On Shifting and Sloughing and Rowing

What’s that thing? I said.

O, that’s an oar, he said,

in case we hit a calm stretch & we decide

we need more excitement

-Brian Andres, from his collection Mostly True

A gecko’s been hanging out in my kitchen lately. He seems partial to the area nearest the coffeemaker. I don’t blame him. He appears to be molting, in the process of sloughing off his old skin for new. Most of his body seems to have already shed. His tail is still in process.

I’ve been surrounded by a lot of endings of late. 2011 - the year - for one. Dear friends’ relationships have recently closed chapters, or epilogues, or sequels. H, in her most recent Heffalump musings, commemorated the 20-year anniversary last Monday of our father’s death by wanting, once and for all, to bid farewell to the longings for what ­could have been; she’s building a beautiful cupboard in her mind for all the colorful, good memories and all that longing, too. I asked her if I could build one in my mind, as well. She said of course. So I will.

The winds here on Maui, though they have not ended, have changed. Kona winds are blowing from the south meaning that everything around me is blowing in a different direction. Palm fronds wave this way, not that. Bushes and shrubs stretch this way, not that. The grasses, too, sway in reverse. It’s discombobulating, yet inspiriting to have my surroundings shift.

Some evenings at twilight, Petey and I walk the nearby beach. Usually the planes take-off above my head appearing suddenly from behind the trees with a roar before heading steeply up into the clouds. But these days, they land toward this side of the island instead. I can see them coming, at first just a pinprick of light; then a beam growing wider as the silhouette looms close until, loudly, they swoop down over this wild, narrow strip of sand. Even sound has changed with the wind, amplifying the jets, the traffic, the rain.

But before the winds shifted and sound was magnified, all was quiet. My mind, my heart, my home.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s, I flew to California to see a man, the same man of this summer’s and fall's playing and being and loving. I thought we might be beginning a new chapter. And I suppose we did, just not together.

As I flew back across hours of the Pacific, as I walked back into my home in Maui and stood in the kitchen waiting for…something…there was only silence.

In the silence, I charged forth. I chopped bright orange carrots into rounds and grated frozen ginger for a soup. I swam, carried my yoga mat back into class, went paddling and visited with the turtles. All around me, the Kindergartners dyed macaroni and strung patterned necklaces. They oohed and ahhed in delight as our caterpillars grew and ate and pooped (OOOH! AAAHH!) on the milkweed plants. My friend’s baby turned one and there was cake and mingling and chatting at the party. Even as the pundits hashed and thrashed about on the news, there was somehow quiet all around me. Quiet and space.

Two weeks into my charging forth, my wheels fell off – as a dear friend calls it - and I collapsed into bed for days with fever, flu, cold. I gave in until I felt better.

Me and the geicko. Side by side. Watching the wind. Sitting in the quiet. Adjusting. Molting.

Oar in hand, just in case.

You may not be able to control the winds of change, but you certainly can adjust the sails.

-Lani & Pomei Weigert, TedXMaui 2012 presenters

Spring Cleaning

I was on the phone with my sister a few days ago. The topic of our blog came up, and S joked wryly that we didn’t have to think too hard about the subject of our next entries. Today is the 20th anniversary of our father’s death, you see. But I rankled at her suggestion that of course we would be marking two decades of his absence. In fact, I thought, hadn’t we said plenty already about our loss? How much more was there to write about his early and sudden disappearance from our lives? We have already acknowledged how quickly our worldview changed, and how at the same time we also, unfairly, lost our mother to her grief. Our blog posts have been studded regularly with childhood memories, nostalgia for what was and ruminations of what might have been.
“I don’t want to write about it,” I said to her, warming up to my indignation, “I’m tired of it. I’m tired of wondering how different my life would have been if he hadn’t died. I’m tired of being sad at every milestone that he, once again, isn’t around for. I’m tired of spending my energy wondering about all the things we don’t and never will know about him. I don’t want to spend any more time stuck in the past.”
Quietly, my sister replied, “Maybe that’s what you should write about.”
Avoidance comes naturally to me. Maybe I’ll just play websudoku instead of writing, I think to myself. As I type this, I am cringing with discomfort. Which is how I know I have something I should probably try to express.
I want to move on.
I will never be able to say goodbye to my father. I don’t expect to move forward without taking note of what he might have thought. But I want to find a comfortable nook in my brain where I can place the feelings of sadness and loss that will never go away. I am ready to give them a space where they don’t have to rattle around and catch me off-guard.
Let me build a little cupboard in my head. No, I need to be more specific. I am picturing an antique Swedish cabinet with glass doors. It will be so pretty I will want to look at it regularly, but it will keep everything contained so things aren’t loose to roam, unwelcome. When a thought or memory pops into my head, I can put it on a shelf and shut the door. There, I’ll say, this is your home now. The funny bits and humorous pieces will live side by side with the shards of wishes and preserved regrets. It will make an amazing and beautiful assortment, worthy of the man my father was.
Maybe then, with his corner in my head newly tidied, I’ll feel freed up to look around me with a fresh, unburdened perspective and ask,”Now what?”

On not really remembering

I grew up observing Santa Lucia. What this means is that every year on December 13, my sister and I would get up before the sun had risen, don white robes belted with tinsel, carry candles and sing the Swedish Santa Lucia song to my sleepy but game father who would ooh and aah at all the right spots - one of those spots being when my mother would place on his lap the tray of Swedish saffron rolls we had baked the day before, the ones with a raisin placed very deliberately in each pocket of our carefully crafted infinity sign.

This year, I went to a Lucia concert at a Lutheran church on the Upper West Side. The choral singers poured into the church, candles and tinsel galore, and started singing the Lucia song, only it wasn’t. Not quite. It was the same melody but I didn’t recognize the lyrics. What was happening? Was there a different version of the song? I play the same Swedish Christmas CDs every year. Maybe the version I know went out of style?

Two weeks later I watched “Miracle on 34th Street” while addressing my holiday cards. I hadn’t seen it in years, but with a half an eye on the screen, I waited for the part where the lawyer figures out how to win the case proving that Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle is, in fact, Santa Clause. You know the part: someone gives him a dollar bill and he sees the “In God We Trust” and realizes that’s his argument: we can’t prove there’s a God, yet we believe it so inherently that we print His existence on our country’s currency - wait, what?

Exactly.

That scene never happened. What actually happens is that the post office delivers all the letters addressed to Santa Clause to the courthouse. But... what was I thinking of? Did I make that dollar bill bit up? Had I spliced it from another movie onto the end of this one? (In my worst case scenario, I am now informed that the God scene I just described is from a Jim Carrey movie).

I am constantly reminded that my memory of an instant is just that: my memory. It’s one of the many reasons I’d be a terrible eye witness (I can picture it now. Me: “I know for a fact he had a beard and wore a green sweater vest!” Reality: She’s a blonde in a navy peacoat.)

Of course it’s natural that my version of events morphs with time, but the worrying part is that not so much time needs to pass before I alter reality. Never mind what I forget (which is a lot). I’m talking about the stuff I think I remember.

Not so long ago, my friend whom I’ve known since 8th grade brought over a rediscovered yearbook from our junior year of high school. I’m not in it. I’m on the list of people not pictured. I have no recollection of being a no-show. More to the point, this seems so unlike me. I am nothing if not vain enough to show up for picture day! And why was some other chick in the Class Secretary photo? That was my job! … oh, except it wasn’t. That wasn’t my job until the following year.

Facebook does wonders for shaking my confidence in my own memories. Reconnecting with former classmates can be jarring. “You were always (fill in the blank).” I was? “I’ll never forget when you (insert event here).” I have no recollection of that. “Remember how we always (active verb here)?” No. No, I do not remember that.

And yet, out of the blue, I can conjure up the name of someone’s ex-husband from a story told ten years ago. Oh sure, that guy!

There seems to be no method to what my brain decides to hang on to.

There are moments in my life when I know I thought to myself: “Remember this.” And yet my highlight reel is filled with those everyday non-events that didn’t seem worthy at the time of getting filed away, but for some reason, they’re the ones that passed the memory test. Those are the bits and pieces I return to when I play back my life on those sentimental evenings when I wish to wax nostalgic.

On evenings like tonight, for instance, when I want to think of New Year’s Eves past, and pay tribute to the years I’ve lived, celebrated, mourned and resolved to improve. If I allow myself no more than twenty seconds to contemplate them, I can come up with three memorable December 31sts. Maybe four. And of those, I am quite confident that were I to share my version of that night with those who had been present at the time, there would be a collective “what night are YOU thinking of?”

But these are my memories. That’s the way I remember the song. It might be the wrong version, but it’s mine.

Tonight I am celebrating my fourth New Year’s Eve with my O. I have been repeatedly told that it is an extra special night because it is my first New Year’s Eve as a married woman. That may be true, but I won’t know until I try to remember 2011 in a few years’ time and see if this is the one that sticks. I already have a memory bookmarked with him from an especially fun New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago, so there may not be room in my mental archives for this one. I’ll let you know in a few years. If I remember to keep you posted.

My forward-fold-breathe-in-the-space Christmas.

This is for you. You can hang it on your fridge. I used ALL the golden colors.

- B., 5 years old, as she handed me a picture of colorful scribbles

This is the first Christmas I remember in a long time that I’m spending on my own. In fact, I think it may be the first. H is in New York with O. My other siblings are gathered in Atlanta to be near their mother and each other. And others that are near and dear are, well...not so geographically near.

Later today, I won’t be alone. A couple friends will be gathering for eggs and coffee and pancakes in my kitchen. There will be Christmas Eve under the stars in a little church beside the sea. Christmas Dinner with paper crowns and brightly colored crackers. But each morning this holiday season, I have woken up alone. And so, too, this Christmas Eve morning. There is stillness in this, stillness and a beauty in This Moment where all is quiet, the tree is lit, and I sit in bed writing with a cup of hot tea nearby and Petey curled up beside me.

A dear friend told me recently that I write often and most about memory. And it is true. It comes from a place, I think, of wanting to remember what and who is no longer here; remembering brings them back for just bit. So, no surprise, I’m all about tradition - almost obsessively so. I literally cannot go to New York this time of year and not go see the tree at Rock Center. It pulls me to it like a magnet. And I've paid crazy money to have a bottle of Glogg shipped to Hawaii simply to have the smell fill my kitchen for an evening. But this Christmas has been different. I haven’t had a cup of glogg. Or Swedish meatballs. Or bitten into a saffron bun.

But I have walked on the beach plenty, even in the rain. Especially in the rain. And there have been rainbows. Rainbows everywhere.

This morning I am thinking of and missing the whirlwind that is being with my family in Atlanta for the holidays where someone is always making a new pot of coffee or pies or darting off to the grocery store. There's always a game going on or an animal caught in the Christmas tree. And I dare you to make it from wherever you’ve found a place to sleep to the bathroom without being shot by a foam dart.

But in the end, I think today is just the way it should be.

In yoga, after we’ve done a lot twists, the teacher always brings us back to neutral. We stand still in downward dog or in a forward fold taking in the effects of the work we just did and allowing ourselves time to breathe before moving onto what will come next.

This is that Christmas. My forward-fold-breathe-in-the-space Christmas.

This is the time to wake up on my own, to stand at the kitchen counter in silence drinking coffee and eating buttered gingerbread cookies on a rainy, tropical morning while looking at the picture made for me by B. She used ALL the gold colors, you know. And I feel them all filling me up.

This is that time between what came before and what comes next.

Zen and the Art of Personal Maintenance

For my 37th birthday, I pierced my nose.

I was on a fall vacation in Maui lying on warm rocks by a swimming hole listening to the friend beside me chat away, but all I could focus on was the small, sparkling stud that adorned her nose. I’d had a fascination with nose piercings for a while. There was something alluring to me about the women I knew whose delicate noses were bejeweled; each one seemed artistic, free-spirited, and exotic...a far cry from what I’d known as a little girl growing up in dark, cold Northern Europe.

My first real sense of Who Am I? in terms of fashion came in my late twenties when I became a teacher in a progressive school. I threw myself into that liberal world wholeheartedly; my students called me by my first name, instead of giving letter grades, we wrote long narrative reports on each child, and I wore overalls to work. I had at least four different overalls from corduroy to denim and wore them with my Converse or heavy work boots. And yes, I did think I was all that. Not that overalls are all that extreme, but there was a definite search for identity involved. After all, I was the one who couldn't wait to grow up and dress like my mother in her Swedish, middle class uniform of slacks, skirts, blouses, pumps, and an Hermes silk scarf knotted around her neck. This was not that.

A decade later, I lay on a rock in Hawaii; I was about to turn thirty-seven and was again contemplating what was next for me. Before the day was over, my friend stood beside me in a tattoo parlor. Pain shot through my nostril. I started laughing hysterically in a panic as the blood rushed from my head. This was not what I had envisioned. First of all, my nostril was red and sore and stinging, and imbedded in it was a large, metal stud - - a starter piercing, if you will, that would need to stay in for at least a few weeks. Second, it hurt! And finally, I was told that I’d need to soak the piercing in warm, salt water every couple of hours for the next twenty-four. Flash forward to my ten-hour flight back to NYC the next day with my nose dipped into a paper cup for most of the flight. Really.

My process from this to the sweet, bedecked nose I had envisioned would apparently take time. And patience.

Enter Zen.

Now, I am a very, very patient teacher. In fact, I am at my most patient with my students, no matter their age. One of my assistant teachers, upon meeting H. for the first time, exclaimed, “I love your sister! She’s so Zen!” H. smiled politely, but no sooner had he left us than she turned to me and said, almost gritting her teeth, “Zen? When are you Zen? I’d like to see a little of that Zen!”

In all fairness, H. was at that time my roommate and that experience did apparently not spell Z-e-n to her. Most of my impatience is directed at myself. Give me a child who needs to redo a math problem five times. Piece of cake. Give a classroom full of five year-olds with glue sticks and scissors in hand? I can usually breathe through it. But give me a tough stain on my stovetop that isn’t gone Right Away? No can do. I imagined H. with a montage of my best unzenlike moments flashing through her head: Why won’t this printer just print ALREADY? Where are my keys? Where’s my f*#king wallet? I’M LATE! Why can’t I cook an artichoke without burning it – just ONCE?!?!

Back in New York, my piercing was received with varying degrees of enthusiasm and a few eye rolls. Unsatisfied with the metal stud, I - too soon - had it replaced with a small, sparkling bit. Within days, the stone fell out, so I walked around for a week or two with an empty, metal socket in my nose. I tried again. Alas, this stone fell out as well. It was promptly replaced by an obstinate pimple larger than the stud itself. I steamed it for what felt like weeks and weeks to no avail. I gave up.

Within three months of the initial piercing, I was standing in my bathroom naked drinking scotch. I was trying to twist out the metal nose screw (this is the technical term, by the way) but it was the Mary Poppins bag of nose screws. No matter how much I twirled, there was more to come. My nostril throbbed. I twirled. I sweated. I swore.

H. came home hours later to find me in a heap on the couch, nose screw on the coffee table.

Five years have passed. I believe I'm a more patient person now thanks to yoga, meditation, more yoga and, quite frankly, the simple mellowing out that happens over time. And the perk to aging, at least for me, is becoming ever more comfortable with myself.

I turn 42 tomorrow. In celebration, I painted my toes a muted purple. And just to appease my wild side, I painted my fingernails, too. That oughta do it.

A girl can dream

My issues with bicycles go way back. What’s the average age when children get their training wheels? Let’s start there. Our house had a large terrace in back with steps on either side leading down to the yard. The length of the terrace was lined with a cactus garden. Do you know where we’re going with this?
The day came when my father surprised me by removing my training wheels. He had such confidence in my ability to transition to a big girls’ bike that I did not want to disappoint him. I embarked onto the terrace and within seconds veered off the edge, straight into the cactus garden.
It gets worse. My parents had friends visiting. Witnesses not related to me watched as my mother laid me over her lap, pulled down my pants, and proceeded to pull out cactus needles one by one.
Oh, the shame.
It was downhill from there.
There was the time I discovered the difference between girl bikes and boy bikes by dismounting the wrong way. Even now, my girl parts wince at the memory.
There was the time I rode straight into a tree because I did not know until after the fact that sometimes there are no brakes on the handles and that the only way to stop is by pedaling backwards.
And let’s not neglect to mention the time I bicycled too close to the curb and when the wheel rubbed up against the sidewalk, I began to fall in slow motion, went over a fence and landed in some poor person’s tomato plant patch.
My ten year-old self had envied the skill of Jennifer Beals in the opening sequence of Flashdance as she cycled through steam and cobblestone streets with urban panache. I finally accepted I would never be Jennifer Beals.
And then I learned of in-line skates.
I watched an Olympic-related special on TV about an ice skater who trained during the summer months by skating up Colorado mountainsides. I can picture her now, Olympically-fit, cute as a button (as is the tendency of ice skaters), skating UP A MOUNTAIN on in-line skates.
Perhaps I couldn’t control bicycle wheels, and sure, awkward and unwieldy handlebars stymied my efforts. But wheels attached to my feet? This, I could manage!
I received a pair of Rollerblades for my birthday. It was as if the box alone would transform me into someone who could zip uphill without exertion. By now I was in college. I envisioned myself becoming one of those hip kids, weaving fearlessly in and out of traffic, zooming from school to job, the wind in my long, flowing hair. Of course in this fantasy, my tummy would be taut, as well.
That’s not quite how it turned out. You’re shocked, I know.
I wasn’t terrible. I could get from A to B. I wobbled but a little. I got the hang of it. I went rollerblading with a friend one night after we had been drinking. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The upside was that it made me less frightened of speeding downhill in the dark. The downside was that my inebriated confidence made me less cautious about the bump at the bottom of the hill. The upside was that it didn’t hurt so much.
The demise of my rollerblading dreams came when I was felled by a one-two combination of a loose ankle buckle and a bad-ass pothole. I still have the scars where the pebbles embedded themselves into my knee. I was miles from home. The pain of the fall, my inability to get home easily and my newborn fear that I would fall again sealed the deal for me. I was just not good at this whole wheel business.
I decided that I was an excellent pedestrian and I should stick with what I do well.
And anyway, I like walking.
Naturally, I married a man who treats his bicycle like an appendage. Completely uninterested in recreational biking, O. sees bicycles as the ultimate exercise in practicality. He regularly tries to convince me of this. Walking to a movie, “we’d be there by now!” Waiting for a bus, “we’d be there by now!” Explaining why he was late meeting me, “well, I couldn’t take my bike, so of course I’m late.”
On vacation in Berlin, we rented bikes for a day. It had been years since I was on one. I was trepidatious, to say the least. I pedaled behind O. cautiously, forcing him to stop and wait for me at regular intervals. And then we came to a large intersection where he headed into the far left lane without warning and turned left as the other light turned green. I had no choice but to follow as four lanes of traffic moved towards me while we cut across the length of the road to end up on the right hand side. O. nonchalantly continued on into a park and started to comment on the prettiness of our surroundings. In reply, I lit into him. I accused of him of trying to get me hit by a car. I had been terrified. I was shaking and crying. (Yes, yes, I was a total wimp, but in my defense, please refer to the aforementioned “not good at this whole wheel business.”) My dramatic tour de force petered out, and we ventured forth tamely.
I still want to be that woman who rollerblades down the Bowery and through Chinatown every morning to get to work. I want to whip through town with ease and a devil-may-care flair. Alas, such is not my fate. Not if I want to stay in one piece.
Nowadays, I get my dose of risk-taking by jaywalking. It’s no joke: those bike messengers come at you from every angle. They’re lunatics! (, I say with envy.)

Trusting the Hours

Wait, for now.

… trust the hours. Haven’t they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

- Galway Kinnell

Time.

It’s been eleven weeks since I posted a blog. Eleven weeks ago I met someone and time changed for me for a while; it became hazy, elastic, boundaryless, and filled with swimming and playing and lying beneath the stars talking story. Afternoons were lazy, evenings were candlelit. He was on island indefinitely. We had time.

Three weeks ago in New York City, my sister and O walked hand in hand under rain-heavy clouds, the sky ribbons of slate and silver. Bagpipers led the way as H and O, followed by friends and family, guided the way from their home to the venue where they would soon marry. Old men came out of barbershops to applaud the procession. People waved from restaurants, and H and O beamed happiness. I sidestepped friends blowing bubbles and ringing little bells to stand alone for a moment. I stood and watched H and O as they walked up the stairs and into their future.

The next day, my dear friend Katie’s mother had a stroke.

In the muted predawn hours that followed on that Manhattan Monday morning, I flew back to Maui. I flew across the continent and hours across the Pacific. I flew until I was home in my little house far far away. I flew until I was home with Petey my dog and the man I had met. That night, he told me it was time for him to leave the island; it was time for him to go back.

On Tuesday, Katie’s mother died.

When my mother died, Katie drove to Rhode Island and spent days with me and H in that shocked silence that follows death, in that time when comfort is found in the busyness of choosing music for the service and hors d’oeuvres for the reception. On my first birthday after her death, Katie showed up at my doorstep in the morning with lattes and croissants, much earlier than was her usual waking hour, so that I wouldn’t have to be alone.

The most I could do for Katie from 10,000 miles away was listen to song options for her mother’s funeral on iTunes and rate them with her over the phone. I savored every moment.

Fall has come to Maui. To visitors, it may be imperceptible. The sun still shines, the sky is blue, the sand is warm. But to those of us who live here, there is a clear shift. The air has a chill to its edge and the water is cooler. Ubiquitous guava stew along jungle paths, the air sweetened by the warm earth and the fruits' steeping juices. Were there no calendars, no iPhones, no newspapers, this is how I’d know that time was passing.

These days, I am drinking tea and eating chocolate covered marshmallows. I am spending time with friends. I am finding comfort and wisdom and magic in favorite poems by Billy Collins, Kahlil Gibran, Mary Oliver and Galway Kinnell. I am regrounding in downward dog. I am writing. And I am holding onto the possibilities of the future. And I am loving. And I am trusting.

The other week, my Kindergarten students walked into the classroom. The lights were off, and as the children came around the corner into the rug area, they froze, eyes wide, mouths open. On the far wall hung one short string of orange lights, a nod to the month of October. In the unlit corner, the orange lights cast a warm, amber glow. One child whispered, “That’s beautiful!” And then together, like a little Greek chorus, the others joined in, “Yes. That’s beautiful!”

They reminded me of all the tiny Beautifuls. Even when the Beautiful is not within reach. Even when it is a memory.

I spent this morning with Petey at a waterfall. For a while, we had the falls to ourselves. I sat and breathed in air infused with eucalyptus and ginger… until others found their way through the thick greenery and I let them take my place.