My Mother's Letters

I was suffering a bout of insomnia and decided to go through some of my old stuff.  I wrote this back in 2000.  It's strange sometimes to look back and see the progression of some the lessons I learned and how they affected my future.  It's a little long, but there was a lot to put into it.

I hope it means something for you.

My sister Diane recently showed me a collection of letters that were among some of my mother’s possessions.  They are providing me a great deal of insight into many different aspects of my parent’s lives that I had not previously been aware of. 

My parents divorced when I was 10, and the end of that marriage was not pleasant.  Since they both died when I was still too young to really understand the reasons for the failure of the relationship there are many questions that will remain unanswered for me.  I can only go by what I experienced directly.  I remember many nights when I could hear them arguing in the living room.  I would lie in bed listening to the sharp words through my bedroom wall desperately hoping it would stop.  I remember one particular night after I heard one angry retort after another I called out to my mother.  The argument stopped suddenly and she came into my room.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Please stop fighting.  I don’t like it.” I said

“It’s ok, Danny.” She said as she stroked my cheek, “We’ll be all right.”

“Ok.  Can I talk to Dad?”

“Sure.”

She gave me a kiss and a hug and went back into the living room, and I could hear her say to my father, “Your son wants to talk to you.”

My father walked in a few seconds later.  His step was slower and gentler than I was used to hearing. 

“What’s a matter son?” he asked.  Maybe it’s just me looking back with a tainted view, but I would swear he was close to crying when he asked me that question.  My father was never one to cry. 

“I just want you and Mom to stop fighting.”

“Ok.  We will.  But don’t worry, we’ll be fine.  Ok?”

“Ok.”  I sat up and gave him a hug, and he held me tight.

“You go to sleep now.  I love you.” He said.

“I love you too.”

Looking back I realize that this occurred near the end of the relationship.  I have no idea what, if any impact this incident had on them, but for me it came to define in later years what I thought their relationship was like.  It was the last thing I saw, and the first thing I remembered when I thought about their marriage.  I allowed this to color my thinking without considering the fact that they had been married for almost thirty years at that time.  I assumed their relationship had always been like this.

As I began to read my mother’s letters, I found they had a union that was worlds removed from my perceptions of it.  Some of these letters are written in the very early years of their marriage, around 1943-‘44.  In some my father is in Europe fighting in World War II.  She is writing to her parents in Petaluma, California, from where she had moved to Cleveland, Ohio where my father’s family lived.  She is pregnant with my oldest brother Bill.  She writes about daily life, the clothes she is sewing for the baby, the price of food and the things she is doing with his family.  She also talks about my father.  She talks of how much she misses him, and how much she wants to see him again.  She tells her parents what a “great guy” he is.  There is no question that she loves him.

There are also letters from my father to her parents.  He talks about what a great wife she is, and how deeply he loves her.  He talks about how much he misses her and their son while he is overseas.

I will never know all the reasons for their divorce.  I will never know exactly what led to their disillusionment.  Some answers are locked within lives that I have no access to.  There are times when answers to some things are simply beyond my reach, and no matter how great I think my need to know is, that chasm between question and answer is not going to be bridged.  As much as I cry out what I think are the right questions the only response I get is the empty echo of my own voice.  With that in mind I look at what I do have at my disposal, and I find that though the end of my parents’ marriage was not happy, the end did not define the whole.  I am given the opportunity to see the beginning that I was not there to see.  I can infuse my memories with some of the happiness that I have discovered did indeed exist in their life together.  I can see that there was a time when their relationship was a good example of what a marriage should be.  I can only guess at the changes that occurred between them that led them to their point of no return.  They were probably very gradual in their nature.  A slight change of habit here, a different need appearing there.  A desire expressed by one refused by the other.  I don’t know.  There is always more to any situation than I can see.

The first document in this binder is a poem that was apparently written by a good friend of my mother about her.  I do not know exactly when as it is not dated.

“Hollywood Episode”

Once there was a little girl,

A sweet and wholesome maid,

Who heard of glamorous Hollywood,

And its lure could not evade.

She thought she’d like to be a star,

And live in regal splendor

With closets full of lovely gowns

And rings on every finger.

She envisioned every week a check

Too big for simple math

And clearly saw outside her door

The crowds awaiting autographs.

And so we find this lovely miss

Leaving friends and home

Telling those she loves farewell

To seek fame on her own.

But this little country lass

Fools no one with such chatter,

It isn’t a career she wants

It doesn’t really matter.

What her heart is really set on

What she dreams about at night

Is the day she’ll finally meet The One

And know that He’s just right.

In a cozy little cottage

She’d love to settle down

And raise a happy family

In a shady country town.

Her friend compares what she initially thought she wanted out of life, and what she later realized that she truly wanted.  She did indeed go to Hollywood for a little while, and did some acting and dated some actors that went on to make names for themselves.  Yet she also left it behind when it did not satisfy her true desire.

We all seem to start out that way.  We walk into life thinking we know what we want, only to find that what we truly want is either something completely different from what we are pursuing, or something we had all along.  In his book, “Lake Woebegone Days” Garrison Keillor says it this way “Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.”

My mother was a beautiful woman within and without.  In her letters I find myself marveling that the woman I knew who had all the right words of comfort for me growing up, and all the answers to my questions, knew so little at times.  She asks her parents for advice on many things that I took for granted.  She had to learn things too.  There was a time when she needed to depend on her own mother for different things.  It was a time when the things parents passed on to their children were still considered worthwhile. 

There are letters to my mother from my father, telling her of events that are happening and hoping he will be home soon.  My father was not what I would term a sentimental man, but the pain of their separation is infused in the words of his letters.  He was not as hard a man as I remember.  He was lost at times, as I am too.  He was a much better man than I have given him credit for.  He was the man who was my father, and he was worthy of the love I gave him even with his flaws.

It was a time when they longed for each other’s touch, and valued each other’s company.  It was a time that I had forgotten, or perhaps had allowed to be overshadowed by the pain of their divorce.

There are other letters in this collection as well.  They are from friends overseas in the army.  They describe different aspects of the war.  Some of them have holes in the paper where the wartime censors have cut out words that describe their locations.  I had always heard that this kind of thing had occurred but I had never seen it with my own eyes.  Somehow as I read these 60-year-old letters, they didn’t seem so old.  The physical connection of the actual paper that I was touching brought everything closer over that expanse of time.  So much of our history is tucked away in the boxes in our attic.  We have so much to learn from our past, and yet we try so hard to forget it sometimes.  Sometimes we don’t want to give up our preconceived ideas for the incontrovertible truth, and sometimes we would just rather not change.  It’s simply too much trouble.  After all, it takes a lot of work to change your life when you find out that some of the basic experiences that have shaped you as a person were based on misconceptions.  The marriage that I saw end in anger and bitterness began with love and devotion, even longing.  It was richer than I had imagined, and all the years of my life that were influenced by acrimony are now found to be incomplete.  This incompleteness within me was what caused me to search so hard for a greater love, and a greater peace to put my faith in.  It was this that allowed me to discover the healing that takes place when I experience both the receiving, and the giving, of forgiveness.

So then this begs the question: How will this change me?  What difference will this make, and who will see it?

The answer is: I haven’t got a clue.

The fact of the matter is that I am a man who, when faced with a personal epiphany, often expects to see great change in my life when I am on the mountaintop.  Yet shortly after I return to the day to day tasks within the valley the changes I see aren’t all that dramatic.  I have a hard time following through on some things.

But I will say this: I will appreciate that which God has blessed me with more readily. 

My wife says we should live every day as if it were our last, and having so far survived a brain tumor she is more than qualified to make that statement.  I agree with her, but I have no idea what I would do if I knew today might be my last.  Did my father ever wonder about that when he was in the middle of a battle?  Did my mother ask herself this when she was lonely and waiting to see if her husband would come home?  Do we ever bother to wonder about this when we don’t face a crisis in our lives? 

If today were my last day would I bother to do the dishes or mow the lawn?  Would I still take out the garbage?  I doubt it.  Or would I do the normal things with a greater appreciation of my ability to do them?  Would I be able to spend more time with my wife and children, or would I only be able to look at them and wonder how I could possibly say in one day all the things that should have been said over a lifetime that could convey the depth of the love I have for them?  Perhaps we can live our last day only as well as we have lived the days that have gone before it.  Can I make each day the sum of all that have gone before?  Can I live well enough to be certain all of those whom I love will know of my love for them if I never speak another word to them?

To express a lifetime of love to someone takes a lifetime.  It requires every day that relationship exists, because each day builds on the next.  It is a cumulative effect.  It can’t be done in one day; rather it must be done every day.  And if it is done every day, as it was the first day then the relationship will never end.  Because when it comes right down to it the only love that is capable of surviving in its purest form is the love of God, and that will live beyond us as a legacy to those that come after.  The legacy we leave our children goes far beyond what is written in our wills.  There is always more left unsaid and unseen that still influences generations yet to come.

Recently my pastor and his wife celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary.  At the surprise reception the congregation had for them their children said a few words.  I will never forget the words of their oldest son.  He said that while growing up people would inevitably ask him what it was like being a “pastor’s kid”.  He said, “It didn’t matter to me that my dad was a pastor and my mom was a pastor’s wife, because they were always my parents first.  We always knew they loved us.  We always had priority.”  He honored his parents by giving back to them what they had given him: the love that never dies.

So I must consider the truth and substance of the legacy I leave from this day forward, and pray that I leave behind something worth keeping.

©Dan Bode 2000

Solid

I keep trying to identify ways in which I’ve changed since my life changed.

It’s never been easy to nail down, I suppose, just because I could never identify just one thing. 

Certainly my wife’s death was an earth shattering change, but it was one that set in motion so many others.  There were so many that I didn’t know who I was from one day to the next.  Changes are still occurring, and will continue for a while, but somehow I think I can say that I have become a bit more solid.

With change I became less sure of myself.  I didn’t know what to do, what was right, what was wrong.   Unable to make choices I became less substantial, diffuse, drifting aimlessly from one thing to another: a ghost.

I lost my anchor.  

I went through a period where I just couldn’t walk anywhere without realizing that the rest of the world was just going on as if nothing had happened.

There were moments where I just wanted to stand in the middle of the street and scream at the top of my lungs,

“Damn you! How can you not know that the foundation of the world has cracked beneath my feet?!  How can you be so oblivious?!”

But then I realized that it was only the foundation of my world in which the fissures appeared.  I was looking at everything from a different perspective.  There was a different aspect of the world I had only previously glimpsed, but now saw more clearly.  The veil was lifted.

I began to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t really know what to do with us when we experience events that make some of us realize that all that we have been told is important seldom really is.  They don’t know what to do with those of us who have been forced to look behind the Wizard’s curtain in Oz. 

It finally hit me that the events of my life have been used to shape me into someone who has a role in this world that will come clear to me when I am there.  God saved me out of all this for a reason. 

I was torn apart and reassembled with purpose.

That knowledge gives me substance.

It made me solid.  A ghost no more.

I had already been equipped to deal with these events before they happened.  All I needed to do was to keep doing what I had been doing all along.

I had already learned the value of commitment, so I remained committed.

I already knew the value of the Truth, so I remained True.

I had already learned what real love is, and what it requires of me, so I kept loving. 

Just differently.

For though I’m no longer married, I’m still a husband.

There is an ideal to which I remain committed.

I was always longing for something, now I know what it is, but it’s only for me.

Your longing is different, your time will come to know it.

I will be moving into a new house soon.  My house will soon be my house, I will fill it with those things that are unique to my tastes, my neighbors will be my neighbors. 

I will be in a place where no one knows my history. 

I’ll just be the guy in that house.

I realized that I have never been in a home that was made up of me alone.

Home was always someplace where I came back to someone.

I’m about to be in a new space; where no one in my family has ever lived.

A place where the walls have never been imbued with the memories of those who love me.

A place where I did not grow up, my wife never greeted me, my children never raced through the hallways, nor my pets ever roamed.

It will be a space where I am free to define the boundaries of my existence. 

I will make my own decisions about what I like or dislike. 

I’m afraid.

I have always defined my role in life based on the needs of others.

When I step across the threshold of this house I will enter a world of complete unknowns.

I won’t have to stop in the doorway and decide who I am going to take care of first.

My family and friends are with me, and they will help me fill it with new memories that will make it a home.

Because in the end buying this house has never been just a financial transaction.

It’s a need; a calling.

Singer Marc Cohn wrote a song called “Olana”.  The word means “Treasure House”, a house filled with the things most important to you.  One of the last lines in the song goes like this:

“And looking back on everything
All I ever wanted was a home”

And really, that’s still all I want. 

That’s what I long for.

Home.

©Dan Bode 2012

Stuff I Just Needed to Say

Treat every day in which you love someone as an investment for future withdrawals.  The more you put into it now the greater it grows over time. 

The day will come, and it will always come, when you need to live off of that investment.

Real love, as God created it, not as you wish it to be but as God created it to be,  that love can survive a beating.   

Purpose now to know that the other loves you despite the words that come out of their mouths when they are old.  

When they forget your name.   

When they send you away.

Remain.

This is the return on the investment: Love despite the pain.

Promise by nature requires sacrifice.

Do it.

It is by far the sweetest test you will ever face.

Love is to be enjoyed, and endured.

Perfect love perfects you.

It truly is forever.

Never forget this.

©Dan Bode 2012

Vestiges

I finally went hiking one day.
I’d been talking about going for months and suddenly realized, in the midst of a lot of crap, that I had only talked about it and never done it.  Hiking has always been something I love, and I had ignored it.  I understand now that I’m good at that – ignoring my own needs.
I always have this question floating in the back of my mind about whether I’m “good enough”, because if I’m “good enough” I should be there for my friends at all times, I should always drop everything in my life and live everyone elses crisis-laden lives because mine is not worth as much as theirs.
I understood that the demands and expectations of others were allowed to take a back seat.  That I don’t have to care what anyone else thinks, and I don’t have to explain my actions to anyone but God. And if anyone doesn’t like it – eh, screw ‘em.
I finally admitted to myself that I had some inherent value, because God made each of us that way.

I put in for time off on very short notice, and got it.
Looked for a room in a bed & breakfast and got that too.
And I left.
Such a maverick I am.

I got there late on Sunday night.  I left 95 degree heat in Sacramento and arrived to 60 degrees and wind at Pt. Reyes on the north coast of California.
Awesome. (I love this word.)
Pt. Reyes has always been my getaway spot.  Once you get there and start walking the trails there is simply no end to the possibilities of what you may see.  There are trails easy enough for anyone, and others meant only for those looking for a prehistoric setting.  There are places where the canopy is so thick that even when it’s raining heavily no drop will ever reach you, and when it’s sunny all the light is green from the leaves it filters through.
You will always see some wildlife; deer, fox, tule elk, seals, or in my case this day, a bobcat.
I left the main trail for ground that I hadn’t covered before.  Trails I’d never seen.
Different terrain.
New ground.
I sought higher ground which naturally took me uphill.  Uphill always starts out so easy, but the longer you go the more the trail seems to hold you back.  So reluctant to give up your presence on that quiet stretch that’s too steep to rest on even when you need it the most.  I have no choice but to keep going until I find that one little piece of the trail that’s just the slightest bit level so you can stop with no continuous pressure on your calves and thigh muscles.  I get there eventually, but it seems like it took longer than it actually did.
I finally top the ridge and remember oh yeah! I’m on the coast! All that blue?  It’s the ocean I haven’t seen in over a year!  I LOVE the ocean!  Almost as much as I fear it.  It’s overwhelming.
Every time.
It’s always been the one thing on earth that makes me think the most about God.  There’s so much in it that I will never know or understand, but just looking at it I know there’s always more to know about it.  Every single wave that caresses the shore is different.  Its touch changes everything, reshapes everything, always gives me something.
I often think I would be content living in a shack on the shore just watching the ocean all day long.  Waiting to see what it offered up on the beach from one day to the next.

I found another place much later to sit and rest for a few minutes.  Some rocks close to the cliff edge.  I sat down, took my pack off and pulled out a water bottle.
There was a blue belly lizard sunning himself.  He was doing this thing where he pushed up on his front legs repeatedly.  Like he was doing pushups.
I named him Jack LaLizard. (You know, Jack LaLane – fitness guru of the 60’s? Whatever.)
As I got up and put my pack back on I read the signs I’d been ignoring that basically said, “Don’t sit on these rocks they’re too close to the cliff.”  I was a rebel without even knowing it.

As I walked the trails I discovered that I was inadvertently following a predator.
First I saw the stool.
Took me a while to figure out what it was from.  Not a deer or an elk.  Then I noticed some hair and a paw print.
Definitely a cat and thankfully not a big one.
A little further along I found what turned out to be what was left of several small animals; lizards, squirrels and something else I couldn’t identify.

The vestiges.
What a strange word – vestiges.
Leavings.
Traces.
What’s left behind.

I am a vestige.

As I continue on and get to the highest point on the cliff trail I look to my right and I see the bobcat I’ve been following walking into some tall grass.  He looks at me over his shoulder and determines I am no threat.  He turns his back on me in disdain and walks away; disappearing into the grass without a trace.
I have reached my halfway point.  I have to turn around and retrace my steps.  I tried to find trails that would be more level, but I did go uphill.  I can’t avoid the logic of my steps.
Downhill can be just as painful as uphill.  Particularly when it’s steep enough that attempting to stop would mean you will probably collapse and roll the rest of the way down a significant portion of the trail.  At which point you will come into intimate contact with a large patch of Stinging Nettle.  So I saved myself at the expense of my knees and hips.

There are things I question in life.  Like Stinging Nettle.  I don’t question its existence, but rather the reason for its existence.  Not the process of how it came into existence, but why it exists.  And even more specifically - why do I have to deal with it?
Why do I have to deal with this obstacle?
I don’t have a consistent answer to that by the way.  It changes every day.
 
Eventually there was level ground, but still a ways to go to reach the end.
The end.
Back there at the beginning.

I kept going because I had no choice.  I would not have done it otherwise.
There was nothing else I could have done.
So be it.
Life is like that now.
One foot in front of the other.
No thought beyond the next step.
Moving in some direction that I realize at some very basic level of consciousness is the right way.

It was here that I walked into this “Hiroshima” moment.
I started this day with something ripped out of me.  Tattered ribbons of my spirit fluttering behind me wherever I went.  The wind howling through the hole where my heart used to be.
This blast that overloaded everything and destroyed me completely.  Left nothing but a shadowy imprint of dust on the remnant of a wall.
Dust.
Vestiges.
But even dust is real.  It has substance.
It is what God breathed life into.

So I inhaled the breath of God and decided to live again.
Probably one of my better choices.
I was what was left, and became what He re-created me to be.
Not a shadow.
Made whole.

There is a part of this trail at the very beginning where the dirt is very fine. You leave a definite footprint as you walk there.  As I walked back to the beginning/end I found the footprints I had left when I began several hours earlier.  I compared them to the footprints I was leaving now.  When I started out my steps were faster, and lighter, and so the prints were shallow.
Now as I returned my steps were heavier and more deliberate, and the prints were much deeper.
I left a greater mark as I left my burdens behind.
I gathered back into myself the substance they had leached out of me.
As I reached a point of physical and mental exhaustion my mind was completely focused on just taking the next step.  I had no energy to devote to dealing with any problems.  Here and now I could process no other thought than, “Take a step forward.  And another.  And another….”
And then as I reached the end and finally sat down and dropped my pack I just didn’t feel the need to take up those burdens once I started thinking again.
I hiked fifteen miles that day, and though it was only fifteen miles I think it was still the longest journey I’ve taken in my life so far.
I drove away, and left my sad, heavy little bundles lying in the dirt.
And there they remain, disintegrating into…
vestiges.
©Dan Bode 2012

To My Daughters on Father's Day

Dear Jennifer and Kaytie,

This Father’s Day is different from the rest.
It is the first of many more to come in a new era of our family.
We’ve gone through a lot together to reach this point, and we are a stronger family for it.
I have known you since your conception. Only God has known you longer.
There are some things I want to make sure you know.
God made a choice to make me your father, and so I am your father by blood, but I made a choice to be your father.  He made you wonderfully and placed you in my care, and I was scared to death, but from the first moment I held you I knew everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.
I have always been here because I wanted to be your father.
I have always striven to be a good father, because I get to be your father.
This was always my motivation.
It has always been my privilege to be known as the man who is your father; the one to be reckoned with.
Being a father is the greatest role I’ve had in life, because you are my children.
Now I am a grandfather and blessed all over again, because your children are my grandchildren.
The love I have for you will never be diminished, and you can never be replaced in my heart.
I will always be proud of the women you have become despite the mistakes I made, or the things I should have done and didn’t.
You are my children, and I could not have asked for better.
I cannot describe how grateful and joyful I am that you still desire to have a relationship with me.
I will continue to strive to be the father God calls me to be for you - it's a promise He asked me to make, and I will gladly keep it.
You are truly blessings to me now and always.
For all these reasons, and all because of you, Today is my best Father’s Day.
I Love You,
Dad