New Year's Revelations...

Dear Friends,

Feliz Año Nuevos. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve communicated, especially since my blog entered a dormant phase after I left Mexico in March 2011. The past year has been a time of endings. My mom--the amazing, valiant Carmen--died at 92. Some forever friendships and family connections dissolved. A job offer required me to trade my beloved southwest vistas for the hazy, conservative Midwest—a place I thought I’d never return after moving to Colorado in 1986. It’s tempting to focus only on the losses. But as I said to a colleague who was recently forced out of a job he’d held for a long time, but had outgrown-- the new thing can’t begin until the old thing comes to an end.

There’s no getting around the grieving process. But with my new job at Joyce Meyer Ministries, I’ve been challenged to change my natural tendency to view life through a lens of melancholy (hmm…wouldn’t that be a lovely name for a girl? Melancholia Rand…) to something a bit more optimistic. More than once the Universe (i.e., God) has spoken to me: it’s time to shake the dust off your feet and look forward for a change. Imagine new possibilities: New friends. New paradigms. Even new family. Be grateful for what you have, not what’s still missing. 

I have a job as a writer (with benefits!) at a time when traditional editorial jobs are going the way of the golden toad and the dodo bird. And after nearly four years with no permanent address, I’m finally settled in a charming apartment in a lovely old St. Louis neighborhood across from a big park where Bo and Rocky can roam off the leash. I have enough income to indulge my passion for thrift stores, and take the occasional trip to New Mexico to see my buddies. Oh, and here’s my nyaa-nyaa for those trapped in gloomier climes: I just came back from 10 days in Puerto Vallarta where I stayed with my friend Gloria at her historic posada, Los Cuatro Vientos. After nearly two years away, it was a sentimental journey filled with happy reunions and swims in the healing ocean.

My job entails writing curriculum for Joyce Meyer’s “action plans,” as well as magazine features, marketing copy and other projects. This year I’ve written journaling workbooks based on her books and teachings, including Power Thoughts, Fruit of the Spirit and Battlefield of the Mind. Working at a place where most of my colleagues are half my age, I’ve been forced to stay current with new technologies—although my favorite game on my Kindle is grandmotherly Mahjongg, not “Angry Birds.”

What have I learned in the past year? That what you want is not necessarily what you need. That God provides—usually at the 11th hour. That our “families” are not always related to us by blood. That it’s healthiest to pursue relationships with people who believe the best about one another. That sometimes you have to make peace with things being unresolved. And that it takes a lot less emotional energy to forgive someone than to hold a grudge.   

I’ve discovered that for at least this present season, I need routine and stability—not another “adventure.” I’m particularly grateful that my sister Dodi and I have grown closer after being virtual strangers for decades. We talk regularly on the phone—getting to know one another and working through our respective issues with candor, respect and trust. 

It’s been a year of solitude (what my friend Kathy Parham calls “sacred loneliness”), and many times I’ve felt like a fish out of water in the city where I was born and spent the first 10 years of my life. I wouldn’t have chosen St. Louis as a place to live. But here is where the door opened. I’m trusting God that there’s a lesson I’m supposed to learn from this. More will be revealed.

Blessings to you. May all your life transitions be smooth ones…life is so much easier when you just go with it. Have a great 2013. 

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV)

Love, bird

   

Entropy and Hope

(The following is a chapter from my new book, tentatively titled Where Ever You Go, There You Are; Change, Loss and La Vida Loca in Puerto Vallarta.)

Yesterday, Israel and I made our way to one of our favorite haunts, Peninsula Beach, where the Pitillal River empties into the ocean. We like it there because we can bathe the dogs in the shallow river water at the same time we get to enjoy the crashing surf. Israel loads up our two camp chairs, our beach umbrella and the cooler, and we make our way to a spit of sand where the river snakes around on its way to the sea.

Sadly, our beach gear has deteriorated at what feels like warp speed – paralleling our swiftly ending idylls together in Mexico. The canvas on the chairs has grown threadbare to the point where Israel sat down recently, and the seat gave way, his butt hitting the sand. Yesterday, he pulled our beach umbrella out of its sleeve and the whole thing came apart, with the nylon material tearing loose from the frame and flapping ridiculously in the stiff ocean breeze. I said, “Israel, it’s trash. Let’s just throw it away.” But Israel is like a dog with a bone when it comes to salvaging things that I would classify as "basura.” He’s resourceful in the way of someone who has had to scrounge and make do for most of his life. His room in Pitillal is crammed with funky finds harvested from the beach or fished out of trash barrels: broken fans, toaster ovens, old TV’s, still serviceable clothing and shoes – all of which he plans to clean, repair and sell at the flea market.

Mexicans are accustomed to extending the life of everything, from old appliances to junker cars. There really is no such thing as refuse in Mexico. Men with backpacks root through icky trash bags looking for aluminum cans and old beer bottles to barter at the recycler. In Guadalajara, we ran across a street vender selling used clothing as new, complete with cardboard tags stapled to the pockets. Look closer and there was the Goodwill pricetag still attached. What we consumer Americans might consign to a dumpster, working class Mexicans see as currency for survival -- or a retail opportunity. I love that about Mexicans. They don’t waste anything.

But, back to the umbrella situation. Israel pulled a plastic bag out of the sand, tore it into strips and began to perform triage on the pathetic beach umbrella. Little by little, he re-attached the nylon skin to the ribs. Then, as per our beach routine, he got down on hands and knees, dug a hole and planted the umbrella. I spread our faded beach towels on the two chairs and positioned the cooler between us. The dogs frolicked back and forth between the beach and the river, careful not to stray too far from the compass point of our dilapidated little outpost on the ocean prairie.

Paul Simon once wrote that everything put together sooner or later falls apart. Since coming to Mexico a mere two years ago, I’ve seen that process playing out not only in the disintegration of our beach furniture, but in the landmarks and topography of the enchanted bubble that is our Vallarta. When we first came to Peninsula Beach, the river still ran wild between the towering high rises. Mexican families congregated on the high dunes, while kids and dogs threw themselves into the crazy confluence of river and ocean. Bathers reveled in the fast current and chaotic surf. Once we watched a man reach into the water and pull out a large fish with his bare hands -- which he and his family proceeded to cook for dinner over a wood fire. Israel and I would wade out to where the ocean and river collided, giggling like children as the waves tried to knock us off our feet. Israel held up pieces of tortilla for the seagulls and laughed his high-pitched Amadeus laugh when they snatched the bread from his fingers. One night last year during a full moon, we visited the beach with my dog Bo, and watched breathlessly as the domed silhouette of a sea turtle silently made her way up the mouth of the river, searching for a place to lay her eggs. Israel tried to collapse the sand to help her, but the current was too strong. She slipped beneath the water and returned to the sea.

Who could have foreseen that in the space of a year, such experiences would grow extinct? The developers have succeeded in taming the Pitillal River with a series of jetties, sandbag walls and artificial dunes. The river has been reduced to a benign trickle, a capillary of shallow water flowing parallel to the beach, as ho-hum as the Lazy River ride at an urban water park.

I try not to get depressed about change. To go with the flow, as it were. But I grieve with each extinction – the old pier in Olas Altas, the Page in the Sun bookstore, even our favorite limoncillo plant in Colonia Villa Los Flores – we used to cut the leaves for tea. It’s been decimated by a cement wall. The other day I was walking the dogs among the condos in my neighborhood and came upon the dismembered remains of a large banyan tree, lying in chunks in a parking space. I felt like someone had died. It’s such a balancing act, this process of making peace with loss, while trusting that new sources of love and wonder will come to fill the void.

Israel, on the other hand, adapts. Yesterday, during one of our stops on the way to the beach, he found two pristine kitchen tiles at the side of the road which he studied for an hour, excited about using them for an art project. He placed them on the dashboard of the van as we exited the beach parking area. As I made a sweeping left turn onto the road into Fluvial, the tiles slid across the dash and flew out the passenger-side window. I heard them shatter as they hit the pavement. “What was that?” I said, not having seen it. “Eet’s nawtheen,” he said, not even bothering a backward glance. “Just keep going,” he said. I pressed him until he told me it was his art project. “Ohh, I’m sorry Israel.” “Eet’s okay,” he said. “Eet’s always best to keep going. Dun’t slow down. Just keep going ahead.”

And that, I’ve decided, is what one must do to stay positive in a present that’s pulling away from us like a receding tide, even as we’re still splashing in the water merged with the moment. When I leave Mexico, Israel will take possession of the chairs, the umbrella and all the fading, physical souvenirs of our friendship. He’ll sit down with needle and thread and carefully mend the damaged camp chair, reinforce the seams of the stuff sacks, stitch everything back together in an effort to breathe a second life into them. Just like his dream of my return, which he’s confident will happen. God has told him it is so.

Los Alamos, New Mexico

The poet William Wordsworth once described poetry as "experience recollected in tanquility." Perhaps that's why it's been difficult to write about the last two months. My sister Sibyl has nudged me to keep writing on the "paradise" blog, even though I'm away from Puerto Vallarta now and life is unsettled.

I guess what makes it meaningful is not the slide show, not the spin on quirky dramas in exotic locales, but the insights gained as life unscrolls. The backdrop is really immaterial. Perhaps my weakness as a writer and purveyor of Truth As I See It, has been a reluctance to report on the mistakes, character flaws and questionable choices that have made my life harder at times than it needed to be. The declaration, "I once was lost, but now am found," may be true in so far as I have been redeemed by a loving Creator, but I still wrestle with blind spots, behaviors and assumptions that I have yet to submit for forensic moral self-scrutiny. And I don't always have the courage to ask people I may have hurt, irritated or alienated along the way, exactly what I did to hurt, irritate and alienate them. The fear of being annihilated by someone's judgment, criticism, disapproval -- what have you -- sometimes renders me sightless and mewing in darkened rooms, paralyzed by confusion and self-loathing, begging God for release.

But thank God, that's not all the time. And I write about this journey I'm on so both you and I will know we're not alone. That's really all it comes down to. What I set down in this "experience recollected in tranquility," is stuff that most of us know already. I just have a knack for putting it into words.

The best I can offer anyone is my transparency mingled with a desire to entertain, empathize and maybe offer a tincture of hope. We are all damaged and broken, stumbling in the dark, trying to make healthy choices, but with skillsets limited by faulty perceptions, skewed by pain. The Truth of Grace poured into us has a way of leaking out. Thank God, He/She never turns off the spigot. That's what keeps me going, keeps me wanting to write these words, whether or not they are read or appreciated by anyone out there in cyberspace.

Kansas

After a week taking care of personal business in Colorado Springs, I loaded up the Beast for another 12-hr marathon drive to my mom's home in Fulton, MO. For two days, I pushed through on I-70, a trip I've made almost annually for the past 25 years. I've learned to settle into a zenlike state for what used to be an interminable mind and butt-numbing trek across the prairie. I know every antique mall, roadside attraction and excuse-to-stop along the way. There's an Arby's break in Limon, Colo, followed by the merge onto I-70, then every 100 miles or so, a town...Oakley, Hays (home of the 5,000 lb. prairie dog), Colby, Russell (Bob Dole's hometown), Junction City, Salina, Abilene, Lawrence, Topeka. I've spent time in all those places. While I was married to Stephen and temporarily sidetracked from this roadtrip, someone put in a windfarm in the flint hills between Junction City and Russell. I always pull off the highway to park and marvel at the giant gleaming windmills slicing the sky. On this trip, I encountered several prairie fires creeping over the ocean of drought-yellowed grass. In places, the charred fields stretched for miles in every direction.

I used to dread the drive across Kansas, but over the years I've grown to appreciate the stark beauty of the plains. I try to imagine what it must have been like when cowboys and Indians populated the land. Some of these sleepy towns, like Abilene, for example, were once rowdy with outlaws and houses of ill repute. I guess all that drive time puts my mind into "Lonesome Dove" mode.

There's a calming feng shui quality to the topography of Kansas, interrupted only by occasional grain silos and grazing cattle. Have you ever noticed that cattle all face the same direction as they graze? Why is that?

On day two of the drive home, I stopped in Concordia, MO, for some barbecue, which I ate while parked with Bo in the town cemetary, overlooking a regiment of farm tilling equipment. A white cadillac carrying a couple of suspicious locals crept around the cemetary watching me from a distance. I played a passive-agressive game of cat and mouse with them for a few minutes, but finally had enough and got back on the road.

Missouri

I spent a month with Mom in Fulton, crowded into her tiny Victorian hoarder's house with its windows sealed shut and every available inch of space crammed with boxes of fabric scraps and news clippings, gilded mirrors, candlesticks wreathed in artificial flowers and 10-year-old canned goods stacked to the ceiling in the tiny kitchen. At 91, she's still a steel magnolia. Carmen balances on the Mexican cane my sister gave her and subsists on a diet of game shows (Price is Right, Deal or No Deal, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy) and crossword puzzles she works in the bathroom. On Monday, she plays cards at the Senior Center and attends Red Hat Society functions. During my stay, I hunkered down and tried to stay out of her way, escaping to local antique malls or walking on the Stinson trail with Bo. I was heartbroken to see that Westminster College had cut down century-old oak trees on the old homestead where the artist David Mode Paine once lived; they were making way for an apt. bulding. I ignored a no-trespassing sign to examine one dismembered oak tree four feet in diameter. Tried to count the rings and lost count at 130.

Like wistful Meryl Streep reminiscing about her farm in Kenya in "Out of Africa," I find myself musing..."I once lived in a hacienda in Puerto Vallarta."

Back to Colorado

I spent about a month with Mom, eating compulsively, watching serial episodes of "Madmen" on my computer, and becoming addicted to mocha frappes from McDonald's. To use the internet, I retreated to the Fulton Public Library or the McDonald's parking lot.

It was rainy in the midwest for much of the time I was home, and by the time I crossed the Kansas flinthills heading west, they'd turned a lush neon green. I realized the grass fires are just part of the natural cycle of death and life on the prairie.

I made it only as far as Abilene the first day of the return trip. Day 2 turned into a grim push westward as the skies filled with mushy black clouds. For a change of pace, I pulled off I-70 at Oakley and took a two-lane road diagonally across the barren prairie. The "towns" I passed through were only wide places in the road...I must have driven 300 mi. with nary a car in sight. No gas stations. No fast food places. Just miles and miles of Kansas, then miles and miles of Colorado grassland. Near Kit Carson, the temperature dropped, the winds picked up and big drops of rain splashed on the windshield. I arrived in Colorado Springs at dusk in a downpour, exhausted from 700 miles on the road...and with no place to go.

No Room at the Inn

Nothing is so depressing as arriving in a town that used to be your home...and finding no one willing to take you in. No warm hearth full of friends who've been waiting anxiously for your return. Just a McDonald's parking lot on Fillmore St., where you let the dog out to pee in the rain and the gathering gloom, then try to find a motel that will take you both in before it gets dark. After finding that the Spruce Lodge (they have weekly rates) had no vacancy, I drove down to the Econolodge on Nevada St. (the closest motel to a real neighborhood). Sorry. We don't take dogs. At that point, I sat down in the lobby and wept. The woman at the desk was very sweet. She fixed me a cup of tea and called the Motel 6...my last choice for a place to stay, but beggars can't be choosers. I made my way to the other side of the interstate and checked in.
The Motel 6 turned out to be a good choice for me and Bo. My little room was clean and bright, and the bathroom had one of those shower pods that remind you of something that could beam you up on "Star Trek." Behind the motel was a big field for Bo to run and poop.

For the next week, I checked mail, conducted bank business, consolidated stuff from two storage units and had a little quality time with my old friend Athena. I also made friends with Lisa, a woman who was working as a maid at the Motel 6. She shared her story with me...and it made me appreciate how fortunate I am, despite my current state of unemployment and uncertainty. 38 years old, attractive and sharp, Lisa had endured the loss of her business in the Springs, foreclosure and eviction from the home she'd lived in for 16 years, an unplanned pregnancy which resulted in giving up the baby for adoption last year, a stalking abusive ex-boyfriend -- who she's been hiding from by staying in a one room apt. off the highway, and a brain aneurism and blood clots in her lungs -- a direct result of beatings from the boyfriend...

I don't know how people end up in such dire circumstances. It can be tempting to blame the victim...but I feel for Lisa. A beautiful, intelligent woman for whom life just ran off the track. I watched her doing what she has to do to survive and take care of her 11 year-old daughter. Trying to stay positive when all around her is the evidence of her bad luck and poor judgment. But all I can think of is...there but for the grace of God go ALL OF US.

I paid Lisa to help me load up my bed and dresser and some other stuff into a U-haul trailer. We talked as we worked, about our lives, the men we'd trusted, the patterns we were trying to change. We finished up late in the day and headed to Chick-fil-A. I bought her dinner and we sat outside in the golden afternoon sunlight. I needed a friend and God sent me one.

The next morning as I checked out from the motel and prepared to leave for Los Alamos, Lisa arrived for work, fighting back tears -- she'd had a rough night with her demons. I offered to pray for her, but she turned me down. I gave her a final hug...then me, Bo and the Beast lumbered onto the highway for the next leg of the trip.

It was nightfall when I chugged up the hill to my friend Sheila's house in Los Alamos a week ago, thankful to finally have a place to land. Have spent the past week unloading and putting things away. I've also decided to sell The Beast before it gives up the ghost. Searched Craig's List and found a 2002 Ford Windstar cargo van for only $2800. Two seats up front and the rest is all business. If I go back to Mexico in the Fall, I'll fill it with just what I can carry and sell off the rest.

The adventure continues.