Day of the Dead

Halloween

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This Samhain season I've been called to explore more of the Day of the Dead aspect of this important holiday. I certainly picked out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch and dressed up and went out with my friends over the weekend, but the month of October has had a real theme of dealing with my ancestors and other beloved dead. My older sister has been spending some real effort to discover family stories and tracing our geneaology in recent months and she asked me to look through our dad's photos for a picture of our grandmother. That search spurred me to do a major overhaul of his photo albums which were in dire need of repair or updating. My grandmother had put two albums together for my father sometime in the 1950s and they were physically falling apart. I've spent many hours over the last month or so taking the photos off the disintegrating paper and putting them in new albums, a process that has led to a number of very fruitful conversations with my dad about his life history and family (Ok, those conversations have been as fruitful as possible with a man who generally considers "grumph" a reasonable response to most inquiries).

Neither side of my family really has close intergenerational ties. Both of my grandfathers died decades before I was born and my father's mother died when I was a young child and had lived my entire life across the country from her. Both of my parents were part of the Baby Boom generation that rebelled in many ways against traditional family structure and values, a movement I still believe is valid and valuable, but that has caused irreparable rifts in family ties. Two years ago, when I wrote about my Halloween altar I noted that I had a picture of an extinct species because I almost felt that loss more strongly than the loss of my own family members.

This puts me in a place that is inherently different from the vast majority of humans over time and across the globe. In many, maybe even most, cultures, ancestors are a close and vital part of each individual’s community. Grandparents and maybe even great grandparents would have played a strong roll in raising a child and those people’s deaths would give the young adult an intimate connection with other ancestors who were no longer living. People very often lived in the same community, or even the same homes, that their ancestors had lived in and followed daily practices and traditions that they shared with those ancestors. This is not, in any way, my reality.

My first real cognition of that strong, shared connection with my ancestors came from my study of cell biology and genetics. I realized that the mitochondria in every cell in my body was exacly the same as the mitochondria in my mother’s body, and those in her mother’s body and her mother’s body. Something as intimate as my own DNA was shared with these women who I knew only barely or not at all. Later in my life, through conversations with my father’s sister, I had a realization that habits of mind and speech, childhood baggage and other less tangible aspects of what I consider myself are passed down from generation to generation in a family.

won tickets earlier this month to see a play at a theater here in Portland that focuses on Hispanic culture. The play, their Dia de los Muertos production, was a billingual story about a young woman experiencing revolution in a 21st century middle eastern country being visited by her ancestors who tell their story of experiencing revolution in 19th century Mexico. One of the things that struck me in the play is how present her ancestors were to her, both physically and emotionally. This morning I listened to an interview with a prominent Mormon journalist and blogger and she said she felt the same presence of her ancestors. Their stories of conversion and migration to live out their Mormon spirituality felt very heavy to her and she said as a young person she experienced “visitations” and proddings from her ancestors who seemed quite invested in her daily life. In talking about difficulties in her relationship with her father she was very clear that her tradition believes that families choose to be together, that they somehow know each other before their earthly births and come together to have certain kinds of experiences together. This thought is held in Waldorf communities, too, and is one that, despite it’s issues (does anyone choose to be born in extreme poverty, with debilitating illness or deformity, or into abusive situations?) provides some level of comfort to me.

I don’t have the strong intergenerational connections of a traditional Mexican family and I don’t believe in eternity spent with my current family, but I do know we are in this particular journey together. My parents are a deep part of me, and through them so are their parents and their parents. Other branches of my family are a part of me, too, even the parts that I share no blood with. I believe that my purpose here on earth is to, through my incarnation into this body and self, have a physical and relational experiences that the non-physical spirit of god can not. Humans have their core physical and relational experiences within the family and so, no matter how difficult it may be, those relationships are vitally important.

What are you celebrating this Halloween season? Were or are you close to your grandparents and other ancestors or have you had a journey of discovery like mine? When do you feel closest to your ancestors? Is it now, during the time of the year when the veil is thin between this world and the other? Rob Brezsny's homework assignment this week was "Which ofyour dead ancestors would you most like to talk to?Imagine a conversation with one of them." Which ancestor would you most like to hear from this early winter? What did you dress up as for Halloween?


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These photos are my personal family photos. If you would like to know more about them please send me an email.

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Halloween 2008: When the Veil Between the Worlds is Thin

Halloween 2009: What Do You Really Want to Be?

Halloween 2010: Doggy Heaven (one of my all time favorite posts - it still makes me choke up a little every time I read it) and The Power of the Dog.

The Full Death Moon 2009 post mentions the Halloween season and the post Martinmas is about another holiday associated with this point in the Wheel of the Year.

Golden Autumn

The New Nesting Moon

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The New Nesting Moon this year came right before my birthday, which is a very important festival in my personal Wheel of the Year. Falling right at the beginning of September, it marks the real end of Summer for me and the beginning of my favorite season - Golden Autumn.

Golden Autumn is that wonderful time when the trees, the grass and the sky all seem to have turned yellow. It hasn't rained in Portland for weeks and this year a late heat wave really dried up any last herbaceous plants holding onto their green. The maples, sweet gums and alders are turning yellow but none of the trees are quite yet orange or red. And the light! Some days I've been confused about what time it is because the light is so low and yellow making mid afternoon feel like mid evening. There have been forest fires in the mountains close to Portland and the smoke has given us some specatcular gold, pink and bronze sunsets. I'm on the look out for a perfect day - cool enough for a sweater in the morning and evening but warm enough for shorts in the afternoon, with the trees having turned color but not dropped their leaves. It will happen soon, in my favorite Golden Autumn season.

Golden Autumn is my birthday season and it is the birthday season of another woman very important to me, my maternal grandmother. I was able to visit with Grandma Jean for a whole week when I was down in Los Angeles last month and it was a long overdue visit. Jean is my only surviving grandparent and the only one I've ever really known. Grandma Jean has always been a strong, feisty and independent woman and many of my childhood memories of her are more of her being a strange and willful force imposed on my life than as a stereotypical matronly grandmother. She retained much of her Midwestern sense of propriety and there is a family joke about her way of shaking her head and spitting out a "Well... I just... well!" when we did things she didn't approve of. When I was in middle school she and I got in quite a fight over my need for church shoes. We were attending a very laid back Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at the time and I was as likely to wear Birkenstocks and pajama pants to church as anything else. No, Grandma, I don't need church shoes. "Well... just... well."

This September Grandma Jean turned 94 and continues to live an amazing and full life. I was able to ask her questions about her life and just listen to her stories this summer, a rare treat. She was born on a farm in Loup City, Nebraska and during the Depression her father lost that farm and they moved to another one in Litchfield.. Her father raised corn and wheat as well as hogs, dairy cattle and 9 children. There was quite an age difference between Jean and her older sisters so she ran with the younger boys in the family and was quite a tom boy. She said she remembered having the milk the cows, up to 15 in an evening, and she hated it. She much preferred riding horses, a pass time she continued up until her kids were born. She graduated from high school and attended just enough college to get a teaching school. She taught in a 1 room school house outside of Litchfield where she had kids ranging from 7 to 18 years old, including boys bigger and older than she was. She hated that, too, but saved up enough money to go on a road trip with some of her girlfriends. Six of them headed out west in one of the girls' Buick, staying in Colorado before heading on to Los Angeles and Tijuana. I can't even begin to imagine what Tijuana was like in 1934! While staying with one of her mother's cousins in Long Beach, California she visited The Pike, a boardwalk with a roller coaster, a salt water plunge and other amusements. She met the man who ran

the Magruder's Salt Water Taffy stand and he offered her and her friends jobs if they wanted to stay. Jean went back to Nebraska that year, but the following year moved back out to California with the family of another friend.

Long Beach must have been a magical place for Jean. She knew she didn't want to stay in Nebraska and Long Beach was a party town in those years. There is a story that one of the farmer's sons back home had courted her but she told him, "Carl, I'm not staying in Litchfield. You'd do better to go out with my sister, Lois." My mother remembers visiting her Uncle Carl and Aunt Lois in Litchfield in the 1960s, where he ran the service station and still farmed. In Long Beach, Jean tried her hand at waitressing, but when that didn't work out ended up working for Mr. Magruder at the Salt Water Taffy stand. She told me she mostly popped popcorn and that it was a lot of work to lift the bags of corn, pop it and sell it. Mr. Magruder was a fatherly figure to the girls, helping them get accustomed to the city life. Apparently, they got the hang of that quickly and became quite the talk of the town. There is a story of the cops getting called on one of their parties but no one getting in trouble because they just decided to stay and enjoy themselves. In 1942 or 43 she met a handsome, clarinet playing elevator attendant who she later married. She remembers going dancing with Bob and their friends, and learning to bowl. "We sure had a lot of fun," she told me. I can only imagine, Grandma!

Bob and Jean had three kids and moved to the suburban community of Lakewood, just north of Long Beach. Bob died in the early 1960s and Jean had to find work. One of the women in the neighborhood suggested she get work at the new Hughes Aircraft factory. "Jean, you should get a job there," she remembers her friend telling her, "they'll hire anybody!" "I had never even held a screwdriver, but they put me on the line," she told me. She quickly was promoted to a line supervisor, a position she really liked because she got to know everyone on the line. I laughed when she said that, that's a trait I see very much through the generations of our family. When her kids were teenagers she was transferred into the office as a receptionistt, another job she loved because of the people she worked with. My mom remembers her baking a dessert for the office every Friday and the friends she made in that office led her into golf and travel, two passions that sustained her through the decades after her kids left home.

Jean traveled independently well into 80s and lived mostly by herself in the house she raised her kids in until well after her 90th birthday. I see now that those traits that made her such a stern grandmother served her well in her adventure filled life. She was never afraid to do something she wanted to do, and was willing to take care of her friends even as her own health began to fade. She now lives with her oldest granddaughter and her family and though she moves a little slower than she used to, and can sometimes be forgetful or confused, she is still the independent, sassy, clever woman she always was. She was no saint, but she sure is a cool woman to have in my family background.

Birthdays by Robert William Service

Let us have birthdays every day,
(I had the thought while I was shaving)
Because a birthday should be gay,
And full of grace and good behaving.
We can't have cakes and candles bright,
And presents are beyond our giving,
But let lt us cherish with delight
The birthday way of lovely living.

For I have passed three-score and ten
And I can count upon my fingers
The years I hope to bide with men,
(Though by God's grace one often lingers.)
So in the summers left to me,
Because I'm blest beyond my merit,
I hope with gratitude and glee
To sparkle with the birthday spirit.

Let me inform myself each day
Who's proudmost on the natal roster;
If Washington or Henry Clay,
Or Eugene Field or Stephen Foster.
oh lots of famous folks I'll find
Who more than measure to my rating,
And so thanksgivingly inclined
Their birthdays I'll be celebrating.

For Oh I know the cheery glow|
Of Anniversary rejoicing;
Let me reflect its radiance so
My daily gladness I'll be voicing.
And though I'm stooped and silver-haired,
Let me with laughter make the hearth gay,
So by the gods I may be spared
Each year to hear: "Pop, Happy Birthday."

This year is my 31st birthday. By the time Jean was my age she had left everything she ever knew in Nebraska to travel with friends and later move to The Big City. She worked and played hard and had met a man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Another Virgo friend of mine noted that I have a prime number age this year. "It's like being a human fortress," she said. "Just try to divide me by anything but myself or one!" I think Jean spent most of her life being a prime number human fortress and I think I am going to strive for that myself this year. I've got student teaching coming up this year and a job search in a scary economy. Being indivisible except by myself and 1 sounds like a pretty good way to step into year 31.

Is it Golden Autumn where you are yet? Is your birthday a big holiday for you or just something you let slip by? Why? Are your grandparents role models for you in any special way? Are you ready for sweater weather? Happy September!!

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New Nesting Moon 2009: Breathe a Sigh of Relief

New Nesting Moon 2010: Ramadan

New Nesting Moon 2011: The Book of Nature

The Full Nesting Moon post for 2009, Hey.. it's my Birfday, is also about my birthday and the Full Harvest Moon 2010 post mentions both my birthday and my crazy family.

The photos are all of my grandmother. The first is Jean fishing in 1939 and the second is Jean with Bob (on the left) and her brother and his wife (on the right) at the Pike in Long Beach in 1948. The third was taken in 1966 after her husband died but before all three kids had moved out of the house.