Attention Must Be Paid

20 years ago, my world was the war zone of Bosnia and Croatia. At first, arriving with the UN as a peacekeeper, I felt sure the world was paying attention and action would be taken to end the bombardment of Sarajevo. I was wrong. The siege went on for years.

Do your eyes glaze over when reading about wars? Sometimes, mine do too. Food and gardening blogs are certainly more enjoyable. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Sudan — the stories dispatched from these places are overwhelming and disturbing. Beyond sending money to organizations that provide assistance, (MFS is my choice) what can we do? I don’t know. The resulting feeling of impotence sucks. So I may switch my screen or turn a page to order seeds for my garden or catch up on trashy celebrity gossip or the latest buffoonery in the primary.

But this disturbs me: I spoke with people this week who knew nothing of the recent deaths of the war correspondents in Syria. Three brave and excellent journalists were killed because they believed they needed to tell the world about the terrible situation there. To be only vaguely aware, not so interested — feels shameful, and deaths of Marie Colvin, Anthony Shadid and photographer Remi Ochlik — who  lost their lives in getting the story out — even more heartbreaking.

I do not have what it takes to bear witness as, NYTs photographer Tyler Hicks writes so  movingly about his friend and colleague here. I salute the brilliance and insight we lost with these deaths — and vow to pay attention.

Reason to Get Up in the Morning

Today I pushed the always-set alarm to ‘off’ and went back to sleep — something I never do. I might hit ‘snooze’ for a few extra minutes, but not ‘off’. I didn’t sleep for too much longer – it’s now just 8 AM. But most Sunday mornings, I’ve already dropped Molly at her job, gone grocery shopping and walked Tetley. Left to my druthers, I like to rise early — but there has been something vacation-like about this week with Molly away. And with her off to college in less than 2 years, it’s a taste of what awaits me. And yet…

The longing to take care of someone besides myself, hit me in my late twenties. I had been living in Japan only a month or so.

A cold morning in Kyoto, curled up in the warmth of a futon on the sweet smelling tatami-matted front room in Sarah‘s little house on Marutamachi Street. Sarah was away. There was no place I needed to go. No reason for me to crawl out of bed and get up in this unheated, empty house. For breakfast I would need to dash down the frigid, creaking hall to the tiny kitchen, light the kerosene heater and hover over a cup of tea and wait for my breath to disappear as the room warmed, but why bother? No one was expecting me to show up. Very few people in this country even knew I existed. So I stayed under the covers listening to the sounds of the narrow, busy street. High pitched greetings of women neighbors, grinding gears of trucks, dings of bicycle bells, customers announcing their presence in the tofu shop across the street. Noises of other people’s busy lives. No one waited for me anywhere, nor expected anything of me. I burrowed deeper into my futon with a new ache: a longing to be needed.

As Molly becomes more independent, I moan less about having to drive her places and welcome those moments together. Soon she’ll have her license and she’ll just borrow the car. With another year of high school, she’ll still need some prodding and sometimes, bullying awake in the morning. But not for that much longer. My daily tasks as a mother are changing, disappearing — and I recall the emptiness of a cold Kyoto morning.

A Homecoming (Of Sorts)


This was the plan: I would have my baby in beautiful Cambridge, England. Not too far from N’s family in England, but most importantly, home to Chloe, a friend I’d made on the job at UNICEF-Croatia. A breast-feeding specialist as well as a mid-wife, I couldn’t imagine anyone else I’d rather have deliver my baby. There was no way I wanted to give birth in Zagreb where I was still living, especially after my obstetrician there prescribed tranquilizers for me, 6 months into my pregnancy. As a program officer for UNICEF I’d been in plenty of hospitals in Croatia and would prefer not to cross a maternity ward threshold as a mother-to-be.  Then, my husband landed a plum (and turned out, very temporary) job in Brindisi, Italy.  The baby’s due date was August 1. There was time.

In early June, I left Zagreb and joined N in the small town of Ostuni where he’d splurged on an incredible villa. I picked cherries and limes from the garden, filled vases with just-cut roses. I read and napped on the balcony, gazed at the fields of sunflowers and the shimmer of the Adriatic Sea in the distance. Seduced by the beauty and bliss of the place, I quizzed Chloe about what she thought about staying in Italy for the birth. She suggested a comparable choice might also be Sarajevo — still very much under siege. Southern Italian hospitals were poor and birthing attitudes very behind in terms of best practices for the mother.

So we stuck to our plans. I would depart for England in early July. There, I’d finally read the final chapter – about the 9th month – and face up to what I was in for. I’d bond with other pregnant women and learn to breathe and pant correctly. I’d eat fish and chips to my hearts content and revel in finally completely understanding everything said around me for the first time in almost 4 years.

Molly had other ideas: she was born almost 2 months early on June 13 in a tiny hospital in Ostuni. Whisked away from me to Brindisi Hospital, I barely glimpsed her, did not touch her. Chloe was right about the momma-care (it sucked) but not the neonatology department of Brindisi Hospital. Fancy facilities aren’t everything and the doctors and nurses who took care of (including singing to) my too-early Molly, were superb.

As I write, my daughter is back in Italy for 10 days with her high school’s Italian class. I mentally track her there – imagining what she is seeing, hearing, smelling, eating. I know she must be falling deeply in love with Italy. I can’t help but think she chose to be born there. The Puglia region is not on the school itinerary but Florence is – where I purchased a pregnancy kit that read “Si”. In Rome now, she probably sat on the Spanish steps, threw coins with her wishes, into the Trevi fountain. If the weather cooperates, she will visit Capri. We lost our camera on the boat back to Naples where her birth certificate and first passport were issued. Molly will cross the country by bus all the way back up to Venice, and every mile passed will pull her more deeply in love with this place of such rich beauty and spirit, this place where she first glimpsed the world. And in so many ways, this is a wish come true.

 

My Hubris

The roads are empty this morning as I drive to pick Molly up from a sleep-over so she can be at her weekend job by 7 am. I am thinking about what to write. The moon. No longer quite full, it hangs over the tree-line. Magical how the moon’s visibility is determined with reassuring predictability by the sun. Car heat cranked up against the cold, I sit in the friend’s drive and wait for my daughter to appear. Amidst messy winter bramble next to my car I can see a patch of green and white: snowdrops. A sweet harbinger of spring. I know where to find some near my house – I can get my camera and post them later – and write more about the end of winter.

But none of this clicks into inspiration this morning and I recognize that I am searching for something, anything to move me away from the subject I’ve been thinking about since finishing Bill Clegg’s Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man. Then, this morning I see the news that Whitney Houston is dead at 48, the same age N was when addiction won the battle.

I lived for years looking for distractions from the truth. Anything to avoid dealing with the reality of living with an addict. Hating myself, I welcomed the well-spun lies and chose to believe the crazy excuses for strange and bad behavior. Believing his promises, and making and breaking my own. Believing it was just a matter of time before he realized there was too much to lose, sure he would decide he loved us enough to quit.  Even as he shrank into a shell of a man, as his once hazel eyes turned empty – his soul swallowed into blackness, even then – an ember of hope remained that he would find an exit out of his drug-maze, back to us. Even when I’d had enough and finally was ending the marriage, I imagined his recovery as possible.

In the pages of Bill Clegg’s addiction memoir I glimpsed N. As I read, it was N I visualized living for his next hit, scoping out a bathroom to get high in. It was N I read about – a view of his secrets, of what he was up to, what he was thinking through all those missed appointments and lost jobs. In reading Clegg’s story, I stepped out of my own story of despair of living with an addict, into N’s world – the story of being the addict. This dark world, insane existence he lived while just beside me. And me a fool, so sure I held the light that could lead him away from his demons. What hubris in thinking there was anything I could do against such an enemy.

Spring Rituals Remembered

February! Somehow, we’ve made it this far through winter and barely had snow or the cruel temperatures Europe and Russia are enduring. Already, there are signs of spring. On a quick walk through my yard yesterday I discovered green crowns of Hyacinth bravely starting to erupt. And in another sunny corner, spears of Daffodils are torpedoing through the dry leaves and dead grass. Strawberry plants look very green on the slope outside my driveway and there are already weeds encroaching on Lupine territory. Bitter cold and snow are likely still ahead, but days are longer and winter’s end is definitely in sight.

Nothing like flowers as harbingers of spring. In Japan, February is the time for Plum Blossom viewing. Crowds flock to parks or temples to really look at the Plum trees in bloom. When I lived in Kyoto, I used to pedal over to Kitano Shrine, lock my bicycle to a lightpost and join the throngs parading through the trees, admiring and of course, taking pictures of and with, the delicate Ume somehow already in bloom. It’s February remember, and still cold. But even bundled up against a bitter wind, clouds of breath lingering in the air, the promise of spring can be inhaled in those blooms and it’s impossible not to feel warmed and hopeful. A few thimble-size swallows of plum wine with friends helps too.

Also in Japan, February 2-4 is Setsubun; the last day of winter by the lunar calendar. Time for spring cleaning — and that includes getting rid of all the bad luck, illness and misfortune in your house, any remnants of the Oni – a kind of cute devil. Many Japanese in Kyoto visit a temple on the east side of town, Yoshida-jinja with calendars, papers, anything that symbolizes what they want gone, and throw it all into a huge bonfire that makes this usually staid place feel primeval. One year I went back early the next day before clean up, to see the broken, charred chotchke remnants still smoldering in the ashes. Isn’t this a fantastic ritual? A communal purging. I planned on taking care of some overdue house cleaning today anyway and am glad I remembered this festival. Now I feel motivated to clean house and tonight, will stoke up the fire-pit outside for a mini-Setsubun in Connecticut. ‘Oni-wa-soto, Fuku-wa-uchi’ (‘Out with devils, In with luck’)

All the News

A rare indulgence I allow myself is weekend home delivery of the New York Times.  Padding out in my slippers to the blue bag waiting at the end of the driveway makes me happy. However, for the second weekend in a row, my joy has been missing.

Tetley looking for the newspaper.

I reported the problem and presumed they’d get it straight this weekend. No such luck. Yesterday, Saturday – when all the good stuff is delivered: Magazine and Book Review, Travel and Arts and Leisure sections – no blue bag. I called again, this time pushing past the automation to a human being. I requested that today, the complete paper be delivered – with all the juicy sections that make the Sunday Times such fun.

Stepping outside on this cold early morning, there was the blue bag at the end of the driveway, but too slim to contain the entire paper – and indeed, it did not. Once again I called the delivery number and voiced my outrage. With rapid-fire imperiousness, I informed the calm voice at the end of the phone line that if all of the Sunday sections were not delivered by later today, I would cancel my subscription.

Now, yesterday’s woman didn’t adequately communicate my annoyance to the local delivery person and I wanted to make sure that today, she did. But still, I began feeling ashamed for being such a bitch. I mean, it’s not the fault of the woman on the other end of the line. I said as much to her and apologized that she had to bear the brunt of my disappointment. She was gracious but I recognized the tightening in her voice as she tried to control her annoyance with me. I have experienced the ire of strangers frustrated with the company I work for and it’s easy to take it personally. Of course that’s what customer service is all about: fielding complaints and solving problems. But still, by the end of the call, I felt a bit like an ass. This is about the newspaper. Not being at my front door. Really. My life is pretty good.

The Den

After my husband’s suicide, shock and fury masked my sadness for months. Molly propelled me to pay attention to grief one afternoon as I heard a friend ask her where her father was because she hadn’t seen him in awhile. Molly answered, “In England.” She could not speak this new terrible language of death and loss. Shortly after that car ride and 9 months after his death, I began taking 9 year old Molly to The Den for Grieving Kids. She was afraid The Den would require her to talk about feelings and make her cry like the therapist she’d rejected. The Den would be different, I assured her. She’d be with other kids her age who’d lost a loved one and they’d have activities. If she didn’t want to, she need not utter a word.  Immediately, Molly felt at home and marveled she was not the only kid whose parent had died.

There were years we never missed a session. Two Mondays a month, I’d make the drive down to Greenwich where we ate pizza and salad perched on tiny chairs in the pre-school classroom before moving into the big room for introductions. We formed a heartbreakingly large circle. We took turns saying our names and, only if we wanted to, who died.  Or simply: “I pass” because, at first, it was hard to get the words out: my husband, wife, father, mother and worse — child, brother or sister died. But over the weeks, as the realization and pinch of our losses grew into scars, it became easier to share the declaration of these deaths. At least with this group of fellow survivors.

From that very first session, Molly loved going to The Den, easily going off with a group of children her own age. In another room, us parents gathered in a circle, sharing stories, struggles, tears — and laughter, too. Initially, I found myself envying what seemed the tragic but uncomplicated grieving of the others whose spouses died from illness or accidents – not suicide. How could I admit to them, that in the mixed up soup of my emotions I also felt relief? I discovered no shame and much healing. Regardless of anyone’s tale, grief is thorny territory and we were all traversing it together, reluctant members of the same club.  The Den for Grieving Kids eased our travel on this road.

Seven years later, my daughter has decided it is time to say farewell to this amazing place.  For these few hours a month, she and I reflected on N’s death. Then, in the car driving through the dark towards home, the two of us shared stories, carefully paying attention to each other and our healing hearts.

Art Therapy

‘Only in confronting pain can there be real healing’ — I’m paraphrasing something Bosnian actress Vanesa Glodjo said during the Q&A with Angelina Jolie about their recently released movie “In the Land of Blood & Honey“.  She was speaking about the reaction of Bosnians to this film. Glodjo’s comment resonated with with me as I continue to ruminate on this subject.

This morning in the car, a discussion on global conflict resolution came on the radio. A Jean Paul Lederach spoke about the power of music, of sound, as healing: “…it this notion of transportability, we think,is a window into several places in which reconciliation and healing … this idea that vibration touches us… healing is about feeling like a person again…what music does is it permit people to touch again, feel touched by, and to even maybe touch their own sense of personhood and voice…you may not be able to explain, you may not be able to speak your way through certain things, there are times in which music and/or sound may in fact permit that to happen in a much deeper way.”  He goes on to talk about poetry, particularly haiku in the same vein.

This possibility of healing the psyche and soul through, as Lederach says, — the ineffable — through music, through art, fascinates me.  To facilitate recovery from the wounds of war, the damage done by addiction, illness, from violence, the deaths of our loved one, suicide. Time may ease or at least dull an ache, but art can help us to process grief and find a way to the other side.

 

Something Different: Q & A with Angelina Jolie (really!)

What are you doing  this Thursday, January 12 at 8:00 PM (EST)? Why not tune in here for a live online Q&A with Angelina Jolie.  She’ll be discussing her writing and directorial debut, In The Land of Blood and Honey. This is will be an interactive event and a chance to ask Ms. Jolie questions about the film, live.

 

I think of the Bosnian war as ‘my war’.  Of course, it wasn’t my country and my experience as a UN peacekeeping operation was muffled by armored cars, flak jackets and always having an exit. And leave I did – as the reality of my impotence and the potency of evil became too heartbreaking. But N and I met in Sarajevo and held our wedding there during a summer cease-fire. Our friends pelted us with relief-rice. A very different story than the one in this film – that I will watch with fists full of tissues.  Please join us on Thursday.

About the film:

In the Land of Blood and Honey has been nominated for a Golden Globe® for Best Foreign Language Film. Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian War that tore the Balkan region apart in the 1990s, the film tells the story of Danijel (Goran Kostić) and Ajla (pronounced Ayla) (Zana Marjanović), two Bosnians from different sides of a brutal ethnic conflict. Danijel, a Bosnian Serb police officer, and Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim artist, are together before the war, but their relationship is changed as violence engulfs the country. Months later, Danijel is serving under his father, General Nebojsa Vukojevich (Rade Šerbedžija), as an officer in the Bosnian Serb Army. He and Ajla come face to face again when she is taken from the apartment she shares with her sister, Lejla (Vanesa Glodjo), and Lejla’s infant child by troops under Danijel’s command. As the conflict takes hold of their lives, their relationship changes, their motives and connection to one another become ambiguous and their allegiances grow uncertain. In the Land of Blood and Honey portrays the incredible emotional, moral and physical toll that the war takes on individuals as well as the consequences that stem from the lack of political will to intervene in a society stricken with conflict.

 

 

Going On


I find myself still looking at the stories and images of the mother who lost her parents and her beautiful children in a fire on Christmas morning. I study them as if I might identify what enables her to survive such loss.  Photos from the funeral captured the bewildered, distraught faces of mother and father watching the coffins of their daughters being carried into the church. Her face crumpled in grief, his raw with pain. How will they go on? How do us humans do it?  What is it that keeps us going, through those horrible minutes, hours, days, weeks, months? Perhaps only years will make the ache sear less.

Heartbreaking stories like this one can be found in some community, every day. This one haunts me because it happened only minutes from where I live.  They did not live in a war zone or a blighted ghetto – she had everything and still lost it all. If it can happen to her…

And yet I look at her and marvel: she bravely comforts the father of her children, sharing stories of her beautiful girls and making plans for their remembrance. Making plans. Carrying on. She will carry on with this business of living even as, (I can’t help imagining) she wishes she were dead. The human spirit is magnificent.

We lose the ones we love most in the world — and yet, continue to live. Most of us still find a way. Such losses can seem  impossible from the outside. Part of me wants to turn away from this terrible story, it feels wrong and voyeuristic to want to know more. But I cannot help wanting to, even as I observe with dread. As if I might see how to arm myself against comparable experiences. This same thing is unlikely to happen to me, but there is no escape from what life doles out to us and something else as terrible might again. How would I go on?

We all eventually lose what may seem to be the source of all love — a lover, a spouse loses their soulmate, a child loses a parent, and most horrible of all – a mother loses her children, and still find the will to live. Slowly, slowly finding moments of laughter, once again discovering the beauty in light and recognizing  the myriad of feelings beyond the numbing punch of grief that once threatened to end it all. How? Many have the comfort of their faith guiding them through. But even those of us without the clarity of belief in the wisdom or  master plan of a God, there is something greater than the fear of death that keeps most of us going.

I see around these parents, a beauty glimmering like a haze softening the curtain of anguish. Somehow, in the darkness of mourning we must sense something, some light of hope.  Or perhaps we see it reflected in those who gather to comfort us. In a New York Times article on the funeral a man who only shared the same church with the family called out to the children’s father as he passed by “Brother, I love you,” and according to the man the father reached over and said “I love you, too.” Perhaps that’s it – what drives us forward from our loss, just love.

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