Keeping it steady

Unready. Am I having second thoughts, and if so, why am I having second thoughts. I was ready am ready. And yet suddenly unsure, maybe it’s the fear, that fear of the unknown – not knowing what decision is right vs. the one that could be wrong.

Am I ready? Or is that I am unready?

Funny how things shift day-to-day feelings, ideas, thoughts – seismic shift, continental shift, sands through an hourglass shift. Life is beginning and ending simultaneously at any given moment.

How do I feel about anything? Right now I feel hollow, lost. Even going to the vet with Rocky – I hear the doctor say the words but the meaning is a gobbledy-gook of nonsense to this ear.

Right here. Right now.

Today is Bev’s year anniversary – how my heart reaches across time and space and distance to hold my West Coast family at its center. In three days it will be mom’s 14th death anniversary. Fourteen years, where did they all go? Then in 13 days it’ll be six months without Dad. Sometimes time moves fast, sometimes slow, but it keeps on moving.

Moving. This year I will be moving...toward what is the question. Working toward the next chapter of my life, to another something, which can mean anything. 

Anything at all.  

South Brooklyn, as i know it

11pm on a Saturday. Not so long ago that meant teased hair and tight jeans, stepping into a red shiny car only to drive up and down the avenue (as 86th street was known back then). Today that same strip is quiet, deserted save a taxi or two. The roller rink has been replaced by a national liquidator and a local supper club, Lenny's Pizza holds its ground a few blocks north, and that movie theatre is now a Rite Aid, neither of which are open right this second.

South Brooklyn. That's where I am from. The South Brooklyn of the 70s before the real estate market redefined neighborhoods and invented fancy acronyms like BoCoCa (aka Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens). When looking at a map, the actual South Brooklyn  includes Coney Island, Gravesend, Bensonhurst and Homecrest--parts of the borough that unlike every other area just close enough to the Big Island of Manhattan have survived without regentrification.

When my dad was growing up, Luna Park (as the amusement park was called back then before renamed Astroland) was an integral part of his childhood. One of his uncles or cousins leased the Tornado, a predecessor (along with the Thunderbolt) to the famous Cyclone roller coaster, and he spent many a summer handing out and collecting tickets from enthusiastic thrill seekers. My Aunt Millie had her own claim to fame working at the Brighton Beach Bathhouses. I'm not sure what (or where) Uncle Dom was at the time.

This is where my roots are, where my family tree was planted and flourished. In a 3-story brick house, 2.5 miles northeast of the magic of carney in Coney. There is a slate path of multi-colored slabs leading toward my front door, alongside where once stood a towering pussy willow tree, the branches of which my mom and I would harvest each Fall. The backyard equal parts concrete and grass conjures memories of leap frog, sprinklers in summer heat, of baloney sandwiches and games of hide and seek.

It is here that my brother's children played corn hole with my dad, here where I taught  neighboring children how to make snow angels after the season's first snowfall.  There are so many memories lingering in the eaves of this house, in the branches of the bare bushes in hard winter soil, seeping into the concrete foundation that I call home.

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healing hearts through runes

Every day since my father passed I have consulted The Healing Runes, to guide my intentions and work through the grief. It has become my mourning ritual, jostling the green velvet bag to shuffle and unsettle the twenty-five etched stones. Then reaching in and grazing them with my fingertips before resting on one, the one that calls out to me.

It might seem counterintuitive for a Catholic-raised turned spiritualist to have faith in a sea of stones but the meditation of intention each day has been a gift. Clearing my mind, guiding me toward a path of least resistance as I make my way through these murky waters, an untethered raft floating. In the beginning, as if Elisabeth Kubler-Ross herself was guiding my fingers I found myself choosing humor, denial, forgivness, guilt. They paved the way for the last few days of gratitude, faith and the Divine. The Divine rune encourages one to be present in their own hearts, to look inside ourselves to uncover the love within; for some that might be translated into strength, courage. You need all three to make it through one day, to feel any semblance of accomplishment for waking up and facing the kaleidoscope.

Today was unsettling. There wasn't one moment that defined it as such. It was more an amalgamation of many things, little snippets of living that tipped the emotional scale. Of talking with friends, and not talking to others, and how that unconscious decision made me realize that the one person who I could almost always talk to is no longer of this earth. Dad always had (or made) time to listen, even when he was exhausted or in some cases distracted, he would listen. Settling into his chair, swiveling to face me, rock solid determined to hear what I had to say and grasp my point of view (even when it was unclear to him what I was talking about), he would try to make sense of it all and ask probing questions to guide me towards working it out, toward diffusing the clutter in my mind. All I have now are cobweb enshrouded thoughts and a lingering fog, holding steady.

Midnight. The beginning of a new day, the twelth anniversary of September 11th a tragic catastrophe of a day where the world felt the same level of anguish--a gasp, a sigh, a drop in the pit of our stomachs, a collective feeling of loss and despair.

I reach for the velvet bag and pull out the rune for prayer. A first time appearance in this ritualistic sequence, the prelude for all things, for all intentions. I flip to page 103 and read through the meditation which encourages the reader to place all that which concerns them into the hands of the Divine through prayer, so that it might work to quiet the troubled spirit and summon the greater good for healing.

You to whom all hearts are open, all secrets known, hear our prayers.

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every day is a journey

On good days it feels normal, as if he's somewhere else: at the doctor, visiting his sister, sleeping in. I can't feel his absence. On bad days, it's more noticeable.

Our relationship was ever-evolving. He was a fixture, a constant, a confidante, a friend, a father. We shared ideas over conversation, sometimes dissecting deep thinking that almost always spurred into argumentative discussions--Dad and I had opposing school of thoughts.  It was like that since I was young. It would start at the dinner table over dessert and coffee, migrate to the sofa during TV time, the mad crazy emotionally charged debates. I don't know how my mom survived them. I guess it's just something we Italians do, our own version of a cardio workout.

Silence. 8am on a Saturday is quiet, that is normal. Later after I've had coffee and breakfast, I'll unconsciously be listening for the shuffling of feet, the murmuring white noise of a radio talk show host, the running of water. I know none of it will come, and yet I still wish for it.

Sleep comes easy, and I fall back asleep this time on the couch. At 11am I stir to the sound of cicadas and ghost noises. The house conjured them in my waking cycle, and they are almost real. Startling how the senses are adept at translation.

wistfully yours

I've been through this once before. The first time I was younger, naive and immature. Even though mom was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I wasn't prepared to let go of her, let alone get used to the idea of her not being here. We had almost a year and it just wasn't enough time. Thirteen years later, older, slightly wiser, more mature I was just getting used to (and coming to terms with) the idea of dad getting older and slowing down. My mind was compartmentalizing his gradual deterioration and wrapping itself around the possibilities of how we would take care of him when he slowed down to a snail's pace. Everything happened so quickly, so fast. It didn't occur to me that he would injure himself and then stop. Stop. It's such a final word, and it finds me ill prepared for this act of letting go, again.

We just passed the three week mark, next Tuesday will mark a month. Thirty days. Seven-hundred and thirty hours. Too many seconds to contemplate. It hurts my head if I think about it too much. I find myself watching marathon hours of TV--a shocker for those of you who know me (once upon a time I didn't have TV let alone cable); reading a lot, mostly books, magazines, news articles on my iPad and my Twitter feed (I'm not sure why but I've become mildly obsessed with scouring through posts, tweeting and retweeting) and when I can sleeping, I alternate between an obscene number of shut-eye or none at all.

This weekend I was down at the shore celebrating my niece's birthday with family. The weather blue skies and climate temperate foe all day swimming in the saltwater pool, and the children (and their friends) took full advantage, splashing and dashing around the backyard. A full day outdoors calls for a slumber worthy of kings and queens but instead I found myself restless and tormented by nightmares, the kind that grip your heart tight enough to force you awake.  I was sharing a room with my nephew in the blue and white room, facing Main Avenue. The sounds of the passing traffic ultimately lulled me to sleep.

I woke in the morning to a rambunctious symphony of voices and made my way down to the kitchen. Assigned party duties, we each played our part in the party preparation and then lazily made our way back to poolside with sunscreen and towels and a side order of books in tow.  The day unfurled as family and friends made their way to the house to chat and play, swim and soak up the sun, and commemorate summer the old fashioned way with a pool party and BBQ. It was whimsically fun.

It would have been even lovelier if Dad were there, as my nephew Christopher pointed out. Dad surely would have been pleased with the weather and enjoyed the festivities, from the sunshine to the artisanal hand-packed ice cream from Hoffman's to the tasting of Italian wine recently acquired by my brother's brother in law, Danny.  And he would have certainly cheered, if not participated in the multi-generational game of corn hole being played poolside by my nephew (his grandson), Uncle Dom (dad's brother) and his two adult grandsons (our cousins), Chris and John. That scene made me sad, wistful.

And I should have known that the ride home would do me in; I curse my unconscious for failing to trigger some sort of warning, do not drive back late by yourself. As I sat in traffic on the Garden State it was hard not to remember the last time I drove this way Dad was in the seat next to me, half awake, half asleep, talking about nothing, or something about politics. Estimating the time based on how far we've traveled, guesstimating the time of day by the position of the moon and the light in the night sky. He was almost always dead on too, which of course in its own special way drove me mildly crazy and insane.

All those things we take for granted when they are here; are the nuances that we first begin to miss when their voices are no longer of this earth. 

inexplicable grief

Life is unpredictable.  One minute you're discussing the possibility and probability of rain or recollecting someone based on the color of their hair and in the next minute you're in a fog, trying to remember what day it is and the last time the weather was so beautiful it brought you to tears.

Today is one of those days. It is cool and crisp, leaning toward the end of summer, a sunny Wednesday in August. Three weeks shy of Labor Day. It is a day where Dad would have been obnoxiously alert and chipper, a day where the radio would have piqued at 7AM and the shuffling of his feet on the staircase would have had a rhythm, one part rumba one part stroll. It may have included a knock on the door, a good morning greeting with an offering of bananas. When he had energy it was contagious, and when he didn't the house seemed to creak with its heaviness.

This day is halfway good, halfway bad. The sunshine is refreshing, the air vitalizing but my head is foggy still. It's only been two weeks since the fall, twelve days since the day, possibly the saddest I will know this decade. I know we're only three years in but right now that's what it feels like to me. There seems to be one every ten years, whether that's purposeful or not I don't know. 

Loss happens to everyone. And the grief which affects the saddest people and the happiest of people, attacks silently. Unnoticeably at first, it's expected in unexpected ways; one never knows what will be the trigger. And like a phantom itch grazing against the nerve endings of our heart, lightly touching our soul, it is both intangible and inexplicable.  

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drive me crazy

I've made myself a drunken milkshake as an aperitif to dinner tonight, because after the last 5 days I've earned it. My dad had a fainting spell on Saturday, a repercussion from the mad heatwave the East Coast has been under, a murky and hazy summer deluge. I've been home coaching him toward recovery, urging him to drink water and fight the urge to go downstairs and watch TV in favor of sitting in a cool air conditioned room. I love him but he drives me crazy with his obstinate and stubborn-resistance to change, especially when the intent is to make his life easier.  

the beach is my sacred space

I consider my beach time sacred, whether I am alone or with friends. It's a moment in time where I am in touch with nature and completely relaxed. I feel lucky to live in a city and state that has an accessible shoreline very close to where I live (it's about a 15-20 min drive with no traffic).  And I don't know that I could live anywhere that didn't offer something similar, a body of water, a natural spring to offer that level of solace and happiness.

Shorelines come with a price of course, there's always the chance of of storms and flooding. Last fall, my beach was brutalized by Hurricane Sandy. I was away during it all and hadn't been back since late summer, and I wasn't sure what to expect when I got there yesterday. Kudos to Gateway National Park because the beach itself was intact and even though the shoreline was a bit jagged it was equally picturesque.

The best thing about my beach is that it's also part of a park.  A park that includes miniature golf, an 18-hole range, a playground for kids and picnic areas. It also has courts (tennis, paddleball, handball) that run along the perimeter of the boardwalk that runs adjacent to the beach. There are multiple entry points to the beach from the parking lot.  In the mild winter of 2011, I drove out to Riis to take a walk and after discovering a paddleball set in the garage, found the workout quite enjoyable.  The court itself is overrun with weeds, and strewn with broken beer bottles, but the concrete wall is sold and the court still offers an opportunity to exercise (with caution).  There's something gratifying about bouncing that pink ball against the wall, chasing it around the court, pumping blood through my veins, working up a sweat. I put in my earbuds, the ocean as my backdrop and the Zen takes over.

Yesterday I planned to play for an hour before rewarding myself with a toe dip in the ocean and a read by the sea. I was in the groove for almost an hour until I was interrupted by someone crossing the court.  I caught a flash of black fabric in my periphery vision and pulled out my earbuds before turning around to check.  There's absolutely no need for anyone to enter let alone cross the court. It was pretty apparent that this dude's intention was off.  He looked older but could have easily been in my age range. His salt and pepper hair was uncombed and his teeth yellow and untended. He was wearing long black shorts and carrying a plastic bag. He was talking, I broke the first rule of self-preservation by engaging in his conversation. I don't know why I did, in my mind I thought maybe he needed something innocent like knowing what time it was. No, he asked me if I this was my regular spot, and I politely informed him it was my first time here.  (Stupid, I know; I don't know why I said that.) Then he wanted to know if we could spend time playing paddleball and tennis together sometime. I politely declined thinking that he would leave.  A rebuff usually works and then he reached out to introduce himself, and it was like a five alarm fire going off in my head. I was more bold then, clearly stating that I was not interested and that he should leave me alone. I backed away to the park bench, collected my things and walked, slightly convolutedly so he wouldn't follow me, to my car.

I was fuming by the time I got there, annoyed at myself for interacting and at the loss of a perfectly good workout. I sat in the front seat to cool down and then gathered myself for an afternoon on the beach.  I found a quiet spot amongst the hipsters in the west bay, and pulled out a book and a granola bar, settling in to  admire the view. The water was rolling, its waves criss-crossing in a game of Twister. The weather forecast suggested rain at the beginning of the work week and the ocean confirmed that something was coming.

The wind inspired a fellow beach-goer to try his hat at kiteboarding, which unfortunately was foiled by the local park ranger.  I walked to the water to watch the folks brave enough to swim the icy waters; I wanted to preserve my most recent memory of swimming in the Arabian Sea, so just toe-dipping for me. I turned back to the beach to return to my blanket, I spotted "Michael" the creepy dude from the paddleball court surveying the beach. Whether he was looking for me specifically or someone else I have no idea; all I could feel was the flare of annoyance and anger returning.

I had to walk past him to get to my space, and I instinctively knew he was going to approach me, again. I was prepared to make a scene if he tried anything, any thing at all. He turned around and acted pleasantly (sick in the head right there) surprised as if it was serendipity that brought us together, and just as he opened his mouth I told him twice: "I am not interested. Leave me alone." I never once stopped, walking away from him as I said those words. Walking toward my blanket, not sitting until I could see that he was farther down the beach. I really hope that I don't see him again, my beach is my sacred space and some wacky dude is NOT going to ruin it for me. I'll be carrying chili powder for my safety next time, if our paths should cross again, I'll be finding that park ranger to file a report.

rigor mortis

Earlier this week I spied two kittens in the backyard. One was older than the other, which seemed newly born and skittish, like an extra from a kitten calendar photo shoot. The one that caught my eye was the older one, amber-eyes and soft fluffy grey fur on his body with white feet. Our eyes locked when I saw him drink from the milk bowl I set out for them.

It was the wee kitten, perhaps because she was sick that ventured closer to me on Tuesday morning. I had gone out back to check on the drain from the earlier rains and there she was under the porch, a shaking ball of fur. I took her inside and tried to get some milk into her. Her eyes were dilated and she looked almost cujo-like. It was a bit off putting so I picked her up, put her in a shoebox with fleece fabric and a bowl of milk and set her up in the backyard. Then I came back inside and sanitized the counter.

The weather has been San Fransciscan in mood and swing, one day overcast and chilly, the next springlike and sunny. They are predicting a heat wave for the weekend.  It's hard to know what to wear. Tuesday was partly cloudy, and started with a with a sprinkling of light rain. There was a torrential downpour during the day that lasted well into the evening. The streets were so slippery that on the way home from the train station I fell, bruising up my hands and knees (and luckily not tearing up my dress).

Once home I bandaged myself and made my way to the backyard to check on the little one. There I made a startling, and grim discovery. The poor kitten had succumbed to whatever illness and passed earlier in the day. Her body, frozen in time, lay at the bottom of the staircase. It's such a natural occurrence, death among the species in the circle of life, one that happens every moment of every day, and yet it felt so foreign to me. I felt shellshocked and I can't say why it frightened me so much but I could feel the stiffening fear (the irony inescapable) of having to do what had to be done next.

It took a moment to self-compose and detach long enough to gather gardening tools and rubber gloves, to select a suitable location in the backyard. I was careful to not touch the body outright, instead using a shovel to transfer it from the ground to a my makeshift shroud of a biodegradable bag. I wrapped the body as best as I could and carred it to the shallow grave, and then buried her under the overgrown bush in the backyard, covering the grave with mulch. A simple yet small act of kindness for one of God's creatures. A prayer that the next act of kindness will be for one of God's living creatures.

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I am back at it, in the "real world" slipping into the routine of an every day life: working, commuting, eating, sleeping--trying my best to hold onto the peace of mind from being away, trying hard not to lose myself, not to lose perspective.

breathing in, breathing out. breathing in, breathing out.

lessons learned

I've had a ridiculously productive morning: preparing a meal for dinner, a homemade lunch for work and making french toast for breakfast, all while still having enough time to eat it and write a bit before jumping in the shower. I like this kind of productivity it makes me feel alive and in my own skin, where I can feel the immediate impact of my efforts.

Getting up early in the morning, that's something I used to do ages ago. There was a time I would wake up at 5am, complete the 8 mile bike loop around the bridge, come home, shower, eat breakfast and then leave for work. That has been a foreign idea to me for quite some time. But I like the idea of it, of setting up a ritual to ground oneself before the day begins. The day, every day should be your own, driven by your own intentions and not those of others in your personal life or your professional one. That's one of the lessons I learned on my India trip.

When I plan a leisure trip I normally have a good sense of what I'm doing at any given time. While there's never a tight regiment of what is happening when, I like to map out my activities day by day to give it some kind of thematic structure--even if that means lolling about the beach reading a book. It's my way of being mindful to myself and my experience. This time around though I relinquished control, I let go; allowing for others to take the lead in planning and organizing. No doubt it was a liberating experience, and although I'm grateful for the things I learned about myself (and others, friends and strangers), I don't know that I would do that again.

When you let go, it can shift perspective, but it can also shift persona and you may find that you lose a part of yourself in the process.  That part scared me a bit, that my confidence level could shift to an extreme where my true nature was hidden from view. Whether it was the trip, a mind shift or something else entirely, it has made me more thoughtful about who I am and who I want to be.