Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Category: Writing

September 4, 2018

For my own good?

Invisible fumes
Flavor my world
With chemical smog
Poisonous leftovers
Yesterday’s garbage
Thrown my way
By friendly fire

Gagging
I reach for tissues
Disintegrating
Into air thick
With hypocrisy
Greed and lust

This
Is for your own good
Swallow it
Or die

Walking to the edge
Of the set
I lean over the edge
And vomit what
I will not swallow

The poem resonates with my childhood and youth. And with increasingly horrific reports of widespread clergy sexual abuse. Part of a complex history hidden in full view. Aided and abetted by Predators United in Silence.

When I was 4-7 (1940s) we lived in the Los Angeles area. Smog alerts were common. Warm air got caught below the mountains, contaminated with industrial soot plus heavy moisture from the ocean. It hung over the LA basin like sick grayish fog. And it stank. Each day we blew and cleaned the toxic dark gunk out of our sore nostrils as often as possible.

Later, in the 1950s, we lived about 15 miles southeast of Savannah, Georgia. We always knew when humid, heavy air was blowing from the northwest, just outside Savannah. It didn’t matter that we’d shut all windows. Putrid, rotten-egg air from the Union Bag Company found every crack and invaded our lungs. Along with chemical fumes that were then considered ‘harmless.’

The other image comes from a documentary I watched several years ago when I was learning about human trafficking. The film shows ways women are trapped and then lured into ‘starring’ in porn films. This will make you famous, and you’ll earn a lot of money!

The documentary included outtakes from an actual porn filming. During a break in the porn filming, one of the women (‘stars’) walks to the edge of the set, leans through the curtains, and vomits violently. She’s promptly ordered to return, put a smile on her face, and get on with the show. No matter what is done to her in the name of ‘entertainment.’

Sometimes I read the news and feel like gagging. How did we get to this point? What is all this toxicity costing us? We have midterm elections coming up. I want politicians who get it and are committed to supporting US (the US in USA), not Themselves, Inc., or some other Big Boss.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 September 2018
Photo of Union Bag Company in Savannah, GA, found at georgiaencyclopedia.org

8 Comments
September 3, 2018

My Best Boss Ever – Labor Day

Griswold Letter to ERF

This morning I woke up thinking about My Best Boss ever: Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of the Harvard Law School, and Solicitor General under President Lyndon Johnson. I worked for him at Harvard Law School for three short years, my first job after D and I married in September 1965.

Most of all, I thought about the letter Mr. Griswold wrote to me. It’s pictured above. A letter totally unlike any letter my father wrote to me. I’ve added a typed version of the text at the end of this post.

Mr. Griswold became my employer at the beginning of my marriage to D in September 1965. We’d just moved from Savannah, Georgia to Cambridge, Massachusetts. We didn’t know anyone. D began a graduate program at Harvard, and I needed a job.

I walked over to Harvard and filled out a form. Mr. Griswold’s office called me and I answered. The best boss ever, though I didn’t know it back then. After three years, I resigned to give birth to our first child.

So today I’m thinking about baby Marie, and how to get in touch with her first 10 months of life. That’s 10 months before The Intruder, my father, arrives on the scene. I want a cloud of witnesses, not to me as I am now, but to me as I’ve always been. I’ve already identified Diane, Sister #3 who died of ALS, as a witness, even though she was born later than I.

This morning I realized I have a strange surrogate father in Mr. Griswold. Why? He wasn’t simply the Best Boss Ever. He was like a father to me, though I didn’t realize it back then.

You can see this in the letter at the top (quoted below). His note stands out for reasons I can’t even explain, except for this: Mr. Griswold saw, named and celebrated the 10-month old child in me, now grown up. The Intruder didn’t destroy me.

Today is Labor Day here in the USA, a day to celebrate workers. I’m proud to have been a worker, and proud to say I worked for Mr. Griswold as one of his secretaries.

Below is the text of Mr. Griswold’s handwritten note.

The Solicitor General, Washington

Erwin N. Griswold, August 12, 1968

Dear Elouise,

I am sorry that I could not be at your farewell party at the Law School, and I do want to send you this note in honor of the occasion.

In all my years at the Harvard Law School, I expect I had close to twenty girls working for me. All were good, some were better, a few were extraordinarily good, indeed, and of all of them you were the best. Your ability was of the highest order, your intelligent contribution to the work was unexcelled, and your calm and matter of fact and unperturbed approach was unique. I was blessed in many ways at the Harvard Law School, but that I should have had you to work with the last two years was more than I deserved.

If there had been any prospect that you could stay on, I would have done all I could to push you on and up. You were worthy of the highest recognition—and always, without fail. It was a very satisfying experience for me and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am.

Now you go on to a new phase of your life where I know that you will excel, too. But as you go on, I hope it will give you some satisfaction to know that I thought your were superlative—both as a secretary and as a person.

With best wishes to you and David, and my very great thanks.

Erwin Griswold

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 September 2018

13 Comments
August 29, 2018

Relics of my past and present

Every day I’m surrounded by relics of my past that reach into my present. Then there’s the odd relic I buy for myself because I know I need it. Even though I don’t know where it will take me. The photo above shows three of my relics.

The big furry raccoon is a gift from two male seminary students. Unannounced, they came to my faculty office the week of their graduation in 1986/7. Each had taken multiple courses from me. Yet to their sorrow, they had been less than supportive my first semester of teaching. They came bearing a gift of contrition and gratitude. Their way of making amends and reaching out to acknowledge complicity in my first-year trial by fire.

I promptly, there and then, gave this furry beast his name: Klein Calvin. That’s Calvin for  Reformed theologian John Calvin, not Calvin Klein. And Klein for the German word for small. Again, not for the clothing brand Calvin Klein.

Over the years, Klein Calvin has occupied seats of honor in my house. From these exalted seats he has given my grandchildren tons of fun and caused Smudge, our rescued cat, moments of extreme consternation.

The smaller white teddy bear with a heart is also a gift. This time from my theology class in spring 1999. A surprise gift the week I returned to class after time off following my mother’s death. The class hadn’t been particularly easy. These were the years after our new sexuality policy was approved by the Board, giving aid and comfort (in my unchanged opinion) to those who were on the lookout for deviation.

Yet here was this totally unexpected gift, made possible because of human ties that bind us. When I was a child I never owned a real teddy bear. This is my teddy bear. She’s been sitting on the sofa in my office for years. Sometimes hugged close when I’ve felt overwhelmed about not having my mother present to answer at least a thousand questions.

Finally, right there in the middle is my newest cuddly friend. I’ve christened her Baby El. A likeness of me. When she arrived two weeks ago, I wasn’t sure what to do with her.

For now, I’m certain she is not about my father. She’s about me. I want to know myself better and honor myself. Especially, but not only, that little girl who still resides in me. Now woven into every fiber of my being.

If I just think about getting to know myself (and that little girl…), it won’t happen. I need to practice honoring myself for real. And Baby El is my partner in this. She’s real. She’s present. And she always welcomes me with a smile.

Which, by the way, is helping free me from making D into the bad man he is not, or even into a very large version of Baby El.

I used to think I could work it all out in my head or in my writing. Both are important. Yet having a concrete stand-in ally (who represents me) makes all the difference. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in me: shame, fear, the need for comfort, discouragement or wanting someone to share my joy. She’s there for me, and I’m there for her.

I also want you to know how I came to this point. It’s all about a book I just finished. More on that later.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 29 August 2018
Photo taken by ERFraser, 29 August 2018

12 Comments
August 28, 2018

Complicity and Rotten Apples

For decades I’ve listened to well-meaning friends and strangers telling me to get over it. They weren’t always that blunt, but I knew what they meant. Something like this…magnified through my own shame-based filters:

It’s time to move on with your life. We’re tired of hearing about the same old struggle. When are you going to get a life? Can’t you see how easy it is?!

I don’t fault friends or strangers who’ve urged me to move on. They want the best for me. All I have to do is walk away and don’t look back. The way many of them did.

Yet it seems I have nothing to walk toward except more of those heart-breaking, mind-bending head trips I’ve been on all my life.

Besides, it doesn’t matter what others think about me. What do I think about myself?

From grade school on, academic pursuits were my salvation. They kept me busy. They gave me something tangible to hang onto, plus a fleeting sense of self-worth even though I was running away or lost. I’ve known this for years. Nothing new here.

Recently a friend of many years suggested I’m still complicit with my father’s shaming and silencing of my voice. It still eats me up, from the inside out. Like a rotten apple, it tries to spoil the entire barrel.

She was correct. The shamed-based atmosphere in which I grew up now lives in me, passed on by my father. I have no doubt this is a generational gift of poison.

So I’m back to my childhood with this correction: I did not have a childhood. It was stolen from me before I knew what was happening. Instead, I became a substitute mother (to my three sisters), and grew up labeled as a ‘rebellious, stubborn’ eldest daughter who needed to have anger beaten out of her.

Furthermore, though I enjoyed my children as they grew up, joining in their childhood games didn’t give me the childhood I never had.

So…how do I find what I didn’t have, and how do I stop my internal voice that wants to shame me into silence?

Meet Baby Elouise! No, I don’t have a picture. I bought her over a week ago. Why? Because I’m determined to find and take back what was stolen from me.

My job is to love and listen to the little girl and adult woman I am despite all efforts, including my own, to silence or redirect me. Baby Elouise is helping me move in the right direction.

To be continued….

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 August 2018
Photo taken by Sherry Fraser Seckington, June 2016 – from their garden

17 Comments
August 27, 2018

Children at Longwood | Photos

On Saturday afternoon D and I helped celebrate family birthdays–four of them, within the space of one week! Our son (his big 50), twin granddaughters (18 years old, seniors in high school), and daughter-in-law (I’m not telling). Only their young son gets his own special day later this fall (15 years old).

All this family stuff got me a bit nostalgic. Hence these Longwood Garden photos taken in late April 2006. As I recall, this was our granddaughters’ first visit to Longwood. These were also the golden years when I was Queen Elouise and carried a sun parasol to mark my exalted status.

Looking at these photos reminds me of the tough work our son and daughter-in-law did to honor their children’s gifts and personalities. It’s never easy.

Yesterday I heard this on the radio: Having children doesn’t make a man a father. The statement clicked with me instantly. To it, I would add this: Being a ‘father’ or ‘mother’ of the church (as in padre, nun, priest, bishop, archbishop, pastor, youth minister) doesn’t confer or guarantee the ability to relate honorably to children or young people.

In the news last week: the Pennsylvania report about child abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests and their superiors. All of it covered up by people and a system that took care of its own. Plus, a few days later, reports about the Pope’s visit to Ireland and the legacy with which that nation’s population lives–as do many others.

I only wish it were possible to track similar behavior in Protestant churches here and elsewhere.

All this and more brought back my relationship with my father. He was an ordained Protestant clergyman, sporadically under the loose oversight of a governing body. I have more work to do.

For today, I commend men and women who work hard at parenting and foster-parenting. Especially when they don’t have many models or cheer leaders when things get more than a bit crazy.

Elouise♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 August 2018
Photos taken by DAFraser at Longwood Gardens, April 2006

11 Comments
August 22, 2018

What I’m FOR today

There’s so much going so wrong today that I decided to make a roll call of what I’m FOR on this remarkable day. Remarkable because I lived to witness it! Including, in my past, this river and dock-life when I was growing up. Plus at least the following other items for which I’m grateful:

  • this beautiful world in places touched by human tragedy
  • family members more distant in miles than ever, yet closer to my heart
  • churches standing up to tough challenges without capitulating to visions of grandeur, glory or isolation
  • real places that offered me refuge and peace when I needed solitude and reassurance that my life matters
  • our son who turns 50 today and reminds me why I risked everything with my parents on the eve of my 50th birthday
  • our daughter who lives on the other side of the USA yet is present to me in ways I was never present to my mother
  • the Carolina Wren, Chickadees and Cardinals singing and chirping, plus the small ground squirrel who sits on our back yard wall surveying his spacious kingdom
  • courageous women, men and children who speak out and work for a better world for all of us
  • my neighbors: Roman Catholic, Muslim, Jew, Protestant, or Nothing at All who greet me, invite me into conversation, groan and smile with me, and offer me tea
  • my dear husband who I sometimes thought might be the wrong man for me, yet has become precious beyond words
  • my local church with its challenging mix of cultures, ethnicity, political persuasions, youth and decrepitude
  • days of such unexpected delight that I don’t want them to end, yet can let go because I love my water-bed and the partner swimming in it with me
  • my body and the way it’s leading me deeper into and out of myself in these last days of summer 2018.

And of course, I’m for you, my wonderful readers–an invisible family loosely held together somewhere out there beyond our control.

Elouise♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 22 August 2018
Photo found at pinterest; Skidaway River, Isle of Hope near Savannah, GA

12 Comments
August 20, 2018

cool midsummer breeze

cool midsummer breeze
reminder of things to come
balm for my body

Out this morning for a walk with D. Taking advantage of an unexpected change in the air. Thinking about what’s going on here in the USA and abroad. Especially in churches and religious communities.

Recent revelations of clergy sex abuse of more than 1000 minors in Pennsylvania have sent our state and religious communities reeling. Not a moment too soon, yet decades too late for victims robbed of their childhood, adolescence, and sense of worth as children of God.

This time it’s about priests, bishops and the highest governing bodies of the Roman Catholic Church. It could easily have been about ordained leaders in conservative and liberal churches of all Christian denominations, including those that claim not to be denominations.

Abuse of power has no boundaries.

In the meantime, thousands upon thousands of children, young people and adults wonder when and how this madness will end. Everything in us cries out for freedom, though many of us have believed the lies of our perpetrators:

  • This is for your own good.
  • You made me do it.
  • God told me to do it.
  • I can’t help myself.
  • This will bring you closer to God.
  • No one will ever find out.
  • This is our little secret.
  • You should be ashamed of yourself.
  • I can help you with your career.
  • If you tell anyone, I’ll kill your brother.
    …..

Our lives are precious. We’re here for a purpose. What’s yours?

Today mine is to spotlight the reality of this rampant non-secret that’s eating away at families, communities, religious and secular institutions. To think these things don’t matter in public life is to live on another planet. These aren’t private matters. They are public and private relations disasters at every level.

No, I haven’t given up on following Jesus. I have, however, given up the notion that what happened to me in my youth and childhood should be over and done by now. It’s never over and done. Especially when there are millions of other victims out there. Overlooked, uncounted, discounted and left to their own devices. From the outside, some get along better than others. Yet deep inside, competing voices vie for everlasting attention.

I know, because I’m still doing battle, though not without hope. My purpose today is to tell the truth, without loss of hope and with the most powerful voice I have–my writing.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 August 2018
Photo found at kalynskitchen.com

9 Comments
August 11, 2018

Report from nowhere

This week I feel like an alien in my own body skin and clothes
Who is this woman? Why is she here? Do I know her anymore?
And what’s she trying to tell me? Does it even matter just now?

On top of which we have a tropical depression bearing down.
Waves of heat and humidity that don’t wave or move at all
They just sit there undulating like serpents in a pit of pain

I want to be my own free agent yet there’s always something
Something else needs attention or adjustment or acceptance
Tears well up in my eyes even when I try to smile at myself

You say all is well that ends well and yet nothing seems to end
It just spools out like pink or purple thread that won’t be contained
Knotted and tangled in a heap waiting for me to do something

Though I don’t know what it is and couldn’t care more than I do
For this body You gave me all white with blue eyes and straight
Hair that just sits there looking at me begging me to love it

This morning I wake with a dream the first I’ve had that makes
Halfway sense in this upside down world of retirement that
Feels nothing like the resurrection I need just now in my soul

In the dream a young family takes my words and music and spins
Them into beautiful visions I recognize yet don’t recognize as
Mine in the soulful music and art now accompanying our conversation

All this and more before I wake up not wanting to bid them farewell
And find myself in an airport café wondering where on earth I’m going
And why I didn’t bring any luggage and don’t want to leave just yet

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 August 2018

8 Comments
August 3, 2018

Dealing with Apathy | Dear Mr. Trump

On August 1 I wrote the post below. It’s in the form of a letter to Mr. Trump.

Then I decided not to hit Publish. Why? Because I began hearing a small, nagging voice: It won’t make any difference anyway. Why bother?

So I didn’t trash it. I kept it, and looked at it yesterday. Still no joy in posting this. So I didn’t.

Yet if I’m not clear and open about what I’m experiencing as a citizen of the USA, I’ll completely lose my nerve. The unthinkable will merge into the thinkable even when it isn’t. Or worse, I’ll just give up and fall into that bottomless pit called Apathy.

I’m not one to let things go. Especially when they’re important to me. So I’m posting this for my sake. It’s also my way of standing with others still figuring out their own journeys through this alien landscape, uncertain what’s coming next.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, my hope is not now and will never be built upon Mr. Trump’s performance–past, present or future. Or on the performance of anyone else in any administration, national, public or local.

____

Dear Mr. Trump,

I see you’re distressed yet again about Robert Mueller’s ongoing, legally-authorized investigation. Yet again, you’re asking the Attorney General of the USA to halt Mueller’s probe.

I also observe that you don’t enjoy being an onlooker who is unhappy with the way someone else is doing his or her job. Perhaps you’re also afraid of what this might mean for you or someone close to you somewhere down in the road.

In any case, I respectfully remind you that every day we wake up, every American–whether she or he voted for you or not–must live with the reality of your administration.

Please demonstrate your trust for the man you hand-picked to be Attorney General of the USA, and let our justice system do its work without interference from the top.

Respectfully,

Elouise Renich Fraser
Citizen of the USA

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 1 August 2018 and 3 August 2018

7 Comments
July 30, 2018

About Emily and Me

As of today, 30 July 2018, I’ve made interpretive comments on 44 of Emily Dickinson’s poems. My first, If your Nerve, deny you —, was posted on 5 February 2016. It’s high time Emily had a Category of her own. Scroll down to the bottom of every post and you’ll now find an Emily Dickinson category. Click on her name, and you’ll wake up in Emily country!

My relationship with Emily’s poetry happened almost by chance. D and I were visiting his sister and her husband. We stayed overnight. In the guest room was a small bookshelf filled with tempting titles. On the top shelf, lying there by itself, small and unobtrusive, was a Shambhala Pocket Classic titled “Emily Dickinson Poems.”

I picked it up, began reading, and couldn’t put it down. David’s sister kindly told me to take it home and keep it! I was, and still am thrilled.

Emily isn’t an easy read. Dipping into a poem here and there convinced me that, like the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, I would get to know Emily the hard way. That means reading silently and out loud, pondering and paying close attention to every word, every pause, every abrupt combination of words or structure.

No, I’m not an Emily scholar. But I am a better scholar of my life than I was before I began reading her enigmatic, sometimes off-putting poetry. It isn’t all pretty. Truth, when it follows life, isn’t all pretty.

And so Emily has become an interpreter of me. Not in place of, but not unlike the way Hebrew and Christian Scriptures interpret me. She helps me make my way from here to there without giving up hope or losing my strong voice.

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro endless summer days –
From inns of Molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” —
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun –

c. 1860

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 July 2018

2 Comments