I've spoken of dreams a few times lately, and of how many involve my trying desperately to find something or someone, and being led on a wild goose chase, only to wake up in tears or utterly frustrated, never having success. One subset of this group of dreams is where I realize, with a start, that Grandma (my mother's mother) is still alive and living in Schenectady. I cannot imagine why I haven't visited her recently, and I set out to find her. It ends up being a nearly impossible task, with downtown Schenectady looking like a cross between ancient Athens and midtown Manhattan. This morning I woke up while I was climbing up a ladder in a long line of people heading upwards, but I was nowhere near her apartment.
I wrote about my grandmother in my October 6, 2021 blog ("Grandma"), and you might want to check that out. As we teeter ever closer to a disastrous all-out war, I suppose it is no mystery why I am trying to get back to Grandma's home. She loved me. Being there was safe. I was with someone who was creative, like I am, not destructive. Beauty surrounded me, in the form of art on the walls and books of art on the tables. Homemade cooking was in the oven.
The realization has come to me that I have never felt particularly safe in the world of men. The lack of safety I have experienced in my life has been subtle, but real. It has felt like a constant pushback, a constant rejection, a constant sense of irrelevancy, constantly being told I am wrong. The fact that I attended private girls' schools from grades 7-12, and then all-women's college (Smith), may have added to this later sensation of cluelessness. Once out in what everyone called "the real world", I simply never understood the dynamics of conflict, competitiveness, anger, and struggle. I quite literally couldn't do it. And forget about literal war, the use of weapons. There seems to be a truism out there that all humans have within them the capacity to kill under certain circumstances, but I wonder if that is simply another lie. I cannot be the only woman on earth who knows that above and beyond a mosquito, she would never kill, period. (There are men who feel this way, too.) Some women could kill, and would especially to protect children, and I don't judge that, but I just need to validate another reality in my own little way. War is not "the" human condition, it is "a" human condition that we choose among other options, or have foisted on us by people who are far more violent than we are, far less human and humane.
It wouldn't be too surprising if those millions of women and children and elders on the move, escaping terror and horror, have some image of "Grandma's home" in their hearts. A place of safety, love, beauty, welcome, warmth and nurturing. Oh, Goddess, may they arrive safely. May we all.
