Back to Durango and the Stargate - #32

I meet the rest of my new family

Before you read on, please take a moment to offer a moment of silence and prayers for the Lāhainā community and first responders. Next weekʻs essay will address more. I write each draft a week in advance, editing and polishing during the following days. Not quite ready to write about the fires and their aftermath. So here is what was already scheduled for today, which will, in fact, lead to what I need to write for next week.

Mahalo to my readers, new and old, for continuing on this journey with me. With this installment of my memoir, I return to Colorado for the second time in 1996. If you are a recent subscriber or infrequent reader, you might want to backtrack a couple of episodes to learn about the Stargate and the young family member who adopted me on my first trip to Durango. I have links inserted this text wherever I thought it might be helpful.

The other thing you might find helpful if you are not already a subscriber, is to enter your email below. You can subscribe for free. Or if you just love what Iʻm writing, you can read about why you might want to pay. That link is here. When you become a subscriber, free or paid, you receive a welcome email listing all the installments of my memoir in order so you can catch up. And future writing will come to you weekly via email.

Catharine was one of the women attending the Stargate workshop that Velvalee had convinced me to drive to Durango for on that snowy day in January 1996. She stood out because, like me, her home was on the East Coast, and like me, she was more of a grounded, in-the-real-world type of person than the rest of the New Age followers who were there for the Stargate structure and Prageet-the-Channel and Alcazar-the-Guide. Like me, she found the group meditation experience powerful and valuable. She convinced her husband to return with her to experience it in May. And they invited me to meet them there.

Coincidentally, my father, who in retirement had turned a volunteer gig with the Denver probation department into a paid job doing evaluations and counseling for men convicted of domestic violence, had a conference to attend in southwest Colorado that same weekend. Naturally I invited my curious, open-minded parents to join me in Durango to experience the Stargate meditation after his event finished.

I was looking forward to seeing Catharine again and meeting her husband. I was looking forward to sharing this experience with my parents. More than all of that, I was looking forward to seeing almost-twelve-year-old Malu again, and meeting her mother and sister for the first time.

I had been told repeatedly on my previous visit that Maluʻs mother Marlies and I were so completely different that we were unlikely to find a connection or understand one another. Unlikely is too mild an adjective. The statement was made like an assertion of absolute truth, based upon blanket assessments of each of us. I was warned that at best we would remain a mystery to each another, and at worst we would actively dislike or frustrate each another. Marlies was described to me as an airy-fairy woman who was sensitive to other dimensions to the point where she was hardly in her body and could barely function in this world. According to her husband and the others who knew her, she had high level intuitive gifts, but my strengths, and presumably therefore my interests, were in the opposite direction. They viewed me as adept with the practicalities of this world, excelling in financial and organizational realms, an avid fitness buff. To them, I had nothing in common with someone who could perceive nature spirits and energetic connections.

“They” could not have been more wrong.

As it turns out Marlies and I approach the world in the same way. We are empiricists. Starting from our very different perspectives and experiences, we relentless turn over the evidence of our varied senses, the logic in our minds, the knowing deep in our bellies. From our first conversation we were fascinated both by where our thinking converged, and where our conclusions differed.

Marlies and I may have had different perspectives, but we were mirror-image sisters from the start.

We would become instant and then lifelong friends, continually learning from one another as our shared perceptions and stories continue to grow. Over the next few years our lives and journeys would be completely interconnected. When we traveled together, people would mistake us for sisters. This happened repeatedly, even though Marlies was born in Germany and speaks English with an accent to this day. When the girls were with us, more than once someone assumed I was Maluʻs mother and Marlies was Naniʻs. Over the next decades both her daughters would live with me off and on and continue to refer to me as their “other mom,” bringing me the joy of parenthood - and now grandparenthood.

I have yet to introduce Maluʻs younger sister Nani. At that age she was a blond haired wisp of a child, with a delicacy that made one worry a strong wind would blow her away. Yet both girls were actually physically active and very capable. They swam like dolphins, and during their visits with their biological father they skied and hiked and gardened. Equally at ease indoors, they made art and crafted and read with quiet intensity. They entertained themselves for hours while their mother and stepfather put on workshops.

The girls knew how to grow food, gather food, and cook it. Malu could organize meals and cook as well as any adult, something I had witnessed during my January visit. During the visit that May, her mother was making sure nutritious vegetarian meals were prepared at regular intervals. But Malu still wanted to bake for us. And so this story continues.

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My parents enjoyed their experience with the Stargate meditation. My father confessed to me, his eyes moist, that his father had come to him during the guided meditation. My mother, who had been an advocate of alternative and complementary medicine during her years as a nursing educator, was in her element. She had her own physical challenges, primarily chronic pain due to rheumatoid arthritis, and had long ago discovered that energy healing and guided imagery helped.

While we were in our late afternoon Stargate meditation session, Malu baked a yummy sweet potato pie.

Sweet potato pie was an unusual choice for May, when spring fruits were already making their way to market. It did happen to be Craigʻs favorite, however. That nagged at my attention. After enjoying our pie and whipped cream (I am always more a fan of the whipped cream than of whatever dessert it might be embellishing), I decided to call Craig despite the lateness of the hour in New York.

He had been admitted to St Vincentʻs hospital again right before I left, so that was the number I dialed. He picked right up when the switchboard connected my call through to his room.

I told Craig I had just eaten sweet potato pie and was thinking of him. He told me his mother Rosetta and his best friend Karen had been with him all day, and he had just sent them off to take a break and have dinner. Then Craig started talking about the book his mother wanted to write, and asked me to make sure she did not neglect to do it. “Mom will need you, promise me youʻll be there for her,” he repeated multiple times.

It was intense and rambling. I chalked it up to the morphine. I could hear the fatigue in his voice. I apologized for calling so late, and told him I would let him go as I knew he needed to rest.

“I love you. You can call me any time, “ Craig responded. “Any time,” he repeated. I told him I loved him too and we hung up.

Rosetta and Karen returned from dinner to find Craigʻs spirit had already left his body.

Thanks to Maluʻs intuition to bake sweet potato pie, Craig and I got to say goodbye.