|
Rolf Erickson
When I turned 63, I wrote a personal story for my two sisters and their families. It was a breakthrough for me to share my feelings so openly with them. Now, five years later, I feel called to share it with my CHS classmates as a followup to my post about gathering stories from other 1969 grads.
The title of the piece is "63." It is actually three stories rolled into one. First is about my marriage. Second is about my longtime desire to be an artist. And third is about where I was at age 63, and where I wanted to go.
Your stories will all be different. And that is what makes each one great.
63
A Personal Essay by Rolf Erickson
For my Sisters and their Families
I'm 63.
It's an interesting age to be.
A foothold that inspires me to stop and ponder.
In my 30’s, I thought 40 was old. Turned out it wasn’t. Not really. In my 40’s, I thought 50 was old. It wasn’t either. But when I turned 60, I had to stop and think about it. “Hey, I’m 60. Maybe I am getting old.” However, once you hit your 60’s, I believe the preferred term is “older.”
When I look at the number 63, I see the Past, the Present, and the Future. The 6 reminds me of the Past, the way it curves back into itself, as if remembering and reminiscing about what’s happened so far.
And the 3 is bulging forward into the Future, as if it’s eager to get on with life, to go somewhere. As if it actually knows where it’s going.
The empty space between the 6 and the 3 is the Present, wedged between the Past and Future. Such a narrow gap, and yet so full of possibilities.
THE PAST
I’m actually pretty happy with my Past. Even some of my habitual regrets, now at age 63, are starting to loosen their grip. Releasing those tentacles that at times have wrapped themselves around my Present, and squeezed some juice out of my Future.
I’m feeling more and more gratitude for a happy childhood. For a semi-adventurous youth. For a career that’s been meaningful to me. For the gift of sharing with and caring for my parents at the end of their life. And for having a wife/best friend/partner to move through this life with. With perhaps more than my share of joy, laughter, love, and quiet insights.
That’s what I want to talk about first. Renee and me. On May 30th we celebrated 32 years of marriage. And my appreciation for our relationship has continually deepened through the years.
At first we were friends, which was fun, and pretty easy. Then we got married. She was my wife, and suddenly I was a husband. It was kind of exciting. A lot of our friends were already married by then, so in a way it felt like we were rejoining them, now that we were a “married couple.” And marriage was a legal arrangement, recognized by the government. Sort of serious, like getting a driver’s license, or registering to vote.
It was only after we got married that I began to understand on a deeper level what it was all about. When we had our first “disagreement” I was surprised to discover that, despite our strong mutual love, we could still have different perspectives on what was “right” or “wrong.” Especially about the small stuff. Or that one of us might have a “bad day.” Or a “queasy week.”
That’s when I began to comprehend that this really wasn’t about a legal contract at all. This was about a commitment to hang in there day in and day out, whether the day happened to be good, bad, great, grim, or otherwise. It was about being Best Friends.
Notice that I spelled “Best Friends” with a capital B and capital F. It has to be that way if it’s going to last. If it’s going to carry us through the ups and downs, the hots and colds, the peaks and valleys of life together.
That’s when I began to suggest to my nieces and nephews that they marry their Best Friend. A life together is so much more than a legal document sitting in a file somewhere. It’s a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, even moment-by-moment commitment to give all you can give, whether you can give big or small in that particular moment. And if in that particular moment it happens to be small, there’s still a commitment to give the big as well, once the big returns.
So I lived more happily than ever, knowing that I had married my Best Friend in the whole world. And that I was committed long-term to supporting her happiness and joy in this life. At that point, it wasn’t really the marriage that mattered most anymore. It wasn’t the legal arrangement authorized by the government. It was our day-by-day, moment-by-moment Friendship.
And then, this year, it all changed again. Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t the marriage. It wasn’t even the friendship. It was the continuity, our 32 years together.
Perhaps you have friends who fell in love, got married, and then at some point, it just didn’t seem to “be working.” And so, after some period of discomfort, they went their own ways. It seems pretty common these days. More so than when I was growing up.
Some of our friends did find a relationship that “worked” the second time around. Or third time around. Or not. So this year, musing upon our 32nd Anniversary, I became aware that I am now enjoying a gift beyond marriage, beyond a Best Friend. I have a Life Partner.
In 32 years, Renee and I have been through a lot. Seen a lot. Done a lot. Moved a lot. At times, we’ve had a lot of responsibility for others, for organizations, and for major projects. We’ve faced challenges, and we’ve seen our way through. Together.
Sometimes I like to say that even though we’ve been married for 32 years, we’ve actually been together more like 64 years. That’s because Renee and I have worked together side-by-side, day in and day out. We’ve often been together 24 hours a day, rather than 8, or 12, or 16.
One example. We spent six months in the USSR, living in a hotel room where we slept, meditated, cooked on a hot plate, ate, and kept track of more than 100 teachers from the United States, England, Sweden, Norway, Canada, and India, who were scattered throughout Russia, The Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. With no email, unreliable long-distance phone service, and our room bugged by the omnipresent Soviet powers-that-be. But we did it. Together. And so many other adventures along the way.
Life Partners. It’s a gift that can only come through time. Through perseverance, forgiveness, acceptance, and Love. The real Love. Not falling in love, or feeling some love, but living the deep deep Love, day in and day out. Year in and year out. It’s a long-term commitment.
Today I am deeply and newly grateful for this gift. We made a commitment. We kept it. And we intend to keep it to the end.
When Renee and I were planning our wedding, we told the minister that we wanted to change a few of the traditional vows. The most significant change was replacing the words “till death do us part” to “in the fullness of our eternal love.” Fortunately, he agreed.
I’m not sure that either of us clearly understood what we meant by “eternal love,” but we had a feeling for it. And now, after 32 years together, I may not have any clearer of an understanding, but the feeling has sent its roots down deep inside me, and has taken up permanent residence somewhere down there. It feels good.
Quite likely, there’s even more for me to discover in this life, in this relationship, this marriage, this friendship. In this intimate connection to another. To a Life Partner.
Time will tell. I’m very open to it. And grateful.
THE FUTURE
It’s out there. Somewhere. Waiting for me to arrive.
Well, maybe not arrive like reaching a destination. Maybe more like passing through, as a part of my journey. Like riding a train with the trees and buildings and people and dogs flashing by. And the train doesn’t stop. Even if you see something that captures your attention, it flashes by like everything else, and you’re left looking over your shoulder, wondering.
I welcome my Future every morning when I wake up. Whether fuzzy or clear, my first words are generally something like “I’m in.” Or “Amen.” Or “Thank you, God.” I’m honestly grateful for another day.
I’ve felt many callings in my life. The call I feel now is to spend the rest of my life immersed in the Arts. To write, dance, sing and create visual art – woodcuts, sculpture, paintings, found objects, or obscure engaging combinations of the above.
I wasn’t raised to be an artist. It just didn’t seem to be a part of our family culture, at least by the time I came along. I grew up thinking I’d get my PhD in psychology, and then become a professor at a university somewhere. I suppose as a boy I drew stuff at home and school, but I don’t remember much about it.
When I was in the eighth grade I had a problem with my knees. It was called Osgood-Schlatters Disease. Plus a chipped kneecap. I had my left leg in a cast for six weeks, and I wasn’t supposed to run or jump for one year. Since I was an active and athletic boy, my parents decided to give me art lessons for something new to do.
Mary Jo Albright was the director of art programs for the Corvallis Public School District. She was very creative, enthusiastic, and well-loved. Since my father was Superintendent of Schools, he knew and respected her abilities. She gave private art lessons to a small group of students in her garage, and I joined them. For the first time in my life, my artistic nature was encouraged, stimulated, and appreciated. It was great. Under her guidance, I began to paint, both water color and oils.
Later, I took some art classes in high school, but felt intimidated by other students who seemed to be “really good artists.” Meaning, they were good at drawing and painting realistic lifelike human figures. That was never my strength.
After dropping out of college, moving to Boston, living on a sailboat, and returning to Oregon, I went back to college. But this time around, I decided that I would only take classes that really interested me. So my first year back included astronomy, physics, literature, Spanish, Latin, and a printmaking class.
My art teacher was a leading faculty member named LaVerne Krause. She was well-known and respected at the University of Oregon. In fact, there’s now an art gallery on campus named after her. The other students were mostly art majors who were very experienced and creative. So again, I felt a little shy, but I did learn the fundamentals of woodcut and block printing.
Throughout the term, students would present their art for review by LaVerne. That’s when I noticed that she had a second personality. If she really liked a print that a student had created, suddenly she became like a little girl.
She’d look at the student with big eyes, almost pleading, and ask, “Could I have one?”
The student would always say, “Yes, of course!” They were thrilled that LaVerne would want a print that they’d created.
Then she’d say, “Let’s put it on the wall.”
She would point somewhere, and the student would climb up on a chair to add their print to the other “chosen ones” on display.
This time around, I almost finished college. Since I was spending money I had earned working the night shift at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, I wanted to get my money’s worth. So I took the maximum number of credits allowed by the university. That turned out to be 21 credits per term, which I did for five terms in a row – Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, and then Summer again.
Which meant that together with my first year of college and a single term of study at Northeastern University in Boston, I was reasonably close to graduating. At which point, the desire and opportunity came together for me to become a teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program. So I took off again, this time for France to attend a six-month Teacher Training Course.
When I got back to Eugene, I taught TM full-time and took classes at the U of O part-time to complete my degree. One of those classes was an independent study in printmaking. I didn’t dare ask LaVerne to mentor me, so I went to a younger teacher in the Art Department, and he agreed to take me on.
Well, what can I say? Things got busy. Or I wasn’t quite motivated enough. Or just perhaps, there was a bigger Game Afoot. In any case, I ended up with an Incomplete on my record for that independent study in printmaking.
A year and a few adventures later, I realized that all I needed to graduate was to make up two Incompletes. One was a reading and conference project in psychology, plus the printmaking independent study. So I dove into both.
For the psychology project, I wrote a three-part essay. “The Halls of Hebron” was the story of my experience working nights at Mass Mental Health Center. “180 Degrees” described how I learned TM, and the way it turned my life around at age 19. And “129 Choruses of a Sigh – Minus a Few Refrains” was a listing of significant moments in my life, from my earliest memories up to age 25.
My advisor was Carolin Kuetzer, a psychology professor that my friends and I loved and respected deeply. Her response to my essay was extremely positive. She wrote a note to me about how much she enjoyed reading it, and ended the note with, “I refuse to return it.”
Yes, she actually wanted to keep what I had written, for her own enjoyment and inspiration. That was the moment the light came on for me as a writer. That I could touch someone’s heart in such a deep and positive way.
Meanwhile, I was finishing up a series of wood block prints. I created the blocks, and then produced six or eight clean copies of each piece, since I needed to have a series for each print.
These were something quite new and unique. I had become fascinated by the interesting shapes in the grain of the wood. So I’d take a blowtorch and burn some of the softer wood on the surface of a board. Then I’d use a wire brush to expose the grain, add a design on the rest of the board, and make a series of prints.
My favorite and most ambitious piece was called “Bang Plus Thirty.” That referred to something I had learned in my astronomy class. The theory was that the chemical composition of the entire universe was set within 30 seconds after the Big Bang.
So first I burned and cleaned the interesting grain on a lot of boards. Then I cut that wood into small hexagonal (six-sided) blocks, two-and-a-half inches wide. Next I cut a piece of plywood about 25 inches by 35 inches, big enough to fill a full sheet of rice paper. Finally I glued my hexagonal blocks onto the plywood, in an arrangement that represented 30 seconds after the Big Bang.
It required careful work to ink each little block and then get the large sheet of paper laid down just so, without smudges. And then to firmly press the paper onto each inked block, without sliding off the edge of a block and tearing the delicate rice paper. But I did it.
Inspired and happy, I called the U of O Art Department to make a presentation to my advisor. That’s when I got the numbing news. He was on a sabbatical and wouldn’t be back for months. So they offered to set up an appointment for me to meet with LaVerne Krause instead.
Uh, oh.
Me presenting my experimental art to master teacher LaVerne Krause? But I really wanted to graduate, and this was the final step. So I said, “Yes.”
I brought my whole portfolio to the meeting to show LaVerne that I had a series for each print. I started with the simplest pieces, and she nodded her head kindly.
Finally, I unveiled “Bang Plus Thirty.” She nearly gasped. She moved closer. She started pointing at different blocks in the print, saying to me, “Look at that. Look at how that one is spiraling out.” She was telling me how fascinating it was, as if I’d never seen it before. Revealing to me how subtle and wonderful this piece of art actually was.
And then it happened. Laverne became the little girl. She looked at me with a shy smile and said, “Could I have one?”
Amazed, I said “Yes, of course!”
“Let’s put it on the wall,” she said.
Still digesting the fact that she wanted my art on her wall, I asked, “Where?”
She pointed and said, “There. Right over the door.”
So I climbed up on a chair and hung a copy of “Bang Plus Thirty” directly over the classroom door. And thereby graduated from college.
But it wasn’t the college degree I was most thrilled about. It was the appreciation by Laverne for my artistic vision, and ability to manifest that vision. Somehow, I was an artist. I could spark another person’s imagination and touch their heart with my art.
THE PRESENT
At age 63, I now take my stand in that narrow gap between the 6 and the 3, the Past and the Future.
First of all, I am more deeply appreciative for each new dawn and day. I’m grateful for how my life has unfolded and flowed through all the years, and through all the adventures. And in some more abstract way, I am anticipating what will come, what is coming, both the known and unknown.
I’m seeing life more as an adventure, a journey, a play. At this point I’ve been around too long to take life as seriously as I did in my 30’s, or 40’s, or 50’s. And I realize that I have no real idea of how much longer I’ll be around. That sharpens my focus.
I’m in transition. I’m moving ahead. I’ve nearly completed my first work of fiction. The book’s title is Rhymes with Rhymes: Nine Moons with Mister Jaimes.
At first I thought it was a funny book. Then I thought it was a funny book that was kind of touching. Then a funny and touching book. Then a touching book that was kind of funny.
Now I see it, in some strange and wonderful way, as a heartfelt expression of me, myself, Rolf. Even though the main character is a man from another planet who was sent here on a secret mission, and who writes blog posts by the cycles of the moon. And now I see it as a book that is both funny and touching.
I took an online writing workshop with literary agent Paula Munier, one of the top faculty for Writer’s Digest. I could only give her 2500 words. So I sent her one of the funny blog posts that was about 2500 words long. She responded: “This is a riot. If you can create a book out of this, I want to see it.” That was a big encouragement to keep chugging away.
It’s taken quite a bit longer to totally “create a book” than I had imagined. At the same time, I’m pleased with how it’s finally coming together. I’m getting closer.
Another important part of my Present is teaching Nia, a fitness dance class. Renee and I are on faculty at StudioNia, located in Nia’s international headquarters here in downtown Portland. We teach a weekly class there called “Moving to Heal.”
We also teach two classes a week at the Multnomah Arts Center. Sharon and Carol may remember this as the Multnomah School, located in the neighborhood just east of our old Maplewood home. When I was growing up, my friends and I used to ride our bikes over to the Multnomah School just for fun.
And I’m now a Certified Nia Trainer, which means I can train new Nia teachers. I’ve taught two Nia training courses so far. Nia keeps me moving, keeps me fit, and keeps me happy in my body. I love to create my own dance choreography to a variety of music and then share it with our students in class.
Plus we’re both teaching meditation out of our home. With the fast pace of life these days, it seems like it’s needed more than ever. Our students are very grateful for the classes and for the follow-up we offer.
I’m the editor of an online magazine for TM. It’s an electronic version of a print magazine I founded in 1995 and published for five years. My latest article, “The Dear Prudence Story,” is about Prudence Farrow, who inspired the Beatle’s song “Dear Prudence” when they were all in India together. It was a fun piece to write.
I also do projects for clients. For the past ten years, I’ve been writing two press releases every month for a company that monitors hedge fund and managed futures performance. Ten years ago they were fairly unknown. Today the owner is regularly quoted in top financial journals, both online and in print. Just last week he had a nice quote in the Financial Times.
Hey! I just rediscovered a half-finished screenplay set here in Oregon called “Hollyberry Mountain.” I think it’s got potential, so I’ve put that one back in line to get finished.
At this point, writing and dance are very alive in my life. We were in choirs in Eugene and Fairfield, but we haven’t made that commitment here in Portland. However I am singing more (and louder) around the house. And I’ve started drawing again in a large blank artist’s book. Nothing fancy, but I am playing with the visual arts.
There’s something else.
I’m feeling a call to be more in relationship with my family, friends, and community in general. The job of writing and editing can be pretty solitary work. And I’ve been doing it part-time or full-time for the past 20 years.
My dream at this moment of the Present is to find or help create an intentional community of writers, dancers, musicians, and artists somewhere in a natural setting, perhaps within 20 minutes of a medium-sized town.
There are plenty of possibilities for this here in the Northwest, and elsewhere. We’ve committed to staying on the West Coast for as long as Renee’s mother is alive, so that we can help out with her needs and see her regularly.
TOO OPEN
So, I’m 63.
It’s an interesting and exciting age to be.
Interesting due to the subtle sense of dawning “oldness” it implies. Exciting due to the new sense of freedom and immediacy it has brought to my life.
At this point, my strongest desire is simply to share my stories. That includes a series of personal essays that might someday become a book. My working title is Too Open: Stories That Could Be True.
I call it “Too Open” because I wasn’t raised to be this open. But I want to be. Starting with my family, and a few close friends.
With this story, I’ve begun.
Thanks for listening.
Rolf
|
