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An Autobiographical Poem in Five Parts
Dedicated in Loving Memory to Hazel Marjorie Mendenhall Boyer By Robert Mendenhall
Part 1: "I Celebrate Myself & Sing Myself"
"I Celebrate Myself and Sing Myself"
I’m back home in Pocasset on the Cape. We live here during the "off-season" with our own little inlet, on Wingsneck, around the bend, past the marsh and causeway, up from the Corner Cafe -the Saturday afternoon and Sunday
and the hardware store –where we have an account and can shop-now-pay-later just as if we’d lived in this old New England town all our lives. Yes, it feels like home. After a summer away and now to begin our second year here I am ready to teach again, ready to go back to work, to learning lessons for the soul, to feed my soul so I can attempt to feed the great souls of young, eager little ones, while Gin goes back to the commuting route and we struggle together through the figuring-out-what-to-do-next route.
In these last few days before the cycle of time and I turn inward, I open. Before I go to work I rest and settle in and let all in. I sing to be home again. I open my arms and breathe in the air, watch quietly the birds: The brilliant cardinal chirps full-voiced and gives away his hiding place in the forsythia bush, no need to see his red top -one can hear it in his song; The crane, slender and tall in the rushes, gallunking about sure-footed as he jabs for his meal expertly in the shallow waters; The owl hiding from us all day long and all night long -except for the occasional swift rustling we wouldn’t guess he’s there; The family of wood-peckers drumming, ceaselessly drumming, evened-tempo drumming, to the whole woodland and sea he drums, carving Morse-code messages and perfect, round holes to make his home –one tree over from last year; I watch as the crows go wild, swarming about, clacking their loud caw, caw, caws, the chattering cacophony clears my mind of any self-absorbed thoughts. And in their flight they light on every tree –as if by touching down they claim their rights to property and prey, like some greedy old man, bitter and disgruntled, trying to gather up all his possessions before his nearing and final end; and the hawk soaring above it all, taking all in all the time, not just on special resting-up-for-the-school-year-to-begin occasions, annoyed by the crows, but not deterred from his hunting game, waiting for quiet, to swoop down and try again for his dinner.
I tip-toe to the water to meet Ginny bathing in end-of-the-summer cool water –where fish scurry around us and nibble at our toes and crustaceans dig into the sand to pinch at our toes and the sand between our toes crumbles onto the bare-boards when we scuffle back to the rambling house too big for our four sets of toes. I walk the earth and sing for rocks, flowers and trees and hope for a second glimpse of the red fox. He and his family of five paraded by the back porch last year in the broad light of day while I watched dumb-faced and delighted through my kitchen window. I sing to the rain and sun –bright and full- and to the fog and the all year weather which tempts me, accompanies me, and finally harnesses me. I sing to the moon and starlit skies of early-night walks and late-night walks, together with Gin, and to the early-dawn, gray-red skies that support my lonely walks -for Gin’s gone to try her commute. I sing to the up-lifting spirit in me that sounds and resounds, beckoning me to joy and cheering on all souls to unite, to act, to sleep and dream, to be and to let all be, to rejoice in life’s goodness and in full, perfect opportunity to do good, to breathe in the lusciousness of ALL LIFE.
It’s like my wedding day with Gin all over again, where there were friends all around -the love of people, the people of love- and the people I love, and Gin’s love and my love. And now it’s the Natural World -and all sing to me.
Deep in my being I know that I am loved and yet it is what I struggle most to know and remember. There has always been something within me which has lifted me, though I didn’t always know it as God. Part 2 "All I Ask of You Is Forever To Remember Me as Loving You"
Born: Marseille, France, January 18, 1958, 5:00 A.M. I was given up at one month to Nurse and Doctor Woltz’s foster home; (yet love reigned there throughout). I lived two and one half years with "Mommie" et famille in sun-burnt Rognac –small town au Vieux Provence- -in true loving family- While mother -gone back to U.S. to finish her teaching degree- cared for me from afar and GETS HER LIFE TOGETHER(so she thought). Still near and dear to my heart, I cried for mother. I cried to leave Rognac, too. I cried for the loving family –the only family I would ever know with true sisters and brothers. Au revoir La France. Au revoir la belle epoque. Au revoir La Famille Francaise. Now, La France, herself (that big overwrought, by-gone-age passenger ship) et Maman –my "new Mommy" –mom of my birth- carried me off, far away from my Native Land, the country of truffled-earth-tones, Cezanne Mountains and Mediterranean Blues, away, far across the ocean; To the land of my new home and start of rich adventures (of sadness and joy together, Deeper and Bluer and Colder than could be held in the whole Mediterranean Sea of my heart -though I did not know it yet); To the land of my father –whom I would never know- for he had fled the scene of the womb once he heard that I’d be arriving in a matter of months; To the land of my Mother and of her birth –thirty years earlier in L.A. and two thousand miles away from our new home- she too was born far away from home, but on the same continent and her father stayed with her, though he would die within three years and her life growing up with Uncle Frank in Chicago would have trials worse than mine; To the wide, wide, flat Middle-West; To the land of freedom –so all important to Americans, but without much thought to protection and safety, consequences and responsibility; order did not flourish from days of LIBERATION MOVEMENTS of the sixties and seventies -times-a-changin- went in directions that were beyond the wildest innocent dreams of the concerned-for-a-better-life-for-all people and the dreams could not foresee a world becoming so fixed in cause after cause, corporate interest and power, generation me, me, me and sex, sex, sex becoming intent on being privileged and without inner direction or discipline, yet providing their children with the necessary advantages of phonics exercises for three and four-year-olds, tv's, computerized toys and guns, and now each teenager has his/her own cell phone or beeper –or both- to the extent that early reading tests, chaos and fear in schools out number child play and imagination, and there is barely a real childhood for anyone anymore: they have to grow up quicker, and; To the new land and experience of total dependency and TRUST; -where TRUST for this child meant letting go of everything, -everything familiar and known before- -everything from mother tongue to first known mother- -everything but what God deemed necessary to drive him on; to move forward and not give up... (that indescribable essence that a child has within himself) is it...faith?...instinct?...ignorance?...Grace?... whatever it is he is born with it, for it has no chance to develop; it is not remembered, but can only be forgotten
-with all this little Bobby was brought To a new life, to a new way, yet too; To the land of ALL AXPANSIVE LOVE and SPACE and BEAUTY -inner and outer- To the land of l’Amerique du Nord.
"A Bridge over Troubled Waters"
herself and I was contracted away to another foster home; Madison, Wisconsin -this one without love.
But first, Uncle Frank ushered me home with him, to the long hot summer in Chicago, where I became the one-too-many, pushing my poor Aunt Carole over the edge with her just-born Lynne-Ann and four others -including me-, Lynne-Ann’s four-year-old brother David and two visiting teenage boys from San Diego to tend to and juggle. Uncle Frank assured Aunt Carole’s concern with: "No problem Dear, we’ll all pitch in." Uncle Frank then cut off my hair to look like the marine he had been in Korea and took my picture standing me against a bare wall -as bare as I felt inside and out- and the look of that scared boy still shocks me. Yet, the seeds of nurturing that Aunt Carole carefully sowed would reap their benefit many years later and many times over. Aunt Carole stood like a great Mother Courage for my cousins and me when all doom fell dark and deep, when both sister and brother -my mother, their father- met tragic illness and the too-early-departure from our lives. -A story for another telling, another time.
Then I lived in the town of Betrayal; my next door neighbor was Neglect –none of my own toys or friends, a strange room; foster parents and sister like Cinderella’s step-family. I didn’t -wouldn’t- speak their language –only French. Can’t remember much else, except for the joy when my mother came to see me -almost every week-end; joy to be with her, -that I remember: the perfect breezy cloud wafting in through the still, barren Sahara where I lived. Finally, after one long year, mother won me back and carted me home with her. But her tangle with depression persisted and I wasn’t protected. The uncertainty of life was scary and felt too fragile. I yearned for the lost connection to the Free and Happy. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted safety.
Part 4 The First Miracle
At age seven I was with a friend and we were lying on our stomachs at the end of a pier at Camp Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, leaning over the edge (too close to the water) snatching all the small snails atop the surface of the lake to collect them. I reached too far for one and suddenly I fell into the water and sank to the bottom.
Twenty-one years later I remembered what happened. It was a gift from God, a glimpse into part of my life which had been gone. I retrieved insight to the unknown, usually seen only from beyond earth-life. In clear visions, I saw the experiences that I had had during that blacked-out event of my drowning -at age seven. I went to a place of strange NOTHINGNESS, sinking deeper and deeper, till I couldn’t see or feel anything like earthly-living. Everything was DARK and QUIET (sunk at the bottom of the lake). There was a rhythmical pulsing movement; the water rippled over and over me and became WAVES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Wave after wave, going deeper and deeper. NO LIGHT. NOTHING. VOID. It was all new and familiar together. I was still sinking. Deep, Deeper, Deeper, -sinking to the depths of this vast nothingness.
(And it was through these visions –twenty-one years later- that I realized that this peacefulness and this strange escape to cosmic spaces -QUIET and DARK- had helped put me to sleep on restless nights and had visited me often in my dreams over the course of years after my drowning -at age seven. And I still feel the memories flood over me when I cry or swim, or when my nose runs with that special mucus-fluid-memory-aide; the body holds all)
I didn’t want to come back, yet, at the same time I was crying for help. I was pleading to my MOTHER to take care of me.
had been in her loving: sad and crazy; scary and big; angry and powerful. –Though we had been apart for much in my short life, though it had been at times painful and confusing to be with her, though I was far away from her now in the land of Peace-Calm-Dark-Ageless-Eternal-QUIET
She was my life-line to the only earth-world I knew, still my umbilical cord to life itself.
my MOTHER had just finished eating lunch with two cardiovascular Doctor Specialists –woman and husband- and my friend Paul Chalekian –one year younger than me -only six years-old- went running up the road to the hill calling for HELP. First he called to the teenagers around on the docks nearby, but they did not believe him since there was no noise, only a quiet "ker-plunk", sinking directly to the bottom, fast. Pauly found his mother and then found Bobby’s mother -my MOTHER- she was running down to the beach as fast as her hefty body could carry her, knowing –as a mother does at a time like this- that something was seriously wrong. She boomed in her loudest voice for a life-guard (Hazel had been a stage actress/opera singer, a Junior High and High School teacher, but most of all she was a single, protective and frightened mother, so she knew how to make herself heard; had a ferocious roar when it was needed.) Hysterical, she threatened to jump in first if he didn’t immediately start looking for her son under that Pier. It took that life-guard three tries searching in the murky lake water before he dragged me up onto the Pier. -My body was cold, limp, heavy with wet gunk and all.
Not breathing.
up on me and worked, worked and worked for ONE, TWO, THREE, minutes and more, each ONE lasting an eternity -so they told me- and finally, fiercely, they RESTORED ME WITH BREATH AND LIFE.
Joy and Pain, tears of relief, weeping went all around me by this time. I remember at this point –still in the Spiritual World, not come back to the earthly-living yet, as if in a dream- Demanding of my MOTHER a promise -creating a contract almost- that she would get her life together –this time for sure- and take care of me, love me, hold me, BE THERE AND NOT LEAVE ME AGAIN -or I would not come back and she would lose me forever.
in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for I was the little boy who had come back to life after drowning!!! -at a camp where the nearest hospital was thirty minutes away.
The contract held -until I was sixteen.
and everything changed again.
one little kid can bargain for -even going straight through to the doors of death -from his drowning –at age seven- to his life-affirming, scraping from the depths of soul and out of the cosmic forces, wishing for TRUTH out of his Holiest, heart-felt pain and terror-wrenching fears and from basic human needs for love and safety -for one life-time anyway- (as if anyone can control anything here in temporary earth-living-land).
Part 5 The Second Miracle (For Gin)
I’m not from a large family. Collected together in our family hub, it was just my mom and me, until Mom married John Boyer. Then we were three and three is a very awkward number, especially when it doesn’t start out that way. John and Mom married in March of ’73 (I like to call it the Ides of March) after I had turned fifteen. I was quite happy at that point to be friends with John and to continue being fatherless. But that was not his goal or understanding. He had always wanted to be a father and I guess he thought he could just step into the role. My mother felt so much guilt about bringing me up without a father and without providing me with his name that together they insisted (always pretending that it was my choice) that I accept John’s last name for my own. I obliged and always regretted it. Twelve years after my Mom’s death -it took me that long to work up the courage- I changed my name back to Mendenhall. So, it was often rough-going, those three-plus years that we were a family of three. We didn’t have very good communication or right understanding, and as a ripe-for-rebellion-teenager, I found fault with everything and everyone. There were many questions –at least in my mind- first, a question of love -that was the most serious, but not most obvious at the time. Second, what about loyalty? Who had it and for whom? There was personal history –which seemed not to be thought about; appropriateness –oh by the way, did I mention that John was blind and deaf? And finally; the question of timing. Now no one could know what would happen in only a few short months, but nevertheless, timing as they say, is everything, and in this case was total.
the predicament we were thrown into embedded itself at once. For two and a half years my mother’s body gradually deteriorated. She became more and more paralyzed and had less and less control –in many ways. I took care of her as she lost the power to use her limbs, sometimes her voice and finally, her breath. –By then she had used up all of her will. It was a trying time for us and I especially felt the disruption to my youthful, hopeful outlook. In addition I found I was doing much more care-taking for a step father -who was of no use to me- than I could manage. A typical week-end trip to the store looked like this: we all piled into our new Volvo station-wagon –purchased to be able to fit two dogs, a wheel chair and the three of us- (of course piling in meant that I lifted Mom in first to the front passenger’s seat, then her wheel chair, then guided John to the back seat, and on occasion when John insisted on bringing her along, I put Sugar, his brown-sugar colored Golden Retriever -seeing-eye-dog- into the back for him). In the department or grocery store, my mother would push the shopping cart, I pushed her and led John on my right arm as we hobbled our way down each isle, I, trying my best to avert my eyes from the gawking and bewildered looks and often tried to look invisible –a difficult task for any teen-age boy!
a renewal of sorts –a concluding and fulfilling encounter with PEACE. She was able to let go of responsibilities, expectations, lost hopes and desires for perhaps the first time. She enjoyed simple things and living simply. And it was the happiest period of TRUE LOVING LIVING that I ever witnessed in my mother’s life. She helped many friends to see the JOY in LIFE -even through illness, suffering and death. (This was yet another Miracle for me to be thankful for in my life.)
mostly felt like we were each on our own and ready to go out on our own, since the connection between us was now gone. And so we drifted apart easily, (each with our own dog –the poor dogs who were the best of friends, were now both very lonely. We made pretenses to stay in touch, but ultimately we went against my mother’s dying wishes that we take care of each other...but the connection was not there, we had lived it out –brief as it was, it had been intense and enough for this go-around.
Strangers, too, have come to my aid and guided me and I have had no lack of friends, lovers and teachers accepting me and including me as family, ever in my life. The deepest friendships have greeted me and supported me just when I needed them. Through this perhaps, I have always trusted others and trusted myself and felt connected to Spirit. I suspect this has given me the capacity to go deeper in my trusting and that really is just about everything anyway, isn’t it? (-If you can trust, really trust, what else do you need?)
or outside me- has lifted me, often transporting me to the next miracle of my life.
of turmoil and fog, self-doubt and searching, roving, loving all I could, indecision, inaction, and then changing my life completely: life-style, life-orientation, life-direction and focus (to the Spiritual again) –that all stopped- and LIGHT ENTERED IN.
another round of therapy –this time with a man, a new father figure for me- and about the same time that Gin and I were deciding whether or not to marry, to commit to each other. My meditation practice deepened. I had visions. I felt love and loved. I began to feel a new level of spiritual support. I was waking up to my Self. Gin and I had been apart for a period of time, to decide -each separately- what was right for us together –a time that I found interminably long –several weeks. At last I could wait no longer, though my "allotted time" was not yet up, and I came to my senses and jumped out of the bushes along Ginny’s path to work and asked Ginny-
certainty ERUPTED and I claimed my love and promised my commitment RIGHT THERE, startling Ginny -the gentle one I adored and loved so dearly -the gentle one I meant not to startle or to scare away! and said, I MUST MARRY YOU. As calmly as she could, she told me I still had to wait a little longer for her answer, at least until the previously agreed upon time –another few weeks- but it was no matter, -though her words did not admit it, I could tell by the look in her eyes and the softness of her face, that she was with me already.
initiation process all the way through it. We worked hard all the way through it. And when our wedding day came it was like the harvest of the most plentiful and beautiful garden in which we had sewn constant and loving attention. It was a celebration of love. Everyone there felt the love between us and for them and we felt it from all. Love danced in everyone’s heart. We honored those beings who were no longer with us in body and their love and Shakti was alive and in all. We sang and danced and it was pure joy, the happiest day of our lives!!!
religious poems: blissful.
flowers, music and more music, and dance, food, and good cheer, and love –all encircled us. Beauty supported us. We were blessed ten thousand times. And Gin and I started on our new journey together that day.
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