On the plane home from a work-related conference in Louisville last night, I read journal entries back to October of last year.  I’ve been keeping a journal my whole life.  When I take the time to go back and read what has been recorded, patterns emerge and whatever has been becoming takes shape the way landscapes appear from an airplane.  From the ground my awareness is focused on whatever is in front of me; from the air I can see the convergence of water ways, the patterns of civilization organizing itself around water, and the sprawl into less densely populated patches of agriculture and wilderness. In reading back over the pages, it is possible to trace discoveries, emerging trajectories, the arc of some knowing lifts off the page, becomes more pronounced, and seedling questions take root evolving until new seeds beget new questions in an endless cycle of discovery and becoming.

The arc from October to now started with the smell of memories drifting down the corridors of thought, a recreation of being a child at my paternal grandmother’s home in Brooklyn, early 70s.  The old creaky wooden stairs to the left when you entered from the front stoop, she lived on the lower level.  The bathroom was external to the rest of the apartment and located at the center of the long hallway that smelled and felt so different from our suburban Virginia dwelling.  The entrance to the apartment was at the far end of the hallway, past the bathroom, into the kitchen.

I loved to sit with the adults at the kitchen table and drink soda from tall glasses etched with Grecian, robed women.  The longer we sat, the longer the shadows from the glasses grew.  The details of those conversations are gone, but the cadence and visceral feeling of belonging to something older and bigger remains.

In October I wrote that it was time to start casting my shadow before the sun gets too low in the sky, that my days in October were part hope from the possibility each day held and part melancholy due to a sense of dread that I wouldn’t make the most of it.  Mornings were creating a stir in me and my melancholy was rooted in a frustration that I was not fully realizing what this life was about, that I am no longer in the morning of my life.  This is where the jaded part of me says ‘who cares?’ and the shaman part says step into the power of this knowing and trust that the friction, the stir, the melancholy are all part of the tilling of the soil.

A week ago today I participated in a day-long workshop titled A Life of Service: A Day of Exploration with Frank Ostaseski & Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. It was the perfect book end to the donation process.  In addition to offering lots of new seeds, it provided a container for this whole experience and adventure.  The gem I took away from the workshop was that service is, at its heart, mutually beneficial.  From the way this donation process has pushed me, pulled me, and cracked me open I can vouch for the truth of this new little gem.  As the teachers introduced themselves, Frank stated that service has been his curriculum.  Dr. Remen said that most of the stories about how to live happy and well are about service.  And that stories are a compass to direct you.  She told a story her grandfather used to tell that was his ‘flaming mystic’ interpretation of tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”  It was a beautiful story and in its telling I received another affirmation of one of my longest held beliefs which is that when we turn towards our brokenness and our suffering, instead of away from the pain caused by these things, it is there that we have the opportunity to be made whole.

Dr. Remen went on to articulate that the task of repairing the world is collective and that we all participate in this restoration of the world (this can be extrapolated to any microcosm or macrocosm you like) to its original wholeness not because we are experts, but because we are human.  I heard an invitation to this work towards wholeness from a 17 year old poet the night before at a Youth Speaks semi-final in San Francisco.  His poem talked about his ‘club’ of inclusivity where all the members fight to make this a better land.  I love that teens have been finding Identity. Voice. Power. Imagination. since 1996 in the SF Bay Area and was bummed to miss the Bay Area finals last night, but am looking forward to the national finals this summer.  Thanks to Joyce for dialing me in to this new source of inspiration and faith-building where some truly talented teens compete with poetry to turn their worlds inside out on subjects of identity, race, politics, sexuality, history and more.

In the hours and days that followed the donation process the predominant feeling was a lightness of being.   It was a new sensation and quality of being.  If I were a cookie I would say it was meringue.  And if I were a beverage I would say it was a spritzer.

Physically and biologically, my blood counts were all down as indicated by the post-donation CBC taken by Inja (like Ninja she told me when we first arrived, but without the ‘N’ – and it turned out to be an accurate description of her skills), but not so much that it wasn’t safe for me to re-enter the world outside the doors of Cornell/NY Presbyterian hospital.  Since red blood cells contain hemoglobin, and hemoglobin carries oxygen, this would explain why I got so winded going up one flight of the well-worn marble steps of the NY Public Library’s main branch at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street the following day with Nina.  Nina wanted to share the main reading room on the third floor with me, and I’m so glad she did.  Embarrassing that I had never been there before considering all the years I lived in NY and the two years I attended NYU in the mid-eighties before moving out to SF the first time in ’88.  And now I can say that I’ve been inside the sun-infused quiet room at the top, filled with researchers, tourists and bibliophiles stationed at rows and rows of long tables in that vast open space.

Getting winded was the physical validation confirming that I needed to take it slowly and not push myself.  Gratefully Nina accompanied me on the subway to the Staten Island ferry, then from the Whitehall Ferry Terminal in lower Manhattan to the St. George Ferry Terminal on the other side of the 25-minute crossing carrying one of my bags for every ascent and descent in between.  The added perk, of course, was the extension of time we got to spend together.  Rickie Lee Jones sings you never know when you’re making a memory, but I’m pretty certain one was made that day.  And then I got to spend time with my grandmother (Nanny), aunt, and some cousins through to the next day.  This trip I videotaped a few hours of my grandmother telling her stories to archive the cadence and intonation that have shaped my world for all of my very lucky years thus far.

Moving slowly was not an option immediately following the donation.  Walking through the streets of midtown Manhattan was like moving through a viscous fluid, stilled to the pace of precious and magic.  Petals caught on air currents drifting through shafts of late afternoon light on the path that lead into Central Park had the quality of fairy wings carrying wishes to little girls that still believe.  Moving to the pace of no agenda was delightful.

Emotionally, lightness came by way of knowing that the recipient would receive my stem cells within 24 to 48 hours and the business of re-mapping a healthy immune system would begin for her.  The visual of my stem cells coursing through her body ran something like a grammar school educational video in my mind’s eye.  Happy, excited, eager and full of love and compassion, finding the nooks and crannies and knowing exactly where to go.  A pep rally before the big game.  Also, the sheer experience of having my blood removed and returned to my body six times for hours on end and the bright red mass of it move through an elaborate system of tubes replicating an external cardiovascular system made me a little light-headed.  The nurses were human capsules of anti-anxiety drugs coaching me along for the first hour and a half, and Kenrick even sang Over the Rainbow during one particular twist of discomfort.

Today is my fourth and final acupuncture session scheduled as part of this process.  At the treatment immediately following the donation, Chris said that my pulses surprised him.  He would have expected more depletion but instead my pulses were better than before the donation.  I think this speaks to the spiritual component with respect to the lightness of being.

I’m going to keep blogging.  It’s just too fun to stop.  If you’re around in a year, we’ll get to meet the recipient together, fingers and toes crossed.  Thanks to all the friends and family that have been carrying me on your backs, in your pockets, and in your hearts.  And to the friends that have validated the way I have written about this journey and suggested that I continue, well, there are just no words to express my gratitude for that validation.  But thanks in some mix of pigeon-toed shy little girl looking up, combined with fiercely compassionate, woman-warrior looking out kind of way.

As Ryan says, peace, love and mystery.