As a follow-up to my last post, I found a place to give away my father's tie clip miscellany. I rather hope that the items will make their way to a young man attending his high school prom, or getting married, or acting as best man. Anything is better than another thirty years in a small box.
The process of going through my few bags and boxes of possessions continues to be emotional. I'm not sure, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that most of what I am dealing with is paper -- letters, years worth of journals, notebooks full of handwritten essays (from before this blog), memorabilia of trips to England, research about Herbert Howells, even family photos (see below). It's been decades since I have "owned" furniture, small appliances, etc., and those are less likely to have a major emotional charge. Paper can be a more bittersweet mirror about your life, your choices, your friends and family, the phases you have gone through. I am throwing a little bit of it out, but I had already pretty much reached the plateau of "the next stop on this train is tossing everything but a roller bag-full", which I hope is not where I'm headed unless it is for a joyful, positive reason. As hard as it is, I'm awfully fortunate. The folks in Florida had these sorting choices taken out of their hands. Many of them may feel like they literally don't know who they are without the things they used to carry. Some of them no longer even have a roller bag-full of precious belongings. It's all part of our communal leap upwards, spiritually, but that doesn't make it any less painful.
This is going to seem like a complete non-sequitur, but bear with me. I have tended not to look at myself in the mirror very often. I mean, really looked. For one thing, I haven't felt I was particularly attractive. I've almost never worn make-up, so I didn't pay that kind of daily attention to my face. Having gained weight about 20 years ago that I never lost again, I felt I didn't really want to focus on this "me" that I didn't fully recognize. My first few video conferences online were unnerving, because I wasn't satisfied at all with how I looked, and there I was for everyone to see.
But in the last year, my hair has grown long, as I think I have mentioned. It is now well down my back. And oddly enough, it has become a deep chestnut-red color, with some white mixed in. My hair, at least, is beautiful...and that has been the catalyst to looking with a little more self-acceptance at my face in the mirror. Except...
One morning, I realized with near horror that the face looking out at me is my father's! I am the spitting image of him; if in his sixties, he had worn a wig with long brownish-red hair, he would have been the twin of me, now. In the context of what I have finally learned and accepted about him as a person, it was very, very hard. If I look so much like him, am I more like him than I think?
Then, in going through my papers, I found a small stash of photos that I had forgotten about. Amongst them is a family photograph from the summer of 1961, which is unnerving in its beauty. The five of us look happy, relaxed, and "normal" -- whatever that means! Six-year-old "me" is looking directly at the photographer. I started wearing glasses later that year, so it's amazing to see how clear and almost piercing my eyes are. Another, more formal, studio photograph must date from 1931 or 32, and it shows my dad in the center, with his younger brother to his right and his older brother is to his left. Dad (who would have been about six at the time) is looking directly at the photographer, and he looks exactly like me in 1961. Exactly. I guess you can choose to give away or lighten the load of other fatherly gifts, the old cufflinks and tie clips, maybe even institutions and expectations, but you can't escape your genes! (He, in turn, looked exactly like his Scottish grandmother, which means I do too.) As unnerving as this has been, there is a little bit of healing in it. Maybe, just maybe, I took the same genes and the same physical traits and managed (mostly!) to represent very different qualities and values. Yesterday, just for a moment, I actually thought I looked beautiful in the mirror...for about one second, but still, that's a step forward.
There are so many barriers to loving oneself, and to loving a world that seems bent on chaos and destruction. I guess one 60-something woman continuing to make baby steps towards inner healing doesn't look like much, but it feels really big today.
