arc of a lifetime…
Friday is my birthday. My 75th birthday.
And I just want to say what a privilege and honor it is to live through the full arc of a lifetime. It seems a responsibility, but not a burden. Rather a commitment to see it through authentically, honestly. Because not everybody has this opportunity. I have lived along side and loved so many who have fallen short of this ending chapter.
No worries. I am not standing at the exit, though we never know. But I definitely see the door. Please be assured I do not feel morbid about the whole thing. Just realistically in awe. In a state of wonder. Along the way there were moments of despair when I questioned the meaning. Why events came down like they did. Why certain people were included in this story. Why I chose this way instead of that. But this is what I mean about privilege: it all makes total sense from this end of the rainbow.
The beginning is hazy. Struggling second generation parents. A G.I. bill Miami home. Plastic-face, cloth body doll, pint-sized stroller. Giant red ant hills. Billy with the horse next door. A baby brother. A move to Cincinnati. Climbing trees. The long walk through daffodil fields to kindergarten, my loyal dog Kelly, my friend Leta. Unexplained stomach aches. A baby sister. A move to Long Island. Counting stars out an upstairs window. Bundling up for the snow trek to school. There is something wrong with my sister.
We move to southern California. I am eight. My father, unpredictably bouncing from rage to loving support, working and in college, gone a lot. My sister dies. My mother learns to drive and starts college part time. We camp all the way across the US and back. My grandmother comes to live with us. There is something not right about my brother. I am a good girl, an “A” student. I know for sure I am going to be a nurse. But I am not all goody two shoes. I can also be under the radar defiant.
Rock and roll shapes my adolescence, the beat awakens my sexuality, my rebel, my dancer. Boys verging on men. Nerdy girlfriends and glee club and drill team and being lost in books. I leave home for college and drugs, sex and rock and roll take a firm grasp. But I still show up for 8:00 chemistry, still an “A” student, still focused on healing suffering in the world. I change my major to physical therapy. I am 19 years old. One man in particular rises, cream to the top. We connect, we struggle, we disconnect. We live miles apart. We come back together. We graduate. We move to Sacramento. We marry. He is still my husband. We are still in Sacramento. This amazes me.
We work hard. We save. We take long journeys, vagabonding through the U.S and Canada, circling all around Europe. We are so young, so free, so powerful. I am initiated into a life-long training: caring for a body with physical challenges. We buy a home. We struggle financially. A lot. We become parents. My mom dies. And before we can even take a breath there are four of us. And cats, hamsters, fish, a bird. A family. My brother dies. We keep riding this wave. It lasts forever and it is over in a second. My daughter leaves, never to live in this home again. This home that has held so much life. My son leaves, returns for a bit, leaves for good. They have their own lives to live. Our marriage shifts into the next chapter. I turn fifty, do a ten day vision quest in Death Valley that changes everything.
I flounder. I dance. I sell the big thriving clinic. We travel extensively. My body continues to challenge and teach me. I practice yoga, buy a portable treatment table. I dance more. I build a studio over the garage and see patients on that same portable table. I dive deeper into dance because the mid-life perspective and transformative healing feel like a sacred imperative task. I do 5Rhythms teacher training, partly because I cannot bear living in Sacramento without this type of community. I become a grandma just as I begin holding space for this holy work. Showing up for regular facilitation is daunting. I persist and sometimes wonder why. I complete a yoga training, develop my own teaching form.
My dad dies the same moment Covid strikes. And somehow, especially in retrospect, this intersection, this instant in time feels like the beginning of this final chapter. Again, everything changes and I am moving and shifting right along with it. I fall ever more deeply in love with my work. Teaching and treating feel simpler, clearer, wondrous, delightful. Younger women come forward to hold the bigger pieces of the dance and yoga so I can step back, slow down, breathe into what it means to be more still. Family. Friendship. Nature. Movement. Writing. Meditation. Cooking. Artwork. Kindness. Tenderness. Love.
The arc of a lifetime. It was never easy in real time to understand how the painful pieces were an integral part of the fullness. And yet it is so obvious from this vantage point. Perhaps this is the consolation prize, the hard-earned lesson of a life long-lived. An exacting light shining upon the difficulties lingering on the horizon. A naturally built preparatory perspective on the unavoidable letting goes to come.
Filled with gratitude.
❤️Bella