A Different Experience on the Beach (Love-Milosz, Kindness-Shihab Nye)

I  have put off this blog too long—things keep happening!  I need to come clean on the thing that just happened yesterday before I can continue, though.  My family and I came up to the Mass coast a week ago for some rest and relaxation.  We had a wonderful time celebrating my daughter’s birthday with a dinner and overnight in Boston, the kids had a lesson and became pros on paddle-boards, we had good friends who we don’t see often invite us to dinner and the kids had a wonderful time hanging with these kids, both cousins and near-cousins, for several evenings, and then they all were ready to get back home and get the school planning together.  How did that happen, anyway?  Can it really be time for school?  Have we really spent enough time together?

Add that to the fact that I didn’t go home with them.  I cannot get my feet in the sand enough here, and my sister said she could come up and hang with me for a few more days before she drove me home and stayed with me so that Chip can go back to work part time.  Sounds like a perfect plan; the kids and hubby said it was ok.  They left all the oxygen stuff here just in case, and they know the hospice group from Boston has already been here and are coming back on Thursday. 

What they didn’t know, either hubby or sister, is that I so wanted a day alone so badly, without trying to do much but sit with my feet in the sand and read, that I fibbed and told them the sis was coming or the family wasn’t leaving when they were.  And of course, I was thoroughly unable to use my day alone because I felt so rotten about it.  So rotten, I had to eat left over hamburger for dinner and not venture out at all should I hurt myself.  At least I got the laundry started.  I am so sorry family; I did a stupid, dangerous thing.

Now this morning, I am awaiting Brent (hers is about a 4 hour drive, but I know she is on her way) while I write this.  But let me tell you about the week.  Sometimes, just sometimes I find it hard to reframe an experience again—what I mean is sometimes not being able to get up the stairs or open that can or stay up that late AGAIN can be incredibly frustrating, and I forget that I can just “be” instead of constantly trying to “do” things.  My family is often better at getting me to do this than am I, but it is hard for me to slow down sometimes, and the week was exhilarating and fun, but exhausting for me.  Again, the sis told me this would be a different experience than last year’s week, and she was so right.  When I remembered this, I could “be” , and enjoy watching kids do things on boards and enjoy the company we had, and stop worrying about what my crazy skin with very low platelets looks like in a bathing suit (WHO IS LOOKING AT ME, I ASK YOU, WHEN I HAVE THE TWO GODESS CHILDREN WITH ME?). That helped.

The other thing that helps all the time is this image I have.  Maybe this is sort of like the image of Jon Luc Picard from the Enterprise going after cancer cells during chemo in my mind years ago.  Hey, don’t knock it; it worked wonders for me!  Now I have had another vision.  When I get tired, and the whole reframing thing gets in my way, I see myself sitting in a prayer position, but I’ve dropped my tush onto my legs and I’m sitting back feeling defeated.  Next to me I think is Mary.  She is in full prayer position and she has on a turquoise robe with gold silk trim just like in a book of hymns I used to pour over as a kid.  This book showed her in this position and you could just barely see her perfect little feet underneath her.  I noticed that too because we all have the most awful feet…..but that is another story.

Anyway, there she is and I want to crawl into her lap and say this is all too hard, when I see just the slightest smirk on her face as she looks down. So I look down, and I see the edge of a purple high top peeking out from under that gorgeous silk robe, and we both start laughing and laughing.  And I realize what all these purple high tops from friends all over the country and all over my experiences are doing for me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you one and all.  I know I can sit back and see some purple when I need to.  I can also find my way forward to “being” and feeling loving  kindness, which is what I feel 99.9% of the time. I am also going to do Deepak and Oprah’s 21 day meditation that started yesterday I believe. 

How about some poetry (aided by a magnificent book sent by a dear friend I wish I had known better in college!):

Love (Czeslaw Milosz)

Love means to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird anda tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

Kindness (Naomi Shihab Nye)

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt I a weakened broth.

What you held in you hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how tis could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till you voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,

only kindness that ties you shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

And then goes with you everywhere

Like a shadow or a friend.