Moment of Grace

I found myself praying in a church yesterday—technically, a synagogue. I haven’t prayed in a religious structure in more than 25 years. Balen and I attended the Bar Mitzvah of one of his close friends, Dennis. The celebration was folded into a normal Shabbat service, a new experience for both of us. I was raised in the Protestant faith and attended Baptist, Pentecostal, and Wesleyan services, even a few Catholic masses here and there for special occasions with friends. But, I’d never taken Balen to a church.

I had lived a few houses down from Rabbi Greg for many years during my first marriage. His wife gave my daughter, Britt, cello lessons through junior high and high school. Britt’s recitals were held in the synagogue where the bench rows formed a U shape around a raised platform.

Balen chose to sit with friends on the left side—a cluster of boys all around the cusp of 13. A few wore yarmulkes. Curly red hair, black wavy hair, pale blond, dark brown. I could see the row of them from where I sat, all different heights in various stages of man-child transition. It was amazing to see them all sitting in one place (sometimes fidgeting) for more than two hours without their hands wrapped around a cell phone, eyes downcast. Instead, they watched the blessing of their friend as he entered manhood in the Jewish faith, regardless of whether they understood any Hebrew. Part of me ached as I watched Balen. He did not have a strong cultural affiliation to any one belief system to mark this coming of age.

They watched Rabbi Greg wrap a tallit, or prayer shawl, around Dennis’s shoulders and listened as the significance of the knotted fringes were explained. Those who knew the words joined the tallit prayer while the rest of us felt enveloped by the ancient echoes of a language whose words urged us to wrap ourselves in the tallit, to feel ourselves woven together in one fabric.

I had felt wrapped in the comfort of community since reaching the synagogue doors where we were greeted by Annette Fineberg, the woman who saved my life when Balen was six days old. She was the doctor on call when I stopped in the office to have a swollen leg examined 13 years ago after a c-section. She knew it was a warning sign for blood clots and sent me to the ER with firm instructions not to leave until we found some answers. Many procedures and several hours later, I was admitted with multiple blood clots in my lungs that could have silently killed me at home without warning. Over the years, we’ve seen each other in town and chatted about life, our kids. She will always remember my face; I will always remember hers. I found out yesterday morning that she is Dennis’s aunt. Small world!

As Shabbat drew to a close, Rabbi Greg and Annette led us in singing a Blessing for Healing as she strummed the guitar. Keep the names of loved ones that need healing in your heart as we sing, he urged us. Verses of Hebrew echoed in the synagogue like the pitch of singing bowls, the intonation not unlike the Shiva mantra I chant in yoga.

May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us

Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing

And let us say Amen.

Bless those in need of healing with r’fu’a sh’le-i-ma

The renewal of body, the renewal of spirit,

And let us say Amen.

After the service, I walked into the sunlight momentarily relieved of a weighted pressure that had been keeping my chest tight and closed for weeks. I breathed deep from my belly, the weight lifted and I bowed my head with a slight namaste to the community of spirits surrounding me in a moment of grace.

Adventures Close to Home

I confess to the bit of envy I feel when seeing my friends post photos to Facebook from a trip to Morocco, a twinge of wanderlust to be in a new land, sampling exotic spices and hearing the melody of a language that doesn’t roll off my tongue. Those are the times I find it most important to remember that adventure awaits outside the front door, a short walk to the pond or a 20 minute drive to put the canoe in at Solano Lake.

Really, it’s just a section of Putah Creek. But it’s full of wildlife–beaver, otter, raccoon, egrets, great blue heron, bullfrogs, osprey, woodpecker, kingfisher, Canada geese, buffleheads, cormorants, turkey vultures, red-shouldered hawks, red-winged blackbirds, three-spined stickleback that my son loves to scoop up in a net while drifting in the canoe. I’m sure this is only scratching the surface of the species out there.

But it’s our little slice of heaven that we explore in every season.

Deep in the summer months, we stain fingers purple with blackberry juice in our quest to gather enough for a cobbler.

Those are the days we head west toward Winters in late afternoon and stop at the El Verduzco taco truck parked at the Mariani Nut Company. After eating an assortment of carnitas, asada and adobada tacos, we hit the road to drive another few miles along Putah Creek Road till we find the extra wide pullouts  where you can park your car to unload a canoe or kayak.

Once on the water, you never know what you’ll see! Here are some images from the past couple of trips–enjoy!

On the water again…

For many years, tradition had it that our family would load up the canoe on my birthday and head up to Lake Natomas, near Folsom, for a day on the water. We brought plastic buckets and other containers to pick blackberries from branches overhanging the canoe. My dad always joked that for every berry that made it into my bucket, I must be eating two. By the end of the day, I had purple lips and teeth. We’d often make homemade vanilla ice cream out on the back porch after getting home and a blackberry cobbler with luscious crunchy crumbles on top.

This year J made sure we were back on the water for my birthday–a sojourn out to Putah Creek up near the Berryessa hills. Thanks babe!

Roxy’s first canoe trip!

Captain Hamilton

Pelicans on Putah Creek!

Great blue heron and Canada geese

Berry thief!

Flight dreams…

Sometimes we just need to be reminded…

Got an email today from friend and sole sister, Margot, with this photo attached and the subject line “Sometimes we just need to be reminded.” I know she is thinking of her uncle (and my friend) Chuck, who is in the hospital awaiting his bone marrow transplant tomorrow from his brother. We thought he had whipped this lymphoma thing in the ass, but it came back a few months ago. Whenever I think of Chuck’s struggle, I want to kick myself for every moment I spend worrying about the loss of a job. In less than two weeks, I don’t know where I’ll be. The uncertainty gnaws at my self-confidence. I know I won’t be on the street, but where will I land?

But this…this poster…this manifesto for how to approach life—it seems so simple and yet challenging to enact day in and day out. And yet a wonderful reminder. Who knows what tomorrow brings? One of my favorite quotes comes from Thich Nhat Hanh…”The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.” I can’t say I’ve gotten good at this yet, but I will keep trying!

Thanks Margot for the reminder…

Indiana Jones…you got nothin’ on this kid!

“Mom, look, an entire skull!”

You would have thought B had just made the latest dinosaur fossil discovery—right in the middle of the co-op parking lot. He held up a tiny skull, grey fluff still intact in some spots.

“Look—see the brain case?!”

“Um, yeah, can you find ones that are completely dried? I’m not sure what that will smell like in your room if it’s not entirely decomposed—the bugs still have some work to do,” I replied.

“Ok, good idea.” He placed the cranium back among the other bones littered under the large sycamore tree.

A cool breeze ruffled B’s hair as he bent over another owl pellet, pulling it apart with a small twig and separating bits of bone from fur. We were enjoying a rare July day in California’s Central Valley when it wasn’t much above 80 degrees—such a welcome respite from the triple digits two weeks earlier.

I left the house a short time before to run errands, feeling a little impatient that I had so much on my to-do list and a seven year old who kept stopping to investigate life’s minutia. After a few minutes of watching him sift through the dirt, I realized that rushing him into the store and risking a melt-down because I wouldn’t let him look for bones wasn’t worth the trade-off of giving him another five or ten minutes of investigation.

I stood with my purse slung over one shoulder, looking at the people giving him quizzical glances on their way to load groceries into cars and bikes. What was this kid doing crouched in the dirt under a tree on the fringes of the parking lot? A sweet-faced older woman wheeled her cart toward us and stopped.

“What are you looking for there?” she asked B.

“Bones,” he mumbled, a bit embarrassed.

“Show her what you have,” I encouraged him.

He lifted up the clear plastic container that we had gotten for salsa at lunch and hadn’t used. It was nearly full to the brim with femurs half the length of my pinky finger, narrow pelvic bones, jawbones with bits of teeth and vertebra still fused.

“Wow, quite a treasure trove there, I see,” she smiled down at him. “Where did those come from?”

He pointed above his head to the owl box installed in the sycamore’s branches.

She patted me on the arm. “Congratulations, Mom.”

I wasn’t sure what the congratulations were for. Was it that I was showing patience in letting him explore? That I wasn’t freaking out about him touching all the bones and fur (he could wash when he was done)? That I had a curious child enthralled and excited about these rodent bones as if he was on a dino dig in Utah?

I asked if she had children. Yes, two grown now, a son and daughter. And one grandson, but he had autism, she said. She glanced at my son and when she looked back at me, her eyes were shiny with unfallen tears. I could see her unspoken dreams, her disappointment and acceptance. I wanted to offer hope and solace, but what could I do but nod and offer a sad smile?

We wished each other a lovely day and I turned to sit on the concrete edge of the parking lot to marvel over each of B’s new finds and to let the tears come—the tears of gratefulness, of living in a perfect moment, the here and now full of wonder and possibility.

Looking for true north…

“I’m always where I want to be, doing what I want to be doing.” How many of us can say that and actually be honest in doing so? Leo Babauta’s post on zenhabits today got me thinking of this.

I often fall into the trap of playing what Leo calls the “fool’s game” of wishing I was doing something different—or better or more exciting or traveling to more exotic places. And then I think of what I would be missing…and all that I have found myself grateful for in small moments of clarity and grace lately.

Moonlight glowing on my son’s healthy brown cheeks as I watched him sleep last night…cherry tomatoes picked from the garden exploding with juice in my mouth…the gentle Delta breeze keeping temperatures delightfully perfect this week…warm skin against mine throughout the night…the dog running along a dirt path with the pure abandon that only a dog must know…the sweet fragrance of alfalfa through the car’s open windows as we explore country close to home.

I’m limping along these days…literally with a broken foot. I have to slow down, no running for a bit. And figuratively…I was told I have until August 5^th at this job and so I’ve been grappling with ‘where do I want to be, where do I go from here and how do I get there?’ I keep picking up the compass, looking for true north and the needle spins, unable to settle in place.

A few images from adventures close to home…

Running at night

Running…to the place where streetlights give way to night sky, dark bowl with milky clouds, lights of a nearby city glowing orange on the horizon, Orion’s belt twinkling like a smile. Shadowed furrows of a field on my left waiting for crops, for spring’s warmth. Outstretched arms of dark walnut trees to my right, a mile row of them, magpies and crows settled into the upper reaches, squirrels nestled down in warm hollows.

I see them in the morning along this path, darting from tree to tree, the occasional squirrel not vigilant or fast enough to elude the tires of a speeding bicycle. But for now, only this, the dirt rows, skeleton limbs, night air fresh from the day’s rain and a sailor’s sky above, guiding me through the dark.

Sometimes a run is just a run and sometimes it is salvation. When do you most enjoy running (or walking) and where?

Mountain top experience

Feeling better after a snack on the top of Mt Whitney

It wasn’t what I anticipated, what I dreamed of, what I expected. No arms thrown up in triumph, fists punching the thin air, broad smile as I perched on a ledge high in the sky. Reaching Mt. Whitney’s summit last August, I tried at first to choke back tears, to smile, to high five. Until I realized it was all fake and I found my shoulders shaking with sobs as I stumbled to find a place to sit, to just be.

My companions were ready for a group photo—evidence that we all made it to the top, we’d all triumphed. I didn’t want a photo. I motioned them away with my arm, unable to talk. I rationalized that I hadn’t eaten much in the six hour summit push, that my head was pounding with the altitude, that I was PMSing, that I was just damn tired.

I had carried so many expectations up the mountain…that my kids would survive the divorce I was in the first phases of, that my ex would be able to let go of his anger so that we could be friends again and or at least get through this without hating each other, that my 40^th birthday the week before meant the beginning of a big, exciting new decade of my life, filled with all the adventure and creativity I had been craving.

Those expectations became leaden weight the higher I climbed. As I sat on the top rock of the lower 48 states and looked out, to peaks and valleys in the distance, it dawned on me that this was only the beginning of my journey, not the end. Reaching the summit would not make everything ok, but it gave me a wonderfully high vantage point from which to let weight roll off my shoulders, down my back, past my feet and sailing into deep space beyond.

group shot at last!

Getting out of my comfort zone aka “rut”!

Why wait for the New Year to start with a resolution to reinvigorate my writing habits? I’ve been in a rut for a bit. Excuses abound—full-time job, moving to a new house, kids…you name it. Enough already. I stumbled upon a great idea to get me back on track—Reverb 10, an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Participants receive a new writing prompt daily via e-mail. OK, so I didn’t see this on Dec. 1st when all the fun began, but I’m jumping in now and will try to get caught up on past prompts. (This is also a way to keep me accountable to my writing group!)

Eleanor Roosevelt: “We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.”

Ok, Eleanor, here it goes…