Time Passage Archives - Words from Cara

Home

I’m focused right now on the theme of something that resonates deep within my soul: “HOME.”

“There is no place like home.”
~ L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

That word might be a trigger for you as well as it is for me. HOME means so much to so many for so many reasons-joyful and not so much.

But you had to be living under a rock if you hadn’t been made aware, nor worse, been impacted by the raging fires, floods, mudslides, volcanoes, explosions, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wars, etc. that have drop-kicked millions around the globe from their homebased lives onto foundationless ash and rubble. Beloved memories, cherished pictures and letters and family treasures lost in the smoke and ethers. Plus, far too many lives lost-trapped and buried in the unimaginable maelstrom. Gone in a blink.

We can zero-in on the horror of it all, but we’d need new vocabularies to describe the infinite limitless horror. Yet, that’s not what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about the thing that got me off the floor and faced a new day when my own home was ripped out from under me. My beloved home in the Hollywood Hills, California, some 30+ years ago when my reality was destroyed– after divorce and raising our beautiful sons and living the kind of heavenly life that only began when those two boys were born. I was reborn with them.

So, when all the material wonderful stuff I adored so much was taken away-crushed by the crash and burn of a 25+ year marriage and unthinkable bankruptcy pulling my beautiful home out from under me, I thought I would die.

Indeed, I wanted to die.

Continue reading “Home”

Best Friends

“Oh, my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, “it’s fruitcake weather!”

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together—well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house; relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other’s best friend.” (“A Christmas Memory”, Truman Capote)

Grandfather pushing stroller We see this lovely grandfather strolling his gorgeous little grandbabies almost every morning. He patiently pushes them up and around the neighborhood while they smile and beam at passersby. There is such a peace about this little trio. And it had me thinking that here is an elderly man who probably lives with his family and has a purpose and place to be a comfort to all the generations there while he continues his life passage to the end. All under one roof.

He speaks Japanese and I don’t so unfortunately I can’t bombard him with a million questions. And that’s probably a good thing for him. So I am limited to the boundaries of my own mind and wonderment. And thinking how separate we have become not only from each other, but from the natural grace and chapters of our individual lives. Unlike it is within many cultures still, most of us in this country have our babies separate from parents and extended family. Our children grow up visiting their relatives and having to be reintroduced to them each time unless they Facetime them. And then as the years grow on we visit our own parents or our children visit us in care shelters until the final goodbyes. That’s our norm. That’s the way it is with us in this day and age and yet and yet… I’ve always loved the old ways. Ways I never experienced but heard and read about. The big old houses crammed full of crazies—some loving, some mad as hatters, but there for each other when another couldn’t be. Tiny communities where your tribe lived a backyard or clothing line away. No one was ever alone in all the phases of life. I know I’ve romanticized much of it. Often it’s really a great thing not to be close to nutcases nearby. Family can be as destructive and damning as it can also be supportive and loving. There is no perfect scenario.

But still. I couldn’t help but envy that sweet grandfather who wasn’t tossed out to pasture because he no longer had youth and stamina or a 24/7 job. He has a purpose to be there for those two urchins who will probably never forget that their grandpapa had the time to stroll them in the sunshine together.

Maybe that’s one of the failings of our world today. We no longer have time to be together in such grace-filled ways on all the twists and turns and markers of our lives. We go so much of it alone under our separate roofs and tightly locked doors and unwelcome mats. I think we need to be best friends to each other again…

I’m a Little Teapot

“I’m a little teapot short and stout.
Here is my handle here is my spout!”

I’ve been singing that song since I was a child and then years later along with generations of my splendid boys and I know you have as well in your worlds, too. So this morning, along with my gratitude for simply greeting a new day and focusing on what really matters—like seeing and breathing!—I found myself zero-ing in on the little chirp and steam-stream of my fat and ever-present kettle.

Standing in front of it as it beckoned me to pick up and pour I couldn’t help thinking of how much we’ve tea-ed and coffee-ed together. Like a long marriage, we’ve been there through the sicknesses and health, the highs and lows, tears and laughter, celebrations and devastations, endings and beginnings. Moves after moves downsizing from big, sprawling house to a nub of bump-your-head-on-ceiling studios. Like a wandering gypsy I wrapped my old faithful kettle into newspapers and boxes making sure that it was a priority wherever I landed.

So today I silently thanked it for never letting me down. For being one of the predictables I could trust in this strange place called Life. Both kettle and I are admittedly a tad ragged around the edges with hints of rust beneath the gleam. My dark hair now silver. Its silvery sheen not so much anymore. But like the song says, “We’re still here!”

And, as I propped my feet up next to Boo Cat in the Platter, and Peach beside me, I took in this new day with coffee steaming and felt a warm smile grow inside for what really matters right now.

It was all I could to do to not just hug my little teapot short and stout (of course, after it cooled down!)

About TIME

“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.”
James Taylor

Time. It’s such an ephemeral thing, isn’t it? I mean, you can’t hold it or frame it and place it on the wall except in photographs indicating the way we looked then as opposed to now. Try and explain it to a child. I mean, yes, a clock or watch tell us the time but really what IS time? Minutes. Seconds. What are they? What do they look like? How do we even know they really exist? What is the purpose of time other than to let us know we’re either late or early to this thing called Life.

I suppose if I had Einstein’s genius I could come up with a wise retort, but my brain is seriously lacking in the brilliance department. Not a wunderkind, I’m simply left with a mind filled with wonder. And that’s what brings me to this moment of contemplation. Possibly it’s because of this season of nostalgia. Autumn always does this to me. I love it so. The multi-colored leaves falling to the ground prodded by wafts of sun-tinged breezes. The fire-place smells and everything changing, leaving the summer days behind and everyone beginning to snuggle down and wrap into the coming cold. But I tend to fall into that state of longing. For what? I’m not sure. But I long. And I remember. And I feel both energized and resigned. Seeking out that ancient, inner cave to retreat into and redefine my place here, there, everywhere.

Maybe it’s all that as well as me facing an end-of-the-year birthday signaling the fact that chronologically at least my hour-glass is piling up at a steady downward pace. I can no longer say, “Someday I will, blah-blah-blah…” I mean none of us should say that. The moment is NOW, like the author/master teacher Eckhart Tolle says so wisely. But my point in time is telling me that I really can’t say that. I need to act on my dreams this very moment. My mirror is telling me that too. (Just not making mirrors like they used to!!!)

Continue reading “About TIME”

Always – A Mother’s 90th Birthday Celebrated

“I’ll be loving you, oh Always
With a love that’s true Always.
When the things you’ve planned
Need a helping hand,
I will understand Always.

Always.

Days may not be fair Always,
That’s when I’ll be there Always.
Not for just an hour,
Not for just a day,
Not for just a year,
But Always.”
(by Irving Berlin)

The song, “Always” is my mother, Lilly’s, signature song. She’s sung it so beautifully for as long as I can remember hearing her voice. We ask her to perform it at weddings, family gatherings, comforting moments when we just need to hear her sing it. She begins reluctantly at first, convinced she can’t remember the words or sure she doesn’t have the voice anymore, but then magic happens and we find ourselves in tears hearing her gentle rendition of Irving Berlin’s classic love song. And so it seemed natural to make her 90^th birthday this past August 15^th particularly special weaving the “Always” theme throughout.

Continue reading “Always – A Mother’s 90th Birthday Celebrated”

Every Grain of Sand

It always amazes me. This circle of life thing. How little puffs of life’s circumstances, bits of passages, happen concurrently; some even colliding into each other, or paralleling along the paths. One happy thing happens while another spirals down into an abyss…

Dylan’s “Grains of Sand” struck me as just the words I needed to color in the feelings of it all. How time and each moment of time is “…like a sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.” Precious, elusive increments gone practically before they arrive. Ephemeral little sparks of energy not to be missed. All to be savored; each to be appreciated and then released.

Each swift time passage as unique as the numbered hair: The joy of friends celebrating a brand new grandchild and in the same week their deep sorrow in burying an elderly loved one. Another longtime friend of mine struck down by a truck while she was simply crossing the street. A delightful woman of joy and beauty and rainbows of color, she is now thankfully and amazingly alive but bedridden and broken from head-to-toe and fighting to find her laughter again. And then the unthinkable courage of a mother relating her precious eight-year-old son’s battle to stay alive through the horror of the cancerous demon suffocating him. She begged us on Facebook—friends and total strangers—to pray for a miracle to save Gage (“Fighting for Gage”) and then when he begged her to let him go to Heaven, she asked us to pray that he be released of his struggle. Blessedly, that just happened. And now, another mother is reaching out to us for her little girl, “A Tale of Bella” and the prayers continue. Other stories of animals rescued and abandoned and performing heroic efforts prove to us all that they are not merely our equals, but in so many ways our superiors. Our angels. As are the animal-rescuers who fight to keep them alive.

My sister had to put her beloved old dog down in that dreaded ritual of release, and hours before she heard some encouraging words about her career that gave her hope along with her sorrow. Pete and I were stuck in a terrible traffic jam the other day as we headed for a beautiful gathering with friends to celebrate a Bris, the ancient Jewish ritual of honoring the little boy’s eighth day of life. And while we sat in that morass of unmoving cars we saw the blinking of police cars up ahead and streets being cordoned off. When we finally arrived at the home of our friends we found out that the traffic was both for the visiting Dalai Lama speaking nearby and also a traffic fatality of a cyclist. The Dalai Lama, a dying man, and an infant whose spirits lifted into that circle of mortality, like an inhale and exhale…

Life and death. Death and life. All played within moments from each other. All happening simultaneously and in layers. A few days before, Pete and I were able to enjoy a brief Sunday afternoon escape together along the soothing sands and foaming waves of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, while shore birds soared above us and families gathered in play temporarily free of all cares. Later, I bought myself gratitude flowers in honor of my son, Jesse’s birthday. And this weekend if I’m so blessed I’ll continue my flower ritual for my other son, Ethan’s birthday. And I just say “thank you” over and over again for this gift of time to savor every wondrous grain of life. As fleeting as minuscule bits of sand sifting through an hourglass…