Small Changes

Carnegie Hall, 1997

This is horrible to say but ever since Elizabeth left The View, I've made a point to click it on at 11 am when I sit down to have a combo breakfast/lunch. It's just so nice to see Whoopi blossoming and the whole atmosphere shifting. The negative tension gone. No offense to Elizabeth, a great lesson for all of us. Life is too short to be the negative tension. A little goes a long way. Like Tanya Tucker used to sing, "If it don't come easy, better let it go."

Bye-bye Elizabeth.

This morning I've been thinking about my daughters' father, my ex, Eddie Wolford, Fast Eddie as he was called when he was alive and the lead guitarist for a regional band in the Southwest called Windfall. He was amazing. My younger brother was over last night and he looked at Windfalls's sole album I have framed (thanks, Marylynn) on the wall. "You should let me digitize that for the girls," he said. Great idea. I will. We got to talking so much, looking at his website on the computer, and drinking Sapporo beers that when he left, the album stayed on the wall, but it got me to thinking. I wish/hope I can get in touch with the band members. Three of them are brothers and still living in El Paso, I believe. What I'd like my daughters to see is a video of their Dad. See him up on stage, how electric he was, how he loved it. How he said that was the only time he was really happy. I get that. Although, as we get older, as I sit here at this computer, I feel I can speak for Eddie and me when I say there's lots of inbetween times that we'd like to bring to light, redo, explain, embrace. Like being with our children more, looking into their eyes, telling them HOW MUCH WE LOVE THEM, how they gave us life, how they made us rock and roll in happiness!

As we get older, we get so much damn smarter. Life's biggest prank on us. Getting older, getting wiser, and the only clear memory that hangs on are the ones from days gone by. Like a first birthday, picking them up after school, evenings with them, park time (or not enough), worrying over something or other WHEN NONE OF THAT MATTERS, now I know that.

Now I know that.

Eddie's birth family is nearly gone. His mom, dad, and now him, gone. I wonder about his brother who also had a problem with substance. I finally found his sister's new location. She's in Raleigh. I think she's mad at me or simply can't find the connection that means something, anything to her anymore. But I always liked her. How can I tell her about those rearing up, blindly searing days alone and trying to keep it all together? How that girl is not the same girl now? How I forgive and hope she can forgive, too?

My girls have five cousins on my side and two on their father's. It is my wish that Leila and Sarah meet Mary's girl and boy, grown now. All four of the Gilbert/Wolford's are grown. Sarah looks so much like Mary and Leila is Eddie in all his glory. I watched her dance the other night and she took our zest and perfected it. It was heaven to watch.

These things run through my head today, on my Mother's 78th birthday. She and I have run a ragged race together, but just yesterday we spoke on the phone and the negative tension is eroding. It felt so good. To talk to my mother and to feel the positive energy - between both of us - moving so easily about the rooms we sit in, across the wireless sky from North to South and everywhere inbetween.

Causes me even to kind of miss Elizabeth.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Humbling

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is awaiting us," said Joseph Campbell. I have this up on the door in my apartment. I've looked at it for years, watching as my life bobbles in the direction I am supposed to go. Several times now I've thought, 'there! I've got it' and then it swivels again.

As it has now.

Jumping off cliffs is not easy stuff. It not only can kill me, it can make me look awful foolish, vulgar, lazy, and hopeless. Yet it is the incredible flurry of air blowing my hair back as I go that tells me to allow, allow the mystery to continue. Friends gather, others run, family scratches their head, some stop calling or call with big pauses, and I, on the other end, hear my voice but don't know who is speaking.

Mary Chapin Carpenter sings, "I'm Almost Home," and I hear her.

Reading a book by Margot Anand on "The Art of Everyday Ecstasy." Come to find out I'm imbalanced inside. Not chemically. Don't shove prescriptions at me, but my inner male and female are whacked out. I want to feel ecstasy on an everyday basis. I have learned that this life is meant for growth and joy. Even when it's a searing, maniacal growth spurt. Anand's book works with the Seven Chakras. Why is everything of the spirit in groups of seven? Living in ecstasy (not that E) is hard to find minute by minute with blocked chakras and I'll put some money on the inkling that I've got a few corked up. I'll find them and unblock them. In the meantime, I'll keep writing, filling up the notebooks and watching the messages come out. The short stories aching to be written not just in my head but finally spilling out on the page. Always there, it was I who had to catch up.

The 'lazy, crazy days of summer' I've not had even if I look like a bum.

I'm not.

I'm just almost home.

Tell Me, What Do You Want?

What a gorgeous day. The treetop leaves dancing outside my fire escape are turning and against the blue sky I can feel my lungs resume their breathing. Yesterday I stumbled into Barnes and Noble to cram for a Monday night class I agreed to teach to city workers needing to take the GED test.

Yikes. This is new territory for me. Getting back to the basics; well rounded, rounding out, no mistakes. It is as close to a classroom as I am getting. The idea of helping city workers keep their job satisfies me and I can dress to do this good work.
The coordinator is a jewel, too. Good work, good people. It's one tiny slice of a job, but it's a start. I am walking by faith now. The late night thoughts of coulda, shoulda, woulda are over. It's time to walk on water and let my true self show me the way.

While in B&N, I grabbed the thick GED testing book and then swiveled around to the Writing section and there was a book there, right underneath the shelf holding Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" which I thought would help me to read again, but there, there was a paperback with a curious title, "Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers," by Carolyn See. Hmmm....spark, recognition, decision in that split second. Do I want to make a literary life? It was the universe asking me.

Yes, yes, yes.

I took Carolyn See's book with me to the Cafe and bought a small coffee and bagel, and with ownership sat in the B&N cafe for four hours reading her book, taking notes, and thanking the Source for this woman's generosity in helping me get over the next hurdle.

Published by Ballentine Books, if you wish to live a literary life, read Carolyn.

Next week is my 52nd birthday and I'm asking for her book as a gift. For before I went to the bookstore, I meditated, and in my solitary moment let my sadness come to the surface. I touched it, felt it between my fingers and then dressed to leave. In Carolyn See's writings about living the literary life, I found my happiness. Poor sadness. Gone.

It's a beautiful day.

To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn

Got this photo off the Yahoo images. Thanks whoever took it. It's lovely. It calms me and tells me to go with the flow and to trust the process. Have you seen the Chris Gardner story, "The Pursuit of Happyness"? If not, when you can, watch it. I showed it to my students to about 20 classes.

Protect Your Dream.

Sweet Dreams

Today is my grandmother's birthday. Milly Hastings, maiden name, Wyland. I am not sure how old she'd be today as she flew away at 82 when I was in my 20s. She had my Dad 11 days before her birthday in 1926. I had my girl, Sarah, 12 days after mine. My Mom had me five days before hers and had my brother, Jimmy, four days before my Dad's. And so it goes. Just silly thoughts on a gorgeous Fall day. I'm sitting here contemplating my day and am not going to go much past it. Yesterday I went through all my photos and two hours later had cleaned up the bottom shelf of the bookcase and each album lined nicely against the other as I sat on the couch and collapsed in tears.

The past.

"It is just a dream, Mom," says Leila to me, when I call her, and the emotion oozes out of me when she asks me what's wrong?

Thinking about the past, staring it in the face, I saw my life since my girls' births. I watched them at birthday parties, with family, on merry go rounds, the bandage on Leila's forehead after the car hit her on Halloween and miraculously all she had was that. I just started crying. Did they have a good childhood now that they're budding women? "Cat's in the Cradle" blaring in my ears.

"You fool" is all my soul says to me, and I wail.

"Mom, it's just a dream," my precious girl says.

So today I tip my coffee cup to Milly whose teeth used to click when she laughed. Who wore colorful scarves as she grew into widowhood. I have two violet plants on a windowsill here in Brooklyn that are blooming in abundance today after a summer of struggle.

Milly's been here.

It's a good dream.