A thousand mistresses and perhaps an equal number of misters in distress.
My husband falls in love every day and I applaud from the sidelines.
He's falling in love with one child or another, men and women counselors or child life specialists in hospitals and at camps for kids with health challenges.
"Pun" as he's known in these venues is the magician who does not show up to perform, but to be present. Thousands of kids know and love Pun. He knows how to play. He knows how to BE with every age. He empowers all by shining the light on them.
I miss him when he's gone for long stretches, but I am willing to be a "camp-widow" for the cause.
I cannot dictate, legislate, or berate when we separate. Guilt prevents protest that he's gone for long chunks of the summer when camps are in session. Deserving populations of young ones who just need to feel as if they belong; to feel that they are valued, benefit greatly with a dedicated goof-ball named Pun to cheer them on. It's a perfect match between a need and my beloved's particular set of skills. How could I say no?
At night, we catch up by phone. I listen to the daily triumphs: cases of home-sickness turned around, medical malaise or miracles, and ordinary JOY breaking out where fear and trepidation were the default before the breakthrough. It takes so little to let a child know s/he is heard, seen, and respected. I was a fortunate recipient of specific acknowledgements from caring adults in my childhood during tough times. The value of accurate mirroring cannot be overrated.
What privilege to radiate unconditional regard to kids in circumstances similar to mine, like during family life gone kafoogeldie. Those times spike fear and survival energies, those times make us feel weird and marginalized by our differences from other kids.
Listening to a young teen who you know is pregnant and who you know doesn't want anyone to know she's pregnant means that you let her talk. You maybe teach her to knit and she maybe gets it and settles down and you see her shoulders drop, her face soften, her demeanor shift from frightened little girl to a woman with a purpose. Priceless. You know it'll be a long road, but you also see she has some grit, resolve and resources to handle it.
Maybe Pun and I can tag-team. I do spring and fall family camps; he continues with summer camps. Yes, I'm a wuss. I end up in the Well Shell or Med Shed, depending on the camp, during summer sessions with dehydration and heat exhaustion when the temperature is over one hundred degrees for days on end at those altitudes.
One great joy this summer has been for me to see our granddaughter enter that lovely stage of development called latency. Between early childhood and the inevitable hormonal rollercoaster ride of the teen years, there is this sweet space of mastery. Last Friday, Miss D at seven completed a one week session of horse camp. She is a different person. So knowledgeable, grace-filled and empowered to ride with confidence despite sore muscles. She's also noodled out some tunes on the piano. We spent one afternoon color-coding keys so she can remember more easily which notes follow which in "Silent Night" and "Happy Birthday." She's reading up a storm. She's more willing to try new things - even when it may feel scary in the beginning. I'd like her Gran'Pun to witness this ordinary miracle of marvelous mastery too. She's the only Grandie we've got and we just plain love her - unconditionally.
His next trip home is around July Fourth. It'll be good to share fireworks with him.
May the Fourth be with you also!
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Monday, June 20, 2016
Grief, Leaf Me Alone...
... or The Tenacity of Oak and Loss
Sweeping the front walk is a meditation I enjoy two or three times a month. It is a sweet task thanks to my friend Ellen who gifted me with the perfect hand-crafted broom from her home town in the Philippines. Ellen was my mother's care-giver for eight and a half years. She's now caring for my mother's boyfriend. The broom is fashioned of natural grass and works better than any broom I've ever had.
This day, sun warms me. Perpetual breezes cool me and make the leaves swirl in little eddies. Why sweep when it's windy? The air at the crest of this hill is rarely still. It makes me laugh when the breeze picks up my carefully aimed broom full and blows the pile of dust and leaves all over the place. My arm guides the broom's pendulum motion along the long straight walk way from the curb, or I use it like a propeller, rotating elbow and wrist, aiming to get the leaves away from the front door and off the porch. The front yard is (still, eighteen months after moving in!) covered with redwood bark. Pine needles and leaves from all types of neighborhood trees look right at home on the "brown is the new green" expanse of what once was probably lawn, but won't be for me this last quarter of my lifetime, which I'm living out during the time of advanced global warming and California's enduring drought. A mama deer and her fawns track bark bits onto the walk way when they sip at the fountain we purchased for a memorial garden for my mom after her death in 2012.
What I get to do while sweeping is riff with free-association. Oh, those California scrub oak leaves! Quercus Dumosa. Tenacious they are! They must've been Civil Rights Marchers in another life: they stick to the cement with their sharp corners and sing, "We shall not, we shall not be moved..." Not rotary arm movement nor pendulum motion convinces them otherwise. They're not interested in turning over a new leaf. Sometimes a shoe can get them to budge. Not always.
I ask myself what else clings so tenaciously.
Geckos. They have little hair-like projections on their feet and can walk on ceilings and walls and laugh while they're doing it!
Grief is similarly tenacious. Most days, I can walk around unbound by grief's odd tethers that reach forward out of the past to trip me up on occasion. Those days, I don't laugh as much as a gecko.
As I sweep this day, and laugh at how unmovable the flattened oak leaves are, I wonder what in my life is feeling this stuck. Ah. I seem to project my grief over broken homes onto my seven year old granddaughter who actually seems to be navigating her three summer homes quite elegantly. She spends time at mom's, dad's, and her grandparents's homes. Lucky me to have had her all last week to play, sort-out her book case, garden, cook, do crafty things with, and to hang out at a cool science museum one day and to close out the week with a play date with friends at a man-made swimming pond. Friday her Gran'Pun was home from camp and came along to the swimming hole.
Perhaps I can accept that her life experience is different from mine and stop worrying about her.
Just sweep the walk, Maxwell.
A curious thing happened mid-week. The Grandie, tired of garden clean-up, went inside to read on the couch. She's voraciously working her way through a thirteen volume set of chapter books called The Famous Five. I wanted to complete dead-heading the Cecile Brunner Rose bush in my granddaughter's front yard. I could see her from where I was standing on a wooden bench half covered by tall grasses. I was reaching around with clippers in hand to the back of the bush which is taller than I am. A rotten board gave way. I tipped forward, catching myself on the wooden sill of the living room window with my left hand. No harm done, but I did warn my daughter not to stand on the bench. Shortly after I finished the rose trim my friend and her seven year old grandson arrived and we drove off to Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley to spend four lovely hours.
Later that night, I realized I was missing the gold bracelet that I've been wearing nearly every day since I found it among my mother's stuff after she died. I feel watched over and connected to her when it's around my left wrist. Reviewing my day, I realized it could have fallen off at the Science Hall, or it could have fallen in the big green garden waste barrel. I had a hunch, however, and the next day, I followed it. Clearing away a large enough passage between the front window of the Grandie's house and the rose bush and huge black berry bramble, I was able to squeeze myself in there without too many pokes or scratches or catching my clothes. I sent a voice skyward asking my mom to help me find the circle of gold. No sooner had the words left my lips than the sun's reflection reached my eyes. There it was! Within reach. I gave thanks.
My granddaughter and I gave thanks also for the delicious sun-ripened blackberries we never would have been able to reach, had the bracelet not been lost and a pathway carved.
Persistent longing, or clinging to connection has some value. It spurs us on to action we might not otherwise make.
Desire and aversion are great motivators.
The Buddha was right. All our actions seem to come from longing for something to be different from the way it is.
Just keep to your sweeping meditation of the path, Maxwell, you're bound to figure out what to do next.
Sweeping the front walk is a meditation I enjoy two or three times a month. It is a sweet task thanks to my friend Ellen who gifted me with the perfect hand-crafted broom from her home town in the Philippines. Ellen was my mother's care-giver for eight and a half years. She's now caring for my mother's boyfriend. The broom is fashioned of natural grass and works better than any broom I've ever had.
This day, sun warms me. Perpetual breezes cool me and make the leaves swirl in little eddies. Why sweep when it's windy? The air at the crest of this hill is rarely still. It makes me laugh when the breeze picks up my carefully aimed broom full and blows the pile of dust and leaves all over the place. My arm guides the broom's pendulum motion along the long straight walk way from the curb, or I use it like a propeller, rotating elbow and wrist, aiming to get the leaves away from the front door and off the porch. The front yard is (still, eighteen months after moving in!) covered with redwood bark. Pine needles and leaves from all types of neighborhood trees look right at home on the "brown is the new green" expanse of what once was probably lawn, but won't be for me this last quarter of my lifetime, which I'm living out during the time of advanced global warming and California's enduring drought. A mama deer and her fawns track bark bits onto the walk way when they sip at the fountain we purchased for a memorial garden for my mom after her death in 2012.
What I get to do while sweeping is riff with free-association. Oh, those California scrub oak leaves! Quercus Dumosa. Tenacious they are! They must've been Civil Rights Marchers in another life: they stick to the cement with their sharp corners and sing, "We shall not, we shall not be moved..." Not rotary arm movement nor pendulum motion convinces them otherwise. They're not interested in turning over a new leaf. Sometimes a shoe can get them to budge. Not always.
I ask myself what else clings so tenaciously.
Geckos. They have little hair-like projections on their feet and can walk on ceilings and walls and laugh while they're doing it!
Grief is similarly tenacious. Most days, I can walk around unbound by grief's odd tethers that reach forward out of the past to trip me up on occasion. Those days, I don't laugh as much as a gecko.
As I sweep this day, and laugh at how unmovable the flattened oak leaves are, I wonder what in my life is feeling this stuck. Ah. I seem to project my grief over broken homes onto my seven year old granddaughter who actually seems to be navigating her three summer homes quite elegantly. She spends time at mom's, dad's, and her grandparents's homes. Lucky me to have had her all last week to play, sort-out her book case, garden, cook, do crafty things with, and to hang out at a cool science museum one day and to close out the week with a play date with friends at a man-made swimming pond. Friday her Gran'Pun was home from camp and came along to the swimming hole.
Perhaps I can accept that her life experience is different from mine and stop worrying about her.
Just sweep the walk, Maxwell.
A curious thing happened mid-week. The Grandie, tired of garden clean-up, went inside to read on the couch. She's voraciously working her way through a thirteen volume set of chapter books called The Famous Five. I wanted to complete dead-heading the Cecile Brunner Rose bush in my granddaughter's front yard. I could see her from where I was standing on a wooden bench half covered by tall grasses. I was reaching around with clippers in hand to the back of the bush which is taller than I am. A rotten board gave way. I tipped forward, catching myself on the wooden sill of the living room window with my left hand. No harm done, but I did warn my daughter not to stand on the bench. Shortly after I finished the rose trim my friend and her seven year old grandson arrived and we drove off to Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley to spend four lovely hours.
Later that night, I realized I was missing the gold bracelet that I've been wearing nearly every day since I found it among my mother's stuff after she died. I feel watched over and connected to her when it's around my left wrist. Reviewing my day, I realized it could have fallen off at the Science Hall, or it could have fallen in the big green garden waste barrel. I had a hunch, however, and the next day, I followed it. Clearing away a large enough passage between the front window of the Grandie's house and the rose bush and huge black berry bramble, I was able to squeeze myself in there without too many pokes or scratches or catching my clothes. I sent a voice skyward asking my mom to help me find the circle of gold. No sooner had the words left my lips than the sun's reflection reached my eyes. There it was! Within reach. I gave thanks.
My granddaughter and I gave thanks also for the delicious sun-ripened blackberries we never would have been able to reach, had the bracelet not been lost and a pathway carved.
Persistent longing, or clinging to connection has some value. It spurs us on to action we might not otherwise make.
Desire and aversion are great motivators.
The Buddha was right. All our actions seem to come from longing for something to be different from the way it is.
Just keep to your sweeping meditation of the path, Maxwell, you're bound to figure out what to do next.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Danger: Anger
Fifty.
Fifty people.
Fifty people dead!?
Cause of death: Depravity.
One insane soul with two guns.
The mathematics of mass shootings
Disgust us. The question on everyone’s lips: When?
When will the insanity stop? There is no answer but never.
In Terry Gilliam’s 1985 futuristic movie Brazil, random
Acts of violence are the norm. E-v-e-r-y-day thing.
Bizarre bombings, shitty shoot-outs, mass
Murders: Utter depravity on every knob
of this mud-ball spinning. No one
Is winning.
Everyone
Loses.
Here
Now
An
ger
Is
Anger
Is
D
A
N
G
E
R
US
Deadly
Monday, June 6, 2016
Ti for Two Thriving with Grandie
In 1967, when I worked at the Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association of Los Angeles County, Evelyn Yamamoto, a co-worker, gave me two ti plants she brought from her mother’s garden in Honolulu. I had admired her pot-luck offering called MahiMahi, a fish dish from the Islands served wrapped in ti leaves, sort of like little tamales. Grateful, I potted each plant in in its own ceramic pot; one chrome yellow, the other electric chartreuse green.
I named the plants Arthur and Mergatroid.
From 1967 to 1972, I lived in ten different places. Sweet Brother Melton helped me with most of those moves. The same six pieces of furniture: dresser, desk, dining room table, a couple of board and brick book cases, and an iron frame with orange canvas butterfly chair. The mattress on the floor and Madras cloth spread didn’t count as furniture. Still Brother Mel helped with it all. Arthur and Mergatroid always rode up front on the floor of my ’54 Chevy BelAire.
In 1976, when I was a new mama and totally overwhelmed, I put all the neglected-looking plants outside, one at a time, to fend for themselves. (A & M had many cousins by then.) I was a coward, and couldn't bear to watch their demise. Over time, all but the hardiest philodendrons died from frost or heat.
Busy as I was with being an all-night diner to this lovely being who came through my husband and me to grace the world, I didn’t have time, or as that same lovely grown-up daughter calls, “the bandwidth” for grieving the death of the plants. I was too involved with new life.
Amidst all the joy, awe, and exhaustion of being a new mom, I noted that A & M’s shriveling in the brutal San Fernando Valley sun marked the end of an era. They were with me for over ten years. Life with me had been a moving experience for them. When they were my best and constant living companions they thrived. Shift happened. Priorities changed. I was always grateful for their cheery presence, even when my taste for neon-colored pots, so in vogue in the 1960s, waned.
About the time our second daughter was in first grade, I had a curious experience that made me want to learn about hands on healing. My Grammy Florence Stern had triple bi-pass surgery at age ninety-one. I was there when she was in recovery and the anesthesia was wearing off. When my hands were on her, the heart monitor showed an even and regular rhythm. When my hands were off, the graph spiked and dipped irregularly. I wanted to know how touch supported coherence.
Thus began a very long investigation (1985 to 2014) through self-assigned studies of various healing modalities - from massage, Polarity, and Reiki to shamanic healing, craniosacral therapy and Somatic Experiencing. After my last Advanced training in Bodynamics, and a move from L.A. to Oakland in 2014, I decided to bring my bodywork shingle inside and virtually retire. We came north to be hands-on grandparents, and I've been writing about some of those healing adventures.
Back in 1999 I attended a post grad craniosacral workshop with Franklyn and Maura Sills on Maui. It was held at a retreat center with glorious gardens at the base of Mount Haleakala. There were so many varieties of ti plants I never knew existed! I was thrilled to see their familiar shiny narrow sword-like leaves. One morning on my early walk about the property, a kindly gardener who was tending the organic vegetable garden caught me talking to the ti plants.
Y’interested in those, eh?
Yah. They bring back memories of a couple I had for ten years.
Tell you what. The day you leave here, I’ll package some up for ya.
Oh, no. I couldn’t ask you to go to so much trouble!
No trouble at all. They’re hardy, they are. They’ll be fine in your suitcase ‘till you get back to L.A.
He showed me which end was up, and how to get them going. True to his word, the day I left he gave me a plastic bag with seven beige colored sticks ranging in diameter between one half inch and an inch.
Once home, I followed his directions. Sure enough, all seven sticks sprouted roots and leaves. Some had red or variegated red and green leaves. Others were glossy as emeralds. Some I gave away; sadly, some bit the dust of Los Angeles’ desert clime, when I was working sixty hour weeks with clients and teaching five yoga classes a week.
The sole surviving ti plant lives here in Oakland with us, and seems to love her new home as much as Mark and I do. She's perched under a drawing of our granddaughter which was rendered from a photograph taken the day she was born. Steve Tanaka, husband to Amy who took over teaching a couple of the yoga classes in L.A., has quite a fine eye for capturing emotionally accurate and finely rendered portraits. The granddaughter just turned seven and has a name; the ti plant is seventeen and is nameless. Both are thriving and for that, I am truly and fiercely grateful.
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