Miriam Feder

I’m looking for a “special object.” What makes something stand out as special?  My eye floats across my surfaces.  I live in a high-stuff environment, much to the dismay of my inner monk. My objects have objects. There are small delicate family treasures, like crystal, china and stone. Then there are gifts from dear ones or things I’ve collected traveling. Things might be interesting, beautiful, occasionally valuable, inspiring, and maybe even tender. But what object has meaning?

Should it be something I purchased or something that was gifted or handed down? Are items from the past more meaningful or should it be something very now?  There are other variables: breakage; repair; connection; guilt; luxury; resentment.

Maybe it’s something I made myself in a moment of inspiration or creative therapy. Quickly my brain starts it’s muttering: that should have been finished better; see where the glaze pulled away?  I needed to allow more time between processes. The comments remind me I should be more careful, more attentive. I should try it again, learn from my mistakes, become a better craftsman and then I’d have the object free from doubt.

But the next time I’m creating I become distracted in a different direction being brand new yet again. Again—always—I invent as the clay is drying in my hands. Quick.  Yes, it would have been relatively easy to follow the plan and make the dinner predictable and fine, the file complete, the display transforming. How much would it take to melt away the tiny flaws and show mastery? Would that take a different me?

I don’t have the soul of a perfectionist although sometimes have the soul—or perhaps the soul-lessness—of a critic. Sometimes I can be that mind that looks for imperfection behind every trace—the cat who seeks reward for bringing a lifeless bird through the kitchen door for Mistress. Critic wants to protect, but instead she prevents.

“A precious object,” I remind myself. My eye lights on a small stuffed hedgehog.  Some years ago it pulled me into the zoo gift shop, where I quickly surveyed the entire stock. I sorted keenly and bought the very best three, anxious to spread these treasures to my little family.

When I bring my eyes to the little fleck of fabric woodsiness, I smile inside. There’s no weight of regret, criticism, disappointment, death or imperfection. There’s a bit of silliness and anachronism, perhaps, but its cuteness has withstood the test.

But is this THE object?  I think of Morgan and Rhubarb, my worn, over-loved stuffed animals from childhood. They came to my adult home a dozen years ago, tucked away in a family bureau. I rarely take them out of their plastic bag.

Instead, quite convinced, I pick a stone bear fetish from New Mexico. Perhaps I’m cheating—this is an object of obvious power. Or perhaps that’s exactly what I’m looking for. I share the coolness, smoothness, healing and power of the bear. By holding it, by using it, I derive its power. Sitting on the shelf it has none.  It becomes a special object in my hands. Maybe its special-ness is not in my hands alone, but in my hands the tiny stone bear has power.

Alone is a common way to be when you’re an only child. So common I stopped noticing that other people were usually in groups. So common I didn’t bother to learn how to share myself with others. Physical needs, those could be dispatched in hot-blooded bedrooms and backseats. Social needs were fulfilled in parties and communal living. But day to day walking and working through life nobody seemed to notice me—even me.

I wouldn’t call myself a loner. I’ve always had gatherings on my calendar, different pockets of people, new friends to make, old friends to catch up on. But I’m just fine alone—even in a movie theater—that most forbidding of lone adventures.

I’ve walked the streets of small towns, big cities, beaches, exotic continents, parks and neighborhoods, all alone. I’ve made most decisions big and small alone. I’ve trod the hardest trails alone: a father’s death; a mother’s deterioration; divorce; a child’s debilitating illness; job loss; career dissatisfaction. I barely knew to call on anyone. I kept partners and friends at the periphery. There has always been an invisible barrier that I unknowingly establish. Some came closer and then spun out. Some couldn’t stand the demands, the not-knowing, the shifting priorities these trials set up for me. Some would have been there for me had I let them. And some did get through to me and took a bit of the strain from my tired bones.

I lived well-loved with my parents for eighteen years. I spent thirty years as part of one couple or another. People might not have noticed how alone I was. Coupling can be so isolating. At its worst, it steals the generous mantle of solitude and replaces it with missed opportunity. And it looks to all the world like you have a partner. In those unconnected hours face to face with my partner, drenched in the ice-water of failed intimacy alone became loneliness.

When embrace is worm-eaten, when the arms belongs to the preoccupied or self-important, when he can see only his own reflection in the pool, when the hand gropes for the brittle or the habitual, it warps the strong dependable muscles of the body’s right side. The crust around that right shoulder, thigh and calf, becomes slightly soggy—rancid in the promising chords of camaraderie. Then, if some of the weight—the unearthly weight of sadness, the gonging weight of concern, the black weight of doubt, the sharp stones of anxiety—shifts, the softened side collapses, endangering both of us, sprained and sprawling atop the original hardship. So dissolution accompanies a child’s illness. So death warps life. But alone, standing on two strong legs… Well, the feet may wear, the shoulders ache, the breath rasp, but the slow stride uphill can continue, almost indefinitely.

Alone may not have learned how to ask, or how to share the burden, the questions or the uncertainty. Alone is used to marshaling, not unburdening. She dares not risk collapse too often. And too, alone is the child of alone. Generations have not asked, have not confided, have marshaled.

Alone has its own problems, to be sure. But self-reliance isn’t among them. Alone comes through—sometimes without asking all the right questions, sometimes based on incorrect assumptions, sometimes not as good as it could have been, but the tasks get done, the feet are re-bandaged, the shopworn heart is revived with bygone balms and blossoming boughs. Alone.

 

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Alone is a common way to be when you’re an only child. So common I stopped noticing that other people were usually in groups. So common I didn’t bother to learn how to share myself with others. Physical needs, those could be dispatched in hot-blooded bedrooms and backseats. Social needs were fulfilled in parties and communal living. But day to day walking and working through life nobody seemed to notice me—even me.

I wouldn’t call myself a loner. I’ve always had gatherings on my calendar, different pockets of people, new friends to make, old friends to catch up on. But I’m just fine alone—even in a movie theater—that most forbidding of lone adventures.

I’ve walked the streets of small towns, big cities, beaches, exotic continents, parks and neighborhoods, all alone. I’ve made most decisions big and small alone. I’ve trod the hardest trails alone: a father’s death; a mother’s deterioration; divorce; a child’s debilitating illness; job loss; career dissatisfaction. I barely knew to call on anyone. I kept partners and friends at the periphery. There has always been an invisible barrier that I unknowingly establish. Some came closer and then spun out. Some couldn’t stand the demands, the not-knowing, the shifting priorities these trials set up for me. Some would have been there for me had I let them. And some did get through to me and took a bit of the strain from my tired bones.

I lived well-loved with my parents for eighteen years. I spent thirty years as part of one couple or another. People might not have noticed how alone I was. Coupling can be so isolating. At its worst, it steals the generous mantle of solitude and replaces it with missed opportunity. And it looks to all the world like you have a partner. In those unconnected hours face to face with my partner, drenched in the ice-water of failed intimacy alone became loneliness.

When embrace is worm-eaten, when the arms belongs to the preoccupied or self-important, when he can see only his own reflection in the pool, when the hand gropes for the brittle or the habitual, it warps the strong dependable muscles of the body’s right side. The crust around that right shoulder, thigh and calf, becomes slightly soggy—rancid in the promising chords of camaraderie. Then, if some of the weight—the unearthly weight of sadness, the gonging weight of concern, the black weight of doubt, the sharp stones of anxiety—shifts, the softened side collapses, endangering both of us, sprained and sprawling atop the original hardship. So dissolution accompanies a child’s illness. So death warps life. But alone, standing on two strong legs… Well, the feet may wear, the shoulders ache, the breath rasp, but the slow stride uphill can continue, almost indefinitely.

Alone may not have learned how to ask, or how to share the burden, the questions or the uncertainty. Alone is used to marshaling, not unburdening. She dares not risk collapse too often. And too, alone is the child of alone. Generations have not asked, have not confided, have marshaled.

Alone has its own problems, to be sure. But self-reliance isn’t among them. Alone comes through—sometimes without asking all the right questions, sometimes based on incorrect assumptions, sometimes not as good as it could have been, but the tasks get done, the feet are re-bandaged, the shopworn heart is revived with bygone balms and blossoming boughs. Alone.

In Print

 

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My Mother has been slipping further into the fog of dementia for a long time now. This is a Mother’s Day greeting.  You can read the whole post here.

 

 Living in the Moment [16:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (64)

The start of the year seemed like a good time to revisit Blessings. What’s important? Who’s important?  All the big questions sneak up on us this time of year.

 

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When it’s hard to stand up, sometimes the asphalt can help.  I found that my town was there to support me in some wet, green, slippery, nice sort-of way. It’s a sweet town

 

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In Print

One week it seemed like everyone I talked to told me about someone who had too close a call with mortality.

 

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