My mother told me that she had to learn how to cook after she married because her mother had not taught her; she had been shooed from the kitchen. Surprisingly, as a child, my grandmother, Alice, let me help her make the best fried cakes (Dunkin Donuts can’t compare) sizzling in bacon grease. My mouth has begun to water despite Grammy Alice being passed on forty years. Helping my mother peel potatoes or apples was one of my first cooking duties although it was not until I was an older teenager. Yet, I remember maybe being 12 when she asked me to check the peach pie in the oven; when I tried to take it out the hot pie spilled onto the floor. I am amazed (and grateful) that mom did not get mad at me as she was critical of me in many other ways. No skin off my back, and no skin on the potatoes, peaches or apples. While raising my children, nutrition no longer took off her skin. I scrubbed the potatoes, adding butter to the still dressed mashed potatoes. After my daughters left home I added fresh garlic to the mashing. Strong spicy garlic turned bland potatoes into a real treat that pricked the tongue while risking alienation when smelling garlic-breath, which I happen to like. I wonder if someday there will be creams of garlic applied to our skin for beauty’s sake like cucumbers or teabags now applied to the eyes. Massage therapists use an array of oils to stretch, soothe and relax our strained anxious muscles by pressing our most essential skin that holds us together. During my fourth marriage, my emotional skin tore like a thread pulling a sweater apart. I became very angry and sad and fearful when Gregory would not trust me with accusations of having affairs. I stomped like a toddler: my broken-open-hurt-heart sobbing, which caused the skin around my eyes to swell, becoming like cream puffs. (I wish.) In the beginning my eyes hurt, not just my heart, but as I connected my tears to old childhood memories, I gradually welcomed them like a warm spring rain. Eventually tears even washed away my anger at my mother. Twenty years later, I love my tears which visit a few times a week. I smiled big when seeing the placard in the movie, The Artist, reading TEARS OF LOVE. I had never read those words before, except in my journal; only seen ‘tears of joy’ written. Just last week, a woman who has seen me dance many times told me that I look 45. When I told her I am 66, her husband said, “Bullshit!” Because when I cry, I do not wipe away my tears but smooth them into my skin with a smile on my face.

Today is October 25th, 2012. I am walking on bright yellow leaves covering the sidewalk that leads to the family court room, confidence carried in my well-prepared notes. When I am asked if I’ll tell the whole truth, I reply to the judge, “For sure!” He smiles as do I. (It is the first time in my experience that a bible did not appear.) I am a psychotherapist testifying on behalf of a father of two who has had sole custody since 2008. His lawyer had emailed me questions he would ask and I mostly read my answers in order to cite the time frames and dates correctly while I hear my heart noticeably speed up. It is not often that I testify in court. When I add that I wish the mother had continued in therapy with me, her lawyer objected to me adding anything to the immediate question. I am stunned. I am trying to portray a positive frame to the courtroom’s adversarial picture. After reading my answer to the next question, the mother’s lawyer objects again, saying that I should not be reading my answers, but answering spontaneously, maybe refer to my notes. And adds that he should have a copy of my prepared answers. And, copies of my psychotherapy notes of the father. (I had already given up the notes of the children because the mother had been my client briefly.) Confidentiality by a psychotherapist is ethically and legally a must in order for any client to trust you. There are clear limits as to when psychotherapy notes can be released – such as when a client gives written permission. Even then, I must evaluate the risk of breaching confidentiality. I had been very cooperative in sending reports and therapy updates. Why were incomplete sentences and easily misinterpreted fragments needed? (I write detailed notes during sessions when most therapists write summaries.) I turned to the judge and said, “I can’t ethically give up the psychotherapy notes; it is my professional responsibility.” The judge’s voice became noticeably irritated and replies that it is a court order, to which I add that my profession ‘orders’ me not to accept. ( I had been arrested in the summer in a nearby county for the same reason, and won a compromise where only the judge saw the notes and not the law guardian.) The judge angrily cuts me off and says he will not argue with me. We go to recess. Not a playful one. I confer with my client and his lawyer about my conviction to not give up the psychotherapy notes, when I had provided therapy updates to both the mother and the father and their lawyers for the past few months. And, cited Jaffee vs. Redmond in my defense. The lawyer of my client slowly changed his mind and suggested that my testimony be stricken from the record so that my psychotherapy notes would not be required. After he conferred with the judge and the mother’s lawyer; we agreed. My heart felt pure as the sunshine that followed me out of the courthouse in Ithaca, New York. I regained my confidence in my confidentiality ethic; glad my words were heard in the courtroom, knowing that was all that mattered. I felt as if I had wings.

As I walk into Just A Taste restaurant this past August, for my birthday celebration dinner, Kevin’s hazel-brown eyes are wide with enthusiasm, as he says, “I have a great story to tell you; you’ll love it!” I sit with four other family members as we hear that his eight year old son, Kii, had been playing with his five year old friend, and they had found a coin. There was an argument about who found it, and who would be able to keep it. Kii started crying as the decision was made for the younger boy to keep the coin. Kevin is like a son to me, the father of my oldest granddaughter, and knows how important it is to be able to feel one’s feelings as he is a musician. Yet, he found himself saying to Kii, “You don’t need to cry about this,” trying to explain, when Kii shouts through his tears, “It’s okay to cry! I’ll cry when I’m eight and I’ll cry when I am twenty-one!!” We all laugh and enjoy Kii’s profound wisdom, knowing that through the tear-filled-eyes of children we can see the truth. Then, this past September weekend, while visiting my daughter’s family near Boston, my gray-blue eyes widened big, as my son-in-law asks me to “tone it down,” at Riley’s soccer game. Part of me was surprised, another part hurt, another part understanding. How could one tone down exuberance and enthusiasm when I was shouting go Holbrook! great play! way to go Riley!? Yes, I jump up and down, I let my joy exceed itself to its highest limits; I don’t care what others think of me. Ben admits that it is all positive, yet doesn’t want others being judgmental of me. We talk about how detrimental it is to suppress one’s vulnerable feelings, and how doing so contributes to the anger in the world. He gets it, even as he says, “Well, if you are too loud, I will go to the other end of the field.” I am fine with that. “Maybe we ought to ask your girls how they feel about this,” I say. So, I ask ten year old Riley, who is laying on the living room floor, taking in our conversation, “How do you feel about my cheering?” In an unusually meek voice I hear, “I like it.” On another note, the other day I was looking out my bedroom window, while waking up to the new dawn, watching the maple tree’s leaves magically change into reds, yellows, and oranges, when I notice how the antenna on the neighbor’s roof interferes and distracts me from this natural fall beauty. I think to myself I see beauty through the eyes of daddy, as I notice crinkling sensations winding up my nose into a tear folding out of my eye. He died over 30 years ago, due to complications of diabetes, being blind in one eye, yet was a master in writing and telling detailed descriptions of the beauty he beheld around him daily. The antenna has no use now that a satellite dish has been in place for a few years. Why haven’t my eyes noticed this obstacle before? I asked, and my neighbor has agreed to remove the antenna.

I cannot think of a day that I do not think of my father, my dad, my daddy, since his death in 1977. It was just last week, at the Primal Convention (whose motto is Freedom to Feel) that I attend annually since 2003, that I found myself crying when the DJ played, “You are so Beautiful to Me,” at the Saturday night dance. Quickly, I looked around to find a man who I wanted and needed to hold me throughout that song and dance. Luckily, Leonard was available, as there were few men to choose from. I am not attracted to him physically, but feel very safe in his arms, as he holds me close and occasionally looks into my eyes, and kisses me gently on the cheek. I knew I was needing to be home with my daddy, (tears) as I sobbed, missing him, missing me, as I knew he saw me as beautiful, although I was not his biologically. Yet, our family’s religious repression did not allow us to say such intimate feelings to each other. I was grieving this part of my heart unheard, unsaid. Going home. As I have experienced connecting with some of my past lives, I sense that my granddaughter Denali, holds the (tears) spirit of my dad within her…as she calls me yesterday, saying, “Happy Birthday Gram!” from the University of Wisconsin, where she is a student. I thank her for her gift, ask her how her trip went, and as we enter the space of good byes, I hear, “I love you,” a few more words, “I love you,” a few more words, and “I love you lots,” from her, along with my “I love you so much,” interjected. Although my dad wrote letters to me in college, or cards on holidays where he writes “I love you,” those words were never heard. I sense dad is making up for this through Denali’s free flow of her heart’s home of love for me. Although my two daughters tell me they love me, it is never as often or free flowing as the love (tears) I felt (now feel from Denali) from my daddy. Today I will visit dad’s grave, which I do monthly since the early nineties, when my heart was broken open by my fourth marriage to feeling the appreciation of going home within.

Here it is the last day of June, and we are writing about snow? About twenty years ago I ran a 10k called christmas in July, so I guess we can make our days anything we want them to be. Well, it just so happens that I was writing about father’s day a few days ago, and happened on a letter from my father dated 12/19/70, whom I will let write for me: “Still, there are some things I would like to share with you — the fact that the whole countryside is covered with a thick blanket of snow. That a few nights ago, I was driving through part of the town and everywhere people had christmas lights on trees and bushes around their houses and inside many of them, christmas trees were all beautifully decorated and glowing with lights of different colors. Or, when it starts daylight in the morning, my bird-feeder is almost covered with cardinals, blue jays and several other types of birds. Those bright red cardinals are especially nice against the white snow. Here and there are pine trees, really loaded with snow and looking like the picture out of a book of christmas stories. Things such as these I would like to share with you.” I notice that SNOW has the word NOW in it, and now, today, it is July fourth, America’s independence day, one of my dad’s favorite holidays, as he was born in Germany, came to the USA when 17, became an American citizen, and fought against his Hitler-run country. Our family would attend the yearly celebration at Cornell University’s football field, where marching bands played and fireworks lit up the sky. And bangs would pound into my heart as does this memory. As the marching bands filed off the field, everyone would stand up to honor the American flag. My father was a polite and kind man, so I was surprised when he tapped the man’s shoulder who stood in front of us and said, “Please take off your hat in respect of the flag.” Today, there are two just-hatched Junco birdlings in the nest she made in my hanging basket, where multicolored petunias hang over their heads. I wish I could share this with my dad in the sNOW. My daddy died in 1977, and his footprints follow me everywhere I go, not just where he gathered his three children to cut down our christmas tree every christmas eve.

I can see myself walking down the hallway stairs at Boynton Junior High school, when I hear Jim Clark’s voice just below, “Hey Pancake,” as he looks up at me. I can’t help but feel embarrassed. I know he is referring to my chest, my lack of breasts as an eighth grader. Other girls are developing while I am wishing I was. I can’t even wear a padded bra as my mother has forbidden me with her words, “You don’t need one.” When I am fifteen I am courageous enough to buy a bra on the sly, and place kleenex in a 34B cup, when I am an A. And that is no grade to be proud of! I was also awarded the nicknames: string bean (at first I wrote green bean maybe because green is now my favorite color as it is the color of love according to some Buddhist traditions), or skinny. Since then I have been trying hard to create a more curvaceous figure, because I do have a small waist and lovely ass. Also, I am 5 foot 9 inches of long legs of which I learned to be proud after Miss America models were mostly that height and some boys grew taller than me. Once I became a freshman in college, I put on 15 pounds the first semester, mostly in my behind where I needed it least. What to do with my self image? I was already a wall flower, but not wishing my chest to emphasize such a wallpapering. I had to buy a girdle, not only to hold up my stockings, but you know what to hold in. I still have the broken spider veins, only in my left thigh, to mark that girdle-era when I was 19. Becoming a nurse, psychotherapist and married woman helped me to accept my small breasts, but I still felt inadequate in a bathing suit. I was most happy with my body while nursing my two daughters, when milk-filled breasts gave me 34-24-36 shapeliness. I no longer needed padded bras. I was for real. Of course that was a short-lived part of my life and when plastic surgery became more common, I researched the best way to have breast implants telling myself I had accepted my body, and could now enhance it to be more in proportion to the American way of beauty. That was 1990. Most people would never know I’ve had such surgery because I am only a 34B. Being athletic I didn’t want big breasts which can get in the way; I just wanted to look feminine, not like a boy. Later, after years of deep-feeling tear-filled therapy, I want to trust that I would not have this surgery now, yet I truly feel accepting of myself as is, my chest muscles embracing the silicone-saline implants for 22 years without troubles. I like trying hard to BE ME.

It would be easy to write about how I weed the neighbor’s garden because she is dying of cancer, or, give The Wise Heart by Kornfield to a client who just graduated with her Master’s degree. I’d rather share the surprise of finding twelve dozen red roses sitting at the foot of my rocking chair in my office, being my door is always open. (The waiting room door is locked at night.) From Gaylee, as I call her, my newest closest friend, being a psychotherapist like myself. No, we are not partners or lovers; I am as straight as the red pine rising 100 feet to the Sun. Yet, I feel as loved as she supremely comforts me in my loss. She had heard that my third ex-husband, Alain, had died suddenly of a heart attack on leap year day 2012, and being that “Love is eternal…its character may change but not its essence,” as Van Gogh said, I wept when I heard from his first wife, that I was not welcome at Alain’s memorial service. Actually, I sobbed like a baby wanting its mother. I felt unappreciated, and Gaylee heard my tears, reiterating what a gift I am…how my certainty about how to love is so helpful to others. I needed to hear that, as I have borne many rejections, yet continue to love those who do so. I am embarrassed still to own that kind of kidness. And, kindness:) So, when I stopped at Wendy’s on my return trip home from visiting my second daughter’s family last week, I stood behind a senior citizen couple as they ordered, then was directed to the cashier next to them whereupon I placed my order of unpeeled french fries with sea salt. After I handed over my money, the gray-haired woman next to me said, “You can ask for the senior discount you know.” No, I didn’t know, and turned to the cashier to ask for it to which she replied that I didn’t look like a senior, and left to retrieve my 60 cents from the manager. When the pudgy teenager gave me my additional change, she added, “You don’t look like a senior citizen, you look like a model, better than I look.” Surprised, all I could say was, “Well, thank you and you can still work on it.” (Due to my frequent tears being connected to my heart’s door into my childhood feelings, and past lives pain, I have been able to maintain my ideal weight, with a waist to show for it. Also, I am lucky enough to have inherited mom’s lack of gray hair which she did not have even at the age of 80.) When I reached my Jeep Liberty with food in hand, I thought to myself, “How did the lady next to me know that I was a senior, and the teenage cashier did not?”

I am embarrassed, yes bare-assed to admit that I could have thought such a thing about my daddy’s dying of a sudden heart attack in 1977. Maybe even shocked. But why should I be? I am human and still a child at heart. I have always loved my father. As a very young child I would run down the driveway to meet him when he arrived home from work. He would open the green Chevy door, and lift me onto his lap (tears) so together we could drive to our house. This ritual I would share every other day with my sister who is one year younger than me. I have many together-memories with my dad who was an equal-participatory parent with my mother who stayed at home, being way ahead of his time. So, how could I be relieved that he passed away? He was only sixty. We could have had many more good times together. Shouldn’t being together be the preeminent confession? Dad became a diabetic during his service in WWII, creating how my parents met; my mother being the nurse who took care of him on the ship sailing home after the war. They fell in love, and that’s how I want my story of dad and me to end. But like today when the wet snow is breaking off huge maple tree limbs in April, I am saddened to admit that I was relieved that I did not have to experience the burden of taking care of my diabetic father as he aged. My dad, calling himself the geezer, had voiced to me more than once that he did want to become a burden to his children. Still, wasn’t my love strong enough to want to do so? Dad was still working as a researcher in space sciences at Cornell university when he died, despite being blind in one eye; a common result of diabetes. Dad took good care of himself with exercise and eating properly, visibly embarrassed when by chance I saw him one day at work with a cigarette in his mouth. He would hide his smoking at home in the basement, away from his family. For that I am greatfull; hiding the smoking that is. Now, I want to hide, my admission, despite the advantages of his early death. That dad would not suffer from further blindness, having to continue years of daily insulin injections, from possible kidney failure and common amputations of the lower extremities, where he was most vulnerable. Now, I want him back!!! and have for years. So many tears of missing him continue to fall, which open my heart to the pain of his 52 years of absence. (tears) I would be more than happy to take care of him now. If only. Since his death, I have become a psychotherapist who grew into grieving for the sake of love. As in the 2012 silent movie, The Artist, where I was surprised to read a placard, TEARS OF LOVE; a statement I had never read outside of my journal; I wish to make such a bumper sticker. Just last week, my 18-year-psychotherapist-friend, Sue, who rejected me in 2010, was walking down the sidewalk near me, and as I turned to see her, I spontaneously smiled, saying, “How are you?”, moving to hug her. She replied, “Good,” and continued walking without losing a beat in her step. Her evasion of me was not surprising; my feeling of continued love for her was not surprising either. My littered-feeling of pride in myself I wish was not there. In the past year I have developed a very deep friendship with another psychotherapist, Gayle. We walk in the woods often, taking in the healing beauty. A month ago, I found a near perfect tear-shaped rock while with her, lovingly carrying it to my door-step. Since then, during one of Gayle’s nature-walks alone, she asked the Universe to give her a heart-shaped rock for Dianea, and within 3 seconds, she looked down and found one, the size of a real heart. She was so excited she called me, saying, “I have never had such a wish answered so quickly before.” Just a week ago, Gayle left a tear-shaped rock at the entrance of my office, identical in size and shape to the tear-shaped rock I had recovered from the woods. She says we are soul-sisters. It can only get better…the presence of LOVE that is.

WOW! The first daffodil bloom in my garden the day before it is officially spring! Usually, daffodils are not out until may in central new york state. And, it is alone in its blooming although there are many budding nearby. I am reminded of my daddy-dad who bathed me as a youngin’ in the 50s, took his children on Sunday walks in the woods, built my sister and I doll beds, and a swing set as tall as our home’s roof top…well almost. One of my fondest memories is dad carrying me down Aurora street as a five-six-year-old, because I am bandaged due to being burned by an overturned coffee pot. I feel special despite my bandaged bottom. Dad, was way ahead of his time as an equally involved parent, while my mother took care of three children providing excellent family dinners together, adding her abilities as a stay-at-home registered nurse. She serving pink junket on a tray to her sick children in bed makes me smile as I write. Yet, dad is my role model of loving compassion because he wanted me when I was not his biological child, and mom did not as I was hers biologically by rape. Dad chose to love me anyway, which felt equal to the love of his two biological children. Mom was the strict religious disciplinarian; dad the nurturer despite being a research astronomer at Cornell university. Dad was alone in being ahead of his time, like the daffodil I admire in its aloneness today. He was one of the first men in our town to volunteer at the newly formed Suicide and Prevention Crisis Service where he answered phone calls from those in crisis during the night shift once a week. I was an adult by this time, and had followed my mother’s footsteps into her RN profession, although I had sworn as a teenager not to be like my mother. Still, I became more like my dad as I went on to receive a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, which I continue to practice for over 25 years. I have taken the parental reins of influence into being in therapy myself even though I hadn’t felt particularly depressed or anxious…I knew something was missing within my soul: my own beliefs and trust in myself. I knew I was a good mother for my two daughters, yet found myself in a painful fourth marriage that lead me into primal therapy: crying, sobbing over the sudden loss of my dad from a heart attack many years earlier, and unresolved childhood anger and hurt. My heart was broken open to tears easily triggered like when I would look into my granddaughter Denali’s (tears now) eyes, while lying on the floor at her Waldorf school on grandparent’s day (sobs), she looking into mine without wavering. I became more and more aware of missing the very essential element of love that has no fear. Ever since that day with Denali when she was four, I have felt that my dad’s (more tears) spirit came back in her, as we have continued to have a very close connection as she grew up to be a freshman in college this year. Just last night, when I called her, she immediately says, “I was just about to call you,” and I reply, “it’s our psychic connection,” really our spirit connection. A week earlier she had told me how she was aware of becoming more of her own person when she moved back to Ithaca where I live, she then being nine. “I looked to you more,” she tells me, my heart swelling as if a colorful beach ball. Once again, I recognize and know I am connecting with my dad’s spirit, like I looked to him everyday of my childhood to come home from work, to relieve me from feeling unwanted by my mother. This past week, while talking on the phone to my sister about going to the cemetery where our parents ashes are buried, she tells me that mom cried almost everyday while growing up. I am surprised and say that I don’t remember that. She validates that mom would use her as her confidant, not me. I do remember mom crying occasionally and more so as adults when I would bring up sensitive topics. Although my mom had been embarrassed to cry easily, I had thanked her for that in her last days, because it was through my crying and letting go of my anger toward her, that helped me to love her (again.)