Friday Reflections: The Life That is Waiting....

It’s been a long week. The longest-shortest long week I can remember, short like cuz it goes so so fast from all the darn stuff happening so that time seems to wind in on itself like some tight-curled rubber band ball.

Tuesday I got up at 5:30 to the dark birdie-party and sounds of Teena’s sailor-guest’s feathered snoring. Showered, coffeed and was out the door. Only ten minutes quiet time. Picked up Jason at the College and had to drive to UMBC—which is a college on the other side of Bmore—for a State training. For those unfamiliar this is a hour and a halfish commute, well okay I made it in one fifteen even with a pit stop at my fave gas station where the Mideast workers are all way-out and sparkly with silly grins and together we all laugh and shine the whole time from our hearts like we each are in on a great secret that everyone seems to know but wont let on cuz that too is part of the joke, and this happens each and every time I go in there but I often forget til I’m there. So Jason and I got there to Bmore quick like that cuz I turn in to crazy I learned to drive in the city bitches and the suburbsprawlofcontinuousmetro aint no thing to me and suddenly don’t know how to not drive 80 when I cross the Bay Bridge cuz that’s just what you do with networked highways when you got to get somewhere.

Which brings me to my overview, spiritually, of the week. I read a book recently on loan from a coworker. Why is God Laughing? by Deepak Chopra. (Ok so in my head admittedly I can’t seem to not tack on the words At You? at the end. Ha ha, hilaaaaaar-eee-ous.) Anyway it’s a mini-parable and in all, it’s quite nice—very typical Chopra with the little stories or allegories either preceded by or followed with his own explanation of principled living as he sees it. A couple of things stuck out to my mind, for example: We are addicted to our old ways of being.

Well, duuh.

Case in point. Until Monday night, night before the great trip to Bmore, I’ve been on a steady diet of sunshine and herbs wildcrafted from my lawn and along the edge of Chop and also barefeet. Like I didn’t even realize it but I’ve gotten in the habit for the past many weeks of coming home and leaving my shoes in the car and barefooting it, outside, for the rest of the evening all afternoon long until the night comes and I can lay or sit out under the moon. In the morning when I wake first thing I do is head outside barefoot to greet the day and most of all get connected again to the Earth. I love to lie in bed at night and hear the miracle sound of the rain. I love to hear what the river each day has to say. I love how the sun lights gold right around 6 or so at night. I love the cocoon of love and warmth here, I love the Mama Love here, the Earth, the river and herbs and sun, I love Her, like gently and viciously and sweetly and devotedly and most of all so impassioned because she is always always there waiting so eagerly to love me, too.

So of course I get over to UMBC and there we are with all these professionals and it is sun-gorgeous out and stunning campus-green and allIwanttodo is be out and about and in my bare feet. And instead we have to go in under neon lights and (gag) air condition and pulled blinds! And do things like watch power-points and sit quietly and nod, ohhh, mmm-hmmm mmm-hmmm.

(I have to put shoes on to go in to the house)

I get home that night and was so drained from a day like that so I got on my floppy sunhat and sat with the river and then on the tree swing but I was sinking low, low, low and here’s why: my grand-pop was scheduled Wednesday, the next day, for major open-heart surgery. So I just went there, let myself feel sick with the whole fear of being out of control. So much swirls of sickness and sad in my heart I didn’t know what to do. So I went inside, to my room, to my sacred spot and I sat quiet in my spot and tried to write but that didn’t work either so mostly I ended up just breathing til my breathing turned to a hum and the hum put me gently to sleep.

Wednesday morning comes with rain and mist and heavy fog and I prayed a long time and mom was right there with me in my heart her tears and fears sprung fresh as rain. I got dressed and was headed to the college for a meeting when suddenly my gut unrolled in longing that seemed to be pulling me forward on the road and next thing I called Jason and Kim and told them I think I got to go and they said yes you do and I drove straight with the rain all the way to Pennsylvania.
I got to York Hospital and it was cold and windy by now and mom was waiting out front with her kind of crazy smile. I hadn’t seen that one in a while. Grandma couldn’t come she was waiting at home for him to wake up and for the tubes to come out; once, many years ago, he had an operation and she had to see him on the breathing machine and she could never ever seem to let that most fragile of images go. So it was better for this woman, his woman of 65 years, to just stay sitting in her spot in the corner on her rose-colored chair with the afghans at home.

So mom and I in we went and I wasn’t dressed for this Pennsylvania hill weather and it was cold and my hair was flat and stuck to my face and I had the shivers, never a good way to enter the hospital. And there were mom’s sisters, Lori and Coni, the three of them, and me, first born granddaughter: Us, the women, here to make it all better. But that’s not true that’s not what you can do, that’s not what anyone can do even for all your concern and tears, your prayers and fears in a situation like this no matter how powerful you’re soul there aint a damn thing you can do. And for us, us women from the PA hills, we are strong and we are forceful, we are irreverent to a hysterical point, and god damn it we are in control. So, teeny as we were we went up those stairs and to the ICU and they let us in to see. Us and my papaw, my big bull of up every morning at 5am to work in the shop granddad, who was so little, and yellow, and still.

And all the monitors and beeping and tubes coming out to keep his heart and lungs going.

And all I can think, amazing how powerful something other than us really is….

It was a long day and they only let you in for 15 minutes post-op then back to grandma’s again to float about the house uncomfortably eating all that good York County junkfood til finally we got to antic and anecdotes and story-telling til there was some laughter, my mom’s people laughter the sick kind til your stomach hurts with the crunchedness and you are laughing with tears. I rubbed grandma’s feet til she was quiet and napping and then I lay on the floor and slept deep awhile but also was awake the whole time. Then it was 3:30-5:30 time for BOGO at Ruby Tuesdays so off we went the five of us plus Pap’s sister Sylvia for Sysco food and more laughter. By now I was full-fledged with the half-closed wild eyes making side-mouthed jokes like mom Aunt Lori just threatened to set me on fire and jack on the rocks make mine an IV just to see Aunt Lor, the youngest one, with that shock on her face of out-of-control the second before the hysteria of laughing took her over once more.

At 7 we went back and he was still knocked out but twitching now and making faces every so often like he might cry. And then that’s when I did, just cried and cried, went in the bathroom and cried so they couldn’t hear me the hospital workers who see people like this for a living and who pretend for just a minute that it is really them somehow who have all this control.

I went back to Gram’s in time to see my cousins and hug them and catch up in hushed voices on the floor laying around like we always do and I love them so much I would fight for them or more. It was 11:30 when I got home Wednesday night this time I didn’t drive like a crazy woman I just took it easy because I was still inside after that release from the cry.

Then, yesterday. A freaking staff meeting from 9 am to 4 pm. Seven hours!! That’s seven hours people!! A seven freakin hour meeting. That should be outlawed. Common sense should mandate against such a thing. When the fricken hell is common sense going to mandate for our mental freakin health?!? Anyhow. Yesterday was proof that grace happens: by now it was two days away from the sun and the herbs and also a lot of outside circumstances going on. And by now it’d been 6 days since I’d been to the gym. And though Wednesday night’s sleep was the best I’ve had in months, I didn’t get any time to decompress with me in my quiet spot yesterday morning. The best thing that happened was on the way to the meeting my mom called and Pap was off the vent. He made it through…

Which didn’t change the fact that there was no everloving part of me that wanted to be in the stupid meeting. It was the kind of start to the work day where I wanted my personal life to excuse me enough to be able to treat others like they are assholes for encroaching on my life. That’s why I mean there was grace. Cuz somewhere about 45 minutes in to it I kicked in to gear and was capable of being a worker among workers, bringing thoughtfulness and leadership to the meeting. Wow, now if that’s not proof of a deeper power what the hell is.

The meeting got out at 4, I worked until 6 cuz it’s towards the end of the week and I took off Wednesday and had shit to get done.

Then I got in my car and got my crazy madwoman on again and drove the hour drive over the bridge, this time to the County, Anne Arundel, where I’m from. My old friend from little-school on up just published her first book and what a joy that was, to see her, Erika Robuck used to be Erika Shepard reading from her own book at the highschool where I went and I’ve only been back once in 14 years. It was such a head trip but at the same time it was peaceful to me, and real.

I couldn’t remember living there—you dig what I’m saying? I could barely touch on who I used to be. I was a wild girl in my highschool; Catholic school girl as they used to say with the skirt hiked the thigh high socks or ripped black tights the Doc Marten MaryJanes. Cat-eyes and pink or bleached white hair. Purple almost black lips. Loving living like I was in sin. Smoking cigs and more in the parking lot. Class-partier in the yearbook. Almost kicked out a week before graduation for threatening to kill the Dean. They are changing the school a lot—whole new wings and new monies and classrooms and fields with real turf. A development up in the woods behind there, the woods where I played when I was a girl cuz my high school was only three minutes from where, as a child, I used to live. And it was all so good and pure and real—and me, I was me, not some context of who I thought on the outside, all the way back then, I needed to be. And Erika, I was so, so proud of her. She gave a great, eloquent talk and we made plans to get together next week and talk and catch up as writers and old friends. And she believes that indy book-selling same as indy-music is the wave of the times, so I’m all about that and funny how when you be good to and take care of and honor your self, when you as Joe Campbell says are willing to let go of the life you’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for you…the miracle just kinda happens.

And I’m amazed at the realness—here and there sure there are undercurrents of the autopilot life that this crazed fast-living week so temptingly tried to pull me back to, the hamsteronthewheel of who in the past I’ve been—but that life is faded, not real anymore. Just the awareness there like a soft shadow against the ground in the warm afternoon light. About to stretch long out and disappear. I wanted to come home last night and get on the internet after a long day at the almost end of a long week and space-out, but I haven’t done that in weeks and sometimes you have to make room for the miracle, you have to, as my pal Amy says, set up the conditions. Really, it’s all you can do. So I skipped the OD on the net and went up to spend quiet time with me and just breathed in my sacred spot til I was asleep. And then I got up this morning in the mist and light rain, in my blue robe and barefeet, and went out to find the herbs and the connectedness, the good loving earth and talking river and greet the day…….