There is a Pony, There is a Pony

“Then Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go, and it will be done for you just as you have believed.’ And his servant was healed that very hour.” (Matthew 8:13)

I hadn’t realized that the story of the little pessimist and the little optimist was so familiar. Now I’ve discovered that it was one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite yarns—barnyard story it’s called by some. Say, “There must be a pony in there somewhere,” and lots of people know what you’re talking about. The moral of this tale is clear.

Christmas came for the two young brothers. Under the tree gifts abundant were placed for the little pessimist. After tearing through the pile, he asked with signature disappointment, “Is this all”? Then the brother was taken to the backyard for his gift. In the corner of the yard was a mound of horse manure. The boy jumped up and down with glee, leading the father to say, “I don’t understand. We’ve given you a pile of horse manure for Christmas, and you are delighted. Why?” The boy replies enthusiastically, “There must be a pony in there somewhere.” So how is it that some people see the glass half empty and others see it half full? We’re often asked to count our blessings, as if we don’t remember to do so on our own. A well-placed nudge here and there has merit, for sure.

Recently, I’ve started participating in a group that meets weekly for an hour and half. During this time our processes include a little meditation, visioning, and setting our intentions. I’ll be the first to say that had someone told me a couple of years ago I would be giving even moderately serious effort to self help, I would have said, “Not really.” About 18 months ago the landlady from whom I rented for the first four months here in Santa Fe gave me a copy of “The Secret” on CD. I’d never heard of it, but then I discovered that its law of attraction precepts are fairly well known, with historical roots in the New Thought movement of the late 19th century. I guess I wasn’t amazed to discover that lots of people are making serious money from teaching others to ask, believe, and receive. “Woo-woo,” many say about all this new age stuff.

Woo-woo, well, I don’t know. What I do know is that I look forward to our Thursday early evening sessions. It’s simple. We meet, and we go around the circle letting each other know what’s going on for us. We meditate for a few minutes, breathing to empty ourselves of that which stands in the way of awareness and possibility. We end with setting our intentions. All of this is so new to me that I honestly don’t understand it well enough to explain it. Someone has described the process as training ourselves to hear, feel, see and catch God’s plan for us. The plan already exists, and our challenge is to open ourselves so that it can be realized. As we move around the circle in the final activity of our weekly meeting, we are each invited to talk for about a minute—in the present tense as if it is already realized—about where we want to be in our lives, where we indeed intend to be, soon. We might already have one foot in the door of this intended place.

The intentions are real. Maybe the place is one of resolution with a sister facing serious health challenges. Maybe the place is a more satisfying professional life. Maybe the place is allowing oneself to embrace an intimate relationship. Maybe the place is growing out of behaviors that have long crippled any one of us, proving that the old dog absolutely can learn new tricks.

A friend who joined me for dinner at my place last night gave me a gift as he was leaving. We had been talking about business, friends and lovers, relationships woven, sometimes torn, mendable, resilient. He honored my hopes. He breathed life onto the fire of my efforts to be in relationship. I am ever the one trying to figure out things, although I’ve been advised, “Harold, you don’t have to understand everything,” when I try so hard to get at the root of the whys of conflict and find a solution. I want to be understood, not misunderstood, and I want to understand. Ah, but then there’s this matter of accepting. The notion that I can create my own destiny mystifies and intrigues me. Woo-woo, blessings, yards of manure—what do they all have in common? If it’s really so simple as asking, trusting in the goodness of one’s intent, embracing and giving thanks, then what are we waiting for?

There is a Pony, There is a Pony—Santa Fe New Mexico (May 12, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

It's How I'm Wired

Sometimes I wish I could say, “I’m there.” But as the saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Although each day I better understand and accept that life is a process, I still get impatient with myself. I pray about it, as I watch myself struggle. Recently, I was reminded by a friend, “Harold, you’re hard on yourself,” and then she added, “and this makes you hard on others.” Of course, the good news is that I don’t have a corner on the market. Most of us are rowing the same boat, and when you think about it, the company can be comforting.

As much as anything for which I give thanks, I am blessed to be living in a place where consciousness seems to be the norm—at least in the circles where I travel. I have the privilege of knowing a handful of people who remind me every day that my need to grow, and hopefully change, is a good thing. My dear mother’s take on my penchant for change was that I get bored with the familiar, and then dissatisfaction is not far behind. In a sense, that would have it be mostly about the pursuit, which isn’t necessarily bad. In the past, I allowed myself to feel a little guilty about not only looking to new horizons but indeed being drawn, being dazzled by them.
Thankfully, I realize that it’s okay. It’s how I’m wired.

I’m learning to give myself permission—permission to be restless, to sometimes say “no,” which is painfully hard for someone who is a born people pleaser, permission to be a little selfish now and then. That begs the question of what is selfish, although we have been socialized to recognize selfishness in its various stripes and spots. As tough as it is, I’m crawling toward taking baby steps on challenges everywhere I look.

I’m learning to remind myself to be a little easier on both myself and on others. “Take the best and leave the rest,” a friend here says. The literature is ripe, ripe with advice that for our own sanity and happiness we must accept others without trying to change them. How many relationships fail because at least one of the parties needs to change the other. The good news about all the advice we get and give is that we’re really talking to ourselves, hoping that by saying it aloud we will finally get through to ourselves.

The light is dawning for me, although at times only a flicker. For the first time in my life—at least as I see it—I am partner worthy. I’ve had intimate, relatively sustained relationships in the past, but they all played second chair to my birth family. No, let me be more honest. They were hamstrung by my sense of duty to my late mother. Many years ago, an old friend told my partner at the time, “If you think you will be more important than Harold’s family, think again”—or whatever he said. I wasn’t present for the conversation. It’s all up to me now to make myself available. I can’t lay that responsibility on anyone else’s shoulders. Just as I finally accepted that I couldn’t make my mother happy, I know equally that I am not responsible for anyone else’s happiness. Equally, whatever bliss I can know lives inside me. Realizing that I have something really wonderful to offer another man—that I can be a part of something so full of possibility, so challenging, so completing—well, I’m humbled by this rediscovery in my 65th year. Finally, he’s not just around the corner, as I’ve sensed for so long. I’m putting up—not shutting up—embracing him in the now, right here. And so it is.

It’s How I’m Wired—Santa Fe New Mexico (May 7, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

The Walking Wounded

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
-Emily Dickinson

We are the walking wounded. In truth, I can speak only for myself, and frankly, I can’t remember a day in a long, long while that I haven’t felt the weeping of my wounds. Yet I am reminded time and again that the balm that heals comes through our relationships with one another. We are nurtured and diminished by these connections.

As I watched “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” yesterday, I was struck especially by one scene where the main character details the circumstances that led to his beloved being struck by an automobile. If, if, if, we insist. How many lives were changed forever in all of the ifs that came into play on the tragic day of September 11, 2001. If I could do it over again, we say. If only I had known. If only I had cared a little more.

This morning, as I revisited the events of last night, a neighbor in drunken despair who for some reason chose me as the object of his cry for help, a cry that neither he nor I recognized in the heat of our exchange, I realized that I felt violated. A profound sadness planted itself squarely on my soul. As he insisted last night that he would be heard, I resisted equally the strength of his frustration and anger. As we struggled aloud with one another, I lost sight of the man who had called me an angel, not so long ago. With the coming of light today, a palpable darkness stole my strength. I wanted only to sit, quietly, and to mourn, but I knew that something was expected of me. “You have to move through this. Don’t let him rob you…” a friend advised. “God bless you…” his mother pleaded when she called late in the morning to apologize for her son’s behavior. It wasn’t the first apology, and I suppose it won’t be the last. I know that I have to reach out, in
strength, to this man. I know that I must forgive.

The Walking Wounded—Santa Fe New Mexico (May 5, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

An Old Story

As we grow older we become more interested in where we came from, and perhaps where we’re headed to when we “shuffle off this mortal coil.” At least, this happens for some of us. Thanks to my mother, I have always been interested in our family history. Daddy and his siblings talked little about their family. They didn’t know anything. I don’t remember either of my grandmothers entertaining us with stories about the Fuchses or the Hollises. Especially now that it is too late to learn first-hand more of what had to be an interesting story, I regret that I wasn’t insistent to learn more. It was short sighted on everyone’s part.

I know that our maternal German side landed at Galveston in 1866, from what was then Prussia, and settled northwest of Houston. Their family name—Benfer—appears as one of seven on the historical marker for the Klein community, along with Brill, Klein, Hildebrandt, Roth, Strack, and Theiss. An elementary school is named for my great-great grandparents. Only recently am I learning that one particular Fuchs branch, the offspring of one of my grandmother’s older brothers, is exploring their roots. Lovers of good food, just like my Hollis paternal side, this clan of cooks is regularly producing cookbooks with only family recipes—and now adding family history to their work. How delightful. How filled we pride in our heritage and hope for the future. One of my distant cousins told me a few months ago, after discovering me on the Internet, that she wanted her kids to know about their family.

Our branch of the Hollises immigrated from southeastern Alabama to Montgomery County Texas in the last decade of the 19th century—by train, according to some accounts. As I drove through Louisiana and Mississippi a couple of years ago on my first—and so far only—trip to Dothan Alabama, I tried to imagine what the road would have looked like in 1895, not knowing then that my Hollis ancestors hadn’t traveled by wagon.

Our Cousin Marilyn, whose mother Frances Edith was one of five Hollis siblings from the first generation born in Texas, is on a mission to uncover some of the story of the Hollises, one that begins in pre-Revolutionary North Carolina, with the birth of our great-great-great-great grandfather, Isaac. Until Marilyn began her work, I had determined only that our great-great grandfather, another Isaac, along with his wife, Cynthia Morrell, and their children, appeared in the 1870 census for Pike County Alabama. Cynthia’s roots were in Georgia, and the records show that Isaac and Cynthia were married there—I suppose just over the Alabama/Georgia line. It’s hard to imagine that these lovers could have met had the distance that separated them been of any significance.

Our great grandfather, David Riley Hollis, was born in Alabama in 1854 and our Grandpa Stephen Edgar—who died before my birth in 1943—was born there in 1882. Somehow David and Stephen ended up in two different cemeteries in East Texas. And to make the trail a little harder to follow for those who come after us, David’s wife—Martha Frances Ray Hollis—is buried by Stephen and our grandmother, Sallie Antoinette Forest Hollis, not by her husband. Their final places are indeed in two different counties. When I think about how our branch of the Benfer/Fuchs clan and the Hollises have ended up in who knows how many cemeteries, it gives me cause reconsider what I intend to have done with my own remains.

Marilyn’s curiosity has put her on the tracks of the maternal side of the Hollises as well, Meadows and Forest, with roots in Louisiana and North Carolina. That immigrant path down the Atlantic seaboard was a popular one, no doubt, as evidenced in the artisanship reflected in the architecture, furniture and utilitarian and decorative arts that made their way to Texas, well before the Civil War. What of any of that might have been part of our family history is lost to time. Families of modest means traveling south and west carried only the most cherished keepsakes and portable utilitarian goods with them. Looking at old photographs of Hollis faces we don’t know, folks garbed in Victorian dress, well, we won’t ever know.

In the last couple of years, I have spent most of my time in northern New Mexico. I’m not the first of the Hollises to plant some roots here. Daddy’s oldest brother, Pat, brought his family to New Mexico from Texas in 1946. Although his oldest son, Donald, returned to Texas after graduating from college, the remainder of that Hollis branch continued living their lives in the only city that really counted as home by that point. Uncle Pat and Aunt Martha, who had begun her life in northeast Texas, and their youngest son, Byron, moved to Arizona 30 years ago, which became the final resting place of Pat and Martha. And though I’ve continually reminded that blood ties do not produce close ties, given that I have cousins here in Santa Fe that I don’t know, we Hollis first cousins who have lived most of our lives in Texas continue to be close in a comforting way, as I was reminded recently when several of us gathered around our Aunt Mary, soon to celebrate her 92nd birthday. She is the last of her group of siblings.

Cousin Marilyn’s vigorous pursuit of our Hollis history is energizing and fun. The time she spent with my sisters and me just before I returned to New Mexico has renewed our childhood affection. Soon, she and my two sisters will gather in Texas again, just the girls, digging through Joan’s stuff and helping her get organized in the place she now calls home, what used to be the family home in the country. No doubt, they will talk throughout the day and late in to the night about their shared memories, reminding one another of things that each of them has forgotten. The interest my Fuchs cousins—the offspring of my maternal great uncle—have shown in their story—one we share—is nothing short of wonderful to me. I feel privileged to have been invited to walk a little of their journey. Except for a few sketchy memories of one cousin, their branch of the Benfer/Fuchs clan had become lost to me. I’ve contributed one of my Grandmother Lizzie’s recipes to the next edition of the Fuchs family cookbook. Details of our part of the family are documented in the book. The connection feels good.

An Old Story—Santa Fe New Mexico (April 24, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

Things Done and Things Left Undone

Today will be busy. I have much to do before leaving this afternoon for East Texas, the first leg of my return trip to northern New Mexico. My list-in-progress is made. The back of the Toyota already shows evidence that someone is going somewhere. I already know, beginning with the day I traded my Ford crew cab for the 4Runner, that the back area of this mid-range SUV holds a mighty stash of treasure, but today will be another proving ground. I suspect that any plans I might have had about having room for any treasure hunting on the 700-mile journey will be foiled. Clothes, books, the boxes of merchandise I brought to Texas with the hope of selling for friends in Santa Fe will be mostly making the return trip, along with three precious Rubbermaid tubs of Pueblo Indian pottery, the third installment in my efforts—so far unrealized—to lighten my load of vintage American Indian arts. As of this writing, “antique” baskets and rugs have languished in a Santa Fe gallery for the last nine months, priced by the gallery owner so that “I couldn’t afford these prices,” I observed after consigning them. There must be a message here, one that I will have to consider seriously when I get back to Santa Fe and before turning over any more collectible goods to be offered for sale.

Here on the land we are on day three and the final day of a mini family reunion of Hollis cousins. My older sisters, Sue and Joan, and I are being visited by Cousin Marilyn, the daughter of Daddy’s youngest sister, Frances. We’ve had a grand time. In the true Hollis tradition, Marilyn came with food, and food has been the centerpiece of much of the visit. We’ve dined in my garden, relished cheese and wine on the second story deck of my barn home, reminisced with bowls of Cream O’ Wheat sitting in the kitchen area of the bunkhouse part of the barn, and lunched on venison and pork sausage, complemented by mashed potatoes and sauerkraut on the patio of Joan’s home, which is the family home on this place that our parents bought as retirement property in 1973. Mealtime is a special time of celebration in the Hollis family. We’ve talked about everything from recipes to religion and politics—in spite of everything we all know about the danger of discussing R &P—“Only a fool discusses religion and politics,” Mother often quoted her daddy Frank as saying. And of course, we’ve had plenty to say about family, both blood and otherwise.

I told my sisters and cousin late yesterday that today I have to focus on closing up this place and getting on the road. And though I have been slowly, slowly, getting things in place for my departure, the last day always demands a last-minute burst of energy and focus, focus. The list will be observed, line-by-line, even though some things just might not be checked off. And that, I have learned, is okay. The floor will be mostly swept, the commodes—all three of them—cleaned, the bed changed and the laundry done, the refrigerator emptied of perishables—especially in consideration of the two most unfortunate experiences I’ve had over the last two years because of power failures in my absence.

The garden is lovely and lush, following life-giving rains over the last six weeks. And though the beds and paths are a little weedy, I’m letting it pass. I’m leaving money with Joan for paying the hombre who I hope will do a little cleaning in my absence. He knows the drill after helping me a couple of times. It doesn’t really matter all that much for right now, however. The water feature will go silent this afternoon. Only the birds of song and hum and the butterflies and various things that bzzzz will fill the air with sound in this sanctuary. I’ve noticed lately that rabbits are enjoying this garden space, and I wonder, just like I have about the cardinals, if maybe, just maybe, some people I have loved and lost, though just for now, might be in this space. Not one of the winged and four-legged creatures cares a whit about a patch of “weeds” here and there. On the contrary, working on the notion that a weed is just a flower out of place, they’ll all probably sigh in relief that it’s a little messier around here than it used to be, and that's cause for celebration of the artful wildness of this place.

So I will work my list today, taking time for coffee and Cream O’ Wheat with sisters and cousin, while I do my laundry, mostly sweep my floors, stow the worldly goods making this leg of the journey in the back of the Toyota, and set the AC to 85 and the ceiling fans upstairs and downstairs a whirring in anticipation of a Texas summer. On-off, up-down, in-out, sigh and go. Some things will get done and some things will be left undone. I’ve given myself permission to be messy and incomplete and a little more at peace than has been my habit in the past.

Things Done and Things Left Undone—Normangee Texas (April 16, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

And So It Is

Easter Day began with rain. Awake from 3:45 a.m., I didn’t realize that the forecast had been borne out until I trekked from the downstairs bedroom over to the lean-to that serves as office, library and catch-all on the west side of the barn. It was a lazy day. Coffee perking on the gas stove top, I indulged myself with conversations about God and faith via the Internet, where thanks to a website new to me I found thinkers and believers recorded live in forums at which I can now only wish I had been present. I found myself typing madly, taking notes from a talk by Marcus Borg, Biblical scholar and teacher, and then emailing the notes, High Priority, to myself. In the same forum, Christine Pelosi talked about her work for political and social reform and the call to serve that was an important part of her family upbringing and her Roman Catholic faith and continues to shape her personal and professional growth.

I was called to consider, once again, what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not, and reminded once again that in the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for God’s kingdom on earth, in our lives, in our times. In a separate recording, another writer talked about her research on Mary Magdalene, the first witness at the tomb, and the fiction piece that grew out of her study. And though I did not regret that I was alone, on Easter Sunday, as many other Christians throughout the world gathered to celebrate, I took comfort in knowing that in my own quiet, solitary way, I too was a part of this day of active expression of faith.

This afternoon I soaked up the sunshine that followed the rain, sitting in the garden, and finishing a novel about a young girl’s struggle in the 1950s with undiagnosed Tourette’s Syndrome. Around her tenth year, she is institutionalized for several months, dropped in the midst of a small group of children who suffer far worse conditions. Only after returning to the grandparents who are rearing her, and following the death of her grandfather, does she realize through her grandmother’s insistent faith and her own gifts, including that of words and an “angelic” singing voice, that God does indeed love each one of us, including her, no matter, no exceptions.

And so it is.

The Beautiful Answer

When I came back to Texas in mid February, I wasn’t at all clear about what I needed to happen at that time. I just knew that I was ready to be on the road, ready to put Santa Fe and winter behind me for a while, eager yet dreading the gardening challenges that faced me at this Leon County barn home, and not the least bit excited about pulling it together for the spring Round Top Antiques Fair. I was restless and unsettled, and muddier in the head than I like. I sort of made myself a quiet promise at the outset that I wouldn’t be too hard on myself—that I would try to take day by day all of the work facing me. Maybe I couldn’t have known how badly I needed time for reflection—and as it turns out, time to heal from the healing that I thought I had been working on for the last 18 months.

It is Good Friday, the day after Maundy Thursday, the day before the Great Vigil of Easter. I haven’t darkened the door of a church since leaving Santa Fe on February 15th. I haven’t wanted to go to church, although I have not backed off from my spiritual quest. I have not stopped the daily reading, my own odd way of praying—who’s to say that praying needs rules—my awareness that there is so much that is so much greater than I. Early in this visit to Texas, as I dug in the garden, removing weeds, pruning and then spreading mulch in anticipation of a brutal summer when the garden will be left to its own, although I knew how beautiful this quiet place would become with a little rain, especially after a long period of unusual dryness and warm temperatures, my heart did not remember the beauty. It also didn’t remember how restorative a garden and the labor that gardens want can be.

I’ve made it through the hardest part of this leg of the journey. The antiques fair is behind me. I’m a little more comfortable that I did pretty much all I could do to make it a success. God willing, I will have another chance in the fall. Whatever else I do in the garden before heading to my home in northern New Mexico is adding blessing, both for the garden and for me. In the last week, late afternoons I’ve sat quietly in the shed that looks west, soaking in the washing of water in the fountain, watching the cardinals busy activity—reminding myself that as I much as I talk about them I still don’t have a picture from my own camera—listening to all of the birds that call this sanctuary home now and then, and I’ve delighted in the new blooms that emerge each day. Slowly, I’ve rearranged the stacks inside my house that grew out of my return from the antiques market, some things going in the mail, some being reabsorbed into this home, and some prepared for the trip back to New Mexico.

Very much on my mind are the things I’ve been reading while here, fiction and non, and I’m not surprised to realize that I haven’t been away from God at all, even though I have been away from church. It seems that my entire experience here has been one, relatively long prayer. I’ve read about families in conflict—even across generations—loss of loved ones, regeneration and rebirth. I’ve read two scholars' attempt to explain the last week of the life of Christ. I’ve read one man’s fictional account of a journey here on earth in the "physical" presence of God the Father and Mother, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And at the heart of all of this has been a simple message. The answer is love. And the answer is forgiveness. As painful and demanding and confusing and exasperating as love can be, it is the sweet answer to all that ails us. Regardless of where or how, or even if, we pray, it is the only balm to heal our souls. No amount of proving or asserting our rights can hold a measure to the act of forgiving and being forgiven. As I prepare for Easter on this important Friday, I’m holding on to this good news.

The Beautiful Answer—Normangee Texas (April 10, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis