20 minute read
DREAM CATCHING
My wife makes numbered to-do lists that can bring present and past, wishes, ethics, ideals, and regrets into a convergence that suggests what ought to occur. Her lists remind me of freewriting. A person without academic instruction in writing and its biases might call it doodling, talking to yourself on paper, or brainstorming. Sometimes when her moving finger writes, I think that had Auguste Rodin glimpsed her doing it she might have inspired a creation he’d call “Woman Dreaming,” which my mind displays beside his “Praying Hands.”
At the breakfast table before she awakens, I find her latest list. From three feet away, the grace of her writing stands out. The nuns taught her cursive so well, her notes remind me of copies of the Declaration of Independence, the fluid clarity of Jefferson, Dunlap, or whoever the scrivener was. It’s like Chinese calligraphy. In contrast, her canvases are anything handy: used envelopes, the blank side of printed paper, a page ripped from spiral binding, the margin beside newspaper articles, or sheets from pads that groups seeking donations send us. Since last year such pleas fill a 12x16x5-inch cardboard box with these pads, more requests for help than usual, though pandemic conditions may have skewed my judgments on that.
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While I eat toast, my wife’s notes inspire such thoughts until I see an item in all caps: “CLEAN BATHROOM
BY BILL VERNON
DRAINS SINK AND TUB.” Damn. I imagine her loud insistence convincing me to ransack the shed for a snake and plunger to clear off the smell and rot of forgotten things from our past. If I threw away this list, maybe she’d forget the drain work.
I don’t trash the list only because the next entry is, “Send George Money.”
Whoa now. I’d better ask about that. Giving money to relatives is touchy. For one thing, the main reason the mail brings us list pads from so many groups is that we give a little, though nothing to brag about, but then those recipients share our name and address with other charities. Our bank account has limits. A second thing is that relatives in George’s condition— meaning age range—sometime get too generous. Grandma Vernon comes to mind. Evangelical television broadcasts convinced her to tithe, then send even
more. Her small pension was hardly enough to feed her and pay utility bills. Aunt Bette and Uncle Buster had to go to court, become guardians, and take charge of her income to save her.
My wife’s lists are maps that lead her daily from get-up to go-back-down. When the grandkids show up for her cookies, she sometimes diverts their energy from fun into labor, completing items on her lists appropriate to her workers’ ability: dusting, vacuuming, washing dishes, preparing foods, pulling weeds, sowing seeds, unpacking and displaying decorations for an approaching holiday, or packing and storing decorations after one’s passage. Unfortunately, her volunteers are not qualified to unclog drains. They prefer tamping wooden dowels into the hard ground until the little flags on them surround our front yard, stars and stripes waving in the hot breezes, giving chiggers a meal, unnecessarily announcing Independence Day two weeks ahead of time. Displaying flags this way does remind me that, as they say, we are all in this together.
Lists seem to give my wife purpose and hope. Similarly, levels of institutions and government fill the airways with their own “lists,” and though much of the content is iffy, these messages suggest that social order remains. The lists, I think, are possibilities, but also wishful thinking.
The lists I make are more like the Native American dreamcatchers. My lists cast nets of woven-together-words, hoping to catch something worthwhile, something worth sharing. Boxes and bins full of symbols help me handle confusion and uncertainties, the present and the future.
Retired college teacher Bill Vernon has reminisced in print about the values and follies of golfing, running, canoe racing, playing baseball or basketball, fishing, piano playing, hunting, international folk dancing, and hiking. He’s still active in some of these things. Vernon’s writing appears mostly in literary journals.
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As a young
man, he wrote hit songs for The Temptations and Elton John. At 60, he was a finalist on TV’s The X Factor. Now 70, he is collaborating with a longtime Saturday Night Live band leader. LeRoy Bell may not be as recognizable as fellow Seattle-area musicians Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, or Brandi Carlile. But for decades, he has blended passion and purpose into a successful life doing what he loves best.
The pandemic upended all our lives, and the disruption came at an especially bad time for Bell. He had just forged a new partnership with G.E. Smith, a noted session guitarist and SNL veteran who had spent his entire career looking for a vocalist as good as the singers he had backed over the years, including Bob Dylan, Daryl Hall, and David Bowie. “I wanted to have a singer like that in my band,” Smith told American Songwriter magazine last year. “LeRoy is that singer.”
The duo recorded an album, Stony Hill, and were set to play the March 2020 South by Southwest music festival in Austin, followed by a tour. Then the pandemic abruptly silenced live music. Like most musicians, Bell played some online shows during the forced hiatus, but that couldn’t take the place of performing in a venue before a live audience. When the pandemic finally started to recede and the red velvet curtain rose at Seattle’s Triple Door last June, LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends were the first musicians to take the club’s “ stage in 15 months.
“It’s like the first day back at school,” Bell joked to the appreciative crowd, noting how they all felt
some nervousness after so much time in isolation. ” the first musicians to take the Yet, it didn’t take long before Bell and his current lineup (longtime collaborator Terry Morgan on bass, former Heart drummer Ben Smith, and lead guitarist Jason Cameron) found their groove as the audience got up to dance and sing along.
“It all came back, just like riding a bicycle,” says Bell, who lives in Edmonds. “I don’t think anybody realized how much we really missed each other, how much we need each other, how much we feed off of each other.” The oldest of six children in a military family, Bell was born in Florida and grew up mostly in Germany. His dad, an Army sergeant who sold cars on the side, wanted Bell to become a dentist. “He was never 100 percent behind me trying to make a living playing music,” Bell recalls. But the young Bell had a champion in his uncle, Thom Bell, an architect of the Philadelphia soul scene of the 1960s and ’70s. “He got me started writing for a lot of people like the Spinners and the O’Jays and the Temptations,” remembers Bell. “I hung out with him in the studio, and I learned a lot from him.” Bell went on to record with his friend Casey James, and the duo reached #15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979 with their song, “Livin’ It Up (Friday Night).” With a back catalog of songs that likely numbers in the thousands by now, Bell will sometimes grab a guitar and start playing to conjure memories of how a certain song came to be. Songs like “Jaded” (“my eyes have seen too much”) speak to the despair that convinced Bell to stop watching television a few years ago, and last year’s “America”—a centerpiece of his album When the pandemic finally started to recede and the red velvet curtain rose at Seattle’s Triple Door last June, LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends were club’s stage in 15 months. with Smith—is a soul-wrenching look at a nation betraying its promise. Yet even at his most critical, Bell infuses his work with hope. “One of the threads in my music is, ‘there’s a way out of this’ … that even though I might criticize what’s going on, I’m always hopeful that as the human race, we can get better,” he says. (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)
Of course, love in all its manifestations is the way that we might reach that better place. Many people in the Puget Sound region probably first heard Bell via “Dream of Peace,” an anthemic song of fatherly love that he wrote for the 2005 Christmas in the Northwest compilation album released to benefit Seattle Children’s Hospital. And at the Triple Door show, Bell and the band gleefully served up “Everything About You,” an infectious song that proves that none of us is ever too old for a crush. (“I wish I knew the future, of how it’s going to be, so I could bump into you accidentally on the street,” he sang.)
Although Bell turned 70 in August, retirement is not on his radar. He’s playing some of the best music of his life with old friends and new ones, and he doesn’t take that for granted. Bell tells how, a few years ago, sitting in his hotel room after playing a blues festival, he was inspired to write a song that he often uncorks at the end of a show these days. “If I Should Die Tonight” is a response, decades later, to a father’s disbelief that his son could make it as a musician.
“Even if I don’t have that much money, as long as I am making music with my friends—if I die tonight, if I die on the stage—then that’s OK,” he says. “It’s all good because I’m doing what I love to do. I’d rather do that than work 9-to-5 doing something just to make money and not be enjoying life. …I feel very, very lucky that I chose this road, even though it wasn’t always easy.”
Bell recalls that he was “really kind of freaked out about turning 50” two decades ago. “We get so caught up in what society says is your age and what you should be doing at that age,” he says, adding that he has learned to cast those expectations aside. By coming back from a year on the sidelines to play every night like it could be his last, LeRoy Bell sounds like he is just getting started.
A frequent contributor to 3rd Act, Julie Fanselow used to play bass and sing in an Ohio garage band, and she wrote this article under the influence of a blossoming summer crush. She lives in Seattle.
Got
Purpose?
HAVING A SENSE OF PURPOSE LEADS TO BETTER HEALTH AND MORE LONGEVITY. ARE WE RISKING OUR LIVES IF
AWE DON’T KNOW OURS? BY SALLY FOX ll the good press about the power of purpose has left many of us feeling anxious if we don’t know or can’t articulate ours. What we love and feel passionate about may feel selfish or not significant enough to qualify as a “real purpose.” To all of my purpose-doubting friends, I offer this: Relax. You know far more about what brings you meaning than you think you do. Here’s an example from a conversation I’ve had, many times, with my husband: He begins, “I don’t feel like I’m making a difference” (aka, “I’m not connected to a sense of larger purpose.”) I ask, “But you love cars and have always loved cars.” He says, “Yes.” “And you’re always supporting friends with their car questions. They’re so grateful, which seems to also make you happy.” “Yes, but what is that doing for the world?” Aha! That’s it: Nobility syndrome. Having a passion for cars and helping people doesn’t sound big enough or life-changing enough, even though it’s the work that he loves to do.
Another friend feels befuddled because she cares about so many things and has so many passions that she agonizes which one is the purpose for her month, year or life.
With all the media blitz about life purpose, the word’s becoming a commodity, a thing everyone needs to acquire. Search Amazon and you’ll find
more than 8,000 titles on finding your purpose. Search on Google and, in under one second, you’ll come up with more than a million entries. If you want some questions to ask yourself, read one of those books. Or scan YouTube for relevant talks. But don’t feel pressed to come up with answers. I remember searching for my life’s purpose in my 30s at a weekend transformational seminar. For two days I was challenged to break through my old ways of thinking. Then, on Sunday afternoon, I stood before 100 participants, heart thumping, and announced how I’d discovered the meaning of life and found my purpose. I enjoyed a moment of thunderous applause.
By the following morning, however, my life-changing insight had started to fade. It probably dove back into the deep sea from whence it came. Because that’s where our deepest sense of meaning lies, hidden within our souls. Today, I don’t need to find a set of purpose-filled words that I can laminate and hang on the wall. For me, a true purpose needs to stay alive and evolving. I liken it to a porpoise. It swims around, under the surface of life, playing and exploring. Only rarely does it surface where it can be seen. It needs space to move and grow, and doesn’t want to be caged or framed. Why can’t we turn purpose into a verb rather than a noun that represents something we’re supposed to know? We could be “purposing” throughout our lives (sorry, English lovers), asking questions like, “How do I experience my calling, now?” or “What am I meant to do today?” or “What do I continue to love?”
Purposing would keep us constantly pointed toward a meaning-filled life.
We may benefit from different kinds of purposes at various points in our lives. The researchers who linked purpose to longevity didn’t define the type of purpose, big or small, that leads to a longer, healthier life.
Sometimes we may feel called to a significant, altruistic purpose, such as a desire to change the world. We may want to end world hunger, save the whales, help local refugees, heal lymphoma, or protect fair elections. Altruism and a desire to give back can inspire us, especially at a stage of life when we have more time to give. We search for these big purposes with questions like,
“What is the world asking of me?” “How do I feel called to help others?” “Where can I contribute?” “What issues most concern me?” If we’ve spent most of our time giving to others, however, our purpose might be to give to ourselves, and if that’s where your heart calls you, go for it. Maybe you want to explore a passion project, such as taking up painting. Or travel. Or spend more time nurturing an inner sense of peace. Just because your purpose is self-care or focused on you doesn’t make it less meaningful. We can also gain from having a bitesized, everyday sense of purpose. Life is a day-by-day adventure, and we can all use inspiration to get out of bed and view each day as ours to create. Research suggests that taking care of another being, be it a houseplant, a senior dog, or a parakeet, may be enough to bring meaning to our lives. Recently, my daily goal on my sister’s birthday was to help her celebrate. Nothing more needed. Even if we are following a large calling, finding an everyday purpose brings this down from the stratospheric into the zone of daily action. My big goal of “helping people TO ALL OF MY live more creatively as PURPOSE- they age” won’t get me out of bed. But DOUBTING FRIENDS, knowing, “I want to I OFFER THIS: edit one chapter of RELAX. YOU KNOW my book today” does. (After “get a cup of FAR MORE ABOUT tea,” which is always WHAT BRINGS YOU my first goal of the MEANING THAN morning.) We may have a YOU THINK YOU DO. purpose given to us, one we didn’t choose, but which chose us. We are called to help a partner, friend, or child go through an illness or difficult time. Although we didn’t ask for the job, we
Got Purpose?
(CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)
know it’s ours to do, and that sense of knowing gives meaning to our lives. Hopefully, the situation will pass, so we can pursue a passion project of our choosing. Finally, there’s the deep purpose, the one we can’t articulate, like a porpoise living under the surface of the waters. Your soul knows why you are here. Unfortunately, the soul has a limited vocabulary and may never provide you that information in language. You may feel it, from time to time, during the moments when your heart beats fast or swells with joy, and you know, for an instant, “This is why I am here.” Staying open to wonder helps connect us with our feelings of deeper purpose.
Trouble is, when we put that purpose into language, it often comes out in words that sound trite, too general, or like a greeting card. “To bring more love into the world” is a beautiful purpose, but if saying it sounds like trivializing it, feel free to hold it privately in your heart. However you find meaning in your life is the right way for you. Trust yourself, your heart, and the whispers that come to you. Keep the questions alive. If we fully knew all that we were about, where would we find mystery? Living our questions keeps us open
to what we don’t yet know. Always knowing puts us at risk of staying stuck in the safety of the past. Let’s treat our purpose like a verb and give it room to breathe. Enjoy your path as the meaning-seeking being you are and HOWEVER YOU listen to your heart. FIND MEANING IN That alone may be YOUR LIFE IS THE your best ticket to longevity. RIGHT WAY FOR Or try the way YOU. TRUST of the porpoise. YOURSELF, YOUR Find your wisdom in the depths, HEART, AND THE enjoy swimming, WHISPERS THAT changing directions, COME TO YOU. and playing. Then surface occasionally and share the truth you’ve found. Sally Fox is a coach, speaker, podcaster, and owner of Engaging Presence, a firm that helps individuals and organizations develop and share their best brand stories. She is currently working on a book about finding your creative work in the third act of life. Find her blog at engagingpresence.com and listen to her podcasts at 3rd ActMagazine.com.
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Jerilyn Brusseau channeled grief into a life lived with purposeBY ANN HEDREEN TURNING INTO TREESBOMBS
In January 2020, Jerilyn Brusseau traveled to Vietnam to begin a year of celebration. That year marked the 25th anniversary of an event that changed her life with the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam. Ever since her brother, Lt. Daniel Cheney, was shot down over Vietnam in 1969, Brusseau had known she needed to find a way, someday, to transform not just her own grief but also the grief of every bereaved family on both sides of the Vietnam War. And 1995 was the year she realized it might finally be possible.
Brusseau and her late husband Danaan Parry were among the first American civilians to arrive in Vietnam after diplomatic relations were restored. On that January 1996 trip, they took their first steps toward founding PeaceTrees Vietnam, an organization with a straightforward, though perilous, mission—to remove unexploded bombs, landmines, and other ordnance from the Vietnamese countryside, and to plant trees in their stead.
In its first quarter century, PeaceTrees Vietnam has cleared unexploded ordnance from 1,500 acres and planted more than 50,000 trees. PeaceTrees has also built houses, founded 19 kindergartens, awarded scholarships, and assisted Vietnamese farmers with microloans and business relationships, including supplying Costco with black pepper.
That celebratory trip in January 2020 was “like a giant family reunion,” says Brusseau. The highlight was a dinner honoring more than 80 Vietnamese friends, partners, and current and former staff. At the time, no one could have foreseen that a pandemic would cancel all further PeaceTrees trips through 2021. (Brusseau, who normally travels to Vietnam two to three times a year, is hoping to return in early 2022.)
Instead, an October 2020 online forum celebrated the work of PeaceTrees, bringing together, virtually, speakers from the United States and Vietnam. The moderator, former Washington Governor and Ambassador to China Gary Locke, asked panelists why Vietnam has been so open to building relationships with Americans in general and PeaceTrees Vietnam in particular. Nguyen Phuong Nga, chair of the Union of Vietnamese Friendship Organizations, explained that “the Vietnamese people are a peace-loving nation. Generosity and forgiveness are in our DNA. We do not forget, but we are able to forgive. We do not want to live with hatred and animosity. PeaceTrees Vietnam has not only healed the land, it has healed the soul.”
This year, the AARP awarded Brusseau its Purpose Prize, given annually to people over 50 who are “using their knowledge and life experience to solve tough social problems.”
Brusseau, who is 78, says her unwavering sense of purpose was born in the terrible moment when she learned of her brother’s death. “Suddenly in that very instant I realized there were hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families on the other side of the horizon who were losing their sons and daughters and moms and dads. I realized in that instant, someday, somehow, some way, we must find a way to reach out to the Vietnamese people to begin to build a bridge, to honor their losses as well as our own and begin to build trust and understanding. To go underneath, this word came to me, to go underneath the pathos of war. To connect there in the depths of the pain of loss and tragedy and begin to create small steps forward and of course I didn’t know how or when, I only knew that we absolutely must.”
Ann Hedreen is an author, teacher of memoir writing, and filmmaker. Hedreen and her husband, Rustin Thompson, own White Noise Productions, and have made more than 150 short films and several feature documentaries together, including Quick Brown Fox: An Alzheimer’s Story. She recently completed a second memoir, After Ecstasy: Memoir of an Observant Doubter.
