Mother's Day Blues

I'm not keen on Mother's Day. Don't get me wrong--my own mother and I have a great relationship. Yet for anyone who is actively engaged in American society in early May, Mother's Day is tough to ignore. Sometimes I think that if I could ignore it, I wouldn't feel this hollow grief inside me. On the other hand, maybe I need to own that grief.

I don't think I've written about this here before. Actually, I don't think I've been able to deal with this well enough to write about it. But then I realize that everything happened in another time and another life, and that I was another woman. Nothing's the same. So I'm down to dealing and moving on or being haunted for the rest of my life.

People know me as a textbook success story. What few people know is how I have failed in an area where most women (or so it seems to me) succeed without even trying. I am looking at 39 and I have never given birth, nor will I ever. That's the hand I've been dealt.

Once upon a time, I was married. We got married in 1993 and split up in 2001, so for this day and age we didn't do too badly. Between 1998 and 2000, I had five miscarriages. I'll get back to that in a moment, but you can imagine the stress that put on the marriage. After the last miscarriage my doctor told me to stop trying or risk my own life. I think that's when my husband gave up on me. What good was a wife who couldn't help him preserve his genes in a child?

Anyway, I went through five miscarriages. The first one happened at about ten weeks, and the second after twelve weeks. Both times my attending doctors thought I was healthy enough to carry a child to term and encouraged me to keep trying. I did. The next two pregnancies were indeed longer, but both ended in the beginning of the second trimester.

The fifth miscarriage nearly killed me from blood loss. I'd made it five months and had been so hopeful that finally I'd be a mother. Instead I was torn and destroyed, depending on an IV to survive, and dealing not only with the physical pain but the pain of knowing I could never produce my own flesh and blood. My husband was nowhere around me. I don't know where he wandered off to in those days, but he wasn't interested in comforting me.

When I finally got home I crawled into bed and didn't emerge for weeks. Of course I was depressed, but I remember still feeling relieved when the bleeding finally stopped, when I could eat solid food again, when I could actually walk from one end of my apartment to the other. I wouldn't be able to bring new life into the world, but I would live, and as I regained my strength, that didn't seem so bad.

As I said at the beginning, all of this happened a long time ago. I haven't even spoken to my ex-husband since the divorce was finalized. Besides, there are plenty of people who are perfectly all right with me the way I am. There's always adoption, and there's always a child who needs to be adopted.

And I'm not ready for all that anyway. I'm still a work in progress. 10 years from now I might be ready to parent, but not today. Maybe that's the cosmic purpose behind my disastrous childbearing--if I'd had a child, I wouldn't be who I am today.

Kudos and due respect to all mothers. I'm not so worried about joining your ranks anymore. I don't have kids, but I do have people depending on me and a purpose in my care. Looks to me like I'm mothering pretty well, after all.

Pay It Forward

Let's face it. When we embark on romantic relationships, we're leaving ourselves open to receiving a lot of junk. At the time it might have sentimental value--like X is trying to share their passionate interests with Y. In the flush of love, we go along with the flow.

But when the passion has fizzled and the relationship has gone by way of the dodo, that accumulated junk can just get annoying. You know. It's sitting around your place, but you have no real use for any of it in your current life. Not that it reminds you of affection gone sour--more like it's just plain taking up space, or is otherwise irritating.

So do what I'm doing. Pay it forward.

Look, in these economic circumstances, none of us can afford to ignore any source of gifts for the people we love. What better use for a pile of ex-gifts than to regift them to people who can genuinely use them?

Of course, I mean after you have given your ex every chance possible to reclaim their things. It's only decent, and it's the difference between giving the stuff away free and clear and still having some overhanging dirt smudging it up. Hey, I gave my ex (the ex before the ex that came before my current beau) months to retrieve his things. No games, no gimmicks, just his stuff returned. Well, he's never shown any interest in doing this, so I decided to pay it forward.

He left a guitar in excellent condition and fairly valuable as such things go, but didn't want it back. All right. So I've given it to my boyfriend, who needed a better quality guitar and actually is professionally involved in the music industry.

He left a sack full of comic books of various vintage and topics. I let my boyfriend's nieces and nephews have at them, except for the editions of the illustrated Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I passed on to my friend Marilys.

He gave me a pile of Led Zeppelin CDs. Great, but I'm more of a punk girl myself. I gave them all to a good friend who's going through some tough times and really appreciated the escape. I gave her the DVD he'd gotten me as well.

He left the first season of the old Twilight Zone, which I gave to my sister's boyfriend.

Justice League went to my neighbor. Return to the Batcave went to a friend in my boyfriend's band. The Tick ended up with a friend of a friend of a friend.

He left some Simpsons books too, which my father has promptly seized.

Look at all the people I managed to make happy out of my own mess! Above all, I feel great about it. I mean, if my ex couldn't be bothered to reclaim this stuff, why shouldn't other people get pleasure from it?

The Other Widow

What is the term to describe a woman who has divorced her husband if in the intervening years he remarried, but tragically died? 

 
I wasn't his wife at the time of his demise, but I had been his wife, and I felt great sorrow that such a brilliant mind and driven spirit had gone so soon. We were still connected bu the greater bonds of humanity. But I had no comfortable role to assume. I wasn't a widow, even if I felt like a widow.
The news that my former husband had died worked quickly through the grapevine of friends and friends of friends and relatives. He had mourners on both coasts, the East where he had come from and the West where he had been living. I expected us to gather in groups for comfort and support. I had not expected a phone call from his widow--the actual widow.

I had to admire the courage she mustered to call me, although I had no bad feelings towards either of them. The bottom line was that my former husband had left some very specific intructions for his final rites, and for some reason these included me. He wanted cremation, and then to have his cremains split between the two coasts. The first half was scattered in a beachside ceremony near Santa Monica, California. And then his instructions got tricky.

Because of a rift that had never been healed and of understanding that was never attained, my former husband was completely alienated from his family, with the exception of an aunt and some cousins. To his parents, he'd already been dead for years. Essentially, whatever would be done in Pennsylvania would be up to the friends he had here.

More to the point, my former husband had appointed ME to orchestrate his final rites and officiate at the scattering. I told his wife I didn't understand why he'd wanted me and not her. But her pressing concern was whether I would be willing to take on the burden.

I'm only going to get one first husband. Of course I agreed.

His wife arrived at Philadelphia International Airport with a simple white urn in tow. Maybe that moment of meeting would have been difficult for other people, but we fell into each other's arms like long parted sisters. Then she began to meet his Pennsylvania friends, doing all they could to help her and give her comfort. She wasn't in what she knew as home, but she was home with us all the same.
I read over some of his documents. Specifically, he wanted his cremains scattered to the four winds at Wind Gap, a natural deciduous paradise where he had spent much time cycling and pondering. I organized to get everybody I could up to Wind Gap on that Sunday.

A written script would not have pleased him, so my eulogy was a collection of stories that brough out the humor, the love for life, the brilliance that were all his. We shared our anecdotes, laughing and crying and remembering. I asked that everyone (if the wanted) would take a handful of cremains and throw them into the valley in front of us. There would be no marker, no tombstone. The memory would live on in all of us.

"You're as much a widow as I am," his wife said, sniffling. "You were in his heart longer, and you are with him in death."

"But he is in your heart for as long as you keep him there," I said. "Death politely gives way for love on occasion."

So, did I get a title out of this experience? Old Widow? Former Marriage Widow? Co-widow?

No. I got a more important designation--friend. We're two women bound by our care for the same man. We've both lost him, and a light has gone out in the world. Now neither of us are any kind of wifely relation to him, and so we can begin again.

The Irritating Heartbreak

"I was an idiot."

This has been my mantra in the past months, ever since I saw my ex for the very last time. People around me trample me with contradictions. I'm too hard on myself, I'm told. There was nothing idiotic in going for love, I'm told. How could I have known that this individual would flake out on me so completely, I'm told.

So all right, maybe "idiot" is too strong. But no one put me into that relationship. I walked into it of my own free will. I was a full accomplice. For so long I had been careful not to get tangled up in the webs of romance, because I knew the spider that dwells among those webs intimately, and I knew it was no friend of mine.

Honestly, I'm not entirely clear on why we split in the first place. There was a crisis, there was an excuse, there was my initial acceptance that was followed after a half hour of heavy thought, there was my hard realization that he was trapped in an endless playback loop that I didn't want or need in my life. I never really got to talk out my feelings, however, because he quickly did the brave thing and hung up on me. And so it's been. He cut me from all of his online networking and won't even read my e-mail. About three weeks later I tried calling, mostly because I was concerned for him. He hung up on me then too.

In other words, deal with the problem by not dealing with the problem, me being that problem.

I'm even less clear on why he hates me now. As I recall one night we were deeply in love, and 24 hours later, he'd abandoned me, our relationship, everything we had so carefully forged. What did I do? What went wrong? Or wasn't it me at all, but him?

This is the part when my mended broken heart leads me to a mystery that is both irritating and annoying. Everything creeps back into my mind, and I realize I'm yearning for closure on a primal level. I don't want the relationship back--it's important to know when a time has passed. I do think I have a right to know what the hell happened from his point of view. I don't run from conflict, I work to resolve it. What kind of closure? I'll know when it happens. How is it that I'm on great terms with every other guy from every other relationship, but this guy isn't willing to settle with me peacefully?
I realize that the chances of attaining closure with his active participation is extremely unlikely. He hasn't even been willing to deal with me long enough so that I can return my pile of boyfriend stuff to him. It looks like I'm going to have to create a closure on my own. And that is both irritating and annoying.

How to Break Up Without Falling Apart

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Over and over again, we lose our hearts (and our minds) to another human being. We're giddy each second we're rewarded with their company. Thoughts of the beloved wander unbidden into our minds when we're buying toilet paper or wrangling lunch from a street vendor. Before we know it, we begin to wonder, is this it? Is this the one we've been waiting for? We may even discover that our beloved is wondering the same wonderful things about us. The future seems cast in a pastel glow like a July sunset.

And then, before we know it and seemingly out of nowhere, it all comes to a horrifying applying-the-brakes-at-Indy unbelievable end.

"Why" doesn't really matter, even if it's the nagging question that haunts our minds. Maybe figuring out the why can help us in the recovery, but it's not terribly likely. Why will only sprout more questions and self-doubt. What does why matter, anyway? It's not going to change the present--only living in the present can do that. In the end, we all have to cope. We all have to deal. And then we need to move on with our lives.

If there's a worse feeling to being human than to have loved and lost (beat it, Shakespeare--I respectfully disagree) I don't want any free samples. Then I think about this worst of feelings and wonder why we bother in the first place. No one who swears off love seems to stick to that oath.
Yet we keep at it. Over and over again we go looking for something we might not be able to describe, knowing full well the agony that could be the result. Well, so long as we're going to keep at this crazy game of tag, we might as well learn something along the way.

Allow me to share a little of what I've learned on my own twisted path, which has included a divorce among other split relationships. The end of love hurts. There's no dissembling about it. Parting from your significant other can take you to depths of emotional pain like you've never imagined. But the end of a relationship isn't the end of you. You will go on. Your choice is whether to go on positively or go on negatively.

There is such a thing as a good break up. 

Ideally this would mean a mutual decision to part ways, but you don't need the cooperation of the other person to have a better experience. It is entirely up to you and your reserve of inner strength. Are you resolved to handle the end of your relationship as well as you possibly can? Read these tips, study them, and apply them in your own life.

The end of love is a terrible thing, but don't compound the tragedy by harboring hatred.

Don't hate your ex. Easier said than done, I know. Negative feelings--hate, anger, resentment, and so on--won't hurt your ex anywhere nearly as much as they can hurt you. Hate is an emotional cancer. It can twist and grow within you. You have been challenged to instead try and remember what was good about your ex and to try and nurture positive feelings. Well, all right, neutral feelings are also fine. The point is to not let yourself fall into the mire of hate. Raise your feelings and you can lift your outlook on the whole situation.

Honesty should be rule number one, no matter what.

Even when you're standing on the precipice of a failing relationship, don't start spouting lies in a desperate attempt at reconciliation. If you feel the need to lie, you're lying to yourself that the relationship can be saved. If you're angry and hurting, don't shut it away. Tell the other person exactly how you feel.

Always try talking through any problems.

If you can reconcile your differences, you've achieved a triumph. If you can't, perhaps it's time to be moving along. Either way, don't let a communications breakdown blur the truth.

Never take the sum total of previous bad experiences and project them onto your current partner.

Whatever hell you may have been through in the past with other people, those people are not your current significant other. Don't put whatever blame issues you may have onto their shoulders. This is not fair to them and will only keep you locked in a dark past.

Words and promises really are like the wind until there is action to back them up--or prove them false.

It's easy to promise to change, but much harder to actually follow through with it. In a desperate situation, your significant other may swear up and down that they will alter their behavior if you would only give them one more chance. You probably already know how likely that change is. Don't fall for it.

You can never change another person, so don't think you can fix your partner.

They must find the strength to change inside themselves. You can offer support and love, but otherwise it's up to that other person. If change is necessary and your partner lacks the will, maybe it's time to leave.

No relationship is ever a waste a time.

It's true. Even the horrible ones teach us something--about ourselves, about other people, about life and living.

Relationships are work, and are worth every bit of effort.

Love is not easy. No one ever said it was supposed to be. But it is another example of we get out of love what we put into love. Sure, we may get into fights and hurt sensitive feelings. But the challenge of love is not to avoid conflicts, but rather to resolve them in the best possible way.

Whatever the outcome, no relationship is ever a failure.

Relationships are like obstacle courses. We're meant to meet the challenges and keep moving forward, no matter how long it takes us or how awkward we might be. However your relationship ends, you still have that experience to enrich your life.

Keep something else in mind too. No relationship ever really ends. Everyone we encounter in life will stay with us, somehow and in some way. Remember the good things!

The Ladies of Avalon Live On

"You got that right sister!" Fortune said, and then laughed. Raven and Bast joined in with her.

The night of the love spell we passed through the mists of the mundane world. Daneb, Jane, Catherine, and Brandie fell away as the witches Lupa, Raven, Bast, and Fortune rose from those mortal shells.

I wore my dark red silk robe, designed to entice and to lure, as I would wear it for you, my love. My sisters were equally splendid with Raven forgoing her usual black for deep purple, Bast in a midnight blue robe that matched her shining eyes, and Fortune in the green of a gardenia leaf.

I had planned on holding the ritual in the room we call Raven's Sanctuary. Few of us have ever been inside, and even then no one would dare enter without Raven's protection. For this place is the workroom and meditation chamber of the most potent woman of the Craft we've ever known although she herself would never make such a claim. It is in this room that Raven communes with Azrael, the benevolent Angel of Death, and His presence lingers everywhere as an unearthly amethyst glow.

"Dunno Lupa," Raven says as she leads me into the sanctuary. "I don't mind us having the rite in here but the ambiance might not be so great for your intent."

So right. I stepped through the doorway and immediately noticed the air was at least fifteen degrees colder than in the rest of the house something that cannot be accomplished through air conditioning trickery. The air was thick, heavy, making it difficult for me to breathe it was air laden with spirits and high magic. Still, there was something erotic, the smell of jasmine and earth and a rampant breeze with a cold touch upon my skin. Raven did not seem to be affected in the least.

Then I noticed the exquisite amethyst pyramid upon an altar, a pyramid we all believe to have been a gift from Azrael. The center of the gem glowed purple, as did some tracks on the floor. "Has He been here?"

Raven looked over her shoulder. "Yes, just today. I see you've been able to detect Him."

"Hard to miss."

"You'd be surprised." She turned fully to me, folding her arms over her chest. "Maybe now you understand why I'm hesitant to hold your love spell in here. I'm not sure my relationship with Azrael is exactly the influence you and Rob need."

I blinked. "You mean you and Azrael are lovers?"

"No!" Raven began to laugh. "No, not at all. He is my friend, my guardian, and my teacher. And I do love Him; I doubt anyone can know Him as I do and not love Him. What I meant is that our business together is not of a nature conducive to mortal love. I would hate to have the remains of our communing ruin your spell."

She had a point. I was getting creeped out. "Then what about the patio?"

"Much better idea."

That was an idea that turned out better than we'd hoped. A huge electrical storm chased itself around the sky. Fortune looked out at the striking bolts and nodded. "You lucked out," she said to me. "This is really some extra power going here. I hope you love this guy, because this spell is going to take. I can feel it."

"Don't worry," I said. "I love him enough for a billion people and an eternity of lifetimes. I have never been more sure of anything."

Fortune said nothing, but her approving smile said all. Raven and Bast came out onto the patio then, carrying what was needed for the spell, a spell of my own devising.

But I had left the creation of the anointing oil up to Raven and Bast. I do not know what they included, and it's taboo in the Craft to ask. There was a scent of roses, that was certain, and maybe lavender and ylang ylang flower too. Ah, well. Perfect love and perfect trust, as we say. My sisters would not let me down.

Grinning, Bast handed me two thick pillar candles, one red and one pink, the colors of love and friendship and all kinds of wonderful things. "When you anoint the candles," Bast told me, "be sure to imagine you're handling his penis."

Even I'd never heard this one before. "Are you serious?"

Bast nodded with all the self-assurance of the witchborn. "It's imagery and projection, Lupa. You put your energies into the candle, the intent of the spell, as if you were handling him. Didn't notice the candle was phallic?"

Actually I hadn't, but my sisters of the New Avalon had not overlooked any detail. So I took the red candle into my hand and thought of you thought of you until I broke into a fine sweat and felt the core of my sex throbbing. With light, teasing strokes, I rubbed the oil into the candle, all the time thinking of how much I love you and how much I would want to dedicate the same time and effort into worshipping your manhood. By the time I'd finished with the red candle and the pink, I was wet, my heart pounded in my chest, and I was euphoric with thoughts of you.

I'd made an incense of roses and frankincense, which would smolder in an abalone shell censer on the makeshift altar. There, too, was Raven's great black cauldron, passed down through her family longer than I have any record of mine. Tonight, Fortune kindled a fire of scented wood within the cauldron. The fire would be at my use at the climax of the spell, when my act of love for you would seal my devotion.

So there we were, the ladies of New Avalon. Fortune had put an Anuna CD on low in the background, and the skies continued to crash around us. I stood in the South, in my element of Fire, of energy, courage, daring, sexuality, passion and love. The altar was set up in my quadrant, as it was my spell. Raven stood opposite me in the North, abandoning her customary place at the center of our normal rites to be my Air, representative of intellect, communication, knowledge and wisdom. In the East, Fortune would be my Earth with her attributes of growth, abundance, bounty, and mystery. Finally, Bast stood to the West as Water, my perfect emissary of intuition, emotion, sympathy, empathy, and reflection. I doubt I could have arranged for a more perfect alignment.

Was I nervous? Believe it or not, yes. I think there's always an element of nervousness when one is serious about what they're doing. Mind you, that nervousness does not mean lack of self- esteem. There is no doubt in the Craft. I must know that what I strive to bring forth will be as I would have it.

As Raven has taught me, there are three rules in the Craft.

1) To will

2) To know

3) To dare.

Sure, there are books and groups who make these simple concepts complex, but Raven's right to present it straight and unadorned. There are enough other complexities.

I'd written the rite to begin with summoning the Watchtowers, also called calling the Cross-Quarters, leaving the exact wording of the invocation up to their imaginations.

Raven disliked calling the Cross-Quarters to open a rite and never did so with Star Mother Grove, but she was willing to play her part for me all the same. "From the North come I, by sword and by virtue. I call the powers of Air to protect me and mine and give strength to this rite of love."

We thought she was finished, but she surprised us.

"Boxty on the griddle
Boxty in the pan
If you don't eat your boxty
You won't keep yer man."

This was a new one. "Raven, where on earth did that come from?"

Grinning impishly, she shrugged. "My Nan used to sing it. Just popped into my head."

"And it's supposed to help us how?"

"By Macha, Lupa, there's more to love than rolling around in sweat and whatnot. Call it a hearth blessing." Accordingly, she touched the broadside of her sword to my shoulders.

All right, then, who am I to argue?

As Raven had come forward bearing her sword, Fortune approached with a wreath of roses from our own garden. "Hey, powers of the East! Powers of Earth! On your guard, for we need you! Look favorably upon us as we seek to help our sister bind her love for her man of the Isle. Fill us with your vibrant energy that this spell we make shall bring joy to the lovers" She then placed the wreath, a beautiful creation of flowers and greens and ribbons, upon my head

Normally I would have invoked my quarter next, but as I was the focus of the spell, I would go last and lead the rite from that point. So Bast came to me from the West, carrying a bottle of our tradition's "holy water" (rosewater, sea salt, and spring water). Bast too defied convention. "Rocked in the cradle of the deep I lay me down in peace to sleep. Secure I rest upon the wave, for thou O Water of the West hast power to save. Not my original work, not totally, but I thought it was right for the occasion." That said, Bast sprinkled the water all about the ritual area and took care in anointing my forehead, throat, and wrists.

I began to wonder if my mental catalog of ritual proceedings needed updating, but the moment, the love, and the focus were upon me. What could I say better that I hadn't already said to you before?

Out of the House of Ma'at

Chamber with the scales

Of heart and truth

I see all and hear mine own name

For one and five thousand years

I have been called

“Sacred Lady of Justice and Order

Be with me when I am judged”

Azure ostrich plumes

Fall from my eyes

The blessed tears of Ma’at

Oh children

Why do you invoke me?

You do not understand

You do not serve

In truth I say

Be wary of that bearing

My sacred name of Ma’at

As the green flow of life

Conquers the sand

So will justice prevail over corruption

In calling my name

So you too balance your heart

Against the feather of my integrity

Beware that you summon Me wisely

I am Ma’at who sees within