Uncovering Your Purposeful Beginnings

      In the classes I teach, Writing Places and Wordshops, I often ask participants to write the story of their mythological creation. Nearly every tribe and civilization that we can name has their own set of creation myths. It explains their unique presence. The terrain. The history of the tribe. Creating your own personal myth is a remarkable journey. It's digging into your purpose. Let me share my own creation myth.

      “Entirely too hot!”

      “Entirely too high!”

      “By all our heads I swear this will turn sunset to a crisp.”

      “Stop your murmuring and just complete your tasks!” Umbria chastised the rising criticizers.

      “You don't think this fire is large enough already?”

      “You know size is irrelevant; it's the density of the burn we always look for. Don't be stingy. I know you've not poured yours in yet.”

      Vitae was embarrassed at being caught. She retreated to the wavy edges of the fire. Appropriately corrected, she humbly reached into her boodle bag and pulled the bottled essence for which she was named. As a single drop entered the fire the core flame leapt higher than Vitae's tall head.

      “Only one drop?” Umbria asked.

      Shamed, again, this time by her lack of generosity, Vitae poured lavishly—and stepped quickly back from the rising heat. Years later this extra portion of vitality (for which Vitae could take credit) would sustain the breath of this fiery spirit.

      Umbria kept her invitations flowing. She calculated on her fingers, “All right, yes! Compassion, Intention, Chaos, Camaraderie, Intimacy, Loyalty, Vision . . . and had Creativity come?” Oh, yes. Of course. She came in that silly disguise of hers that many mistake for discipline. Now . . . oh, yes!

      She called out, “Calculation! Prosperity, Strength, and Well-being! Come on. It's nearly time.”

      While it was somewhat unorthodox, the latecomers all came and piled their offerings in the keeping of Strength—the intensity of the heat had become too much for the rest of them.

      “Are we done yet?” Calculation inquired.

      “Almost,” she impatiently assured. “Would somebody call for Attentiveness and Gentleness? I need them to add something.”

      Umbria was still deciding what from her bag to bestow—balance or insight. It seemed silly to contribute balance into a fire of this magnitude. The flames were licking the sun and the clouds had begun to complain bitterly. Clearly the only choice they had was to begin a deluge—which tempered the flames slightly. Thereafter this spirit would love all water, especially walking in the rain.

      As Gentleness, at some personal peril, added her silken threads, she heard, “Isn't it time yet?” in choired unison.

      Umbria gasped at the error of her own long consideration. She knew such an overdue pause would forever compel the belly in which this fire burned to be late. Such things happen. Perhaps insight would help. Umbria tossed her slivers and shards of insight into the flames. In an instant the tower of heat was reduced to a molten coal. Intention and Chaos grabbed the cradle and deftly slipped it under the newly compressed ball of fire. Then they swung the crib back and forth while the others stood in a circle. Following a familiar form they sang their ageless invitation. Soon they heard from the other side of the world.

      “It's a girl, Mrs. Radmacher. Does she have a name?”

      “Yes, her father and I will name her Mary Anne.”

      I was oblivious to the inquiry until second grade.

      “No! They are my parents, not my grandparents.” I was certainly used to them as my parents. The last of my grandparents had died when I was five, and I did not come to understand grief in regard to my grandfather's passing. Only relief. He was described by the nonreligious members of my family as some kind of “crazy bastard.” Perhaps even the religious family members found it within their experience to levy the same charge against him.

      My curiosity pushed beyond its civil limit, I finally asked, “Why? Why do you think they are my grandparents?”

      The answer was apparent to all but me. “They are so old.”

      So old. So old. It was true. Amorous in their anticipation . . . I was the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration to Hawaii that my parents never took. Oddly, I think my mother never really forgave my birth for cheating her of what would have been her first time out of the Pacific Northwest. At least she chose to have me. She was receiving endless unsolicited advice to have me aborted for the sake of her health. She was forty-four. She had a history of miscarriages. Both of my parents insisted that when they married they wanted five children. I would make the fifth, if I survived.

      And I did. Against a host of odds. My mother's general health was challenged, and the two packs of cigarettes she smoked each day became a challenge for me. It was mitigated, somewhat, by the two glasses of scotch on the rocks she would imbibe before five. . . .

      Oh, what we didn't know then—in 1957—about fetal health and the life-time effects of smoking and drinking while pregnant.

      The nine-month lounge act I enjoyed in my mother's belly introduced me to a world bronchially challenged from the word go. At nineteen months old I had a menu of illness offerings: