Homing Signals of the Soul

by Sheila O'Handley

Upon returning from a trip, whether short or extended, who among us have not said, “oh, It Is so good to be home.” There is something profound in that saying, as there is also, in the expression, “There’s no place like home.” The word home surely means different things to different people, just as experiences of coming home feel different to different people and feel different at different times during life’s journey. The experience of home and of home coming we can relate to, simply because they are spiritual archetypes of being human. They also have had an important place in mythology, psychology, history, religion, politics, art and literature.

 If we were to push the metaphor of home and home-coming a little further, maybe quite a distance, and ask, what the homing signals of the soul might be, what would they look like, and feel like?  What might the return to the emotional and spiritual aspects of the soul/self look like?  What would the inner voice sound like if you decided to listen and what would you speak to your inner self?   How would you remember, and what would you remember in the return to your soul’s home, your authentic self?

The homing signal of inner quiet, where one experiences  a  dis- ease, not unlike the experience of home sickness, a longing and nostalgia. What is this dis-quiet really saying, what is it about? Often it is prodding us to be real, not who we think we are, and not who others expect or demand us to be. Times of dis-ease often feel like breakdown, and maybe that also has to happen. Breakdowns are in reality breakthroughs.  We discover that the old ways of doing things, of perceiving who we are and in the world, no longer work. What is attempting to be born in the breakthrough is a return to the soul’s home.

Leaving is yet another homing signal. It might be leaving the wasteland of addiction, whatever that might be. Leaving an abusive relationship. Letting go of old habits, beliefs, and attitudes that are no longer useful nor life giving. This homing signal feels like abandonment, falling apart, emptiness, lost, you name it, we all have been there. It signals time for clearing house, assisting one to stand on the edge of a new way of being that is so much more than previously imagined, and poses the question:  ‘Have I got the courage to be, to solitarily stand on my own two feet?’

The self as home also contains those parts of us that Karl Jung referred to as ‘the shadow’. Those parts of who we are, the positive and the negative, the light and the dark which have been consigned to the unconscious, these aspects of ourselves, in some cases, are gold nuggets. The homing signal of reconciling these parts of us call forth from each of us the releasing, refining and befriending the totality of who we are. In essence this homing signal of reconciling is the living of the moral and ethical life. It requires  a life time of attending to this aspect of  coming home to the soul.

Finally, the reality of a possible life- threatening disease or impending death signals the longest stride of the soul we ever embark upon. We hone in on the meaningfulness of life.  What has my life been, for whom, for what ? Am I reconciled with all that has been both within and without, and all that will be in the leaving of the home of my physical existence. We all will be faced with this homing signal, no one escapes.  It is in choosing to live this homing reality that we come to accept, or not, the realization that we are made of spiritual energy, in unity with all, and finally at home with self, others and the Divine. It is the stuff of which we are made. It was from this point of home that we can say that we started and it is at this point that we end up at home.  T.S. Eliot in ‘Little Gidding’ in Four Quartets says it most poignantly: “ We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

copyright 2013, Sheila O'Handley

Sheila O’Handley is a diocesan hermit living at Saint Mary’s Place of Solitude and Prayer in the Codroy Valley in the southwest of Newfoundland.

When a Woman is Left Alone

by June Tuthill Bassemir

When a Woman is Left Alone…
She must learn to……
….Cut the grass;
...Remove the grass clipping from underside the
mower (& which way to tilt it so the carburetor
doesn’t get saturated with oil; or how to clean the
filter if it does get s. w. oil);
....Remove the bees nest inside the attic fan…before
it causes the motor to “freeze”;
....Turn off the water under the sink in case of a leak;
….Clip the bushes when needed;
….Know the difference between a straight screw driver
and a Phillips; (who was that guy anyway?)
….Be aware when the car needs inspection/registration;
….Change a flat tire/or bat her eyes until rescued;
….Clean the gutters five times a year;
….Understand that if she plants ivy it will take over
everything ,,likewise bamboo;
….Locate the fuse box and memorize the number of the
Fire Department.
....Keep a day book to write down the activity of the day;
when she opened a money market account or cashed in
a CD.
....File the name of a good plumber, electrician and tax
expert.....
....Visit a good shopping mall for bargains.

She should know that WD 40 is a woman’s best friend
along with a rubber mallet and screw driver to remove
stubborn screws –or learn to operate a small propane
tank to heat up the screw for easy removal.

If she can learn to do all these things and more, she can
then live alone. But on the other hand if she has a choice
she should be nice to her husband (no matter how long
he’s been there) break up his Shredded Wheat, section
his half of the grapefruit and/or serve other fruit 

every morning....

...with a kiss.

copyright June T. Bassemir, 2013
June Tuthill Bassemir is the widowed mother of four and grandmother of 10.  An artist and writer, she  volunteers as a docent in a 1765 farm house.   June loves old cars and antiques, and has also enjoyed furniture stripping and rug hooking.  "I used to say I was a stripper and hooker.but with so many trips around the sun, no one raises an eyebrow anymore. They only laugh."  June has given up furniture stripping, but is still an avid rug hooker.

On Being a Maid

by Delores Miller

A best selling novel a few years ago was 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett about the 1960s as colored maids in Mississippi.  Read it if you can.

So lets go back to the summer of 1955.  Time for me to find a job, between my Junior and Senior years of Marion High School. 

After the fiasco of the summer of 1954 and being a hired girl, I was looking for greener pastures and easier work.  Again I did not want to pick pickles the usual cash crop in Wisconsin.   

My Aunt Alma, after World War Two found employment as a live-in maid for a rich widow in Neenah on Lake Winnebago.  This area was a snaggle of paper mills, thus rich widows with  mansions.   She found me employment  as a domestic summer help.  Armed with my Betty Crocker Cookbook, and bluffing my way through the interview bragging of all the food I made the summer before as a hired girl.  The Missus hired me, no one else applied.   White uniform during the day, black for evening serving. Pay was $16 a week.  Big money in those days.

Easy job, cooking three meals a day, all served on good china in the dining room.  Learned to make fancy foods, i.e. lime and cheese souffles, salads, steak, hors d'oeuvre, deviled eggs, creme brulee, melon ball fruit cups, tomato flowers with cottage cheese and Pepperridge Farm  toast tips, appetizers, canapes, molded tomato aspic, borscht or beet soup with sour cream, dried beef rolls, popovers, Yorkshire pudding, baked Alaska, Schaum torte with fresh strawberries, cream puffs, chocolate eclairs, key lime pie, omelets,  English Muffins with orange marmalade, eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce, clam chowder,  lamb chops, fresh fruit, etc.  All made from scratch.  Each morning the Missus wrote out the  menu, called in the grocery order to a store which delivered.  I could order what ever I wanted to eat, too. (I gained weight that summer.)  Dinner parties for her rich friends. Cocktail hour before dinner, a full  hard liqueur cabinet, gin, rum, vodka, whiskey, brandy, bourbon, grenadine, tonic, bitters, vermouth.  Bartender made martinis, daiquiris, Manhattens, Margaritas, Pina Colada, Bloody Marys, wine.   Nothing so common as beer or diet soda.   I never sampled.  Then came dinner.  Salad, soup, overcooked vegetables, usually asparagus,  main meat course, dessert, coffee.  Serving from the left, removing dirty dishes from the right.  Finger bowls to wash dirty hands. Candles.   Cloth napkins, lace table clothes.   Tinkling silver bell summonded me back  to the dining room for more service.  Faux pas, I once took the aluminum  soup kettle to the dining room, when I should have taken her bowl to the kitchen.   No microwave or dish washer.  Polishing the  candelabras and silverware. The Missus was gallivanting often, even out of state and  left me in charge of the house.  How did she trust me not to steal the silver or have wild parties?

My own bedroom with bath and shower.  This was a big deal for someone straight off the farm.  Granted it was next to the laundry room with an automatic washer and dryer.   What luxury.  Lake flies plagued anyone outdoors, so thick, one could not open their mouth, or they would get a meal.    Mosquitoes.   Watching the sunrise over Lake Winnebago with sail boats on the horizon, beautiful.   No television, but a radio where I could listen to all the Milwaukee Brave Baseball Games and best of all - a library filled with books, novels, non fiction.  A 1936 Roget's Thesaurus and a 1929 Funk & Wagnallis Dictionary.  And I read them all.  And a typewriter so I could  write tales and memoirs of my adventures.  Daily newspaper.  Smallish house compared to the big mansions further up town.  A gardener, cleaning lady, laundress. 

Became friends with the other maids and nannies.  We had Thursday and Sunday afternoons free for movies or shopping.  Playing badminton at a nearby park.  Polio  or infantile paralysis epidemic that summer of 1955, swimming pools were closed, quarantined.  Many people died.  Was not in the same league with other neighboring teenagers, debutantes who were presented to High Society  at a ball at the Golf Club.

Oh, what I learned that summer being a MAID, grew up and saw the 'big' picture of life.  Observed  how people in the big city lived and work.

Went back to Marion for my Senior year of high school, graduated, kicked up my heels, shook off the dust and manure and left the area forever.  Enough of picking pickles, being a Hired Girl and a Maid.

Two roads diverged on a highway,

And sorry I could not travel both.

I took the one more traveled

And that has made all the difference.

What do teenagers now in 2013 do to earn money?

Copyright Russell and Delores Miller, 2013

My First Pedicure

 by Moe O'Brien

   

I walk into Regal Nails for my very first pedicure.  “Hipicolor” is the first word I hear.  I must look as confused as I feel.  The receptionist moves toward me, taking very tiny steps. Even with her baby steps, she appears to be running.  She taps her small hand on my arm and gently ushers me toward shelves, lined with little bottles of color.  I have learned from my travels abroad that one does not need to know the language to understand.  I get it.  She wants me to pick a color for my nails.   What she doesn’t know is that it took me two years to pick a color for my living room.   She scurries back to her desk, leaving me to ponder.  Choosing a Sherwin Williams paint chip is beginning to look easy.  This is crazy, right?  This paint is for my toes, which are always covered in socks and sneakers.  And anyway, it will fade away or grow out or whatever it does.

    After ten minutes of picking up the bottles and looking at the names, I simply cannot decide.  The name “fabulous” sounds good but it looks way too pink.   I walk back over to the receptionist and ask if I can look at what the other customers have chosen.  “Sure, sure,” she says as she walks me down a row of five customers, all in different stages of their pedicure.

    Very politely, I ask each customer if they would mind my checking out their color.  Everyone seems amenable to this.  One customer pipes up, “this is the color I always wear; it would look good on you.”  I look at her toes and wonder what slimy, algae filled pond she has been wading in.

    “Oh, thanks for the suggestion,” I say sheepishly.  “I was thinking more along the reddish pink or pinkish red family.”

    The last lady in line has her nose in a book.  No; that is an understatement.  She is not reading the book; she is breathing it.   She appears oblivious to anything going on around her.  As feet go, hers are very pretty with her nails painted a light coral color. I am so taken by her beautiful feet that I whisper, “You have lovely feet.”  I turn to the receptionist.  “That’s it.  I want her color.”

The Reader looks up at me.  I expect her to acknowledge my compliment.  Instead, in a deep guttural voice, she says, “It’s not a pinkish red.  Nor is it a reddish pink.  It is orange.” Obviously, she’s been paying attention.

     “Fair enough,” I respond.

      My pedicurist’s name tag says Lien.  She fills the tub with heated water and submerges both of my feet.  She sits on a low stool in front of me, her head and shoulders bent forward toward my feet, as if in submission.  I can’t help but think of Jesus, washing Mary Magdalene’s feet.   She wears no makeup.  She doesn’t need any.    Her black, shoulder length hair is straight and shiny.  Her wide, dark, eyes look up at me, as she says, “okay, other foot please.”      She does not wait for my response but instead, lifts the foot of her choice out of the water and begins to gently massage it.  This would be soothing if I wasn’t so ticklish.  She grabs some sort of bar that I don’t realize is sandpaper and scrubs the bottom of my feet. My body from head to toe jumps with every touch. “Tickle, yes?” she asks.

    There is a young boy sitting across from me.  I can’t take my eyes away from him.  His thin lips are pressed so tightly together, they seem to disappear.  His eyes are alert with concentration. They widen and narrow, as he looks up from the laptop that sits in front of him.  His fine, black brows go from furrowed to perfectly straight and serene.  He looks up every once in awhile and speaks in a melodic tone to a woman giving a pedicure two chairs down from me.  She turns to look at him and gives her response.   My guess is that she is his Mother, and from the tone of her voice, she has said ‘no.”  Then I watch the boy roll his eyes and I know I am right.

    He gets up from his laptop and walks over to her.  It is then that I realize how chubby he is.  And how beautiful.  His complexion is a mocha coffee combination and his full cheeks are a rosy pink.   All I can think of is Rubens portrait of his daughter Clara, that I had seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Dear Lord, Mister Rubens…please come back and paint this little boy, I think.  I stop Lien from going further. “Please, I need to change my color.  Match my color to that little boys cheeks and I will be happy forever.”  

copyright 2013 by Moe O'Brien   

 Maureen “Moe” O’Brien moved from Bethel, CT to Myrtle Beach, SC in 1988.   Her “claim to fame” as she likes to phrase it, is that she played professional basketball, touring with the Harlem Globetrotters in 1959. She is an avid golfer and won the SC Senior Women’s Golf Championship in 1993 and 2004.  Her book “Who’s Got The Ball?  And Other Nagging Questions About Team Life”, was published in 1995.  It is a “how to” book for team members in all work environments.  Maureen is the proud Grandma of eight granddaughters, ranging in age from fifteen to twenty seven.

The Intrepid Warrior and The Bush

By Ralph C. Quinn

I don’t think there is much in life that really scares me anymore; other than perhaps the usual morbid curiosity and fear one has for his own demise, failing health, the usual life worries or maybe that old tree growing over our bedroom.

But I find myself in a battle that has gone on for years with an insidious foe that is undefeatable……….the hydrangea bush.

The foe is insatiable in its appetite for earth; creeping and crawling, under, over and through anything in its path. I am convinced it cannot be killed!!! I thought I had defeated the one in the backyard. Digging it up along with the earth around it for five feet in all directions, delicately sifting through the dirt down as far as four feet, removing every bit of root and fiber. Gleefully burning some in the fireplace, filling the hole with a goodly dose of defoliant, root killer, used motor oil and anything toxic I could think of………nothing has grown there in over eight years, not even weeds.

Last year several shoots of hydrangea popped up and I could hear them laughing.

I would hate to try and remove the one out front altogether (if that is even possible without irradiating everything for six blocks in every direction) as it is extremely old (and clever) and is not a hybrid. It’s a genuine Hydrangea macrophylla, probably around 140 years old and I truly believe it is immortal. It is worse to deal with than a career politician and more stubborn than my late Grandmother. I would pump a slurry of ammonium nitrate and diesel under it and blow it to kingdom come, but I fear my neighbors would frown on it.
Especially after it began growing in their yards after the roots distributed themselves around the city.

So here I am…..back hurts and neck is stiff from digging a trench around it and pulling roots as they crawl under the house and the lawn as I try to at least keep it in one place. I am sure the pile of roots out front at the curb, which is bigger than the bush itself was when blooming last year, is confusing to those passing by who may wonder just where the hole is for the huge tree I must have dug up.

So the battle goes on, the war will never end.

Those that believe that after we finally immolate ourselves in that great nuclear blast that the only things living will be rats and cockroaches…….

…….haven’t ever done battle with a hydrangea.

 Copyright Ralph C. Quinn, 2013

Ralph C. Quinn is a lifelong resident of Utica, New York.  Born there in 1959, Ralph has lived and traveled extensively across the United States. He is presently a Manager for a national restaurant chain. Married to Bett,y he is the father of 7 children and grandfather of 12.  Ralph’s main interests are Martial Arts, the study of Far Eastern Religions, Philosophy and music. He Admins several forums, writes for the sheer joy of telling stories and still makes his home in Utica with Betty, their flock of 9 parrots and their Siamese cat Kao K'o-Kung.

The Hired Girl

by Delores Miller

So it was the summer of 1954, the year between by sophomore and junior year of high school. In central Wisconsin a summer cash crop was a half-acre of cucumbers and young people picked the blasted pickles to earn cold hard cash.    Some  raised beans, to be picked for four cents a pound and hauled to the canning factory in Clintonville.

Being a hired girl was one step up from bending over in the hot sun.  Pickles had to be picked every day, rain or shine with mosquitoes sucking blood.

Some teenage girls migrated to the Chicago area to be nannies for rich people in the summer.  I was too frightened to get on the train to travel south that far.  So my only option was to be a Hired Girl.  This was a 12-hour a day job, with Sundays off.

It was with a  dairy farm family north of Marion.   Big Holstein cows, which produced 40 cans of milk a day, hauled to the Caroline Gold Cheese Factory. 500 acres of land.  My pay was a dollar a day, or seven precious dollars a week.  Baby sitting four  small 

mischievous whippersnappers , two in cloth diapers.  (Today in 2013 these lads have grown up, became responsible citizens of the community, nearing retirement.)  Cleaning house, scrubbing floors,   ironing.  White shirts, house dresses, children's clothes.  Cooking for that family of six, plus the multiple hired men. The Missus was a very good cook, and made delicious cakes, pies and cookies.  Some recipes I still use. The hired men got paid three dollars a day, for a 12-hour work schedule and for that they had to maintain an automobile, drink, carouse, dance at the Caroline Ballroom and court the girls.  They earned their money.  (Military draft was looming over young men's heads, hence working on farms earned deferment.  Some threw in the towel and joined the Marines anyhow.)

The task I dreaded most was cutting grass.  Half acre.  Granted even in those days they had a power mower with a rope pull starter, which I could never get started and then it would snub in the tall wet grass.   Leg cramps at night.   Small pine trees I clipped off, whoops!

This was a happy, church-going, social family and they treated me well, even though I was the hired girl.  The Mister and Missus died a few years ago, us hired men and hired girls went to their funerals, sat together in a church pew and remembered how hard we worked way back then.

It was a beautiful day to die.

Though they are gone,

The grass will grow,

The sun will shine,

The cows will be milked,

The river will flow,

Life will go on,

But we will not forget them.

copyright 2013 by Russell and Delores Miller

Black Silk Panties For One Night

  

      

  By Annie Fiore

         

          I was standing off to the side in the funeral home watching as mother greeted the visitors.  One by one they came up to her offering their condolences, as mother tried to respond without falling to pieces, again.  I say again, because this is the forth husband my dear mother is sending off to the hereafter. 

          My father, who was her childhood sweetheart and soul mate, was a wonderful man.  He adored her and she was devoted to him.  When father died unexpectedly, after twenty-three years of marital bliss, we were all concerned about mother’s ability to deal with his loss.

          However, mother being the strong woman she is, and being one of Peachtree, Georgia’s best looking females, we didn’t think that it would be too long before some gentlemen would find his way into her heart.  When he did, it was a whirlwind affair and they were married one year and one month after father’s demise.

          By the time, Rodney, husband number two, died, five years later we all figured that mother would move on and find another partner. 

          Surprisingly, it was about two years before mother met George,

who eventually became husband number three.

          As mother continued her life with Georgy, as she called him, my sister and I and our brother sighed with relief knowing that mother was happy, once again.

          Unfortunately, the funeral parlor scene was repeated again and my dear mother, was once again, in the front row greeting the visitor who have come to pay their respects for the forth time.  And, of course mother still looked her very best, in a white linen suit, at the age sixty eight, not looking a day of fifty five, had become a pro in the art of portraying the grieving widow.

          Now what you need to know is that when mother was married to my father she would always say that she wouldn’t know what to do if something happened to father.  Mother never came up for air when she talked about him to her family and friends.  She would always say, “My Spencer is the best husband any woman could ask for.  My husband this, and my husband that;” and, “oh I wouldn’t know what to do if anything ever happened to Spence.”  That’ s when father would chime in and say, “Yeah, yeah, black silk panties for one night.”

          I had never really given that comment much though, not even when father died.  But, tonight what father said about the black silk panties came rushing in to my head.  I guess because this was the forth time that mother was wearing some variation of a white linen suit instead of the traditional black. 

          I never did ask mother why she didn’t wear black for father’s wake nor for George’s or Rodney’s.  In keeping with her style, here again she was wearing white linen.

          I never really gave the white linen suit much thought until this morning when we were getting ready for the viewing.   I didn’t spend much time on it except to  remind myself that wearing white is indicative to living in the south.  The weather here is usually sunny and warm and, it is quite common for southern women, especially those of class, to wear white for special occasions.  Depending how you look at it, a funeral is a special occasion of sorts. 

          I continued to stay in the back ground for a little while longer, watching as mother occasionally wiped away a tear or two, making a special effort not to smear her make-up.  Heaven forbid if her eyeliner and mascara were to smudge around her sad grieving brown eyes.  But, I’m truly not worried about that since I now consider her a seasoned grieving widow who can stay in control of her emotions and display composure. 

          It was time for me to get back to the visitors and as I walked towards the front of the room, I made a mental note to some day ask mother why she never wore black. 

          Several months had passed, after Arthur’s funeral, when I stopped by the house for our weekly lunch date.  We talked about the usual things, the grandchildren, the weather and the loneliness she was feeling.  I listened, interjecting the appropriate aha, and oh when required.  Thinking to myself as she talked on and on that there was surely enough time in mother’s life for husband number five.  When she finally stopped talking I took the opportunity to ask her why she never wore black for the funerals.  I said, “Mother, I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time.  I hope you don’t become upset with me, but I am curious about something.”  

          “What is it Dolly?” she asked.           “Well mother, I always wondered why you wore white to each of the funerals and why you didn’t wear black?” 

                   She looked at me, and raised one of her eyebrows, and it appeared as if she were giving the question some serious thought.  After a few seconds she said, “Oh, but I did wear black.  For each of the funerals I always wore black silk panties for one night, just as your dear father had always said I would.  And, without missing a beat she continued on and told me about the new gentlemen that had joined her Wednesday afternoon senior’s social club.  Then I wondered to myself, how many pairs of black silk panties did mother own, or did she have just one pair for this special occasion, of sorts.

 Copyright, 2010  Annie Fiore

 Annie Fiore-Nicoletti grew up in The Bronx.   She and her husband relocated to Saugerties in 1998.   She is retired from more than twenty-five years working in an administrative capacity in the health care sector.   Annie had a great imagination all of her life.  She started storytelling for her two granddaughters who she refers to as The Sunshine Girls.  It was Tanna and Teah who prompted her to put one of their favorite stories on paper.  Since then she has written several children’s short stories and is working on her first novel. Annie enjoys writing for pleasure and hopes to some day be published.  She is also the founder of the Saugerties Writer’s Club.