all in a day’s walk in the park

“With beauty before me, may I walk
With beauty behind me, may I walk
With beauty above me, may I walk
With beauty below me, may I walk
With beauty all around me, may I walk
Wandering on the trail of beauty, may I walk”
Navajo: Walking Meditation

Did someone say walk???
As in a stroll?
As in an outing?
As in outside?

And so as the notion of a nice leisure stroll was considered…
we decided to venture out for a walk.

We ventured forth…
We ventured out.
We ventured up
And we ventured away…

Away throughout a city that magically transforms itself into something else and
into something so much more…

But it takes a bit of really hard looking…looking in just the right places…
to see what makes a certain ordinary and otherwise crowded, noisy place…
something so much better than what one quickly sees when looking at things with a cursory
first glance.

All strapped in and ready go, after multiple outfit changes, we departed…

We first walked the three-mile loop around Chastain Park.
A 268-acre wedge-shaped park, the largest park in the city of Atlanta that happens
to be in the northeast area of the city and only about 3 miles from where I grew up.

It’s a park where I first learned to swim.
The park where my dad took me when I was a little girl to go sledding in my first
real snow.
The park where I attended the yearly Brownie and Girl Scout jamborees.
The park where my brother played little league baseball.
The park with the swingset where I secretly rendezvoused meeting the boy I had a
crush on in the 8th grade…
And the place where my mom learned to play tennis…a game that actually helped
my mom find her own place in life.

Originally the land belonged to the Creek Indians but in 1840, 1000 was acquired by the
state of Georgia.
There would be built an almshouse and a TB sanatorium as well as a paupers cemetery.
Eventually, in the mid-1940’s, a golf course was designed, a community pool was built,
an amphitheater was created, riding stables and a barn were added as well as
cabins and cookout areas….as the almshouse and sanatorium were eventually transformed
into a private school.
A school that has only grown in size and scope along with the growing park.
Chastain is now the site of the city’s major outdoor concert venue.

But we were ready and even excited to take in what this transforming area had to offer…

Walks and parks are always good for both body and soul.
But they can be exhausting…

Here’s to many more days of walks in the park…

Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you,
so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.
Deuteronomy 5:55

a family’s erosion

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton,
you may as well make it dance.”
George Bernard Shaw

(should not the day a new baby comes home be one of joy? Try telling the little girl on the
right / 1964)

It seems that even at the tender age of 5 I was gifted with intuition…
as in knowing something is a bad idea from the get go.

Just look at that all-knowing face captured on the day the new little brother was
adopted and brought home.
The younger me must have had a premonition that none of this was going to end very well…

and I was correct, it did not.

As most of you who know me recall—
I have written at length in past posts about both my adoption as well as the
dysfunctional life my family suffered at the hands of the mental illness that
engulfed and eroded my brother…

In his erosion, my family eroded.

Today it is not my desire to rewrite any of those posts but maybe today’s post can be a
bit of an addendum…

(https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/forgiveness-one-step-at-a-time/
and
https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/mr-mole-continued-forgiveness-and-grace/ )

The reason for this heavy revisiting is due in part because I happened upon a letter
that I’d found in a box that has been buried deep within dad’s basement for many years.
It was in a box tucked away in a forgotten back corner, under a table,
left to the spiders and whatever else lurks in a dark 65 year old basement.

The letter was written, or more accurately typed, in 1986.
It was a letter from my dad to my brother.
Wednesday was the first day I had ever seen the letter.

I want to share the letter with you and I’ll explain why after you read the letter:

September 2,1986

Dear Ed,
As you know, your mother is seriously ill and will probably die within the very
near future.
Because of that I am under probably as much stress as I have ever felt.
At the same time, it seems that our past problems have come to a head and are causing
me more stress than I can handle.
I had hoped that we could continue to relate as father and son, and to live in the
same household.
That has become impossible, so I have had to ask you to move out.
I hope you understand that I take no enjoyment from all of this.

I realize that you have some personal property in the house and will make it
available to you if you will just call me and set up a time to pick it up.
I cannot, however, consent to you coming and going if I am not present,
so please do not come to the house without calling.
If you don’t have any place to store your things I will help you with a mini
storage warehouse for a couple of months.

I want you to have the bank account your mother and I set up for your education,
and hope you will use it accordingly.

When we talked last Tuesday you said I couldn’t make you leave, and you refused to return
your house key: so I checked with my lawyer to see just what our respective right are.
He said that technically I could ask you to leave the house, or not return, and have
you arrested if you come back. I sincerely hope this never happens, but you must understand
that I will do whatever is necessary to preserve my sanity and to be sure I can be supportive
of your mother during her illness.
I hope you can understand how I feel and that I still want to help you to whatever
extent I can and feel justified, but cannot have you living at the house any longer.

Please let me hear from you and let me know what you want to do about your belongings.

Love, Dad
(the typed letter was signed personally)

And now a little background if you are new to this history of mine…

My brother and I were 5 years a part in age, with me being the oldest.
We were both adopted and not biologically related.
Even in the beginning Ed was different from me, mother and dad.

He was very fair complected, burning easily rather than tanning and he was covered
in freckles where we were not.
His hair was much lighter than our darker hair.
Despite my not being biologically related to mom and dad, no one could
tell it by just looking at us..
Ed however was different….and he always sensed it.

Even his head was more elongated than ours.
He cried incessantly as a baby.
He wet the bed long past when such was considered “normal”
He was considered hyper in school long before there was ADHD.
He struggled academically but soared in the area of physics.
He loved music, didn’t play sports and had a difficult time “fitting in”
He ran away when he was a senior in high school and was found in Texas,
driving Mother’s car, on his merry way to California, “to watch the moon and the stars.”
He fought dreadfully with all of us as his temper was dangerously violent.
He had threatened each of us at different times by promising “to blow our brains out”
Dad tried to get counseling but it was to no avail.

He eventually attended Ga Tech where he excelled in science with a keen interest
in aerospace engineering.

During this time Mother was diagnosed with lung cancer at the tender age of 53, only
to die within a 9 week window from the initial diagnosis.

I know without a doubt that death was mother’s blessed release as she had lived 15 years
of abusive hell at the hands of my brother—
who was especially vindictive to her despite her unending kindness.
He succeeded in eventually breaking her spirit.
Cancer and death were her ticket out.

I know now that his “abuse” to her was the misplaced anger he had so wanted to direct
to his own biological mother.
He was full of rage and simply could not live with that initial rejection.

During all of this time, my brother had actually begun a quest into his adoption and to
finding his birth parents.

I had long since gone off to college, graduated, moved to what I hoped would be far
enough away from the madness, and eventually married.
I had promised myself to “get out” and out I did.

My brother was the first case in the state of Georgia to have an adoption annulled—
my dad wanted to do whatever he could to help this troubled son of his find the peace
he so desperately sought…as is evidenced in his letter written prior to the court case.

This was a story of two loving people who simply wanted to have a family and because they
were unable to do that on their own, they turned to adoption.
And this is a story of a family member who suffered for years without
understanding what was wrong with him.
Life in a family where one member has a severe undiagnosed mental illness….

For those of you who don’t buy into the fact that much is happening in utero with a
fetus except for the physical development….
Let me tell you that there is also a great deal happening as far as mental,
emotional and cognitive development is concerned.
I am a firm believer in the transference of both positive and negative emotions
from mother to forming baby…
that there is much in the way of a lasting impact from mental and emotional miscues
just as there is with the physical miscue.

The long story is that my brother was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and he
did eventually locate his birth mother…moving states to be near her…
However she resoundingly rejected him again.

The adult rejection was more than he could bear, and so in his rejection he found no
alternative but to end his life.
He shot himself.
He was only 30.

I don’t write about this to make you sad or upset or to discourage anyone hoping to
adopt a child…
I share this story because I want to hopefully bring awareness…

I am the sole surviving member of my little family of four.
I am an ardent advocate for adoption as I am gravely opposed to abortion.

Yet there are those who would callously argue that had my brother’s birth mother sought
an abortion or had it been in a time when an abortion was legal and “acceptable”
perhaps years and lives suffered in misery, with an eventual suicide,
could have all been avoided.

Yet murder is never truly justifiable now is it?

I also know that despite the tragedy, the heartache and sheer madness—
God’s hand was alway there for me…guiding, steadying, leading….
but I also know that He is not a manipulator and will not
stop folks from doing what seems to be on their inevitable radar…

Yet He can bring goodness and light from both the bad and the dark.

I believe this, because I know this.

I simply write this because I want others to know that there is now help more readily
available for those who suffer mental illness than there was even 30 years ago.

Sadly my dad had also became broken in the loss of his son—
for he lost this boy he had loved on so many different levels,
only to find the loss unbearable.

For my dad was not a strong man who could bear up under tragedy.

He went to his grave just two months ago still feeling guilty over ever having to have
written that letter, for “kicking Ed out of the house”
He had rationalized, unjustly so, that somehow he too had contributed to my brother’s
rejection—
and no matter how hard professionals and loved ones tried to convince him over the years
that he did what he had to do in order to perserve the safety and sanity of his
remaining family, he carried that painful guilt with him to the day he died.

So this little story which is all about adoption, rejection, mental illness, suicide
and even survival is just as much a story about Grace…

For I have seen and lived both the dark and the bad and had it not been for God’s healing Grace…
this sole survivor of 4 might not have been here today to share her story.

So everyone who has ever been touched by tragedy, sorrow, heartache, darkness, cancer, suicide,
mental illness…must know that even in the darkest dark, there is always HOPE!!!
Because there is help…on so many different levels!!
And no matter how bad things often seem…God is always God and He has overcome the darkness
so that we may find our way to the Light….

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:4-5

Don’t keep your head in the sand

“How long am I gonna stand,
with my head stuck under the sand?
I’ll start before I can stop,
before I see things the right way up.”
lyrics by Coldplay

(grazing sandpiper / Watercolor Beach, Florida / Julie Cook / 2014)

I realize it’s been quite sometime since I last wrote a post regarding Dad.
Oh, not to worry, he’s fine—with fine of course being a relative term with Dad.

You should know that my dad loves college football, of which I figure is pretty much where and how I learned to love the sport as well, as countless Saturdays at home were spent with Dad glued in front of the TV watching every game imaginable. Remember, these were the days before Game Day, Hulu, Tivo, remotes, split screens, etc. It was not uncommon for my dad to haul every television in the house, the tiny black and white in my bedroom, the larger black and white in their bedroom, setting them up in the den in order to watch the games playing out on all three major networks- – -remember this was the time when there were only 3 stations of choice. . .no ESPN, no SEC network, no Sports South, no CBS Sports. . .well you get the point.

His favorite team of course is his alma mater, the GA TECH Yellowjackets.
I was singing “I’m a rambling wreck from GA Tech” before I could count.
I know what you’re thinking, “didn’t you go to UGA and are not Tech and UGA huge in-state rivals?”
The answer to your query is “yes, indeed” (slight smile forming at corner of mouth)
I can’t help that a Tech man sent his daughter to THE University of Georgia—I suppose he’s the one who has to live with that, but I digress.

So imagine my surprise Saturday when I called Dad following the exciting climax of Tech’s narrow victory over their conference rivals Va Tech and he seem clueless as to what I’m talking about:
a groggy warbley “heeellllooo”
Hi Dad
uh Hi. . .
Boy what a game, that was something wasn’t it!? (note enthusiasm)
Game, what game? (total confusion)
Dad, what do you mean “what game”??!! (aghast surprise)
Uh, who won? (again confusion)
What do you mean who won?? It went down to the wire. (frustration)
Did we win? (ugh)
What do you mean “did we win”???!! (aaaggghhhhh)
Were you not watching the game? (ditto that)
uh I guess I dozed off. (resignation)
Dad, are you kidding me??!! (grave concern)

That is not like Dad to miss Tech.
It’s not like Dad to miss a football game.
And whereas I have visited him throughout the summer months, popping up for lunch and short visits here and there, I have, however, backed off with my pursuit of his paper chase—the statements, the bills, the invoices, his insistence that “he’s got this and to leave him the hell alone.”

I’ve rationalized that if the lights are still on, the phone still works, they have hot water and air-conditioning, then things are good, right?!
I had grown weary of the weekly assaults by a feeble old mind that continues to slowly fade which imagined me as agitator over very real financial disasters, etc. His cursing at me which is so out of character, his childlike temper tantrums which really began when my mom died 28 year ago and his defiance and refusal to simply recognize that all I’m doing is trying to help.

And yet, it is time, I suppose, that I suck it up and get back to the task of putting his house in order by pulling my head out of the proverbial sand by actually taking an honest look and making certain that all is well rather than assuming such—as we know what happens with that business.

Here’s to a trip to Atlanta!
Here’s to Dad!
How ’bout them DAWGS

Happy Anniversary Nany and Pop

Ann and Paul were married June 4, 1921. Today is their 92nd wedding anniversary. This picture shows two very happy young people who had no idea that 92 years from the very moment their picture was taken, on a honeymoon that spoke of so much great expectations and promise, that a 53 year old grandchild would share their beginning moment with the world.

I recently discovered this picture, along with a wealth of long forgotten old photographs, in a box buried deep under years of “junk” in my dad’s basement. Never having seen so many of these old pictures before, I have realized that I am full of all sorts of questions—questions I fear that will sadly go unanswered. The questions I now find myself asking my dad, questions about his parents or questions about my mom’s parents, are met with the frustration of his ever fading memory–as that is what Alzheimer’s does, it robs one of those memories. These sorts of questions never seemed to have been asked years ago when I was younger and now sadly the people who had the answers are no longer with me, all but the one with the fading memory. The curiosity of “beginnings” seems to only emerge later in life—I suppose life is funny that way.

Young Paul came to Atlanta by way of New York. His father, a doctor, moved the family south at the turn of the new century. Why I do not know. He was a student at The Georgia Institute of Technology (aka GA Tech) when he met Ann. I found a picture of him at a desk in his dorm room. As well as a couple of pictures taken of what appears to be some sort of ROTC regiment of about 50 young men, all in uniform, taken in what is today Bobby Dodd Stadium. It was taken during the height of WWI, so I imagine all young men at the time were faced with the possibility of going overseas to fight in a war they didn’t understand. Such things never seem to change…

There are images of him in his cap and gown. Images of him in uniform from high School, Georgia Military Academy–two diplomas…GMA dated 1915 and GA TECH dated 1919…and then this image, 1921. I was only 7 when he passed away. At 7, to my young mind, my Pop was bigger than life–bigger than any super hero. It is because of his bigger than life persona that images such as these, found so many years later, seem only more precious—this is where life began for my super hero, and in essence for me as well.

She came to Atlanta upon graduating from a small west Georgia woman’s college. Her family’s home was in a tiny middle Georgia town. Her father was a decorated soldier in the Spanish American War, where, as a young man, barley 30 years old, the Lt. Colonel was mortally wounded. He was brought home to Georgia where he laid in state at the Capital Rotunda, the only non politician in the history of the state of Georgia having done so, all before the long train trip “home” to LaGrange, GA where he was buried with full military honors.

His suddenly widowed young wife was left to raise 4 very small children. She moved them back to her family’s home in middle Georgia. Only 3 of the 4 children survived to adulthood. Annie attended college, something woman, particularly in the early days of the 20th century, in the deep south, simply did not do. After graduating college, Ann moved to Atlanta looking for work—–something else young woman of her day were not doing.

There is the story of the college student Paul and his cousin hopping on a street car in Atlanta. Spying an attractive very petite young lady riding alone, Paul jumps over to her seat hoping to strike up a conversation. The problem was the plug of tobacco Paul had in his mouth. Annie politely told this brazen young man that she would not speak with anyone who had a wad of tobacco in his mouth as she coyly turned her head to look out the window.

Paul, fearing he would miss his only moment of opportunity, does something that calls for desperate measures and seemed to have made perfect sense at that particularly pivotal moment, he swallowed the wad of tobacco.

It is from that precise moment that I must go alone in my understanding of “my” history for you must remember that their history is indeed my history and Dad doesn’t seem to be able to sort out any of this history of ours as his mind and memory are both turning against him, against me, and against how we came to be at this current moment in time.

Life is funny in that we all feel the important internal pull to our very beginnings–what it is, who it is, how it is that we all got to be where it is and who we are today. Pieces of important puzzles being constantly pieced together. As an adopted person, beginnings seem doubly important to me (see the post “Who in the heck is Sylvia Kay and what have you done with her” to better understand this whole adoption issue of mine and the importance of understanding who I am and how I came to be….)

Paul and Ann go on to have a seemingly wonderful life. Paul becomes a very successful business owner in Atlanta that takes him all over the country. As a couple, they rise up through Atlanta’s high society. There are the tickets to the premiere of Gone With the Wind, where they met Margaret Mitchell, Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. There are images of Paul with then governors of Georgia and leaders of growing industry, images with his two young sons on a road trip across the south where a young Mr. Mole (aka my dad) is downing a bottle of Coke on the steps of the Louisiana State Capital. There are images of a proud man, arms wrapped around his two boys with a loving wife looking on……little would she know of her own devastation when he was taken so suddenly from her when he was barely older than I am today.

However today is not a day for looking back on the ending of a happy story but it is rather a day for looking at the beginning of one……
….So on this day, this June 4, 2013 I say happy anniversary Nany and Pop. I miss you both.