OUR SILLY ANNIVERSARY

Like most married couples, Ed and I have our “stock” stories, ones we pull out and tell at parties. One of our favorites is about finding out, after five years of what we thought was married life, that our union wasn’t a legal one. My ex and I had separated in the seventies, and, as a result of a drunken $25 bid he made on a no fault divorce at an ACLU event, and the fact that the attorney failed to file the prize divorce (I know, I know, you get what you pay for), I was, in 1988—Drum roll—a real life, bona fide bigamist.

After telling everybody we knew that I was a Bigamist!, I had an attorney friend in Mississippi work with a judge to straighten things out. She said, just to be safe, it would be good idea for us to marry again. We said our vows to each other at our church, a big smile on our pastor’s face as he told our story, the congregation cracking up, and then feasted on a cake with white frosting and green letters that said “FINALLY”.

We now had two anniversaries, six months apart, October 16, when we first wed and April 17, when we re-wed. We called, (well, I called) the one in April our “Silly Anniversary”, and each year, we tried to do something silly. Ice cream at odd hours or a vacation when we needed to be working or silly dancing in the living room. But, not long ago, as we told our bigamy story at a dinner gathering, I realized that, though we’d kept celebrating the October one with a trip or a concert, we had all but forgotten to celebrate the April one, the silly one, and it had become nothing but an old story.

Our Silly Anniversary is coming up, and this year, we decided to bring it back. Well, I decided to bring it back, and I told Ed, who said he’ll bring it back with me. And then, bless him, a day or so later, he told me he’s thought of something silly for the day, and he’ll surprise me with it.  He says it involves music and food, so it can’t miss.

Back in ’88, after we got that little bigamy problem taken care of, Ed and I were laughing about it, and then, in a moment of seriousness, noted that, not once during the process, did we consider the fact that this would have been a perfect time to get out of a marriage that wasn’t a legal one. Though we’d had times together so wonderful we soared to the heavens, we’d also been through agonizing times, when we felt trapped in hell. But calling quits to our union didn’t enter our minds, because the silliest thing in the world would be for us to be apart.

Happy Silly Anniversary to Us. And many more.

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ONE MORE STEP

I’m in my seventies. Been around the block a few times. I had a private practice as a therapist for what seems like forever, and I’ve been to therapy myself, tons of times, and I’m wiser and happier, and I’ve done about all the change and healing I can do. Right?

Nope.

A few weeks ago, my voice teacher, a young man who comes to my house and is teaching me solfeggio (an exercise for learning to sight read vocal music), asked, “Is there a song you’d like to learn? Something we could work on?”

“Hmmm.” Five zillion songs whipped through my head. “Do you know ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face’?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I’ll find it.”

“Okay,” I told him. But I was puzzled. I didn’t much remember the song and had no idea why I’d named it as one I’d like to learn. But the next day, as I was loading the dishwasher, humming mindlessly, an image came to me from over fifty years ago.

A junior in high school, I’d been assigned, along with the rest of my choral music class, to pick a song, practice it, and perform a solo. I have no idea why, other than I found it romantic, I picked “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” from My Fair Lady, changed the “Her” to “You”, and thought I could stand up in front of forty some-odd sixteen-year olds and not butcher the song.

When my time came to sing, my throat shrank, along with the rest of me. High, squeaky sounds came out. I saw the pitying looks from my classmates. Even my teacher, Miss Karen Gilfoy, known for her no-nonsense approach, looked embarrassed. I got through the song without throwing up or passing out and somehow made it back to my seat, amid a smattering of weak, obligatory applause. I felt sick.

No surprise that I did not entertain the notion of ever singing in public again. I thought vocalists and choirs were the bee’s knees and admired them for risking possible failure and resulting humiliation, but assumed that kind of courage was for others, not me.

Until a couple of years ago, when I was instructed, via a course on creativity, to “pursue a passion you’ve always wanted to pursue,” and then, as my book review this month says, I “felt the fear and did it anyway” and joined my church choir. And, it was no surprise that, in that choir, and in the new gospel choir that’s formed in the Valley, I’ve had a hard time projecting my voice and a harder time reaching high notes that intimidate me.

Last week, my teacher brought me the sheet music to “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”. After I warmed up with vocal slides sung through a fat straw, I stood and sang scales, low ones, then mid-range, then high. “Sing like you’re throwing your voice at that window,” my teacher said, and I threw it, and it sounded strong. He kept encouraging me, and I hit some waaayy high notes, and then I began the song, I’ve grown accustomed to your face. It almost makes the day begin…

And when high notes were coming up, I remembered to aim for them. And by golly Eliza, I mostly hit them. And by golly again, I mostly nailed the realll high notes when our choir sang a dramatic rendition of Andre Crouch’s “My Tribute” last Sunday.

I just love it when that happens. It’s a spark and then a deep satisfaction and then gratitude that, with a little determination and a lot of help, it’s never too late to step up an octave.

And that song—I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face—I sing it to Ed sometimes. Your smiles, your frowns, your ups, your downs… His smile is not obligatory. It’s romantic.

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SNOWFREE

“Snowpocalypse”, or “Snowmaggedon”, which blasted us with over two feet of the white stuff and some serious wind, is about over. I was mostly snowbound for a week. Except I didn’t feel bound at all. The time seemed free, unfettered, and, as a friend said, “low pressure”. I noticed things more—both “out there” and in my less-distracted than usual head. In the afternoons, I binge-watched “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix, and the number Thirteen stayed with me, prompting me to come up with thirteen things I noticed or had confirmed:

1. Binge-watching twenty-six episodes of “13 Reasons Why” induces way less guilt during a snowstorm.

2. The three-foot-long icicles outside my kitchen window were so sharp and shiny, they scared me.

3. There is a special kind of happy that comes with printing out all three hundred and fifty pages of my almost finished novel, reading it, and finding out I don’t hate it.

4. There is another special kind of happy that comes with going to church, thinking there’ll be only ten or so people there because of the snowy roads, and walking into the sanctuary where thirty five people, all of whom also thought there would be only ten people, have gathered to worship.

5. “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect it for Their Writing,” (Chapter 10 in Brenda Ueland’s classic “If You Want to Write”) is as true today as it was when she wrote it in 1938.

6. I could, if needed, subsist for a very long time on coffee, Pain du George bread, dark chocolate, and those parmesan whisps from Costco.

7. Any doubt that I am an introvert has been permanently dispelled.

8. There is not a much sweeter sight than kids sledding down your driveway, unless it’s a neighbor who’s come to shovel out your driveway.

9. Having a generator ready to go if needed and a husband who knows how to handle it is Golden.

10. Dancing is really good exercise, especially if you’ve been lying up, binge-watching all day.

11. Ed thinks it’s funny when I slip into my green flannel nightshirt with the white snowflake design and tell him, “I’m dressing for the occasion.”

12. It’s a tossup as to which is better—Shawn Colvin’s or Sting’s version of “In the Bleak Midwinter”.

13. A car trip on icy roads to stock up at the grocery store, where we bought tulips and chocolate, and then returned home to read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43, made for a sweet Valentine’s Day.

Snowpocalypse? Snowmaggedon? Nah. More like Snowparadise.

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A few mornings ago, I was eating my avocado toast, with two of Ed’s perfectly fried eggs on top, thoughts darting through my mind like gnats—the pozole I’ll make this afternoon, the onions I need to buy, which novel to use for my book review, can I put off washing clothes for one more day, dare I watch the upcoming “presidential” address, did I hurt that woman’s feelings when I had to run out on our conversation—when I remembered another young woman at an AA meeting over thirty years ago.

“This morning,” she said, “I was five minutes into my breakfast, and I realized I hadn’t even tasted my food, and I said to myself, ‘Pay attention! You’re eating eggs, okay? You’re eating eggs!’” People nodded, laughed, said “Been there, done that!” I nodded hard as anybody.

I’d been trying to pay attention to immediate circumstances instead of head-tripping through my own chaotic universe, ever since I read The Three Pillars of Zen in the late sixties. I’d had minimal success. “My mind has a mind of its own,” Jimmy Gilmore sings, and I knew then and know now just what he means.

I’m still trying, though. On New Year’s Day, I posted on Facebook that my word for 2019 is “Present”. And though I was complimented for picking a word that’s both a noun (I got a present—Yippee!) and a verb (“May I present to you our new president whose initials are not DT!”), my meaning of the word is an adjective, as in “I am entirely present in this moment.”

I can’t count the number of prophets and priests and sages and teachers who point to this way of being in the world as the way to spiritual enlightenment and a satisfying life. Since I’m so bad at being in the moment, I count on things they’ve said and images I hold of them to help me.

I see Jesus, standing in a garden, his face glowing with compassion, his voice strong, when he tells his disciple friends, “Take no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take thought for the things of itself.”

I see Ram Dass in Fierce Grace, the documentary about the debilitating stroke which left him, a formerly astute speaker, with his speech greatly compromised. I see his slack lip and shuffling gait as he slurs, “I take one step. And then I take another. And the first one’s alright, and the next one’s alright, and the next one after that, well, it’s alright too.”

I see Eckart Tolle’s elfin face, when I remember a quote from The Power of Now. “When you sweep your floor, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting for the elevator—Instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.”

A still, alert presence. That’s the wannabe me. So, this morning in the bathroom, as my NY Times Health Challenge suggested, I stood on one leg and then the other, balancing myself as I brushed my teeth. Though I staggered like a drunk, I did it for two whole minutes. And for a few seconds, I was entirely present. I was “mindless”. I was “there”. It was enough to keep me trying, and a present to myself in the New Year.

Happy New Year to you. May your steps be alright. The first one and the next one, and the one after that—may it be alright too.

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KEEP HOPE

I hear the word “Hope” more than usual these days. It sounds ethereal, wispy, like Emily Dickinson’s “thing with feathers”, yet we are directed to keep it, to spread it to others, to make sure it stays alive. “Hope” is batted about like a badminton birdie, hard to contain, control, or see. I use the word myself, often quoting the author, artist, or prophet whose vision gives me hope and the belief that our country and our world will one day actually be alright.

But the take on hope that most appeals to me now is from Brian McClaren’s “We Make the Road by Walking”. Some of us in our church are reading this book, and we discuss parts of it with friends who gather weekly at our house during Advent.

To hope, McClaren says, is a very different process than to wish. Wishes are substitutes for action, creating “passive optimism that can paralyze people into happy fogs of complacency.” But real hopes inspire action. Hopes are not just about the future; they guide us how to act now.

Looking for evidence to support this view of hope, I watch Ed, who hopes, in retirement, to volunteer his services as a pastoral counselor. I see him research, write his declarations, meet with committees, as he works out the hows, ifs, and wheres of a new calling.

I see my granddaughter, Sophie, as she takes dancing, singing, and acting classes, watches movie musicals from several decades, and pores over scripts, supporting her hope to be a Broadway actor.

My writing friends and I, in hopes of finishing and publishing rich, engaging novels and memoirs, spend time and money and effort to learn the ins and outs of character depiction, plot development, story arcs. We put in (well, most of the time) our “required” half hours a day at our computers, freewriting or finishing chapters or editing our drafts. I see how much our hope is vitalized when we do the work, how it withers when we neglect it.

Fighting the inhumane actions by our current mess of a government requires and sustains the hope that we can make a difference. Phone calls to legislators, donations to civil rights agencies, and joining organized protests, whether a miles-long throng in Seattle or a hundred people on a street corner in my small town, fall under the “action” category, and feed my hope that we’ll make a difference.

Hope. I love the word itself, love how the “H” sounds breathy and the “ope” sounds solid, love the little blip my heart makes when I hear or say it. I love that, in my reality, hope doesn’t have feathers. As it moves us through action, hope has feet.

I wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope you walk and make the road of peace on earth, good will to all.

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