Category Archives: family

The Church of Santa’s Misfit Toys

Posted on March 23, 2014 | 2 comments

Seven years and a day ago, my family said goodbye to a most remarkable man.  He was the Dr. Reverend Thomas Barth, but to me he was simply “Uncle Tom.”

It is a rare and beautiful thing when you have the opportunity to connect with someone whose spirit is so loving, so disarming, that you can truly be yourself – all of you- without hesitation.  Keenly and wisely connected to a God greater than himself, there is no question that Uncle Tom was steadfast in his Christian beliefs.  But unlike many others who so deeply believe and identify themselves as Christians, Uncle Tom was comfortable in the midst of anyone.  Atheists and agnostics were not welcomed in with a plan to convince them otherwise; they were welcomed in with a plan to love and accept exactly as they were.  I will say this boldly:  more than anyone else I’ve ever known, Uncle Tom embodied the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Uncle Tom’s story, as he told it to me, was that when his older sister Sally – my mother- was on her deathbed, she cautioned him, “Life is short.  Go be you.”  This life-altering exchange put him on a trajectory to take an honest inventory of himself and his life.  Over the course of the next 18 months, Uncle Tom lost and buried many more people in his life, including his own parents. He struggled with his own health challenges and faced his own mortality.  As dark and lonely as this time of his life was, it ultimately led to him ending his marriage and telling his family after 40 years of painful secrecy that he was gay.

Now I would love to tell you that my family applauded his efforts to be true to himself and sprang into action to provide loving support, but that simply is not the case.  It took years and countless hurtful exchanges for some people in the family to arrive at a place of peaceful acceptance.  I have no doubt that there were some very dark days where Uncle Tom felt the searing pain of a broken heart.  Even so, he stayed the course.  He had left the corporate world so he could follow his passion and return to seminary school.  He eventually received his doctorate in theology and was installed as a pastor in the United Church of Christ.  After being part of a few different churches, he found his home as the pastor for a small, fledgling church in Waukegan, Illinois – a church I had affectionately dubbed “The Church of Santa’s Misfit Toys.”  It was the perfect place for him to be, because no one can heal a broken soul like one that has been previously broken itself.

It was over the course of these years of painful growth that Uncle Tom’s life really coalesced.  He met and married a partner who was a partner in every sense of the word, and was eventually assigned the term of endearment “Aunt Bill.”  He built an incredible allegiance with his two children, Todd and Carrie, and loved them as fiercely as I’ve seen any parent love.  When he moved just an hour away from my sister and me, he welcomed us in as part of his “Christmas family” and treated us as affectionately as he did everyone in his life. He told us stories and made us laugh with his silly, outlandish antics, and he helped my sister and me keep the memory of our mom alive.  He even provided mentorship to our friend Matt, and helped him understand that it was possible to fully reconcile being gay and a Christian – a reconciliation Matt desperately needed and carries with him to this day.

Greater than any of this, though, Uncle Tom lived out the values he so frequently preached.  In short, he forgave. It is the single most important thing I learned from him, that the key to a happy life is forgiveness.  He lived it, he breathed it, he taught it by example.  His forgiveness of those who had hurt and betrayed him in his times of desperate need was one of the most profoundly beautiful things I have seen.

He left us in the blink of an eye, but Uncle Tom stays with all of us in subtle and tender ways.  A cardinal landing on a branch to pause and sing their sweet song, a bowl of chocolate ice cream before going to bed, a hearty laugh at the absurdity of life.   Seven years and a day have gone by, and I’ve never stopped missing him.  I’ve also never stopped knowing my life was richer for having had him in it.

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One Happy Memory

Posted on February 8, 2014 | Leave a comment

It was almost exactly a year ago when I received word through my extended family that my step-mother Jan had been checked into a hospice facility.  Word of this news came to me via email, from my cousin to my uncle and then to me, and within just a couple of hours a second email arrived saying that she had already passed.  When we first received the emails, my sister and I didn’t quite know what to say or to do about it.  We hadn’t had but maybe two or three instances of contact with Jan in the 16 years since our father had passed.

In the days that followed, my sister and I hopped onto a roller coaster of raw, gut-wrenching emotion.  There was a reason that we hadn’t maintained a relationship with Jan, a reason that there had only been those two or three instances of contact in all those years.  Those reasons were safely tucked between my sister and me.  Somewhere along the way, we took a vow of silence and made a deep and unwavering commitment to stay on the high road.  Besides the fact that it seemed to be the most right, most respectful thing to do, we had moved on.  We had each built happy, healthy, passionate lives for ourselves and that was the focus of our energy.

But there’s nothing like an impending funeral to get one’s buried emotions all stirred up.  The first stage of emotion was indifference.  Oh well, we thought.  I hope she finds peace on the other side.  But then the phone calls started coming in.  Jan’s family was reaching out to us, asking us to come to the funeral.  Telling us we were in the will.  Giving us details of her last months and days.  Our peaceful indifference dissipated.

From there we moved on to what could only be described as straight up dilemma.  I pulled up the obituary online.  I was shocked – utterly shocked – that my sister and I were listed as surviving family members in the obituary.  Granted, our names were wrong, with me being listed as Jennifer Swearingen and my sister as Jessica Wiener, but this was just a funny (and sad) marker of how lacking the connection was.  I called my best friend and told her the story, and told her that I hoped when I died, no one would be surprised to see their (wrong) name in my obituary.  It was all very telling.

For the next couple of days, there was a lot of back and forth between me and my sister.  At the outset, I had promised myself that I would follow my sister’s lead.  I was 19 years old when Dad and Jan had married and was already moved out of the house, but my sister was only 9.  She had the longest and deepest connection to Jan of the two of us.  I had to let her do whatever was right for her.  Initially Jess took a firm stance:  “We’re not going.”  Okay, I thought…but I wasn’t so sure it was the right answer.

The next day I emailed my sister and I said this:  “Look, I promised myself I would follow your lead.  And I promise you, I will.  But I just have to say this.  It is a little strange to me to be listed in someone’s obituary and their will and not go to their funeral.  As I’ve thought this through, over and over again, it occurred to me that this could be our last act of grace for Jan.  But really, we’d be doing it for our Dad.  The one thing that all three of us had in common was that we loved Dad.”

It took a few hours, but Jess wrestled with all of it and responded:  “I don’t know if there is a heaven, but if there is, and if by some chance I make my way in, and if when I get there I see Dad, I’d feel pretty small if this was the one thing I did that let him down.  Let’s pack our bags and go.”

It was actually on the evening of Valentine’s Day when my sister and I loaded up the Rav4 and headed south to Iowa.  True to form in times of turmoil, I had a massive stomach ache.  I always carry my stress in my stomach, and this was a whopper.  Jess poked fun at me.  “Why do you have to be such a feeler?  You are such a feeler.”  I poked back.  “Why are you always so numb to all of your feelings?  You bury everything so deep.”  The words hung in the air for awhile and became a fading echo; we both knew why she had learned to bury her feelings like this.  The why behind it was the reason we were heading to Iowa.

During the four hour car ride, I set out for us to find our happy memories of Jan.  Isn’t that what you do when someone passes on?  Well, we had a lot of memories – a lot of them.  There was no question we had experienced joy in the presence of Jan, most notably when our dad and his crazy storytelling was involved.  But we could not recall a time where we experienced joy because of Jan.  When we made it to Rock Island, about 30 minutes from our destination, I turned to Jess and said, “Okay girl, this is it.  We have 30 minutes to come up with one happy memory.”  Jess paused for a moment and looked thoughtfully out the window.  She turned back to me and said sweetly, sorrowfully, “I can’t.”

The following morning Jess and I got up and got ready for the funeral.  This time, both of us had stomach aches.  I’ll admit, I was kind of a nervous wreck.  Who would be there?  How would they respond to us?  What kind of emotions would the day bring?  We pulled into the church parking lot, and I paused and gave Jess a fist bump.  “We’ve got this, kid.  You and me.  Worst case scenario, we go in, no one talks to us, we sit in the back of the church and we quietly leave.  At the end of it, we still have each other, and we did the right thing.  We can do this.”

But it wasn’t like that at all.  The moment we walked in, a swarm of step-relatives and even one of our own cousins embraced us.  Were we the prodigal daughters?  Perhaps, but in that moment it didn’t seem to matter.  As is true with many funerals, there were pictures everywhere.  More than half of the pictures were pictures of our family, of us.  Granted, they were old pictures.  Even so, it was another telling marker.  Jan’s life with our dad, which of course included us, was her life.  She loved that man.  Even though she was only married to him for nine years before he passed away, it almost seemed as if her life began when she met him and ended when he died.  Her life was depicted as a time capsule.

Jan’s family insisted that we walk in with the family and sit with them during the services, a gesture that was simultaneously sweet and awkward.  The services were very nice, and we were told Jan had chosen several of the scriptures and songs for her own funeral.  There were scriptures about forgiveness and redemption.  There were stories of her acts of kindness to other church members.  Maybe, I thought, just maybe she had grappled with the harsh complexity of our relationship just as we had and tried to reconcile it.  Anything is possible.

After the service, we lined our cars up to make our way to the cemetery for the internment.  Now usually the cemetery would be maybe a half mile away and it will be a slow but quick procession.  Not so on this day.  Unbeknownst to us, we made our way out of the church parking lot and proceeded together, ever so slowly on this bright, brisk February day, about 15 miles to an old country cemetery.  It was situated out on a gravel road between a sea of corn fields and pastures.  Upon arrival, we learned that the cemetery was actually a family cemetery of Jan’s family.  There were maybe 50 or 60 people buried there,and they were all linked to Jan.  Her parents, her grandparents, and some of her siblings who preceded her in death.

The wind was brisk and unrelenting, so the graveside service was quick and to the point.  When the services had ended, family members of Jan pointed out graves of their loved ones and the stories that accompanied them.  The stories filled in some of the gaps, explained some of the pain that Jan and her family must have surely felt.  Pain that maybe went unresolved, and as I like to say, came out sideways as a result.  A wave of understanding washed over me.

Another thing that washed over me, standing in that little country graveyard, was I think what they call forgiveness.  Look, I can’t sugar coat it.  The relationship we had with Jan wasn’t good.  But I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that I was part of that equation.  And there were complicating factors.  Jan married a man who she loved deeply, but who had his own serious health issues.  He also had two grieving daughters who had not gotten over the loss of their mom.  In short, she married a man with an impossible set of circumstances.  On top of that, she had some issues of her own, but maybe, just maybe, that was the byproduct of her own upbringing, her own unresolved pain.  You throw all of this into a big old steaming cauldron, and out comes a bad chemical experiment.

I realized, as I began to reconcile all of this, it doesn’t mean that you have to assign “good” or “bad” to anyone.  I think what I realized on that day, more than any other day in my life, is that every one of us, every single one, is made of both good and bad parts.  Things we celebrate, and things we hide.  Joy and pain.  Happiness and sorrow.  Triumph and failure.  We are all, at the end of the day, a mixed bag – no one person necessarily being better in totality than the other.

We enjoyed a dinner back at the church with Jan’s relatives and shared a few stories, a few laughs, a few hugs.  We got in the car and acknowledged to each other – this was good.  It was unexpectedly cathartic and healing and good.  The four hour car ride home was quiet, contemplative, exhausted.  But it was also peaceful.  There was no longer a desperate push to find our one happy memory.  We had found it in an old Iowa country graveyard.

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Yes, Jennifer, There Is A Santa Claus

Posted on December 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

Surprisingly, it was my mother who taught me about the magic of Christmas.  I say “surprisingly” because by all other accounts, Mom had a hard exterior.  She had a moral compass made of steel, and most of the time she held me to a standard I was never quite sure I could achieve.  (Case in point:  A 30 minute discussion about why I got one A minus on my report card, when the rest of the grades were all A’s.  Sheesh.)

But Christmas brought out a different side of Mom.  Christmas is where the love, the abundance, the excessiveness, and even the embrace of straight up reckless consumerism came flowing out of mom.  She made sure that every detail was attended to and her Christmas spirit, even to this day, has left us steeped in traditions.  The weeks leading up to Christmas were filled with finding our own special live tree and decorating it with handmade ornaments, baking of cookies, making of candies, meticulous wrapping of gifts complete with homemade ornate bows, and parties large and small – lots and lots of parties.

In our house, Santa was kind of a big deal.  Oh sure, there were the usual transparent parenting techniques of dangling Santa’s watchful eye over me to entice me to behave – which of course achieved only mixed results.  But the bottom line was that Santa was about magic.  I was a logical child, and I knew that this whole Santa business didn’t make sense.  How could he make his way around the entire world in just one night?  How could he know this year we were going to be at Grandma’s and not in our own home?  How could he really get a sleigh to fly?  How could he possibly have snuck into the house while everyone except Mom was at church, put the presents under the tree, and Mom didn’t even see him?  This guy was good, I thought.  In spite of my suspicions, I knew in this family I was required to believe.  So I did.

But all of that came to a screeching halt when I was 9 years old.  I remember it distinctly, because I think it might be the first time my heart was ever broken.  A couple of weeks prior to Christmas, you see, my dad had misplaced a shoe.  He commissioned me to help him find it, and I searched that old farmhouse high and low on his behalf.  This led to me looking under his and Mom’s bed, and I was quickly shooed away by Mom.  But it was too late – I had already seen the big, shiny, silver saucer sled underneath it.  Knowing the rules, I kept my mouth shut.  But imagine my surprise – or rather, my dismay – when on Christmas morning that very sled was under the tree and in big letters it read:  “To Jenny, From Santa.”

WHAT????!!!  I remember staring at it in utter surprise.  I am certain to this day that Mom knew precisely what she was doing.  I know this, because as I looked back at her in disbelief, there was a twinkle in her eye.  Sure, there had been nine years of lies and ruthless deceit.  But this act was a nod that I was growing up, and it was time I got in on the secret.  It was time, because six months later we would be welcoming baby Jessica into our home, ending my days as an only child, and requiring us to all work together to pass the magic of Santa onto someone else.

Christmas now is very different from those innocent days in that old farmhouse on a hill.  But one thing remains:  everything about it is magical.  The joy of finding and giving the perfect gift, the laughter of sweet reminiscence, the sharing of great meals and the straight up comfort of togetherness.  That’s what this Santa business is all about, and that is why a little part of all of me will always believe.

Merry Christmas, everyone…and may today have some Santa magic in it for you.

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Alice

Posted on September 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

I was sitting on the subway in D.C. when the email came through:  Aunt Alice had passed peacefully in her sleep a few hours before.  I wasn’t surprised, per se, for the last time I had seen her a few months prior, it was clear that our sweet Aunt Alice was weak and tired and dwindling in spirit.  Sure, she was still the same great auntie I had always known and loved, and yet, I suppose she wasn’t.  She was 96, after all, and had led a full and lovely life. She deserved to be tired.

Aunt Alice always had a special place in the hearts of the Swearingen cousins.  Though she was one of the many siblings of our grandma, she wasn’t just any old run of the mill sibling.  No, she was the carbon copy of our Grandma Kathryn.  There was really no denying it.  It was her laugh, her touch, her smile, her everything.  Alice loved to tell a story how, one day while out running errands, someone in town looked down at her sandaled feet and said, “Why Alice, you even have Kathryn’s feet!”  It’s true.  She even had Kathryn’s feet.  She had Kathryn’s everything.

Having lost our Grandma Kathryn much too soon more than thirty years ago, we quickly attached ourselves to Aunt Alice to keep the memory of our grandma alive.  And you know what?  It worked.  We reveled in her ability to tell a story in the funniest way that maybe took a few gratuitous detours along the way.  We basked in the way she could laugh heartily, most frequently at herself.  We welcomed the way that she gave so freely of her affection.  It was all there. It was all Grandma Kathryn.

About three or four years ago, my sister and I made our annual pilgrimage to Morton, Illinois to see Aunt Alice and other assorted family members.  Aunt Alice asked us to go with her for her daily trip to the nursing home to see her sister Babe, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s many years prior.  On the way there, Aunt Alice told us that someone once asked her, “Why do you go see Babe every day?  It’s not like she knows you do it.”  To which Alice softly replied, “Yes, but I know.”

And that stuck with me.  That’s the kind of family I come from.  The kind that sticks together no matter what.  The kind that overlooks the challenges and celebrates the togetherness at every opportunity.  A family of siblings who all lived in the same small town for their whole lives and were each other’s most important social connection.  “Didn’t somebody in this family have a secret?” I once asked Aunt Alice.  “Oh, I suppose so” she said with a quick chuckle, “…but not for very long!”  This family’s unique brand of togetherness and transparency led to an accountability that doesn’t exist for every family.  It taught us how to conduct ourselves in the world and with each other.   It taught us that family may not be all you have, but family is the most important thing you have.  It taught us that, even if she doesn’t know it, you still go visit your sister with Alzheimer’s in the nursing home faithfully every day.  Because you know.

That evening after I learned of her passing, I went out to dinner with a colleague and we decided to walk back to the hotel afterwards.  Along the way, we happened upon the National Cathedral.  It is an incredible piece of architecture and we eventually found our way inside.  Immediately upon entering, we heard someone at the front of the church playing the flute.  They weren’t just playing the flute, though.  They were playing “Amazing Grace.”  A little stunned, but then again not, I plopped myself down on a pew and said a prayer for my sweet Aunt Alice who had taught me so much.  My prayer, really, was mostly to say thanks.  I lit a candle in her honor and made my way back to my colleague.  He had been admiring all of the stained glass, but was perplexed as to why one panel was illuminated so much more brightly than the others.  We went outside to investigate, and as we turned the corner we stopped cold in our tracks.  There before us was biggest, brightest full moon we had ever seen.  And just to the right of that, a cloud formation that looked like an angel.  We grabbed each others arms and I said something to the effect of, “Oh wow, I think we are having a moment here.”  A moment, indeed.  A perfectly serendipitous moment to remember a remarkable woman from a remarkable family.

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Peanuts

Posted on October 2, 2011 | Leave a comment
I met my first soulmate when I was four.
The preceding 18 months had taken a toll on my family. My dad had been diagnosed with kidney failure, and in a matter of days my mom had packed up our life and moved us to Iowa. It was a chaotic time, a time of uncertainty and fear and disbelief. It’s hard to self-actualize and find your inner peace when everything that matters is at stake. Suffice it to say, we didn’t.
And so, after Dad’s health stabilized thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, my parents decided it was time our life got stabilized too. When we lived in New Mexico, my dad had two horses and this has evoked a passion in him he didn’t previously know existed. With their dreams of more horses in tow, they searched for some land in the country and decided on a 20 acre lot just outside of Lowden, Iowa. (For those of you who don’t know, Lowden is a thriving metropolis of about 700 people, with zero stoplights and a cop that is shared with the next town over. Kid you not.)
Shortly after we moved, my parents realized that young Jenny was going to need a playmate or she may well drive them nuts. I am told – and I can hardly believe this to be true – that I was quite a talker in my early days. My dad always told the story that one day, out of sheer exhaustion from the sound of my voice, he suggested I go outside and talk to the bush in the front yard. I did.
So one day, my mom woke me up and told me that this day was going to be a very special day. I couldn’t imagine what was in store, but in no time we headed up the road a ways to the home of our neighbor Annabelle. Something was a little off about Annabelle. She was dirty and disheveled and had really bad teeth. Rumor had it when her son came to visit, he had to sleep in the bathtub. So I can assure you, this day that we went to visit Annabelle would be our first and last visit to her home.
Rumors aside, what happened that day at Annabelle’s rickety old house changed my life. Annabelle was a talker (well, so I was I – but talking to a bush had more appeal than talking to Annabelle) and so it took seemingly forever to realize why we were there. We eventually went out back to the barn, and situated there was a momma dog and 6 furry little puppies – German Shepherd/Collie mixes. My mom told me I could pick which ever one I wanted. I looked at her in disblief, then surveyed the landscape. They were all cute in their own way, but there was one who was so fat and roly-poly she could hardly stand up. She was a fluffy fluffball of pure fluffy goodness. I picked her, or maybe she picked me, and in no time I had selected her name: Peanuts.
Peanuts was my first soulmate. On that farm, she was my best friend and my most reliable source of companionship and entertainment. She was an “outside” dog, because that’s what people on farms have. So every morning in the summer, as soon as I would get up I would bound outside, screen door slamming behind me, to find my pal who was always patiently awaiting my arrival. We would roam the acreage and get into all kinds of mischief together. In the fall, when I had to return to school, Peanuts would come running to the end of the lane to greet me when she heard the school bus pull up to drop me off at the end of the day. In the winter, I hated her “outside” status and would go make beds of hay and blankets to keep her warm. And in the spring, the best season of all on that farm, Peanuts and I would make the rounds together to check on all the new baby animals that had arrived on the scene.
I say that Peanuts was my first soulmate because she was all the things you would want from one. She was loyal beyond belief and fiercely protective. (For some reasons she really hated one of our neighbors and would snarl and growl at him and only him. I still wonder what she saw in that man that I never did.) She loved me in a way that I had never been loved: unconditionally. Ever present, she was there when I needed her most, relishing the good times and comforting me during the bad. She was sweet and gentle and affectionate, but not overbearingly so. But most of all, she shared my joy. There was literally no one else on the face of the earth that she would rather see than me. You could see it in her innocent brown eyes, and her tail, and I swear to you she could smile. She was the best.
Here is what I know for sure: soulmates are far and few between, but they come in a lot of forms. You never know when one will just pop up in your life. And rest assured, you don’t need to be on the lookout for a soulmate, you just need to be ready for them when they arrive.

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Billy Joe

Posted on June 21, 2010 | 1 comment

In short, he was the coolest cat I ever met, and while most of his family called him “Billy Joe,” I was lucky enough to call him Dad. There are so many things I admire about him, that I am not sure I can put them all to paper. He was funny and patient and tolerant of the most trying of circumstances–far beyond anyone’s comprehension.

Born on October 1, 1941 to Harold and Kathryn Swearingen, Billy Joe was the baby of his family. (One of his all-time favorite jokes: “They named me Bill because I came on the first of the month.”) There is something about being the baby of the family that lends to a special brand of charm, and he had oodles of it. He just had an easy way about him, and was always the life of the party. Need a spot-on impression of one of the locals in our small Iowa town? Bill was your man. Want to feel better about your own circumstances, compliments of some serious self-deprecation? There he was again. (“How tall are you?” someone once asked. “Depends,” said Dad, “if I am on my good leg or my bad leg. I am either 5’10 or 6’0.”) His life was tragic, and charmed, and as far as I can tell, truly one-of-a-kind.

In 1971 just months before his 30th birthday, my dad was diagnosed with kidney failure and was given two weeks to live. But here’s where I developed a sense that there indeed is a plan out there greater than ourselves: Bill’s brother Alan was completing his medical residency at the University of Iowa hospitals who just happened to be some of the pioneers in the field of nephrology. So in a race against the clock, my family packed up and moved from New Mexico to Iowa so that Dad could get what was then state of the art treatment.

From there, and for many years to follow, my dad and our family experienced a whole lot of medical ups and downs. I look back, and I realize that all of my formative years were shrouded with worry of losing this most remarkable man. But here comes lesson number two, compliments of Dad: All the worrying in the world doesn’t change a thing. And, in fact, it just might make things worse. He showed us.

Dad went through a couple transplants that didn’t last long, but he spent most of the rest of his life on dialysis. Twenty-five years, to be exact, which put him in something like the top one thousandth of one percentile of life expectancy of people on dialysis. He had a point to prove.

If his onslaught of medical problems wore on his nerves, he surely never showed it. Every night for many years, we played Nerf basketball in the kitchen while Mom cooked dinner–sometimes to her chagrin and more often to her delight. Every night sometime after dinner, Dad would grab the guitar and sing his silly made-up songs. He thought and planned and dreamed about ways he could improve our little hobby farm for the quarter horses he so passionately raised on it. Maybe it was because he had the keen sense that life is short, but Dad really knew how to live.

When Dad’s body finally gave out on him fourteen years ago, clearly long before his will dared to do so, my sister and I were there with him. I have always felt it was a privilege to share this most amazing moment with him as he danced on the delicate line from one world to the other. And though he had been in a coma-like state for two days prior, he awoke on his last day and was as lively and as funny as I could ever remember him being. And you know what he said? He said the most astounding thing, considering that he was in the last hours of his life. He looked us in the eye and said, “I am not going to lose levity today.” There came lesson number three out of a gazillion that I got from him. I thought it every day he was alive, and I have thought it every day since: I am lucky to have known this man.

Life has all kinds of twists and turns. Nobody is guaranteed anything, and if you think you are then I say you’re a fool. Just ask Billy Joe: Our charge, if we can, is to live. Not just to breathe, but to live. Find your passion, surround yourself with quality people, seize every opportunity to try something new, make a new friend or for God’s sake, laugh.

Happy Father’s Day, my sweet dad. Thanks for shaping me and above all else, for letting me live in your light. Wherever you are, I will meet you again someday, and when I get there I know one thing that I can count on for sure: We won’t lose our levity.

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Dear Mom

Posted on May 9, 2010 | 2 comments

In honor of Mother’s Day, I am sharing a letter I wrote to my mom for Mother’s Day four years ago. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who have the hardest job on the planet.

Dear Mom,

This weekend marks the 20th year that I have endured a motherless Mother’s Day. Twenty years is a long time –more than half my life–and a lot has changed since I last saw you and you assured me that everything was going to be all right. I think there are some things you should hear from me.

First of all, I want to say you picked a really shitty time to leave me. Granted, you didn’t have a lot of say in the matter, and I know it’s not how you expected things to turn out either. But the time you left this earth was shitty because I was in the midst of what was perhaps my most imperfect state. Sixteen, and had it all figured out. Sixteen, and full hormones and stupidity and false confidence. Sixteen, and angry that you had the audacity to criticize my foolish ways. Sixteen, and unable to see that I was turning out to be you.

But I have turned out to be you, in the strangest and most unexpected way, and I think you would either be immensely proud or completely annoyed. I have your wicked and sometimes bizarre sense of humor. I have your thick, stubborn head (unfortunately topped with Dad’s fine, lifeless hair). I have your big brain filled with big ideas. I am sometimes misunderstood just as you often were. Like you, I believe in all things just and right, and like you I am painfully aware that life rarely offers hearty helpings of either.

I know there are a lot of things about my life that would make you proud. I’ve made a life for myself that is filled with laughter and selectively chosen loyal friends. I have been called and have risen to a life’s work that is more meaningful than almost any other I can imagine, and have made an immense difference in my corner of the world. I am responsible in ways you would have never thought possible. Really and truly, I am.

And one of my proudest accomplishments, one that I know would warm that sometimes steely heart of yours, is that your baby–my baby sister–has become one of my most trusted, cherished and sacred friends in life. The same baby sister I loved the first day she was born, and by the second day figured out she shamelessly stole my spotlight. The same baby sister who I resented for choosing the same cereal as me every morning, and the same baby sister who was the inspiration for the limited-time, one-act melodrama, “Stop Playing With My Makeup You Fucking Little Brat!” The same baby sister I couldn’t comfortably relate to until I could safely assume she’d had her first beer. The same baby sister I look at now and think, “Damn, how did she get here from there?”

You have every right to look me in the eye and confidently state, “I told you so.”

Even if your sudden departure wasn’t expected, it turns out the cosmos were right. Right in the wrong sort of way, right in the way that makes you say, “What the fuck?” and then strap on your cajones and confidently trudge forward to unknowing greener pastures. Right in that, I was afforded the lesson early on that I have the capacity to rise above even the most miserable of circumstances triumphantly. I’ve carried that lesson with me everywhere, and have used it over, and over, and over again.

The truth is, Mom, you may have left the party too early, but before leaving you left many gifts behind. Trust that each gift has been accepted and used in the spirit with which it was intended. And know that even though your stay at the party was too short, it was really great that you were able to show up at all.

Love,

Jen

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Grandma Swearingen

Posted on February 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

I believe it was Mahatma Gandhi who said, “The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others.” For years this quote was carefully placed on the bulletin board above my desk at work, and the meaning behind it has undoubtedly been a guidepost for my career. But truth be told, I didn’t need a spiritual leader from India to teach me this. I had Grandma Swearingen.

Kathryn Pflederer Swearingen was my dad’s mom, and was the epicenter of our family. She passed on much too soon in 1981 when she lost her short but brave battle with pancreatic cancer. Even so, to this day, every Swearingen family gathering eventually results in the warm embrace of fond Grandma Swearingen memories. We really can’t help ourselves.

Grandma was tireless in her efforts to take care of the people around her. She embodied the notion that a stranger was merely a friend she had not met yet. But to her family, her service was unrelenting. Much to Grandpa Swearingen’s delight (“Fox” as she loved to call him), her kitchen was a virtual pie factory. But not just any old run of the mill pie factory–the kind that phoned you ahead of time to inquire about your particular pie requests. (Peach, thank you very much.) There is no question that Grandma took tremendous joy in the little things she could do for the ones she loved. She would wash your hair (even her adult sons lined up for this special treat), make you a fresh lemonade shake-up with real lemons (just like the ones at the Tazewell County fair), and loved to scratch the back of whoever was sitting next to her (hence the constant vying of myself and my cousins for this premiere seating opportunity.) My favorite Grandma Swearingen memory, however, were the hours upon hours we spent playing the board game “Payday.” At the end of each game, I exclaimed, “Again!'” and if her enthusiasm ever waned, I surely never knew it.

I look back now and I know that there was no way Grandma and Grandpa had much money. Grandma was an elementary school lunch lady and Grandpa was the janitor at the bank. But everytime they made the trek to our farm, Grandma came armed with a gift of some sort. A stuffed dog, that I promptly named Puffy and carried with me everywhere for years. A butterfly pin she found that reminded her of me, because she knew I loved to collect butterflies. Something fashion forward, like my first pair of clogs. And, even though she had never heard of Harriet Tubman, she had gotten wind that I was obsessed with this particular historical figure and she searched every bookstore in central Illinois until she found a book that fit the bill–no small feat, I am sure.

Grandma loved to laugh–most often at herself, and even in moments of confrontation her ways were as gentle as a warm summer wind. I remember a time when my mom requested I go to the basement to retrieve some canned goods for the approaching dinner hour. Being the self-centered brat that only I could be, this somehow enraged me and I proceeded to huff, puff and loudly stomp down and back up every rickety step to that basement. Grandma paid no attention to my bad behavior, and calmly looked at my mom and said, “Well, she might have a hard time doing it sometimes, but that Jenny sure can be a good helper.” Her words stung and startled me to attention. I was keenly aware that I had let her down, and that it was time for me to grow up and learn to serve my family just as she had done for her whole life.

The thing about Grandma Swearingen was, everybody felt like they were her favorite. The fact of the matter is, I think everyone was. Almost 30 years have passed since I last saw her, but her presence is always with me. I can’t imagine the woman I would have become without having known her. I just can’t thank her enough, and know that my service–to my family, my friends, and people with mental illness–is a meager tribute to the greatest woman I ever knew.

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