sevita

San Fran in a nut shell and on a penny...

Well, not really a nut shell, and not really a penny but pretty close. Here's how it's done: get to city at 5:30, park car in very cheap parking garage around corner from very cheap hotel (who wants $29 to park your car).  Take bags to hotel, check in and drop off bags. Immediately head back out to cheap parking garage to pull car out and then re-enter in order to save more money by utilizing the after hours weekend rate. Find Old Navy, because you are in the shopping district, and buy daughter a pair of jeans since she has grown out of all pants that were brought. Search for food and find Thai restaurant offering free Thai tea with meal. Get a bowl of noddles and some curry. Eat way too much. Hop on trolley, hang off edge and feel the cold, brisk, night air chilling  your face while heading to the wharf. Get off trolley and take in a deep breath in order to let the smell of fish-and-chips sink into your skin.  Walk by a hundred umbrella's in each souvenir shop. Think about buying one but don't.  Make way to Ghiradelli's ice cream parlor. Use coupon from visitor's guide and get a hot fudge, triple ice cream sunday. Spend way to long telling daughter how things used to be when your father would bring you to this very spot. Leave ice cream shop in pouring rain and wish you'de bought one of those umbrellas. Walk in rain looking for ATM so you can ride trolley back to hotel.

Spend the night in very nice looking but cheap, loud and bright hotel. Get used to taking key with you when you run down the hall to community bathroom.

Wake up early. Pack up and take bags to car in cheap parking garage. Go ride 32 story glass elevator at Francis Drake Hotel. Make daughter listen to you read history of Hotel throughout the last 100 years.  Go get car and head back to Ghiradelli square where there is a most adorable tea shop that just had to be experienced. Accidentally, but excitedly drive down middle of China town as vendors are rolling out their goods and buying thier morning newspapers. Feel like you are in a different world for 10 blocks. Go to tea shop at Ghiradelli square and order crumpets with tea and talk in English accents about trips to the sea and beaus who have gone off to war. Walk past more umbrellas. Drive down to old fort under the Golden Gate bridge. Hike straight up to top of hill and onto bridge, in pouring rain, without umbrella. Hike back down to car, take off wet jackets, scarves and hats and turn heater on. Drive down Lombart St. Drive to Golden Gate park, find the Bison range and take pictures of Bison living in the middle of San Fransisco.  Drive to Union Square and find the "Painted ladies." Realize they are not talking about women, but houses (just kidding). Head toward Market St to hook up with free way and head home. Stop for lunch at a cyber looking vvegetarian cafe, order high end grill cheese sandwich that your daughter won't like and chat for a few minutes with the server. Find out sever started the company Rockstar but got bored with cooperate world, so she sold it and went to live in some exotic country for a while and is now working here. Or something like that.

Run back to car because it is pouring rain again, open door and try to get in. Notice that lights were left on, notice that the car wasn't locked and then notice that this is not your car. Apologize profusely to the lady coming out of the cleaners asking you what youare doing. Find own car, jump in, find freeway and begin long trek home.

Sunday morning thots 2.15

My mind was spinning this morning, engulfed in a sea of sadness and rage before the sermon started.  The pastor shared that when we are in the sea, we must wait, eat, nurture our soul, maintain connection and not jump in a life boat to save our life. This is what Paul did in the midst of his storm. Paul told the soldiers, if you want to live, stay on board don't run away now. It was a beautiful sermon drenched in love and inspiration. But it did not speak to me as he probably would have hoped. I have been in the boat one day to many. I don't want to face anymore storms. I want to jump into the life boat and row out to the middle on nowhere and allow myself to be swallowed up by the darkness. I sat there during communion arguing with myself. I must press on, I say, I must live through this one, for my husband, for my daughter, for the world. I will come out stronger and deeper, I will be refined into the love the world so much needs. But then out of the corner of my eye I see a little one being bounced on his mother's hip. My body and screeching pain, seeks out it's own baby. my arms want to clamor at the air, searching for something to hold, some weight to put my arms at ease. It's a pain I have never known before the miscarriage. It's a phantom that controls me. In my emptiness, I grow angry. My soul starts thrashing about. Deep inside I am smashing mirrors with my fist, I am throwing eggs in my bathtub, I am crushing tiles on the floor. But on the outside I grow numb, shoving down the sobs that threaten me. My cries would be a distraction, a moment of fear for everyone. And, I could not contain them once I got started. So I sit in silence, consumed by my anger, consumed by my fears, not daring to think or feel, praying without words that Love would rescue me.

When the color comes back...

Life has been gray for so long. I've hit so many bumps and have been so bruised in the past couple of years that the color of life seemed to drain away and everything became a shade of gray. light gray, dark gray, deep blackish gray.  If feel the color coming back though, I sense a deep shadow of purple making it's way into my soul. To receive it feels nerve racking. Shew it away, I want to say, don't let the color in, because I couldn't handle loosing it again. But I don't shew it away. I sit, drenched in quite nervousness, awaiting the return of color.

quotes

We are accustomed to think we do not experience something until we express it in a thought. it is difficult to be childlike, to enjoy what is happening and forget it when it had passed –to savor the immediacy of reality.

Thomas Keating

a wave of grief...

For a year now, I have been numb. The day I went into the hospital, delivered my dead 19 week old baby and held her, the world stopped turning for me. I dug myself a grave that day. I jumped in my grave and begged God to bury me alive. God did not answer me. Everyday, I attempt to pull down the earth around me attempting to cover my senses and deaden my awareness.  But God, in spite of God's divine silence, has not seen fit to allow me to bury myself alive. I feel the calling of life, of love, whispering that there is more to me and more to life than this. I have become a mess of my own sorrow though. I have allowed my pain to murder my desires, my hopes, my dreams. the wave of grief has become a tsunami that I must face even though it threatens to eat me alive.