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Invisiblee Sees

I have grown tired of writing here. In search of beautiful everyday moments, here is a new, less wordy and more visual endeavor...

http://invisibleesees.tumblr.com/page/3

Fairy Tale

I wonder what it would feel like to have the sun kiss my skin on an almost daily basis; to recover the freckles that speckled my shoulders and cheeks as a child. It's been years now since I did anything but dare to just survive really; to keep my head above water. To function in the world. I'm ready for change I've told you and I'm not lying. Big changes only someone from another plane of existence like you could imagine. A reality greater than anything my mind has conjured up for years now.

At one point in my life, I was more talented at turning fear into faith, at risking it all, whatever that all might have been, for something new. Today I find myself wishing all the memories of days spent walking miles to do any little errand were closer to front of my mind's eye. Afternoons spent sitting at a computer typing the stories of my days for people far away to read while waiting for the rain to stop and the clouds to clear before my trek back home. I miss the unfamiliarity and the excitement of being surrounded by people from all corners of the globe who speak language I've sometimes never heard in person.

If I try very hard I can remember the queasy feeling in my stomach after having ridden in a small car on cobblestone streets with too many people who didn't speak English. I can remember trying to explain to a pharmacist in a language that was unfamiliar to me, what ailed. I remember one early morning in a small fishing village by the sea, just before sunrise, two guns being pointed in my direction, my large blue hiking backpacked being yanked here and there until I were rescued by onlookers. I remember hitching a ride down the coast in the back of a stranger's rusty pickup truck, the sharp green bushes I'd never seen before a blur along the sides of the road behind me. I can recall sitting by the window of some large bus, legs cramped before me, a song about wide open spaces in my headphones and deep cliffs off the side of the road beside me. I can remember riding a too thin horse in the Andes mountains for so long I could hardly walk for day and the bowl of beans and rice I had for dinner; still one of the best meals of my life. I remember the kindness of strangers, the soiled faces of children who begged for a living, and llamas everywhere I looked. I remember in a different country than this, sitting on the ground in a village full of women learning about the carpets they wove and watching them put any money they earned on a altar for a day before spending and in another place, baking bread in an outdoor oven with the men of the village. I remember encountering several times a day, humility deeper than I have rarely encountered in this country, men pinching my butt on the streetcar and salsa dancing in a secret basement pub in some distant city's downtown. I remember swimming in the warm Oaxacan ocean with my mother after days of not being able to sleep for fear of the scorpions that danced on the ceiling above my little cot each night. I remember climbing to el cielo to sleep under the starts in a hammock on top of a hill and eating giant slabs of sweet white pineapple for breakfast. I remember washing my laundry by hand on a rooftop and being amazed each and every time at the sun's ability to bleach out any stain or spill. The smell of lemon and lime floor cleaner fills my nose momentarily and the I can feel the heavy pulp of fresh squeezed papaya juice and crusty bread for only a second on my tongue. I can remember these colors and flavors and sounds in flashes here and there, but over time even these things have begun to fade. Perhaps it's time for me to stop remembering and start experiencing new versions of these things.

Take me to a new place where bougainvillea grows like ivy on cracked pastel colored walls. Find for me a courtyard where I can sit for a few moments away from the business of the world in afternoon shade and listen to the sound of water gurgling. Find a room with light where I can place in a small corner a wooden table older than me on which to write about the many things I've found to newly inspire me. Take me to a place where the people haven't gotten so out of touch; where what one has is not at all important compared with who one is and how they love. Take me to a place where Grace is the modus operandi and all else falls to the wayside in comparison. Help me simplify my world and recapture that courageous girl who has in her past ridden alone on many trains and buses through mountains and over valleys in continents where nobody new here name. Help me rediscover the joys of living without the pressures and stress of spending the majority of one's days doing something they feel no passion for. What will I do there to fill my days, to make a living? I don't know. But I do know when the heart is truly happy and full, opportunity has a way of presenting itself. When I am scared about all the leaping these changes will cause in my daily existence, remind me of the beauty that is found in the unknown. Of the courage and freedom that comes with throwing caution to the wind and choosing to really live instead of just survive.

That old fairy tale about a girl's life just doesn't seem to ever match up with my own no matter how hard I try. Perhaps it's time I gave up completely on chasing that white picket fence and started looking beyond my own front yard. Take my hand as I step up to the edge of this reality and peer out into the unknown. Watch me as jump and relearn how to fly, to live in wonder for more than these here few solitary moments at a time. Witness me be engulfed by the world and fall back into it's love

Hope

Prologue

For as far back into my childhood as I can remember, every June my father, mother, brother and I would go strawberry picking at Three Rivers Farm in Canby, OR. Although as an adult with a drivers license and a feeling that the world is not quite as large as I used to think it, Canby in my youth seemed a distant town, a quaint farm village far from my urban home. In reality, I think it not more than a thirty or forty minute drive from the elm studded streets of the upper middle class neighborhood in Portland where I grew up. As a child my street, NE 32nd Court, was one of the last streets in the area that was yet to be covered in asphalt and thick irregular strips of tar stretched across the way here and there as far as my eyes could see. In the summertime if we weren't chasing the ice cream man through the neighborhood on our bikes or at the swimming pool a few blocks away, you could likely find me and assortment of the other twenty or so odd children that called this street home squatted down  next to the strips of tar with freckled knees in the air looking for thick black bubbles to pop. We learned early on that it was best to use a stick to do the job as if you used your finger it wouldn't come off too easily and when you went home for dinner, your mother would be less than pleased.

In any event, on the weekends, when my father was off from work and my brother and I didn't have a swim meet, we would all pile into our Volkswagen bus or later our Nissan Minivan and head south to the town of Canby in search of the strawberry fields. Three Rivers Farm was a small endeavor with a large white colonial house and a big red barn on the top of a hill overlooking the acres of pasture and it was here we retuned at the onset of each summer to pick berries from which my mother and I would later make jam to last until the next June. Three Rivers was run by a squat raven haired woman named Martha who always wore overalls and seemed to me to be somewhere around the same age as my mother. I don't know if Martha was married or not, I never saw a man at Three Rivers Farm, but she had what seemed dozens of mismatched children of varying age who looked to me like they had come from all corners of the globe. They helped her weigh berries and tend to the animals and every year she would appoint one of them to show my brother and I the chicken coop where we were allowed to pick out one or two warm brown eggs of our very own. In front of barn, between it and the house, stood a giant willow tree older than any human I knew which cast a cool shadow over the dusty ground and seemed to make more bearable the hot summer heat. After egg picking and animal greeting and small talk with Martha, my family would trek down a dirt road to the strawberry patch where for a few hours we would remain hunched over in mostly silence staining one pluck after another our fingertips pink. Sometimes your fingers would sink right into the side of the berry and you would know you had found a rotten one, sometimes it looked a little green at the top still and you would turn it in your hand, examining if it was ripe enough to be picked. When we would leave the farm I always felt so content in this tradition and knew that although there would be many changes in season before I would be back again, I would for certain be back. The berries would be stacked in flats in the back of the van and I would sit in the back row, eating the sweet fruit all the way home. My mother all tanned and frizzy haired used to holler a warning at me from the front seat every year like clockwork that if I ate too many berries I would get sick but I always ate more than everyone else put together and I never ever did get sick from them. To this day strawberry shortcake remains my favorite dessert and I have a sneaking suspicion it is not just the taste that I like. Or maybe it is exactly the taste that brings me back to a time and place when my life was still innocent and good, when possibility and hope reigned supreme. Hope in fact at the time, wasn't even a thought. I had no need for it, life was already perfect as it should be and I never doubted growing up that it would ever be any different.

These years were the first chapter of my first life, the second chapter was much briefer than the first and began with the divorce of my parents at seventeen. And those two parts composed the entirety of my first existence in this world. My second life began when my mother was killed at fifty in car accident when I was twenty three years old, newly graduated from college and looking for my place in the world. I'm shocked to be sitting here today to tell you that in the past few years, a third life has miraculously begun. One I like to think of my rebirth and resurrection. It seemed for years upon years after losing my mother so suddenly and unexpectedly, that my life would forever be divided into two halves; the whole half, and the empty half. And at twenty three and beyond I was now facing what looked to be before me and empty and pointless existence. How could I go on living and participating in the world when it all just might end tragically and unfairly someday against my will? What was the point of this thing we call life? And how was I to carry on when the person I loved and who loved me most in the world was gone? How was I to get up each day and put one foot in front of the other when the rest of the people I love might just keep getting yanked from the world and from my heart in ugly and unjust ways when I hadn't finished loving them yet?

Mine is a story of unspeakable loss, of endless grief and then, many years and much work later, one of redemption. This is not a tale I ever thought I would tell; the part about the loss of one's mother or about the startling realizations about life that going through this has brought. Mine is also a story that really is not all that unique. I have suffered as too have you and most of the people in the world in one way or another. It is one of the things that unites us and creates the human experience. It is a story of how when my life in one instant crumbled into a million tiny broken pieces, I was able to slowly turn it over and over in my hand and study this thing called and look for the ripe spots and let the raw ones grow just as we did while we picked berries so many years ago. This is the story of how after many years of struggle, I have one wound and heartache at a time, patched many of my hearts broken pieces together. The tar is still there zig zagged across my heart just like it was on NE 32nd court, taping the experiences of my existence together but it is keeping those old wounds from gaping wide open to the elements on most of my days. I don't tell my story because I am unique in my suffering and in my loss but rather to share the forgiveness, love and faith that has come out of my experiences. I met a woman at church the other day who told me she teaches classes in another state about the falcity of two. When I said I didn't understand she took my hand in hers and looked me in the eye and said, "You and I, we are one." It was a deep, moving, and real moment. And it encapsulates everything I wish to say tot he world. Through the loss of my mother and the suffering it has caused in my life, I have discovered my connection and oneness with the rest of humanity, wells of compassion deeper than I could ever have imagined possessing, and a faith that defies definition.

I have always known in the back of my mind somewhere just as most people do that ones parents are supposed to die before you do... I just never imagined it would happen to one of mine while I was still a young woman. This is the story of my life and my mother's life and death woven together, the story of my own spiritual death and rebirth, the story of finding in the midst of my sorrow and grief, an astounding faith in myself and the human experience. This is a story that maybe above all else, really should be titled Hope.

Goldilocks

In Japan today people still lay buried, dead under building ruins, under towns and communities lay lives shredded to pieces and left hanging on some rope of the world like torn clothing strung up on the line. Survivors are living minute to minute in what I can only imagine a most surreal and unbearable existence. Tragedy in all of its forms, whether it affects one person or thousands or millions like all those battered souls in Japan, does in its own twisted way, hold one gift for us; the subtle reminder of life's both precious and fragile nature. An urging to remember who we are and why we are here, a gentle nudging to recognize and cherish the many gifts those of  us who are left behind in the mortal world do have, top amongst these being the people in our lives and the love the grows in between.

This morning I meditated in the tub, slinking down deep into the water and in this moment and that, all the world fell silent. Now I am sitting with still wet hair that curls in the way you like, the house smelling of cinnamon and cloves, and I am reading articles and looking at slide shows about unimaginable devastation half way across the globe. Flashes of my own loved ones deaths dance quietly in the periphery of my vision and all the while I find myself thinking of you. You know death better than I and have survived more tragedy in your short thirty something years than any one life ever should. Perhaps this then the reason for your wisdom, for the perspective and faith that radiates from your every pore, for the deep love and appreciation of everything around you, the gratitude that seeps out into the world and the hearts of those around you with every preciously earned exhale you take.

It's sprinkling outside and the clouds are hanging heavy and thick in the sky, pressing the weight of the world down onto these shoulders that despite their breadth, can sometimes not bear life's strain. I'm wondering if the stress you spoke of so briefly yesterday has passed yet, if you are wading through mud in the forrest with a dear friend and letting a multitude of responsibility escape your body for even just a few moments. What sort of awe for the world are you finding there as you wade underneath piney bows older than my grandmother? I wonder, if even for a second, as you admire the raindrops clinging to tree limbs like a million sparkling pearls, if you have thought if even for a moment of me? I suspect our time together will be short, your life too full to fit a creature as needy and demanding as me, into it. Rest assured that this morning under warm lamplight will only be one instance among many that I sit swaddled in green with a dog you love by my side wondering where this sweet life has taken you.

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.

Winter Blessings

I found myself thrown for a loop this past week, temperatures rising into the fifties. The fifties! In January! Can you imagine?! I suppose I am a true Oregonian at my core, feeling every autumn like I'm coming home again when the leaves begin their slow curled deaths and grey, sometimes stormy skies, return once again.  I relish the soft breath of a winter morning's mist on my cheeks and the funny ways my hair curls on the days when storm drains clog and puddles abound. When I came out of work yesterday I was shocked again to discover that at seven in the evening, my car was iced over. Iced over! It was just fifty five degrees a few days ago! Can you imagine?! And truth be told, although I had to sit there for several minutes and let my car defrost, making me late to a dinner date, I actually kind of loved it. Everyday at work people complain about the weather; it's the safest topic in the world to make small conversation about in an attempt to be friendly and so it is all of our defaults, customers and employees alike. I secretly love when the weather bumps up and down in temperature unpredictably, when its raining one minute and rainbows and sunny skies are seen the next. Its like I can feel the earth spinning as I stand on my porch and watch the clouds slowly roll on by above us. It's only in the summertime when I feel convinced at every moment that the heat and the dank, humid skies are going to bundle themselves up and descend down upon me, choking what little breath I have left. I hate day after day after day of heat... I literally feel at times like I can't breath, like I'm suffocating under the warmth and stagnancy of it all. I love in the fall and winter and spring how the weather changes day to day, hour to hour, the world demanding of us we pay it attention.

Last weekend Shumba and I went to the Gorge for an afternoon. We saw every kind of weather imaginable. Sunny blue skies, cloudy gray skies, hail, rain, mist, sprinkling, downpour; we saw it all. All together I counted twenty three waterfalls although I'm sure if I hadn't of been driving, I would have spotted more. As we approached Multnomah Falls there were park rangers everywhere; the north parking lot having to be closed because it was completely flooded. As Shumba and I approached on foot I found myself in shock again, the waterfall was wider and more forceful than I had ever seen it. At the bottom you couldn't even see the pool because the water was coming down so hard and quickly that it all just splashed right up to the lookout point. People stood back fifteen, twenty, thirty feet and watched from afar, stunned. Shumba and I on the other hand, marched right up the railing and were sprayed from head to toe. We stood there for a few minutes, I'm sure people behind us thinking we were crazy, I'm sure Shumba winking and blinking and squinting as he usually does when it's raining out., but I found myself absolutely enthralled. I closed my eyes and I tilted my face toward the water and I relished in the feeling of something so grand, so beautiful, so alive touching me. I felt in that moment, part of the world. Alive, a kink in the wheel of this big crazy world and I felt connected to the Earth in a way that I seldom do in my day to day life. As we walked back to the car water ran down the front of my raincoat and dripped down the tip of my nose. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara or I would have looked like a raccoon walking a dog on a leash. We made several more stops along the way and although they are views I've seen and roads I've driven and trails I've hiked a million times over, I wasn't ceased to be amazed yet again by all of their stunning beauty. All around us yellowed fields and brush of the most stunning auburn color, barren gray-green trees and my dreams hanging thick in the air above us with the clouds. It was a magnificent, many magnificent, sights to behold.

On Thursday I don't go into work until one thirty in the afternoon. Although I like to bitch and moan with the best of them about having to work until ten thirty at night, I relish my lazy Thursday mornings. I always make a french press, today an African blend, my favorite, and have a good breakfast. I'm out of bread for toast so today I am eating a blood orange for breakfast. It's the deepest reddish purple color with tiny tips of orange on one end and after having peeled it, my fingertips are stained pink. I was out of cream this morning and don't normally drink milk or keep it on hand, so today two giant dollops of ice cream went into my coffee. It's quiet in my house, just the sound of my little red dog slowly taking in and out the breath of the world and I feel at peace. As much as I love my job and spending time with my friends and family, I absolutely adore mornings like this and afternoons in the Gorge like Shumba and I got to experience the other day. I love when I have time to think about things other than what needs to be done in that moment and the ones coming soon after. I love when I can contemplate silly things like the weather and how it makes me feel, when I have time to stand in my kitchen and look out the window for as many minutes as I want in absolute silence and take in the beauty of the naked trees and the grey skies and the world at its barest before me. There's grace to be found here.

I have not in the past been one who is good at... being still. I would die a quick death at any job that required me to sit at a desk and on my days off from work have typically been someone who is up and showered early, ready to tackle a list of errands or social outings or cleaning or whatever. Part of my taking a job with New Seasons was not only for new career opportunities, but for a complete change in lifestyle. I was going 24-7 at Starbucks and worked insanely long hours. I usually had split days off and I was always exhausted from the strange hours I worked. I was cranky and testy and a bad partner and I made a commitment to myself when starting this new job, that I would demand of myself an honoring of work-life balance. And for the most part I feel like I have done well. At least three weeks out of the month I have two days off in a row, usually the days I want, Sunday and Monday. I rarely work more than my scheduled forty five hours each week, and I am not constantly exhausted. On my days off I try to spend at least one of them relaxing and yes, being lazy. I try to stay in my pajamas for a few hours or half a day or a few times, even a whole day (!), and just be. I have my occasional moments of stress, of frustration, of exhaustion, and of depression when I let the world get me down, but overall, I find that I am feeling much healthier in body and calmer in mind and spirit than I did at this time a year ago or two years ago. This new job is treating me well and I feel beyond blessed to have a work for a place that not only allows me to, but encourages me, to have a meaningful life outside of it's four walls; a job that allows me an income enough to have a car to escape the busy city life for a few hours on the weekend to commune with nature; a job that affords me a computer to type my thoughts away, that allows me to put blood oranges and other healthy food I might not normally be able to afford or have such easy access to, into my body.

Today Shumba and I will go for a big Thursday walk as we call them, much longer than our usual route and he will come home panting, out of breath, and high on having had the opportunity to really stretch his little furry red limbs. I will feel refreshed by the blessing of his company in my life and by the glory of this great big beautiful cloudy gray world around me and I will sing with Ray LaMontagne all the way to work. When I get there I will give away smiles to my employees and coworkers like they are candy and hope that in their reception people feel love. And I will look forward to my weekend and to my next Thursday morning where I will be fortunate enough to have the time again to stop and watch and feel and listen to and smell and taste all that the world has to offer. May all those of us who are privileged enough to be regularly given the blessings of peace and quiet and time for reflection and communion with nature, not let those our world who don't share in this great fortune, slip from our hearts and minds and may we remember, in all the many quiet and gray winter moments that surround us, to stop for a moment here and there to thank the Universe for blessing us with all the riches that the beautiful natural world and our glorious lives have to offer.

Namaste.

Scarred

It's 12:51am. I can't sleep. I went to bed around nine and have been back up for about the past hour or so. I finally realized a few minutes ago that I was laying in bed with my arms above my head, ringing my hands, literally. At that point I decided it was probably worth just giving into the insomnia and getting up and letting my hands move in the way they really ache too rather than giving in any more to the swampy thoughts that were clogging my brain.

Someone died last week. Not someone I was close to, but someone a lot of other people were close to... a lot of people I am close to. And as death always should, it touched me. I spent the first several days worrying about his family and his friends and my coworkers and then as the days went by I found my thoughts beginning to be peppered more and more with thoughts of my own experiences with death. And of the death of my mom of course, to be specific.

I woke tonight with thoughts of dying myself in a car accident. Of texting or talking on the phone while driving and not realizing the car in front of me has stopped and plowing into them. I actually think of this when I am driving quite often as well, of what would happen, what it would look like and feel like if I ran into the car in front of me. What it would be like if I was gone. If people would miss me. If they would have a memorial service. What they would say. It's all quite morbid really I know. But I really can't help it I suppose. It's how both members of the generation of Sepulveda's before me died and I often wonder if this will not be my fate too. Or if not this, than cancer... but surely death at an early age. And earlier age than old age anyways. I suppose in the end, or in the ongoing as life continues to be, I have so many unanswered questions and so very little closure about the death of my mom that it always just hangs there over me in the dark sky, dangling and poking me as I try in vain to sleep.

Tomorrow is the memorial service for my fallen team member at work. I am going in several hours early to make many large catering platters for the service. My boss called me yesterday, the only time she has ever called me on my day off, to see if I needed help staffing my department tomorrow in the event that several of my employees would want to attend the mid-day service. She also asked, quite delicately and rather awkwardly, if I was planning on attending and who I wanted to ride with, etc. You see, she has said a few times that she wants to read my blog but I've been unwilling to share the website, knowing that there is not only a lot about my personal life here but a lot about my spiritual and theological beliefs too. I knew it not appropriate for my coworkers to read. But after writing the last entry about the day Dave died, and seeing how moved and torn up she was last week by the whole experience, I sent her a link... I suppose hoping to say to her without having to awkwardly say in person and at work, "I feel you, I've been there, I've got your back." I apologized in advance for the sappiness or rawness of my writing possibly freaking her out and she sent me a very short response thanking me for letting her "know me." She also told me I am an inspirational woman. Wow, to both of those things. Funny how I don't see that in myself for a half a second but how I see it in her and most of the other people I encounter in the world all of the time. In any event, I wondered for a brief moment as we were talking on the phone yesterday, if knowing a little more about my experience with death, she was wondering in the moment if about all this talk of death, of memorial services and food and flowers and eulogies might just... be hitting a little too close to home at that moment. Or maybe this self-involved train of thought was just an example of my selfishness, of me making someone else's death, about me and my own life's experience.

I've been trying not to think much about death this past week. As much as that is possible. It actually sounds really stupid now that I am saying that. How can I not after what happened at work? And how can I not allow it to bring back up memories and emotions I usually try to keep at bay about loss I have experienced in my own life. In the past week, as much as I tried to keep them tightly bundled up in some distant corner of my brain, in quiet hours alone in the dark, unable to sleep, I have been flooded repeatedly with memories of November 10th, 2003 and the many days afterward. I can recall with exact clarity things that were said and what people were wearing and thoughts I had and places I went and things I saw... and it has felt rather like... revisiting a trauma all over again. And so, I can't sleep you see. It's funny, I hadn't realized until this past week how much of my life between then and now I have very little or no memory of. I can recall that first week after my mom's death almost moment to moment... and then for months, years afterwards I have very little memories at all. I can't describe or remember what my life was like or what I was like or how I functioned in the world at all. Which, apparently, other than work I didn't really do at all according to my ex. When she said something awhile back about how withdrawn I was from the world, I don't remember this at all. I don't remember anything other than playing scrabble on the floor by myself for hours on end. That's my only memory of the months afterward and of the few years afterward I remember very little other than being at work and walking Shumba. And I remember I was moody and volatile and that I baked a lot. But that is all. I must have been such a horrible partner. I think probably, I was horrible from then on out...

In any event, death can scar us just a little bit or a lot if we let it. To the trained eye, to the eye that has seen death many times itself, I am covered in gashes, in scabs and in scars; my loss visible in my every move. In my inability to let people get close to me... in my inability to believe in my dreams and in myself... in my inability to get over my absolute terror of really getting out into the world and living. I try not to be a statistic, to be someone who has, "failure to progress," but know deep down this maybe describes me all too accurately. In most moments I don't think about this and I know that I function in the world alright and live my life... but there's a gap... Sometimes I wonder, how can I progress when I don't even know what happened to cause the death of my own mother? How can I progress when I never even really said goodbye.

I think the real reason I can't sleep is because I have guilt and I have regret. Tomorrow is a memorial service and all week I've been worried about attending, about the emotions it will bring up. I've never been to one you see, not even for my mom. I remember days after she died her friends pestering my brother and I to come up with something... but it all just felt too surreal... too impossible. I was still in a state of complete and total shock and so was he. And so a group of her friends in Portland and a group in Washington held their own individual memorial services where no family was in attendance. I have often worried that they probably think my brother and I horrible people because of this. And even though the thought of this; of a service memorializing my mom, of having to say goodbye in such a public, final way absolutely terrifies the living shit out of me like very little else I can imagine does... I feel kind of robbed and sad that I didn't have this. I feel guilty that I am preparing food and participating in the memorial service of a man I hardly knew when I couldn't even do the same for my own mother. Shame on me. Shame, shame, shame shame on me. And this, this is I think, why I can't sleep.

I have spent the past couple of years thinking and writing about the death of my mom, about death in general, about the implication and affect of death on how we live our lives, about how the two are completely intertwined, about the reality of morality, about how death connects us all to each other almost more than any other experience... and in doing so, I thought that I had helped myself finally find some closure and begin to heal... But the events of this past week have brought up so many unanswered questions to be revisited, so many raw emotions that had been pushed down into the depths of my being, so much anger and resentment and frustration and sadness and depression... that I'm left sitting up on my couch with all the lights on at one thirty seven in the morning wondering if I've really progressed or healed much at all; if I've ever moved on pass the moment when my father choked out the words, "You mom was in an accident..." so many years ago. Or is the only difference between then and now that these days I have learned to scream silently on the inside to myself rather than aloud for other people to hear? I hope when I go to work today, I won't be screaming too much or choking on the emotion of it all on the inside. I hope that I will find satisfaction and ease in letting my hands work, in staying busy, in being able to do for someone else something which I couldn't even do for my own mother. And I hope that in so doing, maybe just one of these big scars plastering my soul will begin to melt away.

Namaste.

On Living and Dying II

Thousands of people died in the world yesterday. And in my neck of the woods, we count one of those thousands among our own. His name was Dave, and his surname, I don't even know. He was older, in his seventies probably, and collapsed from a heart attack mid-day. All of the afternoon employees were arriving to fire trucks and ambulances and the morning employees were still there too, some of whom stood outside the front of the store watching EMTs pump Dave's bare chest up and down for over far too many minutes. I was inside, making salads and trying to keep my employees inside and away from whatever appeared to be going on outside, we would find out soon enough. Accidents and emergencies have happened at other jobs before and as a manager, as much as curiosity can kill me, I feel it my job to keep the waters as smooth as possible and keep my own employees away from the storm. I was helping a customer when she told me an employee had collapsed. Ouch... all of a sudden worry set in and it all felt too close to home. A flash of panic ran through my body. It would be okay I told myself, somebody was just probably dehydrated and fainted or something. And so I went back to making my salads but not too long after one of my employees came into the deli after having taken a break, tears streaming down her face and eyes as wide as any I'd ever seen, she came up to me and simply said,"Dave died," and didn't blink. I could see her groping the world around her for some sort of understanding and comprehension as to what was happening; it was look I have felt deep inside of me a million times over and a feeling and experience, that of death, that I knew often defied explanation. I tried to stay calm, I asked her what she was talking about and then across from me at another prep table, a cook began to sob, audibly. She bent over on the counter and deep wails of pain came to her. She began talking quickly in Spanish, stopping to heave her body over and over into as much as a fetal position one can be in while still standing. I couldn't understand exactly what she was saying except I think, that she had talked with him that earlier that day. It was an awful scene and everyone was standing around in shock. As the leader of this group, I felt like I should do something, anything... but didn't know what that something should be. I told my employees to leave the floor, to sit down and take some time and I rushed upstairs to try to find  employees who were arriving for their closing shifts and break the news but I was too late. Upstairs in the break room I found a dozen people sitting in complete silence, looks of terror and shock and sorrow on their faces, redness and tears in their eyes. And in that moment, the world fell silent, another angel was getting his wings.

I drove home thinking about how deep the loss of a life sinks into us and can forever linger in our souls. When I got home I hugged my dog as my boss called to let me know that although he had a faint pulse when the ambulance left the store and there was talk  that maybe he hadn't died, she choked over her words as she said, "I just wanted to let you know, that Dave didn't make it." She was on her way home from work when she got a phone call that Dave had indeed died and that his wife was at the store. She was on her way back. She was supposed to go to the Blazers game with myself and several other managers and said she didn't have it in her to call them all and asked if I would spread the news. Of course I would. And so I hung up the phone and I sat on my couch in shock, opened itunes on my computer, and put on some Taize chanting, music that feels the very closest to holy noise to me. I sat silent, breathing deeply in and out, and listened to beautiful voices sing Alleluia and somehow amid it all, Shumba knew the world's axis had just shifted slightly too far off kilter, sitting next to me, his head leaning gently on my lap. Here it was again, the familiar song of death beating in my heart. At this point in my life, I know it well. And I felt eerily calm. I felt myself worrying about my boss, my employees who probably watched Dave die, and about one of our employees who held his hand as he left the world and about what painful memories if this experience may stamp inside her being. I hope that over time she can see her important part in the way that Dave left the world as a privilege, offering comfort and community to someone in their last moments. I thought about Dave's wife, about the children he may or may not have, I thought about knowing that deep shock and the unbearable grief that follows the moment when someone dies all too well and wishing I could absorb all of it into my being before it sets into his family and my peers insides. 

I suppose in the end, its the one surest and truest fact of life, that all people die; its the singular thing that each of us on this planet share in common. And for the past seven years in my life, death and the grief it leaves behind has often times been the heartbeat that weaves one moment and day and week into the next moments. Once you have experienced death as many of us have, it lives inside of you. Depending on the trauma of the death, upon how we were related or if we were related at all to the person who died, grief can weigh heavy and numbingly painful, or it can be a short, sweet, reflective sorrow that sits inside of us momentarily before we return back to our lives. Either way, it touches us all and it makes us remember the value and importance and perhaps more than all else, the fragility of life. It makes us remember our humanness and that as much as we would like to pretend sometimes, none of us are immortal; that we are share one very important flaw; that we will also die. 

When I was at work yesterday and all of this was happening, I ached for my keyboard. I wanted to write, no,  I needed to write. To process. To reflect. And when I got home I knew I had to go out again and tell people that someone they knew had died. I warmed a frozen burrito in the microwave and I sat on the couch and I watched it cool as it sat, untouched and the choir inside my computer sang, "laudate, laudate," one tenor carrying the tune, acting the heartbeat for the group, for the world. I called my chef who had taken the day off, to share the news with her on her thirty sixth birthday; what a horrible thing. I put on my favorite cozy sweatshirt and a down jacket and as I climbed in my car and pulled out of the parking lot, it began to snow. Large white flakes fluttered and floated down and the world seemed to become silent. And I knew in that moment, grace was happening. Pay attention Emily. Were these feathers falling from Dave's wings as he traveled wherever it was he believed he would travel when his life ended? And did in the snow, those who knew him see at least for a moment the startling beauty that appeared on the day his body died? I will probably remember these moments for an eternity just as I can still feel the kiss my mom left on my cheek seven years ago and hours before she was killed here on the right side of my face, still slightly damp with her love today. Just as I can remember the screams that bellowed from the depth of my soul later that night and the barbeque chicken a friends mom made to try to comfort me a few days later. Just as I remember holding my dying grandmother's stiff hand and and hearing her raspy last breaths and the days after when I collected the few things left of her and threw them in a dumpster. I can still remember the two times in my life I have seen my father cry; looking at pictures of my mom a few days after she died and when he told me that my grandfather had passed several years earlier. Just as I remember planting a tree when I was 12 for a classmate who had been shot and killed after an intruder broke into his house in the middle of the night,  I remember exactly where I was and what happened the moment Princess Diana died or can recall with exactly clarity being woken up by my partner on September 11th and being glued to the television together in silence for hours and days on end. These are the moments in my life that I will remember when all other memories fade because they are the moments when everything I hold dear vibrated the hardest inside of me and grief and sadness felt like they were trying to suffocate my every breath. Strangely enough, these are also the moments I feel at times most blessed to have experienced because they have made me the person that I am. They have helped me find strength and courage and wisdom I never knew I had and they have taught me to savor life in a deeper, more meaningful way. It has been said that until one experiences death they don't really know how to live and I don't know if I believe that's fully the case... but for me it is true that death has taught me how to live more bravely and thankfully and resiliently and has helped me to recognize with greater ease and find value in the things of beauty and in the brokenness that surrounds me in every moment of my life.

Shumba slept with me in bed the entire night last night, he has never done this before. I wonder, he must have known. This morning I woke several hours before my alarm was to go off and I knew I needed to write. I am thinking about Dave's wife and wondering if she has family to surround her in these difficult moments and all those that will follow. I am thinking about Dave sitting on the couch across from me in the break room on so many mornings... about how I was always eating and on my cell phone or reading the paper and about how he just always sat there on that same cushion, never eating, rarely talking. And I feel kind of guilty that I never talked with him much, that I didn't take advantage of communing with and getting to know him and all of the people around me in my life instead of shutting myself off to the world when I'm feeling lazy or antisocial. Because on the day after his exit from our world, I find myself wishing I knew Dave even a little bit more.
Let this be a lesson to me and to all of us not to waste the moments of our lives when we could be weaving this great big interdependent web we all spin a little tighter instead of serving our own self interests in the moment and expanding the gap between ourselves an others. Because everything that happens in life presents an opportunity for learning, this is what I will take away from Dave: pay attention, and spread community. Being polite and smiling sometimes isn't enough and isn't what we're called here to do in the end. 

I'm sure Dave's friends and family will have other, much deeper, reflections in the days and weeks and years following his death. I wonder for my boss and my coworkers, for those who did and didn't know Dave well, what reflections this sadness will bring. I hope in the least bit that it will remind those one hundred and fifty so of us that we are a family of our own. That it will remind us to engage with one another in respectful and kind and genuine ways. That it will help us forget personality conflicts and help us become more united, if even momentarily. When death strikes, people usually come together in new and deeper ways and in loss, perhaps this is almost always the gift. We lost one but are reminded of the dozens and hundreds in our lives who remain. We are reminded of our own life and of its value and of its ability to connect with and impact other lives. May the love that we have for one another as a work family, be palpable in the eyes of our customers and may our kindness and love spread to them, brightening their worlds if even a miniscule amount. May they take the love we offer them in smiles and small conversations and spread it out even further into the world towards their coworkers or family or friends. In the end, we are all called here to love and not to hate, and this is perhaps one of the greatest lessons that death teaches us. May we all go into the world realizing our connection to those around us. May we in all of our days, take small moments to work on weaving the fabric of humanity a little tighter than we found it, and may we, in reflection of those we have lost, be thankful at least for the time that they had and that we had with them. And most of all, may we remember in ourselves, that we are a blessing and gift upon the world. That we, just like Dave and everyone we have loved and lost, offer gifts that nobody else can; that we are worthy and are loved, just as we are. God bless Dave.

Namaste.

January 31st
The day that I wrote the above post I arrived at work to be ushered into a grief counseling session with the other department managers in the store. We discussed how to handle our grieving and upset employees and also how we ourselves can best deal with the loss of Dave or with any other memories or feelings of loss that it brought up. My store manager shared a little more about Dave that I didn't know and it brought home to me another lesson, a bigger lesson than I originally wrote about above. Unbeknownst to many people Dave worked with, for much of his life he was a banker. The last many years of his career he was a bank president. But his entire life he had harbored a dream of bagging groceries at a supermarket and when retirement came, his opportunity after decades of wishing, arose. Dave worked only three days a week I think but as his wife put it in the days after his passing, "he loved that damn place." Apparently Dave was happy as a clam being able to chat up our customers and get to know them and help them with their groceries and he absolutely loved what he did at New Seasons. His daughter and wife shared that it brought them a small amount of comfort knowing that he died doing what he loved. Those from the store who attended Dave's memorial service were surprised to see many of our customers there too paying homage to the friend they had made as he bagged their groceries. People brought flowers and his family hung a picture near the store entrance and one man was seen praying outside at a makeshift memorial where Dave had collapsed. I suppose in the end none of us will ever truly know how many or who's lives we will touch even if we are just bagging their groceries or ushering them to a seat each Sunday morning or serving them potato salad across the lunch counter. May we all until our final breaths, just as Dave did, get out into the world and practice doing what we love as much as we are able and in doing so, spread our own joy and light out onto others. Life is short and its sweetness fleeting so why not spend our time devoted to doing something that brings us joy and then passing this on to others. Dave was worth it and by golly, so are we.

Namaste.