Seeds with Wings

In The Power of One, a novel by Bryce Courteney, an abused five-year-old named Peekay is befriended by a champion boxer on a train. "'Piece a' cake, Peekay. I already told you. You're a natural.' Hoppie's words were like seedpods with wings. They flew straight out of his mouth and into my head, where they germinated in the rich, fertile, receptive soil of my mind."

Right Angles

Discovered an Al-anon meeting at the church next door. Just four of us met at noon. Plenty of time to talk once or twice. After the closing Serenity Prayer, we stayed in the circle and talked. Something powerful about circles, about listening to honest, even gut-wrenching stories. As has happened in meetings many times before, I was at wrong angles to myself and my world when I came in and at right angles when I came out.

Room with a View

"The kind of self-care that accompanies recovery is [...] more loving, more freeing, and more focused on tending to our own responsiblities. It's a healing, rejuvenating, renewing kind of self-care, one with room for feelings, needs, wants, desires, goals, plans, and lives of our own--lives with meaning and purpose, ones that make sense." (From Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps, Melodie Beattie)

Miss Mermaid

Blue skies to accipere (take to one's self.) Sun dapples my desk. At 3 p.m., I will meet my 83-year-old friend, Dee, for a Fellini film. She will come rushing in, those long strides, that tilted almost pelican way she walks, looking fabulous, five minutes to show time. "Am I late?" Breathlessly describe the three buses she took to get there. Then we will settle in for the theatre of the fantastical and the strange. Actually, the film, I VITELLONI, was neither. Filmed in the early 1950s after the war, a tale of four slackers in a small Italian village by the ocean. Classic scene: a young woman crowned Miss Mermaid 1953. "And she almost didn't enter!" her kerchiefed mother cried. The boys hung out together, lovingly exchanging cigarettes and girls. The cad found redemption with Miss Mermaid. I had forgotten how much I love old black and white films, the crisp silhouettes, the way the camera lingers on people's faces. I brought Dee a rose to honor Fellini and wore a pink scarf that blew away from my neck as I walked. Wore John Lennon-like sunglasses which Dee thought "very Hollywood." Wonderful to see her. Wonderful afternoon.

Wedding Plans

The moments before sleep are when I feel the most alone. My bed cover is green with yellow swirls -- reminds me of the sea, and when I lay down, seems as vast as the sea, my body a branch floating in it. A friend said last night he had finally accepted that he might not partner again. I opened my mouth to say I felt that same and couldn't. I attended all three of my siblings' weddings, and others. Read countless romance novels as a teenager. The dream always there. Even through the not-so-bad, the really bad relationships. Several years ago, I told an old friend I had revised my plans for my wedding. She laughed. "Honey, you've been revising your wedding for twenty years." It's true. I don't want abandon those plans, live out the rest of my life alone, and I suppose I may. But it has occurred to me that I would rather have this. This standing taller in myself. This often wry self-affection. This sense that I'm here, not in "you," whoever you are, not becoming you. Here, in yes, the sometimes lonely acres of my bed.

To Take to Oneself

In December 1988, Floyd Skloot was stricken overnight by a virus that targeted his brain, permanently disabling key executive functions. The following excerpt is from his fine memoir, In the Shadow of Memory. "Over time, I began to recognize the possibilities for transformation. I saw another kind of acceptance as being viable, the kind espoused by Robert Frost when he said, 'Take what is given, and make it over your own way.' That is, after all, the root meaning of the verb, "to accept," which comes from the Latin accipere, or "take to oneself." It implies an embrace. Not a giving up but a welcoming. People encourage the sick to resist, to fight back [...] I began to realize that the most aggressive act I could perform on my own behalf was to stop struggling and discover what I could really do."

Worry Luggage

Murky evening, and me, murky in it. A channel surfing, ice-cream eating murk person. I talked in a meeting today about my worry luggage--about wanting to let the universe carry it. When I went to Orcas earlier this month, I packed a shoulder bag with four hard-back books, running shoes, clothes, and food for three days. I lurched onto the Anacortes ferry so tilted one of the ferry people said, "Good God, you packed the wrong bag. Didn't you have something with wheels?" I have spent the last two weeks shouldering fears about finances and finding work in much the same fashion. My favorite line in The Summer of 42 was, "Herme was a worrier and a sufferer, and it was beautiful." But, it's not.

I'm Back

Sometimes, I think I know the exact moment when I shift out of a depression. A flag, an occurrence, even wrenching in a small way, signals to me. I walk down 18th on Capitol Hill and see an exquisitely green caterpillar inching across the sidewalk. The quality of noticing is what I notice. I crouch down and watch. The bug is so green, undulating, intent on its next appointment. And then I know. I have been given back my sight. Again. I'm back.

Brown-out

Woke up in a brown-out, my name for depression. Didn't know right away. Was able to go to the gym. But when I came home, accomplished nothing. Sat on the floor of my bedroom, paralytic. All the leaves are brown, leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. Origin for the term. I think of people all over the world muscling through days like today and worse. Of course, didn't think about them earlier. Just about me. How I hate this. How easy now to forget the part of me that goes frothy about rollerblading. Just the night before, felt sanguine while skating around Lake Union. Have to remind myself that I tend to manage to right myself fairly quickly. But even when dropped into it suddenly, the nature of depression is a feeling of endlessness: there was never a time before it began, and will never be a time after it ends. All the leaves are brown.