Faces

What? Another picture of myself on this website? Am I turning the blog into some sort of vanity thing? Sorry. I promise I won't make a habit of it. But I came across this photo out of the blue today at the bottom of a tiny basket on my desk filled with paper clips, seashell bits, safety pins, fragments of notes, an old St. Christopher medal, a clay face (more about that in a moment), and a stray Lego piece.

The picture, taken in one of those old Woolworth photo booths on February 2, 1963, prompted an odd click of recognition and even protectiveness. This awkward, earnest girl is exactly the person I am today, at least inside.

And there's something else I found in the basket ––that clay face I mentioned. I wrote a blog post once on the randomness of what survives, the odd artifacts that somehow didn't get lost along the path to wherever we happen to be, and this is one of those. One afternoon in the early 1970s, my father and I walked along Main Street in East Islip, or maybe it was Bay Shore, I forget. This in itself was an unusual occurrence. Why were we there? And why just the two of us?

I think it was while I was beginning the messy process of leaving home, and perhaps I was visiting, and he had taken me for a drive. There was a crafts fair going on, and someone's craft was the making of these little bas-relief sculptures of faces. There was glue on the back of the thing, and a pin, now missing, sort of a spin on the Victorian brooch, like a cameo for the macramé age. In a most atypical show of interest, my father looked closely at the item, and I wonder now if maybe that little girl face reminded him of his own little girls, myself included. Then, much to my surprise, he bought it and handed it to me.

The other day, I was chopping and cooking and I suddenly remembered my dear father in the kitchen doing the same. I saw his face so clearly, and I missed him so much, that my heart sort of constricted for an instant. Oh yes. That again.

And by the way, you won't find much commentary in my blog about politics and current events -- it just isn't what I write about, even if it's often what I think about--but while I am recalling long-ago gestures of my father's, I want to confess that my own family of origin did not pay income taxes. Why? Because my father didn't earn enough money, though he worked like a slave right up to the end of his life at 67.  (He died with about $7 in his wallet and nothing in the bank.) 

He did, however, keep his children fed, clothed and dentally sound, and every one of us attained college degrees. He never felt "entitled"; he worked and aspired, and that's all he ever knew. So I just want to say that I found the recently released behind-the-scenes comments of a certain presidential candidate to be insulting and condescending on a lot of levels, but even in this very personal way. On the other hand, we have a clear, revealing glimpse of the values and world view of this man who would be president. Hmmm. There is a Thurston Howell III resemblance.

Meanwhile, there's another face, and this is one I never thought I'd post here. This is the face of someone who was in a coma less than a year ago, and for months after opening his eyes, he just lay there, mute and gazing into space. His brain is badly injured, and he has a long way to go, but he speaks now, and he can walk a bit. He makes new strides each day, and  has a lot of happy moments. For me, he is evidence that life is full of surprises, and we should never discount the possibility of unlikely outcomes, or even miraculous ones. (And sometimes you just have to accept the gifts that the present brings  instead of being overwhelmed by the big picture.)

Something else I found in the basket is that little snippet from Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality. Nice words to come upon. A good aside.

So...faces? I wanted to tell you also about the radiantly happy faces of the bride and groom at a wedding I went to at the zoo Saturday, and my cousin Luisa's shy smile in Naples, she who has never been in an airplane and never been outside of Italy, seeing my living room for the first time via a Skype call the other day, and my mother, contentedly staring up at Sonny and Cher impersonators in the dining hall of the assisted living facility despite the fact that she couldn't hear a sound...or maybe because of that.

And now that we've ventured into the assisted living facility, I wanted to mention an interview I heard on NPR with a man named Martin Bayne. At different points in his life, Bayne studied in a Benedictine monastery and a Zen Buddhist one. The teachings he acquired served him well when, at the age of 53, he went to live in an assisted living facility due to early-onset Parkinson's. He became an advocate for the elderly and a perceptive observer about life (and death) in these institutional settings, and his insights and observations are deeply moving. Here's a link to his interview if you're interested. He said many things that affected me, but here is one part that happened to be what I needed to hear:

I was reading a book one day [in the Benedectine monastery]...and it said the Buddha had learned how to turn the stream of compassion within. And I dropped to my knees and started to weep. It never occurred to me that one could turn the stream of compassion within. Sometime later I was on a plane to California to the Buddhist monastery to try and find out how does one do this. How does one love themselves? How does one give oneself the benefit of the doubt?

This is such a crucial question. I'm working on this idea of self-forgiveness, of moving on, of turning that stream of compassion within. I'd definitely sleep better and step lighter if I could abandon the regrets that haunt me and view myself with mercy.  

Which brings me back to that photo at the top, of the 12-year-old girl on Groundhog Day in 1963. I'm still her, and she means well, and deserves a break.