On a day trip to the coast, my husband and I found ourselves in atypical traffic driving over the mountain that leads out of our town.
A pick up was ahead of us, tailgating a large camper that was slowly navigating the sinewy curves down the mountain as it towed a car behind it.
The pick up was persistent; swerving into the opposite lane around blind turns, and riding the camper way too close.
At first Casey and I were annoyed, and then alarmed, and finally furious.
I wanted to honk at the tailgater, holler out our window at him, pull him over and give it to him, take down his license plate and call the police. (We couldn’t see the plates.)
I began fantasizing revenge.
This was my red flag.
May he feel safe. May he feel at ease. May he feel in control…
To the offering of Metta, I added a cooling breath, rolling my tongue, and breathing through it like a straw.
Within moments, I felt better.
Did he slow too?
Soon we were at the bottom of the mountain and the camper turned off the highway.
I thought about my voice and politics.
Alleviating or exacerbating?
To whom am I paying attention?
To what?
And how might I be most helpful given the circumstance of each situation?
Isn’t it funny to arrive somewhere, like the age of 50, straining toward your life’s purpose, only to discover that you’ve been living it all along.
Kaleidoscope.
This is how I describe these moments.
The same material, re-arranged, in new perspectives, lending radical appreciation and awe–of what was always there–but never noticed or forgotten or not quite recognized in the same way before.
Sometimes the harvest is elusive, like this past winter, when I wrote through an entire draft of a memoir, only to discover that it wasn’t ripe.
Or this past spring when I created a series of mini-retreats, each of which was cancelled due to lack of enrollment.
Other times the harvest just falls into place, like this summer, when I used the vacant space left open by the cancelled retreats to create an online writing journey–which filled almost effortlessly–and not only bore sweet fruit, but also pointed me to that which I have always been pointed (without fully realizing it): Voice.
Expressing mine, enjoying others, supporting you with yours.
Kaleidoscope.
When I look onto my life and its jumble of colors and choices, I only have to turn my attention a bit this way (on the inside) and a bit that way (on the outside) to find this pattern of voice.
From this vantage point, I don’t know if the new endeavor will bear fruit, I only know that my job is to twist and to turn and to appreciate and to “ooh” and to “ahh…,” And then to shake it up again, and start all over…
There were always great expectations for me–as the treasured first born of two proud families.
However my mother said that I was always rather average. I wasn’t able to potty train at 6 months–despite the swan seat my Nana bought me, and I didn’t walk early either–despite the pretzel gold fish that the same Nana used to entice me.
Talking may have been the exception–which they soon came to regret.
“Chatterbox,” my grandfather chided. “Please stop talking for one moment,” my mother begged.
And yet, they continued to dole out expectations. “You are the oldest grand daughter Kelly, you must set a good example for everyone else.”
“You are my oldest niece Kelly, your cousins all look up to you.”
“You are our oldest daughter, Kelly, your sisters emulate you.”
Boucher, detail, visipix.com
Dressed in fancy clothes, telling everyone what to do, my mother says I was thirty by age two. No wonder.
“Dinnertime was particularly stressful,” she said, helping me understand why I had become so bossy, and why I didn’t like sit down meals.
“There were so many aunts and uncles and grandparents telling you what to do that it gave ME a stomach ache,” she confessed.
Peas were to be eaten with mash potatoes.
Steaks were to be cut like so.
Elbows belonged off the table.
Young ladies didn’t chew like cows.
It wasn’t until my late-twenties that I could relax at the table again. Meals that had once been places of instruction and correction–later became places of argument. Often I was sent from the table to my room.
Unless it was a table of younger children to whom I was to attend. Then afterward, my grandmother would help me with my French.
“I always wanted to be a translator at the UN,” she said, “but I never finished college.”
She was married with a new baby before graduation. Four more babies followed, and a life at home–without the satisfaction of a career of her own.
Klimt, visipix.com
I felt the weight of her expectations–not just for my life–but for the life she never led. She had so many hopes for me, but then she died before I got to realize a one.
Thus my life was cloaked in great expectations–which served to nurture and smother me.
When faced with an unwanted pregnancy at 16, there was no one I could tell.
There was no room in the mythology of “Kelly” to allow for such disgrace.
Though my boyfriend suggested marriage, I firmly declined, keeping my eye on college and a future of travel. I refused to let anything get in the way of claiming the life that my grandmother lost.
By my late teens, the great expectations were self-propelling–and out of control. I became so driven that I was tortured by headaches on weekends, not knowing how to slow down–without being sick.
During summer “vacation,” I managed my uncle’s restaurant, working a hundred hours a week; and when I returned to school and was diagnosed with monoucleosis, I insisted on going to classes and condemned myself for letting my grades slip below straight A’s.
My professors questioned my lagging performance, but it never occurred to me to ask for help or exception. My father was a doctor, as was his father, and his father; we knew how to be tough; coddling was for wimps.
My father actually knew everything, especially about me, and I longed to hear his latest proclamation of success. More often, it was criticism: “Hold in your stomach, Kelly,” he said, and so I did. “Your hair looks much better straight,” he said, and so I removed the curls. “You need some color,” he said, and so I spent some more time outside. “You need to loose weight,” he said, and so I did, until he told me that I was too thin.
Friedrich, visipix.com
No matter what I did or how I looked, I could never reach his moving target of approval. And once my parents divorced and he remarried, he quickly lost interest in me altogether.
For a long time, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Our last remaining connections were grades, but by the time I graduated from college, I had to convince him to attend the award ceremony where I was honored for being at the top of my department. (In the end, he skipped it for another event.)
Despite my success at school, my relatives were disappointed that I hadn’t become a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant. They had expected so much of me.
I made up for it in the classroom. At the end of each day, I would tutor and run student counsel meetings and volunteer as a mentor. On vacation, I taught summer school and tutored some more. I couldn’t get enough of work. “Notice me. I’m important,” I seemed to say.
I was afraid of silence. I filled it with everything I could–with television or radio or more often, people; Otherwise, I’d hear the noises in my head–the ones that told me what to do and how to do it better.
“Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly,” they’d echo…
After two miscarriages, my doctor urged me to slow down and consider taking some time off. This terrified me–but not as much as never being a mother.
Modhersohn, visipix.com
What followed was a decade of growth and pruning and slowing down–so much so that I became afraid of noise, and of work–and of the return of the Great Expectations–mine and theirs.
I spent another handful of years waffling between retreat and engagement, confused about who I was and what I wanted and how to know either.
Which brings me to today, where I sit in a quiet house enjoying the silence, all the while holding GREAT EXPECTATIONS for a new role to which I aspire.
This is a place that I could bring my grandmother’s atlas and claim her lost hopes. This is a place where I can feed that part of me who loves the world–not in the driven backpacking days of my college years–but with the wisdom and heart of a mother.
Two Owls Calling 