Endless Abandon

It's four twenty six in the morning. I went to bed about exactly four hours ago... and I woke up about forty five minutes ago unable to sleep. I read for awhile, the last of Anne Lamott's non-fiction books that I've yet to completely devour. I am currently sitting upright in bed having just finished a bowl of red velvet frozen yogurt. Yes, I said frozen yogurt. Don't judge me, any time is a good time for fro-yo.

In the last story I read in Lamott's book, Plan B, Further Thoughts on Faith, Lamott talks about seeing the movie Whale Rider. I wasn't thinking about my mom until I read this chapter, not really. But Whale Rider was the last movie we saw together and when I see it in a movie store on my Netflix cue it makes me twinge and sort of wince inside. I haven't told the story of that night yet... I suppose because it's not a very interesting one to tell but because it's four something in the morning and I have a sugar buzz and nothing else to do, I will tell it anyways.

I was visiting my mom at her home in Port Townsend where after a few years of renting (really fabulous, charming places) she bought a small little bungalow directly behind one of her good friends' house. It was the first and only time I would visit this house while she was still alive. It was summer and warm out as summer tends to be and as I was there for several days she decided to put me to work helping her re-paint her kitchen cabinets. I can't even remember what color they were now before we got our hands on them, probably a horrible member of the hideous family known as beige. We pulled them all down and sanded them and then wiped them clean with some sort of chemical who's name now escapes me but is designed to get all the dust and grease off and who's gasoline like smell is all together delightful. And then we put Kate Campbell in the CD player, a lovely middle aged southern folk singer I had met in college who grew up in the south during the civil rights movement with a white, southern Baptist minister father who marched along side Dr. King. In any event, it was one of the few CDs I had that we both enjoyed so we perched my mom's small stereo atop an open kitchen window sill facing out into the backyard where we were hunched in the grass on our knees and we sang about growing corn in a box and Joe Lewis' furniture as we painted each cabinet in a random variety in an eggplant purple, fuscia pink, sunshine-y yellow, and turquoise; all of my mom's favorite colors. I imagine in the few months after that day and before she died, that kitchen gave people quite a shock as they came around the corner from her dining room but she loved it. It made her happy. It made her house home.

In any event, one of those nights during my visit she decided to take me out to dinner, a place she really loved in Port Townsend, a slightly fancy, sit-down restaurant if such a thing really exists in that funky little seashore town. But it was unexpectedly busy and the service was really slow, really really slow. We ordered and then sat and sat and sat looking alternately at our watches and getting nervous we would miss the movie. Well, really only I was getting nervous. My mom was never as uptight and nervous in general as I am, I take more after my grandmother and her mother in that respect, but ever since moving to Port Townsend time had seemed to become superfluous to her. She drove slowly, down the middle of roads I might add, wherever she went (as do a lot of people there) and she was never worried or hurried or stressed about much of anything anymore it seemed. It alternately drove me absolutely bonkers and I would have to grit my teeth a lot when I visited her, or it would rub off on me and I would find myself also sinking deeply and into this lackadaisical sort of life wherein in not being so rushed about always you are suddenly able to see all the startling beauty around you and be thankful and at peace. Must be something about living by the sea, about waking up everyday with water as far as the eye can see that calms the inner unrest of a soul, or at least some of it's nervousness and anxiety.

In any event, seeing as how I was so anxious and nervous about making the movie (at the one theatre in town, which was located almost across the street) she told me to go on ahead and she would ask for the food to go. She instructed me to sit in the balcony because that would be the easiest place for her to sneak the food in. To sneak food in?! What where we, twelve again?? It's not like we were going to sneak in our own plastic sandwich baggie of homemade popcorn or a box of candy bought at the corner store for a quarter of the price it cost at the theatre; we were sneaking in full dinners complete with meat, starch and vegetables. But I was feeling obedient at the moment and so followed directions and rose to stroll down the hill half a block to the theatre and found us a seat in the balcony. I can't say for sure because the movie was already starting when I got there and it was almost completely pitch black in theatre, but the balcony seemed to consist of only two or three rows, five or six rows across and a had ceiling so low it's a miracle I didn't have to squat like when I stand up from a middle or window seat after the airplane lands. Some time went by and then there emerging from the dark came my mom, complete with two to-go boxes smuggled under her arm. She handed me one and we dug in. It was the only time in my life I can recall ever having had a meal I couldn't see at all. We groped around with our fingers and plastic picnic-ware in the dark trying somewhat successfully to get a scoop of food or hunk of meat onto our forks and into our mouths without dropping too much of it down the front of ourselves. Physically navigating around in the world must be hard for blind folks but trying to eat blind earned me a whole new level of respect. I'm sure if we had been the movie that night, we would have looked utterly ridiculous sitting there hunched over our to-go boxes shoveling mystery food into our mouths that only made it there about half of the time.

And so we shoveled and the movie played, a charming tale about a Maori girl in New Zealand wanting to ride the whales like the boys were trained to do. Deep inside of herself she knew she was called to do this ancient practice of her people but because she was female, her grandfather didn't believe that she could have such a calling. In the end she does of course demand to be able to follow that little voice within her and she rides the whale and they become one. I had just graduated college not even a few months earlier with a liberal studies degree with a focus in women's studies at the time and was still in, what I think of looking back now, as my angry feminist days (whereas now I like to think I am in my post-angry feminist days and into my peaceful, spiritual feminist days, lol). I'm a sucker for the idea of a woman, or a girl as in the case of the main character in Whale Rider overcoming odds and bucking the system and following her calling... or for any person to do this for that matter. And I really loved the whole, 'girl shows 'em who's boss' theme the movie had going on at the time. I loved too that I was watching such an empowering tale with my mom who had divorced her husband of twenty some odd years and not too long after packed up and moved to a town by the sea in where she would make a whole new cadre of friends and followers. Where she would join a community choir and teach troubled youth how to sail and make and share art and dance with wild abandon and bake cookies for all the kids in the neighborhood and plant breathtaking gardens and spend her mornings baking pies for free at a friend's new bakery. When I think about what a happy life really looks like, my mom's last few years are what I see; someone giving up on being anything or anyone other than who they really are and shining almost blindingly bright in the process. Let's face it, the world can be a harsh and shitty place not just for Maori girls who aren't given the benefit of the doubt simply because of the chromosomes they have or graying middle aged women with cellulite who some think outrageous and unrealistic for dreaming so vividly and stubbornly of making the world a better place. As a character in the movie Another Year, that I saw the other night, said when chatting with a friend whilst they looked at an old friend who had fallen on hard times, "life isn't always kind." The longest war in US history rages endlessely on and there are social problems and stigmas and unhappiness and sorrow going on as far as the eye can see. And when most of us think about these things, we think we are only one small person and what in the hell can we do about any of that, about solving any of these big problems that exist in the world anyways?? Well, I'm young and I'm naive and I don't know much, but what I do know is that when something feels much too big to tackle, start small. Start in your own backyard because here's the thing, goodness spreads. Love begets love just as hate begets hate. If we pass on as much as we can to the folks we see every day or every week, most likely they will past that on and the cycle will continue. Who's to say all this goodness spreading around might not cause a million or ten million people to feel so much love that they get together and rise up against all the hate? I have faith and I have hope and I believe in miracles and the enormous power of goodness and love. And I think in Port Towsend, where my mom finally and at long last, fit for the first time in her life perfectly in her shoes and the shape of her being, this is what she did. She started small and she took every opportunity given her and spread goodness and love and the ripples of this can still be seen and heard today. When she died the wooden boat school, famous across the nation, wanted to start a scholarship in her name to continue teaching young people how to sail and build boats. For as much as she could loathe and quickly loose her wits with a surly teenage boy, she still saw the worth and value in all of their tattered souls and so took some of them under her wing and taught them to get in a vessel of wood and fly across water.

When I sat down to write tonight, or this morning I guess I should say, even though I had my mom on my mind really what I was wanting, intending to write about was my dad and brother. I have written a lot about my mom in the past few years you see, more than I would like to admit. More than most probably want to read at this point but somehow she always manages to become the heroine in the small stories that i tell of my life. I suppose her life is the tale that weaves together the biggest lessons of my own thus far and so here we are again, with Jan. Sometimes I get almost angry with myself for how much I write about her but I suppose I don't hardly talk about her at all so here on the page is where her she and her story come gushing out of me. This is one of the things I was going to tell about the other two members of my family who remain, about how when we're together we don't talk about her at all; about the unspoken things that happen in families. And also I someday want to tell their stories too, the lessons I have learned from their own lives' stories. Alas, other stories to tell on other days. Today I suppose it will just have to be another story about mom, one more for the books. I am going to try to get another precious hour of shut eye and will pray as my eyelids fall that you may also have at least one someone in your life who is as equally worthy of having their story told.

Namaste.

An Ocean of Blessing

Yesterday I started reading A Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. A friend suggested it, saying that her writing reminded this friend of my own. Only a few chapters into as of yet, there is much on the pages that resonates with me spiritually and philosophically but today the sun is out after reading some of this book mostly what I am feeling is a longing to be near the coast. Nothing in all the world feels as good and perhaps as close to home for me as warm sand between my toes and the sea's gentle breath on my cheeks.

Growing up my family spent at least two weeks at the coast every summer in a small town called Manzanita a few miles south of Cannon Beach. My parents' friends, the Walters, owned a small rusty red house almost across the street from the beach. Every summer we would return there, usually in August when the sun in the city was just starting to reach the point of sweltering miser-ability for us all. To this day I can remember the sisal rugs in the little red house, the plexi-glass shower door, the small winding staircase with a water heater underneath, and how the paint was more faded each summer and always peeling ever so gently from the edges of the shingles. Inside I can picture in my mind the big round tufted chair from the 1920s covered in a horribly itchy moss green fabric. I would spend ours on it in my swimsuit with an itchy butt paging through one of the books that lived at the house. There was one large black and white photography book with pictures of naked and bare chested women from the same era as that old green chair and we, as in whatever other children happened to have joined us at the beach that year, would sneak peeks secretly when no adults were nearby. The dining room was to the left of the living room when you walked in the front door and there in the cupboard in the corner were stacks of old board games. On colder or rainy days and at night we would sit for hours playing Sorry and Monopoly. At night, if it was too cold or the weather conditions were not ideal for a campfire, we would keep a fire burning in the wood stove which lived directly across the room from the green chair and next to the kitchen door. Here we would perch ourselves on the brick surrounding the stove and toast marshmallows and make s'mores. It was always a little bit cold in that little red house, especially at night and we drank a ton of hot cocoa with mini marshmallows when we were at the beach. These were a big treat for my brother and I and the special treats to be had at the beach didn't end there. We got to have all those mini boxes of sugar cereal that you pour the milk right in to whereas at home it was always oatmeal with raisins (yuck), or generic Cherrios. In addition, everyday at the coast we were given a quarter or two and would stroll downtown to the Big Apple Market and purchase Laffy Taffy and Jolly Ranchers for two cents each. I recall that sour apple was my favorite and my least favorite banana, a taste preference which has stayed with me until this day.

It seems in my memory that my brother and I were given complete freedom to roam around town as we pleased. We could come to and fro to the house and to the beach and back several times each day. And although we each got a new pair of saltwater sandals each summer, we always skpped around town barefoot. Where there were not sidewalks, which was most places, there were gravel roads. And no matter how much you walked on them, it always hurt tremendously. I can still feel the sensation of hundreds of small jagged pebbles poking into my heels and the balls of my feet as I jetted around quickly, endlessly willing myself to be weightless in their sharp pain. Funny that all the willpower in the world never worked and yet and still sandals always just felt much too constraining.

During the day we spent most hours, as one should when at the coast, on the sand and in the water. And sometimes, in the sand too, buried. When I think back to how deep we would go into the ocean I can hardly believe it primarily because it is so dangerous and secondly, because this is Oregon and its so damn cold! These days during even the warmest beach weather its all I can do to wade in the icy water for a few hundred feet before I have to escape again for warmer and dryer land. We would hunt for rogue jellyfish and buy cheap plastic kites which always seemed to break more than they ever flew; surely operator error. My mom would usually accompany us down to the beach but here she became more sedative than in most other moments of her life whereas we would go crazy as soon as our feet touched the sand kind of like my dog does today, electrified by the pure freedom and joy of it all. My mom on the other hand, and other adults who might also be joining us for a few days or a week, seemed to morph into big boring slugs. They would always bring a blanket and a book and would find a warm spot and just park it there for hours on end. At the time it looked like the most boring thing in the world to me but at the ripe old age of thirty, a day or even a few hours spent laying on a beach in the sun with a book and nothing but the sound of the sea and the birds to keep me company sounds almost exactly like heaven. Every few hours my mom would rise from the green and blue plaid blanket we keep in the trunk of our car the rest of the year and take off on a long walk, disappearing into the coastal horizon. About an hour or so later she would return and find herself a spot back on the blanket and either take another nap or read. She was always so quiet in this place.

On some afternoons we would go for long walks throughout town and on one such occasion we happened upon an alley full of wild blackberry bushes. On all the summers that followed we returned to this spot and strolled back to the house merrily with pink stained fingertips to make homemade blackberry ice cream in our old-fashioned, hand-crank ice cream maker.

One summer my mom took myself and four friends in our old split-pea green Volkswagen bus for my birthday. We only made it as far as Seaside before the clunker broke down and my dad and grandpa had to drive out and shuffle us a few dozen miles south to the house in Manzanita and then return a few days later to pick us back up and bring us back to the city. One summer I had a broken arm and had to come back into the city for my arm to be examined by the doctor and then we returned all the way back to the coast that afternoon.

Another summer my mom espied a rusty old claw foot bathtub in the old shed out back of the beach house. My mom's friend Ginger, the owner of the house, sold it to my mom for a few hundred dollars I think. I always thought that was kind of stingy of her charging us for a bathtub that had very obviously been there much longer than she had been in possession of the house and because it was very clear that she had no intention of every doing anything with it. In any event, by this point in time my brother and I were on the cusp of our teenage years and we had traded in our old Volkswagen bus for a spiffy new Nissan minivan that had captains chairs for the middle row of seats and what I thought was the coolest thing ever, a tiny fridge big enough to old a six pack of soda between the two front seats. That summer we took all the seats out of the van and in the bathtub went. Somewhere there's a photo of my mom, her face red and sun-kissed and her hair windblown into a soft crown of grey around her face, laying in that bathtub in the back of the minivan. She had the bathtub refinished and painted the feet gold and the outside black. On top of the black she painted a sea of soft pink roses. I was happy to see a few years ago when the house I grew up in was for sale by the people my parents had sold it to when I was thirteen, that despite other changes and remodeling they had done, my mom's flowered bathtub remained.

The last time I stayed at this house or in Manzanita was the summer before what was I think, my senior year of high school. My parents had been divorced that spring and my mom took my friend Lizzy and I for several days to stay in the little red house and escape the city and our newly unfamiliar lives. At the time Lizzy and I both had our permits, had been learning to drive for several months, and were both anxiously awaiting our soon approaching drivers' tests. One morning my mom handed me the keys to her car and some money and told us to take ourselves out to breakfast. In that single moment, probably for the first time since I had become a teenager, my mom became cool again. I still have a picture of myself somewhere sitting proudly in the driver's seat getting ready to drive without an adult in the car for the first time, sheer exhilaration radiating from my smile. The temptation was, of course, too good to resist and Lizzy and I spent several dozen minutes cruising around town before we headed to and quickly inhaled our breakfast.

I hadn't though about much about any or all of this until most of these words poured onto the page today. I guess memories of my life run deeper than I often realized. And I suppose reading the perspective that being at the coast brought Anne Morrow Lindbergh's and the grace she felt around her during her own time at the there, brought my past to the surface. I think in this moment, that these many weeks spent by the ocean with my family and sometimes my friends over the years just might be some of the very happiest moments of my life thus far. Its funny that I can still recall today with perfect clarity the way things in that place looked and felt and smelled and tasted and sounded and yet, it feels a world away. So very much besides the aging of my mind and body have happened in the years between the last time I slept in that little rusty red house when I was sixteen. When I was a teenager Jim Walter, who owned the place with his wife, was in a car accident with his son Trevor, several years my junior. Trevor survived, Jim did not. As fate would have it, about a decade later my mom's life would end the same way that Jim's did. I often wonder about Jim's children and how his sudden death affected them, if they are able to commune with and feel him with them when they have returned to their family's little red beach house over the years. I will probably never be able to go to the coast and not feel a twinge of sadness that my life will never be as simple and carefree an full of love as it was all those many year ago despite the peace and serenity that seem to inevitably wash over me when I am there. Yet and still today I am feeling so thankful to have such truly blessed memories even if they exist in a place that can never ben revisited in real life. To think that for a time I had it so damn good, that so many people wish they could be so lucky.

In the years between then and now wars have stared and ended, millions of babies have been born, perhaps billions, global warming has sped up its cycle and in my own life, in my own miniscule world there have been deaths and divorces and graduations and there have been new kinds of love, crippling self-doubt and astounding spiritual revelations that have come as a result of all of these things. Returning to that time and place of innocence is not now nor will it ever be an option. But so long as I am living, I will be ever searching to be enlightened by grace moments of clarity about the purpose of my life like those that seem to so easily settle in when my feet are buried in the sand and I witness the world breathing in and out with every giant ebb and flow of the ocean's tide. I will always be trying to live as much of my life in the state of momentary grace and wholeness that my mom seemed to be in whenever she laid there in silence on the sand letting the sun's warmth settle into her every pore.

I am greedy for the world and for peace and for solitude as well as for the company and companionship of others souls. I am greedy for enlightenment of any kind and for perspective like one can find in the quiet company of their own spirit at the coast. May we all strive to be so at peace with our lives despite and because of their brokenness and their beauty. May we be able to revisit happy places from our past in our minds during moments when a sneaker waves comes up and rolls over us unexpectedly, knocking us momentarily off of our feet until we can sure again our footing in the sand and see that whatever this wave is, it too shall pass. And lastly, may we always be looking for opportunities to create new traditions and find evermore places and people and things around us to be thankful for. In memory of my of my dear old mom who would have turned 58 next week and the place she loved to be more than any other in the world, Namaste.

Namaste II

My tea pot makes a noise like fog horn. A medium pitched long-winded bellow from the stovetop waking whatever neighbors were sleeping before its morning wake up call I'm sure. I've been lazy lately, going to Starbucks on my way into work instead of making my own coffee at home. The thing is I can't really afford what for me right now, is such an expensive habit. I am blaming my current laziness on the fact that I've been working round the clock for days on end and sleep until the last possible minute each day, not having time to make myself a nice french press at home before it's time to go out and greet the world. This morning I made an Asian blend, my least favorite of the three coffee growing regions, and it taste particularly strong on my palette.. the kind of strong I know is going to upset my stomach. But, I'm an addict. And so, I will drink it anyways and I will sit here feeling rich.

I haven't had much, and by much I mean any, time to write lately because I've been burning the candle at both ends between work and other responsibilities in my life. I haven't had much time to stop and think and process much at all in fact, coming home and going straight to bed, getting up and going straight to work or running off to some other obligation. This morning feels deep and luxurious as I on the couch in my favorite green pajama shirt and sweat pants drinking coffee and eating german chocolate cake for breakfast. Yes, I said german chocolate cake for breakfast. I'm thinking about a few of my friends who seem to be going through particularly hard times at the moment and wishing there was a single damn thing I could do to make them feel hopeful or at least a tear drop less awful. Yesterday a friend told me she's going through a spiritual crisis of faith. I didn't know what to say at the time and just asked, "Really??" like and idiot. My brain's not very quick you see, and I think this is the reason it's so hard for me to communicate orally with people sometimes. By the time I have really taken in and processed and thought about what they have said and where they may be at or what they may be feeling, its much too late to formulate and give any sort of thoughtful, intelligent response. This morning I am wondering what her crisis of faith is about, where and what it is rooted in if only one thing, or if it is just life and the world in a grander scheme getting her down.

I've had a few crisis' of faith in my life. One this past fall when it seemed all that could go wrong in my world did, where the waves of emotions would creep up and pour over me time and time again when I least expected then... and when I thought I had already gone through them before and moved beyond them. Sometimes you can cry so much you are sure there is not another tear to be had inside your entire body, that you have cried all the tears there is to cry in the world and then, the next day, there they are again. During these moments in my life all felt helpless, the cause of my life a lost and worthless one. I would drive to work and wonder if maybe I should just drive off the side of the road or into oncoming traffic and put and end to the pain and misery and pointlessness of it all. My heart had been broken in one way or another and I felt like why oh why go on. What was the point? What was the purpose of my existence? And would a single soul even notice or care if I was gone? I had lost my purpose and belief in myself, I lost my faith in the goodness of the universe, my belief in the blessing of life, and my hope for better days ahead. I just wanted it all, the pain and the hurt and the sorrow and what felt like the fruitlessness of it all, to go away and be over. Somehow, probably only for the love and support of a few good friends, I made it across this muddy mess that had become my life onto surer footing and more solid ground. I got up everyday and I went through the motions and I came home and a cried and ached for the way that I so wanted my life to be and I mourned and I got up the next day and did it all over again. I did this day after day after day after day after day and slowly but surely, I started to notice the beauty of the fog hanging ever so gently atop the steeples on the St. Johhns bridge during my morning dog walk and I felt a twinkle of gratitude for such a sight. I noticed the first buds beginning to form on the tips of the branches on a tree outside of my house and thought about the resilience of nature and it's ability to just keep on keeping on and endless production of beauty even after it has died, about it's persistence to be reborn. I saw my god-daughter smile widely at me through the window, her deep dimples a sign of beauty, a hope for the future of our world. Through the love and support of others I began to develop a small amount of compassion for myself and learned to believe in myself a little bit more. I began to remember thinking about all the crisis' and trauma and drama I had already lived through and thought about the many blessings that going through these things brought to my life. Now my life is nowhere near perfect and on many days I do let it get me down. I find myself burried in thoughts of the things I thought I would have at thrity, and the partner and children I desperately, endlessly ache for. I worry tirelessly about this or that and I look in the mirror and feel often a deep disappointment in the appearance of the person staring back at me. Some days still I spend swimming in and sinking into the muck of the world but the difference these days is I know I will not be trapped there and that soon, this too shall pass.

In the end I suppose there's no recipe for healing up and taping back together a wounded and broken heart. The story of many of our lives I think, of being a living creature in this world, is one of redemption and resilience. Life isn't easy. And it isn't fair. My mother told this to me what seems like a million and one times growing up. So if it isn't easy and it isn't fair, what the hell is the point of it anyways? Why does pain exist and why must some of us experience it so frequently or so terribly in moments of our lives? The only conclusion I can come to about my life and yours, is that there must be a point and that there must be hidden blessings in all of that pain. For me personally, in order for my life to have purpose, I have to believe that there is a reason for all of this, for this thing called living, for human existence. And judging from the experience of all of our lives, it isn't to feel endless joy and happiness or that is what our lives would all be. Tragedy and heartbreak happen every moment of everyday in the world a thousand times over. Maybe the point of all of this is two fold; to give us something to relate to those around us with, and so that we better recognize the juicy, blessed moments in our lives when they occur with greater appreciation and joy. Heartbreak if nothing else, helps the well of empathy inside of ourselves grow and improves the relatability of our souls to the rest of those on the planet. It challenges us to really feel and more so, to learn, to grow. And if we can somehow manage to live through it, it brings us strength and courage we probably never knew we had. I wish that my friends who are struggling and wrestling with their lives and their lives' purpose right now could see if only a moment, themselves through my eyes. I wish they could see the beauty I am constantly astounded by in their souls. The kindness and the intelligence and really, the blessing and gift of their presence in the world. I wonder if we all truly realized and understood the importance of our being here, understood fully that there are reasons for us as individuals to be alive and particular gifts to give that only we can offer, if crisis' of faith would sink into the depths of our beings as deeply at times as they do now. When I look at my friends I can see why they are here as plain as day; I can see gifts they have to give and I know how very much they are loved. And I know that what I see is probably only a small portion of the potential for love and blessings they have to contribute to the world.

If only we all could take a cue from my cheap, bellowing Ikea teapot, announcing loudly each morning our place in the world and claiming our seat at humanity's table. As my minister so likes to say, today is the day we have been given, let us rejoice in it and be glad. Might I add onto that, let us rejoice in others and in their presence be glad. Might we share with them in their moments of heartbreak and sorrow, during their crisis' of faith and in their moments of joy, how very important their lives are to the world and let them know all of the reasons that they matter. May we in our prouder moments, not feel ashamed to toot our own horn a little bit like a whistling teapot, and may we in other's darker moments, bellow the call of their gift on the world for them, reminding them of the endless possibilities all of our lives hold. May we greet others we love and know, and those we may not, with the word 'namaste' in our hearts, seeing inside them the same divinity and promise that resides inside of ourselves. Today is the day we have been given, may we rejoice in others and tell them all the many and blessed ways they make us glad.

Namaste.

When I was Eleven

This is a piece that I began writing in a workshop recently. The prompt from the facilitator was, "When I was eleven..."

It was a bright... summer day I think. I was at the neighborhood barber shop with my dad and brother on their monthly visit to see Pat the barber in a little place that used to be on the back side of what was the old Hollywood Fred Meyers on 42nd and Sandy. The one with the rooftop parking lot for the few of you who actually lived in Portland twenty years ago. The one where I rode the escalator all the way down two floors and there in a sea of greedy Christmas shoppers, spotted in the very back of a bottom shelf, one last remaining cabbage patch kid when they were all the rage. I snatched her up and little Miss Dot Noel went home with me that day, my favorite toy and best friend for years to come. In fact, she an I didn't part ways until too many years before I found myself sitting around the corner in the barber shop at eleven watching my dad and brother get their sideburns trimmed and their necklines de-fuzzed. It was the summer before fifth grade and I was tall and gangly with long muscular legs and big feet that I'm sure swung back and forth non-stop over the edge of the chair as I waited restlessly to get out of that place for boys and men and back out into the world where I could run and jump and be free. I was a swimmer then, a state champion, several first place trophies on the bookshelf in my bedroom, able to swim two lengths of the pool in under thirty seconds. I was happy and confident and although didn't think a lot about my looks or how I appeared to others then, I can recall that I felt strong and confident, inside and out. As I sat in the window waiting, impatiently I'm sure, something happened that I can still remember as if it were only a few weeks ago; I was looking outside watching the traffic flow and people walk by and a raven haired woman in her twenties stopped and stood on the sidewalk outside of the shop. She had  what I thought was the coolest haircut I had ever seen; a pixie cut. And I knew, it was for me. "Look, look, look!" I shouted to anyone who would listen and I proceeded to tell my dad I wanted Pat to cut my hair just like hers. Now, Pat didn't normally cut women's hair, and I had never had short hair before but I was convinced I needed my hair to just look just like hers. After a round of interrogation from my father, I, after years of going to see Pat, for the first time in short my life, sat my long, boyish looking young body down in his chair. I can't really quite remember my mom's reaction when we got home that day, although I'm sure shock registered quite high on the list, but when all was said and done, I was pleased. And I have to say, I looked damn cute. Until about nine months later that is.

I was just going to a new school for fifth grade so I could participate in their arts magnet program and for the first time in my life, I got a brand new outfit to wear on the first day; a red shirt and a skirt with red roses on it. Together with my pixie haircut and new clothes, I was convinced I was the finest thing Buckman Elementary School had likely ever seen. As the year went on the cut grew old and after six months or so, I was ready to grow my hair back out. And the funniest thing started to happen; as the weeks and months passed, instead of the fine, smooth chocolaty brown hair that was cut off growing back in, a new tangly mass of curly, surly hair began to grow in. Puberty was on the cusp and it seemed all of a sudden, as my hips grew and my swimming time got that much harder to cut, my hair began to jet out in funny directions, in curls at my temples, my brother calling me 'Wings.' I was terribly disturbed by all of this and didn't know what to do with it or how to tame it or what was happening. My mom assured me, the same had happened her when she was around the age of eleven too and that it would all be okay. Looking up at her head of frizzy, greying locks I was, as you can imagine, less than comforted.

By my high school years my body had filled in and I had quit swimming, my hair having turned into a full fledged curls although most days I tried my best to blow dry the waves out. In the rain hairs would pop up and curl out here and there and it seems that ever since that fateful age of eleven, I have been in an endless battle with my hair to tame its wild ways. Over the years, I've perfected the art of straightening it, a combination of blow dryer with a special attachment, large round metal brush, and flat iron usually do the trick. Oh, and a shit load of expensive relaxing product. Even as I have on occasion felt inclined to work with the curl instead of fight it, I still am forced to used the same shit load of product of a different variety and a blow dryer complete with a giant diffuser on the end in order to try to keep my curls looking more like Shirley temple and less like Don King. In 2003 I cut my hair short again for the first time since eleven and in recent years I have kept it shorter than ever before in my life. After having to get up at 3am for a few years working for Starbucks, short hair that required just a little gel, and for the first time in my life, the ability to *air dry* my hair and not look like a chia pet, was thrilling. In my new job I have to wear a hat so I have gotten even lazier, not even washing or combing my hair some mornings. It seems funny to me now that I used to spend about forty five minutes on my hair every morning... and now usually spend less than five.

Recently I have been getting tired of my short hair and decided to grow out the top a little bit. I have been shocked by the amount of gray that I have, or white rather, and also surprised by the emotions that have come with seeing my curl come back as my hair grows. My mom had curly hair just like my own, and I have found myself quite taken aback in several moments lately. Looking in the mirror seeing curly gray hair surrounding my face, I see her staring back at me... and I feel all at once, happy and proud to look like her... and incredibly sad all the same. Although her nose was slimmer than mine, we looked eerily similar she and I. I think the older I get and the grayer I get, the more I will see her when I look at myself in the mirror. I have occasionally wondered at times if me keeping my hair either straightened or quite short in the years since she died has been one more way of me avoiding the subject of her in my brain. Avoiding thoughts that serve as a reminder of what I had and what I lost... perhaps better yet, a reminder of what she lost.

Today I straightened what little length of hair I currently have, a swoop of bangs hanging over my forehead and covering my right eyebrow. In this swoop, streaks of white can be seen. Growing up I always felt so embarassed of my mom's gray hair, of what I thought were her dorky clothes. I always wanted a mom who was chic and trendy and shopped with me at the GAP instead I had one with frizzy gray hair who wore tee shirts that looked like a crossword puzzle, green and purple sweatshirts that said things like, "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty," and mom jeans. It was all terribly tragic at eleven, and twelve... and twenty for that matter. It is only now in the graying of my own hair, that I have found the respect for her ability to say fuck you society's notion of what makes a woman beautiful and sport her salt and peppered head with pride. I imagine my brother and I gave her quite a few if not most of those gray and white hairs. These days I blame my job for all of mine, although I'm sure the stress and anxiety that have ruled my insides since the day I lost her seven years ago are equally responsible as well. To me, these white hairs laying  gently across my forehead are not only a sign of my life's struggles but more importantly a sign of my survival. And perhaps most of all, they are a reminder of kin. In this moment I feel proud of my gray hairs and proud that I lived to tell the story of how they and my curls came to be after so many years of my adult life thus far wanting desperately to either be doped up and locked away or wanting to just give up on life and quit completely.

Someone told me that I am beautiful yesterday. And my immediate reaction of course, was to argue with her. I felt like I did quite well in this task, lamenting all the things that are wrong with the way I look. I can't sadly, remember too many moments since I cut my hair at eleven and stood waiting for the school bus in my new red outfit confident in my appearance, that I have felt beautiful or even remotely pretty at all. And isn't that shame; I wouldn't ever wish that on another person and I find myself wondering why has it always been okay for me? So I'm not perfect and my hair has a mind of it's own, my skin is sometimes bumpier than I would like, and my thighs a little fat for their own good. Who ever said that there's not beauty and wisdom to be found in learning to appreciate imperfection. For a sunny Monday reflection, may we all look at ourselves in the mirror and see at least one something to be proud of, despite some the flaws we or the world may choose to find there. May we take pride in the parts of ourselves that tell a story, our story, and may learn to love and appreciate them despite what the rest of the world may think. For all of the gray hairs and ill-behaved eyebrows, for all of the big butts and the bad skin and the round bellies and short legs and jiggly thighs; for whatever parts of ourselves we may have been criticized about or have loathed ourselves for, may we try to remember as we are able, the history and people of which these traits came and may we in their imperfection, find a unique beauty all our own.

Namaste.