Inherit the sun

Shifting the Sun 
            ~by Diana Der-Hovanessian

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

~~~

I took this photo of sunset at Lincoln City, Oregon, last Saturday evening. We spent the night there with our two dogs and, quite frankly, my mind has not fully returned from the beach yet.

When I read this poem it seemed perfect for the image. I do not know why. I just feel that someone who has lost his or her father might come upon this post and find some peace.

I do know that, since scattering my mother's ashes into the ocean over ten years ago not far from this beach, visits there have grown dearer with each setting sun.

.

in memory of Michael

Bound
- by Carol Lynn Pearson

There's something strangely false in our
Assured, complete goodbye,
For love's the blood in the flesh of the soul
And the soul will never die.
So--friendly, fondly, as I may
In God's approving view,
I'll call across eternity
For messages of you.



Before the Mike I love and married in 1995, there was another Michael I loved and lived with for two years in the early 1980s.

Michael and I met one night in a yuppie-type restaurant/bar. It was my only case of love at first sight, and he said his also. I was having drinks with friends after work, he was celebrating the end of his first year law school exams. The intoxicating stranger gave me a ride back to my place on his motorcycle. Two weeks later, he returned to the house he shared with roommates to collect his big dog and his belongings and he moved in with me.

After our relationship fell apart -- my fault mainly -- we had a few magnetic, mercurial meetings for a year following, even after he formed a new but short-lived relationship with another woman. His dog even returned to the porch of the house we shared and that I kept when the two of them moved ten blocks away. Our friends and family were caught in the whir, with his younger brother becoming my close confidant and kindred. It was complicated.

One night in 1982 I wrote in a book given to me by a friend, a book of really rather mediocre poetry as poetry goes but that contains this one pearl that shone through the confusion of lost love and the accompanying heartbreak. I can tell by my writing that I was drunk when I made the notation: For Michael 8-17-82, being an additional indicator of that time in my life. Three years later I was to enter treatment for alcoholism and I see now that the way the relationship ended was the beginning of my descent into what is called "hitting bottom" prior to recovery.




Michael married in 1990 and had a son. I lost contact with his brother after my marriage in 1995, but I was aware that Michael lived in this area and, although we were long over, every once in awhile I was drawn back to this poem. The power of the poem held an importance that I never questioned.....


In the last few months through the modern miracle that is Facebook I've reignited some old friendships that bring me much happiness. One is with Michael's younger brother, who left a message a month ago saying that he'd be visiting Oregon in June. This news did indeed propel me to once again pull the little book containing this poem from my shelves. I find it truly astonishing that, for the first in all the times I'd read it, I thought that it sounded as if the poem were describing a separation caused by death and not just the cessation of a relationship, which was the context in which I'd always read it.

Following that, I dreamed of Michael. It was, I am sure, the only dream I've ever had of him. It was a dynamic dream with earthy symbolism that the next morning seemed quirky, but that I now understand.

Two days after my dream I heard from his brother again, this time a long email written via my blog profile........ And so it was that, on June 6, 2009, I learned of Michael's death in 2002 at age 54 after a brief struggle with lymphoma.

I've been processing the shock for a week now at the same time that plans are being made to have lunch with the brother when he visits Michael's son and widow next week here in Oregon. My husband has been so understanding of my spaciness and my silence, and has offered some keen observations that helped me greatly.

It seems too surreal for me to mourn one I loved long ago who has been dead now for over seven years. Yet I have grieved. It seems not my place to feel a loss, for there was a wife who knew him as no one else could. Still, I've felt the loss of a strong link in the chain of my past, thereby lightening the anchor to my life that was ..... lightening the anchor to life itself in a sense ..... and thereby casting a thin line with a tiny golden hook into that eternity of the poem.


.

from a pebble of the margin, farewell

On the shore stood Hiawatha,
Turned and waved his hand at parting;
On the clear and luminous water
Launched his birch canoe for sailing,
From the pebbles of the margin
Shoved it forth into the water;
Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!"
And with speed it darted forward.
And the evening sun descending
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,
Left upon the level water
One long track and trail of splendor,
Down whose stream, as down a river,
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening:
And the people from the margin
Watched him floating, rising, sinking,
Till the birch canoe seemed lifted
High into that sea of splendor,
Till it sank into the vapors
Like the new moon slowly, slowly
Sinking in the purple distance.
And they said, "Farewell forever!"
Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
And the forests, dark and lonely,
Moved through all their depths of darkness,
Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
And the waves upon the margin
Rising, rippling on the pebbles,
Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
From her haunts among the fen-lands,
Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)



.

JoAnn

After I posted this about a friend's depression I received comments about the poem by Kirsti A. Dyer, M.D., and the link to her website. A few days ago Dr. Dyer commented at my blog herself and left the link to her more recent website, Loss, Grief and Bereavement. During this time my Aunt JoAnn passed away, the topic of my post preceding this one, and Mike and I visited Dr. Dyer's grief website last night. We found support, a wealth of information, and peace there. This unique connection may be just a random thing, but I really don't think so. People come into and out of our lives sometimes by intent, sometimes by kismet, and, sometimes by grace.



How JoAnn came into my grandparent's home is a certain combination of the three.

She is seen here with my grandfather, JHS, soon after joining the family at around 19 months of age. He is 64 in this photo, and my grandmother, Nellie, was 56 at the time. Aging was different then than it is today, and they were considered old folks at the time (looked it, too), after having already lived full lives. JHS lost his first wife early on, leaving him with two little girls who were raised by Nellie after she and JHS married. Together, they added three sons, and then my mother.

The youngest of the boys, Richard, was only four years older than my mom, Margaret, and, as shown in this photo, they were buddies extraordinaire.
In 1927, the evening before Richard was killed in a car accident on his way to a Santa Monica High School football game, he played jacks with my mother on the kitchen floor, teasingly warning her that she'd better never tell the kids at school about it. Richard died in the hospital the evening of the accident with Nellie by his side. He was a 16-year-old beloved son and brother who left behind a completely devastated family.

The mourning was ongoing even two years later when Nellie rekindled a friendship with an old friend from their years living in Kansas City, Missouri. Now the friend lived near them in Santa Monica, California, where she had a home for homeless children. The closest equivalent today would be our foster care system. Nellie began visiting her friend weekly and she fell in love with an 18-month-old rosy-cheeked, little blond girl (JoAnn) who reminded her of Richard as a baby. Although both parents were alive JoAnn and her brother were at the home due to major concerns about the capacity of the parents to adequately care for them.

Nellie consulted JHS about bringing JoAnn into their home and my mother wrote that, "Pop said it was up to her if she wanted to accept that responsibility after having raised six of their own." Unlike today, the arrangements weren't made with the assistance of attorneys, and the agreement between my grandparents and JoAnn's mother was never legally binding. There was some provision drawn whereby her mother could take her back (with the state's approval) if she changed her mind within a certain time, something like one year. My mother recalled the angst each of them felt in the first months with JoAnn, their love for her being deeper than their panic so that they could bear it. A milestone day came and passed without any word from the birth mother, and so JoAnn was theirs. Without a formal adoption she maintained her birth name that fit her Swedish heritage and appearance. It's such a sadness to think about her brother left behind. I'm sorry I don't know his story and must one day ask my cousins to fill in the years. But I am aware that in at least the later years he has lived close enough for them to become close, for him to know his niece, nephew and great-nieces. I think that is phenomenal.

One of my uncles and his wife had purchased as an investment a large amount of land with a modest house they called "the ranch" in the wilds of Trinity County, California. It was there that Nellie, my mother, and JoAnn (all other children were grown) homesteaded their way through the Great Depression. I love this picture of my mother and JoAnn on a hike in the "Trinity Alps."

While they lived at the ranch my grandfather continued in his once-profitable career in sales of a variety of products, still getting by. He died while on the road in 1936 when JoAnn was seven. This photo is of Nellie and JoAnn at his gravesite. With the end of the Depression my grandmother moved the girls back to Chico, and eventually the Walnut Creek/Lafayette area, where my mother moved on and Nellie and JoAnn lived simply. JoAnn basically lived in that area her entire life. She was a headstrong teen who drove Nellie to distractions at times, but more often was a light in Nellie's life. They understood, respected, and loved one another.

This photo is a marvel to me. Independent photographers once positioned their cameras on the streets in Oakland, snapping pictures of passersby and arranging payment for a mailed copy. This one was called a "Metro Movie Snap" and caught JoAnn and Nellie striding happily along a busy street together in 1947.

She met Bill in the Bay Area, where he rose to Captain in the Navy. He told Nellie straight away that he was going to marry JoAnn. She told my mother that Bill was crazy. She married him. They were a remarkable and interesting couple who raised their family in a beautiful home next to a hill covered with walnut trees. She was widowed in 1994, but was not alone with my devoted cousins nearby.

My aunt JoAnn had flair and a most marvelous sense of humor. As a teen I could listen to her stories endlessly. I realize now that she was like Erma Bombeck in her witty interpretations of daily life in the suburbs. Her speaking voice and intonation were so distinctive that I can hear her easily in my memory. She was also blessed with a beautiful singing voice. And she had the most impressive handwriting I've ever seen. It appeared on cards attached to the most perfectly-wrapped, carefully-selected Christmas gifts any kid/teen could ever wish for.

JoAnn had her paradoxes. She smoked; she skied. She was giving; she was private. She was beautiful; she was self-effacing. She appeared confident; she fought depression. She was sunny; she sheltered heartbreak.

I'm remembering her sunny.

Old Post Card Wednesday--The Snow Cross on Mt.Tallac

Mt. Tallac Snow Cross
--from Tahoe Resort Ministries website

Mount Tallac is purportedly named from the Washoe Indian word “tallac” which means “Great Mountain.” This lofty peak is 9,735 feet above sea level. In the spring and summer a white cross can be seen. This is formed by the heavy winter snows filling the deep crevices of the mountain. As the surface snows melt and disappear, the deeper snow remains, forming the cross that appears for many months. The cross can be best seen in the summer months. Go to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe and look for the tallest mountain on the California side.

(More extensive information about recreation at Mount Tallac is available from SummitPost.org here that includes a spectacular 270 degree panoramic view from the summit HERE!)


This is a special postcard in memory of my Aunt JoAnn who passed away on Memorial Day 2008 at age 78. Her husband, my Uncle Bill who died in 1994, built for his family a most precious cabin at Tahoma, Lake Tahoe, California. Tahoma is between Meeks Bay and Tahoe City on the panoramic view linked above. My family had the gift of two weeks each summer at the cabin, and they are some of the happiest memories I have from my teen years. Nel and I would go down to the pier early with friends we'd connect with each year and would stay all day in the sun, with plunges into the cold lake to cool off. My mother would check out a dozen or so books from the library and read on the back deck most of the day, while my stepfather lazed about on the front porch area or busied himself with the recipe for that night's dinner. Nel and I loved going to the dances held on Saturday nights at Meeks Bay, as they drew a crowd of kids from around the California side of the lake whose families were summering and vacationing there.

Overlooking all this sun-worshipping, frolicking, swimming, reading, dining, partying, and memory-making was Mount Tallac.

We from the Reno area spent most of our Lake Tahoe time on the Nevada side of the lake, with the occasional complete 72-mile drive around the lake. I'd not have had the chance to know the California side -- the quiet side -- of Lake Tahoe had Uncle Bill not built and shared the cabin that is now entrusted to my cousins Heather and Brett, and Brett's young family.

What would have become of JoAnn if my grandmother, Nellie, hadn't taken her into their family when she was 18 months old? Only God knows. Her story most likely would not have included Bill and their happy ski trips in the Sierras, so neither would it have included the children who became my cousins, and none of us would have known the cabin at Tahoma with Mount Tallac 20 miles in the distance.

Beautiful JoAnn and her story deserve a separate post: tomorrow. But I just have to end this post with a photo taken at Nellie's house in Alameda, California, in 1954. Pictured here left to right are: JoAnn, me on her lap, my mother Margaret, my grandmother Nellie, Nel on her lap.