Category Archives: Uncategorized

April 22, 2014 · 4:17 pm

My Private War on Smoking

Mom in her college years

Mom in her college years

[Author’s note: Just after I published this, Harvard Business Review published an online article that explored why major tobacco brands are looking at e-cigarettes (“vaping”) as an opportunity. It included this quote about the potential tradeoff between risks and benefits, “…how many nicotine addicts is it worth the risk of creating to have one tobacco smoker quit?”]

[This just posted as NY Times Breaking News: the FDA will propose sweeping new rules for e-cigarettes on April 24.]

My college-aged son smokes cigarettes. So do most of his friends. Not all the time, but socially. And it’s killing me.

In 1964, the Surgeon General released its definitive report about the health effects of smoking.

The discussion wasn’t new. The cigarette companies had regularly trotted out doctors who would testify before Congress that smoking itself was benign; one of those doctors, a prominent cancer surgeon from Los Angeles, spoke in opposition to restrictions. He died a few years later, of lung cancer. So did his wife. I know because their daughter was a colleague of mine. A fellow smoker, she died of lung cancer at age 46.

I was six when the Surgeon General’s report made it official: smoking kills. Based on a review of more than 7,000 scientific articles, the report was expected to be a bombshell, so much so that the report was released on a Sunday to avoid upsetting the stock market.

At home, my private war began. At that age, I’m sure my initial attacks on my mother’s smoking habit were verbal.

By fourth grade, I had advanced to a write-in campaign:

Dearest mother,

This letter may be based on your life or death. Mother if you don’t stop I’ll kill myself. If you die my spirit and soul will die. If you have to die I don’t want you to die in agony.

Dean saw a film with a guy in sheer agony, he had lung cancer.

Love truly,

Betsy

P.S. I love you

Then I turned to marketing, creating this “ad” with a red felt pen:

Smoking may cause…

Discoloration of your face

Cancer

Destroy your lips

Destroy your fingers

Burn your taste buds

+ burn cili’s off.

NO SMOKING!

Not at 2507 Helena Lane

Or any place ELSE FOR Mrs. H.S. Campbell

My efforts failed.

After my Mom was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in 1999, she weaved in and out of lucidity. On an afternoon of relative clarity, she asked me, “Do I have lung cancer?”

Yes, I answered. She was quiet. Then she said, “I wish I had stopped.” Much later she told me, “Tell others not to start smoking.”

She tried to stop, she really did. In her college years, smoking was just something she did socially. Everyone did. Decades later, smoking was still in vogue. In the photos of Mom and Dad at formal Marine Corps’ events, everyone smoked. Somewhere along the line, her social habit became an addiction.

And that’s what I’m afraid of. Again. When I see my son or his friends smoke, it all comes back to me: the look on my mother’s face as she struggled for breath. Her growing pallor as oxygen was depleted in her bloodstream.

I begged my Mom to stop but she liked the way smoking felt. Or maybe by then the addiction was too well established. Maybe she couldn’t stop.

Twenty-somethings aren’t great at imagining a time when toxic habits collect.

Unfortunately, I am. I’ve already seen it.

 

 

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April 20, 2014 · 9:13 am

My Mother’s Easter

Dean's christening, with Bruce

Dean’s christening, with Bruce

My Mom loved Easter, and not just for the stylish hats, spectator shoes and forsythia blossoms that made their spring appearance. It was truly a time of resurrection, when God made good on his promise to save the world.

In 1954, Easter fell on April 18 – almost as late in the season as this year’s. Six months earlier, Mom and Dad had lost their baby, their little girl Midge, to leukemia. Diagnosed at one year old, it had been brutal to watch Midge’s final remission end after more than two years of experimental treatments. Midge was not yet four.

When Easter arrived the following spring, Mom was big with child, and alone. The Marine Corps had delayed Dad’s solo posting to Japan as long as possible, but he was overseas as Mom faced the imminent birth of their fourth child.

It could have been a terrible time. In fact, one of the Naval medical professionals had advised Mom to abort the pregnancy, saying it would be too much for her psychologically given Midge’s terminal illness. I’d like to have seen the look Mom gave that doctor or heard her response. Never one to hold back, I am certain she gave him — and it was almost certainly a him — what for.

I imagine Mom looking out the window at the yellow forsythia, watching the earth renew itself, her hand resting on her large belly. After three pregnancies, I’m sure she knew her time was near.

Two days later, on April 20, she welcomed my brother Dean into the world. Dad said later, “It was as if the sun came out.”

Happy birthday, Dean. I know Mom is thinking of you today, and so am I.

Mom, Nana and I with Easter hats, by the forsythia, in 1961

Mom, Nana and me: with Easter hats, by the forsythia, in 1961

 

 

 

 

 

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March 24, 2014 · 7:07 am

How Dad Survived

Dad holding Midge's hand 1953

Dad holding Midge’s hand 1953

I have often wondered how my father survived a dysfunctional family, the horrors of the war, the loss of his nearly four-year-old daughter to leukemia, the sudden end of his career for medical reasons, and finally the loss of his wife after 58 years of marriage. Any one of those experiences would have damaged most people.

But Dad wasn’t most people. Perhaps my vision is clouded as his youngest, his only surviving daughter and, for seven years, his caregiver. Maybe the magnetic attraction I feel to ponder his bigger-than-life story is a father-daughter thing. Whatever it is, I’ll take it. Dad has been gone for 14 months and I still learn from him every day.

I was there when Mom died, at the moment her heart finally gave out at the end of a three-and-a-half month struggle with late stage lung cancer. He was steadfast at her bedside, holding and stroking her hand, looking in to her eyes and telling her he loved her and would see her again. She died connected to him.

In the hours and days after that loss, Dad felt that severance as an open wound. He did not know how he would survive it. We all knew the survival statistics for men who suffer the loss of a life-long mate.

As he reflected out loud about their life together, he asked, “How can I live without her?” Over time, within weeks, that rhetorical question subtly changed. It became, “How can I live without her?” And then, “How will I live without her?”

In his questions are clues to Dad’s survival strategy.

With the first question, he assessed brutal reality. Can I survive this? Do I want to? Can I imagine life without Eileen?

Slowly, the “how” came into his inner dialogue. Dad the planner began to emerge. He began to focus on what lay ahead even if it was as simple as assembling the groceries for the four meals he said he knew how to make. He was a realist, and not an escapist. He began to imagine making it, in a world without Mom, day by day. His image of himself was eminently practical: a guy who would rise around seven, make coffee, feed the dog, read the paper, prepare some oatmeal, do some chores, go for a walk, have lunch, take a nap, read a book, make dinner and retire at ten after a few TV shows. Thrown in there somewhere was the endless maintenance of his collection of hunting guns, and perhaps a few calls to line up skeet shooting or fishing junkets with one of his sons or his friend, Bob.

After the massive heart attack that forced his retirement from the Marine Corps, I imagine that Dad’s view of his future self changed radically. He was in his mid-40s, a guy being watched for higher command, a Colonel with all the right prior postings. That guiding occupational dream drove him.

After finding himself out on the curb, his motivation changed. Everything, everything in him aimed at the seemingly insurmountable task of recreating a professional career that could support his wife and four children, none of whom had yet completed college.

“Be clear about your objective” was more than a military tenet. To Dad, it was a commandment. After keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table, his number one goal to secure our education.

Pursuing his objective left little time for leisure. What time he had went to connecting with the outdoors, a source of succor throughout his life. Wading the banks of a promising trout stream or crunching through the stubble of a shorn, frozen wheat field in search of pheasants was his idea of a vacation. Whenever possible, he would share that transporting experience with his children.

Although his dream had been sacrificed, Dad never expressed bitterness. Mom wasn’t above assuming a little high dudgeon about what would have happened if Dad had been able to continue his career, but her comments were never a complaint or rebuke. Dad could easily have looked at his abrupt departure from the Marines as a failure, but I never sensed such a deflation in his self-esteem. A door closed, another had to open. Had to, to educate his children. His sense of self worth was tied up in taking care of us, not stroking his own ego.

A recent Scientific American Mind article described the work of psychologist Shalom H. Schwartz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which sought to identify universal values that might guide one’s life. Constructing them as a compass:

At the north is a universalistic orientation, which includes tolerance… and self-directed thought. To the east are hedonism… and personal achievement in the eyes of others…..Moving southeast, one can find dominance…. To the south is a believe in the importance of security and safety…., and to the west are humility and caring….  

A related study by Ravenna M. Helson, Ph.D., of UC Berkeley divided women into four groups over the course of their lives: seekers, conservers, achievers and “depleteds.” “Conservers valued tradition, family, security and hard work (the south of the compass). The achievers wanted both personal growth and the ability to excel at what they did (covering an area along Schwartz’s compass from the north to the east),” Scientific American Mind reported.

Those who identified as “conservers” were the most content.

Dad knew who he was, even as he worked through jarring crises. He knew what he wanted, even as his goals changed. He did not waste time longing for things outside of his practical reach. And he knew what he wanted to leave behind.

He never talked about his legacy, but if he had, it would have been for the four of us to have satisfying lives with children or people we love, acting with integrity and ready make a difference – however small – in the lives of those around us. Nothing grandiose. Nothing impractical. Just an immutable sense of self in service to others.

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March 21, 2014 · 9:46 am

Not Dead Yet

Father of the bride

Father of the bride

In a play presented by Davis-based Barnyard Theater two years ago, Psyche, the Greek goddess of the soul, continually asks the troubled protagonist, “Are you not dead yet?”

I’m at a stage in life where I’m supposed to be settled. My marriage is stable, I’m successful professionally, my kids are mostly launched, and I helped both parents at the end of their lives. The time ahead of me is likely shorter than the time behind me. Time to sit back and relax, right?

If Dad’s longevity is any indication, I could have forty or more years left. And I am not willing to spend it as excess population.

Yesterday I accepted an offer into admission at Bennington’s Master’s in Fine Arts program, where I will spend the next two years working hard to become a better writer. I hope to do justice to the story I have to tell about my relationship with my father, from the tense days of my childhood and adolescence through the reflective last years of our life together.

Once upon a time, I waited to pursue and complete a Master’s Degree in Business Administration until I knew how it would help me in achieving my professional goals. Going back to school this time is different. As a degree, an MFA is probably useless for somebody like me. I don’t need it to do anything.

But I’m impatient. I’m looking for jumper cables, a cattle prod, a kick in the butt. (I’m sure the inept use of metaphor will be kicked right out of me.) I recently read a comment by a woman who said of her MFA that it was a useless degree but it taught her how to really read.

I could come out of this a better writer. I could come out of it a better reader. Maybe I’ll meet people who will make a difference in my life, or I will make a difference in theirs. Perhaps the program will serve as an incubator for ideas about how to use writing to help people who walk the caregiver’s road.

The words to describe the journey I will begin on June 19 are conditional: could, maybe, perhaps. I don’t really know what will happen. But I’m doing this anyway.

Yesterday, the day that I made a decision about which graduate program to enroll in, I came across “Learning to Walk,” by David Whyte. Here’s part of it:

So learning to walk
in morning light
like this again,
we’ll take that first step
toward mortality,
giving our selves away
today by walking
out of the garden,
through the woods,
along the river,
toward the mountain,
its simple,
that’s what we’ll do,
practicing as we go,
and
we’ll be glimpsed, 
traveling westward, 
no longer familiar,
a following wave,
greeted, as we were at our birth,
as probable 
and slightly dangerous strangers,
some wild risk 
about to break again
on the world.

Once upon a time, my father gave me away. Just before I removed my hand from his steady arm, he gazed at me and patted my hand. Then he let go. Now I am giving myself away, moving forward without a clear destination. Here I go.

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March 10, 2014 · 3:32 am

Girlfriend Magic

Emerald Isle North Carolina

Long, long ago, at the first hint of connection with someone interesting – someone of the opposite sex – I got a shivery, fluttery, electric feeling. Magical!

I still know that feeling. I felt it last spring when I reunited with an old friend.

At first it was awkward. We did the obligatory greeting thing: she told me I looked great, I said I loved her hair (gone silvery salt-and-pepper since the last time I’d seen her), she liked my perky metallic tennis shoes. I could tell she was a little worried about how I might view the changes she had undergone since I last saw her a decade before. I was, too. Even we confident women are a bit self-conscious about our aging appearances.

As we walked to her car, we glanced furtively in each other’s direction. Or maybe we were mentally pinching ourselves to say this is real, we are really together again.

I had made the trip east for an errand related to my parents’ burial arrangements, but I decided to stop first to see her. Happily, my visit coincided with the premiere of a documentary she produced after five long, hard years of work. I felt like I was watching Cinderella at the ball as she was appreciated by literati, family and friends. That was supposed to be the end of it, a quick weekend in town before I traveled north to Washington, D.C.

She knew that my trip to DC would be a pilgrimage. It wasn’t just an errand to secure a date for my father’s honor burial at Arlington. I was preparing the way for my mother and father’s final passage. It was the last thing that I would be able to do for them.

She insisted on coming with me. We stopped for two nights at Emerald Isle on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina, a place that factors large in her own history. Long talks, more than a little wine ensued. Then she drove me north through rural roads all the way to Washington.

Though we entered the Virginia side on a nondescript highway, I felt like I had passed through the gates of a mythical realm. I remember almost nothing from the years my family lived in the area, when my father served as Executive Officer at Marine Corps Barracks. But I knew of those years, the importance that they held in my mother’s memory and the long impact they had on my father.

Everything I saw, heard and felt over the next few days was amplified, like Dorothy finding herself in the technicolor world of Oz. I traced my father’s footsteps, imagined him leading the Evening Parade, even saw my Mom among the flowers at Washington National Cathedral.

It would have been hard to make the journey alone. But my friend knew that. She knew that before I did.

Back and forth. In conversation, we girlfriends have an unwritten code. We instinctively listen to our friends, who in turn draw us out, before we turn the conversation back to them. Back and forth.

But there is another pendulum in our lives. We bond, are pulled apart by the demands of our lives, and only later have the space in our lives to reconnect. Anna Quindlen writes brilliantly about the importance of girlfriends:

…(if) you push her on how she really makes it through her day, or more important, her months and years, how she stays steady when things get rocky, who she calls when the doctor says ‘I’d like to run a few more tests’ or when her son moves in with the girl she’s never much liked or trusted, she won’t mention any of those things. She will mention her girlfriends. The older we get, the more we understand that the women who know and love us — and love us despite what they know about us — are the joists that hold up the house of our existence. Everything depends on them….

When I think back, I realize that in my own life there was a girlfriend interregnum, a time during which I lost the knack for, the connection to, but never the need for close female friends…. Perhaps only when we’ve made our peace with our own selves can we really be the kind of friends who listen, advise, but don’t judge, or not too harshly. My friends now are more cheerleader than critic. They are as essential to my life as my work or my home, a kind of freely chosen family, connected by ties of affinity instead of ties of blood….

As we grow older the mythology has it that female friendships falter because we compete, for everything from the alpha job to the alpha male, but I didn’t find that to be true. What I did find was that a frantic existence left too little time for friendship as it ought to be configured, deep and consistent. For decades I was focused on my work, my kids, my routine….

…(I)n the end we wind up with the friends who really stick. Being female, we pride ourselves on doing for them, on listening to them complain or cry, on showing up with a cake or a casserole and taking charge when disaster strikes. But the measure of our real friends, our closest friends, is that we let them do the same for us. We’ve been taking charge for decades; to let go, to take help instead of charge, is the break point of friendship.” (from Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake)

I wrote this post in response to a request from my friend’s sister to send along a note in honor of her 60th birthday. Reuniting with my friend of 30 years ago has been one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received. So happy birthday, dear Sharon, I wish us many happy returns.

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March 2, 2014 · 8:48 am

Love in Thought, Word and Deed

Screen Shot 2014-03-02 at 8.28.58 AM

When I was growing up, my father rarely said “I love you,” and almost never hugged me in a display of affection. But I knew he loved me.

What he did was engage.

When my second grade teacher said I had a problem with reading comprehension, it was my father who read aloud to me from the Oz books and then listened while I read aloud. My father took me out to the shooting range and taught me how to fire a rifle and later a shotgun. He shared his enthusiasm for poetry.

What I remember most, however, was the simple act of sitting around the dinner table, talking. There we discussed current events and world affairs, poverty and discrimination. Dad drew upon his library of stories — tales of the Old West, meeting Mom, fishing and hunting successes. Often, books were brought out for reference: tomes of Shakespeare, an Atlas, the dictionary. If you didn’t know where something was, or what a word meant, you had to look it up.

I was the youngest. I could easily have been overlooked or out-argued. But when I spoke up, Dad listened attentively. Dad might challenge my thinking, but he never dismissed it. (My brothers were a little less circumspect.) I always felt that Dad was interested in what I had to say.

It wasn’t all polite conversation. There was a certain amount of “monkey feeding time.” Dad had a strange expression that derived from his adoption of the Management By Objectives technique. When facing a challenge (like our family budget, which was a frequent source of concern), one methodically stated the situation, considered alternatives, developed solutions and assigned accountabilities and timeframes, preferably on a flip chart pad. Then came monkey-feeding time, also know as follow-up.

Dinner was follow-up time. My parents never asked me what homework I had or checked to see if I’d done it. But Dad did ask the result. I was never criticized for the grade I achieved. If I was doing poorly in math – as was often the case – he offered resources. (My best resource, I learned surreptitiously, was my boyfriend, Jerry Hooker, who could be persuaded to do my trig homework for me.)

I wanted Dad to tell me he loved my writing, but I knew he didn’t. As a fledgling writer, I was given to flights of multi-syllabic adjectives and wandering sentences, the more complex and flowery, the better. I’d be waiting for a compliment and Dad would say something like, “Very nice.” His tone of voice, however, said, “Adequate.” If I pushed for feedback, he would say, “It’s a bit purple for my taste.”

Mom laid it all out there, for better or worse. With Mom in menopause and me hormonal about half the time, our household was the scene of lot of estrogen-fueled interaction. When we started in, my brothers would exit. At the end of our fights, her jaw muscles flexing and her eyes shooting lasers, my mother would say, “You know I love you, Betz, but I don’t always like you.”

I’m not sure what I wanted more: to achieve my father’s approval or to avoid his disapproval. Just as he didn’t dole out compliments, he rarely said anything harshly critical. Anger did not take physical form.

All of us, however, feared my father’s disapproval and anger. I don’t know what to call it but Dad’s command presence. Even when leaning on the arm of the chair, he exuded a state of readiness. Even relaxed, you had the sense that he could snap to attention and his focus would be on you. In stillness, his eyes would shift your way.

I talked to my brother Bruce on the phone yesterday and I asked him, “How is it that we knew when Dad disapproved without him saying or doing anything?” It was the look, we agreed. Dad just looked at you.

“The eye of Sauron,” I said.

Yesterday, I read that only 56% of black fathers say they hug or show physical affection for their sons every day, and only 45% of the same group tell their sons they love them.

I thought to myself, Dad generally didn’t hug us or tell us he loved us either. How is it that we were confident in his love?

He showed us.

His model for fatherhood was everything that his father wasn’t.

As he told me once, his Dad wanted to be a loving father, but couldn’t bring himself to be. Dad often wondered aloud, “Why wouldn’t my father want to spend time with me?” He couldn’t understand it.

Dad treated us like we mattered, introducing us to the things he loved most: the challenges of the mind, the beauty of nature, the thrill of outdoor pursuits.

He may not have been a hugger. He rarely said, “I love you.” But he loved us in thought, word and deed.

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February 27, 2014 · 8:24 am

A Quiet Kind of Influence

Betsy Campbell eyes 1975

When I was an adolescent, I made some very unfortunate makeup choices. One of my first signature looks was an alarmingly bright turquoise cream eyeshadow that I slathered on both eyelids. I thought it set off my blue eyes. With that metallic green-blue glowing from my lash line to my brow bone, I now understand that no one could have noticed my grey-blue irises. By high school, I had exchanged the eyeshadow for mascara.

My eyelashes, bent like hockey sticks by my eyelash curler, waved upward like hairy tarantula legs. In my mind, they said “ingenue.” To the rest of the world, they said, “mascara fetishist.”

When I sat at our dinner table facing the bay window, the bright chandelier turned the darkened view into a mirror. I was a great admirer of my reflection.

A little smile would come across my father’s face and he would say, “How is Ysteb tonight?”

Most memoirs and many novels have at their root an author who is coming to terms with her dysfunctional upbringing. Underlying their narrative is a turbulent upbringing that haunted them into adulthood with substance abuse issues and shattered relationships.

When I write about my father, I feel as if I am beachcombing. I walk slowly along the sandy beach, crossing miles of uniform sand granules, until I stumble across a fragment. If I walked more quickly, I’d miss it – something shimmering there in its beauty. But having seen it, I pick it up, hold it in my palm, turn it over.

I think now of all of the things my father could have said to me when I was trying on my young womanhood. He could have said, “What the hell are you thinking? Go wash your face!” Or, “No daughter of mine is going out like that.” Or, “I suppose you think that looks good?”

But he didn’t. Deadpan, he would wryly invoke my name spelled backwards, “How is Ysteb tonight?” Hearing that didn’t feel like a rebuke or even a criticism. I took it as, “Come back to the table, please. You’re not the only one in the room.” It felt like an act of love, even if there was a tease thrown in for good measure. I got the message.

I remember few rules from my youth. I wasn’t harangued to make my bed, come home at a certain time, do my homework, achieve better grades or get off the phone. I wasn’t told when I could start shaving my legs, or wearing makeup or start dating.

I did want approval, my father’s approval in particular, and I knew what he admired without him ever saying a word. I was more interested in the brass ring of admiration than avoiding the sting of criticism or the pain of punishment.

Recently, I learned that one of my acquaintances on Facebook is tired of my posting about my father. She thinks it’s time to get over the grief and move on. She has missed the point entirely.

I’m not grieving, I’m appreciating. My experience of my father was subtle.

He was just there, a quiet, predictable and strong presence even when he just referred to my twin in the mirror.

Sitting at my parents’ table, I didn’t appreciate what I had. It’s taken me four decades to get to the point I can see the beauty in his love and influence. And it remains with me.

Last weekend I attended a retreat where the facilitator shared this poem. The utter reliability of my Dad led me to take him for granted. Remembering the subtle ways he expressed his love for me, my mother and my brothers is a gift that keeps on giving.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

– Robert Haydon

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February 15, 2014 · 8:47 am

The Valentine’s Day Card Dilemma

Todd and Betsy Stone

My husband makes me happy. He gets me, even though I am a complex person. I get him, even though he is about as straightforward as a human being can be. The relationship between us is a reaction. We are better and more interesting together than either of us is alone. Even after thirty-one years of marriage and thirty-three years of couple-hood.

But I hate shopping for Valentine’s Day cards.

“You are my soul mate,” one read, in loopy script.

I have never felt that my husband is my soul mate. I’ve never told him, “You complete me,” movie-style, because it isn’t true.

I look at the racks of cards and mostly want to vomit. These are the sentiments that are supposed to express our hearts. There are the “big-strong-man” hubby cards that ooze with compliments about how virile and protective and kind he is. There are the “you’ve still got it, baby” cards that wink at continuing sexual attraction. There are the “old reliable” cards that speak of gratitude for years of steadfastness.

Valentine’s Day cards always make me wonder: is the problem me?

An article published by Aeon provided an explanation that made sense to me:

“…(I)dentities are not fused — they are shared. Profound romantic satisfaction is not about possession but about flourishing; the other person is not an extension of you, but a partner for a dynamic and fulfilling way of life….(T)he partners’ personal characteristics do not have to be the best in town — they just need to be in harmony.”

That rings true.

In the end, I chose a card with an up-close picture of a cow with a baying bull reflected in its eyeglasses, a jokey card. My husband got it, though: a reference to a funny, horny dream I had a long time ago that included a man sidling up to me and suggesting his secret fantasy. “I like to moo,” he whispered to me.

One of the most romantic things I ever saw written said very little. It was a photo of a plane, underneath which my mother wrote, “The plane that brought him home.”

Maybe the perfect card for my husband would say, simply, “It’s you I want.”

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February 6, 2014 · 4:45 pm

Holding Hands

Holding on to love

The first thing my estranged cousin did when I met her was ask to see my hands.

Elizabeth took my hand in hers and looked at my finger tips. “They’re like mine,” she said.

I had never met Elizabeth. I didn’t even know she existed until she or her brother — I don’t remember which — wrote Dad a note after my mother’s obituary was published in the Yakima paper. You may not know us, the note said, but we are the children of your brother, Ed.

The year after Mom died, I took Dad to Yakima – a last chance, I thought, for him to see the old family home, connect with a few childhood friends before they were gone, and meet his niece and nephew.

Inspecting her fingers next to mine I saw no resemblance. Her fingers were delicate and tapered, capped by long nails that extended in white tips. Mine were of a sturdier sort, not ugly, but not something I would ever show with pride. I smiled and said nothing.

Elizabeth was looking for a connection, physical reassurance that she was a Campbell, like us.

My father had no doubts about her parentage. He accepted that Elizabeth and her brother were his niece and nephew. Family resemblance shone in their features. Though he loved his brother, who had so tenderly overseen the medical care of my sister Midge as she struggled with childhood leukemia, he could not understand how Ed could deny paternity. That rejection — the events leading up to it and following it — were part of the heritage of dysfunction that stemmed from their father.

I imagine that I am holding my father’s hand. Though he complained that they showed his age, I found them handsome. While Elizabeth’s fingers were thin and tapered, his were straight and square. His nails were near-perfect rectangles, the white base of his nail beds almost a straight line. The tips were filed to conform to the shape of his finger tips: neatly squared.

Mom and Dad often held hands. Especially when traveling in the car, he would reach over and clasp her hand. Her hand would linger in his.

As a teenager or young adult in the car with Dad, he would occasionally do the same with me. My hand would lay encased in the warmth of his. And it made me acutely uncomfortable. I had gotten to that age when physical affection, for more than brief moments, was awkward. If I snatched it away quickly, would it signal that I didn’t reciprocate his affection? What was the soonest I could gently withdraw my hand without seeming ungrateful?

By the time Dad moved here, Mom was gone. His primary physical connection was severed. Once Mom died, almost no one held him, rested their arm around his shoulder, reached over for the familiar three pats on the knee. Dad always said that we are a three pat family. Not one, or two, but three.

I had a special privilege as a daughter. Though my brothers hugged my Dad, and might rest their hand on his shoulder, they faced the added limitation of male-to-male contact. Or so I guess.

As I drove between my Dad’s assisted living community and my home, I often reached over and clasped his hand in mine. We would drive that way for a few miles, separating when I might need both hands to navigate an intersection. I no longer squirmed. I would feel the warmth of our hands together and think of the love that flowed between us.

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February 4, 2014 · 5:00 pm

Emotional Spanx

Brushing my teeth this morning, Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go” was playing in my head.

As I dressed, I reflected on an email I received yesterday from a friend who is undergoing what he says is a new way of living as he comes to terms with being in remission from a serious type of cancer. Reading Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Close to the Bone, he was struck by her argument that having a life threatening disease is a spiritual journey, and its components are  “…finding meaning, creativity, and joy in life.…”  He is especially thinking about creativity.

Then I recalled my reunion yesterday with a former colleague who I hadn’t seen in ten years. After many years in a corporate environment, she left without a specific plan. Her skill as a “connector” led her to one person after another, one opportunity after another, and now she has formed dynamic arrangement with a team of like-minded consultants. “I’ve found my people,” she told me.

Welcome to five minutes in my head.

Why these three vignettes in rapid succession? My mind is “background processing” themes of risk, creativity and trust as I prepare to embark on a Master’s in Fine Arts in creative nonfiction. I’ve written that I’m scared, and I am. But this five minutes of synapses felt like taking a step.

As a person immersed in the return-on-investment world of marketing and strategic planning, most of it plied in the corporate world, I have been accustomed to control. I’ve controlled budgets, tactics and people but perhaps most of all, I’ve controlled me. Impulse control isn’t a bad thing, of course. It’s necessary. We learn from an early age that we can’t throw tantrums to get our way. We learn how to stay out of trouble. We learn to conform to the expected.

I became something of an expert in emotional Spanx.

Deciding to write after years of rationalizing why I couldn’t or shouldn’t is frightening. But it’s also freeing. I’m letting it go.

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