The List 10 Months Later

Buy our vanagon and sew it a perfect pair of curtains.

Be in New York for Blogher '10 just so I can meet my blog idols.
Go to Canada for 2 months with the boys in the vanagon.

Go back to school to be a doctor.
Go back to Perth and drink beer at Little Creatures with awesome Australians.

Meet Bon and Kate, Andrea and Jen and Neil. Someday meet Ben.

Move to Canada, buy a farm and raise sheep and grow a garden.
Buy the Paradise resort, restore the restaurant and cabins and make it a center for gathering yogis, artists, writers, mountain bikers, boarders and dreamers.
Raise buffalo on acres of land just North of Yosemite and South of Tahoe.
Home school my children.

African dance, modern dance. Dance.

Choreograph a whole dance concert to the soundtrack of Mr. Bungle.
Meet Jessica Whitt and hug her.
Avoid cancer.
Sew my own pair of jeans over and over.
Hand embroider a dress.
Own a Mercedes.
Travel easily and lightly whenever we choose.

Have a 'home' every place we go.

Teach my children to tap dance.
Go to Bhutan as a volunteer PT for three months. Take the family too.
Live in France for a year and speak French everyday.
Participate in a downhill mountain bike race.
Be free of the monetary world in the way of sustainable living :: solar power compost toilets food production.

Make a wedding ring quilt.
Go to Africa to dance with my sisters.
Take photos of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas (again.)

Go to NYC to see old friends and make new ones.

Be a professor of Physical Therapy.
Have so much disposable income I can give it away.
Have one more child, easily (not twins).
Go to Iceland.
Go to Alaska and hike for 7 days.
Watch my boys grow old.

Make friends that last, that care, that like Me, that are complex and smart and whole.

Not grow old and sick and demented.

My (Late) List

A few months ago, my tribe and I decided in order to keep Mondo alive in our lives, we would 'gather' monthly and hold ourselves to a lesson and sharing. Er, obviously, this has come with some challenge and setbacks, but my lovely Kat extended an invitation to write down 10 things that I need. I did it. A few weeks back actually. I wrote it in one of my (too) many small notebooks. The list did not make it to this space, it did not make it to our shared emails, instead it sat in the small closed notebook, written and then left until the next 'breathing' moment.


In the last few weeks I have felt challenged and sad and tired and desperate for support (that email did go out with a plea for hugs and returned to me with folds of love to envelope my soul...thank you, lovelies). And I have felt bolstered and revealed and opened and as if some light balm has been applied to the soul. Right now I feel that I should share this list in a hindsight manner and let it speak for itself ::

Written in the car with a Sharpie pen a few weeks ago...

1. A clean house :: desired due to then upcoming birthday party for the boys (4/24)...achieved on that Saturday with realization that not many cared just how sparkling my windows were or about that hole in the drywall once the kids and water balloon fights set in.

2. Courage to write to a big blogger I love :: I was so on the fence about this but I love this woman and have dreamed about meeting her and her son. I did write, she did write back in a very lovely way and now there is a very real possibility of a meet up.

3. A serger :: Placed on back burner until my fervor over hand sewing dies down. But I did meet a woman (heavily pregnant, Swedish and designer of sweet baby girl clothes) that gave me excellent recommendations on the machine to use, steering me away from what initially was my first choice.

4. To bind in marichyasana :: Not there yet. But so much more open to the possibility. I also shared this need with my yoga teacher and ever since she has been pounding on us with shoulder openers. She is going to get me there, I know it. Be careful what you ask for.

5. A clean slate with work paperwork :: My lack of commitment when it comes to finishing paperwork really gets to me on a subliminal level. I was swimming in undones until I sat down and made it happen. A few hours and no distractions help...but it comes from inside, internal desire to clean up and I did. Of course, that was last Sunday so I really should finish this and switch into work mode. The undones have redone themself.

6. A plane ticket to NYC :: Done. And I found it for the same price I once paid in 1998. 300 bucks. Use www.bestfares.com, they really came through for me.

7. Tow hitch for the Subaru :: This is when we thought we might borrow a pop up trailer and hit the road for a month. Yes to the month, no to a tow hitch. We figured that we have gotten by this long with a tent, we should break in the boys with the lowest lap of luxury there is. And spend the difference in a budgeted condo in Whistler for three days while Tim bombs the sloped and I play a heavy rotation of The Incredibles, The Jungle Book and Peter Pan on the conveniently located DVD player in the mountainside accomodations.

8> Courage to take an African dance class :: Now this is an odd one and a story. My middle sister Amanda is a phenomenal West African dancer. I attended a conference in Sept with her and baby sis Em and vowed to embrace the movement and available class in L.A. I did not. I never went.

So she was down for the week in the beginning of April and we headed into L.A. for a mid-week class that we had Googled. Fighting traffic was a bitch at 6:00 p.m. but we made it 30 minutes late and pulled into a small street in deep L.A. and parked and got out fumbling our dance clothes and what-nots and consulted our iPhones and realised the class was not happening when the address given gave us a shop front of tax preparation tables. But the community was crazy good around there, lots of West Aftricans in dress wandering so we were convinced it was there, somewhere. We wandered a bit and again realised we were out of place and then my sister dropped another pair of panties out of her dance bag and a guy honked for us to pick them up and it was time to get in the car and head home.

But the amazing thing about the two hour detour was that it was the first time in about ten years that we have been alone for more than a few minutes. Time to talk and process being sisters and wives and mothers and others and talk, let it out. Ask and receive.

And the other gift? She is coming to stay with us for a week with Baby girl Kayda and she will be all ours, to completely immerse ourselves in this family that we are. And take that dance class with Mareme Faye on Saturday. Oh, yeah.

I only got to 8 but that was more than enough. And I know it is late and after the fact but I find it interesting that blogging the list afterwards shows just what kind of power listing has. It is almost frightening, the clarity it can bring. And the realisation of potential.

And here it is...the wildflowers taken root in my life. They look like weeds until they flower. A very good metaphor for my life as it is.


Oh, yeah, there is this guy and this guy and this guy that make it pretty right (usually) too.





I have also decided that wearing a white Fedora is completely acceptable sun protection as it makes me feel fab and the husband asked it is cam with a 'costume' post-kid hours. So the courage to wear a hat (if it was number 9) has totally been found.

Nod to my Homegirls

Feeling a little less than inspired in some of the dream categories but I have been following the unfolding of my tribe avidly. They are in such wonderful places and I am loving all that they do. I went to the Library to find some new reads, one on writing after Kat spoke of it so beautifully and the other just jumped out from the shelf as if to say "Well maybe you can. Have you tried?". The third novel with no spine...yeah that is just a trashy novel in case I find it all too heavy.

Other wonderful reads....A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I almost cry as I turn the pages because it means I am getting closer to the end and I never ever want this book to end. And my friend's first novel, a final draft that is so good and oddly enough, set not far from the neighborhood illuminated in Tree.

And hoping that the reading will help generate whatever it is that I need in order to find movement. We'll just have to see.

Continuity

I am struck sometimes about the continuity of my life as it is now. These thoughts are prompted by the late afternoon sun slanting at the very same angle it did when I was a small child. I view it from the same seat; the chair is different, the table also, the children running in the gold light are mine own now, but still, it all feels so familiar. Because it is.

This is the same home I grew up in, I just saw the mildly retarded woman in our neighborhood on her scooter, moving through the light...she is the same one that used to ride a bike and one morning as I biked to school in the early foggy day we came head to head, our bikes colliding, me into the street and biting right through that thin spot under my lip from the crash and she frightened and befuddled and then my brothers ushered me into the school office with a white collared shirt stained with blood and it was all okay. Now my brother owns a home one street over from where the crash happened and she still rides the neighborhood, now from a comfortable motorized seat and I still love seeing her and remembering that morning.

It was not the plan, you know? To return to my town of origin, have my children in the same home I grew in, put them down every night to sleep in the room I once drifted into my own childhood oblivion. I did things in that room that make me blush now when I recall, some of them not with my now husband. And I watch as this home reincarnates itself over and over, first to accommodate 4 then 5 then 6 then 10 then back down now to 7, you get the idea.

(taken 'at work' today)
There is something so comfortable about it all. I thought it would make me feel constricted and pained, that I would feel as if I have done not enough, not proved my worth. Instead I spend my days moving about and through it, occasionally frustrated by the eternal mess and undone doorways, but most often embracng the light and the continuity of it all.

I just saw a patient that lived next door to my husband as he was growing up, her grandchildren and grandnephews played with him in the small leftover orchard of orange trees behind their joined yards. We talked of the time she has spent here, in her home, we laughed about it. And then I took a short drive north into a canyon just above our home. It was ravaged by fire in 2004 and only four homes are left. Homes built by hand, by folks who like to be just a little bit removed from the norm. The notes on her computerized patient chart cautioned me to look in the trees for cougars if I visited in the early morning or late afternoon. These are my stomping ground.

My formative years shaped by the gentle upslope and canyon breezes and me tromping silly and drunk through the parks where I now take my kids to play. I still remember being in those same parks with my mama and wondering what those big kids were doing, over there on the park tables, slumped over, trying to hide something. And now I giggle just a little when I see those same kids when we are there, remembering when I became one of them. Knowing now someday my kids might be them too.

I love my home. A quiet passion. I always have designs to leave, my Mondo dreams made that awfully clear. But it is only because I know I have somewhere to come back to. So solid, a rock, a place to call mine own. It will be here, flowers blooming, bulbs planted years ago coming forth when they receive enough rain to flourish. It will be here as it is, home. Nothing special. Ranch style, 1450 square feet of square rooms and beautiful foothill light. There was no grand architect, no special planning, no gate to get in. Just a cul-de-sac and a small home. But it holds all that is dear to me, all that is good and beautiful. I leave because I can always come back. Always have been able to, and I always have.

That is continuity.

March Mondo Update

Our little Mondo tribe agreed to make March 13 a check-in/Mondo lesson. And it has come upon me with stealth and I find myself startled to see the date. It seemed like so long ago when we took the class, but then the March date seemed long off. When will I learn about the tricksy-ness of time? Probably never.

I suggested that we use one of the last Mondo lessons as our guide....the search for synchronicity. What a word, what a word to let roll off the tongue, into the air and let hover around. The interesting thing about synchronicity is that it did not seem that hard to find when I started looking for it....it hovers like the word, hovers around all the events of the days, longing to be acknowledged. Or maybe it is just my longing to find it. Anyhows...


1:: For example, Wednesday, unwashed and unkempt from yet another long morning struggle with Owen (the child that occasionally wakes at 4 and will not go back to sleep so instead sits on my pillow by my head twitching and talking), I head out for work. I am disgruntled and tired and my schedule is totally off. There is a one hour gap between patients that needs filling, instead I head to Starbucks to sit with the laptop and do paperwork. I notice a young women across the table, she notices me and strikes up a conversation. Turns out she is in a Master's program at the school where I thought I might seek eventual teaching employment...her mother is faculty, she deeply involved in student body activities and deeply knowledgeable of the whole interesting tangle that is post-doc education. She speaks with energy and commitment and at the end of our conversation hands me her card and asks if I would be interested in speaking about my experience in my health profession to the student members she gathers for inservices and such. She is all of 26 years old. And I really liked her vibe. I think we will be seeing each other again.

2:: I had this idea about France and moving there. That dream may be long off, but a few weeks ago just writing out the dream prompted me to re-visit long forgotten spaces in the brain that hold small silly French phrases from my one year of studying the language. I started saying them to the boys and Mace immediately mimicked me with a very passable French accent. The kid is like a parrot, but his adorable lisp seems to allow just the right intonation to the words.

And I thought how fun it might be to teach them rudimentary French...and work on my own skills at the same time. Google translator has become a good friend lately. That way when France does happen all four of us can order a beer (I mean, bread and chocolate).

3:: Years and years and years ago, Tim and I rode down a street not far from our house. We were on our way to one of those long, ridiculously hard mountain bike rides that he loved to take me on, the ones where we had to climb fire roads for miles and my face would get all crazy red and I would want to kill him but then we would reach the yellow gate and from then on, for miles and miles and minutes and minutes we would race down the single track, I would be holding my breath as I tried to charge corners and berms and my arms would burn from the rattling the trail delivered.... but, yeah, on the way that day we came across a thicket of wild flowers. They were rioting on the side of the road...hip height and thick, all varieties, all colors. This was pre-digital cameras but I had a small camera and I took a few snaps. I would look at those pictures and long to see and smell them again. This had to be at last 10 or 12 years ago.

But finally, this year, a large swath of hill cleared in the backyard beckoned and for the nominal fee of 5 dollars and change I picked up a can of wildflower seeds and Mason and Owen and I scattered them before the rains came. Now, 5 or 6 weeks later, we see the evidence of the simple effort...thick green growth exploding over the small hill, the first tiny blooms are white and shine like sparkles in the midst of the green.

And I wonder at myself. For years I rode past that same road, seeking to find those wildflowers again. My printed pictures are long long gone, but their memory lies there, so close. And yet, for years and years I did not do the simple actions above. For many years, I sought wildflowers in other places: Yosemite and Toulumne Meadows, Dinkey Creek Wilderness, Mt Hood. I would pick a few and press them, but the pressing would leach them of their vibrancy, their impact. And still the memory held strong.

Now, today, I wait eagerly to see what comes of this simple backyard experiment. What blooms, what fragrance. The torrents of rain fed those seeds well and the green is so promising. Will they be hip height and full of life? Let's hope so. And if it happens in the month that we are away I will just have to laugh with the true irony of it all...and know that wildflowers usually re-seed themselves and I will be around to see them in all the years to come.


(And yes, I know these are not wildflowers but bulbs....I just really loved the color...and good hold over until the next wave of blooms)

Synchronicity? Tell me, where are you finding yours these days?

What it Is

It is has been quiet around here, huh? Not intentionally, or yes, maybe intentional.

February was an ass kicker. There was so much going on with sick kids and the push and pull of a relationship in flux. Throw some wildly imagined dreams in there and it served for a pretty rough month.

I alternately find myself enchanted and intimidated by this whole idea of dreaming in public spaces. I mean, I put it out there for any person passing by to read. And in the putting it out there it gained some steam, some shape and started to seem like a real possibility.


What I am alluding to is that my dreams have been professed and I fell in love with one particular one and started to fixate pretty hard on it…the whole get in the vanagon and leave thing. Step one :: find a vanagon, right? Which we did and which I loved and found so enchanting. But then I saw Tim’s demeanor start to shift a little bit and then things took their own turn in his life and some of the whole ‘stars are so aligned’ part began to get a little off center and then we had the whole family involved in the discussion (one of the downsides of living communally is that everyone knows your business)…and in the mix of it all, I found myself crushed and disappointed that my so-called life partner was jumping ship on THE most important dream of my life.

Now, a few days later and a few discussions later and the passing of the worst PMS I have had in years and things are starting to look a little less rocky. And I am finding a new equilibrium and some new realizations. They are pretty new and tender and still re-orienting themselves but they are good ones. My biggest realization is that things do not have to happen on a specific time line, especially the ones I set arbitrarily. There is no rule saying that we had to get the vanagon today and be in it by August and be able to juggle all the things that would need to be juggled in order to leave for months at a time…

Realizing that and accepting it have helped me immensely in the last few days. It is so easy for me to get wrapped up in the ideas I threw around in my Mondo list and I found letting go of this particular dream opened up the possibility of a few more.

And so the latest plan has me a step closer to meeting some of the people that I have ‘met’ through this medium and seeing an old friend in New York in August. And maybe getting to Canada much earlier than I thought. Both trips would be for much less time than I anticipated but that is okay because now both trips can happen.

And there you go…Mondo off track and on track. Sorry to recap it all as an event already occurred…I am not very good at writing when things are not going my way. Just never have been good at blogging the more challenging aspects of life and relationship, intimate details always feel like secret details in the moment.

A few things helped bolster me during the last month and it is good because otherwise I might have just turned down this blog. I’ll make sure to post them up here, but for now, I will just let this out and remind myself and any reading that dreams can happen, sometimes in the most mysterious of ways…

They start as seeds, needing to be planted and left alone, given some water occasionally, then left alone again...

And sometimes the path of least resistance is just the right path to take.

More Action :: More Mondo

I wonder sometimes about the list, about the Power of the List. I posted about lists way back when on my other blog, about how the mere act of writing helps in manifestation. It is heady stuff and might be some of the reason I had such a hesitation when it came to writing out The List. It seemed to hold so much significance for me.

I have been meaning to write a bit more here about the changes since Mondo began, but I am hesitating in another way. Afraid maybe to admit that dreams can come true? And in truth because a part of it is hard...to wonder if it is okay to admit to the Movement in the dreams. But then, that is the whole reason for taking the class, right?

Okay, so after that long and probably unnecessary premise..here it the thing. Dreams in action are awesome but dreams in action are work. The next thing I want to talk about is the Teaching.

There are a few dreams in there about Teaching, about going back to become a Doctor or maybe disseminating my collection of information. I was not terribly surprised by them showing up, more that I am surprised by my lack of movement in the direction of Teaching.

When I embarked in my profession as a Physical Therapist I immediately knew my calling. I knew that I wanted to take on the area of Neurological Rehab, the grey area of strokes and brain injury and spinal cord severing (no pun intended, believe me). I knew what I wanted but was immediately overwhelmed by the reality. Rather than sink into oblivion, or even worse, inability to help, I sought to find the right way to approach the challenge and found a brilliant mentor (albeit an asshole) that gave me the frame work to approach the treatment and the challenges with clarity and focus and some success. It was magical, the knowledge he helped unlock and the way it transformed my treatment. For many years I practiced in the field, finding great reward and always aware that each individual had a story that was written in their body which would help (or sometimes hinder) their recovery. It was always challenging and emotional work, and I am not one for the whole 'distance yourself from the patient' approach and the work took its toll.

A few years before the boys, I started to scale back my work, went part time, still working in the rehab setting but not as a team leader, rather as a sub. I found myself almost satisfied with the positions I held, but I also knew I could not do that and mother at the same time. It would be too much, I have no switch between work and home and little did I know it would be twins in the cards for us. The week I got pregnant, I resigned from my Rehab position and signed on to a home care service.

And then for two years after I was really really busy. Really busy. I kept my toe in the door with occasional patients and regular inservices but did not really return to work until last March. Since then, I have been immersed in the quagmire that is home health. It is the best and worst job I have yet to hold. I control my schedule, I have no office but the one I make, I have a distant but accessible supervisor, I have 70 pages of paperwork per patient, I have a laptop always at the ready and always at their ready and a roster of patients that usually push 70 or older and have all the concomitant issues that go along with that.

I love my patients, I love their individuality, their stories and history, their desire to stay independent and assertive and home. But, uh, home care ain't rocket science. Not at all. It is rare that my skills come to the fore. Rare that they are needed at all.

Anyway, last week one of my colleagues called with a question. Se had a CVA (stroke) patient that she was finding particularly challenging and she wanted to know if we could meet and brainstorm some treatment ideas. I love this colleague, she was the one that helped me find a place at the company, and I told her 'of course' and we met at Starbucks on a Saturday morning. Within five minutes of talking, taking in her description of the patient, her concern regarding treatment approach, I had a treatment plan formulated and we were off.

It was like slipping into a comfortable pair of scrubs. The instructions flowed easily and she was so open and receptive to the new information. After an hour we took a break and started talking about Teaching. She told me I should and I know she is right. I was surprised by the way the information has just become ingrained in how I think when it comes to patient care, how accessible it was even after years of disuse.

And it reminded me of some of the things I once thought about. Like walking into the PT department of the school quite literally down the street and offering to TA a class in Neuro. Then eventually teach the class, preparing the students for the reality of the Rehab unit, not the theory.

It is a small step, just a little morning meet up and discussion, but a glimmer of the future. A reminder that I still can walk into the school and have some chops, know I can back up the claims.

And then Monday after our meet up I picked up a home patient with a classic CVA, a perfect candidate for rehab. The reason he was not in rehab was because he is also a hospice patient so he was sent home in a bed after his stroke. He cannot do much, but he can do some. And he does not want to die lying down. And that I can help with. And so it all works in very interesting ways. Interesting is not the word but I am not sure what is.

Mondo might be.

Photo by Tim...his orange trees, he loves them