The Picture

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Pat

Personal photo of my mother © Pat Ruppel

Isn’t she beautiful? This is a picture of my mother, Myrtle Mae (Shaw) Collingwood, taken in the 1930’s and is the picture that mysteriously
brought two young lovers together – my mother and father.

As the story goes, my father was in the military and stationed in Norfolk. My mother lived across the Chesapeake Bay in a small Virginian town on the Eastern Shore. A buddy of my dad’s showed him this picture and since his buddy had lost interest in asking her out gave the picture to my dad.

Love at first sight, my dad carried this picture with him where ever he went. He had to find this girl and on his weekend leaves traveled across the bay in search of her.

The stories of how my dad found her and their romance have been lost over time but I know they ultimately met, fell in love and were married on this day, July 13, 1939, by a Justice of the Peace some 73 years ago.

Here they were a young couple, Yankee and a Southerner, in love and ready to embark on a new life together facing a new decade. The 1940’s brought happiness and 2 daughters but also brought the strain and fears of WWII. My sister was born before the war and I was born after the war. As my mother received letters from my dad overseas in harm’s way, she cared for her baby girl maintaining the home anxiously awaiting the return of her man.

The war ended and dad was back home and life lovingly picked up where it left off with the addition of a home of their own and me. Dad went on to a career in welding on ships and bridges wherever staying close to the sea would take him, my mother pursued nursing and we grew. Life seemed normal and happy at first and then it took a definite turn that would last for the rest of our lives together.

I was too young to remember (toddler years) an event that caused the shift but it seemed to be like day and night. My sister and I could never figure it out and they would never say. My mother became obsessively jealous of my dad and with every denial of accusation the struggles and strain continued between them shutting us out and the world around them.

Over the years, I felt I had lost my mother and tried to get them to talk it out – reconcile – to no avail. I could still see a distant spark of love in their eyes for each other occasionally. It hadn’t died – it was just buried.

Nowadays couples just split, get divorced and go separate ways. The children hold onto that hope of reconciliation in their hearts until a parent remarries and moves on and the hope wanes. I can understand their loss but my parents stayed together and I still held my hope. In that era, wedding vows were taken very seriously and literally when you say to each other, “…for better or worse.” Divorce for them was not an option.

Maybe the reconciliation was more for me than them. I wanted my mother. I missed growing up with the birthday parties, primping and fussing over clothes, going shopping and mother and daughter girly talks.

Every time I would go back east to visit, I would say to myself, “It will be different this time. They’re older and surely they would talk things out, I’ll help and they’ll be happy together again.” But when I would come in town it was as if I had never left. We’d visit and catch up but then it was as if a cloud crept over. The back and forth accusations and denials would begin between them and I was shut out as if I wasn’t there. They were lost again in another world but I still held onto that hope.

More years passed and one day in 1985 I got a call from my sister to come home. Mom had died suddenly and peacefully in her sleep. I flew back in shock, devastated. We helped dad deal with the loss of the love of his life and our mother. It was over and there would be no more chances of reconciliation at least not in this world.

After arrangements were made and my mother was laid to rest, I flew home with a hole in my heart and a feeling like the world had been pulled out from under me. I truly believed in the end things would turn out differently for them and this blindsided me. I was a mixed bag of emotions but mostly mad – mad at God. I thought there was an unspoken understanding between us of reconciliation and I was betrayed. We humans are so silly in our expectations, narrow views and beliefs.

One night not long after my mother’s death, I was awakened with the memories of a vivid dream. I saw my mother but she was wrapped with coils of steel from top to bottom. I then saw a hand come in with shears snipping one coil at a time until she was totally free of the demons. I was okay after that and found closure and peace and thankful for the grace of that dream.

My dad almost 15 years later in his early 80’s left just as suddenly and peacefully – and the picture was still with him on the night table in the same plastic frame. He never forgot the woman he met and fell in love with so many years ago. I never saw the reconciliation but I would like to think they had finally made peace on the other side.

If you have similar reflections, I would love you to share or comment.

Pat – from the ol’ kitchen table

Behind Closed Doors

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Pat

Picture by MSN Clipart Provider

I recently read an Internet article on the Power of Perspective which stirred my thinking from perspective to perception. Perspective (outlook), perception (interpretation) and judgment (response) are all similar in meaning with different results.

I thought of my life and how can I best tell a story through my own writings … but wondered how it would be perceived. I can only relay what I’ve learned and hope it makes a connection with you.

I believe one of the most important things in life is compassion. I learned what you see is not always a picture of the truth. What we see can be rain-colored through our conditioned beliefs and undeveloped mind and senses and we immediately make judgments. Sometimes, it’s necessary to do so but too many times the conditioning takes over and clouds the perception. Let me give you more of my history that has brought me to this understanding.

My parents, God bless them, raised my sister and I with their own beliefs and conditioning – they did the best with what they knew and I loved them very much. My mother was a beautiful, intelligent woman with an LPN and my father handsome and strong, a World War II Veteran.

They were also a little eccentric you could say. But as a child living in the same household I gained a different perspective and first-hand knowledge of the struggles going on around me. It’s was a part of my life. It was like day before WWII when my sister was born and night after WWII when I was born. From what I hear they were so much in love and then something happened, I never knew what.

We lived in a normal suburban neighborhood but apparently not so normal was my family. My father struggled to make a living and my mother fought her demons of jealousy making the struggles mostly between them with my sister and me almost invisible. The challenges they created for themselves made them distrustful of the world and everyone around them.

As a result of their struggles, many times we were without food and heat with my father having a hard time holding down a job. Let me be clear – there was no alcohol, drugs or physical abuse – just the pull and tug between them. There was no convincing my mother that my father was not cheating on her and over time it became an obsession.

To be fair, I don’t know whether he cheated or not but he’d have to be a miracle worker with her demands – no pocket-money, allotted so much time to get home from work, no phone and she was with him everywhere when he wasn’t working – to name a few. I had come to the conclusion later that my mother may have possibly had a chemical imbalance or was manic-depressive which was never diagnosed but may have explained some things.

Family life presented some problems for my sister and me as we grew in trying to fit in with the outside world with neighborhood kids and school. We saw and felt the judgments on what we wore, how our clothes smelled from a portable kerosene heater and how we appeared different.

As years went by my parents aged living in their own isolated world continuing their battles with each other. We grew up, got married and established normal homes (I’m surprised) though not without our own challenges. Things got worse for my parents in poverty having not provided properly for themselves in their ‘golden years’.

My sister took on the responsibility of helping them as much as possible with me half-way across the country but they were proud and stayed in their home even if it was severely run down. It was their home. My mother passed away in her late 60’s and my dad lived another 15 years coming out of his shell and trying to recover without her. It’s another story, another time in how I found closure on the loss of my mother through a vivid dream.

Having lived behind the same doors with the struggles of my parents I learned compassion for them through the good times and not so good. I felt their tenderness for each other, my sister and I, heard their political and religious views, made my reconciliation pitches and wept with them when they faced some of their biggest fears.

Later in my dad’s life is when I observed my full awareness of my reaction to a neighbor’s perception who lived across the street from my dad. Through some bad choices my father had befriended and trusted a neighbor and ended up losing everything he had to the final loss of selling his house for a minimal amount while in the hospital with heart surgery.

I went with him to meet this neighbor out of curiosity to understand his trust in her and was met with another forceful, opinionated neighbor she had asked to join us. He proceeded to ream me up one end and down the other about the kind of daughter I was allowing my father to live in those poverty conditions. He only had the physical perception of the conditions of the house and what life appeared to be from the outside.

As I watched this neighbor rant and rave, I noticed my father as his head hung down realizing the bad choices he had made and could only love him more. He finally understood what my sister and I had lived trying to fit in this world of perception and nothing more had to be said. My only rebuttal to the disgruntled neighbor was, “The only way you would understand is if you had lived behind those closed doors.”

I think so many times of the people you hear stories about on the news and the misfortunes that have fallen on them. I wonder what life was like behind their closed doors, the pain and their reactions to it that brought them to the life they now live. I hope they can make some sense of it, find understanding and compassion along the way and pass it along.

We all have our stories, perspectives and perceptions – may we all take more time before we make our judgments. I hope you will share some of your stories.

Fruitcake Moments

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Pat

We humans are strange creatures in all sizes, shapes and with many weird comings and goings. In his “Fruitcakes” song, Jimmy Buffett, in good humor, suggests that maybe we need some more baking – some of us came out of the oven too early. Maybe it’s not so much Fruitcake people but more Fruitcake moments. I sure have had a lot of those Fruitcake moments in my lifetime and as I look around I see others perhaps having some of their own too.

My family does not like me to drive when we go anywhere – husband included. I don’t know why other than almost killing him one time when giving him a push start in my car onto a country road from around our horseshoe drive. We got a good head start that way. At the end of our drive, I stopped and looked both ways for traffic after giving him the final push – he was just hanging out there (luckily just a rural road) in a dead car. All I could see were his arms flailing and mouth going. Oops! I’d better get out there behind him and push! (You may be saying by now, “What dumb….”. I know but I need to be cut some slack here. I was newly married and barely 20.)

Another time, different home in the suburbs, I was backing our big orange van (vehicles again – go Denver Broncos 1977) out of our driveway and as I straightened out and moving forward, I noticed in my rear-view mirror my husband in the driveway jumping up and down, again arms flailing and mouth moving. I couldn’t hear him but knew something was wrong, so I stopped.

Apparently, I had run over the hose that was stretched across the driveway with the sprinkler attached and it had snagged when I backed up and caught up underneath. Only problem was that the hose was also attached to the house and stretching as I pulled out – I was house-attached with a long umbilical cord. When I got out on the street and started forward it had stretched so much it made deflating balloon-like gyrations before dislodging from the house. The neighbor across the street told us later he was watching the whole thing unfold from his picture window and chuckled all day at work with that sight firmly implanted in his brain.

Then there was another Fruitcake moment I remember when I was elementary school age coming home from school one day. I walked in the front door just ready to yell “I’m home” and looked up and saw legs dangling from the ceiling. “Mom – Is that you?” My mother had gone up in the attic for something and mistakenly stepped off the main floor board in between the slats and down she went. Luckily, it had just happened and she was able to hold on and wasn’t hurt.

I have a whole family with stories like that – guess I came from a gene pool with more than my share of Fruitcake moments. We’ve all done it and more than ever seen our fellow humans having the same brain lapses.

Maybe next time we can cut them or ourselves some slack and just say, “Been there – just another Fruitcake moment in paradise.”

Oops, there’s another one. I was so engrossed in writing this post and having fun with it that I was 10 minutes late for my dental appointment. As I was running out the door, my husband said, “Guess you’re having another one!” Making no excuses for being late but the dental office was kind and cut me some slack.

I’d love to hear what stories you have had or seen – please share.

New Beginnings – Changes ~~ to Live or Die

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Pat

(Thank you for coming to my new site – If you’re new welcome and if you’ve come from my old site I’m happy you’re back – I hope you resubscribe! Please be patient – it’s still a work in progress)

“When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” ~~ Alexander Graham Bell

One thing I’ve begun to observe in these new beginnings – changes are that they come in many package forms.Like many of you who may be experiencing life changes swirling around, in and out as if out of control hardly able to catch our breath, the changes presented to us can be good and some not so good.

But I’m beginning to notice how they are different not whether they’re good or bad but what opportunities they can bring in growth and reflection even if the package appears not too appealing.

Nobody likes changes because we find ourselves out of our comfort zone and forced to face things we’d rather put off for another day. But if we choose to step back and take another view, changes can bring not only something new but they can bring freedom – a break away from the old – if you dare to embrace them.

Let me explain some of my personal new beginnings – changes I’ve been experiencing in the past year. Near the end of last year 2011, I was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor. That will stop anybody in their tracks with all the emotions and thoughts flooding in at once. I realized with the ebb and flow of life that there are things people can do for me and with me and there are other things ultimately only I can do for myself when it comes to my body.

I was blessed to have loved ones supporting me along with a fantastic doctor team and medical technology but they can’t physically take over the task at hand and make the decisions I was pressed to make whether I wanted to or not. No procrastinating here.

I say that because of what my acupuncturist presented me with. He told me that the universe gives us choices and presents each of us with crossroads throughout our lives and he felt this was a gift and that I was, indeed, at a crossroads – I could choose life or I could choose death and either choice would be okay.

At the time, all I could think and feel was “I’m tired – tired of beating the wind”. But somewhere I must have made the choice to live because I started the radiation and chemo treatments and finished early November 2011 resulting with the tumor gone. Before this went down I should have gotten a clue earlier last summer when we lost our 30-year old horse to colic not long after our son-in-law had an emergency health issue in which he almost lost his life. Some big new beginnings and life catcher change packages not asked for but presented nonetheless and the universe finally got my attention.

A new year began and in March 2012 my youngest daughter had her second child. What a thrill to have another baby in the family and I observed the adjustments this new life was bringing into her family – another new beginning – change package.

I’ve been working full time in the corporate world, like most of you. But recently, at the end of April, that job took a turn and went out of state – another new beginning – change package. What do I do now in my ‘golden years’? When I took this job almost 4 years ago, I didn’t think I would enter the corporate world again. Before then, I thought I would explore my passions and personal interests and see what I had to offer the world but because of money flow situations it played a big part in the decision of getting back in the corporate world and taking another full time position.

Another new beginning – change package came also in April in losing my husband’s 93-year old mother and very much a mother to me as well. It’s a new beginning for her as well as for us realizing the emptiness left without her. This was a hard one and always is when you lose someone you love no matter what age. It brings up emotions you don’t want to feel and old-time questions we never seem to have answers for when someone dies. At the same time it takes us out of this world for a moment to reflect on the preciousness of life and take a review of our priorities.

Finally, last month in May, I was sitting with family in Richey Stadium at Denver University watching my oldest grandson’s high school graduation ceremony – I remember that new beginning – life package when I graduated from high school so many years ago. So many possibilities this graduation holds for him. It’s a day you look forward to when you get a bigger taste of independence shifting the focus from school, friends and having fun to first glimpses of the future – scary.

If we live long enough, life seems to bring us around full circle back to where I’m at now still lingering at this new beginning – change package of what I’m going to be doing now. I feel like I’ve been given my life back and I want to find ways to make it fulfilling, valuable and helpful to others. This will be my life beginning – change gift to you sharing my life stories whatever the package looks like with the hope you will be encouraged as we all make these journeys together on this big ball we call Earth. You’re not out there alone loving, laughing, crying and praying.

Don’t ever allow yourself to think this is all there is and life is boring. When new beginnings – changes come, whether they appear difficult or exciting, pay close attention and welcome them with openness no matter how uncomfortable. You may be at a crossroads about to discover the new found freedom you can have with the opportunities they present – something new and exciting never before dreamed. Let me know what new beginnings – changes you have in your life. I’m interested in how it’s going for you.

“When you are inspired . . .
dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive,
and you discover yourself to be a greater person
by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” – Pantajali

Pat from the ol’ kitchen table

Fitting In – Cookie Cutter or Piece of Puzzle

Posted on March 29, 2009 by Pat

I’m just beginning to realize in these 61 years that it’s a good thing when you don’t fit it. I have been trying all my life to be like others – or be accepted – and not stand out or appear to be different. But what’s important is if you have accepted yourself. When you truly have accepted who you are, there are no more struggles, no more fighting with the world. In fact, the world accepts who you are when you do. The Universe has already accepted who you are but for some reason we can’t accept that. That’s where the drama begins and don’t we seem to love drama?

I think that’s the lesson I’m learning in having returned to the corporate world, a year now, to be authentic and okay with who I am when it looks so different from anything I see around me. The key is that we all have something to contribute in our uniqueness. Who wants cookie-cutter people walking around talking and acting like everyone else? That doesn’t contribute – it doesn’t permit growth.

If we accept our uniqueness, like a piece of the puzzle, we add to the overall beauty of the picture when we settle in and feel comfortable with it. Then we can grow and expand along with everyone else’s individuality in the picture. We’re all a piece of the puzzle and we need every unique piece for it to be complete.

Here’s an example of uniqueness in the story of an ordinary phone salesman, Paul Potts, auditioning for a spot in the UK’s version of American Idol (previously included in one of my posts called Footprints). I love this story. It reminds me how inspiring we can be to one another when we truly accept who we are and act on it.

What I’ve been experiencing in the corporate world is more cookie cutter than uniqueness. The work ethic has appeared to have changed in that you can think independently if it doesn’t rock the boat and it’s not tolerated to ask questions that may challenge others’ work. I’ve been having difficulty with this given my old approach to fitting in and thinking independently. I think I have “pissed off” (if you can say that) everyone in my workplace and I really don’t know how other than ask if something is correct or not. It’s like everyone is walking on egg shells afraid to offend someone and you don’t know when you may have offended someone until the supervisor walks up and asks, “Why did you do that?”

Even in that, I can see all of our unique gifts and talents and I appreciate how differently people work these days. I just haven’t realized until now that I had been fighting who I am in this process trying desperately to fit in and it’s not going to happen and it shouldn’t. We all have our own contributions for the whole and it’s in respecting others’ perspectives and honoring ourselves that we move forward and grow adding to life’s picture.

So, when you feel friction in your home or at work ask yourself a few of these questions:

~ Am I trying to make someone else do it my way and am I honoring the way others do their work?

~ Why am I uncomfortable when I stand out or appear to be different? Do I truly accept who I am?

~ Am I honoring my uniqueness and contributions to the workplace…to the world or am I trying to fit in to how others live and work and what their expectations are of who I am?

I am inspired in this new awareness of accepting who I am and in coming back to write and share with you again. I hope these few thoughts have made you think of your life and where you’re at on the path you have chosen. If they have, then I’ve accomplished in some small way what I’ve set out to do. With that I’ll share this quote from Patanjali:

“When you are inspired . . .
dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive,
and you discover yourself to be a greater person
by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~