May You be Inscribed in The Book of Life 5772

Sometimes, even the cat feels like he can just stick his tongue out at me.  I mean, just like everyone else, he loves and adores me but hey, I am Momma and if he's having a bad day, I guess I should be, too.

When done correctly, I have found that the moniker "Mother" is synonymous with the words safety, security and comfort.  My husband wants to be able to fix things when a problem arises.  He is definitely the strong and silent type in a lot of ways so with five women surrounding him(and sometimes all at once!), he has to take in a lot of excess chit-chat which probably often hurts his brain.  I can sympathize with that because sometimes it even hurts my brain.  But women, not all but many, like to talk things through.  We like to discuss different angles.  We like to explore various solutions.  We enjoy the interaction and oftentimes, that is what it takes for us to arrive at a resolution. Men, not so much.  So here I stand.  Unlike my husband, I know that I cannot really just fix anything and move on.  Long after he is off the topic with one or more of our Angel Daughters, I am still trying to maneuver them into a positive direction that will both make them feel better and produce superlative results.  Neither way is absolutely right or wrong, it just is.  I am not, however, a magician.  A goddess, maybe, but...Well that is not what I am writing about right now so I will just move along.  Just take my word for it, it will make me feel special.  The goddess part, anyway.

I have spent a good portion of today dousing fires and wiping tears from my daughters cheeks.  And a few minutes ago at exactly 6:39 PM, the sun, which never really shone itself down here on the edge of the Pacific ocean today, went down for the last time on the Jewish year of 5771.  For Jews all over the world, another year has just passed and ten days of awe will now be observed.  Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year which begins as a celebration and then culminates after ten days with the observance of Yom Kippur.  Yom Kippur is a somber, serious day because it is a time of self-reflection and atonement.  It is a day when we ask God to forgive our transgressions and to guide us into being better people next year.(simply put)  The time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is known as "the days of awe".  These days are used for self-evaluation, reflection and prayer.  On Rosh Hashanah, we ask that God inscribe us into the Book of Life for another year.  On Yom Kippur, it is sealed.  I suppose that the cloudy day today was appropriate for the misty moods which I encountered but during these next ten days, I am going to focus on growth and redemption and healing for all of us and when I say "all of us" I mean myself, my family and all of my wonderful friends, both Jewish and otherwise.  The new year is a time for transition and transformation, much like the season of autumn, so what better time to contemplate the things that we can do better, for others, for ourselves and for the world.  The September mist which blanketed much of the Southern California coast today reminded me that my daughters pains and concerns and fears are very, very real and that it is their father's job to protect them and to try to fix what ails them.  But it is my job, as their momma, to walk them gently but firmly back into the light, allowing them the time and consideration that they might need to get there.  A perfect combination.  A band-aide and a time to allow for healing.

I will write more about these "days of awe" throughout the next ten days and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.  I know this might all seem a bit mystic and confusing to someone who is not Jewish, but trust me, it's really not.  Tomorrow, Mark, myself and our four Angel Daughters will spend part of our day in synagogue celebrating the New Year.  We will pray, we will sing, and we will hear the blast of the shofar as we welcome in the New Year of 5772.  I look forward to this outward expression of gratitude to God before turning inward to evaluate myself.  L'shana tova(which means "for a good year" in Hebrew) to all of my Jewish readers and friends.  To everyone else, I wish you good health, happiness and so much love because we can never receive enough in the way of blessings from those who care about us.

With so much love,
Debbie

Submerged Rocks

I don't know what it is about the month of January that begins in a familiar darkness for me, but then very slowly moves my spirit into a lighter, more transformational place.  I am not sure at what point the dissension initially occurs, the moment at which the downward spiral takes its initial turn causing me to unknowingly burrow down deep, receding into what feels a bit like depression.(if I was a depressive type of person, which characteristically, I am not)  But it is something that I have come to acknowledge over the past eight years or so, ever since I spent six weeks during a particularly rainy January/February, sitting with my ninety year old grandmother in the hospital, watching her slowly whither away while not being able to give in to her wishes for me to "put a pillow over her head" so that she did not have to withstand anymore.  She was ready to leave, her ninety years on this earth filled with mostly productivity and fullness, and I was waiting it out by her side, saying farewell but not knowing when the end would come.  She and I were very close.  In many ways, she looked upon me more as a daughter than as a granddaughter.  I share her hearty laugh.  I share her generosity and her love of the written word.  I share her sense of humor and her sense of loyalty, her sense of duty to those we love.  And so, I shared in her responsibility, taking care of four young daughters who required my full-time attention while giving my grandma the rest.  We moved her out to a facility near where my father lives(two and a half hours away, much too far for him to drive on a regular basis) after we understood that she would need full-time care, and slowly, the time slipped away from her.  It began with the sad fact that she no longer remembered my two youngest daughters, and then, she stopped reading, stopped eating and slept for much of the day.  She was putting the proverbial "pillow" over her own head, wishing herself into no longer.  The entire process took six months, beginning in that early January and then finally releasing her on my birthday in July of that same year.  There is no irony lost on me when it comes to the fact that she made her final transition on my birthday morning that summer.  She and I had several interesting conversations in the week leading up to her death and I knew that where I was dropping her off on this side of life, her own mother would be picking her up on the other side.  I found it all, quite humbling.

The January after my grandma passed, my mother had knee-replacement surgery.  She behaved much like a spoiled child and gave me weeks of aggravation.  Let's just say that when she threw her food tray across the room because the doctor decided it was time to cut off her morphine supply, I decided that it was time for me to spend less time sitting with her in the hospital.  Good decision...

And then, three years ago on February 17, 2008, my younger brother died.  I won't delve into the details about that here as I have written about them many other times on this blog, but his death raised the bar to an entirely new level.

So while I began this by saying that I am not entirely sure as to why January tends to begin in a fairly dark place for me, by backtracking a bit, I admitted myself into a moment of absolute clarity.  By allowing myself to retrieve some of the more difficult pieces that I like to forget, I transitioned myself into a space of clearer understanding and even, compassion.  Compassion for myself.  Understanding.  Transformation.  Allowance.

Yesterday, I took a long walk on the beach.  Not a search for sea glass or sunsets, but a search for answers and understanding.  Each year, I try to come up with a word that will help to direct me and keep me focused for the year.  I do not remember what that word was for 2008.  That was the year that I lost my brother and I think that as a self-protective measure, the word left my consciousness.  In 2009, the word was patience.  Lord knows I needed a good dose of patience for all of the nonsense that was only just beginning!  In 2010, because there are no rules to any of this(except for the ones that I make up for myself), the only appropriate word that rang throughout my mind was once again, patience, and I went with it.  Yesterday, as I walked on the beach at a pace much quicker than my usual beach walk, the word floated into my consciousness.  Transform.  I rolled the word around inside of my mind for a bit.  Transformation.  I thought about what it means and how it pertained to who I am now.  I considered the somewhat negative connotation to the word. Change.  But more about the positive.  Metamorphosis.  And then I thought about the things which we submerge in spaces that we think will somehow protect us.  All of the stuff that we bury in those dark places, only to have them haunt us in ways that we have tried to hide from.  We minimize their importance, the strong influence of which they have upon our lives.

And yet, if we search a little harder and a bit deeper, we might actually find our way back up into the light, just by taking the time to acknowledge the darkness.  Just as submerged rocks can prove to be a serious danger when we are unaware of their presence, when we try to cover up the events in our lives which affect us so profoundly, they can only become dangerous obstacles to the evolution of our souls.  Of who we are and who we are meant to become.

The sun is shining brightly today.  It is warm, about eighty degrees and I can hear a bird calling in the distance.  I have allowed myself to spend some time in the darkness, thinking, exploring, contemplating and just being.  It is now time for me to climb back into the light, step by step, moment by moment, breath by breath.  This is a choice that I am making, this climb, this transformation.  We all hope to transform ourselves but most of us also fight change.  I am giving up that fight.

Do you have a word for 2011?

Learning to Transform

Summer to summer.  July 4th to July 4th.  Birthday to birthday.  In the approximately 365 days since the summer of 2008, I have spent nearly one third of those days walking the beaches.  Through summer crowds, into autumn heat spells, which led to winter solitude and then springtime renewal, I walked my way into the summer of 2009.  Searching...  Searching for answers, searching for meaning and searching for seaglass.  Some of it I found, and some of it found me, yet much of it is still so elusive. But still, I continue to search.

Over the course of the past year, I have come upon and have collected hundreds of pieces of seaglass.  Each tiny piece, each broken shard has been smoothed over and frosted by decades in the ocean.  Quite a tumultuous existence being broken-down and then transformed by the sea.  Yet when the seaglass makes its way to the shoreline, its appearance is without the jagged edges that are inherent in a broken piece of glass.  The difficult journey that brought the weathered piece of glass from its original form, to the depths of the ocean, and then back to the beach, has created a uniquely beautiful gem which is like no other.  A piece of broken glass tossed away, disregarded, dangerous and angry looking, returns in another incarnation as a treasure.

I have always held the Buddhist philosophy that life is suffering or pain.  It is one of the four noble truths, but it has been only loosely translated because there is no literal translation for the word "dukkha" which is the original word that the Buddha used.  Because there is no literal, or single translation for the word dukkha, this noble truth has taken on a very negative connotation.  Yet from my extremely "layperson" point of view, what I have come to believe is that the word "suffering" could be replaced by the word stressful or the word painful, or even the word joyous.  The important thing to glean from this philosophy is that life is transient.  Suffering, pain and happiness are all impermanent conditions.  In other words, it is perfectly fine to experience a variety of feelings throughout our days.  The important thing is to never cling to any of them.  Like a shard of glass dropped into the ocean, we are set forth into this life to walk a certain journey and throughout that journey, we are molded, formed, transformed, battered, smoothed out and transformed again.  It is only in the end that the true essence of our treasures are borne out to the surface.  We are constantly changing, evolving and transforming into who we will become.  It is only by allowing this process to occur, by not clinging to any of the phases of our transformation, that we can truly become the gem that we are meant to be.  Life is suffering.  Life is joyful.  Life is pain.  Life is _ _ _ , you fill in the blanks.

As the road to another summer rises up to join me, I will continue walking.  I will continue searching and I will continue to open up my soul to the impermanence of things.  And as a part of this journey, I will admit, out loud, that I am finally ready to reclaim a part of me that was so immersed in the pained and broken-downness of the past eighteen months that I was often getting dragged down by the waves.  Like a piece of seaglass or some words of wisdom taught by the Buddha, it is my hope to become unattached from my original form or belief, and into a smoother, more refined version of who I can be.

A heartfelt thank you for all of the lovely birthday wishes.  Your words of wisdom, thoughts and kindnesses touched my spirit in a way that made me feel very special.  Your comments are always so appreciated and do not go unnoticed.  And thank you to Maria-Therese's(afiori) readers for stopping by!  I do hope that you will visit again.