WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU?
Fourth of July celebrations I experienced as a child growing up on Sunset Avenue in Decatur, Illinois, in the 1950s shine among my life as rare and special. Our entire neighborhood shared that holiday. We all knew one another and there were 32 children among us. The street dead-ended in a cornfield where some neighbors shared a victory garden in celebration of the end of World War II. Many of the men fought in that War. Our houses were small. Ours and a few others were constructed Cape Cod style with two front dormers in unfinished upper stories that some of the fathers made into bedrooms for their children. We ran free with our dogs in yards that blended without fences. In summer, we lay in the grass to study cloud shapes. When Dad arrived in town to practice internal medicine, he and Mom were able to purchase our house due to a loan from his aunt. After years of making housecalls at all hours, he would study neurology and pioneer that field of medicine in central Illinois.
Fourth of July morning would find our mothers feeding us breakfast, then preparing dishes for the afternoon potluck. Mom’s watermelon boat was a favorite. Our fathers iced large containers and filled them with soda and beer. After the young children woke from naps, we joined to watch plays. My mother often wrote, produced and directed the children’s play. Dad photographed the performances with his Bell and Howell movie camera. When cooler temperatures arrived in late afternoon, we gobbled the potluck picnic. At dusk, when our mothers finished the dishes, everyone brought chairs and blankets to watch fireworks. A group of neighborhood men climbed a stile over the fence into the gravel pit to set off the display. The gravel pit was filled with water and resembled a lake. The Sangamon River flowed a few yards beyond, painting a watery ribbon through central Illinois, pausing at the town of Decatur to pour over a damn and into a manmade lake to offer fresh water and entertainment. The Sangamon and gravel pit were surrounded by open fields and cornfields and attracted birds and wildlife, including an occasional panther.
As Fourth of July approached this year I found myself contemplating FREEDOM as I prepare to republish my first book, The Butterfly ChaSu. The book first appeared in 1995, through WinePress Publishing in Mukilteo, Washington. My good friend from high school, Karen Olsen Murley (Clarkson) did the artwork. The artist for this updated version is Jean Isaacs of Yelm, Washington.
I began the original version of ChaSu with these words: “I’ve read that wing flaps of a butterfly can shape the world and that the loss of one butterfly reverberates throughout the universe.” I wrote the original story in 1983, but searched twelve years to find a publisher. Many saw the book as a children’s story but my intention as author was an inspirational tale for all ages. Once the book was published, I read and spoke to children in school classrooms, libraries, and scout groups and led them in writing exercises. I worked with a group of young authors at College Place Middle School in Edmonds, Washington for six years. Barnes and Noble was just opening stores so I read there too. I visited the now closed Haines and Essick Co bookstore in Decatur, and signed 80 books in one afternoon. I would explain that the story borders on fact, that there are real lepidopterists, real butterfly farms and real butterflies that migrate (most live weeks, not years). There are also many children who study about butterflies but so do adults. Many adults read the book and I taught groups of classes in creativity. A handful of adults asked for the book as a gift for cancer patients.
The Butterfly ChaSu features a butterfly purchased to reproduce her beauty on a butterfly farm owned by a man named Chadworth. Near the end of the story, he decides to let her go. When she leaves, he learns about freedom and letting go. Winepress chose to focus on the story’s symbolism in the relationship between men and women but this little story also includes lessons in awareness of the interdependence of nature and ecology, and speaks to the fragile balance between man and the beings of the wild, which dimmish every year, including the brilliant blue butterflies like ChaSu.
For me, freedom has always been the main topic of this book. In many ways, ChaSu and I have traveled life’s journey together. I struggled to free myself from a domineering mother who exerted strict control over me. I strove to find a balance to keep Mom in my life while designing my own path. My first husband also attempted to control me. In my jobs as a journalist and in public relations, editing and fundraising, I found myself underpaid and fighting for equality in a world dominated by both men and women. I became a major source of income in both marriages but was still expected to be the primary cook, cleaner, laundress, gardener, and head of childcare, roles I carried without pay. Most of my adult life cried for balance between my love and desire to write and read against my assigned roles as wife, mother, and chief financier. I felt like the butterfly during the two years when I earned a master’s degree in creative writing at the State University of New York in Brockport. Rich offered unpaid childcare and I relished the many hours of freedom I spent with writer friends in classes or local bars and alone in the library reading books about women and their journeys as writers.
Once the butterfly ChaSu opens her wings, she is free. When Chadworth unlocks the door, ChaSu is gone. She escapes to join the multitude of butterflies waiting on the mountain ridge. No doubt she then met new challenges but as readers we only sense her joy in being free in that one delicious moment.
As I write this, the concept of freedom seems challenged throughout the world. In Hong Kong, China, citizens have lost the freedom they enjoyed as a colony of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The world struggles to recover from a pandemic that killed millions worldwide and more than 600,000 in the United States. Many rebelled against lockdowns, masks and rules to social distance that were intended to keep them safe. Now others refuse to take vaccines to prevent the coronavirus as it continues to kill, spreading rapidly through unvaccinated areas.
Sometimes one person’s freedom harms another—is it freedom then? Some insist on carrying firearms and shooting when they disagree with someone or something. Shoot if your freedom is threatened, they demand. One man shot a neighbor couple while shoveling snow; another couple came out to shoot protestors in St. Louis. Others stormed the Nation’s Capitol in January to protest one of the fairest and most free elections ever held. Their candidate lost but told them he’d won and they believed he was “right.” The others were “wrong.”
A good friend who is a master gardener in the Midwest enjoys spending long hours in a large organic garden she created behind her house but often finds entire nests of dead birds fallen from neighbor trees. The neighbors use chemicals to rid their manicured yards of mosquitos, but my friend says less watering would have a similar effect. Is this freedom? Does freedom call to honor nature and creatures of the wild? Is there room for freedom if no one honors and obeys laws once agreed upon by everyone?
I agonize over how to find a sense of freedom for myself amid chaos. ChaSu is a butterfly; she has wings. The human creators didn’t give us wings but I find a sense of freedom through imagination. I can dream too, and I practice daily meditation to create each day. I rely on intuition for guidance.
Freedom is so fragile and many imitate roosters who to need to crow and find power over others. At the grocery store last week, I remembered how I had to leave my job when I became pregnant with my first child. No pregnant woman could work at the shoe company where I was employed in St. Louis in the mid-1960s. The company was run by a mix of Mormons and Jewish people; there were frequent clashes. At the grocery, I am free to select what I want or need. No one stops me. We may have a discussion over whether to use paper, plastic or my own bags to take things home but I can buy what I select. I am not as free when it comes to choices for my own body. Insurance companies decide how many blood tests I can have, what doctors I can see, how much I should pay for prescriptions and where I can purchase them. Young women in some states are threatened with rules and regulations and even jail if they suffer a miscarriage. The decisions all women make about their bodies, their futures, their careers and how they care for their families, are often determined by legislators versus the woman and her physician. Once I reached age 65, I felt like a bouncing ball, unable to find a physician with any interest in caring for me. Clinics are often a revolving door for doctors who keep short hours, stay a few years, then leave. Patients remain adrift. Appointments are kept to fifteen minutes, one problem only.
I decided to republish the book about ChaSu when my daughter who lives in Portland told me about taking her dog for a walk in her neighborhood. At one corner where neighbors keep a free library of books, she was shocked to find a copy of my book The Butterfly ChaSu. She picked up the book to take home, then replaced it. She decided she already had the book and would leave the copy for others to find. We have no idea how ChaSu found herself in Portland.
The house where I grew up on Sunset was small but offered a wealth of simple, creative experiences from games we played outside in summer to roller skating up and down driveways to sledding down Denins Hill at the end of our street. We felt a strong underpinning of safety provided by neighbors and caring parents. ChaSu is a tiny book with many lessons. Freedom can be illusive but is also found through spiritual avenues. In the first ChaSu publication, I mentioned the church where I belonged. I tried out a few more churches after that including Unity where I engaged a spiritual study of “A Course in Miracles.” I learned I am not the body I inhabit but a free spiritual being. In the 1980s I’d found Al-Anon with their belief in a “Higher Power” of your own understanding and eventually chose to leave the church. Although I have never been Catholic, I studied meditation with a priest through classes given at a protestant church. For several years, I taught memoir classes at a convent of nuns in Woodway, Washington. Sister Mary there became a dear friend. For twenty years, I attended Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment in Yelm, Washington, where I became mesmerized by an entire new way of visualizing God. I learned healing techniques and how to manifest through focus.
Lately, I have returned to my love of nature as a reminder of God. I especially enjoy watching the birds that surround me including eagles, robins, ravens, Kingfishers, sparrows, swallows and a particular Vireo with a song I love.
What does freedom mean to you? What is your dream of freedom and how do you see the future? I challenge you to engage the exercise below.
SHARING EXERCISE: WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU
TAKE THE CHALLENGE: Sit down with pad and pen or computer. Write nonstop for twenty minutes on the topic of Freedom. Answer some of the questions below if you like. Review your work, clean it up and share it with me. In return, I will send you a free copy of my updated and republished book, The Butterfly ChaSu . Use the questions below as writing prompts.
What signifies freedom for you? How have you experienced freedom in your life?
Have you ever fought for freedom?
What is your dream of freedom? How do you imagine the future?