The Luxury of Feeling Unfulfilled

In her open-hearted memoir, Becoming, Michelle Obama describes her restlessness in practicing law, and her mother’s implicit response to such musings:

“Fulfillment, I’m sure, struck her as a rich person’s conceit,” Obama writes.

My mom, too.  Both my parents were children of Italian immigrants, raised in row-homes in South Philly, both achieving greatly but never lessening the mental grip on the fear of poverty, which I inherited like high cholesterol.  In my senior year of high school, I approached my mom about taking a year off before college.  I was smart enough to not to talk to my father about anything, but most of all this.  My mom heard me, leaned into me and did that staccato-poking-of-the-chest thing that is in the DNA of an Italian mamma. She said, loudly:

“Whaddaya wanna do? Clean toilets the rest of your life?”

And that was the end of the discussion.

So, I went to college and eventually to law school and found myself bereft in a litigation practice because, although I was good at – an Italian from Philly for Pete’s sake - all the lying and the fighting made me soul sick. Firmly on the “Mommy Track,” my salary was based on part time, or “flex” time (which for a woman means working twice as hard for half the pay) and I never made more than a teacher.  As a single mom, money was tight almost all the time but my three sons and I had health insurance, food, and an old house by the beach. I had every opportunity my grandparents dreamed of when they emigrated from Avellino, plus the rock-solid love of a huge Italian clan.  I’d call it a “safety net” but it’s more like a quarry – hard landings, hard love, but always there.

My mother was spot on, really, and decades later the gap between law school and cleaning toilets has never been wider. Stephanie Land’s new memoir, Maid, Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive starkly narrates the counter-tale, the shadow side of my story. Stephanie was a single mom with a lineage of mental illness and generational poverty, carrying a karmic boatload of defeat.  She is the woman my mom envisioned when she forbade me to put my education on pause.  In her story, Stephanie does in fact, clean toilets to survive, joining the ranks of the working poor who do the filthiest jobs for the least amount of money.  She doesn’t have the energy to “dream big!” or dabble in “prosperity mindset” because she’s always on the edge of homelessness with no family to fall into.  

It’s a scary story and one that painfully represents the lives of so many in our country. Anywhere from 50-70% of people in the US live paycheck-to-paycheck according to recent data during the government shutdown, and 12% overall live in poverty (approximated by a family of four living on less than $25,000). A third of our citizens are in “near poverty,” meaning they don’t meet the mark but hover closely.  While I surely understand a very lean budget, I never had to choose between food and rent.  Apparently, most people face that dilemma regularly. While some of us struggle with notions of “purpose” and “happiness,” this is a Caribbean vacation compared to the lives of the working poor.

The difference between Stephanie and me is simple: I had a generational leg up, grandparents on both sides who left Italy to become bricklayers, grocers, and tailors to raise kids who would be doctors, teachers, and lawyers.  Even when I’ve hit on hard times – and I have – my siblings would never let me fall too far. Stephanie Land describes a deeply troubled and dysfunctional thread of a family, barely able to sustain themselves let alone her and her daughter. And though I take calculated risks in changing jobs, moving to different places and trying to innovate my way to well-being, single moms like Stephanie just don’t have that luxury. When you don’t have enough money to be secure, all you think about is that you don’t have enough money. 

So, what is the relationship between those who dream and those who are too exhausted or despairing to even try?  Do those of us fortunate enough to be dissatisfied, in search of high meaning, more purposeful work, well-being, or enlightenment have an obligation to open space for everyone to have the benefit of aspiring to better? If so, what does that look like?  I’m pretty sure it’s not another app. 


What’s an antsy gal or guy to do, then, when the itch to change starts and life restlessness creeps up like a tide? If traditional institutions like politics or nonprofits just grind out more of the same, what good does my search for meaning do? Mine – and a lot of other people’s, by the way, judging by the sale of self-help books, seminars, webinars, coaching sessions, weekend workshops, shamanic journeys, healings, Facebook posts hawking game-changing, life-changing top ten rules-affirmations-secrets-principles-plans of successful, happy, wealthy and wise people? Seriously, it’s like an epidemic of pain and worry for the well and well-off and there’s a huge market for people brainwashed into buying their way to anything, as if human flourishing can be dropped-shipped from Amazon.

Wrestling with these notions, I went to the gym this morning to settle my thoughts. The Zumba class was filled with older broads like me, in various stages of inhibition but our teacher, Sean, sang and danced like he was on Broadway.  Truly, it was uplifting to see him swing his hips and cha-cha like nobody was watching.  Kind of a portly fella, Sean was wearing random guy grey sweat-shorts, a T-shirt that didn’t quite cover his belly when he lifted his arms with exhilaration, and a baseball hat that said BE LOVE.  Marimba! He’d yell gleefully, clapping and waving like a little kid fully in the throes of play.  He was a joy to behold.  How many people do you know who are truly a joy to be around?

As I walked home in the Seattle rain, thinking about the luxury of searching for purpose and meaning, Sean’s happiness radiated in me like the non-existent sun and I realized here it is: clearly, this is a guy living his full and happy life which doesn’t appear to involve serious board meetings, status, or the faux-busyness that consumes us like fire.  He had a different kind of fire – the passion of doing something he loved. That’s plenty - more than plenty  - because his cup clearly overflowed, and gratefully so, all over me.

Maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe we just take some time to listen to that deep, small steady voice buried beneath the worry and woe, which will tell us exactly where we need to go to find and spread joy. And with Sean living his best life, his happiness quite literally goes viral, and our spirits are lifted. Then, still lit by Sean’s fire, I go home and do what I love – write, write, write – and spread some more thought and joy, and then who knows what?  The drudgery of all that damn searching, yearning, workshop-ing, reading, seeking, praying, whining just falls off like an old winter coat, and we pass it around, this torch of joy, when we do what we really love.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the Zen master credited with bringing the practice to the West, was a man of few words and here are his three best:  Shine one corner.  Find something you truly love or want to do and make it shine. Teach Zumba, work in your garden, help a neighbor, run for office, build your family’s love, sell flowers, bake cakes, cure cancer – it doesn’t matter what it is and you don’t need a guru to tell you what to do.  For the sake and the good of the world and the working poor, just go ahead and do it, shine that corner, because ultimately that light will connect with another, then another and more, like a jeweled net that holds us tenderly together. Mythologist Joseph Campbell put it this way: “The influence of a vital person vitalizes,” and like the Butterfly Effect, a wave of your vitality will at some point reach those who are suffering.

You do not need one more book or seminar to quell your endless and privileged quest for happiness. Be quiet for a bit and your inner self will tell you what’s next. Then, take the money you spend on seminars, retreats and books, and help a single mom who can’t afford child care.

How to Talk to Liberal White People

In 2010 I ran a grassroots Tea Party campaign in the third congressional district of Colorado. While I’m a lifelong Independent centrist kinda-left-leaning Buddhist, when my ex-husband stepped up to run I wanted to steer the ship so it wouldn’t be ugly and mean, and it wasn’t. I met thousands of Tea Party patriots and you know what? They were some of the nicest folks I’ve ever known. Even if they found out that I voted for Obama (!), they invited me in for pie, tousled my hair like I was an innocent knucklehead and showed me pictures of the grandkids. The media and liberal whites made fun of them, ignored them and of course, they then elected Donald Trump. Well done white liberals!

If I was forced to be in a locked room with a Tea Party patriot or a “progressive” white person (yes, I’m stereotyping and you know what I mean), I’d take that conservative any day of the week and claw my way out of any space where I’d be stuck face to face with a white liberal. Like the Tin Man, lots of white progressives seem to lack a heart but at least the Tin Man was cute and knew he was flawed. Many deeply conservative voters are connected to values — yes, yes maybe they cling to guns and religion — but they are fueled by beliefs. White liberals seem to gas up on guilt and fear and, I’m gonna say it: geezus it makes them rigid and mean. As the cowboys in Colorado would say, we’re burnin’ daylight. We don’t have time to be nice-nice and mince words. Hang with me.

Now I’m in the Yang Gang, volunteering constantly for this phenomenal candidate and you know what question I hear repeatedly from our gang? How do you talk to these white liberals? Lots of Andrew Yang supporters are making headway with their parents, grandparents and other conservative folks (though that’s not easy either) but white liberals, “progressives,” are a brick wall, a granite block of pompous disdain.

I now live in Seattle where Black Lives Matter signs are all over well-manicured lawns in wealthy white neighborhoods where No Human is Illegal, which is important since Mexicans mostly do the hedges here. My guess is most of these wealthy white people haven’t seen a black person in a month of Sundays, but somehow the sign makes them feel good, and with progressives it’s often all about assuaging their guilt.

My theory is that their hearts are constricted with guilt because they’re the winners, mostly by being born white and finding wealth either by birth or luck. While fear is powerful, nothing makes the mind crazier than guilt. So, when you try to talk to a progressive about Yang’s signature policy — the Freedom Dividend — they rain down fire and brimstone like some evangelical Christian preacher.

Hey liberal white person: why are you so afraid of giving people money?

See, just asking that question could throw a progressive into a rant of ugly meanness that would stun you into submission. It’s hard to find any common ground with a white person who has money and thinks it’s their job to protect black people and others from having cash in their hands. The assumption, which they’d never acknowledge of course, is that minorities and poor folk can’t be trusted with cash, and they need the government to constrict what they buy and eat to which I’d like to say, go fuck yourself. There are also many studies that confirm that poor people know exactly what to do when they have autonomy with their money but I had to go a little Philly on this. It’s that frustrating, sorry.

Here are the Top Ten things white liberals don’t get about themselves:

1. If you must put a sign up on your lawn to prove what a great person you are, you aren’t.
2. Your rigidity about “protecting” the marginalized is white patriarchy at its worst.
3. It’s quite possible that your view is the most myopic on the planet.
4. You are The Committee to Re-Elect Donald Trump.
5. So many people find you impossible and annoying.
6. Dancing to Motown is a celebration, not a cultural misappropriation.
7. You are paralyzed by your privilege, but since you are generally such a Master of the Universe you can’t admit you are powerless over it.
8. There should be a 12-step program for white liberals.
9. Unlike my conservative friends, if I oppose your rigid guilt-based mindset you won’t invite me in for pie. Rather, you’ll try to wither and then crush my soul.
10. You feel guilty about being white, so maybe go to a therapist and stop blowing up the road to progress.

Recently I had a Twitter exchange with a guy called Trump is Your President and we bumped heads on the Value-Added Tax and I used the “f” work and he called me stupid for cursing which is probably true. But when I saw that his mind was made up (mine too), I noted from his profile that he loved coffee. We have that in common, for sure. So, I tweeted him about our shared addiction, wished him best of luck and he “hearted” me right back. Done.

I’m too scared to even go near Bernie Bros on Twitter. They would eat me alive.

Here are a few pointers for How to Talk to Liberal White People:

1. Understand that the unconscious driver in their demeanor and views may be guilt. They are often embarrassed that they are white and have money, but because guilt and shame are so horrible to feel, they lead with strident pomposity.
2. If you can, try to patiently ask open-ended questions after you are summarily silenced and shut down. “Can you explain a little more why you don’t want poor people to actually have money in their hands?”
3. Play the Dalai Lama Card: almost any wealthy white person will be quiet if you mention this guy because they often think they are Buddhists. He has said that any problem can be solved by holding it up to the light and seeing it from a different perspective. Say that, and then: “Are you able to see this from a different perspective?”
4. Try to find a connection: kids, sports, their work, food, coffee…. Find something in common and celebrate that.
5. Talk about legacy. This is something almost everyone understands — what do you want to leave your kids? How do you want to be remembered?My guess? A Tea Party patriot and liberal white person share the same hope — that we and our families are happy, healthy, and free. Go from there.

This is all so hard, man. Trump has blown up all the facades that protected us from authentic exchanges and now there is so much at stake that we have no choice but to be real — really real — with each other. We have to find our way out of this and that’s going to require talking to each other without trying to change someone’s mind — minds don’t change easily — but just for the sake of honest communication. It’s difficult for women, especially because we are raised to be nice rather than fierce but “nice” gets us nowhere right now and fierce can also be compassionate.

Ferocious compassion, relentless hope, a deep well of continuous forgiveness and a soldier-like commitment to be in this together, bounded by an endless river of humor to float us through the rocks. I’m a tough old broad but still a bit scared of poking the liberal white beast. However, for all my snarky-meets-snarky with liberal white people, here’s the belief that drives me and hopefully you. Dr. Martin Luther King said:

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

I’m going to try to bring love to the most difficult people so that we can get everyone out of poverty and despair and into happy, healthy, and free.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Menopausal Woman

Menopause is an unexpected visit from a relative, showing up on your doorstep without invitation all fat and cranky. You must let her in — she’s stronger than you — and before you know it, there’s hair in the sink and she’s sticking her face in the freezer. Before this intrusion, before your body starts morphing into your mother, men stop looking at you, just like that. Gravity takes its toll; your waist disappears so you basically look like a vending machine, and you become invisible. Sounds awful, but there are great advantages to all this. There is a power that comes with this rite of passage that — if used wisely — can freaking change and rock the world.

If I was President I’d stack my Cabinet with menopausal women. Time is short, the nights are long and we’re ornery. No longer beholden to the culture’s standard of beauty, we can surreptitiously go about our business, emboldened by hot flashes and a total “who gives a rat’s ass” attitude about everything. Menopause is Nature’s Liberation, and with the loss of libido comes a lot more time and energy than you can imagine. You can literally put the men on pause and start focusing on yourself. At this stage, we no longer suffer fools, and when you’re in the midst of the “change,” nearly everyone seems a fool. Menopausal women are a force of nature, and you should know better than to mess with Mother Nature. So, if the Cabinet, or Congress or — for the love of God, the WHITE HOUSE — had women over 50 at the helm, stuff would get done or there’d be a problem you don’t want to have. We pack heat, alright, and it has nothing to do with guns.

I’m not going to lie here. In this piece about menopause I’m actually pitching a presidential candidate who will blow your mind and it’s a guy. I don’t have time to be anything other than truthful because at this point in life we’re burning daylight and if a guy’s going to get it done, I’m on board. But before I get to him, here’s the story of my mid-life political awakening.

In my early 50s, lifting my head up after decades of work and raising kids I started thinking about retirement. Doing my research, I found I’d need damn near a million bucks to retire. WTF? Where was I going to get that kind of cabbage? And, more importantly, if it was going to take a million for little ole me to retire, what about my kids? Three boys, all married, everyone working so hard and not one of them anywhere near that blessed “one percent” — the place where the money supply has landed. Would they ever get to retire, or would my oldest, Bill - an energetic restaurant manager - be working at a 7–11 in his eighties? What happened? Who fell asleep at the switch and how did all the money get siphoned to the tippy-top? I panicked and started buying lottery tickets to ensure the financial stability of my descendants. Great plan, eh?

Then I took a closer look at how hard my kids and their wives were working and still barely keeping their heads above water. Joey, my youngest, is in law enforcement and his wife Kaya is a mechanic. They have worked diligently to get out of debt and buy a little house but there is absolutely no margin for error. If the car breaks down or a kid gets sick, there’s more month than money. The wolf is always at the door.

After the government shutdown, I learned that 78% of Americans live like this, paycheck to paycheck and 57% — like Joey and Kaya — don’t have an emergency fund of $500 in case something goes amiss. The old American saw about hard-work-leads-to-success has jellied into full blown bullshit. Hard work is just hard work and the clear majority of Americans have no success at all because they live on the financial precipice. As the fog lifted and I saw the yawning economic gap between the haves and have-nots, I was stunned. But then something happened, and I moved up a level from stunned to furious. Warning: do not piss off a 62-year-old Italian grandma, even if you’re a huge demographic of old white guy legislators or a fucking gaggle of 30-year-old techie billionaires in hoodies. Don’t do it.

Joey called me one early morning, in intractable pain from recurrent knee swelling. He couldn’t get out of bed, go to the bathroom, or help Kaya with the kids — let alone put on his uniform and go to work. But you know where a deeper pain showed up? “I don’t want to go to the ER,” he said, “We can’t afford the $100 copay.”

And that was that.

On my watch, in my lifetime, my beautiful country had morphed into a place where people were afraid to go to the hospital because of a copay. Not just “people,” but my endlessly hard-working kid and his family. We’ve become the wealthiest poor country in the world just like that — snap of the fingers, blink of an eye and wealth and prosperity is hoarded into a tiny corner while folks work three jobs to stay afloat, and entire towns deflate as factories close and men and women in their 50s and 60s can’t find work. This is how Trump got elected. It wasn’t Russia or Facebook.

Over 4 million jobs were automated away and plenty more are on the horizon. Trump named the pain these jobless folks felt and rode the wave of their despair into the White House where he proceeded to not give a shit about them. And now it’s personal. While I grieved for folks in Ohio and Michigan, all the unheard voters who lost jobs and lives, now I saw the despair of my family, a creeping tide of economic disparity; a gap so big that millions of people shared Joey’s fear: if I get sick, we go down the tubes. This ends now. I sent Joey a couple hundred bucks so he could go to the ER, and sat down to unleash the power of the keyboard.

For several years, as I read about what happened to our economy since the boom of the 80s, I came across the notion of Universal Basic Income (UBI)– a guaranteed payment of “x” amount to every adult citizen, regardless of circumstances. Like most people hearing about this concept — as old as our country itself — I didn’t believe it could be possible, but I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand either. Digging deeper, I saw that UBI has been supported for hundreds of years by thinkers like Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King, Milton Friedman, Stephen Hawking, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates. What if everyone had a shot at capitalism? It’s just like the game of Monopoly — everybody starts with a bank. The only way you move around the board and succeed, is with some starting cash in your pocket.

Enter my middle son, John, a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu who lives and works in Panama. We talk about all kinds of things, and were sending articles and info about UBI back and forth to each other. One day I got an urgent WhatsApp from him: “Dukes!” (my nickname for some reason), “Stop everything and listen to this Joe Rogan podcast! There’s a guy running for President who believes in UBI!”

And I did. I stopped everything and sat spellbound for an hour and a half listening to Andrew Yang talk about the Freedom Dividend — his plan to give every American 18 and over $1,000 a month — unconditionally. Doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are, everyone starts at $1,000 a month. Since automation and tech is decimating jobs and enriching companies like Amazon (which paid no federal taxes), Google, Apple, Facebook etc., then we — as shareholders in this great country — should receive dividends from them. It’s capitalism pure and simple. We provide the policies and infrastructure to allow these advances and profits and we share in the success. Brilliant. Yang will implement a Value- Added Tax (VAT) of 10% on tech companies, and this along with a vast saving in welfare programs (safety net recipients can choose one or the other), would fund the Dividend fairly easily, with little inflation and lots of benefits to Main Street, commerce, and the normal people who can’t get the financial boot off their throats.

I became obsessed and read everything I could about Yang; watched all his videos, listened to every podcast. Within two weeks of that call from Joey I was fully in the Yang Gang — a huge and devoted internet following supporting this most unlikely candidate. He’s been to Seattle twice and both times he has blown the roof of the place. The guy is brilliant and he connects at a very deep level. Anyone else — like my friend Gael Zane says — sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher: Wha wha wha wha

Back to me and menopause.

I am pissed off. So many people are struggling and suffering and we keep electing old rich white guys who maintain the status quo and build their personal wealth off the backs of normal people. And yes, it’s personal. Yang gets this: How can I leave this world to my kids and grandkids? The nest may be empty but my heart is full and my passion — no long depleted by sex or other people’s needs — is enormous. I’m on fire, alright and do not underestimate what a female after fifty can do because I will do whatever is necessary to get this leader in the White House so he can right the ship that we have allowed to sink with our greed and blind self-interest. In my younger days, I would care what people thought about what and did and why. That’s no longer a concern

I see a future now where people just go to the doctor when they’re sick, can you imagine? I see factory towns flourishing not through minimum wage soul-sucking government jobs — and those factories are closed for good, of course — but through people putting money into their communities, or going to trade school, or pooling family resources to start a business. I see stay at home moms finally feeling valued for what they do, and women able to leave toxic and abusive relationships because they can.

Yang’s vision is mine now too and once you’ve seen this future you can’t see any other candidate. I can’t leave my kids a million dollars, but Andrew Yang is my legacy. In the liberation of this time of life I have more power than a football player, more time to use my skills and talents, and the focus of a freaking Jedi warrior. We aren’t helpless pawns in the political game anymore, despite the parties’ shenanigans. We have the power, and we’re going to use it. I’ll see you Wednesday, January 20, 2021. I’ll be the old broad leading the parade.

A WEDDING ON THE ICU

Last night on “Grey’s Anatomy” there was a beautiful scene depicting a wedding on the ICU.  The female character breathed her last right after the vows, physicians standing around her, holding up pictures of lights and stars while “Stand by Me” played in the background.  If visual storytelling can do anything, at its best it moves our hearts off empty. This scene did just that for me, while bringing me right into the vivid memory of the day I performed a wedding on an ICU.

For two years I trained as a lay Zen Buddhist chaplain, thinking I might work in a hospital providing spiritual care to sick people and their families.  After ordination, I spent three months doing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at a large urban teaching hospital.  I was assigned to the MICU – the Medical Intensive Care Unit, nicknamed The Stairway to Heaven.  This is where the very sickest patients came, quite often to die.  As most of the MICU patients were unconscious and on ventilators, tethered to a robotic existence in medicine’s last grasp on life, I worked with grieving, bereft, lost families.  It was brutal.

But Jim* was an aberration. Although weak and extremely ill from liver failure, he could talk – very softly and slowly – and understood his grim prognosis: without a transplant ASAP, there was no hope.  His longtime partner Linda*- a sturdy, faithful woman trying to navigate the complexity of this hospital course – had been by his side for decades, many of them involving alcoholism. They both very much wanted Jim to live, but with end stage liver disease, recent alcohol use and several co-occurring conditions, he wasn’t a viable candidate for transplant.  Like most humans, they held out and clung to hope, rooting for a miracle.  I’d lost count of the number of times families prayed for a miracle.

As Linda and I talked about her life with Jim, despair nipping at her heart, she told me they’d never gotten married.

“Never got around to it,” she smiled through tears, “Have a teenage son, a long life together but I was never a bride.”

My response was simple.  At the edge of death, you just ask people what they want, what they need.

“Do you want to be a bride?”

She stared at me, wide-eyed with simultaneous grief and joy.  From the bed, Jim gave a thumb’s up and a weak smile. There you go. It was on.

Jim was yellow with disease and time was short.  There was no waiting period in this state, no pre-marital blood tests or prerequisites; I just needed to marshal some forms and do whatever I could to make Linda a bride, to make her wedding day – in the ICU with a dying fiancé – as amazing as possible.  

“Do you have something clean to wear?” I asked smiling.  She hadn’t changed her rumpled shirt in days.

“Do I have time to go across the street to the motel and shower?”

“You bet. And maybe go find something white to wear if you want.”

Her heart lifted – I could feel it; the divine privilege of working on the ICU was seeing and feeling energy in a way you never could when just bustling around, in traffic, watching TV, yapping on the phone. No, the MICU was the razor’s edge where death and sadness hung around each corner like a thug, ready to rob you of your mother or son, or the man you’ve loved for decades. There was no time for hiding anything. Raw emotion was everywhere.

    

Linda jumped up and Jim turned his head to rest.

I went out to the nurses’ station to start corralling the paperwork. I looked over the hive of beautiful women and men in scrubs, working tirelessly to stave off infection, arrhythmias, clots, and as Shakespeare said, “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” In your wildest imagination, unless you work in this world, you cannot fathom what these souls see and endure in terms of suffering every single day. How do they do it? I took a deep breath:

“Hey people,” they looked up from their computers, surprised that the chaplain would be drawing their attention, “Linda and Jim want to get married.  We’re gonna throw a wedding. Right now.”

The nurses gasped - a wedding!  There was rarely a joyous occasion on the MICU – happiness was a stranger here, on this floor where people hung at death’s door while loved ones cried and struggled.  A wedding!  The nurses’ station started buzzing.

“I’ll get the flowers!” a nurse rushed away.

“And I’m gonna clean up the room,” said the sweet lady from Environmental Services, the quiet, unsung angels who hover in the background, cleaning up the detritus of the sick.

“How about music?”

“Balloons!”

Suddenly there was humming and laughing, a break of sunlight in the grim sameness of the unit. The staff was excited. There would be joy, soon, on The Stairway to Heaven.  A quiet, serious doctor tapped me on the arm.

“Hey, can I come to the wedding?” he asked hopefully.

I sniffed for a minute, every bit the regal wedding planner.

“Well, I’ll have to ask the bride,” I smiled, “But I’m guessing it’ll be okay.

With affidavits signed and a license in hand, balloons, cake, music and everything but ushers in tuxes, we gathered around the bed.  I had learned a bit about Linda and Jim, and met their 17-year-old son who had just arrived the day before.  It was a Thursday, and young Sean was planning to fly back home the next day for his senior prom.  When I’d asked Linda about the ceremony she got quiet, narrowed her eyes and said only this:

“Nothing about God.”

I assured her there would be no religion in her wedding. Lots of people were angry at God in the MICU.  I made no judgments, and hope you won’t either.

So, doctors, nurses, techs, housekeepers, and even a security guard formed a circle of love and protection around Jim, Linda and Sean.  The officiant of a wedding should never be the focus of it, and I only wanted to say a few things.  Time was short.

“We gather around Jim and Linda to celebrate the meaning of long love.  They have already lived their vows over the decades, especially now the ‘sickness and in health’ part of this commitment.  While most young couples get married and look ahead, Jim and Linda have years of memories already that they bring to this day, along with Sean.” 

He smiled shyly. 

“How many kids get to watch their parents get married one day, and go to their senior prom the next?”

We laughed quietly.  Someone had put on beautiful guitar music and for about ten minutes we were not struggling with suffering and sadness, the nurses weren’t toiling in and out of glass rooms with monitors and fluid bags. The doctors weren’t hunched over computers, or tied to a phone. We felt free, together, for a few minutes, swept away by love.

    

“By the power invested in me by the Medical ICU,” we laughed again, “I now pronounce you husband and wife!”

It was so sweet, the kiss, and the cake, the flowers and music, the tired clinicians smiling and hugging at the bedside, staving off for a minute the knowledge that Jim was going to die really soon.

I found Linda the next morning, sobbing at the bedside, bereft.  Jim was in a coma and would never come back. She wailed, screamed at me about how unfair it was and the very same room that held a minute of hope and joy one day became a cavern of pain the next. There was nothing to say, no comfort to give, nothing to do in the moment but be there, next to her. In my short stint in the MICU this is what I realized was the greatest and only thing anyone could do when someone’s beloved is dying: show up and be quiet, breathe and cry with them. Be present and just try to keep them from flying away in grief. Try to keep them tethered to life when they want to leave too, when they want to evaporate right there with their husband or mother, son or sister.

I left healthcare chaplaincy after three months.  There was just too much suffering and pain for my heart to hold it and I was suffering in my personal life at the same time. But I feel like my whole world expanded on the MICU, that entering a family’s pain was a sacred charge where we connected quick and deep, into the heart of each other.  Jim and Linda took us on the rollercoaster ride of joy and sorrow, up and down, ecstasy and despair all in 24 hours – married one day, gone the next. I’m so grateful for my time on the MICU because it was an accelerated class in the deepest secrets of life, a window into what it means to be family, love another person, and to be in the trenches with them, in sickness and in health.

*Not real names

Follow Your Nose and Your Bliss

I went hiking last Saturday with eight strangers, a very real experience made possible by the virtual ties that bind us.  A group called The Mountaineers just puts a bunch of adventures on the website and you sign up, show up, and hope for the best.  Sounds like online dating from what I’ve heard but I’m sorry, that whole scene is just way too creepy for me, whereas a day in the mountains with random outdoor nerds you don’t need to kiss or impress, well that’s just a walk in the park.

One guy was the CEO of some company that does “tech enterprise infrastructure” which could be brain surgery or espionage for all I know, but he was wearing a watch-like gadget the size of a grapefruit and positively crowing – in a happy geek way – about how this thing tracked his every heartbeat and had maps, compasses, data and maybe meatloaf recipes or something.  Thing is, while he was looking down at his monster watch he wasn’t looking up at the trees. Maybe he’d go home and watch the video of what he just missed.

He offered to email me info on this thing, not knowing, I guess, that I’m the broad who still wears clothes from college. 

“Dude, thanks but no,” I said as we climbed up a sweet -smelling trail, “I’m happy my heart beats but I don’t need the details, and I never quite know where I’m going but somehow I manage to get there.”

My son Billy used to say, “If I knew where I was going, I’d be there by now,” and as for me, I live the best line from Alice in Wonderland: “Where am I going? I don’t quite know.  What does it matter where people go?”

My guru for living the wandering life is my former dog and always soulmate Chopper, just a hundred pounds of dumb love.  He’d trot through the neighborhood and it was like Jesus or the Pied Piper or something.  Little kids would run out of the house and up their driveways, “It’s Chopper! Chopper’s here!”  And of course, my dog would smile and do that coffee-table-clearing wag of his tail, loving all strangers and smells. Seems I’m really a black lab trapped in the body of a 60-something female who still doesn’t know east from west, although I vaguely remember something about where the sun rises and sets. Growing up in Philly who cared about directions?  Just follow the signs on the expressway and point your car to the beach. Not so in the Wild West.  The first time a rancher took me out to help gather cattle in Nowhere, Colorado he dumped me on a hillside with a horse and a dog and said:

“Go gather them heads from the arroyo and bring ‘em east.”

Seriously? What the fuck was he even talking about? What’s an “arroyo” and whose head is in there? But there was no time for questions and he roared off in his F-350 diesel truck, a perennial snarl on his face.  Rancher Jim – not his real name even though I’m pretty sure he’ll never read my blog – was a fearsome presence. When we’d show up at dark thirty in the morning for a breakfast of grits before work he’d stomp into the kitchen and you could feel his family’s collective shiver. He was ornery and miserable but I called him “Princess” as in Yo Princess, what’s up?  The first time I did this his kids damn near lost all body fluids but after a while they had to subdue their delight.  Jim let me get away with this. I’m not sure why.

On that rocky hillside with a mare named Thunder and Gus, a wiry dog the size of my shin, I was lost as a baby calf but so happy to be living my goofball dream of being a cowgirl. I’d watched Gus herd cattle and it was something to behold – this tiny angry heeler with his hair on fire, nipping at the heels of a 2,000 -pound bull, not taking no for an answer. Being small, you can move fast and get away with a lot (like the “Princess” thing I guess). I hopped on Thunder’s back and hoped to God or whatever that she knew east from west. Gus led the way, we found the herd and pushed them east.  Well, the horse and dog did the work.  I was just window dressing.

So, when offered a machine to strap on my wrist for data I defer, relying rather on my six or seven senses – the usual five plus my common sense and intuition – and it all seems to turn out fine.  After having cancer, I decided to listen even more closely to my body and let it tell me what’s good or bad, right or wrong, north and south – and try it - it works! For instance, whenever I’m looking for a job, which is almost always, if the title or job description makes me weak and tired I DELETE immediately. If a headline makes my stomach churn I won’t look at it and obviously, I can’t watch Trump because I’ll throw up. Somebody invites me to something, I wait a nanosecond to see how it feels before I yay or nay.  Easy peasy.  What the body says, goes, period, and like Chopper I’ll just keep following my nose and trusting my gut, although admittedly he made some really bad food decisions.

It’s fun to evolve into this deep-down trustworthiness in your own fabulous self.  What if you really listened closely to channel your Inner Chopper? I’m mean, the only path for Chopper is the one that leads to happiness; and he lived on that path because he didn’t know about paychecks and buying stuff, changing the oil in the car or finding daycare.  He didn’t even have pockets to put shit in and as for “relationships,” he was station WLOVE – all love, all the time.  He just trusted in the okay-ness of everything and knew that love would carry the day.  He followed his nose and it led to his bliss, every dang day.

You can talk yourself out of anything with the same old script (“He/she will be so angry!” “I don’t have the money,” What about my career,” “My parents won’t like it,” blah blah blah), but you’re losing ground when you do that, looking at the data and not the trees. What smells good? What makes your heart sing, your chest expand, and your feet jump for joy? 

That. Just do that. 

INTO THE WOODS

Last night I watched Netflix’s blockbuster Bird Box, the dystopian thriller starring Sandra Bullock as the hero, playing most of the role in a blindfold because whoever looks at “It” is driven to suicide.  She ends up in a cabin in the woods with two little kids, forced to travel downriver – blinded – to survive. 

This morning I arrived here:

This could be bad timing, huh?

I thought it might be “fun” to do a writer’s retreat after New Year’s, hunker down with my novel-in-progress, my journal, and sketchpad and just let that right brain go crazy.  A wild and romantic adventure that most women crave like a drug - 72 hours of uninterrupted peace and quiet in the middle of nowhere.  No hungry husband, angry teenager, or leaky toddler to tend to; no dog to walk or bills to pay. Nothing to do, nowhere to go and here I sit in my big woolen socks, an Eagles’ sweatshirt and flannel pj pants, wondering what the fuck I’ll do for the next three days.

It’s getting dark and the rain has started, tapping then slamming on the cabin’s tin roof.  Why do I do this shit to myself? Why do I keep putting myself on the razor’s edge one way or another, out on a limb, walking the gangplank blindfolded like Bullock’s pitiful character, too scared to open her eyes?  I should be on match.com, finding a male human to cling to, shopping some bogus “profile” to the sad sea of old mostly white guys who are now in my “dating pool,” or at least back home in the comfort of my 400-square foot studio in Seattle, where you can’t turn around without running into a cup of coffee. Comfort and safety, the evil twins of stifled growth and a stale life. 

My fears followed me to this remote cabin in the woods of Camano Island, obnoxious little gremlins that rejoice in making my insides quiver: what if the car breaks down? Really? Two nights and three days alone again? No wireless, nobody cares, nothing to do, a waste of time, what’s coming out of those woods anyway? And so on. People think I’m such a fearless broad but there’s no such thing.  Everybody is afraid of something, lots of things, and up until a few years ago I lived with low level anxiety thrumming like a noisy old heater in my soul, all the damn time.  So, I went down to the basement of my terrified little kid psyche and just blew that sucker up.  Fear just sort of pisses me off now, so I keep throwing myself into it because Philly bravado is good for something.  It’s not all about hurling snowballs at Santa and burning cars during the Super Bowl parade. Sure, that stuff’s fun, but it’s truly just preparation for the Big Show.

One summer my boys and I went to The Grand Tetons – a majestic mountain range whose name loosely translates (as they reminded me constantly) into “Big Breasts.”  We went whitewater rafting on the Snake River in Wyoming, which rages up to Class Five rapids; this loosely translates into “worthy of a pants poop.”  At one point, our relaxed and affable guide, a dude named Jim, sort of leaned back, and stuck in his oars in the water as he squinted into the distance.

“Hey folks,” he said casually, “We’re about to have a character-building experience.”

And up ahead we saw massive dark clouds, pummeling towards us like cosmic bowling balls.  There was nothing to do but enter into it, paddling like our lives depended on it which they did. We slammed into a biblical hailstorm the likes of which I’d never seen in Jersey, of course, with hail the size of rocks coming at us and we, hapless Jedi warriors with oars, exposed on a rubber boat.  It was character-building, alright.  I guess that which doesn’t kill you may not make you stronger but it sure makes you grateful to just survive it.  I like living.

But to be honest, lately I’ve been thinking about gearing down you know? Like what the hell, man, when can I just kick back and enjoy?  One: when I’m completely financially secure, period, which is going to be a while; and Two: maybe never.  I worry/fear that once you sort of fold up your tent and call it a life, decrepitude is waiting to escort you to your wheelchair.  Do I fold up my tent or, like the dying guy in the fabulous parable, just get out of my damn sick self, take up my bed and walk? Yeah, that one.

Another book is percolating in me; it’s called Something for the Pain and it’s set in an ER where people are always crying out for relief from pain. Of course, there’s humor and tragedy in the story but the moral is you can’t escape pain, period.  Drugs, alcohol, meds, sex, Netflix, food…. No escape. I continue to voluntarily place myself in places of “no escape” – like the northeast corner of Glacier National Park or the San Juan Wilderness or a cabin in the woods – so I can practice going through pain rather than running from it.  We try so hard to build our physical muscles while neglecting our psychic ones; I want to keep doing psychic bicep curls and squats, pushing my inner self so that when the shit hits the fan again (spoiler alert: it will), I won’t freeze and panic but stand there on my own two feet and find a way through, like the hailstorm on the Snake. Otherwise I’ll just live in anticipation of bad stuff, watching my life go by, just a passenger on a Greyhound, banishing fears to the basement of my mind where, as mushrooms in the dark, they just get bigger.

This evening I ended up knocking back a glass of red (which is my limit because I’m a tiny lightweight) and singing Tambourine Man with Bob Dylan, full volume.  Whose voice is worse, mine or his? A close call, but I was really just telling that boogieman outside in the hollow wind to go fuck himself or better yet, come on in you rat bastard, and listen to me sing.  That oughta kill ya.  I belt out my favorite part, and wait for fear to dissipate:

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sand

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Guess what? As it turns out, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Shaking loose the right brain, and taking my blindfold off now. 

2019: The Bucket and F*** It Lists

As we awaken from the holiday sugar coma, waist deep in wrapping paper and plastic that will live eons in the earth, here comes New Year’s Day, lurking around next week, sneering like a punk ass gangster. And after the hangover of 1/1/19, we herald the vast nothingness that is January, February, and March. The wild bipolar ride of the holidays is about to whipsaw a bunch of us into the bloated grey winter where we’ll just hang on until some brave tulip finds its way out of the frozen mud. Pretty uplifting, eh?

Round this time of year in decades past I used to make aspirational lists that now seem shamefully new-agey because I totally bought the pop culture around “visualizing prosperity” and all the merchandizing crap sold by life coaches who drink too much. Yes, ok, I admit I actually wrote out a check in the millions of dollars – payable to myself from the Bank of the Universe – and stared (no, burned) a hole in the stupid thing hoping for a windfall.  My restless soul created New Year’s mantras around love and money because, you know, pathetic grasping and all that.  Well, none of it amounts to a hill of beans (whatever that is, but I’m sure it’s not much).  In the long cold winter, and most of the other time, doesn’t it sometimes seem that mostly we’re just hanging around, waiting for something fun to happen?

 Lately, since I just no longer give a rat’s ass about achievement for some reason (likely related to a liberating loosening of the cultural binds you start snipping after 50), I’ve simplified the New Year’s resolution problem. On December 31^st I’ll make two lists:  My Bucket List, and my Fuck It List.  The latter is way longer than the former and a lot more fun. It’s simple: what are you over, friend? I mean, what are you just gut-sick over? Ah, there you go.  Put it on the Fuck It List 2019.

 My Bucket List is short because I’ve done so much of the stuff I’ve wanted to do: raised a great family, lived and worked outside, saw the Eagles win the Super Bowl, galloped through the Rockies, hiked for 17-days in the wilderness, lived at the beach and in the mountains, and collected adventures like pine cones. So, I’m deeply grateful for the life I’ve carved out like ski tracks on an endless slope; but I’ve got this burgeoning Fuck It List that creates an exhilarating expanse of time and space for me.     

 For example, a long-time Fuck It List agenda includes all things Christmas –  I don’t bake, buy presents, send cards, decorate, overeat, go to parties, or engage in what my students would call “fuckery” around the holidays.  I do love watching other people have fun, open presents, bake cookies, overeat, and am happy to engage with little kids and happy parents on any level any time.  Rid of all holiday obligations I feel no stress, have plenty of time, and never suffer that gluttonous overload of fake mirth that can saturate a weary soul, like the woman who cooks a holiday meal for 30 people and then just sobs alone, feeling fat and tired. Maybe next year, true to her Fuck It List, she’ll light a cigarette, put her feet up and tell the whole gang to kiss her ass.

 It’s so much fun to toss stuff out of your life like rotten leftovers and old clothes. Besides Christmas obligations, lots of other stuff is on the Fuck It List year-round.  Check it out:

ü  Self-centered shallow people

ü  Narcissists

ü  “Aging,” including all the stupid stuff about “60 is the new 40.”  No, it’s not.  It’s 60.

ü  Technology

ü  Old white guys

ü  Uncomfortable clothing of any kind

ü  Seattle drivers

ü  People who claim to be non-judgmental and who judge me and everyone else who doesn't agree with them. 

ü  Opinions

ü  Politicians

ü  “Religious” people, especially fake Christians who seem to forget that Jesus hung out with the poor, the marginalized, and the criminals (literally, hung with them) and seemed to despise the wealthy, the learned, and the clueless.

ü  Lawn signs about how fabulous and inclusive and loving everyone is inside the house, which is always in an exclusive white neighborhood.

ü  CNN and other “news” outlets that profit from fear

ü  Fear

ü  Exercise:  I’m gonna cut way back on that shit.

     You get the idea, right?  I GUARANTEE YOU that if you make this list and stick to it, 2019 will be the best year ever. It doesn’t matter why.  Trust me, it works. You’ll have a bunch of free time to knock out the Bucket List, and you’ll save like $7,000 in therapy.

Would you do me the honor of making a Fuck It List and sending it to me?  At this point in my life, my Bucket List includes watching other people throw off their shackles and live big and real.  Nothing makes me happier than helping in that process, so do me a solid and make your list – check it twice. I’m rooting that you'll be more naughty than nice.