Author Archives: jtamburini

You name it, I've done it (and laughed). I am 60 and life just keeps getting better. Join me by reading about life's many adventures!

My Friend Caryl with a “Y”

You know that experience of meeting someone for the first time and they are so extraordinarily “something” you are sure your life has just changed for the better?  This is what happened to me almost 15 years ago when beautiful Caryl showed up on my doorstep with 8-year-old Conley.  The sweetness of her smile and gentleness of her demeanor were so comforting to me, a Mom who had been struggling for months to help her son adjust to a new city and school with no friends.  They showed up one early Fall Saturday to take Mario on an adventure – a Fall festival at the nearby Indian Mission.  Mario and I were both thrilled.

A couple of weeks earlier, Mario came home from school a little less grumpy than usual.  He told me he had met someone he was pretty sure was going to be a good friend.  Mario was excited to get to know him better because they both enjoyed cussing and, better yet, Mario shared that the new friend’s kindergarten brother was “very cool” and cussed also!  Perfection – Universe, I think we have found a match.  And thus, Conley Niedens entered our world (and it has never been the same).  After that day at the fall festival, Mario and Conley were pretty much inseparable – for better or for worse!

When I noticed that Caryl’s name was spelled with a “y” and she had a career in the design world, I started to really love and appreciate her artistic flair.  Her ability to create a beautiful and warm atmosphere – both physically and interpersonally – was unparalleled.  Warmth was something our household needed desperately after uprooting our kids from their dream home in the country 200 miles away and suddenly planting them in suburban Kansas City.  I learned that Caryl and Lyle were from Great Bend, Kansas, which really increased their likeability with our family after having just lived in Winfield, Kansas for 8 years.  Very quickly, the Niedens family just felt comfortable and familiar to us.  It wasn’t long at all until the Tamburinis were included in many weekend KU basketball or Chiefs football watch events.  We looked forward to being at Caryl and Lyle’s house because we knew it would be warm and filled with laughter (maybe a little yelling at the tv or the boys!).  She was always trying new recipes and buying me cookbooks. One time I took a centerpiece to her house instead of a dish- when I told her the florist had named it “low and lush” she quipped, “Like ME!”


I mentioned Mario and Conley were a “for better or worse” duo – and this could have gone either way in my friendship with Caryl.  When your kid is known for getting a little rambunctious with someone else’s kid – sometimes that doesn’t lead to warm and fuzzy vibes between the parents.  I so loved and appreciated Caryl’s realistic and consistently calm approach to raising boys!  I never felt judged by her or obligated to make excuses for “boy behavior.”  Caryl’s friendship was genuine and the more time we spent together, I understood our family had been adopted into her “tribe.” How lucky we have been.  

Caryl was not easily shocked, which really worked for me because sometimes shocking things came out of my mouth or my kid’s mouth and sometimes borderline shocking things happened.  She proved to be an “all weather” type of friend over and over.

Mario and Conley were roommates at a 3-day basketball camp at KU after 4th grade.  It turned out to be too much togetherness and talking for Mario.  When I arrived at KU to pick the boys up, Conley was still very wired and excited and Mario looked like he had not slept the entire time.  He was ready for major down time but that did not happen in the car ride back to Kansas City with Conley.  At one point, Mario threw a blanket over his head, telling Conley “the air does not need to be filled with your voice every second”!  Conley thought that was very funny but I could tell Mario was getting close to losing it.  We ended up solving the problem with a quick side trip to McDonald’s (my number one parenting go-to).  Caryl was very entertained by the story when I dropped Conley off and often brought it up when we were meeting new people together.  

Caryl had an amazing sense of humor.  Our friendship may not have survived our boys without laughter! Once when he was going through our cupboards for something good to eat, Conley declared, “Tell your Mom she needs to go to the store!”  Not long after that, Conley and Mario were sent to the hallway for being disruptive during the “Just Around the Corner” puberty video at school.  Never horrified, Caryl just took it all in stride as another day in the life of being a parent.  I so appreciated that and found comfort in her friendship and support. 

Caryl supported me through my various job changes (at least 6) – and was always the first to congratulate me and stop by the house with a little special gift to recognize the new beginning.  I was even a DREADED SILPADA REP for about 10 minutes and Sweet Caryl was the first (and only!) person to step up and offer to host a jewelry party!  She was also a huge supporter of my sobriety.  In early sobriety, you learn that not all friendships are necessarily “good” for you and that change is to be expected.  Caryl showed up at my house not long after I stopped drinking with a hand picked mocktail bar.  It was one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for me yet she walked in with this beautiful gift and quietly got to work mixing me a mocktail as though it was something ordinary.  But in fact it was extraordinary and so was she.

I had not known Caryl very long when my Dad passed away.  She was the first friend to stop by the house with a pork tenderloin for our family.  Just “Good People” through and through. When my Mom passed away last year, Caryl was already not feeling well but not really sure what was going on.  She took the time to look up a recipe for a braided apple bread and brought it to me warm on a Sunday evening wrapped in a lovely fall ribbon.  Completely Caryl with a “Y”! The things she did for the people she loved were always works of art made with the utmost care.  She was really proud of the spaces she worked on for Pierce and Conley as they entered young adulthood.  

Our pets always loved Caryl, another sign she was a very special person.  On the day I went behind my husband’s back and adopted a cocker spaniel, the first place I went to was Caryl’s house with little Pudgey in the back seat!  She was delighted with the little creature and sure he would be the perfect addition to our household.  Caryl was also the first to express condolences at the loss of a pet.  

Caryl made the most of every situation, including the last year of her life.  She accepted that life isn’t fair and had many conversations with her loved ones about it.  She told me last summer she was very proud of her boys and the life she had lived.  In every conversation I have had with her over the past 12 months, she mentioned Pierce and Conley and things they were doing that made her very proud.  Conley’s graduation from KU made her enormously happy.

Recently, I visited Caryl just before lunchtime at the nursing home.  She invited me to join her in the dining room and told me a little something special about each of the women with whom she shared a table.  Little did these women know, they had become part of a very special tribe led by Caryl with a “Y” – the one and only.

Caryl told our friend Kris she wanted all her friends to have a packet of wildflowers to remember her by.  She so enjoyed her back garden and basking in the sun.  One of my most cherished memories of Caryl will be this memory of her in her garden, peaceful.  An endearing goodbye of hers with me was always, “See ya later, darlin”.  So for now, precious friend, I will see ya later, Darlin’.

“We show up, burn brightly in the moment,

live passionately, and when the moment is over,

when our work is done, we step back and let go.”

Rolf Gates

A Dream of Trees – Grateful.org

Happy Tuesday!

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,/A quiet house, some green and modest acres/A little way from every troubling town,/A little way from factories, schools, laments…
— Read on grateful.org/resource/a-dream-of-trees/

The Universal Need to Grieve  — Center for Action and Contemplation

Richard Rohr writes of the necessity of grief. Learn how to enter the “weeping mode” of prayer and acceptance in the Daily Meditation from CAC.
— Read on cac.org/daily-meditations/the-universal-need-to-grieve/

Truth

When I was very young, my Mom let me go on a mini adventure one afternoon with a nun from our small town parish. Her name was Sister Arthur, and like the name suggests, she had a (in my mind) tall stature and commanding presence. For reasons to which I was never privy, it was determined to be a good idea for me to join Sister Arthur on a little field trip about an hour away from home to an ancient Indian burial ground in search of treasures. What precocious child wouldn’t want to venture out for such an adventure?

As best I can guess, Sister Arthur must have taken me to the Towosahgy State Historic Site in East Prairie, Missouri. According to the Missouri State Parks website, this location is “surrounded by some of the most fertile farmland in Missouri….a former fortified village and civic-ceremonial center for Mississippian peoples who lived in southern Missouri between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1400.” I believe what is pictured is what my young eyes saw that day. While I cannot remember anything Sister Arthur said to me that day, I vividly recall feeling a sense of wonder and reverence. The sight of her hands holding an arrowhead and telling me something about how it was made and its purpose is emblazoned in my memory, though exact words I cannot recall. I just remember feeling very special to have been chosen for this wondrous one-on-one field trip. I always wondered, “where have all the people who used to live here gone?”

The impact of that single exposure to something so massively important to civilization sparked a curiosity in me about excavating artifacts. I began digging and searching around my home and surrounding farmland for similar treasures, only to come up with handfuls of limestone rock, usually. That Christmas my grandmother nurtured my curiosity and gave me a rock polisher. While I never returned to the sacred Indian mound, I imagined treasures of my own from mini digs I conducted in the fertile farmland around my house. I never found another arrowhead but I will never forget the spark of interest Sister Arthur ignited that afternoon so long ago. The idea that it was possible to unearth tools that gave clues about how people thought and lived thousands of years before you was the first evidence I had ever encountered that people really are all connected.

I’m 58 years old now and have recently become reacquainted with that budding archeologist who spent the afternoon with a “scientific nun” so many years ago. I recently lost my Mom, the first person to believe me worthy of such an important field trip (or maybe she just needed an afternoon alone!), and what I keep returning to is the importance of excavating the truth. Instead of artifacts, through yoga, I have begun searching for the truth about myself. Hip pain led me to yoga and fate or serendipity or both led me to the Yoga Teacher Training I have been involved in for 3 months. One truth about myself I live with everyday is my former addiction to alcohol and the shadow of lies from that always nearby.

To maintain sobriety is to commit to the daily discipline of pursuing the truth. Lies can be alluring hiding places but they always betray you when you want protection the most. Through yoga, I have been introduced to the brilliant writings of Rolf Gates (“Meditations from the Mat”). A few days ago, I read and reread Rolf Gates’ reflection on self-study (“svadhyaya” in Sanskrit, meaning self-study and one of the five sustaining practices in the practice of yoga).

“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than the truth.” Adrienne Rich

“Self-study is an aspect of the practice of truthfulness……The good news is that truth is music to the soul. There is no end to the soul’s ability to bask in the presence of the truth. Millions of people in twelve-step programs sit around in church basements by the hour, listening to one another talk about themselves. It may sound boring, but in fact it is captivating, because the people in those rooms are telling the truth. It is captivating because spending time in the presence of others who are telling the truth inspires us to do the same.

To practice this aspect of self-study, examine the level of truthfulness in your workplace, family, and friendships. How much time do you spend in the presence of people who are telling the truth? How much do you spend with people who are not? What is it like when you hear the truth? What is it like when you do not? What fears keep you from being honest? Is it true that like attracts like? Does honesty beget honesty?”

Today, as I celebrate my ninth year of sobriety, my Google pics showed me this “funny” photo I took at a restaurant exactly 11 years ago, a time when I was deceiving myself about my truth. I thought this message about day drinking was funny. I thought by throwing my life away each day, little by little, I was really having fun and attracting the right people and things in my life. It makes me sick I once believed that throwing my life away in front of my children and husband was “funny.” There is nothing funny about not being able to live your truth.

As I have slowly excavated my truths and begun building a life of honesty and authenticity, I have observed the impact of this commitment on the people I love. It has had opposite effects: some people have thrived and grown and others have recoiled and shut me out. I’m never going back to not living my truth. If you had told me at the beginning of my sober journey 9 years ago that I would one day be working at my favorite organization and pursuing a yoga teaching certificate, I probably would have tried to protect myself with a “joke” about needing wine or margaritas or some other distraction to sustain me. I wouldn’t have been able to see myself living a happy, healthy, truthful life because to me that seemed so far out of reach in addiction. My familiar pain was more comforting than the effort excavating truth sounded like.

I have found truth in the eyes of the people with disabilities my workplace serves everyday, on my yoga mat and at home with my beautiful family. Most importantly, I wake up and go to sleep each day thanking the spiritual connection that sustains me for helping me to face the truth one day at a time. In addiction, I forgot to love that adorable little girl who was so curious about life and interested in excavating truths. She wasn’t worried about what anyone else was doing, thinking or saying because she was so completely enraptured by nurturing her own loves. I recently excavated this child and oh, what a fun adventure we are beginning.

Little Women

I received a Christmas gift early this year. On a chilly autumn afternoon, friends and family gathered to honor my parents’ final wishes: to spread their ashes together in a field near the home they raised my six older brothers and sisters and me in. You might think this would be a terribly sad occasion at first: the finality of releasing the only remaining physical representation of the 2 people you loved more than anyone in the world. Yet, as spiritual experiences often do, this setting and the people gathered blanketed my soul in peace and absolute assurance that my parents were pleased and all was well.

My children were there along with a dozen or so friends I had not seen in over 20 years, so it was a little surreal, for sure. This coming together of the past and the present for a brief moment, my heart wrenched with grief and love as it took in all the beauty around me. My childhood home, anchor of love and safety, visible in the background and the smells of home long tucked away in my sensory memory brought back to life for a brief moment to honor my Mom and Dad. 

Right before we spread their ashes, a larger gathering of old friends met in our hometown Parish Hall to break bread with our family and celebrate Mom’s life. Theresa, a dear farming friend, had lovingly displayed a cotton harvest themed quilt of my Mom’s in the entryway to our repast. I was expecting a warm reception, but this? Her gesture showed respect in the simplest and most profound way: the work of of my Mother’s hands, gifted to her years ago, represented a lifetime of love, friendship and memories. I had worried too many years had passed since our family lived in our hometown for our reappearance to make sense or feel authentic. Theresa’s warm welcome removed all doubt that my parents mattered to the people still living in our farming community.

The most surprising and delightful part of the experience was our unexpected invitation to enter our childhood home for a tour. To me, our home was a wondrous land of exploration, a kind of Narnia of my very own. As the youngest of seven, I spent many hours alone roaming the 3-acre yard surrounded by glorious fields in every season. It was there my imagination led me on many adventures which no doubt established the vibrant inner life I have always enjoyed and drawn from during difficult times. To be invited inside the home my parents so beautifully launched we children from was an early Christmas gift I eagerly accepted.

Walking around the old familiar rooms, the late autumn sun casting a warm golden light in the front room as I had always remembered, my two sisters and I briefly stepped back in time as the daughters of Dick and Rhetta, beloved community members of this town we left 43 years ago. It was in the kitchen that the real lesson of the day struck me. Standing at the kitchen island with their mother (the daughter of a childhood classmate of my brother’s) were 3 beautiful young women, faces beaming with kindness and curiosity about these strangers who had invaded their home on the Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving. We thanked them for the gift of this glimpse into our childhood and learned a bit about each of the trio of sisters living not dissimilar lives from our own nearly half a century later. 

As I walked away, a little sad from leaving my parents’ ashes in their final resting place, it was the faces of these beautiful young sisters I could not stop thinking about. They, too, might someday return to this grand and abundantly verdant place to honor the family they once were. Because my sisters and I had the courage to seek comfort from a community we had long left, the warmth and eagerness of the friends who welcomed us back home briefly connected us to these 3 sisters gazing at us with their Mom in our old kitchen. We had asked for this kindness and they lovingly granted it. While my parents’ lives were over, our story and connection to this beautiful place and these exquisitely kind people was not. I like a story with potential for a sequel – it must be the little country girl in me!