I used to think:
That if I was a good girl and showed up, did my spiritual work, pushed through, endured, gleaned the gems from the muck, learned from the impossibly hard times, opened my heart (anyway), kept going, was clever, was generous with spirit, believed in the impossible and kept marching forward with hope,
That one fine day the gates of heaven would open up, or a fairy godmother would touch me on the shoulder, or some hero would rescue me and I would be rewarded with ease, with love, with joy, with rest.
Now I know:
That life has served to hone me into someone who is brave and strong and able to stand on her own. That I am incredibly powerful–powerful beyond measure and that the reward for all the hard work is not a fairy tale ending but the courage and strength to bear the heavy loads without faltering, to be able to trek the mountains by myself, carrying my whole life on my back while singing. The reward is the ability to create this wild, wooly, sometimes treacherous but always thrilling adventure that is my life. The reward is to know that I have it in me to keep going no matter how rocky the coast line, how high the mountain, how dark the forest.
Ease and joy and love (and even rest) have been ever present all along the path–Mine for the taking, like fruit that grows on the trees I pass, mine to recognize and harvest and savor. These gifts are not my destination but what has sustained me all along, what will sustain me as I keep adventuring on, all I need to do is pay attention.
The books arrived this week, in a brown box that sat on the coffee table. I took a deep breath as I opened them and spread them out, fingered the crisp binding, the smooth unblemished pages, held them to my nose. So many tiny choices over so many days, months, year have led to this pile of books on my table, the books that tell me that no, I am not making this up. I am, in fact, going to school on Tuesday.
Netter’s Clinical Anatomy, the IChing, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine. These are classics–books that connect me with learning that is old, very old and rooted in intuition and science both. I am walking in a long line–following wise ones ahead of me.
I can exhale. And lean into this. I can do this.
I promised her that I would do this, before she died, I promised her I would live and wouldn’t be afraid. That I would keep moving forward, keep moving into the next adventure, keep walking onto the path before me. And even now I am not entirely sure what comes next. Don’t know where this next step will really take me. So instead I flip through textbooks and then pile them up, then spread them out on the table again.
This summer has been an up and down one, filled with thousands of tiny decisions and many big lifts and a hundred and one changes to our life, all in service of moving forward on this path. I had no idea how to get there, still don’t really know what I am going to do next, so I have been focused on putting one foot in front of the other–a to-do list that has unfurled like a scroll, each step revealing itself after the next. I have so many stories swirling round my head, so many half-written pieces that have had to wait–will still have to wait while I have moved urgently forward with my list of tiny tasks–ordinary simple engines.
Even now I am furiously packing, more tiny to-dos propelling me forward, always forward, preparing for a long weekend in the woods, to finally slow down and rest in the company of my tribe around a campfire and sing and let it all sink in before I step through the gate. One last mad dash to the quiet hollow that is my church deep in the Monongehala. But I stop schleping tarps and guitars to the car because that pile of books has begged me to stop and recognize its significance. Its weighty presence telling me that yes I am here, where I am supposed to be. I have taken my place in line, in a long line of healers. I don’t need to wait until I can sit in the moonlight to let it sink in. It is true now. It has always been true.
I am scared to feel the joy of this moment–so afraid that it will all come crashing down, or a rug will pull out or worse yet that it will really be awful and I will have realized that I have made a very big mistake and I can’t turn back. And yet that scary feeling reassures me–tells me in no uncertain terms that I am going exactly in the right direction. Not wishing and dreaming but moving forward. Moving forward. Moving forward. Step by step revealed as I take it. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Walking in a long line through the dark, through the light, through my life.
This week, I finally let her go. Turned her over the insurance company that had deemed her totaled even though it was only a fender bender. But she was old and belched smoke, and was scratched and dented and taped up in so many places she wasn’t worth saving. Thats what they said. I knew it was true, even though I resisted it. I had known it for over a year now but I was finally willing to admit it. She had been struggling through the last six months. She always came through but each time her effort made me realize just how unsure each trip was becoming.
In the weeks since she had been declared beyond hope I had shopped and searched for a new old car to replace her. At first overwhelmed I became excited and empowered as I searched for a car good enough to actually replace my lovely old car. I found one at last, a sleek wagon with lots of room for hockey equipment and carpools, fuel efficient and well cared for and so I called my adjuster and told him it was time. And as if to bring that message home, that night her front left tire went flat.
Many people aren’t attached to their cars–even their fancy, pretty, cars that can do all sorts of wonderous things. They trade them in after three years for something even better without a thought. That always struck me as more sane. But sane I am apparently not. For me, the older and more beat up my car became the more I loved her.
My car was simple and by no means anything to talk about but I loved her for what she did for me and what she witnessed. She brought me places safely. She carried me long distances and short distances and kept running, no matter how badly I treated her. I have to admit I kept coming up with excuses to go back out and run my hands along the back seat one more time. Even inanimate objects can love us and she loved us well.
Thanks you old girl for the 13 years you took care of us. Thank you for bringing my baby home safely from the hospital, for rocking him to sleep when he wouldn’t rest. Thank you for all the countless trips to preschool, for providing me shelter when I needed to sob in the driveway and get out my stress and sorrow before coming home to be “together and strong” mom. Thank you for seeming to expand almost magically to carry all our gear camping, for being a home to Max’s smelly hockey bag. Thank you for being a canvass for my bored toddler, for delivering me to work, to the doctor, to my loved ones. Thank you for being there when I needed to rush home, rush to school, rush to Max. You made it possible for me to rush. Thank you for carrying us without consequence through snow storms and ice storms and rain storms and for never dying in the heat–even when you had several non-working sparkplugs.
We will forever be grateful for the small and simple ways you made our lives easy, for the ways you allowed us to solve problems. I will not forget you. Nope. Not ever. I am grateful for the goodness your brought on all four wheels.
I woke up about an hour ago to a thunderstorm. The rain was heavy in the yard and sounded like it would not stop–not now, not ever. With a swim meet and a camping trip on the horizon this week I tossed and turned trying to go back to sleep, wondering how everything would turn out. But now, just 8 minutes past the official sunset and the sky is blue and puffy insubstantial clouds drift like the remnants of torn up cotton balls across the sky.
Everything passes. Everything passes.
As I looked out the window and say the rainy stormy night turn to bright day, as I listened to the birds, this song filled my heart.
Sometimes in the most unlikely of places, you will find a tiny treasure that represents a world of potential. Look carefully! Pay attention! It is not always in plain sight. But there right under your nose you will find something that holds promise of sweetness and goodness. Something that promises that this sweetness, this goodness, it is yours for the taking.
Maybe you have been hunting for a long long time. Maybe you just stumbled upon it. Maybe the bright colors caught your eye and made you stop and look again.
You hold it in your hand, turn it over, can’t believe your luck. Even before you open it, even before you you know that its biggest promise is that the cold dark days have passed–at least for now. The sun is shining again and there is work to be done!
Happy (belated) Easter.
Seven years ago this weekend, Juan and I stayed up all night and he told me he was leaving. It took him another year to leave and several more for the divorce to become final. Its taken 3 years for other details to be laid to rest, property to transfer, documents to be signed. Years later we are still navigating and negotiating–consulting about rides to karate and child care back ups and sick days. Nothing is ever gained or lost–it is just transformed and so too it is with the kind of commitments one makes to our children. But something feels big about crossing over the threshhold of seven.
Even as I write I am crossing a big milestone. I am putting stamps on the final document I need to send in–at least what I think is the final document to lay to rest another detail, the final big one.
One last big step away from an us that ceased to exist that night 7 years ago and one more step deeper into the magical and marvelous life that I am building–step by step, breath by breath, glorious morning by morning.
Seven years is a very long time. When things take that long to fully dissolve it can create a kind of inertia. The documents that needed to be mailed sat on my desk all week. In a timeline that has unfolded this slowly, a week is but a blink of an eye.
Sometimes I can get so frustrated with myself and the slow pace with which my life has seemed to unfold lately. Even the simplest of tasks seem to take longer some days. And yet, the landscape of my life has not changed by earthquakes but has instead been shaped by a slow steady rain, years and years of patient life giving rain that has worn new paths, shaped stones, grown trees and moss. Looking out at my garden I am in awe of the beauty that has resulted. Yes it is transformed, quietly, slowly. When I look at the results, who am I to curse the pace?
Some things take longer. Lifetimes or centuries. Millennia even. In the scheme of things, what is seven years? Seven years to finally put to rest something I thought would last a lifetime doesn’t seem that long, even as it feels like an eternity.
And yet there is something about the passing of seven years that makes me stand and take notice. Springing out of bed, as though an alarm has sounded. Enough already. Lets get moving.
Seven feels like a complete number, magical and round. Time now to dust off my hands and whatever inertia is left and move up and out and all around. Shake the earth and move the boulders. Its time. Its time.
The gift on the sidewalk outside the coffeeshop
There comes a time when it is abundantly clear that compassion not ambition is what is needed. There are moments when we gather in small and big numbers to pledge that nurture trumps success and kindness trumps victory. When we realize that giving up and giving in or simply giving, with loving arms open, is the only way forward.
These moments go best with coffee, good coffee, although they are also perfectly paired with tea, or wine or chocolate chip cookies or for that matter water too. Anything that can be shared, given freely, an offering of sorts to seal the deal we make, the promise to be a healing presence in the world. In this space we ask (perhaps for the thousandth time), “What would shift if I adopted love (not defensiveness, or pride or jealousy or fear) as my mantle?” We ask, “How would it be if we recognized the sameness in our humanity? How would everything change? What would it mean?
When we are awake to these moments, when we are conscious about what they mean for the world, if we keep our eyes open, we are often rewarded by a little sign, a sweet treat that tells us that the Universe conspires with us. An inside joke or perhaps a burning bush, a reminder that yes…Love is the only way forward.
A couple of weeks ago now (it feels like a lifetime), Max and I were stuck in a terrible snowstorm. It was the kind of snowstorm that brings down trees and turns DC roads into a mess. Like everyone else, we left the office early, but it wasn’t early enough. By the time we hit the roads, traffic was at a virtual standstill. My normal 25 minute commute lasted almost 6 hours.
But the point at which we arrived home is the end of the story. What is more fascinating is what happened in between.
For the first hour it felt like an adventure. We were moving along at a snail’s pace but we were certain we would make it home for dinner time. I dreamt of what I would cook and was comforted by the fire I would start, the cup of tea I would make within minutes of our arrival.
In the second hour, we started to get a bit itchy, but were certain that we would make it home for the Caps game on TV. The cup of tea turned into a glass of wine. I would need it after all this stop and go.
In the third hour it was clear that we would miss the start of the game, and that dinner would in fact be a long ways away. All the dreaming of tea and wine had made me thirsty. Max had fallen asleep in the car and everything on the radio began to feel old. We had moved barely 10 feet. I began to think we would be there all night. It was then that irritation and restlessness started to set in. Suddenly I was flooded with visions of being home in front of a warm cozy fire, a smooth glass of wine in my hand, the Caps game on the big TV and I wanted to scream and lay on my horn as though that would make the seas part. As I sat uncomfortably, munching on a donut that Max had earlier scavenged from the crevices of the back seat, misery snuck into the passenger seat and taunted me. “You’re not home” it whined. “This is miserable.”
And then something happened that saved me. I learned that the power was out at home.
Transformers had blown and the entire neighborhood was out. The house was cold and dark. There would be no tea, no Caps game, no warm dinner. All my visions of what could have been went up in smoke and I suddenly saw my situation much more clearly.
I was warm. There was an interesting story on the radio. Max was dozing in and out, but relatively content snuggled up in a sleeping back in the back seat. When he woke up from his naps we chatted about things we rarely had time to talk about. While we didn’t have a full tank, we had plenty of gas. The woman in the car in front of me was chatty and kind and together we were moving the branches that fell in our path. The man in the car crawling along in the right hand lane was patient and funny and compassionate, checking in on Max. We could melt snow for water. The stale donuts in the back of the car had filled us up. There was in fact, nothing truly miserable about our situation.
Somewhere in between hour four and five, I had one of those epiphanies that make me feel so naive, like a too-smart schoolgirl, stung by the simplest of lessons she had missed. Rarely does my suffering arise from my life’s circumstances. It is not what my life is that causes me pain. More often than not, when I suffer, it it caused by my disappointment about what my life is not. After all these years, that teaching had never sunk in so profoundly, but rather it had floated about on the surface of my intellect. But suddenly, in the midst of that thick wet snow that promised to hold us hostage, a switch was flipped and I could no longer deny it.
As I turned off the traffic filled road and onto a snow choked side street, I breathed into the reality that we were Ok, more than OK in fact. And while I had no idea of what would happen next I was certain that everything seems to change, even if its slowly.
With the newness of my understanding settling, I felt a bit sheepish and even a bit childish in my complete lack of understanding. All these years, even as I had talked the talk about non-attachment, I find I wound the tendrils of my happiness firmly around visions of some false future and then whine when its somehow different.
Its a habit, a very hard one to break.
I am being gentle with myself now. It takes a lot of courage to admit that most of my pain and misery is truly just an illusion. I have nursed my suffering so for so many years. As I tended my own wounds I felt, I don’t know…. Complete. Worldly. Complex. Deep.
Thats not to say that my pain wasn’t real. Just that not all of it was necessary. And while there is grief that will be unavoidable, real sorrows and feelings of loss, I can save myself from a whole lot of manufactured hurt if I dare. I’d like to think there is infinite value in being able to see behind the veil of my own disappointment into the richness of my own magnificent life.
This season I have traded in the great rush for something quieter. I decided to try my hand at really living with the season, to do what all of nature (except for us crazy western humans) do when the sunlight becomes scant. I decided to slow down and dive into deep rest.
There have been stretches this holiday season where I wore my pajamas for days on end. Days when I chose to read with Max by the fire instead of doing the thousands of chores that had piled up. Days when I put the endless to do lists to rest, fully trusting that one day the important stuff would find a way to get done. My phone has barely worked these days and that has been good because it kept me from taking calls. (I am sorry if you have been trying to reach me).
There is something magical about winter that I fear has gotten lost. Winter gives us permission to reboot and restore but the holiday season modern style instead leaves us feeling run round, ragged. Its not simply a matter of commercialism but rather a matter of hectic, rushing that runs completely counter to what our bodies know we need to do.
I am starting to surface now. Something about the new year turning is causing the sap to rise and pulling me out of my cocoon. Eventually I will return to the written word. I am sure of that. But until then wanted to break through the quiet to wish those who come by hear a New Year full of love and peace.
Max and Mutoni, Odette’s daughter getting ready to “trick or treat” this past Halloween
Its hard to describe what it feels like to be driving to Connecticut with the three of them in the backseat–Max sandwiched in between Grace and Mutoni. I look back in the rear-view mirror and see the three of them huddled over the Harry Potter movie on the computer. They are arguing over Justin Bieber (dreamy or ridiculous?–the sides are drawn) and sharing music on the ipod and sharing the box of cookies I snuck into the backsheet. It feels…well…it feels normal. A normal extended family fighting the traffic on I-95, two sisters in the front seat catching up, three cousins being silly as they sing the latest pop songs. And its that normal-ness that makes my heart swell with gratitude.
*****
Three years ago my friend and housemate Odette made her first trip with me to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. At that time everything seemed impossible and stuck. We had no idea if she would be able to stay here in this country and the possibility of bringing her daughters from Africa seemed bleak–at best. After facing a horrible civil war and genocide in her native Rwanda, after losing her husband, after following her heart to cooking school and becoming a chef and after years of supporting her mother and children and nieces and nephews with her amazing cooking, she took a leap and came to the US. When things didn’t go as planned she ended up with me, thousands and thousands of miles away from her children, on a journey to Connecticut.
The thing I remember most about that trip is the hours we stole away dreaming about what it would be like IF she got to stay AND IF she got to bring her girls here. How amazing it would be. I also remember seeing absolutely no path to this dream. It was a far off destination through a wild jungle and a stark desert without a road (or even a path) leading there. I couldn’t see how she would get there but I loved her dreams. They were beautiful, even though they felt ridiculous and completely unreasonable. And I resisted every temptation to try and talk her out of them in order to protect her heart. And with that decision, I started to learn about dreaming, not wishing and praying but the active art about making dreams come true.
******
If there is anything I learned from my dear friend Odette, it is that we make the road by walking. Looking back over the highs and lows of the last three years, I am not sure anyone would ever have started out on that road if they knew how complicated, hard and impossible it would be. Huge unmoveable boulders would present themselves. Big pits of quick sand. And lions and tigers and bears. And yet, obstacles were faced one at a time. There always was a way around them, even if it took months, and heavy lifting, and impossible stretching. Just when I couldn’t imagine how she would continue or where the answer would appear, countless strangers came out of the woodwork to brick by brick built a path to that dream, chipping in how and when they could. Courage and hope was the only map. They guided everything–and always led the way home.
And then after four years of separation, we were making another journey up north, this time to an airport to pick them up because amazingly they were here. (Side note: for a bit of Thanksgiving inspiration, click over here to see Stephanie Roberts amazing photos and stories of their reunion!)
******
Having been a witness to this amazing story, knowing full well that when she started she had no idea what to do but it didn’t let her stop her, I don’t dismiss her advice when we are talking about my dreams, especially the ones that I can’t imagine the path towards.
JUST START, she tells me. She says it firmly. The next step will appear once you begin. I know, from the giggling I hear in the back seat, that she is right. She had no idea how she would ever bring her girls here but even though she had no plan, she threw herself into it and did the one thing in front of her. And then, the next thing…and the next one and the path appeared and outlandish, impossible and amazing dreams came true.
If there is anything I have learned from my sister Odette, from witnessing her journey, it is this. Just start. Hope and Courage are found in the doing.
