Being the oldest of three children I did not have to wear hand-me-downs…but with some of the clothes my mother bought me I was not happy. On the other hand (body), she sewed me a pretty light blue checked gingham dress vaguely remembered. And it was not until I was in my fifties that I truly valued the dark brown sweater she knitted me while I was in high school. Our relationship had been darkly contentious unlike my relationship with my two daughters.

Yes, my oldest daughter, Erin, and I had our moments, but she had been planned, wanted, unlike my mother not wanting or planning me. Still, I have been surprised when Erin wanted to wear my clothes as she grew to be as tall as me, while more beautiful than me. Her high school graduation 8×10 framed photo still stands on my living room table (along with her younger sister Megan’s and stepdaughter Sara’s), where she chose to wear my purple (tears) gauzy top accented by my silver loop earrings. Not for a lack of clothes in her own closet either.

My granddaughter Denali, has followed in her mother’s clothes-steps as she grew older, asking to not only wear but to keep my T-shirts, one of which she chooses to wear to the extended family Thanksgiving get together in 2012.  Hand-me-ups; I smile! She also wears and now owns my shorts, sundresses, etc. and this summer (tears)  she buys me a moo-moo while traveling in Kenya, as well as one for herself, only in a different color.

Why is it that tears push into my vision as I type? Am I the girl who never dreamed to wear my mother’s clothes? Am I the girl under the moo-moo, crying in the hope I am close to finding her? Is it the closeness that she lost with her mother? Her tears know of the lost love now felt on my back as I try to slip on the plenty-tall and plenty-wide moo-moo, but the hole for my head is too small.

My mother planned the vacations. My dad made them fun – even writing a letter several years later describing one. I saved it and now can I find it? like my memories?

So, I ask my younger daughter Megan what was her favorite family vacation while growing up. “The trip across the USA.” (We camped and hiked for a month in twenty plus national parks.) I was hoping she would say that. She adds that the two weeks in the summer spent with her older sister Erin, and her dad (we were divorced) in Maine were fun, as were our summer trips to Ocean City’s beach. Before my two daughters were born, it was their dad who initiated a similar cross country trip that sparked my love affair with the National Parks.

My two youngest granddaughters both agree that Disney World was their best vacation so far, now being 10 and 12. (I plan to take them camping soon.) Denali is my oldest granddaughter, who is as stunning as her favorite family vacation, the trip with me when she was 16, to Glacier and Banff National Parks. I am surprised when she immediately says this trip was more beautiful than our trip last year with her mother, Erin, and I, to Denali National Park in Alaska. I am convinced that Denali is my dad’s spirit reincarnated, because of the special love-bond we share (tears.)

When I call my sister, Constance, her answer is Hither Hills State Park, situated on the ocean near Montauk Point, Long Island, a 6 hour drive each summer for a week’s camping in a large family tent, lulled to sleep by the waves. I like that our memories are not necessarily the same…she remembering it is the one week out of the year where there is no fighting between our parents or between us three siblings. She sees our mom and dad holding hands walking down the beach in twilight: affection not seen at home. Mom cooks and dad grills delicious meals while I wonder why I remember readily sweeping the tent.

For me, I like to be seen sitting on daddy’s lap at the annual Cornell University’s Stadiums fireworks…or walking often with him to the reservoir across the street from our home where a gorge creates waterfalls, where I occasionally swim naked as an adult, an act that took years in the making to overcome a religiously indoctrinated shame of the body. Denali walked with me there to Potter’s Falls this past week, just she and I, and I again feel (tears) my dad’s presence in childhood nature in her presence.

Today I am reading Miracles Happen, by Brian Weiss, MD, a leader in the field of past-life therapy: “We  are so tentative with love. We stop, we hesitate, we rationalize, we become afraid, we walk away. But love is not tentative with us. It keeps coming back, trying again, setting up new opportunities. Love is persistent. ”

“Love never dies. We hear its songs whenever we stop to listen. We smell our beloveds’ scents even after they have passed on. (tears) We see their messengers: the birds and animals, the sky, and other signs. We FEEL their touch.”

“We sense their presence,” (crying) as I do with Denali’s: easy hazel eye contact, liking to wear my clothes, firm long hugs, her constant “I love yous,”  which daddy and I could not say face to face, only in letters and cards.

(SORRY…that April and May essays just got  posted...a computer glitch as they were written in those months)

One of my earliest memories is of the neighbor’s house burning down as I lay in my bed at age 5. My parents trying to calm down the teenage son, and maybe the mother too. The father died in the fire looking for his daughter who was safe. The flames still flash across my mind when I wonder if I left my stove burner on.

Around this same age I am at my dad’s work-place picnic, when a four-legged stove buckled one leg, spilling boiling coffee down my butt and leg. When the wind blew through the car window while dad drove us to the Emergency Room, all I can remember saying is, “Shut the window, my bottom feels on fire.”

Growing up in a strict born again religious family, I attended church services weekly, hearing of the fire and brimstone I would endure in hell if I didn’t accept Jesus as my savior. My heart smothered its child like loving embers due to the fear that sadly, my second daughter, Megan, also endured at a christian camp; her outstanding memory being of the terror she felt seeing a movie where the flames of hell burnt into her memory. Like a painful tattoo. Luckily, me and my daughters have left this dogma and our fire of love is burning more brightly.

Being a brownie (yum) and girl scout, I was privileged to attend camp for a week during the summer where we learned to build a fire with pine needles and dry twigs gathered near the shore of Cayuga Lake. At night, a big campfire warmed us while singing songs like Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, and roasting marshmallows squeezed between graham crackers and Hershey’s chocolate bars.

What a contrast to the FIREBALLS, so hard and hot I felt I had to spit them out, their red outsides painting my fingers until placed back in my mouth, waiting for the sweet insides to soothe my tongue…what a metaphor for life! as are the fireflies I chased so that I could place them on my ring finger, hoping someday it’d be a diamond from prince charming. Each summer I still ask fireflies to land on me, while aware of feeling the warmth of my spontaneous smile.

As a freshman in high school I auditioned for the concert choir and was inducted earlier than most. A year later, I was ‘fired’, the conductor saying my voice was too immature, nor strong enough. As a junior I was welcomed back as a gratified alto.

All these memories fade into the background when I feel the fire of self-loving orgasms in my sixties, reminding me of two microscopic cells uniting – a match – creating my two beautiful daughters – a love brighter than any bomb fires.

Daniel is just one of my clients that tells me something like: “I slept with Maureen last night, so unexpected;”  I break in to say, “You mean you had sex with her?” It is not the first time I have corrected him, or many other clients. And, yes, sometimes my friends; I just happen to hear about sexual encounters more often in my psychotherapy practice.

Often, I hear on TV, ‘I slept with so and so.’ Or read books by modern authors, such as Eve Ensler, (author of The Vagina Monologues), who wrote in her recent memoir, In The Body of the World: “I could not say that the men I ended up living with or sleeping with were more important loves.”  Why is it so dangerous to say the word SEX in a culture ready with sexual jokes, sexy clothes, nude scenes and sex education?

I have actually slept with men without having sex, and I don’t mean my husbands or boyfriends…I mean men friends or acquaintances I chose not to have sex with yet we slept in the same bed. Safely. Even with a man I had just met at a running race.

Being brought up in a very strict religious home where sex was not talked about, made it difficult at first to feel relaxed talking about sex with my clients which is a must. That is if you wish to treat the whole person. Why –  I won’t let my clients get away with using the euphemism of ‘I slept with.’   And why, I took the risk to say something very dangerous, for me that is, in my sister’s Sunday School class. She is a born again christian which is a belief I have left behind, gathering up a spiritual practice that connects me to everyone with love.

When I visit my sister in Florida once a year, she wishes me to go to church with her, and so I do despite my dislike of the preaching that there is only one way to god.  I want to please her. This year is my third visit to her Sunday School class, so there is some familiarity that counters a bit of my fear to speak up.

I carefully shape my words: “I was a ‘born again christian’ for many years. I need to share my experience of how the church has hurt me, not meaning to offend you. The teaching of a child that he/she is going to hell if they do not believe in jesus as their savior is not loving because it is out of fear that I chose to believe. And, as I John 4:18 states, ‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.’ Also, the guilt I have carried for not caring for others enough is not my kind of love that I now feel for others, where I give out of genuine caring, not out of guilt. Thanks for listening.”

I was surprised to hear one young woman affirm that the church has done such hurt, yet she still believes that Jesus is ‘the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the father but by me.’

Surprised again, when after the class broke up, a man dressed in a purple shirt came to me saying: “Thank you for what you shared.” I wish I could remember why he thought that. I must have been in shock.

“How do you know what is right and wrong?” I ask my two granddaughters, Riley 11 and Emily 9.

“People have different opinions. Also, nobody thinks the same thing,” says Emily in her confident tone.

“When you’re doing something wrong, you feel guilty but when doing something right you feel good,” older sister Riley adds.

“Nothing is right and nothing is wrong…you arn’t perfect all the time,” says Emily with a knowing smile about herself.

“Sometimes you don’t relize your doing something wrong or right until after,” replies Riley. These are the exact words (and spelling) they wrote in my journal so I could write (right?) this essay and not be wrong about what they said.

“There are times I have felt guilty when I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” I say, responding to Riley’s opinion. “When I was young I felt guilty for dancing behind my mother’s back, as she forbade her children to participate in such worldly activities, even movies and card playing with a poker deck.”

Riley’s wise brown eyes and Emily’s gray-blue eyes looked into my light blue eyes with silent understanding.

Is it wrong to say more?

Their wisdom feels so sweet. You can stop reading now if you think it is right for you.

My heart wants to share my visit to be with my ex-husband Gregory yesterday, who has struggled with alcoholism and smoking for many years, and why I had to leave him in 1998. I consider him my soul mate, maybe because during our rocky time together I met my own soul  by grieving my childhood pain that our intimate partners trigger in all of us…yet my three previous marriages had not so clearly or deeply. Being a psychotherapist, I was able to connect to a place in my heart that I had shut away and was not aware that had existed.

Gregory had quadruple bypass surgery 7 weeks ago and is 97 days sober, so he was present with me in ways he could never be while drinking. With his elderly parents present for the two-hour visit, I shared photos of my family as well as the national park post card scrapbook I had made with Riley and Emily a few days before. Each had made their own scrapbook from the many post cards I had collected from two cross-country trips with my two daughters, hiking and camping in nearly 40 national parks, including one trip traveling cross-country with Gregory. He especially appreciated the scrapbook, being the sensitive man I loved and married. Some family members had warned me not to marry him and some disliked him.

When we parted yesterday, we held each other tightly, me crying as I said, “I love you

Gregory and always will; I am so sorry we could not make it together.” He saying, “I love

you because of the tears you gave me.” That can only be right!

        Do I remember Grammy’s ice box frig? I do remember her white enamel tub wringer-washing machine, holding a metal slanted scrub board slanted against a black rubber hose flowing dirty water into the sink. How things have changed since the 1950s – when milk and bread were delivered to our neighborhood country homes once or twice a week in Ithaca, NY. And, a large black C printed on a square of cardboard – placed in our window to show the truck driver when to pick up clothes needing to be dry cleaned. Such personal services without a delivery charge.

My present charge slips Perry’s Death by Chocolate ice cream into my mouth – eaten nightly throughout the past 15 years (except while on vacations). The cost is $4.49 per half gallon until it goes on sale for 2-3 months at Wegman’s – dipping to $2.99, filling my white freezer over-the-top-refrigerator with 6 or more half gallons. My housemates, friends or family cannot believe I am able to stop with 1 small bowl in the evening when there is a deluge of ice cream available. But then, why do I freeze 7 over ripe blackened bananas saved in the side pocket of my freezer for a dozen years? Will I ever make smoothies again after 4 years of not?

My dad called himself “the garbage can,” eating an entire apple, except the stem (if there was one attached.) So, it is melted into my being not to waste, to my daughter’s distaste, eating food weeks old. Sometimes with mold (removed).

But on the outside of my refrigerator another story is told; entirely decorated with photos of family and friends, even several past boyfriends months, years old. And, just today in my office I was told by a client seeing my high school photo, “You’re well preserved.”

Being a “born again christian,” I was a virgin when married at 22, and expected my in laws to be the loving people they claimed to be because ‘god is love.’ Although I challenged their immodest opinions about my ‘too short’ skirts, we were close and Chuck and I visited their home most weekends, washing our laundry, while renting an apartment an hour away. Being an RN, teaching at Cincinnati’s nursing school, I was excited to be able to bring home a foster preemie baby from the nursery, my husband and I being emergency certified. Our first daughter Erin loved having a baby sister whom we named Toby. But my in laws did not love Toby. Toby was biracial and not allowed to be in the same living space with the rest of the family. “Of course, we are friends with the black people, but they are not (good enough) to be part of the family,” my in laws would say. Looking back, I am a bit horrified that I went along, allowing Toby to be only in the lower level of their home, where Chuck and I slept. When my father-in-law spoke to me alone in their kitchen, he said something like: “How could you disrespect your mother-in-law’s feelings about Toby; she’s from Mississippi.” I replied, “How could you not love an innocent baby no matter what color they are?” with angry tears forming a barrier to his angry voice. That was in the seventies. (Seven years later, my mother-in-law apologized, admitting that she had been wrong.) I have been married 3 more times, after Chuck came out as homosexual six years into our ‘christian’ marriage, which faith we have gladly left behind, myself doing so during my second marriage which ended amicably as did my third. My fourth marriage father-in-law walked me down the Rose Inn aisle to my soul mate Gregory. I was well-accepted as being helpful to their struggling son on his way to a divorce from his ten year marriage. I was happy to become step mom of his ten year old daughter Sara, but not to be the brunt of his accusations that I was having affairs and not telling him. His distrust ripped open the pain of my heart to angry-sad sobs, deeply buried, unaware of their existence in me; leading me to primal therapy, healing me to where I am more able to authentically love Gregory and mySelf despite his lies and anger escalating when I left him after being together six years. During our long separation, before our divorce, my in-laws were purported to not like me anymore. In 2006, Gregory apologized for all the lies and verbal abuse, and has expressed his appreciation for my love many times since. I had consistently reached out to Gregory with birthday phone calls and holiday cards, since 1998 when I had left, because I will always love him as Van Gogh stated: “Love is eternal: its aspects may change but not its essence.” Therefore, I showed up at my in laws door one day in 2010, unannounced, apprehensive, yet they wholeheartedly welcomed me. In.

NEVER AGAIN will I see daddy dying in 1977 birth another baby see bloody menstrual cycle own a home although two were sold pay federal taxes to support wars retire at 65…now 67 believe in a religion keep secrets…they tear you apart be afraid to Feel my Feelings: will I ever use the F word feel ashamed of my tears which I rub into my cheeks as natural moisturizer. hate my mother speak in anger feel guilty for dancing drive over 75mph, maybe party hardy (hehsheheshe) be judgmental love sparingly miss 10:43(am or pm), saying I love you, which time is now. will I forget your love for me daddy. You are in my heart never (again) truly gone.

“You know what I mean?” I hear Marcus, my client say about every two sentences. I hear other clients say this common phrase frequently, as well as my eldest daughter and other family and friends. Sometimes I point it out, hearing that they were not aware of doing so. I ask them what they make of this. I guess I want someone to understand is the common answer. Recently, I have become more aware of hearing how basic and frequent is this need….how most of us are feeling insecure in that we need to repeat, ‘you know what I mean’ over and over again. Just this month, a new client, Debbie, began to cry, saying “Sorry.” I hear this apology for crying on TV frequently. I wonder how often I have said ‘sorry’ for crying in the past, as I no longer hear myself saying it in the present. While growing up in the 50s and 60s, I remember having one dream repeatedly: me sliding down the hill on my butt, next to our garage, with my head landing inside a sack of flour. When my head emerged, my dad would be washing off my long Pinocchio-nose with a washcloth. That dream fell away in my young adult hood, as I continued to question my strict born again religious upbringing; my dad encouraging me to question my mother’s insistent faith although he believed the same bible more liberally. I can still see my16 year old self ascending the basement stairs into our kitchen, telling my dad how I was realizing how great it is to be a unique human being who could hear myself. Still, I was too insecure to trust my own feelings and beliefs which my 10 year old voice questioned and fought with my mother. I needed my parents love and approval too much…that it wasn’t until 1984, when I am 38, that I let go of religion and began my long trek back to my spiritual self. Yes, my parent’s house was never locked, which tradition I continue to this day in an apartment located five miles outside the city of Ithaca, NY. And, I live alone. But, to ask a question in a large group, say at a workshop; my heart still pounds loudly as a kettle drum. No longer a snare drum. Yes, three years ago, I asked a stranger, a six-foot-husky truck driver to give my bike with a flat-tire and me (life, I first typed) a lift ten miles back…realizing too late that the passenger door was broken, so there was no way out if this man decided to take advantage of me. But, more often than not I trusted the Universe to keep me safe…I attribute this trust to my dad whom I could always depend on to do what he said he would do for me…to write in many letters that he loves me, although he was too afraid to say it to me in person. Yes, I cheer my granddaughters with yelling enthusiasm (from greek, en+theos = in god) as they play soccer despite my son-in-law saying he wishes me to not be so loud because his friends make judgmental comments. But, can I trust that my eldest daughter loves me when she ignores my phone calls and says she doesn’t trust me with her vulnerable feelings, like my clients do? Yes, now I can shed a tear or two with my clients as I say, “I’m glad I no longer get angry, because I carried anger for way too long.” But, can I say “I love you” to my clients. After 20 years, I now do. Yes, I believe ‘they know what I mean.’

It’s 1984. I am 38 years old. I finally have the courage to not only listen to my 10 year old voice that tells me it is not true what the bible says: that you will go to hell if you do not accept jesus as your savior, but also to take action to leave my family’s religion. Then, I could sing with John Lennon, imagining a world without religion, where we can be one, in love. It was scarier to hear my 12 year old daughter tell me that I will go to hell by leaving this soul-crushing belief of the bible. We both have tears caressing our cheeks, as she looks piercingly into my eyes from her upper bunk bed. Overcoming the fear of being rejected by my family and friends was hard enough, but the repercussions linger as years later in 1998, I am at a greyhound bus station’s restroom seeing a mother threatening to hit her 4 year old daughter if she doesn’t wash her hands. I want to speak as I glare from the doorway, “Please don’t yell at her: I know you may be tired, but you are scaring her and she deserves to be treated respectfully, as much as you do.” I am fearfully silent, and ashamed. Back on the bus, I see a father swat his son on the head, as I turn around and speak again only with my disapproving sad-blue eyes. I chide myself and promise to speak up the next time I see a scared child. While hiking one day, I see a mother walking way ahead of a crying 4-5 year old who is wailing, “Wait for me mommy!” I catch up to the mother and say something like, you know your daughter feels afraid that you will abandon her when you walk so far ahead. She picks up her daughter and surprises me with, “I didn’t realize she would feel that way.” I continue to hike with a lighter skip in my step. That same year of 1998, my then 6 year old granddaughter called me from California, after calling her mom in Baltimore, to get my phone number. She was visiting her other grandmother, whom had sent her to her room when she cried. She asked me to tell her grandmother Ruth that it’s okay to cry and she shouldn’t have to go to her bedroom. I was thrilled that she was courageous enough to put action into her right to cry without shame. By the 21st century, I intervene with parents, strangers in public places, feeling confident in everyone’s right to protect children. In 2013, I become a first-time actress in a local play called: PARENT STORIES. I monologue a story my ‘son-in-law’ tells me at our 2012 birthday restaurant dinner. His 8 year old son Kii was playing outdoors with his 5 year old friend where they found a coin. When it was time to leave for home, Kii began to cry when his dad said he should let his friend take the coin because he was younger. Kii shouted through his tears, “But I found the coin!” His dad said something like, “It’s not worth crying about,” to which Kii cried louder: “I’ll cry when I am 8 and I will cry when I am 21!” A month or so later after the play performance that I felt scared to be in, I met the married couple, Sarah and Godfrey, who directed Parent Stories at another play called Gypsy. Sarah emailed me a couple of days later: Godfrey was crying at Gypsy and she had said to him, “Don’t cry honey,” to which Godfrey replied, “I’ll cry when I’m 46 and I’ll cry when I’m 84.”