Category Archives: Gratitude

Comfort and Conundrum (1)

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I am determined to stay current with my blog this year, so I will post today no matter what. Even if what I post is terrible. Natalie Goldberg does tell us we need to be willing to write the worst crap in the United States, yes? Or in the universe. Though I don’t believe she means we need to be willing to publish the worst crap in the world. Only that we need to not be afraid to write badly. We need to not be afraid of our thoughts, afraid of ourselves. We need to be willing to put everything down on the page—no holds barred. Still, after the act of writing we get to choose. Do I really want Uncle Horace to know this about me? What about the people I work with? Do I really want to publish this even though it seems clunky and unpolished? Am I really willing to be that honest, show that much of myself to the world? It is a choice we face again and again, like deciding not to light that cigarette, not to cheat on our husbands. But unlike failing at quitting smoking, unlike making that decision to light up, choosing to edit out parts of our story doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Right? Each time we send something we’ve written out into the world, we decide how much we want to risk, how vulnerable we want to make ourselves. We get to keep ourselves safe. And I think that’s a good thing. (I can hear the clamor of this controversy even as I write.) Is it without its own dangers? No. We might end up not being willing to take risks in our writing. We might keep ourselves too safe. But knowing it is our choice what to reveal, when to reveal it—that’s a comfort to me (if also a conundrum). Thank you, writing gods. Thank you for that. And here’s to being willing to risk. Here’s to trusting we can still be safe.

Naked (54)

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statue of quan yin with fan palms behind her

I am sitting naked in Desert Hot Springs. Not sitting about in the center of town, no—in a small, modest resort with natural mineral springs. The warm wind has been whipping about me for hours, loud in the fan palms beside the pool. A statue of Quan Yin presides poolside. I’m in the shade now. I’ve been reading most of the day. I go into the hot mineral pool until I’m sated. The wind makes me cold when I emerge, and I wrap myself in my sarong until my skin is dry and the warm air heat seeps into me again. This morning I did yoga. I did qi gong in the early afternoon. I faced northeast, a potted bougainvillea beside me, the low slung hill visible over the bamboo fence. It has been one of those days that go on and on, the quiet stretching of time, summer days in childhood. I feel relaxed, lucky. I am grateful I’ve found this place. My eyes feel sore, a lingering fever. This morning before the wind began, there was a cactus wren laughing from one of these palms. There was a loose dog in the street when I walked here from the bus stop. I look forward to the day when coming here will feel familiar, like visiting someone I know well. I close the door behind me when I leave and walk away. I look back and see the waxing moon hanging above the roofline in the late afternoon sky as though it’s guarding the place. The moon follows me all the way home.

After Shavasana (51)

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When I lie on my side on the yoga mat after Shavasana sometimes it’s so easy. There is a sense of rightness. I am full of trust. Other times I feel aching and vulnerable. Maybe I forget for a moment I am not alone. Or maybe it is an only child thing, or some more basic human ache, one puny human in this big big world? It doesn’t feel bad or wrong, not something needing to be fixed. I tend to close my eyes when I lie on my back in Shavasana, corpse pose. I drift off or sink in, depending on the day. Sometimes I am already moving on to the next thing I need to do. Today I surface on my mat with open eyes, the Palo Verde branches framed against the sky, tears rolling down the sides of my face.

Grace (49)

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I wake up at 4:30 in the morning because Sofia is having trouble. I get up to give her more for her pain. On my way back to bed I see the almost full March moon hovering above our mountains on its way to the other side of the world. I stand by the sliding glass door and watch it, grateful to be awake to see it. After, I lie in bed awake, wrestling with my ongoing trouble with a colleague. These thoughts morph into worries about my job. What will happen if our nonprofit falters? Then I remember I don’t need to be afraid. I can trust the universe. Everything will be okay. I am curled up on my right side, Sable’s warm weight a comfort against my back. For a moment, I know I am held. Safe. Loved. It is like rolling onto my side on the yoga mat after Shavasana. I always lie there for a while, letting things sift through me, before I sit up and bow. “Namaste,” I whisper. The sky is beginning to lighten when I drift back to sleep.

Forgive this Flurry? (48)

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I am inclined to ask for your forgiveness in advance for this flurry of posts as I work toward 56 posts while I’m still 56. I have a handful of days left, and two handfuls of posts remaining. But even as I want to apologize for flooding your email with new posts, a different voice tells me its okay. I think maybe even if you don’t have time to read them, you won’t mind seeing them in your inbox. Does that mean I don’t need to assure you that once I’m 57 things will slow down again? But I do want to keep them coming, one each week, five weeks with two posts. Every year I wonder how long I might keep this up. If I am still doing this when I’m 88, then 36 weeks of the year will need to have two posts. When I started I was 52, so it was the perfect fit. I don’t aspire to being 104 and still blogging, but you never know. I let go of this blog so completely last summer, I wasn’t sure I’d ever reach 56 posts. But I didn’t like giving up on it, so here I am. Tonight I am sick but still typing. I am debating what to name next year’s blog. I’m pretty sure the 57 will rhyme with heaven. What photo will I choose? A shot of clouds on our mountains might work, but I don’t have a good one. I have to make that always wrenching decision, too, about whether or not to pick a theme this year or leave things open again. But tonight I just need to finish this one post and trust the rest will unfold as it may. And tonight, too, I feel glad for you, my readers, and for knowing you will not only forgive me for this flurry of posts—you may even embrace them. So, thank you for that. I can’t tell you how good it feels to think that may be true.

German Healers Triptych (47)

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Last December I met three women in my quest for healing. I knew I wasn’t completely well, wasn’t thriving. I’d found Adrienne, but she only came to Palm Springs once a month. I had insurance now that paid for acupuncture, so I looked through the provider list and found Beatrice (Beatrice Moncrief, Garden of Wellness). She is warm and generous, and German. This was unexpected, but because that is the bulk of my own ancestry, it made sense. (When I was five I decided I was three-quarters German.) The first time I met her, she suggested I may want to give up eating grains. I was already gluten free and mostly vegan, so I balked. I was defensive and cranky at the thought of giving up anything else, but she was kind and patient. Now when I lie facedown during the restorative part of my treatment, I go somewhere deep and watery and return restored. She tells me I’m always happier when I leave, and I know it must be true. One day I want to be able to be less depleted when I get there. And Beatrice led me to Michale (Michale K. Cashe, Herbal Wellness Center). Like me, she is the daughter of a German immigrant. She is warm and assertive. She reminded me of Auntie Gardi’s daughter Luisa who is another strong German-American woman with a wonderful big laugh. Michale smiles like Luisa, too, so I liked her straight off. She does this very cool biofeedback test and a voice analysis that I was especially fond of. She is the reason I am doing the toning to heal my thyroid and my kidneys. And in December when Adrienne didn’t show up, I had a healing and laying on of stones with Gitte (Europa Gitte). She told me I have something in me that resists my efforts to change. I remember standing in the back of the store after the healing and asking about her accent. When she told me she was German, the pattern was hard to miss. “I seem to have a theme of German healers in my life right now,” I said. And I am grateful for each of them, and to the universe for bringing me this triptych of German women helping me along the way. So thank you, Beatrice, Michale and Gitte. Here’s to you. And here’s to thriving.

Night Sky Delight (44)

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The eastern sky is washed in dark pink, our version of a sunset here, so near the San Jacintos. The clouds stretch north, too, as far as I can see on tiptoe. I am weeding the driveway, but I stop to look. There are two of the huge round kind I have only seen in these skies, big puffy smooshed almost-spirals that look like spaceships. The pink pales, and I go back to pulling weeds until the twilight plays tricks on my eyes. Later I remember I have left my shears sitting in the gravel. When I go back out to get them, I see the new crescent moon beside Venus in the west, a hands breadth above the mountains. I stand still, the dangling shears a weight pulling on my arm, my lips parted. They are surprising and bright above the darkening ridge. Back inside, I grab my laptop to do more work. I am carrying it to the living room when I have the impulse to look for them again. I bend my knees to peer out through the 4-inch slit of open window in my front door. They are still there, shining now through the silhouettes of the Palo Verde branches. I am like a little kid, scrunched down, nose pressed up against the screen. I stand there in the narrow hallway, giddy, computer clutched against my chest, watching the two of them for a long time, magic beings in the night sky.