Birds in the morning

9/11/11

This is the path they took, following the widening
River, snakelike brown.
It was their navigator, those men who left their souls behind
shoving, stabbing their way into cockpits;
This churning River on its way to the unfull sea
a brackish flow of shit, toxins, discarded drugs and dregs.
The single minded men followed the River,
with twisted histories in their heads.
(The crooked cannot be made straight.)

I have often stood by the River
On a long wooden pier jutting just below the Bridge
Or high in the Hudson Bluffs where lookouts searched
for incoming warships. I protested
by this River, singing of pain, chains and change.
I believed the words I was singing
that everything was beautiful
everything was connected but somehow
we have lost the thread.

(To every thing there is a season)
These words repeat, over, over,
I heard them long ago, sung by the River, with head thrown back,
banjo thrummed and we nodded, yes.
Today I hear these words again, near
the River that pointed straight to the Towers

(and a time) to what purpose, really?
One translation claims that all is meaningless
but this is used to justify the time for war.
Those men who revved and sped
near the end of the River must have thought so too.

Ten years later (there is no good but to rejoice)
We hold hands and each other, by the River.
We enter this house of mourning
where (wisdom is better than the weapons of war)


Eccl. 1.7; 1,15; 3.1; 3.8; 3.12; 7.4; 9.18

A Hurricane Dance Party

The news is playing endless loops of bright red and green spirals, the animated edges of Hurricane Irene which is heading our way. The dark clouds are Irene's tentacles reaching out to cover us, about to open up. We sit in suspension, before the deluge. People have been in excited panic for days; stores sold out of D batteries and large containers of water in a matter of minutes after opening, and someone told me gleefully that one store sold $24,000 worth of generators in an hour on Friday morning.

Even as I attempted to liken the hyped up terror to those 6 pages of possible side effects (including death) that come along with prescription drugs, I too have been very agitated. Perhaps it is the energy of nervous people around or maybe it is the anxiety of my daughter, trying to finish her last week as a nanny while packing for a four month trip to Italy. She has insisted on taking only one suitcase which required several elimination sessions, color coordination choices and teetering around in various shoes, with a quizzical expression. "Should I take the neutral heels or the hot pink ones?" she wondered. I reminded her that Florence is cobbled and heels might not be the best choice at all. She snapped at me because apparently I know nothing about dressing for night life, which of course is true.

The packing dilemmas are all moot now. New York City has completely shut down; for the first time ever, all modes of transportation have been halted. The airports are closed. Even Broadway is closed. Over 370,000 people have been evacuated. After hours on hold, we finally got through to the travel agency and the earliest she can leave is on Friday.

One thing is clear: Irene is bigger than all of us, bigger even than Europe and we have no control over what she will do. She may weaken and everyone will feel a bit foolish. Or the predictions could hold; lower Manhattan with its honeycombed tunnels and subway tubes could be underwater. We could lose power here in the country, but we are prepared for that.

So why am I so agitated? It always comes back to uncertainty. Not knowing touches an edge of extreme fear in my psyche and in my body; before I am aware of it, I am tense and churlish. I overreact to the slightest tone. You would think I would get this at some point – the lesson of sudden death should have taught me that I have no control anyway. All my talk about staying in the moment ought to have honed some skill. Yet I feel like an unhinged possible projectile, waiting to be caught up by a hurricane wind and thrown against a tree.

Oh well. I can't control Irene, I can't control the airlines or the newscasters. I can calm down though; I could bake something nice. We could put on some loud music and have a Hurricane Party until the lights go out, then continue by candlelight. Sounds like a plan….one which I can control.

Devoted Sisters

One of our favorite songs is "Sisters" from that Danny Kaye/Bing Crosby movie, White Christmas. Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, with her impossibly tiny waist, sing it first, dressed in matching blue gowns, carrying blue feather fans. My sisters and I sometimes call each other on the phone and sing the verses to each other: "Sisters. Sisters! There were never such devoted Sisters…" Our devotion to each other spreads like golden tendrils across hills, mountains and right now, through telephone lines out to the West. Our voices, our minds and our hearts reach out, trying to touch, listen and soothe one of our own.

In a distant city, in an impossibly hot desert, shiny buildings sprout like the models of alien landscapes in old sci-fi movies. Neon flashes, drunken tourists and celebrities stagger through facsimiles of world wonders. Gondolas float on a fake river in a shopping mall, and a giant, artificial Sphinx does not sweat in Vegas any more than the real one does in Giza. And somewhere, on the 8th floor of one of these buildings, our baby sister is lying on a couch. She is in pain; she is feeling weak but she is strong and intrepid. She has paper and art supplies right next to her, and when she cannot sleep, or when she is waiting for another pill to kick in, she draws. Her feelings flow from her heart and mind, bypassing her damaged, soon to be repaired chest, pouring color and emotion out on the page. Her littlest child stands next to her, helping her color.

We, the older ones, cannot quite believe this is happening to her. We don’t have cancer in our family, we whisper to each other. I hold the phone away from my mouth as she tells me the latest news, which is not as good as we had hoped. I wish I was holding her close and I am glad I am not, because then she would know that I am sobbing, soundlessly, helplessly, hoping she cannot hear me. Why should I weep when it is not my body that has been assaulted? Why am I vicariously sad? This is not my pain; this is not about me. This is happening to my beautiful Baby Sister. I remember rushing home after high school to watch Sesame Street with her; I remember her tiny voice chattering away to her three imaginary friends.

She makes another drawing, this one with a tentative smile on her face. We all want to tell her she will be just fine when this is over, in a few months, honey, it will be alright. And we do tell her this – only no one knows if it is really true. This is just another moment where we have to narrow our focus, turn inward, draw out all our resources. This is just another moment where we have to reach across the continent and remind her that no one ever had such devoted sisters. Even though she will always be the Baby, she just might be the bravest one of all.

Living a Meaningful Life

I spent last week at the International Conference on Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society, which was held in conjunction with the Association for Death Education and Counseling's annual meeting. There were hundreds of people there from all over the world – scholars, doctors, clinicians, funeral directors, hospice personnel, counselors and therapists. Research was presented, panel discusses attended. There were keynote speeches on compassion and dying mindfully (Roshi Joan Halifax), on identifying at risk families for early intervention at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center (David Kissane). A psychologist from Australia, Dr. Chris Hall, spoke about the multiple government outreach programs to help the communities that suffered major losses in the Victoria Bush Fires of 2008, which had me and the woman next to me shaking our heads, saying, "that would never happen in America."

What struck me was how kind everyone was, how welcoming. Of course, everyone there works with raw pain and suffering, and has learned how to attain some balance. The compassion and thoughtfulness of attendees was palpable and inspiring. It was also interesting how many people who work in this field have come to it in response to their own experiences with death. It is one of the ways they seek to turn bad into good; to make meaning.

When I first read about the concept of making meaning after death, I did not understand it. To me, it was the equivalent of that supposedly "helpful" statement, "he's in a better place." As if being here, with our children, was not good enough? How could his death MEAN something, other than pain and horror?

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, is the scholar who coined this phrase, saying that it is a necessary part of the reconstruction of life after suffering the loss of a loved one. But Neimeyer is talking about living a meaningful life after this loss. It is what you DO with it. Some people start scholarships, some people plant gardens. Some people become grief counselors and name their work after a tiny word found on the top of a page.

I attended a lecture by Dr. Neimeyer at the Conference. He read a poem he had written about a couple who was in counseling with him after the suicide of their 19 year old daughter. He said that "we seek the meaning that is viable, not necessarily valid." In the process of reconstructing our lives, we come up with ways to cope, to live and to grow, yet we will always have gaps. The meaning we attribute to our lives after the death of someone we love will always have some rough patches, some areas of unsettled dissonance.

Meaning is what you make of it, I guess. While it makes little sense to me that Alby is gone, before he could see the graduations, the weddings, etcetera, our lives have meaning. Some of this sense of purpose is related to him, some of it is reaction to his death. And a good deal of the meaning we make correlates with our own growth as we deepen and mellow. Hopefully over time, this growing purposeful, meaningful life slowly becomes as valid as it is viable.

Buttercup in the morning

This morning I ventured out to Buttercup, walking quietly, following the path, following my breath, listening to bird song and squirrel rustles in the trees. Two deer ran across the path; two beaver stood on islands of their own creation before slipping in to the water and gliding away. I tossed a pebble into the water and watched the ripples change the reflection of the bare trees standing above the beaver dam. The geese on the other side silently swam away.

Stillness has never been comfortable for me. I am so action oriented; I want to DO rather than just BE. I want to BE something – writer, dancer, mother, wife.

This is how I describe myself, by a list of activities. There is some trepidation to claim the fullness and wholeness of who I really am, a struggling, evolving human trying to BE the best I can be. And even that is an activity – I am always trying to do something with my Being. Birds, frogs, beavers do not worry about this - or do they? They are busy building, nesting, swimming in the swampy water. But I treat my life as if it were some lump of unformed clay that I am supposed to mold into a beautiful, useful shape. I treat my losses as if they are obstacles rather than gifts for discovering a deeper way of Being. The losses, the gains are part of the shape of my life. Why do I always want to make them into something else?

It doesn't matter, really. I followed the path and my breath. I squatted on the wooden bridge and smelled the algae in the water. Bugs buzzed around my hair; they touched the water creating tiny ripples. The beavers did not return but it did not matter. I filled my basket with ferns, daisies and flowering branches. I filled my body with the sound and smells of the woodland. I walked back home, quietly.

Let it go

This morning I woke up, fearful. This is a rather common occurrence; I wake up, not quite rested enough and my head fills up with worries. My mind spins and I feel afraid. What if this happens and then that will happen and it will be really bad and what can I do to prevent it, oh no, oh no OH NO!!

A little later, my partner said to me that he had never met anyone who was so invested in cutting through fear. He said he's seen me do it over and over; I am afraid and I cut through it with laser like efficiency. And I know that fear does not diminish courage – in fact, courage is (as Winston Churchill said) proceeding in spite of fear. Perhaps waves of grief have been replaced by rivulets of fear as my life is in flux. As I wait for the shift to take shape, the ground beneath me heaves and shakes. I desperately cast about for something to cling to when it would be better to bend my knees a little, spread out my arms and find a way to balance myself on the groundless ground.

It's a habit, he said. I guess he is right; I am repeating myself over and over. If only I could trust more – my history proves that things always work out, sometimes in surprising, unforeseen ways. But I am so impatient for the next phase to begin; I am poised on tippy-toes and waiting to jump in. Then he said, "The problem is hope. Hope and fear always walk hand in hand. Without hope, you don't have to fear anything."

This is a tough one. As a positive thinking individual, I tend to believe that having hope and intention is a good thing. But is intention the same as hope? Hoping and wishing become longing and yearning which lead to worry and disappointment when the hope is dashed or even just delayed. Intention, on the other hand, is focused and active but I always forget the second part of intention: State it clearly and then….Let it go. Lay the foundation, clarify, clear the deck, set the stage – whatever metaphor works but then….get out of the way. It comes back to trusting that, when the conditions are right, the right things will happen.

So, hope and fear do not have to be my best friends. It certainly would be more helpful not to be involved in wishful thinking and the accompanying angst. I have set my intentions very clearly. I have made the plan, the structure is in place. I have all the tools I need to shift my world. I just have to trust that.

Forget about the Rapture - try Karuna instead

A small group of people, fueled by a pastor whose church has been raking in millions on his claims, have declared May 21, 2011 the End of the World. Some people have sold all their belongings and piled into cars, vans and RVs, driving around the country to convince the rest of us to Believe Before It Is Too Late. They are standing on street corners, stopping people as they go about their own business. The signs are everywhere, and I am not talking about floods, fires and famine. There are signs throughout the New York City Subway system, people are carrying placards in Times Square. The New York Times reports that a nice family from New Jersey has dragged their three reluctant, skeptical teenagers to the City to spread the word. The kids wonder if they will still have to make their beds.

Doomsday rumblings are nothing new. The Right (or possibly Wrong) Reverend who predicts the End this time draws his calculations supposedly from Biblical sources and says that while the true believers will be lifted up sometime on Saturday, the rest of us will roast until October 21. It will be oblivion by then. He said the same thing in 1994. End Day predictions have been made with certainty and the accompanying pamphlets, placards and proselytizers in 1844, 1914, 1918, 1924 by the same group, 1942, 1981 and again in 1988,'89.'92,'94,'95…..Apparently, Sir Isaac Newton even calculated the date: 2060.

Some claim the ancient Mayans have also predicted the End (or could it be the New Beginning?) on December 21, 2012. Personally, I think the Mayans got tired of carving, thinking that 500 years into the future was enough to predict. There is a large movement of intelligent people who believe that Mayans were predicting a major shift in consciousness. If we are all about to experience a worldwide consciousness shift for the better, if we could truly develop peaceful, respectful dialog across the dinner table, across political aisles and across borders, then I say, bring it on. I am not exactly seeing signs of an increase in civil discourse right now; political wannabes still spout vitriol and lies, governments still send in the guns, crazed fanatics are routinely blowing themselves into tiny bits, along with as many people as possible for some kind of "cause." This morning it happened inside a hospital.

Rapture literally means "to catch up" or "to snatch." To be rapt means to be engrossed or absorbed. To be enraptured means to be transported with emotion or filled with joy. Which brings me to my question:

Where is the joy? How do we trust that we will wake up tomorrow and it will be a good day? What can we do to change our attitude to approach any day as if it is a good one? How do we stop our rapt attachment to negative thoughts, worries and fear? I don't for a minute believe that selling all my earthly belongings and standing on a hill with my arms up waiting to be wafted into heaven is the answer.

Karuna is the answer. Compassion, first applied to my unruly mind which can't seem to stop its habit of drawing false conclusions and believing the worst is about to happen. Karuna, pouring like honey on all my self-created obstacles. Compassion radiating out towards the people I love, once karuna has soothed my inner beast. Karuna will bring my arms down if they reach away from what is real, to gently wrap them around the people I love, soothing them as well. Joy can be generated by spreading karuna out to the whole world.

As I write this, there have been no earthquakes, no beam-ups. The Doomsayers are still standing in the subway stations holding their pamphlets. I've got cinnamon rolls in the oven and nothing says karuna more than something freshly baked. Take a deep breath. As you exhale slowly, breathe compassion out towards all.

A tribute

I thought I would write something new but words fail me. I offer this, spoken at the first planting of the Spiral Garden, on May 6, 2006.

When I first met Alby he planted a huge garden, nearly half an acre. He was always full of garden plans, flowering gardens, vegetable gardens, dreams of ginseng growing in the woods. Together we planted lilies and hostas to feed the deer; we played together in our new home and we grew little people.

We used this poem at our wedding and gave it away as favors: The faith waiting in the heart of the seed promises a miracle of life which it cannot prove at once.

The heart of the seed promises abundance in its future flowering.

The seed of a new baby promises unimaginable miracles in first discoveries.

The promise of miracles is found in each of these amazing children, and I feel strongly that our partnership and love helped guide them into the people they are today. They continue to teach me and fill my life with abundance with their ideas, insights, compassion and hope.

The faith that Alby and I could step off the cliff into the unknown together, the heart in the seed of our life blossomed into blessings of home, travel, laughter and love, and even in the midst of the shock and grief of this past year, and in the suspended place of my life now without him, I am reminded over and over how I still live in the abundance we created.

Alby, you have been released into pure energy, and these remains are simply the dust left behind. You are all around us, in the air we breathe, in the feelings we have for each other, in the music we hear and in the love we share.

Alby, May everything you have given us live in us and let our legacy be to create abundance of love and blessings in our lives.

Everything we need, everything we are and can become is right here, right now.

Il faut cultiver le jardin.

Intuition

Last week I did not follow my intuition again. I was traveling from the top of Manhattan to the bottom, heading for a water taxi across the Hudson to a restaurant in Liberty State Park to meet my daughter for lunch. I took the A train from the last stop – or first, depending on how you look at it – down to the World Trade Center. Surfacing, I oriented to the west and trekked across town, through the winding streets towards the river. I passed the PATH train station and my inner voice said, "you should take this train."

Of course, I did not listen. I had my plan and I was sticking to it, even though I was already late and probably missed the 11:30 boat. I look across the water and see the restaurant, just north of the Statue of Liberty. I arrive at the ferry terminal; no boats. Realizing that I actually do not know where the taxi dock is, I run down to a nearby marina, circling through the roller bladers, tourists snapping photos, children eating snacks. A man emerges from a schooner and says, "I don't think the taxi runs on the weekend."

My daughter calls. I am becoming frantic. She has limited time and now I have to dash back across town to that train. Off I go, asking various people which train to take, where to get off; I jump out at the first Jersey stop and ascend on the world's longest escalator up to a nearly deserted square. Now I can see the back of the Statue, and Battery Park across the water. I ask again and find that I have to take another train, called the Light Rail. I am at Liberty, but do not know where the restaurant is and she doesn't know where the train station is. The trip has taken two and a half hours and I am still not quite there. I do the most natural thing; I burst into tears. Her fiancé says they will pick me up. I calm myself and finally we sit down to lunch and a nice, short visit.

It occurs to me that this journey is actually a metaphor for my life right now. I am stuck in my plan, running around in frantic circles, feeling like I am not quite getting there. My intuition tells me that I must take the PATH and I ignore the message. Yet, when I backtrack, get on the path to the unknown, ascend into new territory, everything works out.

I keep circumventing the obvious. The river can't be pushed or even crossed; in fact, I had to go deep underneath it in order to emerge into the sunlight. My own worry and fear kept me from getting there sooner; I did not investigate the alternatives. I was not prepared to shift from my original plan but change was required. It was only when I lightened up, trusted my instincts and asked for help that I finally arrived.

Mise en place

There are three guests coming.
I do not yet know who they are
But I have assembled the ingredients for the feast
My mise en place is set,
The chicken rests in a slick of olive oil,
Here, little bowls of chopped parsley,
Coriander, cumin,
Grey sea salt, cracked pepper
An orange will offer its aromatic zest to the mix
And the juice will blend with garlic and wine.
The guests will be pleased. They will offer
Some surprising words that will shift the world
As we know it.
We will sit and sip, savoring the feast before we leave
The past behind
Bones and drippings on the plate,
The napkin crumbled and the lees
Left in the bottom of the glass.

Little Martin Guitar

Yesterday I did something I had not done for perhaps…well, let's just say, a really, really long time. I walked down the street carrying my guitar.

I bought this little Martin with my babysitting money when I was 16. It was, and hopefully will be again, a beautiful instrument, small but with a rich sound. I remember playing it in California, in Tennessee, in the stairwell of an auditorium, where the sound engineer had placed me to record a Don McClean song. He said that recording in the stairs would create a natural reverberation. I sat on the stairs, closed my eyes, and sang The Circus Song. I remember carrying my little guitar with me on an 18 hour bus ride to Myrtle Beach, which I insisted on taking by myself to assert my independence in my first year of college. The case still has the remnants of an Impeach Nixon sticker on it. Over the years, the bridge has worn down and the action has gotten quite high. This means that the space between the neck and the strings has increased, making it more difficult to play. Since I hardly play at all, my now uncalloused fingers object to the amount of pressure needed to chord properly.

The little 018 has been collecting dust under the bed for years. One of the tuning pegs has popped off and it has a broken string. But I've been thinking that it might be nice to play again. I would like to remember how; I used to be fairly good at it. Now that my son has bought himself a guitar and taught himself to play, I want to get my own facility back. But the guitar needs fixing, and I had to jump through some hoops to get Martin to agree that I am indeed its original owner. My mother searched through dusty bins of newspaper clippings in an attempt to find a photo to prove it. Ultimately, one of my sisters found the right picture of me, at 17, playing my beautiful new guitar.

When the repair technician opened the case, he exhaled in admiration. Then he pointed out all the work it would need. The soundboard is cracked; the pick guard is warped. The neck has to be steamed off and reset and the bridge replaced, but he said it would be ready in one month. Most of the repairs are covered by the original owner's warranty, but it will still cost a bit to get it back in shape. I found myself stroking it gently, remembering how it used to sound.

Although I have little intention of singing in public, I am looking forward to playing my little Martin again sometime soon.

Contemplating Movement

I took a Contemplative Dance workshop with Alton Wasson last weekend. His work comes out of Authentic Movement, and he calls it "movement as spiritual practice, artistic resource and psychological narrative." For me, it felt like coming home. My body is my home, the shape in which I live, breathe, and have my being. My body is also the conduit for the expression of thoughts and feelings, not only in words but also in movement and space.

Ever since I could walk, I expressed how I felt in and through my body. As a little girl, I twirled with joy on the lawn; I waved my arms and leapt about, mimicking the movement of the trees and flowers. As I studied dance and learned a larger movement vocabulary, I began creating dances and performing them. The initial inspiration was always based on how an event or interaction felt and was expressed through the body.

We tend to forget this. We often are unaware of the coded messages, the subtle cues our bodies are sending when we are communicating. Arny Mindell calls these secondary messages – our voices might be saying "How nice to see you," to someone we don't care for, and our body tenses, our chin drops down and the person to whom we speak has a momentary confusion. They hear the words and believe them but they are also picking up the secondary "I don't like you" message. Mindell works with these secondary channels, asking clients to perceive them, to amplify them and clarify their meaning.

The clarification opens the possibility for transformation. If I notice that a difficult emotion is locked into a part of my body, I can work through the feeling with movement. By releasing the tension, the emotion is allowed to flow. By flowing with it, I transform it. If fear hunches me over, drawing my shoulders up and my arms tight around my chest, I can roll my shoulders back and open my arms. I can shift my stance and awaken some courage in the face of fear.

Moving through emotion and giving it free expression within the body is very healing. There was one session in the workshop that was hard for me because sorrow welled up, unwanted. I was resistant, yet it was real and I had to let it flow for a while. I also noticed that I seemed stuck in one spot a lot of the time, and took this for a metaphor of being afraid to move forward. In another movement session, I let myself travel all over the room, feeling the freedom of forward motion, and discovered that staying in one place was not necessarily being stuck. Being rooted could mean that I am growing.

Flights of Imagining

I've been thinking a lot about tool kits – an imaginary box filled with skills, strengths, resiliencies and other "tools" to get through the rough spots. My own encounters with grief waves have become infrequent but they still occur. Episodes of darkness, when the world feels broken and slowed somehow, used to last for days. Now, at nearly 6 years out, I have a dip every few months for perhaps an hour or so. This is real progress, but when the grief hits, I still need to rely on my inner resources. I still need to pull out an item from my tool kit.

My tool kit contains music. Listening, singing, drumming, humming – music has the power to open the channel between head and heart, so often blocked and restricted around the throat. Flowing into music and opening my voice elevates my mood. Music brings out another tool – dancing. Movement brings the music into my body and out again, integrating head heart and body. Reaching up to the sky, expanding my arms out and waving my torso and arms in spirals reminds me that expansion cures restriction. When sorrow collapses me into myself, opening my arms and chest helps to transform the sadness into a calmer feeling. When depression drops me to the floor, I allow myself a few moments down in the depths, then slowly rise, reaching up and outward. It is hard to stay in a dark place when you are imagining yourself unfolding like a spring flower.

Imagery. Imagination. When we are children, our imaginations run freely. We have a conversation with a giraffe, imaginary friends who live in China are about to arrive for dinner. As children, we have no issue with being a Bear, a Pirate or a person who can fly with special superpowers. As adults, we suppress these fantasies; they are "silly" or "childish" or "not normal." Imagination is the most important resource in our personal tool kits. As we grow up, we tamp down our dreams, our fancies. We don't trust our dreams or our envisioning power. After a while, we come to believe that we shouldn't engage in imaginal flights.

My trust in my own imagination was eroded by widowhood. My life broke open and I became afraid. The future, as I had imagined it, was gone. Slowly, I am remembering that imagery seeds my dreams; imagination is a strength I can utilize. It doesn't matter that I cannot literally fly; I have special skills that I ought to be using right now – dreaming, imagining, opening up to a fuller experience of life.

As I write this, it is a little too early to play music. But I can still dance to the sound of the birds, to the beating of my own heart. I can move to open joyfully to the experience of this day. I am going to do that right now!!

Message of Love

Valentine's Day is here again. Who invented this holiday anyway? Why is there so much pressure to purchase diamonds, roses, chocolates? I don't like chocolate, and while I adore fresh flowers in the middle of winter, I'd much prefer a random offering, say, on a Thursday for no reason at all. Seeing my husband arrive with his face covered by a giant display of expensive flowers because it was Valentine's Day was nice, but it always seemed...contrived.

We never took Valentine's day very seriously. Apart from that ostentatious bouquet, it was not a day for gifts or jewelry. We exchanged cards, searching for either the soppiest poetry or silliest innuendo we could find. He always addressed his to "My Beautiful Wife," a reference to the Talking Heads song, Stop Making Sense. I keep finding them, tucked in the back of a drawer, hiding in between my cookbooks.

Holidays are always fraught, but this one comes with heart shaped expectations. When your partner has died, the Day of Love is bittersweet, even depressing. It is a negative reminder of an unexpected end. While it is not really an important holiday, the media frenzy of loving couples surprising each other with flowers, cards, jewels, staring at each other, is painful. The red and pink heart inundation and a particular advertisement that featured an old couple holding hands in a park sent me running from the room in the first few years after my husband died. We would never be that old couple in the park.

Ignoring it is, of course, an option but rather hard to accomplish unless you stay inside for a month with the lights out, TV and radio off. So, what is the alternative? Why not use this "romantic holiday" as an ode to all the love in our lives instead of feeling awful about the love we lost. Turn a tiny bit of the pain, sorrow, regret and disappointment into expression and remembrance.

Here are some ideas for getting through a Widowed Valentine's Day:

~ Write a letter to your spouse or partner. Begin with this: I love you because you….Write in the present tense; honor the feelings you shared and keep them in your heart. When you are done, read the letter as if you were reading to him or her.

~ Write another note to yourself containing at least three answers to the following sentence. Begin with this: I am lovable because I….Recognize the wonderful, loving qualities you have. Express them, decorate them, bring them forward. Read your note aloud to yourself.

~ Buy yourself some flowers. Contrivance aside, having something pretty and fresh in the house is uplifting. They don't have to be over the top, expensive or elaborate. A $5 supermarket bunch will do. Get yourself some lovely blooms that please you, arrange them in a nice vase and place them on display. Be sure to put them in the room you spend the most time in. Allow yourself to enjoy their beauty. Let them remind you of the beautiful love you shared.

~ Send someone a Valentine's card. Your children are obvious "targets," as are siblings or friends. Yesterday, I made personalized collage cards for each of my children. You can also call someone you love (or several people) and ask them the traditional Valentine's questions: "Will you Be Mine?" Reach out, spread the love.

While I am no longer alone, Valentine's day always fills me with remembrance of Alby. I think about those silly cards; I think about his generous spirit, his warm blue/grey eyes looking at me softly. I know he will always Be Mine.

Small Woman with Big Shovel

It snowed again. I don't know why I should be surprised; it is winter and I expect snow.

I love it when it is falling, silently glittering in the light on the back of the house. This light is the Snow Gauge – it illuminates the velocity, the height of the snow piling up on the patio furniture. I peer out the kitchen window and guess at the depth – 6 inches, maybe 10. It is very pretty. It will have to be shoveled.

Out the front door, I sweep the snow away and discover that the blizzard dumped enough to come above the level of the porch. I take the wide grey shovel and start down the path. Alby made this walkway, laying the grey bricks in a herringbone pattern. We argued a lot about its placement, which he wanted to put to one side. I insisted that our symmetrical, Currier and Ives farmhouse needed a centered path. The path is here, somewhere. The snow is heavy.

The cars hunker under bulky white swells, the ends of their windshield wipers jutting out. I shovel a path towards the road, staring at the frozen mound left by the Town snowplow. This is more than two feet high and mixed with ice and sand. I can't do this, I mutter to myself as I continue shoveling. The snow seems almost blue in places. Blue, white, flecked with sand, it doesn't matter. It has to be shoveled.

Several trucks with snowplows hitched to their front ends drive by. Most drivers do not look my way. One of them waves jauntily. I am now closer to the end of the driveway; I've tried pushing the snow but there is too much of it. I settle on a two-stage method, lifting the top portion off and tossing it over my shoulder, then going in again to the same place, sliding the shovel along. I CAN do this, I mutter as I notice another truck. I stand up, and strike a pose, trying to combine frustration with the right touch of exaggerated helplessness. "Look at me, I am very small and this is a lot of Rather Heavy Snow." The truck belongs to the Highway Superintendent, and he shakes his head and drives by. Then, he backs up. He lowers his plow and swipes away the edge his workers left across my driveway. He rolls down the window and shouts, "just helping you out a little!" With a smile, I thank him and wave him on.

The piles on the sides of the driveway are up to my shoulders now. I hack away, carry, shove, sweep and lift. I take a break by the fire for a while and go back out, wearing Alby's bulky black Irish sweater and finish the job.

Winter waiting

Here, at the turning of the year, again I am standing at a crossroads. I am longing to take action, to jump over the steps it will take to develop the next phase. I've been working towards this for the past two years, maybe longer. There is value in methodical steps, there is the necessity of incubation. And I can't, as it has been said, push the river, especially when it appears to be frozen.

I am often impatient. I like to move quickly, I want to make things HAPPEN. I am restless; I have been internal for too long. Perhaps fear is clouding the situation, which actually is a good one.

Winter is the time for stillness. The world seems to be holding its breath; I am holding my breath, trying to fend off the panic generated by what seems like an endless transition. When I relax, I realize that the process is going well. I have spent a lot of time studying, dreaming, seeding. I am ready to manifest, once that proverbial river thaws.