73. It Took Me a Lifetime

It took me a lifetime to get where I am. This concept has helped me to be kind to myself, to not waste too much time having regrets about what I didn’t do earlier, and to acknowledge that what I do and am now is a sum total of where I have been up to now.

The feminist and social activist singer/composer Holly Near wrote a song “It Could Have Been Me” on her way to the first year’s memorial service at Kent State in 1974. Someone asked her how long it took her to write the songs and she answered, “One could say I wrote it in an hour and a half. Or, one could say it took a lifetime getting to a place where the song could happen.

And I have learned that it’s my living that enables me to do what I do today. Everything is connected, and I end up being who I am today because of the life I have lived. It takes me all of these 79 years to get to where I can write this particular poem, or compose that piece of music, or create the friendship that I’m excited about, or love in a deeper way than I ever have.

72. Noticing the Crocus

My grandson Zachariah is now 23 years old, but when he was almost two I did a great deal of day care for him in my home in Nyack, NY. During the day we usually went for a walk, and over and over again, I learned something from him. On this day I learned about noticing. I put it into this poem in pantoum form:

Twenty Months Old

—

Twenty months old, pausing in his walk

To see for the very first time

One small brave crocus announcing spring

Dressed in purple and white against the ground.

—

To see for the very first time

This flower as small as he was

Dressed in purple and white against the ground,

He caught his breath and pointed with delight.

—

This flower as small as he was,

Something new–not there on yesterday’s walk,

He caught his breath and pointed with delight

Babbling syllables with meaning just for him.

—

Something new–not there on yesterday’s walk,

He gave it notice, and hurried on

Babbling syllables with meaning just for him

Excited at this new discovery.

—

He gave it notice, and hurried on

Then suddenly he stopped, looked back and waved

Excited at this new discovery,

Saying goodbye to something special.

—

Then suddenly he stopped, looked back and waved,

Twenty months old, pausing in his walk,

Saying goodbye to something special,

One small brave crocus announcing spring.

—

© Copyright Ann Freeman Price, 1991

71. Task Force on Human Sexuality

I was asked in the 70’s to be co-chair of a Task Force on Human Sexuality (actually focusing on homosexuality) for the Northern New Jersey Conference of the United Methodist Church. It was to be a balanced task force with an equal number of people believing one set of things and the rest believing the other (and some not sure). Our task was to come up with a curriculum that churches across the conference could study about the subject. It was to be a balanced curriculum showing the beliefs on both sides.

There were probably 20 people and we met once a month for two years. I started out with a Korean clergy woman as the other co-chair and when she left the conference she was replaced by a white clergy man.

I was the one who led most of the sessions. And my real co-chair was the Spirit. In the very first session I asked that we go around the circle, take our time, and share with each other where we stood on the issue and why. If someone wanted to pass, they could, but nobody did. And people not only shared, but they shared deeply.

I believe that first session was the crucial one to establish that this was a safe space and that everyone throughout the meetings would be listened to carefully and treated with respect.

We came up with a curriculum but in a way that became not the point. The point, at least for me, was that we could talk on a very deep level, be on totally different sides of the subject, and still care profoundly about each other. I still see people on that task force and we greet each other warmly because we “know” each other.

Interestingly, at the end of our sessions together, we led a workshop in every district on the curriculum we had come up with, on techniques for making it an effective study time for congregations, and people—both clergy and lay—came to those training sessions. At the end of the session we would sit in a circle and have an evaluation time. Over and over participants talked positively about the training session, about the curriculum, about what they had learned that day and then, over and over, participants, particularly pastors, would say, “I wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole in my congregation. It would be too divisive.”

And I felt that they had missed the entire point. Relationships in their churches could have grown and become richer by doing the curriculum, regardless of whether people changed their mind on the topic or not.

I learned in the two years that we met that people with very diverse opinions can come to a place of love and concern for each other because they have taken time to deeply listen to each other. And if you can’t risk doing that in the church—then where?

70. Regret When a Friend Dies

I’m in the middle right now of having had a friend die, and in the past few years it has happened again and again. It’s not guilt I feel. It’s regret—regret that once more I didn’t stay in touch better, that I didn’t call often enough. And it’s also that there were things I learned at the funeral or even in a death notice that I didn’t even know about that person. Does that ever happen to you—where you learn some new thing. And inevitably I think, I wish I had known that—we could have talked about it.

It’s hard to stay current with everyone. That’s the other reaction I have to death. I didn’t do a good enough (notice the “enough”) job of staying in touch with the person who died, and who is there now that I’m not staying in touch with. It’s kind of like asking who is my next regret?

What I’m trying to learn is that you do the best you can—that maybe sometimes it would be a better choice to call a friend that I haven’t talked to for a while than to play another computer game. My other learning is that when you find a friend that you enjoy being with, where you relish the conversation and the getting together, where afterwards you say to yourself —what a grand time— then that’s one event you can remember and feel no regret about.

69. Immortal Bird

I read a lot—often three books a week. This year the most memorable one so far has been Immortal Bird—A Family Memoir by Doron Weber. I fell in love with Damon, the boy in this book with a damaged heart. At the same time I fell in love with the father and in fact with the entire family. I loved the magic of Damon’s acting experiences and how good he was. I admired the father’s constant search for medical help for his son and his willingness to become so knowledgeable himself, that he could question the medical people authentically. And then I too became exasperated and frustrated by those same medical people.

I was amazed at the connection between father and son and if you read the book, you will know the scene that shouts that connection. It says something powerful about the individual’s will to live to avoid breaking that tie.

I finished the book on a Tuesday and by Thursday it was still with me, complete with the tears. When I turned the last page, I found the small black and white picture of Damon and he looked exactly as I knew he would.

What did I learn? I learned that life is here this moment and I need to live it as wholeheartedly, as full of delight and courage, and as completely, just as completely as I possibly can.

68. Give Yourself a High Five!

I was reading one of my evaluation forms from the two years that I attended the Blanton Peale Pastoral Counseling training, and I found one place where I wrote: “Ann—Give yourself one power fist and two exclamation points and a YES in all caps!”

Now, I try to remember to do that on my really good days. AND have you ever tried giving yourself a high five? It’s possible—do it!

67. Music Changes Pain

When I was at New York University doing a masters in music therapy, I did part of my internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and it was there that I learned in a very real way that music changes pain.

Part of the time, the music therapist (I’ll call her Marcia) working there and I traveled together. In one instance we came upon a man with his fists clenched in front of him. Marcia asked him if he was in pain and with gritted teeth he said that he was. She asked if he had told the nurse and he said he had and that she was coming. She asked if he would like some music. He said he would and said “How about Amazing Grace?”

We started to sing as Marcia strummed her guitar. Each verse his hands became less tense. He sang with us and we finished all four verses that were in our notebook and we stopped. He said, “What about the last verse?” We showed him that we had sung all the verses we had and he said, “That’s o.k., you can follow me.” He started to sing to the tune of Amazing Grace, “Praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God.” We joined him and sang those words throughout the hymn, ending with his hands totally relaxed in front of him.

In another instance we had helped the woman create her own notebook of songs she liked. She picked one of them for us to sing that day—clearly saying she wanted the second and fourth verses. She also had a tape recorder with a tape of us singing some of the songs and we asked her if she used it. She said she did and that sometimes she used it especially when she was in pain. She said, “Do you know what I do? I start the tape, and I close my eyes, and I climb up on the music and float.”

Music changes pain.

66. Put a Rainbow in Your Life

I have learned it brightens my day to have some intentional rainbows. I cannot wait all the time for a storm on a sunny day followed by a crescent of colors in the sky. I need rainbows more often.

And so in the sunniest window in my bedroom, where the rising sun comes streaming through, I hang crystals. When the sun hits them the rainbows travel around the room. One day a rainbow landed on the very top of a peak in my picture of the Grand Canyon. At first I thought that it must have always been there and I just somehow didn’t notice it. Then I realized that the crystals put it there.

Another day there was a rainbow in the wastebasket—now that’s the ultimate.

65. Person With Dementia

I worked in a nursing home for eleven years as a music therapist, and then moved to a different nursing home for another two years. In both facilities, I worked with persons with dementia. And I learned.

The most important thing I learned was to stay—stay with the person—sometimes in silence but sometimes in conversation and sometimes with music. There was one woman with whom I would carry on a conversation. I would ask a question. She would say some words that seemed not to relate to the question at all. I would say some words, she said more. It seemed like we were talking together and missing each other when suddenly she would connect and respond to the last thing I had said.

On another occasion I had a small group of five people, all with dementia of various stages. It was the last day of the year. I had my guitar and my goal was to make contact with each person, even briefly. I had done that in the thirty minutes we had, except for one woman. I had my guitar, sat beside her, and started strumming as I said, “You know this is the last day of this year and one of the songs we often sing is “Auld Lang Syne.” I started to sing it and about the second line she started to sing too. I moved in front of her and knelt there with the guitar. We sang the rest of the song together as she looked into my eyes. The minute we ended the song, her eyes stared away across the room. I sat back down beside her and touched her arm and said softly, “That was wonderful to sing with you.” She looked back at me, said, “It was, wasn’t it?” and then she was gone again.

But we had connected.

64. Why Is She So Angry?

There was a time when I took a two-year course in storytelling, taught by Midge Miles. We usually met at a Catholic retreat center on the Hudson River. My first time there I didn’t know what door to use in this huge building, so I parked my car, and went up the steps to what looked like the front of the building. The door was locked so I rang the bell and waited. I was just about to turn around around and try to find another entrance when I saw a nun in a black habit coming my way. She was not smiling.

She opened the door and said crossly, “What do you want?” I stumbled in my speech and started to answer when she interrupted me to ask loudly “Are you here for the storytelling workshop?” I smiled and said, “Yes…yes, I am.” Her crossness didn’t go away and she said, “Well you should have gone around the back and in that door!!!” I turned as I said “O.K.” but she kept talking and said, “Well don’t do it now. You’re here now so come in.”

I took a deep breath and came in with my small overnight bag. Her frown deepened as she shouted at me, “NOW—go down this hall. At the end, turn to the left, and take the elevator downstairs!” I moved quickly away from her and started down the hall. She disappeared from the direction she came.

I followed her directions and found Midge. I told her about my experience in storytelling detail and then asked, “Why, Midge, why does she have to be so angry?” Midge looked at me a minute, then touched the inside of her wrist with the fingers of her other hand as she said, “She has wounds.”

I took a breath. It didn’t excuse the anger and the crossness, but it helped me take that breath and consider the nun who in that time could not be gentle. I have thought of the story often and when I come upon someone or some situation where I am asking “Why—does this person have to be this way?” I think of my experience. I touch the inside of my wrist and wonder if the person has wounds.