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. 

Mes Amis

Friendship

–noun

1.

the state of being a friend; association as friends: to value a person's friendship.

2.

a friendly relation or intimacy.

3.

friendly feeling or disposition.

Some would say that you could define a person by their relationships with other people. Most especially with their friends. Because while we can't choose our family, our friends are people that for whatever reason, we have picked to be in our lives in some degree of intimacy and relationship. The way that we treat and relate to them says something about who we are as human beings both as a collective people, but more so as individuals.

I don't feel like I've been a very good friend to very many people in my life. The friendships that have been deep and meaningful in my thirty years I can count on one hand and the ones that I currently have in my life that mean everything to me number about half of that. I admit it, selfishness is in my nature and at certain points more than others, it can reign supreme... sometimes to the neglect of friends. During periods of difficulty such as during my parents divorce or when I lost my mom or the past year when my relationship of ten years ended, I became at times an exceptionally selfish individual. In spite of how it may appear on this blog, I am generally a very private person. I don't display much emotion with others and tend keep most of my feelings and emotions to myself. And during times of great stress or sadness or when I'm feeling most broken (and probably need to give and recieve love from other people the most), I tend hide away from the world and prefer to process my thoughts and emotions in private. Not intentionally, I pull away from the world and from my friends in the process. This past year that has happened quite a bit, me spending months at a time either at work or holed up in my house with my dog and stacks of books around me. I read, I write, I pray, I process and hopefully, on the other end, a changed me will appear. The problem is that sometimes during these periods of chrysalis in my life, when I feel content to be working on my own insides, I become selfish and forget about people I care about, leaving friends sometimes feeling overlooked and hurt. It's sometimes been an exceptionally hard thing for myself, being such an introvert, to balance maintaining meaningful friendships while also carving out much needed alone time to regain my sanity after being surrounded by hundreds of people five days a week at work. I suppose this is why as I've gotten older and realized my own need for quiet time by myself, I have become much more selective about the people I spend my limited time with and the friendships I invest in. That being said, there are friends out there whom I miss, whom I wonder about, whom I think have lost quite a bit of respect for me in the past year and this continues to be a hard reality to live with.

I have recently reunited with an old and true pal of the greatest degree. She and I had a falling out many months ago after I made assumptions about her feelings towards actions I had taken in my life and said something very hurtful and unfair to her. And so she let me fade from the fabric of her everyday life. Occasionally I would text or call and leave a message, tell her I missed her and apologize and wish her well and she would always respond politely but I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that deep down she was done with me. And it broke my heart. It's rare for me to find a friend that I connect with so succinctly, that I can both laugh my ass off with and with whom I can also share my tears and my regrets and my deepest sadnesses and in this diamond of a friend, I had that. And then I didn't.

This fall the waves of life came crashing down on me hard and in unison and I found myself broke, busted and alone and not knowing who else to reach out to, I reached out to this friend I hadn't spoken with in many months. And she responded. And she asked if I was okay. And despite the hurt I had caused her so many months ago, she forgave me and she loved me and continues to do so selflessly for exactly the big old nerd that I am. When I think about her I feel so blessed and happy to have this kind of support and when good things happen to me I want to tell her because I know she will be happy with me. When bad things happen to me I want to rant and rave and complain to her because I know she will either support my cause, or call me out if I'm being irrational. She always listens to and supports me and she tells me she is proud of me. Nobody tells me that. And I believe her. She encourages me to follow my heart and my dreams and believes in the possibility of my life having a great impact on the world. That's a lot to believe in someone, I still am not really sure why or how she does it. In reflection upon my feelings towards the importance of our friendship to me, I have recently come to the realization that all of these things and so much more mean she is my family to me. I don't have any idea if she feels the same and that's okay. She is like my equally gay sister. When I get married I hope she will be my maid of honor and will be the big gay god-mommy of my children. I hope that when she gets married I will be the one performing the ceremony (and wearing a fabulous linen suit). I hope when we are old and gray we will be able to sit on a porch together and drink chai tea and laugh about what big nerds we were back in the day and that our wives and our children will be great friends. And mostly I hope that whatever many changes life surely has in store for us in the future, that we will always be able to come back to this place of ease and happiness that exists between us and that where love has been between us, love will remain.

In my life the people who are close are few and far between. I suspect this is the case for a lot of us. Some of the people I admire most in the world are everyday folks I meet or know who live life so openly and unabashedly that they not only let anyone and everyone in, but they invite them into their world and their lives and create this beautiful ripple effect of love out into the world. Learning to be better at letting more people really see me and trying to really see others is one of my 2011 goals. For all of us, partners and pets and jobs and even our families come and go in life and sometimes simply just go... so thank God for the love and communion of friends. Although I have two blood-related relatives in town, the friend mentioned above and a few others amazingly giving and open souls feel just as much like my family too. When I feel frustrated about not having a giant gaggle of friends to parade around with, or a "crew" as it were, I try to remember the great blessings of the presence of the close and amazing friends I do have in my life; quality, not quantity. I only hope that I can be half as good of a friend to them as they are to me and that in my presence, they may always feel comfort, peace, and happiness inside their own skin. May we all go through our lives blessed with the love and company of at least one good friend with whom me can be our most beautiful and our most ugly selves and may we when we leave their presence, go out into the world and pass on the love they have given us to others. I am lucky to have that and to be inspired by these women and many more. May you too be so blessed.

Namaste.

Portrait of Beauty

There's a couple at my church named Jason and Jaime. They appear to be in their mid to late thirties. Jaime reminds me of every great art teacher I ever knew, with dyed frizzy red hair and crepe-y flowered skirts and leather boots and beaded dangling earrings and this kind of chatty, spunky personality. I can tell she's a free thinker, a lover of all that is beautiful, a giver. Jason is tall and hunched over, quiet, epileptic and sometimes, visibly intoxicated. During the service they sit in the back row of the balcony, their belongings strewn out next to them. Before Jaime's purse got stolen from behind her feet as sold Street Roots on the side of the sanctuary a few months ago, she would place her purse on the side of her too. When I usher, they always give a few dollars to the offering. When they are outside on the street selling newspapers, many of their belongings in tow, people come up to them and bring them wool socks or old coats or hand knitted chartreuse and turquoise hats. People hug them, they ask how they are, they know their name out there on the street. But inside, Jason and Jaime sit up in the balcony in the back row alone, isolated. Sometimes they don't even go upstairs at all but go down underneath the sanctuary to Fuller Hall where we have social hour after the service and they sit and drink hot coffee or tea and they get warm.
 
 About six months ago Jaime told me they had found a cheap place to live but expressed frustration about being unable to find a job. She was worried she didn't have much nice to wear to an interview and that she wouldn't find a job in time to pay the rent at the end of the month. For a housewarming present I got them a basket of laundry detergent and quarters, and iron and some hangers with the hopes that having clean and pressed clothes might give her that boost of confidence she needed. She thanked me profusely and did end up finding a job as a waitress but it didn't last long. I don't know much about her history other than that she has a few children who are not in her custody and she spends a lot of her time not selling newspapers shuffling around town with Jason trying to find him free or reduced health care and medication for his epilepsy. She has shared with me that she is bi-polar and I wonder if this, coupled with all the other struggles she is faced with, has made finding and keeping employment difficult. I can tell from her nature that she's nurturing, always hugging me hello and asking how I am when in the grand scheme of both of our lives, I have very little to worry about.

A few months ago I could tell that Jason and Jaime had lost the place they were renting and were back on the street as Jaime didn't have her makeup on as usual and she seemed exceptionally melancholy. Her spunk was gone and she seemed tired, downtrodden and Jason appeared intoxicated as he sold newspapers. Inside on the bulletin board I saw a small note on a ripped piece of scratch paper saying that they were looking for a donated used computer to help them with their job and home and health care hunt. It just so happened that I knew my dad's office was getting all new computers because my brother was getting a used laptop from him. I asked if there was any extra and my dad said they were going to sell them but that he would give one to me if I needed it. I told him that while my computer seems to catch one virus after the next, and has to be plugged in to work because the battery died about two years ago, that it wasn't for me that I was asking.

The Sunday before Christmas I asked Jaime if they had had any luck with the computer hunt and she said no. I told her that I had one for her and you could tell by her reaction she thought I was pulling her leg. I told her I would bring it the next week, the day after Christmas, but I fell through on my promise. Instead I went and got a tattoo with a good friend. I felt terrible all this past week that I had made a promise and not delivered and hoped when I saw them today, they wouldn't be upset or disappointed in me. To be completely honest, I did for a moment earlier in the week worry that in need of money, they might just sell the computer, but then I realized that it didn't really matter what they did with it, that that wasn't the point. As a giver of a gift, it's unfair for me to give it with strings or worries attached. All we can ever do is give what we are able and hope it is valued and valuable; to give with faith. When I saw Jaime today, computer in a bag under my arm, you could tell she was bursting with curiosity of if I was going to deliver on my promise. I pulled it out from under my arm and wished her a merry, belated Christmas and she just kept saying over and over, "I knew you would bring it, I knew you would! Jason didn't think you would but I just knew you would." I felt really embarrassed as I hadn't really done anything to give her this gift; I hadn't spent any money or shopped for anything, I had simply lucked into something that she needed and was getting undue credit. I brushed off her thanks and she went to tell Jason the good news. As I turned to leave, hoping that I had made her day at least a little bit more joyous, she came to give me a hug, tears in her eyes. She said that she was so grateful for me and for the gift I had given her. She held me and she looked me in the eyes and as tears streamed down her face she told me she just wanted to get a job and a home and get her life back together so badly so she could give back to other people too. And I believed her. She said for her, having no or very little resources or means, makes it impossible for her to give much to others and that this is what is most difficult for her about being homeless. Unsure of what was the right thing to say to offer her comfort, I told her that for me and I'm sure for others, that her presence in the world is simply enough. I said that her smile and her friendliness and her spunk are a gift in an of themselves and I meant it.

Isn't it funny sometimes how we can go through the world not really realizing the affect we may or may not have on other people? I know for example, that I will go to church each Sunday and she will be one of the first people I see. Unbeknownst to her, I am newly single and generally exceptionally lonely and starved for human contact and she is one of the few people who will hug me each week. Her smile and the joy that she generally radiates are a gift to me and I suppose sadly, in the tradition of my family, instead of me just telling her this, I have given her gifts. I feel like I've done very little for Jaime and other homeless people when you consider how great my wealth is and privilege are when compared to hers... and yet she was showering me with thanks and compliments that I didn't at all deserve. In reality, between the two of us, she's the survivor, she's the brave one.

This interaction got me thinking about the people who mean the most to me in the world and how they aren't those who have given me lavish gifts, but how they are those who have said or done small, thoughtful and genuine things for me... those who have recognized me for who I am and appreciated it. Those who have really seen me. I think in the end, this desire to truly be seen and appreciated for who we really are is what all of us want. This and to be able to feel like we are giving back or contributing something positive to the world just by being here. What a shame that so many people have to go through life either pretending to be someone they are not to be accepted or who because of their lack of privilege, are only seen for their "difference," their Otherness, rather than for who they really are. To most of the world Jaime probably appears just another Portland homeless woman selling newspapers on the street corner; someone who is dependent on the gifts of others for survival rather than someone who also gives to others despite her lack of material wealth. I saw part of Jamie's soul today and damn, it was beautiful. In the shedding of tears her heart was exposed, and her desire to care for and make other people happy shined brilliantly through as her life's calling. I hope that my small gift helps her to find her way back to stability just a little bit quicker or makes it a little bit easier and I hope that in my witnessing her presence as a gift enough, she felt for at least a moment, visible and needed. May we all go through our lives with the fortitude to lay our hearts bare for others to see as Jaime so courageously did today. May we give the gift of genuineness and love to others as our greatest offering and may we recognize, in all of those around us, that whatever the state of our lives, we are all in this moment and will be in all of those that follow, worthy. 

Namaste.

Yee Haw!

Don't ask, don't tell was repealed yesterday! Woo hoo! I have so much more to say but I'm laying in the dark in my bed typing on my phone and the dog is glaring at me for his breakfast and morning stroll. Needless to say, yesterday a few good things happened in our country and I woke feeling hopeful and felt the need to purge my joy onto the page. Give it up for Obama and all my gay family who can now be open about who they are in the military! Because without being able to be yourself, what's the point anyways? May we all go forward boldy, unapoologetic of our own skin and all tha lies underneath it. Namaste friends.

On Living and Dying

Death came knocking on the door to a house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina today. Inside a woman of 61 left this place due to liver failure, a side effect of cancer which she had been fighting for six years and which having originally started in her breast, had spread to her hips, lungs, and lymph nodes. Around ten this morning, with her the recently estranged husband of several decades, her twenty eight year old daughter and other family members by her side, she bowed out of this life with undeniable grace.

Elizabeth Edwards was originally known to the public for being the steadfast wife of  good looking southern Senator who would later become a presidential and then vice presidential candidate. During this time she also became known for fighting breast cancer as she campaigned for her husband and for being eternally optimistic and yet honest about her disease. In more recent years her family was made famous again in the press after it was discovered that her husband John had an affair and then a child with another woman. Although dying of cancer, Elizabeth left her husband but said in a television interview not too long ago that she would not bad-mouth him despite his infidelity to her because he was the father of her children and that she wanted them to still love and respect him just as they always had. Many years ago Elizabeth and John lost one of the two children they had at the time at the tender age of fifteen in a car accident. Knowing what strength I have gained and wisdom has been absorbed through and toughened my skin and my resolve to be in the world since the death of my mom, I wonder if having lost her son earlier in life and carrying on with her head held high in his honor and memory helped her fight her six year battle with cancer in such an astoundingly brave and lucid way. I would venture to guess that she will continue to be admired for her frankness and for living as fully as she could all the way up until today.

Just about the time Elizabeth Edwards was taking her last breath today I was at work wondering where one of my employees was after she had not shown up for work or called to say she was sick or running late. I called her and got no answer, leaving a message. A few hours later still no word and at this point I figured if she had slept through her alarm earlier, surely she would have awoken by now. Soon after another store manager approached and told me that this employee, who is normally exceptionally reliable, had called in tears, her grandmother having fallen yesterday and the employee had quickly driven to Bend to be with her. I learned later today that this employee is very close with her grandmother, her mom's mom and that the fall was bad. As I sat with one of my assistant managers training her on schedule writing we talked about this employee and she said to me, "You know she had to make the decision to pull her mom off of life support." I asked if her mother had been sick and she said  no, that she had been critically injured in a car accident. My assistant doesn't know that I lost my own mother the same way and I tried as hard as I might to not let the shock and sadness register on my face. All of a sudden, with one sentence I found myself relating to this employee in a whole other way. I have never known anyone under forty five or fifty who has lost their mother and feel quite isolated sometimes around my friends who see and talk with and talk about their moms often. It's a reality that most people my age haven't had to live or deal with yet. And so my well of compassion for other folks, other daughters in particular, who suddenly find themselves motherless at a young age, runs deep.

Speaking about the death of her son in a speech once several years ago, Elizabeth Edwards said that often times people don't want to ask about those you have lost because they worry it will make you sad. She told the audience that these people are already sad and know very well in most moments of their lives that their loved one is gone. By us asking people about their lost loved one, we are showing reverence for the fact that they themselves are still here. I hope that even though people know the public image of Elizabeth Edwards and what they have read about her in her own memoirs and in the media, people will always ask her children to tell them about her as a way of witnessing the loss they have experienced, the love they still have for this person, and as a way of acknowledging their survival and still presence in the world. Out of the people in my life who never know my mom, very few have asked about her. I believe only one has asked her name. I will never forget exactly where I was, driving on the highway with a newer friend in the passenger seat by my side, when she asked me to tell her about my mom and about how she had died. This was only a few years ago. In the five years before that, nobody had dared and I of course, hadn't volunteered. I will love this friend until the end of all time for braving the possible discomfort she might experience or create to get to know the thing that has happened in my life that is dearest to my heart and that most of the people in my life never address with me.

Death is so taboo. We don't talk about it, not really. The funny thing is, in one way or another it has affected all of our lives. Earlier today veterans and those who love and respect them honored the men who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor on this day so many decades ago and stood witness to their lives. Those men who lost their lives will always be revered and I hope the same can be said for Elizabeth Edwards, and for the mother of my employee who died too young too. In talking with her children about dying after word had come from her doctors that her cancer was no longer curable but only treatable, she asked her children at the dinner table to raise their hands if they weren't going to die. Of course, no hands went in the air because we are all going to die someday. It is the one and only true and solid fact of all of our lives and perhaps the one and only thing that each and every person on the face of this planet shares in common with each other. If this is indeed the case, why is it also the subject so many of us are scared to broach? Because it reminds us of our own mortality? Because really we are all dying right now and have been doing so since the day that we were born? It is only the speed at which this happens that differs from one person to the next really. I admire Elizabeth Edwards for choosing to live the fullest life she possibly could until today came just as I admire my mom for doing the same even when she didn't know death was hovering near.

Sometimes I worry that I talk about death to much here on these pages. I worry that I write inky pomes about it too often in my drawing sketchbooks. I worry that people think that I am morbid... or worse yet, that I am utterly obsessed or unable to get over the loss of my mother. The truth is, I think, that I don't talk about her much not because I don't want to but because even though I know they care about, nobody much asks and so as a way of processing my feelings, I write about it. But when I'm thinking about her I can't really say, "hey, so I was thinking about this one time when my mom did such and such or I couldn't sleep last night because I was having nightmares about the way she died." Those sort of things can be conversation killers. And so I keep her inside of me mostly, close to my heart and I write about her and about losing her here on these pages. I hope that I don't come off as morbid or unable to progress with life and I hope that for the children of Elizabeth Edwards and the spouses and children left behind by their fathers after Pearl Harbor and for my employee who unbeknownst to her, lost her mom the same way I did, that the world has and will continue to let us grieve however much and however long we want and lets us celebrate and discuss as often as we want to without passing judgement.

What lessons can we learn from the people we know and don't know who have died? How can we let their lives and in some cases, more importantly their deaths, serve as a roadmap for how we might live our own lives? What can we do to honor them in their absence and ensure that we don't take the opportunity of a death that takes a lifetime rather than only two or three or four decades for granted? How can we honor those who are gone who we may not have known but who have shaped the lives and being of those we love? What lessons can the universal experience of living and dying teach us about the interrelatedness of all people and about the interconnected web of all human kind? Tonight I poured myself an orange oil bath and I slinked down deep in the tub until only my face peeked up above the water and I thought about these questions. I laid there in silence and I watched the steam billow from the surface of the water, rolling and curling gently until it dissipated into thin air. I put my ears underneath the surface and I ran my finger down the outside of my earlobe and heard a noise like a trombone playing under the water. And then I closed my eyes. I asked the Universe, the great universal Spirit of Life to be with the family of Elizabeth Edwards, to be with my employee as she sits watch over her injured and ill grandmother, her last living link to her beloved mother, I asked that families of those lost in Pearl Harbor felt comfort and hope in the communion of each other today as they commemorated and I said a silent prayer for myself too that my life may be worthy of my mother's living and dying. That I may live in a way that would make her proud and that I don't get lazy and forget to grab ahold of opportunities that come my way and get greedy and fail to recognize all blessings offered me daily.

None of us know when it will be our turn to go. And none of us really know what is going to happen to us when we do. I hope for all of our sakes that when we are still here we feel love and that when we are gone people ask those who loved and survived us, to tell them the story of our little lives and to honor the spirit inside of us that will live on inside of our kin and friends. May we all in each of our days be able to find the courage and motivation to live in the most colorful and wildly loud ways we can muster, even with death on our shoulder as Elizabeth Edwards did. May we be courageous enough to follow our hearts and live fully our purpose, reaching always more heartily towards our dreams. And may we, in choosing every day to live so boldly, pay homage to the great cloud of witnesses who did the same before us and so bravely paved their paths and our own. In the name of all that is good and holy, namaste to you and to those you have loved who are gone. Let us always remember and honor the divinity that resided within them and that of them which remains inside of ourselves too.

Why I Write

I can’t sleep. It happens a lot. I am always able to fall asleep, I just have trouble staying asleep. After my mom died I don’t think I slept three straight hours for a few years. I always thought that was what it must feel like to have a newborn baby in the house, not that I had to do much of anything when I woke, just that during the day I felt endlessly exhausted from never getting more than a few hours rest at a time. That time in my life was also about when I started working for Starbucks and getting up at 3am. No matter what time you go to bed, 3am always comes to quickly and an afternoon nap is usually inevitable. Again, eight hours of sleep proved illusive again for many more years. The past year I have found myself waking up a lot in the middle of the night too, the bed feeling strangely empty and expansive. I try to wrap myself tightly in the covers but it still can always feel that great big cold expanse spread out next to me; like I might just roll over into all that emptiness and fall of the side of the world. Sometimes I try to hug a pillow for comfort but in the end it just usually leaves me feeling reminded of my own aloneness. In any event, the point here is that 3am and I are perhaps better friends than I am with most other hours in the day. And if we're going to be completely honest, I suppose maybe all these excuses for why I've been sleep deprived for years on end, are to cover up for the fact that I’ve just got too much going on in this damn head of mine to sleep restfully. So much anxiety and stress that it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I am hopeful that maybe if I start writing everyday and letting out some of the thoughts that are swimming circles in my brain, they will stop bumping into the concious side of my brain at night and waking me up. Maybe by speaking, or writing as it were, my thoughts down on a daily basis I will get a solid eight hours of sleep!!! Yes, it really is a that-kind-of-exciting, three exclamation points worthy, kind of thought.

In any event, the positive side of being unable to sleep is I get to read. Or write for that matter. Often times when I read before bed, or even during the day after work, I always fall asleep about two pages into the whole endeavor and it takes me forever anymore to finish one damn book. Lately I have been reading any of Anne Lamott’stuff of the non fiction variety that I can get my hands on. Right now I am reading Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It appears to have been published over a decade ago and before any of her other non fiction books, those about her thoughts on faith, were published. She seems to have been, at least in the publishing world, only a novelist at this point. In any event, there is one chapter called “Looking Around” which is my favorite and it is all about why she writes, the purpose. There’s so many wonderful things she says here and here are just a few...

“Writing is about learning to pay attention and communicate what is going on... Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this you have to know who you are are in the most compassionate sense possible. Then you can recognize others. It’s a simple concept, but not that easy to do... I honestly think in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you’ve read poetry or prose that has been presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, a glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least have meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers I think; to help others have this sense of- please forgive me- wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious... There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsorthian openness to the world where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation. Or maybe you are not predisposed to see the world sacramentally...anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world.... Mostly things are that way, not that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as it sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind...”

Not since reading Emerson for the first time have I read someone who so perfectly captured the way I felt about something, about everything. And Lamott does this consistently. I find myself reading her books and thinking, “Exactly!” and wishing there was someone else here to be experiencing this revelation and assurance with me. In my own humble observation, Lamott has many a great thing to say, many a keen observation about the oneness of the world, but I particularily like her thoughts on the purpose of writing, of why we do it; on looking at the minutia and ordinariness of the world, and seeing meaning there. About seeing and describing in whatever clarity we can muster, the divinity in everything and everyone around us and making others who might not ordinarilly see it, recognize it too. Or making those who do, exclaim internally with wild excitement as I do when I read Lamott, that someone has finally described so acurately with paper and ink, a thought inside their very own head. I suppose all of this in the end, this desire to create meaning from the mystery and to startle people with beauty and awe of the world around them, to make them feel part of something greater than themselves and make them feel a deeper connection to the world and with others, is why I write. What makes me qualified to do any of that, I don’t know. I’m not really qualified at all I suppose, not anymore than anyone else out there... but for some reason it just feels right. And so with the advice of Rumi, I am following what feels right, letting myself be drawn by the strange pull of what I really love and trusting, or maybe, hoping desperately, is a better fit here, this strange pull will not lead me astray...

Namste

Taped

I have seen my family the past four days in a row. If you know me at all, you know that this is like, a world record or something. On my mom's side of the family my brother and I are the only people left and on my dad's side, in Oregon it's just he and us, plus the stepmom. Most holidays either my brother or I or both of us have to work so usually there is three, maybe four of us at best, celebrating a given holiday together. Well, needless to say, this Thanksgiving was different.


My dad's mom, my grandma Lou, lost her husband and my dad's stepdad this year at the age of ninety nine. This is her first holiday season without him and so she came out for two weeks for Thanksgiving. As a surprise, my dad's two brothers and their wives came out to from Colorado and California to surprise her. They have all been here, along with one sun-kissed, Justin Beiber-looking sixteen year old cousin from California as well and Los Angeles to be exact. We had Thanksgiving dinner with them at my dad's house and then Friday night all met at Meriweathers (my favorite restaurant, score!) for dinner and then on Saturday night went downtown for dinner and then took my aunt to get a now nationally famous, maple bar with bacon on top at Voodoo Doughnuts (she saw a show on the food network). Yesterday afternoon I met everyone for a big exciting Max and Portland streetcar ride around town so my grandmother could see more of the city and needless to say, she loved it. 


Family, its a funny thing. I've never known much of it and have always a sort of awkward relationship with most of them as I'm sure many people can relate to. Other than my parents and grandparents, three out of the four of them who are now deceased, the rest of my relatives I see every five to ten years and don't really know at all. They don't seem to understand or want to believe that I am gay and there is always awkward conversations about why I don't have a boyfriend. Politically and religiously we are on far extreme ends of the spectrum so any current events and politics are usually also not good topics to cover. One of the things I have always wanted most in the world is to create a family of my own. To have a spouse and children with them and to, although my upbringing was pretty darn good, create what I had and then some, giving my children every ounce of love I can squeeze out of me and helping create people who grow up to help make the world a better place. Perhaps much of the depression I'm facing at thirty has to do with the fact that I worry that I'm getting older and there isn't even a glimmer of hope at this point that I will ever have those things. In any event,  something happened yesterday that reminded me to be thankful for this odd bunch of family that I do have even if it's not the family tree I would have imagined myself to be clinging to at thirty. 


After a few hours riding around town the sun had gone down and it was starting to rain and we were on our last leg of our big exciting public transportation tour of Portland, headed back to Lloyd center to get in our cars and go our separate ways, and a man got on the Max and sat down near my family. My dad was seated next to me and my grandma and stepmom next to him and across from him my aunt and uncle. He was probably in his late fifties, early sixties and was I think, homeless. I could see he was thin and dressed in many layers but only when he sat down was I able to see the boniness of his knees jut out through his jeans and his thighs seem to be non-existent, burring themselves in the small scoop of the seat. He had grey hair and was balding in the back, his long hair slicked back away from his face. His checks were sunken in and he had deep wrinkles in his face and rough skin on his hands. His nails were trimmed short but there was dirt under them. I was glad at least to see he had a newer, comfortable and warm looking pair of shoes on and a giant down jacket. The most interesting thing about this man, at least from outside appearances, is what he carried, a suitcase. Most homeless people you see around Portland have sleeping bags or blankets or garbage bags or backpacks or rolling suitcases but this many had something that almost looked like a stage prop. It was smallish, about a foot and a half by two feet and boxy, completely square in shape. Each half, the upper and the lower were exactly equal in depth and it had a hard plastic handle on the top. It was a dirty, dingy brown in color and dented, the sides curved gently in. All of the corners and edges were covered with layers and layers of frayed duck tape indicating that this suitcase has probably been around as long as it's owner has and that he had taken great care to patch up it's sores and cracks quite diligently over time. In any event, the suitcase looked like something I've seen a hobo carry in a movie or a clown would pull flowers out of at the circus; I'd never seen a homeless person with a suitcase like this until yesterday. I don't know what this man's story has been, what unexpected heartbreaks and decisions brought him to be homeless and riding the train with my family yesterday, but his suitcase indicated to me that they had been on the streets together for many years, he and this small square bag. 

The part of this experience that really stuck with me, and the part that I really wanted to tell about this man, was how he looked at my family. Seated next to him was my blind uncle who wears glasses as thick as two coke bottles and squints incessantly and my overweight, disabled aunt who spent three months in the hospital this year after a bad car accident and now walks with a cane. This is at least how I'm sure they are often described, how the outside world sees them but they, just like all of us, are much more than they would seem to be from outside appearances and hold beautiful things inside of them. They are an odd couple indeed, both living outside the standard societal norms of what good people, valuable, worthwhile people look like. But they love each other dearly and have for over thirty years and I'm sure see and appreciate in each other all of the things the rest of the world may and probably does find flawed about them. As they sat on the train and rocked back and forth with each stopping of the car, they held hands and at one point my aunt rested her head on my uncle's shoulder and you could see her whole body exhale in the comfort of him. I watched the man with the suitcase sneak glances at them. I wonder if he had love like that in his past that he was recalling. I wonder if he was thinking that looked nice and he wished he had the same or if he was thinking about a woman he used to know in such a way. Mostly though, more than looking at them, he looked across the aisle at my dad. I'm not sure if my dad noticed, I think not, but I did. He watched my dad, who ran most of the conversation during the train ride, quite a lot. He and my dad are probably similar in age, both gray in the same places. My dad however, has less wrinkles because he's been well fed over the years and his cheeks and the corners of his eyes are plump. My dad was sporting some sort of fancy gortex winter coat from REI that probably set him back a few hundred and equally expensive clothes and shoes. He had around him a cadre of family that looked at him and listened to and responded to him. His mother and wife on one side, his child on the other, and his brother across from him. And although when I look around at these people I know the issues and struggles we all sometimes have in relating to one another and trying to figure out what being a family really means and should look like and find myself wondering what the hell any of us have in common besides blood anyways... I suppose to many people looking down onto this scene of six seemingly happy people, my dad would look like a king on a throne. I wondered, as the man with the suitcase watched my dad and studied his outfit and how he spoke and how we responded to him, if this envy or admiration for my dad's obvious wealth in life, not only materially, but more familialy (if that's a word), is what he felt. He seemed to have a curious, longing sort of look on his face. Not one of anger of of jealousy even necessarily, but one of wonder and almost... one of awe. 


This fall has brought quite a bit of heartbreak and disappointment to my life and I have felt at times like I am floating around the world in a bubble. Like the world and it's people, like color and sound and vibrancy are out there... and I am in here, wherever that is, invisible. I feel onside of myself, alone, quiet, watching and listening, but not participating. Like I'm waiting for the right moment to rejoin the world somehow if I can only figure out how to manage this. I go to church some weeks and I sit in the back and look at all the people around me and as the minister speaks my mind floats off into other places and I watch the congregants around me focusing intently on the music or the sermon and I wonder if they feel connected to the earth and each other in that moment, if they feel grounded in community, in love... or if they feel sort of like they have ear muffs and swimming goggles on and walls of plexi-glass around them separating their muffled and lonely reality from the rest of the world like I do. As I watched the man with the suitcase the other day study my dad and my family, I wondered if he felt the same way in that moment because I'm pretty sure I saw in his eyes, the reflection of myself. I saw those feelings of separateness and of longing for something more, for a deeper more meaningful human connection, for a yearning to be visible, to be seen... for what I think so many of us sometimes in moments of struggle believe everyone else but us has.


I wonder metaphorically speaking, we are all a little bit like this homeless man with a suitcase at many moments in our lives. On the outskirts of the world in our head and in our hearts. If we have so much going on internally that we find it hard to take off our swimming goggles and earmuffs and break through the choked bubble we live in to join the rest of the world and really live. For the man with the suitcase, I would assume many of his struggles are physical in nature; finding a warm place to sleep at night and a hot meal, on top of all the more mental struggles that people like myself face. I am blessed more than most people in the world simply to have a roof over my head, and yes, even a family of sorts and heck, I have a job and food in my cupboards and there are ten percent or more Oregonians who can't even say that right now. And while I have these things, I still have longings and dreams and desires for my life and have often as of late like I am watching the rest of the world live from the sidelines while I sit here in my quiet, invisible bubble racking my brain to figure out how in the hell I'm going to just survive until the next day, let alone thrive. 


To use an oft quoted saying, nobody ever said life was a walk in the park. And isn't that the damned truth. Some days, weeks, years, probably even decades for some of us, it can feel like one God forsaken struggle after the next. Why some of us are blessed with a family to go on Sunday streetcar rides with and some of us are not, I will probably never know. In my own assertion, there isn't explanation for a lot of the things that happen to us although we are absolutely the captains of our own ships and to much extent, are able to steer the course of our own lives. The trick to life is not what happens, but how we respond. This is the part we can control. I suspect most of us are just here trying trying to tape together the cracks and fissures that appear from time to time in our lives in an effort to hold ourselves together, just as the man on the train has appeared to have done so dutifully with his suitcase. By the end of our days most of us will have so many layers of tape holding us together that the person we once were or people we have been throughout or days is barely visible, each new layer of tape a fresh start, a new attempt at piecing back together our lives and closing up a wound after life throws us a curveball. We will likely be dented and bruised and battered looking... but we will have stories and memories and a lifetime of some extent in our hands. I wonder the stories and the memories that the man on the train's suitcase could tell, I wonder what memories are underneath each layer of his tape. May we all go forward with gratitude, recognizing all of the many blessings that we do have, the things that we have folded nicely and put in our life's suitcase and stop focusing as much on the things we feel like are missing, the things we used to carry along with us and miss dearly or the things we have always longed for, but haven't as of yet had. May we see in ourselves and in other people, beauty in all those neatly folded and rumpled things inside of ourselves, in all of our the many frayed layers of our existence and in the dents and bruises underneath it all and be thankful for them having made us who we are. May we try to be conscious and aware of those who eye the beauty of our lives from the sidelines and appreciate them for pointing out the blessings we may have been previously unable or unwilling to see ourselves and may we go forth with thanks, always trying to share with others in our abundance. 


Namaste.