Fans & Peeps

People, peeps, newly hatched chicks, or neon-yellow marshmallow abominations? Peeps come in all sorts of forms, or shapeshift from time to time.

What did I grow this summer? This summer, among other things, I helped to transmute a mother.

In “Lord of the Rings” (a classic battle-of-good-and-evil epic fantasy novel), which I’ve been re-reading, the wizard Gandalf the Grey, through great physical, emotional and psychological trials, emerges transformed into his wisest and purest culminating form, thereafter called Gandalf the White. (Whilst the pure-of-heart, mostly peace-loving underdogs eventually win through effective organizing, marshaling authentic community connections built over aeons by wide-ranging members of the team, and bumbling into an effective strategic resistance–sorry about the spoiler–the book definitely has problematic racist undercurrents, just sayin’.)

And caterpillars turn to mush inside their chrysalises, and completely re-form.

My mother went through two weeks of hospitalization–sometimes touch and go–to become a renewed, reincorporated, newly hatched version of herself. My sister and I, and my aunt (my mom’s sister), have had ringside seats to this process, sometimes merely observing, sometimes cheering, encouraging, other times coaching. It’s been a wild ride.

At its best, perhaps, this transformation has allowed Mom more acceptance of some of the endgame physical limitations of a life spent in a relatively inactive lifestyle (though she herself cannot see and would not admit that at least some of these consequences have come from her own choices.) At its worst, she, with her incredible creativity and mind mostly intact, is being strong-armed by those in her immediate environment into agreeing to be pressed into an ill-fitting mold of our society’s definition of “old person,” complete with inane cooked-up “activities,” and being addressed with sing-song baby talk. Through it all, we cajole from the bleachers, encouraging her coping strategies for retaining as much of herself as she can, living in this strange new world into which she incorporates every day.

One thing I learned at college that enriched my perspective about myself and others was the Johari Window…as I undertstand it, that every person has: (1) things that both they see/know about themselves and others can see about them, too; (2) things that are true about and they know about themselves but others cannot see; (3) things about themselves that they themselves cannot perceive, but others clearly can; and (4) things that are there within them but are hidden from everyone, and perhaps are unknowable.

It’s a bit of a blunt instrument, as there may be gradations in each category, or blends of varying amounts from several on any given factor, but it gives form or armature to a basic structure and useful idea: that we cannot perceive accurately and completely everything important about ourselves, nor about others, some of which is completely unknowable. It’s a recipe for humility; a sort of Zen invitation to becoming comfortable with uncertainty; toning down the rhetoric; observing more carefully, listening more.

In no circumstance has the stark expression of the Johari Window been more apparent to me than in this time period with Mom. Though difficult for her, in certain ways it’s been a gift to her, and also for me.

In my own life, I’ve grown a small raised-bed vegetable garden, harvested a bumper crop of tart pie cherries from a couple of shrub-cherries I planted a few years ago, indirectly manifested a partially fixed kitchen (which currently remains stalled in the midst of minor modifications), plumbed some depths in a long-overdue healing process while keeping the plates of my life spinning (sometimes just barely), gaining a bit more care toward myself in the process, and steadily looked for and foraged courage where I’ve been able to find it for whatever my next step(s) will be.