Category Archives: Personal

Fifteen Weeks (30)

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I know I don’t do well without taking days off, days where I don’t even turn on the computer. I have colleagues who think nothing of working seven days a week, who seem to do it by choice. But I have to walk away from it, shed the cords tying me to my students, to faculty, be apart from it all in order to stay sane, stay whole. Still, I am no stranger to long stretches without time off, and when I added the new piece of my job I agreed to working seven days through these three periods, about 15 or maybe 17 weeks all told per academic year. My mind always wants to do the math on that, as if to reassure myself several weeks remain untouched. (52 minus 15 = 37. Whew.) Right now, Day 44, this seventh week of no days off feels like it’s been a year already. My perspective is skewed, lost, and a bit of me, too, I am pretty sure. Still, I think I’ve navigated these weeks better than I’ve ever been able to before. The cats have only suffered a little loss of attention, I think, and I’ve been less patient with Mami. (Which is bad, of course, because I’m not very patient to begin with.) But I haven’t yelled at the cats for no reason. There has been no screaming into the phone. And I haven’t ended up in a puddle on the floor, hysterics my only way to release the mounting stress. So, I hold the thought of Friday in my heart, Day 49, my first day off after 48 days. I count myself lucky to have come so far unscathed. And that welling of gratitude seeps through my cracks and eases something inside me, and I know days 45 through 48 will be easier than I first imagined.

15.2.2015 or Not Quite Mine (29)

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Ah. I had no idea today was a magic number day until I wrote the date in my notebook: 15.2.2015. I still write the dates the way they’re written in Mexico (and most of the world, I’m guessing) with the day first and then the month. Maggie—a woman I met in Ajijic who split her time between Barbados and Canada but had come to Mexico for dental work—told me once my number based on my name is 15, so now I think of it as lucky. She had changed the spelling of her own name to get a better number. And she hated my beloved 29, based on my birthday. She thought it was a terrible number. I wonder if she would have changed her date of birth, too, if she could? My mind gets to wander while I write. It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve written in my notebook. My pen feels funny in my hand, my writing odd looking and out of practice. I am out of practice in all ways, it seems, knowing nothing but work these past six weeks. Work, and fitting in things between work, like sleeping and eating healthy meals. I’ve done my healing toning almost every day while I do my “morning chores,” but I’ve been doing them in the late afternoon or evening more often than not, having let work sweep me away for most of the day. I’ve begun to do my yoga again, though—a small set of sun salutes, mostly, hiding in the shade of the umbrella in the late mornings. And I’ve been swimming three times now. I’m especially pleased about these last two, about having found a way to reach the doing of them in the midst of this crazed stretch. But now, slowing down to write, I feel exhausted and numb, like my mind is not quite mine anymore.

Mockingbird Layers (28)

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Yesterday morning I heard a mockingbird singing on the telephone pole outside my bedroom window. It had been singing for a while before it came to me–this was the first mockingbird song I’d heard in months. I lay in bed and let it wash through me, the pleasure and the delight and all the many layers of mockingbird meaning laid down over time. My big love brought the mockingbird to my world fourteen years ago. I still think of him sometimes when I hear one, the two of us sitting at the kitchen table in my Santa Rosa apartment on a warm summer night, the mockingbird’s song drifting in the open windows from somewhere in the nearby dark. I still have never read To Kill a Mockingbird, though I think an old tattered copy of it may still be somewhere in my closet. I have picked one up more than once through the years from one musty used bookstore or another. I think I have been both intrigued and afraid to read it. Does a mockingbird die? Last Wednesday night the Camelot Theater was showing the film with Gregory Peck. I’d hoped to ride my bike to see it and try out my new headlight, but I let my work get the best of me. Today I read in the morning paper that Harper Lee is having a second novel published in July. Now I think I must read her first one, and watch the movie, too. And if I love it, there will be a sequel waiting. I like few things better than getting to read more about characters I’ve come to love. Maybe I’ll make it another mockingbird summer.

Learning Laughter (25)

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I’m learning to laugh more. I’ve wanted more laughter in my life for a long time. But it’s so much easier to laugh with other people. I’ve been blessed with that, with people in my life who I can laugh with until I cry, until we exhaust ourselves, hands against our aching bellies, sated with hilarity. I had fun laughing in the audience at the Camelot theater and vowed to make a point of that more often, that shared public laughter an unexpected sweetness. But more and more I seem to find it by myself, that sudden burst of it while I’m alone, going about my day, or the quieter impulse to giggle. I’ve always been able to amuse myself, have been lucky that way, too. It doesn’t seem to matter to me that often I’m the only one who thinks I’m funny. But except for the occasional guffaw over a well-delivered line in a movie or a funny moment in a book, I’ve tended to be quiet about it. Or maybe I used to laugh more when I was alone, and I can’t remember. But now I find myself doing it more and more, alone in my trailer or out in the courtyard, some stray thought that catches me, that quick, loud bark of laughter, the bray and the snort of it. It makes me grin to be writing about it. I curl my toes, impish and shy, and eager for more.

The Power of Plaque (23)

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I sweep under the kitchen table and wonder about the power of our beliefs. I remember my dental hygienist in Sebastopol telling me she had client who didn’t believe in plaque. (He didn’t have any.) Meri told me the other day on the phone that someone (was it Deepak Chopra?) claims there is no physiological reason why we need to age. I believe it may be true. But could I stretch my brain enough to let it be true? I can’t even get myself to not believe in plaque. I maneuver the broom between the legs of the kitchen chair. It’s weighted down with books rescued from the swamp cooler in August, so I don’t move it, but I sweep with care beneath it. I think about all the efforts I am making to heal. Most people don’t believe in them–I know. I hear it in the things they do not say. Something tries to stir in me, some habit of futility, and I shake my head as I swipe the broom across the floor. I believe in my choices. I believe I can heal, that my efforts already bear fruit. I remind myself I have shed that old, heavy cloak, dissolved that terrible message that said no matter what I do it will never be enough. I have gathered all the endless desert dirt and the feathers from the leaking down comforter and the teeny Palo Verde leaves we all bring inside with us into a neat pile near the kitchen sink. “I am already healing,” I say. My intentions, my actions, they both carry weight, have ooomph, make me well. I walk down the narrow hallway to get the dustpan. I am humming now, and I feel the vibration in my face, my throat. I am already healing.

Only this Morning? (22)

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Weird how some days are light—busy, maybe, but easy to move through. Nothing jars you. Nothing weights you. Nothing rattles, jangles, presses too hard against your skin. And some days weigh more. Things you can take in stride on any other day push at you, jiggering your insides, everything crimped, all sharp angles. Sometimes I think the universe is toying with me. How many things can she bear in one day before she explodes? Small things, I mean—nothing serious. The cat tracks poop across the down comforter, sprays it against the white wall. The qi gong class you rushed to get to is not the one you were hoping it would be. The wind comes in the late afternoon and chases you inside. You fight with the curtains. They have sprung free from the weights set to hold them, and they are billowing against you as you work, pushing into your space. Your annoyance has no rational tie to the smallness of this invasion. But some days it is the steady press of small things that pisses me off, makes my body feel too small to hold my anger, unjustified though it may be. Was it only this morning I saw the hawk leap from our fence to the sky? Only this morning I followed his flight with my eyes and found the waning moon nestled against the mountain ridge? Was it only this morning I stopped, then, looking at the pale curve of moon and remembered how lucky I am?

Just as I Am (21)

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Wednesday I wake up because I need to pee. It’s 5:20 in the morning. After, I lie in bed, my thoughts loud and incessant, all filled with anxiety. Will I be able to keep up with the students who need help logging in? Can I find a doctor I like through UHC? Can I make time now to even look for a doctor? Will I be able to figure out how to wipe the Nook of all Mami’s account information before I give it to Susana? One thing after another, always the next thing ready to step in, my worries all queued up like actors backstage. The clairaudient told me if I wanted to change I couldn’t let my fear and worry come between me and this chance. I trust the universe, I think, more than I trust myself. Most of my anxiety stems from being afraid I won’t be able to get everything done. I make myself nuts, use up my energy, add bricks to my shoulders. “I am enough just as I am,” I say, my lips moving against the cotton pillowcase. “I am enough just as I am.” Again, and again. I cry, then, eleven seconds of tears. It eases something inside me, and I fall asleep.