the bottom of the ninth

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.

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.

V is for: Voice

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.” - Maya Angelou

She has the tiniest little voice.  I sat next to her at our friend Lesley’s café, sipping cup after cup of wonderful, rich, café latte; catching up with girlfriends on work and family and life.  Loud laughter and quiet musings; sharing story after story as the hours ticked by.  ‘This is me,’ our words say aloud.  ‘This is who I am.  This is who we are.’

Mel’s daughter is a tiny little thing.  Nestled under blankets and warm, cozy Snugglies, her car seat envelopes her petite little body.  That is, when she isn’t being passed around by several dotting “aunties” who love to hold her close, love to feel her silky smooth locks and smell that magnificent baby smell that our now teenage sons used to have once upon a time.

She had fallen asleep.  Despite the loud din of the café, she had had enough and closed her eyes somewhere in the midst of the discussion that centered on how many Weight Watchers points were in a large slice of sausage and mushroom pizza and just how on earth one could be expected to eat only one slice anyway.

And then I heard it.  Just like the Whos on the dust speck calling out to Horton, she began to peep.  “I am here.  I am here.”  Tiny baby peeps.  Soft, gentle sounds rising up from this little creature. “I am here.  Pay attention.  I am…  here.”

I remember when my sons’ voices sounded like that.  When we hung on their every word.  When no matter what we were doing, who we were talking to or what we were saying, suddenly that wasn’t as important as the tiny little peep that was trying to find its place in the world.

And over time those little voices grew.  Louder and stronger and more confident.  They grew from the tiniest of peeps to an often not so dull roar.  ‘This is me.  Pay attention.   This is who I am.’   And we do.

There are, however, people all over this country who have lost their voice, forgotten what it is like to stand up and speak out and have people listen.  Men and women with voices that are not heard, voices that began much the same way as yours and mine, but instead of growing louder and stronger and more confident, grew silent, because no one would listen.

R is for: Remember what the season means to you

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Crazed.  And confused.  I pulled out a credit card on the third floor of the Nike store.  Towering above me were larger than life size images of Maria Sharapova, Roger Federer and Tiger.  I smiled timidly to the woman behind the cash register as I handed it to her.  “I don’t even know what I’ve bought any more.”

There’s a point in every Christmas season when the fog begins to set it.  Like a blanket thrown over me, I become disoriented, unable to find my bearings.  The ingredients of dozens of Christmas cookie recipes start to run together, tinsel begins to appear in places that tinsel has no business being, and I wake up in a cold sweat at 2:45 a.m., sure that I’ve forgotten something, if only I could remember what.

“You know,” I said to the kind clerk at the Safeway check out, “Christmas would be a lot better if we didn’t have to actually buy anything.”

Probably not what Madison Avenue had in mind.

What does Christmas mean to you?  Is it shopping and beautifully wrapped presents beneath the tree?  Is it family and friends gathering around the table, sharing meals and memories and laughter?  Is it attending midnight mass or singing Christmas carols through the neighborhood, sipping  spiced cider?  Is it reaching out to others; filling a wish from the local giving tree and or serving the holiday meal to those who have less?

What is Christmas like for the homeless?  What do they dream about?  How do they prepare for this season of plenty?  And what does home for the holidays mean to them?

You may be surprised.

“Are you ready Popi?   The bag is too heavy, I can’t carry it.”

“You have to if you want to be Santa’s helper.”

“I can’t,” she cried.  “You’ve got to help me carry it!”

And so I did, with Michele on my lap and two pillow cases full of prizes  for strangers who didn’t have the luxury of being able to spend their special day with family.
 
First stop, the fire station.  We pulled up and I put the beard on Michelle’s face She half carried, half pulled the pillowcase to the door.  I rang the bell and stood aside so that the first sight would be my little munchkin, staring up at them.  The door opened.

“Ho, ho, ho.  Merry Christmas,” she squeaked.

The man at the door burst out laughing and called to his buddies inside.  “Look who’s here, it’s Santa!”

“I’m not Santa,” Michele said, “I’m just his helper, see?” and she pulled off the beard so they could tell she really wasn’t Santa.  She reached into the bag and gave everyone a present.  They tried to give her something in return, but knowing that Santa’s helper couldn’t take anything (it being against the rules, and all), she politely refused.

“We’ve got to do something for you,” they said.  “How about a ride in the fire engine?”

“Can I, Popi? Can I?”

“OK,” I say, but we still have other people to deliver presents to.”

“We’ll help you,” they replied.

So we all piled into the big, red, fire engine and drove from place to place, honking the horn.  At the gas station, we gave a present to the guy who had to be there to make sure we had gas on Christmas.  To the grocer, who stayed open in case we forgot milk.  To the policeman who protected us while we were with family and to the lonely souls that were walking the streets, alone on this one special day when no one should be.

We eventually ran out of presents and it was time to return home.  As we pulled into the fire station, the alarm went off and our newfound friends had to leave – after all, they still had a job to do.  So we said goodbye and returned home where we had a big meal waiting for us, lots of toys to unwrap and the warmth of family and friends to embrace us." - Michael T.

“It’s Christmas Eve and the 45 minute ride in the light blue Swingline wood panel station wagon has delivered us to our destination, Grandma and Grandpa Werner’s home in Freeport, Long Island.  I sit in the way back with our dog Dancer.  My brother Larry and sisters Leslye and Debi sit in the middle seat and Mom and Dad are in the front.  We’re dressed in our best holiday clothes and full of the wonder and the excitement that Christmastime brings.  It’s 1969. Snow flurries fall from the sky, slowly but steadily. I’m 7 years old.

The car stops and I spring from the backseat and run towards the front door of this large 3 story home that is the most magical place, where once a year all the family gathers.  Approaching the door, I see my cousins Kelly, Ritchie, Eric and Karin.  The door swings open into a living room.  Everyone has already arrived.  Mom and Dad walk in and sit around the table joining Uncle Philip, and Aunt Diane.  My Uncle Gil and Aunt Mary, Uncle Howie and Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Richard and Aunt Rosemary.  Uncle Bart and Aunt Ann, Helen, Grandma and Grandpa and Mom have all passed on now, but here, at the table of my memories, they are very much alive.  They are happy, joking and boisterous, enjoying each other and toasting the holiday season.  There was a whole lot of love back then, that has since faded, except in my memories.” - Mark K.


“A vision without a plan is just a hallucination. For years, I allowed my life to not be taken seriously. I spent 14 birthdays, 7 Christmas and New Years with people society calls outcasts.  Imagine sitting in a one-man cell on a beautiful Christmas morning.  Hard to imagine?  Not for me. Now imagine sitting on a big beautiful couch with your family around you; food cooking, kids playing, Christmas tree glowing and those beautiful Christmas songs playing in the background. For many years I carried this vision with me, but  never really made the plans to make it come true. But that was then and this is now.  No more probation or parole.  I have more than 1,200 days of freedom on my side.  No more hallucinations. I have been planning to make this Christmas vision come true. Christmas Day is all prepared.  My son and my daughter, their mother and her mother and I have been planning this day for two months now.  The food is bought, the gifts sit under a beautifully decorated tree. My place on the couch is patiently waiting for me to arrive.  This Christmas, a vision and a well thought out plan will make all my past hallucinations a beautiful reality.” – Donnie W.

Here’s hoping your vision becomes a reality.

Merry Christmas everyone.

P is for: Perserverance

Gamblers All

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.

-Charles Bukowski

I make my way into the classroom, hoping to do some work before the class begins.  Expecting to find an empty room, I am greeted with the faces of several students who have arrived early, very early, their noses pressed to their books.  I sit at the desk, correcting papers or editing a presentation or recording a grade.  Work I did not get around to doing amidst the chaos of another week of life.  Engrossed in my own overwhelm, out of the corner of my eye, I notice her standing there.

“Can I talk to you?” she starts, timidly.  There are many of them.  Men and women who have returned to school after a lifetime away, committed to beginning anew.  Hoping to find a way to give back.

“Just a minute,” I say and I finish what I am doing and turn my chair to look into a pair of eyes that have seen more of life than I can ever imagine.

I pull up to the shelter having driven like a lunatic down the freeway, straight from another freshman football game.  I had to pull myself away in the fourth quarter.  I wanted to sit there with all the other moms and dads and brothers and sisters and grandmas and grandpas until the bitter end.    I wanted to sit there in the cold afternoon sunshine until the seconds ticked off the clock.  5, 4, 3, 2, 1… but I have to leave.  They are waiting for me.

“You’re late,” she says, only half smiling.  She has been sitting in the lobby for ½ hour, waiting for me to arrive for our weekly writing group.  She wants to talk.

There is a story.  There is always a story.  Sickness, death, divorce, addiction, incarceration, unemployment, homelessness, financial ruin. 

There was a time when I was judgmental.  I was young and naïve and had a basketful of opinions based on a thimbleful of life experience.  I was raised in the suburbs.  Went to college.  Found work.  Got married.  Had kids.  Stayed healthy.  Life was good.

You only know what you know.

And then, over time, that thimble gets a little bigger.  You meet someone and they tell you their story.  With wide eyes you hear about the cancer that has ravaged their body or the addiction that has stolen their child.  You sit with the mother of a young, once vibrant, 24 year-old as she stands by helplessly and watches her child lose her battle with AIDS and you wonder how she goes on. You wonder how she gets up in the morning and keeps going.  You wonder…  and you are amazed.

But somehow she does.  Somehow they all do.  They go on.  They move into the shelter and get a new job.  They go to Alcoholics Anonymous and begin the journey to get sober.  They register for school and begin to attend classes they never thought they could take and even though they still have problems, even though they still struggle, even though they still don’t have enough money to pay their bills or a home to call their own or a family to support them, they still keep going.

I am in awe of their courage.  I am amazed at their strength.  I am encouraged by their ability to get up each day and start again.

Over time, that thimble becomes a teacup and then a soup bowl and then a big, cast iron, dutch oven and pretty soon experiences begin to flow over the sides, spilling out onto the counter and onto the floor of life’s kitchen. 

Over time I have become a little less judgmental.  A little more compassionate.  A little more understanding.

Over time, the teacher has become the student.

Image from here.

H is for: Hold the hope for someone

" True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." - Arthur Ashe

Who do you believe in?

I’ve always had a soft spot for Don Quixote.

Many years ago, more years ago than I care to remember, we went to La Mancha, Spain, searching for windmills.  As youngsters, my parents tok us to see The Man of La Mancha, the musical based on the story of Don Quixote.  The book, written by Miguel de Cervantes, tells the story of an ordinary man, a flawed human being and his impossible dream.  It is a story of challenge and impossibility, of friendship and honor, of despair and hope.

Don Quixote is fascinated by stories of chivalry.  He reads so much that he forgets to sleep.  So much that he forgets to eat.  So much that he forgets who he is and jumps, head first, into his own fantastic and imaginary tale.  Accompanied by his friend, Sancho Panza, he battles imaginary demons (windmills) in order to defend the honor of his lady love, a local farm girl he names Dulcinea.  As Don Quixote slips further into his own madness, Sancho Panza and Dulcinea stand beside him even though they do not understand.

The reader goes along for the ride.  As Don Quixote falls deeper and deeper into his illusion, he captures our hearts and our respect.  His deep passion and commitment to his quest becomes the connecting point, the point at which we begin to admire and embrace his own unique form of truth.  We see the world through his eyes, not as the insane ramblings of a madman but as he sees it, a world of battling giants and defending one’s honor. A world of friendship and loyalty and commitment to a dream.

3 years ago a bus pulled up in front of San Quentin prison.  On the bus was a man who had just been released from prison.  His was not a pretty tale.  Years of incarceration, drug addiction and crime had all but ruined him.  As he stepped off the bus, his eyes drifted to the west in the direction of his hometown.  There, just a few miles away, was a life that was familiar.  His family and friends were there.  It was all he knew.

And in that moment, he made a decision.  He would not go back.

He could not go back.

He sat in a chair at the front of a classroom full of fresh-faced undergraduates.  The stark contrast of their lives was extraordinary.  He spoke in measured tones, slowly and clearly so that everyone could hear.  Telling his story has become part of his recovery.

At that moment, he tells them, he made a decision that would save his life.  Instead of going to the west, back to the life he knew, a life of addiction and violence and crime, he went north, and although he did not yet know it, in search of someone who would believe in him.

Inside the walls of the homeless shelter are men and women just like him.  People who have lost their way, fallen victim to their own brand of insanity.

There is a moment in The Man of La Mancha, when Dulcinea asks Sancho Panza the question that is in all of our minds, “Why do you follow him?”

Why do you believe in him?

“I like him,” replies Sancho.  “I really like him.”

His faith in his friend makes all the difference.

Sitting in the classroom with my students, I listen to the story that I have heard many times before.  A story that at this point through my work with him and the others like him, I now know intimately.  There are many Don Quixote’s here looking for their Sancho Panza, a person or persons who will go into battle with them.  Will fight windmills and slay dragons and defend the honor of their very own Dulcinea.

They are looking for someone to believe in them.

He tells the class of the changes that he has made.  Of the battles he has fought, the windmills he has conquered, the life his won back.  It has been hard, he tells them, but he is grateful for those who have stood by him, for his very own squire, his person who believed. 

And that, he tells them, has made all the difference.

Image from here.

Wear your overalls

I learned how to sew in seventh grade.  Under the watchful, if not cranky eye, of Mrs. Jacobs, our seventh grade home economics teacher, we spent months sitting at Singer sewing machines, learning the fine points of threading a machine, sewing a dart, hemming, stitching and basting.  We learned how to lay out a pattern, pinning it oh so carefully to the fabric so as to not make a mistake once we began to cut.  Zippers, buttons and elastic waistbands were practiced to perfection.  At the end of the year, to the tempered applause of our proud parents and classmates, we strode down the runway wearing our creations, mine a reversible blue and red square necked jumper that buttoned down the front.

My mother was a sewer.  She had an old brown Singer sitting in her office.  Late at night, after we had gone to bed, she spent hours creating outfits for the four of us.  Matching outfits for Easter and Christmas and special events.  It started innocently enough.  Butterflies embroidered on a white pinafore, matching vests for the boys and little red and white dresses with contrasting Peter Pan collars for the girls which we wore for family photos and holiday dinners.  And it was cute.  Sort of.

And sometimes it was down right embarrassing.

I was reminded of those days by this poignant story that was shared by one of my writers in our group this week.

“My grandmother created an outfit that I later learned would be a part of American history.  She was trying to launch her own clothing business and I was the unofficial mannequin.  She would dress me in her creations and send me out into the world to model her handiwork.

For my first day of kindergarten, she made me a pair of overalls from an American flag.  It was the flag that my great grandfather, in recognition of his military service, had received on the day he was buried.

I was just as dark as I am now.   My hair was in an afro and in order to tend to my dry skin, she covered my face, arms and legs in Vaseline.  I wore no socks.  My shoes were a rust color brown.

I heard a kid say “he looks like a Black Flag” and everyone laughed because we all knew that if you had roaches in your house you were bound to have a can of Black Flag somewhere.

I think it was one of the worst days of my childhood.”

In fourth grade I wore a pair of overalls to the school safety patrol picnic.  Not American flag overalls, handmade by a loving grandmother, but plain, ordinary, blue jean overalls that my mother had bought for me at my request.  I loved those overalls.  I still do.  But on that particular day, for whatever reason, the rest of the kids thought they were the worst possible fashion choice I could have made.  And they laughed at me.  A lot.

I remember going home that day, my feelings shattered by my classmates’ laughter.  When he shared his overall story, I got it, loud and clear.

But there is another side to the story.  Grandmother, it turns out, was ahead of her time.  Flag clothing, home décor, back packs and accessories became a huge fashion statement just a few years later.  As did overalls, it turns out.

Sometimes, we have to take a risk.  Sometimes, we have to listen to our heart.  We cannot be afraid to show the world who we really are.

Sometimes, we have to wear our overalls.

What would you miss

What does it take to wake us up?

You know those moments.  The moments when you “get it”.  When you realize that this isn’t going to go on forever, that it is, after all, the ultimate endgame.  We all have them.  For most of us, they are fleeting.  We experience them the way a hummingbird travels from flower to flower, searching for nectar.   If we’re lucky, however, they teach us; to pay attention, to be present, to ask questions, listen carefully and love like there’s no tomorrow.

In celebration of the publication of her new book, Life is a Verb, 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful and Live Intentionally, author Patti Digh asks the question, “What would you be doing if you had only 37 days to live?”  Readers are encouraged to send in their stories and Patti is publishing one each day until the official release of her book on September 2nd.

“What will you miss when you die?”

My writers gathered around the table this evening, pen in hand, ready for the night’s topic.  They stared at me in disbelief.

“Are you nuts?” one of them said.

Maybe. 

“That’s a horrible topic,” another piped in.

I just smiled.

Natalie Goldberg, in her newest book on writing memoir, talks about going where we are most afraid to go, writing what we most fear.   Apparently, I had brought my little group to the proverbial edge.

“I’ll miss myself when I die,” one of them wrote. 
“The things I do and say
Into the sounds of silence.
I’ll miss myself when I die
The successes of my life
And all of my accomplished promises.
But most of all I’ll miss all the other things I meant to do.”

Things I will Miss When I Die," another read aloud.

“God’s magnificence
The color of the evening sky
Sitting on my favorite bench, nestled in the oak grove.
The sound of silence
The smile I get from strangers as we pass each other on the street
My constant yearning to understand and be understood
The pain and heartache from lost love
The joy of watching my children being born
Dogs barking, horns honking, fights, lightening and thunder
Doing the right thing
The battle within when I desperately want to do bad things
Running my fingers through my daughter’s curly hair
The smell of bacon in the early weekend morning
Paying taxes
Catching a bus to work
Stillness within chaos.”

What would we miss?  Normal, everyday things.  The sound of the rain as it hits the roof.  The taste of ice cold watermelon on a hot summer day.  The joyful squeal of children’s voices as they play ball in the yard.  The stuff life is made of.  The things many of us take for granted, or worse yet, don't notice at all.

“Pay attention to now,” one of them wrote.  Try not to have too many things you "meant to do."

What would you miss?

Moving Day

"If you don't have a dream, how are you going to make your dream come true?" - Oscar Hammerstein

Build Communities

“This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.” – Elie Wiesel

 “Look at this!”  She handed me the local newspaper and stood there with a smile on her face.  For a moment, she looked like she was about ten years old.  Her voice held the excitement of a young girl who just discovered that she could, in fact, do a cartwheel on the front lawn.  On the front page of the section of paper was a story about a 92 year-old man who had just written his first book, a memoir.    She was beaming.

She is almost 80 and she is writing for the first time.  A former nurse, she is a petite woman, no more than 5 feet tall.  She walks gingerly, as though every part of her hurts.  She has delicate hands with long, thin fingers.  She carries a small calendar filled with dates and times and the names of the people she speaks to.  It helps her remember her life.  It is wrapped with a well-worn rubber band to hold in the many slips of paper and note cards stuffed inside.  Life’s cheat sheets.

She joined the writing group just over a month ago and she has become a regular.  Sometimes when we are writing, she lets out just the faintest sigh.  She has forgotten what something is called.   I understand.  It happens to me too.  “Just keep going,” I reassure her.  “It will come back.”  And it usually does.  She is always waiting for me when I arrive, anxious to see what stories will reveal themselves on that day.

“What do you do in there?” a colleague asked as we sat together in the dining room and chatted.  It was such a simple question and yet, I searched for an answer that would do it justice.  To describe it seemed to miss the point.  The residents call it a writing class but class denotes something academic, something taught.  It’s not really about the writing, I wanted to say.  It’s not about syntax and descriptions and correct punctuation.  It’s not like that.   It’s more about… well, about this:

“On March 15, 1939, I was awakened by a very strange noise coming from the street.  We had wide windowsills and I always loved to sit on them and spend hours watching the goings on on the street.  On this night, I headed for the windowsill.  Down on the street were many soldiers, goose-stepping up the street.  My mother came in and called to me.  "Get away from the window.  They must not see you." 

I was never allowed to sit on that windowsill again.”

On that fateful day, life as she knew it changed forever.  An innocent young girl who sat on the windowsill, her knees curled under her petite frame, watched as Nazi soldiers invaded her beloved Prague.  A moment emblazoned in her memory.   An historic moment told through the eyes of a young girl. 

“I was on the last children’s transport out of Czechoslovakia,” she tells us, her voice punctuating the word ‘last’ to let us know that not one day goes by that she isn’t grateful for that twist of fate.

It is an image I cannot get out of my head.

I turned to my colleague.  “That’s what it’s about.  That’s what we do.  We take risks together.  We share stories of our lives and in doing so we open each other’s eyes to something new, to a different possibility of what can be.”  Inside this home for those who have none, we’re building a community.

And just like that 92 year-old, writing his first book, it just goes to show you.  It’s never too late to start.

Welcome Home

Welcome Home.

In the small town of Ashland Oregon, Bill McMillan and Kim Shelton are holding a celebration.  On this Memorial Day, Bill and Kim have organized a Welcome Home party unlike any other.  Tonight, at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival, a ceremony, open to the public, caps a 5 day long retreat, focused on the creation of a strong community of veterans and family members and encouraging expression and healing through story-telling, art, writing, meditation and movement.  I am in awe of them.

We take the time to remember those who have served.  Those who have given their lives in service to this country.   Some are gone.  Many, are still with us.

Kenny served in Vietnam.  Served on the front lines.  Saw the worst of it.  Kenny got injured over there and came home.  And that’s where the real story starts.

You see, serving in the war, in that war, changed Kenny’s life.  After returning home, he spent some time in the hospital allowing the physical scars to heal.  The physical scars.

It was the emotional ones that were tougher.  When Kenny came home, he just never felt right.  To the outside, things looked fine.  At least to others.  His wife and kids welcomed him back with open arms.  His neighbors threw a party.  His friends were glad to see him too, wanting to hear the stories of his time away.  But Kenny didn’t want to talk.  He didn’t want to tell them what had happened over there.  It was too awful.

And soon, as might be expected, things began to fall apart.  Kenny’s life came unglued, like many of the other veterans he knew.  He couldn’t sleep.  He couldn’t focus.  His mind was full of images, images no one should have to have, set in motion during the time that he was “serving his country”.  He started drinking and using drugs, anything to quell the pain, to stop the scenes from playing in his head.

And, in short time, he was all alone; without a job, without his family, without his friends, without his home.

Today Kenny lives in a halfway house for homeless people.  He’s trying to get his life back together.  He has 5 years of sobriety although he told me that every day he wants to drink.  Still.  Even after 5 years.  But he doesn’t because he knows what will happen.  He has a job now, working for a guy who understands what he’s been through because, as luck would have it, his boss is a veteran too.  He puts his money away and saves for the day when he can find a place of his own and start again.  “I am a king without a kingdom,” he writes in our weekly writing group. He’s starting to tell his stories now through writing.   His words, while eloquent, are filled with the struggle that “serving our country” set into motion. 

There are many other Kennys.  They are everywhere.  In communities like ours, all over this country.   They don’t come out for the parades.  They hide in the shadows.  On Memorial Day, let’s remember those men and women too. 

Image from here.

The Family Table

At the Table

I sit down and review my day,
sometimes with others
sometimes alone.

The dinner table is a place
where people can sit
and talk,
or not.
A place of peace
or violence.
Past
or future
Loud
or silent
Light
or dark
Fun
or horror.

Unpredictability.

It all depended on Dad.

- SJ

On the last day of National Poetry month, I thought I’d share a poem written by one of the writers in our group, one of my “guys”.  He started with a disclaimer.  He often does.  He couldn’t think of anything to write, he said.  It wasn’t very good, he said.  He wanted to make sure we all knew, he’s not a writer.

After he read we sat in silence for a few minutes.  Probably like you just did right now.  His words reverberate through my soul.

Often I ask the families I see if they eat together.  Eat together?  Yes, I say.  As a family… without the TV on, do you?  And sadly they say no.  Not really.  Not often.  There’s work and baseball and homework and piano lessons and everyone is going this way and that and it’s really hard to find the time.  We mean to, they say, but we don’t.

And this is what I say to them.  Mealtime is so important.  It is a time to sit together, to share the day.  A chance to laugh, to cry, to come together from disparate lives and become one.  And just for the record?  The research bears it out.  Families that eat together are stronger, healthier, and happier.  It’s true. 
It is a time I treasure each day, be it 6 or 7 or even 8 o’clock.  Time to slow down, hold hands, thank God and break bread, together.

Do yourself a favor.  Do what you can to make your family stronger, healthier and happier. Take the time to eat together.

Go ahead, pull up a chair.  You'll be glad you did.

The Journey

The Road Goes Ever On

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet,
And whither then? I cannot say.
J.R.R. Tolkien

One of the amazing things about life is that we never know how each day will unfold.  It is, in the truest sense of the word, a journey.  Every day something will happen.  Things we expect and things we don’t and that’s what makes it interesting.

Last Thursday I was sitting in the waiting room at my mechanic’s shop when my cell phone rang.  On the other end of the line was Stacy, the director of the homeless shelter.  Stacy doesn’t usually call me.  In fact, in the 6 plus months I’d been involved with them, I could probably count the times she’d called me on one hand, and I don’t have to use all my fingers.

“What’s up?” I asked her cautiously, sitting on the edge of the chair.

“I have to tell you about last night,” she started with a distinct air of excitement in her voice. 

Each Wednesday and Thursday I lead a writing group at the shelter.  “Lead” is a bit misleading.  I set the stage, create the space, hold the door open and invite people in.   

It is a bit like getting ready for a family vacation.  You load the car full of clothes, bikes and camping equipment, check the oil, the tires and the brakes, fill up the tank with gas and pack all the Goldfish and bottles of water you can manage to shove in the spaces in between the seats and then you pile everyone in and head out.  Perhaps you have a plan, an itinerary complete with AAA maps and Triptiks and stops circled in red magic marker.  Perhaps you don’t.  It doesn’t really matter.  What fills the postcards is what happens on the journey.

The Magic of Bees

Seated around the table, the men peered curiously into the basket.  Brown hands, tan hands, old hands, rough hands, hands that had traveled more miles than they cared to remember; they passed the basket around the table, pausing only for a moment just to reach in and choose, ever so carefully, a piece of themselves.

Many years ago I worked with high school kids in a small, rural California high school on the Mendocino Coast.  Each fall we would take a group of kids away for a weekend of bonding and team building.  We brought a bag full of goodies, little knickknacks that we had collected, random things of no particular meaning and at night we would bring it out as we sat around the evening fire.

“Reach in,” we told them, “And pull something out.  Tell us how it represents something about you.”

It’s a simple exercise really, but only if you let your mind expand out of the box as metaphor forces us to do. “I am a whistle,” or “I am a button” does not come easily to those of us who think in terms of shopping lists and paying bills and homework assignments to be completed before the end of Easter vacation.  It takes a quiet moment, a moment spent listening to a voice that comes from deep inside, a voice that tells us something about who we are and what we need.

A frog, a lock, a seashell and a baseball.  A smooth round pebble, a candle and a sparkling crystal.  A screwdriver, a set of keys and a plastic bee. 

And then, we wrote.

The best part of those trips so long ago was the evening campfire.  It’s funny how things are so much brighter in the dim light of the evening fire.  Seated around the fire, huddled close for warmth, we are not teachers and students, separated by age or rank or knowledge.  No longer an “I” we have become a “we”.  The day’s exercises, intentional in their purpose, have opened the door to a different kind of sharing, the beginnings of a bond that will continue when they return to the land of tests and papers and peer pressure.

The Revolution

I can’t remember why I first started reading Annie Lamott.  A gift, perhaps, from a conscious friend who was trying to open my eyes to something important or a book review in the paper that caught my eye or maybe the fact that I have spent most of my adult life working in the community where she lives and, while not knowing her directly, knowing people who know her and love her and think that she is one of the most brilliant writers in the world.  I don’t know when it started but somewhere along the line I picked up one of her many, many wonderful books and I haven’t been able to put her down.

I wish I could write like her.  She’s funny and witty and irreverent and smart and most of all she tells the truth, her truth, in a way that makes you want to stand up and applaud or clench your fists and yell "Yeah!" at the top of your lungs causing the people around you to stare at you with a look of bewilderment but you don’t mind because something inside of you just woke up and you just needed to acknowledge it, just then, at that exact moment for fear that if you didn’t, it would go back to sleep again.

On Wednesday night I took my writing group to hear Annie speak.  I had been talking to them about her for weeks, these wonderful, resilient, courageous, fractured souls who have withstood so much of the dark side of life.  I wanted them to have the chance to hear her words, her powerful, funny, brilliant words delivered in her own voice.  I wanted them to hear the way she uses her experiences, writing about them with honesty and clarity and humor.

Lessons from a Chicken

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.  We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.  -Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

A couple of years ago as the result of some vigorous coaxing from my neighbor, we made the decision to adopt.  He’d been after me for some time about it and I’d put him off successfully.  I’m too old to start again, I said and I meant it.  It was one thing to do it when I was 35 and I was able to bolt from a dead sleep at the slightest sound of a whimper, but at 45 my reactions had slowed just a bit and getting out of bed in the middle of the night involves a 2 or 3 minute conversation with my various ambulatory parts, just to make sure we’re all on the same page.

"Not that kind of adoption," he said to me when I revealed my fears of inadequacy to him during a chat over the fence one day.  "Come on, this will be easy."

Famous last words.    I have a soft spot for the puppy dog faces of my children.  It's one of my greatest flaws.  And so, against my better judgement, I acquiesced.  After the seventy third “please mom, pleeeeease” I said OK and within a few weeks we became the proud parents of 6 of the cutest, fluffiest baby chicks ever to be hatched.  Not that I'm bragging or anything.  We promptly named them Hawk, Fluffy, Clucky, KK (kamikaze), Pepper and Maurice.  They lived in a galvanized metal palace in my youngest son’s kingdom, a sort of utopia where they had everything they could want and the sun shone brightly all day long. 

We all had our favorites.  Mine was Maurice, who secured her name after a long, drawn out naming battle with my kids who wanted to call her “King”.  “What a ridiculous name for a chicken,” I said to them during one of the discussions feigning indignance.  “I think we should name her Maurice.”  They wrinkled their noses at the suggestion.  In the end, I won.  (I am the mom, after all.)

Maurice was what they call a “polish” hen.  She had a beautiful little tuft of feathers on the top of her head.  She looked a bit like a Las Vegas show girl, the ones that high step their way down the stairs in the casino shows.  The others were beautiful as well, but none of them quite as spectacular as Maurice. 

Quo Vadis?

Just southeast of Rome, along the Appian Way, stands the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Palmis, the church of Quo Vadis.  It is the place where St Peter, who was fleeing Rome for fear of persecution, met Jesus.  “Domine quo vadis?” he asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”  Set in the center of the church is a marble slab said to contain the footprints of Jesus (which is where the name comes from).

Many years ago, when I was a young teenage girl, we traveled to Italy to meet our extended family.  Lauretta, my aunt, served as our guide, taking us to places in and around the city of Rome very few tourists got to see.  It was an insider’s view, an opportunity to see this magnificent city through the eyes of someone whose love for her home was so apparent it stays with me some 30+ years later.  I remember standing at the marble slab, looking at the imprints of Jesus’ soles and understanding, perhaps for the first time, the idea that time is eternal.  It’s hard to visit Rome and not get it.  Everywhere you look are ruins, markers of time gone by.  A home, a church, a marketplace… the remnants of people’s lives.

Quo vadis, I think to myself as I sat with my writers today.  "Where are you going?"  We imagined ourselves on a boat, sailing in the ocean.  “Where are you going?” I ask them.  “What do you see, smell, and hear?  Who travels with you?”

I resist the temptation to second guess myself.  Have I done a good enough job?  Do they have a place to start?  What if they can’t think of anything to write? And then, as if by magic, putting pen to paper, we begin.

“This one (journey) is different than the rest…” writes one.  “…I work to enjoy each moment.  Before my journey was dictated by where I thought I wanted to go.  Now I find myself staying in the moment, enjoying the journey, not asking what’s next.”

Making Your Mark

“I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.” – Zora Neal Hurston

“Do you think they knew they were changing the course of history?”

My friend Judy and I were walking out to the parking lot after attending a lecture about the Women of the Harlem Renaissance.  Women like writer Zora Neal Hurston, actress Lt. Josephine Baker and artist Augusta Savage. African American women of the 1920’s and 30’s whose actions set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement that was to follow.

“I don’t think so,” she said.  “They were just doing what they were called to do.”

Today marks the beginning of Women’s History month.  It’s a celebration of women, strong women, courageous women, women who left a mark, women whose actions altered the course of history.   As I left the lecture, I found myself thinking about the actions of these women.   Despite the smothering cloak of racism and amidst threats of violence, these women followed their dreams, speaking their truth, standing up to injustice and hatred in order to become who they were meant to be.

Resilience.

I talk about this with my writers at the homeless shelter.  They have stared “in the eyes of the devil”.   Licked the pots in sorrow’s kitchen.   Fallen so far that they thought they could never return.  And somehow they did.  Drugs, alcohol, crime, violence.  Life in foster homes, on the streets and in the jungles of Vietnam.  Victims of racism, loneliness, abuse and addiction.

These are their stories.  Stories about staring in the face of darkness, a darkness most of us could never imagine.   Lost souls without a map, wandering.

Giving Voice

"Once we choose hope, everything is possible."  - Christopher Reeve

I find myself thinking about them this afternoon as I clean up the gardens on this unseasonably warm February afternoon.  This task that I do every Spring that makes my back ache and my hands dirty as I pull the weeds that have crept into my flower bed like the unwanted house guest who spreads her things all over your living room. 

They don’t have a garden.

So much of who I am is wrapped up in this house.  We’ve been here nearly five years and we’ve slowly begun to make it ours.  Claim it, so to speak, from the former owner who left their handprints pressed into the driveway as if to say they would always be here.

They don’t have a driveway.

I drag myself to Trader Joes to get food for the boys who are wasting away to nothing.  They haven’t eaten in at least 2 hours and they are starving, they say.  Isn’t there anything to eat in this place?  Putting away the groceries I put out cheese and crackers to tide them over until I can put together dinner.  “What’s for supper?” they ask me and then,  “Can’t we have hamburgers instead?”

They don’t have a choice.