O Danny Boy

                                   O Danny Boy

Okay! OKAY,   I’m pushing,     leave me ALONE!     I’m busy,    I’m pushing       ooooooooh!        HERE WE GO AGAIN!

It’s a boy!

Hot, wet, someone lays him on my stomach just within reach of my fingertips -- my son, my sweet baby boy.

“I told you, I knew all along.”

Grinning, exhausted, I’m remembering that long ride to the Delivery Room on the stretcher. The nurse, noticing my pink slippers commenting, “You’re looking for a girl.’

“No, it’s a boy, I know!” I’d been making him, nurturing him, trying to get comfortable with him for nine whole months, don’t you think I would know?”

Flat on my back, feet still up in the stirrups, laughing and weeping all at once, beside myself with joy. The doctor turns to the nurse, “She’s awake! Call downstairs to the waiting room. Let her talk to her husband.” They’re not used to wide awake, natural-childbirth mothers.

Phone up to my ear, Ray’s worried ”Yes -- ?”

“Oh, Danny Boy…the pipes, the pipes are calling….”

Later, downstairs in my room, washed, in a warm clean hospital gown,  tucked up in bed I relaxed after all that hard work, but also HUNGRY! Kitchen closed, it’s after 10:00, poor Ray goes out and gets me the most unforgettable, delicious coffee milk shake ever made!

September 21, 1962. Passaic General Hospital, Passaic New Jersey where my first two children were born. Actually, I was born there too!

It is fifty-five years later and my tiny Danny Boy is a man. Like everyone his life has had excitement, sorrow, disappointments, dreams found and lost, a divorce, a precious daughter, success and failure --

But I write about him as he is NOW, today, living in the moment, because that is exactly what he is doing -- and doing it so well. He is walking, hiking the Appalachian Trail, 10, 12, even 17 miles a day. 280 miles in just 27 days, over rough, rocky ground, up thousands of feet to one mountain-top after another, slipping, sliding down again clutching his hiking poles for dear life in rain, even snow in Georgia in April!

When he takes a ‘zero day’ in one of the small towns close on the Trail to rest and stock up on food he calls me and we talk for an hour. His voice is so strong, excited. 

Today, he is recounting a horrendous trek over the last of the Smokey Mountains a day ago. There were hurricane force winds, snow pellets scoring his face, unsure footing. Almost desparate when his trail buddy grabbed his shoulder, shouting against the roar of the wind, “Man, we are fuckin’ ALIVE!”

“Church -- hell,” Dan tells me, “God lives in the mountain storms!”

Totally alive in that moment, that freezing, bitter, painful, moment -- every part of him stretched almost beyond measure -- gloriously aware of what being alive is all about!

He talks, too, of the quieter moments. “Mom, when I get to the shelter at the end of a day it’s good to meet up with other hikers, some I’ve met before, others are new, it changes a lot, but what I really like best is the walking alone --  mile after mile, my head’s down watching where to make the next careful step. I have stuff to eat tucked in every pocket so I don’t have to stop. I probably eat every hour that way. Sometimes I do stop when there’s an awesome view across the mountains. You know, mom, it is really like meditating. My mind is empty, happy just to be, I’m not regretting the past, I’m not thinking about the future, worrying, planning  -- I’m just resting, aware of the moment. It feels good. Maybe when I get back I’ll write a book, ‘The Appalachian Trail, Modern Man’s Path to Enlightment’ .”

Did I forget to mention that within the last five years Dan (‘boy’ no longer) has had two heart attacks, four stents in that rather important organ? If I did it’s because he does not identify himself that way. He has not talked to me about the journey from the way-things-were-to-now those rather abrupt occasions caused. I have watched him from mother-distance deal with and accept reality. Deciding to stop living a put-off existence he recently resigned from the job he had held for 27 years, gave up his treasured apartment, put just a few things in a 5 X 5 storage unit, came east from Seattle and in one happy moment decided to put – forgive that hackneyed phrase – mind, body and spirit smack-dab in a total experience on the Appalachian Trail

He is learning, that the only time any of us are alive is this moment, the past is mind-memory, tomorrow does not exist yet. Most of us live in a series of empty, tomorrow will be great, I’ll do something then, wasn’t that fun yesterday, where should we go on vacation next year  and the oh so potential gift of actually doing, experiencing now slides, unnoticed by.

Challenged every day, tricky right ankle, blister at the base of his thumb from clutching those poles, favoring his left knee, face forward, munching on a candy bar -- totally alive, Dan, my Danny Boy, lives in each moment forever.

“ -- from glen to glen and down the mountain side ……”

I have paid my dues

I’ve Paid My Dues

What a thought!

In 2 months and 3 days I shall be 90. I’ve been a little conflicted about that.  I have always liked the beginning of each decade, 40, 50, 60 -- because there is a good feeling of ten years ahead. I could almost see them stretching out, blooming, filled with living! Knowing, of course, there might be sadness, grief, fear but right there at the zero, top of the slide, the possibilities for growth and joy were always endless. They are there at all the turnings, 3s, 7s, 9s, on the age staircase but, for me, the naughts were always the most magical. 

Suddenly, here in my living room, drinking a small bare-bones side car, there was only ¾ of an ounce of brandy left, the thought came, all of whole, not in pieces, fully formed – I have paid my dues! 

Perhaps not ten this time but regardless of how many years ahead, I know I have done the best I could. After a lifetime of thinking I really didn’t measure up, I should have done more of this or less of that,  I could everyday have been a better person, kinder, more loving, less self-centered I suddenly know none of that is true.  I have done only what I am capable of and done it well.  Good or bad I have always stretched to fill the limits of what I am.

I took on living, made a promise with my first breath that grateful for the gift I would live it to the full. Years ago when I was young I wrote “out of the seed of my becoming I grew in my own image.” I’ve always wondered about that, why did I say that at the beginning of my life, what did I mean, why did it float through all my years just at the edge of knowing? Now I see that that is what happens with all of us, aware or unaware, we grow and fulfill the innate promise of who we are.

So grateful for the promise, free of judgement, accepting, honoring what was possible, drinking my side car ---  I HAVE PAID MY DUES.

buy hyacinths

                                                      Buy hyacinths…

                                           If thou of fortune be bereft

                                 but in thy store two loaves are left,

                                 sell one and with the dole

                                buy hyacinths to feed the soul.

  …at last, after so many years I have finally found out who wrote those simple words that in no small way have framed my life…John Greemleaf Whittier.

     I was in my teens, dreamy, romantic, living half in and half out of the everyday, swept by emotions which never seemed to stay the same moment to moment. I loved poetry, particularly the exaggerated flowery writings of the 19^th century poets. I can still quote bits and pieces from “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, “Horatious at the Bridge”, “Invictus” and, of course, that lovely instruction on how to live quoted above. 

     In all the talk and lectures delivered to young people of my generation I had never come across this idea that life and living should be more than being good, listening to smart people, obeying the rules, following the ideas and aspirations of society, being just like everybody else. This little bit of almost doggerel was saying there is another way to be. You could and should explore the special, ephemeral, seemingly meaningless things that enrich your life, that perhaps are not productive, but that in some sweet way make you whole…hyacinths to feed the soul.

     Growing up takes so much time and energy…being someone changes almost every week with barely enough moments to take a picture or choose a favorite color or movie star!

     The seed of becoming unwraps slowly beneath the hectic days fostered by small bright things that touch your heart or bits of wisdom lying on the path. Society says, “don’t stop, you have such big things ahead, forget that little patch of whimsy, that useless treasure, that flower, you have worlds to conquer, money to make, success to achieve!

     For me at 13, finding this tiny poem in the pages of a woman’s magazine in a dentist’s office was a message, heaven-sent. I was off looking under, over, behind the everyday for small treasures to brighten and enlighten my life. I had found a map, a way to stretch, a bit of approval for the way I thought of things that didn’t seem to mesh with everyone elses.

     Still confused, stumbling in my style ordained scuffed saddle                shoes I began to spread a little into that “hyacinth world”, once spending my hard-earned baby-sitting money on a decorated wooden box much too small to hold anything but lovely to look at. I have it now – still useless, still beautiful.  It is my Award for taking a chance on being myself so long ago when that wasn’t the 1940’s norm. 

     Treasures, held-in-the-hand like that tiny box, or loved for the moment and gone, ephemeral, some way in the back of a drawer waiting to be rediscovered, memories of small unplanned turnings in the path, choices perhaps meaningless, foolish to others, but which have kept me true.

     Here now at the tippy end of the adventure, the top of the slide, old, I am still buying hyacinths that feed my soul.