The Ungluing (Chapter Three)
The Ungluing (Chapter Three)
Why Does a Woman Take Second Place in Her Own Life?
To recap, in Chapters One and Two, Phyllis, a Jewish mother of three talks about how she and my mother, Magi, Catholic mother of six, seemed destined to meet, based upon how each had begun questioning their role as a mother and how motherhood had perhaps robbed them of something precious they never had the chance to explore. This is the moment when Phyllis now first meets Magi.
"I have done very little thinking on the subject of women," I told her.
"Don't worry," she assured me, "I have researched the subject from my own life. I have fifty-three years of documentation, more than any so-called expert in the field of human emotions. All I need is for someone to put it into book form."
At that moment, magi and I had little more in common than the fact that she had a story to tell and I wanted to write more than anything else in this world. We arranged to meet at my house (while my youngest was in kindergarten).
At the appointed time, I opened the front door to a friendly, smiling face of natural beauty who hardly looked her age. Her short grey hair was shoved into a blue-jean cap, while jeans and a Wonder Woman t-shirt loosely outlined a tall, nicely constructed form. Before me stood a woman dressed in her vernacular, stripped of social custom, comfortable... a replica of my own simplistic outlook on life. She was, to me, a kind of modern-day Mary Poppins on my doorstep, complete with her own bag of tricks contained in a red satchel that she always carried by her side. Our initial confrontation was frightening for me.
I found magi to be strong... uncommonly strong-minded for a woman. She spoke with force and conviction, and I wondered if I had allowed a Goliath to enter my life, only to be devoured in the process.
(What was it we had in common?) What did she expect I could do? I was truly frightened inside... frightened perhaps of my own ability to come through as a writer... frightened of the enormity of the subject magi and I would verbally agree to take on (WHY DOES A WOMAN TAKE SECOND PLACE IN HER OWN LIFE?) It took three tape-recorded sessions for magi to convince me that something must be said.
"We are a Divine Providence," she would say. "A kind of Judaic-Christian alliance, and we must pry deeper into the myth of womanhood than any man has dared!"
When I told my 'friends' about magi, they told me not to get involved. She was having trouble, and I'd be like a free counseling service. 'Cheaper than a psychiatrist,' was the expression. Well, maybe there's a little of the 'psychiatrist' in all of us and we need to reach out to be friends. Maybe we can't be friends until we reach out.
Magi had a book inside her that wanted to come out, but she couldn't find a way. The ideas, feelings, bitterness and conviction that had been locked inside her soul needed the services of another in order to flow freely. I became, in essence, the vehicle for her thought processes... sounding board, editor, arranger. I have written magi's life and philosophy for all the world to see... and I ended up doing it for her, not for me. I feel good.
I gave magi a gift at the beginning of our friendship. I gave her an old battered-up tape recorder. I taught her to speak her thoughts out loud and record them. This book... this living bible... is a result of that free flow of thought plus the ever persistent questioning of the 'tour leader.' We reached into each other's minds and we spawned each other's thoughts and feelings. It was a project that had to be completed by the two of us because 'one is not enough.'
And so, who am I? I am a writer, leader of this tour you are about to take through the mind of a woman who is truly a pioneer amongst her kind... amongst humankind.
A true appraisal of modern-day womanhood is still so new, so unchallenged, that intuitive thinking based on one's own experiential is a very important contribution to opening doors that have been closed since time began.
I have come to know magi, perhaps better than she knows herself. I have stepped into her mind and her thought processes have been bared to me.
She has permitted this only because she feels so strongly that women have never had an adequate spokesperson who would truly speak for the female of the species, without male bias, without feeling compelled to answer from an accepted point of view.
"I know I'm radical," says she, "but you have to have a radical solution to a radical problem. Women have carried the burden for 2,000 Christian years that I know of, and it won't disappear or dissipate unless we open it up and do some drastic surgery."
I agreed. I, too, was tired of the heavy weight brought on by having to feel responsible for other people's lives. For the first time, with magi by my side, I began to allow thoughts to surface that had been buried for a long time.
I couldn't help but admire the natural truthfulness that filtered through her wildly delightful, sharp-witted, abrasive, four-letter-word vocabulary -- aimed at seeking meaning in a world of meaningless rules and restraints.
Having joined forces with her to dissolve the myths that surround people in their various roles, I feel a sense of purpose that I have always sought but never found. Life has always held a kind of senseless and repetitive flimsiness for me, that, if erased tomorrow, would never be missed.
Magi has put excitement and flavor back into my world. I find more honest reflection in her four-letter vocabulary than the eight-letter words of all the professionals who form the structural backbone of society as we know it. So, we will avoid expert opinion -- explanations and documentation that try to fit us all into the norm -- and we will talk, woman to woman.
Magi and I have been meeting for months, all through Spring and Summer. It hasn't been easy, particularly with the children home for the summer. Besides that, geographically, we are worlds apart in that magi hails from St. Clair Shores and I am from Southfield (opposite ends of the outlying Detroit area). If expanded, the extraordinary arrangements we had to go through to find a site for a whole day of conferring, even once a week, would make a story in itself.
We met at a place called Ellis House, in Utica, one day. It is a house for a faith community of sisters, named after Father Ellis, a pastor there for years until he died. Magi knew one of the sisters and asked if we might use a room there to work on our book. Sister Hermene was surprised that she should even ask.
"Our house is always open," she said.
Sister Hermene, explained magi, has done a lot of introspective thinking. She knows that women have a long way to grow. While she is not a radical thinker, she knows that women must help each other to remove the heavy burden placed upon them.
I felt rather strange at first, entering this house that had been provided for the nuns, but Sister Hermene provided us with coffee and cookies, we talked for a few minutes, and then she left -- leaving us alone for the afternoon.
It was not a religious setting as such. It was, for magi and me, more a feeling of peace and quiet, something neither of us could experience in our own homes.
We wandered into a little room that was set aside as a prayer room with a holy candle that burned day and night and a huge Bible opened to a particular page. "Cast ye bread upon the waters," were the words that caught my eye. We lay down on the floor, comfortable upon some pillows in the chair less room.
Everything was silent and still until I began to laugh at the absurdity of my surroundings. What was I doing in a prayer room! A nice Jewish girl like me!
"It is symbolic," said magi, "that a house of God should be opened to us to do our work. Women need a speaker. All we need is a place to think quietly. God, in her infinite wisdom, has provided us that place... a womb of our own!" We laughed.
If she was right, maybe God was trying to tell us something, because shortly after that day, Ellis House was closed for lack of funds!
Once, we met at Lawrence Institute of Technology, which is close to my part of the world. Stretched out on a grassy, secluded section of the small campus with the Rouge River squeezing through, and the highway just beyond, we felt close to nature and, again, what we were meeting to accomplish seemed natural and right.
I began to develop some weird and grandiose ideas about delving into magi's life and discovering the key to our mutual question: Why does a woman take second place in her own life?
When I first met Magi she was bitter and all bottled up inside. The thoughts and the feelings that had wanted to come out of her and be heard had no viable outlet. She was busy trying to make points with everybody she met and the people she met were really totally unaware of what she was trying to do for them.
Magi needed my help, not only as a writer but as a friend, and we have become close friends in the interim. I have given her the confidence she needed to know that her story was valid and necessary in today's changing world. She has given me the same.
I have given her the strength to separate the bitterness from the fact and constructively work finding the answers to the question, WHY DOES A WOMAN TAKE SECOND PLACE IN HER OWN LIFE? She has helped me to find answers in my own life.
There is no one answer, and magi will be the first to admit such. Even her own lifestyle, which may seem radical to some, is not an end (even to magi.) But the first step in finding answers is to ask questions and that is the purpose of this book.
So far, we have learned about magi's years as a girl, woman, and MRS. M. Now that she has become magi, the tree of life, she feels capable of growing up. The encounter session in Ann Arbor was the real turning point in her life. From that point forward, magi would spend all her days, like a fairy godmother's wand, to reach out and awaken not only herself but others.
"I am still growing. I am in a constant state of flux, for each day takes me in a new direction. Each person I talk to opens a new insight into the complex problem. Some of them point out the great need for reassessment. Some of them have added great knowledge to my ever-seeking mind. People are beautiful. Words are beautiful. And beautiful things should get together."
We did, magi. We've gotten together, and we've learned from each other's lives. We've used our insight and our experience to spawn new ideas, and those, in turn, have fostered others. But let's get back to the magi tree and find out what a magi can do that Mrs. M. could not.
[To be continued…..]