tamarjacobson

I have decided to intensify my training. Since January, I have been diligently walking and running on my treadmill almost every day, strengthening my heart rate, leg muscles and stamina. In late June, I will be joining my older sister and her friends for a 7 day walk along Hadrian’s Wall. These last four or five days I decided to hike the trails of the Wissahickon, upping my work-out a notch and getting a feel for the real thing. Each morning I set out down the hill behind our home and within two thirds of a mile I am right there. For the Creek is almost in my own back yard.

I have not taken advantage of the glorious trails as they wind above and beside the little river, or even as they steer up and out in opposite directions all throughout the enormous Fairmount Park. I suppose I was in mourning for my old Delaware Park in Buffalo where I walked every day for years. I just could not muster up enthusiasm to walk the trails of the Wissahickon. Each time I would try it felt so lonely, even dark, and I would return home wistful and blue. It has taken two and a half years for me to start to feel comfortable.

As I walk first along a trail high above the creek and then down alongside the water, these past four days, I find myself embracing the landscape and beginning to own my new surroundings. Sunlight streams through the freshly new, green, leaves and birds herald and serenade me as I briskly charge along. Other people walking their dogs, running, jogging, cycling along greet me with warm smiles and friendly eyes. I cannot imagine how I could have felt lonely here before.

At the end of the trails and returning to my home, I walk up an intensely steep incline for about two thirds of a mile. As I feel my calf muscles strengthening, I become excited. For I am sure we will be walking up some nifty little hills in England come June and I do not want to be left behind puffing and panting while the others stride ahead. This afternoon I was looking at my day pack and thinking that next time I go for my walk I shall take it along. I will pack some water and a few items like those that I might need along the 15 miles or so when we hike in England, and test out how my back enjoys it.

It has been fun walking along by myself getting to know the area and teaching my feet to find the way so that I can look up at the trees, birds, the sky, and feel sunshine on my face. Sometimes I have felt a little afraid, just because it is unknown, and at the end of the walk I am aching in places I did not know muscles exist. But the fresh air and warm sun seep into my body and brain and, back in my room, as I settle into yoga postures and deep, long stretches, I feel a settled kind of peace that I have not experienced very often since coming to Philadelphia.

A year ago at Tamarika: Making Lists

Are you Wise? I scored a 4 (four) and have Relatively High Wisdom.

I know that I have been thinking about aging more than usual these past five years or so. Lately it seems so many people around me are talking, writing, documenting, or researching aging. At times, I am even sick of talking and hearing about it, and I wonder why we are all so obsessed with it. On the other hand it feels like there is a huge, global, aging support group out there.

For me, I think, the shock came as I realized I was no longer immortal. When I was younger, even though cognitively I was aware that life ends, emotionally I did not understand that mine would. I am not sure when the exact moment was that I understood I was definitely going to die. Once that happened, exploring and understanding my past took on a new meaning, became more urgent in a way. I seemed to want to find out quickly what life is all about. Just in case I died without knowing.

Otherwise, the body aging thing? Well, that is a happening and I learn it as I go. I am much less fearful or surprised by all the natural changes. Just curious and sometimes amazed at the complexity of the body and mind as they start to reach for their conclusion. No doubt about it. I will be sad to leave. Parting has never been easy for me.

I am sure it will be difficult:

Bidding farewell to the budding trees and fresh new green leaves, glorious birds, dear friends and cherished family members, winter snows, and all those new experiences that crop up throughout life.

For me, however, the most intriguing part of all in this aging business, is …

… the letting go …

Here is a little something for Thursday … and Friday … that I received this morning from a colleague at work. I thought you all might enjoy it. I did.

SO CLICK RIGHT HERE …

Quote of the day:

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein (from CCIE)

A year ago at Tamarika: Tonight at 9:00

At certain points in our lives, we are faced with choices that lead us in different directions. At the time, we do not realize that a chance meeting, involvement in this or that relationship, personal or professional, are moments, incidents or situations that develop who we have come to be right here, right now.

At breakfast on Saturday, as a friend and I talked about the roads less or more traveled in both our lives, I murmured reflectively, "Hm … When you’re in it, you just don’t know it … " We both smiled as I reached into my purse to rummage for a pen. Almost at the same moment we said, "There’s a a blog post in there somewhere."

A year ago at Tamarika: Peace in the valley

[note: my name was Tamar Meyer in 1993 – long story – for another time perhaps]     

On November 10, 1993, my letter to the Editor of the Buffalo News was published. I was ecstatic! It was my first ever official feminist reply to anything. I was 44 years old. As I re-read it this morning, I realized just how many times I used the word: Dominance. Can you tell I was awakening? Becoming aware? Declaring my own personal Aha?

This letter immediately jumped into my mind as a reply to Winston after reading his comment on my blog this morning. I dropped everything I was doing and rummaged through my papers to find it.

I would write it a little differently today. I mean, just for starters, I probably would not use the word dominance as many times in the same sentence. In addition, it comes across as having the tone of a teenager who has just realized her parents are no longer the moral Gods she imagined them to be. So I probably would tone it differently.

But, still – a lot of it rings true. Don’t you think?

I guess what I am trying to say, Winston, is that it is really easy for those of us who have grown up as the privileged gender, culture or class, to sit in judgment of others struggling for liberation or to find their voice. By the same token, it is difficult to hear those struggles or voices with compassion and understanding because we have never walked in their shoes or suffered the same types of injustice and inequalities.

At the same time, I agree with Frank‘s comment:

elimination of privilege is necessary for achievement of equality, and I think that inclusivity is necessary too,

and reiterate my own ideas:

Dominance and privilege causes everyone terrible pain. All are punished. We have to get together, young and old, men and women, girls and boys, and drive Patriarchy out! Out of our psyche, hearts, minds, societal structures, and, yes indeed, even our blogs.

Let us just agree to acknowledge that we can never possibly know what it is like to walk in any one person’s or a whole people’s shoes, but that we will listen to all our stories in the hopes of understanding one another more and more.

For some reason Frank Paynter's recent post got me to thinking about how I became a feminist. I came to it late in life. In 1992 to be exact. I remember the day, the hour, the very moment. Up until that time I had believed that the woman's place was to settle behind the man, taking care of children and hearth, and sacrificing career and education so that the man could better himself first. Indeed, I had practiced that fervently, doing everything in my power to get it right. I remember when I was twenty three or four, back in the early seventies, sitting in my brother's living room in Manchester one evening after dinner. His intellectual friends were sitting around, everyone talking, discussing current issues of the time. All so much more scholarly and intelligent than me. And yet, when one of them talked from a feminist perspective I became indignant and waxed prolific about the joys and delights, the duties and obligations of a dedicated wife being able, nay privileged even, to wash the floors making them clean for her husband's well-being. I blush to think on it. I had always been an avid activist, believing in social justice and equal rights for all … all that is, except women, but way more personally … except me.

A few years later when I returned to Africa with my toddler-son to visit my aging father, I spent the day with the mother of my friend Jan, Nan Partridge, a woman who had tremendous influence in changing the way I thought about social justice. Nan gave me a book to read called: Meet Me in the Middle. I felt the twitchings of feminism as I read the book at the time. It felt comfortable to read about women and men being interdependent. It was enlightening. I did not realize then that I would first have to emancipate my own mind towards the notion of me being equal, to come even vaguely close to the idea of interdependence. The journey ahead was about to be long indeed.

It would be almost twenty years before the moment I would embrace feminism and start the journey of self-emancipation and liberating my mind of the Patriarchal system that had been hammered so deeply into my consciousness growing up. Later on, in my own book, I wrote about bell hooks describing the "strongest patriarchal voice" in her life as that of her own mother. I identified very strongly with her description as it was true for me too.

In fact, the books that transformed me into a feminist were Mother-Daughter Revolution but, more especially, Educated in Romance. The latter I read for a course on qualitative research in graduate school in 1992. The former I read two years later and it solidified my becoming into a fully-fledged feminist. As I was reading Educated in Romance I realized the authors were describing my life. From the decisions I made to the way I viewed my place in the world. The authors describe how young women start out college with ambitions and dreams to become architects, political scientists, anthropologists, etc. And then, quickly change course towards nurturing professions like teaching or nursing in order to follow their romantic partners wherever they might be sent, sacrificing their own careers for those of the men they have fallen in love with. Some of the things the women say in their interviews might have come directly from my own lips. The book spoke to me deeply because at the time I was experiencing much guilt for having left country and husband, and dragged my teenage son with me across the world so that, finally, I could give myself the education I had always dreamed of. I remember gasping as I read, tears streaming down my cheeks, feeling validated and supported, fear and guilt pushed aside for a few moments.

Of course, I understand that it was not the book, per se, that changed me. Rather, the words read arrived at a point in my life's journey that was the culmination of events, my therapy, and psychic development. It became a huge "aha" moment and I have never been the same since. I always laugh to myself when my mother says I am not a reader (of course she is referring to the fact that I don't always choose to read the books she tells me to read). For, in fact, books have been the catalyst in changing my life in most significant ways.

On the one hand, I do agree with one of the comments at Frank's post: "I’d like to see more Human Beings come to the realisation that there are aspects of life that are simply Not About Them." For me, being a feminist means freeing ourselves from the Patriarchal system, choosing against dominance, elitism and exclusion, but opting for empathy and compassion for all Human Beings. It means realizing that women are often our own worst enemies because we have, understandably so because socialization in childhood is so insidious and powerful, bought into the Patriarchal system. Revolution very often, therefore, calls for drastic and extreme external actings-out in order to counteract that awesome, awful societal teaching in our early years for men and women alike. After all, it is less than a hundred years since women got the vote. There is still a lot of relearning to do. Dominance and privilege causes everyone terrible pain. All are punished. We have to get together, young and old, men and women, girls and boys, and drive Patriarchy out! Out of our psyche, hearts, minds, societal structures, and, yes indeed, even our blogs.

Let us just agree to acknowledge that we can never possibly know what it is like to walk in any one person's or a whole people's shoes, but that we will listen to all our stories in the hopes of understanding one another more and more.

A year ago at Tamarika: #5, #5, #5 …

In two weeks I will be at the point where a year ago I felt shamed into changing my blog. And so, I have been reading the posts that led up to that time, re-feeling the feelings and feeling them again. The sense of betrayal was acute. I am comforted to realize that those feelings have lessened considerably. I am one year older and a tiny bit wiser, I imagine. It was a period of pain which, I believe, in the long run, strengthened and matured me. And brought me face-to-face with a reality I had been trying to avoid with childish delusions.

What was even more intriguing to me was reading where Tamarika was one year ago today. I gasped out loud. For that is what I am feeling – exactly, in almost those very words, right here, right now …

Today.

For today’s post I am right back where I started one year ago: Blog or book

Only, this time is a little bit different.

1. I don’t want to give up the blog. Just write less often
2. I might want to start writing about different things – more externalized: ideas about children and teachers, a bit of politics, feminist stuff, aging, poverty … maybe … opinion pieces
3. Something must get written: book, chapter, or article … I was awarded a summer fellowship for that!
4. Something should get written. My recent keynote speech has given me the confidence and support I needed to reinforce the new direction in my work.

I was ecstatic when one of my colleagues sent me an e-mail received the next day from a teacher who had heard me:

I loved Tamar. She inspired me to want to write my life story, to try to really remember things that went on in my life as a child, from my perspective of course (which I consider truth, because how children perceive things is their truth!). I started, but it really is a scary thing, I feel like I’m writing down things that are deeply personal and almost feel vulnerable doing it. I feel like I need to, my own type of therapy … Friday I really focused on building relationships with my kids, and not so much on the academics. I enjoyed it so much more!

I was inspired by the teacher’s words. Because I feel an urgency to remind teachers about the quality of their relationships with young children. I believe these relationships are affected by uncovering their own inner lives including emotions, biases, and early childhood experiences in general – helping teachers understand why they do what they do. Creating an emotionally safe space for authentic interactions that are respectful, loving, nurturing, compassionate and forgiving.

And so. It is on with my work! Re-energized and excited, the passion for it returns. The heck with past shames and ancient hurts! The blog might suffer a bit, but abandon it I will not …

Some pictures just in from Mira (above with me). The end of the second "speech."

Listening to a poignant story – with gratitude for the sharing.

This girl is back in town. And what a welcome I received when I arrived home. All the hyacinths, tulips, cherry blossoms in full bloom. Gold finches sparkling at the feeder, the city bathed in warm sunshine and people everywhere. It felt like a festival!

Ada has been pitter-pattering next to me keeping me in her view in case I slip away again, which of course I will do. I mean, I have to go to work. The next couple of weeks is end of semester craziness with everything happening at once, all on the same days, all day long, it seems.

My heart and soul is full to the brim from spending time in the Buffalo sun with friends:

crying,

laughing until we were crying,

talking,

eating,

hugging

drinking,

walking,

sharing,

being and being and being

together

A year ago at Tamarika: My grading helper

As I travel around my old haunts, my lonely soul is being warmed and filled to the brim with friends old and new. The power point went quite well although, at the end, the kind and supportive pod-caster and techie fellow suggested that I might want to "simplify" in the future. I knew what he meant! I had been playing and experimenting as I prepared for the speech and words were flying in and dropping down in myriads of colors. The Idan Raichel Project accompanied me with MiMa’amakim (Out of the Depths), reminding me of my roots from Africa to the Middle East and back West to America, as I told my emotional tale and implored the audience to consider relationships with young children as crucial for their education and development.

Afterwards, we went out for dinner and became quite happy. I wish I could have looked more the part of a "featured speaker" instead of giddy and hysterical. Mira took the pictures.

It was so good to see Jack again, …

… and very, very good to meet Clara and Jen, who seemed to enjoy breaking bread with me even after my comments about literacy and curriculum.

Today will be full again. Yet another talk, and after that Marion will drive me to Buffalo for a committee meeting to decide the recipient of The Charles Haynie Memorial Student Award. Quite a whirlwind schedule including dinner with David, and late in the evening I should arrive at Bob and Cheryl for the rest of the weekend.

And all this I relate to you, friendly bloggers and others who happen by, from my spacious and comfortable room overlooking Main Street in my beloved White Inn.

No wonder I cannot sleep and awake even before the robins call.

My heart is full to bursting with joy.