Journey’s End


In a state of overwhelm, with hands shaking I transferred the ashes from the urn to a plastic Tupperware container. It was late on a March evening, the night before my flight to New Jersey, the first time I was returning to the east coast since Jack had passed in July. I was determined to bring some of his ashes to his Bronx and New York City home. But where was the best place to transport the ashes, my carry on or the suitcase?

I imagined the screener at the San Diego airport, stopping the carry on conveyor belt and calling his co-workers over for a look. Then I’d see the hand motion me to come over to one of the little search areas for further inspection.

I considered again my suitcase. I’d attach the cremation papers to the green Tupperware container; at least if the luggage inspector opened my suitcase I wouldn’t be present. Is there a law about transporting human remains in the form of cremation ashes? I stood over my suitcase trying to find the best way to lodge the ashes in. What if the container opened during the flight? I’d have Jack sprinkled all over my clothes.

I fumbled, I cried and I called out to Jack. “What do you think? Do I bring some of you home this trip or not?” In a moment of quiet between my sobs and nose blowing, I heard in my head, “Leave me here. You have enough to deal with.”
Too tired to empty the plastic container of ashes back into Jack’s cloisonne urn, I apologized to him and shoved the container to the back of my armoire.

I did have a lot to deal with for that trip. My mother had just passed away. I was going home for her funeral and the cleaning out of my childhood home.

Fast forward to end of September. Once again I was preparing to return to New Jersey for another family visit. The main purpose this time was to inter my parent’s ashes in a new columbarium built at a local cemetery. I once again considered bringing Jack back with me. I dug the plastic Tupperware container out of the back of the armoire. It seemed the perfect time to take him back east. Wasn’t the whole reason for this trip about ashes? If the focus was on the ashes of my mother and father, why not make it three? But no matter where I searched I couldn’t find the cremation papers. Me who is so organized!

When I told my sister Martina about my dilemma, she said, “Maybe Jack wants to stay in California.” Once again I put Jack back in the armoire.

I thought a lot about ashes, resting places and the journey’s end on my trip to New Jersey.

When my husband John died 16 years ago, I fought to have him cremated. His parents wanted a traditional body burial. John died at 34. In our all-consuming youth, we never fully discussed our final wishes. But one thing I knew was that John loved the Vikings. He had commented once that he wanted a Viking funeral. Since with who I was at the time, I couldn’t quite pull off the body in the boat set out to sea burning, cremation seemed the closest I could get.

I did however acquiesce to his parents. The ashes were buried in the family plot. It was for me a comfort to have someplace to go. Cemeteries often are very peaceful places. St Gertrude’s in Colonia, New Jersey is an old, stretch for miles kind of cemetery with large trees and a variety of headstones, single mausoleums and formal buildings with separate niches. I’d go once a week for many months after his death and just sit with my back against the headstone, my hand outstretched on the grass. I’d close my eyes and imagine through the rich brown earth, his hand touching mine.

Almost every trip I’ve made back east in my 12 years here in San Diego, I stop at St. Gertrude’s. I know I can feel John’s presence anywhere, but visiting the cemetery brings my present day life full circle. I see my Now, in relation to that traumatic event. I miss John still and yet the crazy thing about life is that without him, I met Jack. John’s journey’s end was to be rest with the remains of his grandparents, nestled in the life giving earth.

When my father died 2 years ago, my mother had him cremated but couldn’t decide what to do with the ashes. He sat for those two years, up until her death on their French provincial chest of drawers. Pictures of him sat around the plastic box of ashes in its red velvet drawstring bag. Until the columbarium was built my mother’s ashes joined my father’s, this time on the French provincial dresser. They now had matching red drawstring bags, my father’s darker than hers, different years, my sibs and I commented. Pictures of them on their wedding day, their glasses, a religious icon of Christ and a pamphlet found among my Mom’s papers entitled “Losing Your Mother’, as if she was offering support from the beyond, now completed the shrine.

Last week, on a clear, wispy cloud, happy ending autumn day, my sisters, brother and I gathered at the cemetery. We chose to inter my parent’s ashes on this Monday in September because it was their wedding anniversary. The new columbarium completed, my parents were the first to make it their eternal home. Soon they would have many neighbors but for a while, they would be the only one’s in the community. Tim, the cemetery man opened the niche, before stepping away to give us time alone. The final decision had to be made as to whether we wanted the ash containers back to back, or one on top of the other. It seemed more dignified and truer to who they were in life, to have my father stand behind my mother.

My sister Margaret played her flute to accompany my brother Mark as he sang a song he had composed with words from an essay I had written. Martina, read from their love letters. We stuffed the niche with flowers and slips of paper with private messages. And before Tim, closed the niche, we toasted them with Polish vodka and sprinkled the vodka like holy water on their ash containers. We cried, laughed and walked away comforted that my parent’s journey’s end was close to where they had lived in life and near where my sibs make their present day homes.

In Kentucky, contained inside a beautifully ornate carved box, the ashes of my sister Mary Grace who died four years ago at 46, rest. MG and my brother in law, Chuck’s wedding bands adorn the top, encircled together supporting one another as in life and now in death. Her journey’s end was in her family’s home, a spot for her young sons to stop and pause while navigating life without their mother.

Back in San Diego, I pull the plastic container from the armoire, and sit for a moment with Jack in my lap. I’m still unclear about what to do with his ashes. But instead of trying to multi-task a trip back east, I will simply return his ashes to the green and black oriental style urn. And I know in a moment of calm when I’m not trying to do “the right thing” he’ll whisper once again in my ear where he would like his journey’s end to be.

“Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The Ash Wednesday ritual words from the Roman Catholic service of my childhood sound in my ears.

Final resting places are for the comfort of the living. Once we are released from our bodies, I’m guessing we have no attachment as to where those remains rest. But as a closing gesture to all we leave behind, a suggestion as to where our journey’s end will be is a lasting offering of love.

My Geographic

While strolling together through the park in the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of my brother Mark, my sister Martina asked him, “What is your quintessential Brooklyn moment?”

It was the second day of our overnight “Sibs” get away. My sisters, Margaret and Martina, my brother Mark and I had just finished a taste sating Sunday brunch at Belleville in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. With the breeze picking up speed and the threat of rain upon us, we walked toward the Brooklyn Bridge to promenade the expanse to the Manhattan side.

While Mark pondered the question, Martina shared that for her, the community aspect of her tree lined, family feeling suburban neighborhood of Randolph, New Jersey held the essential element of home.

Montague, New Jersey with its sweeping farm fields dotted with red roofed barns, pockets of forest that are home to deer and black bears, and the ‘reach out and touch’ impression of nature close by, soothes my sister Margaret each time she pulls into her driveway after her 1 ½ daily commute to work.

Mark after a bit, contributed that Brooklyn for him offered the excitement of accessibility. Culture, fabulous food, green space in the middle of great aritechture, allowed for an urban mix of stimulation and security.

The question fell to me. 12 years ago I chose to make my home 3000 miles away. What was my quintessential San Diego moment?

After Jack died, many friends assumed I’d move back east. Back to traveling tree lined maze like roads where the sky is crowded with the ever changing seasonal colors of the leafy topped oaks, chestnuts and maples. I understood why they thought this, all my family lives on the east coast. The foundation of who I am is of an east coast essence. And yes, the intrinsic truth of home does hold family ties, as one ingredient of the mix.

And yet, with an hour left before driving to the airport to return west, after my week long family visit, I anticipate the powder blue expanse of sky as the doors swoosh open at the San Diego airport. I am already comforted by the remembered softness of the air and the way the outside temperature seems to balance me from the outside in.

My roots are in the east, my family in my heart but my geographic is the west.

Sustainers and Destructors


I am on the red-eye tonight to New Jersey. I’m going back to visit family and to participate in the ceremony of interring my parent’s ashes in the new columbarium niche we bought.

I’m in the height of my sustainers vs. destructors clash. As I write this my left leg is shaking at sprinters speed, and the background rumble in my head is the repeating phrase of “go find some chocolate, chips, cookies….”

This for me is a clear indication that my destructors are on the offensive. There are many reasons why my Sustainers vs. Destructors skirmish is raging before going home. The list of oxymoron examples to describe returning to family and choices from the past, reads like a English Composition lecture; quiet scream, bitter sweet, controlled enthusiasm, absolutely unsure, fictional truth, love hate, open minded, passive aggressive, all alone, love hurts, sweet sorrow.

Going home is not the only event to trigger my S vs. D internal squabble. Just about any opportunity that involves anxiety, being unsure of myself and second-guessing my choices will bring out my flower child sustainers and G.I. Joe destructors to clash.

One of the first exercises in personal growth that I did, many years ago, was to identify “ Daily Habits That Sustain Me”. The word ‘habit’ for me was always preceded by the word ‘bad’. So to shift my thinking to things I do on a regular basis that support and enliven me was huge.

Subsequently, I have identified a list of actions that don’t sustain me. And over the years I came to think of my lists as my sustainers and destructors.

My platoon of sustainers holds in its’ ranks, long walks along the water, reading the Sunday New York Times, fresh flowers in my home, petting my cat, Mel, reading a good book, gardening, curling up with Mel in my lap to watch a Netflix, listening to music, and meditating.

My squad of destructors has in its’ service, eating when not hungry, biting my nails, torturing myself with thoughts of things I wish I had done or not done, sleeping when not tired, channel surfing when nothing on TV appeals to me to watch and making up excuses to not exercise.

I try through my days to be aware when my negative emotions have decided to leak inky dye on the whites of my positive feelings, like a washing machine full of darks and lights.

As today moves toward evening and my anxiety mixed joyful anticipation of being with my family envelopes me, I decide it’s time for a truce between my sustainers and destructors. G.I. Joe destructor brings a huge chuck of chocolate to the peace table and my flower child sustainer brings a knife. With a sweet smile she cut me a tiny piece and bags the rest to put in the freezer.

As I savor the silkiness of the chocolate on my tongue, I realize that sometimes, in times of nervous expectation, it’s all in the compromise.

I Am Memory Colored



I look in the mirror and there in the foundation of my complexion is the blush of curiosity for adventures taken and yet to come.

Sadness and grief from loved ones lost has shaded the circles under my eyes.

The joy in living the present imbues the crinkles appearing more and more along my brow.

My shoulders and arms are freckled with friendships that brighten me.

The ruddiness of my hand skin is from years of holding, caring and supporting.

Fear and anxiety have tinted my hips with stretch marks from extra weight.

In my hazel eyes, I see deep into my essence, each turning point is a hue, each commemoration is a pigment, each ritual to support and sustain me is a dye that washes my soul.

I am Memory Colored.

My Other Life is Down the Street


The unfolding of the day put my daily walk in the evening. The breeze is very steady. Along my way, it plays a domino effect of high note musical tinklings from one wind chime set to another with a rustle of palm fronds as the percussion. The sun setting in the west is hidden behind plump clouds as if embarrassed by the undressing of the day.

The course I chose to walk tonight takes me down the Reynard street hill. I’m always amazed when I walk down the hill how different things can look. Before I moved to the top, off of Sutter, I had lived at the bottom. It will be a year this Wednesday since I moved from bottom to top.

My route tonight, will be just shy of the side street I lived on with Jack. We lived on that tiny cul-de-sac for 12 years. I have not been back since I closed the house for the last time, with Mel in her cat carrier, mewing and growling in confusion. I go by the street probably 2-3 times a week in my excursions around town, but I never glance to the left when passing the road sign.

Jack and I often walked up Reynard in our jaunts. When we first moved to San Diego, we’d only make it half way up before our chests clutched tightly as if fearful it was the last breath. Soon with persistence we moved up the hill with ease and walked far beyond.

I’m going to visit family in a week. One decision I ponder each time I fly back east is, “Should I take a quick peek at ‘ my life before’, ‘my other life’?” My husband John died, 16 years ago. The house I shared with John is one exit up Route 78 from the airport. It will only add a half hour to my drive further north, to where my family lives, or I guess I’d say where my ‘1st life’ took place.

It was with Jack in the predawn of a day in late September in 1993 that I locked the door for the final time, to the house on Pine Street in Roselle Park, New Jersey where I had lived with John for ten years. I lifted my boxer Dempsey into the front cab of the Ryder truck Jack and I had rented to drive our belongings from one coast to the other. I blew a kiss out the truck cab window, a fearful confusion of ‘This is my home’, mixed with ‘Go West Young Woman.’

I have peeked at Pine Street a few times. The peeking took place during the middle years of ‘my other life’. It happened when I had found peace with my loss of John in my life with Jack. My taunting pain of “What could have been,” had lighted to “I’m curious what they’ve done with the house.” I enjoyed riding slow down Pine Street to look at the tiny brick faced Cape Cod from the side before stopping in front. The first time, the sidewalk and steps leading up had changed from concrete and grey slate to flagstone and terra cotta. Another trip, I thought I’d taken a wrong turn. The mini two-bedroom now was one of the largest houses on the street with slanting roofs and a skylight popping a hole in the middle of the expanded upstairs.

I missed the landscaping John and I had done by hand in the front yard, but enjoyed much more the improvements to the driveway and garage. My thoughts took me back to our late night conversations on the back porch. Me, sketching on paper, walls to be knocked down, while John grabbed another pencil to outline gadgets to be installed. Money was no limit in how our cozy quarters could become the mansion of our dreams.

Earlier this year when it came time to sell my parent’s home, I squatted on the living room floor and dug through boxes, unearthed photos and heard long ago conversations in an undertone, being released from the walls with each painting or decorative object taken down.

This will be my first trip back to the town of my ‘1st life’. I wonder if I can be in curiosity just yet, to see how my childhood home has changed.

My circle walk down Reynard, up the hill behind the 7-Eleven and winding through the streets of Mission Hills, has brought me in the twilight of the cooling evening, back to the black metal door of my little cottage. As I turn the key, questions pop around me like the stars readying to fill the coming night sky. “When will I be ready to go down the street to glimpse my ‘other life’?” Will I feel the same way when in the nearing future; I turn the key for the last time on my cottage door? How many more doors will I experience last times?

I hear Mel meowing her welcome. Tonight, I am content with being in the questions, and I’m fine in my ‘Now life’.

Sleeping on the Diagonal


The right side was my half of the bed. I found when waking in the deep of night, it was as if an imaginary barrier existed. I never crossed it. Only maybe an extended limb or hand that if Jack were still alive would have been wound around him, craving the connection and the comfort in the security of knowing that in the silent order of our relationship, he would be on the left side.

Once I suggested to him that we switch, change things up, get out of a habitual pattern. But neither of us lasted. The left side was too unconforming to my body’s contour. The right to him was a strange plain, where the clock seemed to tick louder and the breeze from the window too faint.

I’m reading Elizabeth Berg’s The Year of Pleasures. It is about a woman recently widowed. This passage touched me:
“I remembered an eighty-nine-year-old woman who’d lost her husband many years ago telling me in her shaky voice. You still sleep on your half of the bed. I learned that it was true.”

Even though I have moved from the house that Jack and I shared, I realized that in my solo bedroom, I still slept on my half of the bed. The other half was filled with extra pillows, I sometimes hugged tight like a lover, a plumped up comforter for my cat, Mel and it became the repository for magazines, books or the affirmation I was reading before drifting off.

I tried the middle. It seemed an empowering idea. Since I am alone right now, and the bed is mine, I decided to take ownership. The middle symbolized that for me.
But the digital numbers on the clock kept changing and soon it was silly to be battling with myself. I willingly scooched over to my half and fell deep into sleep.

Then one night during the hot airless summer, I found sleeping on the diagonal, pleasant. The breeze seemed to reach my sweat-filmed skin more than when I was on my half.

Sleeping on the diagonal is now my position of choice. In those moments before dreams fill my head and heart, I concluded that sleeping on the diagonal is mingling the past and future. I am experiencing the support of both sides of the bed. It is a position of the Now, it is saying I am fine here alone but still with the hope that I will once again be blessed with someone to share the silent order of a relationship where I am on the right and he is on the left.

‘Princess and the Pea’ kind of day


When I woke up this morning, my eyeballs felt as if they had dropped inside my skull and rolled around all night. My hips ached from the presumed hill I had been climbing in my sleep with a persistent burning sensation on the bottoms of my feet because I must have left my sneakers home.

I knew the moment I forced my legs over the side of the bed that today was going to be a ‘Princess and the Pea kind of day’.

The Hans Christian Andersen story tells of a 'real' princess who was tested by the Queen before she could marry her son. The story states:

“ The Queen went into the bedroom, took all the bed clothes off and laid a pea on the bedstead: then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea, and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. This was where the princess was to sleep that night.
In the morning they asked her how she slept.

'Oh terribly bad!' said the princess. 'I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night!
Heaven knows what was in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing,
and my whole body is black and blue this morning. It is terrible!' “

For me a ‘Princess and the Pea’ kind of day is one where no matter what I do, every little pea sized thing irritates me. I often feel this way before I come down with a full-blown cold or as in today’s case, the first day of my menstrual cycle. I know in my ‘real’ princess sort of way that my body is saying, “relax, kick back, and allow me to do a little repair here and there. Be a princess for a day.”
Of course life doesn’t always allow for a completely unplanned day of balance and renewal.

On days like this, I try to prioritize my activities to ones not requiring too much brainpower, limit my social interaction so my inner dragon doesn’t scorch too many family and friends and not spend too much time in front of the mirror, because I know I’ll hate everything I put on.

Getting out in the fresh air, drinking lots of water and going to bed early help. But on a full-blown ‘Princess and the Pea’ kind of day, I often go with the homeopathic philosophy. In Homeopathy one strives to treat ‘like with like’. If every little pea sized thing irritates me, I’m going for complete immersion. Tonight I’m cooking me up a big old pot of peas and I’m going to enjoy every last one of them!

Butterflies and Feathers


My friend Kalika and I walked through Soulscape gift and bookshop in Encinitas, CA, admiring and commenting on all the unique little groupings of items. The shop was permeated with the smell of scented candles and sticks of incense. The tinkle of wind chimes, played like background music. The sun on this warm September afternoon crept across the mosaic tiled entranceway, catching the crystal prisms and stained glass window decorations to trail a rainbow splash across the opposite wall.


We ooded and ahhed, touched and sniffed our way around. We stopped at a display of mugs, reading the inspirational words encircling their outsides. Kalika gave a short intake of breath as she raised one cobalt blue mug with white printing that simulated handwriting. She recited in hushed tones the quote on the mug. “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly. Anonymous.”


“Oh,” she exclaimed, running her fingers across the raised print, “I have to get this mug.” I personally thought the quote was sweet but nothing that stirred me to bring out my wallet. I moved over to the refrigerator magnets.


After she paid for the mug and I paid for a box of Nag Champa incense, we left the store.


“I’ve told you the story about my mother and the butterflies, right?” Kalika asked, as we got into the car. I shook my head. As if to highlight the importance of this tale, three white butterflies circle danced along the sidewalk as we drove out of the parking lot.


“During the last few months of my Mom’s life, when I went to spend time with her, I always took her for a walk in her wheelchair.” Kalika shared. “ Mom was blind, so along the way I would describe all the lovely flowers and plants. One day three white butterflies fluttered by. After I related to my Mom, how playful they were, she announced ‘I want to be a butterfly’. We both laughed,” Kalika recalled, “and I told her, I thought that would be wonderful.


One day after Mom passed, I was missing her very much. I was sitting in my car with the windows open, looking at the ocean and crying. All of a sudden, a little white butterfly flew in the passenger’s side window danced along the dashboard, flew past my nose and out the driver’s side window.” Kalika turned to me for emphasis, “how often do you see a butterfly come in a car window?” Since Mom passed, whenever I see butterflies, especially three white or yellow ones together, I know it’s her.”


Kalika’s purchase of the mug now made sense to me. And her belief that each time she sees butterflies, her mom is sending love down from above, warmed my heart.


After my husband, Jack passed; a psychic told me that Jack would send me feathers, to let me know he was near. I had scoffed in disbelief. “Feathers!” I thought. Feathers made no sense at all. During his lifetime, Jack had not been a birdwatcher, wore a boa or owned a parrot. I couldn’t see what the connection was. But the psychic stated that spirit on the level of a loved one that has passed over, is limited in their ways to communicate. Using objects such as feathers, embodying the essence of a living creature or having a favorite song play when we least expect it, is within their control.


“Okay”, I thought, “Feathers it is.” I left the psychic’s with a bit of the ‘prove it to me’ mentality. Actually, I dropped it from my thoughts. The session took place within a month of Jack’s death and I was too overwhelmed with grief and how I was going to find joy in life without my best friend at my side.


One day, soon after, frustrated and feeling alone, while walking through the catacomb like hallways of the employee area of the Hotel Del, where I worked, I silently called up above, something along the lines of “Jack, why aren’t you here when I need you.”


I wound my way along the windowless corridor. Half way through in a section that never sees the light of day, a medium sized gray hued feather lay on the ground. A surge of longing suffused with comfort warmed my body. I chuckled to myself.


It wasn’t a feather from a hotel pillow or from a piece of clothing sold in one of the retail shops. It was a perfectly formed bird feather possibly from the wing of a seagull. How did it get in the underground walkway? I whispered my thanks. My mood lighted. I felt confident that the choice I had been pondering was the best one for me.


Since then, whenever I’m faced with a decision, I find feathers wherever I go. If it is along an outside walkway, as if to prove that it isn’t just a random bird dropping a no longer needed tail feather, there will be lots of the them. Sometimes the feathers have been placed like a line of Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs.


“Find your way to your heart,” the breadcrumb line of feathers, whispers to me. I know it’s Jack’s way of saying “Yes, You’re doing fine. Go home, go inside your heart that is where the best choice lives and so do I.”


Butterflies and feathers, symbols of connection, metaphors for relationships that last well beyond the end of life on earth.

Ratty Roomy “Why Me” Sweatshirt


In those self-obsessed made for TV moments, my mood wears the ratty roomy “Why Me” sweatshirt. The color is faded mauve. A throwback hue from some misinformed fashion fad of decades ago. The mauve screams of “I should of….”

The sweatshirt is triple X huge so no matter whether my weight goes up or down, I have no problem fitting into it. I’m constantly pushing up the sleeves and catching the extra material on doorknobs. The fiber is permeated with a level of frustration and hopelessness and echoes, “If he/she would only…”

The fabric blend is 90% polyester, so it has no breathablilty. And it has the faint rancid odor of “If only this would happen then I could...”.

I’ve washed it in highly scented detergents. I spritzed it with organic hydrosols and I’ve used my best hand sewing skills to take up the sleeves and pull in the body. Once, I even used a home dye kit to change it from faded mauve to a deep forest green. I have spent lots of time and money on trying to change the outward appearance of my ratty, roomy “Why Me” sweatshirt. But the camouflaging hasn’t worked. The smell returns, the stitches fall out and the dye comes off in my hands.

Recently, one day, when my mood was shaken by the reaction of a friend to something I had done, I felt the shiver of victim ripple through my body. My first habitual movement was to go find my ratty, roomy “Why Me” sweatshirt. But I stopped. Thought about it for a moment and realized I hadn’t worn my sweatshirt in quite awhile. I had to think about where it might have gone.

Had I thrown it away and didn’t remember? Was it buried at the bottom of the laundry basket? I instinctively went to the hook on the back of my bedroom door, where it has hung for years. It was there limply hanging in the same position as always.

But instead my hand went to the hook next to it. And I took down my “ I’m At Choice” beret. The sequence panel across the front sparkled with lightness and celebration of "Let others be who they are. It has no bearing on who you are" .

The crushed purple velvet felt soft and comforting to the touch and whispered to me, "Trust yourself". The moment I placed it on my head, the victim chill left my body. I smiled in the mirror. The royal color of the beret brought out the deep hazel of my eyes. I winked at my reflection and realized, I look really great in this hat.

Rocket of Desire



I stand on the grassy knoll over looking the ocean at the La Jolla cove.
It is just before sunset. The sea has a glassy quality, almost like looking into a rippling mirror. The lawn slicks the bottoms of my bare feet and sends a shiver up my legs. I hold the rocket in my hands as I arch my neck to stare up and out at the subtle changes in the evening light show of the sky. The air is tingly on my skin, a mixture of dampness and salt. It smells of earth and sea blended together to make the perfect early fall evening perfume.


This is where I go in my mind to launch my rockets of desire.


In the book, The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent by Esther & Jerry Hicks, it says:
“As you explore the variety and contrast of your own life experience, natural preferences relating to the way you would like things to be are vibrationally emitted from you in the form of vibrational signals (similar to electronic signals). You are literally beaming these signals forward into your future experience.
Whenever a preference or desire is born within you as a result of something that you are living, that vibrational signal shoots forth like a rocket of desire and begins amassing power and clarity in your vibratinal future.”


In space travel one of the major obstacles is to harness enough energy to get from the ground into space. That’s where rockets come into the picture. I find this true for me in the manifesting of my desires and dreams. My mind fills with the possibilities of what I can create in my life. But then fear, disbelief and an habitual way of thinking come in and pop the cork, letting all my desires leak out onto the floor.


When a desire for my life starts to form as an idea, I imagine taking that bubbly excitement of possibility and gently capturing it as fuel for my rocket. I think of the movies of my childhood, Mary Poppins and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.


In Mary Poppins, the children go with Mary to visit Uncle Albert. He loves to laugh and his laughing is so joyful and uninhibited that he levitates off the floor. There is a similar scene in Willy Wonka. Charlie and Grandpa leave the group behind and drink some of the fizzy soda. The more they drink and laugh the higher they rise.


The common theme for me is the playful aspect of curiosity. The “What If?” in any dream. The laughter in looking at the positive potential instead of focusing on what I don’t like about the now of things.


Each time I center thought and feeling on a dream, each time I offer action toward my desires and each time I stay connected to the essence of the dream not the actual outcome, I am gathering fuel for my rocket.


I name my rocket before lift-off. I take a glittery pen, usually green, since green is my favorite color. I write in BIG BOLD letters across its’ gleaming side, the name of my desire,
TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR, TO BE ABUNDANT IN MONEY, TO HAVE RADIANT HEALTH.


The sun has set at the cove. The night sky is crowded with stars. I hold my rocket above my head and with a total body laugh; I launch my rocket of desire. I watch it accelerate as it shoots straight up, increasing thrust, amassing more energy with each tearing away of disbelief, and each letting go of habitual thinking.


Just before it disappears up into the upper atmosphere beyond where I can see with my physical eyes, it sends back a firework show of sizzling, popping sparkles that illuminate the sky. And then the remnants are gone. I stand for a moment. The energy of desire and the sweet caress of dreams hugs me. I arch my neck once more and scan the sky. And then I see it, way, way off. My rocket has exploded and it is now a twinkling star winking back at me as if to say, “I’m here and I am now part of your future.”

September Stomach Concerto


My morning walk yesterday, was at the time when the local activity was the first day of school. I don’t have children myself, so I was not personally involved with this annual autumn ritual.


The Mission Hills neighborhood, in San Diego, where I live, contains both a parochial and public elementary school. The area is small enough that the majority of the students walk to school. I’ve taken my morning exercise at this time other days during the school year, but the first day of school has a certain energy all its own.


I watched one Mom take a picture of her boy and girl on the front step of their house, the boy held up a small sign that said their names, new grade and the year, 2006. I’m guessing there is a photo album standing among the video game containers in the family room credenza, which has a similar picture for each starting school day of their childhood. It is only pulled out when a new photo is ready to be inserted. The pictures are giggled over and exclamations such as, “You’ve grown so much!” fill the air.


One Dad met his wife and son at the halfway point to school, presenting the nine possibly ten year old with a Grande sized hot drink from Starbucks. I wonder if this is the new first day of school ritual?


Moms and Dads, baby sisters in strollers walk in a pack with the first day of school student in the middle, their own personal entourage, Rock Star for a day.


My stomach telepathically picks up on all the big and little stomachs around me doing, the first day of school flips and squeezes. I call it my September stomach concerto. Of course my September stomach concerto does not only get my attention in September but any time I am starting something new. It is the internalized concept of anticipation, overlaid with fear.


Everyone I’ve ever met has his or her own personal rhythm of the September stomach concerto. Mine, starts with a hunger pain gnawing deep in the pit. The second movement is usually a series of intestinal spasms that rise into heart flutters. The final movement, depending on my perceived importance of the event, may be a wave of nausea or the head temple drums build to a pounding crescendo.


In the past, as my September stomach concerto played, I sat in judgment. I critiqued myself for being blah, blah, years of age and still feeling this way every time I started or experienced something new.


Recently, I had my nose pierced. I had wanted to do this for a long time. I love the look of tiny diamond stub, winking when I turn my head. But it was against the dress policy at the Hotel Del Coronado, where I worked. When I left my job, and for other reasons I’ll share in another blog, the time to be pierced was upon me.


I amazed myself, at how nervous I was! A full pit orchestra performed my September stomach concerto. The technician piercing my nose brought the levels down. He suggested breathing techniques to calm me. But his matter of fact question of “Sure you’re nervous. Have you ever pierced your nose before?” was the one that helped me shift.


Whether the answer had been yes or no, as it was in my case, every time is a first time; each event is a new experience. And beginnings start with fear wrapped anticipation.


So now when my concerto is in full swing, I whisper to myself, “ Okay, what lesson am I going to learn? What adventure is about to unfold? My curiosity joyfully shoos the internal critic away. My September stomach concerto is my signal that I am alive and willing to keep experiencing new things.

Chewing On A Frustration…


Over the Labor Day weekend I have chewed on a frustration that I can’t seem to identify all the ingredients of. But until I do I won’t be able to swallow.

I know the main ingredient has a history that dates back to childhood. Like a sturdy root vegetable it is something around, “ I’m not good enough.” We all have a root vegetable of our own with this same basic starchy consistency. Due to our individual life experiences, it might appear as a turnip, a rutabaga, or a parsnip.

Mine, I envision as a carmine colored beet. When I slice it, the reddish-purple dye stains my hands like a permanent tattoo. As if to say, “I’ll always be a part of you. I can’t be removed.”

I cooked my latest beet based frustration during a meeting I attended on Saturday night. Actually, I realize now that I prepared the frustration on Thursday but it was a simmer for a while recipe and Saturday the final ingredients went in. Since then, I have been chewing and chewing.

The meeting is a group that I have started of people, who want to focus on the Law of Attraction, which is the basic precept of manifesting your desires and dreams. We use the Abraham-Hicks material, specifically, the book “Ask and It Is Given” by Esther and Jerry Hicks. We call ourselves, The 68 Second Club. The name comes from one of the Abraham-Hicks processes in the book.

It states, “ a thought reaches a combustion point at 17 seconds of pure undiluted focus. It draws another thought to it and it is exponentially more powerful. At the end of another 17 seconds, 34 seconds total, the next thought combusts and by the Law of Attraction evolves to a higher level of energy. Again, another 17 seconds to 51 seconds continues the process and finally, if you can continue a pure thought for 68 seconds on any given subject, it will be on its way to manifestation.”

The main activity of the meeting is to do a 68 Second, (actually we do 2 minutes each), group manifestation on an individual member’s desire/dream that they would like to create in their life.

Joy erupts as we contribute our ideas of growing their desire. Lots of laughter is involved, even a hint of silliness but always, the intention of support of that person’s dream.

I went to the meeting that night carrying my big pot of beet frustration stew. It was the first time I was seeing most of the members of the group, since launching this blog on Wednesday. Except for one member, no one thus far had commented on reading my blog.

At the beginning of the evening, one person said, “I read your blog. Have you posted anymore?” But that was it. No one else mentioned my blog. I asked one dear friend if she had read it and she simply stated, “I didn’t have time.”

I added the seasoning of anger to my pot of Frustration. The ruddy red color of my stew darkened with the addition. The pot sat heavily and hotly on my lap during the meeting.

When it came time for me to have the group “68 Second” on my dream, I was mute. I had wanted the focus to be, this blog as a way to grow my writing career. But how could people in the group help co-create my dream, when no one even knew anything about my blog? I stirred in some herb of sadness.

Over the course of Sunday, I mixed in a dash of the spice of discouragement with a bit of the condiment, loneliness. The pot simmered and boiled, all day long. I tasted it from time to time, each spoonful with an undertone of bitterness and requiring massive chewing until my jaw ached.

Monday, when I went for my walk, I was able to leave the pot at home. There had been a glimmer of relief the night before when I had been reading a favorite passage, I review each day, in “ Ask and It Is Given”. This time the words, “No one is criticizing or looking for unwanted things,” removed the smell of stew from my nostrils.

How could I manifest anything, when my thoughts of sadness, anger, discouragement and loneliness were causing me to look for unwanted things? I was only seeing my sense of not receiving encouragement and validation that I am worth worthy.

It was in that moment I identified the additional ingredients, with my root vegetable, “I’m Not Good Enough”, in my stew of frustration. It is the leaves of “Affirmation”, the nuts of “Acknowledgment” and the tempeh of “Support”.

These are genuine needs I have, that will be little pearl onions along with my big carmine beet of “I’m Not Good Enough.” I can ask others for affirmation, acknowledgement, and support but most importantly, I can start to meet those needs by not looking for unwanted things. I can see if I am affirming, acknowledging and supporting myself inside, before going to the outside.

And when a frustration comes up, that I need to chew on a bit, after I meet my own needs, I might still wish my friends would affirm, acknowledge and support but I don’t need to chew on it like cow cud. I’ll be able to swallow it faster. And maybe, next time, I will make a great little beet salad, that is light and tongue tingling and oh so yummy.

I'm writing personal essays about my "Cottage Year". More about that another time. Here's one to last a long weekend. Happy Labor Day!

My Mel

The sour smell met me at the door to my bedroom. I scrunched up my nose peering apprehensively over to my bed. There in the middle of my comforter cover was a mound of puked up cat food. By the strength of the smell I figured it had been there for a few hours, which meant that the uneven circle of stomach bile had had plenty of time to seep deep into my sheets, down to the mattress pad.

This was not the first time I had been greeted with a chunky light brown pile of vomit when returning home. Chellie sat tucked under the micro throw that covered the ottoman of my living room chair. Exasperation colored my “Oh Chellie not again!”

I knew that the event of puking was long gone from her mind, in addition to the fact that she was only responding to the needs of her body not understanding that in human terms such activities would be easier to deal with on the tile of the kitchen or bathroom floor.

For me the frustration of seeing another vomiting episode was one part, “ I just put clean sheets on the bed yesterday!” And three parts, “ I’m not ready to face my 16 year old Chellie starting her final decline.”

She started out as Chelsea,” the psycho cat” when she and her littermate Venus came to live with my husband, Jack, and I six years ago. A friend was moving to India for 6 to 8 months and wanted animal loving people to provide a temporary home for her two feline sisters.

Having just faced the death of my boxer, Dempsey the month before, I was not ready to open my heart to another fur-coated ball of love. But Natasha was desperate, not wanting to abandon her kitties. I was cajoled into agreeing. My main thought being “It’s only 6 months, no time to get attached.”

I had grown up with cats. My childhood home seemed to have the permanent fixture of a Mother cat and mewing kittens in a brown box in the corner of the kitchen broom closet. Family movies show my sisters and I wheeling around baby doll dressed pusses in play strollers. We did have our share of toms. They roamed the neighborhood, brought back gifts of half eaten mice and birds proudly placed on the back porch mat. And we had a few crazy cats, the ones that didn’t get why they had to have humans around at all. They marked us all with their personalized signature of gashes and scratches mostly on our hands and arms but every once in awhile too close to an eye or ear.

When Chelsea and Venus came to stay, Venus was 96% true to her name. She was the storybook cat, all love, licks and purrs. The other 4% was rarely shown to humans but was reserved for her sister Chelsea. Venus knew how to trigger Chelsea’s uneven temperament. Thus they never were the kitty cat calendar sibs that curled up in a tangle of tails and paws. They always kept their distance from one another but an eye out for each other too.

To friends visiting, Venus was the delight, the one that came and rubbed her soft grey and white coat across your shin and looked up at you with sparkling clear baby blues. Chelsea needed to be coaxed to come out and when she did, she showed her dismay with a series of guttural growls and purposeful hisses.

The story often goes when you close off a room of your heart to try and contain the pain of loss, circumstances demand that you stand at the entrance and either crack the door a bit or slam it tight and lose the key. The “Kitty Sisters” as I came to call them in my missives to Natasha in India, pawed the door to my closed heart room open and snuggled up fur ball tight in the hole left by Dempsey’s passing. And in true fable fashion, Natasha found her love in India and ended up staying for a year. She returned to the States with her new husband, but by then the Kitty Sisters had become an intricate part of Jack’s and my life.

As the girls settled into our lives my nicknaming habit went into full swing. Everyone close to me is fated to have some silly derivative of his or her name label them for the length of our relationship. Jack, who was already a moniker for Jacob, became Jack a Boo. Venus was christened Vennie Bean and Chelsea morphed into Chellie.

We drifted into a comfy life of four on the bed at night. Vennie Bean keeping Jack a Boo’s baldhead warm atop his pillow. Chellie perched by my feet, emitting her now famous throaty growl each time I turned over and upset her position.

The day I sat in the chair at the Vet, the same chair, I had sat in six years before, when I cradled Dempsey while he took his last breath and this time it was to witness the passing of Venus, a month after Jack died; I monitored through a daze of grief, the once again collapsing room of my heart. It seemed surreal that Venus decided to follow Jack to the other side in such close course. “What about me?” I screamed feeling trapped inside my shrinking heart room. “Don’t I need a bit of comfort too?” I wondered if I’d get the kind of furball love I craved to keep me sane, from the psycho cat, Chellie. In the moments when I wasn’t overly obsessed with my own sadness, I questioned whether I could be a support to Chellie. Would she be aware that the one constant in her life since birth, her sister Venus, was no longer around?

After Jack’s death I felt the need to move from the home we shared into a smaller space. Each room of our house echoed with a vibe of memory. The scrape of the spatula on the frying pan as he flipped his yummy toad in a hole egg, made especially for me to start my day with a warming breakfast of protein and love. Sunday afternoons, punctuated with the roaring encouragement of “Go left, go left!” or “Oh my God, you coulda had that one!” while watching the football game. And the whispers that called to me from the bedroom walls of before falling asleep, nightly conversations.

Chellie and I moved into a small cottage in the same part of town. It offered me new walls to decorate, something I truly love to do, and a territory that was defined solely by the person I was becoming, but in an area of San Diego that I had grown to love and had established favorite haunts.

Over the next few months through my confusion of, “Now where did I decide to put the ice bucket?” or the often thought, “Did I sell that rug or decide to keep it?” I monitored Chellie’s behavior. I noticed that bit-by-bit aspects of her personality that I only saw glimpses of with Venus around began to emerge.

We have developed our routine of mutual support. My heart room hinges, rusted from grief tears, squeak each time I come home and she appears from wherever she had been napping to give a meowing hello. Working at my laptop she sits centurion-like in the small gap between the edge of the desk and the rim of the computer covering my arms with her warm kitty butt, flicking her silver flecked tail as if in response to a beat of music from an IPOD playing in her head. Demanding attention while I write is a copycat move from Venus; only Chellie still holds her outward defense, giving me less harsh, but still a growl when I try to work the keyboard from under her butt. When the ache in my arms becomes too much, I lift her off the desk to perch her someplace else close by. But within a few minutes she is back in position again.

I observed her favorite snuggle spots and tried to make them cozier. I put a blanket-covered pillow in front of the heating unit in the hall. Once after doing laundry I placed an extra comforter folded at the base of my bed before putting it away. Chellie called it her own. I left it there.

Now when she hears me pull out the chair at my kitchen table to sit down to a meal, she is immediately at my feet offering an insistent meow of “Lift me up, let me join you in eating. You don’t have to eat alone.” She waits patiently in my lap while I eat, sniffing the plate occasionally, every once in awhile enticed by a smell. The paw then comes out, gently padding my arm or face as if to say, “I’d like some, please.”

She snuggles so deep into my chest when I sit down to an evening of book reading or TV. Her little heart positioned directly over mine. Her hue changing blue eyes looking up at me. The purr of surrender bears witness to the psycho cat, allowing her scaredy cat fear to shed like a winter coat in spring.

With each development in our ever- evolving relationship, I’m touched to my soul by how in her kitty cat way she has chosen to not paw but battle ram her little calico swirled Siamese body against the door to my heart room. Her name mutates once again. Chellie has now become Chell-Chell.

Then the vomiting starts. Her once thick coat of black, silver- white and tan thins to bone peeking skinniness. I buy every kind of cat food in the store, wet, dry and gravy softened. I go on line for tips to tempt her to eat, and to calm the raging belly noises. We visit the vet and run tests. I push pills down her throat, syringe antibiotics into her mouth as she squirms in my lap. I shove the memories of going through the same routine with Venus before she passed and in human fashion with Jack before he died, from playing a continual looped horror movie in my head. The heart room shutters as if an earthquake is about to erupt.

She is showing signs of her 16 years of age. Her eyesight, I have always questioned, thinking that part of her psycho nature was because she didn’t see well, is now diminishing further. The usual kidney slowing and irritable digestion are listed as possible causes. But for now, the Vet leans toward her having eaten something on her once in awhile trips out the front door. Another round of antibiotics is prescribed and I buy special cat food directly from the Vet. In her recovery, she burrows deep under the sheets and blankets on the bed as if hibernating away the discomfort.

One evening she is cuddled up on my lap under the throw I have covering my legs, while I watch a Netflix. Her body is a little circle of emanating heat. I want to toss off the blanket because I’m too hot but don’t wish to disturb her. I so cherish when she is close and I can help her heal without coming after her with a syringe full of drugs.

Suddenly she pops out, jumps off my lap, sits in porcelain cat stillness in the middle of the living room and looks up toward the ceiling. She emits a series of meows, mews, and tongue clicks as if in response to questions being asked. Her head moves left to right as if reading off a page floating in the air above. I whisper to her, “Chel, who are you talking to? Is Jack here?” I have a deep belief and comfort in knowing and having experienced those who have crossed over, still being present. Chel-Chel through her life always talked to walls and chatted up possible unseen beings that seemed to come and spend an afternoon with her. But this is different. I have not seen her so animated since her illness began. Her concentration on watching the ceiling is so fixed. And then as if the lesson is over, she jumps back onto my lap and settles in once again.

Her progress back to health seems to step up a notch. Did she receive a command from on high, saying, “It’s not your time yet. Michele still needs you.” Was this an answer to my silent rant of “What about me?” in the Vet’s office when Jack and Venus passed a year ago? Whatever happened that night, Chel-Chel is still with me. And with this realization, the entrance way to my heart room floods with the light of gratitude. I know our time together is lessoning. But for now, she chose to stay, and with tears rimming my eyes, I pick her up in a gentle embrace and whisper, “Thank you, thank-you, Mel.” Chel- Chel is now my Mel.