The Process

Yesterday I finished Deepak Chopra’s novel about Gautama Buddha. Since I haven’t been going to church while in Texas, I’ve felt a stronger need to do spiritual work on my own, which I do every day anyway. While visiting Dallas a few weeks ago, I participated in a group discussion at the Cathedral of Hope. For Lent they are reading a work titled “The Last Week”, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, both current day Christian scholars, and both very liberal. I suppose the title needs no translation. Chopak’s fictional account of the human being who eventually came to be known as Buddha concludes with an Epilogue and a chapter titled "The Art of Non-Doing." In the novel, Chopra has the character of Gautama say:

“In time I concluded that my struggles could last a lifetime, and to what end? I will still be a slave to karma and a prisoner in this world. What is this karma that visits us with so much suffering? Karma is the body’s endless desires. Karma is the memory of past pleasure we want to repeat and past pain we want to avoid. It’s the delusions of ego and the storm of fear and anger that besieges the mind.” (“Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment,” Deepak Chopra, Harper Collins, 2007)

According to the “Truths” articulated in basic Buddhist principles: life contains suffering; suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known; and suffering can be brought to an end. The path to ending this suffering, of course, is complex and requires serious intent and discipline. The Path includes right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort (and the three more abstract “things”--right view or perspective, right mindfulness, and right concentration). These are the eight things that will open the way to peace instead of pain.

I am reminded of Don Miguel Ruiz’s take on “rightness” in “The Four Agreements”, and of a principle that is basic to life for those who are drawn to the social justice that also has strong roots in the Bible. In Micah of the Old Testament is found the very prescription of how we are to make our way on this journey: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Anne Lamott, who is one of my favorite contemporary writers and thinkers—and also just happens to be one of the funniest—has this to say in her book about her faith journey: "I took a long, deep breath and wondered as usual, where to start. You start where you are, is the secret of life. You do the next right thing you can see. Then the next.” (“Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith,” Anne Lamott)

Doing the next right thing is not a unique principle. “Do the next right thing," is a guideline for living in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is quoted as saying "The time is always right to do what is right." Other persons of note espouse the same notion; indeed organizations are built around it. I suppose that for most it is part of our fiber, even when we are lost in the tangles and snarls of just trying to live our lives. Perhaps it is the one great challenge of being human.

I’ve been alone much of the time I’ve been in Texas. Aside from brief but regular exchanges with my oldest sister, who lives in the big house about a football field’s length from my front gate, a couple of short trips to visit family and friends, and the errands that have taken me “to town”, as we say in the country, I’ve been here working in the yard and house, trying to keep yard and house from completely overtaking me, and getting ready for my antiques market—a daunting task for sure, but one which I’m trying to take in stride since there’s not much I can do at this point to change the outcome.

I’ve had plenty of time for reflection...plenty of time to practice my breathing. I wouldn’t know how to measure any ground I’m gaining, except to say that the stacks around here look a little different, and I’m remembering to breathe—a little more naturally each day. I’m remembering to remind myself not to let the baggage and anger of others overtake me, although that is not easy for me. I am more readily stopping to examine my own ego and “the storm of fear and anger” that can so easily have its way with me. My long-time friend Jane, who lives about an hour’s drive to the east, told me earlier this week that I seem much more relaxed, “even though you’re still impatient with other drivers”, she added later in the visit. Well, it is a process, isn’t it?

The Process—Normangee, Texas (March 28, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

Fruits of Our Labors

Sometimes it’s not enough simply to stop and look at the fruits of our labors. We need an image caught in time to bring focus. Likely, we’re just too close to the process. As nature would show us, spring is not just about rebirth—it is rebirth in color, and moving, if only we pay attention. But sometimes the canvas is simply too large for us to take it all in. It washes over us without our realizing the detail.

Mary Louise Hollis Todd

We may be small in number, but not at all in spirit. Yesterday, a few of us gathered at Aunt Mary’s place on the west side of Houston. Patsy was just 18 when she came to Houston from her native Santa Fe to marry our cousin Donald. He had grown from young teenager to young man in the Land of Enchantment, and they had come to Texas—a return to his roots—to start their life together. That was 1957. Donald is the oldest of our generation of Hollises, the same generation that led Patsy to comment to me yesterday, “It’s hard to believe that we’re the next generation who will die.” But there it is, clearly distinguishable on our faces. We’re an older bunch, children of the 1930s and 40s.

Aunt Mary, the reason we few had assembled, flowers and food in hand, turned 91 on her last birthday, the only surviving member of her own generation. She doesn’t remember so much any more, but the spring in her feet is still lively, though tottery at times, as she demonstrated yesterday when we were getting ready to leave. In the course of a few hours, she had asked each of us more than once, “Now who are you?” Sitting next to Patsy on the sofa, she beamed at me, “I’m Mary Louise Hollis Todd.”

As we sat and stood around the table, letting the hearty lunch made by sister Sue’s capable hands—we all get our cooking ways from our East Texas paternal grandmother—we wandered into reminiscing, laughing and sighing over times shared. Joan, our oldest sister, remembered a trip to the beach with Donald, his brothers Jimmy and Byron, and Sue and me from our branch, part of a herd of Hollises on an outing. She recalled that before we left Houston, Uncle Pat said I’m going to spank you three boys now because I know you’re going to misbehave before we get to Galveston. Donald laughed, although he didn’t remember the incident, and his daddy wasn’t known for administering that kind of justice, especially in advance of any crime, even though he raised his three sons during an era when “spare the rod and spoil the child” was primer to raising kids. “He that spareth the rodde, hateth his sonne," claims a 16th century translation of Proverbs. The origin of the saying has even earlier roots. “Did you ever spank your kids,” I asked Donald and Patsy. We all smiled and nodded. What we remember most from our generation was being loved and lots of laughter, especially at Hollis gatherings.

Hollis outings instigated by our parents remained a popular pastime into my young adulthood. At that time, all of the Hollis siblings owned houses on the Texas coast, even Uncle Pat and Aunt Martha, who had lived in New Mexico for 20 years at this point. Russell, Ray, Mary and Frances (Aunt Sister) were regulars on Caranchua Bay, and visits by the New Mexico family were always a special treat. It was following one of those gatherings at the bay that I flew back to Santa Fe in Uncle Pat’s plane, Aunt Martha and her toy poodle tucked in the back seat. And it was on that trip I recalled our family’s visit to Santa Fe of the 1950s, and I knew again that I wanted to live there some day. In a sense, Donald and I have traded, although his part of the swap is already more than a half-century old, and Santa Fe is a very different place. Just ask those who grew up there when it was a sleepy town, with lots more dirt streets than you can find today.

“We used to go to Santa Fe,” Aunt Mary recalled, although she didn’t add any details. It was a recollection that spurred her imagination as she mostly listened to her nieces and nephews. Our Mamaw Hollis visited Uncle Pat’s family regularly during the 40s and 50s, sometimes riding the train. I’ve forgotten the particulars of any trip Aunt Mary made in her traveling days. Maybe her last visit was for her nephew Jimmy’s funeral in the early 90s. He died too young.

Cousin Becky, the youngest of our generation, grew up an only child. She’s always loved family gatherings. At a funeral several years ago she exclaimed, “I just love funerals!” adding for propriety’s sake that she really meant to say she loves those opportunities to see her kinfolks. Becky is Hollis through and through, hugging and kissing, and laughing her trademark laugh, full of generosity. After lunch yesterday, her hands were in the sink, doing her part for the celebration.

We gathered in the backyard for photographs and instant replay, thanks to digital technology. Aunt Mary wasn’t giving up too many smiles, as she tried to sort through all of the bustle, but laughter pealed from her when I said, “Horseshit!” “Sounds just like Aunt Frances,” Joanie reacted. It was a balmy, sunny, pre-spring day in west Houston, in the backyard of the house on two-plus acres that Aunt Mary and Uncle Frog built in the early 1960s. It’s the home that she won’t agree to leave, on land that used to be country, now surrounded by houses and townhomes. She can’t live alone, and Cousin Donald sees to it that she is safe and comfortable, a luxury assured by the financially conservative ways that dictated how Mary and Frog, children of the depression, lived their lives.

For those cousins gathered yesterday, celebrating around their Aunt Mary, we were reminded that we prosper because of where we come from. It’s not about money, although only a fool wouldn’t acknowledge that money sure does help. What was evident around the table of Mary Louise Hollis Todd, over Sue’s chocolate cake—the cake we’ve long referred to as Anna Mae Sowell’s chocolate cake—was the wonderful connection we continue to have, even though we see each other rarely. As we stood in the backyard taking pictures, I asked Becky to stand for one of just her and Aunt Mary. As Becky took Aunt Mary’s hand, she commented on the dark blue veins so prominent just under the tissue-thin skin. I noticed Aunt Mary’s long, graceful fingers and thought about the precious blood coursing strong still through our aunt, Hollis blood in body and spirit that all those gathered share.

Mary Louise Hollis Todd—Normangee Texas (March 19, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

On Furlough

Rain came to our part of the world last week. I’m so out of touch with the news that I don’t even know how widely the gift was spread. I do know that grass still yellow with winter and the drought lay tight to the ground in the field outside my front gate. Wildflower foliage that normally pokes out its head by mid February was nowhere to be seen. With the rain, rose bushes are bursting with new growth after a severe pruning, and the first blooms from Old Blush and Cramoisi Superieur are official. Although my labors are modest by the standards of previous years, I’ve done the best I intend to give for now. Likely, there will be no early spring wildflowers.

I’m on furlough from gardening. Eighteen days, 94 bags of mulch, $200 in hired labor, and personal hours—well, as the MasterCard commercial goes, “priceless”. Far from well groomed, this landscape, like me, looks a little worse for the wear. If the land and that which grows from it could talk, just what would they say? For me, I just had a few more sunspots frozen off my balding head. They keep coming back, which is their nature, even though I faithfully wear a hat. I’ve visited the local chiropractor a half dozen times. What 10 sessions in physical therapy didn’t do for my chronic back pain, body adjusting seems to help. Engaged in an ongoing battle of attrition, with the hot, dry Texas summers raising their clinched fist in champion posture, my garden continues to slowly lose that which made it lush for a while. Like my body, which can no longer spring from the ground to the tailgate of a truck, my garden is having to accept that less is more. I like to think that all of this is a choice, although I’m not sure that it’s so much a choice as it is a concession. Whenever I sit or recline, I try to calm my mind with palms upturned or forefinger and thumb joined and resting on my knees—“one…come…”, breathe in, breathe out.

Interesting how we can problem solve for others with so much ease, especially compared to our own situations. Last spring a friend asked my opinion on developing the large lot on which she and her husband live in the city. A side garden is lush with color. I remember lots of rich blue Delphiniums from last year, but there was more. The expanse outside this small, intimate garden is dotted with trees and some blooming shrubs, including roses, all suited for prospering at 7000 feet. What should she do to add more interest, she asked. Nothing, I answered definitively. Just leave it natural. That’s no expert opinion, I admit. It’s as much an answer to my own prospects here where central Texas meets East Texas, where there are expectations of grassy lawns, where cattle graze nearby because that’s what happens in a rural county where grass can be plentiful and grazing occurs naturally, except in years of drought.

My visit to my home in Texas is at the halfway mark. The next few weeks will likely pass quickly, as I prepare for the other responsibilities of this stay. I will try to remember to sit in the garden come late afternoon, where I can listen for the water tumbling gently over the sides of a large Mexican jar into the livestock trough below, where I can marvel at the vocal strength of a northern cardinal tucked away somewhere in the branches of a Post Oak—come Sunday mornings, my own efforts at song should be so robust—where I can watch spring do its early work, miraculously fleshing out the canvas in which I live, while here. The Mountain Laurel has begun with a few modest lavender clusters, the Crossvine an orange carpet draped across the fence, the Amaryllis just on the brink of dotting the garden with red, and everywhere green, green.

On Furlough—Normangee, Texas (March 18, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

Never, Indeed

While talking to friend Suzi in Santa Fe this morning, I realized that today is Texas Independence Day—March 2. On this date in 1836 the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence approved the document that would separate Texas from Mexico, creating the Republic of Texas. Four days later, the Alamo fell to Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Any Texan worth his or her salt knows the story.

Yesterday afternoon, a couple I was meeting for the first time at the home of the friend who does my taxes—he a native of Pennsylvania and she a native of Maryland—told me the story of how they had come to Texas—separately. He settled in Houston in 1953, after leaving military service. Retired from a second career, she came to Texas to live with her daughter. “She wasn’t born here, but she got here as soon as she could,” he quipped about this daughter by marriage. Such pride in an adopted place is admirable. “You can go to Hell. I’m going to Texas.” Legend attributes these words to Davy Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836), son of Tennessee, who had served in the legislature of his home state before becoming a hero of the Alamo. A couple of summers ago I noticed a beefy, handsome guy on the Plaza in Santa Fe wearing the t-shirt that bears this affirmation of spirit.

Sarah Dodson (1812-1848), designer of an early Texas flag, is buried in Bethel Cemetery (Grimes County), two counties over to my southeast. According to the Handbook of Texas online, Dodson made the flag for her husband’s Harrisburg (early settlement that later became part of Houston) regiment. The flag traveled with his company to the battle at Gonzales. “Lacking silk or bunting, she made the flag out of three colored squares of cotton cloth. The square nearest the flagstaff was blue with a white star centered upon it. The middle square was white, and the outermost square was red.” They call that making do.

Unlike those who boast “the Alamo…been there, done that,” I reply, “Never!” Unlike a friend in New Mexico who commented last summer, “I am a former Texan,” I reply, “Never!” On this day, when celebrations are happening around the Lone Star State, I am quietly working in the garden. Under sunny skies, I am smiling, and saying thanks to friend Eugene, who I haven’t seen since we graduated from high school in 1961, for being the second and most important reminder today that I’m digging in historic dirt here in Leon County (established in 1846). Local legend has it that there is treasure buried on this property. How appropriate that an historic Old Blush, a China rose also known as ‘Common Monthly' which has been traced as far back as 1752 in Texas, is planted just outside the front gate of my yard. Just down the fence, a Cramoisi Superieur (also a China, 1885 in Texas) flourishes. Ask Texas rosarians about roses for historical gardens, and just about any list will include these two. Wherever I hang my hat, Texas is my home. And in spite of the neglect my garden is asked to suffer while I dream elsewhere, so far it has been waiting and forgiving on my return. Never, indeed.

Never, Indeed—Normangee Texas (March 2, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

East of Clovis

As I sat outside late yesterday, I was struck by the sounds. Joan’s mare, Lucy, pushed her hay trough around the pen, just on the other side of my garden. It makes a hollow banging sound. She does this often out of boredom. From inside my barn home, some 50 yards away, I sometimes hear the same racket that travels through the mostly open space separating her pen from the barn. The wind has been constant for most of the time I’ve been back here—gusting at 15-20 mph. Chimes from my garden are joined by chimes that hang from the beams of the carport behind Mother’s house. Mother’s house…when will I stop saying that? Mother’s house is now Joan’s house. I’m traveling. Somewhere else I’ve had this same sense of call to prayer. The feathered cohabitors of this garden busy themselves, as the sun drops, drops in the west, through Post Oaks still bare, the orange disk gone while the sky remains light and tinged with color. Overhead, a passenger jet, heading west from Houston 100-plus miles to the southeast, pierces the sky, too high for me to hear the sound. I suppose that Casey, the blue heeler, can hear it.

I thought I would be lonely here this time, after living in close quarters with ready companions for the last four months, and especially with the absence of friends nearby in this rural county who have chosen life nearer to the big city. Eight years ago I was ripe to leave a job, abandon the city. I thought I needed to escape—something—to solitude. How could I know that the world, my world was on the brink—that peace of mind was about to undergo a measurable redefining? On the eve of Mother’s 84th birthday, we took her to the emergency room 90 miles to the south. She was admitted to the Hospital. Four days later, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, my neighbor Nancy called. Turn on your television. A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. The only guarantee is change. The solitude I so craved is still on my plate. Be wary of answered prayers.

Pay homage to the cellular age. Last night my friend Judy assured me from 175 miles away that I’m accomplishing as much as I should expect of myself—whatever that means and by whoever might be expecting something. Oh, that would be me, of course. “You’ve only been back a couple of days,” she insisted. Well, it had really been a week. As I looked homeward to Texas from Santa Fe over a month ago, dreading the work that lay ahead of me, friend Suzy cautioned me, “Don’t manifest that.” You will be fine. And though the dread became palpable when I smelled the feedlots of Clovis heading east to the Texas Panhandle, I knew I was okay. This morning I will move and stack the old bricks—TEXAS…MEXIA—that I retrieved from the rubble of the demolished tile shower sub floor. Late yesterday I found them partially buried in the debris on the contractor’s trailer. I’ve put out the first batch of mulch in the garden. Fourteen bags equal one yard. One yard fits comfortably into the rear of my Toyota 4Runner. The garden requires at least 20 yards. No mountain high enough.

For today, maybe I’ll clear the top of the credenza in the middle of the kitchen. Its original purpose was as a food preparation space. Maybe I’ll unpack my clothes. I’ve spilled the contents of my vehicle into a space in the bunkhouse living room that was already past capacity—dominoes teetering on the brink. Maybe I’ll read about Louisiana in the 19th century—a novel set in the area called home by the late Clementine Hunter, revered Black folk artist who died 20 years ago at age 101. Maybe I’ll put out a trap for the mouse that darted through the deconstructed bathroom early this morning and out a gaping hole at the bottom of the wall that adjoins the barn hallway. No doubt, he and his friends are having a heyday while my house stands compromised.

Disarray reigns, along with dust from the demolition of the old tile shower. Visitors? How? Last night I cautioned friend Steve, who abhors clutter, who abhors any unnecessary stuff, that I’m hesitant for him to visit from New Mexico. Before Mother died two years ago—Mother of the odd combination of keeper of things long past purpose and dusted, arranged tabletops—we observed that our aunt no longer invites us over. She had reduced her house to paths, her kitchen counters to a patchwork of miniature workspaces. Horrors, I’m working off of the same paradigm. While visiting the other day, sister Sue assured me, “It’s not that bad.” A few days earlier, sister Joan observed over coffee one morning, “At least it’s organized.” Would it be easier to be here, mostly alone—solitary in the garden, upstairs looking out onto the deck and into the cow trap below and the hayfield farther east, in the downstairs bedroom at night, book in hand and occasionally glimpsing the moonlit sky through the door that leads to the outdoor bath—just me and the chimes, and the songbirds, and the Mouse?

East of Clovis—Normangee, Texas (February 28, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis

Home is Where the Heart Is

Now that I’m back here in Texas, I’m trying not to use the “H” word because I like pretending that I live in Santa Fe New Mexico. Hah! Given my long developing love of sprawl, the one that has evolved into this barn and garden on steroids, I’m hard pressed to explain to anyone who might care to ask, exactly where is your home? Can it possibly be that a postage stamp-sized condo measures up to a home? Is a treasure-filled barn home? Well, I can quote scripture: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21). “Home is where the heart is,” goes an old saying. I’ve just been reminded by someone posting on an Internet website, “…my home is my parents' old house. I've never loved my own…” as much.

Our middle sister, Sue, lives in the house we mostly grew up in. I was already 10 when that house was built, Joan, the oldest, 15. It was moved some 25 miles west back in the early 70s when our parents sold the land on which it sat. It had already been moved once, from one side of the road to the other when the highway was widened my senior year in high school. Even then it hadn’t been home to my sisters for some time. The youngest of three, I lived at this new site for only a few months before heading off to college. In its new place, that house has been the scene of many family gatherings. Sue’s children, now all in their 40s, were in their teens when their Paw Paw died. The house here on this land in Leon County, home to Mother and Daddy for a few years in the late ‘70s—the house where both our Grandma Fuchs and Mother died—is now Joan’s home. The only guarantee we have is change.

My other memories of hearth—the house at 102 Arnold in an old Houston neighborhood, a house built by our maternal grandparents in 1923, and the house built by great Uncle Henry at 105 Reinerman, just around the corner—the house where an historic photograph has recorded great grandmother Louisa Benfer Fuchs laid out for burial in January 1939, the first time she had been in a reclining position in years, having long been crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. We lived in each of those houses in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s. There’s a picture of Sue and me in front of the garage at 102 Arnold, one of us holding the family rat Terrier. Today, through some freak accident, Joan’s rat Terrier, Sadie, fell victim under the wheels of the diesel Ford driven by the contractor remodeling the old bathroom of my barn home. We cried, “the only watchdog on the place,” Joan lamented, and Sadie was buried in my oldest sister’s pet cemetery, just beyond the clothesline, under a cedar tree. There’s Joan, Sue and me, along with Mother and family friend Jim Hulme, shown in a late 1940s Houston Press photo with Lassie our collie and her 13 puppies, alongside the house at 105 Reinerman. What are we to do with all of these changes?

My sisters and I are gathering here on the land in Leon County, both to visit all together for the first time in several months—now that I pretend to live in northern New Mexico—and to conduct our little family business. How keen the memory of Grandma Fuchs, from whom this land was a gift to Mother and Daddy in the early ‘70s, and before her, land to land to land, a gift from Louisa Benfer Fuchs. As our mother and her sister-in-law, our Aunt Edna, did so often in the final years of Mother’s life, last night my sisters and I reminisced a little, gossiped a little. We ate chili and beans over cornbread. Our cousin Mary, Edna’s daughter, is coming for lunch today—chicken and dumplings made by Sue’s daughter, Karen. Food has always been a centerpiece of home, the product of both our German and Scots-Irish heritage.

Recently in Santa Fe, I had lunch with our cousin Donald Hollis, his wife Patsy (Gallegos), whose family has lived in Santa Fe for many generations, and Patsy’s sister, Isabella, who lives in Albuquerque. Donald, the oldest of our generation of Hollises, lived in New Mexico for a relatively short time—from the beginning of his teen years until graduation from university. He returned to his Houston Texas roots four years before I graduated from high school. I loved hearing them talk about growing up in Santa Fe, their family traditions, where they had lived in that sleepy town of the first half of the 20th century. For decades, the Gallegos family compound was near the juncture of Juanita and Agua Fria, not that far from the Plaza. Patsy, of pure New Mexican Hispanic heritage, has now lived most of her life on the Gulf coast of Texas. She and Donald’s children are native Texans, just like their daddy. Their hearts are steeped in Texas.

In New Mexico I am drawn to the persistent call of the ravens that nest in the Pinon pines populating so much of the terrain. Here in Leon County, their crow cousins insist on being heard throughout the day. I associate crows with the pines that dominated the land where I grew up in northwest Harris County, but pines obviously are not requisite to their habitat, as witnessed here in the Post Oak Savannah that lies just a few miles west of the towering pines of East Texas. Studies show that crows and ravens thrive in the woodlands, on the coast, and in the arid west. They migrate to the food. I pay attention to the crows and the ravens, and though I’m not sure of what they tell me, I smile often when I consider what they have on their minds. They are curious by nature, gregarious. They clearly have opinions. So I’m taking their reminder on good faith. Where they are, I find myself smiling as I move toward their presence, feeling very much at home. At the end of the forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark and sent forth a raven. It went to and from until the waters were dried up from the earth. Like the raven and the crow, I make myself at home, wherever I am for a while.

Home is Where the Heart Is—Normangee Texas (February 25, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis