An offering

I see friends shaking hands

saying "How do you do?

They're really saying "I love you..."

--Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World

I woke up this morning thinking about my dad. I have been thinking about him a lot lately. For a week before Thanksgiving, he was with one of his best friends, who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. John Paul had been through surgery and was going to start chemotherapy, his wife Barbara, also dealing with medical issues, was in the hospital, and his son Greg is not well either. My father went to see his friend, provide support for the family, and give another family member a break from caregiving.

This family was well known to us when I was younger, although as the youngest by a few years I have perhaps fewer memories than the others. We would visit them when we came back to the U.S. from overseas for summer vacations, staying with them in their fascinating house on a hilltop in beautiful West Virginia. Shaggy, wall-to-wall carpeting, the stepped up and down style of rooms, a kitchen with a spiral curving bank of cabinets, and built-in intercoms in the bedrooms all struck me as quite exotic.

My memories of the family members have been coming back, too. Greg and Lynette were like cousins to my brother and sister and I. Greg coached me on how to throw a frisbee, and made me laugh so hard I wet my pants once when we were playing a card game that involved saying "good morning, ma'am" whenever a queen turned up and "good evening, sir" whenever a king did, inevitably as the game sped up twisting the phrases into an hilarious muddle. I loved Lynette's long hair, her glamorousness, and her snappy way of talking.

John Paul and Barb's friendship with my parents cast a new dimension onto them, I suppose our life overseas meant I didn't see my parents with their friends that much, and the idea that they had a full history complete with steadfast friends and events that happened long before I was even a figment was a new idea. John Paul was a bottomless source of pun-, slapstick-, and double-entendre-ridden jokes, riddles, and stories, with an electronic marvel of a machine that, as you spoke into a microphone, repeated your sounds back to you in delayed echo, making it impossible to keep track of what you were saying. Barb seemed quietly wise, a fragile beauty with an absolutely earthbound, practical take on life.

So I was receiving updates by email about how these folks are all doing, and they were full of the logistics of when people got up and how they slept, medical appointments and medications, and the ups and downs of prognoses. They had to be detailed in this way as there will be a need for accuracy and consistency through the other caregivers that come to help. And I thought to myself, this is from the left-brain of my very left-brained father, and he does it very well. Also present in the reports, though, as I read them again, were bits and pieces stolen from the feeling world, an echoing of normality--making a cup of coffee, having a meal together, and who cleans up afterward--the effort of all concerned to take in gracefully a radical new version of daily life.

Unrelated but simultaneously I had a conversation with my father's stock broker and friend, whom I have only spoken to a double handful of times, and he responded to my question of what he was looking forward to in retirement with a statement of admiration for my father and the quality of the life after retirement that he has had. He said to me, and I can't remember the exact words--your father, both your mom and dad, love you so much. And the care that your father has taken with your financial future is rare and wonderful.

So many people we meet through life have an influence that can only be measured in looking back, and then there are those who are present throughout our lives, like our parents, whose love is offered sometimes in ways that are not fully appreciated until experiences of life open a window of understanding. I think of my father taking this time to be with his friend and his friend's family, bringing a measure of order in chaotic and challenging circumstances, as an offering of love. I think of Al the stock broker, fluent in the language of long-term investment and planning for the future, parsing the many visits and deliberations my father must have made about stocks as an offering of love.

I think of these examples and many others--the packages that I received from him that came protected by seven layers of bubble wrap (perhaps I exaggerate--but only a bit), or the times we visited museums or historical sites and he elaborated at length (it seemed to me) his detailed, arcane knowledge of art, architecture, or history, which fell on my young and unappreciative ears. I see now that his language of love was one I couldn't always interpret. So often the love people have isn't offered in the way we think we want it, or can understand it. It isn't always offered as a dialogue, or with instructions on how to assemble. So here is my insight of the moment: you just have to be interested, really curious, about what people's language of love is. It's probably different for everyone you meet. I'm going to look harder for it from now on, and try not to be distracted by the package it comes in, no matter how many layers.

And here is an offering, in my language, for my father, for John Paul, Barbara, Greg and Lynette Jones, and for anyone else who wants to receive it. This offering is for peace, beauty, comfort, and of course, love.

The benefits of a stroke

"The limbic system functions by placing an affect, or emotion, on information streaming through our senses. Because we share these structures with other creatures, the limbic system cells are often referred to as the "reptilian brain" or the "emotional brain." When we are newborns, theses cells become wired together in response to sensory stimulation. It is interesting to note that although our limbic system functions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional "buttons" are pushed, we retain the ability to react to incoming stimulation as though we were a two year old, even when we are adults." --Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight

Two things I love about this: the science that allows us to separate the making and existing of "cells" and "brains" and "senses" from the experience of having them, and the positivity with which she speaks of having the ability to react like a child. And a third: that a friend coincidentally passed this book on to me just a few weeks ago.

This book My Stroke of Insight is fitting neatly into conversations started in meditation class . . . people craving the equanimity and calm they get from meditating but not able to let themselves sit. When Jill Taylor had her left brain capacity removed by brain hemorrhage she was forcibly placed in just the position my classmates desire: floating, without a sense of time, in a world defined by perceiving rather than judging. When we want to suspend or slow down physical activity we are all fighting our own personal and our culture's left brain directives to be DOING no matter what.

In school each day my children are asked to move cognitively through hoop after hoop in training to be DOING for the rest of their lives. Ag! It's enough to make me move them to a freeschool! A friend's son told him about having an experience of being there (in the classroom, trying to attend) and then not there (for an unknown amount of time) and then there again (when asked to attend by the teacher). "Well we call that daydreaming," Says dad. "I think that's what I'm doing" says son, in quiet awe.

Just like Dora with her moments of wondering about non-existence. Given the choice, many kids would rather jump on a trampoline for 5 hours than sit in a classroom. They are all about living in the moment and experiencing the right brain. 30 years later, we struggle to allow ourselves 5 minutes of that kind of experience. My personal experience with that: it bites! I know the sparks of my creativity come from that place and it is SO dang hard to guard the space for it. Like speaking to a domineering partner, I have to say

LEFT BRAIN BACK OFF

That's the only way I'm going to be able to appreciate that you can do amazing things as well.

And a last cautionary tale for parents from Jill Taylor: "As a society we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation." Now that sinister spin makes it seem essential, doesn't it?