There were 2 questions I always asked him. Him being the next potential “one.” Come on ladies, you know him. He is the one sent there to remind you of how green the grass is on the other side.

Number one. Are you content? (I was hoping for a NO here. Under the impression that someone content is boring or not driven enough).

Number two. Do you contemplate life? (Here I aimed for a YES since one who contemplates life and thinks way too hard must certainly be more fun than one who is simply happy with the way things are).

Well, regardless, when i was young and single I searched high and low for him. And if I didn’t ask him outright I watched for signs of it in everything he said, everything he did.

Well, eventually I found him. Or, so I thought? But then marriage happened. And four kids. And job promotions. And striving. And more striving. And still more striving.

You put on a blindfold, spin three times in the grass, remove the blindfold, and all of a sudden your kids are grown up and they are cooler than you.

And then you begin to question, why was it so important to strive? What were we striving for? Where are we trying to go? More importantly, WHY are we trying to get there?

I realized that I AM there. This is it. Either you sit back and watch the beauty unfold before you. Or, you continue to look down that road you did not take a couple of times, or that road that looks really appealing from here.

And then you stop…Pull out a really pretty adirondack chair…..And sit down for Christ’s sake. Look around you. Everything is as it should be.

Ever felt like you might be getting to just about the spot where you should be?  Like there may be a shift in the universe in your favor?  A shift allowing for you to reach a destination that once you thought you could only dream of?

I think i am approaching that station.  Thirteen years after a journey –  one which has taken me through several therapists (two of which deserve a hearty thank you and a lot of credit – Susan and Jodi), the sad, senseless death of someone I loved very much, a wedding (mine) and a bankruptcy (yup, I just said that), four kids, two near divorces, an intense and surprising fondness for all things music, yoga, a still unpublished novel (for now anyway), an art studio space, the loss of my mother, an extreme fondness for herbal remedies, and an awesome life coach (thanks Laura) – I finally feel as though I am possibly heading in the right direction. Or, at the least, I am relaxed enough to simply allow the path to unfold in front of me rather than feeling like I need to control it so darn heavily.

My yoga teacher this morning (the best practice I may have ever had) reminded us of a quote from the book by Elizabeth Gilbert,  Eat Pray Love. Here is how it goes:

“Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he’s a little of both. We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses-one foot is on the horse called “fate” the other on the horse called “free will”. And the question you have to ask everyday is, Which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it’s not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?”

I have spent many years trying to answer this question with the rides of my life. I am realizing that, just as in yoga it becomes imperative to focus on your center for balance and harmony, so too is this important in life. The answer to the above dilemma is both in my eyes. And the only way to be able to hold on to this ride of our lives is by grabbing those reigns, strengthening our center (who we really are, despite what we wish we were, or what others think we should be, or what some demand us to be) and allowing fate to lead us, as we simultaneously use our free will (at times mistakenly) (or so we might think at the time) toward where we are destined to end up.  No matter how much we try to control things, the more circuitous our route becomes through this world. This is by no means a bad thing.  To simply hang on and allow this ride (life) to lead you via your heart will let you be who you are destined to become. Only you know who that is.  Only you will, by staying centered, find the balance you need to figure out your own truth.  Your mind and personal precedent will guide, yet not force.  Just as we are taught in yoga to push to the point of slight discomfort but not force to the point of pain.  We all have that gut feeling that enables us to feel and see what’s right. It’s just that sometimes we choose to ignore it or we worry what others will think of it.  

At this same yoga class, my teacher mentioned several affirmations regarding feeling centered and one of them spoke to me the most:

“I am able to create on purpose. Joyfully.”

This one spoke to my innermost self. The one that doubts my ability to write and write well.  The one that tries to tell me what I should be doing with my life.  The one that tries to rush me to make decisions and commitments I am not yet ready to make.  The one that urges me to try things and to follow what my heart is telling me.  The one that tells me I am wasting time when I pick up a coloring book and color, or facebook surf (or stalk, if that’s what you prefer to call it. It certainly feels that way doesn’t it?  Facebook sucks me down paths I never imagined I would go! There is a LOT of crap that must be utilized to “separate the wheat from the chaff,” so to speak. No offense. I simply mean what makes meaning for me), to help my thoughts come to fruition.

And so I thank you, if you are indeed still with me at the end of this rambling post.  I hope you can remain centered, even when it feels like those “fate” and “free will” horses are really taking you for a ride.  And, remember…when in doubt, squeeze your inner thighs.  You can make peace with them after all.

I love listening to musicians because when they perform it is as if they are opening their hearts to the audience and showing us what is inside their minds. It is beautiful to encounter someone who can distill a myriad of events from one’s own life experiences into just a few lines of prose to create the lyrics for a song.

Then there’s the incredible (to me, since it all looks like a foreign language) ability to read notes…a bunch of dots, some of which may or may not be attached to straight lines, either single or interconnected. I have always found great beauty in the aesthetic appeal of this language of sound.

Then, there’s watching musicians in action, so to speak. The intimate dance they perform with one another via their eyes and head nods, as they take turns showcasing their skills, always humbly allowing for the others’ musical talent to shine – accompanying one another (as needed) along the way, but never overtaking one another in the process. It is a delicate balance and most musicians seem very adept at this process.

Finally, and most amazing of all, is how a musician can take his/her instrument and play it with a group of other musicians even if they have never played with or practiced with them before. As in, simply jamming out (is that what they call it?) on a particular chord progression (not really sure what that means, per se) having never played a particular song.

So what baffles me most is that musicians might be some of the most humble people I have ever met. Despite what to me is akin to God-like capability, they perform their magic with class and respect for others who do the same for them.

It was the same thing every day for years after my mom went back to work. I awoke to the alarm’s siren-like, screeching monotone at the ungodly hour of 5:00 A.M. Then I readied myself for the long day ahead. I ate breakfast, usually a bowl of raisin bran, while my mom shuffled around the kitchen in her large, zip-front bathrobe like a barge drifting out of port. She’d drink black coffee and chain smoke long, skinny, brown menthol More brand cigarettes. She was always reading some sort of Mystery or Science fiction novel, holding open the tightly bound paperback with the bony fingers and yellowed fingernails of her left hand.

At 6:00 we’d pile into her Cadillac Coupe De Ville and she’d stop in front of Millie Cohen’s house around the corner. I’d run up the front lawn, enter through the unlocked front door and pull the screen door, against its airtight will, quietly and quickly closed. Once inside I was greeted by the aroma of a house that was not my own. All houses, and the families that carry on inside them, seem to collect their own unique scent.

I can still recall how dark and still it was inside while everyone continued sleeping. Sometimes I’d sit on the recliner in their den and watch cartoons with the volume turned low, my eyes growing heavier as I tried not to fall asleep. The house was so quiet I could hear the ticking of the kitchen’s wall clock. Their dog, a huge Great Dane called Malka, would lay beside my chair, breathing heavily and licking her droopy, wet chops as she continuously shifted her position.

As I grew more accustomed to this morning routine, I started going upstairs and stealthily entering my friend Valerie’s bedroom. She was the youngest of Millie’s three daughters. There was Marlena, the oldest and most crass in her daily choice of words and volume of delivering them; Stacey, a soft-spoken, slight young woman with a constant expression of surprise plastered to her flattened face; and finally, Valerie, one year younger, but in her attitude one year older and wiser than me.

As I padded into her bedroom, I envied Valerie still wrapped in the safe, warm cocoon of sleep under the covers and on top of a soft, yielding mattress. I’d shuffle across the shag carpeting and sit across from her bed, leaning my back against Stacey’s bed and simply close my eyes and wait for time to pass.

When the sun began peeking through the bedroom window, Valerie would wake up to find her outfit for the day, which had been laid out for her by her mommy at the end of the bed the night before. I remember being so envious of this simple ritual, thinking it was so cool to have a mom with nothing more important to do than make sure your matching sweatpants and sweat jacket had a coordinating top and pair of socks. In fact, I thought this was so cool that one Saturday, when my best friend Beth arrived early one morning, on her dad’s way to work, I pretended to still be asleep. I had laid an outfit, much like one that Valerie would wear, at the end of MY bed, imagining my mom had picked it out for me and placed it there, just so, for my convenience and comfort.

Millie’s house became more than just a safe place for me to go in the mornings before school. Over time, its memory has become its own unique and separate entity; pieces of another family’s life frozen in time with my own. It was their early morning ritual of frozen solid New York style bagels, popped into one of the first microwave ovens I’d ever seen, until they became hot and rubbery. While their aroma bathed the kitchen in warmth and flavor, they were slathered with cream cheese and baked salmon procured from a deli in Manhattan on their Dad, Phil the Plumber’s, way home from work once a month.

Millie had perfected a recipe for Chicken A La King made from a series of ingredients all of which came out of a can. My mother had once tried to replicate it, from scratch she tells me, and somehow that canned and, probably, preservative laden version beat her out in my book. She’s never let me live that one down!

Millie was the quintessential housewife and mother. Straightening the house, bossing the kids, and wrapping gifts for birthday parties her children would attend on weekends. I specifically recall watching her wrap a box so perfectly that this image is always at the forefront of my mind, to this day, whenever I am required to wrap something. While my mom perfected the art of blanketing gifts with tin foil, Millie would fold proper wrapping paper neatly at the corners and tape them up flawlessly. Although I shun tin foil and try to emulate Millie, the homemaking goddess, my ends always seem to be too long and end up smashed and wrinkled beneath the folded paper like a big mistake I must cover over every time.

While she would go about her homemaking, she would often confide in me; talk to me as if I were her friend and co-conspirator in all things home, while her daughters flitted about, needing things and requesting entertainment, like the children they ought to be. In her house dress, worn thin with washing and snapped all the way up the front, she would put one leg up on a kitchen chair, drag heavily on her Marlboro Reds, and complain about the kids, many of her sentences beginning with only four words…”Son of a bitch…” and ending – due to an inevitable interruption mid sentence by one of her charges – with a “You bastard!” pronounced as if she were spitting watermelon pits, her lips tight with frustration.

Thirty years later, I am a stay-at-home mom myself. For now, at least. Just like I always envied Millie’s children and desired to emulate Millie, I do many of the same things she did on a daily basis and they don’t seem as glamorous or grown-up. They are just what I do. But, let me assure you I DO NOT wear house dresses. Anymore. Although I must admit to a brief stint with them while nursing my second baby, Sadie. They were just so easy to snap and unsnap for feedings, which were frequent and left me feeling like a walking udder half the time. I do not know how to make, nor do I desire to try my hand at making Chicken A La King. I don’t even know if there is such a thing anymore. But, I have my tried and true recipes that my family will probably remember years from now, many of which come from a box or get popped into a new and improved microwave. I still have not perfected the art of gift-wrapping, although Millie sits beside me, it seems, everytime I try. Maybe when she gets frustrated with my half-assed folding and tucking, she might even be shouting at me….”Son of a bitch!”