My Legacy

_{Written 2023}

Life is a slow river whose ripples push against one another, intersecting watery paths of love, pain, joy and growth.  The river’s progress – though slow – is dogged, and on its banks it leaves behind tiny, fragmented bits of memory. The detritus of a long life.

I spent my childhood learning my mother’s patience, adopting the self-sacrificing ethic that she embraced so generously that she did not even know its truth. If I have watched my own children struggle successfully to free themselves from this recursive pattern, that is a legacy.

I spent my youth catching a flame of passion for human justice and equality. I joined anti-war groups, embraced feminism, and married a dedicated activist from the Third World. If our raised voices of protest ever influenced policy, or added sense to someone else’s world view, then that is a legacy.

I spent my work years learning how to teach. It is an impossible assignment; you can never perfect this craft. It is an undertaking of love, of dedication, insight and recovery from unavoidable, infinite failures. If I have lead dozens of young humans to stop hating math, and to gain back the self-esteem that subject should never have stolen from them, then that is perhaps my favorite legacy.

I spent my parenting years struggling to juggle a job, a household and two school-aged children. My own needs disappeared; I rarely remember getting enough sleep. Perhaps this was the core purpose of my life; I haven’t made that call yet. But if my soul was a jug of water, I poured all of it into raising them.  They are good people – strong, thoughtful, and playful, with a love of nature, travel and adventure. This may become their legacy.

I spent my late 50’s recovering from a brutal brawl with cancer. My Keys School community, my husband’s friends and my own family – everyone was there for me. My son drove up every month from Santa Barbara. I received hundreds of letters, dinners, gifts and encouragements. I got a requiem without even dying. If my survival has given other sufferers hope, this is a legacy I do not deserve, but will accept.

I spent my mid-60’s in a depression around a three-year estrangement from my daughter, who walks on water. Who, together with her brother, hangs the moon. I waited, I sent occasional kind words, I learned to reflect on my life’s mistakes and acknowledge them, and I survived, and still adore her. If I have shown my adult children an openness to vulnerability  and introspection that they can respect, then that is a legacy. Perhaps a painful one for me, but valuable. As the Persian poet Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”  

In my early 70’s, two sacred events occurred. My mother died and my first grandchild was born. Only a few months apart. My mother was a gentle soul, and it was easy to care for her in her last 3 years. My grandson, now almost one year old, is a ray of sunshine. He is forever smiling, he loves to make eye contact with strangers from his perch in his stroller, and if they look back, he smiles broadly and bats his eyes at them. There was never such a child in our family. If this is God’s gift to me for a life well struggled through, I am blessed. If this child is a mosaic of every person in two extended families, including a few molecules of Kathleen, then that is a sacred legacy.