My grief is a teenager that could drive a car

I'm having a melancholy day. My mom died 16 years ago today. And it's making me sad thinking about my 16th birthday. I totally though my mom would get me a car. I had NO reason to think that - we didn't have much money and it really wasn't her style, but I just wanted one so desperately. Instead, she gave me a typewriter. She said that some author (of course now I can't remember who) had said the best gift she had ever received was a typewriter. So that's what I got for my 16th birthday. I can see the beauty of that now. But at 16, I was profoundly disappointed. I literally looked inside the typewriter to see if there were car keys hidden in it. Kinda funny to think about it now. How clueless we can be when we're young. And unappreciative. If I would have known then I'd only share the planet with my mom another 9 years. Gulp.

Easter

Growing up, I looked forward to easter for two reason: Chocolate and a new dress. I've lost touch with Easter, the most important thing I've looked forward to the past few years around this time is coloring eggs at J&Ns. And this year, we didn't get an invitation to do so...

In thinking about Easters' passed, I've posted this image of Paul's SFMOMA drawing done in honor of the holiday, years ago.

Pretty pretty San Francisco

I took this last year, still continues to delight...

Walking with my friend Denie

A true friend is the rarest of all blessings. After our three+ hour walk & talk, on our way back along Crissy Field, this was our view:

And I received this later in my inbox:

let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you really love.
it will not lead you astray.

-rumi

I can't believe we're having to re-debate women's rights

If my mother were in a grave, she would certainly be rolling over in it right now. Maybe I need to join in, and escalate the conversation to the level of acknowledging the benefits of women's health and reproductive rights...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/womens-reproductive-rights_b_1345214.html

Am I too...

I made this self-reflective video a few nights ago. It's not really a personal inquiry, but a human inquiry.

Today 3.3 miles, yesterday 9.5

My gift to myself, in addition to the exercise and fitness of the walk itself, is to listen to a delicious audio-book as I walk. I am more than half-way through The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, and going back into the lives of Bloomquist and Lisbeth inspire me to get up and going out into the world, earphones in my ears.

Today I walked to 26th & Bartlet, after passing by Valencia WHole Foods to pick up some pad thai rice noodles. I carried them the entire way, continued on my walk, and looped up around Dolores Park, and came back down Church St.

Yesterday Val & I walked a mean 9.5 miles, all the way to Ft. Mason, around the Embarcadero down to South Park, and back home. I was sore when I got home. But felt much, much better after a hot bath. Then settled in for the red carpet lead-up to the Oscars.

Your are your own show... and it is on now

Moved by the honesty of Emmauel Carrere’s writing, I want to find my voice, find my path to the story I must tell.

I find solace and sadness, a similarity I am uncomfortable with, yet recognize, in my mother saying she was still lost at 50, and was unable to find herself when her children were around. We were each complicated, and broken in our own way, and definitely with us all around, or even two of us at home the same time, there was too much white noise, too much vibration and chaotic energy bouncing around our home. My mother has soft boundaries, and rarely enforced her own space. People came and went on their terms and convenience, she never turned anyone away. It has made me have difficulties asserting my own space, my boundaries when it comes to others and their needs. But it is not only that I am silent in articulating my needs, I often am not aware what my needs are, nor that they are being compromised for the comfort and benefit of others.

It is a sad tale, to be sure, that my father died 19 days after I was born. But is it not perhaps less sad then if he died a year, or five years later? Each of us three children feel like we had it harder, primarily for our placement in the situation. My sister, the oldest, she was five and had clear memories of her time with my father. My brother was only three, and has no memories of his time overlapping with our dad, and also has the torment that our sister actually got to feel his love and embrace, and carry those visions with her to adult hood. He has none. I seem the saddest case, having only a few select photos of my father and me together, him holding me in his hospital bed, his face thin and gaunt, his body frail with his dreary hospital gown hanging over his body, tubes strung into his arms. What heartbreak he must have felt, holding me, knowing that my life would be difficult, to be sure. What secrets did he hold in his heart, about my mother’s immaturity, her being ill-equipped to be a single mother to three sad and broken children, or perhaps about my sister’s demanding and difficult personality? Did he suspect she had a personality disorder, did he know she would demand total and complete acceptance, that she would be unwaveringly obstinate in the face of reason or concern for others? Did he know Justin would be lost amongst the female-dominated household, and that we would all drift to difficult sources to find love, since there simply was not enough to go around?

He was a man of God, he believed in a creator and I imagine he prayed that I would have the strength and ability to take care of myself, to find a voice and find a way in the world. I always gave him the credit for my intelligence, my excelling in reading, then math, and being assigned to the gifted class created at my middle school. I never gave my mom credit then, nor before she died, for also being smart, and capable, and that she really was doing the best she knew how, in spite of being overwhelmed, and totally unprepared for the discipline that would be needed to run a tight household. Therefore, our upbringing was chaos and all over the place. I have no memories of assigned bedtimes, or daily routines of teethbrushing or baths. I’m sure it contributes to my disdain today of friends that keep impossible schedules of nap and eating and bedtimes for their kids. Though I longed for more regimen instilled into my fibers, I criticize those who impose too much.

Carrere says that there is a saying that happiness is best understood in retrospect. I do not want that to be my case, I want to know how truly happy I am now, how much my life is of my own choice and doing, and how much I am in control of my own motivation. I am both the conductor and the soloist of this performance, the behind-the-scenes production crew, the ushers, and the collective orchestra. I am the ticket-takers and the PR department. I am also the audience, which is the hardest part to remember. I am not waiting in rehearsal for the audience to show up. My show is ON, it is going on right now. For me, by me. If others want to come and watch, they are welcome, but it is my show, and it must go on!

10 Days of silent meditation and no email

I gave myself an amazing gift, in honor of my year of being 40. I spent 10 days in silent meditation, sleeping on a concrete slab, using a wooden pillow, awaking at 4am every day, and meditating the better part of 10 hours per day.

I spent Nov 30-Dec 11 at Suan Mokkh in Southern Thailand doing a Thai Buddhist meditation retreat. The grounds we're simple and lovely, the meditation practice intense in a constant body-discomfort and self-focusing manner. Ten days passed slowly, yet with almost every minute filled with silence, meditating, washing (body, clothes, the grounds), eating, doing yoga, or soaking in the hot springs.

It was the most mentally difficult endeavor I have ever done. I was changed in a small yet significant way. I have not meditated nor done yoga much since the first few weeks after leaving the retreat. But I think about both every day. And that is enough to ensure I'll get back to it.

On departure day, a loving portrait with my special

lotus flower, that I watched open every morning

as I opened myself to the day through yoga

One month anniversary of my 41st birthday

January 1, 2012 at Rookees Sport's Bar, Ventura, CA

I think my father-in-law kinda likes that he got a "guy's girl" for a daughter-in-law. My request for my birthday? To watch the 49ers game. But, the local Fox affiliate wasn't playing the 49ers game, so we had to find a bar - and fast! - to catch the game. And lucky us... the Steelers game followed the 49er game, we could watch it from our same seats at the sport's bar! I had a bloody mary, then a whisky and coke, followed by a beer. Not bad for a 5-hour hall at the bar, watching football!

Hard to believe it's already been a month. But in some ways, I've done tons, too, in a month's time. A visit to North Carolina, then DC... and a week's visit from the Dupuis here for Chinese New Year.