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A friend of mine has recently cut back her hours and is having a tough time trying to rejigger her scheduling. She has time – but for what? It’s a good question as most people who are on the treadmill juggling children, jobs, and relationships are begging for time off – time to BE – with nothing on their agenda but a good book and perhaps even a cocktail with an umbrella in it.

I’m looking forward to a little of all that myself this summer when Tin and I do our annual get away. But for now, it’s all jamming and cramming, and honestly with this summer heat upon me and a summer cold bearing down, I feel more like a flim flam than a jam is going on.

When did ennui become a desired state? How about my recent renaming of working to hustling? Or instead of I’m busy, which is what I end up telling everyone, how about, I’m on an exciting adventure that reloads daily?

See, I woke up sick this morning, my throat sore, my body achey and a headache to beat the band – but instead of letting it color my mood I decided that my body was knocking on my brain – saying, “Hey now, how about you take it easy and rest a bit?” So I have found another word for my cold, it’s a respite – a safe haven to just be. No permission needed.

“I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.”

Portia Nelson, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

So a very special friend of mine has offered me insight into who this man is that has been popping up in my dreams as of late – it’s very possibly my first love. Ken McElroy passed a few years ago and yet my memories of him remain as clear as a bell. I found this photo of us taken in my early 20s – as you can see he fits the dream description of a tall, Viking of a man with a beard and certainly the familiarity with which he kissed and wrapped himself around me fit as well.

Tonight, if he shows up again, I will welcome him in my arms. After all, he will always be my first love.

I had that dream again – the second time this month – where a man with a beard is in my bed. This time, I heard the heavy footsteps walking through the house as he came into the bedroom and climbed into bed and wrapped himself around me. I could feel his beard grazing my neck. Only, unlike last time, when I woke to find him and asked, “What are you doing here?” and he said, “I’ve always been here” then gave me a familiar kiss, this time I was downright scared. I feared he might take the pillow and suffocate me. And I wondered why Heidi, who is with us for the summer, wasn’t barking or protecting me.

I enjoy my peace at night. It took a while to find it, and I relish it. So I don’t like this bearded man haunting my sleep.

How does one get rid of the man of her dreams?

For the Papas (A Shout Out Poem)

This is for the pot bellied papas.
This is for those men who may not run around the block but will chase ghosts from little girls’ closets.
This is for the closet lullaby singers.
This is for the dead ringers for Bill Cosby whenever a turntable is spinning.
This is for the hat wearing brothers with vanishing vanity, but they rock it side tipped and 60’s hip.
This is for the ones who had to ask their mothers what kind of man to be.
This is for the men who taught someone else’s son what kind of man to be.
This is for the barbeque kings with singed brows and sticky fingers.
This is for the lingering scent of Drakkar Noir long after he’s left in his Sunday suit.
This is for dirty work boots, and old worn bicycles.
This is for that nickel. Thank you. They added up.
This is for the reason why he got the big piece of chicken and the 64 ounce cup.
This is for the babies’ daddies who never wanted to just be anyone’s baby daddy.
This is for the phone calls and birthday cards never received.
This is for all of her reasons.
This is for what wasn’t your fault.
This is for the caught balls and bat swings, stolen bases and 3 pointers that he keeps pictures of.
This is for the fact that the ugliest tie he owns happens to be the one loves.
This is for the way he looks at his daughter as if she is made of stardust and yesterday.
This is for everything he doesn’t say, and doesn’t have to.
This is for what a baby’s laugh does to his eyes.
This is for the lies he tells to keep you innocent as long as possible.
This is for the truth he tells when it is exactly what you need to hear, cuss words and all.
This is for the taller than life, the scratchy face, the scent of after shave, the favorite chair, the gruff voice you will still remember when he is no longer there.
This is for telling him now.
This is for telling him…now.

Asia Rainey ©2012

My dad and me in New York circa 1967

Friday the 13th, full moon, and a memorial service, or at least that is how this day started. In the pouring rain, black clouds, low visibility, getting lost with GPS and finding the park where my friend’s service was being held in an open air pavilion with a slide show. Photos of her marrying her husband, having her kids, smiling, grooving, living. Why is it that death takes so much from us? Why, when death is all around us, is it still the most uncomfortable experience we have in our lives. Who gets to say that a life has been short or long, lived or unlived?

I did two sessions with my life coach – one on my career and one on my relationships – and on the scale of 1-10, I found myself not in crisis at all, but actually on cruise control. Who knew? I feel calm, inwardly less stressed, outwardly happy, and curious about what comes next – I have no illusions and yet I expect miracles. Did my friend know that she would die by the time she turned 50? I doubt it. Does anybody know?

The other night I had this dream that haunted me for days afterwards – a very tall man with a scruffy beard was lying in my bed beside me and when I woke he turned over and kisses me familiarly good morning. What? Who is this man? I wondered for a few days afterwards. Who is this large man, lying in my bed, acting all familiar with me. I said to him what are you doing here? And in my dream he said, “I’ve always been here.” Was he a haint? Was he someone from my past or future? And pray tell, why was I surprised?

I determined in the last two days, or let me just say it was confirmed, that life is good. Yes, there are things, there are ducks to rearrange, and attachments to let go of, but for the most part, I can’t complain and I won’t lie and say I’m alright for you either. I just am.

Later it was African City night, where my friends and I dress up in our African garb and watch the web series out of Ghana, An African City, and cook African food. Tonight, I made Accara from Senegal.

I’d like to know how it is that on Friday the 13th, during a full moon, that the veil between the dead and the living, between the past and the present, between what is and what was and what could be, thinned so much that every conversation became weighted with a new way of knowing – others, myself, the world – and that’s how I came to spend this day – a day that Tin got in the truck after camp and said, “Mom, TGIF, thank God I’m fabulous.”

I told my friend who hosts our Nantucket trip that I liken these annual trips to therapy only it is not available on demand. I just returned late Monday night from what has become my annual gal’s trip to paradise and like all trips before this one, there is a tendency to want to tie up the themes in a nice little bow afterwards. Only this year’s themes were plentiful and ranged from cancer to pergolas and so it was really hard to find the common denominator at the end.

However, on the return home, the bow presented itself for me anyway, in a business book that was written called The Compound Effect, which I liken to the Buddhist saying a drop of water exerts the most force. Do small things everyday and you will reach your goal.

At the start of my trip as I sat in my friend’s house getting ready to go visit clients in Boston, and while I was on the phone with the IRS scheduling monthly payments for my taxes and penalty from a retirement withdrawal to buy the Spirit House, a friend rang in that my dear friend had transitioned. Stage Four Ovarian Cancer. My friend turned 50 last week, she was the mother of a 12 year old and a 15 year old and the loving wife of a man I admire. The notion she is no longer with us, with them, is so hard for me to fathom that I cannot. It remains swirling in my mind like a great mystery. For 24 hours leading up to that call, she was heavy on my mind, not like a weight, but more like a calling, call her I kept thinking, call her now, and I hadn’t done it as I was traveling away from her while she was traveling away from us.

I began to dissect the Tao, which I had brought with me, #1 the naming is the origin of all particularities, #2 when people see things as beautiful they see other things as ugly, #3 practice non doing and everything will fall into place, #4 the Tao is filled with infinite possibilities, #5 the Tao doesn’t take sides, and #6 the Tao is called the great mother, empty yet inexhaustible. And on and on.

I tried to hold any worries of debt, of work, of death in abeyance even as we took off from the same airport where seven people had died a few days earlier. Instead, I embraced the bounty of what was in front of me – friendship, time away, Nantucket, my friend’s beautiful house, delicious food, and above all the love and laughter of friends yoked together in a respite. I was tickled pink – literally – from the headiness of abundance that this trip offered up yet again. ACK has not let me down.

I returned to my lawn guy apoplectic because he hadn’t gotten paid, to ten U.S. Marshalls on the corner looking for “someone” with bulletproof vests and artillery visible, to a man who was found dead, shot, in his backyard a few blocks from my house, to heat, and my plants wilted, and to the ever rising cascade of uncertainty that has plagued my finances for the last couple of years. I came home to it, I embraced it, and I went and saw friends for nachos and a margarita.

At the end of the day, it is the Compound Effect. The abutilon (a cutting taken at the last minute from the LaLa when I was moving) is blooming with the vitex out front, the sunflower (seeds planted in early spring) heads are about to blossom in back, the rains have returned to help the plants weather the heat, and it’s summer in the city. I made an appointment with my life coach to work on my career path. I unpacked, cleaned, and began chipping away at the paperwork that awaited me on my desk. I washed clothes, and went to the grocery, and picked a bowl full of ripe tomatoes from the garden. I played and loved on Tin and Stella.

Bit by bit I’m re-entering my life. Every day I will write one thing and add it to my gratitude jar. Right now, the entry is NANTUCKET.

#girlsofsummer

A dear friend of mine who used to be my neighbor and was almost a second mother to Tin is transitioning. She was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer a little over a year ago. Three months of chemo and the cancer returned and she opted not to do chemo again. In the midst of all this, they decided to sell their house on the bayou and move across the lake. A move they as a family have been wanting to do for a long, long time. They are doing it – this week – and she is perhaps not going with them, but her spirit definitely is.

I admired this woman – she was a fierce Cajun who took her family to sit on the bayou and enjoy the sunsets for dinner, who ran and skipped and hopped around the bayou, who planted a garden and kept chickens. She was a true matriarch – a proud mama and a loving wife. A friend in need always.

She snapped at me once when I was describing what my business plan was on first leaving my corporate job. Then she called to apologize a few days later. But she was direct, ahem, like me, and for that and many other facets of her, I love her.

A party was held in her honor on the bayou – a party as it always is on Bayou St. John, where friends and neighbors gather by the water surrounded by food and music, but the theme this time was somber. It had been raining all day but then as it does for us lucky ones, the rain broke just in time for us to convene. My friend couldn’t come down and join us, she’s no longer able to eat, instead she was moved out in a wheelchair to the porch from where she waved to us. We danced in the puddles, her daughter put on a skit with her girlfriends, her son sat with his girlfriend, we ate, we drank, we communed. It’s what we do in life and in death.

My friend’s birthday was last Thursday, she turned 50. A time when life is really beginning all over again. Instead, her fifty year old body has served its time and her spirit will carry on without it. I visited with her last week, all 95 pounds of her, and she said, “Remember the prayer beads you gave me from the Dalai Lama, well I traded them in for the rosary, because you told me to hold each bead and think of something I am grateful for, and I ran out of beads quickly, and now even with the rosary – I don’t even know how to say the rosary – I hold each bead and think of something I am grateful for and I run out of beads each time.”