A Thing With Wings

photo source

My sweet spirit partner, Alpana, loved birds. Not only did she keep birds as pets, she also castigated me harshly for my love of pate'. Frankly, on both points, we had to agree to disagree. Still, I mourned with her when her little lime green parrotlet, Ezabel, flew the coop. We imagined her going for brunch with $10 mimosas. Or maybe she was going to the Barney's Co-op annual sale. But really, Alpana was just very sad and a little angry at the loss. It felt particularly unjust that she should lose something she loved, when she was already on such a difficult path, one that involved lots of letting go, both bitter and resigned.

Ezabel flew away over 2 years ago, and Alpana flew away over one. I'm left here wishing I had wings, not knowing where I'd fly. Life is hard for me without Alpana. She was braver than I am. And if you think that's fantastical revisionist history, the kind where we make people out to be more noble than they actually were in life, then you haven't fully tried to imagine what a crusty and hardcore little character she could be. (Remember she was a lawyer. Read: tough.) Her bravery is a simple, irrefutable fact.

My recent efforts to become a runner are part of a campaign I'm trying out to become more grounded and centered. Maybe here, in my body, I can find some courage. I have a tendency to float space-headed into the ether so that I'm no longer paying attention to my body, to my feet on the earth, and, well, I confess, to most everything that's going on around me. It is the single biggest reason that I never see any celebrities when I'm walking the streets of New York. "Look!", my Andy will say, "You almost ran into Wolf Blitzer." Well. I hadn't noticed. (Sorry, Wolf.)

I've heard that when we meditate, our auras become huge and porous, and we have to be careful to pull them back in, like keeping our elbows near our sides when we run. Having a spirit with wings is fine, as long as we remember that, for now, it dwells in our body, that imperfect and strange and miraculous vessel. Exercise is a way to bring us back to being grounded in our bodies. I think I'm supposed to feel safer here, in my body with its one leg shorter than the other, but instead I feel ponderous. Still, I plonk along on those jogging trails in Central Park, and I think about having wings.

Coach says you have to tell all the muscles in your body to "get in the game" when you're running. "Hey, Abs! Pay attention! And, you, Gluteus Maximus, you heard me. Get a move on!" It works tremendously, and it brings me right back into the action, all those creaky bones and resistant tendons, that lopsided gait. I remember to say thank you for my body and for the newfound respect I'm showing it.

So, I plonk and flap and fret my way along, asking Alpana for advice and hope and guidance. I wonder what's next. I consider possibilities, I ponder action. I put one foot in front of the other because I don't have wings.

Yesterday, I went for a run in Central Park. Up the Bridal Path with it's soft sand and gentle hills. Safely parallel to the Lance Armstrong imitators on their bikes, the epic battle of Peloton versus Tourists. Past the grassy area where I recently saw a flock of snow white birds, then past the one where over the summer I sat reading the paper and a little boy named Raymond asked me to "watch" his lump of Silly Puddy while he rolled down the hill.

I stopped at the water fountain before stepping up onto the trail around the Reservoir. I barked a friendly order to my muscles: keep moving! I glanced at the shimmery water in the emerging Fall light, but mostly I kept my focus straight ahead. Centered, grounded, centered, grounded.

One quarter of the way around the reservoir, I saw the pecking and fluttering of a few birds on the side of the path. They were lovely common grey chickadees scratching around in the leaves and dirt. And in the middle of the bunch, this: a teal-breasted parakeet, with grey and white wings and a golden yellow crown, an improbable jewel in the middle of New York City.

As Anne Lamott might say, I ask you.

It's just like God and Alpana to be funny and cryptic and beautiful all at the same time. I stared and smiled then I kept going, around the pool, back down the Bridal Path. A little lighter, a littler more engaged, thinking to myself, "Stay centered and grounded, and you might become a thing with wings, following your own Spirit Path." (Thank you, Alp.)

And you?

What miracles - winged and otherwise - have occurred for you?

A New Story

photo source

Back in February, I called an old friend of mine. We had not spoken in several months. I had been wrapped up with a new job, and we don't live in the same city. When he answered the phone, his first words were, "I have big news!" My heart did when of those crazy roller coaster loops, when you're gearing up to hear someone's "big news": you're hoping it's good but scared it might be bad.

"My wife had a liver transplant!"

That was unexpected.

Turns out, she had had liver disease caused by an autoimmune disorder of unknown origins. Moreover, she had struggled with this disease for 15 years! It wasn't something she had wanted to make public, so, even though I had known this family for most of those years, I had not known she had any health problems. Turns out the diagnosis had many troubling layers, as such things often do. Not only was she faced with a variety of exhausting symptoms, the doctors could offer the following "plan":

We'll wait until you get really, really sick and then hope to find you a donor. The good news is, we can now do live donor transplants (more on that later) provided you can find someone willing to give you part of their healthy liver. The bad news is, you could develop liver cancer in the meantime. If that happens, there is nothing we can do.

So she did what one can do in the face of grim uncertainty: she kept going. She raised children, cared for an ailing parent, fended off exhaustion and pain. And everyday, she wonder about that anvil over her head. Would she beat the clock or would cancer make a photo finish?

When my friend came to town several weeks later, we caught up more. The awesome news was (and is) that his wife was doing astoundingly well. A distant cousin was a "match" and had courageously agreed to participate in the live donor procedure. The doctors took the diseased liver from my friend's wife, and implanted part of the donor's healthy liver. In one of those miracles of the human body, a healthy liver can regenerate, so, if all went according to plan, both donor and recipient would start with half a liver that would grow into two new wholes! Who can get one's mind around it?!

Several months had gone by, and both donor and recipient were doing very well. It was time for my friend's wife to consider her future. Suddenly, overnight, she was disease free. This albatross that had weighed heavily for so very long was gone. This burden that had defined every detail of her life had disappeared. What now? My friend and I talked about it a lot, and as you can see, it is still on my mind. How do you start a new life when the old one seemed so clearly defined?

The motivational speaker Byron Katie asks, "Who would you be without your story?" My friend's wife had a very literal story: she had a bad liver, then she did not. So what about the rest of us? What if we set down our stories? "I have a bad relationship with my step-father;" "My co-workers don't respect me;" "My alcoholic mother ruined my life;" etc. What if those didn't exist for us because we chose to live without them?

It occurs to me that a wide open space would stretch out in front of us, and the thought of that emptiness, just sitting there, waiting for us to define it, could be terrifying. If you're anything like me, the terror would cause a stiffening of the limbs and heart, making action a challenge at best. But what if even that terror is just a character in my story of who I am and what I'm capable of?

Freedom is like that healthy liver, always capable of expanding and growing. We just need to choose to implant it.

And you?

Who would you choose to be?

36 Things @ Newvine Growing

Remember the super cool list of life lessons that my friend, Lisa, wrote about over at Newvine Growing?

Well, Miss Colleen Newvine Tebeau herself has graciously allowed me to contribute my own list!

This was was daunting after reading Lisa's list and the other thoughtful submissions that Colleen has already shared with us. I confess that I thought about just breaking out my Aaron Neville megaphone to record "Don't Know Much (But I Know I Love You)," but I lack the technology to dub in the harmony. So you're stuck with my own musings:

36 Things I've Learned at 36

Head on over to Newvine Growing and check it out....you may even win a prize!

Remember to Love

The other day, I received a text urging me to get out of town this weekend or at least to avoid the subways. "Why?" I thought. Then: Oh. That.

I live in New York City. And you know what today is.

Bearing witness is achy, slow work. The images zap us into sensory overload. But the thing is, it's a daily thing here. I work next to the World Trade Center site, so a few times a day, I walk by it or look down at the construction work. That means a few times a day, I send up a prayer for all the people who were there that day, those who lived and those who did not and all their families. I pray for help in maintaining my game face, all gritty New Yorker, riding the subways every day. What else can I do? Pray, pray, pray....

I took these photos from my office. This tower is going to be lovely, and you can see in the second photo, the water already running into one of the two footprints.

St. Paul's Chapel, which was a safe haven for so many workers after that day, has posted a theme: 'Remember to Love'. People wrote notes on white ribbons that were also printed with that message. That's what I'm doing today. Loving is an antidote to grief and sadness and fear, whatever the circumstances. One mother who lost her son in the Trade Center was quoted in the New York Times as saying, "'How to resist falling in love with death was the question...Depression and despair is one way of falling in love with death. Violence and aggression is another way.'" Cultivating love raises us to the light.

I've gotten some inquiries about how I'm spending the day today. My Andy and I took a walk in Central Park with a cherished friend. I snapped this photo of Sheep's Meadow. The scene was so peaceful and normal and alive. This is New York too. Anne Lamott wrote: "Hard rain makes a mess, but it also fills in space we usually walk through without even noticing. It makes the stuff we can't usually see - air and wind - visible." That's how I feel about September 11th; it throws into relief the simple loveliness of life. It makes me grateful. And I remember to love.

And you?

How did you remember today?

What's Your Red Dress?

Photo Source

It was sort of fitting that Hurricane Irene ushered in my first vacation of this year. After starting a new job last July, I have been on the road about 21 of the past 52 weeks; I regularly work 12 hour days. Mind you, I'm not complaining (I'm employed! And I like my team: bonus!), nor am I doing that wacky New Yorker routine of "I'm busier than anyone in the entire world, which demonstrates my inherent worth to all of you less busy/important people around me." I'm just saying, I'm a little keyed up. (This is also the person who was so focused on an Excel spreadsheet she thought the recent earthquake we felt in New York City was just the HVAC system kicking in in her office building. In other news: I need a life.)

Although the hurricane largely spared* both New York City as well as my parents' house, where we camped out for the weekend, the lead up to it was all booming headlines and dire warnings, generating for me an exciting level of low grade anxiety. By the time we reached the beach house, I was a ball of stress: my first night here, I found myself sleepwalking!

Instead of catching up on various creative projects, I have largely spent my time here staring blankly into the middle realm and wondering if The Muse has given up on me. Remember those blissful days when I was able to post here daily? Sigh.

So, absent my own creative energy, I bring you other people's!

Remember how Litachiquita from For Serious Batman, who guest posted here about life's amazingness and the accordion that saved her from a bad marriage, taught us the word "peen?" Well, she recently saved my life by sending me a link to The Bloggess and her adventures with Beyonce' the giant metal chicken (now you know why everyone has been running around screaming "knock, knock, motherf*cker"). Which led me to reading back-posts over at The Bloggess til I found the famous, traveling red dress. Which is what I wanted to tell you about.

It's about living with exuberance and abandon and laughter. It's about valuing yourself enough to go for it, whatever "it" might be for you. Interestingly, she doesn't mention Excel spreadsheets even once...

I'm thinking, that red dress would look sweet with my red hair. Exuberance suits us, don't you think?

And you?

What's your "red dress"?

*I know a lot of people were hit really hard by the storm. Sending well wishes during the recovery.