Fluorescent Yellow

Grant to Mom: “So . . . does your new walker have tennis balls on it?”
Mom to Grant: “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”
Grant: “That means it does!”
Mom: “Fluorescent yellow.”

Our conversation then dissolved into gales of laughter. One of the things I love most about my son is his sense of humor, a warped match for mine, and the fact that nothing is sacred or off-limits. Everything is fair game for joking. And none of it is mean-spirited, just funny. We love to piggyback on each other’s comments, ramping up the interaction until everyone is laughing. Humor is a fabulous companion. It helps you get through a lot of things, letting you know this is the moment, this very moment of your life, for you to enjoy fully. No matter what the circumstances. When Grant was at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), being treated for stage-four melanoma, we enjoyed humor there.

While the nurse was checking Grant into his room, recording his responses to a list of questions on the in-room computer, she came to a question about religious preference. After a pause, Grant replied, “None,” in the presence of his former metaphysical minister mother. After another pause, I said, “What? You’re not going to own up to the Santeria and voodoo?” A laughter-filled conversation about chicken heads and blood followed as Grant, the nurse and I bonded through humor. She certainly had an insight into her new patient and his family dynamics.

Each of the six times we returned to UCLA for Grant’s week-long treatment in ICU, we found a new humorous way to greet Grant’s oncologist: “We brought him back so you could make him sick again.” “We brought him back so you could torture him some more.” “Just show me to the Lindsay Lohan suite,” Grant declared on entering when she was on the same floor for rehab.

In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who endured years of unspeakable horror in Nazi death camps, writes about having everything stripped away, all freedoms. All but one. He is very clear that no matter where we find ourselves, no matter what the circumstances, we always have one freedom that can never be taken away. We have the freedom to choose how we respond to our situation.

At the end of this month, I will be attending the first annual Spring Writers’ Retreat for the Albuquerque Writers Cooperative founded by Lynne C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook, who publish bosque (the magazine), a literary journal. Lynn has taught writing at the college level for 36 years. Both have authored several books. Today, I must submit 10-25 manuscript pages for their review. I’m sending them a selection from The Caregiver’s Journey: Supporting Adult Children with Cancer, so my experiences in the hospital with Grant are in the forefront of my mind. And the humor that helped us survive it. Dare I say, enjoy it? It’s our one life. How do we choose to respond?

In gathering material for the book, I came across a quotation in the Living/Dying Project newsletter (winter 2011), that is central to the book and central to life: “Imagine using a life-threatening illness as an opportunity for spiritual awakening. Imagine approaching the unknown with an open heart. We often resist change as a natural part of life. Strength and healing can be found in life’s most difficult situations.”

After five days of confinement to the ICU hospital bed, Grant disconnected all the tethers holding him down, stood up, wobbled, raised his fist in the air and declared, “Power to the People.” In this spirit, we claim the quality of our life by using our power to choose our response to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Sparkle! Time Is the Best Editor

Rev. Karen shopped at the Santa Barbara Saturday Farmers’ Market in full regalia: sparkling silver eye shadow, body glitter, silver-studded jeans and jacket, dangling jeweled beads woven into long strands of braided hair to accent her short red or blonde or brown spiked haircut. She sparkled. Not only physically, but energetically. It was hard not to notice her. A walking conversation-starter, she worked it. Her Sunday morning metaphysical talks were right-on truth – sometimes delivered in a prom dress and tiara. She knew accessories. Once when I visited her home, I saw her wardrobe room (second bedroom) filled with racks of clothes, a full hat tree and colorful feather boas.

She loved to tell stories about the impact of her appearance on the people she met. Once, at a gas station, another customer asked her if she were going to a party. “No,” she replied, “I go everywhere dressed like this.” Another of her answers to the same question was “I am the party,” which became the title of her subsequent book. Perhaps it was her Hollywood background as a Jewish therapist formerly married to Norman Fell, “Mr. Roper,” the neighbor on the T.V. show Three’s Company, that influenced her clothing choices.

My favorite Rev. Karen story, shared one Sunday morning during her sermon, described a recent plane trip she had taken. All aglitter, as usual, she sat across the aisle from a man, obviously quite taken with her (did I mention she’s also quite pretty and has a knockout figure?) After many appreciative glances her way, he worked up the courage to speak to her. Leaning conspiratorially across the aisle, he said quietly, “I like your look.” She replied, “I’m 60 years old, and I’m a minister.” As her audience laughed, she shrugged her shoulders, palms facing upward, and said, “What? It was a short flight!” to more laughter. Get to the bottom line. Cut to the chase. Tell the truth. This either works for you, or it doesn’t.

“Time is the best editor,” a favorite quotation my sister-in-law shared with me, is a less colorful way of saying the same thing. She and I, as parents of adult children with cancer, faced with our own aging, have become exquisitely aware of the precious value of time. Time to live. Time to be with those you love. Time to express your creativity. Time to spend with dear friends, in nature or traveling. A deeper appreciation of the value of time seems to arrive with age and life-threatening experiences.

A week ago my household goods and furniture arrived at my new Rio Grande bosque home in Albuquerque, NM. I have stepped into instant community. And I’m thrilled. I’ve already met a number of the neighbors. My next door neighbor, Betsy 1, has published sixteen children’s books. She is currently teaching a class on novel writing and taking two writing courses herself. Betsy 2, who lives next to her, I have not yet met. Judy, who lives in our same group of four attached adobe homes, is a painter and art teacher who taught for several years on the Navajo reservation. Her students included relatives of the famous Navajo painter, R. C. Gorman. She welcomed me the night the movers and I arrived to offer help and food, to drive me to a restaurant and to say, “Let me help you make your bed before we go to dinner. You won’t want to afterward.” Shirley is a retired elementary teacher involved with senior community theatre. Betty, who informed me today she's 93, is legally blind, and has a home health assistant four days a week. Arana is a retired therapist, a very direct communicator who knows the value of time and doesn’t mince words…or tolerate fools. She is also a musician and a gardener with 80’ long row at the nearby Los Poblanos community farm. She was very clear with me about the fact that my front porch light shined into her bedroom at night. She asked what time it would be going off. “What time do you go to bed?” I replied. She wouldn’t say, but stated she was fine with knowing my porch light would not be left on all night. “Don’t you have curtains?” I inquired. “Yes, but the light shines through.” “I want to be a good neighbor,” I said. “Likewise,” she answered. This was a cut-to-the chase conversation. Honest. Direct. When I relayed the details to Judy later, saying how much I appreciated Arana’s directness, Judy said, “That’s one of the benefits with people our age.”

Time. How do you want to spend your “one wild and precious life?”* With whom? Sparkle! Let your light shine. Cut to the chase. Be transparent in communication. Tell the truth. We don’t have forever. Time is the best editor. Why waste it?
* Poet Mary Oliver

A Temporary Necessity

“Just think of it as a temporary necessity,” the physical therapist told me as she wrote out the prescription for my front-wheeled walker. She was responding to my protest of disbelief at being provided with the accoutrements of an ailing, old lady. “That doesn’t fit my conception of myself!” But I could live with the idea of “a temporary necessity.”

Really, isn’t anything we don’t like in life a temporary necessity when we experience it? The temporary can also be a godsend. When my son, Grant, went through immunotherapy for melanoma two years ago, I stumbled across the beauty and perfection of the temporary. Doctors referred to his last-resort treatment as “going through living hell,” and they weren’t wrong. On the list of 20-30 side effects, chemical burns and blood blisters in the nose and mouth were among the more palatable ones. We also grappled with the hidden, insidious ones like depression, anxiety and hallucinations. Only by the process of going through them were we able, eventually, to identify and deal with them. When he was in despair one morning, I had him take an internet survey on depression. I had previously answered the questions the way I thought he would, and our answers matched closely. An inspired idea flowed through me from universal mind: “You know what, Grant? These are side effects of your treatment. While it may seem right now like things will always be this way, this is temporary. It will not last.” He grabbed on to the idea, allowing it to comfort him and lift his spirits. I’ve heard him tell others since that something distressing is only temporary.

“Temporary,” we get. But, “necessity?” Something needed. Hmmmmm. Why would I “need” a walker? Well, the most obvious externally discernable answer is for the painful limp due to my osteoarthritic left hip. “You’re going to need it after your hip replacement surgery, so we may as well just get it now.” It did make walking easier…along with the vicodin! But my image! My self-image does not include me with a walker. I’ve always been vital, healthy…..and…..impatient with slow, old people, whether walking or driving. “Get out of my waayyy!” Oh. Necessity. The necessity of my soul is for the expansion of empathy, love, compassion. The necessity of my soul is to be balanced, both a good giver and a good receiver, able to let in the love and support offered by others.

I’m learning, as I age, that I generate a different response from people. “Do – you – know – how – to – use – a – computer?” a hospital tech asked me, very – slowly. Instead of “Yes,” I thought of replying rapidly, inviting him to discuss with me the pros and cons of local ISPs. People respond to me differently when they see me limp across shopping center parking lots. They open doors, provide carts, offer help, are loving, patient and kind. Role models. And I have the opportunity to practice being a grateful receiver instead of the giver, a more comfortable, familiar role. Being a receiver can trigger feelings of being helpless, powerless, out of control.

A neighbor told me her independently-living, 93-year-old friend asked her, “Why are people always yelling at me?” They think you can’t hear. Why are they speaking so slowly? They think you don’t comprehend. My dear friend, Verna, an internationally-known, well-respected healer who led workshops from Dubai to Australia, howled with indignation when a long hospital stay didn’t allow her to color her hair and she was treated like an incompetent old person.

Who knew a limp and a walker could be such great spiritual teachers? One behavior I’ve altered radically is the way I interact with the truly elderly (over 80) as opposed to the newly elderly (over 60, like me!). At church recently, during greeting time, I crossed the aisle to greet a hunched-over, immobile, truly elderly woman clinging to her walker. I took her hand. I looked her in the eye. I saw her light. I let her see mine. I said, “Good Morning,” greeting her beyond the level of appearance in the place the Sufi poet Rumi referred to by saying, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Beyond the world of appearance and duality (right/wrong), there is a field (the unified field of oneness). I met her there. I truly saw her. “Temporary necessities,” simply put, can be great tools of transformation.

Homies and the 'Hood

The 'Hood ~ Entrance to the Glenwood community where Terranda's new home is located in the bosque near the Rio Grande Nature Center.



































































































The Crib in the 'Hood ~ Terranda's new home in the bosque.








The 'Hood ~ Sandia Mountains and bosque viewed from street adjacent to Terranda's new home







Homies ~ Canadian Geese
The 'Hood ~ Bosque neighborhood, across the street from Terranda's new home







Homies ~ Salinas Pueblo Indians
The 'Hood ~ Quarai ~ ruins of Spanish church






Homies ~ Salinas Pueblo Indians
The 'Hood ~ Abo Ruins at sunset








Homies ~ Salinas Pueblo Indians
The 'Hood ~ Community Kiva in Plaza at Gran Quarai

Ancient Cities

Abó, Quarai, Gran Quivira – even the names of these ancient pueblo cities evoke a sense of the mysterious unknown. On Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit them with the Unity Explorers on a day-long church outing. The three communities are about sixty miles southeast of Albuquerque on the other side of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains at an elevation of 6400’ (Albuquerque is 5000’ above sea level). Red sandstone walls rise up from scrub brush in the middle of nowhere at Quarai. Part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, which preserves the remnants of three ancient Indian villages, these pueblos were major trade centers for centuries prior to the arrival of Spanish explorers 400 years ago. Gran Quivira was established as a national monument in 1909, making it one of the oldest sites in the National Park System.

In the distant past, New Mexico was beneath the ocean. Signs of habitatation extend back 10,000 – 12,000 years, making California’s history seem paltry by comparison. Salt taken from nearby dry salt lakes, named las salinas by the Spanish (sal is salt), was an important commodity traded between the people living in these communities and the Pueblo Indians to the west along the Rio Grande, for cotton and pottery, and the nomadic Plains Indians to the east, for bison meat and hides, crucial for their survival. In 1583, an explorer reported this area had “eleven pueblos with a great many people, over 40,000.” Until recently, I thought Pueblo Indians were a tribe rather than a group of tribes named after their style housing. Now I know “Pueblo” includes the Sandia Pueblo, Isleta Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, Santa Ana Pueblo and many others with their own individual cultural traditions and languages.

What intrigues me about the Salinas Pueblo people is how we currently find ourselves in the same situation they did when their circumstances forced them to change or perish. The French have a saying, “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”* “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I’m also reminded those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. It is ironic to me to see how the people of the Salinas Pueblo Missions were faced then with the same choices we face today. There’s only one. When we look beneath the surface, we discover how we are the same.

Gran Quivira’s 800-year history is layered and complex. The people lived on the edge of survival, far from other pueblos and in a town with no permanent water source nearby. They learned to adapt to their environment by hollowing out shallow basins in the ground to catch the runoff of sporadic rains to supplement their wells and roof-fed cisterns. They had a flexible diet that included seasonal wild foods such as piñon nuts, yucca, prickly pears, jackrabbits, deer, pronghorns and bison. Salt from the nearby lakes preserved game meat. They cultivated drought-resistant varieties of corn, beans and squash using dryland farming techniques. Historical documents indicate that drought was one of the leading factors in the abandonment of the pueblo in 1672. When the rains stopped falling in the 1660s, the water-poor pueblo was in mortal danger. Famine quickly followed the drought. A mass grave, for 480 people who starved to death in a single winter, was found. The Franciscans transferred tons of grain, beans and livestock from other missions in armed convoys, but bad roads, Apache raiders and sheer distance made it impossible to feed the Salinas missions. Crops failed year after year. In 1670 the people fled to Abó. Theirs was the first pueblo to move. Within seven years, all three communities were abandoned for the still-flowing waters of the Rio Grande south and west of the mountains. In 1669, Friar Juan Bernal wrote, “For three years no crop has been harvested. In the past year, a great many Indians perished of hunger, lying dead along the roads, in the ravines and in their huts.”

So, why did some of these resilient people, who were able to adapt to so many changes, not change soon enough, not move soon enough, to survive? Some did. Their descendents, now living in the Isleta Pueblo, still speak their Tiwa language. Famine from three years of no harvested crops, and they still did not move to neighboring pueblos? These were people who preserved their cultural heritage by establishing hidden kivas, or ceremonial rooms, in their pueblos when the friars changed church policy and vigorously suppressed native religious practices. People who rebuilt their pueblo of concentric circles surrounding the grand kiva with a square-room pueblo atop earlier construction, who adopted cremation over earlier flexed-position burial practices, who evolved from living in partially-underground pit houses, to jacals of woven wicker walls plastered with mud, to above-ground stone pueblos. Their challenges were not so different from ours today. The “Living” section of yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal featured changing climate zone maps showing new cultivation zones for plants due to higher temperatures. The cover story of Discover magazine (December 2011) is “Water Wars: The Coming Battle Over Earth’s Most Precious Resource.”

Change is uncomfortable. Releasing the familiar and known is difficult. Venturing forth into the unknown is challenging, both individually and collectively. Letting go of what no longer works, to discover what does, requires courage. Both historically and currently that proves to be so. That is what we are facing now. Will we survive, thrive, or not? Who will? Will you? The third year of the famine is here.
*Alphonse Karr, Les Guêpes 1849

Gentle Spirit

For someone who doesn’t particularly like shopping, I’ve certainly been doing a lot of it. Shopping for a new auto mechanic. Shopping for a new church. Shopping for a new primary care physician. Shopping for a new place to live, then shopping for furniture and household goods. I’m pleased with the process and the results. A new neighbor I met today said to me, as I was schlepping household goods into my bosque home, “You are lucky. This in the best place in town.” I have to agree.

Every time I go to church, I feel that way about my new church home too. After visiting six different metaphysical churches, three denominations, I landed at the first one I attended. It was the most warmly welcoming. It is diverse, all-inclusive, non-denominational, active, committed to a global vision and growing. A husband and wife, Rev. Ross and Rev. Jude, share the ministerial duties. She’s from New Jersey. And you can tell. Bright and funny. Loud. Even though there are two services full of people, she personally called me the week before Christmas to see if I would like to join a group for dinner at a member’s home. She had heard me express how much I appreciated, as a newcomer, having a place to go Thanksgiving Day when the church served 150 people dinner. Her kindness made such a difference, and I made some wonderful friends. Applied spirituality. Daily practice living principles of truth. That’s what I’m up to, and it’s nice to be with others who are too.

Yesterday’s talk, shared with humor, gave practical suggestions about how to practice being love in the world, exactly what I wrote about last week. Jude gave the talk while Ross played the guitar and sang. Those present were deeply impacted. Many were emotionally moved. A simple song capturing the essence of the practice serves as a reminder:

Gentle Spirit flow through me,
Gentle Spirit grow through me,
Gentle Spirit show through me,
Gentle Spirit, no me.

Three situations described the practical application. First, imagining yourself in the 12-item grocery store line behind someone with 19 items, experiencing the natural tendency, not only to count the person’s items, but also to have judgmental thoughts accompanied with an attitude. Each situation presented the opportunity to choose love, to remember, hum or sing the “Gentle Spirit” song quietly to oneself while getting out of the way (“no me”) so only Spirit remains. Second, imagining yourself with your partner, who, while greeting you with “Hi, Honey,” is doing the one thing that irritates you most, that they agreed never to do again, that even the therapist thought was not a good idea. This time the “Gentle Spirit” song might need to be sung through clenched teeth, as Ross so aptly demonstrated. Finally, while getting ready for bed, seeing in the mirror the person who disappointed you most. And it’s time to sing the song to yourself. This is when the Kleenex came out. Jude explained how vulnerable we are when we decide to show up in the world with an open heart committed to the eighteen-inch journey of enlightenment, that from the head to the heart. And we had the chance to experience it. And I really wanted to share this with you.

Following in Bucky’s Footsteps – The Love Doctor is IN

American Home has been my home-away-from-home this week. I’ve been checking out the queen sleeper sofas there. My curved, eleven-foot-long-twenty-year-old-custom-made sofa went to sofa heaven in Santa Barbara. It is not relocating to Albuquerque, New Mexico. My needs have changed. I need something smaller for my new, one-bedroom, old adobe home. I need a sleeper sofa for versatile living so friends, family and I can Motel 6 on it. I need a sofa firm enough and high enough my aging contemporaries (okay, and I) can easily get up from it. Fortunately, I am hooked up with metaphysical friends, a reference librarian and an interior designer, who can point the way. Like Lucy in Peanuts, the librarian is IN. The designer is IN.

On my last visit to Santa Barbara, I test slept a queen sleeper sofa with an air mattress in the designer’s stunning hacienda next to a fountain courtyard beneath wood-beam ceilings. Heaven. Those five days were closest to the experience of sleeping on my own beloved Tempurpedic. The designer agreed to look up product information for me. The reference librarian has a perfectionist friend with a black belt in shopping who purchased an award-winning sleeper sofa. She would call her. Pointed in the direction of Flexsteel products, I set forth.

January is the perfect month, the librarian informs me, to be shopping for furniture, appliances and white goods. Great. Because I need a washer/dryer too. Sales. Sales. Sales. But prices? I discovered entering a furniture store can be like shopping in an exotic souk or bazaar where everything is negotiable and there are no price tags. I found a sofa I really liked. How much was it? Well, that’s a question with an interesting answer. The sofa was at least four different prices (yes, the same sofa), depending on the day, time, source or person quoting it. It was 15%-20%-30%-40% off in person, online, or in the print ad I picked up in the store. The print ad featured an additional $100-off coupon according to the couple test-sitting sofas next to me. When I asked if the sofa I liked was available as a sleeper, the answer was, yes, for a $400-$700-$1,000 upgrade fee. Change of fabric was also available as an “upgrade.” I began to feel like I was playing the car-buying-shell-game where sale discounts could be clawed back through add-on fees.

American Home did not carry Flexsteel products, but Hilife Furniture a block away did. That was my next stop. There I met Thomas, and, after a remarkable encounter, learned about my “real” appointment for the day. Thomas did not have Flexsteel products on the floor, but he gave me great advice: “Don’t buy anything unless you can do the Goldilocks test on it.” He talked me into looking at another line of sofa beds he did have. He mentioned that his mother had aches and pains and needed a new bed but was too stubborn to consider one. Acknowledging he was Hispanic and a “macho male,” (I bonded with him right then and there!) he told me he’d been unable to convince her to consider a new bed. He even said she didn’t have to buy it from him. He was just concerned about her health. We sat down in a furniture grouping to talk. Knowing family values are really important to most Hispanics, I suggested he say to his mother something like, “It breaks my heart that you are suffering and in pain because you won’t open your mind to the possibility of getting a new bed. You don’t have to buy it from me. I am really just concerned about your physical wellbeing.” Thomas stood up, walked over to me, extended his hand, shook mine and said, “Thank you. I am going to create that conversation with her today.” I was stunned. I didn’t really absorb the impact of our interaction until later.

Contemplating our conversation, I was reminded of Ken Keyes Jr., Buckminster Fuller and Gandhi. In The Hundredth Monkey, Keyes describes monkeys in Japan, living on islands, subsisting on sweet potatoes. One monkey began washing her sweet potato to remove sand before eating it. Soon others were emulating her. Before long, all the monkeys on all the islands were doing the same. The “hundredth monkey” is the tipping point at which behavior changes in the whole. Buckminster Fuller called it “critical mass,” the point at which enough people practice something that everything shifts, the field of consciousness changes, and there is a new paradigm, or way, of doing things. Moment by moment, each day, in each interaction with another human being, I can choose to be the change I want to see in the world, contributing to the critical mass that shifts the consciousness of the planet. The peace doctor is IN. The love doctor is IN – we have the power within us to be our authentic selves with each person we meet. Our smallest daily actions contribute to the creation of critical mass. I don’t have to limit living from my higher self to the Hilife Furniture store. And I don’t have to charge 5 cents when the love doctor is IN.