drive to be famous was a fierce need to be in control. Of f'ing everything and everyone! It made her family crazed, it ruined her marriages, it spoiled some of her best chances. My mother would rather be a big fish in a small pond than the reverse. She feared that the William Morris Agency would "control" her, manage her, and she couldn't stand the thought.
"They'll take a big cut of everything I earn," she said.
"Yeah, but Mom, ten or twenty percent of a whole lot of money is worth it," I said. "A hundred percent of nothing is...well, nothing."
But that's what she opted for. So Sylvia Brown was all over the place with books and interviews and fame. My mom did lots of good stuff and made some impressive appearances. But her books were small potatoes, and she ground her teeth every time Sylvia came on TV. There but for Fortune...
Maybe we all make our own Fortune. We get these chances, and we turn them down, sometimes for a good reason—sometimes not. Mom could have been singing "The Good Ship Lollipop" and I could've grown up in the Hollywood Hills. We'll never know.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Resting Places
In a movie, a woman visits her son’s grave in northern France. He was killed in the War and she comes over from England periodically to talk to him.
I’ve never visited my father’s grave, although I remember very clearly the day we put him in it: the gray flocked casket that seemed too small to hold his tall, big-boned frame; the horrible clot of pain in my throat that seeping tears only slightly relieved. To weep openly, deeply, would have felt like letting go and I was afraid of where it would take me. So I stood in agony while they lowered him into the ground. And I never went back.
As I watched the movie, I wondered about this need to visit loved ones in a cemetery. After all, it’s only their bones, and they are not really there. I have visited my father frequently, but from wherever I was—driving, usually, across country as I fled from West to East Coast and back again, wandering, searching, living my life in geographical phases. I've felt him near me, I've talked to him, wept for him, prayed to him. I've retained a warmth from my early childhood toward him, culled from photos where I sat on his lap and he read to me, this little big-eyed girl with bangs and a ponytail. I remember the smell of his pipe tobacco and the way he cleared his throat before he spoke, especially if he’d been pondering for awhile. He wore Old Spice and I loved the fragrance and the shape and design of the bottles.
While alive, my dad was gone more than he was home, and there are great blank stretches where I don’t remember him at all. For having two parents, I was still a latchkey kid, coming home to emptiness most of the time. Later on, when he remarried, theological differences fenced us off from on another. We never reconciled those, but we overlooked them as he fell ill and death became a reality for both of us.
The preacher of the big church where they held his funeral spun stories of who he was—as if he even knew—mentioning me only among the children and stepchildren that Dad left behind. He talked about a person who had nothing to do with years of being my father. Someone who wasn’t always wrapped up in Jesus, who smoked a pipe and flew planes and sailed in on a carrier to us, with the smells of fuel and tar and salt water, and the cry of gulls above. That person wasn’t present in the church, and lives only in my heart now. So what would be the consolation of going to his grave? Maybe the tangible proof of his former existence, a spot where you can focus your thoughts and send them out to his soul, wherever it is? Perhaps that is the solace of a headstone, the place where you can take time and remember.
I don't have a home, even after all these years. I have places that I live and like, but even a decade living in the same place has not made it Home. For me, the old adage has become Truth: Home is where the heart is, and mine is scattered across the world with my siblings, my son's family, my grandchildren. Through choices and circumstances, I am an exile. I hope to not be one forever.
My mother wanted to be cremated. That meant that when she died, there would be no place to visit and ponder about her or chat. She would be scattered somewhere, and the thought pained me, it gave me grief and even a little terror. Gone is so gone. Whatever may be afterwards, you're still gone from this plane of existence. Feeble and aging as Mother was, at least she was a phone call away.
As it turned out, my mother's cremation—and the scattering of her ashes—is painful for me to contemplate, even now. She died in a nursing home after an eight-month descent into dementia via a series of vascular strokes. In the end, her brain forgot how to swallow. Such a simple function, but without it, she was doomed. She couldn't eat or drink or receive oral medication. Since she didn't wish her life to be artificially prolonged, the only decision was to keep her comfortable and let nature take its course. Dehydration. Not in a desert under a hot sun but in a bed in a cool room. Almost all of her children were there the last night, saying goodbye. I kissed her forehead and her eyes flickered open when I spoke to her, but I'm only hoping when I say she knew I was there. I hope she did. She died in the early morning before we could to her. But I knew when I kissed her goodbye the night before that I would never see her again.
Afterwards, it should have been a straightforward process to deliver her to the crematorium. But that's not what happened. The doctor who signed her death certificate at the nursing home made a mistake when noting down her meds and cause of death; this triggered an inquiry, and my mother's body was taken in a bag to the coroner's for medical exam. Everything was settled and the inquiry went away, but the result was that she went from the coroner's to the crematorium as a naked body in a bag, not as someone washed and dressed in a favorite outfit, as I always imagined.
Because of this hiccup and the time it took, I was already back home by the time Mom's body was released. We'd had a private celebration of her life and death at my brother's home, but no formal funeral—she didn't believe in them and thought they were a waste of time. She'd made no provisions, no will, she had nothing but a few personal possessions that we'd already taken care of before the nursing home. My mother never took care of business if she could avoid it.
But this last process was unsettling and irregular. At any rate, my brothers received her ashes. My sisters-in-law and I suggested that she be scattered from a boat into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps off the coast of Monterey or Carmel, which she loved.
Now, I love my brothers deeply; they are the best men I know, and I hope we walk this road for a long long time together. But their feelings toward Mom were a lot less explored and resolved than mine. Their anger was still fresh and simmering, breaking through the crust of civility like lava through the earth. Their reactions to her death were conflicted—and they are, all of them, (fiscally) practical men. So instead of paying for a boat that would take them out onto the ocean and scattering Mother's ashes there...they took her to a quiet local beach, said a prayer, waded in and dumped her just offshore. And guess what? Her ashes were caught and tumbled by the waves and slopped back up onto their legs and the beach where people walked and ran their dogs.
To their due, they were shocked. They expected the ashes to sink. I don't know why they didn't wait for a time when I could be there. I am unhappy that they wouldn't fork over some money to have a proper ceremony out to sea. My mother's decline and death were not what I would've predicted, and they stunned me; but her final disposal grieves me still. Not for the mingling of ash and sand and sea, but for the lack of beauty and ritual that we all deserve when our time comes.
I want to be cremated, too. But I've asked that it be in a lovely meadow or forest somewhere, under sun and shadows and birdsong. As much as I love the ocean, it is too deep and watery, too turbulent and volatile, for me to enjoy ending up there. It is, by its very nature, a place that does not rest.
The perfect place for a woman as restless as my mother.
I’ve never visited my father’s grave, although I remember very clearly the day we put him in it: the gray flocked casket that seemed too small to hold his tall, big-boned frame; the horrible clot of pain in my throat that seeping tears only slightly relieved. To weep openly, deeply, would have felt like letting go and I was afraid of where it would take me. So I stood in agony while they lowered him into the ground. And I never went back.
As I watched the movie, I wondered about this need to visit loved ones in a cemetery. After all, it’s only their bones, and they are not really there. I have visited my father frequently, but from wherever I was—driving, usually, across country as I fled from West to East Coast and back again, wandering, searching, living my life in geographical phases. I've felt him near me, I've talked to him, wept for him, prayed to him. I've retained a warmth from my early childhood toward him, culled from photos where I sat on his lap and he read to me, this little big-eyed girl with bangs and a ponytail. I remember the smell of his pipe tobacco and the way he cleared his throat before he spoke, especially if he’d been pondering for awhile. He wore Old Spice and I loved the fragrance and the shape and design of the bottles.
While alive, my dad was gone more than he was home, and there are great blank stretches where I don’t remember him at all. For having two parents, I was still a latchkey kid, coming home to emptiness most of the time. Later on, when he remarried, theological differences fenced us off from on another. We never reconciled those, but we overlooked them as he fell ill and death became a reality for both of us.
The preacher of the big church where they held his funeral spun stories of who he was—as if he even knew—mentioning me only among the children and stepchildren that Dad left behind. He talked about a person who had nothing to do with years of being my father. Someone who wasn’t always wrapped up in Jesus, who smoked a pipe and flew planes and sailed in on a carrier to us, with the smells of fuel and tar and salt water, and the cry of gulls above. That person wasn’t present in the church, and lives only in my heart now. So what would be the consolation of going to his grave? Maybe the tangible proof of his former existence, a spot where you can focus your thoughts and send them out to his soul, wherever it is? Perhaps that is the solace of a headstone, the place where you can take time and remember.
I don't have a home, even after all these years. I have places that I live and like, but even a decade living in the same place has not made it Home. For me, the old adage has become Truth: Home is where the heart is, and mine is scattered across the world with my siblings, my son's family, my grandchildren. Through choices and circumstances, I am an exile. I hope to not be one forever.
My mother wanted to be cremated. That meant that when she died, there would be no place to visit and ponder about her or chat. She would be scattered somewhere, and the thought pained me, it gave me grief and even a little terror. Gone is so gone. Whatever may be afterwards, you're still gone from this plane of existence. Feeble and aging as Mother was, at least she was a phone call away.
As it turned out, my mother's cremation—and the scattering of her ashes—is painful for me to contemplate, even now. She died in a nursing home after an eight-month descent into dementia via a series of vascular strokes. In the end, her brain forgot how to swallow. Such a simple function, but without it, she was doomed. She couldn't eat or drink or receive oral medication. Since she didn't wish her life to be artificially prolonged, the only decision was to keep her comfortable and let nature take its course. Dehydration. Not in a desert under a hot sun but in a bed in a cool room. Almost all of her children were there the last night, saying goodbye. I kissed her forehead and her eyes flickered open when I spoke to her, but I'm only hoping when I say she knew I was there. I hope she did. She died in the early morning before we could to her. But I knew when I kissed her goodbye the night before that I would never see her again.
Afterwards, it should have been a straightforward process to deliver her to the crematorium. But that's not what happened. The doctor who signed her death certificate at the nursing home made a mistake when noting down her meds and cause of death; this triggered an inquiry, and my mother's body was taken in a bag to the coroner's for medical exam. Everything was settled and the inquiry went away, but the result was that she went from the coroner's to the crematorium as a naked body in a bag, not as someone washed and dressed in a favorite outfit, as I always imagined.
Because of this hiccup and the time it took, I was already back home by the time Mom's body was released. We'd had a private celebration of her life and death at my brother's home, but no formal funeral—she didn't believe in them and thought they were a waste of time. She'd made no provisions, no will, she had nothing but a few personal possessions that we'd already taken care of before the nursing home. My mother never took care of business if she could avoid it.
But this last process was unsettling and irregular. At any rate, my brothers received her ashes. My sisters-in-law and I suggested that she be scattered from a boat into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps off the coast of Monterey or Carmel, which she loved.
Now, I love my brothers deeply; they are the best men I know, and I hope we walk this road for a long long time together. But their feelings toward Mom were a lot less explored and resolved than mine. Their anger was still fresh and simmering, breaking through the crust of civility like lava through the earth. Their reactions to her death were conflicted—and they are, all of them, (fiscally) practical men. So instead of paying for a boat that would take them out onto the ocean and scattering Mother's ashes there...they took her to a quiet local beach, said a prayer, waded in and dumped her just offshore. And guess what? Her ashes were caught and tumbled by the waves and slopped back up onto their legs and the beach where people walked and ran their dogs.
To their due, they were shocked. They expected the ashes to sink. I don't know why they didn't wait for a time when I could be there. I am unhappy that they wouldn't fork over some money to have a proper ceremony out to sea. My mother's decline and death were not what I would've predicted, and they stunned me; but her final disposal grieves me still. Not for the mingling of ash and sand and sea, but for the lack of beauty and ritual that we all deserve when our time comes.
I want to be cremated, too. But I've asked that it be in a lovely meadow or forest somewhere, under sun and shadows and birdsong. As much as I love the ocean, it is too deep and watery, too turbulent and volatile, for me to enjoy ending up there. It is, by its very nature, a place that does not rest.
The perfect place for a woman as restless as my mother.
Wrong Number
When I was 19 and looking for the Great Love of my Life to marry, my mother was still in the early days of her psychic powers. I consulted her like an oracle, often and eagerly. I pestered her for reviews of current crushes to see if they were worthy candidates. I had her look into the future to describe the man I’d finally choose to fall in love with. So she did. She described in great detail the big house I’d live in, the kind laughter of my husband, and the large, jeweled, heirloom ring he’d give me as an engagement present. It all came true—for my best friend Kathy. She married her boyfriend just a few months before I married mine, I was her maid of honor, and the details fit down to the sparkle in her (heirloom) ring.
Mom had seen correctly—but she’d misinterpreted. Both events happened around the same time, Kathy and I were close, and I'd even dated her husband before she fell in love with him. I was a member of the wedding party and I got to walk around in the big house of Mom's vision. So it's not surprising her wires got crossed. It was something she would hone over the years and get better at when dealing with clients. Perhaps less so with me, her daughter, for whom she had hopes and dreams; it was harder for her to "see" for her family with the same detachment and accuracy.
Romance is always a popular topic for prediction. It's probably what most women want to know about, whether they’re looking, suffering, escaping or embarking on. I've said before that, during the early years of my marriage, a dependency on my mother's visions put me in harm’s way. And it did.
My family lived in California at this point. So my husband and I, and our new baby, joined them there after he resigned from military life in the UK. The differences that existed between my husband and I in terms of values, cultures, and upbringing had already created cracks in our marriage. He didn't want to go to counseling and he was uncomfortable talking about it; I, patterning myself after my maternal role model, already had one foot out the door. Frankly, I'd had it there for a long time, only I was terrified to take the next step.
As my marriage crumbled, I sought desperately for my next Rescuer. So I consulted my longtime Oracle, and Mother described him in detail: tall, articulate, passionate, intelligent. With a very fast green car. Someone I had known in other lives. Someone with whom I would experience passion and romance. This eroded my marital commitment even further and gave me a fierce hope.
Though I could not imagine how I would meet such a man. Every day, my husband went to work and I stayed home with an infant—but with no car, very little money, and no social peers. We'd bought a modest house in a blue-collar neighborhood; to me, it may as well have been on the moon. (FYI, I had a strong intuition NOT to buy the house but it came too late and we were committed.) For friends I had the choice of a woman with a tribe of children and a smelly house full of sticky furniture or a shy, quiet Asian mother with a toddler girl, who was new to our culture. They were both lovely women in their own ways; it was me that was the fish out of water. I spent my time pushing my son's stroller to McDonald’s or bumping over parched, drought-stricken fields, soon to be developed. I felt like I was in hell. Where was I going to meet this prince? At the local golden arches? The cut-price supermarket? The dry, thorny meadows? You had to know where the princess lived before you could climb her tower and set her free. And I wasn’t likely to run into anyone.
My mother’s psychic ability seemed a lifeline to me in these unhappy times. She disliked my husband anyway, and was glad to predict a new love in my future. (He, in his turn, recognized the enemy when he saw her, so the feeling was mutual.) When I could escape to my family, she and I spent hours shopping, lunching, and spinning dreams about my life to come. She was totally sympathetic and indignant about my situation and my husband. And, miserable subordinate that I was, I told her everything. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, when shame flooded me, I confided in her—knowing she would never forget or forgive, even if I did. A hard word exchanged, the nasty mood of an hour or two, might pass and be resolved between me and my husband; we did have our happy moments, when we were kind to one another and tried to be committed to our child. But Mom would not move through that transition with us. She would keep a detailed emotional ledger on every complaint I made and she would hold a grudge forever.
I knew this. She had grudges against people who had been in their graves for decades. A comment from her mother-in-law, who thought Mom should get up and serve her husband regardless of Mom's pregnancy, was still brought up with indignant fury as fresh as the day it happened—despite the fact that this woman died when I was a child. Mother had a fierce tenacity toward any slight. So it was symptomatic of my toxic co-dependency on her, my immaturity, my desperate need for approval and for "being on her side" that I so inappropriately shared my unhappiness with her. Even when I knew both my husband and I would suffer for it.
The wisest thing my mother could have done would have been to tell me nothing about the future; to urge us both to counseling; to tell me that marriage is always hard work and that swapping one Rescuing Prince for another is just trading one set of problems for another. But how could she say any of that when she didn't know it herself? How surprising is it that I emulated my only role model, one who spent most of her life going from man to man, looking for just the right Rescuer to get her through life without fear or harm or want?
It's not healthy to be dreaming of a stranger while you're married to someone else. It's cowardly to wait for a rescuer instead of declaring your own freedom or, even better, working on the relationship you hold in your hands. I considered myself a smart person but that didn't mean I couldn't also be a foolish one.
One day the phone rang. When I answered it, there was a mix-up between the man who was calling and myself. He asked for me by my first name, then started trying to help me remember him. And I’ve lived so many lives, in so many places—well, I just suck at remembering names, faces, events, people, details. My head spins sometimes when two threads of the past come into juxtaposition. 'Don’t you remember?' my brother will say about a childhood event. 'We did such and such with so and so. It was important. You were there. You felt this way.' And I won’t remember any of it. So when I couldn't recall this guy on the phone, I didn't immediately conclude that he was a stranger. Eventually, we figured out that it was all a misunderstanding. He'd misdialed. We didn’t know each other at all. It was another girl of the same name. I hadn’t erased him from my overfilled memory banks, I’d just never known him.
And that's when the harm occurred. That's when the potent New Age brew of clairvoyance, reincarnation, karma and destiny led to a conclusion as flawed as Mother's prediction about my wedding. Maybe I’d known this man before, in another life. Maybe this was the universe delivering to my doorstep. Maybe this accident was really Fate stepping in, and I was talking to my Rescuer on the phone!
I'm going to digress for just a moment. Years earlier, when we moved to Virginia Beach, Mom had a client who was in love with a bus driver. During her reading, Mom gently probed the details of this relationship. The woman confided to her that she based it on the local paper's daily horoscope. Every day, she read her horoscope and applied an interpretation of it to her (quite imaginary) love relationship with the bus driver. Every day, he drove by her house. Well, yes...because that was his route! He'd never said anything to her, aside from the normal pleasantries as she entered the bus. The rest was all in her mind, distorted and made to fit, because of her belief in a newspaper horoscope. Mom and I shook our heads in amazement; how could a woman be so delusional?
I can tell you how because I did it myself.
I talked with this stranger on the phone. More than once. For hours. Laughing. Sharing. While my husband was at work. It wasn't long before he wanted to meet me. Wrapped in my dreams of longing, colored by my mother’s predictions, I agreed.
We discussed arrangements. But my stranger-prince wanted me to come to his apartment. We could swim, he said. Bring my suit. I wanted to meet at my mother’s home, around people I knew. Meet my family, I said. He didn’t like that. He demurred, urged, demanded. I started to tremble. I started to feel fear and to hear deception in his voice. He wanted me alone. He wanted sex. He wanted me away in his world, where no one could see. I argued with him and said no. I told him never to call again. I hung up, shaking.
I realized that I had almost allowed my illusions, my need for rescue, my dependence on prophecy, to potentially put me in the gravest harm. It’s ironic that my mother didn’t foresee this danger. But this was a situation I had NOT shared with her, and she was not always good at foreseeing danger in my life. Not even the greatest of them, which came later and which I've blogged about (read Didn't See It Coming).
Fortunately, I had never given the guy my address and this was years before Caller ID. He knew only my first name. He never called again and after a while, I started to feel safe. But I also felt sick because I'd been stupid, and only my common sense reasserting itself had helped me dodge a bullet.
Years later, Mom's prediction about the man in my future was proved right. I did meet a passionate man in a fast green car. Right in the hallway of her own home. Face to face, green eyes looking into my brown—and it was like lightning striking. Metaphorically, I jumped into his arms and demanded succor. My Prince at last! My rescuer!
In a way he was, but not as I imagined. This is life, not the Hallmark channel.
I divorced and married my new guy. In retrospect, I value the spiritual gifts he gave me, the journey we made together, for it was part of the learning and healing that led me to self-worth and independence. But I would pay the highest price for this "rescue." My first husband became an implacable enemy. As a result, I would lose most of my son’s childhood, the sweetest part of my motherhood. I would experience the greatest loss I have known in this life.
I would also learn that the only person who was going to rescue me was myself, and that was as hard and stoney a road as any storybook quest.
Mom had seen correctly—but she’d misinterpreted. Both events happened around the same time, Kathy and I were close, and I'd even dated her husband before she fell in love with him. I was a member of the wedding party and I got to walk around in the big house of Mom's vision. So it's not surprising her wires got crossed. It was something she would hone over the years and get better at when dealing with clients. Perhaps less so with me, her daughter, for whom she had hopes and dreams; it was harder for her to "see" for her family with the same detachment and accuracy.
Romance is always a popular topic for prediction. It's probably what most women want to know about, whether they’re looking, suffering, escaping or embarking on. I've said before that, during the early years of my marriage, a dependency on my mother's visions put me in harm’s way. And it did.
My family lived in California at this point. So my husband and I, and our new baby, joined them there after he resigned from military life in the UK. The differences that existed between my husband and I in terms of values, cultures, and upbringing had already created cracks in our marriage. He didn't want to go to counseling and he was uncomfortable talking about it; I, patterning myself after my maternal role model, already had one foot out the door. Frankly, I'd had it there for a long time, only I was terrified to take the next step.
As my marriage crumbled, I sought desperately for my next Rescuer. So I consulted my longtime Oracle, and Mother described him in detail: tall, articulate, passionate, intelligent. With a very fast green car. Someone I had known in other lives. Someone with whom I would experience passion and romance. This eroded my marital commitment even further and gave me a fierce hope.
Though I could not imagine how I would meet such a man. Every day, my husband went to work and I stayed home with an infant—but with no car, very little money, and no social peers. We'd bought a modest house in a blue-collar neighborhood; to me, it may as well have been on the moon. (FYI, I had a strong intuition NOT to buy the house but it came too late and we were committed.) For friends I had the choice of a woman with a tribe of children and a smelly house full of sticky furniture or a shy, quiet Asian mother with a toddler girl, who was new to our culture. They were both lovely women in their own ways; it was me that was the fish out of water. I spent my time pushing my son's stroller to McDonald’s or bumping over parched, drought-stricken fields, soon to be developed. I felt like I was in hell. Where was I going to meet this prince? At the local golden arches? The cut-price supermarket? The dry, thorny meadows? You had to know where the princess lived before you could climb her tower and set her free. And I wasn’t likely to run into anyone.
My mother’s psychic ability seemed a lifeline to me in these unhappy times. She disliked my husband anyway, and was glad to predict a new love in my future. (He, in his turn, recognized the enemy when he saw her, so the feeling was mutual.) When I could escape to my family, she and I spent hours shopping, lunching, and spinning dreams about my life to come. She was totally sympathetic and indignant about my situation and my husband. And, miserable subordinate that I was, I told her everything. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, when shame flooded me, I confided in her—knowing she would never forget or forgive, even if I did. A hard word exchanged, the nasty mood of an hour or two, might pass and be resolved between me and my husband; we did have our happy moments, when we were kind to one another and tried to be committed to our child. But Mom would not move through that transition with us. She would keep a detailed emotional ledger on every complaint I made and she would hold a grudge forever.
I knew this. She had grudges against people who had been in their graves for decades. A comment from her mother-in-law, who thought Mom should get up and serve her husband regardless of Mom's pregnancy, was still brought up with indignant fury as fresh as the day it happened—despite the fact that this woman died when I was a child. Mother had a fierce tenacity toward any slight. So it was symptomatic of my toxic co-dependency on her, my immaturity, my desperate need for approval and for "being on her side" that I so inappropriately shared my unhappiness with her. Even when I knew both my husband and I would suffer for it.
The wisest thing my mother could have done would have been to tell me nothing about the future; to urge us both to counseling; to tell me that marriage is always hard work and that swapping one Rescuing Prince for another is just trading one set of problems for another. But how could she say any of that when she didn't know it herself? How surprising is it that I emulated my only role model, one who spent most of her life going from man to man, looking for just the right Rescuer to get her through life without fear or harm or want?
It's not healthy to be dreaming of a stranger while you're married to someone else. It's cowardly to wait for a rescuer instead of declaring your own freedom or, even better, working on the relationship you hold in your hands. I considered myself a smart person but that didn't mean I couldn't also be a foolish one.
One day the phone rang. When I answered it, there was a mix-up between the man who was calling and myself. He asked for me by my first name, then started trying to help me remember him. And I’ve lived so many lives, in so many places—well, I just suck at remembering names, faces, events, people, details. My head spins sometimes when two threads of the past come into juxtaposition. 'Don’t you remember?' my brother will say about a childhood event. 'We did such and such with so and so. It was important. You were there. You felt this way.' And I won’t remember any of it. So when I couldn't recall this guy on the phone, I didn't immediately conclude that he was a stranger. Eventually, we figured out that it was all a misunderstanding. He'd misdialed. We didn’t know each other at all. It was another girl of the same name. I hadn’t erased him from my overfilled memory banks, I’d just never known him.
And that's when the harm occurred. That's when the potent New Age brew of clairvoyance, reincarnation, karma and destiny led to a conclusion as flawed as Mother's prediction about my wedding. Maybe I’d known this man before, in another life. Maybe this was the universe delivering to my doorstep. Maybe this accident was really Fate stepping in, and I was talking to my Rescuer on the phone!
I'm going to digress for just a moment. Years earlier, when we moved to Virginia Beach, Mom had a client who was in love with a bus driver. During her reading, Mom gently probed the details of this relationship. The woman confided to her that she based it on the local paper's daily horoscope. Every day, she read her horoscope and applied an interpretation of it to her (quite imaginary) love relationship with the bus driver. Every day, he drove by her house. Well, yes...because that was his route! He'd never said anything to her, aside from the normal pleasantries as she entered the bus. The rest was all in her mind, distorted and made to fit, because of her belief in a newspaper horoscope. Mom and I shook our heads in amazement; how could a woman be so delusional?
I can tell you how because I did it myself.
I talked with this stranger on the phone. More than once. For hours. Laughing. Sharing. While my husband was at work. It wasn't long before he wanted to meet me. Wrapped in my dreams of longing, colored by my mother’s predictions, I agreed.
We discussed arrangements. But my stranger-prince wanted me to come to his apartment. We could swim, he said. Bring my suit. I wanted to meet at my mother’s home, around people I knew. Meet my family, I said. He didn’t like that. He demurred, urged, demanded. I started to tremble. I started to feel fear and to hear deception in his voice. He wanted me alone. He wanted sex. He wanted me away in his world, where no one could see. I argued with him and said no. I told him never to call again. I hung up, shaking.
I realized that I had almost allowed my illusions, my need for rescue, my dependence on prophecy, to potentially put me in the gravest harm. It’s ironic that my mother didn’t foresee this danger. But this was a situation I had NOT shared with her, and she was not always good at foreseeing danger in my life. Not even the greatest of them, which came later and which I've blogged about (read Didn't See It Coming).
Fortunately, I had never given the guy my address and this was years before Caller ID. He knew only my first name. He never called again and after a while, I started to feel safe. But I also felt sick because I'd been stupid, and only my common sense reasserting itself had helped me dodge a bullet.
Years later, Mom's prediction about the man in my future was proved right. I did meet a passionate man in a fast green car. Right in the hallway of her own home. Face to face, green eyes looking into my brown—and it was like lightning striking. Metaphorically, I jumped into his arms and demanded succor. My Prince at last! My rescuer!
In a way he was, but not as I imagined. This is life, not the Hallmark channel.
I divorced and married my new guy. In retrospect, I value the spiritual gifts he gave me, the journey we made together, for it was part of the learning and healing that led me to self-worth and independence. But I would pay the highest price for this "rescue." My first husband became an implacable enemy. As a result, I would lose most of my son’s childhood, the sweetest part of my motherhood. I would experience the greatest loss I have known in this life.
I would also learn that the only person who was going to rescue me was myself, and that was as hard and stoney a road as any storybook quest.
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