August 18, 2015 – Coming home to sweetness

My painting on the deck in Tahoe – on my morning of joy.

Listen to this post:

One of my childhood friends was Jeanine, and her dad played John Denver’s music a lot. I’m remembering being in their high-ceilinged living room hearing all those songs – Sunshine on my Shoulders, Thank God I’m a Country Boy, Rocky Mountain High. My mom and dad weren’t into his music. The popular music they listened to was Simon and Garfunkel, Carly Simon, The Beatles’ Abbey Road – and my dad really liked Donna Summer! Isn’t it remarkable how the music we listen to when we are young, holds a place that new music can’t reach? It’s “our” music. I’m thankful to my friend’s dad for making John Denver part of my music.

There are songs that when I hear them, bring me right back to where I was and what was happening in my life. John Denver’s Take me Home Country Roads is one of them. It brings me to a few places. The earliest is the summer the song came out. I was swimming and jumping off the high-dive – with Jeannine – at the pool at the College of Marin athletic center, where her dad was a teacher. Paul Revere and the Raiders’ Cherokee Nation was also played that summer at the pool. Another time was 1984, I was with my college boyfriend, my brother Joe and his then girlfriend Kim, on a bus on the island of Brac in Croatia. We were going from the village Su Petar (St. Peter), where we got off the ferry, to Selca, the village where our grandparents were born and married. There we were, on this old bus, in our Vuarnet sunglasses and Swatch watches – with many women dressed all in black – and crates of live chickens. The PA on the bus was playing, Take me Home, Country Roads. I’m pretty certain we were the only four on the bus who understood the words!

Top: Joe and me in 1984 with two of our Croatian relatives.
Bottom: me in 1996, with the village of Selca in the distance.

Then, more than a decade later, in 1996 while I was living my half-year in Paris, I was in the Loire Valley in France. It was mid-August, and I’d taken a solo long-weekend to visit the castles that I did a report on when I was taking French in college. I’d been on a late afternoon hot air balloon ride that ended just at sunset, followed by a dinner with a Belgian/Danish couple, about my age, I’d met on the balloon. As I was driving myself back to the Chambre d’Hote (the French term for B&B) where I was staying, it was dark – no street lights along these tiny roads. I’d had a glass of wine with dinner, and I was all by myself. I would have been anxious and frightened in my recent past – at the end of my first marriage, when panic attacks were the order of the day. Yet, I was not one bit fearful. I knew exactly where I was going. It was a warm evening and I had the sunroof open, and the windows down in my little rental car. Nothing but starlight all around me. I was 5,500 miles away from everyone who loves me, all alone in another country – and I was peaceful and content. I felt completely safe and whole, and was right where I belonged. In that moment, it was just me and God – and it was perfect. If anyone I’d known had been there with me, this experience would not have been possible. I’ll never forget how incredible moment felt in my body. In retrospect, I see that this was why I needed to go to France, at that point in my life. And, as I was driving along, playing on the local radio station was, Take me Home Country Roads. “Almost heaven, West Virginia…”.

Me, in 1996 in front of the Chateau Chambord in the Loire Valley the day after.

When we were just in Tahoe, one morning early in the vacation, I was painting and listening to John Denver in my ear buds. Sweet Surrender was the song. I found myself almost giddy with joy – I was SO happy. Happy for the morning sunlight, happy to be painting these vibrant colors, just happy to be happy. And the song was a big part of my buoyant mood. For whatever reason, this kicked off a curiosity about John Denver and his life. I read some online – there were tabloid-esque references to his troubled personal life, and I read his music being called saccharine. I just finished listening to an abridged version of his autobiography – “Take Me Home” – narrated by him. He wrote and spoke his story, not long before he died (at 53). He did the EST training early on, and worked to understand himself and life. His story revealed that he had a perspective on his shadow side – he even poked a bit of fun at himself. He was human and flawed, and also was immensely talented and creative and deeply thoughtful.  He cared a lot about what I care about – our Earth-home, and that people are touched by what he created. Saccharine or not, his music has touched millions and millions of us.

This has me thinking about sweetness. I’ve been called “sweet” a lot in my life. And I’ve been teased about it. A college roommate called me “Corny Cara.” Sweet, sentimental and sensitive – it’s felt like a bad thing. Then there’s that term saccharine. What makes something good-sweet or overly-sweet-saccharine? For one thing, it’s completely subjective. Some of us naturally live, centered in our hearts, in our emotions. For those of us, sweetness is the water we swim in. But for those who don’t, their tolerance for emotionality is much lower. These are the people we get the eye-rolls from. And besides all of this, if sweetness is expressed through a consciousness, that can also hold and experience suffering, loss and pain, it’s an entirely different sweetness. There is a maturity to it – an expression of joy, without denying that there is bitterness too. Bittersweet – like the best chocolate!

I love the scene at the end of “Steel Magnolias,” after the funeral when M’Lynne (Sally Fields) loses it in her grief that she could “jog all the way to Texas,” but Shelby (Julia Roberts) – her diabetic daughter who just died – never could. And then Claree (Olympia Dukakis) pushes Ouiser (Shirley McLain), offering her for M’Lynne to beat on, to take out her grief and anger. It’s completely heart breaking and then hysterically funny. As much as it’s unthinkable to joke about a mother losing her daughter, the heavy emotion all on its own is too much. Laughing through tears is good medicine.

I cannot imagine a world without sweetness. I’d whither and implode in despair. I keep coming back, over and over to balance, we need it all – us all. What I bring is like Truvvy – the Dolly Parton character in Steel Magnolias, kind-hearted and warm, with my own brand of folksy wisdom. I’m pretty much over feeling the need to apologize for being sweet – in a world that gives a lot of attention to snarkiness and sarcasm. And, like John Denver, it’s good for me to poke fun at my inclination to be so serious and literal at times. The people in my life I most want to be with, are those who are really at home in their own skin, who have come to own and accept their foibles and their gifts. Their genuine self-acceptance brings an ease and – yes, a sweetness – that is the invitation to have more of it myself. Take me home, country roads — to the home that is me.

Love,

Cara