Moving

A friend sent me an essay written by the rector of her Episcopal church, an Advent Reflection. In it, the auther of the piece talked about a fall she recently took while running, and finding grace in having fallen. My friend sent it to me because I took a hard fall while running in early November, a little over a month ago. I hit the concrete pavement very hard, such that I gave myself a black eye and broke my radius at the wrist so badly I needed surgery to have it fixed with a titanium plate. 

Since being forced to work from home these past nine months due to the pandemic, I have put in hundreds, if not thousands, of miles walking and running all over Capitol Hill and its environs, discovering interesting little streets and byways I have never explored in the 29 years I've lived in this neighborhood, and, most joyfully of all, discovering the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail, both the east and west banks. It has called to me every morning since, and even when I've gotten a good five- or six-mile run in that day, it continues to call to me as I sit at my desk and work. 

 Then came my fall. 

 I took a two-hour walk this morning, and walked close to six miles.  I walked on the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail, the place where I have derived so much joy from running these past many months (not the concrete-paved stretch along the Navy Yard, where I fell).  As runners jogged past me, I wanted to call out to each and every one of them, "That was me too, just over a month ago-- I'm a runner too!"  But I didn't.  I had my trusty hiking staff with me, which I'm taking with me as a security blanket when I walk alone for the time being, until my wrist, my spirit, and my courage heal, but there were many stretches where I held it in the middle of the stick, swinging it freely, parallel to the ground, and not using it.   

My legs are a little stiff now from having walked so far after walking at most only a block or two at a time since I fell-- but the point is to keep moving, however I can.  Since aging is inevitable, and with it a certain amount of physical loss, however genetically gifted or mentally determined one may be, I guess there is grace in being made mindful of what I have and in getting the invitation to contemplate how I'll adapt to loss as I age. 

I took a quick trip to Whole Foods this morning (I have driven myself a couple of times this week, too!), and as I was getting into my car in the Whole Foods parking lot, a woman I know from St. Mark's, just a couple of years older than me and a former but long-time alto member of the choir, popped into my head.  She died of non-smoker's lung cancer just a couple of months ago.  The list of fellow altos, with whom I have spent so many delightful and inspiring hours, and who are no longer with us, ran through my mind:  Kitty D., Vicki S., Lee Ann S., Mal C., Suella H.... all but one were fairly close to my age.  I am here and they no longer are.  I thought, I can still sing on their behalf, but one day I'll join them.  Meanwhile, I am here, despite my screwed-together wrist, doing my best to keep moving.  

Connections, continued

I recently reconnected with an old friend with whom I had been out of touch for several years. After we had gotten in touch, she told me she googled me to see if I was still working at the same place, and found this blog. Her mention and praise of it sent me back to read my old posts, and I resolved to begin writing again on the one-year anniversary of my last post.

We reconnected on Facebook, of course—it’s the medium through which I’m now in touch with all kinds of people I once thought were lost forever to me. Before Facebook, many, many old friends, old lovers, old dorm buddies, people I knew intimately for 12 years or casually for 12 days, were simply out in the world somewhere, the silent, compliant blank screens on which I could safely and self-reinforcingly project all my fantasies about what might have become of them. They were frozen in time, the way I remembered them, the same age, with the same hairstyles, and biographies that stopped at the point we lost touch. Getting back in touch in a lot of instances has been a delight and a gift in ways that cannot be measured.

But am I the only one who has found this a little unsettling? There was a kind of wistful poetic distance in contemplating the Mr. Xs’ and Ms. Ys’ roles in my life, and wondering what had become of them, and whether they ever thought of me, and if so, how they remembered me. My relationship with this person or that person lived on only inside my own head, where I could justify the choices I made in the relationship quite neatly, with no reality to intrude rudely upon my contemplation.

But now…. You mean, that woman became a successful artist, who writes book, travels the world giving workshops, and has an avid following in her field? Gee, we both did that kind of artwork together when we knew each other, why didn’t I do that? You mean, that guy did eventually get married and is now happily ensconced in domesticity, surrounded by friends and family in a nice stable situation of a couple of decades’ duration? He was the last person I thought would turn out that way, so why did that not happen for me, with or without that particular guy? And come to think of it, on the other hand, she kind of does have a whiny quality that I had completely forgotten about, or somehow hadn’t really crystallized in my consciousness when we knew each other…. I see it now, and I see how it informed what became of our friendship. And that guy, now that I think back, did have that one little funniness about the way he carried himself that, if I had been more conscious at the time, would have predicted what he’s manifesting now. And how is this guy over here handling his inherent craziness in his current life? And wow, look at all those grandchildren. While I’ve been casting about trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, all these people have gone ahead and grown up.

They’ve always been out there in the world, whether I knew where they were or not, and we have always been connected, or else they would not have friended me, or responded positively when I friended them, even if we have not had much to say directly to each other individually since the day we friended. They played their role in creating who I am now, and I no doubt played a similar role in their life, even if only to give them an anecdote or two to tell at a party, or to share confessionally with their most intimate partner. Social network or psycho-spiritual network, we are connected. Always have been, always will be.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

When I was in college, I took several courses in linguistics-- not because I needed it to support my (nonexistent) career plans, or as a requirement for my course of study, but because I found the subject interesting. For one course, I had a professor who was one of the editors of Webster's New World Dictionary. He was tall and thin, with angular features, a bushy head of salt-and-pepper hair and a very erudite manner of speaking. Let's call him Dr. G.

One day in class, at the front of the room where Dr. G could not ignore it, someone knocked over a cup of coffee, which proceeded to spill onto the floor right in front of him. Dr. G looked up and asked, in all seriousness, "Does anyone have any Kleenices?"

Now, to find that funny, you have to know that the plural of index is indices, and codex, codices, which obviously Dr. G knew (and I did too). I might add as a personal corollary that I have never heard the words indices, codices, or any similar word uttered aloud, even once, in my entire life.

Over 30 years later, it still never fails to make me laugh out loud (a smile and faint chuckle, that is) whenever I think of it. I don't remember what the class was about, but I will remember that question forever. Thought of it again today, when I ran out of Kleenices at my desk at work and had to go buy some. Thank you, Dr. G.

Reiki Dreams

It was a very eventful 2010, with a lot of challenges. One very positive thing that happened in my life is that I became a Certified Reiki Master Practitioner/Teacher. My Master's training took place late in the year, during a cold, hard-winded four-day retreat at Rising Phoenix, the Loyola College Retreat Center in Flintstone, Maryland, during which three celestial events happened concurrently for the first time in 372 years: the winter solstice, a full moon, and a lunar eclipse. This gave a powerful energy and sense of moment to the retreat, which I shared with two fellow students, fun and fascinating men named Carl and Rudy, and my teacher David.

On the first day of our Reiki Master's journey, David asked us to write a haiku about what we were feeling about our experience, to be shared the following morning. This opened a floodgate of haiku, and throughout the rest of the retreat they came, some humorous and some serious. Since it has been so long-- probably twenty years-- since poetry has come to me unbidden, I thought I would share my Reiki haikus with you here.

Silver moon and stars--
the female principle reigns.
Loving, caring, strong.

The Reiki Master
sings and chants her four smybols.
Energy flows free.

David, Rudy, Carl:
my winter solstice brothers.
Reiki unites us.

The food was fantastic at the retreat center, and one night at dinner, I composed this one:
The Reiki Master
licks his plate clean at each meal.
Loyola-- good food!

The retreat center has a huge fireplace in their central gathering/dining room, and throughout that cold, blustery long weekend, they kept it fed and glowing for us:
A log on the fire.
The fire in my heart grows strong.
Both are burning bright.

We titled this one "Pick-up Line at the Reiki Bar and Grill":
Hon-sha-ze-sho-nen
is my favorite Reiki symbol.
So, what's yours, baby?

How Lovely

Many, many times over the past few weeks, in many instances in my life—even at work—I have experienced a strong feeling that the only appropriate thing to say or do is to open my mouth and have Brahms’ How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place issue forth. Not just the alto line, but all the voice parts together, as if I were some super Tuvan throat singer and could sing all four vocal parts at once—with the orchestral score issuing from my throat as well. It has been almost a physical sensation, as if I am a channel, or a pipe which, if placed in the wind just so, would come alive with sound. Or maybe it’s as if I am a television that, if my antennae were placed just so to catch the wave, would spring into sound, color and narrative.

Saying the appropriate thing these situations has been a real challenge. If I am possessed in those moments, it is a wonderful possession. It feels as if it must feel to be standing on the edge of a cliff with arms outstretched and the wind blowing in the right direction, and wanting ever so badly to take off and fly—but maintaining just enough rationality to know that it wouldn’t happen, so best not to jump off, best not to open my mouth wide and wait for that fully formed music to come flowing out.

Do you think I’ve packed enough metaphors and similes into these scant paragraphs? Here’s one more: Though it’s not issuing forth from my mouth, the music lives inside of me, and I ride it like an eagle riding a thermal.

Enthroned in Majesty

The week of my father’s funeral, my cousin Sandy had cooked us a Thanksgiving dinner and brought it to my mother’s house, where we were all staying. Thanksgiving was about two weeks away, and Sandy, in an act of caring and generosity that is typical of her, thought since we probably weren’t going to be together on the actual feast day, we should be able to share a meal of thanks while we were all together.

We prepared the table as for a normal Thanksgiving meal, and sat arrayed around the table. Although I grew up Catholic, ours was not a terribly observant family, and we never normally said grace before a meal—except on Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. As we sat there about to begin the meal, the question arose, who was going to say grace? My brother Mark suggested I say it, as I was the only child who regularly attended church. I said, “No, I think Ma should say it.” And so it was.

My parents had been divorced some 39 years before, and it was an ugly divorce, in which the fighting and strife had dragged on for years. While my father had gone on to create a second family with a second wife, my mother, although pretty, sociable, and popular, had never remarried, despite several opportunities to do so. There were many reasons for that (most stingingly, “no one wants to marry someone with four kids”), but at heart it was because she was a one-man woman, and married the man she had wanted to be married to for life in 1948. Over the years they would see each other from time to time, mostly when it had to do with one of us, but as they aged they saw each other less and less. At the time of my father’s death, my mother had not seen him for many years, and knew of his growing infirmity only through the reporting of her kids.

She began the prayer stiffly—although she had been Catholic by choice from the age of 21, she had not been raised in any religion, and was not a natural at acts of worship—and duly thanked God for the presence of her kids at the table. Then she paused, and unrelated to any sentence that I had heard her begin, said, “Walter’s death,” and began crying. My mother was not an easy crier. Her crying always sounded strangulated somehow, and to break down and cry at the head of the table at which she was formally speaking to God, surrounded by her silent children and their significant others, was not something she felt comfortable doing. My brother Mark quickly began speaking over her tears, partially to comfort her but also I think to get past the awkward, sad and painful moment. He was sitting next to me, and I kicked him. I thought she should experience the grief that I knew she must have been feeling, but had not yet expressed or maybe even felt, caught up as we all had been in the drama of either standing by and witnessing as the funeral preparations had been made, or participating in them from off stage left (that week my mother had even forwarded a suggestion through an intermediary—me—to her formal rival to help enable her to get a payment of some sort from the VA). Quietly, she cried. Quietly, we let her. Eventually someone stood up and walked to where she sat to comfort her, the moment passed, my mother mastered her grief, and we went on with dinner.

I’ve heard those words in my head, “Walter’s death,” often in the years since then. My mother never called my father Walter. She mostly called him Walt (or in the early years, Wally or even, when they were feeling especially playful, Waldo). To us, she always called him Your Father (she even called him Your Father once or twice when talking to one of our spouses, so used as she was to calling him that). But at that table, she wasn’t talking to her kids—she was talking to God. And to her that meant that she had to be formal and well-behaved, like putting on your best clothes to go to church. To her that meant that she had to be at her best, as if she were visiting a rich uncle whom she saw seldom, but knew she was obligated to impress. She might even have been slightly embarrassed at breaking down and crying in front of God.

She had told me toward the end of her life that she wasn’t very big on the external formalities of churchgoing, but, she said with conviction, “I believe.” I’ve thought a lot about that “Walter,” and it tells me that to my mother, God was transcendent, and not immanent. God was not there with her, familiar with the intimate details of her life, but was away from her, up there somewhere, enthroned in majesty.

A Stirring Memory

My mother took cream and sugar in her coffee, and she had a way of stirring her coffee that was unique to her. As she would rotate the spoon circularly through the cup, she would clink the spoon against the side of the cup three times, in a triangular fashion, for each rotation of the spoon around the inside of the cup. It was as if she didn't feel the coffee was being truly and properly stirred unless that spoon clinked against the inside of the cup in just the right way. I can hear the music of her coffee-stirring right now, as I write this.

It's funny how a person lives on in such inconsequential memories, ones that can be prompted by the simple act of making myself a cup of tea in the middle of my work day.