Get Half

Get Half

Thea Nicholas

November 15, 2010

‘GET HALF!’ That was the rallying cry! Get half! If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times.  Kathy, my long-time gone high school friend, returned to my life a few months after I had moved out of my house and into the Wetherell apartments, #501, to be exact. Kathy and I had gone our separate ways; she had been a bridesmaid in our wedding and then, ‘poof’ she was gone.  Out to California, to a whole other way of living.  Christmas card exchanges with her parents and with her kept me somewhat informed of her doings, but not much.

 I had sent her my Christmas card for the year 1998, a picture of all of my yellow rubber duckies swimming in my bathtub trying, as I was, to get all in a row; low and behold, she wrote me a letter giving me her email address.  Via the invention of the internet, this long-time gone friend was back into my life.  She soon became my strongest ally, giving me the encouragement that I needed to stand firm and to keep focused. From her roost in San Francisco she kept up her exhortation: “Get Half! Get Half!”

After 2+ years of wrangling, resisting, once even being accompanied by a private detective to enter into my own home to retrieve my ATM card, time-outs for both of our attorneys to bury their mothers, and for my attorney’s wife to receive her brain cancer treatments in Omaha, the negotiations came to a close.  A settlement was reached.  And not a moment too soon; maybe an hour before the court was to hear my plea, all sides agreed.  Enough (half?) was enough.

And so it was that ten years ago today, I became single-ized.  For the first time ever, I was on my own. Free at last! Now responsible just for myself, I hardly knew what to do, much less who I was. I was half-way through seminary; I sought to return to finish my degree and move toward my life’s ambition: to become a sacramental leader. The church refused to let me return; the bishop released me from my provisional status. The door, never very far open, was shut, permanently.  Set adrift I wandered, finding, eventually, that it’s alright to not know and do, but to be. (I’m still a work in progress, mind you.)

I loved my little one-bedroom apartment, high up among the sycamore trees where I was safe, secure and growing in assurance, bit by creative bit.  I had a little solarium that jutted out to the north, overlooking Grand Avenue with windows on three sides.  It was my sanctuary.  I remember when checking out the apartment prior to moving in, my husband starting to move toward the little space and I yelled out: “Stop! You can’t go in there!”  Puzzled and a bit non-plused, he looked at me questioningly, but he did as I told.

 It was in this tiny space that I crammed in every little bit of self-expression that I had…plants, Advent wreathes, bunches of books, pillows, candles, incense and music. It was in this cozy space that I sang, prayed, wept, exhorted, complained, yelled and pleaded my case before a God who patiently heard all.  It was in this windowed-space that I watched as a mother sparrow built her nest, focused on doing her best, on top of my air conditioning unit. I learned the hymn ‘His Eye is On the Sparrow’ and knew I was being watched over, too. I was in my Aerie, surrounded, blessed, awakening.

 Each place I have lived in has been built upon that time: each place an AERIE. A launching pad for a new beginning. A place for a little one to find her wings. To fluff up and take flight, having been fed, nurtured and cozied in a nest built of the tossed off twigs, the crumpled leaves, the detritus that makes up a life.

Did I ‘get half’? Not exactly. But what I did get was a whole new way of looking and being (not to mention a whole new name). A whole new chance to bring forth what needed to be heard. I learned some of life’s hard lessons. Choices, even when they are made for the good, have cutting edges; when all agree this is the right thing to do, it still takes a toll. We all know it’s not about the possessions, the money, the fancy china, or even the house on the lake that I dreamed would be mine someday. We learn that not all of our dreams work out.

 I never dreamed that I would be alone as I grow old, but I am and I can’t imagine it being otherwise. I rue the hurt and sorrow that divorce causes; the collateral damage to our loved ones. It is hard not living where I thought I should be. I continue to miss some things: not worrying about ending up a burden, vacations on beaches, someone to hug me, seeing my grandchildren a lot.  But, all in all, I got what I needed: a chance to be me.  And isn’t that what it’s all about? What we need, not what we want? A sense of clarity of the important things in life. A sense of accomplishment not purchased through another. A sense that all in all, I got the better half.

Does anyone else do her best thinking in the shower?  Relaxing under steaming hot water is one time in my day when I am completely in the moment.  The cleansing ritual frees my mind of distractions.  Thoughts float unbidden to the surface.

Yesterday, my thoughts fell upon the sad fact that humanity seems to have taken a giant step backward regarding illness.  Over the past few years, we have re-attached shame to illness.  The truth is withheld from friends and family; from neighbors who care and are a potential source of aid and comfort; from others whose suffering is similar to our own, thus would be comforted by our understanding.  If the truth is told, it is in hushed tones, and with the directive, "Don't tell..." 

Fear and love cannot co-exist.  Fear has driven compassion right out of the equation. People are less able than ever to love and be loved.  They are afraid and ashamed to be human, or to allow others to live in the fulness of humanity.  

When my mother was a young wife, a neighbor had a miscarriage.  My mother wanted to go to her friend to offer comfort.  Earlier that year, my mother lost a baby to pneumonia:  she understood her friend's loss.  My grandmother told my mother not to intrude.  My mother listened to her mother, instead of her heart's instincts.  That incident occurred in 1953.  When my mother told me the story 30 years later, she was still haunted by her choice to withhold compassion.  "I should have gone to her... I should have gone."  Even so, all her life, each time my mother was hospitalized, she kept it secret.  In her final illness, she said, "Don't tell..."  She blindly attempted to cut off the compassion she needed, and that others needed to give her.  

 

When is it ever wrong to offer comfort, prayer, a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, or the companionable silence of true empathy?  To share in compassion?  To bring more love into anyone's life?  

There is a difference between privacy and secrecy.  Privacy is born of compassion, a matter of respect for others - and self.  Secrecy, born of fear, is shame-based, disrespectful of others - and self.   We are free to choose our philosophy of life.  Why does humanity choose to live in fear, creating the need for secrecy and shame?  

As women, we are gifted with unique instincts for compassion.  Each woman can begin to create change from exactly where she is in her heart at this moment.  Please join me from wherever you are, and we will step forward together into a new adventure, with our collective heart as our compass.  Let's learn to love and be loved...well.  

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  

If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

(Dalai Lama)

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