her first and second year mother had her mother
all to herself but within eighteen months Gramma
was already carrying Aunt Mid and mother was weaned.
Even though as a young mother in her early twenties
Gramma Coates had a fundamental attitude of complacency,
literally, of being pleased with all of existence, she was still
a person of great concern for not only was she anxious
about having lost her mother but she had identified with
her young mother’s anxiety that brought her to run away
with her baby and then saw her baby taken away from her.
After becoming settled in Bellevue her father then up rooted
her again and sent her to relatives in Spokane, Washington,
a city of much greater opportunity for her high school study.
Out of anxious concern her complacency was built up
just as it was out of the World War that the great jubilation
of the Twenties came frolicking forth all happy and free.
Gramma Coates’ mood of complacent concern was
a preference for some values over others in an hierarchy.
She learned of intellectual and spiritual values and in
her mood she felt and preferred them over physical and
vital values which could perish and pass away as did
her physical mother and the physical town of Bellevue
even though spiritually they could be vitally present within.
Just as mother as an infant totally identified with her
mother’s mood so she became a child concerned about
things that might remain and not be taken away.
And complacency and concern balanced each other
in a logic of mixed opposites that did not let
good complacency become bad, satisfied complacency or
let concern become worried and consuming concern.
I.1.4 In the Sense of Proactive Sensitivity
As a young girl Gramma Coates learned to control
her reactions so that she did not at once fall into
negativity out of the force of habit that increases habit.
In Spokane Leona identified with Aunt Sadie who was
only ten years older than herself and the good Episcopalians
taught the young ladies many proverbs to build character
such as: “Count to ten before you get angry.” And Leona
reflected upon and worked upon affirmative proactive responses
instead of negative reactions which could taint everything.
St. Paul clearly saw that the good I intended to do I do not
but the evil that I resolve against, that I often do.
St. Paul was given the grace to be free to serve others
and the Anglicans taught their young to pray for that grace.
And even at the age of four mother began to care for
baby bum lambs who lost their mothers in late winter.
Her love for them taught her patience and peaceful positivity.
She became concerned about their welfare and their lives
and she was glad to feed them with the baby bottle
with all her mother’s and father’s gladness for
those sweet, bleating, darling little orphaned lambs.
And they told her about the Good Shepherd who left
the ninety-nine and went out to find the one lost sheep.
And Leona Mae and Levaur Paul identified with the lost
sheep who had been found and mother identified with them.
Mother felt secure in herself and with others
in the affection which her parents showered upon her.
And when mother was four her new baby brother,
Robert Abbott Coates, was born and mother was already
helping her mother as a “little mother” with a sensitivity
that learned the sweet voice and the gentle touch that could
aid a baby boy as well as bum lambs when they were discontent.
I.1.5 In the Passion of Positive Emotions
Gramma Coates had a real feeling for intellectual values.
Many around her were artists of pleasure who had a feel
for physical values and many were heroic types,
full of vitality, who ventured Westward seeking fortune
much like Abraham who wandered into the unknown.
But Leona identified with Aunt Sadie’s love of books.
She subscribed to Lady’s Home Journal and Parent magazines.
Mother loved hearing Gramma Coates tell and read stories.
By the time she was five she had her own Bible Story Book
and her own Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme Book and she
quickly learned many of the rhymes by heart and she
loved the picture of Jesus the Good Shepherd most of all.
She pondered stories of folly and wisdom, of love and hate,
of joy and sorrow and of fear and courage and she saw
a network of positive emotions and of negative emotions.
And if there was love and joy the network was positive.
And
