January 27, 2010: Happy Birthday, Stephen!

Hello!

Today is my "little" brother's birthday and so I start with best wishes going out to him! Flitting through images of the past, my heart warms and this cold January morning loses its chill...

I pass to another anniversary that falls on this day. On this day, about 20 years ago, I made my first and last bet. I was at the time in a relationship with a wild and wonderful but inveterate gambler, and he had insisted. Insisted so much that we got into a fight over it. Insisted so much that I made that bet (with an illegal bookie in a bar in the Inwood section of Manhattan in the early morning hours, no less) and then left, saying, "Never call me again unless I hit that number!"

That afternoon, waking me from a sound sleep, my phone rang. I knew right away. Sure enough, I had hit the number for $800, a whole lot of money for me at that time. The story goes on (for another time, perhaps) but the laughter of the universe still rings in my ears. Great news, $800 from the sky. Bad news, back into a toxic relationship. What will our heroine do with that? I missed the opportunity that day to take the money and run; my growing took many years still after that, before I stood tall enough in my own boots to walk.

These many years later, I sit at my window here in Paris, looking through the branches of the tree outside to the Seine, which is flowing fast today. It feels like time has been flowing just as fast... but for a moment I visit that past, that who-I-was, and send her love. Love and gratitude. Because if I had never been that me, struggling to find my self, my voice (though a haze of work and play and intoxicants and tears and some laughter), I would never have gotten here.

I woke up with the phrase "I pass peacefully though portals", an affirmation my friend Sophie shared with me, one that her friend Tom shared with her (thanks, Tom!) This has truly become my mantra and I now live it with gratitude. Life is SO much easier, SO much more peaceful now. I see now that we have a choice: it is up to us how we pass through the trials of our lives, and through the joys as well.

BIG changes are occurring in my life right now, but diving under the surface, I am no longer tossed about in the waves. It was not always so. I had to swim upstream, to be tossed about on the surface, to swallow whole mouthfuls of turpitude and despair and hope and chaos until I gagged and spit it up, spit it out, willfully ejecting what was pulling me down.

I never could have gotten here without having been there. So I send out my thanks and love to that Kathryn, that Kathy, and ask her to hang in there because at some point, she will pass peacefully through portals. And I wish for you all the same. Peace.