Epi(demi)c

Last time I wrote I was en route to give a guest lecture at the University of Arizona. That was a month ago, so I suppose we have a lot of catching up to do.  I think my last post talked to some degree about what I was going to present, so I won’t repeat that here. I’ll just report out that it was well received. Hopefully the ideas that I shared helped everyone present to better digest our current situation with the intent of elevating our individual and collective responses. The feedback indicated to me that I achieved that end. For instance, Robert Miller, Director of the School of Architecture, reported to me afterward that it was “mind-blowing” before wishing me “Godspeed.” He followed up with a hand written note thanking me for an “inspired” and “moving” presentation and concluded that “it makes me feel better knowing you’re out there.” I think that is the most amazing thing that anyone could say to me in response to what I am working so hard to share. I want us all to feel better- about ourselves, about our species, about life.

Feeling better is a big deal right about now, and on every front. So this strange thing happened to me in Arizona. In spite of all of the great interactions that I had, I started to be overwhelmed by this sinking feeling of I didn’t know what. It just hit me out of the blue and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or what was at the root of it. I reported it out to Shannon when I got home, but this looming feeling remained disconcerting. I knew at least that it was in part because I had opened the flood gates through all of the work that I have been doing over the last couple of years to meet and heal my wounded inner child. But still, this seemed bigger than that. I felt something coming, and my usual means of protection were down.

You see I am a sensitive. I am a sensitive who built up significant walls over the course of my life to protect myself. I had done such a good job of it that I had forgotten that I was a sensitive long before I even knew what one was. So for most of my life I have shown up not as a sensitive, but as a stoic. You would have never even guessed that I actually have feelings. Well I do. Even more so, I am intensely affected by what’s going on around me. I pick up on shit. Now I am in the process of unlearning all of those survival tactics that I have used to protect myself, and refiguring how and what to do with the sensitivity. All I can say for now is that I no longer try to run or hide from it. I just sit with it and wonder.

In this case, I wondered what my wounded child might be trying to communicate. I wondered if I was just bracing myself for the impending disarray of the gut rehab of our house (which is in full process at this point incidentally). I wondered if my concerns about how we are or aren’t forming our collective response to our social-ecological challenges was secretly eating away at me. None of those answers seemed to fully resonate, so I just kept sitting with it. And now I know. What I began feeling a month ago is exactly what we are all feeling right about now. When our collective fear over COVID-19 fully kicked in, the feeling of it matched the intensity of what I had been feeling. Mystery solved.

So here is another confession for you. Often times my blog posts come to me in a sort of flash. The entire post essentially downloads into my head, word for word, sentence for sentence. I might wake up in the middle of the night or it might randomly take over my mind right in the middle of something else during the day. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I might have a general concept or idea and let it build as I go. Sometimes I just start writing having no idea what I might say and whatever comes out comes out.  But often enough, it comes in this complete download. I remember the download word for word and simply type it out when I get the chance.

I haven’t written this past month in large part because we were in a whirlwind of moving out of our house and in with our friend Jean all while starting the demo of our house and generally preparing it for the big lift. You’ll hear much more about this in the coming months, but as I mentioned once before, we are gutting and rebuilding our house from the foundation up. The house will be lifted into the air this week. Fixing a house with faulty foundations is not an easy thing to do. It is complicated. It takes know-how. It takes a huge commitment. I say this, because this is exactly what we need to do as a species right now… fix our foundations from the ground up.

But that isn’t what I want to talk about today. Not because I didn’t have a complete post download in response to COVID-19 that spoke to just that. I got that download about a week ago. I elected to overrule. My reason? Well, I felt it was too harsh for the moment. This is something that I have had to learn the hard way throughout my life. Sometimes the stark reflection is just not helpful in the moment. So I am not going to hold up that mirror today. Instead, I am going to share a story. It’s one I believe I have shared before, but it’s a good one and good stories always bear repeating… particularly in times like this.

But before we get to that, I want to return to Arizona for just a moment. The day I was leaving I went on a walk through Catalina State Park, a beautiful desert paradise, with my friend, colleague, and host Jonathan (who has been mentioned in this blog before). Imagine me in the midst of this deep sense of impending doom while walking through the full glory of nature rising up through the aridness. It was like the calm before the storm, and I felt that. I took it in so that it might stay with me when the storm hit. The photo above is from that walk. We could all use a little zen right now, so here is another little dose:

Speaking of storms, if you have never been through a hurricane, what we are all going through right now is exactly what it feels like. If you have, you know what I mean. There is the impending fear, the frantic preparations, the anxious waiting, the sense of helplessness, the onslaught that hurls us around, and then the dismount which we hope beyond hope doesn’t knock us on our asses too badly. Loss of some sort is inevitable. Sound about right? The only difference is the noise. Hurricanes are very loud affairs. So loud. This virus, on the other hand, is silent. It’s so quiet we don’t even know if or when it is present. That deserves another zen timeout:

And now for story time. The year is 1979. I am 9 years old. As you know, I was a gymnast. So was my brother. We led very busy lives that involved training every single day. In fact by that time I was already training 3+ hours a day. My mom is a nurse. She worked the early shift at the hospital. When I say early, what I mean to say is that I have no earthly idea what time she got up and left the house. She was long gone by the time I awoke to get ready for school. Now to be honest, even having been a parent myself, I cannot for the life of me fathom how in the hell she did what I am about to explain to you.

My mom would get home from work in the late afternoon an hour or two after we got home from school. Then, because my brother and I had different workout times (at the same gym mind you), she would load my brother into the car and take him to practice leaving me at home. Our gym was at least a good half hour plus drive away. Then she would turn around, come pick me up, and drive back there. This. Was. Insane. But you know why she did it? She did it so that I would have some semblance of normalcy in my day. She did it so that I could get my homework done. She did it to give me just an ounce of downtime, to make space for me that might have felt something like this:

It didn’t go unnoticed. I understood the sacrifice that she made for me every single day. Retrospectively speaking, I just don’t understand how in the hell she did it. Yet she did. So on this one particular day, September 18, 1979, I had a plan. The only thing more dangerous than a kid with a plan is me with a plan! I had been working on this plan for weeks and now the day had come. My mom arrived home and I anxiously awaited for her to depart with my brother. I had a plan! Only the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating. There was a torrential rain falling outside. The streets were starting to flood, as they do in Houston. My mom was hedging, but in true form she determined that the show must go on. A little rain wasn’t going to stop her! She and my brother dashed for the car and off they went. I watched as the car disappeared down the street and then I dashed for it myself.

I darted across the street to my neighbors, the Hackmeier’s. The Hackmeiers are a family of three sisters and a brother (who was at that time yet to come, I believe). The oldest sister, Missy, is my age so we hung out quite a bit. Just let me start by saying, I love the Hackmeiers. They are beautiful people and a beautiful family. Missy and I got back in touch a few years ago when I was with my PVAMU Race to Zero Competition team in Golden, Colorado where she now lives. She met up with us for dinner and the first thing she said when she sat down was, “Have you told them (my students) the story??!!” This is THAT story. It’s one of those epic ones, kind of like this:

So as I was saying, I ran for it as soon as my mom and brother were out of sight. I got drenched, but that didn’t matter because I had a plan! Mrs. Hackmeier welcomed me in and dried me off. She was expecting me. She was the co-conspirator in my plan. You see, it was my mother’s birthday. My dad was and had been out of town for a stretch on a consulting job. He was somewhere out in west Texas. So I wasn’t about to let my mom’s birthday just go by unnoticed. I had therefore arranged for Mrs. Hackmeier to help me bake my mother a birthday cake during this small window of opportunity. I wasn’t about to let a little rain get in the way!

Mrs. Hackmeier and I got started on the cake right away, with Missy in on the fun. We didn’t have much time to work with. We hadn’t gotten very far into it when suddenly… it got loud. It got very, very loud. The wind that is, and the objects that it began tossing around. A loud thud stopped us all in our tracks. And then, then… Mrs. Hackmeier pulled out her super power. Mrs. Hackmeier’s super power is: calm. In the calmest voice I think I had ever heard she said something to the effect of “come with me” as she took us by the hands. She walked us into her bedroom and back into the bathroom where her closet was, gathering up the other sisters along the way. Then we all sat dow, huddling in the dark closet together. It was loud outside, but the calm that remained in Mrs. Hackmeier’s voice overrode all of that. It was calm there inside the closet with her. Something like this:

I don’t think we were in there more than 15 minutes or so, although it seemed like an eternity. Finally the noise died down and Mrs. Hackmeier bade us to wait there in the closet while she went to see if it was safe to come out. Her absence seemed even longer. When she finally did return she reached for my hand and said, “Shelly, come with me. I have to show you something.” Something in me knew that whatever it was that she was about to show me was going to be the single most important thing in the whole wide world. Mrs. Calm guided me gently back into the kitchen and then toward the breakfast nook that looked directly across the street to my house.

My family home is a two story house with four tall pillars that support the double height front entry. The pillars had all toppled to the ground. To the right of those on the second floor was my brother’s bedroom. The roof over his room was gone. My room was directly behind it. When I was home, that is almost always where you would have found me. I stared in awe, as the weight of what she was showing me fully sank in. Let that sink in:

I can’t imagine what must have been going through my mother’s head as she pulled back up the street just moments later. But Mrs. Hackmeier was quick to run out and inform her that I was safe. As it turned out, they had only made it around the block before they had to pull the car over and take shelter on the floor boards. A tornado had- without warning- just ripped through our neighborhood. My father drove about 120 miles per hour to arrive home to the wreckage just hours later to begin the long process of securing the house, talking to the insurance company, moving out all of our possessions, and finding another place to live as the house got rebuilt. Tornados are completely disorienting events, and so is the aftermath.

Yet Mrs. Hackmeier was the chosen steward to show me the most important thing in the world that day. It wasn’t exactly the first time that I had experienced it in my life. As you may recall, I barely made it into this world in the first place having nearly died at birth. What Mrs. Hackmeier showed me that day had been with me from the very beginning and no doubt constantly to that point. But this was the first time that I actually consciously experienced being protected. It wasn’t the last time for sure in a life that has since included three hurricanes, a handful of serious crashes in gymnastics, two full speed car collisions plus a handful of several other near misses, and god only knows what else.

But I was given a gift that day. Mrs. Hackmeier gave me the gift of calm. Calm is the knowing that no matter what happens, everything is perfectly alright. Calm is knowing that we are all profoundly safe. Calm is knowing that even death is safe, and therefore life is safe. Calm is knowing how incredibly precise the Universe/God is. I mean just look at the facts. That tornado didn’t touch any of our immediate neighbors. It only hit our house before skipping off down the block. And it did so on my mother’s birthday, while my father was out of town, which prompted me to solicit help from the neighbors to bake her a cake. Tweak any one little detail and you get a potentially much different outcome.

Life is pure genius. It is. Just look at this water moving through the desert:

My gift to you all today is one that I am paying forward thanks to Mrs. Hackmeier. I give you all the gift of calm. Calm is letting go in the midst of the storm. It’s that moment when you realize that you just can’t hold on or fight for your life any longer. The wind is too powerful. So you let go. As my tai chi master would remind me ad nauseam, “Give up.” In that surrender what we find isn’t weakness or hopelessness. What we find is the ultimate protection- becoming one with what is. That is where true power lies. That is where we find safety. That is where we inhabit the profound peacefulness that is calm. I wish this for you all now and throughout all that we have yet to face together.

That doesn’t mean be reckless. Do all that you can. Social distancing is most important. Just please proceed with a sense of oneness and a deep respect for this adventure we call life. I’ll leave you with one more zen photo. This one is not from Arizona, it is from our mountain property where I took this photo earlier today. This moon gate, the icon image for this blog, represents a gateway to a new world. Let us move calmly through it so that we might take the “demi” out of “epidemic” and write an epic story instead. Godspeed.