My Seat on the Bed

There are days, like today, when I write My Seat on the Beach from my seat on the bed. It is what I call a fibromyalgia smack-down day. I don't know what brought it on. I slept well; nonetheless, I woke up with burning pain throughout my neck, shoulders, back, hips, gluts, and legs. An army must have marched over me during the night...several times. (Or it could have been FuBu.)

I know I need to be still today. When fibro speaks, YaYa has learned to listen...with reverence. The price of inattention is too steep: days of pain, days of insomnia, days of poor coordination, confused thinking, and memory lapses. Even if I rest today, there is no guarantee I will be better able to function tomorrow. But I can guarantee if I ignore my body and push through, I will feel worse...both physically and emotionally tomorrow.

How do I keep myself still and let my body and soul rest? Let me tell you about the view from my seat on the bed. It keeps me thankful despite my discomfort:

I live on the edge of a eucalyptus grove in a condo with a reverse floor plan; that means, my bedroom is downstairs (second floor level) and my living room is upstairs (third floor level). My bed faces the balcony window which faces the trees. Its like living in a tree house, only warmer.

Its very breezy today and the eucalyptus trees are swaying with the sensuousness of my friend Salle as she hulas. The sun shines through the grove highlighting different branches and spaces between the trees as it arches across the sky.


Earlier this morning, I watched squirrels chase each other up, down, and around the thick trunks of the tree in front of me. Someone once told me when you see squirrels chasing each other up and down, the chaser is probably marking his territory for the chasee. However, if they are going around and around, it means the female is leaving her scent to help the male determine if she is fertile. No, I have never been privy to what happens at the end of the chase! But sometimes, one will land on the balcony and eat some of the seeds that have fallen out of the bird feeder.

Let me tell you about the birds because I am aware of them before I even open my eyes. I know Spring has arrived when the grove begins to sound like a jungle again. The call and response of my feathered friends creates a symphony that wakes me up and delights me. Then the squirrels begin their chatter, and before I know it, FuBu is running back and forth on the bed, making her "ack, ack, ack, ack" noise at the commotion outside.

There is a tree right outside the window to the left of my bed. As that tree regrows it leaves, it will soon be dancing from the sparrows singing in its hair. But for today, just one sparrow sits in the crook of two branches and sings for FuBu and me.

 It is the wonder of nature that allows my spirit to rest when my brain is egging me on to get up and take care of business. Its the birds and the trees, the sun and the squirrels that remind me of this scripture: "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalms 46:10.) Before I know it, I am humming the song, "His Eye is on the Sparrow."

And because I am sitting in my seat on the bed, with my laptop, I visit You Tube and find the rendition of the song, sung in the movie: Sister Act 2, by Tanya Blount and Lauryn Hill. (Enjoy and be blessed!)




Amen...and Amen.

Moving to the Beat of a Different Drummer

"If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away. " --Henry David Thoreau

 Or...perhaps she has fibromyalgia and just can't move as quickly as everyone else.

Perhaps she aches so much that on some days she can't move at all.

Perhaps she is so fatigued that she can't even hear the music.

Or...perhaps her fibro fog is so thick she can't  distinguish the beat.


We fibromyalgia sufferers are not lazy, we are not party-poopers, we are not hypochondriacs.

We are brave people who are dealing with a poorly understood illness.

We are trying to live our lives as fully as possible on a limited amount of energy per day.

Sometimes it really helps when our companions are willing to slow down and move to the beat of our drummer.

A Delicate Balance

A visitor recently questioned me about the stacks of river rocks he saw throughout my home and on the balconies.

"What are these," he asked in a curious little boy kind of way.

"They're rocks," I replied.

"Yeah, but what are they for?"

For a moment I was stumped.

I have used these smooth stones to adorn my space over the past few years, after once seeing an impressive number of them along the perimeter wall of a local beach. Stones, washed up from the sea, not of uniform size, placed precariously one on  top of another. They spoke to me then; they speak to me now.

Each stack is a testimony to aspects of life: the startling beauty of nature in its nakedness; the power of turbulence to shape, smooth, and polish the rough and rugged; and the harmony present in simplicity.

 Lately, these rock altars have reminded me of the balance which has become the essential tempo of my life; for, I live with a chronic illness that drains me of energy in a minute, visits me with pain for hours, and can rob me of sleep for nights on end. I am one of 10 million Americans who suffer from fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disorder characterized by:
                                                    
                                                too little energy
                                                    on top of
                                       impaired memory and concentration
                                                     on top of
                                        not enough restorative sleep
                                                    on top of
                                   widespread musculoskeletal aches and pain
                                                    on top of
                                              soft tissue tenderness
                                                     on top of
                                     too many mental and physical demands

Each day, I must strike a workable balance between these asymmetrical elements of my physical world and the desires of my spirit for inner peace, love, joy, and acceptance.

My stone altars are a testament to what a delicate balance that is!



  
                              

The Message in the Bottle

Two years ago, on my 53rd birthday, I took off my wedding band. It was a man’s wedding band: gold with a gold and copper strand (appearing pink) intertwined with a gold and bronze strand (appearing green) down the middle of the ring. Chaz had the same band, three sizes larger.

 I wanted the man’s band. It had more heft than the typical woman’s delicate ring. I was making a weighty commitment and the size of that band seemed symbolic of the stoutness of my devotion.

For the next thirteen years, I only took the ring off when I wanted to scratch an itch underneath it. Then the day arrived when it was no longer appropriate to wear. He was gone and he wasn’t coming back!

So what to do with the ring?

I’d like to say that originally I sought an honorable method of disposing of it. But no, I took the mad woman route at first. I tried to burn it in a cauldron with thirteen years worth of anniversary , birthday, and no-special-occasion cards! (Did I really think I could destroy gold with the heat of a match? Or was I trying to transmute it based on the intensity of my ire?)

Next I tried to pawn it…or at least find a jeweler who would be willing to transform it into another piece of jewelry. No such luck. The braided segments of gold mixed with other metals made the ring unlikely for any other use.

Clearly the time was not right to dispose of the symbol of my marriage because no viable option was coming to mind. So, I decided to sit with the ring, and the betrayal, pain, and loss it represented, until I could find a way to break through to a place where I could let it go with love.

I purchased a gold bird’s nest in which to place the ring, covered it up with gold confetti hearts for another year, and let it rest amidst a stack of books and articles espousing the virtues of a spiritual divorce.

When I turned 54, I revisited the ring question. A year had past, yet I had not received any guidance from my Higher Power about what to do with the ring. I purchased a heart-shaped alabaster  box, with a dove on the lid, and placed the band there for safe keeping. In the meantime, I set about collecting photos from my marriage, cutting them into teeny-weeny pieces, and burning them in the fireplace!

My divorce was finalized on February 14 of this year—Valentine’s Day. (How bizarre is that?) In the ensuing months, I have continued to do the very personal work of letting go: experiencing the grief, accepting the reality, feeling the loss, and trusting that my Higher Power is in control and everything is working out as it should.

The hardest part? Forgiving Chaz…and myself… for …everything. (Honestly, I think I will be recycling through that stage a number of times before I am completely through the process.)

Yet, when my 55th birthday rolled around this year, the perfect answer to the ring dilemma presented it self. I realized I needed to give the pain, the regret, the sadness to My Mother, the Ocean. Yes! Water, the symbol of purification. Stop trying to burn everything, YaYa. Give it to the ocean.

So last Saturday morning, I awakened early, and took the ring, a jar, and a pink index card to the lighthouse. I thanked the Goddess for all that I had learned in my marriage. I asked her to take from me the sting of divorce. And I rejoiced in the new life and new love that is opening up before me like a flower in bloom.

I wrote an invocation on the card, scrolled it into the jar along with the ring, tightened the lid, and flung it into the ocean.

Now, a week later, I wish I could add an addendum to the message in the bottle. It would read: “It is not physical transformation nor transmutation that is necessary for healing. What we need to heal is an experience of spiritual transcendence.”

What I Heard

It was a warm morning two years ago, the sun was shining, the treetops were dancing, and I had just finished teaching three back-to-back classes during a six week summer session. Trilling the hallelujahs of Handel’s Messiah loudly in the car, I was driving over the Santa Cruz mountain to turn in my students' grades. It had been an arduous year and I was anticipating the sprawling days of August to recuperate before the regular semester began.

I was completing a round of deep inhalations/slow exhalations when two scriptures slid into the rhythm of my breathing. “Weeping may endure for the night but joy cometh in the morning.” And then, “In this world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” The first from the old testament; the second, a new testament rendition of the former. I had not picked up a Bible in over a year, but I was steeped in its teachings. Why these verses? Why this day?

I was raised an Episcopalian (my mother’s practice) and in my late 20’s I became a Baptist (my father’s practice). Since my escape to California over twenty years ago, I had developed a Buddhist leaning. When, inquiring minds push me to declare my faith, I have taken to telling them, “I’m a Baptabuddhapalien.” Elements of each speak to me. But I must admit, when my spirit can’t find a peaceful resting place, it often alights on a Biblical passage, buried deep in my heart, to lead the way.

On this sunny August morn, two months after my husband Chaz had undergone back surgery to relieve the pain of bulging discs and damaged nerves, I was finally exhaling. The emergence of the scripture felt like a celestial pat on the back. I was certain that I was receiving assurance that Chaz and I had survived a major stress to our marriage, and now we would be entering a stage of rejuvenation. Joy was finally going to come to our morning.

The past four years had been challenging, difficult even, but the past five months had been close to impossible. My dear husband had been born with congenital nerve apathy in his eyes and declared legally blind by age three. In spite of his severe visual impairment, he had traversed this planet fiercely independent for 48 years. Chaz was proud of the fact that he had surmounted the challenges of living and working in major cities such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. However, with the onslaught of a mobility disability, his world was shrinking, and every fiber of his freedom-loving soul fought the imposed constraint. Chaz had been exiled from the active life he had known, and this new phase of his life…our life …was not a part of his plans. "Unacceptable!," he would mumble.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow once said: “If all you have is a hammer, then everything appears as a nail.” Likewise, YaYa Bowmann says: “If all you feel like is a prisoner in your own life, then anyone who lives with you appears to be an overlord."  I had unwittingly become the enemy.

Chaz had lost more than his physical equilibrium from the back injury. Unable to work or get around without great effort and discomfort, he had become disgruntled and cranky, then angry and withdrawn. He spoke of feeling anxious and depressed. The computer became his constant companion and solace while I became the target of his frustration. One day, short on patience myself, I told Chaz, “I think there must be a UFO hovering in the eucalyptus grove behind our home, the crew of which has kidnapped my real husband, and replaced him with this curmudgeon impostor.”

I prayed daily that the upcoming surgery would not only relieve the pressure from his sciatic nerve, but would also dissipate the strain in our relationship.

Chaz’s surgery was performed on June 5; he was home by the 9th. I had one week to get him settled in before I would be out of the house, 45 miles away at work, from 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

We clashed over his recovery. I promoted a slow, cautious healing process; while he pushed himself everyday to return to his former able-bodied state. He ignored every precaution his doctor advised. “Wait two weeks before you start climbing stairs," the doctor admonished. Chaz waited two days. “Keep the walker with you, even when you don’t think you will need it. You never know when you will tire.” Chaz disposed of the walker like Forrest Gump threw off his crutches, just a week after returning home from the hospital.

I realized, not soon enough, that I needed to employ a rusted old skill—detachment. I had to let go and try to flow. This was Chaz’s recuperation, not mine. I could not control his process. In the meantime, Chaz was a man on a mission. He was inching around our home daily repeating: “I am moving forward. I am moving forward.” His declaration of independence. I thought I understood it.

The day after I submitted the summer grades, Chaz and I were having breakfast at our favorite café. I was chirping and warbling about the mid-week dates we would be able to resume now that he was feeling better and able to move more freely. Once again, we would be able to enjoy the things we used to do together before my partner became my patient: weekend bike rides, concerts, plays, vacations, sex. Ah, sex. When was the last time? When was the last time?

As I chattered, Chaz concentrated on swirling pieces of home-fried potatoes through the yellow lake on his plate. As he bent over, one of his long dread locks skimmed the yoke. When I reached  to wipe the yellow stain from his hair, he looked up abruptly, caught my hand in mid-air and spoke: “To tell you the truth, I am leaving. I have rented a room. I will start packing today. I should be completely moved by Friday.”

Lightning did not strike, thunder did not roll, the earth did not quake. It was eerily quiet, but everything had changed in an instant. This is not an alien impostor. This is my husband Chaz. I had been listening to his daily mantra: “I am ready to move forward. I am ready to move forward.” I just did not understand: He meant without me.

The moment those unstoppable words spilled out of his mouth, I felt like a hummingbird, shot down and stuck in the maple syrup on my plate. I was struggling to breath, trying to focus my eyes, listening for his voice to pull me out of this drowning.

Nothing.

And then my heart heard it again: “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.”