Monthly Archives: July 2014

My Mother

DSC03501 Regena Larrabee Seehausen, my mother,  looking out over the ocean a few months (around February 1964) before her death in July 1964.    My mother was travelling with her friend Lillian S, who had trained with her to be a nurse.    People were congratulating her on her pregnancy.  She was 48.  In reality she was retaining fluid in her abdomen because of her deadly cancer.

At that time, I was sixteen years old, and was delighted that she was going on a little trip.  I helped her prepare.  I remember some special moments in the “playroom” of our house in the evening, but I cannot remember their content.

Upon her return, she brought this gigantic mortar and pestle.  They had stowed it in the front of the aircraft.  In those days they did not have as many regulations.    I have been unable to find out anything about it online.

DSC03502 The giant carved wooden mortar and pestle which Regena Larrabee Seehausen carried back from the Bahamas in late winter, 1964.

 

 

The Shadow

DSC03494 A shadow.  Recently I have been exploring aspects of my soul as I read Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, A Guide For Cultivating Depth and Sacredness In Everyday Life.   I like to think that I am honest with myself.  However, Regena Larrabee Seehausen said to me once. “It is hard to know how you are perceived by others. ”  And in fact I am finding that others sometimes see my shadow where I feel I am radiating light. The shadow is the flip side, the dark side where we are not, or where other aspects of our personalities,  besides what we think we are showing , dwell.   I have long thought that our good and bad qualities are the same.  We just exist and interact, as we are or make ourselves to be.  What we consider good and bad are aspects of the same qualities.   Much more poetically Regena Larrabee Seehausen  (1964) says something related to this in:

DSC03496 from Poems