Getting through the holidays

Grieving is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The world felt like brittle glass; an awkward movement might suddenly shatter it. Sleep was a problem, except when I dreamt that his death was a hoax. Waking was a problem because my mind did not work; I would start something, then find myself in another part of the house, wondering why. Some days felt so bad I simply cancelled them and went back to bed. Surely the next day would be better than the one I was in. Someday I would not feel so crushed, broken and lost.

In early grief, it seems impossible to accomplish even the smallest task. We force ourselves because we know no alternative. Food must be eaten, bills need to be paid, you have to work, the children have to go to school. These children (and teenagers) need you to show them how to get through this pain. They need a model of how to live while grieving, how to heal and enjoy life again.

Holidays are perfect for this. Creating a family celebration despite your grief, or even because of it will not be easy. I can't promise it will even feel good. But finding a way to keep your traditions, simplified if necessary, will ultimately help you and your children understand, in a concrete way, that you CAN get through the sadness.

You don't have to do everything, but it is better to continue your life than to cancel it. It will take time to find it but there is joy in the midst of your sorrow. Continue to love. Light some candles, put on some music, decorate, share meals and thoughtful gifts. Remember something funny. Give yourself a metaphoric pat on the back once the holiday is over – you managed to get through it. Be compassionate to yourself. Raise a glass of something and offer a toast of gratitude.

Here are some tips that worked well for me over the years.

1. Only do what feels right but add a tiny bit more than you think you can handle.

2. Proceed As If…as if it feels okay, even though it doesn't.

3. Identify the most important things to do and let go of the rest.

4. Don't believe anyone who tells you how long grief should last. No one really understands, even if they insist that they do.

5. Don't let anyone tell you how you should feel. Don't listen to anyone who says you are "supposed to" or you "should". If someone says something hurtful, ignore it the first time. They may simply be unaware. If someone repeatedly says hurtful things, stop having contact with them for a while.

6. Allow yourself to cry; holding it in is destructive. Go to a quiet place, give yourself permission, a time limit and let it all out. Roll on the floor if you feel like it, rock back and forth, do anything that helps you release the intense emotions that are washing over you. After you reach your time limit, slow your breathing and hug yourself. Be thankful for the release. Wash your face with cold water, give yourself a little shake and return to whatever you were doing.

7. Repeat number 2 as necessary.

8. Drink a lot of water.

9. Talk about your loved one, as naturally as you can. Other people will be afraid to mention the name, for fear of "upsetting" you. Bring up his/her name, casually, often. We honor them by remembering them.

I wish you all a peaceful, compassionate holiday.

Thanks!

I am sitting in gratitude, near the fire as the day slowly opens. There is so much to be thankful for.

I am thankful for all the relationships: with my amazing children, my wonderful sisters and my brother, their families, my parents, my aunts and uncles, cousins, my supportive friends. Connecting to so many interesting and unique people enriches me.

I am thankful for Alby and all the love, music, dancing, travel, great food we shared. I grew up with him and he gave me so much; his intuitive intelligence and his zesty, quirky way of being deepened me.

I am thankful for my life now. I am grateful that my brain works again and I can study, learn and grow. I am thankful for the opportunity to turn trouble into something good.

I am grateful for my new life partner. Our deep conversations, walks in the woods, travel around the world and the love we share lifts me out of sadness. He takes me to places I only dreamed of seeing, and shows me worlds I didn't know existed.

Thank you all. Thank you.

Identity Problem

"Who am I," the widow asked me. She was tall, with thick, wavy, grey hair. She wore a purple shirt with a gold linked chain; her glasses were rectangular with purple sides. "I left my parent's house when I was 20, and I've been The Doctor's Wife ever since. We were married for 51 years. I don't know who I am." She turned her hands up in the air, shrugged her shoulders then dabbed her left eye beneath the glass. "I didn't think I would cry," she said, surprised.

We were sitting in her comfortable living room, on opposite low green chairs. In addition to couches and lamps, the room had several tables with dozens of family photographs. Floor to ceiling shelves lined the walls, filled with books, a collection of Chinese jade and ceramics, partially hidden by more photographs. Many of them were family groupings of several generations. One showed a happy young bride dressed in a high necked, long sleeved gown, from which I surmised that the family was orthodox. I gently suggested that the woman married to the Doctor, who parented the children, who lived and loved in this home for so many years, was fully and vibrantly alive, even though, at this moment, it did not really feel so good.

The widow told me that she wandered through house, not quite believing that her husband is truly gone. According to her, she was in denial during the hospice process, convincing herself over and over that another treatment would work. For the past 9 ½ years, they had spent every waking moment together. Then she said that when she starts to break down, she remembers something important. She remembers that she is still standing, here in her house, with comfort and good food to eat, with her children and grandchildren nearby. She is even having company for dinner. She is, in fact, alive. I looked at her, as compassionately as possible. "I wish I could make this pain go away. But I am sorry to say there is no way to fix this. There is, however, a way to heal. It is called…Time."

There are a few things that she can do, if she wants to be proactive. She can nurture herself, carefully sensing what feels right and what does not. Slowly, she can begin to identify where her interests lie, what she likes to do. Perhaps she will decide to go to the Opera again; perhaps she will never return, preserving the memory of years of attending with her loving husband. Slowly, I believe that she will find her way through the grief to a renewed sense of herself.

At least I hope so.

Channeling

Last week, at the corner café, a woman in a perky straw hat and a draped red dress came up next to me to order her café au lait. "Nice dress," I said, smiling. "I like your shirt," she said back. I was wearing a leopard print blouse, since I was planning a visit to my cousin, who loves animal prints. "I don't usually wear this kind of thing," I shrugged. "Oh," said the woman, "you should wear that often, and more!"

"In fact," she went on, "you should channel your inner Janis Joplin. People will love you!! Go get some vests; you could wear a little fur here, there." She touched me lightly on the shoulder. "I hope you don't mind," she went on. "I am a designer and a little psychic. Really, you could go a little wild. We all should. "

How people will love me if I start to party (or at least dress) as if it is 1969 is quite puzzling, but I have been thinking about this all week. Would my inner Janis like lavender today? Dare I add a belt or a crocheted jacket over my dress? I am not sure if I can "channel" fur vests; I didn't wear them when I was a teenager and doubt if I will start now. I am not even sure if I have an inner Joplin; I was always more of Joni Mitchell fan. Then again, I was never a Marcie in a coat of flowers, nor did I dress in leather and lace. My hippy days were filled with peasant blouses and long skirts, bell-bottom jeans and vintage cashmere sweaters from my mother's closet. The thought of going completely retro so "people will love me" is both amusing and a reminder of how far I have traveled from the 16 year old, passionate folkie I used to be.

City life is filled with odd interactions like this, especially in New York. A glancing smile elicits a nugget from someone's life, a random philosophy or unsolicited advice from a stranger. A terminally ill psychology professor stands in the middle of a room full of people and states that, since nothing exists except this precious moment, he is actually not dying. Maybe tomorrow, who knows? The man next to me asks him if is he talking about positive thinking, and when the professor says there is no difference between him or me or illness or life or death, the man, a Jewish cantor, folds his arms across his chest and closes his eyes. I think the speaker is referring to Being, as in completely present, awake with each person and every interaction. He says his cancer is the biggest gift he's ever received in his life.

It is raining, and a flock of birds wheels by, swooping over the rooftop of the next building. A green parakeet with a bright red head hops on a rounded tile edge, cheeping loudly. It looks up at the other birds, then flies off in to the west, towards the river.

Presence

There is a quality we can achieve sometimes, a heightened sense of integration and focus. It is a transpersonal, extra-ordinary way of being, an indescribable sense of being more than the sum of our ordinary responses. When we enter this zone, we often generate a presence that is more centered, concentrated and open at the same time.

I have experienced this state of integration during artistic performance, when singing with others or dancing on stage, or in moments of sharing or intimacy. I have also experienced it during meditation practice, something I engage in rarely, I must admit. I am not particularly scheduled or disciplined in this regard, but have learned over the years how to drop into a calm state of open awareness for short spurts. The best meditation practice for me is a walking meditation, and sometimes a walk can generate this calm, quiet focus naturally, without engaging in a personal lecture to me on the benefits and necessity of meditating in the first place.

In preparation for my first public workshop, I invited a dear friend for a nature walk. We did not do this silently; we always talk about many things when we are together – our feelings, worries, relationship issues, goals in our fledgling endeavors – yet about halfway through the walk, everything came together. Time slowed, and my sensory awareness heightened, even as we continued to talk, stopping to notice the shape of green algae on the water, separated by patches of clear, reflection filled stream. The scent of goldenrod and butterfly bush caressed us and the breeze blew our hair around. She gathered acorn caps for an art project; I picked a yellow flower and stuck it behind my ear. We took the long way through Buttercup Nature Preserve, walking through tall pampas grass by the lake, skirting the fence on the hill behind a farmer's hay field, passing the stone Folly, which we could hear before we could see, its creaky metal flag calling to us as it turned in the wind. As we moved from a rolling field into a mossy, tree lined forest lane, she said, "A nature walk is a meditation."

That quality of awareness, of heightened presence floated me to my workshop. It carried me through my slight surprise at the age of my group – they were much older than I expected. The focused feeling helped me easily adjust my plan to fit the seasoned hospice volunteers, and to begin by saying there was much I had to learn from them since they had so much more experience with Active Listening than I did. To be in the presence of a group of compassionate volunteers, who regularly sit with the dying as they move through their transition, was an honor.

This sense of concentration and calm stayed with me all the way home. It seems to have been felt by the participants too, since the feedback was mostly positive. One person even mentioned my "calm presence" as a workshop leader. Considering how jangled I have felt in the last month, I am grateful for a meditative nature walk. I think I should take one every day.

There be Grief Monsters

Widows call it a monster and it has a sneaky, surprising quality, especially after several years, post widowing. It rears its massive, ugly head suddenly, causing overwhelming sadness and a feeling that death just happened and no healing has taken place. I try to imagine what the Monster looks like, and see a large leer, something like a mastiff dog, with a lion's mane curling around its face. My grief monster is probably a line drawing, colorless, its teeth sharp and its tongue dripping. It has wings and a long tail, like the dragons wrapped around the edges of a medieval map of the world. It sneaks up over the edge of my waking life, curling its tail and breathing hot, fetid sorrow all around me, coloring my world dreary. The Grief Monster has a tendency to pop up at the turning of the seasons, or when the children leave to go back to their lives, or at 3:33 am. While it is no longer a constant companion, it has been hanging around a lot lately, taking a seat on the chair next to me, waiting for me to calm down so it can rile me up again.

The Grief Monster likes to create misinterpretations, to cause tears to fill my eyes when I am driving so I have to intuit the road rather than actually see it. The Grief Monster enjoys a good argument about nothing important, and likes to remind me that I am very small, completely alone and not particularly worthy, even though none of this is true. Except perhaps the small part.

I want to banish it to the nether realms, send it careening off the edge of the flat, dull world, burn it into oblivion so it will leave me alone. I want it to sit in a corner with my Inner Critic and have a slightly bitter cup of tea, discuss the price of goods in far off places and then take a long hike somewhere else. In fact, the two of them should get a place together, preferably in another time zone and only visit me when and if I invite them, instead of when I least expect it. I could conveniently delete their contact information from all inboxes and never see them again. Now, wouldn't that be nice.

Cold Calls

"Hello," I said into the phone. I am calling from Hospice, to offer condolences on the death of your mother. "Oh, thank you, I suppose," said the man." But I expected my mother to die, after all. She was 93. But, perhaps you don't know this. My wife died two weeks before."

I asked him how he was doing and if he had thought to talk to anyone. After all, the purpose of my call was to make him aware of the bereavement program, which includes lectures, support groups and even one on one counseling. "Well," he said, "if someone could give me a clue as to how to rebuild my life, I'd really appreciate it."

How, in the face of what seems like insurmountable pain do we find a way to go on, let alone build a new life? Yet, most of us who are widowed do manage to find a way to live fully after loss. We get up in the morning, we eat, breathe, we pay our bills, we continue to raise the children, go to work, in fact, we live. In the beginning, we are often surprised at our ability to get through the day. We are shocked that the sun comes up every day. I was amazed for months that the birds sang in the morning, building nests, mating, feeding their little ones. Numbly, we float through, or we bravely plough through with tenacity. We really don't have a choice; after all, we are still alive. It would be prudent to live well. In fact, this is the highest honor we can offer our lost loves, to continue to live vibrantly, passionately.

This man, who has suffered two losses back to back, cannot see how he will accomplish this, yet I am confident that eventually, he will. It takes time and he is only in the first months. My motto in the early years was to "proceed as if." Even though I kept asking myself, "Whose life am I in," I went through the motions until the motions began to feel natural and part of me. I identified things I loved, activities that gave me joy and forced myself to participate in them.

The man said that he just wants everything to get back to normal. I told him gently that he would have to find a new normal and that I was confident he would, in time. I certainly hope he does.

The Life of Peggy

For eight months, I visited a family in my town. A matriarch of 95, Peg had been admitted to Hospice for "failure to thrive," although she rallied with the wealth of services and support. Her 64-year-old son, a magnanimous, intelligent and outspoken man had returned home several years ago to care for her and his brother. The younger brother, a Down's syndrome man of 55 named Larry, liked hugs and often inquired if I was single, pointing at his brother with a sly look. I smiled, touching him on his rounded shoulder, saying, "Thanks for thinking of me."

When Larry was born, the doctors told Peg and her husband to institutionalize him immediately. They said he would never walk or talk. Her husband Ed said, "If he won't walk or talk, he can do that in our home." They nurtured him and fought to have him included in regular school classes. They created Special Olympic programs in which Larry was a wrestling champion. His brother said that he has no agenda, which also means he has no guile. A kind word, a smile and a hug go a long way with him.

Peg was frail but feisty, a strong character. I asked questions about her childhood, her marriage, children, and work. She worked in insurance agencies and for the FBI during the World War II. She was a member of the Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary,with whom she marched in the middle of the street late at night, after drinking through their meeting. In turn, I entertained her with stories of my children, of weddings, travel. When I went away, I sent back chatty emails for Ed to read to her.

I asked her if she would like to "write" a book, and scribbled as she narrated. She told me about her mother, who generously helped a family in need only to glance up in a mirror and find the woman stealing her rings. She told me that her mother stole ribbons from the cemetery because they were so pretty. She said a boy who stole her tricycle threw a "clinker" at her. When I asked her to define "clinker," she started to answer, then looked at me sharply. "Girl, don't you know ANYTHING," she snapped. We both burst out laughing.

Even as she and her sparse white hair grew thinner, whether in bed or in her chair, she continued to tell me stories for our "book." Ed gave me photographs to scan; there was a picture in a striped bathing costume, inner tube around her waist. There were dozens of pictures of her with girlfriends. They wore shirtwaist dresses, coats with fur collars, shorts and peter pan collars. They sat on blankets at picnics, next to men in uniforms. Unable to see the tiny faded black and white photos, she identified most of the girls as "Helen who lived in Iowa."

Memory is impressionistic, imprinted on our psyches with emotion. Years later, it is hard to separate fact from feeling. Capturing her stories was also impressionistic; time shifted. She would start to tell me a story of her childhood, then turn to her son to ask him about it. "Ed, remember when we…" she would query. "That wasn't me, Mom," he responded. I told her the problem was that she had too many Eds. Her father, husband, son, son-in-law, grandson…No one could keep all those Eds straight!

Peggy died peacefully, with her daughter next to her. Despite Ed's diligent care or perhaps because of it, she waited until he left the house for a rare errand. I arrived an hour later, and Larry wailed when he saw me. "My mother's dead!" he cried. "Can I have a hug?"

The Life of Peggy was pasted into a spiral notebook, along with photographs. I brought it to the funeral home and left it on a table for people to see. "Do you want to see my mother? I can't believe she's dead," said Larry, holding my hand. I patted him on the shoulder and told him how much she loved him. His eyes filled with tears. I thanked them for allowing me in to their lives, gave Larry one more hug, and left.

Listening to the bereaved

Today I listened to a teleconference called Living with Grief. I found myself nodding in agreement many times as a panel of grief counselors, doctors and funeral directors discussed how best to help families and support their grieving process. Again and again, a central theme was expressed: let the griever lead. Encourage expression of feelings. Validate these feelings because it is normal and right to feel horrible when someone you love has died.

The important of stories was stressed as well. Telling the story of the actual event is helpful in releasing shock and disbelief, but more importantly, sharing stories about your loved one keeps the connection alive. Laughing with someone while remembering something he or she said or did is so important, even if it makes you cry. At my husband's Celebration of Life, one of my children spoke about an embarrassing moment that now actually emphasizes some of the unique qualities that Alby had – the ability to be completely at home in his body and to be absolutely silly with great dignity.

Often, after someone dies, friends and acquaintances don't know what to do or say. They fear that if they mention the dead person, they will upset us. And we, who are so bereft, long for normal conversation about our lost one; we want to tell the stories. We want to hear your stories. We want to give voice to the relationship, to express memories. We need to do this.

One of the most distressing things to me, especially in early grief, was to have someone say, "So and so wants you to know they are thinking of you." I would feel a flash of anger, then of extreme isolation. If they are thinking of me, do they not have a phone? Couldn't they pick it up, call me, and tell me themselves? Wouldn't that be a more genuine expression of friendship and concern?

Ignoring the bereaved, even if your intention to "not to upset" us, feels like invalidation of what we are experiencing. Instead, if you know someone who is mourning a loss, take a different approach. Pick up the phone and call. If you don't know what to say, try honesty. Say, "I don't know what to say, but I was thinking of you. How are you doing today?" Then, just listen compassionately. This is actually a very large gift to someone in emotional distress – to be heard and given an opportunity to express how they are feeling. If you have time, you could even offer to come over, have a cup of tea and shoot the breeze about that wonderful, quirky person who is now gone.

Listening to my body

This morning I feel odd, as if something is wrong. Yet, I know that actually, I am exhausted. I wonder how often we misinterpret the signals from our bodies – a need for more regular and healthy food or better, deeper rest? I tend to jump to a conclusion that involves someone else, an external search for blame when it is really the fact that I have been working 12 to 15 hour days, have been waking up way too early and pushing through each day without adequate nutrition!

There is nothing wrong with my emotional state, my relationships or anything else. I need more sleep. I need to relax. I need to take care of myself instead of hoping someone will do it for me. I live in this body and it is telling me something. Loudly.

I claim to want conscious relationship, yet I frequently am not listening to myself. There are so many techniques to alleviate the stress and exhaustion – a soak in the tub, a sauna and a relaxing shower, a walk in the Sanctuary listening to the birds and the wind. The birds are singing right now as they start their busy day, flying from tree to grass, seeking delicious tidbits to feed themselves and their little bird children.

I know what I know and yet I always forget. Rejuvenation is easy if we listen and respond to what the body has to say. Feed me. Let me rest. Take me somewhere pleasant and relaxing. Let me walk upon the earth and feel its cool power rising up through bare feet. Eyes, follow the flight of a butterfly. Ears, hear the rustling of leaves. Smell the loam, the faint perfume of flowers. Take a long, deep drink of cool water, laced with minerals from the well.

A massage would be particularly nice.

Waiting

CS Lewis said that death gives one's life a sense of constantly waiting, a "provisional" quality. This has now become so subtly part of daily reality that I barely notice it, but it is an ever-present feeling of the breath slightly held, anticipating. What is it I am waiting for?

Sometimes I feel like I am waiting for my life to start up again. I realize, of course, I have been living all along, over, under and through this provision, this endless transition. I have been studying, learning and now have completed a major accomplishment. If I had any sort of plan, life has moved along with it. The connections I am starting to make should guide me in my new endeavors, get my new career off the ground somehow.

Last month, my family gathered to celebrate another graduation, this one from my son's university. The accomplishments of my children give me much pleasure; to watch them grow, think, act and design the lives they want to live is amazing; I have to put a hand over my heart and one over my mouth as I stand in awe. And it is strange, bittersweet, to know that Alby is missing yet another milestone. At moments like these, he is so incredibly gone, and my sense of injustice rises. How could he "leave" us alone like this? Friends and relations tell my son that he would be so proud, and we know this to be true. It doesn't help.

At the requisite Tent Party, with a delicious buffet of all my son's favorite foods, his friends laughing, drinking and partying late into the night, a close friend asked me a question. "Who will make you a party when you graduate?" she asked. Hmm, I thought, probably no one. To test this theory, I mentioned my own graduation, and while people said, well done, good for you, I was right.

My daughter would probably tell me to celebrate myself. Yet, after 25 years of making a celebration out of everyone else's accomplishments, I still find myself waiting, anticipating, my breath slightly held. What is it I am waiting for?

Death and My Father

Karuna is a compassionate practice that sometimes calls you to drop everything and just show up. This is what my sister and I did last week, when we received the news that our 85 year old father’s wife had died. As a widow, I felt compelled to help him, although our relationship has been strained and nearly non-existent for a long time. There are many reasons for this, some of them older than I am. And while both of us might have differing positions on why there has been so little contact, a death changes everything.

This was the repeating statement in my head, moments after my own husband died. “Your life has radically changed,” said the voice. As I watched myself descend into a psychic chasm, as I watched myself sob on the floor, a calm, internal voice added, “now what?” With that same thought, my sister and I flew west at dawn, arriving at Dad’s apartment by 2 pm, Arizona time. He was waiting for us, suspended in shock, surrounded by the disarray of a recent move, his living room bare except for a couple of folding chairs, a card table, plastic bags filled with canned goods and a surprising number of small food processors lined up near the door.

“Hey, Dad,” we said. “We’ve come to help.” We started by asking him what happened. This is the primary thing to ask a person in grief; telling the story is necessary for many reasons. First, telling the story gets it out of the griever’s head, where the event of the death itself is replaying like some broken down, scratchy record on too loud a volume. Telling the story also helps the griever absorb the facts, which is particularly hard in an unexpected death. Even in an inevitable death, when you love someone, you hold out hope for a cure, a miracle or at least a little more time. When it finally happens, there is always a part of you that can’t quite grasp it, doesn't "understand." The mind goes into a self-protective denial. Telling the story of how it happened, those last moments, what you did, how you felt, who you called, what they said (if you can even remember) serves to ultimately convince your mind that Death has arrived and changed your life. There is an adage that you have to tell the story 72 times in order to heal, or as I discovered, until you can believe it happened. Telling the story until you get its reality leads you to that next question. Now what?

Initially, this is answered in small, practical things. In Dad’s case, we thought it prudent to organize the apartment he had just moved into. If he could feel like he was living in his home, instead of in chaos, he might begin to see a Now in his life, and then perhaps a tomorrow and a day after that. I started in the kitchen, and my sister started in the back room. We marveled at the amount of food everywhere; half opened bags of pasta, chips, crackers, lollipops were strewn about, neatly clamped with clothes pins. There were multiple bags, boxes and shelves of canned goods, mostly soups, gravies and sauces. A freezer stood in the corner, filled with meat, and though it needed some purging, there was enough food in his refrigerator to last a couple of weeks. As we put things away, tossed things, made a larger pile of items to discard, including the line of apparently broken food choppers, we also listened to him, encouraged him to mourn. We made some necessary phone calls, to Social Security, to the mortuary for an appointment the next day. We took a break and drove him to the bank. We sat with him quietly, on the folding chairs, nibbling chips and strawberries found in the depths of the fridge. We agreed that he and his wife loved each other over their nearly 26 year long marriage. He said, “She made me feel like my life was worthwhile.”

Two days later, after stocking his fridge with fresher things, taking him places he needed to go, arranging for cremation, cleaning up his office and finding him a source for free living room furniture, we sat on his “new” couch. In a short time, we had helped turn his chaotic living situation into something homey. Our fears that he would be paralyzed with grief, give up and die himself in short order were put aside when he hung his own paintings like a personal art gallery, during an hour when we left him alone. He thanked us over and over for coming to see him and said we had helped him a lot. When we hugged him goodbye, promising to call every day, he smiled through his tears. He said something I haven’t heard from his lips in more than 30 years. He said, “I love you.”

Death changes everything, but it can also reawaken the truth. Death can peel away the unimportant, petty squabbles, even some larger hurts and injustices seem ridiculous to cling to. Death strips us down to essentials, and love is the most essential thing of all. Since I’ve returned from Arizona, I’ve called him nearly every night, just to listen to whatever he wants to say. That’s all you can really do when someone is hurt by death – listen compassionately and say, “I love you.”

The smell of Amsterdam

We’ve invented a really good form of exercise: pack two large suitcases full of clothes that are for a climate other than the one you are in. Make sure that the suitcases themselves weigh at least 8 to 10 pounds, empty. Add extras for possible trips to wild regions where little modern services exist, packets of personal wipes, first aid items, a bed sheet, some pillow cases as a safeguard against questionable laundry practices. Also, while stranded and waiting for some sense of normalcy, acquire gifts for everyone back home, making the suitcases even weightier. Drag them, push them in front of you, preferably on cobbled streets. Book yourself on a couple of trains which will also require climbing up and down multiple flights of stairs, hoisting those pesky suitcases.

We took the train to Amsterdam, just to go somewhere else. I like trains. When I was young, my family traveled through Europe on trains. We had five children, the youngest of which barely two months old, plus luggage and a collection of musical instruments. My father developed a system. The train would pull in to the station and he would throw open the window, then run off the train. My mother and I, with the help of the other kids, would toss out the luggage, guitars, a banjo and autoharp, the frame to the baby carriage and sometimes the baby herself, asleep in her portable pram. As soon as every possession was out of our compartment, we would also dash off the train to help Dad pick up all of our stuff from the platform. The windows on the railroad cars no longer open in this way, but I smiled as we pulled into stations, remembering.

The only reason people seem to go to Amsterdam is to get high. I do not know why I did not realize this. My children certainly did and probably were wondering at our choice of cities to escape to. I knew that pot is legal in Holland, but thought it was confined to special shops. I was surprised to find hippie types staggering through the streets, and that pungent, recognizable smell permeating everything. We wandered out from the train station, pulling our luggage behind us and stepped into a side street, in search of a cup of coffee. Spying a sign saying “coffee shop,” I gratefully plunked down on the bench outside while my partner went in to get me a cup. The woman inside, noticing the handle of the suitcase, mistook it for a stroller and asked in alarm, “you don’t have a baby out there, do you?” This was how I realized that the coffee shop was of a different kind. Apparently you can buy joints of all kinds of strength, color and type of high in a “coffee shop,” but you can’t have children anywhere near them.

It’s a curious thing; since becoming a mother, I have objected to pot smoking on the grounds of its illegality, coupled with fear of the draconian Rockefeller laws in New York State. I have held the same line about underage drinking, even though it is now quite clear that my children did this anyway. Yet, in Holland, where it is perfectly legal, I was still very uncomfortable. Sitting on the grass in Vondelpark with blankets of young people smoking all around me, listening to hip hop music and speaking a mixture of Dutch and English (f-ing being the most prevalent English word) I felt disturbed. I was unable to figure out why. Perhaps it is because I myself am slowly rising out of a debilitating fog and dislike seeing others consciously put themselves into one? But that is very judgmental; I don’t really care what other people do. Go ahead, have fun if you like. As I watched a heron walk by, some white nosed coot families swim near some mallards, I relaxed. I don’t have to smoke the stuff if I don’t want. Let it be. Take a deep breath and smell early spring, the loamy, sweet scent of the mud on the bank. A breeze blows across my cheek, spiced with flowers and marijuana. Should I inhale?

Beautiful Belgium

 

 

 

 

Stuck in Bruges

Bruges is a UNESCO preservation village and therefore, extremely clean. The streets are steamed clear of debris; the horses wear special rubber sluices with bags on the end to catch droppings as they clop briskly along the rocky roads, pulling photo snapping tourists, for 35 euros a ride. Perhaps the preservation regulations contribute to the quaint uniformity of the town, which after four days begins to feel contrived; every restaurant offers pretty much the same menu, in three languages. Cheese croquettes, steak with fries, Mussels with French fries, everything with fries or just fries alone, Flemish stew, rabbit in beer sauce and prunes, which is quite good. We ate at Mozarthuis which is famous for its do-it-yourself grilling on a hot stone at the table. We decided to watch this process and ordered the asparagus instead.

White asparagus is in season in Belgium. I remember my Oma telling me how expensive and fancy white asparagus was; at formal dinners when she was a child and also as a new bride, white asparagus was so special, it was served as a separate course. There was even a special fork to be used just for this course. The utensil enabled the diner to hold the spear in place while cutting it. Asperges Flamande turned out to be eight white spears of asparagus, with their bottoms wrapped in smoked salmon, topped with a béarnaise sauce.

Mostly the cuisine in Bruges is creamy. Several places take a healthier approach, but mayonnaise still finds its way into things, salad dressings, blended with herbs and chopped onion for a sauce to drizzle on the vegetarian plate at De Bron, where you must ring the bell to gain entrance. They only serve one course but they have three sizes. Each plate has brown rice, endive and sprouts, corn salad, pureed carrots, a little pot of pasta in tomato sauce and a falafel patty. It was a decent change from the more tourist-y places, although we still had to dodge the lines of tour groups coming up Katelijnestraadt.

We rented a tandem bike and with much laughter, took off towards the outer ring road. We crossed the bridge over the canal circling Bruges like a moat, to the tree lined canal that runs between Bruges and Damme, the next village over. Daffodils and tulips lined the bank and all the trees on one side were leaning away from the water as if planted on an angle. Trunks are pruned into muscular knobs from which sprout small bristly branches. We seemed to have enough energy to pedal the 5 kilometers, even detouring through some farmland on the way. Damme is a white washed, stone village with a large church, a central square and lots of little restaurants. We chose Tante Marie’s for lunch, chatting and watching other bike riders arrive. There were muscular men with slender, elegant girlfriends, teams of ladies of a certain age in slacks and sensible pumps, although whether heels are sensible for bike riding seems questionable to me. People of all ages and sizes ride bikes, ringing tinkling bells as they pass. Now I understand how the Belgians can eat so much cream!

We spent one more night at Die Swaene in a different room. What at first felt elegant had begun to feel stuffy, the lace and cupids less amusing, the stale cigarette smoke permeating everything in our suitcases. We changed hotels again to a 300 year old manor house with a peaceful garden and view of the Minnewater, where swans float on the Lake of Love. The airline said we could fly home over the weekend, so we decided to take a train somewhere, anywhere. Amsterdam?

I have been trying to find some kind of metaphor for this unexpected change in plans. For one thing, a complete, relaxing rest was really what we needed, instead of dashing all over India in 100 degree weather. My personal “need” for planning keeps being tested; perhaps it really is time to just go with wherever the winds, and the cloud of ash will allow us.

Bruges

Before I went to Boston, I packed for India. We planned a three week trip around that vast country, from Mumbai to the Andamans. Since the plane uses the Brussels hub, we thought we’d spend a couple of days in Bruges, to take the edge off jet lag. Our itinerary took us to Mumbai on Friday morning, then across to the Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh. My partner has been the main sponsor for a temple construction in this region for the past nine years. I packed for cool weather in Belgium and Arunachal, and mostly for very hot weather everywhere else.

Our flight was relatively comfortable. There were Belgian, French and Indian families and a group of Orthodox men, all carrying large hat boxes from Brooklyn, as if they had made the journey to New York expressly for the purpose of haberdashery. Midway through the flight, they all stood up, donned their hats and walked to the back of the plane for prayers.

We landed at 8 am, a little bleary but ready to locate the train in the basement level of the airport. Surprised by the number of stairs we had to negotiate with our suitcases, we walked down one flight of stairs and climbed another, located the correct track, direction Ostende. The train was a double decker, so we hoisted our luggage up and took seats on the upper level, watching the countryside roll by. Flanders is flat, green and decorated with clusters of brick and stucco farmhouses, tiled roofs and cement walls cut in a diagonal pattern that makes the side of the building look quilted.

Belgium is tri-lingual. People greet you and wait for your response, instantly deciding how to answer, in Flemish, French or English. I like to speak French to stretch my mind a bit, and try it as often as I could. Since I hardly ever have this opportunity I quickly break down, forgetting verbs, nouns, and giant chunks of grammar. People are patiently amused and speak to me in English.

De Barge hotel is a converted barge, sitting in the water of one of the canals. Our room had sloping lower walls, following the shape of the boat, tarps stretched on the ceiling, and two bright orange life preservers on the end of the bed. A sign on the window indicated the evacuation route was out, into the canal. Photographs of shipwrecks and a can of sardines with a plaque saying, “survival rations” in French graced the walls. Long barges floated by occasionally and several families of ducks swam around, just outside the window.

We set out to explore the winding, cobbled streets of Bruges. It is really a charming place, lined with 15th century buildings made of brick or stone, lace curtains, and stepped facades reminiscent of churches. Some have mullioned windows. Horse drawn carriages roll by, as well as buses and small cars and lots of people. We wandered towards the Markt square, which is lined with cafes and shops, and sat down in one café for a light meal. Mussels are steamed with celery and onion and served with fries and mayonnaise to dip them in.

Thursday, I went to the town alone for a while, poking into shops, churches and the Groeninghe Museum which holds Flemish paintings from the 15th century on, displayed against deep blue walls that bring the rich glazed colors to the fore. I met my traveling companion at the lace museum where we marveled at the lightning speed of the lace maker’s hands as she shuffled the wooden bobbins around the pins set in her pattern board. We wandered around through the streets and he disappeared into a hostel, emerging with an American woman who has been living in Europe for six months. It seemed she was friends with friends of his. We told her we were flying out the next morning and she said, No, I don’t think so. This was how we learned about the volcano in Iceland.

Our new friend, a photojournalist/English teacher, took us to a pub and set up her computer. We began searching the airline site, which was not informative. Airports were closing across Europe as the large plume of volcanic ash filled the airspace and spread over Britain, Belgium, Scandinavia and onward.

One thing I have learned since being widowed is that I am not in control of events. This is a helpful fact; I am off the hook for such things as erupting volcanoes which close the airspace over the entire European continent. It is clear that I have no say in what will happen later on today or next week. This has been a very hard lesson since I have lived most of my life under the misapprehension that if I planned well and stayed organized, things would go as planned.

I believed this because it could be empirically proven. Since I make contingency lists and planned for different possibilities, one of the possibilities is bound to occur, which proves the theory that I had something to do with this outcome. But, when you plan your future with someone you love, you don’t really know what will happen next. We always said we were in our marriage for the long haul; it was about 20 years shorter than I had planned. I thought we’d be together for a lifetime and we were; only just his. I still have a lot of mine left to live.

So now, along with perhaps a million other people around the world, I am stuck where I am, in quite a nice place. We are not sleeping on cots in an airport. We have dropped any attempt to go to India; the airport might open this evening but the earliest flight is not until Wednesday and even this could change. We have found a new part of town, a park with a tiny pond and fountain. We are enjoying the peace and quiet of this tidy European town. We are safe, comfortable and in a fine city. Die Swaene Hotel has welcomed us into its 13th century, roccoco arms. We might as well just settle in, be kind to ourselves and each other, and relax. The only thing we can really control is our own reactions. A swan swims in the canal, lovers kiss while taking pictures of themselves, children laugh and people stroll as the canal boat passes with its tri-lingual commentary. C’est la vie, la vie a Bruges.

Sisters

As the oldest sister of five, I have a lot of experience in family dynamics. When we were very young my sister was my playmate and an adoring fan until I morphed into a bossy know-it-all, complaining when she followed me around. Our third sister was much closer to the second in age and they became a team, referred to collectively as "the girls." Our one brother was next, and the fourth sister came much later and was our baby doll, our charge and the one with whom I watched the first episodes of Sesame Street after my day at high school. Later, we became much closer as we had our children and traveled back and forth for visits. This is the ebb and flow of our family relations, always shifting and changing, yet always remaining close.

Over the years, we have also become deep friends. We've helped each other through stages of life, parented together, created magical holidays for our children. We were Santa's elves, sewing dress-up clothes and fanciful aprons for surprise Christmas gifts. We've made puppets and puppet shows, themed birthday parties, slept on each other's couches and guest beds, cooked together, laughed uproariously and wept together. We've taken each other in when necessary, and talk at least once a week. When I was suddenly widowed and lost, it was my sisters who first rallied around me, holding me up every time I collapsed to the floor. One sister called me nearly everyday for a year, saying it was the "Sisters Assurance Program."

Many years ago, I made a dance piece called Three Sisters. It was inspired by my own family and by a poem by Adrienne Rich, called Women, which begins:

My three sisters are sitting
on rocks of black obsidian.
For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are.

Sisterly activities of sharing, talking, playing, growing through the same experiences taught me to cherish our uniqueness while rejoicing in the love that connects us and holds us together. We often discuss long ago events and discover that each of our perceptions are very different. This is an interesting and wonderful fact - every human filters experience through their own unique lens. One sister remembers something and another remembers something else. Both views are true; they are not the same, just as the sisters themselves have different characters and ways of being in the world.

We each grew some daughters of our own who are sisters themselves, and who are all different from each other and from their cousins. One is very organized and accomplished; her life is orderly and she prefers it that way. Another is a little wild and prefers to be impulsive and random. One is a dancer, another an actress, and another loves to skateboard. All of us are highly creative, but in different ways. My sisters, too, have different ways of expressing themselves; one is quite shy and gentle, another is very intellectual. All of them, from both generations are funny, intelligent, sassy and beautiful women who make an impact on the people they encounter, especially their sisters, mothers and daughters.

This weekend was Sisters Weekend. A small group of us gathered, arriving by plane, car and train. We slept in beds of sisters, I with mine and my daughters together, wandered art museums and the length and breadth of Boston in a day. We laughed and talked, shared and primped each other, and as sisters also like to do, we shopped. We encouraged and praised each other; we listened. We laughed when the younger sisters poked fun at us older ones, claiming we looked like identical prairie dogs in the middle of the night, alternately popping up and back down in alarm, in response to the loud party in the next room at the hotel.

This morning, we hugged and said loving things when we parted, back to the train, the plane and the car. We are all so alike and so different from one another. And we love each other because of this. It is a reminder that family life provides metaphors for human interaction - how we get along with our siblings is reflected in all our relationships. By lovingly accepting each other as unique and interesting, we encourage compassion towards others we encounter who live, think and respond in different ways.