Vivid Living

Last week I witnessed a rite of passage I’m unlikely to forget.  My twins and I attended a Shabbat service at a neighborhood congregation we’re exploring. Turns out that the community was acknowledging a special member of its own that evening – a 13-year-old boy named Ben who was being Bar Mitvahed.

The thing is that Ben is special, particularly special.  He is mentally retarded, blind and wheelchair-bound.  He cannot read or speak or hold a pencil in his twisted hands. Now…I’ve been to lots of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in my 44 years, but I’ve never seen anything quite so extraordinary and full of grace as this one.

Ben was surrounded by his parents and two older sisters, both of whom had been Bat Mitzvahed in the traditional way – meaning they studied Hebrew, worked closely with the Rabbi to understand and read from the Torah, made speeches, and danced in celebration.

Perhaps more religious folks would question the legitimacy of Ben’s Bar Mitzvah given all that he could not do.  And yet, this Rabbi spoke about Ben’s soul, pure and simple. In spite of all his challenges, Ben, he said, was just as worthy as any other Jewish child for he, too, has unique gifts.  Typical Bar and Bat Mitzvah students work hard, but Ben, the Rabbi continued, has to work hard just to stay alive. And then Ben’s father read a blessing the family had written for him, thanking Ben for all that he had taught them.

There wasn’t a dry eye on the lawn (yes, the service was outdoors). In between my own tears, I watched my 9-year-old twins, wholly transfixed on Ben and his family.  What a lesson in humanity.

I never met Ben or his family that night.  But I’ve been thinking about them all week.  You see, the start of school always triggers a bit of upset and anxiety for my kids: we’re working through sleepless nights and insecurities about friendships, not being able to run as fast as the other kids, not being as coordinated on the playing field, and other real and perceived dramas.

Ben’s story helps me to look past these struggles. Because it’s true: every child, every person has his or her gifts.

I’ll leave you with a message from Ben via Bob Marley.  The musician played it the night of Ben’s Bar Mitzvah and together we sang:

Don’t worry about a thing, ‘cause every little thing gonna be all right

Rise up this morning’; smiled with the risin’ sun.

Three little birds pitch by my doorstep

Singin’ sweet songs of melodies pure and true; saying,

This is my message to you-oo-oo.

Thank you, Ben.

I recently finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, Committed.  As you probably know, she authored Eat, Pray, Love.

In Committed, I particularly like how Gilbert wrestles with the idea of love:  What if love never finds you?  What if you never find love?  Can you marry your own life?

It’s this last question that really leaps out at me.

Gilbert explores this scenario through the eyes of her 40-year-old friend, Christine, a single woman who decides to forgo loneliness for life.  She sets a small wooden boat adorned with rose petals and rice on fire. Then, she let it go – “releasing along with it her most tenacious fantasies of marriage as an act of personal salvation…She had finally married her own life, and not a moment too soon.”

I love this image of Christine transcending her perceived tyranny, and moreover, the notion of her “marrying her life.” To me, this concept means many things: stepping out; facing fears; plunging forward; accepting what is; celebrating the everyday; and having faith.

I have many single, fabulous women friends, some of whom marry their lives without ever realizing so.  They plan trips, take classes, make dinner plans, and run marathons. Yes, they bemoan not having a life partner, but this sense of loss doesn’t prevent them from living.

I lost my first life partner, and now I have another.  And yet I, too, am married to life. It’s the commitment I cherish most. My experience has taught me that when I nurture all that I am and all that I aspire to be, I am the best woman, wife, mother, daughter, friend and colleague that I can be.  This is a vow I’ll be glad to make daily.

It’s rather serendipitous that my husband, Steve, bought me a card today with this perfect quote from Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”

Yes!

Sunday’s Denver Post ran a cover story about female genital mutilation. The article featured a 43-year-old woman from the Ivory Coast who was cut at 11 and a 26-year-old from Guinea duped and then defiled at eight. I’m very culturally tolerant, yet this type of depravity leaves me, a writer, beyond words. What struck me most about the piece was the survivors’ courage to escape their past and renew themselves through a radical reconstructive surgery performed by one very extraordinary doctor.

Courage has many faces, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since reading this story.  Courage is my new friend, Liz Holzemer, who was diagnosed with a meningioma brain tumor in 2000, underwent extensive treatment, wrote a book about her experience, Curveball: When Life Throws You a Brain Tumor, and founded a non-profit called Meningioma Mamas to raise awareness and funds for this common cancer affecting women. Courage is my closest high school friend, a pediatrician, who is battling a very serious brain tumor.  Years and states separate us, but I’m lifting her up in my prayers along with her two children and husband.  Courage is my friend in Denver, a wife and mother of three young children, who contracted Hepatitis C from a drug-addicted nurse.

Beyond illness and grief, courage is the face of a young girl who says “that’s not nice” when her peers tease her because she can’t run as fast on the playing field. She has a mild disability but doesn’t want to appear different than others. Courage is the boy who comforts a crying classmate; he sits with her alone under a tall tree.

Courage is my friend in New Jersey who is raising a baby girl from South Africa literally placed in her arms.  ”Take her,” the child’s grandmother said, “you can give her a better life.”

Courage, I believe, is having the pluck to face your fears, the grace to make unpopular decisions and the bravery to live your dreams.

I’m not sure how these seeds of valor are sown.  But we all have them, this I know for sure.

Six years ago today, my first husband, Brett, died in my arms at Calvary Hospice in Bronx, New York.  As many of you know, and others have read, he had a brain tumor that finally felled him nearly seven years after he was diagnosed in 1998.

Because this experience has profoundly shaped my life and my writing, it would be remiss of me not to write about loss and renewal, today, of all days.

Our twins, Casey and Rebecca, are now at the magical age of eight. They are clever, feeling, beautiful, loving and compassionate children. While they have no real memories of their dad, I make it a point to tell them that they carry his nose, his kindness, and his bottomless love for all things sweet.

In anticipation of today’s anniversary, I asked Casey and Rebecca what they would like Dad to know about them.  “I LOVE cheese steaks and I’m a kick-butt skier,” Casey said. “I LOVE cinnamon rolls and I sleep with the blanket Mommy made of your clothes almost every night,” said Rebecca. Which she does.

As for me, my perspective has shifted, which happens, I believe, over time.  Lately I’ve been thinking about him more often because I’ve been working on a memoir and have needed to dig deep into those hard years.  Even when he’s not top of mind, Brett is always with me.  The same is true for my new husband, Steve, who carries his late wife, Pam, with him, too. In our blended family, the past is still very present.

Mostly, I’m grateful today.  Grateful that Brett and I married, grateful that we had children who bear his name and hold the best parts of him, grateful that in spite of his death we have had the courage to move forward in life, grateful that indeed I found happiness again and a wonderful man who loves me and our children, grateful for health and time and the gift of memory.

Recently I stumbled upon this quote from Vincent Van Gogh and it seems apt: “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

Like everyone, I have been deeply moved by the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.  The images are searing, especially of the children, torn from their parents, many in physical pain, hungry, homeless, without their toys and possessions of comfort, too traumatized now to even think about a future.

The tragedy has hit me hard.

Back in 1994, I traveled to Haiti while working at UNICEF U.S.A. as Director of Public Relations. I spent ample time visiting the slums of Port-au-Prince and even met with Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the National Palace, now lying in rubble. The squalid conditions were horrific to me then, now it’s unimaginable.

Part of me wants to adopt a Haitian baby, to which my daughter, Rebecca, says, “Mom, I think we have enough kids in our house now.”  She’s right, of course, and, in spite of my incredible longing to help, we are not equipped to parent more children. Part of me wants to go volunteer in Haiti for two months, to which my conscience asks, “but how can you leave your family?” The answer is I can’t.  I simply can’t.

What is it then that I can offer in the wake of this giant tragedy? What is it that anyone can offer?

Money? Time? Hands? Faith? There are no easy answers.

Friends,

As we move into a new decade, I’ll let you ruminate over this favorite passage of mine from Emily Dickinson.

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise.

And then, if we are true to plan

Our statures touch the skies.

May you soar into 2010 with wings of grace –  gliding effortlessly whenever you can, rising up as needed, and always, always living fully and well.

Thanks for reading Vivid Living.

Life can careen off-course.

We’ve all had such moments, and thankfully, I’m safe and recovered to tell you about mine this past week.

The blue-black sky contrasted vividly with the soft snow still falling.   In my car at 5:45 a.m., Denver looked magical, like a fairy world with white crystals.  I was headed to a Board of Directors meeting at 7a.m. but had left plenty of time to make the half-hour trip to Englewood, CO.  Looking at the whiteness around me, warm mug of Einstein’s hazelnut coffee in hand, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in E minor playing on my radio, I remember feeling a profound sense of grace and calm.  It was a near perfect moment.  That is, until a car to my left  on Interstate 25 tried to pass and slid into my car.   I heard the collision and then felt my car spinning.  At once, I remember gripping the wheel and screaming, not stopping until the car came to a rest. What the heck happened?

And then I began to shake because I was all right.  There were no other cars to the back or right of mine.  No glass had shattered.  I hadn’t hit my head.  “You’re okay,” I told myself, “you’re okay.”

In an instant…the course of my life, and god forbid, my family’s, might have changed.  Whether I feel such things more intensely because of the lingering loss of my first husband, I’ll never know.  But what I am sure of is that close brushes like these are teachable moments to stop and consider head-on what matters most. When life jolts us in this manner, we must pause and reflect.  I did plenty of that while nursing my stiff neck and shoulders, taking the rest of the day and night to simply breathe and sleep.  It’s what I needed to steer myself back to the beating pulse of my world.

I have found power in the mysteries of thought, exaltation in the changing of the Muses … I have been versed in the reasonings of men but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.

– Euripides