Licefest

Now that it is behind me, now that I am back to washing hair on a regular schedule, now that we can let the sheets stay on the bed for more than 24 hours, I think I can breathe. I think I can write about it.

I tried a few times before but I guess I was still too deep in the process of eradication to be able to tell the story of how lice invaded my life and somehow managed to teach me something. For me, in any hardship there has to be a lesson. Otherwise, what's the point? This lesson was not as clean as I wanted it to be, but then again, lice are not exactly clean.

What they do is force you to be fiercely clean. As a family we have never been cleaner. Normally I don't put much value on cleanliness. I'd rather save water than be squeaky clean and I don't believe in washing clothes after one wearing. But when the lice came, we had to change our habits. We had to wash our hair every day, and comb it with a magnifying glass nearby. We had to put our clothes directly in to the washing machine at the end of the day. We had to wash our sheets when we got out of bed in the morning. Towels had to be washed after each use. Our house became one big cleaning cycle. Everything, including our bodies, was in a tight and constant cycle of wash, dry and fold. Every inch of all of our heads were under constant scrutiny. Eradication was the goal and we were determined to reach it be any means necessary. If there were a more brutal solution we would not have hesitated to embrace it, but there really is only one solution: Constant cleansing.

Constant cleansing got old after a few days but there was no vacation. We had to keep going. After the first full week of it, as I was losing all sense of time and who I was anymore, Dave admitted that it was starting to get to him too. The kids were watching movie after movie, sometimes several a day as we spent hours on hair treatments and the endless combing combing combing. It was hard on them too. Especially Grace who had to spend twenty minutes every morning in the office for more scrutinizing before being admitted to school.

Constant cleansing. As I started to accept that we were being forced to change our habits I realized how hard that is. And it seems to be cropping up in every aspect of my life. I am having to change my posture to correct back problems. I have to change the way I deal with money because it's long overdue. I have to change the way I talk to my children because they are growing up. I have to change the way I engage in conversation because I am no longer willing to gossip. All of these aspects of my life (and the list goes on) are going through a lot of scrutiny and cleansing. I am finding that in order to really live my life the way I want to, I have to really change everything. Because as my teacher loves to say, "How you do anything is how you do everything," so if I'm going to change anything, I have to change everything. And that is what the lice had to teach me.

Lost Kitten

It was Saturday and the whole family was going to the park for a picnic. As Dave was taking things out to the car, the girls were excitedly hovering around him as he exited the front door, and he barked for them to shut the door before the cat escaped. We have two kittens and one of them likes to run outside. Living in the hills above Los Angeles we have heard many stories of small animals disappearing, presumably hunted by the large coyote population. So we keep the cats inside, which goes against my nature. I like to let animals roam freely and I trust them to protect themselves and acquire their street smarts by having urban adventures. I had recently been letting Tabitha, the one that likes to escape, go out on her own and every time she got herself back in, or waited by the door to be let in. So I wasn’t too worried when I saw her making her dash for the door. I watched as she scooted out and ran to the little clump of plants out front, a favorite spot of hers. I told Dave I would get some food to lure her back in while he got the girls strapped into their seats.

When I got back outside with a dish of smelly wet cat food, I couldn’t find her in the bushes. I went all around, carefully looking between the plants, calling her name and tapping the dish. Where could she have gone? Anywhere was the answer. We looked around the periphery of the house, while the girls were getting upset inside the car and Dave and I were getting agitated with the frustration of her fast disappearance and the mounting fear of losing her. We left the food out and told the girls she would hopefully be there when we got back.

Moments after driving away from the house the girls had moved on to other concerns and my own was drifting away. We had a nice time at the park, eating salads and sandwiches on the grass and watching a local drill team practice their cheers. Grace rode her scooter around and around the playground while Dave napped and Frances and I watched the cheer leaders.

When we got home it took a minute before we remembered Tabitha was missing. We looked for her again around the edges of the property and I peeked into the neighbors’ yards. But no luck. She was nowhere. The rest of the day we left the front and back doors open and locked Twyla, the other kitten, in a back bedroom so that she would not try the same thing.

As it started to get dark we all began to worry some more. Each of us quietly blaming ourselves for not shutting the door fast enough and letting her escape. Dusk is when all good kittens need to be safe inside. I thought of Tabitha, almost full grown but still very much a kitten, out in the wilds by herself. I assumed she was probably a block or two away by now and maybe lost. I imagined she was frightened. I gave the girls a bath and Grace started making plans to get another kitten, something she has been angling for ever since we got these two six months ago. I explained that we needed to keep Tabitha’s space open for her to come back. “If we start talking about replacing her now, its like we are shutting the door on her.” Two hours later we reluctantly shut the front and back doors when we went to bed. Dave put more food out along with her bed which he put in a cardboard box with a big hole she could crawl through.

I went out to my studio to pray. I felt a horrible hole in my chest. I had not considered my attachment to Tabitha until that moment. I was the one who picked her out at the Humane Society. We had gone there to pick out two kittens, one for Grace’s birthday and another one to keep it company. I had a strong connection to this beautiful tabby when I looked into her eyes. I felt something. A surge of affection and warmth, and a kind of knowing. She reminded me of my cat Jane who had died two years earlier. Jane had an outsized lifespan, having been my companion for the twenty two years in between graduating from college and middle age. This kitten had the same spunk, the same kind of charisma that Jane had. I knew she would lead an interesting life. Grace picked a yellow Tabby and named her Twyla.

Grace named the one I picked out Tabitha, and she had become the difficult child. She grabbed food off the counter, she got into things she shouldn’t. She consumed rubber bands and knocked things over. It was like having a puppy in the house. Twyla on the other hand was sweet and demure, never getting into trouble and rarely biting our hands. Tabitha was feisty and had brought Frances to tears more than once by scratching her.

But I was not complaining about her as I prayed. I was making promises. I promised not to lose my temper when she attacked the broom while I swept. I promised not to scold her when she pawed the falling litter as I refilled her cat box, making it spill everywhere. I promised to play with her more and scratch her belly every chance I had. I was feeling how much I loved this kitten. Tears were streaming down my face as I spoke to her and pleaded with her to come back, telling her that we couldn’t live without her.

When I went to bed I felt an old familiar feeling in my heart. The sinking feeling that life as you know has been irrevocably changed. “I am worried about her,” my voice carrying all my sadness across the covers. Dave’s response was exactly how I felt: “It makes you realize how much a part of this family she really is.”

The next morning I opened the front door to see the empty box with her cat bed inside and the plate devoid of food. I let myself indulge in the fantasy that it was she who had eaten it. I was making breakfast for the girls when I heard the sound of a cat mewing. I knew this sound of a kitten in distress well and I knew it was her. I flashed to the time I had rescued Jane from a neighboring yard in Brooklyn so many years ago. I yelled to the girls, who were playing in the living room, “I hear Tabitha!” and ran outside to look for her, but she was no where. I could hear but not see her. I ran to the backyard and could hear her cries were close, but where was she? Finally I looked up and found her above me, in a tree! Oh she was beautiful and it was a magnificent sight to see her again. My heart sang, “Tabitha!” But she was in a bad situation. She was walking along a limb that was twenty feet over my head and too narrow for her to turn around on. She kept walking out further and further on the limb while she cried. The branch hung over our roof but it seemed too far for her to jump from my angle. I was thinking we would have to call the fire department when I told Grace, “Get Daddy!” Dave climbed up on the roof and stood at the edge, under the branch she was on. There was at least a foot between them, but he was able to pull the branch down and grab her out of the leaves. He held her inside his jacket as he climbed down the ladder.

She was a different cat now. She had spent a night out and she had survived. In my worried state I had allowed my mind to conjure images of her returning home with cuts and bruises and a piece of her ear missing, like Elsa in Born Free. But she was healthy, clean and beautiful as ever. And proud of herself, which she deserved to be. We were changed too. We have been showering her with love and affection ever since, now fully appreciating her in a way that we hadn’t been.

It has got me thinking about how deep love travels and how fast it takes root in the heart. I really had no idea how much I loved her until she went missing. The desperation I felt as I prayed for her safe return was more than I expected to feel for this newcomer, this kitten who we have had in our family for just a few months. The experience of a temporary loss was enough to wake me up to the fact that I love her fiercely, a fact that I had been sort of ignoring. I suppose, looking back, I was reluctant to love another cat as I had my old friend Jane. And it was a reminder of how strong love is. How quietly it can grow without making me notice it until I have to. And how astounding, to have so much love, and to feel it so completely.

Holiday Miracles

Over the holidays I found myself enjoying a lot of sweets, a lot of meats, and a lot of, hmmm, how shall I categorize the rest…you know what I’m talking about. Breads, pastries, cheeses, dairy products, pasta. White food. That’s it. I generally eat pretty well, consuming a fair amount of fresh fruits and vegetables every day to offset my habit of eating pasta, bread, meat, and dairy products, including butter, butter, butter. I was having a good time, socializing, celebrating, working hard and enjoying all the many gifts of food bestowed on my family. As a rule I don’t eat candy, but Santa Claus put some delicious chocolate morsels in my stocking and I was on a roll so I just kept going. Then it was a road trip to the Bay Area, late at night mind you, so Dave and I needed to stay awake, and what better way than to continue the gluttony. Up at my in-laws house the menu was not in my jurisdiction so I gladly continued to eat whatever was placed before me. I had my share of fresh foods, but by then I was way more into pancakes and pizza than I was persimmons.

I have to admit I let my meditation practice slide a little while we were up there too and I guess that didn’t help matters. There was a price to be paid: I began to lose my focus. I started to have major doubts about my work as a healer and as an artist (writer, what have you). I started to feel down on myself, which immediately translated to down on everyone else. There I was, sitting in the passenger seat next to Dave as he drove us back to LA a day before the end of 2009 and feeling just plain negative. I had this old familiar feeling of being annoyed and I couldn’t wait to be somewhere else but in the car with Dave. Then this miracle happened. I recognized what I was doing. I saw that I was being lazy, sitting there in the passenger seat, criticizing him. And I saw how to stop. I just did. I looked at him and I opened up to all the love I have for him and he for me and I felt all the love that we created, now sleeping with mouths open in their car seats behind us and I watched the negative layer just get sloughed off like dead skin flicked out the window of our fast moving car. I was back in my new skin and I felt grateful that I know how to do that and sort of amazed at how easy it has become.

The next few days I still felt challenged however. No matter how I tried to get on track I kept finding myself wasting time, spinning my wheels, running in circles, not getting to the important work. I would sit down to do something that was a high priority and find myself paralyzed, just sitting there staring at the piles on my desk or the mess in my studio. Feeling defeated.

The other miracle that happened over the holidays was my sister. She gave me a book that is now my favorite about food. It is called “I Am Grateful” and it is written by the people who have some restaurants in SF and LA called “Café Gratitude.” When she gave it to me she explained that she loves this restaurant and that she always feels good after she eats there. This was a surprise to her because she is not a fan of vegetarian food and this is a vegan live food restaurant. Meaning nothing is cooked. I missed that part initially and thought she was handing me a vegan cookbook which I appreciated because I have been cooking more meals that are devoid of animal fat for my family. Before the holidays I was anyway. I didn’t really do more than glance at the book until after we got back to LA.

Right away I had to cook a meal for a family who just had a baby and something was telling me to make it out of my new cookbook. I looked through it and was thrown off by all the preparation involved. I didn’t realize it was not a “COOK” book when she handed it to me, but now as I read it I got the picture. I felt a little intimidated by the nut cheeses and the “rice” made of Daikon. But I kept looking at it and looking at it and finally I found two recipes that I felt I could do. One was like a stir-fry, but instead of cooking the vegetables you marinate them. And the other was a soup, that was really just carrot juice and avocado blended together with a lot of herbs and spices. The day I set aside to make the meal was a busy one and I found myself putting it off until late in the afternoon even though I knew all the prep work was going to take extra time. I was procrastinating which is funny because once I started I immediately felt joy and excitement coming through me that was intoxicating. There I was, up to my elbows in shredded vegetables, liquid concoctions, chopped garlic, minced ginger, and my Cuisinart, my blender and my juicer all covered in colorful muck, and I was having a ball. Dinner was an hour late (for us) but I had my meal all set to deliver to our friends in the morning when I finally sat down to eat. The soup was divine. Spicy, full of flavor and I could taste the prana as it traveled down my grateful throat. I was so excited I kept asking Dave what he thought and he kept answering cheerfully though he doesn’t like to be asked anything repeatedly. I guess the food was inspiring him to humor me. The stir fry was delicious, satisfying and full of a variety of flavors and textures. After the meal I asked Dave (again!) what he thought and he said, “Well, I’m not tired.” He often lays down for 15 or 30 minutes after we eat, but he said instead of the usual post-dinner malaise he felt ready for action. I did too!

It wasn’t until today, four days after that meal (and many more like it) that I made the connection between what I was eating and how I was feeling. I am not usually asleep in this area. I pride myself on knowing a lot about food and nutrition, but I was ignoring what I know and as a result I was eating and feeling crap. Ever since that meal, the first really involved raw meal I have prepared myself, I have been much more mindful about what I am eating. And I have wanted mostly straight up, minimally prepared foods. I am not going totally raw and I probably never will, but I have certainly learned that my body and soul are telling me I need to continue this effort to make entirely raw meals once a week and the rest of the week make it a lot raw. I feel it. And I feel great.

We Are Laughing

We are laughing he and I
On the phone
As I put milk back in the refrigerator
And he tells me how they would accept our “scrappy” crayon drawings as birthday gifts, hang them with magnets on the ice box, and later when we weren’t around sneak them into the trash.

That’s what we do, I laughed
And lied
Thinking of the large file box we have filled with the drawings Grace and Frances have made.
I am selective, I admit, and I do throw things out, but only the things that hold no value to the kids or to us
Everything else is gold

But he is my father and he is old now and I wouldn’t dream of contradicting him
Not now
Not then
I never really have except for the days, so long ago now, when I brought home boyfriends I knew he would disapprove of and with whom that was the main attraction in the first place.
He has trouble walking now

He is calling to tell me he hasn’t been out for days because the sidewalks are slippery with ice
And to ask me what I want for my birthday.
My birthday? I am turning 46
I don’t want anything but a ticket home to see him
But I don’t ask for that
I don’t really want him to buy me plane tickets anymore
I used to, and I used to feel he owed me that much and would feel this tiny victory when he would
But not anymore.

I miss him. And the distance we have grown so used to still hurts
Enough to wish things were different in moments when I am faced with some glaring truth about life and how finite it is
Some moment in a hospital when the only person I really want by my side is him
And the ones when I imagine flying across the country because he needs me
But when the weather is good and life rolling along in its paces I know that it was not really a choice that led me here but some invisible force pulling me to my husband, my children, my career in art and whatever else I call it

Still, tears fall when I get off the phone with him
Our birthdays are coming up and he is 40 years less eight days older than I
so we hit milestones together. Usually the call goes something like:
So, are you ready to be thirty?
If you are ready to be seventy!
Or,
How does it feel to be turning forty-five?
Like I’m halfway to fifty.
Better than halfway to ninety!
But forty-five IS halfway to ninety! And we both laugh even harder

But this is not one of those and we don’t even mention our coming ages. We don’t talk about a lot of things anymore. The past is no longer excavated. I could still ask him about my mother and I even thought about it tonight. I thought about asking him if she had a temper when we were little because I have had to tame the one that my children sometimes ignite. I guess I am thinking he might tell me she had a terrible temper and then I can be relieved for two reasons. First because I don’t remember it so that might mean my kids won’t remember mine. And second because that would place it somewhere in my heritage and otherwise I have no idea where this pressed down anger that wants to explode in odd moments is coming from.
But I don’t ask.
I know the answer. He will say he doesn’t remember her losing her temper and I will be left to decide whether she really didn’t or whether he, like I, just blocked it out.

There was a line connecting so many things that happened today and I started to see it as I was heading into the bedroom to tell Dave about something flowering in Grace that I witnessed at the park this afternoon. I saw the line clearly connecting that story and the one that unfolded minutes ago as I put her to bed and she told me she missed my father and in the same breath that she loved a bright star in the sky. Between the painting of the Milky Way I stood in front of today that was so bold it was as if the guy had nothing stopping him from trying to paint what he felt in his heart, and the laughter I shared with my father over throwing drawings in the trash. The thread was about shifting perspectives and how I am seen by my parents, and by my children.

A week ago, for Christmas I received a round little keepsake box from my mother-in-law (who loves to keep things) and on it, it said: “To the world you are one person, but to one person you are the world.”

Down Time

I am in my post-Christmas peace time, doing nothing all day. We are visiting family who take such complete care of us, I don't have to do anything. It is like taking Christmas afternoon when everyone sits around reading new books or instructions for figuring out new toys, periodically picking at the ham in the kitchen or popping sugar cookies, and extending it out for days. That has been the picture. Doing nothing but zoning out, hanging out and spacing out. I knit a scarf for no one in particular and read a National Geographic cover to cover. Other than that, I have eaten and slept.

Today we drove out to Point Reyes and looked at the mighty Pacific. The sky was gray but the hills were florescent green all the way out. There were stands of Coastal Cypress trees all tall, dark and handsome, and lots and lots of the little coastal deer lazing around as if they've never had any reason to run. Big hawks were hanging out on phone lines, fence posts and tree branches, outnumbering the buzzards. We drove to the end and Grace and I got out of the car and climbed up the little road to the light house. From there you can look down on unadulterated coastline that stretches for miles. It is a gorgeous flat sandy beach with nothing on it, and cliffs along the edge with nothing but rolling green above. There was huge surf making long white lines of foam that floated back out to sea and broke up to look like pods of whales might be making them from below. We didn't see whales but they were out there.

I didn't bring my camera or a sketch pad or notebook. I just soaked it up. There was nothing to do. The endless view of gray on gray with the lighthouse's lonely fog horn and the crashing of waves on rocks far below was enough.

How to find Holiday Spirit

I heard people singing in the distance as I was checking my email tonight. After the kids are asleep it’s my time to catch up on everything and I was in my world of blogging and emailing as it slowly dawned on me that carolers were approaching. My first instinct was strange: I wanted to hide. Huh? When I opened the curtain I saw people in hats and sweaters holding candles in a loose grouping that was half standing, half wandering down the street, singing. I got up and got Dave and we stepped onto the front porch to watch as this large group of dark figures with candles asked if we had any requests. I couldn’t think of anything because anything was what I wanted to hear. I just wanted to hear them sing some more. It was such a gift and such a shift to be invited out of my head and into the night, the cool air, under the stars to stand among these strangers, my neighbors, and watch their slow meandering down the street as they spread wide swaths of musical cheer. What a difference to be out of my room where I sit on my computer supposedly communicating with the entire world by watching youtube videos of snowball fights in NY and reading blurbs of old acquaintances on facebook, and face to face with these beautiful people singing to us. I think the attention of all those voices, all those hearts on us and our house was what made my first impulse to run. I am not used to receiving that much sweet wholesome plain goodness from people. My people. Not old classmates in Connecticut, but my neighbors who hand my children candy on Halloween and sing to us tonight. The flesh and blood that sleeps and eats and breathes in the houses around my house. The people who surround me this day. This moment.

Here’s to my neighbors. Here’s to singing and the way it so easily opens my heart. Here’s to all that this season is meant to remind us about:
Love, peace, generosity, gratitude and joy.

water flow

The sound of water dripping off the trees and the smell of wet mud takes me far from this huge city where I live. It lands me in these other places. Ranches. Lake cabins. Tent camping. Small towns I know as well as my hands. Pictures I've lived a thousand times. The way the air feels on my skin is enough to make my suburban backyard remind me of a jungle I visited only once but which stayed lodged in my chest somewhere as vivid as the places I grew up in. Why is the rain so potent now?

For two days it has rained. The southern California ground is so dehydrated it barely understands how to absorb all the water. It rolls away, down cement waterways filled with trash and trees. I live in a strange place that I love dearly and that changes faster than any place I've ever known. It pushes me to move away and pulls me back to stay. It has little patience for my nostalgia, but romanticizes its own short history. It is a city of contrast and contradiction and when it rains it practically turns upside down. The sky is so blue I don't recognize it and for a minute I think I live somewhere wild and free.