Love Came

Los Angeles, California

Love came,
and became like blood in my body.
It rushed through my veins and
encircled my heart.
Everywhere I looked,
I saw one thing.
Love's name written
on my limbs.

on my left palm,
on my forehead,
on the back of my neck,
on my right big toe...

Oh, my friend,
all that you see of me
is just a shell,
and the rest belongs to love.

-Rumi

Kindness

Los Angeles, California

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passangers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Barefoot and Candlelit

Los Angeles, California

Summer solstice is on its way. The weather that I love the best, somewhat misnamed June Gloom, has gone sideways into a maddog heatwave. Even my geraniums look wilted in temps that are hovering around triple-digits. I feel cheated.

What I plan to enjoy most about summer in my home is easily described: barefoot and candlelit. For the past few summers I have tried to make this a house rule, but there was too much upheaval and sorrow, as well as exhaustion while running the business and all the rest, to try to uphold a rule that is supposed to be about ambiance and romance. But this year might be different. A lot has happened over the past year. I have sold the business; mostly finished the enormous task of administrating my mother's trust; finished a master bathroom remodel after a leaking water heater caused water and mold damage over a year ago. My rental tenants have moved out and I am in the process of putting that house on the market, and lastly, I am parting from my therapist who has greatly helped me through my three-year sojourn through hell and back. I am only now catching up on long-overdue medical appointments and beginning to write more than in my burgeoning journals.

The new master bathroom with its enlarged shower, as well as other modest changes in my house, are helping to make it feel like my home and to create some distance from the turmoil and unhappiness that were contained within its walls for so long. Alas, there is no magic that can deliver me from random thoughts of what-might-have-been, or from the daily sense of loss of someone who was part of my life, for better or for worse, for three decades.

Still, summer brings some rewards. Karen and Greg will be here for several days over Fourth of July, and I am so looking forward to time with them. I love spending time with my friends and fristers here. Along with Joel, they are my family; the most important part of my life. My friends always have been. When I was a teenager, my mother told me that my friends wouldn't be here for me throughout my life; only my family would be. Boy, was she wrong, and even then, I knew that wasn't true. I loved my parents, and greatly enjoyed the adult time I shared with them for the first two decades of my marriage. We traveled with them; shared a season box at the Hollywood Bowl, and went back and forth to each other's homes for dinners on a weekly basis. But my network of friends were and are the kaleidoscope of personalities and humor and tastes and interests that provide vitality to my life. Over the years, I've winnowed out the pain-in-the-ass ones; accepted most of the traits that don't jive with mine, and I relish the enrichment of their presence in my life. And even with the next generation, as I enjoy sharing time and conversations with Connie and Curt's, and Brendan and Diana's kids, and with Greg and Karen's Hayley; all now adults who don't dismiss Joel and I as just their parents' friends.

So, summer. The house is filled with large and small Pottery Barn candles on timers. It continuously costs me a fortune in batteries, but when the sun goes down, the house glows. Ana keeps the floors clean, so barefoot feels good. When this blasted heatwave ends, hopefully before the solstice, I will throw open all of the french doors which line the inside of the u-shape of my house leading out to the pool in the center. I know that the solstice means all kinds of (silly) things to the new-agers. But this year, I hope it will mean something much more lofty and important to me. It will mean barefoot and candlelit. Ready or not, here comes summer...

An Unmarried Woman

Los Angeles, California

I live alone and that means I spend a lot of time alone. I am thankful that I have Joel and good friends and that I am often busy. But occasionally there is a spell of time: Joel is worn down from his work schedule; LOL is recuperating from eye surgery; Lynnette is out of town, and I find myself on my own for a longer stretch than usual.

In my early days in Carmel, I struggled during those Januarys when I had what I considered to be a long stretch alone. I remember having to get through eight days without company once, and it felt like a long slog. Eight days would still be a challenge, and I often think of my mom who we left alone for long periods while supporting my sister during her husband's illness. I wish I had that to do over again, to better balance that distribution of my time. But now, all-in-all, I like being alone, and I enjoy solitude. But still, when it stretches out too many days without the respite of Joel and my friends, it turns to loneliness. And loneliness was the thing I always feared in ending up alone in life.

It's a bit of a paradox, for what I have learned is that living alone is half as bad as you think it will be and that linking your life with someone, having him there, was often twice as lonely as I had anticipated. There are moments of joy now which are singularly relished. But then, there are the moments when I turn to share but no one is in that space. That sinking realization, however, doesn't differ greatly from turning to share with someone who is there, but inaccessible.

It's this great conundrum of aging, I think. My therapist points out that being with someone is not a guarantee that you will have someone there at the end of your life. Any more than that having children provides a surety caregiver when you need one. Life is uncertain, and eating dessert first doesn't rectify us against the realities of aging alone. Ultimately we are all alone, and it is our choice to either be as contented as one can be in our aloneness, or to rail against it.

Lincoln said people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be. When I am struggling, I read this each morning. It's part of an affirmation that I utilize to help me stay centered. The hardest part for me is forgetting about yesterday and tomorrow and trying to be in the moment. My head likes to time-travel and it's a dynamic challenge to shut down the doors before it boards and takes off. As an aside, having an affirmation tends to border on new age philosophy, which makes me shudder a bit. But, whatever works...

But the truth is that aging really isn't for sissies. I've heard that phrase attributed to Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, and, recently, Bette Davis. It sounds like Lauren Bacall to me, but they were all tough broads who stuck it out and got through it. It truly is the only way. Can't skirt around it. Can't avoid it. The only way is to muddle through.

But this started about loneliness and the conundrum of enjoying living alone, but still having intense bouts of loneliness. You can reach out. But you often don't feel you want to bother people. So other things keep you company: writing; reading good books; Masterpiece when it's not a mystery series; movies on TCM; a very good scotch; a very ripe cheese; comfy pajamas; texting a friend. And sooner or later, company comes back around. After I spend time with people, I am more than happy to spend a night or two on my own. Three is too many.

It's good not to have a compass to see where you will travel in this life. And it's good not to be someone who has travel-sickness. If I keep my eye on the road, I do fine. Sometimes, it's just the rest stops that make me queasy...