the bottom of the ninth

Steps

And like that, it was over.

I walked down to the field, looking for my son in a sea of white and red. It was eerily quiet despite a celebration from the other side of the field. Big behemoth sized boys wandered in circles.

Mine stood with his back to me. He was talking to one of the kids from the other school. One of the boys he had grown up with. Had played with. They were hugging and talking and my son was congratulating him. I waited for a moment, holding back, allowing them their time together. And then he turned to me. There were tears in his eyes.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” he said. “Football is over. 3 years of my life. Just like that. It’s over.”

His friend Eddie walked towards us. “I can’t believe how much this hurts,” Eddie said. “I didn’t know how bad it would hurt.”

And just like that, it was gone. 3 years, 4 for some. Practices and weight training and games and team dinners. Game planning and film Mondays and pre-game trips to Panda Express. Their identity as football players.

I didn’t get it last year. Last year as we stood outside the locker room at the Home Depot Center after the State Championships, it was the other guys. We were coming back. We would play again. I watched as the seniors, one by one, came out of the locker room to the warm embrace of their parents, to the waiting arms of girl friends and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who knew what I now know. This is the end.

My eyes filled with tears as I hugged my son and his friend. It had happened so quickly. One minute we were cheering and wishing and hoping for a comeback. The next moment we were facing the inevitable. Life is like that.

In a moment, things change forever.

I had spent the day creating a keepsake for this same behemoth. Hours earlier, my dear and talented friend Frances and I sat hunched over her computer, creating an ad for the senior yearbook. I had searched through photo albums for days trying to find just the right pictures to include in this traditional senior memoir. There was the sandbox that we built that year in the backyard, and the trip to Disney World. There were Little League pictures and Pee Wee soccer photos and birthday parties with train shaped cakes and too many balloons. There were pictures of Great Grandparents and Grandfathers who we miss and vacations we remember. The first day of kindergarten and the 3rd grade play. How could I capture 18 years? How could I do it justice? In the end I threw a couple of photos in a bag and headed to my friend’s house, unsure of what we might do.

I needn’t have wondered. It turned out beautifully.

When one door closes another opens. By Sunday we were looking forward. College applications were due and despite a lingering sadness, it was time to think about what was next. There will be a tomorrow.

And yet, despite the excitement of what is to come for him, I can’t help but linger.
When we sold our first home, I walked from room to room and stood in the doorway remembering, soaking in the images of the moments that had been. I took my time, scanning the rooms that, despite being devoid of furniture, would never be empty in my mind. I took a deep breathe and turned out the light.

On Friday night as we stood on the grassy field, as the sweat mixed with the tears, and we soaked up the memories, someone turned out the lights for the last time.

I wasn’t ready.

Memories

"God gave us memories that we might have roses in December." ~ J.M. Barrie

My father-in-law passed away last week. He was 84 years old. He was a World War II military veteran and a veteran employee of the Wisconsin Public Service. My husband used to tell me stories about how his dad would go out in the dead of winter when feet of snow blanketed the county to make sure his neighbors could see and stay warm. He was a Boy Scout leader and a member of the American Legion, a man who loved history and maps and fixing things in his basement workshop. He was a son, a husband, a father and a grandfather and he was deeply loved.

The night my father-in-law died, my husband sat in the dark of the bedroom. The house was full of kids and dogs and the commotion that comes with both and he needed some quiet to be with his thoughts. I went back at one point to check on him, to make sure he was doing OK.

“The memories keep coming,” he said, “Like waves rushing over me. They keep coming and coming.”

“I know,” I said, because I do.

When my Dad passed away a couple of years ago I could not bear the sadness. I was unprepared for the emotion that would wash over me, the memories like snapshots from my life’s photo album that played over and over like an emotional slide show that would not stop. I knew what he was going through.

We are so complex, us humans. In a moment, life changes. A father, husband, grandfather gone. In the blink of an eye.

We sat at long tables. There were 600 of us. Fathers and mother, grandfathers and grandmothers, sons, daughters, sisters and brothers, we were gathered together to celebrate the end of the fall sports season. The principal welcomed the participants and then, with a slight deviation from the traditional pre-meal prayer, he welcomed the father of one of our varsity football players to the front of the room.

Two weeks ago he had a heart attack. Two weeks ago his number was called. Another moment of transition. Another moment when things change forever. But not the way he expected.

Somehow he survived. The paramedics responded quickly and within a few days he was on the road to recovery. He stood in front of the room full of 600 faces, waited for the rousing applause to die down and then he spoke, his voice shaking with emotion, of the power of family and friends and the support he had received from this school community. His son’s football teammates had stood by him as he faced the darkest days a son would ever face. The players dedicated the game to him and presented him with a football signed by all the boys on the team. A talisman of support, a reminder that he was not alone. While he struggled to get well, the whole school community prayed. And here he was. Just two week later, standing in front of us and sharing his gratitude at being given a second chance. A son, a husband, a father and someday, perhaps, a grandfather.

"Look around the room," they instructed us after he had finished speaking. For many this will be your last time together. Students will be graduating. Families moving on. Take the time to share memories of your time together."

Notice the moments.

In English class, my oldest was given an assignment to write about an object that has particular meaning to him. He wrote about a bamboo back scratcher that belonged to my Dad. It was one of the things he took from my father’s belongings. I remember when he handed it to me to read. He hadn’t discussed it with me ahead of time. In fact, I had no idea what he had written at all. His words were beautiful, lovingly describing a visit with this giant of a grandfather who had meant so much to him.

“My Grandfather,” he wrote, “was everything a young child could ask for. He was loving, smart and funny. He taught me how to play golf, fueled my imagination and most importantly made me laugh… When we left to go home, I had no idea that this was the last goodbye I would get to say to him. These are the things that I remember when I go to take that plain wooden tool out of the closet to reach that hard to get spot on my back. It eases the pain of the itch and makes me feel better. This object reminds me that I have to take advantage of every opportunity possible. You never know when it will be your last.”

How did he get so wise?

Keepsakes. Talismans. Remembrances of those we have loved.

In the cabinet in the kitchen is an assortment of antique bottles. My father-in-law collected them, delicately digging them up from the acres of farmland in northern Wisconsin. He knew where every one had been found and he had methodically researched each one’s original purpose. There were medicine bottles and beverage bottles and bottles that held alchemist’s elixirs. They were his treasures and on one of our visits back, he gave a number of them to me. Blue and green, brown and opaque, they come in all shapes and sizes. They are old and beautiful and unique and now, forever, they will remind me of him.

In case you've been wondering where I've been...

I don't get sick.

Really I don't.

While everyone else is coughing and hacking and sneezing and wheezing, I'm fine.

I don't get sick.

I cook and clean and pick up tissues, drive to the doctor and make chicken noodle soup for other less fortunate people,

People who aren't as healthy as I.

I don't get sick.

I'm a Mom.

I take care of other people.

I cook and clean and do laundry. (Lots and lots of laundry)

Drive to and fro and back again

I help with homework and pay the bills and walk the dogs,

I change the empty rolls of toilet paper that no one else will change.

I don't get sick.

I'm a Mom.

I don't get sick.  Really I don't.

"Sneezles"

by A.A. Milne

Christopher Robin

Had wheezles and sneezles,

They bundled him into his bed.

They gave him what goes

With a cold in the nose,

And some more for a cold in the head.

They wondered if wheezles

Could turn into measles

If sneezles would turn into mumps;

the examined his chest

For a rash and the rest

Of his body for sweelings and lumps.

They sent for some doctors

In sneezles and wheezles

To tell them what ought to be done.

All sorts and conditions

Of famous physicians

Came hurrying round at a run.

They all made a note

Of the state of his throat,

They asked if he suffered from thirst;

They asked if the sneezles

Came after the wheezles

Or if the first sneezle

Came first.

They said, "If you teazle

A sneezle

Or wheezle,

A measle may certainly grow.

But humour or pleazle

The wheezle or sneezle,

The measle will certainly go."

They expounded the reazles

For sneezles and wheezles

The manner of measles

When new.

They said "If he freezles

In draughts and in breezles,

Then PHTHEEZLES

May even ensue."

Christopher Robin

Got up in the morning,

The sneezles had vanished away.

And the look in his eye

Seemed to say to the sky

"Now, how to amuse them today?"

- A.A. Milne

The Essay

Imagine if you had to write an essay that had the potential to decide your future.

“It’s only 500 words,” the high school senior said, dismissing it as though it meant nothing.

There is a story I tell my students to demonstrate awareness. A story to remind them to pay attention to the now.

I spend a lot of time in my car. Work and carpools and commuting take up hours of each day. I confess to them that I sometimes drive from point A to point B never truly paying attention. My eyes are open, of course, but I don’t really see what’s in front of me. I arrive at my destination realizing I’m not quite sure how I got there, my mind preoccupied in its very own schizophrenic state, cluttered with the chaos of the moment.

Life is what happens, John Lennon said, while we are busy making other plans. Being in the now is hard.

“It’s only 500 words,” he said again when my husband asked him when he was going to sit down and write the supplemental essay that would accompany the college application that was being sent off bright and early Monday morning.

500 words to tell a group of strangers who don’t know you something about yourself that will make them curious. Make them interested. Encourage them to open their door just a crack to take a look and maybe, just maybe, give you a key to your future.

It’s only 500 words.

There is a scene in the Wizard of Oz when we first meet the Scarecrow. Dorothy is wandering along the Yellow Brick Road dressed in her blue gingham dress, her dog Toto faithfully by her side. She comes to an intersection, roads to the east and west stretch before her. “Now which way do we go?” she asks her trusted companion.

“This way is a very nice way,” the scarecrow says, from out of the blue. Her trusted companion barks.

“Don’t be silly Toto, scarecrows don’t talk.”

“It’s pleasant down that way too,” he says again, pointing in the other direction. “Of course, some people do go both ways.”

Choose.

“Tell them something about yourself,” I say again. He is walking on the Yellow Brick Road. Just up ahead is the crossroads. He will have to make a choice. I am Toto and I am barking as loudly as I can.

It’s only 500 words.

“It’s done,” he said after a while. “I need you to take a look.”

“You have to show them who you are,” I say to him as I peruse the 473 words that he has chosen to introduce himself to this panel of faceless individuals who will decide his future. “Don’t tell them, show them.”

Grumble. Grumble. “Why do I have to have a mother who was an English major?” All I can do is shake my head. We’ve been down this road before. Was I like this when I was 17? (Don’t answer that, Mom.)

Many years have passed since I stood blindly at that crossroads, wondering which way to go. It likely was a blessing that I did not realize the magnitude of the decision I was about to make. I was just as confused, I imagine, as the creature that sat at my desk, honing the now 492 words that would be his calling card, this baby boy turned almost man.

On Saturday night I attended the 50th birthday party of a dear friend’s husband. A familiar faced stood in front of me in the buffet line as we waited our turn to fill our plates with food. “Do you remember me?” I asked as I tapped her on the shoulder. “My son went to your preschool many years ago.”

“Oh yes,” she said, after a moment and she put her hands down by her knees, patting an invisible head as she remembered this tiny person from her past. “Is he still blonde?” she asked.

Laughing, I pulled out my iPhone and showed her what he had become.

We reminisced for a long time. She kept a daily journal for the children in her preschool. We still had it. In fact, I had come across it just the other day when I was rifling through his “box” where I keep all of those touchstones of his childhood. It was in there along with the first year calendar and the lock of hair, his first lost tooth, spelling bee ribbons and the invitations for his “big truck” birthday party he had when he was 3. It’s all in there. 17 years of twists and turns along the yellow brick road. 17 years of moments collected along the way. A box full of his journey: moments noticed and some, sadly, not. It is a box full of him.

Too bad he can’t send them that.

When losing isn’t

“That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.” – Richard Bach

It was Saturday and I had driven all the way down to Salinas. No offense to anyone who lives in Salinas, but it isn’t on my top ten places to visit list. And if you never listen to another thing I say, listen to this. It shouldn’t be on yours either.

Never the less, there I was sitting on a hard plastic molded seat looking out at a football field that was framed by a cattle yard. It was a cool evening and the sun was going down. The field was dotted with cardinal and gold behemoths smattered around like small plastic army men placed in a random pattern that made no sense to anyone, least of all the person who put them there. There was a faint smell of hotdogs in the air and the smell of cattle. Don’t forget the smell of cattle.

And we were losing. Again.

Losing is never easy. Last year at this time we were un-defeated, as in never lost. Un-defeated. It has a nice ring to it. We had a good team. A great team. A phenomenal team. We were, after all, un-defeated.

This year, however, we were un-victorious. As in no wins. Three games into it and not a single one.

Un-victorious clearly does not have the same ring to it.

After the game I kvetched with the other parents of the cardinal and gold behemoths. Everything was wrong. Everything. They weren’t running fast enough. Or catching the balls. Or looking down field. Or trying hard enough. They just didn’t know, couldn’t know. We were un-defeated last year. Did they not realize that un-victorious was not an option?

I stood outside the locker room waiting for my very own cardinal and gold behemoth. “Well?” I said to the offensive line coach as though he was supposed to say something to me that made it all make sense. “Well?”

“We have a lot of opportunities to grow,” he said and I could swear I saw just the slightest glimmer of a smile as the light from the locker room cut the darkness of the night.

We have a lot of opportunities to grow.

A while back I had the opportunity to interview a basketball coach from a nearby high school. I wanted to know how he used his role as a coach to teach life lessons. The kind of lessons that change you and teach you about yourself and who you can become.

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant,” he said. It was a quote from Horace, an ancient Roman poet. “One of my coaches said that to me many years ago after the team suffered a big loss. It always stuck with me. I try to teach that to the boys I coach.”

Challenges are opportunities to grow.

On Thursday evening, Sandra came into writing group. The hood of her camouflage sweatshirt was pulled up over her head and her eyes were barely visible. “I’m not going to stay,” she said, her voice dripping with pain. “I’ve had a really bad day and I’m just not up to writing tonight.”

“Sit down,” I said. “Tell us what’s going on,” and she proceeded to tell us about receiving an F on a school writing assignment that she had spent hours working on.

Sandra is back in school after a very long time on the streets. She’s a brilliant writer who has written a book that sits unpublished in a plastic grocery bag in her small efficiency apartment. She’s loaded herself up with classes at the local community college and she has dreams of opening a group home for girls who have no one to believe in them. Girls whose lives have been filled with things that should never happen. Girls like her. She is brave and courageous and resilient and this hit her hard.

“I don’t usually cry,” she said as she wiped the tears from her face. “I’m not a crier.”

“It’s OK,” one of the other writers said. “I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.” And after a brief discussion, we wrote.

Yesterdays

“You filled a bowl up with my yesterdays

And told me to eat yesterday’s pain.

The brutal things that I put away so long ago

You placed them there and forced them down my throat.

My failures and my unwanted self destruction,

Running for my life to escape yesterday.

Funny how yesterday caught up to me.

In just the blink of my soul there yesterday sat

And confronted me.

Yesterday never let me get to know tomorrow because of its jealousy.

Some things never really change.

Places and faces, people seldom do.

But yesterday stays the same

That is certainly true.

While I ate yesterday swallowing every spoonful again

I remembered that I ran from yesterday

Skipped tomorrow

And here I stay,

Walking in today.”

She put her pen down and looked around the room at the faces at the table, the faces of the friends that had walked along beside her. “I’m going to talk to her,” she said aloud. “I don’t deserve an F.”

“You don’t,” they said. “You are a brilliant writer.”

The next week she came back to group. “I got a C.” she said her face beaming with pride. “I got a C.” She had spoken to the professor, made her case. “What do I need to learn?” she said. “Help me learn what I need to learn.”

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

On the practice field there are changes. Positions are changed, schemes are rehearsed, skills are sharpened. Hard work. There is no grumbling. Getting better is not negotiable. Friday night there is another game, another chance to get better. Another opportunity to grow.

It’s not about the grade or the final score.

Life is full of challenges. Life lessons are everywhere. On the football field, the classroom and all around us, if we only look.

We have, it turns out, lots of opportunities to grow.

Coming Home

The thing about having teenagers is that you get to experience high school all over again.  A week or so ago, my oldest came home and announced that he needed money to buy a ticket for the homecoming dance.

“Mom,” he said, “I need some money.”

“Yeah.  Me too.”

“Funny.  I need to buy homecoming tickets.”

“You’re going to homecoming?” I said.

He just looked at me.

“With someone?”  If so, this would be the very first time.  “Can I ask who?” I said, and with a pause for drama and an audible sigh, he gave me the name of the lucky young lady.

 “Oh,” I said, and opened my checkbook.

A couple of days later, as I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get dinner on the table, we revisited the conversation.

“Mom, I need a shirt and tie for homecoming.”

“Don’t you already have a shirt you could wear?  And Dad has lots of ties.”

I got the look again.  “None of them fit and Dad only has old man ties.”

“Oh.”

“Can I have Dad take me to Kohl’s after practice?”

“Not if you want your shirt and tie to match,” I said, noting my husband’s sense of fashion.  “We’ll go on Saturday after we go look at your senior pictures.”

On Thursday, two days before the big event between bites of baked potato, we began chapter 3.

“Mom, I need to get a corsage.”

“A corsage?  Do you even know what a corsage is?”

“Yes.  It’s a flower.”

 “How do you know you need a corsage?” I quipped.  As this was the first time he had attended a dance with someone, I wondered where this new found knowledge about all things homecoming was coming from.

“Mom, everyone knows you get a corsage.”

“Everyone?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh.”

“You get them at Safeway.”

“The grocery store?  You don’t get corsages at the grocery store.”

“Yes you do.  That’s where you get them.”

“And you know this how?”

“I just know.  Everyone knows that’s where you get corsages.”

Everyone except me, apparently.

On Friday I wandered into the florist.  “I need to buy a corsage for my date for homecoming,” I said with just the slightest bit of sarcasm.   This date that I wasn’t going on was starting to cost me a fortune.

The girl behind the counter looked at me blankly.

“She’s wearing a plum/silvery sort of taffeta dress.  What color would look good with that?”

The florist came out from the back room.  “Ivory,” he said, not missing a beat.  “I could do something with tiny ivory roses with a yellow accent.  Maybe a yellow ribbon.”

“Sounds lovely,” I said.

On Saturday, between replacing the kitchen faucet and installing a new handle on the front door, we ran out to buy the new shirt and tie and preview the senior pictures.  Soon it was time to get ready. 

Shirt?  Check.

Tie? Check.

Pants?

Pants?

 “I’ll be right back,” I yelled as I ran out the door.

“Hurry,” he shrieked.  “I’m going to be late.”

We pulled up to the house just a few minutes behind schedule. It was now 5:30.  It was in that moment that I realized something shocking.  In between the plumbing, carpentry and power shopping of the day, I had forgotten to brush my teeth and wash my face and I was about to meet the girl’s parents.  “Oh well,” I thought to myself, so much for good first impressions.  It had been a hell of a day and this was a big moment, a seminal moment in the life of this young man and his journey into adulthood.   I would just have to buck up and deal with it.

Camera in hand, I took a few deep breaths, popped a couple of mints and tried to compose myself.  I made nice with the other parents, keeping a safe distance lest my secret be revealed.  After small talk, photos and a well-deserved glass of wine, I piled into the old brown sedan, found my way back onto the freeway and headed towards home.  No sooner had I turned the corner than the waves began to wash over me, memories lapping up on the shore, over and over again.

And I began to cry.

It had been a long day but somehow we made it.  He was dressed and ready to go and the tiny ivory rose corsage did look lovely against the plum/silvery taffeta dress.  And although I’m not particularly objective, he did look awfully handsome.

You almost didn’t notice he was wearing sneakers.

The sound of birds

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

This is for Robert.

From the composer. "Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating."

My brother is a composer.  A brilliant, gifted composer.  I am in awe of his talent.

This post, on Patti Digh's "37 days" blog, made me think of him.  Music, it appears, is everywhere.

Next to Normal

"The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone.  It requires no force or effort or sacrifice.  It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal."  Deepak Chopra

I was asked recently to teach a class in Abnormal Psychology.  A simple request really. 

Except that it isn't.  At least not for me.  Nothing ever is.  Simple, I mean. Because it begs the question...

What is normal?

The other day we were having another "moment" with the alien who inhabits my oldest son's body.  "You are exceptional," I challenged him channeling my very best Marianne Williamson.  "You are smart and talented and creative and wonderful.  Be exceptional."

"Mom," he said flatly, "I don't want to be exceptional, I just want to be normal."

See what I mean?  What, exactly, does "being normal" entail?

Is being normal doing what everyone else does?  Is it walking the same path that has been trod on many times before?  Is being normal going along with the flow, not challenging oneself and others to something better?  Does being normal mean keeping silent, even in the face of things that challenge what we hold dear?  Should we stop taking risks or having dreams or standing out in the crowd just because it isn't the way everyone else is doing it? 

Was Albert Einstein normal?  Vincent Van Gogh?  Martin Luther King?  Rosa Parks?

"Everyone else is doing it", my kids tell me.  "It's not a big deal", they say.  "Just go with the flow", they coax, all the while grumbling about the fairness of having a mother who never does.  "Why can't you just be a normal mom?" they wonder aloud.

In the classroom I wonder how to teach more than just the subject at hand.  It seems important to do more.  To teach life lessons rather than just theory.  "We are a community," I tell my students.  "This experience is about more than just papers and exams and a final grade."

Take the time to watch this.  It is part of a documentary called "Children Full of Life".  Children who are lucky enough to have a teacher that understands the chance he has to make a difference in the lives of others.  To teach lessons that are not learned in textbooks.  Lessons about life and friendship and honesty and courage. Toshiro Kanamori is not a normal teacher.

Let's be something else.  Something next to normal.  Let's strive to be the exceptional people we were all meant to be.

Let's not be normal.  Normal is over-rated.

Tell them

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.  The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."  ~Carl Jung

School began on the 17^th.  With temperatures still soaring and the taste of summer vacation still in our mouths, the campuses came to life again.  Fall, it appears, has fallen.

I stood in front of a packed house, a standing room only crowd.  Thanks to the “governator’s” disastrous and shortsighted handling of the state budget which forced massive cutbacks in the class offerings this fall, there was not a seat to be had.  Every class was the same.  Men and women, intent on improving their lives through education, were turned away.  There was no room at the “inn.”

The first day of school is always so full of promise.  New clothes and shoes, notebooks and pencils, attitudes and expectations.  And relationships.

In writing group, on Thursday night, we wrote about what we cannot forget.  The good and the bad.  The taste of a ripe, juicy peach. The thoughts that haunt you when the room is dark and the house filled with silence.  Grandmother’s angel food cake.  Mrs. Compton.

What I Can’t Forget - By Sandra

I can’t forget Mrs. Compton, my first grade teacher.

She gave me my first hug and kiss.

She told me that I could be

The best

And the brightest

She told me that she was proud of me.

She made me believe in me.

And every Wednesday morning, I won the spelling bee.

Because Mrs. Compton believed in me.

“Did you ever tell her what she meant to you?” I asked Sandra after she had finished reading the poem she had written.

“No,” she said, with tears in her eyes.  “I tried to.  Years later I saw her and I tried but by then it was too late.  She had Alzheimer’s disease.  She could not recognize me.”

Somehow I think she knew.

On Sunday, with two dogs in tow, I wandered out the country lane we frequent almost daily.  My mind drifted to Uncle Vic, my mother’s brother who is nearing 70.  A month ago when I turned 50, he called me to wish me a happy birthday.  It meant a lot to me.  My mother’s younger brother has always been a favorite of mine.  He is brilliant and fun and compassionate and he was a godsend for me as I navigated the landscape of early adulthood.  During those challenging years of my late adolescence and  early twenties when I was struggling to figure out who I was, he was my sounding board. 

As I wandered down Davis Road past the acres of dairy cattle, amidst the golden landscape dotted with black and white, I remembered the lesson my father’s death taught me just two years before.  Today is the day.  Tomorrow is not guaranteed. 

It was time to tell him what he has meant to me. 

Who is your Mrs. Compton?  Who has helped you see who you can become?  Do they know what they have meant to you?

Tell them.  Today is the day.

What are you doing on October 4th?

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.

Twice a week, in Classroom 2, a group of men and women gather to share the stories of their lives.  They come from different places.  Men and women, young and not so.  Parents and grandparents, daughters and sons, people from all walks of life who share one thing in common.  They are homeless.

We need your help. 

On October 4th, from 1-4, brilliant writers from Marin County will gather in the Next Key Community room for "An Afternoon of Inspiration".  They'll share stories of how they became a writer and read from published work.  We'll feast on hors d'oeuvres created by Homeward Bound's own Fresh Starts Culinary Academy, talk about writing and even sign a book or two.  The suggested donation is $50 and the proceeds will benefit the creative writing programs at Homeward Bound.

Won't you join us?

To learn more about Homeward Bound, click here.

The beginning of the end

 “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”- Thich Nhat Hanh

And in the blink of an eye, it’s gone.

I was lying on the sterile blue examination table in my OB/GYN’s office the other day.  Flat on my back, looking for patterns in the small holes of the ceiling tiles overhead.  “Senior year,” she said as she did her thing, “Senior year is hard.  Really hard.”  Often, it’s in those odd moments when we are most vulnerable, when we least expect it, that true wisdom resides.  She peaked up at me, and gave me one of those all knowing looks.  Her daughter is in college already, heading into her second year at a tiny university in Minnesota.  “It took me all of her first semester away before I could pass her bedroom without crying.”

Great.

17 and a half years ago I was lying in this same room, flat on my back, talking to this same, very wise woman who had already been through it. Already done what I was about to do.  She was sharing her experience, the wisdom of someone who knew what was coming.  I was excited and nervous and full of questions and she answered every one, not like a doctor with clinical answers that came from years in medical school and delivered with professional distance.  No, these were the words of a fellow mother, shared from the heart and they gave me comfort.

17 and a half years ago, he was still a dream.  A big basketball sized bump in my midsection with a strong heartbeat and propensity for shoving his heels into my ribs.  It doesn’t seem that long ago.

Today he began his last year in high school.  The clock is officially ticking.

We had a fight last night.  Another one of those fights we seem to have so often these days.  "It’s his tone," I tell him.  “I don’t like your tone.  How dare you speak to me like that?  Just who do you think you’re talking to?”

I’ve been too lenient, I think to myself.  “If I spoke to my parents the way you talk to me and Dad,” I repeat time and time again, “ I would be dead.  Grandpa would have killed me.”  It’s just the slightest bit of an exaggeration, but not much.  We didn’t dare say the things our kids manage to say to us.  We thought them.  We just didn’t say them out loud.

He’s pushing away.

And so we fought.  And I hated it.  I hate every single one of them, but this one was worse because right smack in the middle of it, I heard it, the ticking of the clock.  I don’t want to spend the last year of his time living in this house with his heels firmly planted in my ribs.  Some things never change.

It’s starting.  The grieving process, I mean. 

He’s growing.  Faster and faster it seems.  I hated the beard that he grew this summer, just because he could.  Hated that he looked older.  Hated that his friends liked it.  That his girl “friends” liked it.  Hated that it made him look like a man.

I don’t want him to grow up.   

My friend Judy is about to send her last child off to college.  “I can’t imagine,” I say.  “It’s going to be so hard,” I confess, as the tears begin to well up in my tired eyes. 

She’s excited, she tells me.  No more worrying about homework.  No more late nights wondering where he is and when he’s coming home.  “I’m not a mother anymore,” she says aloud, as if trying on a new identity.

“I can’t imagine.” I say again, because I really can’t.  It’s all I know anymore and I tell her what my OB/GYN had told me just a few days before.

It’s going to be a long year. 

And I’m determined to savor every minute.

Rescue me

Apparently, we don't have enough chaos in our little family.  What with a 17 year old who has been taken over by aliens and a smaller version of the same who the aliens have their eye on (because these aliens only have one eye each, mind you, and it's right in the middle of their green, wrinkly foreheads)....  With trying to manage our shrinking family budget due to the cutbacks and furloughs and the shortening of the school year and a water bill that has required taking out a second mortgage...  And with the driving.... to practices and tournaments and kid related, always kid related events that are too numerous to mention... and trying to write the book proposal for the book that is still being written....

No, apparently we needed something else to do.

A week ago our Shadow passed away.  He had had a good life.  A long life.  A sixteen year life with us filled with fun and frivolity and camping trips and walks and scraps from the table (shhhh, don't tell our vet) and even a nip or two out of a friendly postman (sorry Shawn) and a very compassionate FedEx guy...  It was a good life, a happy life, and a very long life, especially for a dog.  And so it was time.  And we are sad.  Very, very sad because we miss him.

But nobody misses him more than her.

She moped.  And she cried.  And she pouted.  And she lay on the couch and moped some more.  And I have to confess, I was a little surprised.

When Katie came to live with us, the idea was to get a friend for Shadow.  Someone he could play with.  Hang out in the back yard with when the humans were doing what humans do.  And it was a good idea except that Shadow didn't play.  "I'm old," he'd say to her when she'd lick him on the nose in the morning.  "I'm old and my bones hurt.  I can't run and jump and rastle like I used to.  I think I'll just sit here and watch you play." 

And so Katie lay next to him.  Licking him lovingly each morning when they woke up, side by side on the same bed even though there was another just one foot away.  They preferred to sleep together.  They were buds.

And now he's gone and she's sad.  Very, very sad.

"We need a friend for Katie," the principal said after a few days of moping.

"We need a friend for Katie," said the 17 year old alien upon heading out to yet another baseball tournament. 

"We need a friend for Katie," said the younger version as he poured himself a bowl of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch. 

Who am I to argue with the consensus?

"Can we test drive him?" I asked Abby, the Big Dog Rescue rescue person as we stared blankly at this big pile of orange fluff.

"Of course," she said cheerfully.

"And is there a return policy?" I wondered under my breath knowing full well that returning him would not be as easy as the too small shorts from Costco or the one too many bottles of Caeser salad dressing.

"Sure," she nodded.  "If he doesn't work out, you can bring him back."

Yeah right.

That was four days ago, and he's still here.  We're getting to know each other.  He's sweet all right.  Fluffy and dorky and very, very raw.  He's romped a bit with Katie, although she's clearly moving slowly in the approval department.   He hasn't slept for more than 10 minutes at a time, choosing instead to pace, round and round the house, as though he is on watch, waiting for something that never happens.  And he eats.  Non stop as though there is never going to be enough food.  But hey, I'm used to that.

And apparently, he likes butter.  Whole sticks of butter.  And five layer dip.

Heart speaking to heart

“Cor ad cor loquitur”

I sometimes wonder if my children will know how to have conversations when they get older.  With their mouths, I mean.

The other day I was driving to a baseball tournament with my 17 year old son.

“Are you sure you want to go to the tournament?” my husband asked me as I was brushing my teeth, preparing to head to San Jose for the day.

“No.”  I said decidedly.  “I’m sure I do NOT want to go to the tournament.  I’m not particularly excited about spending the whole day in the blazing hot sun, sitting on hard metal bleachers watching bad baseball.  I’d rather stay here and do 15 loads of laundry, cut back the blackberry bushes and scrub stains out of the carpet on my hands and knees.”

I was not kidding.

But being the mother that I am, I thought it might be a good opportunity to “talk” to my oldest.  Have an old fashioned conversation of sorts.  You may remember them.  I say something and then he says something and then I say something and then he says something and on and on.  Like we used to do in the good old days.

“I find it hard to believe that when you were a kid you didn’t have cell phones and iPods and computers,” he said, after a while.  “It seems so, well, unnatural.  I mean, I can’t imagine what it must have been like.  Like, how did you ever communicate?”

How, exactly, did we?

My son talks with his thumbs.  “Did you call LT,” I asked him the other day.  My son’s best friend lives in the next town over and they were trying to firm up plans for the weekend.

“I texted him,” he said quickly. “I’m waiting for him to respond.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to call him?” I said naively.

“Mom, no one calls anyone anymore,” he replied, as though the entire notion seemed utterly ridiculous.  I stared back at him in disbelief.  Unfortunately, we’ve gone down this road  once or twice before.  “Why is it such a big deal to you?”

This afternoon, a young woman from Columbia stood in front of the class.  “I wrote my paper on the psychological impact of immigration,” she started softly as she took a deep breath, her voice shaking.  “You have to excuse me, I’m very nervous and my English is not very good,” and she began to tell her story.

“When I was a 12 year old girl, as we were driving in the car, my mother was shot,” she continued as the tears began to well up in her eyes.  “My father decided that it was not safe for us to stay in Columbia."  Hoping to find safety for his family, he took his son  and came to America.  "He struggled to find work.  What he earned, he sent back to Columbia to my mother and I.  It was very hard.  We missed him very much.  He sought political asylum, wanting to bring my mother and I to live with him in this country.  It would be 3 years before we would see him again.”

Every semester I assign a paper to my psychology students.  The assignment is to pick an experience that has had a psychological impact on them and write about it, and every semester I am surprised by what I get back.  What they share with me.

The stories of their lives.  Little snapshots of life’s photo album and each time I flip through the pages, I feel humbled.

And until this semester, when I decided to have them present their papers to their classmates, I was the only one who got to see the pictures. 

As this beautiful young woman from Columbia spoke of her experiences in this country, of the pain of not seeing her father and brother for 3 years, of the agony of never being able to return to her native country, of the sadness of being separated from her older siblings who, because of their age, were unable to seek political asylum with the others, I looked around the room.  Her classmates were mesmerized.

“I do not belong anywhere,” she said, sadly.  “I cannot go back to Columbia and although this country is now my home, I do not really belong here.   It is,” she said, as her voice broke with emotion, “Very difficult,” and gathering her papers, she quietly made her way back to her seat.

You could have heard a pin drop. 

Language.  The sound of her voice as it cracks with emotion.  The tears streaming down her face as she relates the sound of the gunfire as it broke the sounds of an otherwise nondescript family outing.  The feelings that rose from a place deep inside me as I listened, moved by this small window into the life of this young woman who has sat in the same chair in the back of the room each day for the past 6 weeks.

That’s what this generation is missing.  That’s what the texting, emailing, facebooking, AIM’ing generation is being cheated of.  Connection.  Real connection.  Heart to heart connection.

On the wall of the convocation center of my son’s school are painted the words “Cor ad cor loquitur.”  Translated, it means, heart speaking to heart.  My son’s words echoed in my head as I made the drive home. “Why is it such a big deal?”

It just is.

Looking forward, looking back

Today is my 50th birthday.

When I was 16, my mother, with a great deal of help from my best friend Anne, threw me a surprise birthday party.  It was, as it turns out, the first and only surprise party I have ever had.  It was a warm, humid summer day and we had spent the morning having a tennis lesson at the home of a family friend.  Normally, after our weekly lesson, we piled into the Country Squire Station Wagon and headed home with a usual stop at the Grand Union.  On this day, however, we lingered for a bit, sipping ice cold lemonade under the trees of her very substantial and magnificent back yard.

When we arrived back home, Mom sent me down to the basement to collect a pan so that she could bake my birthday cake.  I skipped down the stairs, two at a time, singing a jingle that had gotten stuck in my head.  It happened like that sometimes.  A tune would get stuck in my head and it would circle around and around like a goldfish in a bowl, covering the same 12 inches of water again and again and again.  And sometimes I would sing.  Loud, top of my lungs kind of singing.  The kind of singing you do when you are sure that no one is listening.  The kind of singing my husband likes to call my “Cher” imitation.

So on this particular day, with one of those little jingles stuck in my head, I went skipping down the steps to the basement to collect the pan that would soon hold my birthday cake, singing, at the very top of my lungs, “my seamless, isn’t shapeless, anymo..…”

Surprise!

And there I was, in mid-jingle.  Before the ‘more’ could come all the way out of my mouth, I was greeted by a basement full of my nearest and dearest friends who had been clandestinely gathered in my basement by my very best friend in a conspiracy with my Mom to celebrate this important transition in my life.  And at that moment, at that very moment of transition, I was singing a bra commercial.

It was a moment I would never forget. I could not know what was coming, the twists and turns and ups and downs of the path that lay in front of me.  I was young and innocent and standing at the threshold of a journey I had only just begun.  And so, with eyes wide open, I began to walk, straight into my life.

That’s the thing about walking.  You tend to look straight ahead, eyes on the horizon, walking towards whatever it is you are headed to.  You might look to the side occasionally, taking inventory of where you are and what surrounds you, but the horizon is never far from view.  You stroll down cool mossy paths, wander through bright sunny meadows, pausing a moment to dip your toe into the icy cold creek. 

And sometimes you climb.  Straight uphill, with determination and commitment and focus, always keeping your eyes forward, looking towards the horizon.  Your breath is heavy and your feet hurt sometimes, but you keep going, determined to make it to the top. 

And you keep walking.

Until one day without planning, you stop, deciding to pause for a bit and finding yourself a place to set for a spell.  Knowing where you have yet to go, you take the opportunity to look back at where you’ve been.

And you know what?  You know what you see if you turn around and look back?  Not a quick, cursory glance but a full 180 degree turn, your back to the horizon, your eyes trained down the path that you have just worked so hard to walk?  You know what you see?

You see places you’ve been and things you’ve accomplished. Dreams realized and dreams forgotten. You see tender meadows and challenging hills and mossy paths of sadness and exhilarating streams and magnificent wildflowers that you might have missed the first time around, things that only crossed your peripheral vision, never fully coming into consciousness.  Those things.   Only now you can see them because you’ve stopped for a moment to look.  Really look at where you’ve been.

Stepping back is like that.

And you see faces.  Many, many faces.  The faces of the people who have walked with you along the way.  Your childhood best friend.  Your piano teacher.  The Camp Counselor that made those two weeks every summer more special than she would ever know.  Your prissy college roommate, who you never liked and your grumpy boss at Duke Island Park.  Yep.  They are there too.  And your family who has been there forever, walking, sometimes silently sometimes not so, by your side. That’s what you see when you take the time too look back.

You don’t stop looking forward.  You don’t lose sight of the horizon.  It’s just that one day, you realize that where you’ve come from turns out to be just as important as where you are going. 

And on that day when you pause to sit, when you pull up a rock and gaze back at the path you have travelled, with a little luck, you’ll be singing.  Because, as it turns out, that wasn’t the only surprise party after all.

A very merry unbirthday

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You" - Dr. Seuss

You never think it’s going to happen and then, all of a sudden, it does.

Today is my youngest son’s 15th birthday. 

My baby.  The little guy who wanted to be home schooled, who loved Winnie the Pooh and penguins and spent hours on the floor of his bedroom playing countless games of Beanie Baby Baseball.  The guy who promised me he would marry me when he got older even though he was never, ever going to grow up.  The guy whose prepubescent voice still greets callers on our answering machine because even though it has since dropped several octaves, I just can’t bear to let it go.  That guy is turning 15 today.

A couple of weeks ago, as I always do, I brought up the subject of a birthday party.

“Mom, I’m a little old for birthday parties, don ‘t you think?”

Blink.

“You’re never too old for a birthday party,” I said defiantly. 

“I think I am,” he said with an equal amount of conviction. 

“Well I don’t,” I repeated.  “You’ve always wanted to have one before.  I don’t understand why you don’t want to at least have a few friends over.  I mean, we don’t have to call it a birthday party.  We can just say it’s a get together.”

“A get together with birthday cake?” he said smugly. 

“If you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” he conceded.  “I’ll think about it.”

And so we let it go, for a little while.

There were so many of them.  Winnie the Pooh and Thomas the Tank Engine.  Cakes with penguins and baseball diamonds and piñatas that spilled Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Ranchers all over the driveway. Midnight bowling and large, inflatable jump houses, water balloon baseball and enormous six foot reptiles that slithered on the laps of squealing 5 year-olds.  Hot dogs and hamburgers and watermelon and pounds and pounds of orange, cheesy goldfish. 

Trick candles and wrapping paper and handmade cards decorated with magic marker and glitter.  Swim parties and slumber parties and trips to the party supply store to pick up the little colored bags to be filled with candy.  Jack Horner Pie prizes tied to the ends of little white strings. 

Countless hours of planning, cleaning and organizing and the careful squeezing of balloon bouquets into the back of the mini-van.  Piles of wrapping paper and paper plates and finding juice boxes stuffed elegantly into places no one would ever look for them.  The vacuuming of orange, cheesy goldfish, crushed unceremoniously into the carpet.  And when it is over, when the children have all gone home and the house is finally quiet, you sit down, exhausted and spent, wondering why on earth you spent all that time preparing for an event that lasted just a few hours.

You never think it's going to end.  And then one day it does.

“Did you want to do anything for your birthday?” I queried the soon to be birthday boy a couple of days later.  “And if you do, don’t you think we should make some kind of an invitation so your friends know what’s going on?”

“I’ll just send them a text message,” he mumbled back.  “But Mom, it’s not going to be a big thing.  Promise me it’s not going to be a big thing.”

“I promise,” I agreed, crossing my fingers behind my back so he couldn’t see my intended deception.

A couple of days ago, I wondered aloud if he had talked to his friends yet.

“No.  But I will.”

“OK,” I said biting my lower lip hard.  Leave it alone, mother.  Leave it alone.  I’m learning.  Slowly.  But I am learning.

“Do you want a cake?” I said gently last night. 

“Yep.”

“Ice cream or regular.”

“Ice Cream.”

OK.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

“Anything else?” I queried, feeling like we were suddenly on a roll.  My mind was racing.  I checked my watch.  There was still enough time to make it to the party store before they closed.

“Maybe a piñata,” he answered back, sounding sincere.

“Really?” Mothers can be so gullible.

His face broke into a big grin.  “Got ya,”

Happy Birthday buddy.  Mum's the word.

Rally

“Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious, obviously isn't obvious...” - Michael Stipe

The words leapt out of my mouth before I could catch them.  “Because I said so.”

Huh?  Did I just say that?

Yes.  That would be me.  Expression number two of the four thousand, three hundred, seventy two things I promised myself I would never say if I ever became a parent.

I’m sensing a theme here.  There’s nothing like wandering in the wilderness to make you realize just how little you really know for sure.

I’m thinking I need a personal parenting assistant.  Someone that can walk around right beside me and give me advice about what to say and do in those occasional moments of indecision in the parenting of a teenager that occur, oh, say, every 5 minutes or so.

Like the other day when a G-I-R-L came over.

Huh?  Yep.  You heard me.  One of them.

“This is good for him,” the principal said.

“Umm hmm, “ I mumbled.

“He’s a seventeen year old boy,” he continued.  “You were on, like, boyfriend number 11 or 12 by the time you were his age, weren’t you?”

“Umm hmm,” I mumbled again.  Actually, I was only on about number 6 by then, but my fickle romantic exploits were not something I was interested in debating at that exact moment.  I mean, we had a G-I-R-L coming over.  There wasn’t a moment to waste.  We needed to prepare.   There was the small matter of taking the underwear off the line and vacuuming up the week old dust bunnies and wiping off the ½ layer of breadcrumbs by the toaster.  We wanted to make a good impression, didn’t we?  Never mind that he let us know exactly one hour before she was set to arrive.

“She's coming over in an hour?” I shrieked.  “Are you kidding me?  A little more notice would have been helpful.”

“Why?” he asked, blankly.

He has so much to learn. 

“Well, what if we were going to go somewhere?”

“Were we?”

“No, but what if we were?  What if we had something we wanted to do?”

“Did we?”

“You’re missing the point.  We need to talk about the rules.”

"The what?”

“The rules. You know, the expectations.  The parameters.  The guidelines.  Like no entertaining her in your bedroom.”

“Why not?” he said naively as though the mere thought had never crossed his mind.

The bedroom has long been a standard spot for entertaining.  Lavish Lego fortresses have been constructed. Beanie Baby battles have been launched.  Endless games of “Guess Who” have been played while lying prone on the bedroom floor.   No entertaining in the bedroom?  What was this new and clearly Byzantine dictum? 

“No entertaining in the bedroom,” I repeated steadfastly. 

“Why?” he pushed.

“Because it’s inappropriate.” I replied, sure that that would be obvious to his adolescent mind.  I thought back to the days of Ralph Maffucci (Number 1) and the sound of my mother’s voice resonated in my head, issuing the same warning, ‘You don’t take boys into your bedroom.’

“What do you mean, it’s inappropriate?” he queried back.  “Isn’t it more about what you do, not where you do it?

This is a game we play.  It resembles a rally in tennis.  You hit the ball over the net, trying to place it in the corner with just the right amount of backspin only to have it come back at you with a bit more speed and as deftly placed as yours.  You have no choice but to fire it back across the net.

And so it begins.

After about 10 minutes of doing this, you realize that you are really tired.  Really, really tired.  The kind of tired where you find yourself falling asleep sitting upright on the couch, your mouth wide open and the tiniest bit of drool pooling in the corner.   You’ve just run back and forth across the court, up and down to the net.  The warm temperatures are starting to get to you, you're out of water and your opponent shows no signs of wearing down.  You have nothing left.  The gas tank is empty.

And that’s when it happened.

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

“What does that mean?” he fired back.  Apparently, the exhaustion wasn’t a mutual thing.

I put my racket down.  “I’m done,” I said.  ‘To me, the reason is obvious.  You may not understand it.  You may not agree.  That's just the way it is.”

Apparently the obvious, isn’t.

Z is for: Zen

"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot

My mother once told me, “ I love you, but I don’t always like you.”  I can’t be certain, but I think at the time, I must have been 17.

I remember thinking that it was an unusually mean thing to say to someone as wonderful as me.  I mean, how was it possible that she didn’t like me?  All my friends liked me.  They thought I was clever and witty and exceedingly funny. How was it possible that my very own mother did not see the qualities that undoubtedly shone like a beacon from the deepest recesses of my soul?

How indeed.

Those words came back to me as I drove down the freeway, tears streaming down my face after yet another altercation with the horrible creature that now inhabits my son’s body.  Apparently, at a moment when I wasn’t paying attention, someone or something swooped in and snatched our oldest, leaving in his place an alien being who, while physically resembling the child I gave birth to 17 years ago, otherwise bears no resemblance to the original.  It is as though I have landed in one of those creepy sci-fi thrillers and I keep waiting for the moment when his skin begins to blister, taking on a reptilian hue, his lizard like tail bursting out from underneath his oversized gym shorts.

I was sitting in the school parking lot, ready to join in the caravan that was heading south to transport the baseball team to a semifinal game across the bay.  “We need drivers,” the email from the coach requested and so, ever the helpful mom, I emailed back.  I was available if he needed me.

“Coach says you’re driving,” the alien said, the look of disdain dripping from the corners of his mouth.

“It wasn’t exactly my idea,” I said back, taking the deep breaths that have become so customary in my dealings with him these days.  “He said there weren’t enough drivers and I was trying to be helpful.”  The truth was, I was planning to go anyway.  What was the harm in leaving a few hours earlier if it helped the team out?

And so there I was.  The car gassed and ready to go.  I had emptied out the dirty socks and week-old pile of mail and the crushed soda cup from Panda Express that was tossed, unceremoniously, in the back seat.   I had gone to the bank to get bridge toll and put in the last of the power steering fluid to minimize any embarrassing “noises” from our “oldie but goodie” vehicle.  I thought briefly about running the car through the car wash, but in the end, opted for the “as is” condition of the day.   I pulled into the shade of an oak tree and sat patiently as the players came out in their uniforms and checked the contents of their baseball bags, readying them for the trip south.

“No one’s coming in our car,” the alien said sullenly, flopping himself into the passenger side seat.  I inhaled, filling my lungs with oxygen and praying for divine intervention. 

“Oh?” I said, sweetly. “How come?”

“They’re all going with John because we don’t have air conditioning.”  And then, as if to add insult to injury, “Everyone already has a seat.  We don’t need you.”

I breathed again, deeply.  In and out.  In and out.  Slowly, so as not to hyperventilate which I felt was a good possibility given the immediate turn of events.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.

I do this with my writing group.  Before our writing practice each week, we meditate.  It is, as I tell them, to get yourself into the room.  To put away the distractions and stress of the day.  To bring yourself into your body, into your experience.  To be here now.

However at that exact moment, it wasn’t helping.  Being here now didn’t seem like such a great idea.

The alien grabbed his equipment bag from the back of the car. “I’ll see you at the game,” he mumbled and slammed the door shut leaving me alone in the parking lot like the fat kid who is left for last after all the teams have been picked for kickball. 

In.  Out.  In.  Out.

It wasn’t working.  My eyes welled up with tears.  I put the car in gear and began to drive out of the parking lot, the tears streaming down my face just as I reached the street.  I had to get out of there.

I thought about running away.  I thought about boarding a plane to Tuscany.  I’d leave no forwarding address.  I would change my name to Gabriella and live atop a hillside, only coming down to shop periodically for mozzarella and prosciutto and a crisp white Pinot Grigio.

That’ll show him.

Or perhaps I’ll wake up some night to a room filled with bright, white light.  I’ll walk into the back yard and board a space ship that is hovering just above the tree line and I’ll speak to the person in charge.

“I want my son back,” I’ll tell him.  “You’ve had him long enough.  It’s time for him to come home.”

I want him back.

My neighbor Lois tells me that he will come back eventually.  “When he’s 20 or so,” she promised me.

“20?” I repeated, just to make sure I heard her correctly.  “How can you be so sure?”

“He’ll be back,” she repeated, knowingly.

I sure hope so.

Choose your path

“The more languages I read and the more books I read, my world became bigger.” - Nuruddin Farah

We sat in the blazing hot sun on this most magnificent May afternoon, the concrete walls of Berkeley’s Greek Theatre catching the sun’s rays and reflecting them back on us.  The concrete pillars of the theatre towered above us.  On stage, the tiny black clad figures sat silently as Somalian author, Nuruddin Farah, spoke.

He began with a story.  It was, of course, the way one must begin; in the oral tradition.  It was a folk tale from his native Somalia, a story about a man who stood at a crossroads.  Unsure of which way to travel, he picked up the other paths, one by one, and fashioned them into a belt which he tied around himself and headed down the remaining path.

It was a fitting story on this most wonderful day in the lives of these new college graduates.  Mama and Papa sat beside me.  “I’m so glad you came,” Mama said, her face beaming with pride.

It was, of course, never a question.

We were there on that October day, twenty-one years ago.  I remember staring at her as Mama placed her on the bed.  She was wrapped in a pale yellow snuggly sack with hand painted stars and moons, the first gift we ever gave her.  She was so beautiful, so innocent, and so full of promise.  She was our first.  Well, not ours exactly, but the first baby in our circle and so we took her as our own, even just a little bit.

We watched her walk and talk and count and sing. There were birthday parties and Christmas Eves, Super Bowl Sundays and weekends in the snow.  And day-by-day, year-by-year she grew.

She has the brightest smile.  A wide, toothy grin that makes her eyes twinkle and the corners dance and despite your best efforts, you cannot do anything but smile back.

It was just yesterday, or so it seemed, that we vicariously stood with her at the crossroads that led her here.  It was the end of her high school years and as she and as her classmates hugged and kissed each other and promised they would never forget, she had already begun to pick up the other paths and fashion them into the belt that she would carry with her down the path she had chosen.  She was off to study English at one of the most prestigious English departments in the nation. 

When they were younger, Mama and Papa took her and her two brothers to live in France for a year while Papa, a former restauranteur turned culinary instructor, studied French cooking.  It was the experience of a lifetime as they lived and traveled through the French countryside, learning another language and culture and the lesson that we are just a small part of this place we call home.   And when it was time for junior year abroad, there was no question where she would go.

And now, here we were again, standing beside her at yet another crossroads.  Time to gather the alternate paths and make another belt to carry forth on the new path she has chosen.

“Do you think that your life is yours for you to do with what you want?” Farah asked the graduates as he neared the completion of his speech.  “You consider a bank to be yours, because you deposit your money in it, but it is not yours alone.”

No, she most certainly has not journeyed alone. 

There have been others.  Many, many others.  Teachers and coaches, family and friends who have loved her and encouraged her and watched her grow… but none like Mama and Papa.

Mama and Papa have stood firm.  They have been beside her as she has navigated the many divergent paths of her life.  They have loved her and supported her, coached her and encouraged her, and, as they stood at the crossroads beside her, they have let her find her own way.

Yes, she is part of something much larger than herself.  As she moves forward, she carries with her a piece of each of us who have walked with her.  In the fall she will embark on another journey as she heads back to France to teach.  She will do great things.  She will leave her mark.  She already has.

Congratulations Chelsea.  We couldn’t be prouder of you.

Oh the places you'll go...

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Twenty-three years ago I made a phone call that would change my life. 

It was the end of the school year and I was in my second year of graduate school on my way to earning a Master’s Degree in Social Work.  It was time to find a field placement, a place to gain some hands-on experience in my new profession-to-be.  I was young, inexperienced and married less than a year.  I sat at the round marble table in our small rented house, staring at a handful of numbers scrawled on a piece of paper.  It was a list of social service agencies for me to call.

I wasn’t sure what to say, exactly.  “Uh, hullo?” I’m sure I began as I fumbled through those first awkward seconds, “I’m a second year social work student and I’m looking for a place to do a summer field placement.”  Who was I kidding? I mean, I’ll understand if you say no. I’m young and inexperienced and after all, I don’t really know anything. I wouldn’t take me if I were you.

“Sure,” came the voice from the other end of the phone.

“Sure?” I repeated.  Perhaps I misheard you.  Sure?

“Sure,” the cheerful voice said again.  “We’d be thrilled to have you join us for the summer.”

And so it began.  Just like that.  A simple phone call that began a journey that has continued for 23 years.

I packed the silver Honda Accord hatchback and moved in with a couple of girlfriends for the summer and began my internship at Catholic Charities of Marin, working for a clinical supervisor who would teach me many valuable lessons about the field of social work; about kindness and compassion and caring, about helping others to help themselves and what it meant to be part of a professional community.

But she taught me so much more than that.

Once a week we sat in her corner office filled with photographs and beadwork and gifts from the earth.  Pine cones and shells and feathers.  Symbols of her Native American heritage.  We talked about the work of course, but we also talked about so much more.  She taught me life lessons: of community and partnership and balance.  She became my mentor, my teacher and my coach.   She was my rock, holding firm  as I stumbled my way along this brand new path.  And through it all, a deep friendship was formed.

At summer’s end she hired me and I worked for her for 10 wonderful years before circumstances took us our separate ways.  A few years ago, I jumped at the chance to partner with her once more.

Last fall I began another professional journey with ten social work students embarking on their own first field placements.  As we sat in the room on that first fall afternoon, I couldn’t help but think back to my own journey all those years ago.  This was going to be fun, I thought.  They would face new challenges, stretch themselves in ways they could not yet imagine and learn about this profession they would soon call their own. 

And through it all, I got to bear witness.

It has been an amazing ride.  They have stretched and twisted and turned in ways they could not predict.  They have opened their hearts and learned the fine art of helping by empowering others to help themselves.  They have challenged their thinking, reflected on perceptions and expanded their way of being in this world.  They have held the hope that things can be different.  That change can occur.

They are kind and compassionate and caring and together we have formed a professional community.  And I couldn’t be prouder of them.

So this is for you.  Keri, Regina and Kristine.  Burt, Sylvia, Calla and Jill.  David and Loreen and Ashley.  This is for you.  You will go on from here.  Like the path I began so many years ago, you will find your way through this most wonderful profession we call social work.  You will meet people who will touch your hearts.  You will think thoughts that will surprise you.  You will laugh and cry and wonder. 

And I have no doubt you will move mountains.

Twenty-three years from now, perhaps you will have the chance that I have had, to walk side by side with people who are just beginning to find their way.  And when you do, I hope you too will look back and remember.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

It has been a pleasure walking with you.

Happy happy

You've got to see this.

When I was a kid, we went to see the Nutcracker every Christmas Eve. Every single one. And every time I'd see it, I'd walk out on my tip toes, dancing my way down the streets of New York City wishing I could be Clara, dancing a pas de deux with my very own Prince Charming.

Try not to smile when you watch this. Life would be just a little bit happier if we could sing and dance through it, don't you think?

Thanks to Patti for pointing me to it.