Tag Archives: #soul work

The Butter Box

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My father balanced a martini and a cigarette, settling in heavily as he often did when he came home at night.  We snuggled, me tucked under his arm;  he adjusted one of my short legs so it looped over his. Without words, we savored the smells and sounds of dinner on the stove, wrapped in comfort.  The couch softened, and we sank further in, my breathing increasingly paced with his. 

I was cozy, savoring my special time, while the smells and sounds of dinner on the stove wrapped the room in comfort. I didn’t want to move.

“Why, Daddy?” I asked.

“I have some stories to tell,” he said, smiling.

Well, it was sort of a box—small, oval, and battered. I must have walked past it every day, probably knew it was there, but never actually noticed it. Something there, but not consciously there.

I wasn’t especially curious, but the promise of a “Daddy story” was always enough. He loved to tell them—sometimes real, invented—and that was how he spread his love through our little family, how he made himself our daddy.

The box was light, wooden. The top pressed on.
“It’s easy to open, Karen,” he said. “Go ahead—but be gentle. There are some loose things inside.”

I tugged at the lid—a serious job for six-year-old hands—and hoped for candy, or maybe a small toy stowed away for just such a Daddy–Karen evening.

“Daddy, there’s nothing really in here—just some old stuff!”

That’s when the story began.

“A very long time ago, in another country called Sweden, your great-great-grandfather was a small boy, about your age, living on a farm. And your great-great-grandmother was a small girl, living on another farm. But the farms were poor, and the soil was rocky. They had a few sheep, but too many stones to keep a cow. They grew potatoes, drank sheep’s milk, and lived in a small house—much smaller than ours.”

In my mind, all I could think was: boring!

“Daddy, can you make the story go a little faster?”

“They left Sweden and took a boat to the United States…”

His voice was deep and slow, like music. I remember how happy I always felt when he was in a storytelling mood—but this one seemed too slow, confusing. I knew better than to interrupt too much. Interrupting could mean the story would end.

Then he picked up the box and held it to my nose.
“Smell it, Karen—it’s old roses. They still smell.”

“Daddy—I see brown things at the bottom. Are they really roses?”

“Those roses are more than fifty years old. They came from your great-grandmother’s garden in Minnesota.”

“Oh.”

“The box is ancient too—it was what they used to store butter in Sweden. It’s the only thing we have that came over with them.”

He paused. I could feel him trying to decide how the story should go on. But he didn’t. We got up, had dinner, and put the box back on the table.

Since there, I’ve come to understand why he breathed deeply and stopped.

For him—and therefore for me—the box was a link to a past we would never fully know, but that made us Swedish. Or rather, Swedish-American.  It represented something about who we were and where we belonged in the world that was hard to explain.

Every so often, he would say, “Let’s look at the box again,” and I would bring it down. I’d ask, for the hundredth time, “Who are the people in the funny tin picture?” and “Why did they make necklaces out of hair?” and “How can the roses still smell when they’re so old?”

Decades later, when I was in my fifties, I saw him unpack the box again as he settled into a retirement apartment, moving from Ann Arbor to Minneapolis to be closer to me.

“Daddy—the butter box! It wouldn’t feel like home without it on a shelf in your study. Can I open it?”

I still called him Daddy, though by then we spoke more about our shared research interests than anything else.

“Of course you can—the roses still smell, even though my sense of smell isn’t what it used to be.”

As I pried the lid loose, I saw that his mother had taped a small torn label inside. It read: This is for Stanley.

I knew what he meant. I would have it next. I said nothing.

Now the box is on a shelf in my living room. The roses still smell–well, at least the cloves that were used to dry them. The old tintype and the hair necklace are still inside. My grandmother’s class list from when she was a teacher — 1899.

When does a simple object become something so valuable that it would be the first thing that you pick up, after your dog, if you had to evacuate?  Is it the object?  Or the stories it engenders, not just to one person, but to many.  When do objects become part of a family’s web, holding it together across generations?

Obviously, it is easier if your object is a butter box than your great-great-grandmother’s Queen Anne table. 

But for me, the boundaries between the butter box and all the people who loved it have become blurry –it is hard to separate the object from the remembered presence of someone you hold very dear.

Soon, I’ll ask my granddaughter to bring it down from the 8-year-old level shelf where it sits.  And I will tell her the story – perhaps not as beautifully as my father, but with the same effort to weave an invisible but durable web of connection.

“Opal, can you open the box?”
“Sure, Nana—what’s inside?”
“Just open it and see…”

Vulnerable: What’s in a Word?

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“I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.”

–Adrianne Rich

Vulnerable: Susceptible to physical harm or damage, susceptible to emotional injury, or susceptible to attack.  “Vulnerable populations” are unable to care for themselves; elderly people are “frail and vulnerable”.

Most of us spend our life avoiding vulnerability. We exercise endlessly to stave off weakness; we guard what we say in meetings to avoid attacks and disagreements that could weaken our influence; when things get tough, we decide to leave our lovers before they can leave us.  We do what we can to protect ourselves – physically and emotionally. 

Of course we can’t be invulnerable in every context – we share things with our best friends or partners that we wouldn’t want to shout out to the world.  In early life we learn to admit when we are wrong, even if we do so sparingly.  We go camping, hiking or skiing without deep concerns about being attacked by a bear or breaking our leg, even when those are possibilities.  We are willing to be vulnerable because the rewards can be great – it is worth it to be connected, to be trustworthy, and to have fun.

 I suspect that each of us hones a personal, intuitive calculus that allows us to make quick decisions about when to leave our safe, self-protected space to realize something more important.  But then fear of failure and loss pushes back, demanding to reduce vulnerability to as small a part of life as possible. 

In my 30s, I believed that I needed a continuous career because I ached at other women’s vulnerability when spouses left and they couldn’t support themselves.  I wanted to stay home with my babies, but didn’t dare and chose safety over the complex pleasures and challenges of full-time mothering.  The pattern of looking for every chance to reduce vulnerability was well ensconced, although most of my choices were right for me at the time.

But then, more secure in my career (and becoming older, possibly wiser) I became more tuned in to the antonyms of vulnerability – what happens when reducing vulnerability becomes a practice and a priority.  Some are worth pondering:

Guarded: cautious, circumspect, reticent, non-committal

Protected: insulated, sheltered, screened off

Resistant: averse to, immune, unaffected by

Insensitive: inconsiderate, thoughtless, hard-hearted, callous

Indomitable: unassailable, unshakeable, intransigent

Thick-skinned: unfeeling, insensitive, hardened

I admit that I have often wanted to be all of these (well, not thick-skinned).  I hoped to control how other people would see me and how situations would affect me, and to find a relatively unshakeable balance, equanimity.  When challenged, and on those many days when I lacked self-confidence, trying to be non-committal and immune seemed pretty good.  When I was overwhelmed because I said yes to more requests than I could easily manage, being a bit more insensitive to other people’s needs felt like the wisest path.  As a young woman in a predominantly male world, being regarded as indomitable was a strategy to reduce uncertainty at work — and seemed to engender respect (acting more like a man?). 

Yet, as I look at the antonyms, I see that self-protection was cumulative.  I adopted predictable behaviors in meetings, and even with close colleagues, which shielded me – but did I gain respect at the expense of trust? I was intransigent in arguing for policies that served my students well – but did that get in the way of developing relationships that might have supported both me and my students?  Could I have accomplished the same goals with more vulnerability and less protection?

Then, sometime in my early 50’s, I found myself in a group where members developed a deep trust and shared painful details of their past and current lives.  There were two rules: you could not interrupt, and you could not offer advice.  I had to learn to listen rather than react. I read Thich Nhat Han, and absorbed the lesson that “the most precious gift we can give others is our presence.”  I had to acknowledge that I didn’t always know the solution to someone’s question or problem, but I could, if invited, join in a search.  I took in other mantras, accepting the inevitability of “failure” because I could not eliminate uncertainty.  I read Sun Tzu’s  Art of War, and took to heart “To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.”   I realized that to be an effective warrior for my students I needed to see the nuances of other people’s thoughts and allow them an honorable way of leaving or amending a conversation. 

I deliberately took baby steps to became more vulnerable.

At work, people noticed.  In my marriage it was too late, but when I remarried, I saw that prioritizing intimacy and understanding was as important as love – and much more important than being right.

Being vulnerable doesn’t mean being a pushover.  It doesn’t mean being weak or unable to take care of oneself.  It means that I need to measure my days against the antonyms – were there places where I leaned on them?  If so, what did I gain and was it worth it?  Did that leave me with vague hints that a change (or even an apology) is needed? 

The only way we get deeper knowledge of another person is if we both are willing to be seen, honestly, without defenses. And, I often feel that when I make myself vulnerable, I allow others to try it out as well.  

I don’t overestimate how well I am doing: I am still vain, self-absorbed and protective.  But more vulnerability has made me happier and more connected, not frailer.  It feels like my later-in-life superpower…

Photo by Damir Korotaj on Unsplash

Resolution…Or A Nudge?

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Photo by Devon Janse van Rensburg on Unsplash

For the past few years, the Washington Post has provided an alternative to New Year’s Resolutions.  Instead of articulating the characteristics of a “good” resolution, it suggests that we adopt a nudge. 

I had to think about that for a while: What is a nudge, and how is it different from an intention?  As a devotee of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I am first struck by how it has leaked into our vernacular as a short-hand for sexual  innuendo (the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink”  episode).  Moving on, one self-help coach, opines that “”If a stick is floating down a river and gets stuck… It just needs a little nudge and then it will get back into the flow of the river.”  Nudges are small but can have big effects. Chetan Bhagat adds that a nudge can be commonplace but “because it connects with you it holds meaning for you.”  So, if nudges are both commonplace and sometimes unpredictable, why try to adopt one? 

Well, having abandoned New Year’s Resolutions in my 20s (because they never lasted for more than a month), I discovered the nudge without anticipating it. 

A few decades ago, I slowly became aware that judgments infused almost every interaction.  Conversing with a colleague, my mind would remark, “he is a wonderful person, and his shoes are really great.”  Why is that a problem?  Because more often the automatic reaction was, “She is so smart, but I wonder why she can’t seem to get a flattering haircut.”  Routinely grasping for negative observations was accompanied by my ubiquitous irritation with people who didn’t act to make my world better: the person in line at the drug store who wanted to discuss their medications at length while I needed to get out of there ASAP, the jerk in the car that pulled in ahead of me to enter the freeway without a signal.  The list was endless. 

photo by Rashid on UnSplash

That year, in the middle of a yoga class where I was, as usual, assessing the quality of everyone else’s Warrior II pose, I came to an instant insight: my unkind thoughts harmed me, but not the other person.  The antidote came as a nudge: don’t resolve to stop thinking harshly – but instead embrace compassion.  I held the nudge of compassion through yoga and other moments of calm for most of that year and it changed me.  No, I am not perfect, but the judgment that colored my life gradually lifted with my nudge word. 

There we are: insights and subsequent nudges may be unpredictable, but they are not random.  We may not feel the nudge because we are not paying attention.  Nudges come and go every day, but when I carefully read a poem, I sometimes gasp because it says something that I have not been able to articulate – almost any Mary Oliver poem can do that.  Who is not nudged by her “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”   But I can also look for a nudge when I sense that need one – or, if New Year’s Day rolls around and I cannot resist the idea that every year brings something new.  If I am lucky, a word or image appears, and when I am paying attention, I can hold it and keep it as mine.

But as I contemplate how a spontaneous nudge can change me, I am also leery of how human beings invariably try to tame the ephemeral.  If you Google “nudge word”, you quickly come to social science, which tries to turn the expansive human experience into a solution for what ails us: “Nudge theory is a concept in behavioral economics, decision making, behavioral policy, social psychology, consumer behavior, and related behavioral sciences that proposes adaptive designs of the decision environment as ways to influence the behavior…of groups or individuals.” (Wikipedia)

Ouch — The social scientist’s nudge theory is designed to deliberately select small inputs to change people’s behavior in predictable ways.  This does not sound like Mary Oliver, who invariably directs our attention to surprise! 

In any case, my first experience of a nudge word, decades before it became “a thing”, suggests that when I am at a turning point, whether temporal, psychological, or spiritual, a word, phrase, or image can point a direction.  This year, the Washington Post’s article led me to the word Journey.  It feels like an appropriate invitation as I make deliberate choices to do less. 

Focus on what is now in my wild and precious life rather than plans, goals, or anything else that causes striving.  Chop wood, carry water.  Do the next best thing.  Take time to think about the journey and pay attention to what I can see right in front of me.  Take time to look back and ponder what I have learned.  Move, but not so fast that I don’t take time to observe…

Of course that is only a nudge….

Strange But True

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Guest blog by Carol Boyer Peterson

--Photo by David Matos on Unsplash

Have you ever heard a story that seemed so unlikely that you thought to yourself, “that couldn’t happen”? Yet, reluctantly, most of us learn that awkward and even bizarre experiences can yield unanticipated life changes.

My recent story is about how loneliness, isolation, and physical challenges led to an opportunity to reengage with life that I could not have anticipated. Who could imagine that spending two months in a memory care facility would become a journey into vulnerability and community? But it happened.

A little over two years ago, I tripped over an errant lawn-watering spigot and broke bones in both of my hands and fractured my wrist. Surgery was required on my left hand; a cast, on my right hand/arm. At the time, I was also part of a 15-month clinical research trial for chronic leukemia, and my orthopedic surgeon could not predict how long it would take for my bones to heal.

Keep in mind that, as a participant in a clinical research trial, I learned compliance—not easy for someone who prides herself on being in control! So, I should have readily accepted the hospital’s recommended placement in a traditional rehab facility, but my instinct told me otherwise.

While I was confident that my bones would heal, I knew that what I wanted was a quiet place where I could get the care that I needed and spend time in solitude, prayer, and reflection. I chose a nearby senior living community that had skilled nursing, a faith-based organization where I had volunteered and was familiar with some of the staff. However, there were no rooms available in the rehab section. Given the urgency of finding a room and my deep conviction that I needed to be at this particular location, I agreed to a room in their memory care facility, where I joined 12 elderly people—many close to my age—who were no longer able to live independently.

My health care professionals were horrified, but I prevailed.

My sparsely furnished room was on the second floor; my view, the monastery and an adjoining college campus. When I arrived, I spent much of each day alone…and looking out the window. But the shock of being physically unable to care for myself—even eating and brushing my teeth required assistance—and living in a locked ward with 12 other souls with advanced dementia became much more than a story of an awkward and inappropriate healing environment.

Rather than stay in my room, I chose to become an active member—albeit differently dis-abled—of this community. I participated in group activities, interacted daily with other residents, ate with them, volunteered to lead a chair exercise group (I am a certified exercise coach), and more. I learned to love being with my new friends, who quickly became comfortable with my active presence in their daily routines.

I often tell people that my perspective on everything was forever changed by the experience of being my late husband Jerry’s primary caregiver for nearly a decade. As his Lewy Body Dementia progressed, I learned to slow down, be more patient, and live with a good heart because I loved him so dearly. But, it was also a time of increasing detachment from the rest of the world.

And yet, two years after Jerry passed away in the same memory care facility that was now my temporary residence, something implausible happened: I felt part of a community. In a place that clearly was not intended for someone like me, I gained a different and deeper respect for the many challenges faced by those with advanced dementia. I also became reacquainted with critical life lessons, including how essential it is to protect individual dignity, call people by their first names, and listen closely to their life stories, which often appear in fragments rather than a well-designed narrative.

So, looking back, I can now see that my story—which others might have seen as ripe for a comic review titled “Life in the Alzheimer’s Unit while needing help with the Activities of Daily Living”—turned out to have been a gift.

Spending time in a memory care facility brought me face-to-face with my own vulnerabilities in a way that I had never even considered before. And, perhaps most important of all, it got me “unstuck” from loneliness and isolation, giving me instead a renewed sense of hope, healing, and connection. At a time when things could easily have gotten much worse, they started getting better—all because of a choice that I made against the advice of pretty much everyone…a choice based on instinct, not rational thought.

Fast forward to today. My cancer is in remission, my bones are healed, and I’m beginning to find a new way forward with greater humility, courage, and a heart that is more open to others. Caring, which has long been a defining characteristic in my life, will be guided by my faith and what I started to learn in those two months. Writing and sharing stories about my life-affirming or life-changing experiences will become part of my calling to bring peace and light into the lives of others. And, even though this is not what I planned for myself when I retired early and married Jerry, I will take the curious, compassionate, spiritual, and loving version of myself—which is slowly emerging—with me on this next phase of my life journey.  

“We do not think ourselves
into new ways of living;
we live ourselves
into new ways of thinking.”
                       —Richard Rohr

Carol Boyer Peterson

I am a widow, stepmom, grandmother of 9, social scientist and retired university administrator. I love many forms of exercise from Pilates to hiking. Despite the long winters, I also love living in Northern Minnesota with a view of Lake Superior. I am blessed to have dear friends and family who are with me on my life journey.