Finite Infinitude

Danny was my first husband. We married when we were two years old, and our parents thought it was cute. They photographed us together under his Christmas tree, as we sorted out boxes with ribbons and boxes without ribbons. I don’t know why that seemed so awfully important at the time, but evidently we had a prescient notion that things should be “tied-up.” 

At seven, I married Jeffrey. Our neighborhood gang loved to perform wedding ceremonies while everyone was decked-out in these fabulous costumes, which an elderly neighbor lady had given to Angelika and me. There were tail-coats, veils, and velvet gowns with beaded bodices. There was also a host of hats. Hats of every kind. We kids took turns being bride, groom, preacher, or cabby. The right hat cinched it. Over time, the clothes got left in the box. Only the hat was needed, and didn't make us sweat so much, nor need to be hiked up to walk or run.

The best part about these weddings was the “taxi ride” that constituted the honeymoon. The “preacher” wore the tailcoat and sometimes doubled as the cabby  - changing hats, if there were only three playing “Wedding.” The cabby’s job was to pick up and run the chaise lounge from the top end of Jeffrey’s yard all the way down hill to the peach tree with the bride and groom bouncing and jostling along, trying not to fall off.

Perhaps these early experiences prepared me for the fact that no matter how fun the wedding might be, there’s still a lot of hard work involved. At least, at the bottom of the hill, it was every man (woman) for himself (herself). No one should be made to work so hard as to push that “chaise-cab” back up the hill. Even empty, it was hard, hot work.

My beloved and I will celebrate our forty second anniversary this April. We meant to celebrate Forty in a grand way, but it took us two years to clear and coordinate our calendars so we could go to Machu Picchu and the Galápagos this past January. (see “Four Wet-Landings and a Funeral” posted 2-1-14)

Longevity in marriage is not something either of us saw modeled in our families of origin. Well, except that my maternal grandparents celebrated seventy nine years together - longer than many people on the planet LIVE - let alone live with one other human person - interacting daily, with hearts, minds, and purposes  intertwined.

So, to wake up in my sixties and realize that I’m married nearly twice as long as all the years I lived single (except for those fleeting starter marriages at ages two and seven), makes me shake my head in wonderment and thank the firmament for sending me such a fine partner for this lifetime.

We sometimes finish one another’s sentences. Other times we are clueless as to what the other could’ve been thinking... 

Real life. Sometimes you’re on top of the wheel, other times you’re being plowed under by it. “And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down, we’re captive on the carrousel of time, we can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the circle game.” (Joni Mitchell)

We all know, life is terminal... we just don’t know which terminal and... when. 

Recently, within our circle of friends, campers, and family, there’ve been a lot of dear ones finding their terminal and departing - seemingly ahead of schedule. We don’t like it. It shatters that notion of infinity. Infinite time, infinite space - like billions of dollars or “light years,” or “googolplex” - my small human mind cannot compute unending  anything. 

But the promise of it is comforting and sweet. Perhaps I taste it on clear nights when there’s no point in trying to count the stars, because their numbers are beyond my comprehension. All I can do is humbly appreciate the vastness, and sense my spec of a presence being grateful in one wee corner of creation.

Ultimately, I suppose, we are both: 

Finite and Infinite. 

I'd rather have life be a möbius band. That would be a cool way to tie up a life… in a never-ending strip. Ha, ha! Take THAT, you stupid Grim Reaper! Ha!

When we were little, Googolplex was Danny's favorite number… that's the year I want to depart… in the  year googolplex.

Dichotomously,

along for the ride.

Rudy Molina's Guitar

Rudy Molina gave me my first guitar - on permanent loan. Mom and Rudy met at the Democratic Club of Los Angeles. I was twelve. His guitar came from Candelas’ Guitar Shop on Sunset Boulevard at the east end of Echo Park. I still have it. If he ever comes back to earth from the Great Beyond - looking for his guitar - I’ll be very surprised, but I can tell Rudy something of what his glorious and generous good deed hath wrought since he bequeathed it to me in 1960.

My teacher Lenny Potash approved of the quality of this fine guitar, and set to work teaching me, and my mom, the obligatory folk cords: A, D, and E7. 

During that first lesson at the Purple Onion on Melrose, I saw posters of the greats of the day, who had performed in the space - including Mary Travers, Pete Seeger, and The Lime Lighters. I was enthralled, and within six months progressed from the basic cords and thumb-pluck of “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie” through the Spanish right hand slaps and dramatic minor cords of “Malagueña,” to the blues licks that sounded like electric or at least steel strings - even on the soft nylon strings of my guitar.

Six months worth was all the lessons I got. Mom took fewer than I. She decided to give motherhood a try one last time and met, married, and bore a son to Leo, my step-dad - just after she turned 43 and I turned 14. What a whirlwind time it was in my young teen years!

Without Rudy Molina’s guitar to emote with, and the support of a gifted, intuitive, and compassionate English teacher, my eighth-grade experience might have been a disaster of unbearable angst and displacement.  

Mr. Pollack gave us an open-ended assignment for our term project. I chose to write essays. Most of them were about the joys of having a baby in the house - whose “pudgy starfish fingers reached out and clung to anything offered for exploration.” Some of my pieces had to do with simple observation. One was titled: “You’re Imaginating Things,” about going backward from “imagination” to reconstruct erroneously that the infinitive would be “ to imaginate” instead of “ to imagine.” Mr. Pollock gave me an "A" on my project.

It takes so little for a kid like I was to feel seen, heard and appreciated. Even though I didn’t get much further with my guitar prowess after those six months with Lenny, the music and love of making it stuck with me. Even though I didn’t become the polished and published writer I imagined (imaginated?), I love to share observations in this essay-like format.

Rudy's guitar accompanied many a nursery school performance when I was teaching, and serenaded our daughters during camping trips and impromptu songfests.

When we go to camp as volunteer counselors, my husband takes his magic paraphernalia. I take my guitar. Kids who may never have had a chance to hold one in their lap and just play with it or on it, come alive with light in their eyes... the light of recognition of the possibilities.

Rudy Molina’s guitar lives on in its self-esteem building usefulness, and I am thankful.

Timeless Beatles

Yes, I watched Ed Sullivan’s show that night fifty years ago. Yes, I was intrigued by the sound and sight of these four mop-heads singing their hearts out. But, NO, I didn’t understand or get the hysteria of girls my age, older and younger, crying, wetting themselves, yearning with such earnest yearning to become the one and only TRUE beloved of Paul, John, Ringo or George. Maybe I was absent the day they taught us why that was important to do. Maybe the Salem Witch Trials were fresh in my mind from reading The Crucible, and I was suspicious of mass hysteria. For whatever reason, I could not get into throwing my heart at the TV.

From the relative comfort of the red cement floor, with my Sunday night homework laying inertly between my wide-spread toe-shoe clad feet, I watched over the top of step-dad Leo’s, head. He was prone, with elbows propped on pillows, his chin on his hands, and his nose maybe 14 inches from the screen, while mom tried to rock fourteen month old baby brother Steven to sleep behind me. In this familiar family-style configuration, we were gathered around our small black and white TV for this special Sunday night event. Homework remained undone until well past midnight. Phone calls to Rhonda, Vicky, Sharon and Johnette confirmed that I was odd one out for not screaming and creaming my pants.

Next day, on the long bus-ride to Belmont High, and all day at school, The Beatles’ performance was the ONLY topic. My tenth grade peers were buzzing as if high on something. Looking back, I’m guessing it was adrenaline. Maybe we needed a lift out of our deep depression over the loss of Jack & Jackie in the White House. Maybe this mania was that lift.

“I have dibs on Paul... those dreamy eyes... aaaaaah!!!” 

“You can have him. John is mine. I don’t care if he IS married.”

“Nah... he’s too quiet. Ringo, Ringo, give me your ring, oh, Ringo...”

“Georgie Porgie is the one for me.”

On and on it went. And as it went I felt further and further adrift and apart from the groundswell of instant love and craving for the British invaders.

I loved the music. It stuck to my ribs. The songs were easy and fun to sing-along-with. Still, I felt a loyalty to my Friday night folk group which met at the twin’s small house, on a steep hill in Echo Park. Danny and Teddy turned their tiny living room, over to guitars, guirros, tambourines, and claves as a dozen or so of us sang our hearts out about “Where Have all the Flowers Gone,” “This Land is Your Land,” and “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”-with four-part harmonies.

As the war in Viet Nam got more intense, the Beatles stuck with us - morphing their and our understanding of what it means to be a caring human in a world gone mad.

Yes, I’m guessing we all get by and high with a little help from our friends. I’m grateful for the Beatle’s back-drop sound-track to those most formative years of my life. I’m certainly enjoying the revision of the ’60’s from my mid-sixties, and remembering fondly cleaning house in the ‘80‘s with my daughters while the music of the Fab Four blasted full volume from the stereo speakers.

As pop-culture seems to unify us - if even over what I may deem trivial events, I’m all for it. I don’t mind not being swept up in the hysteria of it. These days, I like really listening to the lyrics and relishing their brilliant clarity... not something that came so  easily to me in those teen years of being super-distracted and full of various substances.

Sunday night’s CBS 2.5 hour special on the “Birthday Celebration” of the Beatle’s debut on US Television, twisted some of the songs around in delightful and fresh ways. Some were not covered; others were. All the lyrics have meaning to me...

“Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came.

Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved…”

***********************************************

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be...”

And so, I shall.

Thanks, J, P, G & R.

Orthorexia

A couple of years ago, my high-school buddy Judy gave me an article about Orthorexia - the compulsion to eat healthfully. The two pages fell victim to my “filing system” and only recently resurfaced from the depths of my desk piles.

Judy knew me when I was rail thin, and my dad was still alive. Later, she and I took our kids camping together. It was on those trips to California beaches and in-the-redwoods state parks that my need to control what I was putting in my mouth was highlighted for her. I made food for all of us in advance and froze it, put together whole grain flour and all else that (then, to my mind, in the mid 1970’s) made up batter for “healthy” pancakes.

The result of my careful planning, besides comforting me, was that it earned the admiration of Judy’s son when he became a teen and began to eschew junk food, and my actions earned the appropriate wary eye of my friend - who always tells it like it is.

The truth is, I do have some obsessive behavior around eating, and have had for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until memories of early childhood sexual abuse surfaced that I at least understood a potential source for my need to choose carefully  what I put into my mouth and body. The nature of the abuse, which began before I had teeth to bite and chew, made it difficult for me to discern nourishment from inappropriate substances which children should not swallow.

Judy doesn’t even know the worst of it. Perhaps the zenith (or nadir) of my obsession with control over food occurred in 2004, when I traveled to Brazil for the first time. I had become a raw food devotee in 2001 and for this ten day trip carefully prepared and froze many packets of cured raw chicken, fish and beef, (think Ceviche), and protein drinks. More than half of my luggage was food packed in an ice chest with blue ice. This was the fare I felt safe (compelled) to eat.

My Somatic Experiencing colleagues and I landed in Belo Horizonte during a walloping rain storm. The drive up the mountain, Carlos our driver told us, normally takes two to two and a half hours. This night it took nearly four. We arrived in the dark, as the electricity had been knocked out by the storm. There was no refrigeration. Over the next three days, all that food I had brought went bad.

The wisdom of the elements gave me a very clear message, hobbling my hubris. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” The folly of my actions made me laugh, and I realized that in the mountains of Brazil during their winter, people don’t thrive on raw food. The nourishment of the hot soups, baked fish, poultry, and finely shaved collards - that looked like brilliant, vibrantly alive sea-greens - sunk in and stuck to my actual and emotional ribs. I was being held gently in a community specifically built to heal its members.

That first night we were greeted warmly, by candlelight and firelight. Our first sensory awareness of this marvelous community was scent. The gorgeous warm smell of soup simmering on the wood stove enveloped us before we came in out of the rain. The quiet sounds of silver on china, inquiries and intros softly spoken in the most beautiful language I’d heard yet in my life - Portuguese - and the strong hugs, hands extended to guide us in the dark, and delicious flavors of food lovingly prepared completed our sensory welcome.

With gratitude and humility, I drank in the nurturing like the hungry child I was.

It would be a lie to say, I’m over orthorexia, but my goals are more realistic these days. This body has always been my laboratory. I’m the scientist; I’m the Guinea pig. Knowing that my joints ache with too much sugar, that my gut and mucous membranes react to dairy, and that I have a whole body allergic reaction to gluten, I can navigate my way more quietly and with less fanfare and angst through most menus. I’m not out to proselytize, chastise, or baptize anyone into the one true way to eat. I hope that my daughters may understand and forgive my past neuroses and find their own path - a middle path between junk bingeing as a steady diet and nose-in-the-air-self-righteousness denial of good food offered in welcome to a hungry heart.

Our therapist gave me a great gift recently. She said that free-floating anxiety is always looking for a place to land. Our trip to the Galápagos Islands mid January gave me a visual. Frigate birds are opportunistic creatures. They let the pelicans, boobies and penguins catch food and then steal it from their mouths for their own babies. I can now see that my free-floating anxiety - that discomforted feeling that the other shoe is about to drop - seeks a place to land so I can throw myself full bore into the project of protecting myself or controlling something! 

Watching where the Frickin’ Frigate anxiety wants to land is a discipline. Acting anxiously and trying to control every little morsel I want to eat is a choice. I can choose not to grasp. I can choose to be at ease around food. I can choose to eat chocolate or not. Maybe. After all, Chocolate is a major food group all its own. I need some every day. It makes me feel healthy!

Four Wet Landings and a Funeral

The panga pulls up as close to the shore as it can without ramming the motor into the sand. Seven of us pile out, one at a time, splashing into the small waves and wading up onto the black sand beach - leaving our life jackets behind. 

This wet landing did not include acrobatics and drenched back packs. Some do.

We wait and watch as the second panga pulls to shore and the next seven disembark - including our Galápagos guide Karina. The shortest member of our Road Scholar group performs some acrobatics negotiating the jump from the bulbous rubber raft to the sandy shallows. Wet to her waist, she is good natured and the camera safe in her husband’s pack.

This is Santiago Island, where the basalt from the volcanoes that formed these islands six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador has been eroded by wind, wave and creature action yielding the coarse black sand. This is one of several wet landings we have during our weeklong exploration of the Islands which so captivated Charles Darwin.

I survey the vegetation and critters up shore and turn to see mother ship “Wittmer Tip Top IV” stately on the horizon. Breathing in the warm damp air, I get all leaky-eyed with gratitude again - my typical response to the privilege of viewing worlds previously unknown to me. Last week we were at the top of the world, 12000 feet up at Machu Picchu! Breathtaking in all ways!

“Careful, don’t step on the Iguanas!” Karina’s cautionary exclamation brings me back to the practical. Indeed, there seems to be a carpet of the foot long black marine reptiles impeding our progress further up the beach. Yesterday, during a dry landing, at the rocky shore, of Genovesa Island, we were so excited to see a few dozen land Iguanas which were much more colorful than these - their marine cousins. Here on Santiago there must be HUNDREDS of the reptiles on this small strip of beach alone!

The stars of yesterday’s outing were the Frigate Birds with their distinctive split tails and graceful gliding through the blue. Males boast huge inflatable red throat sacks, looking so much like our red life jackets as to be comical, and bringing new meaning to the concept of inflation. They seem to deflate slowly and sadly when the female spurns the display. Also noted were a plethora of Nasca Boobies, whose yellowish beaks and brownish feet seem drab and colorless to me. I feel like Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “I want a Blue Footed Booby NOW, Daddy!”

Day five I have my chance. Oh, the BLUE of those gawky bird’s feet AND beaks! Kind of a turquoise-ish to aqua, depending on their diet. They got the Booby name from the Spanish “bobo” - meaning clownish. They are goofy looking creatures and I fall madly in love with them and even, I admit, with their red-footed cousins. The Nasca or Masked Boobies lacking that startling color don’t captivate me. Still, I have to marvel at Mama

 Nature’s experimentation.

Snorkeling offers me the chance to overcome a life-long fear of deep water. First adventure is entering the water from the beach. All goes fairly well. Knowing I can stand up at any time gives me confidence. The first mid water attempt - requiring me to plop off the edge of the panga directly into the eighty foot deep living room of sharks, sea lions, sea turtles, chocolate chip starfish and coral - makes my heart race and breathing get to the edge of panic. Of necessity, I use my mommy voice inside my head. “STOP MOVING, Melinda. Just float! The wet suit will keep you up, the snorkel will bring you air. Stop stuggling. Just float.” I heed the voice, come back from the edge of panic and listen to the only sound I can hear - the sound of my own breath slowing and deepening.

What a fabulous living room it is! My curiosity calms me further.  I’m directly over a white-tip shark - two thirds the length of my body. I follow it - trying to mimic its undulating locomotion. I experiment with left/right kicking of my swim-finned feet versus mermaid fashion using both feet in unison, which more closely imitates the shark’s gliding undulations. This is FUN! 

A large Green Sea Turtle turns her head to look me in the eye. I’m transfixed but can’t afford to get leaky-eyed with wonder here. I’ve already discovered that smiling or crying breaks the seal of my mouth around the snorkel and I get a snootful of salt water. “Note the wonder, Melinda, but contain the emotion!” The mommy voice rings in my ears.

Another of our group swims by. I point out the turtle and two sea lions swimming in exquisite Esther Williams synchrony. Also a dancer, Claudia and I share the thumbs-up experience.

My beloved has faced and overcome similar water fears this trip. Karina offers the perfect combo of playful invitation, knowledgeable support, and respectful space.

It is no surprise that her support and calm extends to us a helping hand when a call comes through her cell phone our second to last night on the boat that Mark’s brother-in-law Bob has died in New York. Bob’s timing is impeccable. We’re just able to shift flight arrangements from landing at LAX Sunday night to arriving at JFK Saturday morning. After twenty four hours of travel, we get to the funeral on time and, with a quick trip to Kohl’s and Marshall’s, appropriately dressed for the eighteen degree weather.

My beloved’s eulogy of Brother Bob was so moving. The 250 of us assembled were at benefit of his great gift of compassion, truth-telling and humor. 

After four wet landings and a funeral we are grateful to be home - if leaky-eyed with a combination of gratitude and grief.