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Lovely friends and readers. Thank you SO much for your loyalty and supportive comments. I have been writing the Well Met blog for one year now and loving every minute of it, but presently need to turn the bulk of my attentions to creating classes and teaching. 

The posts from Well Met are being compiled and put into a book called….drum roll here…. Well Met, a collection of raw, funny and loving reflections on life. The book will be released after I win the lottery, or maybe a little sooner. I’ve left about 50 pieces in place for readers who are visiting the site for the first time. 

I always welcome your comments, so please leave them. Your thoughts add sunshine to my day and we all know Oregonians need lots of that. If you want your words to remain private, just let me know. I will honor that request.

I will post something here from time to time, but must now close the door to regular tending. Thanks so much for reading. I’m better for having spent time together and hope you are too.

Gib and I bought a BMW before we drove to LA for Thanksgiving last year. We needed something. My car was pronounced dead and his was an old Honda Civic without shocks or creature comforts. Well, some creatures found it comfortable, like the mice in the pole barn, but I never did. Anyway, the Saturday before we left we found a beautiful Beamer the color of the sea. It stood out like the amazing machine it was. I am a sucker for beauty in people and machines, so I was sold. But it is definitely a guy car! We got the sports package. I don’t exactly know what that means, except it has performance tires that hug the road and make it hard to steer. The inside is black, the dashboard looks like it belongs in a private jet and the seats have more positions than a thousand piece puzzle. My neighbors have named my car, Jumping Jack Flash, which is a good masculine name and suits his spirit. 

Gib drove to LA, feeling manly, he had found his inner stud and its real world reflection. The car responded by doing whatever he wanted and more, while I declined driving. But it was supposed to be my car, so when we got back to Portland I got behind the wheel. The thing is, the car and I really never got to be friends. I even asked the dealer to take it back but everyone agreed that with enough time I could learn to love it. I do admire its beauty and capabilities, but in real life, it’s beyond me. 

It’s like when I visit my son, Clay. At home I can manage because my life is simple. I write on the deck under the tree with pad and pen in hand, then type it into my very old version of Word Perfect and send it off, but when I visit my son, he owns the best of the best in computer technology. He is the graphics king and uses machines and software I have no right being in the same room with. Honestly, I don’t even know how to turn his system on. Well, that’s how it is with the Beamer. It should belong to someone who understands it. 

When my daughter told her friends I had a BMW, they shook their heads and said, your mom? That just doesn’t seem like your mom. I definitely have a classy elegant side that loves fine things, but fine machines are a tad beyond me. And why am I bringing all this up now?…because Kristen has borrowed my car to go to Seattle. She likes to borrow my car, and has NO trouble seeing herself in a BMW at all. That means we trade. When she takes my car, I drive her 1989 Volvo which has 300,000 miles on it. It is elderly, friendly, white, needs a new transmission, has torn seats, and is basically as comfortable a car as I could imagine.

Kristen’s car is sort of a Clydesdale’s mare, while the BMW is a high-strung thoroughbred. He wants to run fast and does. I spend all my driving time reining him in, which is not easy, because he tricks me. I think I’m going down the highway at 55 and look down to find it’s 80. That car is just like a spirited horse, and horses always know when someone inexperienced is on their back, and will throw them off or take advantage of them every time. 

The Volvo on the other hand is a feminine spirit. She putts down the highway with aged integrity, not pushing in line or showing off like Jumpin’ Jack Flash. She is, in a few words ‘age appropriate.’ I also like her because she is not precious like her brother. The BMW shuts down in snow, refusing to leave the corral. If I coax him out, he slides in the ditch and says, I told you I don’t like cold feet. Put me back. The Volvo on the other hand will fight to make it up the driveway and succeed. She’s wise and snow-worthy. She’ll also allow children to stand on her roof to pick the plums, cherries and apples along the road, while Jumping Jack would not lower himself, for fear of scratching his perfect surface.

 Jumpin’ Jack is not thrilled to have me on his back. He’d prefer a 30 year old jockey with growing testosterone levels, but for now, we have each other and need to co-exist. He’ll be back in my driveway soon, a target for bird poop and cedar branches. I even found a slug on his windshield last week. That really pisses him off because he knows he should live in an upscale neighborhood with his own paddock, not be left to rot with an old girl who fancies broken down Volvo’s.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had grateful clients say, you changed my life. I am a completely different person now, so much happier and fulfilled.

How did I do it? I did it by bringing light to their dark places, creating a safe nurturing environment and by seeing the truth of their soul, then holding their spirit with respect and beauty until they learned to do that for themselves. I freed them to stand in the best part of themselves, but never changed their essence, which is an important distinction. They are not really different people; they are simply more of who they already were.  What I do is turn up the volume on their light and bring them out of hiding.

You could not change the essence of a person if you threw cosmic fireballs at it all day long − just not going to happen. 

 As parents many of us believe that we can shape and mold our children, but we can not. We can create a supportive loving environment and teach values, but that is all. I think if we could really understand that, in our heart of hearts, that it would relieve a world of parental guilt and all the, ‘what did I do wrong’, conversations that go on inside and outside our heads. 

 For example, my husband Gib is an athlete. His greatest desire was to have an athletic son, but he didn’t get one. He got a gentle sensitive boy with the soul of an artist, who had no desire at all to go crashing around an athletic field. In the end, the son felt he didn’t measure up and that he disappointed his father, while the father wondered what he’d done wrong. 

We are all unique. We all come in with a strong powerful core and mission, but when we don’t listen to that inner voice that carries our wisdom, and we let others define our purpose for us, we become sick, depressed or unhappy. 

I have found astrological charts to be helpful, because they expose the birth blueprint of each individual. I remember finding out about a trait from my brother’s chart and being surprised.

Really, I said, he’s wired that way? I thought he was just doing that to piss me off.

The point is, that people are who they are, and we can’t do much about it, except love them as they go through their changes. That’s the challenge we all have, to strip away the layers of information and experience, until we come back to our original essence, then celebrate that essence and take it proudly and boldly into the world. We are not here to hide, but to be ourselves as fully and completely as possible, while supporting others as they do the same.

When I feel lack in my life, my chest constricts, I don’t breathe deep and I create a little cloud of gray worry that lives above my head.

I begin to doubt myself and my place in the world. It’s amazing how quickly an event or series of obstacles can pull me into a place of fear.

But I had a lovely lesson about lack at the ocean last Sunday. 

I was with my daughter, Kristen, her partner Kenny, and ten year old Isabella. We’d had a full day of playing in the surf, walking on the beach and climbing over shell-encrusted boulders. 

It was time to drive back to Portland but Kenny wasn’t ready. He needed one more walk on the coast, so we filed down the stairs next to the sea wall at Cannon Beach and let the sunset wash over us in radiant shafts of orange, amber and red. 

I wish we had a fire, Kenny said. It’s a perfect night for one. 

People had wrapped themselves in sweatshirts and jackets to roast marshmallows and hot dogs, while warming their hands and feet near the flames. They had come prepared with large stacks of wood, papers and lighter fluid. Bonfires made little islands of blaze, up and down the shoreline. 

We can’t have a fire, I said, we have nothing to make one with. 

We watched the sun slip beneath that long going-on-forever line that defines the sea. It was breathtaking and full of calm. As the day faded into black, the bodies that huddled in close circles of humanity felt ancient and primitive. 

We were moving toward the stairs to leave when I noticed a tiny spark of light, a small flicker in the distance, as if someone had ignited a book of matches and dropped them on the sand. The silhouette of a man on hands and knees came into view as I walked closer, his silver hair reflecting moonlight. He was bent over a small stack of twigs blowing into their base with great hope and intention. A young woman kneeled beside him with an open wallet, searching the compartments for useable paper. She pulled out receipts and studied them, deciding which ones she could give to the fire and which ones must be saved.

There it was. The world’s smallest campfire made of a few broken twigs and copies of the days expenses. 

I stood above them. That is the most pathetic excuse for a fire I’ve ever seen, I said.

Yes, I know, the man laughed. I watched as he continued to blow on the base and the woman searched for more cash register tallies. 

I have a tissue, I said, dropping it into the fire. It’s clean and dry. 

Kenny caught up and became entranced as well. He bent down to help by blowing on the fire, while I searched the beach for more wood. Unfortunately, everyone had scavenged it clean, except for a few scattered twigs. Soon, their tiny fire became a group effort, with everyone searching their pockets for paper and probing the shadows for wood.

Kristen and Isabella were visiting with the rest of the family. There were new mothers with babies who were feeling sand on their fingers for the first time. Theirs was a family vacation that was coming to a close in a few hours. 

I’d like to report that the fire became a raging inferno, but it never did, and in the end, it didn’t matter because we all got to help and had fun doing it.

Driving home I began thinking about how important it is to begin what we have in our hearts to do, no matter how insignificant our efforts may seem or how depleted our resources.

I once met a man at Harvard when I was pretending to be a woman from France. He was a third generation attorney named Perceval Harkness Granger the third.  It was the actress in me, looking for something more interesting from life than the hand I’d been dealt. While he told me about himself, I got busy assembling a French accent and history to match. I was just back from France so my clothes reflected the culture.

Yes, this is my first trip to America, I told him, I’ve come to study music.

 I was without shame. Unfortunately, the more we talked, the more I liked him and by the end of lunch we’d made arrangements to see each other again. Now I was really stuck. If I wanted to be with him, I needed to continue to be the person he’d met, which would be an on-going challenge.

The show-down came when he gave me a surprise birthday party, decorated his apartment like a street in Paris and invited all of his friends who spoke French.

 I wanted to make you feel at home, he told me.

 How dear. The only problem was that I didn’t speak French. I just had a great accent from spending my summer there. I walked cautiously from guest to guest, like a swimmer in shark infested waters telling them my latest lies.

I’ve promised that as long as I am in the United States that I will speak only English. That’s what I am here to learn, forgive me if I don’t join you.

It had taken everything I had to maintain my charade with Percy, but convincing a group pushed me over the edge. I decided to end the game. We’d dated for the better part of the school year, when I asked him to join me on a park bench to discuss ’some things of common interest.’ I drank in his image for the last time. He was a handsome young man with dark wavy hair, his eyelashes, thick brush strokes executed with precision. He had opened my eyes to the world of art films, coffee houses, Harvard University and what it felt like to stand on a solid family base.

 My voice sounded flat and ordinary, as I let go of my French accent and explained what I had done. Everything felt different as I did, colors, textures, the light, the very air smelled different. When I finished, he got up and walked away, feeling angry, embarrassed, and used. That was the last I ever heard from him, except for a book he mailed to me written by Eric Fromm, called, The Art of Loving. He wanted me to read it, but the title was enough. I got the point.

Last year I decided to Google him and found he had died. Percy decided not to become a lawyer after all. He migrated to writing instead, leaving a creative legacy for television, theater and the screen. Maybe I inspired him. You think?

He did it several times a month. Everyone was asleep, or at least he hoped they were, when he tiptoed into our father’s bedroom. I don’t know what excuse he would have used if my parents woke and found him reaching inside my father’s pocket. He might have had one ready or maybe not. With breath held he made his way over the brown linoleum, past their double bed and must have groped toward the closet like a blind man with arms extended, feeling his way in the dark. The keys must have clanged because they lived on a fat silver ring with many others, but Sparky didn’t care, or had perfected his deception, I don’t know which. That was my brother’s name, Sparky. 

I stayed up most nights cutting paper dolls, so I knew he was doing it. I begged him to take me along, and one night he did. There were three gentle taps on my bedroom door and a whisper. If you’re coming, come, cause I’m not going to wait.

My hair was a scramble, my eyes heavy with sleep, but I jumped from my bed eager for adventure.

I’m coming now. Don’t go without me.

He was 14, I was 11. My brother wanted nothing to do with me on my best day, so I was thrilled to be included.

We moved down the stairs, Spark looking over his shoulder to schuss me with his finger. My pajama bottoms dragged on each step, threatening to trip me and foil our escape. I pulled them up and followed, silently like an obedient dog.

Once outside he opened the door of the Chrysler Imperial and motioned to me. I slid past the steering wheel and waited, breathless and full of risk.

The engine purred, Spark lowered the gearshift on the steering column from P to D and we crept away.

Once we hit route 14, the main highway that ran in front of the restaurant, my brother slammed the door shut and let it rip.

Watch this, he shouted, as he drove into Mr. Palmer’s yard, up over his lawn and out the other side. I can do anything I want and no one can stop me.

He swerved to the right and we were back on the highway. Next it was Gail Allen’s house.  He headed straight for her mailbox and took it out with a quick, thump. Up and down we went over neighbor’s yards, through shrubbery, past loaded wheelbarrows and into flower gardens.

My eyes were round with shock and excitement. Just don’t tell anybody, he said, if nobody knows we’ll be okay. I sunk low in my seat, eyes in the sky, swallowing moonlight.

Eventually he tired and turned the car toward home, but home was not the way we left it. Every light in the house shone through the windows like a lighthouse, which welcomed and warned at the same time.

When we pulled into the drive my father was waiting, rage seething from every pore. He grabbed my brother and began beating him, as my mother marched me to my room. I listened, my ear pressed against the door, my heart frozen in my chest, hot tears running down my face for my brother’s pain. I waited for my turn, as Spark’s screams rose and fell again and again.

When my father reached my door, my mother blocked his path. That’s enough now, she said. That’s enough for one night.

One of my clients is a world class entertainer. She has been doing a one woman show since March, eight performances a week. It’s the first week in August and she has two more weeks to go. She’ll rest awhile then take her work to Los Angeles, New York and London.

Before she performs, she closes her eyes, reaches deep within herself and says, thank you.

What a powerful centering prayer that is.

Thank you. It is not − I want − I need, or I must have. It’s simply standing in the grace and reality of what we are and all we have become.

Thank you, acknowledges our gifts, our health, and our deep connection to something greater than ourselves.

Saying, thank you, as prayer shines our inner light on all that is right. We see that we are human, we are flawed and we are blessed, all in the same moment.

I was struck with her session because of my own years in the performing arts. I did not say, thank you, before I went on stage. I seized in fear. I sweat blood. I judged myself through the eyes and value systems of my audience.

How wise she is, this young forty year old woman, to take her power back from all that is external by simply and honestly standing in the fullness of gratitude.

It started when my kids were very young. There was the wagon and the hill and the blackberry bushes at the bottom. All three of us piled in the Radio Flyer ready for an exhilarating ride down the hill. My son, Clayton, in front, my daughter Kristen next, and I squished in the rear.

This is going to be fun, I said.

Kristen was worried, how are we going to miss the blackberries, Mom?

Don’t worry dear; I’ll just turn before we hit them.

We flew down the hill screaming and laughing. At the critical moment I pulled on the wagon tongue, but it wouldn’t budge.

Oh, we’re in trouble, I yelled and tipped the wagon on its side, only seconds before  lurching into gnarled thorns. Clay walked away laughing, wanting to do it again, but Kristen gave me a look of distrust that said, no way lady. No more rides with you − a look I’ve since become familiar with. 

In the spring of 1980 Kristen had her appendix removed. I thought a camping trip to Mount St. Helen’s would speed her recovery, so I made up cots in the back of my panel truck, threw our bikes inside and took off.  We stopped at the visitor’s center before settling in, where I carefully explained that the mountain was one of many sleeping volcanoes on the west coast, all of which were inactive, so she had nothing to worry about.

I have an idea, I said brightly. It’s all downhill to the campground. Why don’t you hop on your bike and enjoy the slope? I’ll follow close behind and pick you up at the bottom. That should be fun!

She rolled up her right pant leg as I untangling colored streamers on her handlebars, so they’d fly free in the wind. Ready?

She started gently with a push and glide, then balanced herself with a careful turn of the pedal. The smell of pine sat on the breeze and played in my hair, as I congratulated myself for finding the perfect vacation spot for Kristen’s recovery. But my serene mood was quickly broken by a piercing scream, and the sight of her bike careening out of control. She moved in abrupt zigzag patterns, back and forth across grass and gravel barely staying erect, going faster and faster. As she approached a curve, she risked a sharp glance over her shoulder, calling for help, panic written on every inch of her face. I sped as close as I dared.

Mom, my chain has come off. I have no brakes! What should I do?

Jump off, I yelled. Jump before you go faster.

And she did. I stopped the truck in the center of the road, bolted from the cab and pulled the still spinning wheels of the bike away from her body. I gathered her in my arms and held her as she wept.  

Oh, I’m so sorry, I said as I picked pieces of stone from her right arm and bruised knee. I’m so so sorry.  That was a bad idea. 

Three weeks later it rained ash in Portland. It was a clear Sunday in May when I walked out of the Benson Hotel after a workshop and smelled sulfur. Looking skyward I saw plumes of gray snow-like substances falling on cars and sidewalks. Mount St Helens was showering us with debris from her explosion. This continued into the next day, one small eruption following the next. Kristen gave me the look, the − I don’t think I trust my mom anymore − look. 

These stories move through her childhood finding a crescendo in Mexico. Kristen was in her twenties; freshly back from living in Greece, when I decided a mother-daughter trip was in order. We were sitting by a swimming pool in a fancy hotel in Cabo san lucas, when a man approached asking if we’d like to parasail.

Of course, I said, jumping from my beach chair. Let’s do it. This will be fun!

I moved immediately toward the boat. Kristen came along. We sat in a double harness beneath a brightly colored kite that whisked up with lightning speed 600 feet into the air.  A speedboat pulled us without effort into a vast sky, where we dangled our barefeet above a cobalt sea. The boat, only a tiny speck tethered by a strong black rope, moved beneath us in azure currents next to an endless pale shoreline. I was in heaven. The bird in me was home. At last I knew what it was like for my human body to take flight. I looked over to share my joy with Kristen and found her frozen with fear. She was white, paralyzed, her eyes open in solid circles of panic. Her voice echoed in tiny sounds of terrified half sentences.

Down. Now. Can’t do this. Let me down. Her breathing was shallow, short and full of urgency. Mom get me down NOW!

The men in the boat didn’t look up. I tried. I yelled, but they were too far away to hear. Finally one of them turned. I waved and gestured.

We need to come down, I screamed, but my voice was lost in the wind.

The driver smiled and waved, happy to see that his animated guests were having a good time. Kristen was crying now in that cry we get when we think the world will end and us with it. I kept waving. Eventually the men in the boat reeled us in like fish.

Kristen walked shaken and wind-battered to our room, and fell into a deep infant-like sleep. When she woke, we sat together on the couch.

Mom, I can’t do this with you anymore, she said, exasperated. I can’t go running off with you on all the crazy adventures you dream up. This is it. This is the last one. I’m a woman now and get to say, no!

I’m sorry, I whispered, I just thought it would be fun.

Jill is a big hearted woman, too much so. She has a knack for finding a lost cause and devoting herself to it until she gets used up and spit out. The universe gave her a brilliant lesson in this pattern as we went floating down the river last week.

There was a bee in the current, who was more dead than alive. Jill spotted him immediately, and began devising ways to enact a rescue. She decided a leaf could make a good life raft, so I paddled over, snatched a dogwood leaf from a gentle eddy and gave it to her. Jill placed him on top, but he had other ideas. He might have been a suicidal little guy cause he kept working to get back in the water. I was eager to continue our float but Jill had abandoned the idea and was now completely obsessed with saving the life of the bee.

Here is the way Jill saw it:

“He clung tenaciously to the stem of his life raft, waterlogged and exhausted. I was slightly unnerved, paddling to shore against the current, belly flop style with one hand, while holding a leaf with a very possibly irate bee in the other. I made it to shore and because it was an extremely hot day, searched the bank for the perfect spot to deposit him. I gently placed him in the shade of a cool river rock, so as not to scorch his little bee feet. Yes, I actually went that far. I know.

Karen felt the need to point out, in an amused sort of way, that my behavior with the bee was strangely reminiscent of my behavior with men. I find them drowning, struggling and then I, as rescuer, spring into action. Not only do I make the save, but I make the save my life’s work. We giggled at the analogy, but I had to agree. How many men have I gone out on a limb for at my own peril?  

The bee was now safely deposited in the shade of the river bank, so I continued the float. I was relieved as I basked in the hot sun, the cold water and the knowledge that I had done a wonderful deed. But not for long. Barely 15 minutes had passed before another bee spotted me, singled me out in that vast landscape, and out of the hundreds of people who lined the shore, landed and plunged his stinger deep inside my arm!  

Karen roared with laughter at the irony of it, because the story always ends the same! But I learned a valuable lesson, so the next pathetic creature that floats my way, be it animal, mineral, vegetable, or cute guy, I will look into the depths of my heart, and find that cold spot that I know must be in there somewhere, suck it up, turn a blind eye, and for once in my life, paddle by and save myself. Sometimes, the life worth saving just might be my own.’

Jill is currently looking for work in the court system where her desire to serve can be directed towards a more positive outcome. Let’s wish her well.