"All my life's a circle..."

"All my life's a circle;
Sunrise and sundown;
Moon rolls thru the nighttime;
Till the daybreak comes around..."
-Harry Chapin

I had a piece all ready to post today and then my mom called yesterday afternoon…and here I am again…on a Tuesday…writing madly…not mad…just madly. 

Okay, so now that I have consented to writing this piece, I am so excited to share the story with you.  It is a story of a divine gift.  One of mercy and grace and such jaw-dropping "oh my gosh God you are soooo cool…and you must love me…a lot!" joy that I found myself dropping into my chair in astonishment last night.  I was rendered speechless for hours…really. 

This story starts in the mid-1990's with a girl in a bagel shop in a little University town in Colorado.  Our town was seriously lacking in coffeehouses at the time and my family owned one of the three scattered near campus.  I needed a break from the charm and chatter of our own place and had heard that another friend had opened a new bagel shop nearby and so I wandered down to check it out. 

"...It seens like I've been here before
I can't remember when;
But I have this funny feeling;
That we'll all be together again.
No straight lines make up my life;
And all my roads have bends;
There's no clear-cut beginnings;
And so far no dead-ends..."

From the moment I walked in it felt like home.  There were quotes and murals of children playing painted on soft terra-cotta walls.  Birdhouses, nests and wildflowers nestled in corners…the colors were gentle and the lights were dimmed.  The tables were at angles and the minute I walked through the door I heard her voice.  Clear, warm and supported from within by just a hint of laughter - her voice was brighter than the bell on the door letting her know someone new had arrived.  It was almost as if her heart was jumping up and down, aching to get out and see who it could love that day…and everyday.  She was behind the counter, but in a moment, like Tinkerbelle,  she was…well, everywhere.  Wiping tables, clearing a plate, offering jam, refilling coffee.  She was a whirlwind of beauty and fire. 

This immediately became my "haunt".  When I wasn't seeing patients or having appointments at our coffeehouse…I was at Wildflour (the name of the bagel shop).  And the feeling was mutual.  She loved our place when she wasn't working for Randy at Wildflour.  We started carrying their bagels at the Prairie Opera Café and they sent all their morning patrons to us for evenings of folk or jazz, amazing vegetarian food (if I do say so myself), and the best hot chocolate in the world.

And Cathe and I became dear friends.  We were different enough to love the other's talents and alike enough to share ideas, style, mutual friends, and dreams.  We both had cottages with Mary Engelbreit front porches and dressed in prairie skirts and boots and loved gardening.

Cathe started her own "magical tea" business after I left for a three year sabbatical in Boston.  And by the time I returned to Colorado, Cathe had moved to Vermont and although we wrote, it was hard to find that place of magic we had shared three years earlier.  I was going through a very difficult time and her new life was just taking off in a way that left me feeling very far away.  Her courage in taking brave steps left me feeling as if I was living out from what others thought of me…rather than with conviction of the heart.  It was easier to just convince myself that I was right and distance myself, than it was to face my own self-doubt.  Our letter writing dropped away and I moved to another state - and before I knew it years had passed and I no longer knew if she was still in Vermont.  She wasn't.  When I finally found the courage to look for her again…she was gone and all the google-ing in the world didn't help me one bit in finding her. 

I've thought about her a million times and wondered where she ended up, what her life looked like (I was sure it was beautiful, charming and warm) and if she was still creating magical moments for the people who were blessed to wander into whatever bagel shop or tea house she either worked for…or owned.

Then my mom called yesterday.  My brother and I were on the phone, deep in conversation, when I started hearing a "call waiting" beep in my ear interspersed with my cell phone ringing every few minutes.  Our call was important, and I never interrupt a call for call-waiting (I just have it on there so I can no that I missed a call and check voicemail once I am through) so I let it ring and ring, commenting to my brother that "someone really wants to talk to me"!

When I got off the call with him I immediately checked all the calls and there were a few from my mom's cell phone.  I knew that she was in Maine with my sisters, so I called her without even checking the voicemails she had left.  When I reached her it was like I was hearing my mommy from when I was ten.  She had that giggly sound in her voice that she gets when she has found, and saved for, and bought you the bestest Christmas present and she can't wait for you to open it on Christmas morning. 

She proceeded to do the most annoying thing she could have done since I already knew from the sound of her voice that she was very excited to share something with me.  She said, "So I was looking for Fawn and Lila (my sisters) who were window shopping and I noticed that they were in the cutest shop talking with the salesgirl and guess who it was?"

Okay, I am not one to play guessing games with and this was a particularly bad time to do it, but I decided that since I love her soooo much I would go with it.  So I thought for a moment and said, "Hmm, cutest shop...Cathe."  I hadn't even given it a moment's thought and out it came.  I think we were both so shocked…because I was right.  

"...I found you a thousand times;
I guess you done the same;
But then we lose each other;
It's like a children's game..."

Mom went on to tell me the whole story, but I couldn't wait to get off the phone and call Cathe at the number my mom had given me.  Now don't get me wrong, I have a best friend…she and I talk or write all the time, but this was different.  This was like having Tinkerbelle – a magical friendship that almost felt dream-like and maybe not quite real as the years piled up on my memories of it.  I needed to talk to her…to let her know that she was special and not-forgotten.  That those years we all shared together were some of the most precious of my life.   There was an imperative to let her know that she had made a difference.  That her example of courage and grace were often vital to me as I took scary steps forward into a dark unknown.  That her life had left little breadcrumbs of light promising me that I was not alone….no matter how far down the path and out of sight she had already traveled in front of me.

"...As I find you here again;
A thought runs through my mind;
Our love is like a circle;
Let's go 'round one more time..."

I didn't get her on the phone, so I sent an email to the email address that mom had also given me.  This morning I got a reply.  It was all her…full of joy and beautiful words and giggles you could read between the lines.

I immediately went to the kitchen and brewed myself a pot of tea.  I took it to my office before I sat down to write her back.  Who knows what magic lies waiting beneath a pine tree, on a patch of moss, among the fairies…for our friendship.  We'll see…but for today I am completely grateful for God's gift (and mom and Lila and Fawn's) of mercy and love and joy, in reconnecting us…so randomly from across a continent and beyond my wildest dreams. 

I feel deeply blessed by each of my dear girlfriends, including my mom and my sisters, my daughters (and their birthmothers). This last year or so I have discovered, with such clarity, what friendship really means and that these girls/women (as well a few guys out there...especially my brothers and husband) are the most important gifts that God has given me.  But this post is about a friendship lost...and found, about Cathe, and how honored and humbled I am that God has graced my life with this precious friend…again.  When I told my husband, who knew how I had been searching for her, about my mom's call…he very gently said, "Of course.."

"...All my life's a circle;
But I can't tell you why;
Season's spinning round again;
The years keep rollin' by..."

Thank you God for your unspeakable gifts…
Kate

"This one's for the girls..."

"This one's for the girls
Who've ever had a broken heart
Who've wished upon a shooting star
You're beautiful the way you are…"
- Martina McBride

This summer is all about girlfriends  I have sensed it since early last winter.  It has been clearer than the little stream just beyond my porch at Crowsnest.  This one's for the girls.

We launched this summer with a great, but all-too-short graduation weekend. Three of our four daughters, as well as with our oldest daughter's girlfriend, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and our son's girlfriend were with us for not nearly enough talking, eating, laughing and playing games.  What a terrific way to get it all started.  We let the boys join us (okay, so the weekend was really all about our son's graduation) but they ate chocolate and laughed like girls so it was okay.

Today, as I finish packing Clara, Emma, and I up for camp it comes to me over and over again that this really is the summer of being with my girlfriends.  Especially these two wise and funny ten year olds I love to snuggle in the night, sing lullabyes to, and well, just live with.  I can't wait to take a road trip with them next week and sing Beatles songs and eat red licorice and look in the rear view mirror to catch a glimpse of their faces as they transition from girl to woman right before my very eyes. We will stop in Kansas to visit with my dear friend Nancy and her daughter Amy before heading up into Colorado's high country on our way to camp.

For Emma and Clara, this is a summer I know they will never forget.  They are going to spend two weeks at Adventure Unlimited with four of their girl cousins.  Six girls between 8 and 12 years old, riding horses, singing camp songs, giggling long after past "lights out" has echoed through their cabin.  A summer where you fall in love with a horse, share your deepest secrets, and learn to cook pineapple-upside-down-cake in an old black skillet over an open fire. 

This is also the summer that each of my own girlfriends has made it clear that we will gather and will see each other…face to face, arm in arm, "you and me against the world." We will sit, and talk, and laugh, and cry.  We will drink tea, eat chocolate and share secrets.  We will take long walks or just sit on the porch of my cabin.  It is the summer when I will hold the hand of my best friend while we watch the sunset over the Sleeping Indian range, wish upon a star and thank God for "another year" at camp.

This is the summer that Leslie will finally return to camp for a day of talking about boys and God and friends we miss.  I am hoping she draws Beth down out of the mountains like a bee to honey.  I miss them both and need to hear them talk a million miles an hour while I just listen in rapt fascination.  Maria will bring m&ms to my cabin and we will smile about all the things we thought we were so burdened by, that is until camp made us laugh too hard to let the little things get us down.

Maree and I will eat Nutty goat Cheese salad at Laughing Ladies and marvel that we never get tired of the sound of the other's laughter, voice, silence…or tears.  We will talk about all ways we seen things change and yet stay the same in the last 25 years of our summers together and we will stand in awe of all that God has shown us through this friendship.  My new (but in so many ways "old") friend Jackie and I will share word paintings full of color from our two, very different, remote corners of the west.

Alison will come sit on my porch like she did when she was a girl…long before she realized what we all knew… that she is amazing and could keep the world from coming unglued if they just gave her the chance.  Sami and I will sit on the lawn and catch up on where she's been and what she's seen and I will admire her courage and her gentleness all at once.  Debra and I will meet on the porch of Bongos and catch up on one another's spiritual journey in the shadow of Mt. Princeton. 

I will kiss my mom and stare at her hands and realize that either hers are looking like mine…or mine have started to look like hers.  I will marvel that at 73 she is still so beautiful and pray that I take after her…just a little.  I will be amazed that my sisters are such remarkable human beings and that I must have been adopted to be part of the cache of talent, and passion for living, they represent.  Their motherhood will take my breath away…until I look beyond their faces, to the eyes of the one who raised us and taught us how to be like her without knowing it.

And I will travel to South Africa to see my beloved oldest daughter later this summer.  She, her birthmom and I will spend ten days discovering wonderful new things about this extraordinary relationship of ours.  Ours is a mother-daughter love triangle that has already shattered old adoption paradigms right and left.

This is the summer when I will have married my JillyBean to her beloved farmer, and I will have watched a group of girls we all love "rise from among us like a big balloon and take to the sky and forsake the ground" as they march across the stage and graduate out of our sight.

This summer I will fall in love with a whole new crop of campers, counselors, and CITs.  At least half of them will be girls.  Each girl will have a story, a dream, a desire to love and be loved, to find their North Star and to know they make a difference in the world.

"…Yeah, we're all the same inside
From 1 to 99…"

Some of them will be boys…but for today…this one's for the girls.

This summer is all about the girls.  Girls who make me laugh and cry and girls make me remember that life is soooo worth putting in the time…

"This one's for the girls
Who love without holding back
Who dream with everything they have
All around the world
This one's for the girls."

I can't wait to see you..each..and all,
Kate

"He was looking for a soul to steal..."

Okay…it all started out as just a funny internal dialogue.  Let me set the stage for you….

It’s a Friday morning. I’ve studied, prayed, read emails, taken calls…responded to emails and calls with emails, calls, conversation, prayer and treatment…I’ve showered, woken the twins and gotten them up and dressed and fed and out the door with their big brother, (who, as a high school senior, doesn’t need the same level of help with dressing and feeding) and now I am dressed (actually I was dressed all along, only now I am no longer in my pajamas) and back in my “office” for one of my favorite parts of the day….oops, one more thing…

The kettle is boiling, there is a Republic of Tea Decaf Ginger Peach tea bag waiting in my favorite hand-thrown and painted Portuguese pottery mug (white, cobalt blue, pear, and a shade of robin’s egg blue that makes me weak in the knees).  When it boils I‘ll pour it over the tea bag, let it steep for a few minutes…and then remove the bag, carefully plop in a small ice cube (I am such a wuss) and return to my desk…

Ahh..now I am ready. 

I pull up Safari, go to my bookmarks and pull down the CSdirectory.com listing of  all my friend’s blogsite links and anticipate having a nice cup of tea with Kim, Laura, Evan, Colin, Miles, Travis, Emilly, Chris, and occasionally, Carol.  

I start with Laura …hmmm…she must be posting late today.  So I move on to Kim….hmmm…no Kim.  Okay, then I guess it will be just me and Evan to start with.. ahhh, there he is…whew…

But once I finish reading Evan’s posting I was ready for more of my little spiritual blogging community to wake up and be counted at the table.  I check every half hour for what seems like days, but is more like two mugs of tea.  Then the “devil dialogue” starts in my head, or at least that is where it feels like it’s happening…but I sometimes wonder if it’s in my nose or my earlobe…both of those are close.

“Hmm…”, it suggests, “it’s Friday and they always post on Friday.  Perhaps they are on a conference call that you somehow weren’t invited to be a part of (we share many worlds) or they are so busy chatting with eachother on the phone that neither of them has a moment free to post.”  These benignly reasonable considerations get me wondering.  Then it escalates…gets more and more insistent that I be “concerned” (read "worried") that I’m being left out of something important (how weird is that?).  It seizes on this little moment and tries to create a schism in my peace...and on my focus on the spiritual work at hand.

Within moments I’m down a road so bizarre, I later had to chuckle.  “Well, maybe they’ve decided to meet for lunch today and are somewhere laughing and giggling and sharing wonderfully inspiring stories…perhaps they are planning to write together.”  Now my feelings are hurt.  I feel like this dialogue with the devil is reaching the insistent pace of an insidiously rememberable 1970s country-western song by Charlie Daniels, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”:  

The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind 'cos he was way behind: he was willin' to make a deal…
Fire on the mount'n, run boys, run.
The devil's in the house of the risin' sun.
Chicken in the bread pin, pickin' out dough.
"Granny, does your dog bite?"
"No, child, no."

In every way the nonsense in my head reaches the same level of “out of control”, headlong feeling of a reeling and careening train heading down a mountain pass at breakneck speed that I imagine when I hear the frenetic fiddling in that song.  And the intensity of its ridiculousness not only allows me to find my freedom from it (the way dancers who are twirling out of control eventually fall out of the spin and onto the floor in exhaustion), but more importantly, teaches me a very important lesson. 

I decide to play it out just as it ‘s presenting itself.  I open an email and type a note to both Kim and Laura asking them where they are…had they met somewhere in the middle (Laura is in New England and Kim lives in the up, up, upper mid-west) and are they, as I am typing, having a yummy lunch on a veranda (another silly thought…it was the middle of January and the country from here to there was covered with an inch of ice)?  Are they laughing and sharing inspiring stories? I look at what I had typed, laugh my arm off, and push Send.  I even go on to send another follow-up email to them, threatening to write our mutual friend and fellow blogger, Red Fork Hippie Chick, inviting her to come with me, in her VW microbus with the peace sign in the back window, to track them down.  I laugh even harder when I send that one.

Now you may think this is all silly and a waste of my time (and yours, now!) but there were a few important lessons for me in this. 

First, even though these musings seemed silly and harmless and funny…they had kept me (even if just for a few moments) from thoughts that could have been a blessing. Thoughts that were consistent with the spiritual fact that God is All-in-all.

Second, they were thoughts about someone else, speculating on their life, their plans, their relationships…certainly commonplace but not a blessing…to me, to my family, my friends, or the world.

Third, how many times had I let my thinking wander down this road because of something as benign as misreading a look someone gave me? And all the imagined scenarios of why, who, what I would say to them in response…and on and on.  These mental sidetracks deprive me of “the truth” in each situation. And more critically, they deprive me of the freedom to be and do those things which really are mine to think and act on, and could be a blessing to those around me and the world at large.

I am learning that it takes a consecrated commitment to living with  humility to not think of myself as so important that my uninvited thoughts or considerations about another person’s life, choices, or motives are valuable…or even reasonable.

Cherish humility, "watch," and "pray without ceasing,"
or you will miss the way of Truth and Love. 
Humility is no busybody: 
it has no moments for trafficking in other people's business,
no place for envy, no time for idle words, vain amusements,
and all the et cetera  of the ways and means of personal sense.
-Mary Baker Eddy

My vote of confidence doesn’t really have any weight in another person’s journey...only God’s does.  I trust Him to guide, govern, annoint, appoint, adjust and administer the steps of His children's journeys.

Our thoughts are important.  Mine are “where I live” and I want to be living in my own house…not wandering around uninvited in the houses of my friends, or even strangers, speculating about why they put the couch in that corner and what they were thinking when they bought that lamp…rearranging the table and chairs or commenting on the color of the walls...metaphorically.  I want to be all about having a clean, neat, orderly, beautiful home of my own….and then invite others in for a party!

Laura and Kim each responded to my silly emails, a sidetrack that I turned into a fun moment with friends.  They later posted their blogs…neat, orderly…beautifully warm and welcoming “rooms” in their homes.  Rooms full of inspiring ideas to which they had opened the doors and laid out a lovely “feast of Soul” for us as readers to come in and enjoy.

I have been so graced this week by my experience last Friday.  I am becoming clearer than ever before that it is not my right, privilege, role, or responsibility to engage or entertain thoughts about others just because “the devil” says, “heyyy…what about that Margaret…did you hear what she did???”  

Man, I slap that sucker down quicker than the tiger, Sheer Khan slapped down the slithery, sly snake Kaa when he tried to entrance tired little Mowgli with his hypnotic “Gooo too sleep, go to sleep…close your eyes…go to sleep” suggestions in Disney’s The Jungle Book.

Y’know, I really don’t have time to think about Margaret, Bill, Uncle Rufus, or the guy on the corner except to be grateful that we each have a direct relationship with God and that we are all governed, guided and directed in our thoughts, words and deeds, unconditionally, by this omnipotent, benevolent Love reigning within our hearts.

That said…I would love to have lunch or a teaparty in the garden with Laura and Kim…and Evan…and Red Fork Hippie Chick….soon…oh, the laughter we’d share…they’d hear it in Amarillo….oh yea, and of course…you’d be invited too!

“A grateful heart a garden is
Where there is always room
For every perfect God-like grace
To come to perfect bloom.”
- Woods

K