Declaring Independence

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/20/2010

I don’t remember how I got the ball rolling on this issue, but I do remember the early morning at the School of Prayer, waking up and thinking, weighing the pros and cons of leaving.

In front of me outside the third story window, I looked at the Twin Towers rising above the trees in Washington Square Park. They were magnificent. Such a statement of imagination and possibility! I would miss this view.

I would miss – maybe – the early Morning Prayer and meditation together in community. I would not miss the rush that followed. Prayer and meditation were supposed to prepare us for the day, but often these practices felt artificial due to the momentous responsibility that required our earning a living for the good of all.

I never did integrate the contemplative with the active while I remained in religious life, and something inside indicated to me that I never would – if I stayed.

Hadn’t I committed for life to the community? Would I be happy continuing to live in this way? I had learned earlier that I did have options. But once you make a commitment, do you still have options?

I had lived on my own before. I had paid the bills, the rent, phone, electricity and heat. I knew how to do these things. I had had a checking account and savings account. I had lived on my own before. I knew how to shop for food and clothing. I had lived alone.

I was familiar with all those feelings from a past of almost twenty years before, and now I was about to do it again in a similar fashion – leaving what was known for what was unknown. I had to do it! It was about choosing life over death – once again!

On My Own

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/16/10

Boston meant I was on my own for the very first time. No curfews, no supervision, no classes to attend. I would need a job to pay rent; that was the practical piece. I also needed to eat. But after that, the field was open. I could walk the city, observe, write, dream, hope, fall in love … or not.

Mom and Dad were thirteen hours away by bus ride north, Aunt Rill and Uncle Jerry, my second parents, practically speaking, were five hours away south by train.

I was on my own in regards to my daily life, and this was like breathing rarefied air, seeing clearly with no impediments.

I was no kid. At twenty-three, this was where and when I got my first apartment. I could fix it up in any way I wanted. So, I bought unfinished furniture that I could sand down and antique. A table, two chairs, a dry sink, which would be my dresser; I could store my sweaters and shirts and other folded clothes in it. Yet, it did not look bed-roomy.

Since this small studio apartment was my home, I wanted it to look homey. The table had leaves that folded down, but would also turn into a larger table if I needed it. I would have to get a sofa bed. I wanted a long sofa, which would fill up the wall space and provide plenty of sitting space for guests. And, of course, a rocking chair – a wonderful wooden chair, which I painted black and stenciled the upper back with colorful yet dainty flowers, red and pink with green stems. I painted gold squiggles on the arms. I loved the way it looked. I bought a small padded cushion for the seat that matched the predominantly red braided rug for the floor space. When I moved in, I had brought one suitcase, one portable typewriter that Dad had bought me when I was in high school, my bible and a hair dryer. A small radio/TV set that Dad felt I just had to have also came along. This was really impressive. I’d never seen one before. The screen was about five inches and the picture black and white.

I slept in my friend’s sleeping bag until I found just the right sofa bed – a soft gold and black patterned material. It was perfect! The antique painted furniture when finished was a dark wood looking like oak. It took several weeks to complete; each coat having to dry before the next color was applied. This was now September 1972. I had arrived in August.

Boston was where I’d come right after high school. I had studied at a fashion retailing school for a year. I’d returned home to northern Maine afterwards, knowing I’d return to Boston, hopefully soon. I’d get a job, work. Save my money and return. Someday.

I would write and I would live in the city. Someday.

My best friend had gone to Bates College right out of high school and she met her husband-to-be there. I got a job at W. T. Grant Company, lived at home with my parents, insisted on paying rent (they kept protesting), and saved as much as I possibly could so that I would return to Boston. Someday. That was in 1967, so I’m digressing.

It was in the summer of 1972 when Linda and David had settled just outside of Boston in Norwood, and I was on my way to New York to visit Aunt Rilla and Uncle Jerry. I stopped to see Linda and David. David was studying at Harvard School of Medicine and Linda was teaching math at a high school near where they lived.

She and I went into Boston and walked around the city. I took her to places I’d remembered from my experience there in ’66 and ’67. I so loved the city— the music of its traffic, its tall buildings, the freedom it inspired, the possibility it offered.

Linda challenged me when she said, “ …then why not move here?” “I will someday”, I said. “Why not now?” I had saved money. I could do it. I could. Mom was still working. Dad was getting older, but he was fine at the moment. His heart seemed good after several years with a pacemaker. He had made medical history in Maine when he became the first to receive a pacemaker in the early 60s at Portland’s Maine Medical Center.

This seed of possibility had been planted in my mind. The whole time I was in New York, I thought about it. Linda was very practical and she had an answer for every question I had posited that might have stood in the way of my move to Boston. I would do it!

I did do it! And after a week, with Linda’s help, I’d found an apartment. I would find a job within two weeks – and then the rest became mystery. I had no idea how all of it would unfold. I was on my own!

The exhilaration of being on my own was sheer ecstasy. And I would let nothing interfere with that feeling. The heartbreak that would later follow could never take away that first sheer, exuberant, foot-lifting joy of independence. That would remain firmly planted forever – though tucked away for a while. It has remained … and will, I know.

What Happened

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 1/13/10

It was the turn of phrase like turning a corner. It was the sound of the word spoken aloud that brought a tingling sensation up my spine, the back of my neck to the frontal lobe. I was awakened. I was awakened.

There’s no quiet explanation for this occurrence. Silence says it best. Yet, the urge remains for me to explain and so to acknowledge that words affect me greatly. I always knew I wanted to write, but write about what? I could never say. It eluded me.

Only when I placed pen to paper would it be revealed what I would write. There’s intense excitement in this for me. But, it’s no way, practically speaking, to earn a living.

Practically speaking, how could I support myself – pay rent, eat, buy clothes – only the necessities, mind you, but they are necessities. This remained for years and years and years the perplexing question.

It wasn’t like being a Beatle – one of the boys in the band, one of a group of singers, song writers – wonderful song writers making wonderful music with their words and musical instruments.

Suddenly becoming famous. Working, working at their art, perfecting and publishing by performing out in the world. Becoming acclaimed – rightfully so – given the excellence of their art and artistry.

No, my writing is much more hidden – not great writing like Dickenson and Poe. Nevertheless, I write my own story, my own experience of my own life and vision and dreaming and hoping and searching and loving and losing and finding and choosing.

Not According To Plan

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 12/27/09 for 1/16/10

Without even being conscious of it, I’ve had expectations – perhaps I’ve achieved having expectations through listening to others and theirs and also to their ability to achieve what they expected.

Having had mine doused a number of times, I began to settle with not having any real expectations of my own – except of course, when I did have them without realizing consciously that I did.

Argument only for argument’s sake is what often happens when my significant other will not go along with my suggestions. Drop it. I’ve learned. Just put it out there then drop it. That too is perfectly okay in the end. We love each other, I tell myself. That is enough – and that has gone totally according to plan.

Old And New

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 12/12/09

There were trunks in the attic at Uncle Eddie and Aunt Eva’s house. They were treasure trunks for sure. We pulled out of them old dresses, long ones, short ones, shawls and hats, gloves and shoes. Who did these belong to? How did they wind up in this house? Why were they moved here? Who valued them enough to make that move? I question this now, but not then. That attic was a wonder. It offered rich fare for our imaginations.

My cousins Rita and William and sometimes my friend Norma would come along. And Joyce too and how could I forget, my cousin Roland, who was my secret and dearest love. We were all in the same age range with only a few years separating us or even a few months. Rita, Norma, and I were only months apart; Roland and Joyce a year older and William a couple of years younger than Rita, the baby of my Uncle and Aunt’s eight children.

Bernard’s comic book collection was up there too – in the glorious attic – and we sometimes took out the scary ones and Rita and William and I would huddle together in a corner with a flash light when it was raining, and we read them and became scared and thrilled. We heard creaking sounds from the house, and sometimes the cat spooked us and we nearly jumped out of our skins.

How old were we? Six … seven … eight … nine? It seems that attic offered us hours of sheer entertainment almost at any time of year.

It was also in part an unfinished space. Between the attic beams where the floor ended, there was only thick brown paper, and if we accidentally stepped there we might come through the living room ceiling, so we had to be very careful when walking those beams, and we were strongly encouraged not to, that we should not fall or put a foot down on that paper part.

The admonishment was scary and added to the thrill, because, of course, the boys walked the beams all the time. The boys also – the older ones – jumped the railroad cars, when they were parked on the tracks and not moving. The temptation to do so was just too great. We’d see them from the screen porch at my house. They dared one another, ran and jumped from one car to the other – like in the Westerns we watched. The boys loved playing cowboy and Indians. That had to be the favorite game of the day until one of them acquired a basketball hoop and it was anchored to a large tree in front of his house. Then, making baskets quickly displaced playing cowboy and Indians.

We girls, however, never tired of hauling out the treasures from the old trunks and dressing up like grown-ups pretending to attend parties, funerals and weddings.

I took to playing priest one day and used a roll of Necco Wafers in their pastel roundness as communion hosts. I’m amazed now as I was then that I could so influence Rita and William to kneel down and receive the wafers as if they were actually receiving Holy Communion.

I was also fascinated that I could convince Rita to eat the mush I made with Ritz Crackers, water, salt and pepper – telling her it was the pabulum, she as the baby, would eat from me as the mother. She ate it. And this never ceased to amaze me. I would never have eaten it myself.

I’m sixty years old and I can remember it all as if it were yesterday. Circumstances pulled us away from one another when we were still young. And these memories are for the most part the only ties that bind us now. As adults we rarely see one another.

Joyce, dear, dear Joyce; she was so excited when I was assigned to Eagle Lake. She braved a blizzard to come out to see me the evening of the day I arrived. I opened the door on that blustery January night – and there she was stepping in out of the howling wind, snow-covered just from her walk from the car to the house. We hadn’t seen each other in how many years? Oh my, maybe fifteen – since high school, at least, when my parents and I moved away. But she threw her arms around me and kissed me and hugged me. We kept in touch after that evening and even after I moved back to Portland. She was one of the few of my childhood friends, who never moved out of Soldier Pond.

Joyce married one of those ruffian boys, whose dad was a potato farmer. He and his brothers inherited the father’s farm, had worked with their dad on the farm from the time they could walk. She and Carl married right after high school. They had two boys. Her life was surrounded by men, she would say. And she relished my visits whenever I came up north to see relatives.

“I rarely get to sit down at a table with a good woman friend,” she said to me on one occasion. She lived with such passion – even when we were children, she had intense energy and love of life. It seemed cruel that fate would have her die at forty. I just didn’t want to believe the news of her death. But, I saw how she lived, smoking cigarettes, and eating junk – that day at the kitchen table. She was blond, blue-eyed and buzzed on caffeine, which she didn’t need.

She had always been pretty, and I couldn’t understand a lot of what was happening to her. She worked hard, she lived that way too. She was always interested in me and wanted to know what I was doing. Yet, part of me so much admired her, that she had a husband and two children. I was a woman, married to an institution that claimed we women in community were married to God. What did that mean? I would never have children. But I’d never really given up hope that maybe one day I’d meet a man and we’d love each other. Even when I wasn’t suppose to hope for that.

I wish Joyce and I could have talked more. I wish she hadn’t died so young. She had been so very brave. She had sought out her real mom, been profoundly disappointed when she found her, but gained a loving grandfather from that experience. She had loved her adoptive parents, but she was compelled to know her own history. In her thirties, she embarked on the venture; she had done it; she had had to know. I so admired her for that. She’d written me a long detailed letter with the account of her search. It was written on lined yellow notebook paper; page after page of her adventure, her pain and disappointment and her acceptance and ultimate triumph. She would never know her real father.

Interesting how life unfolds. I didn’t know then, that I would embark upon a similar search a few decades later. I would never get to share my story with her.

This having to know is such a compelling and tenacious demon for some of us. Some questions, however, will never be answered to our satisfaction. Making our peace with that state of affairs is also imperative. And the demon never goes away.

Anger

DeAnn Louise Daigle AWW 2/10/10

No, no I don't want to go back to

meditation or church or worshipping

groups of any kind.

No, no; all of that is past for me; there's no

telling about the future, of course.

Certainly, for now, all of that kind of

religious practice is out for me.

I had my share of it. I don't mind, but I'm

glad it's over. Instead, I've always wanted

to bring the actual practice of meditation

and worship to my daily life; somehow

integrate it, not as a separate matter but as

something lived. Or else, it all means

nothing to me.

None of it I would change, really. I met

some great and wonderful people and

some things were difficult for me, but grace

was always active. There's a religious term.

But I've found no substitute for the word

grace. Perhaps that hold-over can remain.

Grace -- a physical manifestation of an

invisible or spiritual power; the presence of

care and fortitude and benevolence.

Webster's Dictionary defines grace as 1 a:

unmerited divine assistance given humans for

their regeneration or sanctification b: a virtue

coming from God c: a state of sanctification

enjoyed through divine grace, and so on.

Anger too is grace, I think. Sometimes for

some of us, anger is the only thing that

wakes us up and pushes us forward. For

me, it's been that way, I know. Every major

decision I have made in my life has come

from the grace of anger.

I do not recommend this be so. I am only

stating that for me, it has been so.

Some sense of indignation has so riled me

that I was made to come to my senses by it.

When I refused to return to Fort Kent High

School to retrieve my records for the move

to Presque Isle High School, it was due to

the utter embarrassment I had experienced

at that school.

It caused me to weep -- even as an adult,

years later -- to recount what had happened

to me there. It was in part due to one

student's ability to so put me down and a

teacher's lack of understanding and a

principal's weighty need to punish a whole

class for the behavior of a few -- which for

me was utter chaos and injustice, the

breaking point of my humiliation.

It was anger and heartbreak that caused me

to do the right thing by my father when he

was in the hospital and dying. I would

return from Boston to spend the next three

years at home with my parents through the

events of my father's death and my

mother's grieving.

It was anger that people could so meddle in

my personal life as to cause me to move

away and into another way of life because I

felt the need to do something, but it had to

be on my own terms, not anyone else's.

It was anger that pushed me ahead once

again when I was compelled to leave one

way of life not knowing what lay ahead, but

certain that the decision was a forward

moving one.

It was anger and a sense of freedom at last

that provoked me to pull back from too

much activity in order to contemplate what

really mattered in my life and how my

involvement in the world as a peacemaker

had to begin with my own inner peace and

sense of solitude. I had to get at the root of

my anger in order to better realize that

peace would become a life choosing, not

just a by-product that came without effort.

Anger is grace when anger moves me

toward peace and the hard, hard work of

peace-making within myself and in my

relationships with the world around me.

Consciousness does not allow for in-

authenticity; consciousness frees me to

cooperate by choice with grace, and often

anger has been the wake-up call.

See Saw

Mary Ann was my very best friend.

I did not want anything to change.

But change, it would come

Knocking on the door of an idyllic

Childhood - if only in my mind.

I did not want to leave my home

Where the cats played and the dog

Followed me to school and the woods

Were my wonderland.

But leaving, it would come

Knocking on the door of an idyllic

Childhood - if only in my mind.

I longed for benefit and holding on

Forever to all the pretty places and all

The pretty faces.

But letting go, it would come

Knocking on the door of an idyllic

Dreaming - if only in my mind.

12/24/09