This, Too, Shall Pass

"Maybe it's gas," I told myself at 11:30 p.m. Monday night.
I knew better.
First the hint of ache. Then the increased intensity of pain until it hit a "10."
Oh yea, here we go -
into the hot bath to sooth my flank and calm my tensed body.
Up and down. Unable to sit or lay still.
Pounding water - watching the clock.
4:30 a.m. came and went.
ER or not?
This time I decided to tough it out. I had an old bottle of Vicodin on hand so I decided to pop one.
It helped.
So, I am now tethered to my toilet as I drink gallons of water, pee, and wait to pass a
5 mm stone.
I know it's 5 mm because when I awoke from my Vicodin- induced- grog, I made an appointment with my urologist, Dr. Khonsari,  who sent me to get a CT Scan
Stone protocol the radiology referral read.
I know this protocol.
Anything less than 6 mm is passable unless it gets stuck in the urator. Mine is stuck in the left urator.
But I'm still gonna try to pass it.
"You are experienced at this," Dr. Khonsari said to me on the phone today.
Yep, I sure am.
My first stone was at eighteen. It came in December of 1977 after a company party in Laguna Beach.
My most memorable stones were the ones I gave birth to days after both of my children were born  having to leave them in the care of my mother as I went back to the hospital pumping my breast milk while writhing in pain.
The calcium pills I had taken while pregnant produced healthy bones for my babies and a bonus for me.
My most inconvenient stones have come in the midst of production - Carousel in 1995 and most recently, during rehearsal for Les Mis in 2012.
My most surprising stone was in November of 2006 just before Thanksgiving. I was laying on a massage table during my Dahn yoga days as the practitioner shook my legs. Apparently she shook too hard, because I had to get up from the table and excuse myself in kidney stone agony before the session was over.
My biggest was 9 mm and caused me all sorts of grief including a kidney infection. That stone was so stubborn, Dr. Khonsari had trouble pulverising it. Passing the fragments from that monster was like passing a quarry of miniature stones.
There have been other, less remarkable stones I can barely recall.  I know I'm up to at least eighteen -possibly more.
So today, I went to Whole Foods between potty breaks. I bought myself some magnesium powder to drink to help me better absorb calcium, and an herbal supplement called "Stone Free" which hopefully will live up to its name.
This was actually my second trip to Whole Foods this week. Last week, I went to pick up some Vitamin D and Cod Liver Oil for my new low sugar regimen.
Changing one's life takes a lot of work, commitment, time, and research.
It all started with my labs.  Not horrible. Not scary. Just bad enough to be a "wake up call."
Low Vitamin D, High Sugar. Not in the Diabetic range but "at risk."
Notation: Can be reversed with diet and exercise.
And so I plunged in.
Back to the gym. Riding the bike. Gentle yoga.
Walking.
Reading recipes, trying new ones.
Thanks to my niece, Marisa, I have discovered the Paleo diet to control blood sugar.
Farewell to sugar in my coffee. With two cups a day, a spoonful of sugar in each - I was consuming 14 spoons full of sugar each week! Stevia is no replacement and I will always long for my delicious cup of sweet coffee every morning, but I'm adjusting.
Goodbye Rice. Pasta. Beans. (Though I'm reluctant to forego my legumes!)
I've discovered a fabulous cauliflower and cilantro recipe as a replacement for rice and I even dried my own herbs to make various herbal salts. I think I'm a fanatic now.
Well kind of. I am going to have to slowly ween myself off of my weekend wine.
The balancing act of lowering blood sugar by eating the good kind of carbs, fat, and protein and the dietary restrictions to reduce kidney stone production is tricky.
I might have ignored the latter had it not been for this latest episode. Lucky for me, my life style change coincided with my latest kidney stone attack which I am quite certain was brought on by my increased exercise! Go figure.
All that moving around jarred that little sucker loose!
So that is how my summer is shaping up. Or, more to the point,  this is my summer of getting into shape!
My niece says, "Health is everything."
She is right.  I have been the first to point my finger at denial but have not looked closely at my own.
When you ignore your body, it will get your attention one way or the other.
Mine is screaming out pretty loud for me to take care of it.
So they say confession is good for the soul.
Today, I confess to starting a new way of life.
And I've carved it
 in stones.

608

They tell me 608 is gone.
Razed.
The threshold through which my father took his final steps and the building that housed his dreams are no longer.
Place and memory.
Long before that fateful August morning when my father set out on his final jog, he dreamed of breakfast meetings complete with omelets. He designed his office with a kitchenette for cooking and a bathroom for showering.
608 East Broadway was not just a building.
It was a family business.
The news of its demolition caused me to pause.
Halted, like the once thriving enterprise that had inhabited its house-like structure, I momentarily mourned its end.
I grew up with 608 and had long ago let it go - its death to me pre-deceased its ultimate demise.
And yet like a monument to a past as faded as the yellow pages of my youth,
it stood  in the ghost town that was once my home.
Anaheim.
This spot will now be paved for parking.
No one will mark it as having had any historic significance.
One building-
One threshold-
One father-
For me,
608 East Broadway will always be sacred ground.

His Normal Heart

Today is the twentieth anniversary of my brother's death. In a twist of irony, I spent last night watching the HBO movie version of Larry Kraemer's play, THE NORMAL HEART.  I was destroyed by the end of it. The spotted  men. Walking skeletons. The anguish. The indifference. The courage. The injustice. At least by the time Bob was diagnosed in 1994, there were medications, funding, support services, and scientific data. For those first stricken with the "plague," there was nothing but the loyalty of friends and the compassionate, increasingly angry voices of activists who worked tirelessly to bring attention to the epidemic. Twenty years later, my story fits into the larger epic of the AIDS story, like a piece of the quilt.  So much has changed in those twenty years. Now people live with HIV thanks to the "cocktails" and medical advancements. Magic was diagnosed before Bob. He has lived a full life. There is a reason that my brother is dead and Magic is not. The social stigma that accompanied the diagnoses, captured in The NORMAL HEART had to have played a part in Bob's fear and unwillingness to seek treatment earlier. I believe now, twenty years later, that my brother thought he had too much to lose. It was unimaginable for a man who, while not closeted, lived a very private life. We never spoke of  "it."  It wasn't until I walked him in to the hospital to get the test that we ever even acknowledged anything about "it." In fact, we never did say anything to each other about "it."  The only words I said was "Well at least we'll know."  Whether shame or embarrassment were part of his silence, I'll never know.  I only know that for me it was the most intimate conversation I'd ever had with my brother. The details of my story are written in ARIA a sister's journey with AIDS, and can be found in this blog. I have been writing this story now for twenty years. Last night, the realization I had, thanks to THE NORMAL HEART, was that my brother was scared.
But unlike so many of those poor guys in the early 80's who faced healthcare workers in space suits, and whose bodies were tossed like rubbish into trash bags, my brother died surrounded by his loving family who held his hands, gloveless, and kissed his face and mopped the perspiration from his forehead and sang to him as he labored to leave us.  There were few words spoken between us about "it."  I believe that made it easier for him. But the unspoken moments pour out of me still. I miss my brother and his normal heart.

Resilience - Twenty Tips

1. Grieve your losses. Otherwise they will haunt you.
2. Stay close to friends, family, and community. Don't isolate yourself.
3. Go to bed for a while. Then get up,
4. Go to the ocean. Sit a while at its edge. It has something to say to you. Listen.
5. Find a creative outlet. Write. Paint. Journal. Draw. Make a collage. Garden.
    It will transform the pain into something beautiful.
6. Seek support when you need it.  There is no shame in asking for help.
7. Cuddle with something little and cute. A puppy. A kitty.  A baby.
8. Get a massage.
9. Read Rilke.
10. Work at something you love.
11. Be open to the gift.
12. Walk.
13. Until you have the energy, only surround yourself with people who understand.
14. Light candles. Soak in the tub with lavender  or  rosemary salts.
15. Cry when you need to.  Eventually you will stop.
16. Become comfortable with solitude.
17. Be in the moment.
18. Sunflowers are happy. Get some.
19. Don't judge yourself. Treat yourself like you would treat your best friend.
20. Give Thanks.

You Can't Go Home Again

I look at the devastation in the Philippines- the anguish on the faces of mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children as they sift through the rubble, barefoot,  in contaminated water, searching to salvage...anything.  The typhoon's horrific violence, unleashed on these tiny island villages leaving a smiling people, bereft and homeless.

I see the tornado that swept through Illinois. Random selection. Implosion. Obliteration. Unrecognizable terrain.  Any sense of direction, lost in the ruin.

I think of  the Syrians in exile. Families relocated to refugee camps across boarders.  Makeshift shelters. Escaping man's inhumanity to man. Even their own beds not safe as they breathed lethal chemicals while they slept.

History's human story is filled with chapters of people struggling to survive,  seeking new beginnings, risking everything to escape oppression, famine,  starvation, annihilation.  Ellis Island. "Next year in Jerusalem." The Mayflower. Immigrants. Refugees. Boat People. Tribes.

Each story filled with one common theme - hope that they will find home.

I have, over the course of nearly a year and a half, been thinking a lot about home. I have been home sick.  And I've been sick of home.  While my plight pales in comparison to the catastrophic experiences of families whose very lives are at risk merely from having been born in a war-torn region of the world, the question of what home means has been forced upon me by circumstances entirely out of my control.

As I look back on my life, I am aware that home was a place of deep rootedness. Long before I was
born, my father was a traveling salesman.  He and my mother, lived in apartment hotels throughout the southeast while my father sold for RL Polk and Company City Directories. Eventually, they bought a trailer and towed it from town to town, like tortoises with their shell, home came with them wherever they went. It wasn't until they arrived in Anaheim, California, in 1949, that they finally bought their first home, famously, on Flower Street where they lived next door to the family who would become their best friends.  The migration began. My father and his brother opened their own business. The promise of opportunity beckoned to other family members. Letters and urging from my father to travel west lured my aunts, uncles, grandmother, cousins. They all relocated to Southern California. On Flower Street alone, my Aunt Betty and Uncle Larry lived at one end of the block, and my mother's mother, Mema, lived next door to my parents. My father's sisters and brothers all moved from Ohio and Kentucky, to the post war suburbs, holding on to the hope and dream of a more promising future.

While I came into the story ten years later, in 1959, the successful rise of my father from his poor Kentucky roots to business owner, home owner, and independent publisher, is everything that the American dream promised. No myth at work here. With no privileges of class or education, equipped only with an ethic of  hard work and know-how, and blessed with a dashingly handsome face and charismatic personality, my father was a self-made man with a high school education and determined
spirit. The luck of timing in a post World War II economy, provided fertile soil to put down the roots from which my childhood would grow. A childhood of privilege. Not great wealth or connection but an easy life in a suburban neighborhood. A house that to my parents must have seemed a palace as they earned their way to the life-style of pool parties and sipping scotch around the bar in a den added on for entertainment.  My father's dream of success matched with my mother's frugality and common sense, provided me with a security that was certain. Clothes. Toys. Trips. Most importantly, education.  My father took his greatest pride in providing my brother and myself with the best private school education available. My brother attended St. Catherine's Military Academy, then, no doubt, a sign of prosperity. We both attended St. Boniface Catholic School, parochial high schools and ultimately, the greatest achievement of my father's life, he sent us both to the University of Southern California.

The trajectory of my life was tied to the coat tails of my father's success and his beaming optimism and belief
that if you didn't "make it by thirty" there was something wrong. With no perspective of my own and only my father's example from which to imagine my future, my expectations were cemented into what certainly became the myth of my generation: that children would always do better than their parents.  What happened to the publishing industry is something my father could not have foreseen. Ink dried up and paper went up in flames, along with the independent publisher, the local bookstore, and the dial phone. While the new generation of digital media, spurred by the rapid growth of the internet, created new opportunities, those of us caught in between have been forced to adapt and seek very different paths than those carved by our parents.Making it by thirty became the impossible dream. Thirty came and went with the ups and downs of a business landscape that brought boom and bust.

 The complete reset of our economy brought on by greedy banks, bloated egos and Wall Street hubris brought an end to any notion that my future would be as bright as the one my father experienced for himself or imagined for me. My story is littered with worthless stock, meaningless stock options, empty promises of liquidity events, and the ravages of public offerings and unmet bottom lines.  Mergers and Mayhem as far as the eye can see from Chicago to LA. From family business, to corporate giants, bankruptcies that make Miller's character Biff in Death of a Salesman, seem more like a prophet than a lost soul. I understand the earthquake of when they "stop smiling back."  The ash heap has piled up and so, unfortunately, has my bitterness. Willy Loman's got nothin' on me.

The Great Recession may not rival the dramatic images of breadlines and dust-bowl migration, but the loss of dreams, homes, and financial security have altered people's lives and dashed the hopes of the promise of a comfortable retirement. Savings accounts tapped to put food on the table. IRA's cashed in to pay the mortgage. Short sales. Foreclosures. Rooms for rent. The  divide between the haves and have not's has less to do with  level of education and more to do with luck and the winds of fortune shifting.

The depth of my disillusion may be irreversible. I have been lied to. Not intentionally.  The lie of our times is woven into the fabric of my being and into the collective psyche of American society. That lie promised that reward is inevitable after sacrifice. I have perpetuated that lie with our children by sending them to prestigious universities and going into debt to give them an education that will hopefully launch them into a bright future. And indeed perhaps this one sacrifice will pay off.  As luck would have it, they are still young enough to be on the cutting edge of the new technology and may pick up where my father left off with a new generation of entrepreneurial spirit.

 Not so for me. Instead, I am forced into exile. To rent my home, a home that represents my lost dream. Much like my parent's vision of pool parties and fun - I dreamed of a life at the beach. Sailing and kayaking. Yearning to be a member of "the club", like Sabrina crooning her neck from a tree over the wall of the Larabie mansion on Long Island. Fueled by an imagined fantasy life that seemed possible at one time, now has, as Blanche says in " A Streetcar Named Desire," "slipped through my fingers."

Home has been torn from me. And I have clung. Stubbornly. Voraciously like a lioness roaring down a predator, I have fought to hold on to what I believed I deserved.  How wrong I have been.

And what of the family in the Philippines clinging to a tree for survival as everything they own is swept away in the typhoon's gale?
There is no comparison to our situations.
 My shame and guilt for my longing to live in my dream house tempers my grief and gives me perspective.

 But it is grief none the less. I pack up the rooms of my home just as I've packed up my family business, forty-nine years of telephone directories, my father's legacy, and my brother's life. I am no stranger to boxes.

 The family who will be renting our home for two years plans for the birth of their baby and what color to re-paint my daughter's room. The Paris decor will come down, holes will be plugged, and our memories and dreams will be boxed up.  My would-be studio, decorated in Mary Engelbreit yellow, will be transformed into his office. The yellow has to go. Of course it does.  Bold in its choice, its merriment now seems naive and stupid. I am embarrassed by it because the history of upside down cherries is a story from our home on  Pine Street that he can't possibly know and so the room seems ridiculous.

 I've fought not to have to do this for a year and a half. But now there is no choice. When you reach the end of the rope, it's the end of the rope. At least we can rent and aren't forced to sell. And who knows, just like the "L Box" in London, there may indeed be a happy ending to this story.
And so I hold on to that hope.
The hope that we will go home again.  But I cannot cling to that hope. Expectations have been dashed too many times for me to be that foolish.
For now will mourn the death of this dream and heal this wound of uprootedness.
I will bow my head in shame for my yearning for a materialistic lifestyle of boating and beach and seek higher ground in the heights in the spiritual lessons of this exile. I will process my guilt, and reflect on the sins of my father, seeking to forgive him for planting in me the seeds of a dream that my life would be better than his. An innocent enough dream -  reality is what I've had to face over and over again. He died too early to give me the necessary tools to deal with adversity.  I've had to learn that all by myself.

I know it is all in how you look at it. I've always been a home body. I lived two blocks from my mother for twenty years of my marriage. Eight houses away from my extended family for my entire childhood. Maybe it was my Mother's need to stop rolling along in a trailer that got imprinted on my psyche.  She stayed put for over fifty years on Resh Place.  My idea of home is roots.  I have idealized the notion of the family home, filled with memories, laughter, tears, and moments.  It is not easy for me to let go of that and turn my home over to another family to fill that space with theirs, while erasing mine.The hole in my heart is gaping.

Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz says over and over "There's no place like home.
We all say, "Home is where the heart is."

My problem is, I left my heart on Savona Walk. 
I hope Thomas Wolf was wrong when he said, "You can't go home again."
But if he is, I will have to redefine what home means to me.
I will have to find a new dream.

Will the phoenix rise...again?
There's always hope.

When I Die I Want God There

I remember the day I drove to the crematorium.
I knew I had to be there with my mother even though I knew she was already gone.
Have I told this story?
Have I written it?
Maybe.
Yes.
But I'm remembering it now.
So I'm re-telling it.

I'd awakened  that morning knowing it was the day.
I'd arranged with the mortuary to be there, though they'd advised against it.
I was having a hard time letting go of that body.
That body had given me life. Had held me and hugged me and tickled my arm and patted me.
And for the past few years, I'd cared for it in ways I'd never imagined. Mother and I had traded places.
On that morning, I was having a hard time with the idea of that body being incinerated.

So I looked for a sign.
The first was a camellia in full bloom in our yard.
Pink.
Mother's favorite.
I carefully snipped it and wrapped it in a wet paper towel and foil to take with me.

As I drove down the winding road to the crematorium
there were two birds - with a wide wing spread - soaring ahead of me.
They were the only two birds in the sky that I could see.
They flew ahead of me the whole way to the crematorium - as if leading me.
Soaring, dancing in the sky.

And I thought
There they are - Mom and Dad.
Dancing again at last.

I knew that they were together. That they had sent a sign to me
that they were dancing in the heavens and that it was alright.

When I arrived at the crematorium,
They pulled the casket out and asked if I wanted to see Mother one last time.
I said I did.

I placed the camellia on her chest. Kissed her cheek for the last time -
and gave the okay to roll her body into the oven.

Whether those birds were a sign
or whether they were just two birds swooping in the wind
whether a camellia in bloom was a sign
or whether it was just the start of spring
whether there is a heaven
and eternity
or whether there isn't
doesn't matter.

This is what I know.

Believing it
is comforting.
Believing in something eternal
makes the living more meaningful.
It is all a mystery.

I just know that when it's my time,
I want God there.
Because believing it
makes it so.

The Golden Ticket

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Hamlet Act II Scene ii
 
I recently returned from a ten-day trip chaperoning a group of students in England.  The trip had may artistic and professional dimensions to it which will no doubt be inspiration for future blog posts.  However, the story I wish to tell is about an experience I had that has reconnected me with myself and changed my outlook on life.

I got a call at 1:30 a.m. on August 10th, that our flight back to the states had been canceled and there were no flights available until the next afternoon.  This was a lousy wake up call portending a long, dreary day filled with hassles, vouchers, airport hotel rooms, and the domino effect of arriving home a full day later than planned. At 5:00 a.m., with students in tow, we drove two hours from Warwick, where we had been staying, back to Heathrow to take care of rebooking our flight and dealing with the details of the delay.  By 9:00 a.m. we were eating breakfast and I was faced with the decision of what to do with the rest of what was already a very long day.   Fighting the urge to crawl into bed under the covers until it was time to begin the trek back to the airport the next day, I announced to the wilted group that we would go back into London for a "bonus" day.
I directed everyone to meet back in the lobby in twenty minutes, giving me time to go back to the privacy of my room, have a quick cry, splash water on my face, change my clothes, and most importantly, adjust my attitude!

After an hour's ride into London on the tube, we arrived in Covent Garden, where the Saturday afternoon scene was festive and lively.
The students and other chaperones set off to explore, leaving me free and strangely solitary for the first time in ten days. Alone, my thoughts drifted to my childhood.
London held many memories for me, particularly with my father. From the time I was eleven-years-old, I grew up traveling to Europe most summers with my parents, always ending our six-week ventures in London. My father and I shared a love of theatre. He was my first acting coach. Hard to sum it up, but suffice it to say, everything I am today can be traced to my father.  He dropped dead of a heart attack when I was twenty-two-years old. His death changed the course of my life.  

As I stood there at the edge of Covent Garden, I was overcome with a strong sense of connection to him. I was compelled, utterly propelled, to turn around. As I did, my eyes fell on the three hundred and fifty-year-old Royal Drury Lane Theatre.  It was the first theatre in which I had seen a live musical with my father when I was eleven-years-old. The theatre seemed to call out to me, beckoning me to walk down the street toward it. Mesmerized, I couldn't take my eyes off of it - the marquee advertising the brand new musical version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - the hottest ticket in town.
As I arrived at the grand entrance, I noticed a crowd gathering and realized they were going in to see a matinee.  It was 2:15 pm and the curtain was at 2:30.  In a foggy, dream-like state, I walked up to the box office and asked "Do you happen to have any singles?" The woman smiled and with a beautiful British accent replied, "We have one seat left in the house." "Really....," I replied. And then after a brief inner dialogue of "Should I or shouldn't I?"  impulsively I said, "I'll take it."

I didn't pay any attention to where the seat was, I simply handed it to the usher who directed me through an open door to a center box seat.  I sat myself down on a velvet chair with three strangers, and shook my head in disbelief.  Center Box.  The show began and I was transported to the land of Charlie, Willy Wonka, and the delightful Oompa Loompas during Act One.  During the intermission, I made a quick call to my group saying I'd be 30 minutes later than I'd planned to meet them.  Joyously liberated, I wandered around the grand lobby and staircase marveling at where I was.  As the bells chimed indicating the end of the interval, I moved back up the steps to where I had been seated.  As I approached the box, this time, the door I'd entered was closed.  As I stepped up to the beautiful shiny, Mahogany door I came face to face with the letter "L".  I had been seated in the "L" box.  Stunned, I laughed and then burst into tears.  I knew in that moment, that something truly remarkable was taking place. My father's name was Lee. Overwhelmed, I thought of how my day had begun and where it had ended up.  I got the last seat in the house in the L Box for the hottest show in town.  I knew instantly why I'd been compelled to turn around! My father was waiting for me at the Royal Drury Lane Theatre in London where he had taken me to see my very first musical forty-three years earlier.

The theme of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is you have to believe it to see it.
The message came through loud and clear.  I wept with joy as I sat in my seat, feeling surrounded in love, embraced by my father. 
In the play, Charlie magically wins the "golden ticket."

 So had I.

When I left the Royal Drury Lane Theatre, I felt transformed.  I'd had a mystical experience reminding me that we live a mystery.  There is no death - only a passing from one dimension to another.  I have too much evidence in my life experience to doubt this.

I know there are those who will say it was all coincidence. But I know it was more than that.
What started out as a terrible day, ended up giving me one of the greatest gifts imaginable. Had my flight not been canceled,  I would have missed it. Had I crawled back into bed at the hotel, I would have missed it.
Since that day, I've been filled with joy and a sense that everything is as it should be.  I have felt at peace, happy, connected to myself, and absent of anxiety  and worry.
I truly believe my father sent me a message.
Trust that where you are is where you are meant to be.

You have to believe it to see it.

                                                   

Sent from my iPad