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I walked into a house for sale the other day and someone had left a fortune cookie fortune on the refrigerator that said, “Follow your heart and you’ll be happy.”

So that is what I’ve been doing. I’ve signed up for a seminar in Berkeley to train as a facilitator for workshops on race. I have a press pass for a conference here in New Orleans on race and education. And another community meeting on race and kids coming up. I spoke with an attorney this morning about legislation in Louisiana regarding transracial adoption. All of this is where my heart is and that is what is making me happy. Or as a friend said, “You are glowing.”

Then today, while an ex colleague was running the Boston Marathon I got word there had been an explosion, that it was horrible, and so I called to check on her and thank god she was safe, but no one had heard from her sister yet. Then later, her sister had checked in and was safe. In one instant, a big event like the Boston Marathon that people train for years to complete and everyone comes out to support turned into a nightmare. I turned on the news but then quickly turned it off and said a prayer for the families of this tragedy and said a word of thanks that my son and loved ones are safe. The heart can only take so much.

I drove home from Tin’s school later and passed many lots and houses and one thing led to another, and before you knew it I was going to see one house, and then driving by another house all the way across town, and then decided to drive by a house I had seen the other day and came across a huge lot for sale and all of this set my brain into overdrive – this or that, or can I? Should I? What if? I know I don’t want to keep renting because it seems like my money is going into a bucket with a hole in it, but at the same time looking for a place has me disillusioned and discouraged. I feel like I would know what my heart wants when I saw it – today I came close – a preservationist had remodeled a shotgun Uptown with love, and it was close, but no cigar (plus I’m not a fan of Uptown).

I went to Chickie Wah Wah to hear Evan play but ended up bailing after a few songs – it was just time to come home and be with me, myself and I.

My heart sometimes needs rest when the world is too much with me.

Mule Heart

On the days when the rest
have failed you,
let this much be yours —
flies, dust, an unnameable odor,
the two waiting baskets:
one for the lemons and passion,
the other for all you have lost.
Both empty,
it will come to your shoulder,
breathe slowly against your bare arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat.
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask.
The little bells of the bridle will hang
beside you quietly,
in the heat and the tree’s thin shade.
Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,
or the way the left ear swivels into dream.
This too is a gift of the gods,
calm and complete.

~ Jane Hirschfield ~

(The Lives of the Heart)

Two mornings in a row, either I or Tin have crawled in one another’s bed and had a giggle fest. This is possibly the best age I could ever tell you about with my son. He truly is self possessed and enjoying his world and I’m an intrigued guest there.

Why not just spend four hours straight imagining what makes you laugh and then just belly laughing and going for the laughs whole hog. What goes on? This is the strangest universe I have ever been party to; it’s so ill defined and so irrational and just out and out surreal.

I finally coaxed him out of the laughing hysteria to board the streetcar and head downtown to the French Quarter Fest. He did not want to go. But like I said, I forced him. We boarded the streetcar in front of the museum and rode towards the wonderland they call a New Orleans festival.

Next week is the Fortier Park Fest and then Earth day and then Woman Fest – how does one keep her wits about her in this festival gone wild town?

When all of these external pulls have you wrapped up in festival overdrive, remember there is always remaining in bed, feet in the air, and giggling till it’s brunch time with someone you love.

After a fabulous Zumba class Saturday morning, I came home and cooked Asian noodles with shrimp and fish tacos with the fury that comes from being exercise hungry. And then I stopped in to see a house for sale that left me a little disgusted with the prospects of housing out there in the world.

I decided to just stop the madness – seems I’m pushing to a conclusion that doesn’t exist for me yet. So I took a deep breath and came home and hung my laundry out on the clothesline.

Later, in the afternoon, I went to a Vietnamese wedding in Metairie. We walked in late and sat in section that was empty and watched all the pageantry that comes from a religious wedding. The only visible difference between this wedding and any other I’ve been to was the fact that everyone in the church was Vietnamese except me and my friend. I observed silently and thought to myself – the horror – I never want to get married again in my life.

I walked outside after the ceremony and my friend said she had the opposite reaction. She longed to be in that parade. And I remembered my deal with myself – keep my heart open – and thought I would revisit the notion that fear is what you have about experiences that are known.

Early evening, I stepped out with friends to go to Houston’s and we sat in a booth and ate steaks and came home early – 9pm – and then everyone went home to bed. The big night out we had planned for a week was casually dismissed with the weight of our reality.

Late at night, the thunderstorms rolled into town knocking out electricity throughout the city and sending thunderous waves of oh my god underneath my covers and I thought to myself the clothes are still on the clothesline and then I thought when I get up tomorrow morning, I’m cleaning up my life.

Once and for all.

If anyone wants to know what is really going on in this country’s economy they should look very far away from the stock market and very close to their friends. A friend of mine hates her job but she soldiers on every day because she can’t find another one. Another friend lost her job unexpectedly and now doesn’t know what she and her family will do. They were getting by as a dual income and now can’t afford to be a single income even though her husband is a professional.

I left a company of mostly unhappy people that feel stuck in their jobs.

There’s a bright note if you say we are living through a dismantling of the glitter and gold dust world we’ve been believing in over the last few decades, and that has pointed people back to basics, into thinking about what matters, into mattering. But there’s the dark part which is the fact that a way of life most of us grew up believing and aspiring to – the middle class – is fading away into oblivion.

And this didn’t start yesterday, this has been going on over a very long period of time:

Between 1971 and 2007, real hourly wages in the U.S. rose by only 4%. (That’s not 4% a year, but 4% over 36 years!) During those same decades, productivity essentially doubled, increasing by 99%. In other words, the average worker’s productivity rose 25 times more than his or her pay.

This was, of course, a bonanza for corporations and for the richest Americans. In 1976, the top 1% of U.S. families held 19% of the country’s wealth. By 2000, they held 40% of it. In those same years, 58% of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1%.

Another friend lost her job a year ago and having never found another to replace it, decided to start her own company. This is what I’ve and others are doing to reinvent ourselves in this brave new world, but in doing this you have to give up a lot of what had become familiar, comfortable, the “norm” and brace yourself for uncertainty, different forms of currency, and a reimagining of what you know.

A friend of mine who made millions in Marin County on real estate said that he wanted his tomb stone to say only, “Had a nice day.” He was a real collector of smiley faces – an artifact that I actually loved then and now.

And today, well dear readers, today, I had a great day. An awesome day. I’ve been HIGH AS A KITE all day.

I started my day with a phone call with a woman who has been doing the work I am just starting to do and she was instantly a mentor and a loving, kind and gracious one to boot. I then had a visit from an old friend who has come in and out of my life and we connected on a zillion levels being in the same place at the same time and it felt so good to face to face connect with another human being who is on that same road I am on. It was truly just a lovely visit as we sat outside in the back yard and caught up over biscotti and coffee.

I then had an encounter of the past kind, the kind that is not really going the way you want but now you are so aware that everything about it is wrong and is screaming it’s wrong and the encounter tells you, you and this are separate from each other, and yet, even this was a great part of my great day. My own awareness. My own clarity.

Afterwards, I spoke with my hope to be architect who had visited two lots that I had scouted out and he gave me an honest assessment of what he saw and he did this caringly and as if he would be living on these lots himself. I knew from the get go that when I picked him he was the person I wanted to work with – and so many times over that has been confirmed. I knew in my gut he was someone who would remain on my path whether or not I did work with him now or later.

I went to pick up Tin and he played in the park outside his school for over an hour and then we returned for a playdate here at the house where people started stopping by here and there, spontaneously and I felt that my home here (regardless of how temporary) was Rachel’s place – the home that welcomes everyone in and people feel comfortable stopping by for a moment or an hour.

The night ended with friends bringing by dinner and us sitting in the kitchen and doing what gals do – bullshitting and laughing and having some wine and food.

Perfect day – well almost. I felt like me after not having felt like me for so very long. But the best part of the day, I saved for last, was a note I got from a friend:

Rachel – I just wanted to let you know that I have become totally addicted to your blog (the “original” – just now getting into the parenting one). I am a lurker, but it occurred to me today that you should know that your beautiful honest writing is inspiring (sustaining?) me through a difficult year and I really thank you for that.

I have wanted in my life very few things so strongly – mainly, that I might write about my self actualization in order to help others understand their own journey. And I also wanted to find my purpose in life and in a conversation this morning, the woman I was speaking with said, “You made a commitment to have a child in your life because you knew that that child was going to bring purpose into your life.” How did that just come from her on just meeting me? How did it become full circle for me, a writer, who always said I can’t write my book until I have my child – at that time I thought it meant I needed to physically birth a child, little did I know then that I couldn’t become who I have become until I adopted Tin, the child who has challenged me to be not just me, but to be extraordinary.

Let me just take a victory lap right here because you know what – today was a day for gratitude hither and yon.

I had a productive week after all.

I finished a Media report.

After the lot deal fell through I went on the offensive and at this moment in time, there is a certain lot that looks interesting, and there is a certain house that might be ideal. Who knows?

What’s good is there are OPTIONS on the housing front that don’t leave me feeling like I’m gasping for air.

Meanwhile, I made a reservation for a retreat for a silent meditation weekend with some gal pals and we’re off to Mississippi soon enough. A girl’s trip where no one speaks to each other – sounds like my kind of weekend.

I finally have some free time to start working on my own work and that’s where my head (and heart) is, when it’s not in the clouds.

Well actually Satan, don’t get behind me where I can’t see you – stand right over there so I can just pass you on the fly.

I went through a period a while back of just a flurry of negative vibrations coming from strangers and the known and I thought good grief, who are these people and why are they in my dream. That’s when I stopped into the Botanica to buy candles and the guy there said – these are random, don’t pay them no mind, it happens. And me, always trying to find and derive meaning out of every encounter had to agree with him that it was better to let these encounters stand right over there and let me pass them by.

And lately, it got weird again, my sister wrote on Facebook that I’m my mother’s killer (always great to hear from her); my new neighbor crumbled a note I wrote to inform her I was going to plant basil and tomatoes on my side of the yard, which meant I was going to pull up her spent winter vegetables – she threw the balled up piece of paper in my front planter (she’s a hater, has been from the get go, it’s a mystery, but I was forewarned by the painter and the landlady); and then, today, my ex neighbor told me as I went to go retrieve my bikes from another neighbor’s garage that he heard the garage door and had called the police and he said, “You almost had a bullet through your head” and then as if that wasn’t enough, he sent me an email to reiterate this point (I’m gone, baby gone is what I thought when I read it).

I thought of these three encounters and as I am want to do tried to find meaning in them, or how I, the constant in them, might be welcoming, provoking, or encouraging this type of vitriol and aggression. In the book When Bad Things Happen To Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner says, “The question we should be asking is not, “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” That is really an unanswerable, pointless question. A better question would be “Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?””

Which is what I did. I ignored my sister, I threw the crumbled note away, and I replied kindly to my ex neighbor’s email and signed it, “Peace, R.” In the same fashion that the other day in a brawl on the bayou with my other ex neighbor, I text an apology before fanning the flames any further. At the end of the day, I’m not going to be the one these people fixate their anger on, and it’s their anger to own.

The old me was fond of a quick “FUCK YOU” retort – say it loud and say it proud – the new me, says softly, bless your heart, smiles and walks my way.

I hung this quote up on the wall yesterday because I was sort of in a reflective mood.

Every time I take a step in my new path, people come out of the woodwork handing me ideas, suggestions, encouragement, support, guidance and even networking opportunity.

Today, I was interviewed by a woman who is seeking to understand how white mothers of children of color are invited to collude in white privilege and how they end up colluding when it’s not their intention.

I feel like the world that I have inhabited over the last seven plus years, the year of “no, but” has been flipped on its head and now all I hear is “yes, and” and right now the best thing I could do is to rejoice and be grateful that I am staying close to the source of life and my cup overflows.

“Staying close to affluence wants increase, vessels enlarge, rarely full, never overflowing. Staying close to the source of life, needs diminish, vessels reduce, always full, overflowing with joy. ” Sister Stan (from the book of hours, prayers based on the canonicl hours. Sister Stan combines verses from the Psalms with Zen like Meditations)

Oh joyous Spring, I love when the weather is humming along like it is today – sunshine, cool breeze, and a festival in New Orleans. Now that’s my kind of day. After a workout at Zumba, I headed to Freret Street where the festival was in full swing. Luckily I had a lot of my peeps manning booths and I was able to sit with a friend and just enjoy the view for most of the day. I tried Bayou Brew, Rene’s concoction of tea and healing herbs, I chatted with Yolanda who is at her first festival with her business, Two Girls and a Spoon, and then it was off to hang with Darrin and his art. Check out my post on Darrin, how his blackness is invisible.

Fun in the sun – and much needed for my soul.

This week has been a struggle, I cannot tell a lie. My hair that seemed to be growing is not – well a few hairs are growing, bless their little hearts. The bank denied my offer for the lot. I saw a house and was going to make an offer and a contract was signed before I could even get to square one. And I lay in bed and asked, “What’s it all about?”

There is an old Quaker saying, “Let your life speak” and that’s what I’m trying to do. My life is guiding me into my next phase, only right now it seems as if that phase is still a mystery even to me. I know where I’m headed, my life is calling me to write about race and parenting and to be an activist in this area. This is necessary for my son, it’s necessary for my city, and it’s necessary for me.

But there are realities that I’m still stumbling through right now. A friend is sending me passages – last night she sent hers at 3am and I saw it at 4am. Obviously a sleepless night for both of us. Yesterday it was a message to not fear lacking because your needs would be fulfilled – it was a timely message. Today, her message was to not give up hope.

And so this morning, I am awakened to hope yet again. Surely that is a miracle.