Identity Crossroads

Posted on September 5, 2015 by spiralwoman

I sat in a beautiful rural church on a recent warm Saturday. A woman who once lived, had died. I remember her very clearly. She was big of personality, voice, and opinion. She seemed to care not one whit about what anyone thought of her. I admired that. When I knew her, I was in my late 20s, she was maybe 25 years older—old enough to be my mother. But she wasn’t.

Although Katherine was being honored that day, she was not the reason I was there. I was there to honor someone else.

The year I met Katherine was my first year of teaching 6-8^th grade English. My 6^th grade that year had only 7 students in it. One of them was Katherine’s daughter, Kit.

Teaching was, like babysitting or nannying, both of which I’d also done, a precursor to parenthood. I found out, almost by surprise, how much love is involved. I discovered how much a group of 7 kids in a classroom every day can worm its way in. By the time they were in 8^th grade, we were sitting around discussing The Scarlet Letter while everyone took turns feeling my first baby thump around under my sweater.

I taught Kit and her classmates for 3 years. I knew at the time that she would always be a powerful memory for me. There was something about her. She knew herself, I could see. Or was on the way to knowing herself. And she was only 11.

Kit grew up, moved away, began a career as a midwife, married, had children. I stayed in the background, like a good former teacher, proud and admiring, happy for her growing and achieving, but mostly for her happiness. All this thanks to the power of social media, where I walk a fine line between stalking and benevolent awareness. (Thankfully, I have a busy, rich life so stalking is not really an option for me. But I am alertly and fondly cognizant of many, many of my former students, and in touch with them at appropriate interludes, thanks to Facebook and other cyber-land “realities.”)

In the intervening years, between Kit’s 8^th grade graduation, at which I cried (I always cry), and the memorial of her mother, I lost mine.

Mother-daughter—it’s a complicated bond. Teacher-student—less so, but also multi-layered, very lasting, and potentially very rich. Kit and I shared what I recently described as a “history of entanglement/anguish/difficulty” with our mothers. The loss of a parent is always hard. The loss of a mother has its own layers of complexity. The loss of a mother with whom the relationship has been fraught, painful, guilty, or in other ways complicated… well, it’s the worst, or at least the most difficult to navigate.

Fast forward 25 years from graduation day for Kit and her 6 classmates, and I received a message. Kit stretching out a hand in my direction and saying, well, lots of things. Part of it was just this: “I find myself wanting to reach out again all these years later and for your support . Although I am no longer a child and need so much less than the 11 to 13 year old me needed. It feels comforting to know you are out there, regardless. Thank you for helping me find my way all those years ago. I will be in the dark for awhile with this grief but less scared knowing you are there if I feel the need to call out.”

When Kit lost her mother. When she reached out to me. When the memories of my own mother’s death in 2004 resurfaced during that exchange with Kit. When I sat in the small church listening to the carefully worded eulogies about a woman—a force of nature who was hard to love but easy to admire (so like my mother). When I heard Kit speak of, and to, her mother, back stiff and eyes dry, her complicated pain a stunning echo of mine, 11 years before. When I saw Kit in the flesh for the first time since 1990, holding her two babies close, a boy and a girl (like mine). When her smiling face reminded me of the eternal grace I always saw in her, even in those awkward adolescent years, and that lovely soul that shines out to this day. When her beautiful face brought back those first years of teaching and all the hard work and the crazy impossible aspirations and the valiant heroism of kids and the bond that forms and the teacherlove.

Sitting in the church I was briefly in a powerful crosswind—a very real moment when several pasts intersected with the present and an idea of the future in which Kit-as-mother, me-as-mother, Kit-as-daughter, me-as-daughter, Kit-as-student, me-as-teacher, sparkled like the facets on a universe-sized crystal.

Not all intersections are where clandestine meetings take place. Sometimes they are just moments in time when our different identities intersect unexpectedly, and immediately stop mattering. When the only thing that does matter is love.

The Family Thing (it’s the thing)

Posted on August 17, 2015 by spiralwoman

Cozy reunion house.

Family has been a lifelong journey for me. When I was two, my mother removed me from my father. Life was now rearranged into “regular”—in New York City with my mother—and “visits” –in the summer, to my dad. Though I often spent 4 months a year with him, my mother’s terminology had its intended effect. “Home” was with her, not him. But I felt more “at home” with him. Which meant I was homesick no matter where I was.

Those precious visits to my father invariably involved forays from his home in western PA to northern Ohio and our extended family there—including 13 first cousins. I lived for those visits.

On my mother’s side, it was like we were in witness protection. As I grew up, I knew she had a sister and five brothers, aunts and uncles, two parents— but I’d never seen them, except once when I was three months old. By the time I met them all (my mom finally got over being mad at her mom), when I was about eight, I acquired 13 more cousins. Jackpot!

There was something so powerful in knowing I had people. Every day I spent with my cousins and other extended family was about creating and discovering history. That shared history—of DNA, generational memory, and memories forged in cousins’ back yards— has sustained me in many ways over the years.

I’ve since realized that DNA, and even fond memories, are not always enough to carry a relationship into maturity. But sometimes, you just get lucky.

Partial group shot 2015

What are the odds, I wonder, that the 14 offspring of 4 people born in the 1920s + spouses, the chosen life partners of said 14 offspring, and a combined 22 from the next generation (and even their spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends), would like each other enough to spend 3 days together on an island in a big house? Like…24 hours a day. Did I mention: on an island. (AKA no easy escape route.) And not just once, but over and over again? I don’t know. Maybe it happens a lot. But that’s what we do—my dad’s genome pool—the Park clan.

Richard Bach (remember him?) wrote: “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” I’ll go with that. But what a blessing when the two converge, and the respect and joy and the blood go together?

There are 5 basic things that cement this bond, every few years when we gather together on an island in Lake Erie. 1. PLAY 2. FOOD 3. WORK 4. TALK 5. LAUGHTER.

Play

A deck of cards, a baseball bat, a volleyball, a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (or three in one weekend, one done twice). A massive game of trivia played by all 45 of us, in teams with ludicrous names. Who cares? To play is the thing. (Apologies for a faulty reference to a famous quote by Shakespeare that has nothing to do with playing.) How often do we play in life? If you are not under 10 or on a team of some sort, you probably do not play as much as you should.

#puzzlemadness

65 year old cousins and 50 year old aunts, and cousins-in-law, 20 something second cousins– a collection of sorts, all tiptoeing into the expansive, sea-like Lake Erie with floatation devices and water shoes, to swim, or just hang—literally—on noodles, and chat, laugh, wash their hair. Play and the time to play.

Talk and walk and swim.

I’d sit willingly for 3 hours straight on a blanket under the trees beside the lake, playing Spades or Hearts with any and all comers, from my 10 year old niece (not to be underestimated) to my 30-something first cousin once removed who calls me “Aunt Vanessa” because he can and I love him so.

Cards, cards, and more cards (with talk, talk, and more talk).

This year there was a bit of edgy competition in some of the contests, but balanced nicely with those willing to poke fun at a slight overabundance of wanting-to-win when half the people on a team are either under 12, over 60, or never played volleyball/baseball/trivia/spades before. Laugh, wink, fade to sunset, a glass of wine, and arms around shoulders.

Volleyball in the hot sun.

Food

Never underestimate the power and influence of good food. We bring a truckload of fresh groceries over on the ferry to stock the house’s 2 refrigerators. Pre-arranged teams comprised of 5-7 family members of multiple generations, and none of them from the same nuclear unit—each team is responsible for one meal from preparation and presentation through clean-up. One. That’s it. The menu is prepared ahead, but the inspiration, timing, insouciant je-ne-sais-quoi-mystery of the meal’s creation is a magic that happens within the team itself….

Meal time is happy time.

And the food. Is. So. Good. It probably helps that everyone has worked up an appetite swimming or hitting balls with a bat or laughing so hard the tummy ache of laugh-muscles just fades into hungry belly. It also helps that the few foodies in the family plan the menus (my sisters and me, basically). And that smart people (and this family does have smart going for it) make good decisions. And then there’s my bro-in-law-aka-secret-weapon Joe who can grill or smoke anything and is willing to wake up at 6 a.m. to do it. But whatever. 45 people finding a seat on one of two porches, the living room, or the kitchen to talk and eat and groan with satisfaction. Feeding and being fed. That’s a family thing, right?

Work

A happy, gorgeous cog in a meal team wheel. #vital #worthit

For our reunion weekends, food and work go together. Those meal teams work hard. Knowing this is their one responsibility, and that the rest of the food will be made by other teams, releases all kinds of motivation, not to mention team spirit and lots of creative problem solving. Over the years (we’ve been doing this since the mid-90s), I’ve noticed that the work binds us together. Pride and accomplishment and camaraderie all go together with getting-the-job-done focus.

Bacon gets made on the porch. #itsarule

Whether it’s making or stripping beds, cleaning a bathroom, or doing laundry, we benefit from the fact that we are NOT in a hotel, at a resort, or on a cruise. The tasks are few enough, and the rewards of being part of it all… are many.

Early birds make beds!

Talk

Porch schmoozing. #cousins

Like minds. That’s part of it. And the fact that we like each others’ minds. Talk is a major part of the mirepoix that makes those family weekends so delicious. A bunch of curious, thoughtful, and articulate (not to mention funny) people who manage to be great listeners (recipe for conversation Nirvana?) with loads of time to spend just plain schmoozing.

Blanket schmoozing #auntandniece

Where shall we go to have our next in-depth convo? This is not a question we ask ourselves. In the hallway outside the bathroom is a good place. Standing in front of the stove while one or more of us is flipping pancakes. In two or a few of the 8 zillion rocking chairs on one of two porches. On a blanket by the lake. In the lake. In a hammock. Standing at the edge of the grove as the sun blinks below the horizon. I even had one cousin call me at home a week before the reunion to get a head start on conversation. He was worried we might not have enough time when we got there.

Under-a-tree schmoozing. #brothersinlaw

Sometimes no words are necessary. #secondcousinsrock

Laughter

As good as the food is, if I had to give it up to keep the amount of laughter that happens in 3 days, I would.

Best laughter pic from any reunion. 1996, my sister and my dad. #outofcontrol #laughtillyoucry

Family is worth any effort. I have a cousin who flies in from Texas every time. One from Colorado and another from Georgia. We start talking about the “next time” before the weekend ends.

My niece, Jane, was in tears on the last night of our weekend. She is 12. She doesn’t want to wait two or three years for the next family reunion. She wants one every year. (The practical issues and expense for people was not factoring in to her calculation. Nor should it.) Time’s passage is as vivid to Jane—if not more so—than to those of us on the other side of 50. Change happens. It happens to her (probably daily) and there are no guarantees, no promises, no sure things. “Please, Aunt Vanessa. I don’t want to wait.”

Neither do I.

#LakeErieSunset

Brief Reflection on a Daughter’s Graduation

Posted on July 24, 2015 by spiralwoman

When she was four, she graduated from Hayes Nursery School. She was growing up fast. The children sang their songs, got their little certificates, and we eased into summer.

The next 9 years were reassuringly graduation-free. Time seemed to stand still a little bit because of the lack of ceremonial transitions. For a number of years, she would stand alone on the talent show stage and sing, a cappella, one of many multi-verse Irish rebel songs she had learned by osmosis from her dad. Standing stiff and straight, she’d launch into a song, crisply enunciating lines like:

“What will my local brethren think, when they hear the news
My car it has been commandeered, by the rebels at Dunluce”
“We’ll give you a receipt for it, all signed by Captain Barr
And when Ireland gets her freedom, boy, you’ll get your motor car”

When you have a small daughter who does that, as you, her dad, and everyone else in the room stares in awe, you sort of get the idea that things are special around here. That tradition—of singing a rebel rousing song at the end of May every year—became a kind of passage-marker as she “graduated” from kindergarten to first to second to third and on up through the ranks.

I have been blessed to know many children who really liked school. As a teacher at a very special school, I saw them every day in my classroom. The ones who did not like school were quite rare. My son really liked school. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the sports and the hours spent in the art room or the science lab or learning guitar with a cool jazz musician on Thursday mornings.

With my daughter, it was different. If living life is partly about finding “the flow”—school was definitely part of her “flow.” She stayed in the flow through her 8^th grade graduation, at which she spoke, with wisdom and a droll humor that kept everyone laughing, her high school graduation, cum laude etc. etc. and then, ever the educational traditionalist, college, after a mere four years of #crushingit.

It’s a funny thing to sit, surrounded by strangers and family, as several hundred names are read out, and several hundred beautiful 22 year olds stride proudly across a stage at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where, for a variety of reasons, your daughter’s college holds commencement.

All those years ago, we chose a name for the baby who got herself born in record time due to having “been there, done that” so many lifetimes’ worth (I am convinced). We gave the name to a small human we made. It was our second gift to her, after life itself.

She wrote that name on her pictures, poems, and papers, on her notebooks, baseball gloves, riding helmets, applications, résumés, water bottles, and social media accounts. Then one day someone says that name into a microphone and yet another birth happens, as the human we made moves through yet another passage from what came before, to all that still awaits.

Hairdresser Goddess Guru Kindred Spirit Soul Sister

Posted on April 19, 2015 by spiralwoman

She’s about six feet tall with the face of a goddess, yet nothing about her intimidates. Radiating warmth, Molly (not her real name) is a woman in touch with herself as much as with others.

My relationship with Molly started the usual way, through the recommendation of a friend. Despairing, I had all but given up on my once lush, silky hair that had turned into sparse straw on my head. My fall from “great hair” status had taken its toll on me, I’ll be honest. I was struggling, as I passed deeper into middle age, to come to grips with lots of stuff, but when my hair betrayed me it was almost too much.

At first my interactions with Molly were entirely professional. She exuded confidence and set about fixing me, hair-wise. And she did. Not all at once (after all it had taken years for life and me to destroy my hair). But within a year, I was a new woman. And my hair looked better and better. It was obvious that this woman is very very good at what she does. As well as very good at… being a person.

Molly trusts and honors her own instincts, always. She dresses the way she wants too. Confident style. When I first knew Molly, her hair was shortish, and sometimes white blond and sometimes shimmery brunette. Eventually, her hair grew long and she used it as an art medium when she took it to full, glorious dreadlocks. That transition made me fangirl even more, if that’s possible. But her beauty, tawny youth, and loving smile are nothing compared to… what shall I call it? Okay, her soul.

She is an incredible single mom. She is a seeker. She is an artist and she loves life and her own journey with powerful feeling. She has deep wisdom that has been forged, at least partly, in the cauldron of busy past life cycles.

The more we talked, the more we realized how profoundly we understood one another on many levels. I have opened up to her about things I have not told anyone else. And it’s not just that she’s safe, because she doesn’t know the people I know, blah blah blah. You know, the dynamic you get when people open their guts to the bartender, realtor, or, okay, well… hairdresser. It’s not like that. Once a month I show up in her chair and we pick up wherever we left off. We both share from somewhere deep inside. We both listen. We are interested. I want to know about her process, her journey, her exciting view of the world from where she is.

We support one another with clips of wisdom, fit into the time slot allowed—between the color and the wash, the snipping and the blowdrying. She has texted me once or twice, at crucial moments, when she knows I’m about to face something particularly difficult. She has seen me at my very worst. She’s seen me high on life. She’s seen me cry. Hard. She gives hugs, and accepts them too.

She got a call from me one afternoon as I sat by the side of a road in Texas deeply afraid I’d never be able to drive again, so shattered did I feel in that moment. Yes, I called Molly. Somehow, she was tuned into a particular part of my inner journey in a way no one else was, or could be. She talked to me for an hour, probably. Got me back on the road. And then we did not see one another till I was back in New York and had my next appointment. Another effortless chapter in our serialized relationship.

Molly is young enough to be my daughter, but mine is not a motherish feeling, and hers is not a daughterly vibe. Sisters find each other in the most unlikely places, at the most serendipitous of moments. She is a healer, a visionary, a friend. Molly’s gifts come in all colors and work in all seasons. She has a lust for life and she is simply determined to make the best of the one given to her. She is a competent, independent woman with strong ideas, a superb mind, and a huge heart. I am her biggest fan. Not only does Molly have a vocation, she has a big round universe full of everything else—all the things you might not realize when you see her standing behind the chair, scissors in hand. Unless you are really looking.

Oxymorons for a New Age

Posted on March 16, 2015 by spiralwoman

This is my now.

Living in the now has become a buzz-phrase lately. A standard bearer for logic and linear time might wonder, “If we are alive, and unable to time travel, what other damned moment would we be living in?” To someone so tapped into “the flow,” even “now” might be too fluid a concept to pin down and actually live in.

But let’s not overthink this. The point I’m trying to make is that buzz-phrase or not, there are plenty of helpful bits of advice being turned into memes and tweets and book blurbs all over the place these days. There are driven people out there who actually think that being busy equals being important or being stressed is somehow cool, but who want to be up on all the latest trends (like “living in the now”). They have heard stress will kill you, and they get that. But the killing part comes later, after they have retired from being stressed and thus can stop death in its tracks by hiring a meditation guru or learning Qi Gong. They’ll live in the “now”… later.

A strange conflict emerges as smart people try to put relaxation and now-ness on their to-do list.

I’m trying to play more.

It seems to me that play just sort of happens, or should. I mean sure. We can head to the gym for that weekly pick-up game of b-ball and play our guts out. Or we can put “game night” on the calendar and invite our most irreverent and funny friends over for a rip-roaring round of “Screw Your Neighbor” but play is so much more than that. Play is a state of mind. You can play in your mind, with yourself, as you re-wonder about things you’ve already wondered about. I think that laughing out loud at your own clumsiness is playful, or turning spilled coffee into a game to see who can get to the floor first, you or the drips. Play is by definition impractical and gives pleasure. I need more of it, that’s for sure. Here’s what I think: don’t try. Just play.

I’m struggling to let go.

Believe me, letting go is often not easy. Whether it is letting go of lost love or a bad habit, easier said than done. But it seems to me that the struggling and striving we do to let go causes us to hold on harder than ever, without meaning to. I picture someone (like me, many times) straining under the burden of …letting go, so that nothing at all is released and implosion is the only natural outcome. I’d prefer to lie down on the sand inside my mind and open my palms to the sun, until whatever I am holding onto just drifts off on the wind. No struggle necessary.

I’m straining to understand.

Strain and strife are antithetical to understanding in many ways. Most of my “aha” moments come when I am open, mind, body, and heart, to the messages available to all of us. Believe me, I’m as guilty as anyone of squinching up my face in an effort to make a round thought make sense in my triangle brain. If I just wait till my brain gets a little rounder, it all makes sense. Suddenly and completely with no squinching. I’ve decided that instead of “trying to understand,” I’ll just allow understanding to fill me.

So much of life today intrudes on the very concept of today. I want today to be itself, a whole 24 hour moment of now that fits nicely with yesterday’s now, and tomorrow’s now. I’m working on it.

Big Rambling Houses, Cliffs to Jump Off, and the Power of Flight

Posted on March 7, 2015 by spiralwoman

After more than a decade during which I almost got used to the fact that access to my sleeping mind had been cut off, I’m remembering my dreams again. There is more than one way to tap the unconscious, but dreams were always my fallback. The membrane was reliably soft and easy when I awoke, and I could ease back through it, take a look, and know what my message for myself was that day.

Well, it is all there for me again. Over the years, I had invited my dreams back now and then with not a lot of success. They say you can train yourself, but I think there is more to it than that. I guess I’m ready for them again. Ready to hear what they have to say and see what they want to show me. (In other words, ready for what my higher self needs to teach me.)

Lately, my dreams have had three common threads. Aside from a series of dreams in which I see someone I badly miss, I’m dreaming about rambling houses, edges off which I jump, and the power of flight.

As a child, my dreams of flying were so constant and so real to me that I spent a few years around the ages of 6 or 7 secretly believing I really could fly. I just though I wasn’t good at controlling it while I was awake the way I could when I was asleep. I have not flown like that in my dreams for over 30 years and I have missed it very much.

Flight. In childhood, I usually flew to save myself, in an often-narrow escape from someone or something. And sometimes I flew just for the joy of it. Now that I’m flying again, the frequency is reversed. The occasional “good thing I know how to fly so I can get out of this freefall” but with a lot of “damn, I can FLY” kinds of dreams that I wake from feeling good and filled with a glorious POWER.

Big rambling houses. In one recent dream sequence, the staircase to the basement was made of empty wine crates. (Hard to navigate but begging the question: where did all that wine go?) I made my way down that scary staircase, without fear. My cats are occasionally with me, familiars even as I sleep, and they often do a good deed or exhibit impressive supercat skills, sort of the way I superhumanly fly all over the place. Not to be sidetracked by the props and minor characters — these dreams are about dank basements, endless hallways, doors…and me, always faced with a CHOICE.

Precipices. In one badass dream lately I took a bad guy (faceless, nameless, but menacing) by the hand and jumped with him off a cliff. Even though it looked like the edge of a porch, it was indeed a very intense cliff, and we ended up plummeting through dark bottomlessness until I conveniently let go of his hand and flew to safety. Though I made the choice to exert my power and avoid termination at the bottom of that particular precipice, cliffs are about risk and facing fears and, in my mind, they are about MAJOR CHANGE.

The recent full moon (which was ruled by Virgo, as it happens) still holds sway over us all. And over me, telling me that change is inevitable, that it is time to live truthfully if I’m not already, that everything I’m going through inside and outside of me is prepping the stage for my future. Sure, I know that every act and thought and feeling is, in a sense, doing that. But we all know when the shit that’s going down is BIG and when it’s not. This feels big.

So I look at the dreams (and so much more) and conclude that I have the power to fly. I can fly away, I can fly up, down, or in. I can save myself, and I can let go of what is not serving me. And I can fly just to fly, for the joy of being weightless and free. And I have choices and they are forcing themselves into my consciousness so I’ll make them. Not all of the choices are easy, not all of them are safe. Just like the big houses. Scary basement or door number three? And I am on the brink—of something. The very knife-sharp edge of whatever it is, I can make the leap… and be okay.

Four Women and a Starting Place. Add 30 Years.

Posted on January 25, 2015 by spiralwoman

The 4 of us.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, humid late August 1977, two girls met in a shared suite in a dorm at the University of Virginia.

That was me and Molly, forging a friendship that was, for a time, like two people wearing the same sweater. There was the closeness of oneness and the parallel discoveries and experiences of a lifetime. First love, first hangover, first bong hit, first writing workshop, first apartment, first sex, first predatory professor, first job – all of it shared together if not in words, then in simply showing up.

Eventually I got Molly a job at the place I worked – she became barmaid in the dance club behind the restaurant where I waited tables downstairs, and men we found easy to fall in love with worked upstairs inside a golden circle, or behind the bar, shielded by cigarette smoke. There was not much we did not do together at first, and as we split off to live our own lives, nothing really changed about loving each other. She had a perfectly expressive face, animated eyes, eloquent long fingered hands. She wrote poetry and was learning Chinese.

Me, Molly, and our friend Bridget, outside the Cottage-of-Many-Parties.

She loved to eat and drink at bars with me, or sit at coffee shops imbibing hideous coffee and smoking hideous cigarettes as we talked about everything from Modernism to sexy guitar players we had a thing for. Molly represents the period in my life when I was figuring out who I was (or starting to), choosing my path, taking risks (as she puts it so lovingly) with my heart. Then she moved to Taiwan and I never saw her again. Until three weeks ago.

In Charlottesville, Virginia winter of 1982, two young women met in “The Cave” – an interior space in the bowels of Cabell Hall that served coffee and snacks.

I was introduced to Anne, a young MFA student, a poet, a girl with thick black hair held back by a barrette. Soon enough, she was coming to the little cottage in town that I shared with a mutual friend, Bridget, for pot luck dinners and round-robin back rubs. This friendship grew gently. It was allowed to do so because we were both settled, secure in our circles of friends, ready to get to know one another and we had time to do it.

I remember those years. There was so much time. Always enough time, to sit and be, go to work, go to class, write lots of papers and stories, hang out with other people, play silly games on bar napkins, dance till 3 a.m. and walk home sweating and alive only to have more time the next day. I remember showing up to meet Anne one day at the Virginian. I had just left the woods where I had been picnicking with my boyfriend. The strap on my shoe had broken. I saw her at the bar and I walked up, holding one sandal in my hand. She laughed. That was a perfect moment.

Her earnest, joyful, loyal friendship has seen me through … a lot. Her lush, alto voice is sure to help me feel centered, no matter where I am, or how I’m doing. We were in each other’s weddings and then…. For years, as we raised families and started careers, we rarely saw one another, but at some point I was reminded that, for me, Anne is a lodestone. Now, I see her whenever I can.

Anne and me in 2014, enjoying an afternoon visiting a couple wineries!

In Charlottesville, Virginia, fall semester 1983, I met Sarah in one of two classes we, by chance, were taking together – a seminar dedicated exclusively to George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte (I know, heaven, right?), and a Lit Crit class.

Sarah had just moved back into the town. She had grown up and attended high school in Charlottesville, and now returned to finish up her college credits at UVA. I was still where I’d been since 1977, finishing up my college credits. And now, we got lucky – fate brought us together.

To say that my young twenties were fraught with some painful passages (some the usual kind about a broken heart, and some less usual, involving being stalked by a mentally ill parent), would be a glib sidestep, but that’s what I’m going to say and leave it at that. Sarah was the North Star smiling right into my face as I tried to put my head down, determined to get my diploma. We used to joke that we had parallel lives, and in some ways we did. We certainly were drawn to the same writers, and we both had “difficult” mothers. Sarah was the person who, no matter what was going on, would reach out to me. Years after I’d left Charlottesville, when she saw my missing-for-months mother wandering a street in Bethesda, MD, she called me immediately, knowing how much it would mean to me.

When something hurt me, or I was holding on too tight to my control, it was Sarah’s level gaze that would gently ease me into recognition, out of denial, and it often involved copious, painfully-relinquished tears. Sarah has remained my external hard drive, holding onto memories about my life that I have unwittingly let go. She can summon anger at a man who hurt me, or a job that demanded too much (like when I had to constantly cover for the coke-fiend diva who employed me), when I cannot because I have pushed things down too far. Sarah will hold me accountable to the events that transpired in those last years in my favorite town where so much good and bad happened.

When Sarah and I reunited in person after a 12 year gap. 2010.

None of these three women were friends with one another. Anne and Molly took a poetry class together at one point early on, and may have crossed paths through me. I used to love to open my house up to everyone I knew for pot-luck parties that had as much insanely good conversation as shitty wine and yummy food. We don’t think Sarah ever met either of them until she met Anne at my wedding in 1986, then, years later through me again, in Charlottesville. All of us had our circles of friends, and like a typical Venn diagram, there was some overlap. But in the Venn diagram of me, Molly, Anne, and Sarah, the little piece in the middle just had me.

These women were, like others I was fortunate to know in those formative and exciting years, absolutely central to my life and are intricately woven into who I am.

A few weeks ago, because Molly was going to be in the states (Richmond, VA to be exact) for a vacation—all the way from Taiwan—I drove down to Charlottesville with my daughter. Molly drove up from Richmond. We were pulled to reconnect for the first time in 30+ years. Sarah and Anne, who live in Charlottesville, Molly, my daughter, and I, gathered for dinner one night. Four sets of memories, four ways of knowing me, four versions of my past… and The Past. And I knew each of them in a particular way, at a particular time. We had found one another for particular reasons.

I think of certain women, scattered across my life, as my chosen sisters. Or my found sisters. Whether we come together to fulfill a pact made in a past life, or to continue helping one another grow on a continuum that predates and will postdate this lifetime, or by chance alone, it doesn’t matter. For that weekend in Charlottesville, January 2015, I was content to be the hub connecting these women to one another at this time and that place.

We met for dinner and we were just four women and a daughter. As we sat together around the table, sparklers twinkled at the edges of my vision. Was this a magic trick? Or life so sweet? Was it simply as it was meant to be? Yes to all.

The Privilege of Self-Improvement

Posted on December 29, 2014 by spiralwoman

Not that I’m the poster child for personal evolution and self-discovery, but I sure do feel privileged. Why? Because at every point in my life when I had the urge to take a step into my unknown mysterious calling – whatever it was at the time – I could take it.

This rather obvious fact hit me over the head the other day. With privilege comes both time and money – both of which are quite helpful when we want to self-improve. Whether it is the Reiki training I suddenly felt called to, or the shamanic training I’ve received over the last ten years, or the hours spent across a table from a dear soul sister sorting through the latest spiritual bushwhacking we’ve participated in – I’ve been blessed.

Sure I work hard and sure I strive and toil – a fact which unites us all on some level. But a still, sun drenched winter morning spent with one of two Tarot decks at my disposal is within my realm of possibility. If I hear about a book that I know will kick my butt, or amuse me, or guide me to a door that needs opening, I buy it. If I have to head up to the mountain top that is my journeying spot, I head there (either in reality or otherwise).

Sure I’d like to travel to Greece and do a goddess tour, or to Italy to seek details of a past life – not every privilege is “easy” for everyone who is privileged, but I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to make these trips happen, as well as a week or two among the Celtic mysteries in Scotland and Ireland. Something to aspire to. And I can.

Because I don’t have to aspire to get my GED because I didn’t have to drop out of high school. I got a kick-ass education because I grew up assuming that was important and that I could. Even though I put myself through college and grad school, I consider that a privilege too. I knew how to support myself and had done so for 10 years by the time I was done with my education. And that is a kind of empowerment many uber-privileged children are denied. Things can come too easily, it turns out.
Because I was empowered enough to know I had choices. I did not have to bear a child when I could not do justice to one. I was able to choose when to bring my babies into the world – and they waited for me to be ready.
Because I was born white and middle class, to an ambitious, upwardly mobile (if mentally unstable – can’t have everything) mother. Not only was I clad and shod, fed and taught, there were books on the shelves and records on the stereo and paintings on the wall. And trips to the Met and MoMA, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall.
Because I don’t have to work a minimum wage job, or depend on food stamps to survive, and if I work a second job it is not so I can pay the heating bill, it’s so I can send my own kids to college, or maybe save up for that trip to Greece. Feel me?
Because I have health insurance.
Because I have the luxury of thoughtful opinions, know that my vote matters, and have time to speak up, opine, march, fight for my rights and those of others (with words, anyway). Single moms living in tenements have no such luxury, though voting is power and everyone has that privilege…. At least for now.

When privileged politicians use their positions to look with contempt on those less fortunate, I realize they are not using their privilege to self-improve, but to self-aggrandize, and worse. Their karma is entirely besmirched, of course, but I won’t gloat about that. Everyone else pays the price of their comfortable hetero-patriarchal ability to look down on people who are not like them.

I’ll try hard to use my privilege not only to improve upon my small soul, but to grow my large soul. Oh, and love everyone. Even that, it seems, is a privilege.

The Beauty of a Broken Heart

Posted on October 25, 2014 by spiralwoman

Recently someone came into my office and saw a mask on a shelf. She exclaimed, “This is so beautiful!” It is a Mayan mask that one of my sisters brought to me from Mexico when I was teaching the culture of ancient Maya to my 6^th graders. Somewhere along the line it broke and I patched it together. It’s still beautiful. The cement that creates the bond between the broken pieces does not detract from its beauty, and, according to the woman who noticed it the other day, may even make it more beautiful and precious.

About a week earlier, I was in New York with my sisters and a friend. After dinner, we spontaneously visited a palmist on 33^rd Street. During my session with her, the hardest to hear but the thing that sounded most true was that I have had a rough go of it (my whole life) where love is concerned. She expounded at length, mentioned a possible curse, and never concluded much about what comes next. The choices I make will guide that outcome, as will the meanings inherent in my heart’s map.

I think my heart is my best feature. It knows how to love and feel things deeply. But my heart is broken. It is broken the way the mask is broken. The lines of glue that hold it together are not going anywhere. They are visible and real. They are, like any scar, a part of me. Nothing, whether artifact or heart, is ever “unbroken.” They can be mended. They can be as strong as they ever were, but the marks of misfortune, brutality, and carelessness will never go away.

Sometime after my meeting with the mysteriously intense palm reader in New York, I was given a routine EKG to clear me for foot surgery. It turned out not to be so routine after all, and triggered a cascade of tests upon my heart, performed at the Heart Center at Vassar Hospital. My heart, the eternally open golden cup of the Tarot, is a gift to me and to anyone who has my love. It is also an organ made as much of water and electricity as meat. What will the tests reveal? Is my meaty heart organ flawed in some way? Or does the brokenness and sadness that my heart holds within it somehow talk to the EKG machine, which measures electrical impulses?

The ghost in the machine. EKG as medium, channeling the mysterious language of a mended heart. I may sound wacky but there is something to this, I think, if not scientifically.

The full-body-and-heart love of my children, not to mention the loyal love of some real friends – and even the nuzzling solicitous affection of my cats – these are healing and pure like the vibration of a rose quartz or the sensuous comfort of candlelight. But the lines in my heart are there. I embrace my beautiful broken heart and refuse to be critical of its scars, its less-than-perfection, or its senseless longing.

The Hole Left Behind

Posted on September 20, 2014 by spiralwoman

Since July, when Scott died, I have wanted to write about it. It’s what I do – write about stuff. It’s how I process. But I think, nobody can write about this. Because it’s impossible. No one can touch with words the bottomless grief that he left behind in his parents and siblings. No one can capture the perfection of a 22 year old boy who died horribly decades too soon.

What is the shape of the hole left in too many lives to count? Is it his shape? Big and tall – I can see the outline in my mind’s eye. Broad and burly with a floppy shock of hair. I color in the outline I see, the outline left when he was wrenched out of the world. I color his hair sunflower yellow and his eyes blue. The crinkles come next, at the corners of his ever-smiling eyes. The grin, shit-eating and fun, and full of limitless love for whoever he was smiling at. The low slung jeans fade forward from the void of his outline, cornflower blue, muddy cuffs. He just got in from the farm where he worked all day with his dad. Tending cows, mending fence, plowing in straight, fragrant lines.

spiralwoman

One woman trying to pull all the pieces together.

Category Archives: life