Dear readers, welcome back to 1996 and the beginning of a period in which, for the first time in my life, I began a trip without a final destination in mind. The lessons received on the January road trip would become my way of life for the next year. But at the time I did not know that would happen.
My 1996-97 “pilgrimage” is an apt metaphor for my journey in writing memoir in installments for an audience. I have a general direction in mind but am never sure exactly what will happen next. I appreciate your support as I find my way.
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Craigʻs passing severed another cord binding me to my life in New York City. I had enduring commitments to his mother Rosetta and to my Big Brother Best Man Carman, but those would play out over our lifetimes. It was the cord tying me to the family in Durango that now pulled taut. As June came, I once again boarded an airplane bound for Denver, retrieved the Pathfinder from my patient parents, and drove back to western slope.
Prageet and Marlies had decided to let go of the house in Durango as a fixed base for their Stargate work. They traveled most of the summer months giving workshops around the United States, and most of the winter months giving workshops in Europe. Their plan was to buy a large RV, with a kitchen and dining area, a bedroom, and bunks for the girls. An expansive house full of possessions needed to be downsized, packed, and vacated. For me, this was a no-brainer. When itʻs family, we just pitch in.
Marlies and I had begun to function smoothly as a maternal unit, caring for the girls physically and emotionally. I had the patience to sit for hours with a nine-year-old who had few manufactured toys, but a bedroom filled with her own creations, craft and art supplies, and collections of stones and feathers with detailed stories for each one. What must be packed, what could be released? What was essential to be transported in the small cubbies of the RV? Nani and I talked through each decision.
When Prageet went to pick up the RV in Washington State, he left the Stargate office entirely unsorted and unpacked. Everyone else at the house, staff and family, balked nervously at the task of entering and clearing Prageetʻs domain. I happily and ruthlessly began tossing entire folders full of flyers and paperwork into large black trash bags. “Whoops! Lost in the move!” I chortled.
It was not all work. Each day I would take a couple of hours to hike in the surrounding mountains. We still did meditations with the Stargate. Marlies gave me the first of many essential oil readings, letting me intuitively pick oils, explaining their properties and the message in my choices and in their sequence, at the end giving me the custom fragrant blend to use as I worked with its insights.
According to my journal there were eleven oils in this blend, and the number of drops for most was a multiple of 10 or 11. Marlies said that eleven was my “soul number” and that it has to do with being in the public world, with power. The first seven oils I chose were more masculine scents with clearing qualities, not a single flower among them. I thought I was done after choosing them as if more would be too greedy. Then I heard in my head “there are four more.” I did not say those words out loud, but Marlies separated the last four oils from the rest as she set them out. The last oils were more feminine and spiritual in their scent and energy. The blend seemed to fit my transition perfectly.
Finally the packing and cleaning was nearly done. Once the house was empty, I would drive Marlies to Oregon to meet up with Prageet and the RV. Malu and Nani would spend the coming months with their biological father, his partner Marie, and her son. I had already met Joe on previous visits. During the winter he worked as a ski instructor in Telluride. During the summer, he tended an organic farm in Paradox, Colorado, where he also served as postmaster for the town with a population of maybe 200 people. Paradox is named for the unusual way in which the Dolores River flows there, crossing strangely straight across the walls of the valley, rather than coursing down it as a river should.
I thought a lot about that paradoxical river. Had I been flowing the wrong way, and needed to allow myself to follow the natural course? Or had I been flowing along the easy course my whole life and it was time to breach some seemingly impenetrable cliff faces? I could not decide.
Joe came to pick up the girls. Very tall, and very thin thanks to his strict vegetarian diet and his partnerʻs prohibitions around what she believed to be unhealthy foods, Joe was constantly hungry. He headed directly to the kitchen to pull out a quart of Mountain High ice cream to be devoured in a single sitting, eaten directly from the container with a spoon. I was familiar with this routine from other visits.
Having already co-parented with Prageet for most of the girlsʻ lives, Joe accepted me and my relationship with his daughters with grace. Having chosen to leave behind the life of privilege which I still represented, Joe and I disagreed about many other things. Topics and choices we continue to debate affectionately to this day.
Meanwhile, one of my Three Mothers, my New York Jewish mother Rose Warren, was also on her way to Oregon. Her daughter Poppy lived there and was in crisis. After delivering Marlies to Prageet and the RV, I drove to Poppyʻs house in Portland. I discovered the nature of the crisis when Rose asked me to crawl under the bed and pull out the dozens of empty bottles of booze that had been discarded there. She and a friend finally convinced Poppy to enter into short-term treatment. Rose decided to stay in Portland and help care for Poppy when she came home.
I pleaded with Rose, tears in my eyes. She was in her early 80s, her own health fragile. There was money to hire someone to help. I feared that Rose was sacrificing herself for a hopeless cause, as her daughter only seemed committed to coming home as quickly as possible rather than to sobriety. Rose held my gaze, her own eyes clear and fierce as only a motherʻs love can make them. “I know what my choice might mean for me. But as her mother, it is the choice I make,” she answered.
I understood. We embraced, long and hard, and I drove on. Rose did eventually make it back to the City, where she died months later, peacefully, in her favorite reading chair. But that loss was still in my future. In my present, all I knew was that I was not yet ready to go back to the City either. So I turned the Pathfinder down the Coast and into California. I had a craving for solitude. I did not even know what my questions were, but I was determined to give myself the space to find the answers.
The explosion of arthritis in my feet crossing through RMNP caused a good doctor to prescribe 9X my normal prednisone which put me in a deep, dark place I don’t ever want to return to. Thursday I learn the status and type of my skin cancer which is the bane of people spending more than a decade on immunosuppressants. But I don’t think either is going to kill me: we have a new grandson after all!
(I have been very ill and am catching up)
Eleven is my soul number as well:
At eleven till eleven on the day before the eleventh I got the call for my double organ transplant which, then, happened on Nov 11th.
11/11/95, at age 40, was the date Bob Hope and I had dinner, in a party of four, after riding together in the Branson Festival of Lights parade surrounded by the Rockettes on their first performance ever outside NYC. My committee, where I was chair, made that happen.
So both my physical transformation and a fun entertainment event happened on the eleventh.