Standing in the face of fear…

In the world we live in with all its fears and uncertainty, its frailties and capriciousness, having an Inner Sydney is a necessity.

Sydney is my eight year old granddaughter, and she was born with a sensitivity to textures and sensory experiences. As a very young child, everyday experiences often created a landscape of deep and immediate emotional reactions.

One would think that being wired this way would create a young woman who would be trapped in fear and anxiety. But Sydney is one of the bravest people I know.

As I write that, many memories surface of when I witnessed this first hand, but the freshest example is from the first day of third grade this year.

For the first time, Sydney was facing elementary school without her older sister, whom she adored. When we pulled up, the sidewalk was nearly empty and the school loomed large.

I felt her momentary hesitation and took her hand. “Syd, do you want me to go in with you?”

She stared right into my eyes, totally clear and open. I saw the beginnings of tears forming. Then, she took her hand away and smiled a weak smile.

Oma, I got this.

She closed the door of the van, squared off her shoulders, readjusted her backpack, and headed for the door.

Alone.

A night later, she was standing on the field of the local high school stadium preparing to sing “The Star Spangled Banner” acapella before the start of a soccer match.

“Are you nervous?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation and strode off with her mother towards the field. She was led off by an official to be in position for the start, and I saw that once she was settled in, she stood there silently holding her mic, waiting.

Alone.

When the player introductions finished, her name was announced over the PA system,and the crowd stood. Standing by herself on the field, she seemed even smaller than her eight years. I felt her inhale, and then she sang with a confidence way beyond her years.

When she was done, I asked her how she handled her nervousness.

“I held a stress ball in my hand.”

That was all.

As a parent, as a wife, as a friend, as a grandma, when others express their fears, I often find myself giving pep talks, or at least what I think are pep talks, to help them “get through”. But this little girl has learned what many of us never do.

Strength has to come from the inside.

Strength from the inside is a strength that sustains. It is a strength that admits frailties and marches ahead anyway. It is a strength that gives voice to fear and then walks through it, head held high.

It is an "Inner Sydney strength" forged in the crucible of fear.

Someday, I hope to develop my own Inner Sydney and stare down the voices of resistance - to acknowledge my fears but not let them own me.

Someday, I hope you find her too

The power of eggs

Bright yellow egg-shaped shakers, it appears, are highly prized items in senior song settings. We discovered this quite by accident while playing music in a small adult family home.

One of the residents, who recently celebrated her 98th birthday, expressed frustration every time we came because she could not sing, though she loved music. One day I found at the bottom of my purse a leftover shaker from band practice, which I handed to her.

Throughout the hour, she experimented with the sound. Basic shaking came first. Then as her confidence grew, so did her repertoire of sounds until she soon could do not only the first beat, but the subtleties in between the measures as well. As we were saying our goodbyes, she remarked, “I can’t sing, but I loved doing this. I was able to participate.”

Because of this reaction, we began to bring other eggs shakers to pass out before performances. And we noticed something unexpected. Sometimes, like our 98 year-old friend, making rhythm came naturally. However, other times, the shakers would sit unused until between songs. Watching from the front I would see listeners pick up the egg and roll it around in their hands, as if examining it under some kind of microscope. Then experiments would begin in the pause between songs. A shake here, a roll there…like explorers in uncharted territory.

For some,however, the shakers became an invitation to boldness. One senior, notable for a sometimes surly response to the world, became the lead shaker in a large group setting.

From her chair at a table, her shaking of the egg became more complex and rhythmic until it seemed the very movement itself compelled her out of the chair and across the room to where we stood. Leaning on a support post beside me, nearly blind and hard of hearing, she stood and sang full volume, her feet, moving in time to the shaking of the egg in her hand.

The shaker moved her from discontent to bold leadership. When an old favorite tune ended, she stood, marched up to us again, and started a new chorus of the song, leading the room in an acapella reprise of one of her favorite songs. In the end, when we went to greet after the music was done, she announced,

This was the best day of my life.

But these best days come ”at a cost.”. Though we arrive at our senior sing-a-longs with a certain number, and though we always say we are collecting them, new "owners" are reluctant to give them up. They get slipped under napkins on the table or into pockets or into purses. We know this is true because as we wander, we hear the telltale signs of the rattlesnake-like rhythm punctuating the air. A little like a game of hide and seek, when we are near, quiet reigns. But as we move away, we hear the quiet rattling dares of captive eggs in the hands of their kidnappers.

After seeing this pattern develop, it occurred to me that apparently, that egg-shaped shaker is not just a noise maker. It is a symbol of what happens when people gather to relive memories through music and create new ones through participation. It is a symbol of curiosity about things that are new. And it is a symbol of what a person can still do well when other abilities are gone.

Someday, good Lord willing, it will be me sitting in that dining room while someone is singing the songs of my youth… Crosby Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, and, yes, Arrowsmith. And I hope when they do, that someone hands me a shaker. Something small that fits in the palm of my hand and is brightly colored so I don’t lose it through blurred vision.

Something that gives me permission to be part of the music and not just a silent subject.

And when they do, I want to shake it with every fiber of what’s left of my body. I want to shake it as my primal victory cry to the world that I made it…

I sang my song…I lived my life.

And no matter what lies ahead, I want to shake with all of my being to announce to the world that I will live, to my last breath, not on the sidelines of life, but celebrating the life song I was given with a joyful noise.

A new matriarch

Over five decades ago, my mother took my brother and I to meet our grandfather and aunt for the first time in her hometown of Frankfurt, Germany.

Having heard stories of her war time experiences and of her father’s resistance to the policies of Hitler, the trip to this “exotic” place during our high school years held the promise of finding a piece of ourselves there in her homeland and our heritage.

She and her little sister had a complex relationship, which we only knew through mom’s stories. My mom left everything behind to start a new life in America as a military wife and became a card carrying member member of the lower middle class. Her sister remained in Frankfurt to continue a path towards wealth and social status.

Aunt Charlotte, for whom I am named, greeted me warmly that first day and, holding my hand, walked me upstairs to her bedroom which had one wall of mirrors. She put her arm around my shoulder and looking into our reflections in the mirrored wall, announced in broken English, “We look like each other…”

It was meant as a compliment, but for the remainder of our stay, I took note of her poor treatment of my mom, bordering on distain, it seemed. Mom seemed destined to be thought of as “the poor relation,” lacking manners and class, however that was decided in Aunt Charlotte’s world.

And so I didn’t want to “look like her.”

But secretly, I think Aunt Charlotte admired her older sister Irene. Irene was the adventurer who literally sailed the seas as she followed my dad to various military assignments. She was the one who traveled the globe, four children in tow. She was the one always conquering new challenges in a foreign land with vigor and with joy.

Over time, mom stopped communicating altogether with Aunt Charlotte, feeling acutely the sting of her critical spirit. Often she would regale me with tales of all of the slights, and an unforgiving spirit settled into her.

One day, exasperated, I just tried to set her right.

Someday you will both be gone, and you will have lived all this time without the one person who shares a history with you.

She took the counsel reluctantly to heart and reached out, a gesture which reunited them after a long absence and kept them in communication until my mom’s death at 95.

Towards the end of her life, mom would often recount how she and her sister had talked about their reunification in heaven, a thought that seemed to give her great joy.

Today, my brother let me know that Aunt Charlotte had passed at the age of almost 98. Though she and I never had a relationship, she was our last connection to my mother’s homeland…our last living relative of that generation, and it filled me with deep sadness at the loss.

When I called one of my daughters to let her know, after expressing her sympathy, she said,

You are the matriarch of the family now.

And that is a statement that will take awhile to assimilate.

In time I will perhaps grasp the significance of that mantle and assume it gracefully, but at the moment, it comes wrapped with some uncertainty for me.

But also in this moment, I am certain of this one thing: for years, my mom looked forward to spending eternity with her sister, Charlotte, and today she is doing just that.

And someday, so will I.