Tag: spirituality

Dear Badfish (again)

File:Crystal Pier.jpg

Crystal Pier at the end of Garnet Street in Pacific Beach…that is my sand, my original beach, my sunset place, my surfing destination, my first bikini debut (had to sneak so my Mom wouldn’t know), my first kiss (Russell Lanthorne), my second run-away-from-home spot (my first was to hike to the top of Loring Street Hill, 2 blocks from our house, so steep and high, I could see my entire world from there).

Related image

These memories came tidal-waving back, Badfish, when you mentioned the pier in a comment. Some of the pictures I found online were images as familiar to me as my own hands. (By the way, I am still learning how to find and use free photos on my blog.)

Memories, in order of significance: starting with…well, you can decide if they go most important to least, or the other way…

1) My bathing suit. I wore the aforementioned bikini on that beach.

I found my first bikini and bought it with babysitting money. A whopping $13.

It had to pass inspection by both my mother and grandmother.

 

Luckily, in this instance anyway, even at 15, I still had nothing “up top” to show for my age. As a matter of fact, my nick-name from some Junior Highschool bullies was Busty (a logical transition from my last name, Bessey), but chosen for me because I wasn’t.

Here’s how creative I was in my  pitiful to fit in.

It was camouflaged as a two piece bathing suit, with maximum coverage.

You could wear this one particular bathing suit in a modest, cover your belly button way, OR, your could pull on the drawstrings hidden on each side of the suit bottom, and Voila, decide exactly how itsy bitsy you wanted your Yellow Polka Dotted Bikini to be! (Mine was pink and green plaid.)

I opted for minimum coverage, pulling those secret drawstrings as tight as I could…once I got away from the house, that is. I was hoping, I think, to draw attention away from the also adjustable, Kleenex or Kotex stuffed bra top. (Yes, when I swam, it was a soggy mess until I switched to my cut up gym socks.)

2) Battle of the Surfer Girls and the Spider Babes. Picture a long flat sandy beach, about 15 stair-steps down the hill from the sidewalk, parking area and life guard tower. Me and about 15 other girls, with our surfboards, requisite bikinis on ultra tanned bodies and our long, straight, variously attained blond hair are gathered on the beach. We have heard the Spider Babes are coming today. I don’t think any of us actually know what that means but we are ready. Honestly, this could have been a competition over our hunky Surfer Brother’s or just a face off over make up style. Who knows?

But here they are, all lined up along the cliff overlooking our Crystal Pier Beach…only about 8 of them to our 15. They are dark haired, over clothed, pale skinned with ratted hair adding several inches to their height, and sporting exaggerated Twiggy eye make up with almost white lipstick.

Oh, and our foxy guys? They are here too. This is rare because the area south of Crystal Pier is insultingly named “the girl beach”, meaning long slow very flat waves, compared to Tourmaline canyon just a few blocks up the coast where the guys surf.

At the time I thought the boys were standing at a respectable distance, trusting us to handle ourselves, but now I bet it was that these adolescent boys were drawn to the possibility of witnessing females fighting.

What is that anyway?

3) Maynard’s–In those days, there was a tiny biker bar at the corner of Garnet street and Ocean Blvd. If you crossed Ocean your were ON Crystal Pier. The place was called Maynard’s. Amazingly good food, and they served meals 3 times a week for a quarter (25 cents) to minors (Hippies/surfers/street kids) out the back window.

Maynard’s in Pacific Beach, California

http://www.billpaxton.net/maynards.html

4) And last memory, for this post anyway, My favorite Runaway Place-As a kid, 7 to 13 years old, I would sneak away from my “oldest kid” duties at home and walk to the beach. Got in big trouble for that. Did it anyway.

As an adult (all of 19 years old) I ran away to that same beach again. This time it was after discovering I had become pregnant (my very first time out of the gate) and the love of my young life, had dumped me. At 5 months along, I ran away this time, with a fist full of hard-earned der weinerschnitzel and Fotomat dollars, to the cheapest motel I could find on Ocean Blvd. facing my same old beach.

I could only afford two nights and it was the longest 48 hours of my life, filled with anger, grief, confusion and terror. How would I ever raise a baby on my own working at Fotomat? I walked on the beach. I wrote in my diary. I watched the sun set. I ate at Maynard’s. (They actually fed me for free one night. I mean, what were they going to do? Turn away a crying, hungry, pregnant teenager??)

But my Crystal Pier Beach came through. I left knowing exactly what I needed to do.

What happened next is definitely for another day………

 

 

 

Calling the Dolphins

http://cetajournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Dolphins-Surfing.jpg

Even as I prepare to write this story, I feel resistance to the parts that will sound religious to some. This is not a story about God or prayer or any kind of absolute pious fervor.  This is a story about innocence, about hope and about One-ness.

There is a small skeptical part of me that still doesn’t believe my own experience. You can read this as fiction if it will help you immerse yourself in my tale. I want you to have had this encounter too. I want it for my children, my grandchildren. Actually, I want it for all of us…..before it’s too late.

 

For over twenty years, each Autumn I would head south from Washington State, to my old stomping (surfing) grounds in San Diego. My best friend and his family would stay in North County for eight weeks right on the beach, so I would join them.

When I started taking my yearly vacation with my adopted family, I established some lovely rituals for myself to maximize my time away from a booming Psychotherapy practice. Examples: assorted visits with friends and family, daily walks on the beach, shopping beach boutiques, the San Diego Zoo, favorite restaurants, beading, reading, and the dangerous, but no less addictive and strenuous activity of sunbathing…..this last, while my friend and his father would body surf out in front of our condo.

Many of these vacation customs were shared experiences, but there was one I kept completely to myself; Calling the Dolphins.

 

From the time I was a youngster in the seaside community of Pacific Beach, I had been absolutely in love with dolphins. My admiration for this amazing animal is not unique. Most people who have a spiritual bone in their bodies will never forget crossing paths with a dolphin, whether it is actual, in a movie, on a nature show, or in a book.

Being a very sensitive and deep thinking child, as well as being fairly dramatic in my expression, I elevated the dolphin to god-like status upon my very first meeting, at 9 years old, on a Marlin fishing trip with my neighbors. When I saw them at Sea World, I was only sixteen years old, and still pretty impressionable. I came away from that encounter believing that dolphins were magical messengers, with vital information somehow essential for the whole world.

They say intermittent positive re-enforcement is one of the most powerful ways to establish behavior change or to alter a belief, so over a span of years when I was still under the age of practical disbelief, I would stand in front of the vast Pacific Ocean, and “Call the Dolphins”. Two times, maybe three (out of a hundred) they showed up!

That’s all I needed. In my innocence (and maybe desperation to believe) I immediately took credit for these occurrences. It was proof that I was at one with all animals. They trusted me and readily flew, crawled or swam to me just like they would in a Disney movie; to Cinderella to help her dress for the ball, or to Snow White, joining her in song. I even confirmed my conviction with the occasional “summoned” butterfly, which would land on my arm, or once, on the tip of my nose.

As an adult, I have had the pleasure on many occasions to see Dolphins, in captivity, semi and literal, as well as in the wild. I also continued my lifelong practice of summoning these spectacular animals into my field of vision any time I was within sight of an ocean. Not surprisingly, I never successfully “called” them to me again. But hey, I am a believer, an optimist, so I keep up the custom, because, you just never know, right?

Anyway, it was a natural addition to my list of vacation traditions to “Call the Dolphins”.

Because we stayed in the same condo each year, it felt a lot like coming home every time I visited. Ours was right on the beach, the second of three stories, in the middle of three buildings, all looking out on the Pacific. Below the bottom story was a rock wall about eight feet high made of giant, stacked boulders…storm protectors, like those that are common in the many jetties and seawalls on the Southern California coastline.

Living in these rocks below our condo was a huge variety of critters…lizards, frogs, crabs, the occasional snake, rats, and, my personal favorite, this precious little creature that looked like a cross between a ground squirrel and a chipmunk. Spotting them was rare but each morning when they were most likely to appear, I parked myself on the sand close to the rocks and watched quietly…one or two would cautiously dart out of their rock formed caverns, and dash around, busily collecting food or nesting treasures.

https://naturalunseenhazards.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/800px-ca_ground_squirrel_pair-by-howcheng-wc.jpg

 

Each year, after a few days of my morning presence, these cuties seemed to get used to me, and would venture closer and closer in their search for bits and pieces of whatever it was that sustained them. This delightfully confirmed my long forgotten magical belief of Snow White powers to call animals to me.

The locals thought I was nuts because for them, these sweet Disney-like critters were simply annoying rodents….fear of disease or scat exposure for their children I suppose. They would set traps and spray poisonous deterrents while I was more likely to share my breakfast with them just to get a closer look.

I knew there must be many living in this 400 foot long rock wall, but I never saw more than two at a time.

One year I showed up for my annual retreat, having left Seattle immediately on the heels of a painful tragedy. I had received the phone call, literally as I was climbing into my taxi for my vacation flight. My dear former clients were losing their baby.

I had “attended” high risk childbirths for more than 20 years but with this one, we expected nothing unusual. I had agreed to this be at this birth more in the role of Doula for my long-time former clients, who had since become like family.

My vacation was immediately delayed, and when I finally did arrive, it took me several more days of grieving in deep seclusion before I had the wherewithal to re-establish any of my familiar vacation routines.

On my very first morning venturing tentatively out of the condo to see if my rock critters were around, and maybe, to “Call the Dolphins”, the event came to pass that I hope my story captures.

This particular morning was one that tourists to Southern California Beach Towns have no way of appreciating the way the locals can. These are the days when a certain quiet is observed by the natives…a kind of homage paid to those earliest morning hours, reverence shown in the silent, head-bowing greetings to each other on their beach walks. It highlights the natural peaceful atmosphere, even along this stretch of waterfront packed with condos, motels, and massive houses.

Maybe it’s because of a certain early-morning color of blue that happens only now and then. The locals, on their morning constitutions, or carrying their surfboards across the not yet warm sand, know it right away.  It’s going to be one of those days…the kind of day they wish they could hide from the hordes of innocent trespassers seeking the climate perfection regularly available in San Diego’s North County.

On this morning, I am sitting in my usual “rodent” welcoming spot, feeling like I am the first person awake in Carlsbad today…not a soul in sight as far as I can see up the beach to the North, and way to the South of me, only a few, hard core, first-wave-of-the-day surfers, already patiently bobbing out beyond the shore break.

I am lost in dark thoughts of what I had just experienced in Seattle. As I sit, waiting for the squirrels to show….I assume they won’t.

This thought drags me next to a crushing realization. Maybe there really are no miracles after all. Maybe we aren’t really connected to all other living things.

I spend several quietly angry, silently sobbing minutes, allowing myself to feel the depth of my bitter disappointment at what seems like a viciously unfair trick for God to play.

I mean, seriously. Those parents had to be told their baby was dead already, but that first-time Mom had to go through labor anyway!

This raw loss of faith in all things, has me looking at all the lies I think God told me as a kid…like letting me believe I could actually “call dolphins” to me at will.

My heart is racing as I type now.

What happens next is simple.

Very close by, one of the chipmunk-y things comes out of rocks, and then another one from a few feet away. They are standing, at attention, but then there is another, and another, and another, and another, and another. I swear, they are lining up. They are silent. They are all slightly angled north, but still facing the ocean.

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Startled out of my negative reverie, and remaining as motionless as possible, I do a quick count of these oddly behaving animals. There are 31 of them.

All of a sudden, they are making a noise I can only describe as a cross between the chirping sounds I have heard Meercats make and the low chatter you sometimes hear from crows.

As stunned as I am by their strange actions, I can’t stop myself from turning away from them to see what they are looking at. The surf has come up quite a bit…the waves long and high. Is that it?

These whacked out “squirrels” are vocalizing almost in unison now and I look way up the coastline to the north, out past the breakers, and see the familiar signs of a school of dolphins. Not unusual as they pass by here every morning, way out to sea, moving south parallel to the shore and then they head back to the north in the evening…..but barely visible to the unpracticed eye. My twice-daily view of them is usually through binoculars.

This large school is off course though, swimming at a definite south-eastern angle.

They appear to be aimed in my direction.

The crazy chipmunk chorus continues.

As the dolphin’s destination is becoming unmistakably clear, I see them sounding, joyfully leaping all the way out of the water, landing with a splash twice their own size, and there are many, many more than I had originally thought. Hundreds!!

The next thing I know they are riding the surf directly in front of my grieving spot on the sand.

And the squirrels have gone eerily silent.

A large, evenly breaking wave that is back lit by a late-in-the-day the setting sun will silhouette any solid objects in that wave….seaweed, fish, a dolphin, etc.

But this morning, the rising sun, still low in the Eastern sky, is shining directly on the face of the waves, revealing their contents with a spectacular clarity…like looking through clear, blown glass.

http://cetajournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Dolphins-Surfing.jpg

These dolphins are now right in front of me, and I am mesmerized. The waves are moving in extreme, TV-nature-show slow motion, and these sensuous, silky, silver mammals are performing a beautiful, playful ballet. There is no one else on the beach.

Is this just for me?

I can’t count them. There are way too many, and besides I can’t make numbers work in my head right now.

Groups of dolphins are suspended in the wave breaking closest to me, riding almost to shore. And now, their strange and miraculous detour completed, they are suddenly veering back out to sea at a perfect southwestern angle, eventually, their long lines, slowly disappearing from sight way down to the south of me.

It is a graceful, smooth, unbroken performance, cluster after cluster of dolphins, angling in, riding the wave in front of me and then angling back out to sea.

Barely in my awareness, and still silent, my squirrel friends, having completed something, are slipping back into their invisible hiding places in the rock wall.

 

At some point in this amazing experience, I remember having the fleeting thought that no one will ever believe this. Later, in a welcome validation of my reality, my best friend told me he had wandered out on our condo balcony just in time to see the tail end of this performance.

And, those early morning surfers I had seen earlier? They talked about this for days.

But I had already decided that the whole event had happened just for me.

Though it had come in the form my grief stricken, silent wail, maybe with some help from my chattering rodent friends, the Dolphins had heard my call……and they had, in fact, come to me.

Or maybe God is a chipmunk.

The Choice

Here is a disclaimer of sorts that I wrote when I was new at this blogging thing. (That’s a joke by the way as I am still incredibly new at this…)

 

Black and White, Light and Dark

I can tell a lot about my mood and general state of mind simply by what I choose to write about. I am absolutely blessed to have had a big enough range of experiences now (at 67 years old) that I can see how trauma and chaos will inevitably be balanced by joy and peace….if I can just wait long enough.

This is a disclaimer for my readers (all 4 or 5 of you now) so you can decide what you are in the mood for reading should you choose to check out my Blog on any given day.

Life has given me two very distinct kinds of experiences and I need to write about both….Consider yourself warned.

Thanks for reading either.

Kathie

 

I’ve included it here again because I want to share a darker story. Thanks in advance for reading this.

Her name is Sraddha

September 2015

Some of us learn pretty young how to make “the choice”.

It doesn’t take more than one event. If a violent act happens to you or even in your presence, you can stay…or you can leave. And when you can’t depart physically, you simply learn how to leave your body.

If it happens early enough in your life, you get hardwired for it…this “choice”.

I learned about it, a toddler, still in my crib. I got so good at leaving, I could look down and see what was happening, but I never had to feel it again.

Everyone learns their own version of this “choice”, not always because of some ordeal. But if yours came the way mine did, this ability to choose is not a bad skill to refine and practice. You must train yourself to use it ONLY by choice. You can’t let it control you, and believe me, it will. You must master it or you will use it to trash your most important relationships and you could walk through your life an enormous bundle of PTSD symptoms.

Ugly words will get attributed to your skill…”she can be so cold and distant” but you know exactly what you are doing…and why.

I’m glad now I developed this skill. In my professional life as a Psychotherapist, I can decide to never allow my feelings to be more important than those of my clients’. I can choose to be unconditionally present for them, even if their story is very close to my own.

But here’s the thing…You never get perfect at it. Sometimes things happen so fast, the Choice moment will slip right by, unnoticed.

That’s what happened just 21 days ago, on September 29th, the day before our long-planned dream vacation.

Let me go back there now, just to confirm for myself that I had a choice.

James and I are waiting at an intersection, the first car behind a metro bus. I’m driving. He is the passenger. The sound comes first, loud enough for me to look out to my left, expecting to see a car barreling toward us. Then, from my vantage point, I see a huge spray of sparkling glass, taller than the bus. From his side of the car, he sees what I would never recover from witnessing….a car, hit head on and pushed up onto the sidewalk…into several waiting pedestrians. James is out of the car in an instant to see who he can help. My emergency training kicks in…I put on the car’s flashers, turn off engine, grab my phone, and am out of the car, dialing 911…all in seconds.

But those same seconds are an eternity for the young mother who is pulling her toddler out of her completely crushed stroller….

As happens in emergencies, time loses all meaning so hours or maybe nanoseconds are flying by. The Mother is cradling her baby and wailing while she is frantically dialing the phone, again and again and again, reaching no one. She is clearly alone.

Having coached high risk childbirths for more than 30 years, I’ve seen way too many dead babies so I know her child is already gone. The first policeman on the scene knows it too, although he is performing CPR as if this is his own child. The firemen and the EMT’s who are arriving also know this little girl is dead.

But the Mom does not know yet.

This is where I give up my choice to protect myself. I can’t bear her being alone with this and though she never even knows it, I am standing with her. I plant myself right behind her as the CPR performing cop finally gives in to the truth. I stay here when the head EMT orders his team to move on to check for other victims. I remain while she is dialing her phone again. I am still here when her baby is covered with that awful death blanket. I am present when one cop tells everyone who is not hurt to move on but I say “No, I’m staying. She is alone here”. He thanks me. And I am here some infinite number of minutes later, when another cop is asking me if I saw the actual impact. When I say no, he tells me I now have to leave as this might be a crime scene. I don’t remember the walk back to the car.  I am still with that young mother.

As I am writing this, I realize I don’t know the ending. I could talk about how, afterwards, instead of finishing packing for our vacation, I frantically searched for more information on that mother, just so I could tell her she was not alone….that I had seen her daughter there. And that her baby girl did not have to make any Choice, to feel or not to. She was gone the instant that car smashed into her.

Or I could write how on the first days of our long awaited trip, I felt jerked back and forth between the sweet time we should be having and the auditory memories of the crash and that mother’s cries of anguish. Or I could describe the very kind detective who had to interview us by phone, apologizing for disturbing our beautiful train ride down to San Diego.

When you do not make the choice to protect yourself, whatever the horrendous event is, it happens to you also. I was that baby girl. I am that mother. And now, I need to recover also. All of us who were there that day need to grieve.

Then I remembered…I might be writing this story for more than just my own processing. I might want to share it, but I need a focus. I thought of the Moth Story Slam (open mic Story Telling competitions). The topic next month is “Guts”, but in re-reading this, I could not find anything that required guts on my part. Not switching into emergency mode…years of practice with that. Not standing with that Mother while the horrifying truth dawned on her. That was primal and any other mother would have done the same. It took no courage to take a huge bouquet of flowers back to the busy accident intersection later in the day. That was actually comforting to find a couple of others others had the same thought. A few flowers, some stuffed animals and a toy. A small sweet tribute to that small girl and her family.

But now, we’ve been home from our vacation for 3 days. Though the fateful intersection is on my regular driving trail, I have successfully dodged that corner…until today while out running errands.

So…I pulled off the road and gave myself a good talking to. I decided to find the “guts” to go there. You can handle it I told myself. They had, of course, cleaned up the glass and all that blood on the first day so what was I afraid of seeing?

Then I realized my biggest fear. What if there was no trace of the event, that sweet toddler and her devastated family already forgotten?

Finding the courage to do something like this can cost you such a painful flashback. Or it can pay off big time.

It is three weeks later and here’s what I found there.

 

 

 

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Various news stories:

(don’t know how to transfer this picture…)

 

Isabella Sturm, 4, tapes a drawing she made to a memorial wall at the corner where a 28-month-old toddler was killed when a two-car accident sent one of the vehicles over a curb and into her stroller. Isabella and her mother, Meghan, had been at the same corner only 5 minutes before the fatal accident.

 

From KIRO news…..When 2 year old Sraddha Panchakarla her mother Bhavya went for a walk on their Bellevue sidewalk Thursday morning, a violent collision between an SUV and a car would change their lives in an instant.

The impact sent the car onto the sidewalk, over the spot where Sraddha was riding in a stroller.

“Nobody imagined it that would happen this way,” said family friend Kishor Vadla. “They were just trying to cross this road.”

Vadla told KIRO 7 that Sraddha, an only child, was killed instantly. He said her parents were new to the U.S, having moved to Bellevue from India four months ago.

Siva Kumar is trying to comfort his friends who have been through the unthinkable.

“I can’t believe a daughter dying in the hands of her mother. That is the most saddest part no one should ever expect,” said Kumar.

Bellevue police say the toddler and her mother were on the sidewalk waiting to cross Bel-Red Road at 140th Ave Northeast. Bellevue police say two vehicles crashed in the intersection.

According to investigators, a Dodge Durango was heading southbound and a Nissan Sentra was heading northbound.

Police said on Wednesday the Sentra had a blinking yellow arrow, failed to yield, and turned in the Durango’s path. The vehicles then collided.

The Sentra left the road and went onto the sidewalk, hitting the stroller with the toddler inside.

Witnesses rushed to help the little girl and her mother. The first police officer gave the little girl CPR but her injuries were too severe to survive, according to police. The toddler’s 25-year-old mother was taken to the hospital to be treated for distress.

Bellevue police investigators spent hours talking to witnesses and taking measurements to find out what caused the crash. The drivers of both cars had minor injuries and were also taken to a hospital.

“This really seems to be, at this point, a horrible, tragic accident,” Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett said.

Tuesday night, as the memorial to little Sraddha grew, Vadla said the world lost an extremely smart little girl.

“She’s very bright, though she’s just two-and-a-half years old,” he said. “She speaks very fluently and you know she tells all the rhymes and all, though she’s just two-and-a-half years old, she is very bright, she’s very sharp.”

Now, Sraddha’s parents are surrounded by a community who wishes it could do more.

“We are all standing to support him financially, morally, (that) kind of thing,” Vadla said. “But loss is loss for him. Nobody can return that.”

A fundraising site for the family raised more than $20,000 in 17 hours.

Friends said Wednesday there was enough money to cover travel costs, so they shut down the GoFundMe account.

The family will take Sraddha back to India as soon as possible.

 

http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/baby-stroller-hit-killed/nnqqd/

 

Update: The flower wall in Sraddha’s honor grew and grew and remained right there for almost 3 months, apparently unprecedented in our area.

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Optimism for WPC

Optimistic

I can’t think of anything more optimistic than a Primrose! They are relentlessly cheerful! And they just assume they will be back next year!

I watch for the first batch to show up every year, at my grocery store (I know, I know) and this year they are already here!

10 for $10.00!! Pretty cheap so I always load up. You’d think that because they are a perennial I wouldn’t need to replenish my own garden each year. I don’t, but I can’t resist. Some of mine are 7 and 9 years old!

This year I had this idea.

I live on a very unusual, long dead end street that’s a country-like oasis in the middle of a ritzy city. (When I moved here over 40 years ago, there were only 2 other houses and we had horse acreage! Even though my address would imply money to some, I didn’t stand out on this street as a migrating “Hippie”.)

Of course, our lane has built up over the years but we have scored big-time in wonderful neighbors. Everyone knows everyone and we all watch out for each other.

We just lost one of our dear neighbors a few days ago, an unexpected heart attack. The funeral is tomorrow. So tonight, after everyone is down for the night, I am going to plant a Primrose in every yard in honor of our sweet neighbor. They’ll probably figure out it was me because most of them know how obsessed I am with these hearty little flowers, but I don’t care. I like my reputation of being the oldest (and strangest) neighbor on our street.

Only problem is, we all have pneumonia in our house right now, so I may have to elicit some outside help for my clandestine operation. I’m still a little weak, but according to Badfish, my snot color is telling me I’m on the mend. https://badfish2.wordpress.com/

(By the way, if you haven’t read him, he’s wonderful!)

In honor of my neighbor Arul, one of the more kind people I’ve known, I give you the Primrose (and remind you of the story of Johnny Appleseed).

 

 

Dr. Martin Luther King: part 2

Coming out of Hiding

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Miles College, Fairfield, AL

We were quickly ushered into the basement of the home belonging to the Pastor of the community’s largest church…..

We were guarded, the ten of us, in a dry, clean enough, cramped basement (think 1950’s rumpus room.) I think we knew that we were being protected but they fed and watered us like terrified prisoners, completely confused about our crimes.

scan0012 (2)Safe House

We finally got word from our VISTA Project Supervisor through our host, the Pastor. The relayed message was that we were free to go back to our separate housings now, but, if we felt compelled to participate in the rumored Memorial March to Birmingham’s city hall in honor of the passing of Dr. King, we could not, in any way, identify ourselves with or make reference to VISTA. Like in the then popular TV series, we were given the Mission Impossible disclaimer “The director will disavow any knowledge of….” (This was also the nick name for our particular VISTA Project.)

In other words, we could join the memorial but we would be completely on our own….and it would be dangerous.

The danger, as well as the denunciation from our project leaders was no surprise. We had been thoroughly briefed in our intense, 6 week, training in Atlanta before we came here. We were endlessly briefed about how to keep our VISTA project from getting thrown out of Alabama.

We had even role played many scenarios about how to stay safe and talk our way out of a variety of situations. For example, if the locals (especially the authorities) found any of us alone with a Black person, even another “volunteer” who happened to be Black, we had very specific things we were coached to say by way of locally acceptable excuses for such abhorrent behavior. (It wasn’t until years later I realized all those exercises for our safety were about white people hurting us, especially police. We were embedded in a middle class, again relatively speaking, all Black college town, and it didn’t occur to anyone that we might be in danger from the people we were there to help…)

All those warnings didn’t matter now though. Many of us had been drawn here in the first place, by the work of Dr. King. He was certainly my number one teacher. We were devastated.

Before King’s assassination, way back on my third day in Fairfield, I had ventured out from our tiny shared living quarters to the little mom and pop grocery store across the street from the college. I was surprised to see a pretty young white women about my age shopping there. I had arrogantly assumed that we VISTA’s were the only Caucasians in town. She came right up to me and looked me straight in the eyes. She said she was an exchange student from a Christian College up North. She had heard we were coming. She knew why we were in town. With a heartbroken expression, she warned me about something that, in my intense idealism, I defensively could not comprehend. All she said was, “No matter how badly you want to, you will never be black.” Then she turned and like a wizened old woman, very slowly walked out.

Her words came back to me now as we prepared to march, but I was a True Believer. I was going to stand up for ending racism in a non-violent way. I was not afraid. Dr. King was as much my loss as anyone’s. Nothing could have held me back. (Ah, the idealistic mindset of a 19 year old. Hmm, isn’t that the age we send our youth to war?)

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Gathering for the March

So off we went, to march with our Black Brothers and Sisters, fully expecting that we might die for our cause that day. It is 6 miles from Fairfield to Birmingham. I was never afraid, even as we passed through the rougher parts of town, where on one corner, there were groups of Blacks shaking chains and brandishing knives at us and on the next corner, Whites yelling out the standard “nigger lover” threats. I felt hated by all but motivated by a much bigger force cursing through me. I just kept marching and I sang until my voice was completely gone….Amazing Grace and We Shall Overcome….over and over and over until we arrived at the courthouse. I have no words to describe the feeling of blissful oneness and pure honesty I felt that day.

I heard later there were 10,000 of us, and an estimated 10 % were white. As the Mayor of Birmingham addressed the crowd, he actually choked up when he said something like Dr. “King was an honorable enough Negro. Just look how he brought our white people and the Negroes together today”, a sight this mayor said he never thought he’d live to see in his city.

I will never forget that day, that feeling of raw, unconditional hope…the uncomplicated, indisputable knowledge of being connected to all of humankind. It became the bedrock of my life’s work as a Psychotherapist, working with the most traumatized and shortchanged of people. My mission in life continues to be finding and providing proof to people that two seemingly opposing truths can co-exist, even complement and enhance each other….like what I witnessed that day on the lawn outside the court house in Birmingham. Blacks and Whites hated each other but they came together, united in their grief over Dr. King.

 

My youthful, ferocious belief in the possible end of bigotry dulled over the next few years, to the point that I almost gave it up. I hid my idealistic conviction even from my closest people. But that tiny flame would still flicker when I would see something normal and lovely and equal happening between and among the races.

And it will never blow out completely. I’ll fan that flame until the day I die. Here’s why.

All those years ago in Fairfield, the other “job” we had as Vista Volunteers was to teach A.B.E. (Adult Basic Education) in night school at the college. My favorite student was an 80 year old preacher who was learning to read his bible. He said before he died, he just wanted to be able to actually “read God’s words, not just memberize ’em”. One night he told me that his grandfather had been a slave in Birmingham and that his grandchildren now lived in a rat town housing project on the same property where his grandfather used to pick cotton. My sweet Pastor shook his head sadly and said, “I always prayed my grand chillen would get to see the true end of slavery but they still slaves to the white man, living under his thumb. You young. Maybe you grand chillen get to see it.”

Well, not that long ago, my two grandsons got a glimpse. I first started writing this on January 21st, 2009, the day the United States of America elected Obama as their 44th and my “grand chillen” have an un-erasable Black President as part of their history.

Those boys are 10 and 12 years old now, and their grandmother is committed to teaching them about the symbolism of Martin Luther King and Barack Obama and the hard work it took all of us to get even this far.

Flame officially fanned!

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Fierce Idealist! April 2nd, 1968

 

In Honor of Dr. King

 

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This framed postcard sits on my desk. I like to think he is teaching this child my favorite quote…

“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

 

 

My First Public Speaking Experience

(This is NOT intended as a political post)

Try to put yourself in my shoes….

I am standing on a big stage, pretending with all my might that I am somehow hidden behind the podium. I am looking out over a huge, newly built auditorium. The house is full. I am one of only ten white people in this entire gathering. My white-ness highlighted by my San Diego sun bleached long, straight hair. I am at Miles College just outside Birmingham in Fairfield, Alabama. There is a blurry sea of faces, made up of a few hundred black students, teachers and local residents. They are silent, staring at me expectantly, although from my nineteen year old, extremely white perspective, I see them as glaring skeptically.

There are nine other nervous VISTA Volunteers up here on this stage with me. We are supposed to speak to this audience. Our task? To describe our noble purpose for moving into this all Black suburb. (I am actually, here to justify my well-intentioned, but naïvely condescending intrusion into their community.)

Right this minute though, I am not thinking about race. I am thinking about stage fright. I am wondering how in the world I ended up here? How am I supposed to open my mouth, let alone speak coherently in front of all these people? Me, who, completely terrified just a couple of years before, risked a failing grade in high school English by skipping school, rather than getting up in front of Mrs. Little’s class to read a book report out loud.

I remind myself, I am here because I am “called”. But, I am seriously questioning my sanity on this night. I mean really…what was I thinking???

And why in the hell am I the first speaker?

It is just after 6 PM on April 4th, 1968.

I had learned about more in Mrs. Little’s English class than just book reports. At Natchez-Adams County High School in the state of Mississippi, 1964-66, I also learned about an attitude, a fiercely held and fought for belief system I could never have imagined as I was growing up on the blissful beaches of Southern California with my colorblind friends. (Well, some of them DID see shades of brown in our Chicano friends and neighbors…a mystery to me though.)

When I first arrived in Natchez, Rebel Flags flying everywhere, there was a welcoming banner across the main street downtown that proudly announced,

“Where the Old South still lives….and ALWAYS WILL”

They were serious. There wasn’t a single black student in my school. It was still in the days of “colored” and “white” drinking fountains, two separate movie theaters, and the one that always got to me was Men’s, Women’s and “Colored” restrooms in the gas stations.

Attending high school in Natchez definitely changed the direction of my life. My ears were pricked, my eyes ripped opened, and my heart was bitch-slapped into an adult reality my first day there.

Granted, the seeds for my shift from a Beach Boys “California Girl” to a Bob Dylan/Joan Baez devotee had been planted a couple of years earlier, but I had no context for the significance of that first wake up call.

In the summer of 1963, my aunt and uncle, “Yankees” from up North, asked me to join them on a road trip down Dylan’s Highway 61. They were moving from Chicago to Natchez and they wanted my teenage babysitting expertise to keep my youngest cousin entertained on the long journey. Somewhere toward the end of that trip, we found ourselves delayed by long lines of Black people on foot, trudging along at a snail’s pace, clogging the roadway in both directions. I now believe it was probably a Voter’s Registration march led by Dr. Martin Luther King, with Joan Baez at his side, but I have not been able to confirm that.

All I know for sure is that I had the miraculous experience of somehow ending up at the front of those bedraggled columns and getting to shake hands with Dr. King himself. I can’t remember a single word spoken though I know he said something to me. But I can still see his kind eyes and feel his hand, grown-up shaking my own, and his other hand patting the back of my wrist.

At the time, other than sensing its magnitude, I had no clue what this moment would mean to me for the rest of my life. That the marchers were primarily Black simply did not register with me. I was only twelve years old. But the combination of the fortuitous intersection with that march, and the terrifying and enlightening culture shock I would experience three years later when I ended up in living in Natchez, has continued to influence my life today.

Back on the stage at the Miles College Auditorium……..

I came here tonight determined to somehow cross the racial barrier and reach “these people”. Surely they will see that I am the exception to their assumptions about white people. I understood their plight. I had lived in Natchez, Mississippi for God’s sake. In Mr. Whittington’s Geometry class in my junior year, I sat behind the son of the Grand Dragon of the KKK. (He told me I’d better “behave”.) I saw a cross burned in a yard for a simple crime committed by a five year old boy. He was seen kissing the family’s maid out in their driveway. I was personally taunted and threatened because someone got a hold of my Mission Bay High School yearbook from San Diego and discovered an autograph from my friend, our exchange student from Columbia, right next to the picture of his coal black face.

Surely they can see that I am NOT RACIST, that I understand…..

VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) founded by Sergeant Shriver in the 1960’s, was like a domestic Peace Corps. Our project in Fairfield was the very first VISTA project allowed into Alabama, the last state to hold out. Our stated purpose here in Fairfield was “Community Education and Relations”. And though were not allowed to acknowledge it, we all knew we were really covert Civil Rights workers.

Our project was based at and around Miles College. My individually designed mission was to set up much needed free day care centers in the plethora of local churches in this small suburb. The local norm for the many fatherless families was that the older siblings “retired” from school at about age 10 or 11 in order to stay home to care for the younger ones so their Mothers could go to work.

My hands are shaking so much the podium is rattling. Gripping my scrawled notes, I begin my “speech”. (I wish I still had those notes. They were the first self-initiated writing I ever did. I remember they were written on the insides of hoarded and flattened out envelopes. I can still see those scraps of twice-used paper swirling around and disappearing into the panicked chaos that happened 7 minutes into my allotted 10 for speaking.)

I am breathing fast and instinctively I know I have to come up with something I have in common with my listeners that has nothing to do with race. I try for light hearted camaraderie as a fellow struggling student, and my comment is met with a deafening stillness. I try a couple of over-rehearsed jokes. They fall flat. Next, I find myself blurting out a rude but innocent question. I say something about the confusion I had been experiencing in my attempts to set up my Day Care Centers.

“I am having such a hard time distinguishing between the teenage girls who stay home from school to baby sit and their extremely young looking Mothers. How do y’all have so many kids and still look so dang young?”

This gets an immediate huge and lasting laugh and I think “Whew! Thank God for women and our universal vanity!” (I did not realize for years what they were probably reacting to. Those women I referred to actually WERE as young as they looked. Many WERE teenagers and some of those mothers already had five or six kids by the time they were in their early twenties.)

That misinterpreted amusement is barely dying down when, from the back of the auditorium, a large black woman, huge breasts bouncing (funny the things we remember just prior to a disaster) comes running down the aisle, screaming, high pitched and piercing  “Dr. King’s been shot! Dr. King’s been shot!”

Instantly, I am in the midst of pandemonium.

 Only fleeting snapshots of the next little while are clear in my memory…..

Shock, disbelief on black faces, people falling to their knees in the isles, hands raised in hopeful prayer, some trying frantically to get out, scrambling over the backs of their row-chairs, still others forming instant group hugs with those around them.  

And the sounds…I will never forget the primal wailing and soulful sobbing, and lots of swearing.

The most haunting of all the pictures I retain, is of several scattered people who were totally still with completely resigned and knowing expressions, flat affect, as if they had been waiting for this inevitable moment….

Up on the stage I go calm. (Our VISTA “Boot Camp” training as well as a lifetime of practice in delaying my own emotional reaction to dramatic things both serve me well in this moment.)

Before my audience is even finished responding to the announcement, the ten of us, wearing our shocked and terrified bright white faces, are whisked off the stage and led through previously unknown darkened hallways, like secret tunnels behind the auditorium. We are shoved into two waiting cars that drive us to a large home in the wealthy (this being a relative term) neighborhood. We were quickly ushered into the basement of the home belonging to the Pastor of the community’s largest church.

We stayed huddled there for three days.

Next Chapter: Coming out of Hiding

Take us to school

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On our Train Trip, we went to the Organic Farmer’s Market, held each Saturday at this Encinitas (CA.) elementary school. The produce and various treats, and the crafts were all amazing but what really stopped me in my tracks was this wall. Each square (or tile) was created by a student in that year’s graduating class.

Encinitas has an interesting Mosaic history. My favorite story is a community battle over a piece of art deemed “graffiti” (because it was illegally installed). Here’s an article about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfing_Madonna