Back to Life

It's been two weeks now since Doc. B. and I returned from Guatemala. During the yoga retreat, and since then, my throat chakra has been hard at work trying to find the right words to give the trip justice. Not much luck on that while I was in Guatemala and still not much luck since returning home. But because I want to at least get something down in print, including a couple of photos, I’m going ahead with what I’ve got – my "closing circle" thoughts, with a slight detour as usual.

For any of you who have ever participated in a retreat, a support group, a group therapy session or a 28-day drug and alcohol treatment center, you know there’s always a "closing circle." Wait, before I go any further, I should remind my faithful readers and qualify for my new readers that I’ve never been a patient at a substance abuse treatment center. But for a short (witch’s) spell I was in the employ of one. I guess you could call it my 270 day treatment program (270 days in that I barely made it 9 months on the j-o-b, and treatment in that that I was treated like dirt). But it did conclude with a closing circle on my last day of work. By the way, I think I’ve experienced more closing circles in departing jobs than I have in the therapeutic, more typical way.

Here’s the scene of the closing circle at the culmination of my first "real" job (not counting McDonald's where I worked during high school and not counting the Hispanic Community Center where I did my Social Work internship). Seated, in the round, on card-table chairs (the kind my parents set up for their bridge parties), on my last day of work at the treatment center, were:
1) the Director who hired me and that I later learned only did so because she mistakenly thought I would fill her lacking Hispanic quota,
2) a holier-than-thou family therapist,
3) several impatient in-patients, and
4) little old me at age 22.

They each went around the circle and said (i.e., made up) something nice about me or about working with me. Then I closed the circle by graciously (Huh?) receiving my "never alone again" AA chip followed by a recitation of some drivel that I concocted, on the spot, about how much I would miss each and every one of them and how much I appreciated what they had taught me during my stint on the second shift. there really was SO MUCH that I learned, including:
1) learning how to drive the big van full of self-admitted and court-ordered treatment participants to the Friday AA meeting;
2) memorizing the first five of the 12 steps, since that’s all you really have time for in a 28-day program; and
3) perfecting how to avoid "Jim", one of the other second-shifters who kept asking me out.

Oh, and I of course learned the serenity prayer and several other AA sayings that have helped me make it this far in life by taking it one day at a time and keeping it simple, bitch, I mean stupid, since "KISS" makes more sense than "KISB".

So if you didn’t know what a closing circle was, you should now have a good idea of what they involve. But more importantly, I'm hoping you can also imagine how moving a closing circle could actually be if you were even slightly interested in the people sitting in the circle with you. And that’s how I felt with the yoga retreaters. I honestly had no difficulty coming up with at least one thing (or more) that I liked and/or appreciated about each and every person sitting cross-legged on those yoga mats and cushions. During the closing circle, our yogini leader gave us the option of making a closing statement of our choice or reciting a haiku. A couple of people actually did the haiku and I was able to add yet another admirable quality to the list of things I appreciated about those particular participants. Here’s one example:

“Mystical mountains
Sacred energy rising
A lone man fishes”

I thought at first of reciting a haiku since I do enjoy coming up with them. But I decided that would require too much thinking and memorizing while I was simultaneously trying to hear what others had to say. I don’t do well in creating poetry in my head; I need paper. So I quickly lined through that option and decided to go off the cuff. I pared down what I wanted to say into three main memory mementos that I planned to take away with me as I went back to life in the ATL (or the "404", or "Hotlanta", or "that big metro area of 5 million plus that doesn’t fit with the rest of the State of Georgia").

The first "memento" was a reminder statement that the general manager shared with us during our orientation to the retreat center: "go with the flow and remember that the flow isn't yours." She was essentially telling us to just calm down, allow the staff to do their thing and let the retreat happen. In other words, so what if coffee and fruit have not yet been set out before your 7am yoga class, you won’t die of caffeine withdrawal or starve to death either. And so what if the hot tub isn't heated up when it's supposed to be; it'll get hot or the sauna will get heated up instead. The bottom line was that everything would happen in its own time and in the meantime, you’d live (and in fact probably learn from the whole thing).

The second was something our yoga teacher quoted (though I can't remember who said it first) and that is to "speak with one mouth and listen with two ears". One of the things I’m very much aware of lately is how much I just automatically react (verbally) without really listening. It’s habit. And the other thing I do is think about what I’m going to say next while the other person is still talking. Time to work on that; I miss out on a lot and/or don’t remember things I’m told. "Deep listening" is what my therapist calls it and she’s damn good at it. She remembers things I’ve told her that I don’t even remember telling her. And she remembers people’s names and scenarios too. Yes, I’ve probably talked about YO U in my therapy session and my therapist remembers you 

And finally was simply, but not so simply, the word gratitude. It kept coming up during the trip. Words like gracious, thank you, appreciation, etc… were common during the week and you could feel the depth of it when someone said it – it was right from the heart and true rather than a meaningless string of words. Maybe it was how grateful we all felt to be on the retreat or how much "more" we all "had" compared to the Guatemalan villagers with whom we came in contact. Whatever the case, everyone we ran into "had" so much in their hearts...

As always, after a trip away from home, I'm glad to be back...back to life...but I'll be adding a few Guatemalan jewels to my life...

The Little Mugger

Doc. B. and I had only a few days left on Hilton Head Island. We had plans to fill every waking hour and weren’t interested in sleeping the days away. Our plan was to get up early each remaining morning and get in some exercise – a long walk on the beach, a bike ride, some yoga or a jog. My intention was to actually set the alarm to ensure that we kept to this schedule. So when the phone rang on Thursday morning at about 7:20 a.m., I was looking to smack the snooze button. But in fact, I had forgotten to set the alarm. When I finally realized it was my cell phone ringing, I couldn’t imagine who would be calling. It was my friend the "Post Master General" calling from Washington, D.C. (We’ll call her PMG going forward).

I couldn’t imagine why PMG would be calling me at that hour, but it turns out she needed to report a synchronicity that had just occurred. And if she was calling me before 8 a.m., I figured it must be a good one. PMG did not disappoint. Here’s the tale…

PMG had been planning lunch that day with friends. So rather than taking the METRO as she does every other day, she was going to drive her car to work, feed the meter all morning, go pick up her friends for lunch, dine, drop her friends back off, and then feed the meter all afternoon. As she was going to her car that morning, she got to thinking about what a hassle it would be to leave her desk every hour to go give quarters to the parking meter Gods. So at the very last minute, she put her car keys away and walked to the METRO. After much thought, she decided that at lunch time, she’d simply hail a cab and pick up her friends to go eat lunch. Sure, it would be a little more money, but also less of a pain in the gluteus maximus.

So PMG headed down the street, the same old route she takes each day. Within minutes, she was approached by a young boy, of maybe 12 or 13, wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. He had his hands in his pockets and made one of them look like he had a gun. PMG had no idea if it really was a weapon, but he sure wanted it to look that way. The kid said to PMG, "Give me your money." PMG said "NO!" So he said it again, "Give me your money!" She said, "I’m an angry white woman and I’ll kick your ass, now leave me alone!" But he persisted so she made her way toward the street, banging on car windows trying to get the attention of a driver who might be a Good Samaritan and either intervene or at least call the police. No one seemed to be responding so she kept moving quickly toward the METRO station along the side of the street where she could at least be seen. The kid continued to follow her. PMG then got her wits about her and realized that she should be calling the police on her own cell phone.

So she got herself to a point where more people could see her, across from the entrance to the METRO station. The kid must have seen her pull out her cell phone because he promptly headed toward the elevator to go down into the METRO station to catch his get-away train. As the elevator doors closed, that little mugger smiled and waved at PMG. Well, PMG quickly described her location, and the kid, to the police who must have immediately contacted the METRO police because shortly thereafter, up the escalator they came with the kid in tow. The police must have been standing there waiting for him as the elevator doors opened up onto the METRO platform. She identified the kid and they took him away.

And there she was - all alone to go on to work as though it were a morning just like every other morning. But it wasn’t. PMG had almost been robbed. Can you imagine the adrenaline that must have been so obvious in PMG’s body after she knew she was safe from harm? PMG went on to work, trying to decide what her fate was for this day - a day that she was supposed to have driven to work. And had she driven, would something worse have happened? Or was this an open door to something else that was to be? Did she NOT drive her car that morning so that this kid could be caught before he committed a truly serious crime? What did this mean? Was it a higher calling for PMG in some way? Would this kid be forever changed? Would PMG be forever changed?

I suggested to PMG that perhaps she had saved someone else from being robbed or hurt that morning. Some elderly woman who wouldn’t have handled things the same way that PMG had? But PMG couldn’t go for that idea. She’s too concrete. It had to be something that was either going to save that kid from a life of crime or something that would happen to PMG; something not yet known. I thought for a moment and came up with another suggestion. Could it be that all of this happened just so that PMG would call me at 7:20 and wake me up since I forgot to set the alarm? Hmm… Can a synchronicity really be that simple?

UPDATE: That little mugger will have a court date in June at which time he may be able to plead to a misdemeanor charge and be sentenced the same day without need for a trial. The prosecutor asked PMG to prepare a statement about how this has affected her so that it can be read in court, before the sentencing. This way, the kid will hear from PMG that there was more harm done than simply ruining this little thug’s reputation as a tough guy.