Return to Splendor

As part of my healing journey this year I find myself returning to the past to confront my anger, loss and regrets. Last weekend I had the chance to revisit my last address before moving to my present home. Like so many these days, what I found there after three years of upheaval no longer resembles what I remember. Those left behind have changed and so have I.

Five years ago, my husband and I moved to a retreat center where we had hopes of living with like-minded people in an environmentally conscious community that honored land recovering from the ravages of agricultural abuse for decades. We wanted to grow organic food and create a safe haven for all beings in a chaotic world. We helped with the retreat center which hosted all kinds of spiritual and healing retreats.

We lived in our own private space but shared close living quarters with other community members. Our understanding was that the community shared other aspects of life as well like chores, tools and contributions. Unfortunately what looked good on paper did not translate well to real life. When egos are involved, misunderstandings and imbalance can quickly develop. We eventually recognized that this wasn’t so much a community but a collection of individuals who held very different ideas about the direction we were headed.

Sadly, my husband and I came to realize that this living situation wasn’t going to work for us, and so we bought a little bungalow in a city we enjoyed and moved away, vowing never to return because it hurt too much. Returning to relive the lost hopes and dreams of a previous life seemed unthinkable three years ago. But then pandemic, illness, death and time’s passage have a way of shifting the focus from past hurts to present challenges.

A dear friend I made while living at the retreat center, one of the few positives from that brief adventure, had a birthday coming up and I was given the chance to return for a celebration. I saw this as another opportunity for healing and accepted the invitation. The weekend turned out to be very enjoyable because I gathered with like-minded people, met new friends, reconnected with those still living at the center and returned to a piece of land that spoke to my heart.

And I happened to visit during a special time when the bluebells were in bloom. There is an enchanted place along the river with more of these fairy ephemerals than I’ve ever seen anywhere else. On a glorious Sunday morning I found myself wandering solo into the middle of a blue-hazed glade with the music of rippling water in my ears, once again falling under its spell. At that moment, I knew for certain that no matter where I live a part of me will always feel at home here.

Path to Peace

The significance of my 2022 word for the year, “Peace,” turns out to be more universal than I thought, unfortunately. My humble notion to spend a quiet year focusing on inner and outer manifestations at a personal level have been usurped by horrific images coming out of Ukraine, a country I associated with sunflower fields and ornate architecture resting in Russia’s shadow. Turns out this bravely independent country is much more than that. As am I.

The Year of the Water Tiger has already presented itself as the opposite of peaceful — brash, ambitious, unpredictable and aggressive. The specter of war has latched itself to the Tiger’s tail and opened up the world’s wounds on a larger scale. Apparently Covid’s death and destruction didn’t deliver enough suffering. Or rather, pandemic was the beginning of a series of evils released by Pandora’s box that humankind must address.

In the face of constant turmoil and uncertainty, I keep coming back to the original inspiration for my choice of theme this year. During a family vacation to St. Louis in 2013, I stopped by a downtown New Age shop run by a soft-spoken young woman in long skirts and even longer dreadlocks whose presence was palpably peaceful. The mindful way she moved, the soothing tones of her voice and the gentle attention she paid her customers created a moving meditation that affected me more than all the years in a local meditation group. She was peace in action, something I had never witnessed in practice except among ancient nuns in a dying convent.

I have held that encounter like a mental mantra close to my heart all these years. As an adult, I’ve experienced fleeting moments of profound peace that embraced me with infinite love only a few times in my life, mostly at unexpected moments. I would like this feeling to happen more and often. How to find and hold peace despite the ego’s determination to disrupt and divert is probably one of life’s greatest challenges. Perhaps it is the greatest challenge of all.

The inner and outer journey required to peace is what I will be exploring in this year of turbulence. I can already tell that the path’s lessons will be difficult and costly. In order to gain, much will have to be let go. I know the ego part of me will fight like a tiger to keep the drama and chaos going, while my soul spirit which has always known the way, will patiently wait.

Aftermath

This February we experienced the deepest snows and coldest temps since moving into our little yellow bungalow. I was beginning to think we lived in a southern climate until the negative windchills rattled our windows and deep drifts muffled my garden dreams. But as is the course of all extreme weather events, the pendulum has swung back to a lovely week of balmy breezes and the recent polar vortex fades into memory but for a few scraps of white clinging to the edges of driveways. 

Once again we count ourselves fortunate as we watch the aftermath of grid failure in warmer lands completely unprepared for such arctic extremes. No doubt lives have been totally disrupted and altered by conditions that they couldn’t control. In a heartbeat all that you’ve counted on can disappear along with power, food and water, violently shoving your life in a very different direction. I was reminded of the polar vortex in January 2014, when our house in the suburbs suddenly lost electricity after a heavy snow along with one other house right before the temperatures dropped forty degrees overnight to -11 Fahrenheit. By the next day, 100,000 households were out all over the city with restricted travel, but we were the only ones in our neighborhood.

Luckily, my family could stay with our generous neighbors across the street while waiting three days for the electric company to get around to restoring power for only two houses (which consisted of flipping a switch at an electrical box by the street). In the meantime our house temperature dropped to below freezing and every liquid froze (even the shampoo) as my husband kept a fire going in the fireplace during the day. We made the wise decision to drain the water pipes which saved our plumbing. Our neighbors in the same boat were not so fortunate, sustaining $20,000 in water damage. 

Afterward, many suggested we get a generator or a wood stove to prevent a repeat of a supposedly rare occurrence (which seems to be occurring more often now). The street-side power station that malfunctioned was later replaced. But I couldn’t seem to get warm again even after the house eventually thawed out and the frozen bottles returned to liquid. Our illusion of safety was gone, and we were tired of maintaining a home that was too big for us as we’d outgrown the suburban lifestyle. Over the years we’d dismissed the nudges of change as merely annoying little snowballs that finally grew in size until reaching avalanche proportions on the heels of an arctic clipper. I feared an iceberg was next.

And so four months later we put our house on the market and sold it in a day. We gave away most of our furnishings and settled into a two-bedroom apartment with the assurance that the complex had backup generators. Snow removal was included in the rent, and we could walk to stores for food and supplies. But the appliances were all electric and there was no fireplace. In extreme cold the fire sprinklers in our ceilings would have burst and we couldn’t turn off our water and drain the pipes if we wanted to. In three years, we would move on as part of the five-year odyssey to find community and sustainability in an increasingly isolated world where you barely know your neighbor.

I will never forget the family who lived right next door to us in the suburbs who knew of our plight but never even offered to run an extension cord over to power our portable heater for an hour or so. To add insult to injury, our house sat dark and frozen while their house was luridly aglow from the extravagant Christmas decorations that were still up and running. As I watch the same selfish and negligent acts unfold on the news while Texans struggle to survive, I wonder if we will ever find a way to get along and work together in community with such a sense of distrust and entitlement rampant in our culture while the lack of foresight and preparedness continues to undermine our very existence as a species.

These days we still don’t have a fireplace or generator but our wishlist for power backup includes solar and a wood-burning stove. For now our gas stovetop will have to do. 

Mellow Yellow

June was better. The house and garage are painted, our gardens flourish and we finally enjoyed a visit from our adult offspring after months of separation. Slowly, we’re getting to know the new neighbors, and they are becoming more familiar with us. Apparently painting a house yellow inspires reactions and conversations. Perhaps yellow is friendly and welcoming, I don’t know.

Flower beds are filling up and so far the vegetable garden has managed to escape the attentions from two fairly large bucks, several groundhogs and innumerable rabbits, not to mention a family of skunks and a digging outdoor cat or two. We have not received much rain, which worries me although the nearby reservoir is still full. My spouse and I continue to order grocery and farmer’s market pickups, and wear masks to stores first thing in the morning to avoid germs and crowds. There is no end in sight.

The bright spot is that our daughter is moving to our city in July and renting a house up the street. We will be a family again and for that I am rejoicing. Sure, there will be adjustments and boundaries, but we have all missed each other terribly this spring. Her new freelance business enables her to work from home, which is a luxury these days. Not all are so lucky but for her and her parents, this is the best solution in the short term.

While I still get overwhelmed at times, the tasks are not as frustrating and futile as they were the last two years. I answer to no one as I tend my small garden that will still feed two and maybe three people nicely in the coming months. We are on a waiting list for a small chest freezer, but hopefully we can stock up on frozen vegetables and local meats before winter. There are a few perks that I miss from the country, but not enough to give up my independence.

Even in the city, nature makes its home with us. Every night, my husband and I sit and watch the fireflies flicker in the backyard, while mama skunk ushers her youngsters under the neighbor’s shed in single file. She makes sure all are accounted for. Soon, I hope to feel the same about my little family.

Taming The Fear

The time I’ve been preparing for all my life is here. For years now I could smell it coming in the wind, felt the rumblings under my feet, heard whispers from the trees overhead. I’ve spent a year painfully eliminating all that I knew and believed that was no longer sustainable or trustworthy, pushed along by an inner urging. With the past crumbled into a pile of lies and the future so murky that my sense of direction was lost, I groped along in the dark with only basic instincts to guide me. Where I landed is all that I had when time as we knew it stopped.

I thought I was prepared for this: stock up on necessities, stay home and till the garden, be creatively mindful, and support those who sought my help in any way I could as I recovered from surgery. I limited the daily horrors of the news, played soothing music and started garden seeds while listening to audio books and chatting with friends as I kept a watchful eye on my level of anxiety and proclivity for mental depression.

But doing my part in staying home to stop the spread of disease was not enough, it seems. Complications from my eye surgery began promptly on the day my state’s stay-at-home order was issued. I was forced to travel three hours roundtrip to seek medical attention, where I found out I had a retinal detachment underway with orders to lie flat on my back for five days after laser treatment to keep from having surgery in some already overburdened hospital.

I thought I was prepared but fear had other ideas. The villain finally got to me, and took what was left of any security and stability I had managed to salvage since starting over in a new home and town where we had barely begun to know our neighbors. My days and nights blended together as I memorized every crack in the ceiling above me, hoping for the best and dreading the worst, letting my overactive imagination play out in creatively dreadful ways. My dreams at night which had already taken a sinister turn turned ugly with anxiety.

Seeing no other way out, I began to give myself permission to grieve the beautiful eyesight that I had briefly experienced along with the world’s sorrow as precious loved ones everywhere suffer from this insidious virus or pass away alone in hospitals while others isolated at home are tormented by abusive partners set off because of their dire circumstances. It was overwhelming at times, but I kept hanging on to what was given to me–a loving partner who takes great care of me, health insurance to cover my treatments and a roof over my head with plenty of food and toilet paper.

Five weeks have passed in a blur of uncertainty, fear’s faithful companion. Lying still for so long was an exercise in release, of expectations, of routine, of control. With all the time in the world, I found that I could truly listen to conversations and savor the moments when I sat up to eat. Since I spent several weeks not bending over or lifting anything, I left the gardening to my spouse and watched him gain confidence when the plants responded to him. I let go of planning anything besides the next doctor’s appointment as I watched trees bud, bloom and leaf out from the inside as an exceptionally colorful springtime unfolded.

Despite fear of what was happening out in the world, I realized that this was an opportunity to be still and heal, to become intimately aware of my own physical needs and what I’ve always taken for granted. I was forced to finally learn moderation if I wanted to recover and proceed with any quality of life. Nothing was spared from scrutiny, from alcohol consumption to diet to screen time to worry. And I had to allow myself to be vulnerable but not a victim.

Yesterday, I was given the green light to live life normally again. I was told to do what I want, with the exception of engaging in any boxing tournaments. The country and the state where I live are starting to entertain lifting their restrictions. But I know better. The normal we knew is over. As time goes on, the more experts realize how little they understand about this virus, the more frightened the powers that be become of the unrest already taking place, and the more we as a people acknowledge how undervalued and under-compensated those who provide our basic needs and services have been.

Whatever my purpose will be moving forward remains a mystery without expectations. For the time being, my job is to live mindfully and provide for my own basic needs and those around me in a sustainable way, making sure to leave enough for others and never taking for granted good health, plenty of food, a safe place to live and the connection to loved ones again. Fear can only destroy us if we let it in to stay.

The Kindness of Strangers

Homeward bound.

I was traveling at the beginning of the new regime. On Inauguration Day, I witnessed the protests at a different statehouse, one that had defended slavery and bore the marks of a broken nation. On Saturday during the Women’s Marches, I walked the red clay trails of a state park, marching with all in spirit. On Sunday, we arrived in New Orleans for a much-needed vacation from the burdens of a country already spinning out of control, and found ourselves in an emergency room.

My husband became very ill with a bad infection on the 8-hour drive, and so we checked into our hotel and headed straight to the nearest emergency room. What followed were three days of uncertainty and fear in a strange city where we’d never been before and knew no one. Three days of an endless stream of nurses and doctors and housekeepers and aides who spoke in odd accents, from all walks of life and every corner of the globe, with compassion in their eyes and caring in their hearts. Three days of hearing and seeing the city’s poorest and sickest soothed and treated along the ER bays and hospital wards. Three days of witnessing what the world is like from outside my comfortable little box. Three days of relying on the kindness of strangers.

After spending our entire stay in The Big Easy living moment to moment, the drug-resistant infection finally turned a corner and we were cleared to go home on a beautiful spring-like morning that the natives thought unseasonably cold. Everyone on the staff shook our hands and told us how sorry they were that we never got a chance to see the real New Orleans, to taste her food, hear her music, savor her spirit. They told us to come back and give their fair city another chance.

And we will. But I feel like we’ve already experienced her soul without ever setting foot on Bourbon Street.

Waking Up

The post-election Supermoon of 2016.

The morning after the US election, I woke up strangely calm. I didn’t expect that reaction. And then I remembered; I’ve been through this rodeo before. On a personal level. Ironically, or maybe fortuitously, I’d been studying our president-elect’s particular personality disorder during the months leading up to our national November surprise, trying to get a handle on the kind of panic and physical paralysis I experience every time I hear him speak on TV.

His rhetoric throws me back to my old childhood and even recent adult showdowns with family members who exhibit the same traits. In or out of therapy, I’ve used all the tactics that have played out on the national stage in social media and comment threads. Anger, denial, defensiveness, sarcasm, blame, finger-pointing, compliance, withdrawal, pleading, compromise, escape, negotiation, a blind eye, even an occasional proactive offensive — you name it, I’ve tried it. Some of them seemed to work, at first. But in the end, what little gains I’d thought I’d made were just illusions, part of the narcissist’s great charm in promising you the moon but vanishing before you come to collect at sunrise.

I have neither solutions nor cures to offer. As long as the narcissist is getting what he or she wants, there is no motivation to change. It’s a very hard addiction to break. But what I do know is this: that hunger for the spotlight can never be satiated. The more attention (negative or positive) that is fed, the hungrier the appetite. I can only imagine that the gnawing search for more must be a form of hell on earth. And while I must forgive in order to be set free from the vicious dance I participate in as a narcissist’s compliant partner or even adversary, I will not forget.

What’s at stake is the sanctity of life for all of us, narcissists included. The ones in my life have taught me the hard way that no matter what I do or sacrifice for them, it’s never enough. Instead of beaming all our attention on the insatiable ones, I vote that we focus on ourselves, the stars of our own reality shows. We may not determine our outcomes, but we can control our outlooks. Do we sustain healthy boundaries? Do we care too much about what others think of us? Are we doing what’s important or just marking time, filling up space? Are we aware of the lessons being taught to us, supporting us, warning us? Are we awake?

I, for one, have seen the enemy, and behind all the bluster and bravado, they look just like us. In fact, they are us. We all play our parts in this tango, whether we lead or not. And if one partner changes the steps, the other must react, one way or another. Sometimes we follow, sometimes we break apart. And maybe, just maybe, we find a new rhythm, a new dance.

It’s time to get to work.

When the Fog Lifts

Day 19: I Said Goodbye To . . .

This year I said goodbye to some lingering roles that had run their course: the dutiful daughter, perfect mother and overcompensating wife. This year the fog lifted from my eyes, and rays of my own turth blinded me with potential.

I’ve decided to participate in Susannah Conway’s December Reflections  photo prompts again this year. During this hectic and stressful season, won’t you join me in mindful reflection from life’s photographic window seats and contemplative comments that provide refuge from the madness.

Feathering the Nest

You seem cold
so I pull out all I can remember
and rip this in shreds
to hang high like hope.

Soon, I notice the beginnings
of fear in fraying scraps from
a bathrobe you’ve forgotten
I gave you, the mother I miss gone
in a flutter of tailored blue trim, while
your memory’s soft batting spills
onto a crazy quilt of early crocus
chaos underneath.

The awful resentment in granny’s
faded remnants still swings too low,
blocking your chance to rise
above, her bitter view spun on threads
she sewed into your youth,
your marriage. And even though
I bend the branches down,
you can’t look far enough beyond.

Instead, you build on hard ground
with only heavy hurt,
using a muddled history
as nesting wattle over and over,
unable to see
your life in the trees.

NaPoWriMo #5

*A friend of mine had the idea to put her colorful quilting scraps outside for birds to use in their nests, helping to create spontaneous works of art in nature. I began to envision the memories evoked by suddenly seeing a piece of old clothing in a new outdoor context, which led me down a completely different path.

I’m writing a poem a day in April as part of NaPoWriMo’s celebration of National Poetry Month. We may be able to live without poetry, but who would want to?

How to Live or Die by the Outcome of the Game

1. Position yourself as far away from the TV as possible.
2. As an alternative, you can dominate the viewing selection by turning up the volume on repulsive shows like Hoarders, thus forcing fans to flee into another part of the house.
3. Stock up on perishables to sustain you, since no one else will be eating until the final score, and maybe for several hours after depending on the injustice of the sports gods.
4. Keep earplugs nearby in case of excessive screaming over a bad call by a vision-impaired referee.
5. Become engrossed in a good book set in a land devoid of all competitive activities but that still offers a compelling plot line. (No Hunger Games, in other words)
6. Sneak in a nap during halftime while fans are mumbling about strategy behind closed doors.
7. Above all (and this is most important) always remove yourself from the premises during the last “five” minutes of the game, which could take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.
8. Return for happy hour or unhappy hour, depending on the fates.
9. Next Saturday: Do it all over again.