I like the constancy of the accompaniment to my descent whenever I go to my office - early each morning for yoga and meditation, and later for office tasks.
Welcome to my space. It's a small space, just large enough for a desk and a chair and a healing cot. If I want to set up my massage table, it's really cozy. Squished feeling. But clients don't seem to mind when they're supine and their eyes are closed or they're prone in the face cradle. Nor do they mind when I slide the healing cot into the middle of the room on a diagonal so I have access to all sides.
The only problem is when I want to do a boundary exercise with a newish client. Then I need to move to the official guest room. Even there, it's a little cramped. Too small to have quite enough space for a big circle of rope or yarn or ribbon around a client to determine where a boundary may have been breeched by an unwanted or unexpected event.
It's important to know where someone's boundaries have been breeched. Dad's good right hand smacking against our cheek as we accidentally spilled milk at the dinner table can leave a lifelong imprint - meaning, child (now adult) is always looking out for that smack to come, thus ignoring the other side. OR we know what's coming to us from Dad's right hand, or a remembered auto accident, surgery, or other assault, so we willfully ignore that side and get hyper-vigilant toward the other side.
Boundaries count. They keep us healthy. Repairing them is a fun puzzle. But we need a big enough space for the body to speak its truth. Hopefully, when clients who have boundary breeches come to me, they will not be disrupted by walking down the hall to the Hobbit Room. We call it the Hobbit Room because it's snuggled into the hillside. The only window is three inches too high up from the floor for safe egress in case of fire, according to the Oakland's Department of Building and Safety, but we keep a stool handy, just in case.
Boundaries R Us. Don't leave home without one.
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Israel is said to have the largest number of traffic accidents in the world - more than any other country. Think of it as an island of land that was initially petitioned by Zionist leader Herzl when the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine in 1896.
Not until May 14, 1948 was Israel officially declared a Jewish State, by the United Nations after the Holocaust led so many Jewish refugees to flee Europe. The very day of Israel's establishment as a country, bombs were being lobbed into it from surrounding Arab nations in the morning, and by Egypt in the evening.
Surrounding Israel are Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt. The Red Sea is to the South; Mediterranean Sea to the West. All these countries still want that precious land originally given to the Israel, then under rule of the first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
The reason for greater numbers of car accidents perhaps lies in the number of wars that have been fought over the land of Israel. War breeches boundaries like nobody's business. It is a huge factor in making humans crazy with a feeling of "Not Safe." We need to have a certain base level of safety in order to be able to function with any coherence. When boundaries are breeched by bombings, there's a sense of not knowing when or whence the next blow is coming. That sort of gun shy reaction makes terrible drivers, because people in shell-shock are always ducking and covering while trying to navigate through a city's busy streets. Syria may run a close second in number of traffic accidents. What atrocities we are capable of perpetrating against our fellow humans! One Lifeboat, Earth, folks. ONE lifeboat.
Peace, man! Peace.
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My Ring... makes a joyful noise as I go downstairs. It's like a Pavlovian bell indicating it is time to meditate. Yummy. Or write a blog. Yummy and challenging. Or pay bills... Mehhh. Or to work with a client... Definitely yummy. I love to work! I love to work with clients and kids and babies and old folks...
Sometimes, the ring sound is missing, replaced by clunk, clunk, clunk. I am carrying the vacuum, the feather duster, and vinegar for cleaning toilet, sinks, and mirrors.
Sometimes, cleaning happens.
Although I've worn my wedding ring for nearly forty-eight years, it's not getting much thinner. I remember looking at my grandmother's wedding ring and thinking how very thin it had become. Worn away by busy hands doing busy work every day for over seventy-five years! That was a long marriage. The only time each of them married was that auspicious day, September 1, 1914, the day they both said, "Yes! I do."
My mother was born August 23, 1919. She would have been 100 years of age this past August. Her brother, my Uncle Larry, was born May 10, 1924, on the chicken ranch where they lived in San Bernardino. He was a twin. His brother, born dead, had a separate placenta which was not expelled during the birth process. Grammy got systemic blood poisoning. The invention of antibiotics was more than twenty years in the future. She was in bed for six months. Three of her sisters rotated caring for her, while my Granddad cared for the livestock and small garden.
During her infirmity, my Grammy Florence cut and sewed together hundreds of pieces of fabric from her husband's worn-out shirts, her old dresses, and those of my mom, to make a quilt. She called it her agony quilt. It was a pre-depression era distraction. When complete, she shipped off the face of the quilt to her sister-in-law Wilhemina who, with her quilting bee in Marine City, Michigan, quilted it for her. It now hangs in the hallway downstairs here in this very house. The hand stitched border reminds me there are historical boundaries also; that our ancestral imprints, when understood, acknowledged, and healed in ourselves do not have to repeat in our own lifetime. I believe healing happens not only for ourselves but for future generations, and retroactively - back into history for the spirits of those who came before us.
Whenever I hear my ring singing along the wood bannister, I also think of my Grammy's thin gold band. A wonder it was, that it never got so thin that it actually broke. She was still wearing it when she died on October 16, 1991. We, her closest family, were there. I heard my Gramps' voice come into the room, a few minutes before she took her last breath, to ask, "Florence, would you like to dance?" Her last breath came out as a resounding, "YES." Nice ring to it, I think.
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May your Holly Daze be Joy-filled and cozy.
May you ring in your New Fangled Year of 2020 with Delight, and may the next twelve months be bright with visions of peace dancing in your heart.
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