Wishing on the Mom Star

Meant the world to me when my oldest brother, who lives relatively close by (unlike the rest of my family, who live in NC,GA, MO, CA & Australia), was coming to tomorrow's memorial tribute to Mim.  What a difference it would make, having someone else there with a lifetime of Mim memories.  Felt like the Universe granted the wish I'd made on my Mom Star!

We were going to pick him up & then continue the celebration at dinner afterward.  Now, he thinks he'd prefer just watching it where he is. 

 

Fingers crossed Peter changes his mind, joins in the love & remembrances.

My heart's desire - Mim memory

It means the world to me that Peter wants to come to Sunday's screening of the memorial tribute to Mim.  He described dreading watching it in isolation, without people he cared about near at hand.  I feel that way, too.  For me, that means hoping not just Mim's friends, but mine come too.  It matters. 

Peter is my brother & means the world to me, always has.  But there's a lifetime behind us of how he's felt about me.   

Just as he doesn't want to see the tribute in isolation, I long to watch it with at least some of the people who helped me get through all the years when my family life was in upheaval, who helped get me to & keep me on safe, stable ground.  

 

Alas, I have zip relatives to rally 'round, no professional connections to the Academy or the church, don't work at BATS, am not athletic, don't have kids, & married someone with even fewer connections to my hometown that I have!  

In years past, it's been my experience that folks assume others will be there.  Doesn't mean they don't care, aren't keeping me in their thoughts  & hearts, but it can be hard when just a few are present to put their arms around me.

So, what I'll do is write out a list of friends & pleasant acquaintance, keep that list in my pocket all Sunday afternoon.  Will be over the moon with those who show up.  With those who can't, will keep them literally close at hand, snug in my thoughts, my love.  

Comforting, realizing that no matter what happens, no matter who shows up & who can't, will hold the friends & dear pleasant acquaintances who mean - in large ways & small - the world to me, tenderly in my thoughts, and in doing so fulfill my heart's desire.

 

Addressing the 1% - Mim memory

Giving thanks for my John & his patience as I try this approach, then that, to remarks I'm making at the gathering celebrating Mim.  
 
Am hoping Peter will be there & share some Mim memories, that Mike & Kerry watch via Skype & share some of their own fond moments.  But there's no getting away from not standing up with my own sense & recollection of Mim, without sugar coating or unnecessary embellishment. 

 

Spouting out around John has been a godsend.  What I'm considering at this point in time, three days before the party down at Shannon's, is addressing my comments to the 1% who were allowed a glimpse of the real Mim, or at least selected sides.  

In his tribute, Frank Rose mentions how invisible Mim was at perhaps the first Laurel Church Camp, which she attended in her mid-late thirties.  "If you walked into a room & no one was there, it was Mim," was how Frank put it. 

That's the Mim seen (or not) by most people.  Only the 1% experienced her invincible side.  The person who auditioned for & was accepted at theater programs at Manhattan's prestigious Circle in the Square Theater, at California's even more elite Pasadena Playhouse.  Attended Berry College, a mountain college in north western Georgia; the University of Houston; the University of Pennsylvania.  Received her bachelor's from New York University & her master's from Rutgers.  Honored with a formal proclamation by the New Jersey State Legislature for her volunteer work with autistic children.  And those are just the tip of her adventures & accomplishments.

Mim was a maker of magic - for her family (especially her younger brother & sister), for neighborhood kids, for youngsters in town who fell under her spell, for the countless families whose lives she touched over the years. She was the lynch pin in the Lockhart family, the one who virtually defined how "family" was translated & lived from one era to the next, the one who connected most profoundly with the various elements of the extended Reynolds' circle.  

When it suited her, Mim could be invisible, but - within the family & with many others - she was always a force to be reckoned with.  Just coming up with the funding for the amazing things she did must have taken awesome creativity & oomph!  No shrinking violet could have managed such major financials.

 

All who knew her seem to be in agreement that Mim was singularly intelligent, talented, gifted.  The one person who balked at that assessment was Mim.  

It took until my early twenties to start questioning Mim's inexplicable scarcity mentality.  Her explanation came in the way of a warning, "The more you have, the more others can take away."  

To this day, am clueless why Mim carefully set up brunch outings to places like the Du Pont Hotel, to The Plaza, to the Algonquin, only to turn to me as we sat surrounded by storied elegance & say, "We stick out like sore thumbs," or  "We look like a couple of hicks."  It took me until my late twenties to finally have the presence of mind to respond, "Speak for yourself."  

Couldn't figure it out then, still can't fathom Mim's entrenched sense of being less when she was so much more than most hope to be.

Many years back, I developed imagery that helped me cope with my adored older sister's self-denigrating ways ~ I'd picture the day, this day, at hand, with Mim truly connecting with The Creator.  

The Creator would look at her with a loving smile & say, "Mim, your sister says..."   

Mim would interrupt with an adamant, "My sister LIES!" (which was what she always said).  

The Creator would go on, the loving smile even more tender than before, and finish, "Mim, over all those years, your sister told the truth.  You ARE singularly intelligent, talented & gifted."  

Hearing it from The Creator, 
my bet is she finally 
has to believe it.

Keeping it real - Mim memory

Pondering what to say at the gathering at Shannon Good's following the screening of Mim's memorial tribute.  Hopefully, John will handle the thank you comments, freeing me to focus on sharing personal moments & thoughts.

It was - until the wee small hours of this morning - rather daunting, thinking of what to say and, even more importantly, what not to.  Then, remembered something that whisked away all cares.

Many years ago, the parent of good friends died.  At the gathering after the memorial service, person after person commented on her goodness, on what a caring parent she was, at what a devoted mother she'd been.  Mim looked around the room, at the children, who seemed uneasy, each doing his or her version of shifting from side to side.  

One person, the oldest son, stood up & did the unimaginable - he told the truth.  While acknowledging his mother had meant well, she'd been a disastrous parent, had mangled her children's lives, had been a terrible amalgamation of distant & in their faces.  Mim looked around the children, who now seemed relaxed, listening intently, some even nodding.   

Mim never forgot that experience.  She often mentioned it, talked about the importance of being kind but honest in such situations.  The older guests were shocked, she admitted, but the children were grateful that someone was willing to honor the woman who actually existed, not just an ideal that anyone could admire.  It didn't make the mother less, just made her real.

I will remember that when I make my comments about Mim - to be kind but honest, to honor the woman who actually existed, not simply an ideal that anyone could admire.   

Joy ~ Maddie ~ Blake

A recent Facebook posting put me in mind of these three young women, each of which I consider a friend, each just shy of grandchild age, each someone I'd have been proud to call daughter.  

I am so blessed to have of these remarkable women in my life, if only on its far reaches.  Each is spectacularly creative, in similar & different ways.  It's delightful to discover they're compadres.  

Sometimes certain people just need a shout out.  Blake, Joy & Maddie - this is your day.

 

 

 

We've been played

A recent HuffPo read -You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia - is a bit of a slog, but an essential one, taking our post- Paris 11/13/15 eyes to an almost ignored, willfully overlooked Middle Eastern/global power brokers.  Aka the Saudi royal house.  

The US government & our media outlets made the calculated decision to NOT give any sort of balanced picture of our "valued" allies.  That's always chilled me to the bone.  The Saudis sat back & let America fight for IT's issues, while they remained safely behind the scenes, decidedly not part of the big picture.  Well, not visibly.  But they were always there.  

And the radical form of Islam currently encroaching on Europe & the world is right at home with the Saudis.  

It took the most tragic of circumstances, but FINALLY someone is writing what I've wondered for many years.  To quote from the article (the first part of a 2-part piece):


In the collaborative management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western projects (countering socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse.

After all, the more radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan -- and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.

Why should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar's Saudi-Western mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised -- knowing a little about Wahhabism -- that "moderate" insurgents in Syria would become rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have imagined that radical Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could we imagine that a doctrine of "One leader, One authority, One mosque: submit to it, or be killed" could ever ultimately lead to moderation or tolerance?

Or, perhaps, we never imagined.


Finally, the media ostrich raised its head out of the sand & was alarmed by what it saw! Alas, I fear - too little, too late.  

My fellow Americans - we have been played.