SWEET LADY

Although I was praised by my mother for my drawing of a horse when I was five years old, she was enraged when I showed her this when I was six years old, not long after the second of my two younger sisters was born. My mother was overwhelmed, trying to take care of three young daughters. My father was often away on business, was experiencing setbacks in his career and had had a spinal fusion as well as having had his gallbladder removed. It was a difficult time in their marriage to say the least.

My recollection is that she screamed at me for using up an entire box of stars. Additionally, I had cut out magazine images of a woman in bed alone during the day, images that resembled my mother, who suffered from narcolepsy and severe migraine headaches. In 1954, my mother began taking prescription Dexedrine, which may well have contributed to her hair-trigger rages. She took oxycodone for her headaches.

My sisters and I learned early to avoid her anger by being quiet during her frequent naps and attacks of migraine headaches. Until my mother died, I never understood her anger. It frightened and bewildered me. After her death when I was 45 years old, I began to experience my own anger for the first time and understand how much she suffered from her anger. She didn't want to be an angry mother. Angry or not, my mother saved my collage/drawing.

In 1955, Walt Disney first released "Lady and the Tramp" to the movie theaters. At 6 years old, I could think of nothing that would bring me more happiness than to be a sweet dog like Lady and be loved by a handsome dog like Tramp. My mother wasn't happy. I did everything within my power to avoid her anger but I failed. I didn't want to grow up to be like my mother. I never played games about growing up, getting married and having children. Although my family wasn't Catholic, I had a friend who was Catholic and who had a nun doll. I asked for a nun doll for Christmas but was given a very sad-looking bride doll who appeared to be only a child.

I escaped by way of the colorful world of Walt Disney movies, through books with illustrations, in my love of animals and in the freedom I had to wander alone in the fascinating California oil field/desert environment where we lived at that time. My mother instilled me with a fear of anger, but she also provided me with escapes from that fear that she, too, must have experienced.

My mother was a Sweet Lady who suffered in ways that I didn't understand as a child. Before marrying my father, she had married a "Handsome Tramp." That marriage, one I didn't know about until I was 17 years old, ended within a year.

Each time I tell this story, I learn more about my mother, my life as a child and the part that art played in our lives. Her dream from childhood was to be a writer. I don't know if she was able to write at all when my sisters and I were very young, but by the time I was in grade school, I remember that she was writing short stories and encouraging me to write poems and stories, as well as to draw.

As I do this thinking back again, my desire is to remain aware of my creative and holy ground in the present.

WOMAN WITH WINDOW

My mother did, and my two sisters and I do, get headaches. My mother's mother had severe sinus headaches to the extent that she had surgery to the sinus above her left eye and was left with an indentation there. My headaches are usually on the left side, with pain around and in my eye. My mother and my sisters have suffered from migraine headaches. My mother had a prescription for Percodan, in the days that that was prescribed for headaches. The currently prescribed migraine medications don't help my headaches. For relief, I have recently begun to rely on over-the-counter Excedrin, as the caffeine diminishes the pain. My headaches never last more than three days, for which I am grateful, especially this time, because next Wednesday I start the classes which I hope will lead to a job in a medical office, clinic or hospital setting, one of the few settings in which I can work because there are the least number of environmental triggers for the headaches I experience.

Today's gouache and watercolor painting with chalk pastel added, which I did in the 1980s, is called "Woman With Windows." It occurred to me today that she looks as if she might have a headache, too. I haven't been able to do much for the last couple of days except sleep and read through the headache while taking Excedrin.

The main triggers for my headaches are environmental mold, smoke, incense and scented candles. Most unfortunately, this excludes me from many settings which would otherwise be relaxing and peaceful such as the houses of friends, libraries, old bookstores, antique stores, greenhouses, many historical houses and buildings, damp houses by the ocean, some churches and many meditation groups. December is a difficult month for me because of the prevalence of greenhouse-grown poinsettia plants, which I love for their exquisite redness and greenness, although I have to limit my exposure to them as much as possible -- something not easily accomplished, considering that they are almost everywhere a person goes.

Of course, Western Washington is a moldy moldy place for much of the year, but my home is free of mold. That is what makes it possible for me to live in Western Washington. It seems that there is a threshold dynamic. As long as I spend most of my time in non-triggering environments, I am free from headaches. Still, I rarely go for more than a month without, at least, a mild headache. For many years I thought the headaches came from foods that I was eating, but I have been eating pretty much every kind of food for the past month, without triggering a headache. I haven't consciously eaten anything in the last few days that might trigger a headache. Overripe fruit with its attendant mold is a trigger. It is possible that I ate some overripe fruit. I am not sure exactly what caused this headache but it is characteristic of a headache caused by environmental triggers or overripe fruit.

The headaches became particularly severe and frequent when I was a volunteer shelf-reader at the local public library. It took me several years to figure out that the headaches were triggered by the many wonderful old books for children. I loved volunteering and knew that I would enjoy working full-time in a library. If not for the disabling headaches, that would be my choice of work. Doing research in a library is not possible for me and limits options for returning to college.

Odd. I just got an email dated February 23, 1970, from The Teaching Company. That was the year that my boyfriend spent in Da Nang in Vietnam. That would have been during his first month.

That's it for now. Looking forward to being free of this headache for the last day of 2007. May all beings be free of headaches.

May we see the beginning of peace, if not the end of war, in 2008.