Laura: Holiday Love Journey: Part 3

Part 1: Caring for my Mom, and laying next to her watching her favorite movie, Cinderella as she falls asleep.

Part 2: Singing Over the Bones, my father’s bones to be exact, singing over his grave on Christmas Eve, and how in my time of grief and loss, I sometimes feel like La Loba, the ancient pueblo mythical woman who gathers up the scattered bones in the desert and when she takes them back to her cave and assembles them and sings over them, they take the form of a wolf, grow flesh and blood, rise and bound out of the cave, taking the form of a free and laughing woman.

Part 3: Mermaids, Fireflies, and Laura We drove to Vegas to visit my teacher, mentor, fellow dancer, and dear friend Laura Kali Shakti and her three daughters.  Two years ago, Laura was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and given a few months to live.

The last time I saw Laura was on Martha’s Vineyard when she brought her husband and three beautiful daughters to visit us. Laura is a nature-loving goddess and the island was a perfect place for her with its magnificent walks, staggering scenery, sparkling light and stunning isolated beaches. We collected over a dozen whole conch shells at a beach we called Conch Beach, pretended to be mermaids at Mermaid Beach, made sand castles and seashell mandalas, swam on our backs in the fog in Icehouse Pond while a single hawk flew over us, frolicked in the pink waters of the Cove as the sun set, and cheered as the moon rose over Menemsha. Laura’s girls have blonde hair down to their waists, and each night we braided it before bed and watched the fireflies dance in our yard like fairies, while her husband cheerffully cooked some amazing meal for us.

One night, I came downstairs to see Laura in her turban, sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, humming. I raised my eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

Her husband, who was sitting on the couch on his laptop, put his finger to his lips shushing me. Later, they told me she was psychically healing a sick baby. I don’t know how psychic healing works. All I know is that I’ve seen Laura do it many times over the years.

I met Laura when I was about 22 and she was 26 and seemed ancient to me. We were driving out to Woodland Hills to look at belly dance costumes imported by Ali who brought them over from Egypt. We barely knew each other, but we had the same dance teacher, Mesmera. All I knew about Laura was she was a tall gorgeous blonde amazon who danced like a goddess. She marveled at my chutzpah when I told her I had started dancing professionally after only nine lessons, and I marveled at her caution when she told me she took lessons for five years before she ventured into her professional gig. She lived in a little apartment near the beach in Venice that always smelled of lavender and oranges, and she was married with a little girl, Sarah. I came to all of Sarah’s birthday parties as a “Fairy” with my giant wings on ad would do my fairy wishes and dance with the children. Laura and I ended up dancing in the same Arabian dance company, and even with our height differences, we ended up doing a rainbow silk veil duet wearing white togas tied with gold ribbons, fusing our ballet training with belly dance. In later shows, she did her own version of Double Rainbow Veil to Sting’s “Desert Rose” and it was so stunning it brought tears to my eyes and gave me goosebumps every single time. She would dance around the stage with one gorgeous silk rainbow veil, and then when the song changed keys into its’ “climax”, she would spin and suddenly her one veil split into two.

Laura was very spiritual, and lived on a different plane than me. She never danced professionally at nightclubs, restaurants or parties–she would only dance onstage with the company in big choreographed shows. One day, we were standing on the dirty sidewalk in front of her house in Venice, the smell of the sea in the air even though Venice is what I would call a “ruffian seaside town”, I asked her why she wouldn’t dance at clubs and she said, “I don’t want all those sleazy men sliming my aura. I’m a mother, and I hold the energy for my daughter and our home.” I love that phrase, “sliming my aura”. I danced professionally for many many years, and I never really thought about being “slimed”.  But I do remember when I first started dancing at Dar Magreb, a moroccan palace restaurant in Hollywood. I was dancing for families, grandparents, children, and the energy never felt slimy. But I do remember one time, a group of college boys came into the restaurant in a big group, and they were egging each other on to get wilder in their interactions with me, giving me their phone numbers and addresses and begging me to come over after to their after-party. I laughed and took the numbers and tossed them in the trash later, but I decided it would be good to have a strategy for dealing with this type of behavior in the future. I spoke with my belly dance teacher about it. She told me that when she encountered groups of men like that, she would channel Kali.

“Kali? The Hindu goddess who sticks out her tongue and carries a bloody dagger and a ring of heads around her neck?”

Mesmera laughed. “That’s the one. When I’m myself, (meaning not belly dancing), I stay away from groups like that, but as Mesmera, I eat that energy for breakfast. It can be delicious. I take it and allow it to light up my dancing and throw it right back at them.” She tossed her gorgeous hair as she spoke.

Laura actually went by the dance name Laura Kali Shakti, but her version of Kali obviously handled slimy energy a different way—by staying away from it.

(I incorporated both of these wise conversations into my life. My dancing grew in power and I kept control of the energy whether I was dancing for children, elderly wise women, or groups of college boys. And now, in divorce, my aura is “slimed” daily, the very essence of the divorce process involves experiencing a continual spray of slime from lawyers and exes and in-laws. How fabulous that I have had so many years of practice protecting myself and now, teaching my children how to protect themselves.)

Laura became my goddess teacher when I had to observe a religious ceremony different from my own for my religion class at UCLA. I observed Laura leading a “goddess ritual”, casting a circle, doing breath work and movement. It resonated with me on such a deep level, that Kim and Courtney and many other of our friends met with Laura every week afterwards so she could share her wisdom with us. We learned  about the phases of the moon, how to cast a circle, harness energy, and the seasonal cycles. Laura is a scholar of history and linguistics, a kundalini yoga teacher, massage therapist, herbologist… basically a wise-woman-healer from ancient times. She taught us the deeply layered history and meanings of words and energy we use in daily life, how to use movement and storytelling to raise energy, and how to conduct rituals for transformation and healing.

Cat funeral

When my beloved cat, Coco, died, I asked Laura to officiate his funeral. She said humans share a unique relationship with their pets: we are their caregivers and they are our teachers, and that Coco was back in the lap of the goddess. It was comforting to have the importance of Coco acknowledged. He was a very unusual cat who taught me about love and changed my life in positive ways I can’t even put into words. Losing him after only four years was devastating, and it comforted me to think he was lying in the lap of some gorgeous goddess somewhere.

Baby Shower for Marci and Annabelle

When I got pregnant with my daughter, my two best friends in LA, Kim and Dolphina, had a baby shower for me, officiated by Laura.

At the time, Dolphina had a big goddess center in Santa Monica, and they decided to have a Valentine theme so everyone would wear pink and red and the focus would be love. Laura created an incredible ceremony for me, that wasn’t just a baby shower, it was a transformation ritual. She went around the room and had each woman say their name, their mother’s name and grandmother’s name, followed by the words “I accept Marci in my life as a mother.” It sounds simple, but it was really powerful for me in moving into my new role as a mother. Having my close friends verbally accept my new role aloud was powerful.

Then Laura filled a “chalice” or moon goblet around the room, had each woman hold it while saying a one word wish for my birth experience: magical, sublime, powerful, short, etc.

Then she had me sip from the chalice.

This was followed by passing around a basket of rose petals, with each woman saying one word or sentence that was a wish for the baby, like the fairies in Sleeping Beauty passing out blessings. Afterwards, they had me sit on a red velvet throne chair and they poured the rose petals over my head and danced around me. My dancer guests performed for me and we all danced together and ended the evening watching glitter catch the light as it fell through the air, swaying with our arms around each other.

Diagnosis

When I got the news that Kim was in a coma in LA, I called Laura to see if she could feel any energy there or help in any way. I hadn’t spoken with Laura in a while and didn’t know of her diagnosis.

A few weeks later, Laura told me of her diagnosis with an apology that she knew it wasn’t a good time to tell me, with everything else I was going through. Oh Laura—the truth is the truth, and I will help in whatever way I can. Western doctors had told Laura she could not be treated and had a few months to live. She wanted to try an alternative treatment that wasn’t covered by her insurance, and I said I would set up a Go Fund Me for her. An old friend said, “Do you really need to take that on right now? You are dealing with a lot.” Yes, I know, and yes, I do, because this is how I cope, this is how I heal, by caring and helping others in any way I can. Laura needed $40,000 and her Go Fund Me raised the total amount in two days. Laura was able to be treated, and her diagnosis of a “few months to live” turned into two more years.

Always the teacher, she has documented her journey and shared it with her close friends and occasionally to the general public. Two of her daughters came out to stay with me over Halloween to look at colleges. They are tall gorgeous graceful amazons like their mother, and it was a gift to me to spend a few days with them, to talk to them about what it feels like caring for someone you love so much and that you are so tied to in their last days. The journey of grief and loss is a very personal one–it takes as long as it takes. No one can rush it, or tell you it’s time to stop grieving. It’s your own sacred journey.It is an honor to be witness and caregiver to your great love in their last days.

It is also really hard, and it’s important to fill your well and not feel guilty, to care for yourself in whatever way that works for you. In the 911 hyper-vigilant world of caring for that person, caring for yourself happens in tiny moments—you have to find them, create them, notice them as you go—a beautiful flower, kind word from a stranger, a song that makes you dance in your car. The Upanishads, the sacred books of India, say that when you stand before the beauty of a sunset or of a mountain and you pause and exclaim, “Ah”, you are participating in divinity. Notice these pauses.

Laura’s nurse told her she wouldn’t make it to her birthday on December 7. The kids and I went to visit her on Dec. 29. We walked into her house in Vegas and it didn’t smell like sickness at all. It smelled of lavender and oranges and evergreen. She looked beautiful still, with her lion’s mane of blonde hair still intact and her kind eyes. She can no longer stand, and she was sitting at her breakfast table in a purple caftan. She smiled at me and nuzzled me and smiled and joked with the kids. Annabelle and Henry gently hugged her, careful not to hurt her. Then they went with her daughters to a mall so they could be teenagers together for a couple of hours and do teenager things.

I had no visions of what the visit would be like—I just knew I would step in to help however I could. I hoped we could talk and I could tell her how she impacted my life in such an amazing way. But it’s hard for her to talk, and it’s hard for her to breathe. She has a catheter in her lungs draining the constant stream of fluid, and oxygen tubes in her nose. I looked into her beautiful face as she sunk into her big chair, and she smiled at me as she immediately fell asleep. I got on my knees, tutu and all, and scrubbed her kitchen floor, did her dishes, started laundry and talked to cheerful and charming Sarah, who is now 26 years old. When Laura opened her eyes, she had a Skype appointment with a grief therapist, trying to put things in place to help her girls and her husband cope after she is gone. Sarah and I went upstairs to give her privacy, and we sat on a bed and talked about musical theater and her upcoming wedding.

And then I had to leave. It was way too soon. I only had one day in Vegas. But I gazed into Laura’s beautiful face, and said, “It’s not enough time, and not enough talking, but I also don’t feel like we need to talk. You know how I love you, and I’m with you every step of this journey. And please know, that I belong to your girls—I am theirs and they are mine. Anything they need, ever, I am here for them.”

Cinderella and La Loba

So visiting Laura was like a combination of Cinderella and La Loba. At first glance, the two stories don’t seem like they have anything in common, but look a little closer. They were both willing to do the hard work, the deep work of cleaning the dirtiness and muck, uncovering the truth, uncovering the bones and gathering them together in one place to sing over them, almost like gathering villagers together at a ball, to have a glorious wolf-woman spring to life, or have a glorious soul emerge that has done the tough work while singing, not with grouchiness or bitterness, and it seems to me that both Cinderella and La Loba had good reasons to be bitter, but they didn’t succumb. They did the soul work and kept on singing. Cinderella didn’t lay in bed yelling at people to do the work for her, she got up every day and did it herself. La Loba didn’t sit in a chair drinking herself into oblivion. She picked up and went where she needed to go to gather the pieces. She did the soul work of assembling, singing, breathing life with sound and voice, into that which looks lifeless.

Maybe Cinderella’s prince isn’t actually a prince, but a metaphor for the side of her that is regal and action-oriented, actively seeking to find a something that fits, a shoe that fits, a kingdom that feels right, a way to merge the cheerful optimistic hard-working dreamer with the “make things happen” side, so together they are whole and run into the world as a laughing woman.

It probably sounds confusing, but I love a good metaphor, and one of my favorite dinner conversations with the kids is to ask them what they think of certain fairy tales and what they could possibly mean: the Mirror of Shattered Sight, the Evil Queen’s Mirror, Rumpelstiltskin, the power of names… I could go on and on and I am always amazed and delighted at their wise answers.

Joseph Campbell said, “The metaphor is the mask of God through which eternity is experienced.”

I had the same feeling at Laura’s that I had with my Mom—every elderly person in the memory care is my Mom, every transitioning soul like Laura is Kim and my Dad. Reaching out our arms to hold them on their sacred journeys, and knowing this is the sacred work of life: bones and wolves and enchanted shoes and pink ocean foam and fireflies and mermaids and sunsets and moonlight and we can dance through all of it, hand-in-hand, loving and losing like building our sandcastles and seashell mandalas knowing the sea will come and wash them away, and there is wisdom and joy that comes in knowing that and building them anyway.