Grandmother's Dharma

 

Dharma that which holds together…That which bring harmony….One’s purpose in life.

Jaganath Careera, Inside the Yoga Sutras

 

May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the façade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening.

John O’Donohue, For Solitude

 

As I search to find and align my life to my dharma, from my perch of great freedom, privilege and spiritual guidance, I have been wondering if my grandmothers who lived in a time and place of great constraint sought and found a way to live their dharmas.

 

I grew up with my mother’s mother Philippa in the two-family house we shared until I was 12.    Amelia, my father’s mother, died before I was born when my father was only 12.  I was close to Philly in both spirit and proximity while my nearness to Amelia came from a few spare stories, old sepia photographs, my father’s woundedness from her loss, and my imagination.  Both of my grandmothers were born before women had the right to vote.  Neither had much choice about education, job, family, how she should spend the days of her life. 

 

Philly left school after eighth grade to help the family earn money after her father died. She sewed piece work next to her mother in the front room of their three-room tenement on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.  When she was 23, she met my grandfather Nunzio at cousin’s funeral and married him shortly after.  He was ten years older, an immigrant from Sicilia, who made his living styling the hair of Harvard professor’s wives.  She raised three kids, kept house and Nunzio’s books, and worked for less than the minimum wage until she was in her seventies cleaning houses, watching other people’s children, and cooking for the nuns who taught at the local Catholic school. 

 

Amelia who grew up in an Italian immigrant family in East Boston made it through to the sixth grade.  After her mother left the family (or was sent back to Napoli for an undefined infidelity as some in the family have hinted), Amelia was enlisted to cook, clean, wash, and tend to her father and three brothers.  My father told me she wasn’t treated well by her family, more like a servant than a daughter or sister.  She married my grandfather Louie when they were both 20 and she was pregnant with my father their only child.  The moved out of East Boston to a flat near Fenway Park where Louie had his barber shop.  My father remembers his mother’s warmth and love for reading, decorating, and cooking.  Even though they didn’t have much to spare, she would read the women’s magazines of the day and come up with creative ways to make the house beautiful and cozy.  There must have been something sad and dark inside her though because at age 30 she stopped eating enough.  They lost her two years later terribly thin and weak from the starvation.

 

I struggle to discern the dharma in my grandmothers’ lives if dharma is to be understood as one’s life’s purpose, that which we freely choose to give to the world and which brings us into harmony.  Across different cultures, times, and circumstances, we see people who manifest their dharma, a path of service and giving they make their way towards however small the steps and incomplete the journey.  Others perhaps the most of us live our lives without a clear idea of what it is we want or are capable of giving.  It takes all of our effort to just keep house and a family, make a living, go on a few nice vacations.  It can feel as if much of life lacks purpose not moving beyond the superficial or day to day demands and obligations. 

 

Perhaps there is another more expansive way to understand dharma, one that would include more of our lives including my grandmothers. We all face many external and internal challenges and obstacles to our well-being, our sense of belonging, our loving and caring for ourselves and for others. Perhaps our dharma is to figure out what it is at a very basic and intimate level what life is asking of us in each moment and how to meet the calling of that moment. When we are attentive, it seems that life itself calls us to live from a deeper place.  To pause before saying the violent hurtful thing, to offer a condolence to a grieving acquaintance, to write the poem that is stirring in the heart. 

 

My grandmothers’ lives and stories live in my blood and body.  I would not be who I am without them and the very particular way that the lived their lives and met their purpose.  One I did not know well, the other I saw every day of my childhood, both alive in my heart.  Along with cooking for her family every day of the week, Philly prepared a multi-course meal every Sunday for ten or more relatives to share after church from salad and pasta through the roasted pork, stuffed eggplant, espresso and cannoli.  She hardly ever left the five square radius of the town she lived in, played cards with me when I was bored, danced with Nunzio every chance she got.  Through her own love of reading and dreams of a bigger life, Amelia passed to my father a joy of books and education, and a respect for women that was beyond what most other men of his time and background were capable of.  We are not meant to know the fruits of our giving but only to give what we are able, as we discern, as life asks of us in each moment.