CHAPTER 1
Lean Forward into Your Life
Lean forward into your life. Indeed. Often I embrace this instruction and put myshoulder to the moment. But certainly not always. There are times when, if Iwere to lean forward, all I would do is fall over. The roots of the word"despair" can be found in old French—a pairing of "down from" and "to hope": tofall down from hope. When I am not leaning forward into my life that is why.Because I am busy falling down from hope. Sometimes the ship of life is pitchingso viciously that the best action I can muster is to just sit down and hang on.The storm subsides. I stand up. I look around. I lean forward a little.
My chiropractor, Dr. Colleen McDonough, was helping me recover from a moment inwhich I had rapidly leaned backward. I'd stepped backward, while walking my dog,into a recessed planting area in the sidewalk. I snapped something in my back.My doctor was being attentive to the details of my life while working to correctthe problem. "Now how's that writing going?" she asked. "That book you'reworking on—what's it called? Fall Forward into Life?"
I laughed so hard. The irony of my chiropractor getting the title of my book sowrong and yet so right, struck me as howlingly funny. When I stopped laughing Itold her the correct title. She observed that I more frequently seem to leapforward into my life. A running leap, she modified. With your dog along on aleash. Leap. Lean. It's just one letter difference.
A pilot would tell you that a seemingly insignificant lean of a wing willdramatically alter the direction of the plane. Perhaps if a bird could speak itwould share that, with the right wind, a little ruffle of a feather may changethe way of its flight.
There are many reasons you lean forward on any given day. They are all perfectmetaphors for this book. When you're trying to see something better, you leantoward it. When you are listening to someone and can barely hear, you lean in.When the really exciting part of a basketball game comes, you lean forward inyour seat. When you're trying to catch, to see, to listen to the best bits—youlean forward.
Lean forward into your life ... catch the best bits and the finest wind. Justtip your feathers in flight a wee bit and see how dramatically that small leancan change your life.
Begin Each Day as if It Were on Purpose
go to the self help section of the library. Or bookstore. There you will findprotocols, guides, methods. Ten steps to this. Easy solutions to that. Thirtyways to hop, skip, and jump to a more successful, thinner, efficient,purposeful, happier life.
This is not that.
This book is an invitation. A reflection. A mirror. A set of prompts to help youremember the questions you want to ask yourself. An intimate portrait of some ofmy processes that have allowed me to separate life as it happens to me and lifeas I choose it. They are such very different things.
So often people discuss purpose as if it were a far off mountain, difficult tosee and even more difficult to climb. Purpose is discussed as if it were the onething that we are to ultimately achieve in our life.
Jan Johnson, my publisher, has said well that things are not only "done onpurpose, but with a purpose." I awaken with my purpose. I bring my purpose toevery party. I have the choice of applying my purpose to every set of events andenthusiasms of my life. My purpose. The unique intention that only I bring.
You know that feeling of being completely energized, which occurs when you aredoing something you absolutely love? That thing that might make others tired,weary, but you could do for hours, and then get up the next day and do it allover again? That thing probably has a lot to teach you about your purpose. Whenpeople speak of being "in sync," when things are flowing or a part of a groove.What they could say, instead, is "I am acting in complete accordance to mypurpose and it makes everything sing."
Life is the biggest schoolroom there is. Show up. Take notes. Notice the detailsso you gain mastery over the skills, talents, and abilities that all compriseyour special purpose. Writing notes to yourself is one of the finest ways tocome to a deeper understanding of your purpose. Here are some suggestions.
Write to make sense of life experiences. Write to learn as much as you can fromall the challenges and the joys. Write because words and ideas are fascinating.Write because exploring concepts is play. Write to synthesize explorations andmake them practical. Write to become the best version of yourself. Write toinspire, motivate, comfort, facilitate, discover, communicate. In the process ofseeking empowerment, empower others. In this scratching, this making marks,encourage others to make their own mark. Write to discover everything you(already deeply) know about your purpose. It's waiting for you.
Uncovering Your Purposeful Beginnings
in the classes I teach, Writing Places and Wordshops, I often ask participantsto write the story of their mythological creation. Nearly every tribe andcivilization that we can name has their own set of creation myths. It explainstheir unique presence. The terrain. The history of the tribe. Creating your ownpersonal myth is a remarkable journey. It's digging into your purpose. Let meshare my own creation myth.
"Entirely too hot!"
"Entirely too high!"
"By all our heads I swear this will turn sunset to a crisp."
"Stop your murmuring and just complete your tasks!" Umbria chastised the risingcriticizers.
"You don't think this fire is large enough already?"
"You know size is irrelevant; it's the density of the burn we always look for.Don't be stingy. I know you've not poured yours in yet."
Vitae was embarrassed at being caught. She retreated to the wavy edges of thefire. Appropriately corrected, she humbly reached into her boodle bag and pulledthe bottled essence for which she was named. As a single drop entered the firethe core flame leapt higher than Vitae's tall head.
"Only one drop?" Umbria asked.
Shamed, again, this time by her lack of generosity, Vitae poured lavishly—andstepped quickly back from the rising heat. Years later this extra portion ofvitality (for which Vitae could take credit) would sustain the breath of thisfiery spirit.
Umbria kept her invitations flowing. She calculated on her fingers, "All right,yes! Compassion, Intention, Chaos, Camaraderie, Intimacy, Loyalty, Vision ...and had Creativity come?" Oh, yes. Of course. She came in that silly disguise ofhers that many mistake for discipline. Now ... oh, yes!
She called out, "Calculation! Prosperity, Strength and Wellbeing! Come on. It'snearly time."
While it was somewhat unorthodox, the latecomers all came and piled theirofferings in the keeping of Strength—the intensity of the heat had become toomuch for the rest of them.
"Are we done yet?" Calculation inquired.
"Almost," she impatiently assured. "Would somebody call for Attentiveness andGentleness? I need them to add something."
Umbria was still deciding what from her bag to bestow—balance or insight. Itseemed silly to contribute balance into a fire of this magnitude. The flameswere licking the sun and the clouds had begun to complain bitterly. Clearly theonly choice they had was to begin a deluge—which tempered the flames slightly.Thereafter this spirit would love all water, especially walking in the rain.
As Gentleness, at some personal peril, added her silken threads, she heard,"Isn't it time yet?" in choired unison.
Umbria gasped at the error of her own long consideration. She knew such anoverdue pause would forever compel the belly in which this fire burned to belate. Such things happen. Perhaps insight would help. Umbria tossed her sliversand shards of insight into the flames. In an instant the tower of heat wasreduced to a molten coal. Intention and Chaos grabbed the cradle and deftlyslipped it under the newly compressed ball of fire. Then they swung the cribback and forth while the others stood in a circle. Following a familiar formthey sang their ageless invitation. Soon they heard from the other side of theworld.
"It's a girl, Mrs. Radmacher. Does she have a name?"
"Yes, her father and I will name her Mary Anne."
I was oblivious to the inquiry until second grade.
"No! They are my parents, not my grandparents." I was certainly used to them asmy parents. The last of my grandparents had died when I was five, and I did notcome to understand grief in regard to my grandfather's passing. Only relief. Hewas described by the non-religious members of my family as some kind of "crazybastard." Perhaps even the religious family members found it within theirexperience to levy the same charge against him.
My curiosity pushed beyond its civil limit, I finally asked, "Why? Why do youthink they are my grandparents?"
The answer was apparent to all but me.
"They are so old."
So old. So old. It was true. Amorous in their anticipation ... I was thetwenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration to Hawaii that my parents nevertook. Oddly, I think my mother never really forgave my birth for cheating her ofwhat would have been her first time out of the Pacific Northwest. At least shechose to have me. She was receiving endless unsolicited advice to have meaborted for the sake of her health. She was forty-four. She had a history ofmiscarriages. Both of my parents insisted that when they married they wantedfive children. I would make the fifth, if I survived.
And I did. Against a host of odds. My mother's general health was challenged,and the two packs of cigarettes she smoked each day became a challenge for me.It was mitigated, somewhat, by the two glasses of scotch on the rocks she wouldimbibe before five.... Oh, what we didn't know then—in 1957—about fetalhealth and the life-time effects of smoking and drinking while pregnant.
The nine-month lounge act I enjoyed in my mother's belly introduced me to aworld bronchially challenged from the word go. At nineteen months old I had amenu of illness offerings: scarlet fever, pneumonia, this and that—the listeludes my accurate memory. Poor care added staph infection to the masterpiece ofillness, like a malicious single stroke of red across the painting.
My oldest sister, a nursing student, was home on a break, looked at me for tenseconds, and called the head of pediatrics at Oregon's Health SciencesUniversity. That call saved my life. I was immediately transferred. Months laterI was released from a group of loving people whom I had come to view as myfamily.
That hospital staff had posted twenty-four-hour volunteer duty with me as I wasin intensive care alone. Residents reviewed their reports aloud. Students readtheir textbooks to me. Doctors and nurses read reports and children's stories.Doctors would poke their noses into my room and ask me to repeat what had justbeen announced over the loudspeaker. I did so, verbatim. This was more adevelopmental exercise for me than a neccessity for them. It certainly wasfoundational to the way I listened to words.
When I was placed in a normal room, I wondered, at first, who the civilians werewho were not dressed in scrub green or white, but who visited me and seemedinterested in my progress. I slowly sorted the details of my blood relationshipto these guests. This experience would serve as a life-long habit of choosing myown family, rather than simply accepting the bounds of family that blooddictates.
At the going away party, which the staff gave me, I was gifted with a yellow,soft, stuffed elephant. It was made of the same kind of looping of whichbedspreads were made. Like overstuffed tatting. I don't know the word for thetechnique. Bedspreads of this sort are now considered antiques.
The elephant and I were inseparable. Yet in all the time I had it, I had nomemory of its source, its beginning place. I had, in fact, no recollection of mytime in the hospital at all until much later in my life, until the experiencewas fully informed by my older sister. The elephant had simply always been withme; it traveled with me, slept with me. I frequently ventured out of doors withthat elephant, and it had its own place in my favorite tree. I would jam itunder my shirt as I shimmied up the trunk and then place it on its perch whereit could view the world along with me. In my memory, its name was the force ofits comforting presence, and while I must have called it something, I do notremember giving it a name.
I knew none of the above hospital details until my oldest sister visited me forthe fourth time in her life—the first being that visit of which I have justwritten, the second being my mother's funeral, the third being the visit toofficially determine the level of dementia visited upon my father's mind byalzheimer's disease, and the fourth being a few years ago. It was on that fourthvisit that I thanked her for all the stories she read to me when I was a weelass. I had, for decades, attributed my vocabulary and love of books to myoldest sister whom I recalled read to me incessantly when I was a toddler.
"No," she confessed, "it was not me." And then she spun the tale of my illness,my life hanging in a balance for months. The story captivated me, and suddenlymade so many nonsensical things about me make sense (things like my precociousvocabulary, my love of new words, my habit of repeating phrases verbatim, and soon). It also disappointed me. How could I have gone through over forty yearswithout anyone telling me such a significant thing about my own life? I askedher.
"I guess no one thought it was important that you should know" she answered. Ah,the odd bits of information families choose to keep from each other.
I don't recall taking my elephant to school, except maybe for show and tell.When I was in fourth grade, my brother left his electric blanket on, crumpled.An electric blanket on an unmade bed in a tinder box of a messy room. A roomjust across the hall from mine.
The house burned from the roof through to the structure of the second floor.Everything I owned—my art, my writings, all my origami paper brought to me fromJapan by my third grade teacher, my clothes—burned. I wept only for one thing.The yellow elephant.
That summer was the only summer my father took me anywhere in the city. Hebought a pass to the Portland Zoo. The pass came with a zoo key. The story wouldbe more tidy if the color of the key was yellow. The key was red. Each displayhad a prerecorded message about the animals, their native habitat, their eatinghabits. One listened to these messages by inserting the zoo key. The redelephant. My father took me to the zoo a number of times that summer. He shouldhave been sleeping, for he was a graveyard-shift manager at a heavy equipmentmanufacturing plant. Trying to object to my making a single dart to the elephantexhibit by asserting there were all kinds of things we could see—he finallysuccumbed.
My last visit might still be remembered to this day by the adults that werethere. Packy was my favorite elephant, my favorite creature in this structure offences and yards and pens. I'd participated in a contest to name him. My name,which I cannot recall, was not chosen. But still, Packy was my favorite. I wasaware of murmurs from the crowd around me. Only in retrospect do I know theywere saying things such as, "It's like they're speaking to each other," and"Look, that elephant is just staring right at that little girl."
I reached my hands out over the rails, my little body splayed over the doublemetal railing, my dad holding on to my feet so that I would not go sliding downthe cement cliff lining the elephants' area.
Packy raised himself up on this hind feet, his trunk seemed to fly in the airlike a restrained bird. And he called to me. A resonant trumpet of a call. Andthen he thundered himself down and, to the amazement of every one but me, Packykneeled. His great, soft, leathery, tree-trunk-like legs bent, and that creaturebowed to me.
I bowed back as well as I could manage. In much the same way it did not occur tome to think of my parents as old, it did not seem to me that this exchange wasin any way odd.
