“When you send it flying up there, all at once you’re lighter than air…”
My daughter and I watched Mary Poppins a couple of nights ago. That was after we watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” how Walt Disney persuaded P.L. Travis the author of Mary Poppins to allow him to make the movie.
Neglected kids had a magical nanny come to take them on outings, play games, never be cross or cruel, never give them castor oil or gruel and never smell of barley water…. They got to laugh on the ceiling, jump in and out of chalk drawings, and Mary Poppins, instead of allowing Mr. Banks to fire her, tricks him into taking this children, Jane and Michael, on an outing to the bank where he works. The father, George Banks, gives Michael, his son, a Tuppens to start a bank account.
On the walk to the Bank, Michael sees the old Bird Lady at the Cathedral and wants to spend his Tuppens to feed the birds as the old Bird Woman pleads. Instead, he is dragged along reluctantly to the bank.
The bank wants the money, the Tuppens. They want it enough to grab it from the boy’s hand. In the tussle, noise and confusion there is a run on the bank.
Any reference here to us?
The movie was about saving Mr. Banks, about personal crisis and redemption. It takes Travis’ tragic childhood and writes a happy ending to it.
The healing value of Art.
When you don’t know what to say, say a nonsense word like "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Take a sad story and write a happy ending.
And go fly a kite.
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,”
Jo
I took my book Your Story Matters off my blogs and decommissioned it. That is removed it from Amazon. It will come out as a new version.
However, you can read Chapter 57 here:
Art is Anything You Can Get Away With*
*Andy Walhol
Although I look back and see the beautiful scenes of my life, and I was an obedient child, I never gave my folks any problems that I know of, yet I carried a lingering sadness. And I would come home from school every day with a headache. My body was telling me something.
One day, later on—after I was married, I said, "The headaches are gone."
I could say I have a problem with low blood sugar, and I know that all through high school, I would leave the house with little on my stomach and probably little protein. At around twelve, when I was about to have my tonsils removed, they found I was anemic.
Yes, they removed tonsils in those days—I remember waking up with a throat that felt ripped, and I thought the nurse who kept telling me not to roll over on my back was my mother. My mother was there, though. And that sage doctor and parent’s ploy trying to cover the hurt with ice cream is a crock of bull.
By taking away my tonsils, they took away my defense mechanism, for after that, I got strep throat and had to guard against getting it every winter.
But back to the headaches. How much was physical, and how much was psychological?
We can paint rosy pictures of our lives, remembering the good times and the highlights, or we can dig deeper and say, "What was bothering a child that she would have a headache every day?"
I didn't dwell on things. I put my love on the animals. I did wonder if my father ever thought of me. Grandma was gone. Tiny was gone. It appeared as though that didn't matter.
It mattered.
Mike molested me.
It mattered.
Sometimes, it is as simple as that. Acknowledging that it mattered.
Your Story Matters.
We lived in the town of The Dalles for about a year and a half, and I remember that as good. I played with the neighbor kids and the little boy next door and went fishing in Mill Creek, near our house.
The day I caught a two-inch fish and ran home all excited, I stopped short when I found my Aunt Marie from Illinois there. Dear Marie. I loved her. Mom was a bit embarrassed for Marie to see that I was such a tomboy, which surprised me, for Mom was not a girly girl. Tomboy isn’t a word we use anymore. But then there was an issue with a girl wanting to do what I wanted. I wanted to ride bikes, play with toy cars in the dirt with the boys, and read comic books. But then, didn't everybody?
I loved being a tomboy. But did it bother me?
Yes.
Within that first year after leaving Illinois, we got the dog mom promised. Somebody shot it while he was still an adolescent pup because it reared up on his rabbit hutch. I was home and off my feet because I had gotten stitches in my ankle from a teeter totter swinging into my ankle as I was on the swing. This was a collision on a swing set in someone’s back yard. The kids from the neighborhood ran to tell me that Mike had hit the dog in the head with a hammer to put it out of its misery.
I know Mike did what he thought was right because he didn't harm the animals.
It was a year or so later that I got Silver.
I became friends with a little girl from a Catholic school whose parents were both doctors. A woman doctor of her age was rare as she was quite a bit older than my mother. But I thought those doctors must be a bit cuckoo, for their son, younger than the girl, had ulcers. Mrs. Doctor wanted her kids to have the same birthday, so she had a cesarean section with her son. And I wondered why both parents made such a fuss if one of their kids was injured in the slightest way.
They weren't Catholic but thought the Catholic school was the best in town, and thus sent their kids there.
My mother got a job cleaning Mrs. Doctor’s house. Once, they took us to an island for summer vacation. I often went home with the girl after school—we were both in the second or third grade. When they served a meal, they used more than one fork. However, often, when I went home with the girl, her mother would fuss at her to practice the piano. I loved piano music, but I thought if that's the way it is, I'm not taking piano lessons.
Later in life, I met the girl at a high school reunion. The Catholic kids transferred to The Dalles High when they reached high school age, but we had not seen each other since the fourth grade, and in high school, we hardly knew each other existed. Had she not introduced herself, I wouldn't have recognized her—a Burnette had become a blond-that’s common, but her entire countenance had changed. The last I heard she lives on a Hog farm. Fascinating. Who would have thought? And she seems to be someone I would like to get to know.
When I was in the fourth grade, we moved from the town to a more rural area called Chenowith. I rode the bus to Catholic school for a year. There are nearly always some comments, however small, against the new, the strange, the different, and there I was a Catholic in a pack of Protestants.
I’m sure the same would happen the other way around.
After the fourth grade, I joined the Chenowith public school and soon joined the Protestant church.
I was an only child, which was okay; I like time alone. And I like having friends. And I had Silver.
Once we joined the Protestant church, it occupied many hours each week. There was church service on Sunday mornings and youth meetings at night. I joined the choir, and we had a Wednesday night choir practice. I met my first boyfriend at church and my future husband there.
Changing churches felt much like moving from Horace Mann to a Catholic School. I felt as out of place in Sunday School as I did in Catholic school. I didn’t know the books of the Bible and couldn’t recite verses as the other kids did. Odd, that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, to quote my mother, but it shows how we want to fit in and feel left out when others are more advanced in some subject.
I went to church camps and sat at a camp meeting, doubting that there was a God. And I wondered about all the "true believers" and how believing seemed so easy for them. I couldn’t mix the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the loving God of the new, and why did people attempt to mesh the two? Jesus clearly stated that he came to put aside the law. I thought those people never doubted. I wondered what happened to the miracles. And why couldn’t I be as sure as the true believers appeared to be?
I saw Billy Graham in a tent meeting once when I was Catholic and thought he was full of it. Later, as a Protestant, I saw him again. At that time, I thought he was arrogant because he said he knew he was going to heaven. I'm sorry, Mr. Graham. I believe you were a nice man. I just couldn't stomach some of the religious aspects.
But I set off to find God and found that he/she lives in all of us. How we express that concept is up to us. Finding people with whom you can agree, discuss, and have a great relationship is fine and dandy; if not, travel your own road.
Almost everyone could go over their childhood, and each would have different experiences but with similar wonderings, longings, disappointments, and questions. We were, after all, babes in the woods. Looking back, I can see why so many feel different or left out, as though they don’t fit. I was a country girl in a sea of professional people’s daughters. Those girls shopped at Williams Store, the upscale one, while we shopped at Penny’s. And I could tell the difference. Isn’t it strange that that matters?
A great number of people now take antidepressants—like one-third of the American population. Why?
We have friends, a couple, who used to work at an Elder Facility. They told us that the same cliques occur there as they did in high school. That reminds me of a refrain I often heard at The World Healing Center, “If you don’t work on yourself, as you get older, you get worse.”
We have yet to learn that a smorgasbord of life is laid out for us, and we must choose what we want on our plate. We think something on the smorgasbord is going to jump onto our plates, when in truth, we must pick it up and place it there. Leave that liver, which I can’t abide, for someone else.
How can I say you are good enough? How can I tell people they aren't broken and need to be fixed?
Experiences come and go; happiness comes and goes. We search for meaning, fulfillment, and our place in the world.
You might have noticed that I do not have much written about how to change your life or how to become a Baddass. (read Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badda**)
I want to offer a tease to say, yep, the world is out there for you to grab. Take a chance. It’s possible. Go find a way.
Once you declare that you want to achieve something, believe it’s yours, and take action to get it, you will be amazed at how the universe fills in the blanks. God, the great Spirit, the Force, the Source, the Universe, you name it, has your back.
But there’s a glitch. You don’t just sit on the couch, yawn, and wait for magic to drop. You need to ask for what you want, believe it is possible, and start walking, driving, rowing, flying, whatever moves you.
Andy Warhol said, "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the
world the master calls a butterfly.”
― Richard Bach
