Finally, I have that baby in my continuing story at No Longer Quivering: Hard Day's Night.

I was responding today to a young woman who grew up in a Quiverfull family. She was bemoaning the state of her divorced family with her younger siblings visiting their dad (her stepdad who was highly critical of her all of her life) and how alone she was at Christmas. This brought to mind a book about family and solo rituals and traditions that I used heavily when my children were still at home. We went through a lot of changes, from married to single-parent household, from Hare Krishna to pagan, and so on.

Here is what I posted on the forum:

As a young mom I bought this book years ago (still available used) called Rituals For Our Times by Evan Imber-Black and Janine Roberts. The subtitle is Celebrating, Healing and Changing Our Lives and Our Relationships. I can't recommend this book enough for people blending traditions from families or going through changes in their lives. I've read it many times and used the very sensible advice to create or change my own family traditions over the years. It's enabled me to be flexible and really think about the meaning and purpose behind the rituals. The examples in the book are very relevant to our multi-cultural society. There are even some good rituals for those who are divorced or blending new families together and advice on how to handle a death in the family as it affects gatherings.

I cannot recommend this book enough. These authors really thought of everything.

For a witchy book on rituals (that includes life transitions as well) you might check out Dancing Up the Moon: A Woman's Guide to Creating Traditions That Bring Sacredness to Daily Life by Robin Heerens Lysne.

I wrote the following review on Amazon:

This book gave me lots of ideas for creating personal rituals as well as rituals for family and friends. Lysne gives many examples of rituals for passages that our culture doesn't have a ritual for, guidance on how to create rituals, examples of ritual elements, and so on. I've referred to it many times over the years and loaned it out to people going through experiences that they wished to create a ritual for. I've never seen another book cover ritual for miscarriage and abortion or help couples ending their relationship celebrate the positive aspects even as they sever the ties that bound them. Ritual plays a vital role in our lives and to be given the tools to shape rituals that meet our needs is an incredible gift. I will be forever grateful to Ms. Lysne for writing this guide.

We always had Christmas dinner on Christmas eve. Years later I met a woman from Germany who described her family traditions, common in her region. The tree wasn't brought in until just before Christmas eve and the adults would decorate it in secret. Because it was fresh and still damp outside and had retained moisture internally, they would put candles on it, real candles, and it wouldn't burn down the tree or the house. Then the children were ushered in and it was like a scene from a magic fairy land with the candles and the beautiful branches and presents.

It made me realize that it was probably the influence of the Elschlager side of our family that caused us to always celebrate on Christmas Eve. We didn't have a cool, live tree like that. We had the silver tree with the color wheel, though I remember being fascinated by the colors moving over the tree. At home we had the same kind of thing except Mom had pink bulbs instead of the red ones at Grandma's. I guess with allergies a natural tree wouldn't have worked well for us.

Our meal invariably had Grandma's home-made egg noodles in turkey broth, turkey, stuffing, a baked sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I think some one broke out cranberry from a can but I never liked it. I think other vegetables made an appearance. We didn't have the green bean casserole everyone talks about but Grandma knew I liked green beans, and carrots, so some of these would make their way into these dinners some years. Sometimes Aunt Gin would bring a salad when she was dieting. Oh and there would be cookies and fudge and pies. Grandma could produce enormous amounts of food over a couple of days for this. It used to be my cousins (the ones who aren't speaking to me) and their mom and dad (Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Wayne) would be there, along with Great Grandma (Pearl Paris Elschlager) after Great Grandpa died. (His death put quite a damper on Christmas because he died Christmas day, 1965.) Once in awhile if they were in the area Uncle George and Aunt Pauline would come with their son David. They lived in California most of the time I was growing up.

After dinner we would all be groaning and unbuttoning our top button on our pants or loosening our belts, LOL.

The latest installment in my story for the No Longer Quivering blog has been posted.

When The Levee Breaks covers my late pregnancy, homeless and sleeping in a friend's cement-floored, unheated laundry room. I have added some detail into the story so even if you read an earlier version you will find some new material.

I don't really celebrate Thanksgiving but I get invited to gatherings of family and I go because I love them. Personally it just makes me think of all the injustices our ancestors perpetrated on the people who shared food with them and welcomed their trade. I also can't really enjoy a holiday that is so identified with animal slaughter we call it "Turkey Day."

However, this particular Thanksgiving we are going to get to see my grandsons, who were living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and are now much closer to us while they stay with their dad.

So my heart is singing today for my beloved grandsons.

I hope you all are having a peaceful and love-filled day. Good food can't hurt either (in moderation).

Memoir-writing has become a fascinating exercise for me that is bringing people into my life I never thought I would hear from. I've been contacted by ex-wives and friends and family members of those I've written about. At least one person vigorously disputed my characterization of them from our days in the temple and argued that they weren't there at the same time. Fortunately I kept letters I wrote during that time period clearly placing me there while they were. I personally didn't think I said much that was truly negative about them but we don't all perceive things in the same manner. In the end I agreed to change her name.

Most of the time it has been beneficial that I've used real names. My main policy for now is to use real names except where I feel a victim of abuse or mistreatment needs to have their privacy protected or someone has asked me to. There are certain cases where I will refuse to use a pseudonym because I feel someone needs to be accountable for their behavior. The primary person in that case is Mahasraya, also known as Michael John Cody. The fortunate outcome of using his name is that someone from his past has come forward to provide valuable information from before I met him myself.

How Not to Deal With a Student's Crush

With the power of Google, others have stumbled upon my memoir entries. In particular, lately friends of my 8th grade science teacher, let's call him F.K., have been commenting about how unfair I am to him. What they don't know is that an associate of his first family also contacted me last year and told me things about his abusive treatment of his first wife and children that shocked me deeply and changed my whole outlook on him. This was fortuitous because it provided some closure for me and I no longer care to have an answer to my questions about what I meant to him when we spent such enormous amounts of time together when I was 13/14 (and he was 29/30) or later when we reconnected as adults and saw each other and exchanged letters and phone calls. If he wants to call it platonic, I don't care. I still think that for a teacher to spend so much time on a daily basis with a student who obviously has a crush on him is crossing a boundary that is unhealthy for the student--especially while willfully ignoring the student's feelings. It is a form of subtle encouragement at best and manipulation at worse, and I suspect the real reason is to feed the ego of the teacher. I want to remind people that teachers have the power in such interactions and the responsibility to form clear boundaries. When dealing with a teen from a troubled background (absent father, suicidally depressed mother) it becomes even more important to do so.

Someone with an IP address from F.K.'s current place of employment recently posted a rather nasty comment calling me delusional and saying that the only relationship was in my mind. So let's review the actual facts and I'll let readers be the judge about how appropriately the teacher behaved. Keep in mind that he's a smart man who couldn't possibly miss what half the school body knew: that I was in the thrall of a major crush, my first big one.

*Every day after school he allowed me to hang out with him in the science lab. Sometimes other students talked with us but most often they were doing their own thing at another table (we were geeks one and all) while F.K. and I discussed philosophy and world religions or played chess, made jokes, teased each other and generally enjoyed our conversation. By the time we left there were few cars left in the parking lot. School let out at 3 and I remember at times it was nearly 5 when we left.

*Every morning I would hang out by the door of his homeroom, across the hall from mine, and we'd chat until the bell rang. I remember one day he was joking that he had an invisible doberman named Shadow with him and this became a running joke of ours. Yes, silly--I'm not saying we discussed rocket science!

*We played chess throughout the day by telling each other the moves as we passed in the hall. I kept a magnetic board with me and used masking tape to keep track of our moves.

*Several times he drove me home in his little sports car.

*The following summer (1973) I had been crash dieting because he'd made comments about how I should lose weight. I walked a lot that summer and walked over to his home across the Mississippi River in Hamilton. (I had the address from the school paper.) When I showed up I was not sent away or told that it was not appropriate to just drop by. I ended up spending the day and was given a choice whether to accompany him and his children on an errand or hang out with his wife. I chose to stay with her and chatted all day, then had dinner with them. I now see this as a poor choice on his part. My mom should have been called to come and get me and I should have been told not to visit again.

*The next school year ('73-'74) I continued to drop by the science lab and we continued chatting as before. There were a few months that I couldn't do so because I was living in the "county home" after asking to be removed from my home. I was required to go right there on the bus.

*The following year ('74-'75) I dropped by a couple of times but I was attending high school at that point. Later I dropped out and joined the Hare Krishna movement to get away from home.

*I dropped by school in the spring of 1976 when I was once again brought home by my mother and we caught up on events in our lives.

*Spring 1978: I was visiting my father in Hamilton with my 4 month old son and when it was time to leave I gave F.K. a call to let him know I was in town. He offered to come and pick me up for a visit and then drop me off at my Aunt's house in Keokuk. We chatted at his home for a bit and had a snack. His kids were present but not his wife, I believe she was at work that day. He drove me over the bridge to Keokuk and was curious about my husband. I told him I had a picture at my Aunt's and he came inside briefly to see it, then left.

We lost touch for awhile because I was moving and he also moved away.

*Summer 1985 I decided to try to locate him after hearing he'd left town, so I got his address from the other science teacher he worked with, Mr. W. (Aside: I was saddened to hear recently that Mr. W has Parkinson's disease.) I wrote to F.K. and he replied right away. We also spoke on the phone. I was getting ready to take the train out to the West Coast where we were relocating. He offered to meet up with me at the Salt Lake City train station with his young child and fiance'. We had about half an hour before the train would leave again. At the end of that visit he gave me a hug (this was the only real physical contact that ever took place, just for the record, it was never physical whatever it was) and I said "will you write?" and he said "you know I will."

*During the remainder of 1985 and to the end of 1986 we corresponded. He wrote over 3500 words altogether. We spoke on the phone several times, most often when his wife was at school in the evening. I noticed that he was giving his students tests while he wrote a couple of the letters. I don't know how aware his wife was of his end of the correspondence. I have the letters on file.

At some point I was weary of the ambiguity. I will not pretend that I was not behaving badly when I ignored the well being of his wife and finally asked for some clarity on just what he was feeling towards me--was it ever sexual or romantic, I asked? This was his reply:

The Question, I have had a good deal of mental gymnastics, self entertainment, puzzlement, and judgmental debates trying to come up with an answer. Here I am, the man known as The Shadow of the Owl, and someone has asked me to stand still and have my picture taken! Have you no sense of tradition? Image? The mystical? I mean I was thinking of going back to my tribe and having my name changed to The Ghost of the Owl, or The Shadow of the Ghost Owl, in order to better capture the essence of my Mittique (?) image, my self image as I move along the forested mountain trail as swiftly and as smoothly as the line 1/x [asympteticely?] approaches zero and as quietly as the ever lengthening shadows stretch through the forest in the late afternoon. DON’T YOU JUST LOVE IT WHEN I TALK THAT WAY? Did you ever play chess? Did we ever play chess, hell, I can’t remember stuff like that, but I do remember that chess teaches, if nothing else, that the import is not the move itself but rather how it affects or will affects what is to follow. You follow?

OK, clear as mud. He should have just written at that point and said he couldn't correspond with me anymore, or even that he couldn't unless I respected his marriage and kept it on a platonic level.

His wife found my flirtatious response and the next time I called, he picked up and was trying to tell me it was a bad time to talk because his in laws were there for dinner. I was about to get off the line when his wife picked up an extension and told me off and of course never to call again--for which I certainly can't blame her. Of course he could have told me never to call or write again himself when he picked up the phone, but I guess his in laws were in the same room and that might have been awkward. So...it ended abruptly and without any way to process what it all meant. That was hard for me to deal with after a childhood of disappearing fathers and uncles.

On the bright side I am finally "over" the whole thing in terms of my feelings for him. However my writing stands because I think this is an important issue for anyone who teaches to be aware of and because it had consequences for me later in my life--in a story I haven't told yet.

What should he have done back in 1972-4? Told me not to come by after school unless I had a specific question about class material. Told me not to hang out before homeroom because he was checking in his students and I had my own homeroom to attend. Not played chess with me. Not joked around with me. Not driven me home. Not allowed me to show up at his house with no consequence. If I persisted in trying to do any of the above, he should have enlisted the resources at his disposal--guidance counselors, the principal's office, note to my mother, parent-teacher conference, and so on. If he was concerned because I was a student from a dysfunctional family, again he should have enlisted the counselor to help him find a way to set a clear boundary with me while having them provide the support I needed. He was the one in power and there were many options. But spending enormous amounts of time with me, knowing that I had this crush, only poured gasoline on the fire. Ignoring what I felt just made me feel discounted and disrespected and injured my self esteem. I began to feel like I didn't matter, really, and I yearned for some kind of validation from him that I was not getting anywhere in my life at that time. It really set the stage for some unhealthy baggage at a crucial and impressionable point in my development.

I will grant that at age 29-30 etc he perhaps hadn't had a lot of practice dealing with student crushes. I'm sure there's a learning curve. But it would be nice if he at least once had acknowledged that he didn't behave properly and that it had negative consequences for me, rather than writing--or having a "friend" write--a nasty and dismissive comment putting it all off on me as my delusion.

The following passage is from a college professor talking about student crushes:

For most of us (let's hope) our students don't see us when we're sick, whiny, tired. Like actors on a stage, we (presumably) perform at our best most of the time, concealing the reality of our frailties and our inadequacies from those whom we are teaching. For many of us in academia who were "geeks" and "nerds" in our own younger years, the sense of power and satisfaction we can derive from holding a class spellbound is tremendous -- and very, very seductive. And as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong in deriving real pleasure from teaching well and knowing you're admired and heard.

But there is no greater sin in our profession than to use an individual student's crush in order to gain validation outside the classroom. Given that we've established that some crushes tend to be more sexual and others more intellectual, it's understandable that some profs may feel a tremendous curiosity about what exactly it is that a student who appears to be "crushing" really wants. Time and again, I've seen professors make the dangerous mistake of subtly encouraging a crush -- not because they intend to have an actual affair with a student, but because they are hungry for more and more validation. They may hope to entice the student into sharing more about his or her feelings, all for the satisfaction of feeling more powerful and desirable.

Students don't seem to get crushes on me as often as they used to. Some of this is because I am older, and some of it is no doubt due to the reality that my boundaries are much better than they were a decade ago. When I was a novice teacher, I did consciously encourage student crushes because they felt so damned good! I loved the little notes and the "googly" eyes I would get -- and I found myself enjoying the attention way too much. It was several years into my career before I became aware of just how manipulative and unprofessional I was being; I am happy to say that I have radically changed how I interact with students.

A follow up on student crushes: what not to do.

Previous post about F.K.

F.K. can take solace in one thing: his name is not Mahasraya!

My latest guest blog entry, entitled What It's Like To Sing The Blues, has been posted on No Longer Quivering.

I have a new guest blog post up at No Longer Quivering:

From Generation to Generation.

The latest installment of my story for No Longer Quivering had been posted and is entitled "I Will Lay Me Down." This covers half a year in the early days of my marriage to Mahasraya (Michael Cody).

I wrote this a few years after I left my ex husband.


I Have Won

Crashing against the wall
World spinning crazily
Your voice from a distance
Screaming in fury
Self righteous condemnation

Again the blows come
They seem to explode inside my head
I don't see your fist
in its journey towards my body.

In defeat I huddle
Arms over my head, shielding in vain
Knees drawn up to chest
I believe this is the end.

Finally you finish
Your anger and frustration relieved.
Surprised to be alive
I remain where I am, in shock.

Slowly reason returns.
I try to pull myself together
Clutching the shreds of sanity--
Determined to survive.

In bitterness I hear the pleas
To forgive you one more time.
Ignore the empty promises
"It'll never happen again."

I know better than that
I've heard it all before.
I've also heard the denial
In between the beatings.

I want you to understand:
Violence has no excuse.
There is no rationale.
No end justifies that means.

You're wrong about me.
I can make it without you.
Someone else could love me,
And I can love myself.

Now I'm on my own.
Life is peaceful and serene.
No fear intrudes on my home,
Or in the lives of my children.
I have won, after all.

Part 7 of my guest series for No Longer Quivering is entitled I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You). In this installment my mom takes me back to Keokuk but invites the man I've just started to date, Mike, to join us. To my surprise he said yes.

Previous installments can be found under the heading Patriarchy Across Cultures.

I previously wrote a longer version of the time with Mike in Keokuk, which can be found here.

Here's another installment in my guest blog series at No Longer Quivering.

Patriarchy Across Cultures: Magic Man.

No Longer Quivering has its own domain now: nolongerquivering.com.

was National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness week. However, I had so many migraines I couldn't write a lengthy post about it like I wanted. There's irony for you.

http://invisibleillnessweek.com/

September is also Pain Awareness Month.

Still in a very bad migraine phase (like every day for a couple of weeks now) so that's why you're not hearing from me as much.

New URL:

Patriarchy Across Cultures. The move is still in progress so my latest post wasn't up yet, it appeared this morning. NLQ now has its own domain name: nolongerquivering.com.

Sing hey! For the bath at close of day That washes the weary mud away! A loon is he that will not sing: O! Water Hot is a noble thing! --Lord of the Rings, one of Bilbo's favorite bath songs

My latest guest post for the No Longer Quivering blog has been posted. It is entitled Over The Rainbow.

For those of you who are following the link from No Longer Quivering and are curious about other biographical entries, here they are. I'm not putting all my memoir writing online for obvious reasons. These are all rough drafts anyway and may bear little resemblance to the final product. :)

Pre-Hare Krishna involvement:

Scents From My Childhood
F. Komatar

(I have more of the above offline.)

Guest blog posts for No Longer Quivering:

Patriarchy Across cultures

My first marriage to Mahasraya (so far, still have more to write):

Meeting

Falling In Love

I've connected the above posts with the ones below via the Patriarchy series at NLQ.

Pregnant In a Laundry Room

Childbirth Led To More Violence

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I Can't Live Without You!

Separation

The Odyssey Part 1

The Odyssey Part 2

Adventures In Cultivation:Odyssey Part 2 interlude

Odyssey Part 3

Two Days In The Life, Odyssey Part 3 interlude

After The Odyssey

Friends Locked: From the Other Woman (letter)

Mother of Mercy (stand alone piece)

These next two were some of the earliest writings I did regarding my abusive marriage and I reprinted them in my online magazine, Uppity Women. I just want to add that Maxine, mentioned in the second piece, passed away in 2001 and she is sorely missed.

Why Don't You Just Leave That Jerk? (essay published in 1994 La Gazette in Santa Cruz)

So You Left The Jerk. Now What? (follow up essay also published 1994)

Other biographical entries (just to help me keep track):

Joy In Unlikely Places: My son's head injury

Spanish Guy (Just before I got together with Mahasraya)

Comfort From Above (also connected to son's head injury)

I'm Alive (2001 heart surgery from paper diary)

Trials of the Heart (Salon piece)

Almost: Meeting Dave (my current husband)

Appointment With Death

Letter From A Christian

Bonnie and Virginia (my mom and her sister)

Here's my post about something my Grandma said on my answering machine after my mom and aunt passed away, with a link to the voice recording of that message: Terilyn, you only have one to hate now--me. Your Aunt Virginia was buried yesterday-beautiful...funeral. Your mother was buried Thurs...Wednesday. And Grandpa goes in for "prostrate" cancer next week so you probably won't have him anymore so I'll be the only one for you to hate.

Damn you! :)

By putting on the brave front, not talking about how we feel, delaying taking our pain meds and so on, we're doing the equivalent of trying to "pass."

I remember Whoopi Goldberg's routine about the little black girl with the "long luxurious blond hair" that had tried to sit in bleach to turn her skin white. I thought it was one of the saddest things I'd ever heard, next to my friend Karen's daughter not wanting to go to school when she was little because she didn't want to get assassinated like Martin Luther King.

You're right, I find myself wanting social acceptance from my healthy friends and not wanting to be such a drag that they avoid me. But some of them are avoiding me anyway so my efforts at minimizing and hoping for a cure and being good haven't earned me much. Most of the time I think I ought to be able to endure pain better as if I could earn some prize for doing so.

Thanks for the reminder! I'm sure just being myself will take less energy than aiming for some kind of saintly, silently suffering persona that bears no resemblance to me. Goddess knows energy is in short supply these days.

My new post at No Longer Quivering is entitled All Things Must Pass.

This was a hard one to write since it brought back a lot of unpleasant memories.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have. I'll be away today but back tomorrow.

There is a new installment of my series at No Longer Quivering about my time in the Hare Krishna Movement and how it connects with the lifestyle of women in Quiverfull groups or other fundamentalist traditions. It's entitled Summer of Transcendental Love.

Previous installments can be found here and here.

There will be future installments; I won't leave the readers hanging, I promise.