The Sun and Mountains Remain

I watered Rob’s garden the other morning. His pint sized raised garden bed is home to some beautiful Swiss Chard, Bok Choy and Beets. They are healthy, happy and loved. Their radiance shines through their glossy leaves and gorgeous colors. “Hello!” they seem to exclaim, “It’s great to be alive!” The leeks are a little shyer, their sprouts growing more slowly as they add to their circular depth in private. I initially thought the leeks were angry but as I contemplated them I realized they are just taking their time to grow deeper and wider into their beings.

As I glanced around the area that is now designated an, “urban renewal” space for small plots of agriculture, I noticed the old Indian School that is pushed back from the intersection that also hosts a small high rise and some non-descript residential buildings. The light rail train moved past and my eyes settled onto a vacant lot adjacent to some condos. It was in that lot that I first remembered Phoenix.

My family traveled through the night in August 1978. I don’t remember much of the trip. My father carried me to the car from my bed at the motel in Searchlight, Nevada. My parents must have told me that we were leaving that little desert town and going to Phoenix to find work because I was not startled by the midnight change in my sleeping location. We didn’t have enough gas money to get back to our house in California and I know my parents hoped for more opportunity in Phoenix. The nighttime travel helped to insure the car wouldn’t overheat but August nights in the desert are hot and when I woke midway through our journey, I was thirsty, hot and disoriented. We pulled off the road and a single streetlight illuminated a closed gas station. We seemed to be there a long time but perhaps my 5 year-old brain miscalculated the length of that seemingly fruitless stop.

That’s all I remember.

Then I woke up.

The front bench seat of that Oldsmobile was staring at me. My sweaty hair was damped to my cheeks. I sat up and looked out the car window to see a far off yard with many people with white shirts. The people I saw milling around looked brown and they contrasted against the red brick buildings. The gate around the yard made me think they might be prisoners. It was early morning and the sun was casting her warm orange glow over sharp mountains that seemed to jut abruptly from the earth. I was alone in the car and glanced around to see where my parents and brother might have gone. I realized I was in the parking lot of a restaurant but I had no idea what the large milk silos were that hugged against the building. They looked like rocket ships to me, yet the restaurant sign displayed a carnation flower, which was confusing given the spacecraft.

I realized I was in Phoenix.

Prisoners. Sun. Mountains. Rockets.

I went inside.

Just like those rockets were not spacecraft but rather large storage towers for milk, the, “prisoners” were no prisoners. Well, not prisoners in the common sense of the word. The Indian School would operate until the early ‘90’s leaving behind a large urban corner lot adjacent to the VA hospital.

This is where I stood watering the garden that was ever so meekly bringing new life into the world. I tearfully wondered at how much had changed since I first arrived here. Not merely with the city itself but also within myself. Years had not just brought age to me but rather a plentitude of experience and hopefully some tendrils of wisdom. I think that empty corner lot feels the same.

I took one last look at those leeks that have yet to know where they are springing up and I wondered if they might feel as equally confused as I did when they awaken and realize they too are in Phoenix.

Abundance

Abundance.

This is my word for 2014.

A word that I have so rarely used in my life; the concept of abundance has seemed almost foreign to me. I have spent much of these first 40 years of my life attaining, building, earning and in many ways enjoying the fruits of my labor, but the idea of living in abundance has never really occurred to me. Perhaps I was confusing this term for the extremes of excess or gluttony or avarice. Abundance is none of these things.

My childhood was not filled with abundance. Greed, envy and judgment? Yes. But definitely not abundance. This lack of security resulted in fear of scarcity and a relentless pull to make ends meet, provide for the family and “build a life for myself.” According to the Catholic priest Richard Rohr this is the task of the first half of life, to build one’s container for living and I would say that I have managed to complete this task relatively well.

Only recently have I begun to sense a feeling of fullness, a calm roundness, deep, joyful pleasure in my soul. I wasn’t sure what I was sensing and then I had a dream. It was what I like to call, “a healing dream,” the kind that when you wake up you feel at ease and reassured.

The dream took place in mid-air. I could not see myself but I was somehow suspended and floating in an ethereal space. I stared at a large floating cauldron. It was luminescent and large. It gave off a type of hologram depth and it seemed that I would never be able to reach it.  I watched and into the container poured tears from what I understood to be all of human kind. The significance of this was profound to me and I wondered, while dreaming, what it all meant. The constant flow of tears seemed oddly soothing and I knew there was comfort in that vessel.

When I awoke I thought of how many tears were being poured into that hovering bucket, yet the bucket was never full. There was such an abundance of tears but it all was calm and good. Then the word abundance struck me. As I mulled over the word I started to think that abundance is not just a thing to have but also something to feel. Abundance is not as much about having a lot, as it is about deeply living into your soul. And perhaps this is the reason I had been feeling so full recently, my soul work was paying off. God was doing God’s work on me.

As I enter 2014, I would like to continue nurturing this feeling of abundance. Not through accumulation of material goods but rather through continuing to feed my soul with gratitude, meaningful relationships and sharing my many blessings with this wounded human race.

Twilight Time

Twilight Time

“Heavenly shades of light are falling…”

I loved singing this song when I was little when the impending night brought a creeping sadness, the endless miles of desert road stretching out in front of that Olds ’98. My mother would wonder why I would cry while I sang. “Are you car sick?” I would shake my head and try unsuccessfully to explain why the end of the day brought tears.

My interior landscape was held hostage by anxiety. Unsure of what I was feeling, I decided that I must have been the victim of a car accident in a previous life. Perhaps this horrific end to my prior earthly existence took place around sundown and I happened to be the unfortunate passenger in the back of a large, American sedan. I held so strongly to this belief that I finally had to make my mind up that if I were indeed snatched from my former life through a vehicular collision then I certainly would not meet the same end in this life.  

Recently, as we drove west into the sunset, I glanced back at my children buckled safely in their seats. In my head I started to hum that childhood tune and again sadness flooded in. I thought of those days on the road with my parents and brother when I would worry what the next day would bring or if the next day would come at all.

Then, I remembered a time when I was about 7 years old and I woke in the back of our car at dawn to find my father standing outside and observing the sunrise. My mother and brother lapped on top of one another in the front seat. I got out of the car at the scenic overlook that was our motel for the night and approached my dad. We watched as the sun rose above the mountains. I noticed that my father had a tear in his eye. As a child this only added to my confusion but as an adult it feels poignant.

A moment of profound connection.

A completion of a loop.

My tears shed at the end of the day and my father’s at the beginning.

Perhaps this is how God works, entering our awareness at vulnerable times and creating deep meaning through darkness and light.

I still wonder about my previous life but if the end of that one opened the door to this one, I am endlessly thankful.

To Fill Up a Suburban

To Fill Up a Suburban

When I was in high school I would watch the large Catholic families leave the school in the afternoon. The chaotic masses were loud and energetic, as they filed out of the doors into the awaiting Chevy Suburbans driven by mothers who looked haggard yet glowing with confident love for their children. I was smitten. My mind was made up. I would one day have a least four children and fill up a Suburban.

I kept this dream alive through college and when Rob and I were getting married I shared my long-held plan with him. “We’ll see,” was his simple response. When I was pregnant with our first child, I proclaimed that this was just the beginning because there would be three more little Lowe’s to come! To this proclamation, doubters would respond with, “Why don’t you start with one and see.” Little did these naysayers know that my life’s vision was solidly rooted. To me, more children meant more love.

After two kids, Rob and I knew we weren’t done. Someone was missing from our family. By this time Rob was fully on board with my breeding plan, so two more were added easily.

Over the years various comments have been made such as, “You already have two beautiful children. Why would you mess with perfection?” and “How are you going to fit everyone in your house?” To this my answers were, “There is no such thing as perfect.” and “Why do you need so much space? To not be near the ones you love?”

And love our kids I do. Each one is a wonderful individual who brings new meaning to my life everyday. Some days are hard but I could never imagine life without my litter of kids and for that I am grateful.

Oh, and I never got that Suburban but I certainly hope that in my minivan people can see my confident love through my haggard exterior.

Wascally Wabbits

Wascally Wabbits

There was a point in time when I absolutely abhorred being a Speech and Language Pathologist. I remember wondering why I chose such an undervalued and underpaid career. To add to my workplace malaise I was hit with, “Special Education burnout” from having cared for those with special needs during my 6 years in college only to enter a profession tasked with assessing and treating communication disorders of those with disabilities.  I would drag myself to work and will myself to find some sort of light in the darkness of one impairment, after another.

To make matters worse Rob and I would attend parties that included other 20 somethings only to be met with patronizing smiles and comments about my “nice” profession. “I used to sttttuter!” or “Are you talking wascally wabbits?” I suppose these “jokes” were intended to be light hearted and they didn’t sting as badly as the, “You’re a Speech Therapist? Oh, how nice. That must be so rewarding.” I usually wanted to hide as these Assistant Project Managers, Level 2 Engineers and H.R. Department secretaries participated in what I viewed as self-important, entry level corporate pissing matches. My inquires about people’s work usually netted something that sounded like this, “Well, I am a project coordinator 2 for sector 4.” Huh? Whatever that was seemed much more happiness inducing and exciting than being a lowly SLP.

I finally got so fed up I thought it would be best to look at other ventures. So, Rob and I opened a cupcake shop! Sounded fun and exciting like that sector 4 person but better! The thing is cupcake shops aren’t fun. Yes the TV and radio personalities who would show up to talk with me and put me on the air made it sound awesome, like all good advertising does.  At parties people wanted to hear all about the cupcakes. I felt respected and interesting like that H.R. person.

The truth is the food business is incredibly difficult and soul sucking. There are generally 50 negative comments to 1 positive. Nothing ever seemed right and everyone knew how to bake better, run a business better or frost the better. Speech Therapy started looking really good.

I had to reassess everything and that I did.

Now as I take kids from their classrooms and they look at me and talk about their lives and laugh I wonder how I could have ever felt that my profession was anything but the best thing ever. I am often times the only adult who pays any real one-on-one attention to these students and I can feel in my soul that my presence makes a difference to those children and their presence makes a difference to me too.

What makes my job even better is that I am blessed to be able to share my knowledge with the next generation of therapists. I love training and mentoring these wonderful people and I always remind them that they have one of the most important jobs ever….Sector 4 be damned!