1/30/12: A New Year, Fortunately

I recently held a Chinese New Year party. To prepare for it I purchased Chinese lanterns, filled a tall vase with mandarin oranges, and cooked and bought Chinese dishes. A friend introduced me to a restaurant supply store where I purchased a lifetime's supply of fortune cookies. I gave a lot of them away and still have fortune cookies coming out of my ears.

I've never been a huge fan of these apres dim sum treats. Maybe it's the fact that they always seem a little stale, or that they stick to your teeth, or maybe it's simply that they're not chocolate. But my boys like them, and, true to form, they eat the cookies and leave the fortunes all over the house for me to clean up. When I find one, I can't help but read the message, and so, without having to suffer sticky teeth syndrome, I "receive" several fortunes a day.

"Your principles mean more to you than money or success." True.

"Do not do unto others what you do not want done unto yourself." OK.

"An important email will be arriving shortly. Check your inbox." Still waiting.

"A financial investment will yield returns beyond your hopes." Hope so.

"Keep up the good work. You will be rewarded." Thanks.

Usually at a Chinese restaurant they're militant about only giving one cookie per person—as if there really were some magic behind the cookie's message, and a second cookie would blow the whole gig—so my bounty seems to defy the laws of nature.

And while I'm not certain of their magic, I am grateful to fortune cookies, because just like the New Year, each one is an opening to a new possibility. Stale cookies, fresh start. That is a yin and yang I can sink my teeth into.

1/2/12: A Brave New Year

What did you accomplish last year? When you think about it, 2011 rocked, really, didn't it? So how is 2012 going to be even better, braver, bolder? What would you do with your life if you knew you could not fail? What would you do today if you were brave? Love and Blessings for a wonderful Brave New Year!

12/29/11: Layovers

I'm supposed to be in Chicago at this very moment. Settling into a seat in an intimate theater to enjoy a stage production of Secret Garden that got rave reviews by Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times. "Whatever she recommends, you have to see," said my friend Scot, a native.

I was supposed to have breakfast with Scot in 2 days. He was going to pick me up from my four-star downtown hotel and whisk me off to a local eatery called Orange, just hours before he and his partner left for a family vacation in Florida. "No one comes to Chicago in the winter. Are you crazy?"

I'd planned to get a three-day trolley pass and see the town. I'd planned to rent a Segway and tour the riverfront. I'd planned to have a Chicago hotdog from a specific street vendor who serves it on a poppyseed bun smothered in neon relish. I was going to see the "Bean" at Millennium Park. Take a walking tour put on by the Architectural Foundation. And of course go to the Art Institute, especially to see the Impressionists, and a new photo exhibit called The Three Graces that is comprised mostly of "found" candid shots of women and their friendships throughout the last several decades.

I thought it would be a bold way to start the New Year: traveling alone to a city where I'd only previously touched down before, for layovers on my way to someplace else.

But then I realized: I didn't really want to go. I was going to Chicago to make a statement, to prove a point. That I wasn't heartbroken. That my life hadn't been thrown a huge curve ball less than a month ago. That I was alright.

So just hours before I was supposed to leave, I decided to stay. I decided that it's OK not to be alright. It's OK not to go to Chicago. It's OK to cancel the housesitter, say goodbye to the nonrefundable airfare, the nonrefundable hotel, the nonrefundable theater ticket. It's OK to go to work on the days you'd planned to be on vacation. To stow your new carry-on in the closet. To enter the New Year with people you love, who love you right back.

And it's OK to cry just a little during the layover, on your way to someplace else.

12/17/11: Breakfast at the Cadillac Cafe

What is it about breakfast out with your girlfriends? I met three great gals at one of our favorite haunts, the Cadillac Cafe. None of them had ever met one another before and yet we laughed, joked, cried a little and told stories like we'd all known each other for years. I love putting people together. But this was more than that. Somehow going to breakfast with friends, taking our time over the meal, joking with the waiter, just chatting and laughing, with no rush to be anywhere ... and the whole day before us afterward ... is such a luxurious indulgence. I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. I love my life!

12/12/11: Turning Around

There is a story about a young woman in Jafar who was walking along a path. She noticed that a young man was following her. He dogged her, step by step. After a mile the young woman turned around and said to him, "Why do you follow me?"

He answered, "Because you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. I love you, and I want to marry you."

"Fool!" she cried. "For not 10 feet behind you is my younger sister. She is a hundred times more beautiful."

The young man turned around to see an old, wrinkled woman.

He spun around angrily to the young woman. "Why do you mock me? You lied to me!"

"You lied to me too," she answered. "If you were really in love with me, you wouldn't have turned around."

How many times in our lives do we fail to appreciate, truly appreciate what is here before us, and instead go chasing the next best, and often far inferior, thing? Relationships. Jobs. Careers. Homes. Friendships. And time. Looking forward, looking back, turning around.

The only power is in the present moment, right here. Embrace it.

12/11/11: Tree Thieves

We finally got our tree today. I've been in denial that Christmas is coming. Probably something to do with spending the last week of November in 80-degree temperatures (Maui).

The first tree lot we tried had larger-than-lifesize painted wood stand-up characters: snowmen, Nutcrackers, Santa ... and $80 trees. We turned around and walked out.

The next lot had a gorgeous grand fir that was more than 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide with beautiful feathery branches. It was stunning. And only $40 including the stand! I had a debate with my friend (who had offered his pickup truck to help get the tree), as to the height of my living room ceiling. So we had them hold the tree for us while we went back to measure. Turns out the ceiling was about 6 inches too short for the tree. Darn.

On the way back we passed another lot that had a sign stating "Wild Nobles," but I wanted to go back to the same lot because they were holding the tree and it wouldn't be polite to not return. But when we got there "my" tree was gone. Someone had come by while we were measuring and wanted it. The tree guys told them they were holding it for someone, but the buyer kept offering more money and when they got to $75, they took it!

How can someone take someone else's Christmas tree? Can they actually feel good about that? I have a friend who had a Buddha statue stolen from her back yard a few years back. "They just don't get it," she said.

The tree guys felt bad about selling "my" tree, even though I told them it wouldn't fit anyway, and they gave me a great deal on another grand fir that was just a little less grand, but equally beautiful. So it all worked out. Except for the karma the tree thieves will have to deal with. Yikes.

We set it up in the living room corner where our Christmas trees always go and I added lights, then strung more lights on our porch, windows and archway. The weather people are talking snow. I guess I'm really not in Maui anymore.

12/4/11: The Window in My Heart

Losing love is like a window in your heart.
Everybody sees you're blown apart.
Everybody sees the wind blow.
- Paul Simon, Graceland

Mercury is in retrograde. Astrologers will tell you that this is a time to safeguard your electronics: put a leash on your cell phone, back up those important computer files, don't order anything off the Internet. It's also a time when things you don't expect to happen, happen. Often in the worst possible way.

My retrograde moment came Friday when bad news was delivered to me electronically, by email. Three hundred words of unconscionable betrayal were packaged into bits and bytes, and sent along the information superhighway at lightning speed from a desktop two thousand miles away. Seconds later they arrived at my Internet server, reorganized into 10-point Calibri and waited for Pandora to open her inbox.

I was at work when the email arrived, and it wasn't yet lunch time. By the time I left the office for the day I'd cycled through three of the seven stages of grief. Shock. Denial. Anger.

The next day found me at my clients' vacant house, waiting to pass the keys to the new buyers. The buyers had mistaken the hour of the appointment, so I had been given the rare gift of time. Time alone. Time when I wasn't rushing hurly-burly through my life, my To Do list, or my ambitions. Time when others weren't waiting for me to deliver a document, a meal, or a project. And because the house was empty, there were no distractions from the outside world.

While I stood there contemplating this miracle, an image came to me. I was drowning in pain and the house was my decompression chamber. I knew that, if I chose to do so, I could take the necessary steps to return to the surface.

I sat on the carpeted floor in the dining room, leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and took stock of my feelings. My first hit was that I felt like I'd been body slammed by an expert. I was flattened, shaken, and had a gaping hole in my chest that was becoming a vortex for all the evils of the world. I also saw that I was stuck in Stage 3, Anger, and that it was hurting me the most. I had to find a way to release the anger. I knew that if I could, the pain would still be there, but it would be stripped of its power source. So I skipped past Bargaining, Guilt and Depression, and went right to Acceptance.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free,
and realize that the prisoner was yourself.

Somehow I knew, through some primordial instinct for survival, that the only way I was coming out of this intact was through forgiveness. I thought about my betrayer. And I began to see him differently. He was weak. He was lost. And he'd made a terrible decision that had cut me to the bone. But I still loved him. I was shocked and immensely grateful to see that, in spite of his actions, my love for him was still there. It would be my lifeline.

In a favorite childhood story, A Wrinkle in Time, the main character's younger brother is inhabited by an entity of pure evil. The protagonist decides that the only way she can defeat the evil is to love the brother she knows is inside, but who is no longer in charge. I reached into my heart and accessed all the love that was there. I let it pour out, overflow. And as it did, it washed away anger, humiliation, and resentment. It kept flowing, and soon became the salve of peace and forgiveness.

After I met with the buyers, I drove home to get ready for dinner with an old friend who had miraculously reappeared in my life at the same time all of this was happening. (There are no coincidences.) On my drive home, I phoned my betrayer. His cell phone rang one and a half times, and then he sent me—the person who just a few weeks earlier he had shared the vision he had for our wedding—to voice mail.

I left a message. I offered my forgiveness and love and best wishes. And a final farewell. In a little more than 24 hours, I'd Kübler-Rossed my way out of the darkness, and onto the path of healing.

Healing takes time, of course, and I'm not there yet. But I feel blessed to be on the path. And, as with Pandora's box, once my heart was emptied of its anger, what remained was Hope.

10/12/11: Goodbye, Stress Monkey

Two things that looked like they were falling apart came back together in the same 24-hour period, and the weird thing is, I wasn't even surprised. Somehow I knew ... and to think: the old me would have spent all that time worrying for nothing! It makes me wonder: if I had been worried, if I had let myself get derailed over those bumps in the road, would the outcome have been different? Did my peace of mind contribute to whatever assimilation in the ether had to happen to allow these items to resolve themselves?

It sort of doesn't matter, because I had the peace of mind regardless. I'm beginning to catch on ... I'm beginning to have of a grasp of something that may make a profound difference in the rest of my life. Maybe this whole quantum- physics-law-of-attraction-divine-matrix-particle-vs.-wave theory has something to it. Could Einstein, Braden, McTaggart, Bohr and their ilk be right?

Back when I was a stress monkey I used to have a mantra that I'd repeat over and over in my head when things felt too overwhelming: I Am Peace. All is Well. Life is Good. It saved my sanity more times than I can count. It was my lifeline—my white-knuckled grip on the ledge over the abyss. And eventually, sometimes in just a few moments, sometimes in days, the panic, frenzy, stress, misery, and frequently the situation igniting it, would pass. Eventually I began to wonder: what if I just never went there (to the panic/frenzy/stress/misery)? What if I just went to the peace and waited for the situation to blow over? Dang. I realized I was onto something! Not only that, I wondered what took me so long to figure it out! All the tools, all the learning, all the information, were right there waiting for me to pick up and use.

I'd think I was a slow learner except that time doesn't exist. Another tidbit I picked up on my road to peace, in a life that is good, where all is well.

10/10/11: Staying on Track

Why is it that, when life seems to be chugging along smoothly, and you're picking up speed, some snot-nosed kid always comes along and puts a brick on the tracks? This weekend two significant events, one financial, one relational, were the bricks on my track. But the surprising thing is, I managed to switch tracks and keep right on humming. The scenery is not what I expected or even hoped for, but I'm still together, still in one piece. And still. In one peace.

It helps to have a good engineer at the controls. Or several. My engineers are my faith, my strength of purpose, and my support base of family and friends. So rather than being derailed, which would have been the likely scenario a few years ago, this weekend taught me that I am unstoppable. And I will keep right on chugging along, no matter how many bricks come my way. And I have a feeling that just around the next bend is something wonderful.

10/6/11: The Shape of My Life

I turned a milestone birthday this year, and it's finally sinking in. While my son Max says the kids at his school think I'm 30, and often people are in shock when they hear my real age, I can finally see the view from the top of the hill, and I have decided that I'd like the rest of my life to be in better shape than the last few years have been.

So I'm working out ... a lot. And watching what I eat and drink ... a lot. And I'm beginning to see results. But it's not just my body I'm shaping up. It's my life. My finances. My relationships. My career. My plans for the future. And above all, my mindset.

A new man in my life who loves me like nobody's business sent me a birthday card yesterday. My birthday was June 1, and he knows it, but he sent it to me now, he said, because he felt he'd already missed enough of my birthdays. The card said a lot of lovely things that I'd like to be able to live up to, but if he sees those things in me now, who am I to argue?

I'm four months into my milestone year, and I plan to make this New Year's resolution simple: keep every beautiful thing I've gained this year. Because I love how my life is shaping up.

9/27/11: Need More Calm? More Inner Peace in Your Life?

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me today, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives. Some doctor on tv this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I'd started and not finished and, before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Evan Williams, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, a pock of Prungles, the mainder of bot Prozic and Valiuminun scriptins, the res of the chesescke an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now. Plaese sned dhis on to dem yu feel ar in ned ov iennr peesss. An telum,u luvum!!!

My cousin, Randy, posted this on FB today. Had to share. (HB DL.)

9/22/11: When Commas Matter

And, from a friend: Commas save lives! Consider:

Let's eat Grandma.

vs.

Let's eat, Grandma.

9/15/11: Adult Kindergarten

I never attended kindergarten. They didn't have it where I lived at the time I was the age to attend. But from what I understand, kindergarten is about learning essential life skills. Cutting with Scissors. Sharing. Colors. Numbers. Shapes. ABCs.

Lately it feels like I'm in adult kindergarten. I keep learning things that I wish someone had taught me ages ago. But rather than lamenting the lateness of the lesson, I'm damned grateful for getting it at all. Because, like cutting with scissors, once you've got it, you've got it. Discernment. Self-Love. Humility. Patience. Discipline. Don't get me wrong: it's not like these skills can't be improved upon over time. After all, very few adults still cut with round-top scissors. But the clarity of the lessons has been like some benevolent teacher is spoon feeding them to me in manageable bites. Gently, patiently, and in no uncertain terms.

And just like in kindergarten, at the end of the day, I review what I've learned. Today I learned that just because I would like to believe the best about someone, and I'm wrong, that I'm not wrong for wanting it to be true. And that in order to be true to myself, I need to withhold my judgment a little bit longer to protect my own trusting heart.

Now: if someone would just bring back nap time.

9/13/11: Moon Talk

I went hiking a few months ago with a friend. It was an ambitious urban hike: nine miles through hilly areas of SW Portland. We went through posh neighborhoods, rose above Washington Park, and peered down at the Japanese Gardens. When we were above the Gardens, my friend told me about a Moon Viewing Ceremony that takes place there in mid-September. It sounded lovely: strolling through the gardens, enjoying small plates of food and sake, watching as the Japanese lanterns are lit, to cast their soft glow over the ponds and stone sculptures. And of course the moon coming into view over the city while we listened to haunting flute music wending through the air from the garden's east terrace.

So Sunday night I took a date, and we went. And it was beautiful. The highlight was watching the tea ceremony in an outdoor pavillion: watching the slow, measured, graceful movements. There was no idle chatter, just the preparations of the host, the patient anticipation of the guest, the honor and courtesy bestowed to one another.

But back to the date. I felt like he was maybe not having the best time of his life, so I suggested he ask the moon a question and listen for the answer, silently. I did the same. In a moment, I asked, "Without joking (he is a teriffic joker), what did the moon say?" He said something like "well, it didn't really work," and then asked me what the moon said to me.

"She said, 'Go get a drink somewhere'."

He laughed. "I thought you said, 'without joking.'"

"She was serious. She said, 'I'll always be here for you, just go.'"

We'd come in separate cars, so I drove us to Ringler's Annex for a glass of wine. We had a great conversation, got to people watch, checked out a pub I'm supposed to meet some friends at later this week, and then I drove us back to the park. When we got there the gate to the park was closed. Locked. I saw the security guard's vehicle and flashed my brights, trying to get him to stop, but he drove off. The sign on the gate said, "Park closes at 10 p.m." It was 9:53. We drove to all the entrances: all locked, my date's BMW, left behind, inaccessible.

The conversation on the 30-minute drive to bring him home, and the half hour of quiet reflection on the way back brought a lot of clarity.

That Moon. She's a tricky little devil.

9/5/11: Horsing Around

I grew up with horses. When my sister and I were barely old enough to walk, we were taught to ride. Our trusty steed was our Shetland pony, Frosty, so named because she was all black except for white socks and a white mark on her forehead. We rode Frosty with or without a saddle, mostly without. We'd climb on her back and ride her all over our 11 acres. Frosty was gentle and patient. If we ever slid off, she'd stop and wait for us to climb back on. It was a magic that we didn't appreciate at the time, but looking back I am immediately wistful for the innocence, the adventure, the freedom, and I regret that my children will know nothing of this. They're city boys. One of my favorite lines from the summer is, "You go first, Mom, in case there are spiders," (my eldest, Max, age 13).

This weekend we traveled to Eugene, got a place that would take our dog, and had an outdoor pool for Sam, and were within spitting distance (well, 68 miles) of the beach. I'd waited too long to get reservations at the beach, so we took a day trip in to Florence. Sam wanted to ride horses. Max wasn't interested, so he stayed with the dog while Sam and I rented trail horses for a 90-minute ride: across a road, through a wooded trail, across some sand dunes, and out on to the beach and back. We were Lawrence of Arabia times 20. Sam struggled to get Dusty, his horse, to do his bidding. Dusty wanted to stop and nibble the grass instead of keep up with the pack. One of our guides eventually gave Sam a riding crop and told him to whack Dusty on the shoulder when he wanted her to go. But Sam couldn't bring himself to hit Dusty very hard. The guide said, "Sam: have you ever been really mad at someone? Pretend that's Dusty." He tried, but he loves animals, and he is a very gentle soul. I doubt Dusty even felt the crop. We had fun, though, and Sam even got Dusty to trot a bit at the beach (she took her cue from the other horses, I believe). I am proud of him for making the effort, for being brave enough to try something new.

The next day when the boys and I went for a walk along the river by our hotel I found some snowberries and tossed a few at the boys—another childhood pastime. That one they both got into.