Tag: connection

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Travels

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I love the tech-y stuff that allows me to write my words to you and then to pack my suitcase and take off for a few weeks. At the end of this month and the beginning of next, we’ll be traveling to Europe to visit Christmas markets in various cities. A couple of years before COVID, I was privileged to travel to Vienna in the weeks before Christmas, where I took part in a winter retreat led by Christine Valters-Paintner (abbeyofthearts.com), a retreat leader, Benedictine Oblate, and prolific poet and writer. There, I met other travelers from all over the United States who gathered to retreat together and to enjoy Vienna by day and night.

One of the best Christmas Markets in all of Europe – the taxi driver who had delivered me to the retreat house from the airport told me so – materialized in the square right outside the window of my room in an old monastery, whose monks now have day jobs and who returned to the retreat center every evening. Several new friends and I walked all over Vienna to see the other markets in our free time, and daily we walked a few blocks away to a cafe that had been frequented by Sigmund Freud before he and his family fled to London during World War II – we were told.

After dinner, I would walk from a restaurant where all retreat members had had dinner, back to the retreat center, and I’d go to my own room where I prepared for the night. As the darkness fell, the shutters of the portable stalls in the square below my windows opened to reveal hidden treasures – clothes, food, and drink – winter drinks. I’d hear the voices of the shop keepers and the folks who shopped for Christmas delights, and the sound of folks in revelry, enjoying the dark evening with the lights and music filling the night. The smell of alcohol rose from the street below and filled my room.

At ten o-clock PM, something happened. All at once, the street was silent. When I looked out the window, I saw the booths that had been alive with people and activity were shuttered, the street dark and quiet. “I’m definitely not in the U.S.,” I thought.

After I returned home from the retreat in Vienna, I told Jeff often about the beauty of the place. That telling ignited a longing in him, too, to see the Christmas markets in Europe. I expect that as you read this, he and I will be enjoying new friends, fellow travelers, as we visit several cities of Europe, as we see the Christmas Markets. This year, we’ll leave on the trip after Thanksgiving, so we’ve been preparing by making sure we have enough warm clothes for the chilly days and longer nights there. We’ve even packed wool hats and long underwear – a memorial to our days growing up in Wisconsin.

For us, the Christmas Markets, full of laughter and wonder and crowds enjoying the colder nights, will mark the holiday time this year.

***

When I travel, as I prepare to travel, and when I return home and mention without thinking much about it where I’ve been, I remember. I remember the way I grew up, the life in my family. I remember that my mother and father wanted something more for me: “you will be a teacher,” my father said, more than once. I’m surprised by the life of privilege I have had, a life so distant from my people that they could not have envisioned it. “I have not forgotten you,” – I say to the ancestors. I remember where I come from. As I navigate the world – the world of privilege – I am always grateful, and I am astounded when I reflect on my life. The dreams of the ancestors come with me to these places, they walk with me, they see and they listen, they smell the fragrance of hot mulled cider drifting to my window.

***

As I travel, I’ll be thinking of home, where the trees are preparing for winter, too. – Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/2024

community, memories, reflecting, remembering

Showing Up

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Over the years of my life, I have come to value something that is rarely mentioned. Although this quality is not often mentioned, it is of inestimable value. At least it has been in my life. Many years ago, I committed to memory the “gifts of the Spirit,” and sometimes before I go to sleep at night, I say them to myself: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” And to that holy list I would add: “showing up”.

I remember the day of my mother’s funeral in Milwaukee. Jeff and I had accompanied my mother’s body back to Wisconsin to have her honored there, a funeral, and to have her buried there, alongside my father. Like many important memories of days and times in my life, “snapshots” appear in my mind of that day, a cold, cold February day, bleak in that way mid-winter days are bleak in the Midwest. I can sense myself sitting there in the sanctuary, aware of the folks who were sitting there along with me, my mother’s casket before us. Jeff’s mother and brother Randy were there, along with many of my friends, and some of my mother’s friends – those who were still alive, my mother having passed her 80th year, her friends, also. Some of those gathered were friends of my mother and some were my friends, there to be present to me.

Clearly, I remember myself walking away from the grave as the small group of us had gathered at the graveside for a few words to be said, and as we walked away so that her burial could be completed by the waiting workers. My friend Vicki walked beside me, and she said to me: “you had neat parents.” Her comment was so simple, and yet I have not forgotten her presence beside me, and I have not forgotten the words she said. With those words, she was telling me that she, too, had loved my parents, and that they had been a part of her life.

I remember Vicki’s presence that day and I remember the presence of many others. I remember reaching out to Joanne to join me in throwing some earth onto my mother’s casket at the burial. I remember my mother-in-law, Betty, taking my left arm as I walked down the steps to the gathering in the church basement that followed the funeral. I remember Jeff, who read the words I had written in honor of my mother, and who had traveled with me to be with her friends and mine on that day.

I will always love the people who were present that day. They showed up. My cousin Rudy and his wife Mary, now in their late 80’s and early 90’s, attended the funeral. I remember them especially because Rudy and Mary carry with them the value that I have come to love: they showed up. They were there at my wedding to Jeff, the first day of spring, when the guests traveled through another snow storm to be present with us. They were there when my father died after his long struggle with colon cancer. They were there on the day that Jeff read a short story of his at the little church in Kiel that his grandfather had pastored, many years before.

Last week, when I was in Wisconsin, I made sure to drive out of my way to see Mary and Rudy in their home. I wanted to show up for them, as they had shown up for me and for so many I loved, over the years. As we talked and talked, our conversation remembering so many that have passed, and including those who are still with us, I made sure to remind Rudy and Mary, as I have before, in other visits, that I have not forgotten that they had showed up.

Rudy and Mary personify that blessed quality, “showing up.” To me, they do. When I told them – again – they told me that they had visited my mother when she was living alone in the apartment on Appleton Avenue, alone after my father had died, alone in the place she lived until Jeff and I moved her to be closer to us in the Bay Area. I had not heard that story before.

I haven’t read accolades about “showing up.” I doubt I will, in this time of Artificial Intelligence and driver-less cars. Some of the simplest, most concrete things in life will not be mentioned.

But I remember all of you. I think of you often. I see your faces, those who showed up for me at just the moment I needed you to show up. Thank you.

Cousin Rudy and Me, circa 2014, Kiel, Wisconsin

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The One

Mary Elyn Bahlert 
She chose me before I knew Her,
or maybe - forgetting - I chose Her.
Silent, She's kept her peace:
Though I have risen and fallen,
though I have walked through the dark holding hands with demons,
forgetting who I am.
She observes, Her eyes deeper than mine:
She sees it all - sees clearly, with a wise heart.

She took my hand  
before I reached out.
She spoke:  sometimes with words, sometimes in silence:
She spoke.

One day - alone and afraid -
I said:  “Yes."
Then, we walked hand in hand.
We did not part ways again -
although sometimes I forgot Her for long stretches.

She is placid, clear, deep, full.
When I am angry, shaking a hot fist at the world,
She is placid, clear, deep, full.
She holds me then with great gentleness.
My breath returns, gentle, too.
                 - Mary Elyn Bahlert, 8/2020

Sometimes with words, sometimes silence, she speaks… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Vilnius, Latvia,

7/2024

memories, nostalgia, reflecting, Uncategorized

Jeff’s face

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Sometimes in the morning or evening, when Jeff and I sit across the room from each other – he in his beloved leather chair, and me on our sofa, I look up to look at him. He is reading, or watching another series on the web. He doesn’t know I’m looking. I look up and take a few moments to look at his face, to study him, to enjoy him.

Jeff’s face has been in my life for a long time, although sometimes it seems as if all the time has gone by so quickly; it has gone by so quickly. We’ve had good times, sweet times, hard times, laughing times, gentle times, shouting times, quiet times. I am grateful to the Powers for having gifted me with Jeff as my partner in this life.

I love that Jeff is a man who makes sure to make time for relationship, time to nourish and be with one another, offering gratitude, remembering together, enjoying one another.

And so, today, this is an ode to Jeff’s face. “From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face…” – Rumi

I think his kindness shows in his face, and I’m grateful for his kindness, through all of life’s journey.

Jeff, Lake Tahoe, 8/2020

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Crabbing

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Sometimes when I think about my life, I think I came from what we called “The Old Country.” The Old Country was how my mother referred to people who – like her parents from Ukraine – had immigrated to the United States. Many of the customs and much of the way we lived then, in the 1950’s and 1960’s – were ways that had strong connections to the Old Country.

Summers in the Midwest can be brutally hot and humid. By the late afternoon, we tried to find respite from the heat by running an electric fan near the screen door that led to the front porch of the upper flat on Milwaukee’s North Side. Even the whirring fan did not change the oppressive heat in the flat. Several days during the summer, after Daddy came home from his job in the steel mill, Mom and Daddy and Suzie and I set off for a secluded, leafy spot on the Milwaukee River. Daddy had changed into bermuda shorts – he’d been liberated from wearing long pants all summer some time in the 1950’s – and the car was quiet except for his talking, all the way across town to our spot.

We carried wooden poles and Daddy carried a silver bucket with water sloshing against the insides, and a package of raw liver – bait for the cray fish we were about to catch.

I never did like to touch the sharp edge of the hook at the end of the fishing line, so Daddy baited the hook with a bit of slimy liver, and I dropped my line into the river, and waited. Soon enough, the line would be pulled down a bit into the brown water and I’d pull up my end of the pole, a crayfish holding tight to the liver on the hook. I’d swing my pole toward the shore – hoping to not hit Suzie or Mom – and drop the writhing crayfish as close to Daddy as I could. He’d pick the crayfish up by sliding his fingers along the fishing line, pull, and drop the catch into the silver bucket.

Then, he’d bait the hook for me again, and I was back at it.

We still made it home to the flat in time for an early supper, after Daddy had carried the silver bucket, now heavy with crayfish, into the basement. One time, a crayfish found its way out of the bucket – how did that happen? – and he had to chase it around the cool floor of the basement until he picked it up again and dropped it into the bucket with its companions.

The next day, Mom boiled a big pot of water on the stove, and one by one, the cray fish were dropped into the steaming water where they stopped their frantic moving and turned bright red. Mom served the crayfish to Daddy while she made supper for the rest of us.

I never did get to taste a crayfish. I didn’t want to. But I can still find the place where the leafy path led to the river, down a few steps from the sidewalk, where the lush trees muffled the sounds of passing traffic.

Now my summer adventures are to the desert in California. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 04/2024, at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California – where two deserts meet.