It’s in the cards

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My sister has moved 22 times as an adult. And no, she’s not in the armed services, the French Foreign Legion or the witness protection program.

I guess you could say that she’s a rolling stone.

She’s lived in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia (twice), California, Maryland (twice), Ohio (twice) and is now back in California.

And she’s been through many acquisitions and purges in her 35 years of moving but there has been one item that has always made the cut – a box filled with every note, letter and card I’ve ever sent her starting when she went to camp when she was 12.

The box is not organized in any way, shape or form and if you knew my sister at all, you would laugh at the very idea of her organizing such a thing.

I pulled out the box while I was visiting her this week and it was a little like that weeper movie, Somewhere in Time, where Christopher Reeve is swept back in time by looking at an old painting. Years and years documented by Hallmark.

My sister is seven years younger than me and she was only 38 when we lost both of our parents. That’s terribly young to lose your rudders and the loss has certainly informed much of her life since then.

As the older sister I was always somewhat of an authority figure (okay, you can say bossy), even if she rarely took my advice. When our parents died in 2002, I became sister and mother, a dual role I desperately want to get right.

This is the essence of my sister.

Rummaging through the box, I have made several observations:

My handwriting over the years has declined from marginally legible to Straight Outta Serial Killer. I wonder if it’s too late for med school.
I pick out the best cards. I knew which ones were from me before even opening them. And many of them made me smile – again.
Almost every note to my sister is a form of a pep talk – only the subject matter is different depending on the decade – boyfriends, jobs and diets, always diets.
Postage has really gone up a lot in 40 years.
Those “Forever” stamps are looking like a good investment.

I pulled out a letter from 1981 that I had written my sister – on yellow legal pad paper, my stationary of choice for many years. She was living in Lynchburg, VA with my aunt and uncle and taking general studies courses at the local community college. Her grades in high school were not stellar and she was feeling like a loser while many of her friends were enrolled at various colleges and universities.

I was trying to make her feel good about herself and her future and my letter made me laugh out loud when I got to this part: Don’t look back – the past is nothing but a bunch of Kodak snapshots dumped in a box in the closet.

Sisters, circa 1974.

How prophetic I was!

I don’t know if my letter helped her but it all worked out well as she went on to study at The University of Virginia and is now managing several breast cancer centers in Southern California.

But it’s the cards that really get to me. Almost all of them have a picture of two young girls on the front and that is the image that has sustained me over the years – the two of us, together – usually laughing and usually up to some shenanigans.

The inscription on this cards says, “I’m so glad I always have you to lean on.”

It is a rare and precious thing to be deeply known by another human being – especially one that you are related to and my sister knows me in all manner of ways. That’s why she had a case of seltzer water (orange) chilling for me upon my arrival and vases of fresh-cut hydrangeas (my fave) throughout the condo.

And she knows my heart and my pain and she has suffered greatly these past few months since I lost my job – a job that was more like a calling to me. She was 3,000 miles and three time zones away as we weathered this great storm together. And yet, she walked every step of this ordeal with me.

Some of it was good. Some of it wasn’t. But through thick and thin, they stayed close, and they were sure they always would. And this made the world good again.

That’s why I was so grateful to have the opportunity to share a special dinner with her on my first night here. I sat across from her at the table and looked into her sweet face and told her that in my entire life, I’ve never felt another person be so present to my pain.

She cried. I cried. I think the waiter might have even cried.

We’ve had so much fun together this week and “no fights” as she remarked the other night, which initiated a hilarious “greatest hits” recap of some of our most famous disagreements.

My favorite story is from years ago. I was living in Greensboro at the time and she was in Kensington, MD. We got into a heated argument about, well, who knows, and I got so mad that I threw the phone, the portable phone mind you, against the wall and it shattered into pieces. She called back a minute or two later and my partner answered the phone. My sister said very earnestly, “I think Addison and I got disconnected.”

I’m giggling now thinking about how clueless she was to my rage.

Fortunately, most of our disconnections have been few and far between over the years. Nothing a call or, yes, a card couldn’t repair, but I’ll tell you one thing, we’re going to need a bigger box.

My sister, my lifeline.

The wisdom of beaches

sunset

I’m spending some time with my sister this week in Newport Beach. I booked this trip a day before I was fired in January and I suppose that is fortunate for my sister because otherwise, I may have left my return trip open-ended.

The world just feels so much bigger here – in all manner of ways. I guess the Pacific Ocean has something to do with it. Cue the ocean if you really want some good reflection time.

I find myself thinking less and less of my old life, the one where I was responsible for 17 staff and several hundred clients. I certainly think about many of my beloved colleagues and I’m so grateful that I had a chance to properly mark our time together at a gathering a few weeks ago.

It was a chilly night but we sat outside in a circle around a tall heat lamp in a makeshift cabana. We laughed a lot and we cried a little and we held each other in embraces free of any self-consciousness, the ones where you don’t worry if it’s too long are too tight. It was a remarkably intimate evening and I’m certain that we all savored every minute of it. We know what we shared was special – almost sacred in some ways – and that can never be taken away.

Today, I am more angry than sad. I know that I was treated unfairly and ungraciously. I also know that life is rarely fair and the deaths of two friends in January certainly gave me some sobering perspective on the magnitude of my loss.

I find myself looking forward and while that can be a little scary, it is also terribly exciting. I feel lighter these days, more present.

Yesterday on the beach, metaphors were practically bopping me in the head like a cartoon character.

I get it!

I took a long walk and stopped to watch the waves crashing against the jagged jetty – that’s how I felt for several weeks earlier this year – battered. And later in the day, I saw three children frolicking in the water – the frigid water. They were so impossibly brave – standing there to face the oncoming waves and they squealed with delight as they got smacked back on their heels.

Enough of that.

I want to be brave like them. I want to not be afraid. I want to delight in the unknowing.

I wish this photo had a soundtrack.

Late in the day, my sister and I walked to a perfect perch to view the sunset – the magnificent California sunset. It was brilliant and so quickly vanished. And then there was that exquisite time of every day – the gloaming. The sun is gone but it is not quite yet dark and there is a peace in the air that is almost palpable. My dear friend, Sarah, shared a wonderful song with me by Over the Rhine about this magical time, “Favorite Time of Light.” It goes like this:

It’s our favorite time of light
Just before the day kisses the night
You see the redwing blackbirds fly
The sun’s a big ol’ lazy eye
When they lay me down at last
And this life is finally past
Just remember me this way
And don’t forget to say
It’s our favorite
Our favorite time of light

The gloaming.

I’ve been reading on the beach, too, and yesterday I finished The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zig-Zag Life by Natalie Goldberg. She has long been one of my favorite authors and I’m fairly certain she wrote this latest book just for me. Of course, that’s what all the truly great writers do – make that connection that the reader so desperately longs for.

Goldberg writes, “The Great Spring includes the Great Failure, the thorough-going reduction to nothing, to loss, disappointment, shame, betrayal. If we can stand sill and attentive in our lives and not run away, even right in the middle of the ruins, we will find fertile ground.”

I’ll be home soon. I have some planting to do.

That’s me, looking forward.

Invincible summer

summer sun

January was a rough month for me. I lost my job and two dear friends.

While I feel certain I’ll find another job, I know that Kristel and Regina can never be replaced. As my dear veterinarian said to me years ago when I was agonizing over the decision to put down my 19 year old cat, “Death is so final.”

I’ve never forgotten her stark wisdom.

I’ve been writing about my friends for several weeks – in my head – and now it’s time to put the pen to it. I suppose I’ve resisted doing so because it would make their absence on earth truly final for me – permanent ink if you will.

Regina died on New Year’s Day. She had a great sense of humor so I’m sure she would have appreciated that irony.

She was 66 years old.

My wife and I attended a New Year’s Eve dinner the night before her death – a treasured tradition shared with several wonderful women who have known Regina and her wife, Miki, for years. Before we sat down to eat, one of our hosts offered a beautiful prayer for our missing friends. It was a muted evening as celebrations go but very comforting in its intimacy.

We all laughed a lot – that knowing laughter steeped in the history of shared experiences. We wiped away tears, too, softly. I think we all knew that were already sitting Shiva for our friend.

Regina was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer about a year and a half ago. It is a rare form of cancer that started benignly – she couldn’t get comfortable at night in “her” chair when she and Miki were watching television draped in their dogs. She had some nagging discomfort that eventually worsened and led to her diagnosis.

Miki, left, and Regina and their children.

And then began the barrage of several rounds of chemotherapy. Miki started posting on the website CaringBridge, a personal health journal, soon after Regina’s diagnosis and she was remarkably disciplined about it – writing often and sharing not only clinical updates on Regina’s condition but also her personal reflections along the way.

Regina was a private person and even though she would have never personally posted, she apparently really enjoyed hearing Miki share all of the encouraging comments from friends at the end of those interminable treatment days.

And Miki’s posts were staggeringly beautiful. She is a former journalist and law professor, so I was not at all surprised by the quality of her writing but I was deeply moved by its intimacy, particularly as Regina was dying.

Regina responded well to the brutal regimen and was declared in remission by early last summer. She was always a great athlete and was elated to return to the other two great loves of her life – softball and golf. The girl of summer was in her element.

Miki and Regina in the Florida Everglades. They were homebodies who traveled the world.

But winter came with no mercy and in early December, an MRI revealed widespread cancer throughout all portions of her brain. She declined rapidly and was transferred from the hospital to hospice.

No one knows for sure, but it seems there is little time left. The most important thing now is her comfort. I’m sorry to bear this news. It has been a very hard day. The worst day, really, ever. 12/20/16 ~ Miki’s journal entry

Miki and Regina were together for over two decades and married in New York a couple of years ago. In an almost lyrical post, Miki revealed that they weren’t really that engaged in the same-sex marriage movement – they had been together for so long that they didn’t think they needed that legal validation. But Regina’s impending death made her realize that it did matter.

It gives me comfort that we are married. It means something. It is big. 12/26/15

Miki and Regina on their wedding day. Newlyweds after more than 20 years together.

My wife and I went to visit Regina a few days after Christmas. I’m always astonished by the quiet – the deafeningly reverent silence in the halls of a hospice. We slipped gently into her room and found Miki on her iPad beside Regina’s bed. Regina looked remarkably vibrant and very tan for December. That made me smile.

She did not speak but she raised her slender, weak arm in recognition and smiled. I talked to her a lot – mostly about sports and she would nod her head slightly. I’m not at all a medical person but I am comfortable with the dying. This was a gift to me when my parents both died in 2002. I wasn’t afraid and I wanted to be very present to their final journey.

If you have not sat with death you may not understand this, but I have found that leaning into it can be powerfully life affirming. And I think we owe this to the dying.

We knew that this would be the last time that we saw Regina and we both kissed her on the cheek and told her that we loved her. There was nothing left to say.

There is one final story about Regina I need to convey. During our happy life together, Regina considered it her sacred duty to take care of me. I have had my share (okay more than my share) of serious health problems in my life. Regina always took the most wonderful care of me and, I think really loved doing so. As I sat with her, it was obvious that the end was near. I asked the nurse whether she could tell us anything about the time frames, and she, of course, said she could not but that she believed through her experience and knowledge that people at the very end of their lives seemed to choose their moment to die. I immediately knew what I had to do. I whispered to her, and I held my face against hers for moments and told her everything was okay and that I was going to go home. Ten minutes after I got home, Beverly (a dear friend) called to say she had died. Though it could be wildly coincidental, I believe that, even in dying, Regina took care of me — she did not want me to see her go. 1/3/16

Amen…

I thought that I would also write about my friend, Kristel, but it is just too much for one post and I think that spring will be the perfect season to share about her bright and hopeful spirit.

Regina thrived in the long, hot days of summer and as winter wanes, I picture her in her golf visor, tan and happy, and I recall the words of Albert Camus: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

Game on, sweet friend.

Regina celebrates a good out.

Being comfortable with the uncomfortable

Photos by Carla Kucinski.

I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about the idea of being uncomfortable, accepting where you are in your life and making peace with it. In my yoga class, my instructor often talks about this because it’s a huge element in the type of yoga I practice – yin. In yin yoga, seated postures are held for three to five minutes at a time, which forces you to surrender to the pose and allow your body, mind and spirit to just “be” no matter how much your body, mind and spirit fight you. It’s an exercise in letting go.

I’ve been practicing yin yoga for a little more than one year now, and it has helped grounded me in situations and periods in my life where I’ve felt groundless. February was one of those months. Sometimes life hurls at you one big explosion that pulls the ground out from underneath you. In one moment everything changes. That’s how my February started. It forced me to have to process a lot of difficult things and emotions all at once. Feelings I sometimes didn’t know what to do with. Every day felt like a freight train of raw emotions plowing into me.

After taking a brief hiatus from yoga, I returned to my practice last week to help find my footing again. Coincidentally, the lungs were the focus of class that night. The lungs represent courage; it’s also where we hold our grief.

spring blog web

During the class, my instructor talked about a YouTube video she posted on Facebook earlier in the day. The video features a rabbi talking about how lobsters’ bodies grow, but their shells do not. When the lobster is ready to shed its shell, it retreats under a rock, casts off its armor and then re-emerges to begin growing a new shell.

I feel much like a lobster these days. For the last three weeks, I’ve been in hiding and spent a lot of time reflecting and processing. But something has shifted in me recently. I’m starting to shed my shell. With each new day this past week, I felt the ground returning beneath me. The chatter in my mind quieted. My emotions began to find balance. I started to make peace with this uncomfortable place I’m in. I’ve accepted that this is where I need to be right now, so I can grow, like the lobster.

“Times of stress are also times that are signals for growth.” I keep coming back to those words from the rabbi. They grabbed my heart.

A friend remarked over brunch this morning how good it feels to see pops of color beginning to emerge outside, after enduring a bleak, grey February. Winter is starting to let go, and so am I.

Spring is a transitional season. It’s a time of growth and renewal. It’s a new beginning. Letting go is all about moving out of something, so we can move into something else — another wise observation from my yoga instructor. (Are you noticing her pattern of awesomeness?)

I do not know what I will be moving into, but I do know what I’ll be leaving behind (fear and grief) and what I’ll be taking with me (hope and promise).

spring flowers web

Inside Job

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I lost my job about six weeks ago. Well, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it went.

You see, I gave someone a second chance and it came back to bite me. It could all make for ripe fodder for a Lifetime movie. We would need a catchy title, something like Behind the Ledger: Her Secret Liability and Meredith Baxter would have to play me because, well, just because.

I can laugh a little now because the absurdity of it all lends itself to farce but there is nothing funny about it. A lot of people that I still deeply care for are suffering greatly. These are people I’ve shared my days with for a long time doing some very hard work for folks in great need.

I miss these good people more than I can put into words but there have been so many exquisite words from them in the past several weeks that have saved me. Phone calls, emails and texts – some of which would make the Baby Jesus cry.

After a late night round of emotional texts with a long time colleague who said, “You know me better than anyone – I would rather lose an arm,” it struck me that I was in the surreal position not unlike attending my own funeral. I felt like I was listening to a series of eulogies every day.

It was rather wonderful and it was truly awful.

It has been tremendously gratifying to hear that I have made a difference in the lives of many of the people I’ve worked with for over a decade. I know I tried to but those intentions don’t always convey.

I’m not a conventional boss. I smiled typing that last sentence knowing that anyone who has ever worked with me will bob their head up and down when they read it.

I don’t like to be micromanaged so I have never done that to others. My mentor and beloved friend, Phyllis, was a big proponent of the weekly To Do List when I worked for her years ago. She wanted to know what her staff was working on each week and even though she was more intimidating than me on her weakest day, she always appreciated my style and instead of squashing my independent spirit, she nourished it.

Years later she would joke, “Addison would always turn in her To Do List but it might be on the back of a cocktail napkin.” Phyllis let me be me and it worked out quite well for both of us and the organization we represented.

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I’ve always tried to emulate Phyllis as a manager but I’m sure I’m really more of a Phyllis-Lite. I tried to nurture and appreciate each staff member’s unique skills and gifts but I imagine that she would have been more discerning about that second chance than I was.

I’ve always tried to be the kind of boss that people can talk to about personal problems, too. And Lord knows, over the past 11 years, I’ve been through divorces, illness, births and deaths with these folks. These are the ties that truly bind and this is why so many of us are grieving.

As one of my closest colleagues wrote just the other night, “I know more about you now just in seeing what your people miss and are reaching out for.”

Yes, my people.

Some of the messages have been angry, many of them have been sad and others so sweetly genuine. I heard that one of my younger staff made an impassioned defense of me by saying among many things, “Addison wrote me a note when my grandfather died and when my dog died. And I don’t mean a Facebook note.” I love this and the memory of it will always make me smile. (I never met her grandfather but I really loved that dog.)

944008_10153321711037190_5094882858512280359_n You’re probably wondering if I regret giving that second chance since it was ultimately my own undoing. I’ve thought about that a lot the past several weeks. I certainly regret the pain and havoc that a misguided malcontent has wreaked on so much of what I have loved for so long.

Every fire has a point of origin and even Fire Marshall Bill could trace this one.

Someone told me a heartfelt story about how they had been the victim of someone else’s maliciousness and I believed them. I’ve been there, we’ve all been there. I chose to not hold someone’s past – fact or fiction – against them.

I remember my dear and devoted former CFO, who retired a couple of years ago, shaking her head at me one day when I gave a staff member a pass on something and saying, “Addy, you always give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” I wanted to take her observation as a compliment even though her tone was more scolding in nature.

I try to live my life by the Christian principles that I believe in. The God that I love is a God of second chances. I know this because I have been the recipient of many of them. And the agency that I gave my heart and soul to for so many years is dedicated to creating second chances for people who have never been afforded that luxury.

Second Chance Just Ahead Green Road Sign Over Dramatic Clouds and Sky.

I truly believe that this is what we are all called to do.

President Zachary Taylor once said, “I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me.”

While I admire his sentiments, I think I’ll claim executive privilege on the question of regret for now.

And I hope I have many more years to serve my community but I most certainly know that I will never work with a more compassionate, committed and crazy crew of characters if I live to be a 100.

Lucky me.

The Boss

Bookends

Two writers. One blog.