Soft Lines

 

It hadn’t been a deliberate stop in front of the mirror. As with most women of her age, Mary did not regard the mirror as a friend requiring frequent visits. But a chance glance this morning had surprised her. Could it be that her worsening cataracts were causing those dreadful lines on her face to appear softer?

Mary chuckled to herself as she realized that the combination created by those two nasty vestiges of old age could in fact be a positive one.

Soft lines…

So much of her life had been shaped by “soft.” No sharp edges permitted. Malleable to the point of having very little internal structure at all, she made life easy for those in her life. Non-argumentative, non-judgmental, Mary was a beige person – and a happy beige person at that. The non-strident ambiance of her home was gift to herself as well as to her family or travelers who enjoyed a winter weekend respite in her home.

It was in so many ways a perfect pairing with her great love, a man with whom she had lived nearly 53 years.  Jim had died from a sudden fatal heart attack just two weeks before their celebration of that milestone. He was a man who had loved to take care of his wife and she was a wife who gratefully accepted that attention. Others of her generation had made different sorts of decisions. She had entered womanhood at a time when women were demanding equal rights, burning their bras, and rebuking the men who held doors open for them. Mary lived on the cusp of that revolution, but she had chosen not to join.

Now, she was alone.

Well, not really alone. The three sons produced in their marriage each lived less than an hour from her condominium. She recognized and understood their current desire to “fix” her life and recalled she had similarly attempted to “mother” each of them to a better life.  But now, that solicitous attitude modeled by her husband felt uncomfortable and controlling when taken on by her children.

Visits had become agenda-filled. Each child providing a list of what she should be doing differently. “Walk every day.” “Television isn’t exercising your mind. Why don’t I get you some stimulating reading material instead?” “Do you think two glasses of wine every evening is a good idea?” “Did you do your leg strengthening exercises this morning?”

Each one a well-meaning suggestion designed to improve her life they thought. But there was the problem. Living a life no longer interested her. Not depressed really, she was just ready for the next big event. Like a party guest who had enjoyed the experience but now sensed it was time to bid farewell, she had picked up her purse and was standing by the door, ready to leave.

Those sons (who loved her) were nagging her to stay. “We need you,” they chorused, but each of them knew that the needing time was long past. She’d had little experience in “standing tall” in her eighty-two years. No necessity for that in the nurtured existence she had enjoyed. But now she wanted to confront her children and inform them that she was the master of her fate, the captain of her soul. A grayed head and a form leaning forward, eyes that strained to see and ears that heard imperfectly. She had not one of the outward signs of a strong woman. Was there enough mettle inside?

Her intentions should not be misunderstood. No jumping off a cliff or swallowing pills on her agenda. It was more a plan to not prioritize swallowing her multicolored assortment of pills. Creative avoidance of prolonging her life. Her head and her heart had already moved on and it felt appropriate that her body join them in what she knew to be a better place.

Memories from her childhood of that perfect place awaiting her would surprise her in the midst of an ordinary day. “Would there be swings?” she had wondered as a six year old. Assured by a loving first grade teacher that there would indeed be swings Mary began early to imagine her arrival. Later, religion lessons promised a place of no more pain, freedom from a body which, while necessary, involved a lot of work.  Lately, her day-timer seemed peppered with medical appointments; not many parties, just all those appointments. If she had a body in the next life, she was sure it wouldn’t require eyeglasses, monthly blood draws or dental check-ups.

The reunions that she imagined called to her as well, her mother and her father, two of her sisters; so many friends from her long and happy life had completed their journeys ahead of her.

Most of all she imagined Jim. Sometimes he seemed to her just outside the door, waiting for her to walk through and join him. Jim, who could always find her glasses when they wandered off and settled in some strange location.  Jim, who strove to protect her from reckless drivers, aggressive dogs, and liberal politicians. Jim, who called her “Beauty” years after the world would deem her such.

She turned to look and once again, she caught her own image in the mirror. Yes, those lines did appear softer. But she noticed something else this time. She noticed  she was smiling.

.

 

 

Some of the wonderful women in my Wise Women Write group. Though each is a special woman, we do not normally wear crowns.

 

CHRISTMAS IN COUNTERPOINT

 

I never send Christmas cards.  My reaching out to the big family and friends will happen.  It just might occur on the Fourth of July or Easter, the first day of spring or Thanksgiving.  I send my reach-out epistle pretty religiously but never allow it to be caught in the Christmas plethora of greetings.  I pride myself on those letters and I don’t want them ending up in the “groan” pile.  When a newsletter-style greeting is sent and received in February or July, it is more likely to be read, relished, and even responded to by the recipients.

Feeling very strongly that Jesus was not born to improve the last quarter fiscal reports of major retailers, I don’t Christmas shop.  I pretty much have a mall-free Christmas.  For the larger widespread family, I may bake bread, or make wreaths, or aprons for little children, or bookends from bread dough.  But gifts that can be purchased, wrapped, opened and then returned to a store – I just don’t do that.  The men in my life (There are four of them.) want to avoid malls under any circumstance so the Jesus rationale may not be their primary rationale.  They just don’t like to shop. What our family of five has done for many years is to give “days.”  Someone takes the family out for lunch and a movie.  Someone treats for breakfast and a shopping trip to the bookstore.  Someone might organize and pay for a family portrait. 

And don’t look for red and green around my house at Christmas.  I think our holiday house looks so beautiful. But beautiful in bright pink, purple, blue and gold.  No moral imperative was involved in this choice; I just don’t like red and green.  And the ornaments, those bright shiny balls reflecting the lights on the tree?  I don’t have any of those either.  I do have a whole flock of birds, each bird gold, of various sizes and poses, nesting within the branches.  In addition I have flowers – large poinsettias in shades of rose and wine, and of course pinecones to provide seed for the birds.  Gold birds would obviously search for seeds in gold pinecones.

Of course I bake for Christmas.  Never have made a fruitcake however.  I can’t imagine why I would.  I don’t make Christmas cookies either and suspect this has something to do with sons who never showed much enthusiasm when I suggested we bake Christmas cookies together.  But zucchini bread will appear on our table this Christmas morning just like it has every year for a long, long time.

So the McCulloughs do have traditions, just not traditional tradition.  Bill will certainly light a fire Christmas morning. Colin, who was an impoverished student and is now an equally poor journalist, will once again give his father a big Hershey bar.  Casey, our environmentalist son, will continue to wrap any gifts he gives in newspaper. I’ll prepare a lovely table in the dining room with as much gold sparkle as I can muster.  At dinner that evening, Michael will surely (with sarcasm) once again make his annual proclamation, “This is the best Christmas ever!” 

And who knows?  He just might be right.

 

 

 

STEVE AND ME

 Maryann McCullough

 

As the whole world was grieving the loss of Steve Jobs, I found myself doing an examination of conscience – my teacher conscience. I made a depressing observation.

 He wouldn’t have liked me as a teacher.

 For the majority of my years as a math teacher, I taught the honors math classes. Other than the facts of time and place, Steve would have been assigned to my classroom. And so I imagined him there, sitting in a desk where someone with the last name starting with “J” would have been assigned.

 I encountered an above average number of very bright students at the Phoenix prep school where I taught. While their answers were usually right on target, it was their questions that impressed me even more. Encounters with those challenging minds was a definite perk of my chosen profession.

 But I was a teacher with a lot of rules. I imposed them on the premise that an external order would result in an improved internal order. In other words, like children who are better behaved when they are dressed-up, the outside can shape the inside.

 Rules about showing the logical process required to solve an equation. Rules about the form for demonstrating the proof of a theorem. Even a rule requiring rulers.

 But the Steve Jobs of the world would surely have been rule breakers. They would certainly question the necessity for demonstrating “process” when they knew the answer intuitively. Why? My requirement for professional-looking work would likely rub them the wrong way as well. What difference does it make? I would have been the raspberry seed in their wisdom teeth.  They would likely have been the irritant in mine as well!

 It would have been such a gift to be able to truly teach each individual individually; to find the right voice for each pair of ears, the right motivation for each and every student, the insight to assign just enough problems to secure the concept in each brain. (“John, you do #1-#40. Mike, you do the odd numbers through #40. Steve, you do #39 and #40…”)

 I do look back on a career of nearly thirty years with both pleasure and pride. But as I look over my shoulder, I’m searching and studying the faces from my past and wondering if there might have been a Steve Jobs in the mix. And if so, did I open a door for him? Or, was I the one who caused him to close it?