One of the fresh appreciations flowing from last weekend's writing workshop at Rowe was how comically mismatched I was for my birth family. The family joke was always that Peter believed he was a prince who's been switched at birth with a changeling. The more credible tale would have made me the one left in another's place - I was that different from my parents & surviving sibs as to unimaginable we share the same genes.
My sister-in-law nailed it when she said Lockharts hated looking a hard truth straight in the eye. I believe she called us ostriches, burying our heads in the sand rather than facing a difficult reality. (Alas, she had a few ostrichy moments herself.)
A straight talker like me ending up in such a family is just another example of the Universe's perverse sense of humor. Or the irony that I'd become, up to Grade 7, a polished, prolific & persuasive liar.
My child self was confused that teachers got twisted about my lying. Miss Erna & Mrs. Kirby & Miss Louise didn't get that lying, or at least ignoring reality, was the unacknowledged norm at our house. Not that I understood it either, at least not back then.
Unlike my family, for whom straight talk set their knees to knocking, I appreciate unvarnished truth. Not that the others would see it that way; my guess is they probably believe the absolute opposite, that I lie & they handle reality deftly & decisively.
But this is my blog, with my truth.
Which leads me to the past seven weeks, to the past seven months.
Mim's 07/03/15 death left me in a dilemma. She'd left it to me to arrange her service, but that came with a challenge. I knew how much she loathed memorial services that glorified the one who'd passed rather than honoring the whole person, "warts & all" as Mim would say. It took a long time - five months - to complete, but the online memorial tribute is an homage that hopefully even she would have liked. Straight forward, yet tender; loving, yet unsentimental.
Apparently, it set a standard for being honest, because after a group of us watched it at Cairnwood Village, at least one dear friend of hers shared with the rest of us a few straight-talking, compassionate truths about Mim. My jaw dropped & something in my heart grew three sizes hearing it.
I had the same sensation this past weekend, at Nancy Slonim Aronie's writing workshop. She made a comments about me that threw me into a furor of emotion. My primary reaction - which I weirdly experienced as a 3rd, uninvolved party - was disbelief. I didn't belief her. I even questioned her, afterwards - "Were you being ironic?" - because I could not process as possibly fact what she'd said.
She'd described me with praise that, much to my surprise, I automatically rejected. Not just questioned - rejected. Not me, never me.
Nancy's words were less revealing to me than that reaction, which I witnesses as well as felt. It was a stunning revelation.
Just as Gray's simply stated share broke shackles clamped around my heart, Nancy's - and my visceral rejection - snapped ones around my spirit. Not just because of the complimentary words, but because of how she phrased them a 2nd time, on our last day - "You are so smart & perceptive & gifted, that I could really dislike you if I didn't know your vulnerabilities." Those words hit home as hard as Gray's. Where I'd questioned her glowing words on Saturday, what she said on Sunday hit home. Clearly, concisely, she'd described my lifelong experience of strengths that tend to irk & irritate rather than arouse admiration.
Even now, days after hearing it, am intrigued by my different reactions. When Nancy first shared her opinion on Saturday, I rejected it - her praise set my knees a'knocking. It could not be true. On Sunday, given within a context, it was liberating.
Perhaps what Nancy would have experienced as irksome - without knowing my vulnerabilities - was my confidence, which has always rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way. "Who are you to be so cheerful & upbeat & hopeful?!" ~ I've gotten that a lot over the years. My unwaivering belief in the possible can leave others trying to uncover my real motives. But there is no hidden agenda - just Snoopy-like me!
Life doesn't get my knees a'knocking. It doesn't tear down my deep inner sense of confidence that all will go right in the end. It doesn't, because I had the great good fortune to have evolved into, as the wondrous Vaishali describes me, a Buddhist Unitarian Swedenborgian Love Goddess of the Universe.
Who can feel their knees a'knocking when they have the sort of wonderful straight talk that's always been part of my life experience, raised with, "Peace has in it confidence in the Lord, that He directs all things, and provides all things, and that He leads to a good end. When a man is in this faith, he is in peace, for he then fears nothing, and no solicitude about things to come disquiets him." (Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia 8455)
Yes, I have my vulnerabilities. But more than them, I have my confidence that all things are being directed toward a good end, even if not in this moment or even in my time. Yes, I am an unrepentant Pollyanna, an unflagging Snoopy who loves straight talk with loving words.
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