A pope died. A new pope was chosen. A very dear old lover passed away. Some of my favorite artists, whom I have enjoyed for many years, have transitioned to perform, write, and dance on a heavenly plane. I’ve never liked change. Perhaps, been afraid of it even. Ironically, one of my favorite songs is “Everything Must Change” by the late Benard Ighner. I’m considered an elder now, and I’m finding impermanence increasingly disquieting.
But it’s summer, and I’m indulging in its beauty. The seasonal drift from spring to raging heat offers me a sense of liberation from political nightmares and brings with it an obstinate optimism. As authoritarianism plants its ghastly footsteps in too many places across the planet, we are divided. Yet, we are also connected. We hold before us an eternal optimism that protects us like an ancient knight’s armor. We have a battle cry: JOY IS RESISTANCE.
Growing up, I struggled with finding joy at home. At 11, I was weighed down by the constant fighting within my family and desperate for laughter. Most of the time joy felt as distant as an air balloon over the Atlantic. But then spring would arrive. Spring, with its sweet smells. Spring with its flowers and brilliant colors. The sky seemed bluer. The delicate green of spring grass was accented with purple crocuses and yellow tulips. The pussy willows along the streets assured me that everything would be just fine. Spring brought joy.
There were cocoons in trees lining the sidewalks where I walked home from school. Those white cottony things, almost transparent, had lumps inside that I didn’t understand would turn into butterflies. Boys, ever annoying little boys, threw rocks at them or batted them down with sticks. I usually ran beneath a tree to get away from those white lumps knocked loose because they landed on my neck or in my hair. But as spring wore on, the lumps inside became beautiful, magically colored things, liberating themselves from bondage. As I ease into elderhood, I reflect on this memory from my earlier years: the cocooning times.
Joy and An Abundance of Eggs
Eggs — The subject of economic dismay that’s led us into this year of low expectations and turning the American Dream into a nightmare for many.
My father used to chastise me because, as he said about my mother and me, “Whenever I walk into this house, you two are going at each other!” This, even before I was 13. But the night before Easter Sunday, something magical happened. Joy fired up a powerful resistance to any family issues. All of us kids joined Mom as we gathered around dozens of eggs. There was a renewal, a resurrection, a rebirth, if you will, of the delight human beings are meant to experience.
We stayed up past eight o’clock, selecting stencils and food colors for our boiled eggs and filling Easter baskets for ourselves and cousins. Those nights were special. The evening routine of dinner, dishes, homework, and perhaps a harsh “I told you to finish your homework!” was abandoned for an experience of limitless childish joy. We did not whine — “but it’s still light out” — when we heard neighborhood children playing kickball in the streets. What we cared about was decorating eggs. What we experienced was joy.
Obstinate Optimism as Resistance
The spirit of the times requires — demands — that we maintain joy in our resistance. We are living through overwhelming changes in politics and culture. Dreams for peaceful coexistence can only survive and manifest in optimism.
Children are dying from measles – a disease we had eliminated from our country. People are being kidnapped, placed in prisons and concentration camps, or starved mercilessly by authoritarian governments. There are dictatorships throughout this world, and we, in this country, are as politically divided as we’ve ever been — some say since the Civil War. “Divide and conquer” is as old as humanity itself, and we fight against this abomination. And still, people are bursting with obstinate optimism.
We have been through tragedies before, and we have come through them to celebrate the return of the Light. Optimism, Joy as Resistance, is the best of the human spirit. Claiming our joy is necessary nourishment if we are to survive — and thrive.
The brew is flavorful, and the hint of chocolate on the back of my tongue is a calming sensory experience for the many thoughts and feelings I have in this stream of consciousness.
After months of procrastination, I’m gaining clarity about this post. I’m not writing about food this time, although I’m sure that a large bag of chips will make its way to me as I write about kindness and ─ oddly enough ─ empaths, people who have a high sensitivity to stimuli, including other people’s emotions. I’m writing about being empathic ─ not empathetic.
While researching, I came across a definition about the difference between empathic and empathetic. In an article published by Stylist, an online magazine based in the UK, Lucy Fry writes the following:
Being an empath is developmental, whereas empathy can be learned.
Fry continues: Empaths easily lose themselves in feelings. For most people expressing empathy means making a concerted effort to see the world through someone else’s lens in a kind way. For an empath, however, it can get confusing. These types of people absorb others’ emotions so quickly and easily they’re sometimes unsure which lens is whose. The boundaries between the self and others can be thin, which means they are super sensitive to other people’s needs but can also entirely lose track of their own.
You’re too sensitive, Sala. Sigh. I’ve been told this numerous times.
You want to hear the heart in the voice. Alexa’s words landed like sparks in a dry field.
Yes.
Not too long ago, I was irritated by a conversation I was having. I felt that the person wouldn’t shut up until she had me submerged in the cesspool of anger she swims in all the time. All. The. Time.
I’m a human sponge. I soak up other people’s emotions like others suck up soda through a straw. When I’ve gone to the movies, I’ve found that I feel almost physically pulled into any violent action on the screen. I feel overwhelmed. So, I don’t go to the movies. I don’t read violent novels. I have an enduring crush on Stephen King and have slept with his book On Writing next to my pillow. But I have never seen, nor will I, a movie adaptation of his books. I was traumatized as a child by Hitchcock’s Psycho. I’ve never seen a Tarantino film, and I did not watch Game of Thrones ─ my sister advised me against it. Give me the Hallmark Channel, Notting Hill and Madea.
Don’t. Judge. Me.
According to Dr. Judith Orloff, a board certified psychiatrist and expert on the subject of Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs): Empaths absorb other people’s emotions.
There it was: absorb. While others define themselves as extrovert or introvert, I’m defining myself as an empath. The Cleveland Clinic notes that you may also identify with being a highly sensitive person (HSP), a personality trait that was first used by psychologists in the 1990s to describe someone with a deep sensitivity to the physical, emotional, or social situations and information around them. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/highly-sensitive-person/
My parents, Bill and Libby, joined millions of American Blacks who moved to northern and western states during the Great Migration from the South. I will never know the depth of their disenchantment on discovering the same racial discrimination and limited economic opportunities in Washington, D.C. that they had left behind in South Carolina.
Exposed to Mom’s anger and disappointment at having had to leave her beloved career ─ teaching ─ to raise five children in poverty and her mood swings from having to witness my father’s humiliation and rage when private builders told him ─ a master brick mason ─ that “coloreds” weren’t being hired, I absorbed their every emotion. I cried a lot. When teachers sent us home from school the day President Kennedy was assassinated, I threw myself on my bed and sobbed. And despite my empathy for my family and our world, I became unkind and angry.
Mine or Yours?
A White neighbor called to vent about another devastating U.S. Supreme Court decision on Affirmative Action and the efforts to obstruct racial diversity in higher education. They’ve been busy taking rights away these days. She ranted, not taking a breath and not allowing me to speak. I listened. When she was done, she thanked me for allowing her to “get it off my chest.” I responded, “Good. You need to know that I did not take it onto mine.” Her silence was brief but obvious. She had been hoping I would join her anger.
“I lived through those days,” I said. “How can you possibly be angrier than someone who experienced those times?”
I felt the wind go out of her sails. I was honest. I was direct. I felt powerful. It’s not that I don’t get angry. It’s that I have experienced self-protection and learned ways to know if it’s my anger, not someone else’s.
Childhood Educators Are Saints
During my ─ if-only-they-could-be-forgotten ─ adolescent years, the vice principal of our junior high school took me under her wing. A tall woman with dark chocolate skin and closely clipped hair, she was a no-bullshit, take-no-prisoners administrator. She offered a wide, memorable smile that, behind her back, prompted cowardly kids to call her “King Kong.” Fiercely principled, Mrs. G. was a potent advocate for young people. If, however, one was foolish enough to challenge her authority, you did so at your peril. I didn’t know too many kids who were willing to face their parents for being suspended or, even worse, expelled.
My grades were poor. Incidents of colorism – discrimination based on color within the race ─ fed my anger, and I was filled with anxiety about American culture. Additionally, adolescents are markedly known for meanness, and one day I found myself in a fight with a light-skinned girl who looked Caucasian. She was not. A ring of girls surrounded us and chanted “Fight! Fight!” This, not surprisingly, led to a sit-down in the principal’s office. Mrs. G. put her arms around my shoulders. “Walk with me.” We walked the halls. She didn’t use the word “colorism” or demean other students for their behavior. She spoke kindly and told me I was smart, that I could do better. Something inside me softened, if only for a little while.
My Ways of Empathic Protection
Therapy and Psychotherapists
During my twenties, I was led to a compassionate therapist who taught me something: Anger and repressed fear were my defaults. If I couldn’t identify or own my feelings, I could not respond to life circumstances authentically.
Prayer
I found a spiritual path that focused on the love of God ─ not “fear” ─ as the unseen guidance. I could no longer sing “saved a wretch” in the hymn Amazing Grace. I sang “saved a soul.” Chanting became a daily practice, and service ─ volunteering, a lifelong practice for me ─ took on a golden hue. I was becoming softer, more vulnerable. When, after 30 years, I left California for the east coast, a friend told me gently that he had watched me transform over the years. “You’ve lost that explosive anger.” I was moved ─ my own feeling. I remember saying to someone during those years, “I like a lot of soft around me.” In the company of softness, I felt ─ and feel ─ good.
Food
Ahh, yes. I knew I’d come back to the plate. Beginning with family meals for the seven of us in our two-bedroom apartment and extended family gatherings to visits with my grandparents in the south and church picnics, food preparation and pure laughter became a major empathic lifeline. Hugs were plentiful. Empathy was strengthened. I learned that in cooking, sharing, and eating good food, life could be joyful. But it’s been a rocky ride here. Sometimes my empathic protection revealed itself in weight gain. The soft protection of bulge around the belly. Other times, my love of sharing food and company with people I love has been the empathic lifeline.
Nature
I call my apartment a tree house. Outside my windows, the leaves of the trees serve as curtains in the summer. The southwestern sun keeps my apartment warm in the winter. I am heralded with birdsong, and I hope the circling hawks don’t see the rabbits occasionally nibbling by the side of the building.
Okay.
Now that I’ve finished my coffee and reflections for the morning, I’m on my way to juice apples and pears in the safety and comfort of my kitchen, a comforting place where I always experience the “soft around me.”
While dining with a friend, I reflected out loud, “I want a lot of softness around me.” It was a prayer released into the air. I was so tired of the drama with folks who felt that aggression was the way to success. In that moment, a few seconds felt like I was frozen in time.
When I became aware of the movement around me again—people bussing trays and the café filled with noisy chatter—I knew I had hit on a significant truth about myself. Apparently, my friend understood completely because she nodded her head and said “yes!”. It was a desire for fewer disagreements, more kindness, honest listening, and deeper sharing with friends and family. With her recognition of this desire, I didn’t feel alone anymore.
January 2018 had started with a bundle of newness: new writing, new personal insights, and a new food management plan. Then Mom died.
It was not unexpected. She’d had Alzheimer’s for several years and was a month short of 96. Attending her funeral would be my first travel experience since I had been diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP) in 2013, a condition that had, at that time, left me paralyzed and weak in the legs for many months. I was nervous about the journey, but after all my years of progressive recovery, I felt strong and ready.
In going to Washington, D.C. for nine days, I would be surrounded by relatives I hadn’t seen in decades. There would be dinners with siblings and other family and a funeral repast with old family acquaintances and neighbors. I’d be stretching myself to the limit with travel by train, social interactions, and using Uber to go between the hotel and my brother’s home where there were too many steps for me to stay there. The physical effort meant being outside in sub-freezing weather, pulling luggage, and staying up until 11 every night as my siblings and I worked on funeral details.
The likelihood of staying on my new meal plan was doomed. Pizzas, fried chicken, and breakfast pastries became the daily cuisine—fast, filling, and cooked by someone else. I wanted—and needed—someone to walk with me; someone who could hold me up and carry my heart gently in his or her hands. Someone, perhaps, who really knew me.
My family is stoical. We do not “do” feelings. This is something that’s bothered me for as far back as I can remember. I’ve always been envious of families that can mourn together, folks who can physically embrace each other while shedding tears. In our family, my tendency to express feelings has earned me the label of “emotional.”
Overnight, the five of us had become orphans, and yet we did not share that familial intimacy. Perhaps this was why I felt desperate for a friend with whom I could share the thoughts close to my heart. But is there a friendship that can meet such a need? Every person has a boundary when it comes to openness and vulnerability. In choosing friends, I have made some mistakes.
I was thinking about the concept of “softness around me” on the day I returned from my mother’s funeral. Feeling sad, I called a woman that I considered a new friend since moving to Pennsylvania. In the past, we had talked about politics, philosophy, and where to find good men. We had cooked together and shared family pictures during holiday meals. So…when I got back to town, I rang her up. Phone calls were not returned. Neither were text messages or emails. Weeks later when I heard from her, I was stunned to learn that she thought our “expectations for friendship are different.” I did not know what she meant.
I was hurt, but also angry. Faced with the realization that I had somehow unwittingly made someone uncomfortable, I had to look at how I choose friends and what my expectations are. Clearly, my inner “friend-picker” needed repair. I was now faced with another new task for the New Year: Approaching my seventies, I would have to learn how to choose new friends.
When I graduated from high school, my classmates and I used to write a common verse in each other’s yearbooks. Love many, trust few; learn to paddle your own canoe.
My need for deep friendship on any given day can remain securely hidden behind the pots and spices in my kitchen. But need has a way of breaking out of hiding places. When it does, judgment dissolves.
A good friend, like good food, is a reliable source of comfort. I use great care when selecting ingredients for cooking. Will I be able to, going forward, choose friends in the same way? Some friendships I thought would last for years, end or fade. And, of course, I change. Understanding this, the future stands before me with thoughtful friendship experiences and more “softness around me.”
I’ve been needing change. I’ve been wanting to see new people, and experience new life, open hearts, new songs, out-of-the-box thinking, and new courage. Yes, courage. So, God bless me, I went to the organic market and bought…
a basil plant.
Er?
Well, for one thing, with a plant I knew I would see change in the form of vibrant growth and an abundance of leaves. With a plant, I’d see time in motion. Visiting the local organic market reminded me of something very important. Change is good.
It’s time to change my blog, again, and renew my commitment to stay current. I began this blog with weekly posts. What an exciting time that was! Then, when I was admitted to the hospital, I posted once a month (or was it every six weeks?). I took that as a challenge from God, the universe, or whatever folks call their higher power these days. Do I really want to write? How transparent do I want to be? Do I want to be confined to stories about family and friends? It became more challenging, and the frequency shifted to every two months, then three—until today.
There are so many reasons for the delay. Well, at least I like to think there are. It’s not because my family has become less interesting, although there are times when I wish they were less interesting. It’s certainly not because there’s less to say about food and my peculiar food interests. And it’s not because of the weather, as much as I would like to blame my lethargy on the almost 40-degree drop in weather (from 90 and humid to 50-something and raining. What can I say? It’s Philadelphia after all). No, the delay is not due to any of those things.
Here’s the thing. I’m working on a novel. You heard it first here. And here’s another secret. I turned 69 this year, and I kept hearing the tiniest whisper in the trees—okay, maybe it was that precious basil plant—”if not now, when?” I’ve also signed up for an online writing course and, although I’m not a matriculated student, the amount of coursework would break a horse at the Kentucky Derby.
The intensity of keeping up with it all is what sent me to the organic market. There, I filled my culinary yearning by fondling those little plastic containers of pesto, hummus, and dips. I sighed softly as I held blocks of cheeses from all over the world, cupping them in my hands as if they were rocks of gold—or maybe a lover’s face. (I won’t purchase the cheese, mind you, I’m off dairy—doctors orders.) Then, there were those whole organic, free-range chickens—at half the price of other markets in the area. I guess food will always be a part of my story.
And so, I bought the very fragrant basil plant. It filled my apartment with the smell of newness, of spring, of purpose. After all, if I’m going to change, begin a new cycle, I want nature to support me.
Over the winter, I’ve been stuffing my intellectual belly with books by and about women who grow, harvest, and love food and the graceful generosity that cooking and sharing meals creates. I’ve been (probably) growing my newly diagnosed cataracts by constantly reading about writing, spirituality, and race relations. I’ve been sticking my foot in the waters of book reviews and learning that even if I don’t like a book, there is always something positive to highlight. I’ve been busy.
Perhaps it’s because, in my gardening experience, I’ve learned to respect the time it takes to nurture the seeds of new growth. Respecting that time makes me feel less anxious about my yearning, and it makes me want to be more disciplined about my writing. I’m writing a novel. But I told you that already.
So here I am, tending my basil plant, thinking about the prospects of an apartment vegetable garden, and focusing on a story worth two to three hundred pages. While it takes away from my blog time, the promise of new growth is exciting.
Sala
wordshavecolor.com 