Face Down and Naked

Last Friday night I partook of a recently acquired annual ritual of swimming butt ass naked in my pool. The stars need not be aligned for this particular event to unfold. I need only privacy and a warm summer evening.




A few years ago I took my first naked dip. That first one was unexpectedly interrupted by my daughter who had returned from a concert earlier than expected. Not to be deterred, I informed her of my intentions and after she picked her jaw up off he pool deck she sat in a chair while I swam.



Last Friday I found I had the house to myself and no interruptions loomed. We’d been caught in an unusually intensive heatwave and the night perfect for a swim. The pool temperature was akin to mild bathwater all week. The night was gorgeous, clear and calm and very warm. I’d undressed in my room, slid on a terry bathrobe and padded my way through the house and out the back door. Leaving off the outside lighting, I scanned my neighbors back decks to be sure no one was sitting outside. All was quiet and dark and I walked the short distance to the pool.



I loosened the sash of my robe and walked to the ladder. In one deft movement I dropped the robe, descended the steps and slipped into the water quickly and quietly. The water was far too warm for any sort of initial shock of temperature to register. Once immersed, enveloped in near darkness I immediately felt that wonderfully relaxed and free feeling I get when I do this.



Warm water sliding over my bare skin felt wonderful. I felt strong and powerful. I felt youthful and lithely supple. Stretching out my arms to begin to swim I felt long and lean. Slow strokes followed and I slid through that water feeling incredibly graceful and fluid. I felt sensual and alive. I felt fierce. I felt the way I have always felt when I was at my best.



Eventually I reached for a small tube, slipped it over my head and began to float, bobbing the the wake of waves I’d made from swimming. I lay my head over my arms, pitched forward and face down, the tube keeping my face out of the water. Prone and relaxed in that dark pool I settled in and started to think. So many things were on my mind these last weeks and I turned them over and over, one after the other, while I lay there floating.



I thought about my daughter, who was on vacation with her husband, celebrating her first wedding anniversary. I thought about my oldest son, hoping his house hunting will unearth a jewel he can afford. I thought about my youngest, headed toward his senior year of high school, wondering if I will figure out how to be the support he needs.



I thought about a friend who is dealing with a husband failing in health, who needs so much herself and never asks. I thought about a friend whose own health supplants itself front and center, never giving her rest, hoping she gets a reprieve from the latest occurrence. I thought about a coworker, having come out of an experience with cancer, who is sadly falling victim to her own emotional bondage.



I thought about a dear and special friend who’s absence feels like a slap in the face to me. I thought about my own absent husband and how our situation no longer seems to bother me as it once did. I thought about the corners I’ve turned lately and realized that having turned them actually makes me feel better. In fact, floating on that tube, in the dark, face down and naked, all of the thinking I’d been doing had me feeling pretty good. I felt anything but exposed. I felt fierce.



I felt exactly the way I have always felt when I was at my best.

Indeed.

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes

My youngest sings in the shower. He sings the most unusual songs for a kid his age...his latest favorite is a tune written and composed by Jonathon Larson from the Broadway musical Rent, Seasons of Love. He sings in a sort of rich but high pitched falsetto and with great enthusiasm. The entire exercise is quite comical as he's an athletically built football jock who has a very endearing personality. You just can't help but love this kid.


One day this week he was still singing walking up the hall, towel around his waist, and I stopped and listened ...


Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year....



In daylight, in sunsets, in midnights,
in cups of coffee, In inches, in miles
in laughter in strife,


I have been thinking about that song all week. My birthday was this weekend and the step toward measuring a year in my life was an easy one to take. All last year I was full of angst over the many things that were wrong in my life and at the same time trying to enjoy the incredible joys that were taking place. I was all over the place emotionally and trying so hard to nail it all down and not let anyone see me sweat . Everything was out of balance and I couldn't stand it. Nothing seemed to be under my control and I felt helpless and insignificant. I lost so much, had so many things taken from me that I was filled with so much anger and bewilderment some days and deep and abiding joy the next. I've never felt more unlike myself. I have never been more thrown off and ungrounded in my entire life.


I realize now that in my own self absorption I neglected to see the compete picture, I failed to see what it was that made what I went through bearable. I failed to see what carried me along and kept me in check some days. I failed to see what I have and have had all along, deep in lockstep with me, as I traveled the road that is my life. I failed to see those incredibly special parts of my life who, both near and far, walked the road by my side.


So on this birthday, how do I measure a year, measure my year? In people. In friendship, in kindness, in care, in encouragement. In tenderness, in whispers, in touches and in love. I can measure my year in this life in the things given to me, in the things done for me and in the things I carry with me now. The gifts I was given by sweet and dear friends, picked me up and carried me on days that I stumbled. They calmed me, made be feel stronger and amazingly sometimes even made me laugh at myself for having to admit I was faltering at all.


I just may start singing in the shower myself'....


Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year....

Its time now to sing out though the story never ends
lets celebrate remember a year in the life of friends...

Indeed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-4ikcohCs

Beautiful Minds

A Beautiful Mind is an Academy Award winning film loosely based on the life of Professor John Nash, mathematical genius and Nobel Laureate in Economics in 1994.



ABM is an extraordinary love story, one that I have had an affection for since I saw it for the first time and every other time after that. It's difficult sometimes to conjure romantic images of a brainy mathematical wonk and a lovely and similarly brilliant woman but John and Alicia Nash’s love story is by far, to me, one of the most beautiful I've ever encountered.


John Nash is a mathematical genius who suffers from schizophrenia and whose story I’ll not trivialize in the little space I have available to tell it. Rent the film, read his biography, he’s an incredible human being.


Schizophrenia causes John Nash to see and hear people who aren't there. He sometimes can’t distinguish between real people and those imaginary ones his mind has created. His self described delusions put his family in danger and at a point, where he was incapable of any differentiation between his real and imagined worlds, his wife had to make a decision whether or not to permanently commit John to an institution .

At their most desperate moment, when they stood at the edge of their own personal abyss, Alicia and John face each other and he asks her...How do I know what's real?

Alicia whispers with amazingly loving conviction, You want to know what's real? This is..... as she places her hand on John's heart. Then she takes his hand and gently places it on her face. Looking deeply into his eyes, so very softly she says....This is real. This, is real.”

Such a profound moment. Alicia, in the madness that surrounds her and envelopes John, manages to disconnect him from all of the noise his world has become. Stopping time for a moment, she is able to show him the only part of his world that is real. Despite the danger and frustration and burden of living with John’s schizophrenia, Alicia chooses to believe in their love rather than logic. She fully understands the impossibility at that time of overcoming a mental illness such as John's...but she looks past conventional wisdom and medical opinion and believes that together they can find their own solution similarly extraordinary as those mathematical equations that John’s beautiful mind had discovered. While John and Alicia Nash lived an unconventional and complicated life, their love remained longlasting.

I've always thought of that moment in film to define the truest and simplest example of love. Real love. I like to think about having such a belief in love over logic. I like to think about what it is to have such conviction and belief in something that for most doesn't exist. I like to think about conventional wisdom and extraordinary equations. I like to think about slipping into a place of quiet peace amidst life's chaos and asking, How do I know what's real?

I also like to think about not really needing to hear a reply because I already know.

I already know.
Indeed.

A View From The Clouds

"Get your head out of the clouds!"

Sister Mary Leocadia had occasion to bark that command to me repeatedly when I was her student in the 7th grade. I was a dreamer in her estimation and her mission, it seemed, was to bring me back down to where she thought I belonged.

Sister Leocadia was a no-nonsense, hard-nose, brass tacks kind of woman. I suppose my perceived dreaminess was a source of irritation to her. My propensity to see the possibility in all things grated on her nerves such that she availed herself of any opportunity to knock me back to reality... or rather hers.

The funny thing is that I am very much a realist and always have been. I always will be. It's my nature combined with an upbringing rooted in practicality. My parents didn't so much spin Fairy Tales for me growing up. They always presented the truth to me but in the gentlest of terms and with comfort. I was taught to face situations, accept news head on and squarely and to accept these situations with grace. I learned to see things as they were but I could also imagine what they could be. I learned to not just see endpoints but to see room. Room for possibility. This gift has turned out to be one of my greatest strengths at this stage of my life.

That grace to accept situations is a godsend. For even in news we don't want, in situations we would rather have be different, have them be more of what we'd hoped for, that grace lifts me. It lifts me all the way up into where Sister Leocadia saw as the clouds. But you see my feet are always planted firmly in reality, with my head and my heart residing above it all... seeing the possibilities. The possibilities I believe to be there.

Guess what Sister Leocadia...you may think my head is still in the clouds ... but you know what... I think the view is pretty great from up here.

Indeed.

Bright Baby Blues

"I'm sitting down by the highway...Down by that highway side...Everybody's going somewhere...Riding just as fast as they can ride"

Those are the opening lines to one of my favorite songs by Jackson Browne, Your Bright Baby Blues, from the album, The Pretender released in 1976. Last night I went to see Jackson Browne perform with one of my oldest and dearest friends.

The performance was outdoors. The night was beautiful, warm and clear, and our seats were good ones. We'd had some wine and were feeling mellow and talkative. Our conversation was deeply personal as it usually is when we get together. We've been together as friends a long, long time.

Midway through the show I hear the first chords of the intro to this song that I like so much. I know it well. I turn to her and tell her it's my favorite. She knows this already and she knows why as I've told her before. Her hand goes to my arm and squeezes. She knows.

The song is part of my past and it connects me in a very nostalgic way to someone I used to know. Someone I used to love. Memory fades detail, time fades emotion but it's the prevailing reminiscence that still touches me pleasantly. I can close my eyes and hear him sing it to me:

...Baby if you can see me...Out across this wilderness...There's just one thing...I was hoping you might guess...Baby you can free me...All in the power of your sweet tenderness...

I don't make it a habit of looking back at the past, in fact I really never do. I certainly do not look back to that particular time and person. The past is behind me where it belongs, where it shall remain. My present is what I'm interested in, what I hold dear and those with me in it are who I care about. Still...that song makes my mind wander and drift. It drifted last night.

I can see it in your eyes....you've got those bright baby blues...You don't see what you've got to gain...But you don't like to lose...

My mind may have drifted but it didn't drift to what I had then, it drifted to what I have now. It didn't drift to what I was then, but to what I am now. It didn't drift to where I was then, but to where I am now. Right now.

My friend knew I wasn't thinking about the past. Her hand on my arm told me she's not looking back either. The song doesn't tell a story of my past, but of my future. It tells the story of what's ahead for me...or rather what I want for myself.

Like the songs says....I can't help feeling I'm just a day away...From where I want to be.

Where I want to be.

Indeed