I'm Back!

It's been far too long since I posted here and I hope that I've not lost your interest. Thanks for showing up again to catch up with me.

We had a snowstorm here in Massachusetts last Saturday which knocked down trees and branches and took out the power for many days. What a wake-up call! I was woefully underprepared for such an event. It's time for me to stock up on necessary supplies and have them at the ready for the next disaster. In just a handful of months we've been touched down upon by tornadoes and engulfed by torrential rain which caused massive flooding in the region. Following up with this freak, October storm, which dumped over two feet of heavy snow on leaf-laden trees, just about broke the camel's back. We're rebounding, but it's been surreal.

The power outage cancelled school for me all this week, as the campus is located in a town that was particularly hard-hit. The power was just restored today and classes will resume Monday. School has enveloped my life so completely that I was utterly bereft this week, without a compass. I did not know what to do with myself! Missing a week of school is like missing a month of normal life; we cover so much territory in just one day! Falling away from the continuity of lessons is tough. How will I get back on track? It's like starting over again! I know that I'll do it but right now I am daunted.

I love being in school! It's incredibly fun, completely engrossing, so empowering. I know what I am there for and I am making it all happen for myself, which feels great. I haven't wanted anything the way I  want this in a very long time. I'm so ready, totally committed. I forgot what that felt like! My classes are interesting and I love the way that one builds on and dovetails into the next. What I learn in American Government fortifies what my Into to Law professor is teaching us which relates to what's being covered in Violence and Non-Violence in North America. Statistics is surprisingly fun and fascinating, and Fine and Performing Arts, a massive, lightning-fast-paced survey course of art history, is blowing my mind. Can't wait for next semester when I can begin to study law with greater focus.

What I'm discovering, or re-discovering, is my passion for learning and inquiry. I am surrounded by impossibly young women, whose curious eyes follow me on campus; they can't figure me out. But, I know them and I realize how important it is for them to witness me doing what I'm doing cuz this is what a lifelong learner looks like. I know that some of them are inspired, because they've told me so. My instructors are my peers, which is terrific fun, and they really appreciate having me in the classroom. I love the synergy and excitement we share for the process in which we're engaged, which naturally pulls the more motivated students in and gets them going, too. I'm finding the leader in myself, finally.

I'm happy.

Riding the Wave

It is a time of great change: school has started for both Rain and me, I have scaled back my hours, considerably, at the cafe, my birthday has come and gone, and Summer is making way for Fall. Of course, there are smaller shifts happening all around these bigger changes, as the cascading effect of change is inevitable. Being in school means that I am less available for all of the other activities I either enjoy doing or have, over the course of time, become responsible for. Fortunately, we humans are amazingly adaptable. Week three of school has arrived and I am starting to feel as though the aftershocks are subsiding and the ground beneath my feet is settling again.

Still, it took tremendous effort to get myself to that first day of school, which was not everyone else's first day of school. I haven't been a student in a handful of years and never at this level, so I just had no idea how much preparation was involved in starting college. Summer came and went without me knowing I had long ago been assigned a school email account, so unbeknownst to me emails full of important information had piled up all summer! Several of those emails were on the topic of medical forms (all of you former college students can sigh in commiseration here), more specifically the issue of vaccinations. Good heavens! I had no idea that it would require three whole weeks of bureaucratic hoop-jumping to resolve this issue, but it did. A multitude of phone calls made and received, a dozen visits to my doctor's office, a flurry of faxes sent and received later, my medical hold was lifted and, on week two, I walked onto campus, a college Junior. Talk about a happy woman! I was giddy! It amused me to glance about the room at my classmates, most of whom are 18 and freshly graduated from high school, and see their faces glazed with either boredom or incomprehension, their bodies fidgety and flighty, while I was totally relaxed and utterly absorbed. I am there to learn and to apply what I learn to very specific goals, which gives me focus, excitement, and energy.

Rain came home from school a few days ago and said, "You're studying the Constitution, right?" I nodded. "Yup, in two of my classes. "He smiled." We're studying the Constitution!" "Oh, cool!" I exclaimed. "I guess we'll have a lot to talk about." He smiled again, nodded knowingly. "We certainly will." School has the power to bring me even closer to my son's daily reality, instead of dragging me further from it, and perhaps it can give each of us opportunity to see ourselves in the other, to find empathy and correlation.  Anything that keeps me connected to my son is a blessing.

I have loved the Fall my whole life, and I guess for many reasons. School has always been "my element," so Fall has always been "my season," with back-to-school being a welcome imposition of structure, order, and focus. School forces me to harness and channel my energies in very productive and illuminating ways and provides me great opportunity to express myself in ways that are helpful to others. It creates an environment in which I am not only free to indulge my curiosities, my analytical tendencies, my expressive drive, but required to! What a luxury! What a joy! Fall is also the season of my birth, so it feels like the beginning of my new year each and every time. I get so energized and excited about possibilities, dreams, goals. Not only do we harvest in Fall, but we glance forward from that harvest with a sense of what will be required of us to succeed in the following season. At the threshold of every ending is a new beginning.

The nicest thing about not being at the cafe so much is that I get to wear my hair down. It's a silly thing, but I'm ready for the freedom of it. I feel liberated! Also, I get to put on clothes in the morning that are still pretty clean when I take them off at night (not infused with the scent of chili and cupcakes or streaked with stains of every sort), and almost no one asks me to do anything for them. If they do, it's not because I am standing behind a counter that infers my subservience, but because they see that I have skills that can help them get where they want to go. A welcome change. What I have found difficult is letting go of all that has defined me for so long. I walk into that space, any space really, and see all of the details which add up to a feeling of harmony and order, all the little things that make a space welcoming, and I attend to them efficiently and with vigor. I perform about six people's jobs! Knowing that no one else does what I do has me concerned that those things just won't get done and I know how important they are. Lately, I've been taking note of those almost unseen tasks and teaching others how to see and perform them, too. I guess it's one way to stave off the nagging notion that I am abandoning something that truly needs me. But, maybe it's only ego that has me believing it needs me. Perhaps it really doesn't. I guess I'll find out as time passes.

I have dropped in on a wave of change and I am falling, feet beneath me, heart giddy with excitement, down its face, feeling the pull of its power. I have committed myself to change and, soul surfer that I am, I know that once we've committed all we can do is ride that wave.

Such A Week I'm Having!

It's been fascinating to watch myself fall apart as the first day of school has drawn closer. Because I didn't get all of my medical forms returned on time to Health Services, I have been on a medical hold at my school. This means I can't go to classes, or even access important information regarding them, until Health Services lifts this hold and gives me a slip of paper to show each of my instructors which indicates that I am not a health menace to the herd. I have cried a fair amount every day for the past week.

Of course, work has to also be stressful because, well, because! Because I perform at least five people's jobs, and because no one capable of taking over for me applied for work over the summer, despite all of the advertising we did to recruit someone, it has been impossible to find my replacement. Which means that I am up to my eyeballs in school-related tasks (and about to be attending five classes) while simultaneously managing the bakery (i.e. managing commercial accounts and vendor relations, baking full-time, and making deliveries) and training others to do some of the work I do. And since I perform a multitude of "unseen" tasks, which are almost impossible to tally, delegating my work-load is a daunting task. One that, it seems, I am going to be doing bit by bit.

Wouldn't you know it, I'm also traveling to California tomorrow, to attend the wedding of my longest-time and dearest friend who, after decades of single-mom-career-woman-supergoddesshood, has found her true love. I am honored to be included in her wedding bash and so, just as I am starting school and transitioning out of the work I've done for so many years, I am boarding a plane at 6 AM tomorrow and flying across the continent to make merry with many, and feeling pretty happy about it (even though it means I'll be up before even the worms, let alone the birds). Still, preparing to travel cross-country and be away for three nights has not exactly been my priority, so I have been feeling panicked about all that I need to get done.

And, let's not overlook that today happens to be my baby boy's fourteenth birthday! Have I planned a party? Decided on the perfect gift? Um. No. No I haven't. He just walked out the door with his buddy, off to his first day of 8th grade. Wow. He's several inches taller and quite a bit more slender and angular than he was on his first day of 7th grade; looking oh-so-like his father and every inch the young man. His summer was unspectacular, except for the fact that he demonstrated tremendous maturity and poise in the face of adversity at sleepover camp. He was ill-placed in a cabin full of boys much younger and less mature than he and got caught in the crossfire of their foolish choices. As he didn't stop any of it from happening, he was complicit and was placed "on contract," which means that he couldn't go anywhere in camp without a counselor present (yes, even the bathroom) and was quite close to being sent home. At that point, instead of lamenting his bad luck, he turned his frustration toward canoeing and, with a cabin mate, earned his first canoeing rating, his Tandem. He is now endowed with significant canoeing skills and, perhaps more importantly, knows that, most often, you've got to grow where you're planted. I have watched with wonder as my son has grown to young adulthood and feel so proud of the person that he is. Last night, he said, "I don't need a party, or presents. I just want to chill at home with you." Then he gave me a big hug and told me how much he loves me, which induced more tears.

Yesterday, I was at the end of my rope, feeling desperate and sorrowful that I wasn't able to start school when I was scheduled to, feeling cornered into getting a vaccine I didn't want to get for fear of it making me sick just as I'm preparing to travel, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of effort involved in performing the simplest tasks at work as it involved slowly showing others how to do it, feeling regretful that I wouldn't be able to properly celebrate my son's birthday with him. Today, I've decided that I'm going to drive down to my school, buy all of my books and supplies, pick up my parking permit, check in with my admissions counselor to thank her for all of her help and support, drop in on my instructors to introduce myself, and put everything into place for me to start classes next Tuesday. My medical hold will be lifted late this morning, so I could attend afternoon classes, but I'm going to pass. Instead, I'm going to get a present for my boy, make him a card and a little cake, get a pedicure (my one girly indulgence, I admit), then go home and pack my bag to ready for tomorrow's flight. Today, I have freed myself from the stress and the fear and the frustration.

Though change is the one constant, it's never easy, is it? As mentally prepared as I feel to make this change in my life, I'm still subject to all sorts of mixed emotions around it. I've cried more this week than I have in a while, even as wonderful things have happened. I started working with a physical therapist who is helping me make the next step in recovering from being assaulted. I celebrated a most special anniversary with a dear friend. I got to spend a couple of nights with the most adorable 11-month-old and his beautiful, wonderful Mama who just happens to be my beloved friend. It's been a great summer and I'm really happy to have the opportunity to embark on this new life path. And, sometimes, we've got to fall apart so that we can put ourselves back together again and maybe do it in a way that gives us even greater access to what matters most: joy.

Survival

Yesterday, while awaiting the impending tropical storm Irene, I began rereading a book called Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. It is a fascinating and well-written book by journalist and author Laurence Gonzales, which compellingly combines neuroscience with stories of people of every stripe embroiled in great battles for survival. As the title suggests, the book explores what it takes to survive such challenges as being lost at sea or in the wilderness, natural disasters, and accidents- who lives, who dies, and what decides it? I won't reveal too much of Gonzales' findings here, for I highly recommend reading this book and think it makes much more interesting reading if you approach it with curiosity and innocence. I do, however, want to touch a bit on what reading Deep Survival is bringing up in me, for while it largely relates to surviving extraordinary, life-or-death experiences, the same mechanisms seem to allow us to get through the challenges of life intact, and to enjoy a long and fulfilling life.

We are constantly confronted with experiences and environments that don't match the images our minds are projecting onto them, that defy our "mental map" and the resulting expectations associated with it. We are challenged to adapt to the realities at hand (a changing environment, an evolving concept, shifting perspectives) in the face of our disappointment or fear and sometimes this can be a difficult thing to accomplish. This applies not only to physical challenges but to emotional or mental ones as well. What allows "elite performers" to survive high-intensity challenges is the same thing that allows we regular folk to survive the heartbreak of loss or the disappointment of failure, or to successfully transition into new environments. Adaptation. When we fail to adapt to the realities of life, we bring unnecessary harm and pain upon ourselves and we challenge our very survival.  

I am embarking on a new life path and I am scared. Elite performers and survivors aren't devoid of fear, in fact they allow a healthy dose of fear to simultaneously sober and motivate them as they take gigantic risks. I find that I am almost overwhelmed with anxiety when I pull back and look at the enormity of the task I am about to undertake: two years of full-time school while co-parenting a young teen and working at the family business, all the while attempting to maintain a web of intimate relationships. I have seen others take on similar challenges and watched as they depleted themselves of every resource. I wonder, "Who do I think I am to believe I can do it any more smoothly, or even do it at all?" Mostly, I just wonder how the hell I'm going to find that much energy to perform to my own high standards on every front. I think that the answer is, "I'm not." Something's got to give. I'm in transition and life isn't what it was just a week ago, nor is it how it's going to be next week. I have to be in the present to attend to the decisions and take the necessary actions which will allow me to begin school next week. If I go too far out, get too far ahead of myself, my confidence gets shaky and I am enveloped in anxiety. 

What reading Deep Survival has done for me is to illuminate something very basic: survivors adapt. They don't hold tight to a fixed mental image of a situation while the reality stares them in the face. They get with the reality at hand and take action to survive within it, attending to small tasks which will keep them alive (like a shipwreck survivor spending an entire day catching and eating a fish while floating on the open sea) without allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation they are facing. If I can keep my mind focused on what needs my attention in any given moment and not be overly concerned with the complex set of demands I am facing, I have at a shot at not only surviving this transition but thriving within it. It's just one moment, one day, one task at a time. 

I'm a survivor.

Questioning My Sanity

Classes haven't even started and I'm already procrastinating. I finally logged into my school email account today and was horrified by the number of messages awaiting me. Important information here, people! Who knew? Right now, instead of filling out my overdue medical forms, I'm eating green olives marinated in garlic and lemon juice, and writing this. I'm setting the bar high. Each morning this week, I've felt fall in the air as I greeted the day and a feeling of doom has settled in my gut that not even these delectable green olives can assuage. People, I'm scared. I keep thinking, "What have I done? What was I thinking? What have I gotten myself into?"

But, then I go to work and poke holes in cupcakes, filling them with vegan cream and topping them with smooth chocolate ganache and I remember. No matter how much I appreciate what those humble cakes have done for me, I'm most ready to bid them adieu. Really! I've got a callous on my right index finger from poking holes in cupcakes, a little reminder that I am on the right path. Star told me recently (making me cry), "You've earned this. You've paid your dues. You deserve this more than anyone I know."

School. I really love school- the structure, the challenge, the synergy, the constant stream of information, the irrelevant tangents made by professors during lectures. Actually, that part annoys me to no end, but the rest is delightful. I'm taking these next two years as a kind of large, living crossword puzzle designed to stimulate massive synapsis growth and reverse the effects of what feels like middle-age dementia. My brain feels dried out and crusty, desperately in need of an energizing zap of ideas and concepts. I'm terrifically excited. And, shhhh, don't tell anyone, I'm terrified.

How the hell does anyone hold it all together while they're in school? Parenting, job, health and fitness, some semblance of a social life, personal hygiene? My mom went back to school full-time when I was a kid while she worked a couple of jobs and things didn't go so well, really. I've watched women much stronger and wonder-womanly than I fall to pieces in the face of what I'm about to take on and, yeah, I'm a little unsure of how I'm gonna pull it off, but I'm guessing I'll need a lot of hugs.

The Call

Today, we got "the call" from Rain's overnight camp. Star called me afterward and we had a long talk, as most parents would upon receiving word that their child was choosing not to participate in camp activities and was behaving in a disruptive manner. My first question was, "Oh shit, what did he do?" But by the end of our conversation, I realized that what Rain had "done" was less important (as his infractions seem very minor) than the fact that we had gotten the call in the first place. It is said that idle hands are the devil's workshop and I want to ask, "Why is anyone allowing my son to be so idle?"

On drop-off day, as we helped Rain get set up in his cabin, Star and I saw immediately that there would most likely be problems with his cabin assignment, as he was obviously the oldest in his cabin. Rain is a sophisticated only child who grew up in his parents' cafes, surrounded by adults. He has traveled a fair amount, lived on both coasts, and seen the difficult realities of life up close. While he is still a child, he is no babe in arms. He has always, always most closely resembled a cross between Lenny Bruce and Bambi- equal parts scathing, dead-on, witty social commentary and too-long legs skittering wildly across glittering ice, big eyes wide open and awestruck. Because he missed the cut-off for starting public school by a day, Rain has always been the oldest in his class, which meant that every-other year he would be a full two years older than half of his class. While his actual peers (the kids his age to whom he is naturally drawn and relates, all of his closest friends) are about to start high school, Rain will enter 8th grade this fall, a chasm too great to ignore. For Rain's entire life, we have watched as systems have continually failed to serve him- unwilling to place him with his peers unless he shows that he's "doing the work," unwilling to accept that it's only when placed with his peers that he will "do the work." This camp session seems to be unfolding in a similar fashion and I want to know, Who is going to step up and show my son that they care enough about him to engage him in the program, instead of allowing him to opt out of activities or loiter and cause trouble? If I'm getting the phone call, who's not doing their job?

On that first day, I went to the camp director and asked, "Is Rain married to that cabin, or can something be done to accommodate him more appropriately?" I explained, yet again, that Rain functions better when placed with kids either a year or two older than he, rather than with kids either his own age or younger. When placed with younger kids, Rain backslides, seems to regress, goofs off, acts out, turns into a disruptive presence. But with older kids, he strives to keep pace and participates fully, because he wants to be accepted by his peers and because there's just no opportunity to goof off- he's too busy! Boredom is a great motivator of negative energy. I told the director, " It's not going to go well leaving him in that cabin with those little boys." I warned him, and I read his response as a willingness to accept responsibility for the situation and recognize and address the problem before Rain could show it to him. As with people of any age, if Rain's acting out, it's a sign that something's wrong, as well as a sign that we adults have some work to do to help him. When Rain is met for who he is, as a full person regardless of his age, and he is shown that he matters, that his individual needs are important, he will jump through every hoop, write every paper, do all the chores required, even go on that most heinous hike. He will perform to his very best when he observes that he is valued. By leaving him in that cabin, forcing him, once again, to be the "mentor" to younger kids (as he has been constantly called upon to do his entire school career), he was told that his needs did not matter. And, if he doesn't matter to camp, why should camp matter to him?

The camp director is going to call me tomorrow and I have some things to say from which I believe he can benefit. Most immediately, I want to remind him, without being didactic, that his job as a director is to direct. Most often, with kids (as we parents know), that means a whole lot of re-directing: noticing where a young person's energy is going and re-directing it to a healthier, more productive place when its careening off into negative territory. We parents start doing this from the get-go! If this director doesn't see himself as as sort of Meta Dad to 150 kids, we're all in trouble. Frankly, if the director is calling us (and my son is not huffing glue, smoking pot in the woods, beating up or bullying other kids, painting swastikas, or self-harming), it makes me wonder if he is the right guy for the job! Who's in charge? You or my almost-14-year-old? Whoever it is that is allowing Rain to opt out of participating in the camp program is doing him a terrible disservice.

When my child acts like a monster, I look at my own choices closely to see what I've done to create that monster. Nine times out of ten, it's pretty clear. When infanticide seems like the only option and my son clearly has too much power, the holding of which frightens him terribly and causes him to behave uncharacteristically poorly, I remember that I contributed to the situation at hand and ask myself what I am going to do to change it. How am I going to help that monster revert back to it's human form? This is the duty with which the director of Rain's camp is currently charged and, as Rain's Mom, it is my job to remind him of it.

Simple Tests

In his poem entitled "The Testing Tree," which he penned as an octogenarian, Stanley Kunitz writes of himself as a boy carefully choosing stones of just the right weight and size and aiming them at a tree whose might and constancy defines his place in the world and challenges and informs his notion of manhood. Recounting a recurring dream, which symbolizes the relentlessness of change, he calls up his long-dead mother and images of war. Finally, he closes, summing: "In a murderous time, the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and to not turn. I am looking for the trail. Where is my testing tree? Give me back my stones!"

I think of this poem often, particularly when I realize that the child I once was still lives within me and is more accessible than I sometimes remember. I tend to over-complicate things with mental gyrations, feeling challenged by the interconnectedness of everything. Sometimes it's hard to make a move, knowing that the ripples cast will span out well beyond the bounds of my perception. Dark times come, difficult things happen, and we wish to be returned to a time when tests were simply defined: can I hit this ancient oak tree, with every throw, at fifty paces? Making bargains with the tree: If I hit this one, I'll be kinder to my mother, more helpful to my sisters. Feeling the weight of the stones in your pocket but not knowing that this is the only weight you carry. The innocence, the simplicity, the honesty of childhood becomes a beacon as the body grows burdensome and the mind softens and everything intertwines with everything else. The wide-open, unquestionable courage of childhood calls to me, like Kunitz hears the trail, that tree, those stones. I don't want to go back. I want to stand here, in this time, imbued with the courage and clarity I felt sitting on the uppermost branch of the sycamore tree at the end of my driveway, watching the world unfold below me but knowing even then that I was a part of it all.

Back To School

I tested out of high school at the end of my junior year, when I was seventeen years old. I immediately enrolled in junior college, but when classes started I looked around and found myself surrounded by the people I had just succeeded in escaping from- it was just like high school, but with a smoker's lounge. I had already been working for three years, so I quit junior college, thinking that I would go back to it later, and began to work full-time. I didn't know then that "later" would be decades.

People warned me. They told me to stick it out in school and get my education while I was young because the working world has a way of swallowing you whole and never spitting you out. I didn't listen. I sacrificed myself at the altar of manual labor and for 32 years I've been a food service professional. I'm a hard worker. I don't really know what to do with myself if I'm not working hard. And, school never really felt like particularly hard work. Restaurants? Now, that's some hard work! School? That's my playground.

When I was thirty-seven, I went back to school at a two-year college just north of my home. I entered with an interest in Early Childhood Education, but quickly switched my major to Liberal Arts English, which allowed me to exercise the full scope of my nerd-superhero skills. Yes, I'm one of those people who actually enjoys reading the classics and writing critical essays about what I've read. I know, get a life. There is really nothing more exciting to me than receiving a particularly challenging assignment; I feel a great sense of purpose fill me up. I know, really, get a freakin' life!

When I was four credits shy of completing my B.A. and transferring to a four-year college, my marriage came to an abrupt end. Needing to prioritize my use of limited resources, I deferred acceptance to school and moved west to get my head and heart together. Two years later, I returned to Western Massachusetts and went right back to work in the family business, baking and selling vegan pastries. More than three years have passed since my return and I have loved every moment I have given to the cafe- it reflects my love and care in myriad ways both great and small. I am deeply gratified by its success. And, I am ready for my second career, one that doesn't require I stand at a table for eight to ten hours a day, poking my index finger into cupcakes.

This fall, I will return to school to become a paralegal, a fancy term for a legal assistant. I'm really excited about this and so happy and proud that I had the wisdom, five months ago, to create a space for myself in such an excellent school. When I tell people that I'm going to be a paralegal, their faces go a little blank and I can tell that they are working hard with the idea. I find it curious and funny, because it seems like such a natural thing for me to do, but other people see me more as a creative, artistic, entrepreneurial person than the word paralegal conjures. What some people don't realize is that I am happiest when I am behind the scenes, attending to details, while the front man gets all the attention. Besides, I need to sit down for a while!

A Gift To My Future Self

At Fire & Water, there hung on the wall a manifesto, the final line of which read, "Art is the salvation of the soul." I have always been a creative, expressive person yet have been reluctant to call myself an artist. But, if art is "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance," and is created by individuals of unusual sensitivity, perceptivity, and communicativeness, then I am, indeed, an artist.

Lately, I've been noticing the role of art in my life more intimately, seeing how the art that I create- the written works, the photographs, the drawings- are like missives I am sending out to the potential future me, to arm myself with the tools I will need to face the challenges life will, no doubt, offer up. I recently wrote a poem which I believed was an offering to a friend who has had a particularly tough year. The very next day, I needed those words of wisdom more than anyone else I know, for I suddenly found myself in emotional dire straights.

Not only does my own art work this way, but the art of others does as well. I remember being with Jesse at Boston Children's Hospital, feeling so weary, so shattered and disoriented, and hearing Star's songs, penned many years previous, with new ears, as though he had just written them. The words seemed to touch on every moment we were living with Jesse, as though visionary Star had sent them ahead of himself so that we would have a way of touching down in the experience and gleaning deeper meaning from it through the songs. The songs encouraged me to slow down and savor every moment with confidence, as if I was following a map that had been sent well in advance of me ever knowing I'd be taking a journey.

And, art is like this. It's the gift we send out across time, in all directions, believing that some day it will help someone, and sometimes (probably most often) that someone is the artist him- or herself. Art has delivered the immaterial part of my being from harm, from ruin, and has brought me joy, communion, and the courage to withstand, and the wisdom to celebrate, the greatest challenges of life. I find it poetic and beautiful that I pinned that manifesto to the wall, as a gift to the world, so many years ago, and it is only now that the full strength of its message has reached me- yet another gift to my future self.

To Help The Helpless

About a week ago, my friend and I were assaulted in a restaurant in Northampton, by a man neither of us knew. He saw us sitting close together, talking intimately, and sexualized our relationship, and then asserted that we had an obligation to satisfy the ideas this gave him. When we protested, he attacked us, verbally and physically. I cannot remember a more frightening encounter with a man. Though my most immediate fear (that he would beat my friend as I watched, powerless to stop him) was averted, the terror he inflicted upon us has hurt me, hurt us both, deeply. And while the overwhelming sense of crisis has quieted, the fright evoked by the experience has lodged in my body and lies so close to the surface that sudden movement, unexpected sound, a raised voice trigger in me an immediate panic response, unfamiliar and unwelcome. I am unusually vigilant in public, hyper-aware of people, quick to swerve off of the path of any man who nears me. I am poised for flight at every moment. I have not slept deeply since the night of the attack and I am tired. I lost a week of work, my body too badly bruised and misaligned to labor physically.

All of this has been terribly hard for me to believe, for me to bear, but the hardest reality of all is that no one attempted to help us. Not one person called the police when I shouted throughout the space, "Call 911! Someone call the police!!" over and over. Their eyes met mine and they walked away. Right here in our little Happy Valley, a very large, raging man attacked two women in a restaurant and no one helped.

There is something seriously wrong with that, people.

Now, I know I'm preaching to the choir here as I am amongst friends, but pass this story far and wide, please friends, to remind one and all that we are in this life together. Have we become so utterly desensitized to violence that we don't know what it means to do the right thing? I am your sister, your daughter, your girlfriend, your lover, your friend, your co-worker, your grandmother, your wife, your neighbor; I am every woman you love or ever will love, every woman you cherish, every woman with whom you have a meaningful connection. When someone hurts me, they hurt us all.

I am not suggesting that anyone ought to have put themselves in grave danger to stop this man. I am reminding that the police are a phone call away, so tell everyone you know: the next time you see two men arguing on the street, tempers rising, or a couple fighting in a car, or a parent slapping a child in the parking lot of the grocery store, make that call. Get help for the momentarily helpless. Don't avert your eyes, or walk on by thinking someone else will help, it's none of your business, not your problem.

Because, it is.

Perspective

I find it wondrous how much the way we look at our experiences dictates how we feel about them. It really does seem to me that perspective defines reality. When comfortable situations change, if I think that I'm losing something I can feel sad and scared, or even angry. But, when I turn my attention to the beginning that is simultaneously occurring, and allow myself to see what is being offered by it, my emotions become more pleasurable. I can feel happy, anticipatory, and energetic. It is even possible that I could simply accept change as a constant and feel neither happy nor sad, scared nor reassured, but instead feel a cool neutrality. I guess this is the middle way that wise people are always espousing, where extremes (of experience, of temperament, of perspective) are eschewed in favor of moderation.

Sometimes, though, situations and experiences are hard to get a handle on. Sometimes we are so deeply entrenched in our experiences that we cannot see the reality of our place in them. Lately, I have been looking at the changes taking place in my life as being fairly negative, mentally and emotionally struggling hard against them, trying to reject the fact that they are taking place and suffering terribly. I have wanted to just go to sleep for a nice, long stretch and wake up either forward or back in time, either healed of the pain or luxuriating in the bliss that came before it. I haven't been willing to fully acknowledge that it is my perspective on change that is causing me to suffer so immensely. People say that change is good, but I'm finding that it's neither good nor bad, it just is. Change, like a constant river, does flow on and on. But the river has been more like an ocean of waves so gargantuan that they block out the horizon and leave me without a point of reference. I have recently been very disoriented.

Today, I watched streaming video coverage of the full lunar eclipse which was not visible in the US, and made an important observation while staring at the moon for an hour or more. I realized that some things (experiences, ideas, celestial bodies) are so big, we cannot ever get accurate perspective on them. For instance, we can only see the entirety of Earth from hundreds of thousands of miles away, and then we can only perceive part of it. We know from experience that there is another side to what we are seeing- to the Earth from space- for we have at other times been privy to that side as well. But in that moment, all we can see is one side, and it is riveting. That side is not any more important than the side which is beyond our vision, it is merely temporarily illuminated and thus held in the light of greater relevance. But, things will change, unstoppable shifts will take place and we will, once again, be able to view what was so recently in shadow. I see now that my life is like this too.

My life is changing and I don't necessarily like what is currently illuminated or visible. I have believed that I don't know what is in the shadows; what is there that I cannot yet perceive? This has felt frightening. What if there is actually nothing there? But, memory and faith, life experience, reminds me that not only is there something there, but that what is there is nothing new. What lies in the shadows is merely something that was once more readily visible, something I've simply, temporarily, lost sight of, something that was there all along.

I could go with an outdated paradigm, believing that what is not visible is not real, like those who once believed that the world was flat. I could live for a fantasy future, become lost in the idea that what is not yet visible is the answer to all of my troubles. Or, I could begin to adopt the middle way and remain neutral but observant, trusting that all of my experiences are influenced by how I choose to look at them. What I cannot yet see is always the same fullness of life coming back around, spinning toward the light, and it is up to me to deem it positive or negative, or, perhaps most beneficially, simply let it be.

Detour

It happened so quickly.

I had left work and was on my way to the grocery store. The road was icy and a light sleet and snow mixture was falling steadily. Suddenly, a pickup, towing a small trailer, came sliding down a hilly street into the roadway in front of me. Instinctively, my right foot mashed the brake to the floor as I curled up my body and turned my face to the right, fearing both the airbag exploding and the impending collision I assumed would crush me. There was no veering around the truck, and I knew my car would never stop in time to avoid hitting it, so I braced myself for anything, and crashed.

However minor an injury it may be, whiplash hurts. And because of the pain, I wasn't able to work for two weeks, which gave me time to look closely at my life, thankful that I still had one to live. I'm a hard-working person, unaccustomed to, and rather uncomfortable with inactivity, but everyone (my friends, my family, and the incredibly kind staff at the health center where I was being treated) assured me that my only job was to heal. I watched a lot of Netflix in bed, endured shocking ice baths (good for reducing overall inflammation, from which I was suffering profusely), and indulged myself in many long hours of massage, acupuncture and chiropractic treatment. I doubt I've ever before been touched that much in a two-week period, and it was rather blissful.

As enjoyable as it became to be so pampered, each time I closed my eyes to sleep, or even rest, an image of that pickup appearing in my path rose up in my mind, unsettling me. I began to have dreams, tense and vivid, of escaping, by myriad means (though never a car) from all manner of emergency. I would awaken from these dreams out-of-breath, my body feeling drained and numb, my chest weighted against the bed, panic pounding in my heart. I lay awake at night, wondering what was happening, worried about how I would go forward if I couldn't do the only work for which I am fully trained.

It took about ten days to get an answer.

One afternoon, I was on the phone, telling a friend about the accident, and I said, "I couldn't go around the truck and I couldn't stop; I had no escape route!" Bells, blinking lights, and a siren went off in my head. "That's it!" I thought. "An escape route!" Oh, brilliant unconscious mind, working away on the tough stuff while the rest of me simply lay quivering in shock! The accident was giving me an escape route! I have been in food service since the age of 14- that's 32 years! Anyone who does what I do will tell you: it's tough, physically demanding work. Laying down that heavy burden for two weeks illuminated my reality: I could not go back to a job that was breaking down my body and stealing my joy. Later that night, I laughed out loud in an empty room. "Couldn't we have left this one in the metaphoric realm?" I asked. "Did it really take a huge, heavy, metal object blocking my path entirely to get me to alter my course?" It seems that we humans don't change, individually or collectively, unless life pins us to the wall, its forearm to our windpipe.

The next day, I went online and began researching schools. I sent out a couple of emails, made some phone calls. By the end of that day, I had applied to a small, women's college located 20 miles south of my home. I knew that if I didn't immediately take action, I might let doubt and insecurity hold me down as I had a hundred times before. Within a week, I was accepted. Days later, I met with an admissions counselor who was overjoyed by the idea of having me transfer into her school. A month later, I was offered full financial aid, which I accepted, and had enrolled in classes for fall of this year.

It happened so quickly. One minute I was driving to the grocery store and the next I was careening into a future unforetold. Egotistically, and perhaps foolishly, I like to believe that I am always on a path of my choosing and that my intentions dictate my course, so I appreciate what a friend once told me, somewhat consolingly, so long ago: "Always remember- detours are also part of the journey."

Symbols

I have a good friend who, for the last ten days, has been moving out of a house in which she has lived for about five years. It is a herculean task which she is accomplishing a little at a time with almost no help, and the process is stripping her bare. She is physically and psychologically exhausted and emotionally raw, and the end of this move is nowhere in sight. Because she'll be traveling to Bolivia soon as a part of her continuing education, she's making a temporary move into a small cabin on a friend's property, but the space is currently full of someone else's belongings and they will have to be moved before her stuff can come in. I stopped in on my friend today, to pick up an old mirror she needed to get rid of, and we had a chance to catch up. She cleans houses for a living and told me that she has realized in the course of this move how much of her time and energy go into simply moving stuff around but never really accomplishing anything. She feels defeated by this, like she's simply wasting her energy. "I don't want to do it anymore," she explained.

I told her, "That's quite a symbol you've unearthed. Seems to me that it might be a good thing for you to ponder that symbol until you're ready to change your situation. It's going to change no matter what, but maybe this symbol will help you guide the change with your intention." The image of my friend picking up and moving myriad objects, cleaning around or under them and then replacing them as precisely as possible seemed to me like such a strong theme. I wondered in what other ways she is repeating this pattern, perhaps with her thought process or in her relationships. Often it is when we are at our most vulnerable that powerful symbols appear to awaken us to our habits and patterns, as well as our true abilities, needs, and strengths, and perhaps give us the inspiration to get right with ourselves starting from the moment we realize what we are seeing. The signs have likely been there all along, but it's when we're cracked open and desperate that they begin to mean something to us. Right then, we see not only the problem but the solution to that problem as well. The unconscious mind is very fertile and powerful, and a truth unearthed from the darkness of fear will immediately begin to work in service of our well-being, whether or not our conscious mind fully understands the work being done. I'm excited for my friend for I think that with her simple realization, she has helped herself more than she might actually know.