GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, MOTHERS AND FATHERS

INSIDE THE TICKING MOMENTS OF A PANDEMIC – III – EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2020, COLUMBUS, OHIO, USA, LINDA LEE GREENE, AUTHOR & ARTIST

GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, MOTHERS AND FATHERS

Of my early childhood, I recall quite a lot, both great and small—little things such as the floral pattern of my grandmother’s apron; the chewing-tobacco aroma of my grandfather’s breath; the giggle of my Uncle “Neenie.” I remember big things, as well, such as the gnarled old man, his cavernous eyes shadowed beneath a snow-white pair of shaggy, brush-like eyebrows, whom from time to time nodded off on the davenport in the front room of my grandparent’s farmhouse. Landon Howard Caplinger was his name, and he was the father of my grandmother, a worn-out farmer and grieving widower. Great-grandmother, Sally, his wife of over fifty years, had died when my mother was in the early days of her pregnancy with me, and by all evidence, he mourned her passing until his own death nine years later at the age of eighty-nine. It was also one day before my ninth birthday.  

My great-grandfather, Landon, was the first old person I ever knew, and I recollect that I was always on guard around him while he was alive—on guard so as not to disturb his sleep, but also because I think I somehow feared I would catch what he had—that I would also grow suddenly old if I failed to keep a very long and very safe distance between him and me. Shielded behind the frame of the doorway between the kitchen and front room, at every chance, I peeked around the edge of it and studied the strange old man, scanning him from head to toe, rooting out his secrets—secrets, I suppose, of what it was like to be such an ancient being.

Religion weaves through the history of my family, but by the time of my childhood, church attendance was a luxury they could no longer afford. Sundays on the farm were like all other days. The cows still needed morning milking, the pigs slopped, the chickens fed, and meals prepared for the many of us. Animals didn’t take out time to worship God, nor did the members of my family whom were their busy caretakers. Even so, there was a kind of reverence in the air of those Sundays, a softly-spoken devotion among my grandparents, my parents, and my aunts and uncles. I hail from a family of talkers, chatterboxes whose verbal excesses required of me to take cover beneath tables and behind chairs and to listen, to observe, and to examine their words for myself. No doubt my soul was rehearsing me even then for my role as the chronicler of their story.  

It was there in those times of overhearing that I learned about another sad man, a man by the name of Jesus. While all around my great-grandfather the house bustled with that activity and chatter, out of the corner of my eye, I watched him half-prone on the davenport, silent and sad. That old man added a kind of curious weight to my childhood. I seemed to understand that he was the linchpin of my family, indeed of my very existence, while at the same time he seemed to me to be of another world. I think that deep down I had a feeling that Landon and Jesus were one and the same.©

Image: Landon on the davenport between my grandfather and grandmother, Adams County, Ohio, circa early-1950s.     

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s books are available for purchase at Amazon.com.

My Talking Heart - Chapter Eight: A Past Life Experience at Chicago's O'Hare Airport

O'Hare International Airport

One sultry August afternoon in 2002, my travel companion and I were annoyed passengers stuck at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. We were awaiting our delayed connecting flight back home from a vacation in New Orleans. While there were no pyrotechnics, gunshots, microphones or cameras associated with it, nor a naked man streaking up and down the aisles as I had witnessed at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport years before, this layover was different than any in my experience. In fact, then as now, it is a completely unique event in any setting in my life, and is one of my most indelible memories.

Among the sizeable group of my fellow irritated passengers, I sat with book in hand and tried to pass the time by losing myself in the story, normally a reliable escape for me under almost any circumstance. But there was something strange in the air that distracted me, a weird feeling, a sort of prickly awareness not unlike the sense that sweeps across my consciousness and skin when someone is staring at me. I looked up through my eyelashes and in the section across the aisle from ours, one for a different flight, a man and an adolescent girl sat, and indeed, both of them were looking at me intently. I recognized them instantly. I couldn’t have stated how, or why, or under what circumstances I knew them, nor did I know their names, but know them, I certainly did so. I noticed that not only were those two individuals staring at me, but all of the many people milling around or sitting near them also gazed at me relentlessly, with total recognition of me in their eyes. And as with the man and girl, I knew all of them in return—they were as familiar to me as members of my own family.

If I were Oprah Winfrey or Angelina Jolie, my outsized fame would account for the O’Hare crowd’s recognition of me, but I am “private citizen Linda Lee Greene,” even less known then than I am now, for I was yet to join the throng of Internet users. It was a decade down the road before I began to develop a serious social media presence, on the occasion of publishing my second book. However, even if I had been a celebrity, what is the explanation of my recognition of them?

Perplexed by then, I revisited every possible setting in my mind in which I might have met the O’Hare crowd before then. I thought perhaps they were a delegation of some sort, and since there were a few other children among them, maybe they were a church or sports group I had encountered somewhere in New Orleans, or in my home city of Columbus, Ohio. But their incoming flight was not New Orleans or Columbus, and the outgoing flight was to a city to which I had never visited. To this day, I have been unable to identify any prior situation in which I came in contact with those people.  

One of the other strange things about the incident is that there were no discernible responses on the faces or in the bodies of any of them once eye contact was accomplished among us. Not one of them smiled or nodded or made any physical gesture whatsoever in acknowledgement of me, not even a twitch of an eyelid, or a tiny flick of a finger. They merely held my eyes steadily, and I swear to goodness that I began to think they were communicating a message to me, telepathically, but not of a soothsaying nature. There seemed to be no warning of impending misfortune or fortune. It didn’t cause me to feel uncomfortable or creepy—it simply felt like a gentle affirmation of kinship with me. As a matter of fact, the exchange settled me somehow—my spirit relaxed, my irritation over the delay lost its edge, and I felt friendlier toward my companion, a royal pain in the rump during our trip together.

 Back in my college days, I wrote a paper about reincarnation, and I recall that one of its tenets is that we travel through time with a pack of spiritual soulmates appearing in dissimilar guises at different times. For instance, my mother in my current life might have been my brother or sister or husband in lives past. Both major and minor characters appear in the sequential acts of our spiritual journeys, like the headliners and bit players of a Broadway show. Both types are essential to the full performance and disclosure of the story, a conjoined cast of pliable energy stores materializing when needed and providing continuity through which to work out ones spiritual lessons over time.

In literature as well as in the historical, scientific, and religious records, accounts of past-life experiences abound. Across the board, or nearly so, researchers discount them as so much smoke and mirrors, labeling them as fantasies, delusions, playacting, or a type of confabulation, a fancy word for lying without knowing one is lying. Within their quiver of rationales, even alcoholism can trigger false past-life memories.

Whether or not reincarnation will ever be observational, and as a result accepted as chapters in the script of life, isn’t about to be settled any time soon, if ever, as far as I can see. But there was something about the chemistry of my O’Hare Airport encounter that has kept it vibrant in my memory. It has remained a curiosity to me. It seems to refuse to allow me any sense of closure pertaining to it. I admit that I can’t help but wonder if those people are members of my spiritual family. And when I do fess up to that possibility rattling around inside me, it feels right. It rests flawlessly in my spirit. It doesn’t rest quite as well in my brain, however.   

 In any event, reincarnation as a subject is titillating fodder for writers, me among them, as is the case in CRADLE OF THE SERPENT, my latest novel. The following is a synopsis of the story:

Fearful that her husband Jacob is embroiled in an extramarital affair, archaeologist Lily Light turns to psychotherapy, astounding consultations in which Lily often takes on the persona of a young maiden named White Flower, a member of the clan of long-ago American Indian builders of Ohio’s Great Serpent Mound.

When a gunman’s bullets leave Jacob permanently paralyzed from his shoulders down and a woman identified as Jacob’s mistress dead, Lily’s world is shattered. Through the example of her own life a thousand or more years before, White Flower reveals to Lily the unexpected path to her salvation.   

      Given 5 Stars by Readers’ Favorite, CRADLE OF THE SERPENT brims with “enthralling” journeys into the human psyche, romantic love, archaeology, American Indian history, spinal cord injury, its consequences, and its contemporary treatments, as well as “amazing” sequences of past-life regression, and unimaginable twists and turns in a long-term marriage. It is available in paperback and eBook at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, Google, BooksaMillion, and other booksellers.- Linda Lee Greene

Best-selling author, award-winning artist, blogger, and interior designer Linda Lee Greene is on social media at the following:

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/lindaleegreene

Email: lindaleegreene.author.artist@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Twitter: @LLGreeneAuthor

Blog:  http://Ingoodcompanyohio.blogspot.com

Also look for her at LinkedIn and Google+

My Talking Heart: Chapter One - MY MOTHER'S MILK by Linda Lee Greene

I came out of my mother’s womb kicking and screaming, and I didn’t stop carrying on until after I was weaned from my mother’s breast. The opinion of our country doctor, and of my grandmother, was that I had colic, which is defined as “a severe, often fluctuating pain in the abdomen caused by intestinal gas or obstruction in the intestines and suffered especially by babies.” I think I was merely hungry. I think my mother’s milk was insufficient to nourish me, because as soon as I was weaned from her milk and put on solid food, I settled down. Another possibility is that my mother’s diet tainted her breast milk. A modern-day treatment of colic includes eliminating caffeine, cow’s milk, and gas-producing vegetables from a breastfeeding mother’s diet. From the time of her teen years, my mother was a caffeine-fiend, and a main staple of her diet was vegetables grown in my grandmother’s enormous farm-garden. One of my indelible memories of my mother is watching her at mealtimes, her fork in her right hand and a freshly-pulled, cleaned, and trimmed scallion in her left hand, a bite from the fork followed by a bite of a scallion. I wasn’t yet a year old when my mother weaned me, and I was by then a precocious, curious, fidgety child, talking like a magpie, and wound up like the Eveready Bunny.

Another widely-held belief is that a colicky baby’s nervous system is immature at the time of birth, a phenomenon that renders the infant unable to handle stimuli outside the womb: sights and sounds, for instance.  At the time of my birth, my Dad was away at Navy Boot Camp. Mom had moved back to her parent’s farm for the duration, and it was there, in a bedroom of the farmhouse, that I was born. The household was a raucous one, as six of the eight young offspring of Mom’s birth family was still under roof, plus my grandmother and grandfather, and then me. Mom’s youngest sibling Dean was only eight days shy of seven when I was born. Other than during my young girlhood when I was still a chatterbox and a jumping bean, throughout the rest of my history, I have tended toward widely-spaced bursts of energetic chatter and activity, for during my adolescence, I discovered quiet, my quiet bedroom, and quiet people to whom I was drawn. I fell in love with quiet. And I just wonder if at the moment I first emerged into the world, if my soul was jarred by all the activity, as it still is. I can handle noise only for short spans of time. Recently my son Frank drove me from my home in Columbus, Ohio to Palm Harbor, Florida, and back, for a short visit with my sister Susan. Throughout the entire 36 or more hours of the roundtrip, my son entertained himself with blasting music on the car’s radio. This is his habit. It energizes him. It depletes me. And by the time the trip was done, the inside of my head was ringing, painfully, and my soul just wanted to hunker down in the luxurious, the deliberate serenity, the utter freedom of my home.

While I was my mother’s first child, she was not a novice in the care of infants, for she was the eldest female among her parent’s eight children. As such, Mom acted as backup mother to her younger siblings for most of her girlhood. In the attached photograph of Mom and her seven siblings, she is the teenager in the back row, the one holding her youngest sibling, the infant Dean.

As you might have guessed by now, the title of this chapter “MY MOTHER’S MILK,” is a metaphor for my relationship with my mother. That I am introspective is a given, as most highly creative types are. My reflections often center on my bond with my mother. Mom and I were devoted to each other, without question, and while outwardly it was unhampered by dysfunction and inadequacy, a Sherlock Holmes-type of investigation of it unearths a mother/daughter connection not quite so blemish-free. Strangely, the glitch in our relationship can be boiled down to one factor, one giveaway clue: my colicky infancy. The unfortunate truth is that like my mother’s milk that left me under- and ill-nourished, she was not enough for me in other ways, as well. This was the case during my formative years, at least.

I suspect that by the time I came into being, my mother was burned out on babies, on the work tied to babies and young children. She’d had years of it by then with her younger brothers and sisters. Then I came along, and rather than being the designer baby she had dreamed of, I bawled night and day, I bit her nipples with my sharp baby teeth in utter frustration toward those only instruments available to feed me, and getting little of what I needed from them. I’ve concluded that the breastfeeding interaction between us set up a psychological pattern that dogged us forevermore, one in which my natural need to be nourished by my mother was thwarted at so many turns, the consequences of which played havoc with her confidence that she was equipped to respond to my needs, sufficiently. I think she gave away her power to me out of guilt. Throughout the years Mom and I had together, her reliable response to me when I solicited her guidance on almost any situation was, “Why are you asking me? You’re smarter than I am.”

An adjunct to this whole thing is that I think the basic need of my mother’s soul was quiet. I think she craved serenity and freedom, and other than for a little while in the last years of her life, she was allowed very little of it. I inherited my need of those things from her. She has been gone now for 25 years, and still my need to feed off her is as strong as the day I was born. My only comfort is my belief that our story isn’t finished—and someday, somewhere we will be together again, and then we will get it right in every possible way.

***

“Guardians and Other Angels,” (http://goo.gl/imUwKO) is my novel of historical fiction blended with the true story of my maternal ancestors, including my mother’s girlhood, a story that takes place during the early to middle Twentieth Century. It has been compared to Pulitzer Prize winners, “The Grapes of Wrath,” and “Angela’s Ashes,” as well as to Jeannette Walls’ “Half Broke Horses.” 

When Spirit Moves, We'd Best Follow

In a few weeks, I will bring to a close my daily stint as a “Granny Nanny” to my grandsons Alixander and Noah. Two years ago, I retired from my position with a local interior design firm, rented out my home, and moved in with my daughter Elizabeth and the boys, then fourteen and eight, to help out as much as possible. This occurred as a result of the death of Elizabeth’s husband Mark.

          As the smoldering days of summer are at their peak this year, I will relocate once more. I will leave my daughter’s condo in neuvo-posh Powell, Ohio and return to my house in an elderly and modest neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio—on a good traffic day, only a forty-minute drive apart, but light-years distant in benchmarks used in the United States to gauge the quality of life available in them. For instance, while Powell boasts some of the best schools around, like most school systems in large cities across the nation, Columbus City Schools cripple along. In my youth, Powell was farmland, stretching north of Columbus as far as the eye could see, but which now comprises broad avenues of sprawling, multi-storied homes and “executive” condos essentially, all of which have Beemers, Benzes, Volvos and their equivalents parked in garages nearly as large as the whole of my little house in Columbus. Sans make-up, to which I’ve grown allergic, and minus a Juviderm pout, and sporting a post-menopausal JLo booty, and even though my roots need touched-up and I drive a Kia Soul rather than a vehicle standard for the area, now and then, and risking sensory overload, I insert myself into the blonde and boy-hipped female fray of Powell and do the dodge-‘em-grocery-carts thing at the Kroger Superstore. When absolutely necessary, I also flash a credit card in the feathered-out establishments along Sawmill Boulevard, one of the region’s de rigueur shopping areas. But despite my pluck, there is no way around the fact that for the long haul, I do not belong in Powell. I am just no good at “keeping up appearances,” which is a requirement here. My daughter is a natural at it. She was born chic. Her soul requires it. My soul, on the other hand, while deeply proud and accepting of Elizabeth’s innate elegance and grace, compels me toward a plainer and simpler way of being.

        And so, in August, I will return to my humble home in Columbus. My portion of Universal Spirit, which has been there all along, hiding in nooks and crannies invisible to its tenants, will greet me at the door, and let out a sigh of contentment. “Oh, let’s unpack those boxes and put the furniture back in place,” it will exclaim happily. While Spirit has been stirring all of this within my soul, it has been busy inside of Elizabeth’s, too. Independent to her core since the day of her birth, she is ready and eager to take up her life on her own again; to expand into the rooms I occupy now, and to set up her office and workout space; to convert the family room into a hangout for my grandsons and their friends. There is another element to this crowded mix. My son Frank also moved in with us a year ago. A long-time resident of New Jersey, Frank was one of the thousands of victims of Hurricane Sandy, from a financial standpoint that is, and had to come home. He will move into my house with me for a year or so, time he will likely need to completely re-establish himself here.  

        It is a universal truth that life wastes nothing, and although my Spirit yearns for a place of my own other than Powell, there was, and continues to be until the day a truck pulls up to my daughter’s condo door to haul me away, additional purposes, beyond the obvious, for my being here. This is far more than my “Granny Nanny” story. This two-year-block-of-time has been a veritable laboratory for Spirit; each of the five human beings subject to it have been individual Petrie dishes of experimentation for it—Petrie dishes of flagrant emotions; of bruised and bolstered egos; of tested and strengthened integrities; of shattered illusions; of acquired wisdom; of gained respect; of acceptance; of renewed commitments, of love. But among all of the subjects of this particular curriculum that Spirit had/has in mind, I think that forgiveness was/is its paramount goal. I do not care how exemplary our performances as parents, and I fell short in too many primary ways in that regard, there always exists fallout among parents and their children, especially their grown children. But Spirit grabbed each of us by our shoulders and guided us firmly, carefully, lovingly around one another, and ultimately toward one another. We prevailed! We came out of this human trial better persons, one and all!

        Like the lingering effects of a summer lover left behind, the memories of my two-year sojourn in Powell will become indelible pages in my book of life, for it was here that my daughter, my grandsons, my son, and I reconnected; it was here that our family bond was forged anew. Yes, I feel free to go my own way again because the time is right for all of us to do so. But more than that, I can go because I feel forgiven by my children, at last. Not all of us are given such an opportunity, and I am grateful for it!

Linda Lee Greene is the best-selling author of the true-life novel GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS http://goo.gl/imUwKO, and the co-author with Debra Shiveley Welch of the suspense novel JESUS GANDHI OMA MAE ADAMS http://amzn.to/VazHFG. Linda’s artwork is on view at www.gallery-llgreene.com. Linda’s Twitter handle is @LLGreeneAuthor. Her Amazon Author’s Page is at https://www.amazon.com/author/lindaleegreene, and follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/#!/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor, as well as on her Goodreads page at http://www.goodreads.com/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Author Linda Lee Greene to Participate in the 2013 Ohioana Book Festival

I am so proud to announce that I have been accepted as a 2013 author-participant at the prestigious Ohioana Book Festival.  It is a great honor to be included in this book signing and sale coordinated by the Ohio Library Association and sponsored by Barnes and Nobles Booksellers.  An additional benefit is that I will spend the day hobnobbing with authors from every corner of Ohio.  I will also take part in a Writer's Roundtable where I will share in a discussion about Women in Fiction.  The festival will take place on Saturday, May 11, 2013, 10AM - 4:30PM.  If you are in the area, please stop by my table and see me.  I will have copies of Guardians and Other Angels and Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams on hand for you to buy.  The location of the festival is indicated below: 

    

“The Ohioana Book Festival is a welcome reminder of the powerful friend we have in a generous author who gifts us with a well-written book.”

Check out the 2013 Ohioana Book Festival authors!

The 2013 Official Festival Program is now available!

The 2013 Festival will have some of Columbus’ amazing food trucks!

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Join our email list and stay informed about developments and events please email bookfestival@ohioana.org.

The Ohioana Book Festival will take place at Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, 546 Jack Gibbs Blvd., Columbus, Ohio 43215. Located in the Discovery District, Fort Hayes is just a short distance from some of Columbus’ best and most exciting attractions! The Arena District, just blocks away, is filled with fun shops and exceptional dining! Check out Experience Columbus, to make the Ohioana Book Festival part of a great weekend in Columbus, Ohio!