May This new year be filled with peace of heart and peace of mind…
The mists, gentle rain, pulsing winds and shining light of this corner of the world fill my heart’s cup. This is Middle Earth, with friendly hobbits, wizards and elves living in the timeless forest, freely offering sweet potions of wisdom and blessings to all.
As this new year begins, my resolutions swirl around my feet and float up above my shoulders, caressing me into feeling more faith in myself. Yes, I will (fill in the blank) and yes, I will (fill in the blank) etc. We’ll see how it goes.
A Sufi teaching says that gratitude is the key to will —and while I don’t yet understand that exactly, I am teasing out possible meanings. Steeping ourselves in gratitude – authentically counting our blessings: for life, for health, for shelter, for birdsong, clearly empowers us, if only to get up and out of bed in the morning!
To start the New Year, I also like to reflect quietly, and re-read passages from some of my favorite works. This year it’s Turgenev’s First Love, Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, and Muslim Sufi mystic Inayat Khan’s unique symphony of truths, Vadan: “True love is without beginning or end…it is willing surrender…It is love that teaches us, Thou, not I.”
Following a theme of love and renewal, my favorite Pablo Neruda poem, from Extravagaria, has swum to the surface of my consciousness, so I’ll share it here:
This is where we live
I am one of those that live in the middle of the sea and close to the twilight a little beyond those stones.
When I came and saw what was happening I decided on the spot.
The day had spread itself and everything was light and the sea was beating like a salty lion, many-handed.
All that deserted space was singing and I, lost and awed, looking toward the silence, opened my mouth and said: “Mother of the foam, expansive solitude, here I will begin my own rejoicing, my particular poetry.”
From then on I was never let down by a single wave. I always found the flavour of the sky in the water, in the earth, and the wood and the sea burned together through the lonely winters.
I am grateful to the earth for having waited for me when sky and sea came together like two lips touching; for that’s no small thing, no? – to have lived through one solitude to arrive at another, to feel oneself many things and recover wholeness.
I love all the things there are, and of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one; and that’s why I go from life to life, from guitar to guitar, and I have no fear of light or of shade and almost being earth myself, I spoon away at infinity.
So no one can ever fail to find my doorless numberless house – there between dark stones, facing the flash of the violent salt, there we live, my lover and I, there we take root, Grant us help then. Help us to be more of the earth each day! Help us to be more the sacred foam, more the swish of the wave!
“My soul is trembling in the wake of a colossal change,” I said —
“This is what you do,” replied a dear friend of many decades, reminding me of my life’s path so far, the cataclysms that have driven my personal evolution.
I’m sitting on my sheepskin beside the fire in the wood stove in a cabin built 150 years ago. I’m listening to Boris, the glorious Americana rooster sing his cock-a-doodle-doo. I’m watching Anna’s hummingbirds, one, two, four, five, seven and more, stream to the two feeders outside the window, their magenta head-dresses glowing in the muted light of this overcast day. The beams and shingles of the 19th century cabin ceiling were crafted from hand-hewn redwood milled from this canyon long ago.
It wasn’t an easy process, leaving my four-bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of endless corn and soybean farms in the middle of the continent. The neat widow’s nest I’d fluffed and sorted until it was just right, my late husband’s library organized by subject in the redwood bookshelves he’d built, my tribe of loving and creative friends, my well-appointed Little House on the Prairie. Four years of dramatic transition – and blessed support.
And now, back home.
The tender romance that blossomed before and during the months of my cancer treatment: beginning in a French bistro in Carmel, a cup of coffee and a hug, with the kind-hearted gentleman who went on to take care of me the week of my surgery and who swept me away back to the coast in a madcap road trip last month.
Feeling the blessing of my husband on the other side, who would want me to be cared for, loved and happy.
Now, feeling nostalgic for a place I wanted to leave for much of my time there. We human beings are such odd creatures. Perhaps it was the shock of all Big Sur’s easily forgotten details – cold bedrooms and hauling firewood, poison oak blooming on my arms and face from touching the pets, a dash of PTSD looking out at the wooded canyons all around this Little House in the Big Woods.
Small things, a small price to pay for the privilege of living in love, again.
The joys of touch, the warmth of hugs, of cuddling under the covers. A delightful man who brings me coffee in the morning, who kisses my feet and makes me laugh. Like, duh.
Such a decisive moment and when did this change begin? A query from my sweetheart’s spiritual daughter, a beekeeper and animal rescuer who visited us this week.
It began in the moments when I realized I might have only 5 years to live. Wouldn’t one last chapter be sweet? My gentle knight in shining armor consoled me, telling me over and over that I would be OK, and we agreed we wanted to spend this next chapter together. So here we are.
Now begins a time of forest bathing, star-gazing, and luminous healing in domestic bliss.
Even a spiritual warrior trembles on the brink. She wonders about choices and consequences, longs for what is past, then clarifies her priorities in order to move forward with a peaceful and courageous heart.
Iowans love their trees, and in Autumn you can see why. Suddenly, every street is a Klimt painting, with glowing golden, amber, chartreuse and scarlet leaves trembling on slender branches, getting ready to let go and fall to earth.
Last week, I planted (with the help of a big strong man) a crab-apple tree in my front yard. Awash with plump red berries, it’s in front of the house to the right of the front door. I can see it from where I sit on the couch beside the fire, looking out the window, there she is. Torrey’s tree.
I dashed home from work when I learned the digging had begun, arriving just in time. As Denny filled the bucket with water, I carried out a quarter cup of my husband’s ashes to the edge of the hole in the earth. On my knees, I scattered the bits of bone in a perfect circle, ready to receive the roots.
I went inside to get my camera, returning to the front door to see that the tree was in place. Staked on the sides, trunk circled with a white plastic tube, a metal cage around it as well, it is protected for the coming months as it goes into dormancy. Then, in Spring, it will burst into white blossoms.
Love and Death. How close they are, intense, mysterious, inevitable. To die for love is the romantic’s dream come true. Death makes life and love sweeter. The fact that life ends gives us purpose, and the drive to grow our souls. Love, I now know, is sacrifice: joyous, willing sacrifice. Sacrifice that is an honor, a privilege, a gift of grace.
Human cremains have a strange, powerful energy. Whether they sit quietly in a cardboard box in a closet for decades, rest in an expensive urn on a mantel, are scattered to the winds or tossed into the sea, they are more than just a symbol of a soul. They are, in a very real way, the last of an individual’s physical essence in this world.
And now, back to trees. The Wedding Tree is a California scrub oak perched above a canyon, one of the many mini-ridges of land in Big Sur, stretching like a finger down towards the highway, the cliffs, and the waves.
A picture-perfect place for rustic and romantic weddings, we hosted several unforgettable nuptials beneath this oak. One involved the bride arriving on a bejeweled white horse. For another, we placed rows of hay bales for seating down the hillside and the tree was decorated in tiny bells and colorful streamers. All of these celebrations involved toasts, pledges, and heartfelt poetry.
It was on this mountain that Torrey and I said our private wedding vows one brisk and glorious Winter afternoon. It was a spontaneous, flirtation-turned-serious moment. In an instant, our guardian angels took charge and we began the next chapter of our great adventure.
“With this orange I thee wed.” I said, feeding him a section of mandarin orange from the citrus tree beside my bedroom door. He took the orange tenderly from my hand, peeled off another section and fed me a small piece of the delicious, tangy fruit.
“With this orange I thee wed,” he said.
Then, Torrey lifted up the orange to the heavens and said,
“With this orange, we are wed.”
Next, we looked out over the shining blue ocean and sighed together, a nice big exhale. The simplest possible wedding ceremony, and all of it just for us.
A wind line from Pfeiffer point several miles to the north divided the calm ocean waters from the darker, wilder open sea.
On another afternoon we stood watching the sunset beneath this same scrub oak. The neighbor’s giant white Turkish sheepdog appeared at our side. Kash was a mystical creature, intuitive, protective and playful.
“These big dogs are so special, “Torrey said, and I replied,
“Yes, but they don’t live as long as the little ones.”
His eyes twinkled and his smile was wise and kind.
“Well, darlin’, we can’t have everything we want in this life, that’s not why we’re here.”
We laughed, but today I understand this moment better. When we are blessed with a great love later in life, we can’t expect it to last for decades.
Last August I made a return pilgrimage to the Wedding Tree. Alone, I buried a small amount of Torrey’s bones in the earth beneath the oak. The day was gray and overcast, the ocean invisible. The little tree had grown a size or two larger, and was garlanded with heavy ropes of Spanish moss, that brushed the grasses beneath it. The light all around was muted and soft. The land was quiet as I whispered my prayers to the earth and sky.
I placed the fine white powder into a depression in the soil, covered it with a round river stone I’d found, then brushed handfuls of oak leaves onto the tiny sacred site. The wind blew, I looked north into the fog, and wept.
Love and Death, entwined on a magical tree above the sea.
When you throw parties, the fortune-teller told me with a smile, the dead come to enjoy the vibe. They love to celebrate Life with you and your friends. At the next gathering of my tribe I imagined indigenous people dancing and drumming in the meadow, while the previous owners of the land cracked open a bottle of champagne, pouring it into old-fashioned coupe glasses.
Always with gatherings, there would be libations. Adult beverages, as a friend of mine, a true wino, calls them. A true wino meaning someone who has an extensive wine cellar of fine vintages of the grape, who can hold forth in flowery language about “terroir” (the wine tastes like where it was grown) and “legs” (wine streaks on a glass, called tears) and flavors reminiscent of blueberries, figs, lemons, lapsang-souchong, black pepper with just a hint of raspberry. Whatever. A connoisseur, who basically likes to get drunk every night, ideally with like-minded bon-vivants.
In my previous life, there was never a gathering without wine, a good bottle or two or three or four. This definitely got the conversation and other juices flowing. My first husband was a sommelier (French for wine steward) as well as a gourmet chef, so not only did I not need to cook (and was, in fact, banned from the kitchen), I also got to get loaded with our guests at every gathering. Afternoons, evenings and weekends that were filled with storytelling, laughter, dancing, sunset-watching and star-gazing. I’m not complaining! As they say, the fun never stopped.
Until it got old.
Or was it that I did?
Coming home to a house full of unexpected guests, and putting on the “drink bag” (like a horse with a sack full of oats hanging from its ears) became less and less appealing. Not to mention the flirtations that I witnessed when I was occasionally sober, my then-husband’s especially. No one realizes how transparent they become when they’re high. Why? Because they’re high! Really kind of a blessing.
We were always seeking our tribe, and finding it. Real community, yet so often we found ourselves celebrating in the bottom of a bottle.
One evening a dear friend, at the time a total lush, suggested I open something from the “cellar” the cellar being a stack of cardboard boxes filled with wine in the darkest corner of the closet, so I dove in. I thought the vintage said 1994. As I opened the bottle of Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet I looked more carefully at the label, Nineteen Seventy Four. Ooops.
Oh no, I yelped, and started to push the cork back in.
Well, that won’t work girlie, said my friend, laughing, and so I pulled the cork out all the way. We each had a couple of glasses as we sat on the Adirondack chairs and watched the sunset over the ocean. Not only was it deliciously forbidden wine, it was actually the best wine I’d ever had, before or since (with the exception of a lady winemaker friend’s Santa Maria Chardonnay that tasted like flowers, but that’s another story.)
I learned later that the Napa Valley Cabernets from the 1970’s weren’t as amped with alcohol: 11-12% instead of the 14 or 15% which is the norm today. A much smoother, gentler buzz, and no hangover.
Speaking of hangovers, I was the Hangover Queen. It seemed at every gathering I would draw the short straw and be the one with the vicious, killer hangover.
They came in all kinds: the creeping slow tide, when I would wake up and give thanks to God that I had dodged the bullet, only to have the classic splitting headache come on later and last for a few days. Or, the kind when I would feel so woozy I couldn’t eat breakfast, or even have a cup of coffee. Or, and this one happened to me a lot, the icepick through the eyeball variety, leaving me wondering for hours if I was on the verge of keeling over.
One night when Torrey was in the hospital at the University of Iowa, I forgot the damage two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc in a lonely hotel room can do. At the hospital pharmacy the next day I found myself eyeballing the Alka-seltzer packages. I asked a beautiful young woman, clearly a pharmacy student, if this kind of Alka-seltzer was, um, good for hangovers?
I even confessed that I had one, and needed relief.
You know, I said, “Plop, plop – fizz, fizz oh what a relief it is?” I didn’t expect she would get this. I showed her the 50-year old TV commercial on You-tube, which she appreciated.
She asked the senior pharmacist in the back, who also remembered the famous jingle.
Actually not this kind of Alka-seltzer, but Naproxen (aka Aleve) will help, she told me.
Oh, and the acetaminophen (Tylenol) I’d been taking for hangovers for years? It’s contraindicated for alcohol use. Who knew?
What a blessing it is to get older and finally give all that up. I miss the celebrations of course, but relish feeling better in the mornings, and all day long. I also confess to feeling a little smug. At last, I’m getting over this life-long case of AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder). Hallelujah!
I drank my last glass of wine when I met a friend for lunch the day before my husband, the one who had rescued me, passed away. Exhausted and agitated after six months of battle in the hospital wars, I had no understanding that he was going home, and so very soon.
The caregiver suggested I take a short break, and that shared bottle of wine was like a dose of Ativan. Later that afternoon Hospice arrived and Torrey set off on his voyage.
The next day, as I pressed my body against his in our bed, his body cold, turning into sacred marble, mine still pumping blood, weak with grief, I felt the last little molecules of the grape leaving my system. For good. That craving is gone.
The following day I poured the last of the cheap red wine down the kitchen sink.
What is a soul family? Do we gather with them after we die? Torrey thought so. We were family to each other on this earthly plane, with a love both intimate and unconditional. Because of this, our souls grew deeper in unexpected ways. Such a blessing to have this, at least once in a lifetime.
It could be that we are all in the same tribe and can’t feel it, at least not yet. When I would sit in circles in retreats, I would say to myself, who are these people? I don’t think I have anything in common with them. Then we would start sharing our stories, and I would realize, without a doubt: we are the same, we are connected. Just variations on a theme.
But the soul family, these are the souls that follow each other from life to life, learning, loving, growing. This round the soul is my mother, later, my child. This life, my enemy, next life, my friend. Who was I last time? Who will I be next time? Imponderable questions.
One thing I know for certain – there are people we are supposed to meet. When you see the light in the eyes of your beloved, you follow that person, through hell if necessary, and all the way up to the gates of heaven if you can.
