Dad's Home-Birth

I got to kiss my dad good-bye.

And that's not all, I was able to be present at his home-death, as I call it, so akin to my three home-births did it seem! Now,' death', 'dead', 'died', etc. aren't the right words for the passage from alive to wherever and whatever it is that transpires in that very strange event that we are all born to experience one day. But I think birth is a good word for both our entrance and our departure, birth being a word with positive and joyful connotations. So truthfully, even though I may call my dad's event, 'home-death', I think of it more as a 'home-birth'.

Now I must tell you, that my dad's home-birth was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, my three home-births being counted right up there alongside it. Perhaps I would never have realized the many beautiful components, if it hadn't been for my own adventures in ultimate mystery!!.... Ultimate mystery....

I guess at this point, I must tell you that in my world, the spirit is first, physical manifestation flowing therefrom. Perhaps I'm deluded--probably, but living life from this perspective, one is able to allow life to be whatever it wants to be, to glimpse the spiritual beauty constantly, in a smile or gesture, in a flower or a cloudy sky, in water sparkling in the sun.... So even birth and death aren't really within our control, and whatever humans may scientifically deduce from the given evidence, life appears to have enormous will, creativity and determination all it's own!! That's the way I see it anyway.

stop, look and listen

When the kids were little, I read a Lot! of child psychology and child development literature. One book that made a big impression, was called "Drama of the Gifted Child" and it was written by Alice Miller. It was a simple, small book, but it made two important points: 1) a child's #1 need is to be listened to and taken seriously, and 2) the way an adult treats him/herself and others, is a reflection of the way that person was treated as a child by his/her parents.

Now that was interesting and actually novel. I thought about my own childhood. I was the middle child of 6 born in 8 years and even my mother always admitted she treated us as a group, not paying undue attention to us individually. When I thought really hard, I still couldn't remember my mother paying individual attention to me, unless I was being reprimanded or questioned. I thought about my dad, his perpetual sarcasm. My dad was a brilliant person~~top of his scientific technology field, but personally, he was a little stagnant and opinionated: for example, when discussing our futures, he would blithely and repetitiously joke that we should all become brain surgeons. Or, in a more serious moment, he would recommend a marketable future: accounting or computer science~~never taking our individuality into consideration.

I began to listen to my children and to take them seriously as unique individuals. Almost immediately, I realized that I consistently disrupted their play to drag them off on my errands or to whisk them off to their activities, or to preschool. How many times had my four-year old daughter screamed and cried, "You're ruining my game!!!", while I insisted it was time to go... it didn't matter... we had to get somewhere right now!!

Something that completely changed in my behavior and recognition and realization regarding my children was the critical importance of not ruining their game! I came to respect their 'game' and to believe that their play, especially make-believe, was more important then getting to the grocery store now, getting to the 2-year-old class, or even going to preschool at ages 3 and 4. As time went on, I listened more and more to my children and to other children and I observed their behavior and their play. I wound up homeschooling and even 'unschooling', because the more I let them play (and nowadays, it really is a matter of Letting Them Play!) the more I realized that children live in a magic wonderland!! which is slowly but definitely being eroded and decimated, pretty much like the rain forests and other forests of this planet... and being replaced by an impoverished kind of standardized, structured, adult-imposed, scheduled, conformed and hyper-controlled kind of existance... even at the ages of 2, 3, 4...

Simone

I've been thinking about Simone. Simone, to me, can mean Simone deBeauvoir or Simone Weil, or both, but Simone deBeauvoir has certainly figured much larger in my life and in my heart, than Simone Weil, whom I discovered much later in my life.

I was about 19 when I found and read, "All Men are Mortal". I remember how impressed I felt with the philosophical premise of the novel. The main character couldn't grow old or die, and lived through era after era, carried along through all the social upheavals and evolution. After only a few generations, he realized that immortality isn't after all, anything one would wish for.... "ennui" was a favorite word in French existentialism, and this character suffered from disabling and perpetual "ennui" (like depression, or stultifying boredom).

I was also enamored of Simone dB's passionate and exacting intellect which seemed to have both female and French qualities. When I found out that she and Jean Paul Sartre were best friends, lovers and inseparable lifelong intellectual colleagues, it only intensified and solidified my admiration. Later, when I discovered that Simone and Nelson Algren, a Chicago writer, fell madly in love when she was in her forties, and loved to visit the Chicago underworld together, she rose even further in my esteem. Here was one woman who lived life on her own terms, who reached for and expressed cutting edge philosophical thought, who lived side by side, but not together with, Sartre, who for maximum freedom, didn't marry or have children or settle for exclusive, possessive relationships. Most of all, I loved her mind. All of her work exposed a sharp, incisive, but extremely passionate, willing and open intellect. Throughout her writing, one perceives the attitude and inclination of French existentialism: a disdain for God and all things Christian, a radical sense of personal freedom and always the shadow and presence and contrast that death casts on life.