Lenten Liberation

The seals are barking and morning is a long ways off. They started about the same time the cover band next door stopped playing Jimi Hendrix ‘Changes” followed by Average White Band’s “Play that Funky Music White Boy”
Throw back weekend. I’m up willing myself not to vomit. Too little sleep from an early early flight. Too much rich food.  Full glass of wine that I am very much not use to.

Monday, previous, I called and told our fearless leader and hostess I absolutely could not come. I needed to spend the weekend scrambling, panicking, and being desperate, with lots of prayer language and theological explanations about said, s,p, & d’ing.

“You’re coming. I need your stories.” That’s what she said. Who EVER needs my stories? My stories are annoying to most people, tedious to others. If you are in any kind of unacknowledged or recent pain or loss, my stories are agony. My life is a Greek tragedy with music.

Somehow God seemed in it. Later the next day, my traveling companion called to say the airline tickets she had purchased had been upgraded to first class, without any cost. Hmmm. What is God doing? I need to be striving this weekend and God seems to be sending me on holiday.

What was the destination? A boutique inn owned by our hostess with the mostest in Morro Bay California. The coast. Sunshine predicted. How on earth am I going to relax and enjoy this when I have so much worrying and strategizing to do about how to keep my life from imploding….again?

The ‘why’ of the trip? To see and visit with my sisters, alumnae sisters. There were fifteen of us to begin with. Jane died prematurely about ten years ago. Two of us couldn’t make it because of prior travel arrangements. So, there were twelve.

All of us lived on the third floor of Olney Hall at Mills College for Women. The oldest of us entered in 1969. The youngest of us graduated in 1976.

During that time zone, there were two ways to be a feminist, a women’s libber. You could burn your bra which was basically a fashion statement, or you could put on a floppy bow, put your kids in daycare and go compete in the world white men, y chromosomes, had created.

Us twelve? Because we went to Mills where we were defined by our relationships with other women, not competing with men, because we spent our days exercising our smarts in classrooms where nobody ever shut us up, where we dominated the conversations, we experienced a different kind of liberation. We became free to be ourselves. Just like Marlo Thomas said we could.

None of us has had easy lives and we don’t disguise our stories. But a couple of my sisters hadn’t heard the latest chapter of mine. The next day at Saturday Lunch, outside in the sun by the San Louis Obispo River, they asked to hear it. I started to talk, and suddenly the sister sitting beside me got up and went down to the end of the table. She was crying. I was so upset that I had upset her.

A year ago she buried her husband and when I tell the whole story of the awful things I have experienced from the worst behavior of mankind possible in the last two decades it is very upsetting to people who have experienced severe losses. I’m very careful and I was terribly conflicted about continuing. I started to cry. I thought I was hurting her. My other two sisters waved it off and said don’t worry about her, please continue.

I’m going to skip to the end of the story and then I’m going to tell you what happened.

We finished lunch; I finished the end of my narrative. We all had dessert and sang Happy Birthday to one of the sisters. Some of us drove up the coast past San Simeon to see the elephant seals. Laughter began again. Raucous fun continued. Rejoicing, regaling and renewing of deep deep friendship happened.

Sunday evening at the airport, waiting to board for our return trip, which had also been upgraded to first class, I asked for verification I had hurt my sister in the telling. I was reassured again. No, she was upset that anyone would ever be mean to you or betray you. She was moved to tears by what you have endured.

I wrote and told her I had misunderstood. She wrote back and said, --roughly-- “ I asked God what I could do to take away this pain you had experienced and God said you can prayer for her. I am with her the same way I was with you and I can do EVERYTHING”

Vashon is a great place in many ways. It has one fault. It demonizes people sometimes. And like everywhere in the world, there are people who lie and cheat and steal who sometimes try to pin it on other people. I left a demonized pincushion nearly completely broken apart. I returned home strong, smiling, hopeful, singing, literally, the best I’ve ever sung in my life.

God always breaks through. God always liberates. I know down to my toes, and have for decades, that God loves me. That’s why I cry, dust myself off and get up again and walk. Well…that and twelve sisters and a college that made strong women stronger. I started praying for my enemies. I want them to know God  loves them too.

Love,
Deborah…. And Happy Easter, Eastern and Western…and Happy Passover.