Fate In A Lovely Shade of Gray

Erin,

I am very impressed with your science fiction story and know I couldn’t have written a story as well developed and focused as yours is when I was your age. You grabbed my attention right away with the time travel theme and kept it by staying focused on the main character’s direct experiences during the assassins’ successful attempts to kill famous people. You never wandered off the subject by having him explore other events taking place during each time period.

I think the introduction of Fate to the story was brilliant. Fate always is there whether or not we understand or accept it. Having Fate wink at the main character at the end was the perfect ironic conclusion. I loved it and would like to hear it again!

I can help you correct it line by line the way I used to if you want. I won’t try to change your story.

I’d like you to make noodles romanoff @5:45. Okay?

Dear Mom,

My fate is to be a writer. Could you have known this? Could you have known this when referring back to my story about the time-traveler and his run in with Fate? Could you have known it when you wrote “Fate always is there whether or not we understand or accept it?” I’ve spent far too much time in my life asking black and white questions like this only to discover the answers are gray. In my mind you live in a beautiful shade of gray where words and ideas are constantly blurring and taking different form to fit the moment.

Formerly, not only did I refuse to accept gray answers, they terrified me. Now I seek comfort in gray. I’ve found that it’s in the blurry places where the greatest possibilities blossom and grow. Finding this note from you in my folder of personal letters brings me comfort—soft gray comfort. If I looked at your words in black and white, I would not see them beyond face value. I would lack the ability to internalize a very important self-discovery. I wouldn’t have realized that my fate is sealed.

Of course I’ve always know from the time I was a small child that I loved to write. I have notebooks full of quirky characters, goofy plot lines, and even a science fiction story where my protagonist attempts to unlock the mysteries of a personified version of “Fate.” College-ruled-paper pages full of barely legible, insanely horrible grammar and spelling have waited years to not merely be acknowledged, so much as to be accepted as evidence of my fate. Fate always is there whether or not we understand or accept it.

You accepted my fate—my gift. You wrapped it in gray while I still clung to black and white. When all throughout my school years I circulated through one blasé teacher and instructor after another, my writing not so much berated by them as ignored or cast aside as mediocre (a much worse fate for a writer, believe me), you were my steadfast encouragement. I remember as a young girl, in my teens and tweens, sitting by your side. You in your recliner—the sick chair, and me in an uncomfortable dining-room chair—the petulant-child chair.

On rare occasion you and I would delight in sharing one of my literary creations, but mostly (and sadly) I recall complaining relentlessly at having to endure your editing sessions and commentary. The computer you so painstakingly used to communicate with was a menacing time-sucker that I became increasingly resentful toward. Oh but if I could turn back time … I would gladly sit by your side for hours, days, and weeks, sucking up every edit, suggestion, and comment you had to offer—Fate is always there whether or not we understand or accept it.

When you passed, 18 years ago this month (so hard to believe) I tried to outrun, outsmart, and deny my fate. For years I swapped pen and paper for liquid insanity and oblivion making sure everything was black and white—mostly black. Any hope for creativity was blighted by too much untreated sorrow and resentment.

It took two years of being clean and free of resentment before I could even consider the possibility of allowing fate to catch up with me. Anyone (including me) who seriously believes they have a jump start on fate is a fool. My fate has, was, and always is—with me … whether I accept it or not. Putting pen to paper was just like riding a bike again, but accepting my ability to put pen to paper was more like breathing fresh air after years of living underground. A long, long, long time underground.

As liberating as it was to write again I was consumed with doubt and insecurity. As fate would have it, however, someone who reminds me a little of you, someone warm, encouraging, and convincing looked me straight in the eye and told me (in her unmistakable Kentucky accent), “Honey, you are a writer!” I began to believe. I began to accept. I began to slip into the gray.

Since then days and years have passed. I’ve sat beside others who have offered edits and commentary on my writing. I’m grateful to each and every one of them. They have continued to be warm, encouraging and convincing. I no longer try to outsmart or outquestion my fate. Sometimes I still regret not having spent more time with you in the dining-room chair, saddened by all I could have learned, but then I remember—it’s not all black and white. What you gave me before you left was priceless and invaluable. You taught me how to not only see, but to live in gray. Fate always is there whether or not we understand or accept it.

In The Eye of The Storm

It’s scary

how some of us discover

we’re alone.

Lorna says

most people make that discovery

when they are in their forties

so it must sometimes coincide

with the experience of

the so-called “mid-life crisis.”

But I also think it is possible

to realize that fact

when a person is younger than forty

and it is likewise possible

that a person could live a lifetime

without ever learning

that he or she is alone.

By “alone” I mean

finding out you are

a completely separate entity

from everyone you know and love,

that no one will experience life

in exactly the same way you do,

that no one can truly understand your pain,

and that life will go on

virtually without change

whether or not you are around.

I plunged into this ice cold realization

at the age of 35

when I learned I had

an incurable illness.

In the months immediately following

this realization,

I spent every waking minute

thinking about and fearing my aloneness.

When we went on family outings,

I’d look at the houses we passed

and think,

life goes on in these homes

just as it always has.

In them are families

going about their regular business—

eating, sleeping, going to school or work,

watching TV, reading books, cleaning house—

as if nothing has changed.

How can this be

when the structure of my life

is crumbling into ruin around me?

It must mean

that my problems and I are insignificant

and I am truly alone

in this experience!

During that same period of time,

I would lie on my bed in the afternoon,

not resting,

but probing my conscious mind

in a frenzied effort

to find ways out

of my predicament.

My eyes never fixed

on features of the room

or on how the light

streaming through the window

struck the furniture in the room.

Instead,

they darted back and forth feverishly

in a desperate attempt

to escape from

a very tricky, very lonely maze.

None of my mental pacing helped

because I was seeking a cure

for the aloneness I felt

outside myself

rather than from inside myself

where the answer waited for me

to discover it.

Time, Lorna’s psychotherapy,

and my earnest desire

to find inner peace,

have brought me to the place

where I am right now.

It isn’t a joyful place

(because I never would have chosen

to have the experience of this illness)

but it is a place of peace

like that which is found

in the center or “eye” of a hurricane.

Whenever I stop thrashing

at the raging hurricane outside myself,

I soar like a seabird

over the ocean far below me.

I am in the eye of the storm

and I find healing in the quiet there.

While I know God is with me

at all times,

I only FEEL his presence

when I enter the eye.

I wish I could always remain

in this gentle, peaceful place

where the pain of my loss

doesn’t hurt so much.

But I am human

and, therefore, am very attached

to the world.

I can remain in the eye of the storm

only so long as

I allow my conscious mind

with its worldly concerns

to rest.

When I turn to the world,

which turns me away from God

and from the vast healing resources

within my unconscious mind,

I am thrown back into the hurricane again.

Now when I look back on

the early months of my illness,

I feel sympathetic ache

for my struggle to accept it.

It took a long time

for me to feel comfortable at all

with the knowledge

that as far as the world is concerned,

my illness and I are alone together.

But if I could get

just one point across

to the readers of this poem,

it would be

that given time, professional guidance,

and earnest desire

to find inner peace,

they can join me

in the place where I am now.

I am not alone here.

By, Laura Schiller

November 15, 1988

Dandelion Tears and Wishes

Me and my Laura, taken by my very talented, and very dear friend, Trisha Madrid

In these passing days, months and years I see you everywhere. I see you in my neighbor’s mom who comes three days a week to take care of her grandson. I see you in my other neighbor, two doors down, during a spring dinner of tomato-basil soup in the company of her two adult daughters and three grandchildren. I see you arm and arm with mothers and daughters of every age--passing me by in streets, cars, coffee shops and grocery stores. I even see you in the arguments, bickering and misunderstandings between my closest girlfriends and their mothers. You float through these scenarios like the minuscule windblown seeds of dandelion puffs I’d make a wish on and then blow away as a kid.

I’m often angry and sad by the scattered pieces of you left behind; tiny indiscriminate parts of you I can never quite grasp. All the moms and daughters, their abundant love, anger, and other oozing communal emotions bring me to my knees. I cry without abandon as I tote my 2-year-old twins across the parking lot thinking, she was robbed. My little brother was younger than they are now when you became sick. You would have unwillingly forsaken holding his small body against your own. Already, pieces of you are separating from the whole, and the only wishes being made are the kind that can’t come true.

I think about my friend who recently lost her mother. We sit on the couch and she says, “No one can replace her.” And I wonder, is there a hint of question in her words? Or, is the question my own? For in my own past I spent many years petitioning a stand-in for you. At times I’d bathe in a feeling close to Mom, but inevitably it evaporated into misty disappointment. It wasn’t fair to put the unwritten expectation on them. It’s impossible to replace the irreplaceable. Sooner or later my unattainable expectations of them would squelch us both and one or both of us would recoil, our relationship withering like the limbs of the ill-fated Wicked Witch of the West. Sometimes you can never return to Kansas.

Still, I’m doing alright by myself, and really if I think about it, I’m not alone. Not by a long stretch. And somehow, I find myself seeing you in different light. I see you as I rock my fussy girls to bed. I see you in the man who loves me unconditionally ever reiterating, everything is gonna be okay. I see you in your namesake as she stubbornly undermines me … again and again. I see you in my friends: In Liz who somehow never ceases to hear out my increasing lamentations (about everything) and picks up where you left off as writing sage and mentor. I see you in my friend Lori who always seems to bring me dinner or treats at the right time. I see you in Lauren, Natalie and Rhonda, who despite the many miles between us, always return a phone call, offer a kind word and tell me I’m a great mom, especially when I don’t feel like one. They do not replace the irreplaceable, only enhance the willingly enhanceable.

You float through these scenarios like the minuscule windblown seeds from dandelion puffs I’d make a wish on and then blow away as a kid. My heart is happy now because every tiny seed is a testament of your love for me, and like every good seed, you can be everywhere and I don’t have to hold you in my palm to know it. The peace in my heart tells me that for every piece of you floating through parts of my life that I can’t reach, the stem of you—the part that held everything together, still holds strong. It holds my ideals, my beliefs, my friendships, my children, my family, and it holds … me. Perhaps wishes do come true—although not in the way we imagine they will.

MY PHONE BOOTH

Laura Schiller was my supermom, even when her body
wouldn't let her be. In the spirit of Halloween, may you all
find the phonebooth that transforms you, into your most super you.

Clark Kent is a wimp

and so am I.
He is clumsy and awkward
and basically a nerd.
We have those characteristics
in common as well.
Yet, when Clark Kent
goes into a phonebooth
and tears off his everyday clothes,
he becomes Superman,
who is quite the opposite
of Clark Kent.
All of a sudden,
he is faster than a speeding bullet,
more powerful than a locomotive,
and able to leap over tall buildings
in a single bound!

In addition,
he can bend steel with his bare hands,
has x-ray vision,
and is damn good-looking!
His transformation from
Wimpy to Wonderful
takes just a matter of seconds.
Such a dramatic and rapid change
would seem to be possible
only in comic book pages
or in movies having large budgets
for special effects.
But I am living proof
that such transformations are possible
without cartoons or cash.

When I need to be strong
or powerful or pretty,
I simply enter my phonebooth,
which is in the form
of an easy chair and a computer.
Someone puts a switch in my hand
and in an instant,
I change from mild-mannered wimp
to Superwife, Supermom, Supreme!

There is nothing I can’t do
with the power of my imagination
and the marvelous machine
on the table in front of me.
I can climb
the treacherous and icy slopes
of Mount Everest.
I can explore the depths of the sea
to observe the behavior of the whales
I admire so much.

But more important to me,
I am able to enjoy the complex conversations
with my husband
and can join with him
to guide and discipline
our growing children.
I can physically hold and comfort
my daughter and son
or tell them stories
or play with them.
I can have another child
as I probably would have had
if I hadn’t gotten ill.

Skeptics will tell me
all these things aren’t real,
that they’re all in my mind.
They certainly are in my mind
but also on this paper
in black and white!
What’s more,
you just have to look at me
while I’m sitting in my phonebooth
to see how
my writing transforms me
from Wimpy to Wonderful
in a matter of seconds!

I sit taller,
have roses in my cheeks,
and a gleam of inspiration
in my eyes.
Since such a small movement
is required to activate the switch,
I feel no weakness in my limbs
as I create a different world
on my computer’s screen.
My phonebooth gives me confidence
in my ability to be
an important and worthwhile person,
which I rarely feel
when I’m away from it.

For as long as I am there,
I’m as strong and invincible
as Superman!

In case you were wondering,
I have something else in common
with Superman.
I, too, haven’t found a way
to handle the Kryptonite.

By, Laura Schiller
March 1988

Brownies, Ice Cream and a Lesson in Caregiving

Some people are naturally good caretakers. I am not one of those people. My husband Paul … now he’s someone you’d pick to be in your lifeboat after a shipwreck. Caring for others comes naturally to Paul. When we were dating, right before he proposed to me as a matter-of-fact, he was my sole caretaker during a nasty bout of pneumonia. He took me to all my doctor appointments, made me homemade chicken noodle soup and literally, was at my beckon call. In all times of sickness, sadness or otherwise down and out periods in my life, Paul has always gone above and beyond in caring for me.

Now I, on the other hand, cannot readily confess that I have reciprocated the same attentiveness to Paul. Mothering, thank GOD, is something that comes a bit more naturally! It’s caring for big people that I find unnatural … and sometimes unsettling. I can’t really pinpoint my discomfort other than to say, that the thought of caring for an adult creates an overall sense of uneasiness within me. Am I doing this right? What if I screw up? Or, worst of all, the admission of: I wish I were doing something else. Part of these lamentations stem from the caretaking responsibilities I had as a child for my Mom, which although were not many compared to some, were enough to leave an impressionable distaste in my memory.

When I reunited with pen and paper (or fingers to keyboard), one of the first stories I wrote, was a story about feeding my mom brownies when she was in the height of ALS. Titled “Brownie,” the story was what I would call an honest piece of writing—but also an angry appraisal of caregiving. I now identify that I was angry for being angry at being angry about feeding my mom brownies, when really, I’d rather be doing whatever it was I thought I’d rather be doing at the time. It has taken me many years to forgive myself for all those brownies. But I have.

I was reminded of “Brownie” when Paul was in the hospital after a motorcycle accident. The night before he was scheduled for elbow surgery, he asked if I would feed him some chocolate ice cream. Willingly I obliged; and as I put each spoon full to his mouth, a familiar feeling crept over me. It was a feeling reminiscent of a time when I brought a spoon full of chocolate goodness to the lips of my Mom-- but the feeling wasn’t anger this time. It was fear. I remembered feeling utterly vulnerable as a kid, sitting there in a room, just Mom and I-- a brownie and a spoon. “You can do this”—the thought that willed my sometimes hesitant arm to lift the spoon.

There I was again, but this time, sitting in a hospital room, just me and Paul-- a chocolate ice cream container and a spoon. And again, I thought, “You can do this!” adding without realizing, “this is not the same situation.” Without much further contemplation, I fed him the rest of the ice cream. The next day, (post surgery) Paul wanted coffee. Again, I obliged and held a cup with a straw to his mouth. I quickly realized that my mind had wandered somewhere into “brownies past” again. The result: hot coffee dribbled out of the straw, down Paul’s chin. “You can do this!” … but somewhere between the ice cream, brownies and a few 24 hours in the hospital, I could feel my resolve begin to dissipate.

Paul home from the hospital three days later, I continued to site myself on poor caregiving incidents. I caught myself sighing at one of Paul’s simple requests. I openly threw a tantrum after hours of enduring our three girls having tantrums of their own. Worst of all, I started to feel angry for being angry that I’d rather be doing whatever it was I’d rather be doing at the time. “You can do this!” had completely degenerated into, “You suck at this!”

Perhaps my biggest flaw was that before the hospital release papers were even signed, I had already set my expectations to a degree fit for complete and utter failure. I was going to surpass June Cleaver in all her mothering, caregiving, house cleaning and cooking abilities. Right—because I am so like June Cleaver, who I might add, is just as fictitious (and not nearly as cool) as Superwoman. I suppose it’s kind of like expecting a child or teenager to be happy about feeding her adult mother brownies, with the absence of fear, frustration or embarrassment.

I don’t believe in blaming my behavior or shortcomings on situations that have occurred in my past. I do however; believe in using events from my past as information to help me grow in my present. It has not served me well to cast aside the memories of brownie feedings, or to discount my feelings tied to them. If I can accept my feelings and limitations tied to caregiving, I can replace “You can do this” with “I am doing this … the best I know how.” I don’t have to be June Cleaver and I don’t have to love doing something I don’t love to do. I only have to remember that just because I have forgiven myself for an event in the past, doesn't make me immune to feelings surrounding the incident. I have been given the tools to effectively field my feelings ... I just have to remember to apply them.

Lord knows I have a l-o-n-g way to go in taking care of big people. Poor Paul--the guy probably missed a few meals and baths here and there during my motorcycle accident caregiving days… but we made it through. I made it through.