September into October 2007

Summer took its early September leave of Ojai in a ten-day blaze of scorching triple digit heat absent our typical 40-degree drops into cool nights. Still pretty ragged from the smoke and ash drifting in from one of California's largest ever wild fires that, only 20 miles away, had been raging since July fourth, we were all dragging our tails and coping with persistent coughs.

Then, all at once, it was fall: crisp days in the seventies and low eighties, the return of clouds-lush, cumulus- above the mountains, the golden light of September afternoons, our first drenching rains; blessed relief.

The freezing temperatures of last January have brought a bounty of crunchy, tart apples to the two trees that came with the meadow around my cottage. My small container garden flaunts roses of all colors, mauve and orange coneflowers, multi-hued dahlias, lavender-blue rosemary flowers, brilliant orange nasturtiums, purple stalks of lavender and radiant yellow marigolds. I continue to harvest chards, kales, bok choy, arrugula, purple basil, Italian parsley and oregano to make daily salads and green-soup puree that I curry. Lots of cherry tomatoes still ripen daily even as I slowly begin the fall task of cutting back the too leggy or browning overgrowth of so many other plants.

As the fall equinox arrives, I'm caught up in a seasonal cycle of cleansing my indoor and outdoor spaces: I take down and replace my year-old, now rather tattered tent; change the tent bed sheets to my fall/winter flannels; launder all my slipcovers and throw rugs, have the window-cleaners come by and then immerse myself in deep cleaning every nook and cranny of my house. Along the way, I discover both things I've forgotten about and things I realize I no longer need (these go to the local thrift store for recycling). The whole process, like the weather, feels clarifying, rejuvenating and refreshing. I feel the buoyancy of spirit that fall brings in me each year, even such a subtle fall as we have here in the south central coastal part of California.

It's been a most unusual six weeks since last I wrote here. I've been traveling almost every other week. Each time I go, and now as I'm packing for the third of these trips (coming up this week) I feel so much crabby ambivalence about leaving, about being torn away from my wild and crazy lovable new kittens and about spending so much time away from my sweet sanctuary. Yet, each of the last trips has been a very special experience-rich, juicy and nourishing in new ways. Each time, once I manage to achieve escape velocity, to separate from the gravitational field of my ordinary life, I'm amazed by the way I slip into the reality to which I find myself transported. Home mostly falls away from my thoughts and I am fully, unambivalently present to wherever it is that I am. (The first days this time, a part of me did need to be reassured that the babies were handling my absence well. Once that was clear, I could let go.)

It's been hard to find the space from which to write before now. Between trips I've either been resting or caught up in this cleansing with little time or inclination to reflect or to consciously digest the experiences. Even now as I sit here I find myself teetering, not really sure that I'm ready to spin the tales quite yet. The spinning involves putting form on the experiences that are still sort of sloshing around inside of me. But, I seem drawn to the task so I'll try, maybe lightly.

The first adventure in late August was a road trip to Santa Cruz. My old and very dear friend Carol Munter (who authored Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies) had invited me there to co-facilitate one of the Advanced Overcoming Overeating Workshops that she does from time to time out here in California.

I haven't facilitated a group or workshop in many years. I'd stopped doing them because it would usually be a bit of a struggle for me to lead them. I'd long for someone else to be in charge of holding the space, of running things so that I could just put my two-cents in from a place within the circle of participants. I'd feel uneasy in the position of leader; uncomfortable with the extra weight/value my contributions might be given because I was speaking from that position. I'd been pretty sure that I was done with the whole idea until Carol raised the possibility of working together doing a group with/for women who'd been doing the Overcoming Overeating work for some time.

For years Carol, and I have been in ongoing, creative and enlivening dialog about the approach that she birthed and then shared with me (in 1970-71). She'd shaped a practice for detoxifying our relationship with food, body size and how we feed our selves. The cornerstones of the process include committing to stop both depriving oneself and yelling critically at oneself around food and body size. Then the focus is on learning to recognize our hunger and to demand-feed our selves with love and care. What I learned with Carol so many years ago served as the seed for all the work I've done since then, taking her approach beyond the relationship with food out into every aspect of life. That journey of mine fed back into Carol's work and growing theoretical framing. For years now we've been talking about the very same issues/concepts/self-nurturing practices but always with our very different idioms, contexts and preferred languages. Carol's notion was that bringing our dialog, our she said/she said, east coast/west coast framings into the group setting would be exciting and lively both for us and for the women who came to work with us.

It would be a walk in the park for me, a fantasy realized: Carol and her assistant arranged the whole thing. She put the word out to all the women on her extensive mailing list; one of those women once again provided the house in which the group would meet and this time offered space for me as well as Carol to stay. Carol had the food/supplies list; I pushed the cart through Costco. We all arranged the on-going buffet. There was no need for either of us to do any formal preparation for the two-day workshop since it would all unfold in response to what the 11 participants would bring to work on. And, best of all for me, Carol would hold and lead the circle while I would put my two cents in when and where I felt like it or she invited it.

We had a wonderful time bouncing off each other and the material brought by the amazing, courageous and open women who came to work with us. The women were energized by our point and counterpoint as our more-head and more-heart approaches offset and intertwined and illuminated so many more facets of each of the issues. It was a delicious experience for all of us.

Not the least of it all of it was the exuberant way Carol and I played with each other's ideas and energies. Our delight in and respect for each other's wisdom and articulateness and brilliance was infectious and magical for all of us. Not one second of it felt like work to either of us. We both loved every thing about it and so, it seemed, did the participants-enough so that we've planned another gathering in February, this one in Ojai in my cottage

Afterward, Carol and I spent a night and a day bed-and-breakfasting at a funky but lovely, very 1960's Buddhist retreat center in nearby Soquel (The Land of Medicine Buddha). Hiking around the land, spinning the huge prayer wheels, surrounded by all the Buddha and Qwan Yin statues, we debriefed, marveling at how seamless and enlivening and uncomplicated it all had been.

The only downside for me was how exhausted I was in the following days. I'd slept long and deep after each night of the workshop, had time for most of my yoga/exercise routine, taken walks, soaked in a soaking tub with jets and done my usual tender self-care. Yet, being around so much people energy-even such exciting and positive energy-seems to really wipe me out. I needed huge amounts of solitary, quiet self-time to recoup and rebound. That I had throughout the workshop (and before and after it as well), been coping with a deep, hacking cough and bronchia that were still irritated from having inhaled so much smoke and ash for weeks certainly didn't help matters much.

Two weeks later, I was off on my next adventure: a full week in Arlington, Massachusetts as acting god-grandmother. My godson's work was taking him out of the country for almost a week and he (both of whose parents are dead) and his wife (whose mother and sisters aren't very tuned in) flew me out there to be loving family support for her, their three and a half year old daughter and their four-week-old somewhat colicky new baby girl while he had to be away. Their au pair/nanny was there as primary support for the enchanting, energetic, incredibly creative and lately quite obstreperous Amelia. Amelia and I did get to spend some very special time together at the beginning and end of my stay. But, since she had the stable presence of her nanny, it turned out that most of my time was spent trying to support Ellen (their unbelievably mellow and patient mom). That meant giving Ellen some spaces of respite (to brush her teeth, take a shower, a nap, a bike ride, do paper work, return phone calls, spend some time one-on-one with Amelia) by holding, walking, bouncing (doing rhythmic, slow deep knee bends), swaying and hanging out with tiny, precious and often digestively quite challenged little Harper.

I've neither birthed nor parented a child nor ever even related at all to such a very new being. What's more, I've never been at all interested in or drawn to babies or pre-verbal little ones. So, this was an enormous leap of faith on all our parts. I had my stand-by support system (two friends who'd raised truly healthy kids) on call out in California. And, I came with lots of trust in and lots of prayers to the Grandmothers for their guidance and support. Surprisingly, I wasn't worried or anxious at the prospect or the reality. I felt sure, on a cellular level, that I would be given what I needed to do whatever was needed of me; that there wasn't any need (or indeed any way) to prepare for or anticipate anything that lay ahead. I rested as deeply as I could beforehand, gathered in as much massage and chiropractic and acupuncture support as I could assimilate and brought all my high-maintenance self-care accoutrements along with me.

It was a parallel to the workshop experience with Carol. Ellen was there holding it all together. (Never mind that she was enormously sleep-deprived and, from that, feeling quite cognitively challenged.) All I had to do was what I could do in the moment. She modeled for me things to do with and for Harper that sometimes might calm her upset belly pains that seemed to come in waves. She modeled for me calmness in the face of helplessness in the face of Harper's pain and discomfort. I seemed (much to my astonishment) able to osmose that equanimity along with the various possible calming methods Ellen shared with me. It helped to know that Ellen wouldn't imagine that I was torturing Harper if Harper's wailing didn't stop.

I would hum and croon and keep telling Harper how sorry I was that she was hurting and how incredibly well she was doing in the middle of it. I'd hold her close and rock her in my arms, gently rubbing her back or her belly doing Reiki- not expecting that that would help but doing it anyway. When she'd fall asleep between waves of cramps and pain, I'd lay her on my chest as I leaned back on pillows and then I'd read my book till the next wave hit. Sometimes in the middle of it all I'd think about how hard it would be to be the actual mom rather than the auxiliary heart-and-arms; how completely overwhelming that would have been/would be for me. I'd realize how completely ill prepared and ill equipped my mother had been to deal with the non-stop neediness and hunger of an infant; how much your being gets subsumed by the enormous task of nurturing and nourishing a new being. As the auxiliary, the one to whom the baby was only handed off, I had all the room and energy I needed to keep on nourishing myself. I could sleep through the night rather than waking every hour or two. Imaging myself in Ellen's place, being the full-time mom was utterly daunting.

When Harper was calm I'd notice and be fascinated by the miracle of her day-by-day developing: watch her stay awake for longer stretches of peaceful exploring time; watch her eyes beginning to focus and track more and more steadily-both my face and the wonderful baby flashcards (high contrast black and white drawings of bird, fish and animals) and mobile they had for her; watch the play of endless expressions on tiny face.

It was all the while a unique time of getting to share with and begin to know Ellen in a close and intimate way, more like the way I share with and know my godson Ron. I was astounded by how lovingly she's coping with the challenges: A colicky often inconsolable baby; a three and a half year old who's not only being a typical three and a half year old but also dealing with a new and fussy baby that needs a lot of her mommy's attention and a daddy who-since he has to travel for work almost every other week for several days at a time-is always coming and going. And, for Ellen herself, having a husband who's back and forth across the world pretty much every other week again now that the grace period of his paternity leave is over. It was so special to be able to be there with and for her in the middle of this trying time, to be able to bond as we handed the baby back and forth and also hung out together in patches as we collaborated on meals and chauffeuring Amelia to and from school and a get-acquainted family picnic at her new pre-school.

At the same time that all this felt so singular, I realized that I could never do this kind of loving grand-mothering with any kind of regularity. It asks a lot of surrender, a sort of selflessness that I can only manage open-heartedly on very rare occasions. It was touching and fascinating in so many ways, so dear to get to have some closeness with all three of these special beings. Yet, it's very clear to me that it's not how I would enjoy or could see myself spending a lot of time. Though sometimes I've wished that they lived closer so I could see them more often, I come away glad of having been there for this time yet grateful that the geographic distance precludes there being room for a lot of this kind of sharing, And, I feel more grateful than ever that I knew not to dare having children of my own. There's no way I could ever have done what I watched Ellen doing

Again, coming home I was exhausted and starved for gobs of solitary, quiet, drifting time. I had several meltdowns the first couple of days feeling overwhelmed by all I had to do to re-enter my life and to prepare for work. I felt just like Amelia in one of her meltdowns: “I don't want to do that, why do I have to do that…I don't want to, I don't want that!” I could see the three and a half year old me reacting when things felt too much for me: tearful, whiny frustrated not-knowing what I needed to help me other than the space to be crying and ranting.
In Ellen's way of being with Amelia's meltdowns, I recognized the same good mommying that I give myself in those places: there's no fixing possible, only the loving, patient allowing of the upset, the cuddling and holding; not expecting it to help, just doing it anyway.

I got to see that my good mommying of me all these recent years has given me the capacity to actually show up in good ways (at least for some stretches of time) for real, outside-of-me physical children. But, clearly it's way harder to do that and still not something I'd want to do very much of.

Now that I've had two weeks of recovery time, I'm packing again, this time for a long weekend in Maryland with my sister visiting our folks (and our extended family of cousins). The senior community we moved them to in April has made a remarkable difference in our parents' lives. Our step mom at long last has a life beyond just the intense caretaking of my dad. The social connections and activities and concerts are providing her with some very sorely needed sustenance and are even having a good impact on our dad's mental functioning. Since she's actually speaking about being happy and he seems less depressed, this may well be a different kind time with them.

I'm so looking forward to not to having any trips in November since there are more trips scheduled for December and January and then there'll likely be a workshop here in February. Certainly this is being a very unusual season in my life. It's a challenge.

About the progress on the book: No news from the editor at New World Library who's had the manuscript since July 16th. I suspect that at some point I'll know it's time to move on and do something like self-publish/publish-on-demand. Till then I'm simply going on with doing life.

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