What is maturity?

A collaged explanation.

Mar 19, 2022

Ok, I’ll admit this in public.

I had at least an A cup in 4th grade. Ok. Maybe it wasn’t an A cup. However, I was one of only a few who had a bra on while waiting in line for Miss Vandenberg to open up the door after recess. In fact, if I remember correctly, I don’t think anyone had a rack bigger in those days. If anyone from my class remembers this differently, I would love a walk down memory lane.

This impromptu blog is going to be about my relationship with my baby brother, although it may meander off from there. I meander, though I do it honestly. I also have problems understanding how to use tenses when I’m zig-zagging through my history. I’m sure I could interview quite a number of fascinating people about what they think true maturity is all about, but that isn’t relevant at this moment. This piece here is to introduce you, to my baby brother.

Steven Alan Guest b. 4/27/1962. d. 6/3/1993.

The day he graduated with a Master’s degree from Claremont Graduate University in Computer Science and something else… notice how tired he already looks? The deep dark bags under his eyes? Wish I knew how to turn the right photo so that he’s facing himself.

I want you to feel him as I feel him. I want to bring him alive to you as he is alive to me. In fact, if you have the ability to stream Todd Rundgren’s album entitled HEALING from 1981, please turn it on. You’ll see why in a few.

He is no longer physically alive. June 3rd will be 29 years. He was a great kid, a beloved classmate (although he never knew that), and though he only had 31 years to grow in his maturity, my beloved brother was a man of integrity. He is very much alive now and expresses how he feels and what he can see from where he is. Keep reading.

I first learned how to communicate with those on the other side because I loved him so much and missed him even more. My friend brought him through less than three weeks after he passed.

Dingaling aling aling…..

“Hi Honey. What’s up?”

“Are you sitting down?”

“No, but I can be.”

I’ll give her initials, KM because she doesn’t want to communicate anymore with those hungry ones still alive to speak to the more silent ones on the other side. This conversation was not taped, but she had a vision or a visitation but I don’t think it was a dream.

NOT QUOTES:

-I came upon a small lake or a big pond. I decided to walk around the perimeter of it. I could see a big boulder, or stone, or rock formation across the body of water and it seemed to me someone was sitting on top of it. As I approached the person I had seen sitting upon it, they had a red hooded robe on. I approached closer. It was your brother Steven, but it was a woman. She said to me, ‘Tell Lisa that I came into this life to have the children expected of her in a Jewish family. What your brother needed was some extra time between lives. If you succumb to the pressure to have children, not only will you live your life in vain, but Steve’s life will also have been in vain.’-

: UN NOT QUOTES

Breathe Lisa, breathe. Sitting there, on my black couch on Seaview Lane in Laguna Beach, wearing Steven Alan Guest’s red hooded velour robe. He’d been there on that couch just two months prior, summing up how good my life was. I said to him on 3/11/93, “Steven, I’m not dead yet.” Little did I know there was a reason he was summing up my life at that time to give me that feedback.

His widow gave me the red robe when I was in Lafayette helping her for the first two weeks after his death, with their little girls, one 26 months and the other, 30 days old.

But back to my bra size. Bra size is one way of measuring a girl/woman’s maturity. Granted, I had little boulders in 4th grade and some don’t even grow little boulders until much later. It’s not that I was more mature in 4th grade than a girl/woman blossoming in 12th grade. Or, that getting an enhancement makes one more mature. Or, that my minimalization surgery at 17 made me less mature.

I keep my brother close to me. Communications with him have deepened over the years. I rarely miss him because I feel him showing me he is witnessing me in many special moments.

In 2017 I was close to the edge with extreme tension causing me to overload. I wasn’t even looking for him as I drove on Colorado Street east. (PS, he died in the state of Colorado) My heart was heavy and I saw no way out of the devastating situation that seemed to get worse, day by day. Suddenly, something in my brain said, “Was that a 27?” I looked in my rear view mirror and a white car’s white license plate had a red 27 with a navy blue * next to it. I don’t know what kind of a license plate it was, or how I could see it so clearly in my rear view mirror. I only know that automatically one hand went to my heart. I exhaled deeply, and suddenly the mood changed. I felt lighter. I felt hope. I felt free. Huh? Is this even possible? I don’t know, but it happened that day, in that way.

A few months ago I spent nine hours on this blog, but I’m editing it because I’m reminded I couldn’t read Nin because I didn’t know who she was writing about. On that day, I’d moved the 12/13/21 birthday collage with two cards for every month in 2022, below my light switch so I could see it more easily. Thus, there was a space needing to be filled, above where it had been.

It takes me 27 minutes to piece this red, yellow, gray, and green collage together.

March is the third month of 2022. I’m now connecting with the dreamers.

Looking for a frame, there was a gorgeous picture of Steven in an Austrian sweater. He’s wearing glasses. One of the first pictures with him wearing glasses. The little frame, I decide, will fit the spot nicely, even though it’s old and scratched. I also put two pictures of Steve and me that literally hit me over the head.

A very old brass frame with round corners was unseen, on top of other framed collages I’d done of him but taken down because I’ve been told I tend to “overdo things.” With a belligerent noggin, I put them back up in the other room because I want them up.

So what if I’m overdoing it?

It doesn’t bother me.

It’s not dangerous.

I’m not hurting anyone.

I celebrate him. I love him, probably even more as we seem to have grown closer in the years since he’s crossed over. I loved him when he was alive, but I was so busy in my life, that I probably took him for granted.

Nothing seems to bother him now and his sense of humor has increased and gives me levity. Since I probably know him the best of anyone still in the living … I celebrate him all the more. I’m the one that still cares deeply about what he was, and how he felt. I am open to his perceptions about now and I have so many incidents when he has helped me grow, and heal.

The collage with the Japanese influence, notice the famous statue lady’s buttocks below this? I made it years ago thinking about him, his love of Asian influences, and how short-lived his dreams were on this life plane. I recently almost took it down. Now I’m glad I didn’t. It belongs here with the green-hued new collage, near the green feathers, near the green beads that have been up, it seems forever.

The brass frame hit my head when I was bringing down the clear plastic frame. The two other pictures of the two of us were inside. So I collaged it all together. In the original only I can see Steven’s hand reaching out of the frame. The green-hued one shows how gently I held him in my arms, even at that age.

Details. What is too much? What is not enough? What is good behavior? What is poor behavior? I get bored with too many details I don’t understand or feel I shouldn’t be the judge of . . . and yet, details flow through for the sharing.

Here’s another message from Steven right here in my condo. While writing this and collaging, I see these little hello’s. Do you see what I see?

Mom wanted to believe it was possible. Dad poo-pooed it until weeks before he left his body behind. He called me to him at Alamitos Belmont Rehabilitation Hospital at 6:30 in the morning. He said, “You and I are going to communicate in the great here and beyond.”

“What are you talking about?” I barked back at him, angry I had to be there two hours before I could talk to the person who MIGHT release him out of there to go home to his wife. He’d called me the night before. “Get me out of here.”

“You laughed smugly when I would share with mom, who wanted to know, how to ask Steven to send us a sign. You belittled me when I said, ‘Look, mom! Look at that license plate. He answered us within two minutes.’”

He didn’t know what I was talking about. He didn’t know what he had said.

He just looked at me with a blank stare. They are together now.

3/9/22: 4th anniversary of Ronald David Guest’s death

I try talking to him in my kitchen.

“Dad, do you know how happy I am that I live here?” Silence.

“How happy I am that I’m finally doing what I’ve always wanted to do?” Silence.

“Dad, do you know that you are inside of me?”

Suddenly, it’s as if the lights went on and the vibration of the room started to dance. I swear, it’s as if I heard him sheepishly and quietly apologize, “I’m sorry.”

I look around as if Steven is there to explain my confusion.

I hear and feel Steven laugh.

“Dad is eating through you.”

I told Dad, “Ok, that’s enough!”

Maturity is not just about bra size, or the age on one’s driver’s license. Maturity is about getting to live long enough to fully understand what your life is about, what your dreams say to you, what your gifts are that were given by the ultimate creator, and what you can do with them to understand and offer hope.

I really wish I could call a friend and read this to them before I hit the publish button. However, I want to be the fire that I am, without apology. It’s time.