2021 was the first September 14 of my life where I didn’t send flowers or a gift to my Mom for her birthday. She’s in Memory Care, and the last two years, I sent her bouquets of flowers that she never received. She doesn’t really
Am I developing clairvoyant powers? Or was it just coincidence?
Here’s what happened: Yesterday I went out to my back deck in the forest, surrounded by waterfalls and flowers, and laid out my yoga mat. I lit candles and …
’s been 22 days since my hip replacement surgery, and the hardest part is slowing down. I want to be healed. I want to dance, to stretch, to slide into bed without tweaking pain, to sleep on any side I choose. I want to jump into the ocean and then slide into a hot bubble bath.
Because I felt so crushed, so destroyed, I started to create, all day every.
I painted my longing for strength, I danced my grief through my body, and I wrote, faster, harder, wilder…
I just want to be next to her, to read to her, put my arms around her, to feel my heart near hers, and pretend that her brain will come back and she will remember who I am, even for one bittersweet moment.
Last week I attended my first wedding as a divorcee, and I wasn’t expecting the cascading waves of mixed emotions. I was happy for my niece of course, and I do adore romance and beauty, but there were moments at the wedding that were zings of pain, like little divorce bees were flying around, stinging me here and there…
A few minutes later, I heard the sound of a saxophone and finger-snapping and saw the crowd of sweaty bodies parting to make way for two vastly different oddballs: a tall wild-haired saxophone player named Spyder Mittleman, and the very short Chuck E., who was hunched over, snapping his fingers like a Beatnik in a dark seedy poetry bar who has just heard “Howl” for the first time. They both wore sunglasses, and they took their time sauntering through the crowd, whipping them into a frenzy before they climbed onto the stage and launched into their witty-Louis Prima-New Orleans-style-rockabilly-blues. I slid off my barstool and started to dance and didn’t finish until they played their very last song, Goddamn Liar. Chuck E. would stand onstage, smoking his cigarette, wearing his sunglasses, and every time the band would pause, he would say, “Goddamn Liar.” Then he would usually shout, “Get the hell out of my gas station!” and exit the stage to exuberant screaming and applause.
As I drove home that night in my bug, my ear drums muted from the loud music, I rolled down my windows so that the warm gardenia-scented air could cool the glistening sweat off my arms. I thought my co-server was right: Chuck E. was God, and if not “the” God, he was “a” god, an insanely talented, mischievous version of Dionysus, reigning over Monday nights in Hollywood.
And now, after all the tremendous loss I’ve experienced the past few years, when I felt so crushed with heartbreak and loss, and so far away from that girl I used to be, the girl spinning with her golden wings, that girl with the jewels on her hips; now I feel like Isis was standing vigil next to me all this time, her wings spread, silently fanning me back to life. It has taken me a long long time to stand back up, but I’m still here, and my wings are spread, and every time I dance, and share my story with others, I am fanning them with my own shimmering gold.
I sat quietly in the giant hand, the stone warmed by the sun, and listened to my heartbeat among the children shouting and laughing in different languages around me. I thought about the 20-year-old me who had been full of childlike wonder and adventure and enchanted by everything about Paris and living out my dream of visiting such a magnificent city. I thought about 28-year-old me climbing the hand with my soulmate and best friend, wrapping our arms around each other, feeling like we would be intertwined forever… one glorious treasured moment caught on camera. I didn’t know then that it wouldn’t last forever. And here I was, 50-year-old me, letting the hand gently hold me.
I don’t want to hear about the gifts of pain and darkness, but it recently dawned on me that maybe the point of it all, and I’m not saying there is one, but if there was, perhaps it’s about finding our inner light no matter what life throws at us, a light so strong and bright that nothing can snuff it out. Maybe it doesn’t matter how brutal and agonizing the world can be. Maybe it’s about cultivating kindness in the face of cruelty; humility in the face of egotistical tyrants; compassion in world that tells you that only the strongest survive.
