Book Review: The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers by Amy Hollingsworth

(Photo from Angela's Clues)

When I am enjoying a book I read slowly and purposefully. I back up and read the sentence, or even the page, again to be certain that I have absorbed all that I can in that moment. I savor a good book like an expensive celebratory meal, and The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers was indeed worthy of such a purposeful pace.

I have a list of at least a dozen people I would like to buy a copy for, but reality will limit that to just a couple. I do know that I will buy a lending copy and take a photo of the lendee holding the book that I may use for public shame if it is not returned in a timely manner. This book needs to be read and shared and read again!


I think I understand why this book has made such an impact upon me, but want to continue to contemplate the reasons. I will say that it touched me at every age; from first memories to my future old-lady self and then my dead-and-gone self. This book reached beyond me, far beyond, to help me see clearer the people I cherish and the ones that I have a choice to cherish more sincerely.

The author, Amy Hollingsworth, had a vibrant correspondence and friendship with Fred Rogers. This impresses me because personally, I have never had much success as a letter-writer. Sending letters seems to get me in trouble or go across as confrontational, regardless of my intent. As a teenager and young adult my letters were read by unintended recipients and there I was; real, honest, raw feelings and actions exposed and the results were judgment and shame rather than a loving embrace, acceptance and sound counsel.

On one particular occasion I mailed a lengthy letter in which I was attempting to say, "I need you in my life now more than ever and this (sharing hurts and vulnerabilities) is why I need you so."  It had more of a tsunami affect resulting in estrangement. The cost was high and my entire household continues to pay the price of that stamp. On a different and less traumatic occasion, my letter ruffled feathers and stirred pains in the receiver that I did not know what to do with and the result is a strained relationship. The easiness that I felt before is no longer there. I broke us by being myself and sharing my honest thoughts. I retreated and  accepted the same messages as an adult that I got as a teenager; shame for feeling, judgment for believing, out of step for speaking.

As a result of my unsuccessful letter-writing career, I now tend to keep it to note cards where the harm will be minimal (crossing my fingers) if I'm misunderstood. And sincerely, I am hoping the receiver will sense kindness at the very least when they receive a note in the mailbox when the normal venues of communication in 2016 are less tangible.

I hardly read a page of this book that a tear didn't roll down my cheek. I placed my bookmark at the end of many chapters and lay it aside so that I could sob, and heal and understand. Thank you, Amy Hollingsworth, for sharing your insights and allowing me to be the receiver of Fred Rogers intended messages, that it is okay to feel and it's right and good to be honest and kind and to see the beauty in others and in myself.

Stand in the Light

I quoted a line from Anne Lamott's post yesterday over breakfast, a cheery positive statement her grandson makes in the mornings, "This might be the best day ever!" It's worth a try anyway. Attitude is everything or so they say. I mustered cheer and smiles for my family, gave long hugs and kisses
as I sent them out the door and then made my way to my 1980s yard sale find, a hifi stereo and record player with speakers as tall as I am, almost. Nora Jones fit my mood with her melancholy voice to which I can glide about the house dropping clothes in the washer and dishes in the sink all the while floating on the surface of my sea of depression.

A few trips through the house doing this and that and then I stepped into the kitchen as the sunlight came over the neighbors fence, hit the hardwood floor and bounced up into my face, blinding me, paralyzing me. I stood still for almost five minutes. I wept. I soaked up the warmth and the benefits of the light and I shed the sadness that has been sitting on my shoulders. "Hold on, hold on to this!" my brain screamed. I slipped my phone from my pocket and snapped a photo of myself, which is what I do with each and every moment that is meaningful to me. I've been doing that long before the selfie craze and camera phones, way back when I had to take my roll of 35mm or disc film to Kmart and wait a week to get them back. My photos are not always of myself, mostly they are of others, events, meals, emotions, people groups, places, animals, clouds, weather. See, I have a great fear of forgetting and moving forward unchanged.

I believe this fear originates from losing my mother when I was a very young woman. I search her out in the faces and voices of family, trying to remember her more clearly. I miss her and sometimes I can't find her no matter how hard I search my memory bank. But last week I found her in the touch of something that was hers. I noticed the curio cabinet shelves were not as I prefer them. She has a shelf there with a few of her personal affects. I suppose they were moved about during cleaning or the cabinet was bumped into, but they just weren't sitting right. I opened the glass door and reached into to make the changes and as I touched her glasses, her Bible, the handkerchief that covered her face at her baptism and a bell I'd given her as a gift on Mother's Day, I found her. I crumpled to the floor and remembered her well and long and completely. "Hello, Mother. I see you. I feel you. I smell you. I hear your voice. Oh, how I miss you. How I long to lay my head on your lap while you stroke my hair. Do you know I walk in your shoes lately with a teenage daughter of my own? Do you know my baby boy is all grown up and is a man on his own? I use your words when I guide them. I smile your smile when I listen to the account of their day. Oh, and today I combed your hair."

Today I hold on to this sunlit morning in my kitchen just as I hold to the fading and distant memories of my mother. On some difficult day or week or depression era in the future, I will have this photo to help me recall how good it feels to stand in the light. And if I search, intentionally seek it out, I will find the joy and hope and faith that I need to take the next step, face the next day, and the next, and the next.

Small Potatoes

Back aching from a day at the sewing machine

Popping ankles from shoes a bit past prime

Cold shower I had on Sunday morning
Second sleepless night this week 
All small potatoes

All small potatoes
Small potatoes
All

News reports of murder
Neighbor burying her mother
Another teenager missing
 Selling of human beings
God have mercy on us all

God have mercy on us all
God have mercy 
On us all

Anne Hutchinson (1591 - 1643)

Bronze Statue @ Massachusetts State House in Boston

Anne Hutchinson would not be silent when culture, courts and threat of death demanded. She followed her heart's desire to share her faith as a Puritan Preacher even after she was excommunicated from the Anglican Church, banned from New England and forced to flee for her life. She was a student under her father first, who educated his daughters passing on his contempt for authority and questioning nature to Anne, and then under her mentor, John Cotton. She was a leader in her home and in her communities. She served others well, building relationships through midwifery which developed into home talks and studies where even the husbands attended. Anne is greatly honored today as a force in civil liberties and religious tolerance. 

Resources and further reading:

50 Women...Learning from Heroines of the Faith by Michelle DeRusha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson

Joan's Reflection:
From grade school I recall hearing God's voice. Sometimes it was a stirring in my spirit that carries me away. Other times it was an audible voice when I walk alone in the woods. And on other occasions his voice is a whisper, a thought, an arrow that points. My father also taught me as Anne's did, to listen and believe God speaks to all his children, not just the boys and men. I am grateful that I am able to share this without fear of banishment or threat of being burned at the stake as a witch. 

Omniscient Mother

As the mother of an extroverted daughter I do not have to put a lot of effort into deciphering her thoughts and moods. She once asked when she started talking. I laughed and answered, "You always talked, even before you had words." Something has shifted over the past several weeks. She has gone into herself; into a dreamy, far away place. I know where she is and respect the privilege of her solitude foggy with dreams.   

In our conversation over breakfast this morning I shared with her something I have never shared before. I've never had reason and honestly did not have this event in my back pocket waiting on the right time to pull it out. It simply came to me as I walked into the kitchen and saw her sitting on the couch in contemplation. She tolerated, and maybe heard, my story over her bowl of oatmeal.

There is a point in a girl's life when she realizes her mother is not a god. We've been there a while, and I am perfectly fine with it because the other voices she allows are healthy, strong and some days more solid than my own. That dethroning phase gives way to the understanding that our mother is not omniscient and this is a time when honesty and openness is most important.  

One day after school mother and I were driving to the chiropractor who I saw for migraine headaches. She was chattering about how much it would cost and how I should appreciate that she worked all day and made just enough to pay for the visit. Her voice was fading in and out as I escaped to that dreamy, far away place. "Are you listening to me?" "Joan, do you hear me?" The only correct answer was "Yes, mam," but I had no idea what her last few sentences had been. That is when it hit me! Mother is not omniscient. She does not know I wasn't listening or what I was thinking. So I tried it out for size and began to intentionally think phrases or comments that she would disapprove of to see if she had a response. 

I started with something that I could wiggle out of easily. "I don't like your shoes." She had no response. "I wish you would drive faster." She didn't even a blink. "I really like boys." I winced waiting on a rebuttal. So far, so good. Then I turned to look out the window and thought more serious things and after each one slowly turned to peek and see if she "heard" them. She didn't! She honestly couldn't read my mind! 

That was the day I found a safe place within myself where thoughts were all mine. No one could shame or punish me for them or tell me how I should feel. As long as I kept my mouth shut I had a place to be alone. I now could shut the noise of our loud family out and have solitude far, far away. It was independence day! 

The following Sunday I was in that dreamy state, staring at the flowers on the communion table, appearing as if I was listening intently to my father's sermon. And then something he said drew me out and back into the room filled with wooden pews and red hymnals. "God knows your every thought," he said. What? Oh, no! Panic set in. Was my father the omniscient one? I began to closely pay attention to what he had to say and understood.

God heard the phrases I tested Mother with in the car. He knows my secrets, my anger and hurts. He knows my dreams and desires. He knows it all! I spent the following days wrestling with guilt and conviction, confession and forgiveness even though I didn't have the maturity to assign those words to the process at the time. Eventually I found comfort and serenity in the fact that God knows my every thought. I understood that I am never alone;
never alone; never alone. 

I have a choice of solitude, as does my daughter, and each of us. One choice is running into myself with my face turned away from God's presence staring out the window, pretending he is not there. The other choice is running into his serenity with my face turned toward him, dwelling on thoughts that are pure and advantageous to my growth. I make this choice day by day, minute by minute. It is never decided once and forever, it is a continuous choice of where to go when I need to withdraw. But whichever I decide today, right this minute, the fact remains, I am never alone.   

Photo by Joan Uptain Watkins

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

Psalm 139:7-12

A Man Sat on a Bench

A man sat on a bench
Reading the paper
Which was my mind

He saw my fear
Understood my hurt
Every memory
Happy and sad
In black and white

He heard the music
Felt the rhythm
Past and present
Hidden and public
In fine print

He grew to know me
Better than I
Desire and distaste
Action and thought
Fully exposed

A man sat on a bench
Reading the paper
Which was my mind

photo by Joan Uptain Watkins 2015

I Dreamed of Mother

I dreamed of my mother two nights ago. The following day I held on to the memory of seeing her like a lover remembers the sensations and sounds the hours and days following a night of love-making. I found myself sitting in stillness and quiet each time my remembrance of her stirred, as if any movement or sound would push it away. I had a dreamy and nonproductive morning, alternating between gentle tears and violent sobs.

In my dream I was attending a Tupperware party that my sister-in-law, Christina, was throwing. She was hosting it at the book store at the Ava Maria Grotto. I entered the party, spoke to my older sister, Joy, and then made my way to the second room of the book store. In reality the second room is filled with racks of book marks, statues, religious collectibles and shelves of literature. Those items were there in my dream but in the middle of the room was a table of clearance items that looked amazingly like the clearance section at the Kmart on Greensprings Highway where I recently purchased fall tablecloths at 90% off. The stack of storage bowls and cooking utensils was tall and I sorted them by size and pattern as if I were an employee. Incidentally I was a Kmart employee in the mid 1980's but I was never an employee at the Grotto book store nor a Tupperware rep.

While organizing the wares, several items fell to the floor. I was struggling to get behind the table in the crowded space when someone started to help me pick them up. She offered them to me and as I took them and intended to express gratitude, I looked into her face. It was Mother! She was smiling from ear to ear and had the pleased look of a successfully delivered surprise. We embraced. I smelled her Chantilly Lace perfume. I felt her touch. Her hug was familiar and warm. I leaned back from our embrace to look into her face and then sank again into her arms. She whispered, "Hey, baby. I'm here."

I looked over her shoulder and saw my sister, Joy, seated in the first room near the door where the tour of the Grotto ends and visitors return into the gift shop near the restrooms. She was smiling too, and her smile looked just like Mother's. She communicated with me and I with her without spoken words.
"Did you know she was here? I asked Joy.
"Yes, I did. We wanted to surprise you," she replied.
"Well, you certainly did that! She looks so modern. She's healthy and strong! She has naturally dark, thick and beautiful hair! Look at her skin. She looks younger than I do! She hasn't aged. She is so beautiful!"
"I know. I know." Joy responded, in agreement and in the way an older sister is a step ahead of the younger in life and experience.

I absorbed Mother's scent, her touch and especially her voice. As I enjoyed her presence I consciously renewed and sharpened my stored memories of her. Then I woke. I sat up in bed and said to Brian, "I dreamed of Mother." But that statement wasn't strong enough; it didn't convey the absolute filling of togetherness that I had experienced in the dream. Words failed me or I failed them.

I dreamed of Mother.
Mother came to see me.

Mother, Joy, Joan 1984
At Stella Uptain's kitchen table