Maybe it was my herb garden experience, but I somehow sensed I needed to broaden my life…scatter more seeds. Maybe with the more new endeavors I tried, and the more seeds of hope I planted, the right path would come clear to me yet.
3/1/80
“I desperately need a new direction..a new purpose in my life. Nothing will be right until I find an inner peace – that’s the key. I’ve been looking for happiness in things and people and jobs, not from within…I MUST get a grip on my life.”
4/22/80
“What is it God wants from me? I’ve been endowed with talents, but as yet I haven’t found why I have them, how to best use them, and what it is God wants me to do…I’m so mixed up…I experience depression, lethargy, apathy, procrastination, frustration, disgust, and contempt for myself when I am like this. I feel paralyzed to do or think anything clearly that will lead me out of this mess.”
The snowball
While this may sound like more of the same, and throughout this year there would still be a fair bit of despair, yet there is one key piece above that was a change from the past – the recognition that my peace must come from WITHIN, not from others or work. That small shift would eventually snowball into a powerful avalanche, even as it would still take more time.
In fact, where work and career were concerned, this year I started to consider looking beyond the lab. I was continuing to pursue writing classes. In February, I took an 8-week night class at Post College in writing for publication. Even as I had my arm in a sling from a broken elbow incurred in a fall and had to have my father drive me there, I passionately attended those classes. The instructor was a freelance writer, business instructor, and editor who was making her total living from her writing pursuits. I was excited. If she could do this, certainly there had to be a way for me to use writing in my career.
Sending out hope
I started looking beyond the hospital environment to corporate positions. With a medical background and more writing classes on my resume, I wondered if I might secure a public relations position. There were several medical and pharmaceutical firms in Connecticut, not to mention the aerospace industry. I didn’t care what the field was. I only knew that if I could leverage any skills I had acquired, maybe I could still use my writing professionally.
In that same vein, I also started sending out articles to magazines. I started with what I knew. I had an herb garden and had learned a number of things about both growing and using them, both in the kitchen and as landscaping. And I started tapping some of my other interests for material to write general interest articles.
I submitted to everything from in-flight magazines to the National Enquirer. I wasn’t having any success in selling any writing…yet. But I figured if I kept up my efforts, sooner or later I might. And any “clip” from a published article might secure me more credibility as a writer. That might get me out of the lab and into a new career path. So I kept trying.
In service to others
The other possibilities I started considering had more to do with serving others. I visited a school in Norfolk that cared for patients with mental disabilities, and I investigated things like the military, Vista, and the Peace Corps. While I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to do any of those, I still kept looking around for some job that might allow me to use my caring and compassionate side in service to another.
While all this was going on, I was starting to pay a bit more attention to me. I got rid of the sports car and bought a Honda hatchback that was great on gas. That left me more money for things like clothes and books. I even took a couple of skiing trips with family, to northern Massachusetts and to Maine. And I continued to try to build a connection with my mother.
Reaching for Mom
On that point, a few of my work friends were planning to take a cake decorating class at the local YMCA and invited me to join them. Even as domestic skills were not my forte – I hated sewing, any kind of needlework, and was not big on cooking, still, this was a chance to build friendships. And it was my chance for a foray into the world of the “feminine,” something I’d never valued.
Knowing my mother was a master baker from all her years of making desserts from scratch, I asked my mother to join me. I thought this was something we could do together. And where in the art class that we took together, the attention was often on my painting versus her sketching, here I felt she would outshine everybody.
“Painting” on cakes
It was pretty good in the beginning. We learned how to make large cakes, all kinds of frostings, and how to wield pastry bags for flowers, piping, and decorative writing. We made a trip to a baking supply store in Waterbury to get specialty supplies…it was almost like painting, except on cakes.
The final day of the class was to be a party. Each of us had to bake and decorate our own cake and bring it in to share with everyone. I was off that day, so I set about baking a two-layer cake and decorating it with some corded edging and flowers. It wasn’t fancy, but it was good enough.
I noticed, though, that my mother hadn’t made her cake yet. I kept asking her, and she kept saying “later.” By supper time, it was obvious she wasn’t making her cake, and we had to be there for 6:30 p.m. I asked why she hadn’t made anything, and she said she wasn’t going. She didn’t feel like it.
That damned garden
Disappointed, I went upstairs to get ready. As I was about to walk out the door with my cake, she said she had chest pains. She didn’t seem particularly upset about them, but I went outside to tell my father what was going on.
He immediately got mad at me and accused me of not caring about her. He told me he had to work in the garden, and I should be the one to take her to the ER.
I was crushed. For starters, I didn’t think she was in any crisis. But still, with chest pains, who could be sure? Yet, here was my father, more worried about his damned garden than his wife. Why wasn’t he worried enough to join me at the hospital?
Needless to say, I did not go to my last cake class. My sense of duty won out. If something had happened to my mother and I’d not taken her to the ER, I would have never forgiven myself. So I took her.
There was nothing wrong. They said maybe it was anxiety. But she was okay.
The “right” thing
Of course, I was praised by both her and my father for doing “the right thing” and putting family first. She never did answer me as to why she wouldn’t make a cake for class. Did she feel inadequate? Had my father mocked her? Whatever it was, I didn’t try to include Mom in any new classes. And as for any worth in that world of the feminine in my life, I wrote it off.
The next day, we took a picture of my cake and ate it at home. And that was the end of that.
But it was not the end of the pressure ramping up in the house….
Soul Mosaic 
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