Chasing the dead.

I’m probably an outcast to my paternal family tree. Nobody came out and said “stay away” but the one time I tried really hard to meet my father I had him tracked down by a volunteer branch at the Salvation Army. If you could provide a last address, full name, birth date, and social security number (which i have scrawled on a torn piece of scratch paper in my maternal grandmothers handwriting in an old envelope that I have held onto my entire life as if it were gold) they would contact the “missing” person for you at no charge. I wasn’t really surprised when they wrote me a month or so later saying they sent him my letter and he chose not to respond. As an adult, and then as a teen, I could understand the fear an estranged child could cause to a new and probably better life. What caught me off guard was when I realized the pain it caused me. The last time we had contact I was under two years old and have no memory of it so It was a huge awakening 16 years later to find that I really DID care what he thought and that there was deep emotional scarring from the thought of rejection.

More than my father, I really wanted to meet my grandmother Rosemary whom I’d heard such great stories about. She was an artist who was also gifted with premonitions and prophetic dreams. There were several stories about her painting for 2 days straight to get the dream out of her head and then the scene in the painting would soon become a real event. Family tragedy, such as her husbands military ship going down, became sickening reality on canvas. I really don’t know for sure how much of these stories are true or even partially true because I was never there to see or experience first-hand. I have the imaginary paintings in my head as they were described and I feel a psychic connection with her since I am very sensitive to energies and intuitive and have my own prophetic dreams that I finally got wise enough to record after 20+ years of forgetting them. I have no reason to think these stories are “wives tales” because I have had many “paranormal” experiences that have been confirmed either by photographic evidence, verbal affirmation of correct premonitions by the people i dream about, and random sensitives saying the same thing about the same spot I felt a particular energy without my mentioning it or, sometimes, without ever meeting that sensitive before that moment. The sinking ship painting I was told about brought the sad news of her becoming a widow, after maybe five years of marriage, in 1945. She was only 26 or 27 years old and had two small children but she packed them up for a move to California where she worked nights and went to school to complete her GED. She actually went on to complete her Masters degree and taught art El Camino College. We are/were such kindred spirits. Alike in so many ways. From being a struggling single parent who refused to drop out of school (I Finally decided on my Registered Nurse degree after taking nearly every course available in 4 different Community Colleges while running from the “bad men” in my life who stalked me). From high school the plan my art teacher had was for me to be an Art major and get scholarships for my potential. But, when I started college with a full 21 unit Art assault plan, I found that there were so many talented people with the same major. The formula seemed to be: the better the artist was the closer they were to me in seating. My self esteem began slip and I knew that I could make nice art for my home but I’d starve to death if I had to make a living with my mediocre potential and skills. I was also confused as to what major to stick with because I liked everything. I love to do everything for myself as far as fixing the cars or the home so when something came up on a vintage car restoration project that I needed help with I took a class. I also knew I was great at fiction as evidenced by all my A+ papers that I had 2 months to write but I finished without drafts or much research the night/morning before it was due. So I joined the college newspaper and soon became the Features Editor, staff writer, cartoonist, illustrator, and page design/paste up person back when the Mac was still a baby and we weren’t designing the pages on the screen to print out in magical camera-ready perfection. No we had to adjust font, size, leading, etc and reprint each article if it didn’t fit on the board. Everything was coated in hot wax to “glue” it to the page boards and all the pretty lines and bars that separate stories and headings were meticulously placed pieces of vinyl pin-striping in various different widths and once you actually got it down “mostly” straight it had to be cut square at the ends with an X-acto knife. Oh I know the suspense is killing you here as you think of what tragedy could happen when making the final cut…….ummmm vinyl is stretchy so the mere act of holding it taught to make a straight line puts you at risk for “shrinkage” when you make the cut and let go. Yeah, after the final cut is made it always seems to be 1/16″ to 1/8″ short and guess what time it is folks! Printer deadline time. After several 6 hours marathon paste-up sessions I figured out that I should only use the striping that were the exact size of our various tipped sharpies so i could just “touch up” instead of removing 10 yards of sticky vinyl string to begin the tedious relining of the entire newspaper sized page. I lived in the newsroom for nearly a year and then decided that a career in journalism would make me blind and poor postured (and just plain poor) before I was thirty so I began taking creative writing classes and unleashed my freedom or creativity. It’s stimulating when you know your work doesn’t have to pass editorial board and that the sadly censored letters could happily return to their rightful places where the *,$, and #’s were standing guard for too long. But even with the excitement of creative minds all brainstorming and chatting wittily I began to notice that writing causes a lot of sitting. Sitting in one place. Sitting for hours before you realize rigor mortis has set in and you just ruined club night for at least two weeks. So my wonderful poor circulation (a gift from the gene faeries) reacted most unpleasantly to this new habit of sitting till my legs were numb and swollen to twice their size(a habit i still have while writing, researching, blogging, podcasting, and networking with creative types). The need for venous bloodflow prompted the need to get another project in the air. I researched careers in medicine as MD, Physicians Assistant, Nurse, DO, changed my mind mid semester as to which program would be best in terms of time put in – student loan payback – amount of time I’d love in the growing up of my little boy – how much was required to enter the program (ie: number of A’s required in relation to the odds I could study for once and or guess my way through like I do most of the time to keep a B+ average).

Several semesters later,Car chick/Artist/Creative writer/Editor/Healer/Algebra and Chesmistry 2-page equation lover/Techy gurl on the internet years before anyone heard of it (1989?)/Nature communicator with Pagan-Wiccan tendencies was now also taking, for credit, auto body shop and grinding the old paint off the new baby (64 impala) all the way down to the metal and pulling out the little dents with near precision. Auto body is an art form. It came easy to me because I looked at the car as a piece to mold and perfect. Bondo was easy to tackle because I put it on the cleanest and most ready surface, knowing as an artist that you must start with a good foundation to get a good completed piece. The other students mostly tried to do it the easy way by slapping the Bondo on haphazardly and then trying to make the outermost layer clean up nice.

From the obituary bio I was drawn to by, i’m sure, grandma Rosemary or her mother or any other angel spirit watching over me, we see Rosemary was a sculptor, painter, writer, teacher, healer of the earth. A lot like me but I also have a good/bad temper and enjoy aggressive sports like playing roller hockey in the men’s league or jumping in a bar fight to save a stranger from getting unfairly beaten to a pulp. I’m not as bad as you’re probably imagining. It’s a matter of balance. I will crawl on the ground outside to coax an insect out of harms way just as surely as I’d get in some guys face at the rink if he’s getting too close to the goal with the puck.

So back to balance. I can’t get enthused about anything unless I have too much going on at the same time giving me the artificial energy/enthusiasm of adrenaline over-stimulation. So I look for problems and I solve them. I took auto electrical systems because I was tired of having men who “knew what they were talking about, miss, so will you please wait behind the yellow line” tell me for the 10th or 11th time in a month that my battery goes dead because the ‘voltage regulator’ is bad. That line can be inter changed with ‘the alternator’ by the same expert a day later. Nobody heard a word I said when I told them that 10 alternators and regulators can’t ALL be factory rejects and so it MAY be a wiring problem. If it weren’t for the “never question the mechanics for accuracy” policy combined with the “90 day replacement guarantee on electrical parts purchases at any of our 3 Boys chain stores ” (three guys with black hair and the initials of M,M, and J) I would have had to hold up a few banks to pay for all the parts and mandatory M, M,& J installation of said parts. Turns out the real problem was with the terminal on the wire running from the voltage regulator to the alternator and I solved the problem with a new terminal that cost me about 50c. And I got the highest grade in that class which was comprised of 30 or so guys in ASE mechanic programs.

Rarely have I ever taken a vehicle in for a minor maintenance visit and those times I did go to a shop it was to avoid being accused of voiding the warranty if something happened later. Hindsight offers me great frothing at the mouth stress after seeing the damage the “pros” caused and the amount of months I wasted trying to get things corrected half-assed so I’d go away and leave them alone. I may have had one warranty repair done in my house in 12 years. Maybe I’m a bit controlling but I get satisfaction and a calm feeling from having control over the inner workings of my house and cars. Maybe grandma Rosemary was not quite so gung-ho to re-wire the ceiling fan for lights but I get the feeling she was still in charge of repairs when hired help came and she probably did her research to be sure things got done right. I feel that she still had her hands on everything in her environment. I’m told she liked to nurture all the living things around her and loved the earth. Another similarity between us. As a teen I always felt like she was sending me encouraging thoughts from an unknown place when I found I had a talent for art and it seemed she was inside my head when I got out of bed in the middle of the night to make some important creation in a manic artistic frenzy.

The strangest things have been happening to me the last few weeks and they have prompted me to seek out my estranged family. Not only is family more important and precious to me as i age but I’d also love to see and touch the artworks that this inspirational mentor has created. I want to sit in her favorite chair, browse her bookshelves, read her poetry, trace my hands over her sculptures, and lose myself in her paintings and art supplies. Perhaps there’s a favorite brush I would be given to paint my own works with. Maybe someone will share some of her ashes so I can bring her to see my home and my children, animals, plants, pet spiders.

Yes, this has all become such an important mission to me because I was given spiritual messages that could not have been coincidence.

About a year ago, quite possibly February 2008, a ball of light appeared in my bedroom. I’ve had other energies visit me from time to time so it didn’t frighten me at all but this one gave me an immediate thought as to who it might be but when I searched the internet for her name nothing showed up. This ball has been in my room nightly for an entire year and every time I saw it I immediately thought of Rosemary Dumas and stuck with that thought even though my internet search showed nothing. Then, in February 2009, when I was sitting at my computer editing a blog I got this strange urge to log on to a site I signed own radio show up on. I saw there was a psychic radio show offering free readings on earlier but I missed it. For some reason I felt compelled to check in to see if they were running late. Of course they were. They also said they weren’t taking any more callers 20 minutes before I signed in but I called in anyway and sent a quick instant message to the host letting her know I felt Michael had a message for me and could she please let me hold to see if he had time. Several callers in front of me suddenly dropped off and I was on with the psychic. I was caught off guard already because I’ve never felt the need to ask a psychic for advice. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to ask until he spoke to me. I asked him if he saw anyone around me that was acting as my spirit-guide (an angel) because I had been feeling as though a certain person had been with me in this ball of light. Right away he said yes, its a grandmother or great-grandmother on your fathers side that you do not know. She’s been sort of tapping you on the head trying to get your attention (i did not tell him how long) and that she was traditional in a sense that she was raised a certain way but that spiritually she was very non-traditional (gifted psychically?). He also said (without knowing me from Adam) he felt I was a gifted writer and that I should work on it as something will become of it soon. Well, at the time he said that, I’d already been trying to get a TV producer acquaintance to co-write a couple documentaries. A couple ideas have interested him and he has requested me to give him more information in a summary. I’ve also applied to National Endowment for the Arts for a creative writing grant for short fiction.

So, with two powerful answers from this man I had to believe that he had angels guiding him. I closed the computer, saw the ball of light really flying in my face for attention and felt I was supposed to search for her name again. I googled her name and only one link came up but it was the right one. The obituary/remembrance written by a family member opened before my eyes. I forwarded it to my mother and grandmother and printed it out for myself.

This was another scrap of paper with links to my lineage that I would hoard for eternity. I made a pretty hot pink file and punched decorative stars in it and then lined it with neon green paper to show through the cutouts. After I finished making places for notes, document copies, and research, it was put into action.

I’ve spent every day since the discovery of the obit searching ancestry.com and social security records and county records in search of the family I didn’t get to keep. The ball of light hasn’t been around since I took on the family tree research and I’m sure that’s because the psychic and I were right about the identity and I’ve been put on the path she pointed out to reconnect with her people and heal the empty spot that I discovered when I was 18.

And, just for the record, I encouraged my children to create art when they were babies and never stopped. If I had an artistic mentor all these years I’d probably be a happy artist rather than an unhappy nurse living vicariously through her childrens art. My son Angel did tattoos for a short bit and recently submitted some designs/graphic art to a local clothing company that he likes. They are pleased with his ideas and will probably purchase a few.

My 13-year-old, Maya, was just recently recognized with a Gold Key award from scholastic, Inc for Young Artists and Authors of 2009. A letter explaining just how grand this honor is on her portfolio page at the bottom.

http://www.gallery.mac.com/creepycast#100022

This award was a lot of work to apply for (for me) and I barely got all the required papers and CD copies of her art to them in time for the deadline. A couple weeks from now we will know how she did in the final round nationally. I am happy with the Gold Key alone because she will have her name on the record with other winners of the past like Robert Redford, Joyce Carol Oats, and Truman Capote.

I am on a mission to unite a family that broke up because of nothing in particular. My own children are also estranged from their paternal families for the most part due to safety and psychological well being needs. Perhaps they can fill their empty spots with new family from my past.

As for the ancestry search, I’m pretty much ready to give up. It seemed too easy at first to fill the tree and now I know why. Family tree making is like playing “ancestor Sudoku”. Everything falls so well in to place giving you false hope that it’s all right. Then as the last relative is about to fall into the square you realize that somewhere back two or three generations is a stranger who fit the puzzle. Now the tedious job of figuring out who that is and getting all their blood out of the leaves is more daunting than starting fresh.

Here’s to hoping that one of the leads will accept us and share the answer key so I can just cheat and fill in the squares