Gazing in the Mirror

March 5 - Going Home & Finding What Is

For a few moments, I had
abided with them in a reality
too big to change, but
too pressing to ignore . . .
~ Trebbe Johnson,
Gazing Even Here

Life not only created you as
an independent being, It also
implanted a unique something
within you. It will never be
duplicated. The spirit that
accompanies you through your life
is just a little different from the
spirit of any other person — not
different in that it is isolated,
because all are rooted in one being,
but different in that it is individual.
~ Ernest Holmes

The dark side of human nature includes what has been lost to the insatiable appetites of ignorance. Where do those places go that were a part of us and our families, that yet remain now only in our private thoughts ? During our journey I found my self one night in the vicinity of my childhood home. I lived there from age 5 to almost 18. Our hotel lay between my father's previous employment at the Standard Oil Refinery in El Paso TX and my childhood home not far away. So the next morning we drove by my old home. It is interesting to note that I had no desire to drive by that place for almost 40 years. That is a long time in the life of a place. My parents had moved across town from there in the 1970s after my first marriage.

To the south of the refinery is Ascarate Lake where I had learned to water ski. Looking at our GPS map on the computer I was shocked to see that the Mexican border was only walking distance from there. I was surprised at how small the one-story square of a 3 bedroom house actually was. It seemed much larger when I was a child. My father had added the family room or den as we called that to the back of the house. The little cinder block workshop that my father had used for various projects was still there as well. So my childhood home was still recognizable when I found it there about midway in the block on the north side of the street.

Everything else about how the whole area felt to me was completely different now. There were protective wrought iron window and door guards on my childhood home that weren't there before. Although these are a decorative Spanish style and common enough in the Southwest, they indicated to me now something about the declining nature of the neighborhood where I spent my childhood. Their presence felt fortress-like to me. My first husband used to make window guards like that to support us. We had our wedding reception in that house. My heart remains fond of what I remember, not so much what is now.

There had been grass and trees along the border of the street and bushes next to the house when I lived there. Now all of that was gone. The ground was now bare dirt and a lone pine tree struggled to maintain its life there in the middle of the yard. During our journey the day before, we discovered that the Rio Grande River is now totally dry. During my entire lifetime there I had never seen the river without water. The farmers of the upper valley are now pumping water from the aquifers and those can NO longer be replenished by new river water seeping in as it flows past. And what is unconscionable to me is that they continue to plant more pecan trees and more vineyards as though nothing is out of balance there. It seems inconceivable that they could be so blind to the environmental changes that were so clearly evident to me.

I can accept the disappearance of a way of life that seems so close to the surface as to exist even now in my own mind. I could say that I accept that continuation and progress can't be stopped and that I am able to easily get over that loss of what was. Yet the place is still residing within me even though I can no longer physically re-visit that. The little region between home and school (which was actually quite a distance that I had to walk twice every day) is still the same as I drive the old route to show that to my children. It is laden with emotional memories so that it hovers like a ghost that is still in my personal world right where it always was even though it is abundantly clear that another time and new people have taken their places in my "old" world.

What is meaning in that woundedness I feel in that place ? There is wholeness in my gazing at it now. I truly sense that I am a part of a process much larger than I am individually. It could have been too painful to bear seeing the loss of that lushness of greenery that was my childhood. Now as an adult with a mature perspective I can see that greenness was a created illusion that never was native to that desert place. There is a meditative kind of "gazing" that can bypass ordinary ways of looking at things. The old ways are steeped in a denial of reality which includes an exploitation of the resources that should have been conserved. My old view of life might have categorized what remains as a bad thing. What I saw instead is what is now and that it is truer to the reality. I can still remember what it was then even though the place today is no longer the place I remember growing up in. There is a previously unacknowledged reality about how humble my roots actually are. I felt an openhearted compassion for the wholeness of that place which mixes the past and present with knowing it will change yet again. Today there are a couple of totally new houses replacing the old ones that I remember existing at the end of the street. It is an indication that suburban renewal is constantly occurring.

~ perspective

There is an interesting kind
of wholeness and letting go of
attachment in viewing the changes
that occur to a well known and
beloved place over a long period
of time.
There is a risk in clinging to the
conventional ways and ignoring
obvious changes that suggest
the need for a modified perspective
and a change in behaviors.
It can be humbling to see after
a long passage of time the place
that one grew up within.
Letting go is enabled by recognizing
that one no longer possesses a place
so familiar to them.
My memories remain but are
transformed in acknowledging
the ways that change is constant.

#acceptance #attachment #change #childhood #desert #environment #fondness #loss #memories #present