My life has been super full in the last few months. Ergo the absolute absence of blog posts. Sorry bout that peeps.
I might almost say too full at times, but I would never ever say that because in an avalanche of crazy busy wonderful, there was no time to be overwhelmed. Overwhelm doesn’t happen. Not anymore. Overwhelm means life is too much. Life is never too much.
And as events, creative endeavors, cosmic shifts, romance peaked and valley’d to unquantifiable extremes, as everything decided to happen at once, there was no time to relish, to cherish to soak in a sentiment or anticipate an ending.
A combination of not a moment to spare and this ever unfolding awakening made everything: now now NOW. No where else to be. No where else I could possibly be.
And so now, on a six-hour cross-country flight, I have my first real breaths since Labor Day, and it seems only apropos that it is almost to the eve of Thanksgiving.
I was born on Thanksgiving. Which didn’t matter at the time, having been born in Poland, where things such as turkey and football are of no consequence. But growing up in America, Thanksgiving was always a very big deal that either slighted or highlighted my birthday—either it was shadowed by it completely or utilized as a terrific excuse to get away from the suburbs and to, really, anywhere else.
In the five-day weekend, busiest-travel-time-of-the-year Ameri-turk-stravaganza that is Thanksgiving, I have found it remarkably underwhelming to see how many households actually take the time to dedicate any kind of thanks or grace of any substantive measure to the holiday. At least, there will be a dinner toast, at best, everyone goes around the table saying one thing they are thankful for, you’ll probably get an email from your boss/company with wishes for the day and a generic gratitude statement. I’m not screaming sacrilege; I just find it interesting.
My mother was in New York last week to see me in my off-broadway play. The trip was supposed to be with a couple of her girlfriends, in a midtown hotel, and one night in my West Village studio. Then the girlfriends dropped out, and suddenly it would be Mom and I, 72 hours straight, cozying up on my tempur-pedic mattress. My mother, who did not like New York.
72 straight in our huge suburban home had been not without it’s made-for-tv movie drama in years past, one Thanksgiving seven years back being without question the worst night of my life, and this?… Well, I was most certainly far too old for this.
My teachers say that there is always more work to do in healing friction with our parents. That we know when we are done because we are willing to kiss our parents’ feet in devotion, like a deity. I had some pretty great Virginia Slims stretches of healing with mom in the past few years, but I wasn’t about to puja her anytime soon…
And then I thought… why not?
Just before my mother arrived, I had a guest in town whom I adored. Worship came spontaneously, easily. I realized I wasn’t anticipating her visit with the same joy as my guest’s, and decided to shake that judgement up.
When I shifted the perspective of how I would approach my mother, everything else shifted too.
At one point I just decided to stop feeling apprehensive about her visit and make it all about her.
“I am going to show my mother the best time she’s had in New York. I’m not going to do what I want to do, I’m going to do what she wants to do.”
She wasn’t an adult. She wasn’t my mother. She was a visiting deity, and gosh darn it if I wasn’t going to schlep all over town, watch her haggle with jewelry vendors on 47th street, consume too much coffee with her and try to be patient as she tried on countless pairs of shoes.
I was abundant with the thank you’s. I fetched her anything she needed, gladly, willingly. I was always checking in to make sure she was comfortable. No thought to our past, our struggles, our (very much continued) differing opinions on most matters, I worshipped her.
And we had a marvelous time. She came to one of my blessing nights and enjoyed it. She was terrifically generous with me. She said she is starting to love New York. Miracles people, miracles.
Gratitude breeds magic.
Gratitude to our parents is a transcendence. At best it is a healing experience on one of those weird metaphysical spiritual levels that no rhyme or reason explains. At worst, it makes them feel super nice. That’s not such a bad worst.
I have a full life and world to be grateful for: My recent theatrical experience was a tight knit rarity and privilege in the theatre world. My inadvertent spiritual family, the oneness peeps in New York and worldwide, the chosen rogue genius artistic friends also sprinkled and dazzling worldwide. Recent moments and experiences so profoundly beautiful and private they cannot even be touched on here, but exist through and through me. Health, adventure, integrity. Life and love taking over more and more each day as only experience with no residue: the ultimate purity.
That and so much more to be thankful for, but this Thanksgiving/Birthday week I am most grateful for my mother. She’s not who I would necessarily choose first. But as this shifting accelerates and this 2012 promise is right around the bend, as the world rebirths itself, can we fast-forward our own evolution by giving gratitude where gratitude is due at the most primal level? What if we can?
Family is the one place where we unconsciously feel we are allowed to act our worst. They bring out the patterns that we may have evolved past in our new, “real,” life with another partner or a career or a different city. The famous Ram Dass quotation “If you think you’re so enlightened go and spend a week with your parents” is painfully accurate in the holiday season.
So what if we approached this time with that awareness and a commitment to keep our small self at bay and give gratitude to our family first? For those of us whose families are in conflict (and whose aren’t at some point or another?) this weekend, relax with the yoga, put aside the meditation and take it down a notch with the kirtan. This, could be our greatest spiritual practice.
Because the world is never going to give you more until you appreciate what’cha got. So this Thanksgiving, go to the source: let’s give it up for Mom and Dad. No matter our relationship, there is the basic certainty, there’d be nothing to be thankful for without them. I wasn’t perfect when my mother came to town, but we’re about a million times nearer to it than we were five years ago… practice practice practice. Perfect came in a few sparkly moments and I know that means there will be more. And for that, I am thankful.
A most wonderful Thanksgiving to you and yours! love.
