Category Archives: grief

The Sweet Nature.

arts education, classical musicians, contemplation, family history, grief, healing, health and wellness, human behavior, love, memorials, musicians, performance, professional musicians, psychology, relationships, social behavior, sociology, thoughts, tributes, truth, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Some people are born to it.

There are all kinds of traits which, science is now disclosing, are expressed rather automatically because, well, they appear as genes along the strands of our DNA helix. We are so proud, we humans; we’d like to think that we never intended to be the person we actually are.

But, in large part, we get dealt a hand and then the game plays itself out.

Or, does it?

My mother was one of four daughters. Her father’s name was Henry Thomas Sweet. He said his parents were from Cornwall, on the English coastline. Ancestry.com lists:

“This Anglo-Saxon last name has three origin theories. First, it is a baptismal surname meaning “the son of Sweet”…. Second, it derived from the nickname “the sweet”, a good, pleasant, or agreeable person, from the Middle English word swete. The old English personal (first) names Sweta and Swete also derive from this word and may by the source of the surname. Third, as asserted by William Arthur in his book An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names, the name refers to a Swede, a person from Sweden or who was native to that country. Fourth, it can be an Anglicized version of the German/Jewish surname Suess ….. The given names Suet and Suot were documented in the Domesday Book of 1086 AD, which was a survey of England and Wales ordered by William the Conqueror. Fifth, the book English Surnames by Mark Antony Lower claims it’s a nickname for a person “who has either a vinegar face or a foxy complexion”.

Hah.

One wonders if “agreeable and pleasant” married “a vinegar face or foxy complexion” to form the genetic expression handed down to me by my mother’s father.

“Sweetness”.

Sort of a vague reference to guileless, I guess. Gentleness comes to mind, in tandem, along with pleasant countenance. Ain’t no bitch face in the sweet one.

I can say that “The Sweet Girls”, as they became known – Dora Mae; Lydia Elisabeth “Betty”; Frances Magdalene, and Martha Louise, if ever they bore common “sweetness” would have largely been due to the nature of their mother, Mae. Rather, each had an immediate feistiness, manifest more readily by the first, third, and fourth born. Mum’s was demonstrated on her own turf, where she ruled the roost with a formidable tone, but hidden in public behind a radiant grin and a gullibility born of her Aquarian dreams.

So, what’s in a name? Any number of ultimate aspects, all of them inherited.

Mary M. “Peggy” Zeppenfeld, however, was truly sweet. She was a flute player, in the Erie Chamber Orchestra and Erie Philharmonic, and a music teacher. Her students adored her. Her family adored her. Her colleagues did, too. She was “kind”. She was “devoted” to her students, and to music education, an “extraordinary teacher”, generous of spirit. Her maiden name was Munro, Irish to Scotland to fight for William Wallace. Robert Munro served Robert The Bruce; Alice Munro would descend to write sterling short stories, her characters never socially important but always both starkly recognizable and memorable.

Peggy Munro was entirely without ego. Preferring to observe from a distance, watch she did; I can remember more than once looking up, from my seat at the front of the orchestra we shared, to see her gaze directed at me. Peggy was keenly aware; she likely picked up signals from body language that others missed entirely. Perhaps she was just alarmed by any number of reactions which I so irrepressibly demonstrated, but I often wondered if Peggy was the only musician in the room who perceived my needs. Whenever I felt frustrated, or dismissed, or ignored, I could feel Peggy’s eyes on me.

Peggy’s career in the world of professional performance wasn’t so brief – 25 uncelebrated years. Like me, she came to it all by default, receiving an appointment at a time when someone with her qualifications seemed right. And, just as quietly, when the players at the card game increased in power and might, she lay down her hand and bowed out.

This past week, Peggy died. She was only 55 years old, nobody with the power or might to prudently diagnose the disease which took her life having stepped up to save it. And so, another sweet one escaped the earth, to leave behind all those whose hearts hurt because they were so touched.

And, these were innumerable. So many young, eager students. So many colleagues. So many family and friends. And, even one such as I, from the distance between her eyes and mine.

I will miss you, too, Peggy.

Perhaps some are born to live briefly. All are born to die.

It’s the nature of life.

Thank God for those who are born to bring the sweet.

.

Mary M. “Peggy” Zeppenfeld

January 1963 – January 2019

.

.

.

.

© 1/19/19   Ruth Ann Scanzillo.  All rights those of the author, who can be sour, and whose name appears above this line. Thank you for respecting this tribute.

Just Girls.

Christian fundamentalism, commentary, contemplation, creative writing, Deep Thoughts, family history, Fundamentalism, gratitude, grief, healing, health and wellness, human behavior, love, mystical experience, nostalgia, relationships, sectarian Fundamentalism, social behavior, sociology, thoughts, truth, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

A long time ago, when there were “used books” and “junior high”, and something called “playing outside”, we were the American girls. Much has been said, steeped in nostalgia, about how much simpler life was then. Implied in that descriptor is the unspoken conviction that life was also somehow better. These days, we “downsize”. Yes; we crave a return to that something.
.
Come with me, back to 1969.
.
Now, we in our family were Christian fundamentalists; as such, we were taught to “come out from among them, and be separate”. I was never fully in on that concept but, back then, I obeyed my mother. God’s retribution scared me into submission, He nothing if not male, and females were taught from breath number one to take second.
.
Many things mattered to my mother. One of them was territorial protection. She didn’t want me to have school friends for sleepovers, and I was not allowed to stay all night anywhere but at my cousin’s house in Lawrence Park. So when Darlene, from school, invited me to spend the night at her parents’ barn out in the county,  literally in the hayloft, I held out little hope.
.
Who knows what went on inside my mother’s head? One thing was certain; plenty did. Mum was a romantic. She’d read every Christian romance novel in the Elsie Dinsmore series. She’d had a French soldier pen pal for years before she met Dad and, even when she became old, hoped I’d find him on my first and only trip to Paris. Perhaps my mother thought sleeping overnight in a haystack in a barn was just as pure and worthy as her best fantasy because, to my astonished surprise, she let me go.
.
And, it was all that. Darlene was great company. She was among all the other girls the embodiment of what used to be called “self possessed”, and she knew – in spite of the sprawling city planning maps we built in our “Urban Geography” class – that everybody should experience what she had to offer out there on the county farm.
.
Because, even though we had a grand time romping around the property into the late afternoon, and crawling all the way up into the loft by nightfall, what we’d witness the next morning Darlene knew would trump all the rest of it.
.
I was always a night owl. That night, I can’t tell you if I slept at all. But, I do remember that Darlene was up at the crack of dawn and, somehow, managed to wake me, too. And, she was eager. I had to follow her, out the barn and down into the field.
.
The field…of wild strawberries.
The morning dew was peaking. But, the berries weren’t even host.
.
It were the spider webs. Dew drop decked spider webs, dozens of them, draping and lacing rows and rows of the nearly hidden wild berries beneath the early morning sun.
.
We squatted all the way to the ground, and peered down each long row as if gazing through an infinite prism. The glistening geometry rivaled a crystal landscape.
.
Everybody knows that there are some things impossible to forget. It all has to do with the senses. If one is sufficiently aroused, every detail imbeds in memory. And, there was something about that whole idyllic scene: the musty crackle of the hay bales, the scent of unseen critters, the feel of farm living, setting the backdrop for the secret which had unfolded that morning.
.
For two days, I was with my friend. We were just two girls. Her father was quite away, inside the farmhouse, just enough presence to play landlord. He left us to our own. We didn’t have to obey him, or God, or anyone. The farm, and the barn, and the field, and the strawberries, even the spiderwebs bathed in dew. There was no fear, and no reason for any.
.
At the end of this past year, Darlene came back. I hadn’t seen her since junior high, she being one of only a couple who hadn’t remained with the rest of us in our class. She’d been married, had five kids, divorced, married again, one more baby. Six children, and her husband, the love of her life. That precious man had just passed away, far too young, succumbing to the side effects of a disease. Months before, her mother had also died. Yet, just as I had remembered her, the girl was still in possession of herself. She, in spite of everything happening around her, remained visibly undefeated. She still knew, even in the wake of death, how to find what was so special in the simple life and, even after over forty years, was ready to share that essence again with a girl she still called her friend.
.
The disparity between the haves and have nots widens every day. Technology has produced more collateral for consumers to covet than ever before, so much so that even the Christmas stocking is obsolete. But, that which fills our senses and our hearts has not changed.
.
Find the freshest air, the clearest water; go to the untouched places, and leave them undisturbed. Take only the sensations with you, when you go.
.
And, then, share them with your oldest friend.
.
.
.
.
.
© 1/12/19   Ruth Ann Scanzillo.     All rights those of the author, an old girl, whose name appears above this line.   Thank you, Darlene Pitonyak Brown.
littlebarefeetblog.com

The Game of Need and Seek.

gratitude, grief, healing, health and wellness, human behavior, love, psychology, relationships, social behavior, social commentary, sociology, thoughts, truth, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An Open Letter to the Unsuspecting:

 

The holidays have a seductive quality. Be wary of prowlers.
.
Oh, and know that I am not talking about those who skulk around property with burglaries in mind. I speak of those who, without realizing it, are looking for you.
.
These are the ones who proclaim their independence. And, they’ll do it to anyone who appears to be listening.
.
What is important is to first know that there are always layers. There are layers of skin – the epidermis, then dermis, then the fat, and so on. But, there are also layers in behavior. Human behavior.
.
And because, though we may look upon them fondly, we are not dogs we are people, and we have needs far beyond those of food and sleep. These needs are many, occurring first on the surface and then running deep, reaching all the way to our core of being.
.
If we are self aware, we know what we need. Add to that some self education, and we can distinguish between the sources which can meet such needs. Having established these, we can then seek the fulfillment which results in needs met.
.
But, if we are neither self aware nor sufficiently educated, we may become prey. This is not a good thing.
.
Should somebody treat you with unusual attention, begin by stepping back. Adopt a position of observation. Feel your own breath. Know your space.
.
Because unless you maintain your self as distinct from the other, you may become an extension in the realm of someone who, at the very moment you are feeling special, displaces you. This is because you are likely being sought to meet a need in that person, a need for whose meeting you are vastly unqualified.
.
Remember that the way you feel in the presence of another exists only within your own perception. Do not attribute to the other any credit for such feelings. We are, at any point along the journey of life, so often assigning to others credit where none is due. Doing this causes problems between us and everyone we know.
.
If you do experience nice, soothing, exciting, or otherwise desirable feelings, enjoy them in that moment. Be grateful. But, be not deceived. You are likely merely responding to a synergy which is inherently momentary.
.
We converge at any moment across a spectrum. Many believe such encounters to be profoundly divine in nature; these see God as directing all. Yet others are more detached, viewing the world of life as largely random. Whichever your position, know that you are still a distinct living soul, and do not have to accept that your meeting up with any other is anything attributable to the intent of that person.
.
If your encounter is pleasurable, express gratitude. But, when you separate, take the experience and store it as just that, without any further expectation. The other person is also reacting to having been with you, and may register a completely different response.
.
Pain exists to warn us, to heighten our attention and increase our focus. But, some pain can be avoided. Take your attention away from false beliefs that others can meet any of your needs. This places a burden upon all our relationships which is doomed to disappointment, what some call heartbreak, and can induce acute and entirely unwarranted pain.
.
Instead, return to your own soul center. Name your need, and feed yourself. Regard all others as decorative, perhaps transient, across the scheme of your own life. Give as emergent crisis warrants, help with an attitude of love, but avoid sacrifice. Be, in all ways, who you are, without fear. In this way, nobody will ever take from you that which is truly your own. No one will steal your heart.
.
.
.
.
.
.
© 12/18/18 Ruth Ann Scanzillo.  Thank you for respecting original material, and for taking your own advice.
littlebarefeetblog.com