Category — Life

You know those fleeting moments of grace? Sure you do. They come unbidden. They grab you by the gut or maybe they infuse the fourth chakra. You are transformed. Transported. And then, poof. You’re back again, back to who you were before. And as hard as you work, you can’t recapture the moment. Because that is the nature of grace.

I wish I could report that my moments of grace are spiritual epiphanies. Almost always not. The closest I come is when the beauty of the place I call home washes over me. Not a stunning sunset, or the light filtered through Doug fir forest. I expect that. (Yes, I am just that privileged.) But something quieter, subtler. Like twenty big fat bees busying themselves in the head of a yellow sunflower. Or the hiss of rain at 2 in the morning in the midst of the dog days of August.

And now, with that set-up, I wish I could report that my fleeting moment of grace yesterday (in the car—how prosaic–heading over the hill into town) was about the innate goodness of humankind or how (thank you Incredible String Band) everything-is-a-part-of-everything-anyway. It wasn’t.

It was about my body.

Like just about every woman I know, I have nit-picked, disparaged, and more than occasionally hated body. I have frowned into many a mirror. I have said mean things about myself that I would never ever say about anyone else. Google “women hate their bodies, and 12 seconds later you get 76 million results. But really, I don’t have to click. I know. I also know that the weight of our obsession is not the poundage but the sexist, ageist, able-ist burden we carry. And yet I hear and too often listen to that unforgiving, relentlessly critical voice

Then yesterday, from out of nowhere, driving down the road, I was gobsmacked by gratitude. For my body. This body that has supported healthy pregnancies and fought off malignancies, this body that runs and keep on running without injuries, this body that goes on mountain hikes and long-distance bike rides, this body that has relearned how to put itself to sleep with ease. This perfect imperfect body I have been living in for more than half a century.

Thank you! I blurted out in the car, surprising myself. Thank you! I yelled again when I recognized the moment of grace.

And then it was gone. And I continued down the road and stopped in the grocery store and didn’t buy that baguette because, you know, it goes right to my thighs.

I love the sound of that word: Soothe. The soft, whispery sibilance of the “s.” The slow, breathy exhale of the double “oo.” The quiet resonance of the “th” as the tongue presses against the upper teeth.

The power to soothe, to comfort, to calm. The baby is crying, and we quiet him by holding him close and swaying side to side. The toddler is crying, and we calm her by kneeling down, leaning in and stroking her forehead. We know how to do these things, and most of the time they work.

What we don’t know how to do, what is so much harder, is soothing an adult. Or maybe we make it harder because we have forgotten what works. So instead of touching an arm, rubbing a back, holding someone close, we talk:

I know just how you feel, we say. We do not. We cannot. And even if, by some remote chance we do, this isn’t about how gloriously empathetic we are, is it?

Here, let me give you some names, some links, some websites to help you through this, we say. Is that what soothing is about? Giving someone a to-do list.

This isn’t the worst thing that could happen, we say, as if that’s consolation. And then we talk about all the worse things that have happened to people we know. Because that makes someone feel better, right?

This too shall pass, we say. Or time heals all wounds, we say. Or god never gives you more than you can handle, we say. Because, in the throes of a crisis someone really wants to hear aphorisms.

Or worse: Buck up, we say. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, we say. Because, in the throes of a crisis, in the depths of despair, what everyone really needs is locker room talk.

And then we end with: Call me if I can do anything, a generous offer that off-loads all responsibility. Because when someone is in the midst of a crisis, they’re gonna sit down and figure out what they need and who is out there that might be of help and then contact them to arrange the help. Not.

When we pick up a crying baby, we do not say: I know just how you feel. I was a baby once and I used to cry a lot. We do not say: Yeah, I know you have a messy diaper and that feels bad, but there are babies in other countries who are sick and dying. Buck up. You don’t have it so bad.

We do not say anything. We soothe by touch. The warmth of skin against skin. We soothe by our presence, our wordless presence.

This year we have all been especially touch-starved. If something good comes of that, let it be that we now more clearly understand the power of touch, that we return to what works: wordless soothing.

I am so proud of us. I just want to stop for a moment and appreciate my fellow humans (so very many of them) for their resilience and strength and perseverance. For their resolve, their diligence, their kindness, their generosity. For making it through the worst of the worst with humanity intact, heads held high and, right now, sleeves rolled up ready to get vaccinated.

We rightly celebrate the heroes among us. And we solemnly memorialize the dead among us.  I want to pause to recognize the rest of us. I mean you and me. Us ordinary folk. We voted into office a kind-hearted and compassionate man. We found ways to connect with each other when couldn’t meet. We kept education alive and learners engaged. We helped feed our communities. We supported our local businesses. We danced in our living rooms.

And now, one by one, jab by jab, we show how much we care about our families and our communities by getting vaccinated—and then by continuing with all the precautions we took before we were vaccinated.

When we slowly, carefully—joyously—emerge from all this, we will have learned just how strong we are and what we truly value.

I am so proud of us.

How come you haven’t been posting a little essay at your blog every week as you have for, like, forever? I’ve sure missed it.

Said no one.

But, since you didn’t ask, let me tell you: When I first started blogging 11 years ago—yes, that long ago—it was in support of my then just-about-to-be-released book, My Teenage Werewolf. The weekly posts were meant to gin up interest in the book and, as they say, “build my platform.” Neither of which happened. I then blogged my way through the next book, Counterclockwise, mostly because there was no end to the fascinating research coming out about health and aging, and I wanted to keep sharing it.  Then there were the weekly stories connected to my next project, Raising the Barre, which I found time to write because the book was teaching me so much about humility and self-empowerment as I learned about the lives of those who lived their art. Research for the prison book, A Grip of Time, grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go, so I had to write about that even as I was writing the book.

But the blog also became a place where I could write about writing and, during those dark  Trumpian years, about politics, about holding on to a semblance of sanity, about not losing hope. The weekly stories became part of my writing discipline. I no longer thought about “platform building” or driving sales or–forgive me, I actually had this fantasy back in 2010– “going viral.”

Lately, though, not that you noticed, I have not been posting regularly. Work on the new book, which I hope will be titled Time After Time, has taken over. (Four weeks and counting to manuscript deadline.) Add to that the work-on-top-of-work it has been to conceptualize, refashion and reboot four writing workshops and a graduate seminar to the virtual classroom.

And then there’s the psychic energy drain of living through the final dangerous days of Trump and the never-ending months (now a year) of the pandemic.

Anyways, my friends, I am back. At least for the moment. And while I have your undivided attention (all 3 of you), I wanted to share this link to an interview I did recently with the 1200-member Aviatrix Book Club about The Happy Bottom Riding Club. That book, one of two biographies I’ve written (published, yikes, 20 years ago), has recently—and mysteriously—been getting renewed attention. There’s this book club, and then another female pilot book club before that, and a film option. It’s nice that old books never die. I am reminded of that final scene in The Happy Bottom Riding Club, possibly my favorite in the book. If you know it, you know just what I mean. I am not, however, covered in ashes.

Last night, the night of January 20, I had this dream:

I was looking out the back door of my house across the property. I saw six or seven men or maybe older teenage boys rolling across the land seated on small tractors or dirt bikes. They were rolling toward the back of the house, toward me. They were yelling at each other. I saw that they were holding rifles. But they looked to be plastic, maybe play guns or BB guns. I was scared. The back door was unlocked. I wanted to lock it. But, as in so many dreams like this, I moved in slow motion, and the lock was stuck, and the men got closer, and I struggled with the lock. Finally, it clicked, and I moved away from the door.

The dream shifted to the front of the house. There was a knock on that door. Standing on the porch was a man and woman. The woman was holding a baby in her arms. I didn’t know who they were, but they smiled and I invited them into the house, and they sat on the couch in the living room. I went back to close the front door, and I saw a group of young girls standing in the yard. There was a woman with them. They were wearing Girl Scout uniforms, those old ones like I wore when I was in sixth grade, those unflattering sickly green ones. No one said anything, but I knew they were selling Girl Scout cookies. That’s why they were there.

I was still shaken, so I said, “I’m sorry I can buy any cookies. I just can’t think about that now.” And one of the girls walked the front steps and handed me a little carton. I took it. I went inside to sit next to the couple with the baby. I opened the carton. There were three boxes of Girl Scout cookies inside.

Obvious? Yes. In need of deep analysis? Um, no.

Did I wake as if scoured by a cleansing rain? Oh yes.

And then I listened to this “Call to Courage” meditation on InsightTimer.

Good morning, my friends. A new day.

Maria Tallchief danced the Sugar Plum Fairy. Andre Eglevsky was the Cavalier. It was my first Nutcracker. I was five. I had no idea who they were or how incredibly lucky I was to be in that audience. All I knew was: WOW. All I knew was: I WANT TO DO THAT.

My mother, who took me to that performance and to Nutcrackers for the next thirteen seasons, understood. I started ballet lessons with Professor Troyanoff (who may or may not have been an actual professor) when I was six. When I was almost eleven, I began taking lessons from Andre Eglevsky, (yes, him) who had just retired from Balanchine’s New York City Ballet. At twelve, I was–as the saying goes–drummed out of the corps. Eglevsky told my mother to stop wasting her money. I had the wrong body. I would never be a dancer.

What those words did to me, and what I did to recapture the dream I had of dancing in The Nutcracker became my book, Raising the Barre. I had to write it.

This is my first Nutcracker-less year (either in the audience or on stage) since I was five. I miss it terribly. In this year of missing so much, this is near the top of the list.

And so I am listening to Moscow Symphony Orchestra’s production of Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous score as I post these images of my time with the talented, hard-working, generous and oh-so-kind Eugene Ballet Company dancers who inspired me, taught me, and let me into their lives.

Stretching out in company class

The ever-patient Mark Tucker (in background) and his partner in dance and life, Danielle Tolmie, taught me the Grandfather Dance (my 15-seconds of center-stage glory).

The glamor (not) and excitement of the backstage dressing room. (That’s Victoria Harvey, who took me stage make-up shopping. Suzanne Haag taught me the magic.)

Warming up before a Hult Center performance

My friend, wing-woman, Ballet Book Club and leotard-shopping partner, Kim Sheehan.

Collective effervescence.

In 1912 the French sociologist Emile Durkheim coined this term to describe the shared euphoria of individuals who move together—in ritual, in prayer, in work. His insight was that communal gatherings that bring people together in close physical proximity for a shared purpose intensify, electrify and amplify that experience. People feel more connected to each other and more deeply in service to something greater than themselves.

Of all the ways 2020 has been grim, grueling and more than occasionally soul-crushing, number one for me has been this lack of shared euphoria. I long for the rush of communal joy I have felt every Wednesday for the past eight years when I arrived at Food for Lane County’s Dining Room, checked the menu board, aproned-up, stuffed my pockets with silverware rolled in napkins and, in the company of an extraordinary group of women and men, served hot meals to those for whom a hot meal was more than nourishment. The Dining Room was for them, as it was for us servers, about connection and community, a shared space and a shared moment that transcended our many differences. It made the world right for that instant. And it filled the room with collective effervescence.

In March the Dining Room was forced to close for the protection and safety of all (and to comply with the Governor’s orders). Since that time the hungry in our community continue to be fed—with both food and kindness—by a small FFLC staff taking every precaution but still risking their health. We volunteers are precluded from being a part of that effort. The absence of this experience has created in me a crater.

I miss also the shared joy of synchronized movement, the hour I spent many mornings each week in the Barre3 studio with women I had come to know, with instructors who cued mind, body and soul, with a community of the like-minded who searched for the ease within the effort, the calm within the chaos. The virtual community is strong, the livestreaming works. But the collective effervescence is absent.

I miss the group energy and creative spirit that filled the small conference room on the second floor at the Forum for Journalism and Media in Vienna where I led writing workshops for the past five springs. But not this spring. We met remotely. Good work was done. Conversations were lively. But that communal lift was missing.

I am not sure I realized the power of collectiveness effervescence before the experience of the last nine months. I love (and often crave) solitude. I am at home (literally and psychologically) with technology. I am comfortable with online life. But euphoria, where art thou?

I used to think “self-care” was the special bullshit of the Me Decade (and beyond) privileged who wanted to feel less guilty about their spa days. “I need a little Me Time” was code for “I am a self-involved, selfish jerk. Why don’t you just shoulder my burden as well as your own while I go center myself.”

This was back when I was so protected from (and ignorant of) the kind of life that would have called for radical self-care that I could espouse such an attitude.

Now I know better. I know better because I am no longer protected. None of us are. And some of us never were, I realize that. I understand the privilege of that.

And here’s what I also understand:
I understand that to keep fighting we need energy, and to have energy we have to gather it within ourselves, to feed ourselves. I understand that to keep fighting we have to hold onto both our sanity and our optimism, which are eroded every day by the ongoing catastrophes of this place we call our country. And to hold on, we have to dig deep, and we can’t expect others to do that work for us. I understand that to keep fighting we have to keep resilient, to not just “bounce back” but to “bounce forward,” as a psychologist friend recently put it.

So: Self-care.

What to do? A foot massage would be lovely, but not now, so not-now. A long, leisurely coffee date with a good friend would be delightful. But there is no one outside my family who is in my bubble, and I don’t go outside my bubble. Speaking of which…a bubble bath. Sure right after I deep-scrub that tub, which is not, in my book, a good precursor to a self-care experience.

So I go outside. I don’t mean I bike, hike and run. I do all these things, and I believe they help keep me healthy (and dopamine-infused). I mean I sit on the porch and listen to the jays. I crouch in the garden and watch the quail. I kneel beside spider webs and take pictures of them. I try to take cues from my cat.

And, in the spirit of all that, I offer these images. May they help support whatever your version of self-care is.

I thought I might write about the air, thick with smoke and ash for the ninth day, and the one million acres of my state that is on fire.

I thought I’d be able to think of something to say about the Philadelphia performance of the pathologically ignorant liar currently occupying the White House. Or his “it’s gonna get cooler” comments about climate change when he stopped off in California to show off his deep understanding of science and research.

I considered writing about the results of a recent survey of young American adults that found almost a quarter of them thought the Holocaust was a myth, or exaggerated.

Or maybe I’d post a link to the YouTube of the maskless flash mob of pandemic-deniers dancing down the aisles of Target.

I didn’t do any of this.

And Wednesday (yesterday), the day I have posted an essay here (and the blogsites that have preceded this one) for more than a decade, came and went.

It’s all too much.

Well things change fast
But this too shall pass
Better carve it on your forehead
Or tattoo it on your ass
Cause who can tell
When the clock strikes twelve
If today’s become tomorrow
Or it’s all just gone to hell

We’re okay. We’re okay. We’re okay.

I was up at 4 am today, the air thick with the smoke of wildfires whipped by winds that never travel east to west but did this time, gusting to 75 mph, downing trees and power lines, sparking fires that roared through forests, that incinerated entire towns, that burned three historic covered bridges. The sky yesterday was yellow-brown. The sun, when is appeared through the ashen gauze, was color or orange sherbet. You could stare right at it. But you wouldn’t because the smoke burned your eyes and the ash was falling on your hair and it felt like the world was coming to an end. Like after the cruelty and misanthropy of Trump; after the revelations that were not revelations at all about deep, entrenched, fear- and hate-based inequalities; after the virus and the Depression-level unemployment; after all we had endured…there was more. How could there be more? Hadn’t there been enough?

I woke thinking this. Knowing that millions of humans in other places have endured so much worse, decades of draught, starvation, war. But somehow that didn’t make this easier. It just makes me feel guilty about feeling so powerless, so discomfited by what might legitimately be called (except for the virus) First World Problems.

I thought maybe I could ease myself back to sleep by listening to one of the mediations on InsightTimer, my go-to/ go-to-sleep app. I listen, in times of need, when the wounds ache, to Sarah Blondin. I listened to Life is Kind, which has never failed to soothe my soul. Then I listened to A Message of Hope, a new offering. I wanted to share (in my words, based on hers) a bit of that one. It did not get me back to sleep. But it reassured me that at that moment when you think you’re done, you are not.

We have already gone through the hardest thing we will ever go through: to be pushed from the comfort on our mother’s womb into the light of day, into a bright, loud world we do not understand, into an unfamiliar place where we are forced to engage, adapt and change, again and again. To encounter the new and to deal with it, learn from it, grow from it, embrace it. Take pleasure in it. So a part of us is okay with these chaotic times we are living through. A part of us knows how to move through this with grace.

With grace, then, my friends. And with strength.