Goddessing: A Goddess / Pagan Blog

On this day, in 1919, my grandmother, Lalla Rook L gave birth to my father, Harry Thomas L. He was her second son, though her first son died before my father was born.

We called my grandmother "Mam" and delighted in saying "yes ma'am, Mam," which never seemed to annoy her. She's the only person I've ever known well who was unconditionally loving. Or perhaps I should say she was the most unconditionally loving person I've ever known. She was petite (went on a diet, about twice in her life, when she weighed over 110 lbs.), the second of seven daughters, a quiet believer who read through the Bible every year, a few verses at a time -- a daily ritual.

She raised three boys who all survived military service in WWII. She was widowed early, worked as a seamstress in an upholstery shop after her husband died of leukemia, saved Green Stamps to buy Christmas presents for family members, made excellent popcorn, chow chow, lemon icebox pie, and all manner of good food. She never learned to drive. She did get a teaching certificate when she was 16, but she fell in love and married young and didn't get a 4-year degree, as did most of her sisters. In her 80s, she moved into a nursing home, and blossomed: she'd been a widow for nearly a quarter of a century by then and hadn't had much of a social life. She dressed up every day and loved visiting with all the residents.

Her first year in the nursing home, she was voted "Valentine Queen" in February. She hadn't wanted to give up housekeeping or gardening, of course. When I asked her, once, how she managed to be so happy despite illness, and sharing a room with a stranger and a grouch, and no longer living at home, etc., she thought for a minute and answered: "Well, I just tried to be happy every day, so every day, I'm happy."

My dad was much like her, in some crucial ways. He was loving and fun-loving, proud of his kids, a hard worker, generous of spirit. He grew up with his two brothers and parents "dirt poor" on a cotton farm in Texas, after cotton had gone south as a cash crop. He came into puberty during the Depression. World War II was his big adventure. Likeable, resourceful, a good communicator, and reliable, he spent most of his duty as a liaison to a high-ranking officer in North Africa. He did spend some time with a gun in Germany, at war's end, responsible for prisoners of war. Whatever those experiences, they were the source of lifelong nightmares that resulted in his crying out in his sleep in the middle of the night, something that waked me periodically when I was a teen.

Dad came home from the War with a bigger picture of the world and of himself than the one he left with. Forever after he liked good food, good company, good conversation, and traveling. He was a successful small-time salesman and eventually had his own businesses. We didn't have a lot of money, but we took family vacations once a year, and twice a year when there was extra cash.

He loved my mother, who was brilliant, creative, gifted, fun-loving, beautiful, and tragic ... an untreated manic-depressive, a rageaholic, an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, a narcissist, a sometimes sadistic, abusive mother and spouse. I was 5 the first time my dad told me he was going to divorce my mother, explaining that this meant he would no longer be living with us. I think when he saw the look on my face and when he thought about the consequences to his girls, he changed his mind. This happened more than once. He never left mother, never left us, and suffered with us through her brilliant hell. I know he stayed for us; he absorbed a lot of her viciousness; he didn't or couldn't protect us, but he didn't abandon us.

I can't tell you how grateful I am for my father. For Sunday adventures, little mini-trips out into the country after church; for a quirky and incredibly dry sense of humor I appreciated when I was older, and inherited; for staying with my mother until she left him, just after we two girls and she had (finally) graduated from college; for excellent grilled steaks on Saturday nights; for bringing home gifts from his business trips when I was a little girl; for his creative story-telling -- myths and fairy tales personalized to feature me as the protagonist; for my first car, a maroon Barricuda, for being proud of me, with cause and without; for Oktoberfest and Yellowstone and downhill skiing all over New Mexico and Colorado; for sending me to college; for leaving me a little inheritance when I was 28 and he died young of lung cancer, 30 years after quitting smoking, just as he was moving into semi-retirement at 63.

My dad believed in saving for your retirement. When I saw that he didn't get to have one, I decided that living for the present, living in the moment, was more important than living for some time in the future, which may or may not come.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the P.D. James quote above, but when I came across it last night I thought about my dad and what I learned and inherited from him. Though my dad did live, to some degree, for the future, he also managed to live quite well, though simply, in the present. He didn't have big dreams, really. He was quite happy with the essentials of life. After his divorce, he dated a very sweet, loving, beautiful woman who was with him every day during his terminal illness. She had so much respect for him. I'm glad he had her. My mother visited him once while he was in the hospital, but she didn't go to his funeral. After she died, seven years later, I found among her papers a receipt for a single therapy session, dated the month of his death.

It's the end of a long day's work; I'll be having a delicious meal and fun conversation with my partner half an hour from now. In just a minute, I'm going to get up and go spend some time at my altar. I'll light some incense, look through some photos of my dad, and spend time in the present remembering the past.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 6:42 PM.

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