The Trip that Rocked my World – Part I (June 14, 2014)

I was beyond excited, already grinning at the mere fact that I was visiting a new city, staying in a beautiful hotel suite (feeling like a Queen) and about to visit the architectural work of Frank Gehry. I’m his #1 fan—but he doesn’t know that.

As we rounded the corner to the Pacific Science Center, I saw the Seattle Space Needle peeking above the tree line, behind it hints of the colorful and wiggly work of Gehry, his architectural signature in contoured lines of bended metal sculpting the EMP building.

Giddy as a teenage girl, I’m armed and ready with my Canon arsenal dangling from my right shoulder. I’m wide-eyed and smiling ear-to-ear. I can’t believe I am here!

Just around the next bend, we’re almost there, just a few more steps to my own personal amusement park of architecture and…BAM!

The pathway, lacy concrete block style pavers, specifically made for grass to grow in between the decorative gaps, proved to be more dangerous than met my eyes and greeted my feet. The ill perceived evenness skewed by its indifference to shadow and light, under the typical overcast Seattle sky. My right foot caught by an unexpected elevated section, sent me flying—and by no means was this first class with champagne and steaming warm towels.

I knew in my heart that I would not be recovering from my own body’s trajectory. It’s incredible just how fast the mind works. Tried as I might to adjust my core to right myself with invisible wings, I shifted into a preparation for landing, which was no more than a thought, less than a split second acknowledgment to myself that I was going down, with no landing gear to speak of.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the phenomena of time slowing down during events like these. Yet in reality, it all happened so fast. My hands instinctively lifted up and came forward to protect my body and my face from the now inevitable impact with the ground before me.

Down, down, down.  My eyes closed shut tightly. I mean who wants to see what’s coming right? Pain starts to register in so many places my brain can’t file the information quite that fast. What to attend to first? I feel the bulk of the impact in my right breast. I landed on my camera. The lens that had been pointing out and away had somersaulted inward and broken my fall. I would learn later that my fall had also broken my lens. (Side not to Apple, the rest of the trip was photographed with my iPhone!)

My eyes remained closed for a while. It was better that way I thought. I began to scan my body, check-in on my own collateral damage. I rolled over onto my back, knees bent and up. I hear Steve saying “Don’t move… don’t get up.” I wasn’t going anywhere. The information continued to pour in on me, over me. Broken bones? Nope, don’t think so. No need for the bone density test. Check! I can feel certain parts radiating out in painful reaction. The top of my right foot, palms of both of my hands, my knees and elbows and my right breast. That’s going to hurt. I had no clue then just how true my thought would actually manifest.

As I laid on the ground I could hear people as they passed by speaking in concerned tones, asking “Is she okay?” After some time, I slowly rolled up with assistance to a seated position and today as I think back to that very dazed moment in time, I was in some kind of altered state. Somewhere between here and there…

Fast-forward one year as I reflect today on the, count-them-on-less-than-two-hands, pain free days, I remain grateful and for the healing hands that continue to bring me back to my whole being. I’m sure there are many great lessons to be learned, as of this entry I have not met them all…yet.

Notes from the Purple Bench

Do you ever have moments where you wonder if you are doing enough with your life? I do. I'm not a rocket scientist, nor am I a PhD working on the latest cure for cancer. And for the most part, I am satisfied with how I've participated in the career world and in my personal life. It's curious however, that I continue, now and again, to have these kinds of 'less than' thoughts.

My greatest accomplishment to date [according to me] may be summed up in two really nice human beings I birthed and loved into this world. Yet there are times when in the midst of people with impressive educational acronyms behind their names, a shadow is cast in self-doubt and reflection of what kinds of value I have contributed here during my time of Earth.

Why is that?

It seems, in America at least, the standards of success and value are wrapped up tightly in what we do as workers, how much we bank, what kind of car we drive and where we live. This is the short-list of those sort of markers of "making it."

And so I wonder...am I supposed to be doing more, being more, making more, buying more? Just yesterday I actually had one of those damn thoughts waft through my head!

And then something happened to stop me in my thoughts.

I carry a belief the 'Universe' can hear what we think, say, question and feel, and will respond [sometimes in record time] in-kind with some type of message. On the heels of my thought/question [am I doing enough?], I found a note from the Universe in the form of a yellow sticky wrapped around a music CD I had left on my purple bench for neighbors to take, the one that sits on the city parkway for my neighbors to take a load off during their neighborly strolls.

I had just decided the day before to begin a collection of photographs of the bench. I occasionally see neighbors sitting on the bench, but more often I only know someone has been there with the obvious shuffling of pillows rearranged for each person's individual taste and comfort. Evidence that someone has been there when I wasn't looking. I snapped the first in the series and walked over to the bench to see if the CDs had all found new homes.

There were two remaining out of the original five and oddly one of them had a note attached. Strategically wrapped and tucked into the CD sleeve to keep it from blowing away, here is how it read:

"Hello Sweet People on the Corner. I really enjoyed listening to this CD. Thank you for sharing your positive energy and for also making this a happy corner in the neighborhood. My daughter and I come by every day on our walk. Thanks! Noelle & Grace."

A blanket of warmth ran over my heart as it grew exponentially with the reading of the note. This 3" x 3" yellow square a prime example of what money does not buy, the priceless value of humanity working at its best and a note from the Universe [and the purple bench] that I am enough, I am contributing something of value and making a difference here on Earth.

I've also decided that my curriculum vitae [the course of my life] may need a little rewriting to include a section titled, "Notes from the Purple Bench." Signing off to write a note back to Noelle & Grace and post it on the telephone pole.

Love: Lost and Found

At age 18, what usually marks the time to spread one's wings and fly free from the family tree, I fell fast and hard from the nest instead. My wings unprepared and entangled with the twigs and twine of the nest builders, only to become paired up with another fledgling.

I've often thought that my life as a budding adult, through what is deemed as the 'identity phase' [roughly18-25] was put on pause. Over the years, I've looked inside from the mature responsible woman's exterior and could still see and feel the 18 year old in me waiting for the fun, adventures and reckless abandon to begin. Hold please! The path of individual growth merged with the care and responsibility of other fledgling beings. Forty years down the road I still have a sense of her and through later-in-life experiences she has emerged ethereally a beautiful bird soaring at unimagined heights with layered depths of perception.

I've listened with big attentive ears to the stories of youth through the breathed memories of others. I can't say I ever really feel sad or a loss around my chosen path versus the path of [natural order]. It's as if I already knew it, through a past life perhaps, and so I walked before I crawled into adulthood, I mothered on the edge of transition between child and adult. Many of my ideals and dreams stowed away for another time. That time is now.

The recent passing of my 58th birthday has me reflecting on my wants and desires, the list of which has been tempered with time. Shortened to nothing that money can buy. A sincere soulful attempt to "do unto others" from the book I've never read and to love and honor myself. To understand and live the rest of this life knowing that, just as I am—I am enough. To no longer rely and look for praise and love outside of myself, for that path is entwined with the opposite effect that can clip our own wings of wonder. Everything else that arrives at this point is, as they say, icing on the cake.

I've arrived at this much spoken about [unaccepted] place of self love. Not withstanding going through some very low, alone and dark places. Those places might just be prerequisites and damn hard lessons in the cirriculum of life. (Insert smiley face here.)

I wish everyone could feel this kind of love. It is freedom, it is peace, it is love. It's our birthright.