This Run's For You

Yesterday, I was channeling both Martha Stewart and Guy Kawasaki at the same time. How cool is that?  I was the design maven known for creating something fabulous and useful out of nothing as well as the innovative entrepreneurial visionary and author of “Art of the Start” rolled into one for an invigorating session of dreaming, intentioning and goal setting.


But since my budget is a tad smaller than even the post-incarcerated Martha, I was more like the Giant Tiger version of her.  I took a roll of birthday wrapping paper, turned it around so the blank side was facing out towards me and taped the design side across 6 feet of my living room wall.  Then, with a coffee mug full of colourful markers, I brainstormed what 2012 could look like under the headings of “Life's Work”, “Heart” and “Body & Spirit”.  


There is still much work to be done in reducing the longer term goals into smaller, more manageable 'to do' lists but that will come.  


In the area of Body & Spirit, one goal was to train for a 5K race in May.  This run, known affectionately by my family as Race Weekend, has been an annual event that my original family and an assortment of friends, children, lovers and distant relatives have participated in for 8 years.  It started May 2003, the year that my father died and we have run every May since to raise money to support the hospital that treated him during his illness. 


The first year I took training very seriously.   It was my way of proactively grieving for an inevitable and painful ending that I saw coming.  Morbid?  Maybe.  Perhaps it was the fifth reading through the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying that convinced me to sit with the impending darkness and not look for a way past it.  


By January of 2003, I had signed up for a 5K race near my hometown, downloaded a beginner's 5K training schedule and stuck to it religiously using every commitment device I could find.  My intentions were mostly visual.  I was running towards something, not away from it.


My father was still living during my training and was determined that he was going to be there to watch me finish the race.   Imagining that scenario gave me the energy to run even after a long day at work.  In the bitter cold.  In the dark of evening or morning.  Or through the mind-lies that lashed out at at me to keep me from going on.  "You don't have the body of a runner."  "You're too old."  "This won't make a difference to anyone."


At this point in his illness, the cancer had entered his bones and there was significant deterioration and pain in his one hip.  He eventually admitted that he might have to be at the finish line in a wheelchair.   Even near the end, in his morphine-induced haze, he kept asking if we won the race.  Eventually I told him 'yes'.  We won.


My father died May 3.  Three weeks before the race.  Through the tears, the funeral preparations and the mind-numbing exhaustion of round-the-clock vigil at my father's bed for two weeks, the rest of my siblings, their children, friends and extended family all signed up to run the race with me.  Our first Race Weekend was born.


This memory flooded me, as I went out for a run this morning.  My first run since last May and part of my goal setting practice.  Training is less vigorous as the years pass and I realize now much more there is to Race Weekend than just running.  It's a legacy of facing obstacles with courage of a hero and the frailty of a human being.  Of flawed and fiercely real people putting one foot in front of the other and breathing through the “I can't go on” moments. 


My father was running beside me this morning.  Occasionally flicking at my hands to see if I was clenching them into fists.  Telling me to lower my shoulders.   Reminding me to relax.  To breathe.  He was telling me not to give up, even when I wanted to.  Then, when we realized we were closing in on the 4K point, we both smiled, lowered our arms for increased pumping action and really gave 'er to sprint the last block home.


My father seriously would've needed a few days to get used to the large piece of paper of my living room wall.  He was old-school that way.  But since our family owned a flower shop and a catering business for 20-some years (after his long career as a banker), he would've been totally okay with the Martha and Guy bit.  Then, after a week or two, I would hear him telling someone else why they should be visioning with wrapping paper on their living room wall it as if it was his idea.   


Hey, how can I miss you if you never go away? .... I knew that would make you smile.

Have Yourself a Matrix Little Christmas

I'm not sure when it started.  Or why.   


But, at some point along my Personal Beliefs Timeline, some very serious rants against the practice of mindlessly following long-held traditions began popping up like waving flags at a K'naan concert.  And these weren't just rants going off in the fogginess of my own mind.  Literal proclamations of judgment spewed forth from me, freely and unsolicited, in the presence of others with the precision of a courtroom gavel.


Despite my Degree in Biblical Studies and once being married to a minister (or perhaps because of those things), many of my rants were aimed at questionable religious traditions.  Funeral services that included a message of hell-fire and brimstone for the vulnerable, captive audience of mourners warranted an equally fiery rant for the whole car ride home...no matter how far that car trip home happened to be.


I rationalized that following a tradition without question, was due to an overactive need for consolation.  An adult version of a self-soothing pacifier.  I thought that, as truly high-functioning adults, we should be able to look into the eyes of darkness, feel the discomfort of it and not have to anesthetize ourselves to it with a soother of ritual habit.


Post religious degree and ex-partner, I have now created a very fulfilling life that is a far cry from my oft-evangelical, fundamentalist, tradition-filled roots and education.  I do yoga (gasp!), meditate, question most things, spell truth with a small 't' and believe that god is spelled k-i-n-d-n-e-s-s.  But being a little off-centre is never more evident than in this season that is filled with and built on tradition.  


Last night, I spent a wonderful evening with my sons and we laughed at how 'non-traditional' our family is.   Since the boys were to be on an airplane to visit their father early Christmas morning, we created a new (possibly for this year only) tradition and have our family time on Christmas Eve.   


Some things we did were similar to regular families, I guess, as we opened our gifts to each other, ate  delicious treats and caught up on each others lives.  But we veered significantly off-course when one son put a picture of his friend wearing her hijab on our our pile of gifts and claimed that we had a Muslim Christmas Tree.  Then we watched the Christmas episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as opposed to The Grinch or Die Hard) and engaged in a role-playing, drinking card game and this certainly must have put us in some sort of category of white-trash crazy.  


But, as I sat watching my boys playing the role-playing game, I smiled deeply from the inside out.  One was wearing a bow-tie and the other a camouflage Elmer Fudd hat.  They couldn't be more different if I had submitted a genetic wish list.  But there we were.  Three joyous oddnicks enjoying an even odder evening of celebration.  We laughed.  Till our faces and bellies hurt.  We kept putting off bedtime even though we were all aware of the early flight.


The next morning, as the boys packed, primped (well, the one in the bow-tie was the only one primping) and yawned themselves awake, ate warm cinnamon buns out of the oven, they talked about the trip before them.  I listened with interest as they confirmed with each other that one of them had the movie, The Matrix, downloaded on one of their laptops.  I asked why.  They said, “it's our tradition”.  


Apparently, the first post-divorce, Christmas airplane ride 6 years ago involved watching the movie together, side by side in their plane seats, so, out of a need for continuity, sameness, or just making sense out of a new way of life, my boys created a tradition for themselves.   For comfort.  For consolation.  For the time when they needed that.  


Could it be that all traditions aren't evil incarnations of thoughtless people who are stuck in their adolescent phase of belief?  Or can we create flexible traditions that console and nourish at the same time?  


Who knows?  All I know is that my life, my loves, my boys, my viewpoint are all basically non-traditional but also magnanimous enough to include the occasional tradition.   


“Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony”.  Matrix makes Christmas merrier.  Who knew?

Travelling Signs

Clear Signs To Me That I'm Totally Off My Path

• frequent dreams of losing my wallet or of being a passenger in a vehicle that's being driven carelessly by someone else
• deep breathing comes only in the form of deep sighs
• every driver in front of me is an uber-asshole
• in fact, everyone around me is suddenly cursed with a severe case of incompetence
• complaints live in a permanent speech bubble over my head
• not looking at myself in the full-length mirror after getting out of the shower
• in the company of others, smiling often

Clear Signs To Me That I'm Slightly Off My Path

• locking keys in the car while on a date I knew wouldn't lead to a positive relationship
• getting a speeding ticket while leaving a second date with the same guy...sigh...
• changing my outfit several times while getting ready for work
• misplacing my keys
• driving too aggressively
• noticing the faults of myself and others frequently
• hiding parts of my body while looking in the mirror after getting out of the shower
• in the company of others, smiling often (hmmm...pattern here?)

Clear Sign That I Am Solidly on My Path

• getting an email from my closest girlfriend that says...
  
  

   “Please join me on the first annual “No More Fuckin' Around Tour 2012”. Less thinking, more jumping into what we were put on this planet to do. Let's read the book Danette got us each for Christmas, bring the journal Julie got us last year and meet together before the clock strikes 2012 to set out our intentions, commit to breaking our patterns and supporting each other along the way. The inaugural quote for this tour is...

  
  

  "Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it."

Will you join me?"  

How fortunate am I?  Who could refuse an invitation like this?    

Eyes wide open on the path to live, breathe and to deeply suck all the juice from this experience of life, pain, pleasure and all.   At this moment, my path is what is right under my feet and it is time to accept the challenge, accept the support that is being offered and to accept that I am on the precipice of a life lived out loud.  No more excuses, no more fuckin' around.  

Let's get 'er done!

Oh, and when I looked in the mirror this morning after my shower, I loved what I saw!

Whole Hole

Right on the heels of my most recent Kerouac-inspired post where I go on about needing adequate alone time from my "mad" friends, comes this note to clearly demonstrate my contradictory nature.

Solitude has been in full abundance this weekend.  Other than a coffee date with a couple of fellow yogini's and the occasional cyber-type conversation, I have been on my own at home or alone in the company of unknown people in a public setting.

Even as introverted as I am or as tired as I get from too-frequent interaction with others, I did not go gently into this solitude-filled Saturday and Sunday.  It has not been a time of quiet reflection and ease.  Instead, it has felt more like a storm to be weathered.

The storm arrived like a deep hollowness right through my solar plexus.  Remember playing with Plasticine as a kid and you'd flatten a chunk of it and use a circular object to remove a circle from the center?  At times, I felt as if I could hear the crisp winter wind whistling through that hole that went right through me.  And breathing deeply, all the way down to the hole, animated the hollow feeling and brought to life with the tears of every unexpressed moment of abandonment I'd ever experienced.  I was all at once a frightened child that I would be crushed by the silence, the concrete aloneness and seeming lack of connection to anyone or anything.

How can it be that solitude can both comfort and terrify me so?

The trigger for this weekend's expression of sorrow is not a mystery.   On top of realizing that an unexpected, intimate relationship I had hoped would deepen instead needs to come to a noble end, this is the first holiday season that I have not had at least one of my son's living at home with me.   As I went through boxes of holiday decorations, I felt suddenly very exposed.  I wanted to get back into bed, have a drink, eat something, have sex with someone or do anything but feel what I was feeling.  The boxes of Christmas baubles from years gone by  stared up at me as if to say "Do you really want to put all this stuff up if you're the only one who's going to see it?  Really, what's the point?"  I answered those questions with more tears.

But, since tears are not fatal and are meant to be shed, I tried to free as many of them as I could.  Solitude isn't fatal either.   Along with all the salty, used-up tissues I threw out, I also discarded my need to have a single life that is Facebook-worthy.  No warm status updates about trimming trees and baking shortbread cookies.  Sometimes the line between being lonely and being alone gets a little blurred.  That is life that is too naked for mass consumption.

But fear not, it's not all tissue and tears here!  There is a well of gratitude here, too.  I got to flex my creative muscles in adding a few decorative touches to my home.  I get to spend Christmas morning with my boys who will then travel to visit their father.  Then I will enjoy a full day and night of festivities with my five siblings, my mother and grandmother and our families.   Finally, I can balance that activity with time on my own.

I don't think I want the gratitude to cover up the hole in my chest though.  They both have a message for me that is being held deeply in my body.  And if I listen closely and not be afraid to feel the hard feelings, maybe I can unwrap the gift of true presence this season.