Joy in small places

It’s weird to get older.  I remember listening to Bonnie Raitt when I was a teenager.  I was a little embarrassed that I liked her so much, so I listened in the quiet of my room or riding alone in the Pinto.  But I liked her.  She had that song that went: “I see my folks they’re getting on and I watch their bodies change, I know they see the same in me and it makes us both feel strange.”  And I remember, even then in my 15 year old body, thinking that some day I would be old.  Someday I would be an adult and would see those things change in me and in those around me.  I am surprised to get to 33 with so much and so little in my life. I can’t say that I ever dreamed of much.  I never wanted to get married or wear a big white dress.  I never wanted kids or a family.  I never wanted much of anything except to be successful.  I think I never learned how to look up and to dream. And the gift of getting older for me has been that I get to live dreams that I never dreamt.  I get to find joy in small places.

Although my life might not be a sweet package of middle class perfection, I am alright with that.  And surprisingly, I am also alright with people that have that life.  Before I was judgmental.  Bitchy and judgmental about people that chose the path of marriage/home/family.  But now I look at my many friends with this life and I am truly happy for them.  I am glad that they get to live their life the way that they want.  And I am also glad and less defensive about the life that I am living.   My joys might not be so obvious.  I might have many nights alone or holidays without Norman Rockwell in attendance, but that’s okay.  My joys now, for this moment, come from the small places in my life.

They come from being able to go to see my favorite band and sing along screaming my heart out.  They come in shopping for Thanksgiving and dancing in the aisles with my partner in crime to the blasting disco music.  They come from talking and joking with the cook who made me my lunch today.  They come when I am on my knees in the morning praying.  They come when I sit and write and think about life.  They come when I talk about the weather with the local fisherman who’s been trolling the Pacific Rim for the last 45 years.  These are my small joys.  And they are mine.

As I approach this birthday, the first one in a long time that has gotten under my skin, I am glad.  I may not have the life that I imagined, but the truth is that I never imagined much for myself.  And that makes what I have sweeter and more precious than anything I could have ever pictured in my younger mind.

So for all of us out there sitting with just a tinge of existential angst, I guess we know that we are not alone. And even in the irony and opposition of these two ideas, I can’t deny it. No matter how much I may feel it, I know that I am never alone.

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

It’s that time of year for me.  I am heading into the holidays.  Heading towards my 33rd birthday.  Heading towards memories of the past and hopes for the future.  I love Thanksgiving. I love that my birthday falls on this weekend every year.  I love that it’s a holiday that is just about food and loved ones.  I love that everyone is thankful on this day across America for their own unique reasons.

Recently, I was asked to write a daily gratitude list for some people that have been hard for me in the past.  I have to write ten things every night before I go to bed about why I am grateful for the situation I found myself in.  So in that spirit, I would like to write a gratitude list for this Thanksgiving and for this new year of life that I have been given.  Read it and add to it if you wish:

I am grateful for:

1.  Being forgiven. Learning to forgive is a hard lesson and it feels wonderful to be able to let go of my past hurts and resentments and I have learned that well this year.  I doubt I’m done learning that.  But what I have learned this year is what it feels like to be forgiven.  It is a wonderful, sweet relief.  It is green, cool, river  water.  And I am so grateful for the few of you out there who have decided to forgive me for the harmful things I have done and said.

2.  The present moment.  “TRUTH NOW” used to be my mantra.  I figured if I stayed in the truth and stayed in the now, I wouldn’t get lost in my mind.  But that was complicated.  It’s much simpler to just stay in the present and let the past and the future take care of themselves.  As I was recently reminded: “Girl, it’s Tuesday.  It’s just Tuesday.  All you have to do is Tuesday.”

3.  Country Music.  Ohhh Rascall Flatts. Ohh Sugarland.  Ohh Carrie, LeAnne, JoDee, Miranda.  I am so thankful that I have figured out that I love music that tells stories and has a melody.  This has boiled down to Hip Hop and Country Music.  I used to try to like the music that I thought was cool and awesome.  I tried to like the music other people told me about because I knew so little about myself and what I liked.  I am proud to love country music.  Not the kind of country music that passes for cool in circles of artists and awesome people.  Not Johnnie Cash.  Not Dolly Parton.  But new, pop, ridiculous country music.

4. Riding the waves.  Ya’ll know about that one already.  I am so thankful to know that most days, I can get in the water and swim.

5.  Knowing that I am not alone.  This year has been an epic one.  Big, huge, awesome and awful.  When I look back to my last birthday, I have to laugh.  I was so lost and so hurt and that went on for a long time into my 32nd year.  But in all of that pain and sadness and darkness, I wasn’t alone.  Ever.  There were many people that came in and out throughout the year providing love and support.  There were surprises for those folks who couldn’t be there for me for a lot of reasons.  There were surprises in the people who stepped up and stepped in when I really needed help.   And there were a few who were there through all of it.  I don’t think I would be here today without them.  And there was always, always God.  And I am lucky to believe in God, in a higher power, in something greater than myself.  I know that in the darkest hours of the last year, God was with me.  You know the truth by the way it feels inside, in the deep parts of ourselves.  And it was God who saved me in January, it was God who gave me the strength to walk away when I needed to, it was God who brought me the people who held my hand and let me cry.  And I am so grateful for that.

So now, why not leave a comment and tell me what you are thankful for.  I would like to add a final note: I am grateful for those of you who read my words.  Thank you for letting me share.  You have no idea how much it means to me.

Thanksgiving Story #2

Holidays are hard.  They are messy in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons.  They are also beautiful and sweet.  In this story I would like to share about one thanksgiving that I remember as very messy and very beautiful.

It was the Thanksgiving of 2005, I was turning 29 and my parents had just gotten divorced.  My family was scattered all over the Eastern seaboard, but my twin and I were settled in NYC.  Because of some things that happened, our plans for Thanksgiving changed at the last minute and we decided that we would have the holiday and celebrate our birthday together in her sweet apartment in Queens.  Young peoples’ holidays in cities become a big party of misfits, and this was no exception.  Rachel and I invited anyone we knew who needed a place to go and we ended up with an array of strange and beautiful people.

In the way only old friends and sisters can do, we decided that the best thing to do would be to have a sleep over and make a festival out of the situation.  The night before, Rachel took the reigns of the turkey and began the Mexican family recipe of the 24 hour marinade.  She did and still does take turkey seriously, and it is always worth it.  We bought Parmesan Goldfish crackers, cranberry juice, Pillsbury crescent rolls, mashed potatoes and anything else that felt like home.  We spent the night chilling, slept and woke up in the morning to prepare the feast.  Rachel inherited the Irish genes for excellent mashed potatoes and apparently the Mexican genes for awesome turkey.  I inherited the German genes for setting the table, cleaning the apartment, and setting up the table in her bedroom.  The hour came before everyone was going to arrive.  Rachel and I raised a drink to our misfit Thanksgiving.  I believe it was then that she said, wisely: “It’s always darkest before it’s completely black”.  We laughed and laughed and cried about our losses and our blessings and all of the the sadness and joy that makes up a good life.

People came, we ate, laughed, and the night ended up with Rachel and I on the floor eating left-overs with a yoga teacher and her mom who was in town from Iowa.  The mom had bright red hair and a beret.  The kind of beret that can only be excused because she was not from NYC.  I don’t remember much of our conversation, but I know it was sweet and honest and full of sadness and forgiveness.

And even though this might sound like a sad Thanksgiving, I know that it wasn’t.  I am so grateful to know that kindness like this can exist in even hard times.  We humans are hard-wired for compassion and kindness.  All interwoven species are (look it up, Darwin only studied young species).  And I find that these moments of supreme vulnerability, these moments when everyone in the room knows there’s somewhere else they “should” be, that our humanity emerges.  And it has been these times, these sad, beautiful, imperfect days, that have taught me the meaning of kindness.  Now that is something to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving Story #1

About a week ago, I was asked to do my first “oral presentation” as a master’s student.  I was in front of a small group of peers and a very cool professor.  She’s the kind of person that I want to be, mostly because she has a totally awesome watch.  And let’s be honest, that’s about all I look at when judging a person: What are your accessories of choice?  I asked the group to give me both critical and positive feedback.  I did my presentation on an interesting patient I had met and looked up for feedback.

The cool professor said: “Well, you clearly really got to know this patient, and it’s clear that you are a great story teller.  But you didn’t really give an oral presentation.  It was unclear and not to the point.”  At least she said it with a smile.  So in honor of my positive feedback, I’m going to tell you some stories about my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving.

When I was 22 I graduated from Boston University, joined Teach for America, eloped with a man I’d known for 4 months, got disowned, ended up in Los Angeles, taught special education, and made it to Thanksgiving alone in my house with a white picket fence in a neighborhood with frequent shootings, LA ghetto birds, and drug deals.  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because my birthday is right around this time and I was determined to recreate some happiness even if I was doing it alone for the first time ever.  I shopped, woke up in the morning and put the turkey in the oven.  I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house and cooking.  Mashed potatoes, salad, stuffing, croissant rolls, and dessert.  About halfway through the day, I decided to go out for a run.  It was a sad time for me.  A lot of things had fallen apart, mostly the naive dreams I had for myself about my life after college.  I ran down to Venice Beach, which was only a few blocks away and the Pacific greeted me in its usual LA glory: calm, blue, cold, clear with the Santa Monica mountains peaking out up the North Coast.  I was listening to the new Lauryn Hill album, the now old “Miseducation” and crying.  There had been too many hard words and hard days then and I was sad.  It was the first holiday I spent away from my family, and more importantly away from my twin.  And I didn’t know how to reconcile how angry and sad I was at the same time.  I looked out at the ocean and walked along the beach and decided that I would just swim.  I grew up next to the ocean and there is something beautiful about unplanned swimming.  It is a total and complete surrender to the moment, a total “wo-beach” moment. So I took off my shoes, and jumped into the freezing Pacific with all my clothes on.  And I let the waves wash off the summer and the hate and the anger and floated.  I floated in the November sun and laughed that I could swim in a winter month like November.

I walked home calmer, put on some plaid pants and ate turkey.  The neighbors next door from D.F. invited us over for homemade tequila and I had my first of many adult, grown up holidays.  And that is what’s funny about growing up.  We think we will know what it will feel like.  I spent my early years reading “Victorian Times” magazine and thinking about how I would set my table in the future.  I was sure being an adult meant having matching napkins and a nice dining room table.  What I know now, 10 years later, is that being an adult is being able to accept what you do have.  Being an adult, now, means choosing not to live in a comfortable fantasy.  It means accepting and loving whatever is in front of you, whether it’s a perfectly set table or a homemade carafe of tequila.  Either one still sounds good to me.

Resilience

Things come and go in waves, I am a big believer of that.  When I was a young lady my friend Anne gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten.  We were walking down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, I’m sure I was wearing my birkenstocks.  And I was crying because my 3 year ridiculous relationship was over.  And she said: Beca, you gotta ride the waves. When they’re big, float on top of them.  When they’re small, swim around and try out the water.  Well, more than 10 years later I am still doing that.

I am writing a research paper now on my topic of choice and it’s not surprising that I chose resilience.  Resilience is the ability to bounce back after trauma and tragedy.  And although I can’t tell my professor that riding the waves is my operational definition  of resilience, it is.

Right now I am testing my resilience, or better said, life is.  Life is sending me some great big waves and I am trying to ride them.  I am trying to remember to rest between them and trying to feel the sun on my face when they pass.  I’m not sure how I’m doing and the truth is that not knowing scares me.  I’m scared of the darkness that I’ve come to know inside of myself in the last few years.  I’m scared of finding myself in that again and not finding a way out.  I spent a lot of years pretending that I understood sadness, and I didn’t.  But now I do.  And I wonder if life is about learning to be friends with the things we run away from.  And I’ve run away from sadness for a long time.  I’ve covered it up with red cowboy boots and singing and drinking and carousing and smiling, but mostly by being angry.  But now, it has come to visit and set up shop in my life and is demanding my attention.  And I have no choice anymore, I have to get to know this long-forgotten friend.

I remember when a friend in junior high lost her mom and I was talking to her about that and she said one of her friends had told her: “I really understand how you must feel to lose your mom.  I lost my dog and I was so sad”.  I remember being shocked at how insensitive this was.  But it taught me a good lesson.  When someone is in pain, stop talking about yourself.  Stop comparing.  Stop giving advice.  Stop it.  Stop trying to make it better because it just isn’t.  I remember when my favorite student in LA lost his father.  His dad died drunk on the street corner and no one really knew what happened.  This little guy was a sensitive, sweet, very quiet boy and he came to me afterschool and just looked at me.  We went to my classroom and he just cried and cried and I held his hand.  I didn’t have anything to say.  And I have learned over the last decade or so how to be with people when they are in pain, when they are sad, when they are being broken in half.  I’m not perfect at it, but I try to be present and try my best.  I’ve fallen a lot and there are people that I have failed, but I still try.  And my job now, as a nurse, is to do this.  Be with people when they are sick and frail and scared.

And what’s funny about these current big waves in my life is that I am being asked to lend the same patience and presence to myself and my experience.  I am being asked to hold my own hand and listen to my own words and let my own sadness have a home.  And that feels much harder.  I am hoping that, if the studies are right, the better I get at riding these waves the better life outcomes I will have.  And I’ll hold on to research to get me through the night.  It’s not much, but right now, it’s what I have and what I need.

Humility is not a dirty word

There are some lessons in life that are easy to get: don’t touch a hot stove, look before you cross the street, two rabbit ears tie your shoe.  And there are some lessons that are much trickier.  Humility is one of them.  I have been thinking about humility lately for a lot of reasons.  Mostly because it’s just come up a lot. I once heard someone tell this story about this guy he hated who kept saying “I’m just so humble, I’m really really humble”.  I think there’s probably some universal rule that saying you’re humble means, unequivocally, that you’re not.

So let’s make this clear: I am not humble.  There’s nothing humble about me.  I wear red cowboy boots, I talk too much, I was born with one of the loudest voices known to man,  I am a consummate know-it-all.  In short, I’m a big, messy human being.  That being said, I have learned this year some of the nuances of humility and I am humbled by my own humanity.

Humility is quickly becoming my new best friend, my best lesson, my best teacher.  And it is not something I once thought of highly.  I thought of humility like a prissy, scared 10th grade girl who wouldn’t eat in the lunch room.  It was weakness. And being from the Northeast, I hate weakness. Humility was admitting you were wrong, and I am almost never wrong.  Humility was, in short, way too messy for a neat and tough chica like myself.  Well not anymore.  Now it is like the older aunt I never had who loves me and sees me in all my ugliness and loves me more for that than what I do well.  It is the new voice in my head that says: be quiet and listen better.  It is the new way I walk around thinking: you are not the best or the worst, you are just you, a simple human being.

I have learned to love humility because I have been humbled.  I am humbled by how hard it is to take care of myself, how deep the hurt I have felt has cut me, how easily I can laugh now, how much I have been loved by the people in my life, how kindly I have been accepted and treated by those I have harmed, how openly this new profession has received me.  I am humbled at the gifts that come into my life without reason.  And I am humbled by the fact that at the end of the day, I am never alone because I have a power much, much greater than myself holding me softly in its hands.  I am humbled.  I am not humble.  I doubt I ever will be.  But I am grateful to know now that I can turn myself over to this simple act of surrender.

Ohhhh….oprah

I have an interesting relationship with the great mother Oprah.  I hate her.  I love her.  I reject her.  I revile her.  I worship her.  In other words,  a pretty typical mother-daughter relationship.  And aren’t all Americans Oprah’s little children? haha! If that disgusted you, you have some SERIOUS mommy issues.  Well tonight, Oprah told me what I should do with my life and it came in the form of a magazine quiz.

Magazine quizzes are so great I can barely even talk about them.  They are so full of promise.  Yes! This quiz will tell me what to do! And they are usually so dumb they put FB quizzes to shame, but this one was actually interesting.  So the basics are this: you take this quiz, rate the statements and then add them up.  There are seven different “styles” and then you find out what you were MEANT TO DO! I mean this is a hellaciously serious quiz.  This is not a quiz that tells you what “dating style” you have, this is a quiz that tells you your fucking destiny! Screw meditation, India, therapy, 12-step groups and an entire section of border’s books: all you need is this quiz and you will know your true destiny.

And yes, it was that good.  So go take it.  You know you are dying to.  It’s okay.  Here’s how you do it without letting anyone know.  Go to a store, hopefully not your local deli, somewhere in a different neighborhood.  Find the Oprah magazine and take the quiz on a separate piece of paper that you can casually drop in a garbage corner.  And then shazaam! You will know your destiny.

So what is my destiny? Well, wouldn’t you like to know! I was very surprised and a little disgusted to be honest.  And yes it was that bad.  I have spent my life in school learning, then I became a teacher and loved the bells that rang and told me what to do, now I am a nurse and just want to follow protocols.   And the truth is that now I don’t really want to work hard at all.  I really just want to lie around on my bed in my sunny bedroom and think about how going to the gym and the post office is enough for one day’s long work.  I justify this to hard working people by saying nonchalantly: well, I’ve been working since I was 14! I’m tired! Well I used to work SO hard, so many hours! This little fight of who works the hardest is really just the New England way of making justified excuses for being relatively unproductive and unhappy.  And now since I live in SF I don’t have to do that and I can embrace my inner sloth and lie around my room all day and feel really happy.  People ask me about my “future” and I stare at them blankly.  Not so blankly that they think I am a fascistly lazy hipster, but so that they think I might not speak English.

So what is my destiny? Oprah told me from my scores that this is the only thing I am “meant to do”.  And it makes me sick because I do not see myself this way at all.  I am meant to “strive to be creative”.  Creative? Creative? What The Hell Oprah? Couldn’t you have given me something a little better and in line with the life I already live? Jesus.  Now I have to drop out of Nursing school and go study art? Oh man.  Or maybe I can turn this into a search for the most creative way to be lazy.  Ya, I think that will work.  And maybe I’ll think about how to do that tomorrow.  Or maybe not. I think it’s going to be sunny and my room will miss me if I do too much.

The summer ends

I have always liked transitions and anniversaries.  And many of the biggest ones happen in September.  September has always been a time to say goodbye and hello to things.  But it has been decades since I had a summer like this one.  This was a summer of childhood.  Not because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go, but because there was no actual reason for doing much of anything.  Since I was young, I have worked somewhere in the summer.  Summer was a time to be productive, to make money and maybe to go to the beach. But,  I never liked going to the beach too much anyway since you had to wear a bathing suit.  So long ago I decided summer was a time for productivity and long shirts.  I have, luckily, gotten over both of these beliefs.

This summer began on the East Coast.  It was a trip that involved a lot of rain and endings.  It was good to close chapters and that happened in the best and most complete way possible.  I made amends to people I had hurt this year.  Probably not totally, but it was a beginning.  I saw old family and a new niece.  I said goodbye to the East Coast with great relief.  And my summer began.

To be honest, I didn’t do much this summer.  It was easy and simple.  I worked on an annoying project that pushed me to the edge of Acrobat pro insanity, but showed me that my old life and profession is done.  I hung out in the neighborhood a lot.  And I slept deep and dreamless, sweet sleep every night.  I read great books.  I woke up when I wanted.  I exercised and ran stairs a lot.  I made lots of plans with friends.  I didn’t stay up too late.  I studied for my nursing exam and passed it.  I moved.  I swam at nude beaches.  And I swayed in time.  Literally, swayed in the sweetness of free time.

I remember being young, very young, and looking at the summer as a never ending time that held endless openings and no plans.  And then, as I grew up, no plans became lots of plans and plans and plans.  This year taught me a lot of things, and one thing it taught me was to never respect plans or pretend to make them.  This summer I got a chance to never make big plans.  I got the chance to do and go and be anything at anytime I wanted.  And this wasn’t necessarily because I didn’t have plans or didn’t do anything, it was more a feeling of total and complete freedom and quiet.

How lucky was I? I recognize it.  And now as September ends and October rolls into the year, I know my freedom is starting to shift.  I am back in school, I will be looking for a job.  The schedules are starting to fill up.  But I am so grateful to know again what it feels like to be free from plans and drama.  I am so grateful to be okay and to be held in the hands of such a sweet universe.

Life is good

This weekend I had the good fortune of moving, again.  And I feel really, infinitely grateful to the good universe for what it has gifted me and how I am taken care of.  My friend moved out of her bedroom in a house of 3 other women and I moved in.  I have a scholarship that will pay my rent and a house that is two blocks from school.  It is right next to the Golden Gate park, 5 minutes from yoga, two blocks from the gym, library, and school.  I have spent the last year hiking my big hill and living quietly alone and now I will be thrown into communal living.  And I am excited.  For two reasons: 1) It feels very non-commital. 2) I am finally living in SF.

As a sagitarrius, I really do not like commitment.  I have spent a lot of time perfecting the art of “seeming” committed to things without really committing.  I love my freedom more than my new red cowboy boots and it’s definitely got me into some trouble.  But living in this new way feels amazing.  This house is in constant motion with four active people in and out all day.  There is a chore wheel.  There are rules.  And there are utensils and dishes that are not mine.  There is all this stuff in this house that is mine to use, but isn’t mine to keep. And for some reason this is really soothing.  As I packed up my house I looked at my two big suitcases and thought: how the hell did I get two suitcases of clothes.  Who needs all this? And then I remembered the 30 boxes of stuff in my grandma’s attic full of stuff that I don’t need either.  I remember traveling for a few months and the best part was living with only one backpack full of things.  And this house now is like my bigger backpack.  I have my room.  And that’s it.  But I have everything I need.  I don’t know how it gets better than that.

I also feel that I have finally landed in this crazy city.  I spent the last year losing my mind and breaking my heart in half just to see if I could fit it back together.  And that was, inevitably, a very isolating and lonely experience.  But now I am here and out.  I live next to “circus school” and am going  to sign up for the trampoline and conditioning classes with a screaming russian circus artist.  I am going to take Afro-Peruvian dance classes and guitar lessons.  In short, I am going to figure out what I like to do.  I am going to find some joy and try to cultivate it in the same way I have so expertly cultivated control and misery in the past.  I think it’s time for something different.

And to welcome me in my new home, I was surrounded by love.  Oakland crew rolled through, barrio crew rolled through.  And it was so good and sweet to sit around my new big kitchen table (which isn’t mine, but I can use it!) and laugh and talk.  It was a good welcome.  A sweet beautiful welcome.

So..life is good.  And for tonight I am thankful and happy.

A foggy night

Tonight, after the first sun in more than a week, the dense summer fog of the bay blew over my house.  And also my heart.  I’ve taken to recognizing this shift inside of me as something transient.  It is one day, but it is quite a day.  It has taken the shape of destruction and deep sadness in the past.  It has caused great rips inside of my heart.  And it is only recently that those cuts are starting to close.  And tonight I am hoping that this feeling, this pull on the scars I carry inside, is nothing more than a part of healing.  Sometimes I worry that I have had my heart broken too much.  That things have hurt too much.  And sometimes I think there might not be an end and that I should close what I have left of feelings off of the world.  And then I realize how small-minded and childish that response is.  There are disappointments and joys everyday, enough to do all of us in in a minute.  And I wonder if growing up means becoming present.  I have learned and learn everyday that looking to the future or some plan for support and comfort is nothing more than an invitation to pain and disappointment.  The only real joy I have ever found is living in the very present moment.  And I never understood before that this is the only option, the only way for me to live without shutting down.

I was thinking last night about how there is great luxury in believing in love.  It is a luxury that we don’t understand until it’s gone.  It is like hurting your left foot.  You are limping and in pain and then inevitably you think: oh my god, I never knew how much I used my left foot, how important it is.  And belief in love is like that.  It is a comforting, soft, lovely luxury.  And I never knew how lucky I was to have it until it was gone.  And although I’m not sure what to do with that, I hope that as things move forward in my life and shift, I will find a new way to appreciate love and trust in my life.  And maybe it will just be with myself and a few excellent companeros y hermanas.  I would be lucky to have even that.

So I read this book “Shantaram” over and over again and come back to this quote.  I leave it to you on this foggy night:

“For this is what we do.  Put one foot forward and then the other.  Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more.  Think.  Act. Feel.  Add out little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world.  Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night.  Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day.  With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own.  With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved.  For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on.  God help us.  God forgive us.  We live on.”