Little Friends

Frances collects little white stones that sit waiting for her in the grass behind the restaurant while I sit at a table inside checking email, watching her through the glass. She carefully puts them in the pockets of her blue rain jacket. Every time I check on her through the window I see her dancing around the area where all the stones are, singing and talking to herself and then picking up more. When we get home and out of the car she asks me to zip up her pockets which are both jammed full. “Hold on,” I say as I put the keys and cups and trash in my hands on top of the car so I can help her. When I turn around she is already halfway to the cabin. She is running her fastest and I watch the little white stones drop to the ground behind her with every step. Something is pulling her to the house and she has already forgotten them. Later, when we are walking back to the car, I point out the white stones laying in the grass where she dropped them. She looks at me like she has no idea what I am talking about, and says she has never seen them before. Perhaps to her they never were stones. Maybe they were treasure, or little friends.

Cows

Today we looked at cows. Grace and Frances and I stood at the side of the road, in the rain, and talked about the cows whose milk we had just purchased from a small farm. Frances was the one who didn’t want to drive away without seeing them. They weren’t where they were last year, but we found them down the road. There were three cows, three calves, and two heifers. “Heifers are like teenagers,” I said.
“What’s a teenager?” Frances asked.
“Someone who is no longer a child but not yet grown up.” We tried to guess who was whose mother and if one of them was pregnant. As we stood there talking about them, the cows moved closer. Big brown eyes and a wide wet nose covered in flies, came real close. Frances wanted to touch her and this one, the biggest of them all, a beautiful brown lady with horns, let Frances’ tiny finger touch her wide nostril. “We’re all girls!” Frances said with glee.

Back to Vermont

This year, Vermont greeted us with silent lightening on the lake. When we pulled up to the cabin after 7 hours drive from New York, we immediately went down to the lake which was just starting to fall into the evening routine. The sun was still hovering low over the hills and its rays were doing a sparkly dance on the tiny waves that the breeze was making. The light was warm on the round cheeks of my daughters faces as we headed out in the paddle boat to see if we could find the loon.

When we left Brooklyn this morning I had a mysterious feeling of ambivalence. This is our fourth summer coming to the same spot and yet I found myself wondering why we were going. It was like I was one of the many people back home in LA who look confused when I tell them what our summer plans are. They could understand Cape Cod or Hawaii or Puerto Rico. But why Vermont?

After we finally broke out of the traffic vortex which happened much later into Connecticut than I expected and were on the road through New England I started to get more excited. The woods, the lake, the friends, the fun, the hikes, the canoes all started to come back in my mind. And when we passed the sign that said “Welcome to Vermont!” where we shared our stretch of road with only one other car for miles, and after we had visited the cooperative health food store where beautiful earthy young blonds with dreadlocks help you find things, the excitement started to build, This was Vermont.

After our first evening boat ride and pizza dinner and Ben and Jerry’s for dessert I gave the girls a bath. I left them alone for a minute and went outside because I thought I heard the loon calling. It was pitch black but it was definitely the loon so I walked down to the dock. The wind was gone. There was no movement except for the sound of the loon echoing across the lake punctuated by frogs clearing their throats and flashes of light in the corner. I couldn’t see any forks of electricity. And there was no sound, no thunder. No leaves rustling. Just the sound of the loon and the frogs, some distant voices laughing, very low rumblings that were so faint I wasn’t sure they existed outside of my imagination and the flashing of light, on and off.

Looking Back

I had a shift in perspective today as I rode a rented bike around Governor’s Island. I grew up staring at this little island that sits between Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan from my parents apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I know I asked about it a million times, never understanding the answers I was given about why it was off limits to the general public. I guess for a long time it was inhabited by the coast guard and their families and has been open to the public on various limited occasions over the years. For the past two summers it has been open to the public every weekend. You can take a ferry there from Brooklyn or Manhattan and ride rented bikes around it. There are no cars, but nice paved roads make it easy to ride.

So there I was, riding around the island behind my niece and daughter. As we rode past the side of the island that faces Brooklyn I looked up to see the building I grew up in. I had never seen it from here. I had a flash of myself, as a kid looking out the window, wondering what that place was. Now I know.

Up on the Roof

Tonight I was hanging out on the roof of my father's apartment building, the building I grew up in, with my daughter and my niece who are both seven. We were taking in the view of the east river and the Manhattan skyline; a view that is beyond familiar yet never ceases to startle me. The skyline with all of its million lights on, the activity of the boats and the aircraft, and just being high up above the harbor where two big rivers meet is a view I can stare at endlessly and not get tired. We stared for a while. There was a warm but very strong west wind blowing that made us open our arms and laugh and we felt like we were standing at the front of a big ship. We sat down and looked up at the crescent moon and tried to decide which were stars and which planes. We watched a police helicopter circle very low to the water. We talked about the world and the universe, the sun and the moon, and how you never know if you are on top or on the bottom of earth. We laughed so hard at this and other cosmic questions that it reminded me of being stoned with high school friends up on the same roof thirty (yes thirty) years ago. But hanging out with two seven year old girls was much more fun.

Taking Responsibility

It does not mean guilt. That much I know. It is not apologizing for things. It is not about feeling bad or taking up space with remorse. Taking responsibility means taking whatever happens or happened and turning it into knowledge and experience that I can use. Things happen. Terrible things. Good things. Ordinary things. It is all a picture for me to put together, like puzzle pieces, adding up to make a whole. Yes I am evolving, we all are, even if it doesn’t always look that way. Frustration with where I am has everything to do with a lack of patience, with myself and with others.

Let’s take the gulf and the oil that is gushing up from a hole in the earth that we made, creating a huge black cloud of destruction. At first there was a lot of blaming going on, which is always my first response as a human being, isn’t it? Lets blame BP. Lets blame Obama. Lets blame our neighbor with the big SUV. But unless I am living on an island somewhere eating coconuts, I have to take responsibility as a consumer of oil. Living in LA, I consume a large amount of gasoline just to live. I have to get to the store and so do the trucks that deliver the food there etc. There is no way around being responsible and no point in measuring how much. I am responsible. I cannot blame anyone for the oil spill. My consumption of oil makes me a contributor.

Let me say, thinking this way has changed my thinking about the spill. It is making me do things. It is making me try to reduce my use of the car and that is good. Really good. It is changing my thinking, and that is the important part. I have to change the way I think about everything, not just the car and the oil, but the water I use, the money I spend and on down to every little detail of my life. Taking responsibility, to me, really means being conscious of every choice I make and trying to do the best I can. This includes having patience.

As I think about responsibility, the other piece of it is taking responsibility for my talent. The things I am good at and love to do are my greatest gift to the world. It is my responsibility to get them out there.

Vermont

Every summer for the past four, my children, husband and I have spent many weeks in Vermont. I have been preparing for this trip for a few weeks and we leave in two days. I cannot wait! Every year our time there seems to just get better. Maybe it's because our connections to the people and the place grow stronger and yield more rewards, which are great and plentiful.

I think the thing I am looking forward to most is seeing the loons again and hearing their calls echo across the lake. I am looking forward to sleeping with the windows open with our heads next to the screen so we can smell the exhales of the cedars. I am looking forward to a lot of Ben and Jerry's. I am looking forward to buying Frances a new pair of crocs at my favorite everything store, the Pick and Shovel. I am looking forward to seeing old friends and watching Bread and Puppet perform in an open field. I am looking forward to walking in the pine forest, where it is always dark. I am really looking forward to the rain. Most of all I am looking forward to having adventures and seeing what this summer has in store for us. Yes.

Birds I Noticed Today in San Francisco

Five pigeons huddling on the sidewalk
Seagulls, starlings, pigeons and crows eating chips and french fries
A red-winged blackbird among a crew of starlings and a couple of Brewer’s blackbirds
Four turkey vultures soaring high above
A mature western gull perching nearby
A juvenile western gull playing on the breeze
A cormorant floating and diving in the bay
Four Canadian geese coming ashore
A red-tail hawk frozen mid-air

Turkey Feather

I have been packing all day for two trips, one short to SF and one long to VT. I stared at all my feathers for a while and decided the one I couldn't live without was the turkey feather. It symbolizes gratitude for me and I am so grateful for the people who keep coming to me for healing. They are healing me!

Frances makes a friend

Today at a fourth of July party, Frances held a roly-poly (aka a pill bug) in her hand for a long time. She lounged in the pool, grazed the food table, changed out of her bathing suit and climbed all over my friend’s lap, all with the little bug in her grasp. Every once in a while I’d ask her: “Frances, Do you still have the roly-poly?” and she would open her fist and show us. I forgot about him in the bustle of packing up the towels and potluck dish as we were leaving, but in the car she said, “Mom! I am telling the roly-poly that it’s going to be a long time in the car!”

Fresh

A crow flew overhead as I rounded the corner on my bike, zipped past the XL SUV that was stopped there, looked in at the inhabitants who looked at me like I was crazy and thought to myself, "You don't know what you're missing!"

Something Amazing

A few weeks ago Grace was in my studio, asking if she could have one of my feathers. I said yes and she picked up the parrot feather which is slightly green. I told her she would have to choose a different one. "That's the only parrot feather I have and it was a gift from your father." She was immediately fixated on it and none of the other feathers would do. She was disappointed with her second choice of an iridescent turkey feather. I told her that if she really wanted a parrot feather all she had to do was ask. “Ask who?” she wanted to know. “The parrots, or the sky, or the sun or the moon! “ I said. “Whoever you want to ask!” So she did. I think she asked them all.

The other day we had a conversation I had been dreading. It was after we read a story in which an older brother tells his younger sibling that their parents are the real Santa Claus. I saw Grace’s face drop and I asked her if she wanted to talk about Santa Claus. “I just want to know the truth” she said and I could see she was holding back a lot of feelings. I took a deep breath and said something like this:

Yes it's true that we put the presents under the tree and fill the stockings up. But the great thing about Santa Claus has nothing to with whether he is real or not. He represents a child’s ability to believe in things like a fat man who squeezes down your chimney and lives forever and manages to travel around the world in one night behind flying deer delivering presents to every single child. Or a rabbit who does the same sort of thing. Or a fairy who knows every time you lose a tooth. It’s all about magic, and in a lot of ways, kids are closer to magic than adults are. But magic does exist. I experience it all the time. It’s more subtle than a bunch of presents under a tree. It’s like trusting a feeling you have that things happen just at the right time because someone’s looking out for you.

She accepted my explanation and added that it was fun to watch her little sister believe anything Grace told her and we laughed. She admitted she felt disappointed but said she was also relieved to know the truth, because her suspicions about it had been bugging her for a while.

Yesterday she found two pretty gray feathers on our front lawn. She was delighted when I told her they belonged to a mourning dove. “I love mourning doves!” she squealed. And then she said, “I am glad they gave me a feather. I really wanted a parrot feather but I am happy with my mourning dove feathers anyway.”

Today we went to an outdoor concert in the park and she came running up to me with a huge smile on her face and a beautiful green feather in her fingers. Much more colorful than mine, it has several different shades of green in it. “You were right Mama! All I had to do was ask!”

Tonight when I put her to bed she said, “I am so glad I found that feather and that you weren’t lying to me.” “About what?” “About magic. It really does exist.”