Away and Back

I was in Albuquerque for a T'ai Chi Chih Retreat. T'ai Chi Chih is a moving meditation designed to activate, circulate, and balance the body's intrinsic energy (also known as chi.)

The plane made its final approach alongside a rainbow (which I did not get a photo of.) There were more rainbows that evening--doubles and complete arcs.

T'ai Chi Chih's movements are slow....

Turtles at the Rio Grande Nature Center

...and continuous.

The Rio Grande as seen from the River Loop Trail

One of T'ai Chi Chih's 19 movements is called Light at the Top of the Head, Light at the Temple.

Sunrise Over the Sandia Mountains

Light Through the Cotton Wood Treetops along the Rio Grande

T'ai Chi Chih shares its roots with the ancient Chinese martial art, Tai Chi Chuan, but it's not a martial art and it's a lot easier to learn.

Ancient Petroglyphs from Petroglyph National Monument, Boca Negra Canyon

The brochure handed out by the visitor center says that "These images help us learn from those who continue to interact and reaffirm their spiritual connection with this place. Be still. You may feel another presence beyond what you can see or hear."

Albuquerque is full of clear light. I love it there. And I'm always thrilled to come back home to this light.

Tuesday Night's Sunset, Looking Out to the Channel Islands.

Report from Pillville: The Balance of Opposites

Photo from this morning's walk along the beach in Ventura--a local artist stacks these stones.

My mom is more frail than ever but feels well.

I'm happier and stronger than I've been in a long long time but feel spent.

Those statements balance one another in a way I can't quite explain. And maybe there's balance too in the fact that my mom is sleeping more and more these days while I am sleeping less and less. And even when I do sleep, I awake feeling hung over. There's no gin involved in this, I swear--at least not for me. She is, of course, still having her martini. The balance of opposites right here in Pillville.

I almost had to sit during my T'ai Chi Chih practice yesterday. Today I opted out of yoga and took a walk. I need the sky over my head to feel the vastness of possibility. I need to be quiet.

I'm in the process of transitioning my mom into a nursing home after more than 3 years of caring for her in my house. I'm filling out the forms for Medi-Cal and Iowa Medicaid. I'm gathering documentation. I'm making travel plans and not making travel plans. I'm formulating a Plan A and a Plan B and wondering if they are mutually exclusive while wondering if both of them will fall away.

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room as I write this, wholly aware of the sound of her breathing in her room, while feeling that I'm barely breathing at all.

My heart is in Indiana with the man that I love and my heart is here, heavy as a stone, and so light it is a tower reaching for the sky.

This morning's walk took me past the estuary. Here it is looking inland--and looking out to the sea, just like me.

The path I was on took me under the freeway, framing a perfect view of the hills,
and it took me across the railroad tracks. Travel plans, vistas, hopes, dreams,manifested through a camera lens-- and if you look closely at the photo below you'll see a white cross in the lower left. I didn't see it when I took the photo.

Thank you. You have no idea. Well, Maybe you do.

I snapped this photo on Valentine's Day

Thank you, everyone, for you well wishes for my mom--and for me. Thank you for your emails. your texts, your Facebook Likes, your calls, your company, the wine, the pie, your yoga and T'ai Chi Chih classes. Thank you for your phone calls and the nice things you said or wrote to me about caregiving. Honestly, I'm tired. And I'm shitty at it some of the time, so your words give me the faith that I can turn those shitty moments around and be better. God almighty, what would I do without you? If I had a nifty little convertible like this, I'd deliver a dozen roses to each of you.

Sincerely,

Denise

How I Spent My Mother Vacation and.....Waffles.

I've done a lot of things since I dropped my mom off at my brother's house in Maryland. Mostly, I feared that these two months would be filled with procrastination for the real life tasks I'd planned, and that I'd spend way too much time curled into a fetal position with the occasional foray into the kitchen to make popcorn which I would then return to bed to eat. I feared I might walk in circles around and around my house, wailing and tearing my clothes, or burrowing into Dan's ashes, begging for an answer to the unanswerable why. Okay, I did some of that.

But I also road-tripped to a niece's wedding with my daughter C. I flew to Hawaii for two 50th birthday parties on two different islands, and visited one of Dan's friends on a third island. I went to a T'ai Chi Chih retreat in New Mexico, and spent a week getting accredited as a T'ai Chi Chi teacher in Santa Barbara. I drove north 5 hours to my godson's wedding and drank a barrel of wine with two of my oldest friends. I've had lunch with friends, drinks with friends, dinner with friends, long talks with friends, gone to various plays with daughter M, proving, I guess, that an introvert can socialize when  it's a matter of life and death.

The domestic-doer me threw it into high gear. Kitchen and patio deep-cleaned. Bedroom decluttered--which involved shredding seven or eight bags of paper. (Didn't I just do that before I moved two and a half years ago? Why, yes I did. And yes ,I still have the six document boxes of divorce documents in my garage, thank you.) I got a new book shelf so all my T'ai Chi Chih books and Dan's T'ai Chi Ch'uan books can get cozy together in an organized sort of way. I cleaned out my closet. Again. Honest to god, I'm at one of those mid-life (Ha--why do we say that?-- Last quarter of life) junctures where I loathe all of my clothes.

I shopped. This is big. I bought two nice dresses and a pair of shoes that are not flip-flops. I bought a red toaster/toaster-oven combo that I hope my mom will love because the previous toaster was a pain in the ass and I'm not sure why she or any of my house guests put up with it. I bought this: supposedly handmade by a local artist. I hope it is.

And in my never-ending quest to make my house brighter and more colorful, I've ordered fabric to have my dining room chairs recovered.

Because, well....this is what my living room looks like after I went berserk in there a couple months back--except now the tray is bright turquoise. Stay out of my way; I still have some of that paint left. Didn't Monet paint everything redder and redder as he aged and began to lose his sight? I want everything to be orange.

Oh, and I wrote stuff. And stuff got published. And well, I wanted to write about waffles and about what the yoga teacher said this morning, but I have to go now. Tomorrow. Waffles. I promise. 

Namasté.

How Important Is This Softness?

Statue of St. Francis of Assisi. Mission Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA

From Justin Stone's book "Spiritual Odyssey:" (Justin was the originator of T'ai Chi Chih)

Softness and Effortlessness

How important is this softness? There is a famous story of a student and a T'ai Chi Ch'uan Master that provides the answer. Every day the student came to study with the Master and every day, no matter how hard he tried, the Master tersely remarked: 'Not soft enough!'

After one disappointing class, the student went home and that night dreamed both of arms fell off. The next day when he did T'ai Chi Ch'uan at his lesson, the Master finally nodded and remarked, 'Now, that's soft!'

One of my favorite writing teachers used to say that every story happens in a particular place at a particular time. So here I am, at the teacher training for T'ai Chi Chih, being watched over by a larger than life wooden sculpture of St. Francis with no arms.

HUGE

2012 was stuffed with big things. Sold a house. Bought a house. Left the haunted city of my marriage, but moved 60-some miles from the man who loves me. Applied to four grad programs. Got rejected from four grad programs. Gave up my volunteer job walking Human Society dogs. Gave up my volunteer job tutoring at the Downtown Women's Center. And took on my 88-year-old mother. I cook dinner every night. I walk on the beach every morning. I have a regular Tai Chi Chih practice and a regular yoga practice. I eat less salad. Juice less. Bake more. I see my daughter M almost every weekend. The drive between my son's house and my new place is at least 90 minutes longer. Daughter C now has a room in my new place after months of sleeping on my couch last year--but now doesn't live here. I still have my ancient cat. And I am thrilled by the birds we see here on the water.

While I sit here on the couch with my cat, I listen for the call of the blue heron. While the man who loves me plays a gig I can't attend, I listen to the sound of my mom coughing and the hiss of her oxygen machine. I'm another year out from the end of my marriage. My grandchildren are taller and stronger and smarter. My children continue to reveal new aspects of themselves to intrigue me. I've entered the decade of my 60s.

Some of last year's resolutions never got off the ground--pedometer, Joe's goals. But I have new ones. Kayaking. Homemade yogurt. Homemade sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables. This is how it goes. Failures. Successes. Trade-offs. New projects. Abandoned old ones.

What do I want now, I ask myself--because I am always wanting something. I want more than one night a week with the man who loves me. I want a lighter heart in my day-to-day dealings with my mother.

And then there is this escapist fantasy. But do I really want that? Not really. Not unless I could take everyone I love with me.