Category: Adult children

The BRAVE Interview #5 December 2016: Jeanne Emerson

by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, friends, Interviews, The BRAVE Interviews

Here is #5 in The BRAVE Interview series! It’s the Who, What, When, Where, How,  (and sometimes Why) of YOUR ‘one brave thing’! December’s interview is with Jeanne Emerson!

jeanne-emersonWho: Hi. My name is Jeanne Emerson.  I’m a grandma, gardener, artist, yogi, retired social worker and grieving mother.  I’m fortunate to live in a peaceful and cozy home in southern Maine…it is my sanctuary.  I am calm here, reflective, often tearful and recently, joyful…again.  And, I’m about to celebrate my 65th birthday.  WOW.

What:  I never really thought that I would feel brave about this but I do.  My one brave thing is to allow the feeling of joy back into my life.  My son Scott died three years ago.  He was 35 years old, funny, handsome, loving and very artistic.  His death came as a shock, no preparation…but even if I had been expecting it, it still would have been a shock.  No mother could prepare for this.

When:  The call came at 8:45 on a Tuesday night. (Tuesday has become my least favorite day of the week ever since).

Where:  I was home, the phone rang and the police officer had the nerve to say, “I’m sorry to inform you that your son is dead.”  How could he say something like that about my child??  I hated that officer at that moment.  I couldn’t spare any compassion for him then, no ability to care about how awful that call must have been for him to make.  Compassion could and would come later.

Why:  I’ll never know.  I won’t know why Scott died at such a young age, with so much more to offer, so much more to experience.  (please believe  me, I have driven myself to extreme exhaustion trying to understand).  But here’s what I do understand…healing can happen, life does in fact go on (as much as you may not want it do)…joy can enter again.

How:  This part of the interview is perhaps the easiest to explain.  My joy has come back because of trust.  My husband, Tim, my son Matt, family members and very precious friends believed in me.  They trusted me when I was a wailing mess on the floor, they trusted me when I couldn’t get through a conversation without crying, they trusted me when I couldn’t eat, sleep or get out of my pajamas, they trusted me when I would sit and stare, unable or unwilling to talk.  Somehow they trusted my process, that I just had to go through this my way (albeit dramatic and probably frightening to witness), but trust they did.  AND, miraculously, bit by bit, I started to live again without my son (well, without him in the way I knew him before his death….this is another interview but I KNOW that he is still with me, guiding me, encouraging me in my artistic pursuits, laughing with me and still loving me).  I feel very brave for laughing, running, playing, creating and loving.  This is my most important brave thing….so far.  

Jeanne, thank you so much for your brave, powerful words. ❤

Check out Jeanne’s designs at FOUND in Kennebunk (42 Main St; 207-604-5009) and on her website: emersondesigns.net

Book Review: The Box of Daughter

by Karen, posted in Adult children, author, books, Brave books, family, no fear, relationships, writing

I wanted to read Katherine Mayfield‘s book ‘The Box of Daughter‘ for a long time before I finally did. This is one of The Box of Daughterthe few times I knew the author before I knew the book. I met Katherine through a Wells-Ogunquit Adult Education class I took several years ago when I was working on my own novel. If you have ever the opportunity to take a writing class with Katherine, do it. You will love her low pressure and motivating teaching style. She creates a wonderful, safe environment in her classes, such that even I, who was always terrified to share my writing with others, found myself reading aloud to the class an essay that I had just written.

Anyway, I was interested to see how she wrote. I immediately related to Katherine’s childhood and teenage years of family dysfunction, trying to please everyone, and chronic ‘I’m sorry-ing”. The feeling of walking on eggshells at home, trying to keep the peace at all costs is oh-so familiar. Katherine gives an honest account of her life with her brother and her parents which (be forewarned) may bring up some of your own difficult memories as you read.

The belt? Check. Bullying? Check. The shock of seeing your grandmother’s teeth in a glass for the first time? Check.

I love Katherine’s reference (p 98) to looking at life through ‘pain-colored glasses’…right? It wasn’t all bad, though. There was some card playing in the evening. The Youth Group in California. Finding her voice in environments that stifled it.

In the end, Katherine’s book reminded me that, most of the time, our parents were doing the best that they knew how to do.

If you like this book, maybe read my book next: One Brave Thing!

Top 10 best tips for selling your books at a yard sale

by Karen, posted in Adult children, author, books, Brave books, local fun

I had the good fortune to be part of Stonewall Kitchen Employee’s Yard Sale this morning in York (by invitation from my son, Anthony). I set up my table and brought copies of my book, One Brave Thing.

stonewall yard sale

(Hmmm…maybe next time I should have someone else take the picture so that I can be IN it.)

Anyway, it went very well! I was so happy to see my friend Dawny’s face bright and early at 8am when I arrived. I am here to tell you that it’s WONDERFUL to have the support of friends when you go to do your book events.

Here’s some things what worked for me today:

  1. First of all, bring change. Bring 10’s, 5’s, and 1’s.  The first rule of yard sales (and farmer’s markets, for that matter) is that your first customer will pay you with a twenty. Every time.
  2. Bring index cards and Post-it notes. These are useful for writing down price specials or whatever statements you can think of to attract your potential customers. You can make a tent out of an index card to act as a little standing sign.
  3. Bring tape, because the wind will blow your tented index cards away.
  4. The plastic Godzilla that was on my son’s side of the table attracted a lot of people to our table. Just sayin’.
  5. Don’t bring chocolate to your yard sale if it’s going to be 80 degrees. Or if you do, bring some napkins.
  6. If you have a buddy with you, it helps a lot. It’s nice to have someone watch your table if you need to take a bio break (okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee).
  7. Bring some bags. Many people didn’t want them, but the ones that did want them really did.
  8. Be willing to be flexible on your price (hello, it’s a yard sale). Know your rock bottom price in advance.
  9. Bring more than one pen to sign your books. One pen has a bad habit of going missing right when you need it.
  10. Try to find a shady spot, or bring some shade with you. Someone had a tent thing that I was coveting (not that I would have wanted to have to set it up though). Bring a hat. Bring sunscreen.

Bring your good attitude. Bring your business cards, pens, and book marks (or whatever promotional materials you’ve created).

I hope this helps you sell lots of books!

If you have some ideas of your own, please consider posting them below.

Book Review: Not Even Dark Chocolate Can Fix This Mess

by Karen, posted in Adult children, author, books, Brave books, family, Life's too short to read bad books, Marriage, relationships, writing

Not even dark chocolate can fix this mess by Kathy Eliscu is so much fun to read! I started reading this book weeks ago, when it first came out, and then I Not even dark choc coversadly had to put it aside so that I could finish a project (okay, publishing my own book!). But ‘Not Even…’ called to me the whole time, patiently awaiting my return (okay, fine! I lost it! I had to invoke St Anthony to help me find it and now that I’ve finished reading the book, I can see that he had a vested interest in the recovery effort). All I can say is that it was SO worth the wait.
This book is like a page (okay 309 pages-I checked) from my own life. Maybe from your own, too. From the GYN table to the toilet stall (really? Still wrestling with wings or no wings? I win-I quit that s*** years ago! Sorry, TMI? My bad), Tink had me at “hormones”. Once I picked the book up, I couldn’t put it down again. I read it all at once.
Not Even chronicles the daily life of Tink, which is a cacophony of ringing phones, buzzing beepers, and pinging answering machines, underpinned by the love of her friends, family, and fiance.
A good life.
A few notes to author:
Kathy, my nursing cap was white with 1 blue stripe! Or was it 2? Dammit, now I have to get up off the couch and go look…
Oh, and that gray hair trauma thing in Chapter 15 (insert zipped-lip smiley emoticon here)? Total empathy for Tink (again, sorry, TMI? My bad).
Also, I have one word (okay, 2 words) to add to the ‘SHUT. UP.’ list for nurses: ‘Best Practice’.
SHUT. UP.
There are illustrations in the book. A bonus, like free gift with (book) purchase (thank you, Kathy Eliscu! And William D. Eldridge!). My favorite one is on page 133. Don’t ask me why. Art is personal, remember?!
Now I have to go. That “little portable whirlpool tub” for tired feet? Gotta get me one of those…
This book? READ IT.

(This is my review adapted from the one I wrote for amazon.com).

After you finish this book, read my book! One Brave Thing

 

Missing my mother

by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, good grief

IMG_3330It’s Mother’s Day, and I am missing my mother.

My mother died. Nineteen years ago. Sometimes I am embarrassed by the tears that can suddenly overtake me when I realize that I am still missing her so much. Really? At almost 53 years old?

Really.

Sometimes the emotion sneaks up on me so fast and is so strong that it takes my breath away. But it’s been so long, I think. I shouldn’t still feel so bad, I think.

The truth is that I didn’t appreciate her enough while she was still alive. I left her in a million ways before she left me.

Now that I am the mother in this complicated mother-daughter algorithm, I have insights that I lacked then. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized all the ways that my mother was there for me that I didn’t even know about.

We are connected forever to our mothers. My mother carried me inside of her, and now I carry her inside of me. Whenever I wonder if she is still with me, I get a huge rush of feeling-love?- that assures me of her continued presence in my life. Just like when she was still alive, she is always as close as I will allow her to be.

 

To boldly go, part one

by Karen, posted in Adult children, family, my one word, teens, Travel

disney blog 1My daughter has been asking to go to Disney since she was about 9 years old. I would always listen to her ask, nod, smile, and say that tried and true line that I’d borrowed from my own mother: “We’ll see.” I got away with that for, oh, 5 years or so. Five years during which she watched many of her friends go to Disney. Five  years during which she watched her older brother go to Disney (in fairness, I never took him either-he was an adult and paid his own way when he went). Five years during which she got older and smarter and my “We’ll see” was starting to fall a little flat, even to my own ears.

A few years ago, she changed her tack; instead of asking to go, she started asking to go for her sixteenth birthday. That changed the game completely. That was a line in the sand. “We’ll see” is timeless, fluid, eternal. “By my sixteenth birthday” was a finish line. I stopped saying, “We’ll see” to my daughter and started thinking, “What if…?” to myself.

Since my one word this year is ‘brave’, the ‘what if’s’ have become more insistent. So what if I haven’t been on a plane in, oh, 25 years or so? So what if my vacation hours at work are precious and few? My daughter will only turn sixteen once. So what if park passes cost more than the airfare? So what if we live far away from an airport with a direct flight to where we are going? So what if the idea of getting us there and back is, um, terrifying?

We’re going.

Lemons

by Karen, posted in Adult children, family, fitness, teens

IMG_2067I got up early on the Sunday of Daylight Savings Time, the way I (almost) always do. Time to make the donuts…

No wait! That’s not right! Time to feed the chickens….I threw on my coat over my PJ’s and bumped into my daughter on the way out. She said she was getting in the shower, and then inexplicably, picked up her phone and went on to the bathroom and shut the door. I went out the back door and the moment I shut it…I got the universal sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that one gets when they realize they just locked themselves out.

I called my daughter on said phone-no answer. I fed the chickens. I got the paper. I called her again. No answer. I texted her. Nothing. I called my other sleeping child on his cell. Nada. In desperation, I even called the land line.

Right. Nothing.

I stood on the porch, wishing I had put my jeans on as the 4 degrees seeped through my thin pajama pants. Let’s face it, a teenager’s shower could potentially take an hour.

I decided to (take my life in my hands and) take a walk. In the snow. And the ice. On my Very. Narrow. Street.

I made limoncello out of lemons! I am the type of woman who does that!

Of course, 3 minutes into the walk she called me, and I turned around and went right back.

 

The Song of Karen (or whoever)

by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, good grief

IMG_1584I went to the Crystal Harp Healing Session at The LoveLight Center with an open mind. I wasn’t sure what the ‘healing’ part was about, but I have heard Cheryl play that instrument before, and that was worth going back for.

There were about 9 of us seated in a circle. Shoes were shed at the door. The sequence was this:
1. She played for the group.
2. She then played an individual melody for each person present.
3. She closed with another song for the group.

It took about half an hour. It was free.

What was it like? Well, you know how when you have a massage or acupuncture session, sometimes there is an emotional release? It was like that for me (full disclosure: so okay, I was crying).
Right before Cheryl said that she was guided to play ‘my’ song first, I was sitting there thinking:

I wonder if my mother is here?

One moment before the music began, I suddenly felt like she was standing right behind me.

Is that you, Ma?

My mother Mary died in February 1996 on Leap Day. She was only about two years older then than I am now.
Then the music started.
Then the tears.
Yep. It was her.
Thanks, Cheryl.

 

Telling our story

by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, good grief, knitting, The write words at the write time

scarfI was at a craft show a couple of weekends ago. The weather was awful–freezing rain coating the icy snow on the ground that fell overnight. As soon as I got through the door, I stopped to shake it off of me. The first thing I saw was a table of scarves and hats, and the small dark-eyed woman standing behind it caught my eye.

I took a minute to look at the items on the table. I noticed a black and white scarf  that I knew would make a great gift for a number of the people on my list.

I asked, “How much is this?”

“Fifteen dollars,” she replied, “and you can pick a free cookbook from the box,” she added, hopeful, hands clasped in front of her.

I looked down. The ‘cookbooks’ were some old cooking magazines from 2008.

Well, all-righty then.

As she was wrapping it up, I was looking through my bag for my checkbook (note to self: Clean this damn thing out!).

I asked, “Did you make these?”

“Yes. Well, me and my daughter did. And then after she died, I made some more myself,” she told me.

What? Oh, no.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I told her, and suddenly found myself hugging her. “Yes, it was hard,” she said, and proceeded to tell me about how her diabetic daughter who couldn’t feel her feel very well had a blood sugar drop that caused her to get into a car accident. “She went through the windshield and died instantly, the…the….” she trailed off.

“Medical examiner?” I offered.

“Yes! Yes, the medical examiner said. She didn’t feel anything, he said, and that made me feel a little better, but I was still pretty sad. Until my birthday,” she said.

This is what happened on her birthday: She and her husband were having lunch, feeling the feelings only parents who have lost their child feel. Suddenly, her glass of water slid across the table. About four inches. By itself. “I said, ‘Did you see that?’ to my husband. “‘That’s her wishing you a Happy Birthday,’ he told me, and we both teared up. Then I felt much better. I knew she was okay.”

Sometimes, people just need to tell their story.

Even if they aren’t writers.

Cardinals

by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, good grief, Life in the cube, restaurants

cardinalI recently spent a few minutes (okay, hours) trolling the Facebook news feed and something caught my eye. Someone (sorry, I have no idea who or what or when exactly) posted that every time you see a red cardinal, that is a sign that a loved one that has died is saying hello to you, or something to that effect.

That’s nice, I thought.

Then a funny thing happened. I started noticing red cardinals.

  1. My friend Christine at work has a tapestry hung up in  her cube that depicts multiple red cardinals.
  2. I went to the movies to see The Nut Job (skip this one-see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty instead) and the bad guy’s side kick was a red cardinal. A squat, mean, nasty caricature of a cardinal, but still a cardinal.
  3. Today, I went to brunch at The Good Table in Cape Elizabeth and there in the foyer was a fake tree with cardinals all over the branches.

So, maybe this is just that phenomenon that happens to you when you are pregnant and you suddenly start seeing pregnant women everywhere you go.

On the other hand, this is the time of year that my mother and father died (mom 2/29/96 and dad 3/15/98) and so I am already thinking about them.

Maybe they are thinking about me, too.