What's Going On Here?

When I was little I knew the words "What's going on here"? usually meant trouble. I was pushing the envelope in a way that would have consequences. Surely what I am looking at now also has consequences. I am still watching myself discover what it means.

I have been observing how I use my unscheduled time. I am not proud to say that my best gobbler of time is Spider Solitaire. I like to think I can influence the cards by my attitude, that it cultivates single point focus, and helps me to unwind. These may all be true on occasion but the value gained is not commensurate to the time spent. I have known this for some time but Spider seems to be my default setting when I am bored.

Usually I like to write when I have an insight into some small behavior. I have no insight yet about this. Maybe it is enough to "fess up". I have lots of interests that I am exploring but not with enough determination and passion to become how I choose to spend my unscheduled time. How many things could I have gotten quite good at by now if I had channeled my Spider time into their pursuit.

This is not about beating myself up. Rather it is about becoming conscious. I hope it leads to different choices. Maybe. I often suggest that if people want to smoke, they totally enjoy every single puff and when it becomes habitual to put it out until they are loving it again. I think I will follow my own advice here and play Spider with my whole being and attention until I am drawn to something else or bored.
Perhaps then I will see how it fits into why I love my life so much.

Don't Touch Me!

We inherited a litter of puppies to find homes for this spring again. The itinerant workers who "own" the mom are never here when the puppies arrive so mom and brood end up down here. 2 got good homes, 2 disappeared and we are left with one. He is 3/4 Siberian Husky or Malamut. He does NOT want to be petted or touched. We call him Rootie since he loves digging.

Rootie is incredibly alert. He watches everything. He follows along at a distance and settles in a few feet away when I work outside. He licks my fingers and enjoys my food. He likes to come in but doesn't like to go back outside. He wants to be where the action is as long as he is on the sidelines out of reach. I presume he doesn't feel safe but I have no idea why.

Of course I am anthropomorphizing here, but he reminds me of myself. I mostly kept myself at arms length away from others, both physically and emotionally. For my part I was keeping myself safe but I also removed myself from the love and affection of others. I even found an acceptable way to do it. I took pictures. I can't play because of the camera and taking photos. I never did anything with them. I didn't even take many. It was safe. I could be there without getting too close.

I keep telling Rootie that I would love to pet him, that it would feel good. And besides it is the puppy's job is to give comfort by allowing such contact. He is not impressed. He is laying here 6 feet away, watching. How much of my life did I stay arm's length away while complaining no-one loved me? Far too much. Now I am recognizing that I was the one who shunned the contact. I was keeping myself safe. Safe and separate.

From where I sit now, I see no danger. That obviously wasn't how I felt growing up. It's curious that I waited until dad died to pull much of this together. We had gotten 90% of the way there but even then, in the last weeks, there was a part of me saying, "Don't touch me. I don't want to hurt so much when you die." I used the excuse that he wasn't as mentally available as I would be needed. I guess I trained him not to try to touch me. I didn't know how to touch him at those deep places then either.

I hope he knows how much more highly I have come to regard him. I hope he helps me sort out the couple areas of my life I know I still have in a tangle because of beliefs I built keeping myself safe. finally I feel myself becoming softer. Maybe touch is a good thing. Rootie, are you listening? You can train me not to touch you but we both will miss out on something special.

Lusher than Ever.

I learn a lot from nature. My spirit is impacted by nature. I was bee-bopping along with the early greening of trees this year. Most of my plants were 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule because of the unseasonably warm March weather. The new shoots were out and displayed a tender green. It was awesome. Then the Easter freeze of 2007 hit.

I knew the bad weather was coming. I protected what I could. I was not prepared for the devastation, especially to the shrubs and trees. I drove down the backroads thinking everything had been torched. The fresh shoots were hanging limp and brown or black. This included all the Oak trees, various nut and fruit trees. The Bradford pear were black on the north side and green on the south. I wished I had taken photos but then again it was so awful. I despaired of much green to soothe my eyes this year and worried that many trees would not make it.

The specialists said don't prune anything. Give it all a month or two. I shook my head and wept inside. Little happened that first month. Then some trees started putting out new shoots, not just leaves but entirely new branches. I looked up into my Butternut tree and saw 4-5 green bunches of leaves and wondered if they could do enough photosynthesis to sustain that great tree. Turns out those clusters were the pioneers.

Now the trees are more lush than ever I have seen them. And drooping from among the leaves are the blackened vestiges of life frozen to death. Even the trees that stayed barren longest have now begun regreening. The Katalpa tree even produced new blossoms. I am already thinking that the autumn colors will be spectacular. I know everything is still fragile in the sense that a drought could really stress the trees that have now put out so much energy to restore their foilage. I am thinking about what the wildlife will do this winter without the fruit and nut crops.

I am left knowing nature appears to be more resilient than I think I am. I don't know that I have been tested to the point where I have had to call upon my reserves so deeply in order to survive. Sometimes I dote on my self pity when things seem not to go my perferred way. I find myself thinking that life is too hard and I don't want to do this. But sooner or later, this too passes.

I take strength in watching this miracle of regenertion and hope I follow suit when I feel burnt to the core. In the meantime, things are greener than green. My eyes are bathed in spring greens. My heart is calm. The tears have dried. Life is good.

My Exotic Life

I wrote a friend about having a bamboo sale. She wanted to know where I got it and what inspired me to do such a thing. She didn't know I had been growing it for the past 9 years and have sizable groves of 5 types. The timber bamboo is getting to be 2 inches in diameter which is great for this far north. I realizied I do lots of fun and unusual things. I summarized some of it to her:

"Actually I live a pretty exotic life. I live on a farm with llamas and bamboo. Work in a dome I helped build, study homeopathy, do arts and crafts of all varieties and started martial arts training when I was 55. I have a thirst for learning and personal growth and write a great blog reflecting on my life learnings. I make it a priority to walk my talk. How cool is that!"

Sometimes I find myself thinking I am bored. Who am I kidding? The more I pay attention to this moment, and take in as much sensory input as I can, the more I see I am creating a very cool life. And it has generally been on a low budget.

There are times I get swept up in thinking I ought to make lots of money, become famous, or travel first class. I think I would welcome such experiences but they are not my target anymore. I created that photo collage of my life after my dad's death and I am realizing I have always been loved, even when I thought I was alone. And I have participated in experiences others would never consider. I did an Apache style vision quest with 72 hours alone, fasting on a mountain after 6 months prep. I took a seminar in blowing glass. I wondered in the wilderness of unloved and found my way back to my truth of being totally loved.

Why do I love my life so much? I am waking up and living it these days. All I can say is YES! I going to go see how much my timber bamboo has shot up in the last 24 hours. I can almost hear and see it grow. Yesterday it was up 10 more inches. Sometimes I think my growth has been as fast of late.

Actually, there is something interesting about bamboo growth: 80% of it is underground. The visible canes emerge and shoot every spring and grow like crazy for 2 months time. Those canes will never get taller or fatter than they do during that time. They will get stronger and they provide food to the roots which will strengthen and send up new shoots next year that are fatter and taller. My growth is probably a lot like that. Tons of it happens in the invisible arena, fed by my sensory input and actions, and periodically it becomes visible to myself and others around me. Down the road I will harvest the energy that is now going into my roots. I can hardly wait to see the size of my next shoots! WaaahhhWhoooo!

Boo Hoo Hoo

Boo Hoo Hoo, or WAAAAAAH, is my sound of of resisting what is. It is the sound of self pity. I get to play with wearing the happiness hat or not wearing it. I wasn't wearing it yesterday or the eveniing before that.

Things weren't going as I had planned or wanted. I felt overwhelmed and alone. But life happens at the intersection of events. I scheduled a sale of bamboo plants for this weekend. I didn't think through the timing or what was involved. I thought I had help I didn't have on Thursday, nice strong help to dig bamboo plants. I didn't. Watching me try to dig bamboo is truly laughable even though I was feeling sorry for myself.

Picture this. A 9 year old established grove of bamboo, climate zone 5. The cames are .75 - 1.5 inches in diameter. I pick my clump, place my shovel, climb upon the shovel top with all the force I can muster. The shovel goes in 1 inch. I hold onto the shovel with one hand and another bamboo cane with the other and begin rocking side to side to get the shovel down another inch or two. After a dozen wholehearted attempts I have loosened around the edge maybe 5 inches deep. It has been 45 minutes. I go looking for a crow bar to try and pry it up. Yes, and the sale is tomorrow. I have no bamboo dug and not much hope of getting any dug. I tried another clump I thought might be easier. Huh! I can't cancel the sale. The ads are in the papers. My roommate has gone to England for her grandson's graduation. That is when I sat on the ground whining. Besides that, I am too exhausted to get up.

Worse than going through it is watching myself go through it and knowing full well it is my own creation. It was my bright idea and I set the dates and placed the ads. Well, I got to the computer, finished writing the sheet of bamboo facts and care. Made indentifying labels and went to bed. This morning I didn't know if I wanted customers or not. I didn't know what I would do but dreaded no one showing up. I had one couple today. They helped me dig. And then my strong man showed up. Yeah!!

Did you ever see the old cult classic movie "Harold and Maude"? There was a scene where they were driving over a bridge with a tree standing bolt upright in the pick up truck. I remembered it as bamboo but it probably wasn't. 4 clumps went riding down the country road, off to start a new grove. My strong man and I dug Bamboo for the next few hours. I am ready for tomorrow and have a brand new bent, really bent, shovel to show for my efforts. Actually my strong man has that as his trophy.

Would it be so very hard to simply trust that everything will work out from the beginning? I was aware enough to observe my wimpering and whining but not enough to put my happy hat on, except when I saw the gyrations of my trying to dig bamboo.
That would be one for funniest home videos.

Learning to stay present and make conscious choices is great fun as long as I remember I fell down many times while learning to walk. I need only to keep getting up and affirming this is why I love my life so much.

Flirting with Fly Paper!

Fly paper and sticky traps attact with a lure and hold one fast until the life force is sucked out. Pet peeves are one of those fly papers. Some things hold such a charge to my righteous mind that I won't let it go, even if it is sucking my energy.
Just last night I listened to someone wrestle with such a theme. It was clear to me she was stuck onto the fly paper and not able to listen right then.

Ha! Less than 24 hours later, I find myself buzzing around my own fly paper. My righteous indignation gets riled up over what I call bait and switch marketing techniques. The offender is my car dealership. We have an ongoing battle. Every quarter I get reminders and coupons to get my car serviced. Oil change about $22. OK. In the small print it says it may be different on various models. My model is $36-40 for a oil change. Almost twise the advertised price. I figure they know my name, my service timing, my mileage. So why don't they know I have a hybrid and send me an appropriate coupon? I get riled up everytime I get a reminder and everytime I even think about getting my car serviced. I am running around on the same hamster wheel I was watching someone else run last night.

I am right! I have gone round and round with them. Doesn't seem they are able to delete my name from the mailing list longer than 6 months. They say that service is farmed out and they don't have control. I beg to differ. The engager always has control or should have. Today I had a letter written in my mind to send to Honda, the dealership owner, the service manager and even to God. I am already unlikely to to buy the same brand because of this but I love my car, just paid it off, and want to keep her healthy. I don't want bad vibes around or about her.

So what are my choices? Get off it. Yes, but I'm right! Take her to be serviced somewhere else. I will look into getting the expensive rarely used oil in bulk and taking it to my local service man. I did call to find out the value of that coupon if I had a regular car. We are talking $2-3 here. That put it in perspective. All of this energy drain over $3 bucks. Who is the crazy one here? I'm the one with my hand still in the air. So today I will request a proportionate coupon reduction, and go in knowing what it will cost.

I am still right but not happy. Happiness is a choice. Would I rather be right or would I rather be happy? I choose happy. The fly paper will have to change its lure and I get to be more vigilant at noticing when I am flirting with leaking my energy through righteousness. In the meantime, I love my life so much when I see a trap and avert it, at least this time.

The Bamboo is Shooting!

I grow bamboo, 5 varieties of bamboo. Bamboo is awesome. It has different growth patterns than most plants in that each shoot does all of its growing in only 60 days. The height and diameter is determined prior to its emergence. The cane gets stronger from one year to the next but not thicker or taller. The source of vitality is in the roots. The stronger and more established the roots, the greater the diameter of the cane and the greater height. I can see the diameter of each cane from the moment it breaks through the earth. It grows fast, sometimes 1-3 feet a day!

Kentucky is a little far north to get really fat timber sized bamboo. But every year so far, the canes get a little broader and taller. So I wait and watch for the shooting to begin to see how fat they will be this year. I then prune out the smaller canes of previous years. The last variety, my timber bamboo, started shooting today!

Bamboo is a case of so below as above. I always know where the roots are heading because of the trail of canes that appear on the surface. I can see the vitality of the root reflected in the size of the shoot. It is a lot like life. The vitality and driving force are invisible. The fruit of the invisble always show up in life. If I want my bamboo to grow in a straight row type hedge I have to "encourage" the roots to grow in certain ways and thwart roots that want to go different way. I have to do the same thing with the stories I tell myself about how thigs are and what they mean.

I have been listenig to an audio program called "Holosync" for some months now. It uses technology to support a variety of brainwave patterns. I have now completed the first level. In proceeding to the next level, I have the option of choosing and recording 5 minutes of affirmations to be imbedded into my next holosync program. I am choosing how to shape and prune the root system of my mind, which will produce the shoots of reality in my life.

Of course I started with my umbrella question, "Why do I love my life so much"? I decided to use all questions instead of statements. I have been writing down ideas for these core questions for months now. I arrived at 22 finalists and submitted the recording yesterday. I am eager to see how I will respond to the next level soundtrack and to my questions approach. Let the bamboo shoot! What will this input shift in my life? I am eager for the shoots to appear!

Spinning Burnout

I am on a chatline on which someone is asking all the typical burnout questions. Why am I doing this? Do I really want to help people? Are the financial rewards sufficient reason to do something I don't love anymore? Did I ever love it? The questions go on and on. Bottom line was she didn't find joy in her work and she couldn't be a real therapist until she found that. Until then she was just working.

I have been somewhere like that recently when I was struggling to accomplish specific goals. Turned out that they weren't really my goals but rather ones that great copywriters lured me into seeking. In my reflection process I re-membered that joy is what I bring to something not what I get from something. Happiness is a choice. Happiness is not based on reasons. Someting does not make me happy or unhappy. Happy is the color of my glasses, the color of my world view point.

Back when I went to school, Occupational Therapy talked about "therapeutic use of self". It meant that who I was and how I related to a patient was as much a part of treatment as the exercises or activities we were doing. Maybe it was the real treatment. So the quality of me that I bring to my clients or to my job is the joy not the job. I have had sales clerks or even strangers change the course of my day. I am remembering the crosswalk guard whose smile and wave made my day and caused me to alter my day just to drive by that location at that time.

The more I am realizing that I am part of the great human family and participating in that family, the more I perceive just how much my being effects others.
This lone wolf has found herself in a pack. There are different assumptions and certainly a different spin. Burnout has little to do with job or resposibilities and lots to do with trying to run solo in a team sport called life. Questions about my beingness may be more important than questions about my doingness. Burnout comes from seeking answers outside instead of inside. Asking why do I love my life so much has let me see my insides reflected back to me from the outside.

Wandering in the Fog Bank?

Awhile back I wrote that I was leaving myself a trail of breadcrumbs to find my way back to the spiritual ah-ha I was experiencing at the time. I hoped I wouldn't need my trail so soon. One of my crumbs has to be my mastermind group who noticed that I haven't been blogging and wondered why. I described myself as wandering in the land of "I don't want to". I don't want to write. I don't really want to see clients, I don't want to be pulled out of my fogbank. I thought it might be grieving but that might make it too easy to act unconscious.

Not wanting to doesn't mean I am not taking action. Quite the contrary. When I look at my week I have cleaned the workroom and refrigerator. I have caught myself doing things to cross them off my list and stopped myself, refocused and did them as if they were the most important thing in my life. I have started eating all by itself for its own sake. I am not eating while driving, not eating while watching TV, not eating while reading. I am eating to savor the food and nourish my body. I have paid off my car loan. I have found a glassworking class I want to take.

So I feel as though I am in a fog but I am accomplishing much. Maybe I am mislabeling what is happening here. Perhaps my thought machine is quieter. I am thinking that I am in a daze rather than noticing I may be more in a natural flow in which efforting has given way to flowing. Maybe calculating and judgement is giving way to intuiting and accepting. If that is the case I am not so lost after all. The rewriting of my life that has taken place recently is simply spilling over into my present life.

Why do I love my life so much?

Getting to Here from There

All of the introspection leading up to and following my Dad's death has made me wonder how I got from animosity to love but also how did I get into such animosity in the first place. If you were one of those who stayed close to family all your life, this post may seem peculiar.

Dad was tough, no question about that. He drank but I'm not sure when that became a problem. His voice instilled sufficient fear so spankings were seldom needed or used. I compared my situation with that of others and thought they were given things I had to earn. It appears I took isolated instances and generalized them into great themes. Like I probably saw dad try to kiss mom when he had been drinking and her push him away which led to my having a judgement everytime he tried to kiss her. How could he want her to kiss him when he came home from work and she was cooking? Or when she was dying and noone knew that she was sick, she didn't want him to buy another rental house but I thought she was against all of his real estate dealings. Somehow he became responsible for her death in my mind. And he yelled. And I couldn't or wouldn't stay and be the mom after she died. What stories did I have to tell myself to move out on my own?

I was civil but distant. I was angry. I believed I had to do it all on my own. I moved out of state so dad couldn't just drop in on me. I called home every few months. I didn't think anything of it. I didn't see my parents call their parents very often. We went to vist South Dakota and Minnesota every second or third year.

Dad gave me a loan to have time to sell some land rather than lose it. About that same time I was living with someone who called home every week. It had never occured to me that this might be appropriate. So I called more often, like once a month. Then I had an opportunity to be with someone who was waiting for the grown kids to call, someone who refused to be a burden but was clearly affected by a call or the lack of a call. That made an impression. Calls home were superficial in my opinion but I increased the frequency. Dad and Virginia, my step mom, seemed grateful. I wrote monthly with my loan payment.

I visited every 18 months or so. A couple of times they came to visit me or we rendezvoused at a navy ship reunion. Somewhere in there, I understood the importance of the navy to him and how effected my childhood. I gradually became more grateful.

Another leap in relating came through my studies in homeopathy. Vega, my instructor often brought his 2 daughters to class. As I watched him parent them, I felt reparented myself. I started to understand what "honor thy father and thy mother" meant. I grew in appreciation for the way I was raised and the pitfalls I avoided because of the way I was raised. It was one of those classes that inspired my classmate and I to swap family stories as we drove down the mountain. That helped me remember the good times in addition to the tough times.

I had made great progress but even as late as January of this year I struggled with what to want for my Dad. His quality of life was absent from my perspective. I didn't know whether to pray for his release or his life. My homeopath suggested that was a theorethical thing and that I find a way to realize how I was connected to Dad.
After much sighing, I opened a space to find that father-daughter connection.

Dad was in the hospital, seeing dead people. I set about reflecting. This is when I made the lists of things he did that I felt good about, things that he did that were good for me but that I didn't like, and things I faulted him for. I saw the good far outweighed the bad but my little girl emotional fear still outweighed the all the good. I wrote him a letter recalling good times and bad times, asking forgiveness for anything I might have done that hurt him, and giving him permission to go if it was time. My sister read it to him. He didn't remember. I read it to him again when I got there.

It was my sister who had the fantasy of a family reunion while he was still alive. She had that idea from an episode of "Little House on the Prairie". I got on the computer and helped it happen. I went a few days early to help it flow. It was a surprize. It was amazing. The last time all siblings were together was 1994.

This brings me to this last trip to help plan the funeral and celebration of his life. Now I am a genuinely loving and apprecitive daughter. Somewhere in there we healed and my heart is opening.

Why do I love my life so much?

Grounding the Ephemeral

Perhaps this feeling of connectedness has been a spiritual experience of sorts. A great AH-HA that will fade away with time. There has been some spill over into life. I am gentler with myself. I am gentler with others in the sense of being more present to them and more compassionate. I don't seem to be looking out for my personal rights and interests in the same way. I am not trying to be different; I am noticing many places where I am.

Given that I have had great insights in the past and then forgot only to remember them again some eons later, I am looking to ground this new community sense. I am leaving myself breadcrumbs along the path so I can come back here and remember this time of grace. Better yet, I intend to instill this new perspective into my waking life.

I am being grateful when I observe I am responding with greater presence. I am trying on different reponses when my impulse is to behave from irritability. I made a collage of my life using copies of my Happy photos. It has photos relating to various turning points, bursts of creativity, people who tweaked my direction and bold snippets of text to remind me of what I now think I know. There is room to add more as I contiue my journey. I won't need a slide show at my death; my life is already compiled.

Even this blog is a way for me to ground my experience. Asking the question "Why do I love my life so much"? is helping me to pay attention to interactions that I might have overlooked in the past. This blog also gives me a way to remember. It may also be a force in my evolution. Scientists make an effort to research using double blind designs because of the observer effect. Questioning. observing and posting accelerates and I hope, grounds, my process. Maybe it encourages someone else in their journey.

Rewriting History

Not so very many years ago I would look at childhood photos of myself and see a sorrowful and withdrawn child. A few years ago I noticed I didn't look so sad in those photos any longer. I just looked normal. Now I look at those same photos and see a smiling, happy child with a twinkle in my eyes. What happened here?

I know I changed the stories I tell myself. I used to tell myself I was a breech baby because I didn't want to be on the planet. After all, I was bathed in fear vibes while still in the womb. Dad had fallen off a roof, broke his back and both ankles. They said he'd never walk again. Mom wasn't allowed see him, being so pregnant at the time with me. so naturally, life was hard for me and I had a story to justify it. I felt alone.

Perhaps my photos became "normal" about the time I was searching for stories of what was good in my family a few years ago. I wasn't looking then.

I first saw the smiles and twinkle while looking at photos for dad's memorial. I am so puzzled by the shifting perspectives. I am convinced that the photos themselves changed, not just the eyes seeing them. I feel myself connected to my family in a different way now and through that, I feel more connected to the human family as a whole.

I once thought it noble to consider myself a "self made woman" now that seems to be an arrogant position. Clearly I stand on the shoulders of my parents, my siblings and even countless others both unkonown and unknown. I really am loving my life more now. Even the memory of feeling alone is fading away.

My history changed as I resorted stories and gave them a new spin. It might not even be a new spin. It might simply reflecting the change order in which stories I think of first. My "present time" has changed dramatically. My future trajectory has made a radical shift.

The Stories I Tell...

I got to Seattle on Saturday. The service was scheduled for the following Friday. I took an active role in shaping the service. My sister and I worked from 7 Am till midnight everyday. When was writing his obituary my sister said I made it seem that he led a colorful life. If fact he did.

One of our early decisions was to take resposibility for speaking about dad instead of leaving the task to the minister. We asked the minister to do the spiritual comfort part; I would speak of the themes of his life. I am the eldest. I have worked consciously to heal my relationship with him.

I shape who I am becoming by the stories I tell myself about others and my experiences. The stories I would have told about my dad are far different now than they would have been years ago. They are different than they would have been a couple of weeks ago.

My stories changed radically at least 4 times in the recent 30 years. The first was an evening lecture in which the speaker suggested that we choose our parents before we are born. I couldn't see why anyone, meaning me, could possbily choose to be born into a family where the dad drank and had such a temper as my did and where my mom would die when I was only 19. I stomped about inside my head in a rage. Eventually, the idea had appeal in that if I chose my parents and a board outline of my lessons then I wasn't a victim. It gave me a kind of power.

The second took place in New Mexico. My dad and stepmom were visiting and we were all at a neighbor's house for lunch. My dad and our friend Clint began discussing their time in the military and in WWII. I had never heard my dad speak of the war before or since. He was not sharing with me but I was allowed to overhear their conversation.

I knew dad had joined the navy under-aged as an escape from his family. He credits the navy with making him a man. As I heard the stories of discipline he went through I understood how he came to raise us in the way that he did. In a way we grew up in a boot camp. Understanding this gave me insight and I softened towards him to some degree. We were civil as before but I started to call more often.

Did I say dad had a temper and was irritable? There wasn't physical abuse, I was just afraid of him. That little girl fear dominated my interactions with him. The third story changing event came as Peggy and I drove from Flagstaff to Phoenix after homeoplathy class. I don't remember what in class prompted us, but we began swapping positive dad stories. She would tell one and that would spark me into a memory I had forgotten. I began remembering family vacations, father daughter breakfasts, fishing trips, and times when he was there for me. My pre-occupation with his tone and manner had hidden all the good times. Who knew?

The fourth shift happened just last week as we shifted through photos and stories getting ready for the service. I know people mellow as they age. Dad did. He also stopped drinking. My sister ran a daycare that dad visited. The kids had a couple of nicknames for my dad. One was "Silly Grandpa" and the other "Rudolph". Who was this person? I think I would have lost my head if I had ever even thought to call my dad either of these names. It was a whole different side I had never seen but could imagine. He was strict but loving with the grandchildren and even better with the great grandchildren. I started to see and remember my dad as a family man. It only took 56 years and his death to see it.

I have lots of stories now to illustrate 4 themes in his life that he taught by example: 1. Never quit, 2. live big and ride the waves, the ups and downs of life, don't seek the always placid waters, 3. be ahead of the times by seeing the potential and taking action, and 4. be a family man.

You know, if I was looking at a book of potential fathers and I saw dad's photo with the caption underneath saying irritable, tempermental, drinking problem, but never quits, lives big, is ahead of his time and a family man, I would choose dad. Knowing everything I know now, I am glad that I did!

Go in Peace; Return in Peace

My dad died. I received word late Friday night. It was expected. It was sudden. Just the sunday before, I thought he might live a few more months. I was no longer listening for the phone call. He died peacefully in his sleep, without drama and trauma.

My habitual pattern would have been to stay in class, fly home on Sunday as planned, fly out to Seattle on Wednesday or Thursday, attend the services, and fly home on Saturday. I fell asleep with that plan, continued it into the wee hours and got up knowing I was on my way to Seattle that day. My friends helped me book flights. I can only attribute this change in pattern to being open to why I love my life so much.

I stopped at my homeopathy class and waited for my teacher and mentor, Vega Rozenberg. He held me as I cried, and blessed me to go in peace and to return in peace. His words reverberated in my mind at the most emotional of times and gave me comfort. They still act as my rudder.

My homeopathy class is also my personal growth laboratory. Because of these studies I had already made peace with my dad. Before these studies I was a dutiful daughter, which was already far from the resentful daughter I once was. As a result of class I was a loving daughter.

I remember one class we were asked if we had become who we were because of our parents or through our own efforts. I said it was by my own efforts. I was wrong.
I realized my error a few months later and wrote a letter to Vega telling him so. The events of the past week have shown me that I still lacked clarity. The truth is that I not only became who I am because of my parents, but that I stand on the shoulders on my parents. I am not alone in this world and never have been. It was my illusion.

I have put on a new pair of glasses. The assumptions that protected my self isolation no longer work. What will life look like as I move ahead? Why do I love my life so much is taking on a fresher and warmer hue.