Tag: friends

Half Century

It’s hard when we are younger… anything younger than 50… to imagine actually being 50. And yet, after much anticipation, here I am. I don’t feel a day older than, let’s say, 25. Some would say I don’t look any older than that either, although the wrinkles around my eyes might suggest otherwise. I don’t mind one way or the other. I do appreciate that while I can’t for the life of me see anything up close, I feel the same physically as I did in my youth. I am grateful for that.

Luckily for me (one would never put it this way when one is 16), I have had a bum knee since I was 15 and it is no different today than it was back then. That means that when we traipse all over New York City for three days to celebrate my turning, the dang thing hurts. Yet because it’s nothing even remotely new and I got used to it a long time ago, I don’t in any way associate it with aging. Same thing with the physical challenges that come with PCOS. It’s nothing new. It has ebbed and flowed and manifested differently throughout time, but it just is what it is and I know now that the phase will change. It always does. One of the biggest benefits of age is being able to recognize that nothing lasts forever, just as one of the benefits of being young is believing that it does.

Another benefit of age, and I think particularly for women, is that we finally begin to step out of the bullshit and into our true selves… with authority! That’s good, because as I’ve mentioned before, we need a whole lot of feminine boss energy in the world right now. I got to catch up with four of my best female friends in NYC, all of whom are roughly the same age, and it made me happy to no end to experience the bossed-up women that they have grown into. Need a definition? Here goes from the urban dictionary:

 Boss-Up. Take ownership of ones life, by directing the full capacity of their time, resources, and attention toward a specific direction, goal, or intent.

Simply put, each shows up as who she authentically is. Each in her own way is flourishing, guiding, loving, and leading with uncompromised authority… because she’s been there, done that. Chausey, my oldest friend dating back to age 5, is a powerhouse of love and wisdom who is a master at nurturing the little self while reflecting the higher Self back to each and every person she meets. Mary, my best friend and partner in crime from college, is an unwavering creative genius who can’t help but manifest more laughter and love into the world. I perpetually can’t wait to see what she will put out there next. Krista, my best friend from graduate school, is rocking her life as an architect in NYC with no need for apologies or affirmation. She’s got it. Elise, my freshman year roommate in college, continues to live into her sheer genius as a writer of both words and now numbers (coding), all while mentoring youth into their potential. Not only that, but each one is a nurturing matriarch in her own right, be it to her own children, her nephews and nieces, or her aging mother. I’m lucky to have had each one, and so many others, as a friend for such a long time now. It’s my privilege and joy to be a witness to your lives.

That’s what 50 looks like. We laughed, and laughed, and laughed… particularly about our newfound impatience for disrespect and waiting and drama given that we could now keel over at any second! No time for that shit! I’m not so secretly excited to have reached this threshold, because now I can say “Don’t mess with me! I’m fifty!!” Oh and I have been. It makes people stop and actually listen. I’m gonna use this age thing for all it’s worth. Don’t look at me and treat me like some young thing with long, blonde hair. In the first place, I’m probably older than you, and in the second, I’m likely wiser. So move over. The Age of the Woman is here.

Now that we have established that, please allow me to utilize this momentous occasion to share a little feminine wisdom with you. I bring this to you via The Beautiful Project, which we were fortunate enough to see on it’s opening day at the Met. Shannon found out about it and we practically ran across Central Park, bum knee and all, before having to run back across Central Park to meet Elise for dinner… because we had to see this one exhibit. Here is the description of the project:

“At The Beautiful Project we train and support a collective of Black girls and women photographers, writers, scholars and artists in activist image making using photography and writing while centering our own care and advocating for the care of our sisters. Together, we engage our community, providing opportunities for further learning, gathering and sharing.”

It was well worth the run. The images and stories were powerful in and of their own right, but then their creed spoke to me at my very core. I had to take a picture so that I can keep it as a constant reminder. Sisters of all ages and colors, I share this gem with you care of our Black Sisters who are wise and beautiful like no other. I am so grateful to have experienced that wisdom and beauty first hand in my five years at Prairie View A&M. Thank you, Sisters, for the gift that you are to all of us. Power on. It’s your time. May we all follow your lead:

49 1/2

My birthday has traditionally been a bit of a doggy downer for me. Maybe it’s because in some unconscious way it reminds me of the trauma of my birth (for a recount read my post “The Gift”), the origin of the deep feeling of having been banned to a hopeless state of separation. What I can say for sure is that my birthday has most always felt like a disappointment. I’m serious about the unconscious connection to the original event. I mean, honestly, imagine being in a fight for survival just wishing for it to end only to be birthed into another fight for survival equally as intense as the one before. Oh, you get it. We all get it.

I’m not sure when my chest collapsed in to protect my heart, but I’m going to guess I was born this way. My shoulders roll deeply forward, creating this hollow wall in front of my heart. It’s been called to my attention in various ways throughout my life. I don’t have flexibility in my shoulders and that was always a struggle in gymnastics. It is point of contention in yoga, this effort to roll my shoulders back to give my heart space. When my Reiki master first worked on me she said the vision that she got was that I have a picket fence around my heart. And then there is my tai chi master who would give me hugging lessons to try relax this physical wall that is encoded into my body. Yes, our traumas get encoded into our bodies.

Then there is breathing. Just ugh. I have a love-hate but mostly hate relationship with breathing. Honestly, do I have to? You want me to actually breathe as I move?? Why??? My breath runs shallow. I used to near pass out at the end of a floor routine because I hardly took a breath the whole time I was doing it. When I am sleeping you might not think that I am breathing at all. Seriously, people have checked to see if I am. When it comes to energy, I don’t connect in the yogic sense, through prana. That requires breathing. Just like heat flows through convection, conduction and radiation, I would say that it is the same with our own energy flows. You can move energy in and out through breathing (convection), through your chakras and energy meridians (conduction), or through your general aura (radiation). These are just metaphorical equivalencies. I tend toward conduction. In the meantime, I keep my aura pretty tight to my body and as for breathing- just no. I don’t get it.

Aerobic stuff, especially running (and partly because of a bum knee), are not fun. But these days I am doing it. Running that is. I decided last summer to figure this whole thing out, so I started trail running to see if my knee could handle it (pavement is out of the question). So far, so good on the knee front. Then there is the breathing. Of course running forces me to breathe deeply. Because my shoulders cave in so much, my arms have always pumped side to side across my body rather than front to back. I decided last week to experiment with that by forcing the issue (making my arms swing front to back) the entire time I was running. A funny thing happened. It opened up my chest. And guest what? I could breathe. I am almost fifty years old with a lifetime full of athletics and nobody has ever made that connection for me. I could breathe. And you know what else? I felt my heart chakra open up. As it did, these words immediately entered my head: “Lead with your heart.” You see it really is all just one thing- body, mind, heart, spirit. Just one thing. Adjust any one of them and the others change. They have to.

So five years ago I decided to start taking this birthday matter into my own hands. Rather than just sit around dreading the disappointment that was sure to come (unconsciously, that is), I decided to start planning fun things to do for my birthday. One year it was a trip to New York City including a party with my NYC peeps. The next year it was LA, the following Mexico City, and then Stockholm. That has worked beautifully! One of the things that has been so great about it is that it has given my wife a framework to plug into rather than having to approach it through a minefield that she didn’t even know was there until she stepped on one. And trust me, she has stepped on a few!

So this is a big year for me. I will be turning the big 5-0 in December. First things first, I don’t mind. It’s not the age that bothers me. It’s the separation. So I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate this one with varying thoughts, but no concrete plans as of yet. We are still in the midst of getting ourselves settled in Vermont, so it’s not at the forefront of my mind even. It especially wasn’t at the forefront of my mind last Saturday.

There is no polite way to say it, last Saturday was a shit show! Literally. All I wanted to do was sleep in, relax, unwind, etc. after my trip to DC. I was exhausted, having left at 3:30 AM one day only to return at 3:30 AM 48 hours later. The next thing I knew Shannon had come up to report that we can’t use the toilet- again. It’s not flushing. It had been acting up for a couple of weeks. And did I mention it was Saturday? Overtime plumber fees will kill your weekend for sure. Of course it also kills their weekend too. So our friend Jean came over from across the lake to crawl under the house with Shannon to see if they could tell if there was anything wrong with the pipe, as has been the case before. No dice. Mind you, I still haven’t gotten out of bed because I am cranky, tired as all get out, and I have to pee like a racehorse. I would not have been any help in that state of being.

I heard Shannon and Jean back in the house working on the toilet to see what parts might not be working. They came upstairs to borrow some parts off of the upstairs toilet, which hasn’t been working for awhile either. That’s right, we had no working toilet. Not a one. I have to hand it to those two- they were determined! Of course one is a native Vermonter and the other is the first female to have reached full retirement from the carpenter’s union in Boston (and both hockey players, of course). They were not about to get beaten by a stupid toilet. Finally, they figured out that there was no fixing the toilet. We needed a new one. Worse yet, there was no guarantee that the toilet was the root of the problem. Shannon came upstairs to give me the report.

Now, let me just say here that when I am in the aforementioned state of being, I’m not the kindest person in the world. There. I said it. In fact, I can be downright ornery (verbally speaking). Shannon, who had gently and mindfully let me continue to sleep while trying to deal with this ordeal, was prepared to go to the store to buy a new toilet and Jean was going to go with her. She knew, however, that her architect wife was going to have an opinion about the toilet. This wasn’t a short term purchase. It’s one we knew we would be making anyway, and it’s hopefully going to be our toilet for life. So, yes, I knew I had to have an opinion. I had to get up and accompany Shannon to the store. I knew I had to because Shannon is frugal (which is often a good thing), and what we were needing was going to cost way more than she was going to be comfortable with. Now it would have been nice if I had communicated that all to her in a loving, appreciative, and kind way. I did not. Let’s just leave it at that.

While I got up and put some clothes on, Shannon told Jean to run for her life! She’d call her when we got back. Then, rather than going defensive and then offensive on me, she so gently just stayed quiet and calm (on the outside anyway) on our drive into town, giving me a nonjudgemental space to calm down in. And I did. The toilet shopping was tense, but she trusted my judgment. It cost twice as much as she was anticipating, but she didn’t fight me. She trusted me.

I am telling you this in part to give testament to the amount of personal work that Shannon has done in the twelve years that we have been together. It is truly inspiring. I’m not sure I would have been as graceful if the roles had been reversed. As fierce competitors, our MO has been to get into standoffs that could last for days, weeks, months. But instead of going there, Shannon pulled the perfect tai chi master move. She didn’t resist. It allowed all of my negative energy and the underlying fears to dissipate. With the tension of purchasing the toilet behind us, I was able to say and truly mean those magic words, “I am sorry.” It needed a little more punch than that, so I added “I was a complete asshole.”

We went to lunch to give ourselves a breather before heading home to continue with the shit show. That’s when she broke it to me:

“So, I had this great idea. I’ve been working on it for two months now. Turning 50 is a big deal so I wanted to surprise you by throwing you a surprise 49 1/2 birthday party. I got in touch with some of your closest friends to see if they could fly into Vermont for a long weekend.”

Micki was of course first and then she rattled off all of the friends she had contacted, at least one of whom she had never even met or talked to before. A ton of planning had gone into it and the long birthday bash weekend was supposed to be starting on the coming Wednesday (now this past Wednesday) night. She went on:

“Everyone was so excited and trying to figure out how to swing it, but one by one something got in the way and the list kept shrinking. I kept telling myself it would still be great as each person regretfully declined. Then it was down to just Micki. I still thought it would be great. Then, this morning, about an hour into the toilet debacle, she called and left a message. She can’t make it because her daughter, Haley (also one of my former players), looks like she is going to give birth earlier than anticipated and she can’t risk it.”

I was stunned. I had zero inkling of an idea that she had been working on all of this behind the scenes. I could see the sheer defeat in her face. I was stunned. Did I say that? Hearing her tell this story literally took my breath away. In that moment, I felt so incredibly connected. I felt connected to her, for sure. But I also felt connected to every friend that she had contacted as she told me how excited each one was and how hard each one had tried to make it happen. She has done some super-sweet things for me in our time together, but this one might be the topper. And it’s because she knows me. So much knowingness went into this whole thing. To all of the friends who tried so hard to make it happen, thank you, thank you, thank you! Please know that I feel your love. As for you, Shannon, thank you for knowing me. That’s really the best thing that you can ever give me. Oh, and, did I mention that I’m sorry about the whole toilet thing??? By the way, we have a rocketship of a toilet now and the shit has been cleaned out of our (septic) system, so feel free to visit! All puns intended.

Parades and Porches

As an introvert, it’s easy to get the feeling that I am watching from the sidelines. I am and I’m not, but because I keep a low-key profile, it’s easy to feel invisible and expendable. Then again, as I have mentioned before I don’t like being the center of attention so invisibility is often my preferred state. But it is also true that I lowkey want to be connected in a meaningful and impactful way. Time out. Did you just notice my use of the latest lingo??? I’m highkey proud of myself that this near fifty year old can understand what my students are freakin saying half of the freakin time! Of course the rest of the time I lowkey just have to look it up…

Back to my point. It’s easy to think that I could just slip out the back jack and nobody would notice. Of course this is crazy talk. We are about to slip out the back jack of Houston and what is in fact happening is everyone is freaking out. Shannon and I have in a relatively quiet way ingrained ourself into the fabric here. As a case in point, we will momentarily be heading out to our world famous Art Car Parade. This is a huge event in Houston. It would be quite easy to be an anonymous spectator in the crowd. That would be our typical m.o. at such a thing. As for art car folks, let’s just say they are more than a bit flamboyant, which is to say the opposite of us. You wouldn’t expect to find us in that crowd. And yet… there we are. We are personal friends with several of the best of them. We have even been in the Art Car Parade, as we pulled Tiny Drop through a few years ago. Today will be a huge celebration not only of the creativity and hard work that has gone into this year’s entries, but also of the network of relationships that we have cultivated here.

It’s slightly funny, because Houston is like the wild west in which autonomy is everything. Houston’s motto might as well be “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.” Actually, the Art Car Parade is one of our better manifestations of that attitude. And yet, in this extreme quest to be different, to be unrestrained, to be free, what has in fact developed is this intense sense of community. It’s surprising, actually, that such a deep connectivity can be found in this place. Mind you, you have to work for it. But some people do. And I suppose, in a way, that makes it feel more special. There is a paradox of course in all of this. My ACIM (A Course in Miracles) lesson for today says in part this (which I am interpreting for my own digestibility):

“All things we perceive are upside down until we listen to the Voice for God (the non-reductionist all-knowingness of the All that Is). It seems that we will gain autonomy but by our striving to be separate, and that our independence from the rest of God’s creation (all of existence) is the way in which salvation (freedom, joy, enlightenment) is obtained. Yet all we find is sickness, suffering and loss and death. (In truth,) to join with His (the will of the All That Is) is to find our own (will, creativity, freedom).”

Let me explain. This is to say that we find freedom not by seeking independence, but rather by celebrating and cultivating our inherent interdependence. If this seems counterintuitive, think of it this way: love = connection. And there is nothing more free than the pure state of Love.

This weekend I am feeling the love. Also at this very moment the Department of Energy Race to Zero Competition is taking place at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado. My students and I have been a fixture at this competition for the last five years. We have been not so lowkey celebrities at this event having been two time champions. It’s a fierce world-class competition, but you know what… more than that it is a place in which both my students and I have developed some world-class, life-long friendships and colleagues. My two closest academic colleagues, collaborators, and really great friends who make me so happy every time I talk to them, Mary Rogero from Miami University and Jonathan Bean from Arizona, are there right now competing with their students. My students and I are not there this year, for reasons I won’t explain. Mary and Jonathan have been emphatic over the last few weeks that they wish I was going to be there and that they are going to miss me. And I know they are not alone in that. I, for one, am also missing what has become for me a great celebration of generations of people coming together to work for humanity’s salvation. Godspeed to all of those “competing” right now. I know that regardless of whether or not they walk away with a trophy, they will walk away knowing that the work that they are doing in the world is priceless.

Well that was yesterday. The brief update is that this morning Mary’s teams won first place in one division and a best undergrad project in another. My day stated with a huge smile for her and her students! That, and the fact that both she and Jonathan texted me to tell me that they could see the influence of our grand winning project from last year in many of this year’s projects. It’s not often that we get to see the impact of the work that we do. It’s especially rare to get to see it rippling out across the universe. My typical m.o. is to gloss over such things. Not today. Today, I am standing in the grace of the power of our interbeingness.

Last but not least, here is my porch story. Remember my close friends and colleagues who I left behind up at school a few weeks ago because I needed to go home for some self care? One of them is Kathleen English and another Amanda Tullos. Amanda, Kathleen, and her husband Steve Setlzer, have been the core of our green team in Houston. They are all architects, incidentally. We have had a tradition of a monthly brunch on the porch for awhile now. Today was our last brunch on the porch before we go. I so love these people. I love them for their bravery in the face of a city that doesn’t really want to change its ways. I love them for the integrity that they bring to all that they do. I love them for how much they care even though it hurts. I love them for how freakin smart they are in navigating through all landmines toward a viable future. I love them for telling it like it is. I love them for understanding that nothing matters without the cultivation of deep interconnectivity between us. I love them for the love and support that they have given me. I love them for believing in me and standing by me no matter what. I know that this is not goodbye. But it is most certainly a moment to stop and be grateful for all of the parades and porches that have bound us together in love.