The Words of Mother and Dad

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adoptee, adoption, aging, Charlottesville, Dad, Diaries, Letters, Memory, Mortality, Sunset, Virginia, Wisdom, World War II

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.
~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

Note to readers: Before Richard and Reva Beard adopted me, the bond between them intensified. With each year of courtship, marriage and — most of all — through their World War II separation, they imagined the family they would build. The war made that dream even stronger. Though separated by 6,000 miles and 18 months, they corresponded every day. The letters were relegated to a file case in my parents retirement home. After Dad passed away, I asked my brother to send me the entire collection. Daddy had meant to write a book about his India experiences, but life got in the way. I inherited the thousands of handwritten epistles, quit my day job to read every one, and turned the best of them them into a book: From Calcutta with Love- The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard. (Texas Tech University Press, 2002) The original missives were archived at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. In 2002, the Texas publisher gave me back the rights. Last year Pajarito Press in Los Alamos, New Mexico acquired them. I’m happy to announce that, eighty years after they were first written by mom and dad, the letters are again being presented to the world.

Richard and Reva, I’d like to believe, would be proud to share their words with the world.

If I could speak to Richard today,  I’d remind him of a certain conversation. When going through some of my old diaries, I found this entry:

 My father and I were walking around the gentle hills of Charlottesville, Virginia. I’d left Virginia for New Mexico, embarking on my own life, but I visited at least once or twice a year. He and my mother had moved to a senior community named “Stonehenge.” I found the title amusing, thinking it conjured up the wisdom of the ages. On this particular evening, I was out walking with the wisest man I knew.
    The sun was setting and mist arose from the earth. Instead of a blazing sunset like those I experienced in New Mexico, this “sky-scape” was layered in subtle pastels…pink, peach and gray.
    Though I don’t recall my exact words, I told my father that when I was 70, his age at the time, I wouldn’t mind dying. I would, I told him, be ready to leave the earth.
    “You’ll feel differently when you’re there,” he retorted. “You’ll want more years ahead of you. Many more years.” I wanted to disagree, but I knew that argument was futile. Daddy was strong minded.
    Life happened. Marriage, children, divorce, grandchildren. Suddenly I was the agemy father was when he made his pronouncement.
    He’d left years earlier, but I felt that at some mysterious psychic level, he could hear and understand me. “You were right,” I longed to tell him.

Join Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on the life through adoption colored glasses, hiking, reading books, and writing. The Hand of Ganesh, slated for mid-April publication, can be pre-ordered from Pocol Press. (Pull down the Books tab at the top of this page). Stay tuned for a publication date for From Calcutta with Love. Thanks so much for reading; Your comments and questions are  invited.

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Poetry Live: May it soon Return

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Acceptance, adoption, Adoption recovery, Attitude adjustment, Coleman Barks, Emotional journeys, Hope, Memory, Performance, Perspective, Poetry, Rumi, Self-realization

The pending new year is filled with promise. With the development of a Corona virus to end the pandemic, we will, hopefully, be able to join live audiences. Zoom will still be around, of course, but there will be other options. I can imagine a time when we will sit with others, in person, to share music, movies, dance and theater performances. I am ready to adopt and embrace that time. Lately, I’ve been remembering Coleman Barks, the famous translator of Jelaluddin Rumi. In the past, Barks regularly came to Santa Fe. His show, “Rumi Concert—A Feast of Poetry, Humor, Music, Dance & Story,” offered a mesmerizing combination of poetry recitation by poet/professor Coleman Barks, music by David Darling and Glen Velez and dancing by Zuleikha, international Storydancer. And it led me to offer you, dear Reader, my favorite Rumi poem.
The following masterpiece fits my topic because the adoptee’s journey is about being at home in ones own skin.
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The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. 
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes 
because each has been sent
 as a guide from beyond.– Jelaluddin Rumi,

********************************************************************** Although he wrote seven centuries ago, the Persian poet, theologian, and Sufi mystic Rumi provided insights that serve us well today. The “guests” are emotions and thoughts to which one awakens each morning. Rumi advises welcoming them all rather than disdaining some as unwelcome pests and others as “right” and correct. It is true that we enjoy those guests that empower, buoy us up, and make us feel successful, capable, happy. But as I’ve traveled the adoptee’s road to discovering who I really am, I’ve found that we need to accept all the feelings and learn to live with them.
The emotions that appear in our personal guest houses can, after all, serve as guides from beyond.

Looking at the world through adoption-colored glasses.

Redwoods Everlasting ~ Haiku Monday

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Adopting a Place, Arcata, California, Forests, Life in the Slow Lane, Memory, Pacific Ocean, Preservation, Redwoods, Sequoia

Note from Elaine: Guest Poet Roberta Fine is back by popular demand. A friend for decades, she’s always been an inspiration to me. She reads more books and writes more poetry than anyone I know. Teacher, writer, artist, mother and grandmother, Roberta enriches every life she touches. After a recent trip to California, she produced a lovely bouquet of Haiku.

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In every lifetime there is a golden bubble, a time and place preserved in its own magic gel in ones memory. Sometimes you wonder if you made it up, if you revisited the place, would the reality be crushing? One of my daughters continues to call me on such memories, finally buying a plane ticket to deposit us in that spot (after a long twisty drive) to either debunk or validate the stories or perhaps just to participate in that golden time.
Such a place is a hidden pocket in the northern California coast redwood country called Arcata. Between the sea and the Sequoia sempervirens, its inhabitants have been influenced by and dependent upon both. Fifty years ago there were cone shaped lumber slash-burners and fishing boats dotting the bay, feeding an industry. The burners are gone, but some fishing boats ply the ocean and Humboldt University is still thriving, attracting ecologists, foresters, wildlife managers, fisheries experts and anyone who seeks to preserve or make a living from the abundant natural resources that intersect with the Pacific Ocean.
What’s not to love about such a conglomeration of tree-huggers and sea and stream rovers? In our forest rambling, ocean watching, meandering steep neighborhoods, savoring seafood in locally owned cafes (chain restaurants prohibited), we were impressed by women without makeup, low meal prices and high property costs (not much building room left). Of course, two-thousand-year-old trees still stand, the ancient ocean laps the rocks and the inhabitants cherish them. Arcata wasn’t a fantasy.

Arcata, California

Embracing redwoods,
Sea air wrapping giant trees.
Wave-rocked fishing boats.

Granted permission
To live with archaic trees,
Town clutching steep slopes.

Forest meeting sea,
Stern grey waves washing rocky shore.
Great redwoods looming.

Tender light in woods,
Redwood branches filtering.
Massive, incised trunks.

Speck on forest floor
Canopy a mile above.
Treading cushioned earth.

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Roberta Fine adopted Haiku as her medium of expression.

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An Elephant never Forgets

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adoptee, empower, healing, labyrinth walking, Memory, my story, struggles

We are not elephants! The beauty of being human is that we, unlike animals, have the marvelous

“Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant.”-John Donne

ability to transcend memories. We are capable of “rising above.” We can and do remember negative events in our lives, realize that they are what happened in the past, and revitalize ourselves. Through conscious efforts, we accomplish this in spite of what happened when we were five or ten, seventeen, twenty-five or thirty. For those of us shaped by adoption, I believe this is especially true.

Theologian Eugene H. Peterson, in his book Answering God, says “Memory is not an orientation to the past; it is vigorously present tense, selecting out of the storehouse of the past, retrieving and arranging images and insights, and then hammering them together for use in the present moment.”
The operative word in Peterson’s definition is “selecting.” We are neither elephants nor robots. No one is making us think our thoughts, and once we decide to take control of the “monkey mind,” it is possible to switch internal channels. Going for a walk, being in nature, talking with a friend or confidante are ways to reset the emotions.
Building a labyrinth in my back yard, a spiral walking path, was my key to healing. Available 24/7, the labyrinth provides an opportunity to gain insight, to calm the mind and find answers. It empowers me, as an adult adoptee, to reflect, take responsibility,

The Labyrinth dates back 6,000 years.

and to become accountable.

As a human, albeit a human shaped by adoption, I can both remember and select.

Memories: My plan is to “keep the best and ditch the rest.”

“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all the expectations, all the beliefs—and becoming who you are.”
-Rachel Naomi Remen