After the Doors Were Closed

By Judith Solt

In my forties, at my father's grave side, his funeral. I had feelings of liberation and  suffocation.

There was violence all through my childhood.  The worst kind of violence.

There was a mystery in my family.

The child's voice is what I knew as a child.  I had incidents; no answers.

I was involved with people who did ritual with drugs, alcohol, and masks. From three years old for three years.  As a result, I carried  terror in my body for a long time.

To get through everything, I had to be truthful of what I saw and how I felt.

During a period of dealing with dark forces, I learned to protect myself.

The twelve step program was a safe place to discover my core issue.

Chapters on body work, eating disorders. dowsing, and  the labyrinth.  How I used them to heal.

A chapter on insights on sex and sensuality my voice is finally adult and sophisticated.

Nature was a big part of my recovery.

I am hoping my book will open doors all over the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judith Solt
• Release date: Oct 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386877493

Judith Solt

Judith Solt is a poet and writer. After high school she attended the Pennsylvania academy of the Fine Art in Philadelphia. She worked at Educational Testing Service ETS for over 30 years. Doing quality control. She is now retired. A maser device less Dowser and a Labyrinth designer and layer. She has been a Quaker for more than 40 years. Judith lives in Bucks County Pennsylvania.

Book preview

After the Doors

Were Closed

Judith Solt

After the Doors Were Closed, Copyright © 2018, All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

I have tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places, I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Copyright © Judith Solt, 2018, All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13 ISBN-13: 978-1727017557 Judith Solt

ISBN-10: 1727017552

Judith Solt, (2018-09-30) After the Doors Were Closed

Dedication

––––––––

This book is dedicated who all the people who have stood by me.

Contents

Dad

X Signation

Night Sky

Mom

Mother

Never Arriving

Bunny and Jack

Hangers on

Limoges

Morrisville

Religion

Mystery School

Hours Days Years

Our Divine Mother

Mom and Dad

Being Connected

Camping

Family Anthology

Putting Pieces Together

Fools Rush In

Ritual

Take Refuge

Night

School and Learning

Me and Noel

The Academy

E. T. S.

Earl

The Daily Word

The Mind Will Make It Real

Healing

Alternatives

Be happy

Alice

Screaming

One second at a time

Tripping

Rebirthing (breath work)

My Face

Quakers

Twelve Steps

Being Nurtured

Breaking Away

Insights on Sex and Sexuality

Sam and Sally

Friends Asylum

Phyllis

Getting out from Under

Montsegur

Nature and the Natural World

Dunes

Seed

Body Work

Dowsing

Being a Shaman

A Shaman Drumming Circle

Labyrinth

Tinctures, essential oils, herbs, food, sun, pills and prayer

A Call for Love

Culmination

Cover 4 coral doortrimmed dshad Doorshad fullname FOR INTERIOR.jpg

Dad

It was winter. January in Colorado and it was cold. Dad was over eighty years old. We went to the graveyard with family. It was his funeral. I was in my late forties.

I was feeling a release all over my body. I felted uplifted, as though someone was taking heavy bags from my head, shoulders, back, and hips. My legs felt lighter; I wanted to run and stomp my feet and laugh big out loud laughing and shout and holler. I felt joy, a release, at the same time as though I was being suffocated. I couldn’t imagine what it was I had been carrying. I reminded myself to breathe and I made a mental note to tell my psychologist when I got home.

Our family always had people who decided they were family. They came too. I was glad for their presence. I sat next to mom; she insisted. We were in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. We were on packed snow. I felt the cold come through my boots, wool socks, in my feet and up my legs.

I remembered Carl Sandburg’s poem, The Tsar slipped into regions of cold and ice. Yes, the Tsar and dad, together in regions of cold and ice. I liked the idea of him being there, with the Tsar.

Dad had Parkinson’s Disease for several years. I kept putting off my feelings; I didn’t know how to deal with him dying and I knew I could not prepare myself for the inevitable. My sister called and told me, I don’t know what is keeping him alive. Every breath seems to be his last. There was a connecting flight to Denver from Trenton in one hour. I purchased my ticket at the airport. There was no gangway from the building to the airplane. We walked outside on the runway to the airplane.

There was a man who was uplifting. A priest. His haircut, the cut of his coat and his hat all gave an impression of height. When we were all walking out to the airplane, he was in front of me, and I noticed he had lifts on his shoes.

He was enthusiastic that I was going to Colorado; I had a sense he was enthusiastic about a lot of things. He asked if I was going for skiing and I said, No.

He was genuine and kept asking and guessing. I finally had to tell him why I was going to Colorado. It was hard to tell him my dad was dying. It was the first time I said it out loud. He was upset with himself for pushing for an answer and I reassured him; I needed to hear myself say it.

I kept going in and out of denial and wanting to run away. I would hear in my head. I don’t want to be doing this, then ask myself, doing what? It would come back, he’s dying. When I arrived in Colorado I was somewhat believing it.

My mother and sister had purchased a hospital bed and they put it in the living room. Dad was in the center of everything. He may have been embarrassed. He didn’t like others knowing of illness or anything physically or personal. I thought that he might be uncomfortable; I didn’t say it to my sister or mother.

It was about two or three days after I arrived. I had left my mother’s house and gone to my sister’s house a few houses down the street and laid down. It was less stressful to get away. My sister called to me from the door. I thought it was morning. She said, He’s gone. I didn’t understand; it took me a few minutes to understand what she was saying. My first thought was, Good, I’m done with him. Another thought flashed through my mind, From now on it is going to be a different kind of journey. You have just begun..

I could not believe it; I thought my dad would never die.

When I was in my twenties, I still confusedly thought that my father was god. I had shared it with a group of women. (I had feared him as though he was). Several of the women had thought the same thing around the same age about their fathers. He had a life and death hold over me. I would sometimes find myself praying to him.

The coroner was putting his body in the hearse at the same time I was placing a trash bag filled with things from his illness in the trash bin. My dad’s body was being carted away with the rest of the trash.

A few days later was the memorial service. By then I was a jumble of emotions and wanted to go down inside myself and hide. The last thing I wanted was to see relatives and church people.

I read one of my poems. It happened by chance I had it with me.

X Signation

1

She, continued talking

As though, I hadn’t said a word

I wondered if I spoke.

2

He walked by

His eyes did not turn

They focused on something behind me

My head and face did not exist.

3

As a child, I was. In a shop with my mother.

It was the first time I had seen a fossil.

I felt a deep sadness. I wept.

She took me to the car.

The fossil made a visual record of itself forever.

She asked, I managed.

I want to go home.

4

The tour guide, Masa Verdi pointed out a hand print

A child had put there when the cliff dwellers were building

Their houses.

5

On the list of passengers who came on the ship

With my ancestors, some of the passengers put an X.

Someone wrote (his mark)

I marveled at that!

My poem didn’t directly say anything about my dad. I wanted to ask, Do you know the mark he left on me? I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, my Aunt Eva, (my mother’s sister) was always looking for a place to put her anger. She let me have it for not crying.

After I arrived home I had a dream.

Dad was standing on a rock that hung out from the side of a gorge. He reached up to the top of his head and pulled down a zipper the length of his torso. He flew out. He said, he wanted me to let go of the past. To let it drop off. To step out and discard it. As he was discarding his body.

He had a job while he attended college at Lehigh University, and earned a three-year degree in electrical engineering. After graduation he worked in a cable company in Trenton, N.J.

During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans moved their lines so fast our troops were hardly able to keep ahead of them. Whatever side could get the phone lines up fastest would win the war. The problem was presented to many factories all over the United States. Dad designed a harness that would be attached to dogs. Then they put the phone wire on a spool that was on the harness. The spool rolled like a wheel. The dogs ran along the front line. (The phones told the gunners where to direct their fire.) The army told his factory president it helped them win the war. The Germans could not figure out how we could get our lines up faster than they could.

Dad told me on several occasions that I was a liar, and he could not live with a liar. The rest of my childhood I thought I would be kicked out of the house at any moment. I was always stressed and afraid. What would make them most angry, the truth or telling them what they wanted to hear? It was not lying. It was fear.

When I was seven, my dad and I had arguments about my not telling people what I was thinking. We would go back and forth, on and on. Until I said, Why should I tell people what I am thinking when they already know? He insisted they do not know. Finally, after several arguments, I know what they’re thinking. He hit his head with his hand and said. Of course you know. Judy, there are some people who know what others are thinking, and others that do not know. I didn’t believe him; I thought it was a conspiracy. I thought that for years until I under stood what it was. My family knew I was clairvoyant from an early age. I do call it psychic, sensitive, or clairvoyance; I feel connected and I call it being connected.

Dad was having a problem in the factory with two machines; he had a sketch of the machines. He needed to connect them with a belt. There was a flywheel on each machine. I asked him the diameter of both flywheels. I thought for a while and told him he needed a belt thirteen feet long. The next day his assistant found him having some workers put the small machine in the next room. Dad told his assistant what I had told him. Dad came home in the evening and told me it worked. I was about twelve.

It was geometry. How could I figure out the problem in my head?

Over the years, dad and I used to have a go around about black people. I insisted they were as smart as we are and like other humans they have the same hopes and fears. They want to be loved and respected. In the sixties, when I was in my twenties, I saw my father after work one day. He seemed different. I asked him, What happened? He told me he did something he thought he would never do. He had eaten at the same luncheonette for over thirty years. A black man came in and the owner told him, I will not serve you. As he started to leave my dad found himself leaving too. The luncheonette owner asked, Where are you going? Dad told him, If you cannot serve him, I will have to leave with him. The owner was shocked. He told my dad that he was family. Dad said he could not go home and face his daughter if he let the black man leave. The owner said he would serve the man. As Dad was leaving the luncheonette