Category Archives: Culture

A Mothers’ Day

My mother wanted only one child and I was number five. Despite that issue and her many struggles to keep a large and sometimes difficult household running smoothly and efficiently, my mother cared for a problematic mother in law, didn’t hesitate to add an elderly relative with no other home, or to take in a local kid who had a particularly difficult family life.

She was strong and tired, impatient and incredibly kind, frugal yet generous, and although she didn’t approve of some of my choices, I knew that my mother loved me beyond the general care that she showed to everyone under her roof: that her softness was always there when I was most fragile, and that she would enlist an army to fight for me and my siblings if we were in the right and failing to muster our own forces.

She was fearless in defense of her children and others, and it was known that she would spank every kid on the block if they were misbehaving beyond the normal kiddy antics. Kids also knew that if she was baking (and she often did) they would get a treat, same as we did. She never blamed children for their short comings or bad behavior, and had an uncanny eye for the kids who needed extra care.

It was she who grew angry when I mentioned that a kid in class missed days and came in several times with black eyes and a broken arm. Our teacher said he was “accident prone” and made light of it, but Mommy bristled in anger saying, “That boy’s being abused! Somebody’s beating on that child.” I was shocked and freaked out that she’d drawn such a different conclusion, but although she said no more to me, I found out later that she quietly spoke to my teacher and the school authorities, and “Danny” had no more “accidents” that year.

As I got older, I realized how many people she helped in various ways and how big her heart was, despite her often strict demeanor. That so much of that strictness was born of her understanding of how cruel and mean the world can be and her fear for all the innocents and the vulnerable people of the world. That her empathy was hard to bear when she had so few resources to offer. That she understood that her mission and need was to guarantee that we’d survive without her.

She maybe worried most for me, her dreamy eyed, romantic, and artistic daughter- completely unprepared emotionally for the realities I would face. But I knew I had her in my corner. That I could call on, and conjure up a line of women who had gone through more with far fewer resources, and “lived to tell the story.” That I would see my way through and never be the weak link in that chain of women, from my mother and all the way back to “Mitochondrial Eve.” That somewhere within me, I was my mother’s daughter and that if I tapped into that, I would be alright, no matter what.

My mother continues to comfort me and be my resolve when I need it. I feel her presence at times, as though she’s with me, not just remembered, and it gives me heart. It reminds me that I have been and will be loved.

She is always and ever, my Mom.

Cultural Linguistics vs “Love” (but not really.)

Ok, I’m breaking my recent vow to post no more than 7 things per day on that other site (not counting meme dumps) because despite the many responses to this ^ (above) random post that I noticed on someone’s page, to my horror, not one response I read questioned how “love” was being defined! I’ve often heard people with all good intentions say things like “We all just want to be loved” and it hits my buttons and raises red flags each time, because what we mean by “love” varies by temperament, gender, culture, age, and time. It’s not a simple given that we all want it or if we do, what that would look like and be for us as individuals or a corporate group.

Love isn’t merely “attraction” or “shared interests” or “class” as many seem to have been taught. It also doesn’t exist without “respect,” a word many submitted, but didn’t think to clarify.
To me, this was yet another example of how people not only misunderstand each other and skim the surface of “meaning,” but also an example of cultural socialization that doesn’t serve our relationships, or help us to understand the systems in which we reside.
Interestingly, it’s another one of those things I always tried to explore in my classes, and it was generally the first time students had ever considered not only the legal, familial, religious, and professional significances of marriage, but the aesthetic and sexual connections to how we understand “love” and “marriage.”

Wittgenstein said “Love is not an emotion. Love is put to the test.” It certainly evokes great amounts of emotion, but it is in fact, a set of relationships and interactions, both personal and communal. And its presentation and reception reflects and confronts the standards, both implicit and explicit, of the particular culture/society. And so do the terms we employ, which means that if we’re not in agreement about how we’re using these terms and we’re relying solely on our own feelings, or political/familial/religious traditions, or other individual contexts, we’re not only in different conversations, we’re weakening relational bonds.

Everyone “misspeaks” at times (notice the original post’s mistake) but if we have an extended relationship with that person we may know their intent or linguistic patterns well enough to fill in the missing or correct word. In those cases we may show grace and it may even become the source of an on-going joke between friends with shared histories.

But what about when you don’t know the speaker? What if they’re in a position of authority/power? Context matters, words matter. I’m not the Grand Poobah of Love, nor do I claim more than personal expertise on that particular subject, (although the song running through my head right now is the first line in the 1962 Exciters song, Tell Him.) I do however, have a good understanding of what words do and how they work in language, as well as the effect of words and word choices on our audience, intended and not.

And I wonder about the intentions of such queries when they go beyond personal amusement. Like it or not, we’re all engaged in a social experiment and research on the social media in our lives. The fact that in theory we can “reach” millions of people around the world in an instant places an increased responsibility to know more and accept “difference” without imposing our parochial views and opinions. It requires us to understand that if we’re going to communicate effectively and negotiate the myriad relationships we might develop through education, business, travel, hobbies, etc. we must first sit down and hash out our a priori beliefs and understandings within the contextual framework we share. It means that the words we use can be fraught with meaning and we must know that as we enter unfamiliar spaces or renegotiate older relationships.

The requirement has always been there, but we have generally ignored it in judging people within our societies, particularly those perceived to be of lower status.

And that’s maybe what “love” might have to do with it, but maybe it’s just the easiest way to establish any relationship and to build communities that serve the greatest number within that society.

Grief: no negotiations, no pardons.

Poem By Gwen Flowers

Phew! It’s an unwanted colonizer that takes over and sets up house inside you, follows you everywhere, seeming to sometimes relent but always returning, unbidden and often surprisingly.
A deep and ugly scar that never stops throbbing, and won’t be ignored. You live with it: the phantom limb of loss. You talk your way through the daily tasks because the body goes on, seemingly soulless, rudderless, all purpose and desires gone. The things that anchored your life vanish, leaving you not merely adrift, but blood-soaked chum in shark infested waters.
Is this still “life”? More a Purgatory that you cannot pray or repent your way out of. And some days, it is just pure Hell.

You try to keep it to yourself, but also know that there’s something entirely wrong with a society that doesn’t mourn deeply and skirts around feelings. Where many relationships are investments: all form, no substance.

I want a Greek or African type period of wailing: rending of clothes, ashes on my forehead, women keening all around me. Full throttled acknowledgement of the loss of the Beloved, who deserves and rates the stopping of clocks and covering of mirrors, all the actions of loss that spill outside the lines of daily life and boil over in messy clumps of grief not readily wiped away. I feel a bond with all those who have loved deeply and lost, no matter what the relationship. We are veterans of a horrid war, trapped in post trauma, clutching at bits of life and not knowing why.

Grief is a true connection to our humanity and the only surety that comes with birth. It is the terrible and murderous price of love, and perhaps the reason society denies all depths and pain, refuses to allow shared grief in full, and waxes prettily about ways of “moving on/going forward, and worst of all, “getting over it.” Love becomes another disposable item, replaced with people or things, but never plumbed, never allowed to annihilate our “was” to see what’s left or might emerge on its own like a tiny green shoot after a forest fire. Never risking the real, searing pain and suffering that comes from the loss of a life completely entwined with someone who is quite simply you. We are instead zombified: spent debris hoping to be up-cycled, perhaps practical, but never again achieving the singular and fluorescent beauty that being loved produced.

1,085 days I’ve cried out in pain, sometimes softly, often loudly, as though my cries might move some nonexistent being to divinely intervene, send my love back to me, make these years a terrible dream that alters our lives, forever chastened and appreciative. I want a story with an ending I can live with: the hero’s journey completed and survived, now coming home to a hard won and deeply felt peace.

I wake up confused every single day, not understanding how I continue to exist without him, how we can possibly exist on different planes, how he can have ceased to be. It makes no sense, and every single day, my mind and body reject any reality in which we are not together, squabbling, laughing, dancing, making food and music, and loving each other with a complete trust that surprised and confused me for thirty seven years. That I could love someone as deeply as my own blood and bone was amazing to me as has been three years of anguished grief. I never thought I could feel so much except for my child, nor did I understand that love grows deeper, wider, stronger, beyond every boundary of the mind or senses, beyond the pretty words in any song or poetry, a powerful thing that alters your being in every possible way and lifts what you didn’t even know wasn’t there. You felt complete, but love grows an entirely new you that cannot have existed without such love. A seed? A song unwritten? A depth of self undiveable without the oxygen of Love.

And feeling such a well and wealth of love, how is it possible that we can be separated? How horrible and great the force required to separate two such magnets, united in passion and love. How evil and cruel that force must be. It cannot possibly be neutral and wreak such damage: we can only hope that reincarnation exists and that the crime committed in some other life can be absolved and balance restored. But three years later, despair wrangles with acceptance, science, and intellect, none convincing to my heart.

Bereft, bothered, and bewildered, I grieve.

Anole Tales Continue


Opening the curtains in the sunroom on Thursday, I noticed an anole near the door. It didn’t move as I got closer and I feared that it was dead. As I sadly prepared to remove it, he moved, but lethargically. Realizing that it was probably sluggish due to the overnight temperature drop, I reassured him and turned on the little heater I keep there, then left the room.
Returning an hour later, no anole! Scanning quickly and hoping that he was safely ensconced in a planter or huddling with his family, as I walked into the room, I felt a presence. Looking down, I saw that my missing friend was in fact luxuriating in my chair, like some tiny king on his bed-throne!
Laughing, and appreciating his good taste in seating, I asked only that he clean up after himself, then I left dear Freeman to enjoy his rest.

Adventures in “Petty”

As an adult, I have never made New Year’s resolutions. I have a couple of traditional rituals, but they don’t involve promises of any type. I also don’t consider January 1 to be the start of the year and chalk off continuing or new annoyances to be the final dregs of the year until the Lunar New Year begins.

However, in an attempt to at least shift a bit and move past the grueling and unbearable level of anguish I’ve been in since my husband died, I made a personal resolve to try to be more present in my life and accept the reality in which I continue to reside. To live and not merely exist.

I also decided that I will indulge in “I told you so” and acts of petty revenge whenever possible. To whit, my first act of “Petty” in 2024:

I was minding my business, checking the information for a past order on Amazon, when their bot asked me to review past purchases. I ignored it and it asked again, this time stating that if I wrote five reviews it would tell me a joke. My reviews come cheap and I’m a sucker for a joke. Today marked 1,000 days since my beloved died, so for the sake of a laugh, I started writing.

With each one, there was an encouraging Bot note counting down the number to completion. But when I finished the five, BOT had booked! No joke, no thank you, nada.

This didn’t sit well with me, so I decided to contact Customer Service. The service bot couldn’t cope with the fact that I had a problem not directly related to a specific purchase, so I was soon directed to a human by phone.

To the poor woman who called, I patiently explained the problem, acknowledging that it was unlikely that she could help. Following my explanation, she was, as expected, confused. She then contacted someone else who was also stumped. I asked if there was an IT person who could send the joke or change the program so that people weren’t being promised items they couldn’t deliver on. Of course, they were helpless and remained befuddled, despite my obvious amusement. (As a friend noted, they might simply have told a joke over the phone, but I don’t think their English or job description covered this situation.)

After hanging up, I decided to email Amazon, explaining the problem and demanding compensatory jokes as well as the originally promised joke. I said that I knew they carried them, because Amazon Echo’s got jokes! Terrible jokes, but jokes, so I knew that they warehoused them somewhere, perhaps in Bezos mind.

I now await my jokes. I won’t give up and will contact them daily if necessary. A promise is a promise. The BOT specifically said “I’ll tell you a joke” not play a joke on me. As a worker and union member, when I complete a job, I expect payment. I’m retired, have time, and a weird sense of humor. This can become part of my daily sadhanna/spiritual practice. 🧘🏾‍♀️Like the Blues Brothers, I’m on a mission from god. (Not that God, the one “karens”are always entreating. Yeesh, people!)

The Force of Pettiness is strong within me this year, and I will not be denied. Beats crying every day, and I have a lot of anger that my husband died. Might as well use some of it creatively. Excelsior!

Another Sad Christmas Song

Holidays are brutal because Rayo loved them and was like a kid around Christmas. He was the antidote to my Grinchiness via his patience, perseverance, and passion. The cleaning, cooking, baking, and anxiety were relieved by his silly faces, kisses on my neck, and that outstretched hand, inviting me to dance.
I am easily annoyed, quick tempered, and seldom forgiving, but I could never stay angry at Raymond. I knew he had no malice in him and never intentionally hurt anyone he loved, despite his failings. And once we started dancing, it was inevitable that I would laugh, and he would be forgiven, even when I was annoyed that I couldn’t stay angry.
He was, is, and always will be, embedded in my heart. And as is my determined and serious way, I will not forgive him for leaving me here without his comfort and cheer, in a state where my heart remains imprisoned in grief. He will not be forgiven.

At least not until I see his loving hand reach out for me and we dance together again.

Re: Toxic Positivity/Shallow Words

Not every bad experience enlightens or strengthens us. Some are just bad, plain and simple, and we reduce our humanity and disrespect ourselves when we whitewash our own lived experiences and realities. You don’t lessen anyone’s fear or pain by glossing over it, not even your own.

It’s hard to watch people you care about (or anyone!) suffer and it’s hard to live with your own discomfort. Maybe it’s natural to want to “cheer them up” or try to “fix” things. And maybe sometimes that’s appropriate and works, depending on the nature of their suffering.

But all too often it’s a gloss and a way of avoiding your own feelings of guilt, helplessness, and yes, fear of “contamination”-that their bad luck will rub off on us somehow. (Hey, I didn’t make our species, I just participate and observe.🤷🏽‍♀️)

A friend of mine said it this way: “In the face of enormity, people feel like they have to say something meaningful, but they’ve never had any deep feelings or thoughts, so it sounds trite.”

Some pains and losses are never fully healed. Yes, life goes on and there may even be joy and laughter, and a scar might cover and protect the wound, but it’s there. You don’t “get over” the loss of a child or beloved spouse. You certainly don’t simply “heal” from acts of genocide, enslavement, and other mass cruelties. It’ll be 2024, and we continue to search for relatives who were taken and disappeared. It may have an end, but not through denial or superficialities of land acknowledgment without lands or wealth returned. I still want my 40 acres and the mule.

Sometimes silence is best, especially when accompanied by an open heart willing to sit in empathetic compassion. Sometimes only right action will do.

Maybe not immediately, but before long, you can ask the hurt/bereaved what’s best for them and they’ll generally tell you once they know. Sometimes what was lost cannot be replaced, but it’s for the bereaved to say, not you to project or decide. This can be a very difficult concept for many to grasp, especially if you’ve never experienced it or have even indirectly benefited.

But humanity is a shared condition and empathy is real, if you’re willing to understand others as equal to you and deserving of exactly the level of respect and care you believe is right for you and those for whom you care.
Allow for human complexities and always err on the side of kindness. Life can be very simple and very good in that way.

Muchas Gracias

Thanksgiving can be complicated for any number of reasons: being of indigenous descent and knowing what really happened, having a difficult or even an abusive family, or no family or friends, etc.
I’m descended from people who celebrated multiple days of thanksgiving, not only the fall harvest, and I grew up with a Southern mother from a “mixed” family, who spent a great amount of time and energy preparing wonderful food to be shared with loved ones, even while ensuring that we didn’t buy into the story spread by the colonizers.
Any day you are fortunate enough to be surrounded by loved ones and have food to share is a day to give thanks. If you also have health and music, you are a person of great wealth. All of this plus a roof over your heads and no bombs going off? You hit the Lottery of Life!

Appreciate that and take a moment to acknowledge that a too large percentage of people to whom we are all connected are not as lucky. And make no mistake about this: it is luck! Misfortune knows no boundaries. We know this innately, but instead of creating a fear of the unfortunate, let us reach out in compassion. If you pray, include them, if you have money or time, make a donation.
Because at the heart of all thanksgivings is connection, compassion, and sharing. It’s about community.
Thanks to my beloved son and his family who’ve taken care of me through two very recent surgeries and the past 2+ horrific years of grief. And thanks to my extended family, both kin and kith, for the laughs, kindnesses, and understanding.

And I’ll now say something most have never heard me say:
May you all be blessed: bendiciones, mis amigx.
Oh, and please eat something yummy in my name 💕😉💕

I’m Not In New York Anymore

Last summer, I moved to South Carolina to be closer to my family following my husband’s sudden death, and found a little house within walking distance of my son and his family. Cute house, albeit in a dreaded HOA, and part of the overdevelopment of this area of the country. But lovely neighbors, fewer problems associated with previous older houses, an adorable little downtown, and best of all, my grandchild and her parents. All good.

It’s obviously been hard without my beloved, in so many ways, both expected and unexpected. So when I started hearing what sounded like gentle snoring at night, I first assumed that it was my grief stricken imagination. Friends immediately suggested that it was my beloved’s spirit trying to comfort me with the familiar sound of his snoring, letting me know that he was there.

While I do believe our Ancestors exist within and outside of us, I was also taught by my mother to eliminate the corporeal/physical and mundane before assuming the supernatural, so I went through some basic mental checks: animal bedding down in the sunroom? Animal in the vents, etc. Armed with my trusty machete, I quietly creeped out to the sunroom half expecting to surprise and be surprised by a bear, but no, the room was empty.

Listening closely on different nights, it sometimes sounded as though coming from the vents, almost like a bellows, so perhaps the air conditioning? There’d been no problems during servicing, but it seemed the most likely source. I held my own breath to listen carefully, as the sounds could be heard at different levels on different nights, fairly convinced that there’d be a mechanical answer for its regularity.

The sounds continued, and eventually became just background noise. Whenever anything was moved around the house, or we couldn’t explain it, my husband and I would joke about having a wee Poltergeist, so I found myself smiling and thinking, “I guess the Poltergeist followed me from NY” and shrugged the whole thing off.

I hadn’t realized until it started up again this spring that it had been quiet during the short winter. Determined to trace the sound, in the wee hours one night several weeks ago, I got up and again followed the sound from vent to sunroom, and surrounded by this “breathing” sound, and despite my fear of being mauled by mosquitoes, I walked out into the warm, humid night.

And it was under the always beautiful night skies and against the wooded area’s dark silhouette that loomed behind my house that I realized that what I was hearing vibrating throughout my bedroom was the glorious sound of a million various tree frogs! Not bears, or pumas, nor Ancestors, but “Coquis without a song” asserting their healthy presence in the trees and marshlands of their Ancestors. Listening to the force of their combined woodland voices, I stood in awe of their symphonic volume for a few moments, again amazed by the natural world around me.

I thanked them for their presence, said a prayer for their protection, and returned to the cool of my room, content to have one small mystery of life solved.

Photo by Anjana Mebane-Cruz, 2022