What happens in Morocco

 I went to Morocco on a women only watercolor painting retreat. I am no artist and more certainly I do not know the first thing about watercolor painting. But I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco and this opportunity quite literally fell in my lap thanks to a lovely artist whom I’ve known, though distantly and vaguely, since I was a sophomore in high school. 

All of the sun, moon, and stars came together and I was able to take this journey despite the several times it seemed it would most probably become impossible to do so along the way. It was the first hour of the 24 in which the moon appears full and I stood on a rooftop in Marrakech with gorgeous women who possessed intense talent and the magic of the world sang to me of a rebirth I have been experiencing for an entire physical renaissance period, or seven years.  I haven’t just been remade by my own cells’ doing. But I have also realized a different point of view spiritually than anything else I have ever believed or thought. Head heart. Yin Yang.  Black white. He she. The unrelenting desire to describe and define. All of the classification and boxes that we are told we must neatly categorize things within for the comfort and perceived safety of those around us have at long last fallen away. 

As I touched the symbols of my own hard earned iconography, honoring the things that I’ve discovered over 45 years to be truly my own in these present moments, I have a clear moment to reconnaître who I have always been. And while she may change her layers adding and subtracting as she finds new things that are profitable to her and old things that no longer suffice to carry, a core always remains true. In those moments in the spiraling inward Medina, reflecting the infinite creative process inward, even on a subatomic level, a desire washed over me to wrest the power that the violent powerful of the present have used cunning lies and a guise of physical prowess to take from the masses and to restitute it back through any animal , mineral, physical, spiritual, magical methods that I may have at my disposal to the rest of us. 

Many of you who have read and perhaps some of you even enjoyed my blog in the past will likely not have the same interest or appreciation for this next chapter in my life. And that is ok. Scroll on. I don’t think blogs are really a thing anymore anyway. But part of the promise I made to myself in that moment and to the women who encouraged me to do so in that riad was to begin again with the art form that comes most naturally to me me-writing. I return. But in a spiraling outward fashion, recreation of  the self in an outward manner, growing ever larger willing to touch others and encourage them with Magical words to be their best selves. 

I see myself as what the puritans would have called a witch. A woman who is aware of and willing to stand steadfastly in her power. A human who values the human experience of all those around her. I understand that we are made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe and thereby have a mystical connection to everything around us. And each of us has particular wrought curves or bent nature whose arcs intersect with that magic and one another in a divine sort of way. I briefly read through a short historical account of the mathematics that inform sacred Islamic art. It filled me with inspiration as it spoke of spirals and intersecting circles and the vertices these circles created and the connecting of these intersects in order to creat geometric shapes and patterns. As I watched the sun browned hands that create, even to this day, these shapes in the ancient way and breathed in the fragrant spices that are used for celebrating, delighting, bringing pleasure and easing the passing from this life into death, I felt the holiness of the collection of each and every individual there. This isn’t to say that we aren’t all flawed it is to say that even through and because of our flaws we are holy. Perfect. Precisely who we should be. 

My heart was flooded with a desire to encourage anyone I may come in contact with, and especially women who have of late been so beaten down by fearful and ironically powerful people, to retain their power and person despite the echoes of mediocrity to conform to a middle ground that makes those who are not comfortable with their own selves feel more at ease. Encouraging requires courage. How can you imbue others with that which you will not possess yourself?  In the light of that full moon which would later experience an eclipse in a symbol of rebirth and recreation in the hemisphere where I was born and would soon return, courage enveloped me and inspiration danced around me like the shooting stars that raced across the night sky. Feeling an integral part of the every thing and nothing that surrounds us, I freely stand in all of the power that the 45 years of these collection of cells inventing and reinventing her largely feminine and somewhat masculine self and I write to speak to anyone who wants to that you may. Timshel. 

i did not come here seeking redemption

I came to Colorado, specifically to the United States Air Force Academy, at long last, after nearly 17 years. When I graduated I purposefully left the chapel spires in my rear view mirror and never glanced back again. The reasons were too numerous to all recount here, but the gist of it is that inasmuch as an institution can, this one hurt me. To say that I took the road less traveled as a cadet would be an understatement. In fact I didn't take a road at all. I made my own crazy scattered way through that nightmarish maze nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I unapologetically did my own thing. Which was often not the right thing. And while we are being honest many of my injuries at that place were self inflicted.

I came back here not because of or in spite of any of the negative things I associated with what some people affectionately (or not so affectionately) refer to as the zoo. I came to celebrate the career of one of the people who made life at the academy bearable and whose love, compassion, and quiet wisdom were often the only flotation device I had in the rough seas I was errantly navigating. I came to celebrate the 29 years he had spent coaching and championing women's (And men's)swimming at the Academy. I also came as a member of a team whose better members had won two national championships in DII swimming & diving and led to the team's ascension to division one status.

 The festivities were lovely. The reunion was joyous. Seeing all the beautiful faces of the people I loved dearly and unconditionally and they had afforded me the same grace as we bore each other through the years of academics and military training and swimming and life's many trials we all face regardless of the venue; that was priceless.  There was laughter and tears, happy tears, as we reminisced over the past and caught up on what 16-20 years had brought into and out of our lives.

 After the retirement and before the hall of fame event, on The Saturday before Easter, the day Jesus' body lay in the tomb, I ventured back to the visitors center and the cadet chapel at the United States Air Force Academy. As I walked up and looked around I realized the place no longer had a hold on me. Wandering around the path leading down to the chapel observing the scrub oaks that appear to be dead and the dry dusty wilderness teeming with pines and hidden mountain creatures, in the high rare air of that over 7000 foot altitude, I realized that the fire of time had burned away all the pain that i had experienced at that place and left only the qualities that been refined and the unbroken relationships with amazing people I would have unlikely ever otherwise met. A feeling snuck up on me like a whisper that maybe life had put to death all the broken and painful things and what was truly me was day by day being remade from that dust.

 As I stood in the cadet chapel marveling at the beauty of the 1950's modern architecture as light poured into that darkish space through slivers of multicolored stained glass and danced off a cross designed after the fashion of a propellor and remembered the many times I sat in those Wing shaped pews, sometimes seeking, sometimes finding, sometimes just escaping, I believed. For a moment I truly believed again. This Easter what was resurrected in me was an ability to believe. Not of my own volition because I did not come here seeking redemption. But because There is a love that loves me enough to put that belief back in my heart.

 I am not meant to live on the mountaintop. I only get moments of knowing and feeling and the rest of the time I live in the doldrums of confusion about things mysterious and divine. I am beginning to understand that I am also not meant to hold on to those moments for longer than they last. But to live in them presently when they occur and breathe them in drink them in feel them wash over me and then let them go as they ebb and somehow be comfortable in the unknowing that flows in its place. even writing it down seems a little bit like an attempt to hold on to it. To grasp it and keep it. The story of creation and recreation is always being told and retold. It's in science and math and Literature and nature and technology.  It's an old story but it is always new. And for a miraculous moment I am able to recognize its magic. I'm breathing it in. I am partaking in the resurrection.

 This is the story of other women but... On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!

Little Earthquakes...wherein I return to writing for one night only thanks to something i read on the interwebs

I haven't written much at all in the past two years.  My brain didn't miraculously go silent; no the roiling nonsense continues on a regular basis.  I just don't have time to write or anything really good to say.  It's like the words got dumber, and I don't want to sound dumb in public.  With that being said, there are good words that go along with the topic today, but I can't seem to get them out.  Oh well...here's what I do have.

The internet is both my best and most constant friend, and my biggest time suck, all rolled into one.  So much of it is crap but, every once in a while it coughs up a gem. This gem on this day in particular is resonating with me in a way that surprises me:

"...to have faith, even when you don't believe anymore."

That is my current spiritual predicament.  I do not believe anymore. A lot of you who still believe will say that I covered my ears, closed my eyes. Turned away.  And then walked in that away direction.  Walked away from faith. Walked away from God.  Walked away from the truth.

And that may be.  But I look at it differently (I hear the dogmatic countercommentary, and I've applied it already and it bounces right off). The way I see it, I grew tired of imagining a lover who isn't there.  A God who is reportedly all about relationship but puts all the onus on me.  Who is all powerful but leaves all the daily grind relationshipping to little old broken me.  It seemed to me I was living in a vivid fantasy world completely in my mind in this regard...like I was texting some emotionally unavailable boyfriend who was ignoring and deleting the texts with prejudice.  I didn't want to be a stoic anymore.  I wanted to be ravaged by a wild God who wanted to be in a real relationship with me and knowing who I am (because..creator) would do anything to show me that in a way I could feel.  And I have felt nothing for quite some time.

So I stopped.  I stopped all the imaginating and faking it til I make it that never led to making it. I stopped believing.

Moreover, I have not been willing to have faith in the absence of evidence or feeling.  For months I've stubbornly dug my feet in and said no I don't believe.  I shoved my fist up at the sky and said in the words, although with perhaps a slightly different meaning, of Atreiu from Neverending Story to the servant of the nothing, "Come for me!!!!"

Nothing.

And then this grammar murdering meme with several postulates about what strength is suggested I should have faith...even though I don't believe anymore. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I think about everything all of the time, you know, constant inner monologue.  But, underneath and weaving in and out of my thoughts about the myriad of topics I am forever mulling over is this stupid quote about faith.

As Mumford & Sons have sung (leave it to those crazy Brits to say it best) I don't even know if I believe, I don't even know if I wanna believe, but I'm willing to take a peek of faith.  Not a leap, and not even a step, but a peek in that direction.

Even so, come.





Believe
Mumford & Sons

You may call it in this evening
But you've only lost the night
Present all your pretty feelings
May they comfort you tonight
And I'm climbing over something
And I'm running through these walls

I don't even know if I believe
I don't even know if I believe
I don't even know if I believe
Everything you're trying to say to me

I had the strangest feeling
Your world's not all it seems
So tired of misconceiving
What else this could've been

I don't even know if I believe
I don't even know if I believe
I don't even know if I believe
Everything you're trying to say to me

So open up my eyes
Tell me I'm alive
This is never gonna go our way
If I'm gonna have to guess what's on your mind

Say something, say something
Something like you love me
Like you want to move away
From the noise of this place

Well I don't even know if I believe
I don't even know if I believe
I don't even know if I wanna believe
Everything you're trying to say to me

So open up my eyes
Tell me I'm alive
This is never gonna go our way
If I'm gonna have to guess what's on your mind

So open up my eyes
Tell me I'm alive
This is never gonna go our way
If I'm gonna have to guess what's on your mind

Write Hard

"Write hard and clear about what hurts."  - Earnest Hemmingway.

OK

I'm taking that advice; well, we shall see about the clear part.

I met a man a little over a year ago.  He was like all other men to me at that time.  A cursory assessment of him left me with the impression that he was uninterestingly self absorbed, not particularly attractive, followed by a troupe of admiring women, and all other males had a story about how he was kind of a douchebag.  To be honest, I didn't even notice him the first time we coincidentally were at the same local hangout on the "island" of lost boys.  In a very literal sense, I didn't see him coming.

I can recall, and could recount, every moment we spent together.  But I will not, those banal details are not interesting to you, and keeping them secret is my way of marking their importance to me.

The story here is so much more about the journey I am on through life and the lessons this "beautiful, tragic love affair" (thanks t-swizzle) has taught me. By nature, I am a guarded, closed off person.  For practical reasons.  I know that relationships almost always end.  If they are going to end, I don't want to get my heart involved.  It is small and fragile, breaks easily and heals slowly, so I give it away stingily, and pray that the recipient wants to keep it forever when I do give it.  I over-analyze situations that I find myself in, what possible end can this particular path have and what are the odds that it will be at least 51% favorable for me.

I felt a sweetness about him from the very start.  Not cloyingly sweet or surface sweet and then bitter underneath. It was a deep and easy sweetness that may not sound like a big deal, but is unique in my life.  I still feel it.  Not that it has been very long.  But music and dance and moments fill my mind and heart with the sweet feeling and a hope to see him again that will not be fulfilled. And my heart breaks again.

Looking back over those first few months where we barely interacted for only moments at a time during my infrequent visits, I can see the frisson filled anticipation with which I looked forward to the possibility of catching a glimpse of him and exchanging a few words and sharing a furtive glance or ten.  I didn't mean to be deceitful, I really didn't think of him that way out loud...but the brain is sometimes slow in catching up with the heart...especially when the two of them have developed a mutual distrust for each other such as mine have.  With a touch, a look, a sentence, he secretly tethered himself to me.  He placed strings on and through my heart and held them in his hand.  So slight were these silken threads that he sewed through my heart that I didn't even notice them there.  They were thin and ethereal so that in the end the sinew that would properly hold my heart together had been most certainly completely replaced by them.  My heart was no longer encased by its own watery membrane, but a blanket that he had woven and thrown over it, likely without knowing or intending to do just that.  Maybe just out of curiosity to see what would happen.

And then one night, as Johnny Rzeznik would sing, "Like a lightning bolt to the heart, you woke me up."  He shocked my heart with a jolt so that it now beat with a rhythm that was entirely his own.  Nearly a year later, when he removed the pacemaker, I felt the pain of complete cardiac arrest as my heart temporarily stopped beating at all. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but it was love at first real sight, like the light came on and I saw him, and not the him I had pretended I thought he was so I could hide from what was fomenting underneath my feigned disdain.  Maybe it was the full moon, maybe it was all those mosquitos, or the firelight, or the way he willingly let us take care of him instead of acting like the big man who doesn't need any help.  It was probably the music that filled the night air, and the way he looked at me like he could see my soul, and the way he shared his fears and stories and pain and thanked me for all of it.  It was certainly the way he held my hand in his bigger,stronger hand, and the way he held me in his arms tight against his chest like he never wanted to let me go.

My heart woke up from its decade long winter of unfeeling and my brain sat straight up, took notice, shook itself "no" in its cranium and told heart, "Run, Baby, Run."  My heart, aware that this "sliding doors" affair had 99.9% chance of ending in disaster, decided to sit and stay and bask in the warmth of the sun that beamed from his eyes and enjoy the cool breeze that he whispered across me.  The perfect beauty of the summer that I was now enjoying was worth the guarantee that one of these summer days would bring my heart a category 5 hurricane that made any winter chill feel like child's play.  Instead of carefully removing the strings I was now aware were binding us together, and packing up my heart, and slowly backing to a distance where I knew I would be safe, I stayed and let him continue to establish his ties to me..."apprivoise-moi.  Mais si tu m'apprivoises, ma vie sera comme ensoleillée."  So I gave him my wild heart and asked him to tame it, because I wanted to. That was the choice I made.  The heart choice, over the smart choice.  (Where were the christians from "shoot christians say" to remind me to bounce my eyes and guard my heart?)

I've always loved The Little Prince by Antoine de St-Exupery, and my favorite character has always been le renard (the fox).  The interactions between le petit prince and le renard were to me the libretto of our little relationship.

“S’il te plaît… apprivoise-moi!” dit-il.

“Je veux bien,” répondit le petit prince, “mais je n’ai pas beaucoup de temps. J’ai des amis à découvrir et beaucoup de choses à connaitre.”

“On ne connaît que les choses que l’on apprivoise,” dit le renard. “Les hommes n’ont plus le temps de rien connaître. Ils achètent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands. Mais comme il n’existe point de marchands d’amis, les hommes n’ont plus d’amis. Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi!”

He had a rose, because there's always a rose. If there's a fox, there's always a rose. A rose who must be returned to because she needs his sunlight and water and protection and her importance is preeminent because of the time he has already spent on her.

“C’est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante.”

So he said he had to leave this planet and return to his. And I cried. "Don't cry over me" ... "It hurts me too" ...He said, and a million other things that couldn't make it better. How could he look at me, touch me, say those things to me that way and not really care. "I do care" ...not enough... "I just need to do what's best for me"... which was evidently not me... "You always knew this day was coming"  And with that he obliterated my heart.  He tugged on all those strings and tore chunks of cardiac muscle right out of my chest. While, admittedly, this is hyperbolic figurative language, it is also completely true.  My heart physically hurts.  It is crazy and true and largely the reason why my brain doesn't like to allow the heart to make the decisions.  

 

Ainsi le petit prince apprivoisa le renard. Et quand l’heure du départ fut proche:
—Ah! dit le renard… Je pleurerai.
—C’est ta faute, dit le petit prince, je ne te souhaitais point de mal, mais tu as voulu que je t’apprivoise…
—Bien sûr, dit le renard.
—Mais tu vas pleurer ! dit le petit prince.
—Bien sûr, dit le renard.
—Alors tu n’y gagnes rien !
—J’y gagne, dit le renard, à cause de la couleur du blé.

I can't be angry with him. Even in my heartbreak there is no bitterness, and I think eventually I will be able to look back and smile at our moments our secrets our closeness our shared joy. I will remember the way a huge uncontainable grin would break across his face when he saw me, you can't fake nor can you fetter emotion like that, and it's how I know it was real for him too. I will remember the slow, heavy, bass drum kick of his heart inside his chest...steady regardless of the situation...I could just have leaned against him and listened to it reassuring me for hours. When your mom has open heart surgery to replace her mitral valve when you are young, you develop a habit of listening for and memorizing the sound of people's hearts in their chests. Some of them have a sound that resonates into your life and harmonizes with your own. His was just right to my ears. I will look back and laugh at all the faux pas like calling my eyes gray and my hair brunette (because it wasn't the summer just yet and honey blonde isn't legit bleach blonde) and basically calling me fat (which he certainly didn't mean, but mumbles had a way of sticking his foot straight in it). One day it won't hurt, the words won't feel like daggers. Eventually I will be able to be glad for being able to let go and love and be grateful to him for being the object of that affection. Eventually I will be able to appreciate the "color of the wheat" even though he was not the one. After a time I will stop wishing that he would come back and choose me.

But I have learned that this is the condition of being human, we need dark to contrast the light, we will have pain and you can't avoid pain so you might as well risk a certain kind of pain and have something sweet along the way...because who knows, it might just work out...and what's the worst that could happen?  Heartbreak.  And then mend...and maybe even love again.

One last word from that crazy, wise, French pilot: "Bien sûr je te ferai mal. Bien sûr tu me feras mal. Bien sûr nous aurons mal. Mais ça, c’est la condition de l’existence. Se faire printemps, c’est prendre le risque de l’hiver. Se faire présent, c’est prendre le risque de l’absence… C’est à mon risque de peine que je connais ma joie."

For now, if everyone could stop parking those idiotic dinosaurs in the parking lots at Publix and Starbucks and Tacolu...I'd really appreciate it.

Never the same Love twice

As one of my literary loves, F. Scott Fitzgerald, said, "There are all kinds of love, but never the same love twice."  And oh how right he was.  So many kinds of love, and each one is wonderful, amazing, revealing something new in its own unique and unimagined way.

I was 26 and I had been in love a few times.  I loved my mother madly, and my father insanely (literally), and my siblings to differing degrees at different times and always most loved my little brother Ben.  Teenage me had fallen briefly in an intellectually conceived love born on a wave of an imagined intimacy fabricated by sharing untold hours of near nudity in the small space of the practice swim pool.  In Colorado, I fell into an ill advised love, the wild love you only feel in college when hormones are at their peak, alcohol is flowing freely, and you do things you were never even allowed to think about a few years earlier. And finally I fell in love with the idea of a family.

Sebastien Michael Hall came into this world a quarter of an hour after nine at night on May 14th, amidst my own screams of pain due to a wide open pit drip and a not at all open epidural drip.  The doctor was out to lunch, quite literally, when I decided I wanted, needed, HAD TO push.  The nurses told me I was not allowed to and they would go fetch the doc for me.  Finally, he arrived putting on his booties and shower cap and robe, just in time to help catch my firstborn.  As I held that nearly eight pound baby in my arms, I laughed, and cried, and what felt like Grucci's fireworks went off in my heart. All the walls that had been inadvertently built over the years of compensating for false loves were shattered and oceans and eons of unbridled love rushed out of every pore, I couldn't have contained if I had wanted to, and I certainly didn't want to.

There is a peculiar love that comes along with the first born; marked by a deep desire to do everything right-read all the books, follow all the sage advice, document every second of it-and a crippling fear that you are doing everything wrong.  Your first gets your undivided attention.  He also gets all your rigidity and trial and erroring (real words for real talk).  Really no more than a child, myself, in so many ways, I grew up in raising Sebastien.  I learned about deep abiding love, verb love, love that starts out as a chemical imperative and blossoms into an arduous ardor proven through day in and day out choices to get up and try again no matter how many times you fall on your not-so-Mary-Poppins face. I have made my fair share of mistakes - many of them doozies - sometimes I even so resemble my parents in the missteps that they took and I judged them so harshly for, that I can't stand myself.  But rearing children and loving them despite yourself (and eventually their selves) helps you grow out of the naivete and hubris that caused you to once think you could parent perfectly.  Grace begins to worm her way into your life, and you learn to extend her embrace to the kids and even a little to yourself.

Over the years Sebastien has made it easy for me to make the choice to love him.  He has always been ahead of the curve which appeals to my competitive nature: learning to walk around 10 months, being in the 90+ percentile in height for most of his life (you doubt this is important, but it is), having an adorable head of golden blond curls and a sweet, devoted, whole-hearted love for his mom. He is smart.  He works hard. This year he decided he wasn't going to go to the local middle school next year and completely on his own applied to, and got into, the Gifted Science, Math and Technology program at the nearby Magnet school. He is a super fast swimmer, even though he isn't on the swim team- thanks to my lack of enthusiasm for the swim team mom life -  the swimmer in me likes to see someone swim with correct form and decent speed.  This year he has become a pretty righteous defender on the soccer "pitch" (as they'd say in the British Isles).  He is even learning the guitar (which has, btw, forced me to try my hands on the six strings, and he is doing a quite a bit better than I).

He will turn eleven on Wednesday.  ELEVEN!? It seems ages ago that he was a baby, and only yesterday at the same time.  Sebastien forged the way for me to love each and every one of my four sons uniquely and 100%.  I can honestly say that I do not have a favorite son, because being a mom has taught me, through experience, that there are many loves, enough loves for all the loves of my life, and each one is unlike anything else...Never the same love twice.

You kick some ass, Sea-bass.

(yep)

Short. and sweet. Like Spring Break

After an entire week without my kids, I prefer spring break with my kids.  Road trips, beach stays, shell finding, family visits, that's how I want to do spring break, because that's how it's done best.  After all, I'm not 21 anymore and I'm not yet 60.

But, guess what? Every other year for the next 14 years, I won't be with my kids on their spring break.  So what then?  I suppose there will be a biennial trip like, or perhaps quite unlike, this one.

A weekend in Charleston.  Two days of business at home that needed to be taken care of and 4 days and 3 nights in south florida, a great night in Orlando, and just enough of Sunday at home to feel like attacking whatever comes next.  A big change is on the horizon of my life. The biggest part of the change is that I have no idea in which direction it will take me.  It is most literally a leap of faith.  That's a big deal for me.  I love the illusion of control.  I love for things to go my way.  If I have no idea which way that actually is, oh how great the trepidation for the out of control nature of it all.  It's exhilarating at this very moment.  It may be debilitating tomorrow, but right now, the possibility and impossibility of it is pretty exciting.

I relaxed on the beach, floated on the waves, met some old folks, ate and drank at new places, had a lovely evening with a beautiful man I will never see again, saw the sunset and sunrise, made new friends and saw ones I hadn't seen in a while (unfortunately, I missed a couple of them I really would have loved to have reconnected with...but there's always time) and indulged in some "girl talk" and "me time" (two of my least favorite terms).

I'm learning some things this year: patience (this is a lifelong lesson), flexibility, allowing both the trouble and pleasure of the day to suffice for the day-allowing myself to be in the moment rather than dwelling on the past (which I don't do often but we all can get caught pulling a Lot's wife from time to time) or trying to figure out the myriad of potential futures that lie ahead of me behind each and every possible dizzying choice I could make anxiously attempting to map out every one of  the endlessly countless iterations of what if's, as if I can think my way out of every situation that is currently not the most comfortable for myself.

And on this Lord's day, Lord, hear the cry of my heart:

"Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me;
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. 

Spirit of the living God, move among us all;
make us one in heart and mind, make us one in love:
humble, caring, selfless, sharing.
Spirit of the living God, fill our lives with love."

A Saint Patty's Day Vignette About the Luck of the Damsels Who Aren't Necessarily in Distress

Yesterday afternoon, my friend Julie and I were driving home from an absolutely marvelous weekend in Charleston, SC.  I don't ever have a bad time in the Holy City, but this particular weekend was as perfectly blissful as it was necessary to my own sanity at this precise moment in time.  Two nights and three days of thinking as little about the negatives in my life as is actually possible for my mind.

Friday, I received some excruciatingly bad news, the details of which I am not ready to share aloud, yet. The news was delivered swaddled in the thick blanketing of kind words and hoping the best for me, while their actual meaning cut to the very quick and simultaneously sliced my feet off at their ankles and tore my still beating heart out of her chest, the messenger hugged me and sent me on my zombie way.

I immediately left the scene of the crime, heart in hands, crawling back to my home as my feet refused to carry me, packed myself a weekend bag and waited for Julie to pick me up.  We ate sushi and hit the road. We got to Erin's house on an island in Charleston, and things began to right themselves.  Our hostess is a marvelous tour guide, always knowledgeable about the best places to see, things to do, restaurants to eat. Plus, she is the queen of making fast friends of all she encounters, so there isn't a person she doesn't know, it seems, and of those people they all love her without exception.  Friday night, we ate at an Italian restaurant downtown with big wooden tables that lent themselves to the family style surprise menu the chef created for us.  The food, the ambience, the experience, the waitstaff, were the exact panacea to what ailed me (figuratively of course, as my health is not the real issue here) at that point.  A little late night entertainment and then we went back home for a relatively early bedtime, because we had a ferry to catch at zero dark.

The next morning we packed beach cruisers on the backs of cars and headed to the dock where Capt Will, another who was happy to see Erin return with friends in tow, was waiting to navigate our crew through the class 1 wilderness of the South Carolina intracoastal.  He was adorable in a way that reminded me of a debearded, slightly older, hippy leprechaun.  And it certainly didn't hurt that he was quite knowledgeable about Biology, especially as it related to the local ecosystem. The water was pristine and the air was fresh in a way that cleared the head, but only long enough to allow a new tide of thoughts regarding my recent misfortune to rush back in.  Half an hour later we were on Bulls Island and ready to ride around the entire island in search of sand dollars and sea shells.  After nearly eight hours of bike riding and shell hauling, wind and sun burn, isolation from civilization and the fresh ocean fragrance had rendered me exhausted to the point where I almost had a silent clarity in my mind.  While my ischia are still recovering from the first bike ride I've been on since my tragic triathlon accident of 2002, my heart and brain and soul are so grateful for the release and relief that this excursion brought.  Plus, we scored some pretty sweet souvenirs from our search efforts.

Casual dinner at a taco truck turned sit down restaurant and an introduction to the series House of Cards finished saturday off. That night I slept like a baby.

After a Lazy Sunday, we headed back to Jacksonville.  The low tire pressure signal came on in Julie's car. We stopped, she added air, there was a bit of a bubble on the tire, but we pressed on, mindful to keep an eye on it.  About an hour and a half later we stopped and repeated the process.  Less than a mile later we heard the loud flappety report that the tire had gone completely flat.  Julie expertly crossed the three lanes to the right shoulder and called roadside assistance as it was raining, and we didn't necessarily want to mess with the tire change when it was covered by insurance.

Then we got the text from the tow truck driver: he wouldn't arrive for another hour.  The girls sprang into action.  Wearing skinny jeans and light billowy cream colored shirts, she in high wedged sandals and me in flats that may as well have been bare feet, we set to work.  We moved everything out of the trunk to the back seat, opened the well and lowered the full size spare.  It has been nearly a decade since I changed a wheel solo, and probably 3 or 4 years since with my ex doing only a nominal amount of work, I changed a wheel with help. I feel fairly confident in doing what must be done even without recent experience in the arena.  But Julie fortunately had recently changed this tire and was not only familiar with the process but is an expert about her car.

We propped the car up with the jack no problem and had all the tools we would need for this quick change. The only difficulty we really encountered was the fact that neither of us had on thick soled shoes-boots or even sneakers would have really been better footwear for this scenario.  Neither one of us are hulking brutes, although we are both pretty strong in our own right.  We both gave a turn at the wrench, but these arms were falling short of the task of loosening the lugs nuts.  Each one of us then took a turn at standing on the wrench, I guess the fact that the lugs still didn't want to budge was a testament to our fitness? (Sure, why not, silver lining, half full, rainbows and unicorns.)  With sneakers on we would have just kicked the wrench and that would have loosened it no problem. The car's owner was determined that she was not going to let five tiny lug nuts defeat her, so she repeatedly jumped on the wrench until she finally achieved victory in the form of a little budge in the first lug nut.  She had loosened three or four of the them when two young gentleman pulled over and offered their help.

They, with their thickly (though not particularly cut) muscled arms made quick work of the tire change, and Julie (with minimal assistance from me) strapped the flat tired but up under the car.  In the waning moments of the tire change, another car stopped.  Out floated a tiny leprechaun of Asian descent, wearing a tweed jacket over a green crew neck tee shirt and bearing a small black umbrella.  He glided up to us and said, "I noticed you didn't have an umbrella."  The four of us who had been out there for less than ten minutes had not noticed, as the rain was barely heavier than a mist at that point. In fact Julie replied with a laugh, "Actually we have two, but we were so busy we didn't even think of it!" He stood above the young man who was tightening the lug nuts on the newly installed wheel, as he rightly wanted to protect the person doing the yeoman's work from the elements.  I looked over at him and could read a portion of the caption on his saint patrick's day themed shirt as it was revealed by the opening in the top of his elbow patched smoking jacket; it read "Keep Calm..."  and no doubt obscured by the buttoned lower portion of the jacket were the words "...and Carry an Umbrella."  The wheel was on and we began to clean up the tools and lower the car.  Our parasol provider looked around and said "seems as if you've got it under wraps."

And with that he was gone, with a tip of his umbrella.

A minute later after a brief inspection of their handiwork, our gentlemen helpers were also on their way.

Less than fifteen minutes after stopping, we were back on the road.

The moral of the story is twofold:  b!tches do be doing it for themselves, but it doesn't hurt to have a few extra man hands in the mix to make light work of a messy situation.  And if you don't have the presence of mind to get the umbrella you DO have in your car out whilst performing a tire change in the rain, "Keep Calm and Call a Leprechaun."