Okay, in the tradition of my soul sister Penni Westbrook I've had two
glasses of red wine on an empty stomach, and I'm working on the third
one, and before I sit down and play the traditional New Year's game of
Castle Risk with the teenagers around my house, there are a few things
I've been thinking about this evening that I'd like to share (very
California-speak, but sorry, I've spent my whole life here and that's
how I feel right now) with everyone.
This has been a year of tremendous loss, change, romance, excitement,
and then more loss for me. I've spent plenty of nights crying, sitting
looking at the forest outside my house, at the top of an urban
mountain under the moonlight, sobbing wholeheartedly and mourning my
vanishing youth and pain of all sorts. I have reveled in it, but I am
quite aware that I have the luxury of doing that, because none of the
heartaches of sheer survival affect me.
My life is comfortable and secure, like the lives of most of you, and
it is the desire for perfection and ecstacy, and my failure to achieve
those things consistently this year--not the search for shelter and
safety from harm and enough food to feed a starving child, the things
that drive most of the earth's population every day--that make me
melancholy this New Year's Eve. There is a frightening statistic that
has always haunted me, and it points out how far removed from the
reality of hard-scrabble, hand-to-mouth existence all of us at SI are,
and it is that 30,00 to 40,000 babies and small children die each day
on this planet, in the third world, from easily preventable causes
like dehydration from diarrhea.
So tonight I thank the moon and all the stars in the sky that this is not my fate,
and at the same time am aware that there is much sadness everywhere I
look, and want to say that I am grateful for what I have, even though
there is agony sometimes in my life, as there is in the lives of most
of you.
Two weeks ago I opened the "San Francisco Chronicle", our daily
newspaper here, and read on the front page of the death of a prominent developer,
who had gone skiing with his 17-year-old son. I have
travelled the same roads to Lake Tahoe, and looked out at the same
vistas, but for this man, who was from all accounts honorable, a good
husband and father, full of integrity, and a pillar of our local
community, it was his last drive up the mountain. He got caught and
lost while skiing in deep snowdrifts in an area that had just been
reopened after a lot of fresh snow, and while his son attempted to ski
out to get help, he froze to death. Imagine the panic he and his son
must have suddenly felt, and the horror of his death for his family!
Imagine how guilty and helpless his teenaged son must feel, having not
been able to get help in time!!
A few days later I found out from my daughter Briana that this man's
younger son is in her class at school, and now more children are going
to yet another memorial service, and death is in the air again, and
these young children are noticing it, and talking about its prevalence
recently, amid the stirring romantic feelings and acne and high
academic expectations that we expect of them, all at the same time. It
must be so scary and raw and confusing for them!!
Tonight I have not only my daughter and my brother's two teenage boys
in my house, who were planned houseguests this week, but Keiko, the
classmate of Briana's whose grandfather just died very suddenly. I
don't know exactly what to say to her, but I will think of something,
as she, too, is here to spend the night and welcome in 1997, along
with Laura, another girlfriend of Briana's.
These are girls who had holiday invitations to other parties tonight,
but all of the party givers are snowed in, in the Sierras, stuck in
the same random and chaotic patterns of nature which killed her
classmate's father, and so on the spur of the moment these girls are here
for the duration, and I will make pancakes for all of them in the
morning, and reassuring domestic bustling will, I hope, prevail
against the sadness and bad dreams of the night.
So I am blessed suddenly with the open feelings and optimism and hope
and music and love of five teenagers at once, and all our beds are
more than full tonight, if anyone ever actually falls asleep, and even
though our house feels very alive, I am thinking--and they are too--of
celebrating the New Year and the loss and finality of death in their
immediate circles all at the same time.
My father has recently fractured his pelvis, in church!!! (Please
don't give me your tired old religion, all right!!!) Now, at 75, he is
eating tons of vitamins and minerals and calcium, trying to heal his
broken body and recover, to survive and walk again. Imagine how that
must feel, to be pretty much near the end of life and still trying to
summon the strength and energy to keep on truckin' some more!! How
brave the elderly are, and how little we appreciate their courage
until we, too, are at that place on our journeys.
My boss from a long time ago, my former attorney and Pisces soulmate
as well, a man I considered vulnerable, gentle and sweet, was murdered
in his rose-colored Rolls Royce late one night last month, found by
the police slumped over the steering wheel with multiple gunshot
wounds to his chest. Again, I found this out by glancing at the
headlines in our local newspaper, and was once more shocked and
saddened. After being born poor, working his way through law school by
performing as a clown and a gifted amateur boxer, and becoming a prominent
local Democrat and fighting for the rights of those who started out
like he did, he finally obviously lost a long, valiant fight against
cocaine addiction that I knew he had been fighting for 20 years at
least. He was probably gunned down by a local Vietnamese gang. There
were so many prominent San Franciscans who have at some point been
connected to him, and also hooked on cocaine, that this crime reverberates
through our community as the police investigate its most prominent
members, and it all makes me very glad that I have grown up since the
time I knew him, and did not get lost like he and so many of his
friends did.
What am I saying here? Well, it's almost time for more wine, since I
am staring at an empty glass again. Hey, it's New Year's Eve!! Okay,
what I am saying is that even though we may seek perfect happiness and
perfection and wealth and comfort, life happens as we are searching
for Nirvana, and I think we should all sometimes remember the reality
that we are each of us all alone here, even though we may cleave to loved ones
along the way, and that we should hopefully give thanks for each day
that we survive, and cherish each experience that we have.
So if you are reasonably healthy, looking ahead optimistically and
wondering what the New Year will bring, remember that this level of
looking at life is a luxury in itself, and that we are all born alone
and will die alone, and wrap your arms around yourself now and hug
yourself hard--you are truly alone in the world no matter how many
people surround and distract you.
And remember, in words I have borrowed from my very good friend
Maurice Winn--a concept he often reminds his children of, and I would
like to reiterate here--THESE are the good old days!!
Enjoy them!!! Don't take anything for granted; life is fragile and
unpredictable!!
Wishing everyone a wonderful year!!
Christine |
