Two Years Ago

Today’s entry was written in June 2019 and posted on a short-lived private blog I started soon after my dad’s diagnosis. I thought it would be a good way to process what was happening and capture what I was experiencing, but it ended up working better for me to record tiny snippets in a journal, by hand. This piece was written in response to the immediate, crystal-clear determination that I had to abandon many of my routines and habits in order to manage my time, energy, and strength for the year ahead. 

~

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” Thornton Wilder

I have been curled up inside a snail shell—quiet and tightly coiled, allowing myself only the tiniest of engagements with anyone beyond a small circle of family and friends. I have been determined in my isolation; the choice to pull so completely inward has been willful and calculated. If I am in front of you—face to face, eye to eye—I’m likely to let everything spill out in a single run-on sentence, an attempt to offer a condensed version of What Is Happening Right Now. Beyond that, much of what is going on right now feels impossible to articulate in any kind of public realm. How to explain what feels ineffable and also as intimate as my own bone marrow?

Here’s another piece of this, my self-imposed exile: It is important to me not to drain, escape from, or otherwise dilute the potency of the life that is taking place in my life—in my waking up, my daily routines, my emotions (unpredictable these days), my chores, my longings, my sorrows, my revelations. I’ve reasoned that anytime I stop the momentum of whatever is happening in order to share, post, or update others on my experiences, I am stepping out of my own life in order to craft a narrative about it in real time. I haven’t felt capable of doing this; even if I did, I haven’t felt the desire.

I have needed to hold everything close, to wrap all of my experiences around me like a well-worn blanket. I have needed to release myself from one of the most purposeful, joyful, life-affirming responsibilities I placed on my shoulders decades ago, which is to inspire others to create a meaningful life. I’ve done this over the years by sharing my artwork and my stories. I’ve done this by encouraging others and by keeping in touch with a wide circle of friends and creative kindreds. I’ve done this online, while at home and in other parts of the world. I’ve done this because it is who I am and what I love to do. 

But right now, I’ve needed to step away from that entirely. I’ve had to tend to a much smaller garden, albeit one with much deeper roots, a process that has been simultaneously frustrated and enhanced by a mishap that happened a month ago and resulted in a broken foot. Plans have had to be rearranged and movements, especially at the beginning, have had to slow down to a crawl. I am getting around much better these days, but the healing process is still ongoing. My movements must still be carefully calculated, whether it is getting in and out of the car, doing laundry, or sitting at my desk. But there are gifts in that stillness—in the letting go and the receiving of support, in the quiet hours spent reading Walden by Thoreau.

When I try looking ahead, I don’t know how—or if—I’ll be able to channel the miracle of all this into something meaningful, hopeful, and uplifting. I’ve always wanted my work and efforts in the world to mean something—to provide inspiration, comfort, insight, and encouragement. I’ve wanted to be a conduit, whereby I’d take the raw material of my life and let it simmer and rumble within me until it was transformed into something akin to light or water or stardust, able to flow into the world for others to receive, use, and experience themselves. I have wanted to be open, awake, and alive enough—through everything—so that my soul has every opportunity to grow and become whole and provide a message that others might need. 

Where I am now is entirely uncharted territory. It is as if I have been looking in a mirror, with a fairly solid understanding of who I was, what I believed and why, only to see it shattered into a million glittering pieces and revealing an entirely different world that I didn’t know existed, let alone know it was actually right in front of me the entire time. 

Is that a message? Is that something you might need to know? That there are worlds—worlds that might seem impossible to you—that are, in fact, much closer than you realize? That no matter what circumstances you find yourself in, there are possibilities for joy and awe? Even though these might exist within the warp and weft of profound sorrow (maybe even anger)?

Do you know the power of forgiveness? Of pure, unconditional, let-the-past-stay-forever-in-the-past forgiveness? Let me tell you, it is the most miraculous thing. It is the thing that makes so many other things possible. It is one swift motion that sends life down an entirely different track and into a realm with bluer skies, more fragrant lilacs, and blueberries as big as marbles. It is the ultimate freedom, the greatest weight lifted. It is the sound of a key falling to the ground with a clang—the key to the cage I was trapped in until the moment I chose to forgive. It can be decided and executed in one moment—one moment! And then, in that instant, you’re in a whole new world.

Can I tell you about humility? About showing up to be in service in whatever way is needed? And putting aside most (maybe all) of the things that are more outwardly acknowledged or widely seen? Can I tell you about the freedom and power that comes in the act of turning down the volume on all you’ve been in the world and to others in order to let the shape and texture of your heart go through a metamorphosis that may or may not let you go back to any part of who you were before? Can I tell you how scary that is? And how thrilling?

I have always been my father’s daughter, but I haven’t ever had a clear idea of what that meant. I’ve learned how to step into my roles as an artist, a wife, a writer, and even a stepmom, and they have supported and influenced each other all along. All the while, my daughterhood has sat mostly unattended and lonely, dust bunnies gently nestled in its corners. Every once a while I’d shine a light on her to give context to some other area of my life, but never have I lavished it with the attention it has so desperately needed. I am my father’s daughter and, in that, I have work to do. This is the garden I’m tending right now, slowly, methodically, out of view of most everyone.

Lost. And Found.

I worked in my studio today—hands covered in paint, new splotches on the drop cloths. With a stack of blank sketch paper and a limited selection of colors, I proceeded to create more than thirty rapid-fire compositions, each one an experiment with brushstrokes, motions, and smooth sweeps of a palette knife. I spread thick globs of paint like butter on toast. I dabbed layers with a tissue as if mopping up a spill. I never stopped moving.

When I first moved to California more than twenty years ago, one of my first purchases was a nine-foot surfboard. There was a tiny surf spot within walking distance of where I lived, and I spent many mornings in a wetsuit, paddling out to the waves, by 6:00am. One of the experiences I loved most about surfing was the way I felt afterward, when I had the sensation that my entire body was sparkling. I felt simultaneously exhausted and energized, enlivened by the saltwater froth.

In this moment, after my time in the studio, I am experiencing something not quite the same, but close. I feel tired. I am full of energy. Something deep within is awake.

It has been tempting to look at the past few years and say, “I lost myself.” Between moving across country, reconciling with my dad after our estrangement, and then dealing with his almost-immediate small cell carcinoma diagnosis, my attempts at creativity were piecemeal at best. For three years the majority of my time, attention, and energy was spent showing up in other areas of my life and in ways I’d never experienced. I was letting go, calling in, and growing up in a whole new way. On some days I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. On other days I believed something else was happening—that I was becoming more of who I was meant to be all along.

I will say this: I am not who I was three years ago. That much is certain. But does that mean I was lost? That I abandoned some core part of myself when I left California, reached out to my dad, and then pushed aside so much of what was precious to me in order to spend as much time as I could with him before he died? In all of that, did I go astray from my artistic soul?

Even though it is mid-April, fat flakes of snow are falling outside my window. They are gathering in clumps along the branches of the thirty-foot pines. They will most likely be gone within 24 hours. Watching them flutter downward, they almost look mirthful—twirling and floating and letting small gusts of wind come along and swoop them in their currents. They are oblivious, these snowflakes, showing no cause for concern that they will soon be on the ground and, from there, gone.

Are these like the moments of my life, when unexpected blasts of wind sometimes come along and carry me in an entirely new direction? Is it inevitable that I lose some part of myself along the way? Or is it part of the process of moving closer toward my soul’s deepest longings? If this is true, what are the parts of me that are steadfast and immobile, so solidly anchored in my bones that it isn’t possible to leave them behind no matter what happens?

I am making art again. It started today, in a way that feels more resolute than it has in a long while. I am trying things that feel familiar and venturing into new territory. I am a scientist in my laboratory, a chef in her kitchen. I am following crumbs and peeling back layers. I am weaving together experiences from the past three years with the mysterious artistic yearnings that are starting to bubble up. Whatever this work becomes, it will tell a story. Of then. Of now. Of the mystery on the horizon.

Anniversaries

{Grounded planes lined up at Tulsa airport March 30, 2020.}

This March, like last March, has been a strange, beautiful, bittersweet confluence of events. Milestones on top of breakthroughs, anniversaries on top of transitions. I keep envisioning sparkling waves of energy swirling all around me and my family, even though some of these landmark events are difficult. With every overlap, I am reminded that there are forces at play that I can trust and lean into. 

As most everyone was reflecting on the one-year anniversary of Covid in mid-March, I was thinking about the fact that I’d just arrived in Oklahoma on a one-way ticket, knowing my dad’s journey with cancer was nearing the end. When the lockdowns started and there was no toilet paper on the shelves, my awareness of Covid was peripheral at best. I had to think about it when I went grocery shopping, but as soon as I left the store all attention returned to my dad. By the time I got back home at the end of March, a few days after he died, I had to catch up with what everyone else had been trying to process for more than two weeks. 

I am going back to Oklahoma tomorrow. I will be there for the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death, which happens to fall on the weekend our family is having an estate sale that my dad’s wife has been preparing for for months. This wasn’t intentional—we didn’t set out to have the sale on that particular day—it just happened to line up that way for a number of reasons. As my dad’s wife and I have reflected on the timing of it, we have found a certain kind of peace about it. And although it will be a hectic time, there will be many of us happily under the same roof. We will be sharing stories. There will be plenty of laughter. Meals will be enjoyed in a large circle. My dad’s wife will be surrounded by those who love her, and who loved my dad. 

There is nowhere else on earth I would want to be at this time. 

The estate sale is being held at my grandparents’ house, which is the only house I have known my entire life. I have been back there a few times on my visits, and even though they have been gone for many years, the house still smells exactly the same. Whenever I walk into the house I take a deep inhalation, which unleashes a wave of memories that spans from my childhood all the way until my early forties, when I was helping my grandma get situated in a nursing home.

A few days after she moved, I had to go to her house to pick up a few things. As I collected each item on her list, I heard a strange noise in her furnace closet. I quickly realized the noise was coming from something that was alive. Not having any idea what I’d discover, I stood on a stool before opening the closet door to investigate. It turns out it was a small bird that had gotten in through an air vent. I managed to scoop it up in a towel, take it outside, and set it free. When I told my grandma about this she thought it was hilarious, especially the part about me standing on a stool for fear some rodent would jump out and attack me. My grandma wasn’t one to scare easily, so I’m pretty sure she was laughing at me a little more than she was laughing with me. It is, and always will be, one of my favorite memories. 

After the estate sale is finished and everything is cleared out, it will be time to say goodbye to that house, as it has already been sold. And then, a few days later, I will be flying back home almost exactly the same day as when I flew back home last year after my dad died. 

There have been other momentous events in our family that have landed on the same space in our calendar this month, and I look at all of these auspicious alignments the same way I always do—as evidence that I am exactly where I belong. All such strange coincidences and curious connections are not random; they are experiences I’ve collected and organized for as long as I can remember. I have an entire cabinet full of these stories, and I cherish them.

It doesn’t seem possible that an entire year has passed. My mind can’t grasp it. Perhaps it never will no matter how many years go by. At the moment, I don’t feel any particular emotional reaction to this impending anniversary. I don’t feel the need to recoil or lean in, to avoid or confront. I don’t know if I will be weepy or stoic or clear-headed or angry. It isn’t something I can plan for; I’m not packing a suitcase full of assumptions about what it is supposed to look like. All I can do is show up—in love and gratitude and the mystery of it all. 

Under a full moon, all kinds of magic happens.

The Dream

This is the dream:

I am walking in a space with high ceilings and an open floor plan. It is a warehouse kind of space but not quite as cavernous. There are a lot of people in the room, most of them seated, some lying down. I have the strong impression many of them have been injured in some way. They look at me with plaintive expressions on their faces and sad eyes. I sense that they have a longing, a need—for some kind of uplifting or healing or attention. No one is speaking. No one reaches out to me. But I know these are people who are wounded in some way.

As I walk through this maze of humanity, I am suddenly overcome by a singular thought. It is as if a clap of thunder cracked the sky wide open but I was the only one who heard it. I start sobbing uncontrollably as I look from one person to the next as I say the same thing to everyone, again and again: “Don’t you know how loved you are?”

I feel a desperation that is almost frenzied. These seven words are not a platitude or a curlicue script on a greeting card; these words are the difference between life and death. “Don’t you know? Don’t you know?” I keep saying these words, over and over, looking every person in the eye as I speak. There is so much energy inside me from this thunderclap of truth—too much for my body to contain—and the only way I can prevent it from consuming me is by trying to send it outward to everyone around me.

“Don’t you know how loved you are?”

I wake up the next morning feeling foggy and slightly disoriented, but those seven words still glow in my mind like neon.

~

During the last months of my dad’s life, every so often I would look at him and say, “What can I do for you?” Even though there was a mile-long list of potential responses to this question considering he was being forced to (try to) accomplish tasks that he thought he had plenty of time to tackle, he always answered the same way: “Just be you.”

My dad answered the same way every time I asked this question, but it still took me slightly aback. Lines of communication were not always so open and gentle between the two of us, so it would take me a second or two to adjust to this new reality, to hear him say, “Just be you,” and know he meant it.

It is an amazing thing to let yourself be surprised by someone—to let go of what used to be in order to experience the deep joy of unexpected new terrain in the here and now.

These exchanges between my dad and I weren’t anything I would have ever predicted, but each time they happened their essence sank deeper and deeper into my heart. They remained lodged there, and true to their original form, for a long time. But then, in the midst of my grief after he died, they became something else. It was as if my grief was the catalyst that broke down the raw material of those exchanges to reveal the deeper, more fundamental truth hidden within them, which was that my dad loved me and I had no idea how much. I’d never known. I probably still don’t know. How this knowledge managed to elude me for most of my life is an entirely different story, but once I saw it I understood it had been there all along. 

Don’t you know how loved you are?

I see now that “Just be you” was the egg that I held as delicately as I could in the months before my dad died, and it wasn’t until I was deep in a dream state, still mourning his absence, that the egg could crack open and reveal the beauty inside. The dream has been fluttering beneath my rib cage ever since, and I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to release it all this time. 

This is my first attempt to share this story, with another 100 postcards, each one with a message that has sprouted from the same core insight. If “Don’t you know how loved you are?” is the tree then these are 99 of its branches—a variation on my tried-and-true “You are…” messages, but with a bit more substance and maybe a bit more poetry. 

Perhaps one of them is meant for you. Fill out the form below if you’d like one.

The Soundtrack of My Dad

The Story Behind the Story

The Holy Wisdom Monastery is a retreat center and sacred space near Madison, Wisconsin. Less than a mile from Lake Mendota and adjacent to a wildlife preservation area, it is a place where those seeking solitude can tuck in for a few days, whether on their own or as part of other organized gatherings. I was there at the beginning of March in 2018 to participate in a three-day meditation retreat led by Karen Maezen Miller, my first such experience.

I’d registered for the retreat months earlier, and kept looking at the small block of dates as a time to drop in and be still after a whirlwind year that involved a cross-country move, my fiftieth birthday, and a trip to India. In between all that, something else happened: I received a Christmas card from my dad. It was the first time I’d heard from him in twelve years.

The arrival of that glittery Christmas card came after I’d reached out to my dad a few times via snail mail, all attempts to reconnect with him after we’d severed ties in 2006. It started with a letter, followed by a few cards, and then, not long after we got settled into our new home in Wisconsin, I sent my dad one more letter. It was written by hand on a snowy afternoon, and it was essentially a goodbye. Not a “screw you” kind of goodbye but a surrender. After my repeated efforts to make contact with him were not reciprocated, I could only surmise that my dad did not want to reconnect. Although this was a disappointing outcome, I still felt at peace. What I thought was to be my last letter to him was simply an acknowledgment of my acceptance that our relationship was complete. It was also a way for me to say, one more time, in my own handwriting, that I loved him. When I put that letter in my mailbox, I believed that was it. Chapter closed. Story over. 

After the initial shock of seeing my dad’s handwriting on an envelope addressed to me less than a month later, I didn’t actually know what to think about the Christmas card. There was no letter or specific invitation to talk. The only clue as to my dad’s mindset was a note at the bottom of the card: Don’t lose hope. I let the potential those three words contained hover lightly in my mind like dewdrops on a spider’s web. There was a certain kind of substance and form—and beauty—to it, but it wasn’t something I could grasp in any forceful way. I had to release expectations and sit with the uncertainty. So I slid the card into my desk drawer and I let those three words be enough.

The Story, as told in a journal entry from March 3, 2018, written at the Holy Wisdom Monastery:

What would the soundtrack of my dad be? 1970s folk music—The Kingston Trio, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot; “If I Had a Hammer”, “Tom Dooley”, the song about being 500 miles away from home. 

Here I am at a Zen meditation retreat, where there is much discussion about life, death, old age, and sickness. In between our seated meditations, Maezen talks about things like this. About releasing thoughts, releasing the past, releasing everything we know, except love. 

Today, on my way to lunch, I start to wonder where the main chapel of the monastery is. I walk beyond the stairs that lead me up to the second floor dining area, thinking maybe it is around the corner. But all I find is another hallway leading to a meeting room. So I go back the way I came and head up the stairs. As I take each step I begin to hear voices, which is strange since this is a silent retreat.

As I reach the top, both the mysteries are solved. The voices belong to a small group of people preparing for a memorial service, and the chapel has actually been here all along. It is at 10:00 as I face the dining room, but I’ve walked right past it every time I’ve had a meal. The doors have been closed, so it was easy to miss, but now I see it is a spacious room with white walls and lots of bright, natural light.

I see photo collages set up on nearby tables and flowers being taken into the chapel. Life, death, old age, and sickness. Right here in front of me. 

I begin to fill my plate with the day’s offerings for lunch—baked potatoes, salad, and sauteed vegetables. As I make my way to a table I hear music coming through the overhead speakers. It is music I know, music from my childhood. A few minutes later, I hear voices:

“Can you help me with this?”

“Testing, testing.”

Everything is muffled, as if in a dream, but it is apparent I am hearing snippets of the arrangements being made for the memorial service. Whoever is speaking is unaware they are being broadcast all over the entire floor. The volume is low, but clear enough that whenever music is played there is no mistaking what I am listening to—it is the soundtrack of my dad, and it is all I can do not to burst into tears in the middle of my lunch. 

After the first couple of songs, I have one searing thought: If they play ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ I might faint.

As if on cue, it begins.

My initial urge to cry becomes a compulsion to laugh—a full belly, howling laugh—because how can this be?

If I wanted to read into this, to look toward God and ask What does this mean?, I’d say it was about not losing sight of our impermanence, of the fact that our time together on earth, in this existence, is quickly draining; that there was once a time when my dad and I lived under the same roof and tried to love each other as best as we could; that my dad’s heart couldn’t have been totally armored, because how could someone like that love The Kingston Trio?

I think of happy afternoons when my mom and dad played records while our German Shepherd Charlie napped in the sun. I am reminded that the letters and cards I’ve sent to my dad over the last few years are not without purpose, and this would be true even if my dad hadn’t ever responded; when I felt an opening in my heart to reach out to him, I reached out. I see that his eventual response was actually beside the point—that reaching out in love is imperative for its own sake. It is its own universe, its own narrative, with a perfect beginning, middle, and end.

Today’s experience could have had me mired in guilt and regret for actions not taken and love withheld. But instead, it offered an affirmation that when I feel called to love, all I need to do is LOVE. Again and again and again.

Listen here