I'm 10 today

April 6, 2010

Chocolate croissant, flaky, a touch of cinnamon it sticks to my fingers and I have to lick them clean. I lick my fingers clean and then wipe them on my jeans, then wipe my lips with my forearm. I’m 10 today. And Mother finally let me have a birthday party. I’ve been to lots of birthday parties. The kids in my fancy pants private school are big on ‘em. Mom tends to forget about them until the last minute so she keeps a handy dandy supply of tiny flashlights that can be wrapped at the last minute before we dash into the car, the last to arrive. I’ve been to birthday parties at fancy restaurants, the family owned it. I’ve been to birthday parties where there were clowns, rented ponies, swimming in the pool. Usually the whole class is invited so there are fifteen of us which means lots of presents. There’s a perfect cake with fancy writing. There’s always a picture drawn in a different colored icing. If it’s a boy’s birthday, it’s a puppy or a soccer ball, if it’s a girl’s, flowers or dolls with lots of pink. I love getting a big piece, an outside piece so it has lots of icing cause the cake is usually tasteless. But the icing is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt and the fancy, stiff paper napkins that match the plates don’t do a good job of getting it off my fingers. I never wiped it on my good dress, though.

But Mother wouldn’t let me have a birthday party. For one, my birthday was in June, after school was out and school friends were not always about, I suppose. June is a real busy time at our house. The vegetable garden needs all kinds of attention, so does the flower gardens. Haying is about to start or has started already if the rain has let up. New calves have to be tagged, a kind of ear piercing and the cattle need to be moved a lot so they don’t over graze the pastures as the grasses start to come in. There’s way too much to do to have a party. My older brother and sisters had parties when they were little but their birthdays are in fall and winter and besides, when they were little, the farm was much smaller. But ten, turning ten is a big deal. Two digits. The beginnings of teenagerhood. Growing up in a big way, not a baby. So Mother decided a small party would do. She invited the two neighbor boys, Randy Zabaron and Jimmy Tenneson, the only two kids my age within three miles and the son of family friend, Douggie Kohn. My grandmother came and took our picture. There was the one of me sitting on Ann’s bed with my presents all around. I had on my Davy Crockett hat and my Davy Crocket T-shirt. I’m holding the picnic basket with the lid up so you can see the small plastic settings, the two cups and saucers and forks and spoons and knives. And there was the yellow 45 record of the Davy Crockett theme song, “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.” There was some other stuff but I don’t remember what it was. I remember the smile though, and the way my shoulders were, strong and wide. I was so alive then.

Why tell you this, about that frozen moment in time? I sit here, an old woman now, at least in the eyes of that ten year old girl. Another birthday looms, a big birthday, 60. Clean digits; I like that. Born in 1950, 60 years old. I am not hoping for a Davy Crockett hat this time. So what am I hoping for? A knee that will continue to work without surgery. For my daughter to break free of her suffering, for my son to find the next, life giving step in his journey. Me, for me, I also want the next step, the next life giving step in my journey. It is the walk I take, this search, this journey. Maybe, just maybe, I do have something in common with Davy Crockett.

On the top of my bucket list

13 April 2010

Funny, how old messages linger; things I didn’t have and still want. I have this old fantasy of a best friend/lover. So old, it makes me a little sad to think of that lonely teen who dreamed of someone to explore life with, someone who also saw the world as a great adventure to be discovered. But as I grew into adulthood, something shifted—I don’t know how—but I became convinced that I couldn’t explore the world without a partner, that life was too dangerous for me to navigate it alone. And yet, here I am, traveling the world by myself. Now granted, doing all this exploring solo is hard but truth be told, I’m not alone. You see I have these amazing friends. I sit with a group of them now, my writing friends. Such wealth lives in this room, this shared joy and commitment to clear the space to write. And the writing; I can’t tell you how wonderful it is. We all slip into the past, the old memories and the movie starts, flickering first with an image, a child frozen in a leap, braids flying, mouth open with laughter, next the same child running down the walk to join the family, movements jerky as the film bucks and stops until suddenly the film is forgotten as that world fills the frame.

I am that child, playing with the new toy boat my mother’s best friend’s son Brian brought with him, one for him, one for me. He wakes me up early and we sneak out into the morning rain, boots and plastic raincoats and crouch by the biggest mud-puddle in our gravel driveway. We push the tiny boats back and forth and discover just how much speed they can manage before they tip over. We design towns, ports at sea on the shores and Brian tells stories of wars and strife. I listen in awe to these stories. My world is so sheltered; the wars I know are silent, internal and have no words nor a realized counterpart in the outer world. Brian has moved often and visited many worlds and is full of surprise. It is easy listening, adding bits to his parts, letting the story emerge and grow between us like a giant bubble in the air before it is released to float away. We are sitting in the mud now, oblivious to the rain when we hear my mother’s voice calling us to breakfast. She is quietly surprised, as I am a devoted sleeper, never waking early but she recognizes my hunger for friends and says nothing. That ease, that creation of story that Brian and I had, I marked.

Growing up, there were two or three lengthy visits when Brian would spend a month on the farm or I would spend two weeks with his family in New York. As we grew up, we changed and each time we got together it took longer to slip into that place where he would tell me what he was thinking and I would tell him what I thought. He was less trusting and angrier. When he did finally let me in, I was surprised to find how full of rage he was. I didn’t know how to move with that. But, as he pointed out, I was younger and still naïve, I would learn.

The last time I saw him was in college. We met in Denver and went skiing together at Winter Park. He was a much better skier than I was and I felt left behind. He was reading about Buddhism and studying with a teacher. He ate a pure diet the details of which I have long forgotten but his hair had turned bright blond again, no longer darkened brown and his eyes were so blue, his skin so pink and clear. Again I felt slow and left behind. He was adamant that he didn’t want to be a TBM, a tired business man, like his father had been. He was, he felt, on the path to something wonderful .

I never saw him again. Later I learned from my mother that he had become quite paranoid. He wouldn’t visit his family for fear that they would lock him up. He was homeless, afraid to stay anywhere too long, again for fear that he would get caught. Once he allowed his parents to meet him at a coffee shop but shortly into the visit, he became angry and left. Sometimes, he would call home and talk.

I don’t know where he stays now, what city, or even if he’s still alive, my friend Brian, who I used to create worlds with.

Light on Water

13 April 2010

I have to tell you about what happened. It was Tuesday and I had driven to Berkeley to my old writing group. We had met at Alison’s house, up in the hills, a view of the bay with the city peaking through the redwoods, the house, old and funky, beat wood floors, a huge fireplace. It was cool enough to light the wood waiting and we wrote in friendship and warmth as the mystery of the unconscious spilled out. But it was after this, after the hugs good-bye, the date with Ellen for lunch the next day finalized, that I drove to Tilden Park. My friend Mary and I used to walk there, in 1991, when I would drive down from Sacramento to go to school three days a week at the same PhD program Mary was soon to finish. I slept on her sofa. We would walk and talk for hours in Tilden Park. But since those times, I’ve only found my way back once. I thought that I would just slip over there for a long walk, before heading to my friend Brigid’s house.

But I couldn’t find my way. I knew when I drove past the “Welcome to Contra Costa County” sign that I had gone too far and turned around on the winding road and headed back. I decided to settle for the lake as there was a sign pointing clearly to the right. At least I would get there and I had just been writing about a lake, albeit the one on my parents’ farm. There was a path that went around the lake. “Rough Path” the sign said and they were right. Up rocks, over roots from the giant eucalyptus trees that were as big as my arm, under low hanging boughs from the pine trees. I climbed and descended, avoided the mud, jumped over the streams, carefully navigated the rocks. On the opposite side of the lake there was a boulder, long and flat that jutted out into the water and I found myself drawn to it. Though the air was cool, the rock warmed me and I sat watching the water.

At first, I noticed the usual, some ducks swimming off to the left, the water brown with the silt from the spring runoff, the sound of men working across the lake by the parking lot where I’d started walking. Then I got caught in looking at the water. The ripples in the water gave the water a dense look, as if I was looking at the skin of a giant, mud coated hippopotamus who was twitching his skin. I laughed at my imagination. Then the light changed and there were diamonds of light moving across the water swirling with the waves the wind made, sometimes moving across the lake, sometimes moving right towards me. The diamonds grew large, so large that I could see blue light mixed into the white, as if they were in fact stones of light with depth and shadow of their own. They danced all over, sometimes to my left, sometimes directly in front of me. Sometimes there were hundreds, sometimes four or five and then disappearing only to suddenly shine out in a different place as the wind shifted and the light changed. I sat watching, searching for answering light within me, looking to see if these flames of light would trigger an answering fire. My body remained silent, only my mind relaxed, opened, let these flickers of light move in and out of my field of awareness at will until the light changed again and the lake was brown with the wrinkled skin of an old hippo and there was no light anywhere. It was suddenly cold, the rock no longer warm. I had been sitting too long and needed to walk to warm myself. But something had shifted. Even though my body was tired, hungry, cold, I felt as if I’d been given a secret glimpse into what is possible. I felt privileged. And so I walked carefully over roots and rocks, through the mud, back to my car. I spoke to the ducks before they swam off. I thanked the lake.

They say where two or three are together, that’s church. They say God can touch us at any moment. They say it is simply a dream this life, a dream that hides the truth. I don’t know about any of that. All I know is there was this light on the water that was so beautiful that I knew for that moment that I was seeing something holy. And that if I am allowed to see such beauty, I must be beloved.

Dreamer

The prompt for this writing was a quote by Mark Doty

"The dreamer beneath black leaves and a spatter of summer stars."

April 5, 2010

Lying on the earth, summer night, frogs croaking, the grand-daddy frogs harrumphing, crickets, cicadas surrounding me with sound, holding me like a hammock as I lay with my sister and friends watching the night sky. The black leaves are but a frame, no weight at all. There are no thick ponderous oak branches moving slowly in the wind, just a kaleidoscopic shifting of black shape as we look at stars. We are wiggly squiggly bodies flung on top of sleeping bags, moving around rocks, poking a friend, "Look at that! Did you see that shooting star? Oh there's the north star. There's Orion's belt, do you see it?"

"Where, where?" Oh the joy of it, discovering this magical universe that lives behind the light waiting for everyone to darken down so their millions of light yeras away light can find our hungry eyes and help us dream. Those nights of laughter, wonder, warmth swirl in my mind like the stars themselves, waiting for the lights to go down so they can again be revealed and dance. It catches me. I thought I knew what I would write about. I had a straight, clear idea which now fades out into the swirl of starlight. That glowing presence is all I need to start my body relaxing, shoulders fall, mind tingles. This Petri dish of life that I rested in held so many visions of possibility but not just visions. It held the rich bubble of joy that rested in my belly and just below and surrounding my heart. That sense of my roots shooting deep into loamy earth as my hair blew wild with the wind hiding stars in its tangles, that love and connection, that is what I knew then. There was no doubt that I was earth's baby and sky's child. I knew it in my dreams when I would fly--but not too high--for I loved the weight of the earth as well as the freedom the wind brought me. Now I would smear myself with mud, paint myself earth brown before I fly off for a moonlit gambit.

I must be mad but I don't care anymore. This freedom, this joy to taste and touch all parts of existence is so exquiste, so utterly satisfying, I could no more turn away from it than a mother from her child. Ahh, but I knew, I knew that I could wiggle into the night soil and visit the stars and then, just before I finally closed my eyes, so tired from a day of running and working and being good and staying out of trouble if I could figure out trouble before I splashed into it, the blackened leaves would move and dance around the sky until I couldn't tell if the leaves were moving or it was the earth that was dancing, carrying me in its night song to sway oh so elegantly along to the songs the frogs played bass to and the crickets alto but it was the stars who sang soprano so high, so impossibly high that I couldn't quite hear them but I knew they were singing and my ears tingled with the beauty of it until finally, even my ears closed, drooping heavily and I slept.

Back in the states

10 March 2010

How many rooms have I schlepped my suitcase into, unzipped it, rifled through looking for my PJ's? Don't buy black. It's a terrible color. I own so much black: PJ's, turtle necks, sweat pants, socks, underwear, corduroy pants, jeans, sweater,. They morph into one wrinkled, bulky unit and I end up throwing them into different piles every night just trying to find my PJ's or a clean pair of undies or socks. My kingdom for a dresser.

Let me explain. I am a hobo. I carry my suitcase, which has one outfit for most occasions, my black bag for toiletries, the current book I'm reading, my writing notebook, vitamins and hairdryer. I also have a portable file for very important papers, a place to organize the latest bills, store the stamps, unused envelopes, scotch tape, paper clips. Actually I need to buy paper clips. The file usually stays in my car. And I have my backpack that contains my computer, camera and more writing papers, the ones I want in hard copy. With these items I travel between Sacramento, Fairfield, Napa and Oakland depending on where I need or want to be. It seemed simple, this idea--odd maybe--but simple. In July of last year, I quit my job of three years at hospice, gave up my four bedroom house, put my things in storage and went. I flew to Jordan and visited my son who works in Saudi. I flew to Nepal and then to India and then to Nepal again where I went on retreat. From there I flew to Australia, another retreat and finally, after two and a half months gone, I came home. Only I didn't want to come home. I didn't want to sink back down into the routine, the sadness, the quiet life of work, care taking of others, playing with my grandchildren. Odd, isn't it? It seems odd to me too, for I am so tired, at this moment, of being homeless, so exhausted with trying to be the good guest. Yet today, as I looked on Craig's list for a rental, I realized that I wasn't ready to stop and settle down. I won't do it. I can't. I can't go back to that life; that life of quiet desperation. I want something else now. I want joy. I want connection. I want community. I want to feel in the wildest and most basic way that I am growing inside, becoming younger, as it were. I want to continue to shed old structures, old certainties, old beliefs about me, about the world, about what is important.

I was one of those people who never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I was 22, my boyfriend asked me what I wanted from life, what my life's ambition was. I answered, "To know a lot." But it wasn't facts I was wanting. It was life itself. And for a long time, working in the mental health world, I learned a lot. I learned by watching and listening and cataloguing the results of other peoples' choices. Then I went to work in hospice. At first, I was delighted to be working with regular folks. Twenty-five years in mental health and it's easy to think every one's crazy, and if not crazy, certainly unhappy. But in hospice I met people who'd been in a loving relationship for sixty years. I met people who'd lived lives of meaning, or simply quietly fulfilling or just lived without drama. And it was joyful for me. But the message of hospice, over and over, is simple. We are all going to die. No exceptions. I might live thirty more years or show up tomorrow with a terminal diagnosis. No certainty about timing, but no doubt about outcome. Every day I sat with someone dying. Every day I looked at my life and wondered if tomorrow I learned I had six months or less to live, what would I regret? And I did regret. I was afraid I hadn't really lived, risked, explored, pushed to see what I could do, who I could be, what I could know. So I packed up my things and I left. And now, now I can't quite stop wandering, not yet, as painful as it is at times. Tonight I will drive the forty miles to Fairfield to yet another house, schlep my bags in quietly so as not to disturb my friend and sleep. Tomorrow I will pack up, drive sixty more miles to Sacramento to another friend's home. And so it goes. I don't know when this will stop. I don't know how much longer I can continue like this. But I do know that I promised myself, when I was young and lonely on the farm, that when I got big, I would live my life the way I wanted to live it, that I would have adventures, that I would touch the truth of this life. I promised myself, that skinny, braided girl, that I would have a life of love and learning that was full of the unexpected, a life that pressed me to grow in ways I couldn't dream of. I promised. I can't wait any longer; I don't know how much time I have.