VALLEY'S 10 MINUTE PIECES

Wednesday night I went to a Reiki share at my Reiki master’s studio to join five other women in varying degrees of yoga pants, head scarves, and work outfits The act of laying hands on bodies, vulnerable and open and willing to receive was a holy sacrament. When it was my turn on the table I felt as if I’d been scooped into a bowl full of honey. The hands were warm and strong and soft and electric and full of love. I could feel all of my circuits ignite. A handy tool when the whole world is on fire.

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Two weeks ago I sat on the unmade bed in my sun flooded loft in San Miguel de Allende. I just had one of those LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCES. I texted a friend, everything has to change.

I almost gave you some unsolicited advice, he texted back.

Go ahead, I said. There are those times I know I have to shut up and listen.

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I think of home all the time which makes sense because I live in the house I grew up in, across the street from my mother. My father moved 15 times before I left for college and has lost two homes in the past year. He now lives in the sort of home he used to visit as a social worker. He is folding himself around the unlikely edges and it is beginning to fit.

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Did you know there was more to traveling than sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Me neither! But, as it turns out, when you are in a foreign country you can sit in a church, look at art, listen to music, dance, drink ginger lemonade, wander through markets, watch parades, soak in Hot Springs, hike botanical gardens, draw, write, dream, wonder, wander, and try all of the tacos at the taco stands. 

You can even find yourself co-leading a retreat with beautiful artist Linda Laino, at Casa de la Noche, a former bordello in San Miguel de Allende AKA the City of the Fallen Women. Casa de la Noche, even hosts a celebration of Saint Bridget, the Patron Saint of the Fallen Women, every February 1. Our group missed this particular holiday, but certainly found many ways to honor it.

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Monday afternoon a woman in magnificent yellow robes, a head wrap, and golden earrings pulled up to my house with my Usui Reiki Master Certificate. Our hug was huge. Aqiylah gave me a gift I don’t really have words for.

When I was 23 and on a train home from Alaska drinking Miller Lite in the smoking car with a boyfriend I’d made 10 minutes before, I heard a crazy voice in my head. It was so crazy I had to write it down. You are a Messenger of Light, the voice said. I knew it was crazy because a) it sounded crazy and b) because of all my darkness. There were a million secrets written on my body beneath my clothes. I didn't want light shined on me much less did I have any light to shine on others.

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Like most women, I have spent far too many decades of my life having no idea of my worth.

Last Friday, in line at Bank of America, attempting to change the signature card on my parent’s account, the photograph of a man with whom I was once obsessed popped up in my phone. My face flushed, my heart pounded. I hit delete. I wondered, did he ever really love me? But before I could finish the thought it was replaced with a more powerful thought. WHO THE HELL CARES? And that is major progress for me.

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We have our passports and our plane tickets. We have shuttle buses and and Airbnbs and we’re ready for boarding passes. In two weeks I will fly to Mexico, my first trip out of the country in 23 years. There are so many reasons I haven't traveled before and so many reasons I'm ready to now.

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This week I have lost a set of keys, my medicine bag, my sunglasses, my phone. I've missed appointments, forgotten to return phone calls, found myself forgetting what I was going to say or why I why I was going to say it. You have a grief brain, friends tell me. I'm in survival mode, fight or flight.

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My dad was was a social worker before he went into carpentry. He work with troubled youth, senior citizens, and in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. His patients were the bedtime stories of my youth.

The nurses at my dad's new facility say he reminds them of a social worker still. He says things like don't let your mother mood go down with the sun and the Isak Dinesen quote, The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.

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This week I picked up Mary’s ashes and placed them in the wooden box made by her son from her parent’s dining room table. I brought death certificates to the bank, the insurance company, credit cards, and social security. I’ve taken my dad for a haircut and a straight edge razor shave. We’ve had a memorial service, Valentine’s Day, and a birthday party. We’ve looked at a thousand old pictures, tracing our shared and separate past. I’ve heard him weeping beside me and from his room across the house.

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