i’m writing this as i listen to the loud interruption of wind machines and a large lawnmower/mulcher behind our yard. a family with many children (6 or maybe 7) is having their yard spring-cleaned up and it makes me nostalgic for the days we, as kids, as families, cleaned our own yards.
the feel of the rakes in our hands, the smell of leaves, the chill in the air and the anticipation of spring-on-its-way, the promise of hot chocolate. the quiet. i can hear the sound of the metal tines of the rake, many bent out of shape, as i attempted to make piles of leaves. my dad would later clean up my messy attempts but in the meanwhile i knew i was helping. i was outside and the sounds of birds-early-on-the-wing and rustling squirrels, the wind whispering high in the oaks of our yard, these were the sounds of march.
ahhh, the blowers and the large-engine machine just stopped for a moment and i took a deep breath before they started back up again.
in these days of unsettling and increasing isolation we are challenged to find ways to calm our souls. recently we took a long walk on the frozen lake up north. all around us nature was quietly waiting. gracefully bending in the cold wind, birch trees wait. grasses, browned from fall and a long winter, sway in pause. all around us you could feel it; anticipation of what is to come and the quiet biding of time.
in between all the remotely-done work-of-the-day tasks, maybe later today we will take a walk. we’ll put on our boots and drive to the woods. we’ll feel our breathing even out as we step from little-baby-scion into a hushed space, a place of waiting. we’ll likely walk in silence.
there’s so much noise around us these days. angst and anger, concern and contention, rhetoric and reason, pomposity and push-back.
we have no choice but to wait. to be respectful of each other, of the time it will take. to do what we need to do in order to survive as best we can with as few dire repercussions as possible. to be responsible and proactive. to do the right thing and honor health and life in the none-too-steady heartbeat of the world. to wait. like the birch trees and the grasses on the edge of the lake, bowing to the wind and rising to the sun.
it is at that place in my memory where i can juuuust-about-touch-it-but-not-quite – the first time i heard, ‘ don’t stare into the rearview mirror. that’s not the direction you are going.’ i can’t quite remember when or where i first heard it, but it was one of those comments that i stored away as a wisdom to feed off, something that would give me strength in a moment of weak, something that would give me hope in a moment of despair.
my john glenn high school senior class song was seals and crofts’‘we may never pass this way again’. even if it’s the best. even if it’s the worst. never. this moment won’t be repeated and, with the absence of time travel, we cannot re-live it. ever.
we have all walked in different shoes on different paths. we have passed through challenges of which we may never speak; we have had successes about which we have never bragged. we have been hurt; we have hurt. and we have healed.
“healing does not mean going back to the way things were before…” (ram dass)
the thing about healing is what it teaches us. we can never be un-hurt. we can never undo what was done or what we did. we can’t return to the baseline; it has vanished with the winds of change. in a million tiny pieces of glitter, it’s in that proverbial rearview mirror.
but we can ride the river of our breathing into new normal. we can carry with us learnings and soft words of apology. we can pack our virtual baggage with tools of prevention and fairness and forethought. we can pick up techniques of negotiation and navigating in the process of coming-out-of-pain. we can avoid the temptation to retreat from moving forward, thinking that healing means it’s all back to what it ‘was’ before.
instead, we can step, in blind faith, into next, trusting that healing will bring us to a new place, a new start. that healing will have somehow gifted us, given grace to all involved in ways we may never know or understand. that healing will be like dawn, like rain, like birth.
bananas. they were $.49 lb. we picked up a bunch and walked to the register. a moment later, with no question or drama, we paid our $1.17 and left.
the next step in my two-broken-wrists saga is occupational therapy. not because we do everything with our hands. not because we write with them and open doors with them. not because we use them for our personal hygiene or because we cook with them. not because we drive with them or dress with them or shake hands with them. but because using my hands IS what i do. the therapist asked me how long i have played the piano. 53 years. it’s what i DO. so getting my wrists back to pre-snowboard-fall is imperative to me. there are no other options.
before we went to this first appointment i, responsibly, called our healthcare insurance company – the one we pay $29,000 a year to – the one with the slogan ” for the care you need at a price you can afford” – to check in about the coverage of OT. i was told, after much menu-choosing, that i am limited to 20 visits and that the cost will be $50 per visit. with the OT’s recommendation that my getting-these-wrists-back-trajectory would involve appointments twice a week, that would add $400 to the already-$2400/month in healthcare costs. bracing. impossible.
the OT office checked in with me to remind me of my appointment, coincidentally, just after i hung up with the insurance company. i told them what i had just learned and they insisted i was wrong. “no,” i was told, “we have never heard of molina charging ANYthing for a copay.” I asked them to please double-check for me and they assured me they would and that they would apprise me at my appointment.
when i arrived, the receptionist checking me in told me that they had their 23-year-insurance-veteran in the office check and that there would be no copay. i asked them to provide a written document to that effect so that if and when i was billed i would have recourse. they assured me that they would triple-check and to stop back after my appointment.
at the end of my appointment with the therapist, the receptionist told me that “no, you don’t have to pay $50 per visit. it’s actually worse. instead, you have to pay 100% of all fees until your thousands-of-dollars-deductible is met.” what?!!!! now this is the third story i am hearing about the same service with the same provider and the same insurance company. who am i to believe?
i stood there and literally cried in front of the receptionist in the middle of the waiting area. you mean to tell me that our $29,000 a year doesn’t really cover much of anything??? this is blatantly wrong, grossly outrageous.
bernie sanders, if you have listened to him speak, has given a example of the perverted and pathetic healthcare in this country. he speaks about a family who makes $60,000 a year and that this family must pay $12,000 for healthcare. “that’s 20% of their gross income,” he bellows. what i wish he would add is this next example: consider a couple who makes say $65,000 a year (this is the magic healthcare cliff for two people and only $5000 more than the previous example). that couple will pay anywhere between $24,000 and $29,000 for a policy that will still have high deductibles and yet (clearly) not actually have good coverage. i want to jump on the bernie-bellowing-band-wagon and yell, “that’s 45% of that couple’s income!!! what is wrong with that???? EVERYTHING!” how is it that we can live in this country, the richest country in the world, and have the worst healthcare for our populace? how is it right to set the populace up for financial disaster when they have to deal with the eventual health scare, injury, illness?? (on a side note, i won’t even beGIN to start talking about Covid-19, for i have nothing good to say about the administration’s handling, lack of information or truth, and unpreparedness for this pandemic that will truly test the resiliency of our country.)
when i could take a breath at the receptionist’s desk i asked, “what do these appointments cost?” how much is my professionalism worth to me, i am thinking. i earn my living playing the piano, i am thinking. i have fifteen albums of piano music, i am thinking. i am a pianist, i am thinking. i just need care for my wrists so that i can do what i do, i am thinking. at what cost, i am thinking.
but healthcare is not like bananas. i was told, “we can’t answer that. we don’t know.” i beg your pardon??? “billing handles that. and it’s different depending upon insurance plans and whether or not you have appropriate insurance.” i beg your pardon???? “what if i just wanted to pay cash right now?” i ask. “you can’t,” she says. “we don’t know what it costs.”
i wonder if it would be more if i paid cash – after all, i’m not an overstuffed insurance company that has the capacity to deny portions of the billing or disallow costs or base payment on the coding used to describe my treatment, while at the same time accepting ridiculously high premiums from clients with the knowledge that the insurance offered is incomprehensibly lacking.
no. i’m just a person who needs her hands.
we left, went to the store and bought more bananas.
blind faith. every day. dare i say that is the way we live?
live (verb): to be alive or have life. we rise, we go about our day, never really certain what or who will cross our path, never absolute about any single thing we might encounter or be challenged by or be gifted with. we make plans, we have hopes, we dream of freely checking off that which is on our list-of-things-to-do and our bucket list.
in this moment now, we cannot see the moment of the past or the moment of the future, but we know that they are there; they exist. there is much we cannot see. words that elicit emotional response but nothing you can see as a thing with your eyes – love, grace, forgiveness, freedom. you can see evidence of them but not an actual thing, like the simplicity of a table or a chair. faith is one of those amorphous things. present as a gentle reassurance, zealous as a fire in your heart. you can no sooner lasso faith as you can lasso love. both are omnipotent; both are invincible.
“well i will walk by faith, even when i cannot see.”(walk by faith – jeremy camp)
and so we keep walking, never really knowing anything for sure. we trust. we trust the next day will come. we trust we understand these words that capture that which we cannot see; we embrace them. we trust we have life and that #allwillbewell.
but it suggests giving over to something bigger than us. it suggests belief in a universe where we are aligned with each of the stars in the milky way, where we are equally important – each of us, where we are held and richly loved and granted grace and forgiveness. where we lay our heads down to sleep and rest, believing, blindly, that next will come with the sun.
none of it is easy – our lives are not pre-scripted for ease. but we have been gifted with big hearts, thinking minds and the ability to keep on, despite all of life’s ambiguity.
my sweet momma loved these words, “breathe in faith. exhale fear.” no real proof. unless of course you count all those around you who love you, who have loved you and who will love you. the grace you have been granted with each day. that new day that comes.
“none of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. because we trust. because we have faith.” (paulo coelho)
sometimes it takes a little practice. one foot in front of the other. stepping lightly.
there is little as comfortingly sweet as watching your dog sleep. dogdog is whirling motion so when he sleeps in your presence it is a magical time of trust and deep respite. the vision of him asleep on the bed or in the middle of the living room rug is a picture of all-is-right-in-the-world; he has no other cares except he is with his people and he can rest.
some of the times i remember most about when My Girl and My Boy were young are the times they fell asleep with me holding them, in my arms, on my lap. the moment you feel their little-child-body relax and fall into you. exquisite.
it’s that moment you sigh and lay your head back to nap with someone you love. the moment you close your eyes on the beach towel in the sun, warm sand beneath you. the moment you drift off in the grass watching the clouds. oh yes, the moment your face plants against the window at the rest area during your long journey and a couple hours pass by. the moment, hiking in high mountains, you lean against a tree and your eyes close to the sound of the wind in the aspens.
rest. a time of no real conscious worry. a time of innate trusting that all-will-be-well. a time of repose, of tranquility, of solace.
i have found, sometimes, if i want to go to sleep and cannot, that if i watch dogga or babycat sleep it will slow my overthinking-breathing. it will settle my heart and mind a bit. it will remind me that my own whirling motion – physical, intellectual, emotional – needs time to rest, to curl up on the living room rug and close my eyes.
so, i love the smell of horses. i love the proud way they hold their heads and the sometimes-wild forelock that dances between their ears. i love watching them cavort in fields together, free to gallop and play. i love the warmth on my hand as i stroke under its mane. i love the sound of leather creaking underneath me when riding. i love the clip-clop of hooves. i love the feeling i get up-close-and-personal talking softly to a horse, looking deeply into its eyes, pools of wisdom taking it all in. it is no surprise to most of my people that i love really everything about them.
with the snowy quiet punctuated by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and laughter, we rode the sleigh through the woods. the sun was out and, with snowpants on and under a blanket, it was toasty. perfect. ace and bill carried us through the trails to a spot for a bonfire and cocoa and then back. i didn’t want it to end.
there are people in your life who just know what you need. we are lucky enough to have a bunch of these people close by and paying attention. our little trip up north was perfectly timed. a chance to just enjoy each other and the frozen-but-not-really-freezing outdoors. the sleigh ride was wondrous. the time together restorative.
the peaceful time in the woods and on the snow-covered frozen lake brought me out of storms i was withstanding. the laughter, good food, conversation, pjs and coffee and games with glasses of wine helped transport my spirit and rejuvenated me. i am grateful. for a few days it didn’t matter that my wrists were broken. my ernie straw was with me and i was surrounded by people who loved me.
and the horses. ahh. icing on the cake.
so now, i will wait till the next time…the next time i am near horses. as someone who has had a lifelong wish for a horse of my own, those times feed me. i imagine that maybe somehow one day sometime i might have a horse-of-my-own. i imagine i won’t show this horse or ride around in a paddock practicing dressage. i will ride my friend in the woods and in the fields, manes flying, both of us gleefully breathing the air and listening to each other. i imagine silent conversations about love and respect and sweet moments of just being close by each other. i imagine walking away, blowing a kiss backwards to this horse – my horse – the wind catching the scent on my hands and my clothes, and smiling.
“to everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”(pete seeger) this – this time – must be the time for anger. it’s bracing. and it’s everywhere. i have a hard time validating anger as a choice over a steadfast temperament, especially when it comes to leadership. i have a hard time watching poisonous blaming where blame does not lie. i have little to no patience for those who justify their angry words or actions with falsehoods or the power of their position. i have no respect for those who point vindictively accusatory wagging fingers at people who are doing jobs for which they are qualified and to which they are committed. people are riled up and it’s not getting any better.
“anger is a selling point among many voters as it’s a proxy for passion and strength…”(nicole hemmer) it’s bracing. if you happen to be among the millions of people who use social media you might find yourself astonished a time or two. without remorse or regret, posts will wreak havoc on your fact-checking, source-seeking self. the information posted is mind-boggling. the anger clearly behind the posts is jaw-droppingly stunning.
but i suppose that’s the point. in the absence of a calm, informed, articulate, well-meaning leader who is anchored to the core values of our country, not to mention the core values of human-kind, all hell is bound to break loose. and it has. our communities, our country, our world – all are observing as anger runs for president. and now anyone who has been angry has a choice.
do you choose anger? or are you mistaking that for passion? do you choose anger? or are you mistaking that for strength? for they are not the same. dare to parse out the difference; dare to question the intention.
“to everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season…a time to gain, a time to lose…” there is much to be lost. starting with both the humility and pride of a country designed as an experiment of democracy, a melting-pot-welcoming all, a place of peace for its citizens, a land of the free and home of the brave that takes care of its inhabitants, be they women or men, creature or flora.
there is much to gain. starting with both the humility and pride of a country that can favor inclusive equality and fairness over discrimination, intelligent decision-making over agenda-riddled punting, wholehearted responsibility over retribution-acts, unshakeable virtue over a lack of ethics, reassuring integrity over molten anger.
1980. it’s not often i have listened to this song since four decades ago when i recorded it. i was a mere 20. listening to it warbling now, in the way that only old cassettes can warble, has been a mixed bag: this cassette master, with little studio experience, with reel-to-reel recording, with no auto-tune for my young nervous soprano-ish voice, with too-sweet flute lines and picked guitar, measures-too-long-instrumental-interlude; i am catapulted back.
it is shocking to hear the innocence. it is shocking to hear the pain. if my wednesday post this week was too much, i would hasten to add that this will be as well. this is a song about stripping a young woman of choice, of what should be the blissful love of first intimacy, of no justice, of no opportunity to process. it’s the story of sexual assault in the late 1970s. it’s the story of sexual assault any time. it changes everything. every trajectory. it’s my story.
NO BALLOONS is a song of the times. especially for someone who listened to john denver, james taylor, carole king, joni mitchell, bread, loggins and messina, america, england dan & john ford coley, the carpenters – the A-team of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-interlude-chorus. simple melodies, simple instrumentation, simply written, simply sung.
i can’t believe i didn’t write it in the vein of led zeppelin or kiss. it should have been a screaming heavy metal song, full of pointed weapons of anguish, of power-stripped anger. instead, it sounds like a sweet love-gone-bad song, “you take away my hopes, my dreams, you give me no balloons to fly.” only it’s not. it’s about no air. no breath.
“and now with my eyes closed, i no longer see the pain in yours or feel it in mine…” and that was a product of the times as well. i closed my eyes and silenced my voice. i stopped feeling it. or did i? “and i cried as long as the rain lasted and when it stopped i stopped.” was it really that simple?
until this week i really never thought i would share this song again. after all, the song is 40 years old; i’m an alto, perched firmly on the tenor shore. but somehow, between the #MeToo movement and the swirling-around-us-in-the-world-contention and public court battles in recent media and the lack of regard for those who truly need help or healing and my aunt’s texted article and the weeping inside of my younger-self and my silenced-silence, it felt like it was time to be vulnerable and candid and believe that our muddy-boots-narratives might make a difference for someone else.
we each have a story, a timeline, an arc that takes us through this life. things we want to remember in detail, things we desperately want to forget. things we have lived boisterously out loud, things we have lived in despairing silence. the tapestry that holds all these threads together is the soul of our experience, the way we can hear others and truly listen, the empathy we can employ in a world that seems to cite MeFirst instead of UsTogether.
i wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone. i’m pretty sure that every day since those-dark-days-in-the-late-70s i have both been affected and have effected because of them. i have made choices and non-choices, taken action and had reflexive reaction. i have searched for answers.
but i also know that my heart was blown open. i am not standing on a different rung of the ladder, too high up to understand or remember, too discurious to ask, too blinded to see, too discriminating or apathetic to care.
i am next to anyone who needs me to listen, really listen. i am next to anyone who needs me to jump and catch their balloons before they have flown too far to reach.
nine. i have nine fingers i can use right now. and, like chicken marsala, i am putting them on the keys and following the music. two weeks after breaking my wrists i was back playing and directing. who needs wrists anyway? who needs all ten fingers?
music can’t be stopped. it’s in the sound of the sunrise, the sound of your baby waking up, the sound of the clink of coffee cups. it’s humming as you ready for your day, singing along in the car, laughter shared over the phone. it’s in the hug you give your children as you drop them at school and the help you give your aging parents. it’s in dinner you prepare for loved ones, and in the volunteering you do for a local service organization. it’s in the walk in the woods, a stroll by the water’s edge. it’s in the quiet weary at the end of the evening, the sighs of a life-day done well. it’s in dreams and in hope. and it can’t be stopped.
we will always turn to the arts for comfort, for meaning, in joy and in sorrow. the music follows us; it surrounds us. it waits silently, ready to volume-up when necessary, hush-down when needed. it’s background. it’s foreground.
my aunt texted me a link to an article that was published in a long island news source. the state of ny recently enacted the child victims act, extending the statute of limitations for a survivor of child sexual abuse in criminal and civil cases.
the article she sent was about a woman, now 58, who alleges sexual abuse by a music teacher in her middle school years that extended into her high school years, a young woman whose first sexual experience was forced upon her by a man twice her age.
i just re-read the article online, which had 70 comments by readers, a mixed bag of revulsion, outright indignation and seething condemnation. people who claimed this woman was lax in her non-reporting way-back-when and was now after the money in a civil suit. people who knew that this music teacher had been assaulting young girls for years and years, whose pedophilia was ignored by the administration and who were now cheering for the uncloaking of the mantle of silence, a journey to possible justice. people who were sickened.
i alternatively sobbed and couldn’t breathe trying to click on this article on my phone when i got the text. i needed to download an app, couldn’t think straight to remember my apple sign-in; i was not at home and was anxious to get there and read in the safety of our kitchen. i was sure that i knew who this un-named alleged perpetrator/rapist/pedophile was.
when we got home, i was able to download the app and read the article aloud. no name was mentioned of the man-who-was-accused-of-heinous-acts-with-little-girls, but a school location was and it was then i realized that – in two different towns, side-by-side, in the late 70s – there were at least two men who made it their mission to prey, to take the virginity of young women and forever change those young women’s lives. the man who stole my innocence and the innocence of girls i tried in vain to protect was a different man than the one in this article.
there was no victim-witness division in the prosecutor’s office back then. in an all-too-common story, not one of the assaulted pressed charges. as far as i know, both of these men walk freely about, wherever they live. the smallest among us may still be suffering their disgusting acts. i can vouch for the fact that the fallout of the act does not end; this breach of trust, this contemptible forcing of will, the abhorrent power-wielding by another leaves fossils in every cell.
we stumble into small-but-profound acts of impact. people donating used mascara wands to aid in the cleansing, and thus, healing, of small wild animals in need of care. donations of suitcases to foster care agencies to give children a place, besides a plastic bag, to keep their tiny collection of belongings.
it may not balance out the atrocities, but these gestures, these initiatives help. we are responsible for each other.
protecting the smallest among us. the children. the creatures. why can’t this be the most important?
reverse threading 