August: Osage County, and other thoughts about vibrations

Tonight I saw the movie August: Osage County. It was truly a heavy HEAVY movie. But the good thing about movies like that are that they cause the viewer to ponder, well ok, they cause THIS viewer to ponder. And while pondering, I ponder about not only this movie, but about my own patterns. Family patterns. And when we think we are doing better for our kids than our parents did for us, seeing that we all just did our best. Our best, which sometimes can be seen by others as not good enough... And then I ponder about how the Universe gives us snippets and thoughts and songs and books and movies and stories that help us see our own stuff. The stuff that we just don't see until we see it... So after the movie, my love and I were talking about patterns. Patterns of our selves, generational patterns going back through our families, patterns of our parenting, patterns of our relationships (current and past) and patterns of the future. We talked about cellular patterns, and how we "pass things down" from generation to generation. How we tell ourselves that we are different from those before us, and how we then go on to choose similar situations to learn from, just with different people... It is such a HUGE and fascinating topic. And one that if you are going to explore it is best to be gentle in the exploration with ourselves and others. To look at things from a lovingly detached perspective, like a witness, rather than the star of the show... With that being said, here is a story that came to me just a day ago. A story that started this whole thought thread... Grandma Marey: Marey with an E. My Grandma, who I saw not enough, but who left a lasting impression. I often wondered how she did it. Always smiling. She always had really good "spreads" of homegrown foods and soups when we visited. While Mom and Grandma talked we would run around and play, exploring the underground magic of the old house's front porch where she lived. The porch was falling apart, but it wrapped around the entire house and there were cool things, tools that we had never seen, and old furniture to be fixed, all stored underneath it. My younger brother James and I would play mostly, while my older sister read or played the piano, and for some reason I don't have any memory of my older brother Jeff playing with us at all. But what we would do all together was color. Grandma Marey with an E had a whole cabinet of crayons and coloring books, different kinds of papers, glue, sparkles, and different pieces of fabric for cool art projects. Grandma Marey with an E, who was taken from her Mother by the Sisters. Grandma Marey with an E, who was taught how to be a proper girl, who learned about Sunday school and pergatory. Grandma Marey with an E... E for everygreen, extraodinary, enriched, elated, eradicate, elusive, elective and exist. That E. As a kid I would make up stories about her life. She never talked about the past. Mom said it was because she didn't remember. She had had an "accident". And that was always the end of it. We always loved the crayons and paper best. Grandma Marey with an E encouraged us to draw or write about something we remembered from the time in between our visits. She would display our "creations" all over her house. Taped to the walls, magneted to the frig or metal file cabinet, or just laying out on her coffee table. I think after we all left she would go through them an piece together our lives, our joys, our traumas, or triumphs and it made her very happy. Grandma Marey with an E grew up in an orphanage. Not because she was orphaned, but because of her Mother's lineage. Grandma Marey's father had died early and her mother was deemed "not capable" to raise Christian children, and so the Sisters came, and her mother stayed, and there wasn't much discussion about how long, or why or when she would return. But Grandma Marey with an E went. She obeyed. She knew the "sin" of her mother. Grandmother Marey, not Mary like the Mother who was pure and holy, began forgetting who she was. She erased (an E word) herself. She did not exist, but to serve others. And she taught my mother how not to exist, and my mother taught me. And she didn't exist unless it was through others. She loved us so. She enticed us into telling her our dreams. Dreams, she said, was where we all could exist. Dreams were real. I will come to you in your dreams, hold onto your dreams, Be who you want to be in your dreams. And at the end of the day we would all pile into the station wagon and go home. And we would dream outloud, very noisy, lots of singing, lots of stories, lots of teasing... And the car ride seemed to make my Mom really quiet. Which I never really understood. But at Grandma Marey with an E's funeral I understood. We were part Indian. We were sinners. We did not exist. But I changed that pattern. I named my baby girl (who was born shorly after my Grandmothers death) Sara MAREY (with an E), and she exists, she excels, she enlivens, she excites, she has an E! And, to bring this whole story back around, my Grandmothers patterns were passed down to my me. And I chose many of the same lessons, and I also changed many of the lessons learned. And I am sure I taught my children things that I am not even aware of because we share energy. And energy is stored in cells. And we share cells. And we share cellular memory of a lineage that is filled with ceremony, and the earth, and beleifs that are far different than westerners, and a lineage that is filled with pain. Ancestral pain. May it rest in peace and transform with this generation. Namaste