Blogs

ASCENSION FIELD NOTES – FORTY YEAR CYCLE BY KATHY VIK 11-27-13
www.ascensionfieldnotes.wordpress.com
www.deeplyawake.tumblr.com

My cat Minky is draped over my right calf, me here on my bed, after what feels like a five minute nap. It also feels like Sunday, but it feels like Sunday, for me, most of the time anymore. I decided, spring of 2011, that I would no longer work on Sunday. I had found something at mile Hi Church of Religious Studies. I knew I had to be there.

I look at it now, and realize that doing so, just setting one day aside, with my son, in-between weeks, Sam and I created a good pattern, a rhythm to our weeks, months, and years ensued. It's the day we sat aside for treats, and rarely do we schedule family time on Sunday. It's not a time of darkness, of dissonance. Sunday has turned into a day of indulgence. It's the day I practice what I learned on my trip to Laughlin and Vegas last year. I dwelled in something, those few days I took for a trip, after not having taken a vacation in twelve years. It was good to be required to attend to myself, and to no one else, for those days. I settled into myself. I started having visions. I knew what I was to one day become.

That most days feel like Sunday, even last night at work (a rare Tuesday), this is a blessed turn of events.

I bring this up because being a rarely employed night nurse has had, built into it, time alone, in bed, half in and half out of sleep, in a trance, a lot of it, I think. I had permission, and it was in fact necessary, that I stop time, as a night nurse, and unplug, right when everyone else was out in the sun, pursuing goals that only make sense in company, all doing the same, goals the same, hours the same, patterns the same. The Monday through Friday bunch.

I think, with the way the economy has been allowed to rape the middle class, that more and more regular joes are now doing shift work, trying to make ends meet. There are hidden reasons for our troubles, I think. When more and more people, by necessity, need to break stiff patterns with time, a certain freedom enters the mind. The idea that time is a device, a construct we use, but not as rigid as once believed, this sort of thinking is introduced. It's not a bad thing.

I feel the same sort of certainty with my personal explanation for the high divorce rate and all the split parenting that is done anymore.

I believe it is because we have begun to split from the god-the-father paradigm, and the benefit of this is that more and more women, all over America, all over the industrialized world, have, for over a generation, have raised their children without a very strong male bond.

Sure, some folks live with dad instead of mom, and sure, some moms are just really crappy at it, but, think about it. Just think about it. Two generations of kids who see that mom is a fully functioning adult. Valid without a man, many of we single moms, we've chosen to walk alone, with our kids, until they are mature. I did. I don't think I'm the only one. I decided to disengage socially, to a very large degree, and one of the reasons was, I just didn't want my kid to have to deal with any more heartache. I left his daddy when Sam was three. That was enough interpersonal violence. It was time to heal, without supervision, without support, and without knowing where it would lead.

I preface this story by telling you that about a week ago, maybe less, I realized that on my birthday