Flow, Flow, Here I Go!

In response to my latest for The Fix, where I recount some recent slip-ups that showcase sloppy sobriety, and which required some mopping up, one reader commented: “Be a Buddhist monk like me. It's easier.” Not sure he was serious in his suggestion, nor in his own claim to enlightenment, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a good idea, to get more grounded and get around some of the unmanageability of the first half of this year. I’m all-in to up my practice this summer!

Except meditation often eludes me. Outbursts are my family tradition, not OM. So far, sessions have been short-lived, my focus fragile. “I’m just not good at meditation...” I once copped to my then sponsor Lisa M. “That’s just your alcoholism talking,” she shot back. She didn’t give me a pass on meditation, but she did give me permission to be lousy at it. “Just do it, don’t judge it.”

And whenever I do manage a few mindful minutes, I enjoy this:

• Less babbling

• Less breaking s$%*

• Less mindless munching

• Less spilling my lunch on my lap

• Less creeping ex-flames on IG

• Less texting at red lights

• Less shouting at sons

So I keep at it.

My goal is a full hour in full lotus, but I’m in no rush. Here’s what helps me poke along my monkish migration towards Nirvana...

Free Yoga on the Internet

Child’s pose is not child’s play. I’m a reluctant yogi. Still, 

I start some days with Kassandra: (Yoga with Kassandra)

And a friend ends hers with Sara Beth: (Bedtime Yoga Stretch)

Both are growing on me. Ten minutes of threading the needle, followed by a good rag doll hang for those hamstrings, and I’m limbered up, connected to my breathing, and have “Set my intention for the rest of the day.” Namaste.

Choices

Just because there’s coffee left in the carafe, doesn’t mean I have to pour it over ice and down it right then. It’s pretty much impossible to meditate in espresso mode; those thoughts percolate faster than I can dismiss them, and each one is “oh shit” urgent.

What A.A. Has to Say on The Subject

“...in meditation, debate has no place.” The words from chapter eleven in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions echo my sponsor’s: “Just do it. Don’t judge it.” It offers up the overtly Christian St. Francis prayer as a guided meditation, with this disclaimer: “We won’t be biased or scared off by that fact, because although he was not an alcoholic he did, like us, go through the emotional wringer. And as he came out the other side of that painful experience, this prayer was his expression of what he could then see, feel, and wish to become.” I do wish to become more selfless, like animal-loving, locust-eating St. Francis, and in its turn of poetic device, this devotion is quite the lyrical tool for contemplation. With extensive prompts from my eleven-year-old, I’ve committed it to memory, and regularly chew on it. Along with written inventory, it works wonders on those stubborn resentments.

Set the Scene

Mood matters. To “increase my conscious contact with God”, as well as with the present moment, I’ve set up a small home shrine to settle me in: a brass meditation bowl with velvet-tipped hammer, twin bamboo plants I took in when my sponsor moved cross country, an essential oil diffuser, stick incense in sand, and a fat pillow.

I arrange myself on the floor any damn way I please that my tricky knee tolerates. I don’t judge that either, my asymmetrical squat. I’m comfortable. Sort of. I open my laptop or grab my phone and choose:

Guided Meditations and Meditation Apps

Calm has a lot I’ll never explore. I find the guiding narration sticky and condescending, but I do like thumbing through the pretty backgrounds (except rain hitting leaves, that one makes me pee my mat). The timed meditation feature is nifty too. I get to control how long I follow air flowing from my nostrils to my fallopian tubes. Twenty minutes, ten or two… Sixty seconds is better than nothing. Whose judging? I manage to do at least this daily. And I appreciate that 10:30PM screen flash, my nightly nudge to go the hell to sleep: “Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges!” (Strike Warrior 2)

Tara Brach’s voice, on the other cupped hand, doesn’t make my skin crawl in my yoga pants. I can hold space for her, especially for her under twenty minute talks, like the one on self-compassion (or being-easy-on myself-when-my-kids-are-not). She sure helps me keep showing up for this single-parenting gig with more gratitude, and more laughter than lectures...

And I just love tough-talking Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu of dhammatalks. I often bookend my day with one of his two minute morning meditations and a ten minute tuck-in talk. He helps me keep showing up for meditation, by reminding me that my mind reigned in, is better for me and for everyone within my physical and virtual reach.

The Natural Connection

Sometimes I just stop and stare at the American Linden across the street from my building. I take in its storybook perfection, its dense, lollipop-shape, and thirty-seven shades of green. At night, I watch the way a breeze tickles at its leaves, while the streetlight plays off its under surfaces...  

I also have the good fortune of an occasional run along back-country roads, where conscious, clean-air breathing comes easy. This past Memorial Weekend I experienced that smell of wet hay in May....

Now how this petites madeleines-moment helps foster meditation and recovery, well, does this need explaining?

Not Just For Sober Moms...

That Gratitude List

From almost the start, when I poured that last screwdriver down the sink, I’ve had this three-way tie for first place on my nightly gratitude list: my sobriety—my sons—and a sense that something has my back. All three, neck-in-neck as they cross that finish line: my beating heart.

Everything else—my health, my job, my home, the new Carvel on the corner—falls into place below, in no special order. I’m grateful for them all, but it’s this inseparable trio at the top that I claim most dear: my temperance for today, my two male adolescents, and a loving something that answers foxhole prayers and opens up parking spots too. For this three-in-one trinity lacing fingers around my life today, I thank those stars above, stars that twinkle beyond city lights, unseen, but always there.

Since last summer however, there’s more to this nightly accounting of my blessings. In bed, as I note my appreciation of the three frontrunners, I also now acknowledge there are no sure winners in this horse race, and in doing so, I value them even more. Something scary happened last July that sank down deep beneath the stretched-skin of my mommy belly: this sobriety thing is not a given.  I realized—what the hell— I could easily someday decide to order the house white to go with the fish special. Just like that, I could toss out years of clear-headed showing up for the responsibilities of my little life.

The Family Reunion
It wasn’t the kind of family reunion with monogrammed Oriental Trading ball caps, and fifth cousins flown in from far corners. Just the immediate family, and cousin Nancy from Missouri, gathered for the fourth, on the family “farm”, a former dairy, where livestock had been replaced with wildlife. Herds of deer, and wild turkey now roamed Four Fields Farm in exurbia New York. Due to a chlorine-resistant algae bloom, the pool wasn’t even open.

“A Family Disease?”

While I don’t point fingers, and respect that alcoholism is a self-diagnosed disease, I have sometimes wondered about the drinking habits of those ancestors dangling from my paternal branch. Great Uncle Gray, the family acknowledges, was the town drunk of Coleman, Texas. My biological grandfather, Howard, was his running buddy, though no one has ever labeled my granddad an alcoholic too.  I’ve had my doubts about Gray’s sister though, my beloved, eccentric Great Aunt Honey, (nee Vivian), a former beauty queen with a penchant for leopard print, a framed portrait of her Pekinese, and strange curios from trips to Mexico with her heavy-drinking lover Frank. I don’t ever remember visiting Honey when she was not in her brass bed, propped with pillows, her red wig askew, animated, eating coconut cake. Was that coffee she drank or something else? I really don’t remember. But pictures don’t lie. I cherish a polaroid of her, in a lawn chair, with shades and red lipstick, and a tallboy resting on crossed knees above showgirl legs. The jury’s out on Great Aunt Honey.

But really, I don’t have to go farther up the family tree than the next leaf on my own branchlet, to find genetic evidence that alcoholism runs in the family. My brother, approaching 33 years of continuous sobriety is—on a cellular level—the closest person on the planet to me, and he, like me, is powerless over alcohol. My sober sibling had been proof enough for me.

The Fireworks Get out of Hand

Until two days after Independence Day, 2018, that was. Walking the gravel path from house to road with my beautiful cousin, a vision in flowing linen and towering six inches above me, fields of ripening hay for fodder on either side of us, I broke my anonymity: “I don’t drink you know.” “Oh,” she replied, “I guess I didn’t know that.” She was surprised. Everyone is. I don’t fit their profile. Whatever that is, it’s not a middle-aged mom who car pools kids to chess tournaments. Then she added: “There have been times when I drank a little more heavily… when I was going through stuff… But I don’t drink much now.”

And that’s all it took to flambe the low flame under my denial and reignite DOUBT.

Was it really that bad, I asked myself. Maybe I was just going through stuff too…I mean, everyone hits those keg parties hard in college, that’s normal... And after graduation, when I spent my entire twenties producing a low-budget feature film flop, I reasoned: Hell, a decade of indy filmmaking would drive anyone to drink! Everyone blacks out at post-screening parties and does stupid shit. Maybe, if I’d just let my drinking run its course I would have—like Cousin Nancy—gotten to the point where I was bored with bottom shelf whiskey and bad chianti with screw top caps. I would have gotten fed up fanangling illicit refills of prescription muscle relaxants…Maybe I’d beat the odds, learn to moderate, and wind up pretty much be where I am today, with the blessed life I have.”

Of course the sober, grounded me knows that my drinking is not conditional; it’s not based on stuff going on in my life, not the low times nor the high.  I know this. I know that I’ve got a life-threatening disease that’s arrested one-day-at-a-time, and is contingent upon my fit spiritual condition. This is my truth. But in that moment, I forgot it all. I forgot the scary. Like the scary, and deeply sad boyfriend from Lawrence, Kansas, a pale rail who, at 6’6”, ducked when he boarded subway cars and subsisted on quarts of Budweiser and Winston Gold. (He’s gone now, that sad, scary boyfriend.)  Or the scary scrapes I’d survived, like staggering home alone, over the Brooklyn Bridge, at 3AM, a young woman in a red halter dress, heels in hand, because I couldn’t find a friend to join me in my mid-week drinking adventure. Because I’d spent the 20 bucks that I’d stashed in my bra for cab fare home, on whiskey sours instead. In this magical moment approaching dusk with Cousin Nancy, her smile as wide as a Texas sky, I completely forgot that, when I crossed that bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn, I crossed another line, or as it’s described in Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 2: “There is a Solution”:  I “lost the power of choice in drink.”

I continued to rationalize: That was 30 years ago; it’s all water under the bridge now. Then this fart bubble of an idea popped to mind,  as dumb as adding “an ounce of whiskey in my milk”: Why can’t I enjoy one scotch on the patio with Cousin Nancy and Dad this evening? You know, rock back, reminisce and tinkle my ice cubes in a tumbler with “N” for our surname, etched on its surface…. To hell with the swimming pool, now THIS is a family reunion!  

In the first paragraph of Chapter 3: “More About Alcoholism” I have the following lines double highlighted in yellow and pink, then also underlined:  “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.” Oh and “illusion” is also circled.

There Is A Solution in the Onion Fields

The fields of hay shimmered in the mid-summer summer light. It was a Kodak moment, yet I felt unsafe. So what did I do in this moment when the bottom of my sobriety fell out? When my phone and my brother were back at the house, and I couldn’t reach my sponsor or any sober gal pal? Thankfully, I remembered what Lisa M., the sponsor who’d led me through this close reading of the Big Book told me early on: “Start cultivating your relationship with your Higher Power Maria. People aren’t always available, but G-d is.”  So I prayed to HP, actually first I cursed at G--d. Then I prayed for the urge to drink to pass. It wasn’t passing fast enough. I prayed to remember that I was an alcoholic who couldn’t drink safely. And I prayed to tolerate the discomfort until it passed.

Frankly I felt HP’s response was inadequate, given the circumstances.  But then another thought followed. This one felt G-d-inspired, and smelled better.  Oh that’s right, I’m going to a meeting tonight. Another sound suggestion from Lisa M. had been this: find a second home group when you’re away, visiting your second home. For me, it’s my parents’ house in the township of Warwick. They know me as the “holiday gal”, because I’m up there with my sons over most school holidays. Feels good to get to meetings up there, and to bump into friends of Bill in the village post office or coffee shop. Feels good, away from home, to still feel connected.

And this was just enough. I had a sober plan: to go to a meeting where I could spill. In ninety minutes I’d be sitting in the second seat of the second row of folding chairs, between ball caps and boots, in the spic-in-span basement of St. Stanislaus Church in Pine Island, New York, sipping percolator coffee, and nibbling an Oreo. In this white clapboard church surrounded by black dirt onion fields,  the feelings would continue to pass through. Sooner or later the discomfort would lift. I had faith in this. A problem shared is a problem halved…

Mother’s Day, 2019

On the eve of another sober Mother’s Day, it’s still a photo finish for first place on my praise list: My Higher Power/My Sobriety/My Sons. But on that Friday night last July, the dark horse was that little Polish church that housed a Group Of Drunks. Those alcoholics listened to me and nodded in identification. I enjoyed my first deep breath in hours. I felt safe from that first drink, and all urge to jay walk or put my hand on a hot stove.

Soon after she returned home to Missouri, cousin Nancy was diagnosed with lung cancer. She passed over the winter holidays. The family was stunned, but Nancy flashed that smile to the end, and her own two sons rose to the occasion magnificently.

These final memories with my first cousin are on my list tonight too, those hours spent sitting poolside, laughing at the stagnant scene, and sipping my mother’s glorious sun tea, that quenches like nothing else.

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Lizard is Lost

“Never say no.” That’s one of those strongly suggested A.A. suggestions. When someone in the program asks you to speak, or to set up, or to sweep up, you just show up, and do service. You just do.

Truth is though, I haven’t answered all calls for help, like the one to serve on the Bill W. Dinner planning committee, a full twelve-month commitment. Maybe next year. But I’ve never said no to a newcomer (not a female one). I’ve bought into this suggestion because it works. I’m still sober five and a half years later and I’m mostly happy and sober.

So when I got home from work last Wednesday and dropped my lunch pail, I was excited to leaf through my closet and start pulling together an outfit for an outgoing speaking commitment I’d accepted months earlier, across Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy.  (Confession: I’m still preoccupied with what I wear in meetings, and what you’ve got on too. I say the 7th step prayer over my fixation on your footwear, which is either judgmental or covetous.)

I’d asked my friend Peter to chauffeur me in his Subaru Crosstrek with the heavenly suspension and new-car smell. And because I’ve always known Peter to also take this most strongly suggested A.A. suggestion, he didn’t say no. He’d agreed to be at my doorstep at 7:40pm. Plenty of time to get dressed, feed and exercise the pet lizard, and go.

I  scattered six crickets on my yoga mat and watched our Australian Bearded Dragon scamper in pursuit. (A small reptile seemed a sober pet choice in a working single-parent home). I hate cages: big, small, literal, figurative, not for people, and not for pets. I’ve always had an open door policy for my parakeets (and bird shat everywhere). And that’s why I left Scamp unattended on the living room yoga mat, free to digest, roam, and stretch his tail, while I changed.

But then he went missing. And I was still in my robe when I realized it.

My productivity in searching for lost things has always been inversely proportional to my anxiety level. I looked behind the bookcase, bureau, and the piano. No luck. I started to throw sofa pillows, and look in unlikely places: the freezer and the toilet. After forty minutes of rising panic with no results, I realized three things: ONE: how much I loved that little guy, TWO: how filthy my apartment was, and THREE: Peter would be here in ten minutes.

I thought to cancel, but then I thought, people are counting on me. I chair a meeting myself, so I know that jab of disappointment you feel when your speaker doesn’t show, that is, before you pivot into acceptance and ask that first warm body who walks in to speak. This family emergency would have to go on ice until I returned home.

But I hate leaving home with unfinished business as much as I hate cages. I’ve made myself late for appointments over dishes in the sink. It’s a fear thing, an unwillingness to accept that—as an old sponsor Lisa M. often reminded me—“Life is messy.” and I’m not in charge of straightening it all out. “Everything that’s supposed to get done today will get done...” she’d coo. Only now, with a few twenty-fours attached to my first name and last initial, I’m starting to buy in.  When I’m willing to acknowledge the sloppy around me—and inside me—I can relax just enough to do the next right thing.  In this case,  I reminded myself of my primary purpose: stay sober and help another alcoholic. So I pulled up my moto biker pants, left the free-range lizard at large, and hopped into Peter’s passenger seat with the wrong shoes and one earring.  

Driving over, I listened to—and heard—Peter, as he updated me on health and family. I was almost okay when we parked. Then I got out and stepped on a dead rat. BAD OMEN. I imagined our poor pet turning up months later, like a foul Easter egg on July Fourth, in a crawl space behind the FIOS box.

Somehow I found my sober feet. The air was almost fresh from a spring shower, as we approached Our Lady of Victory Church, with its Rapunzel tower rising, and an opulent magnolia, shedding it’s blossoms underfoot...

When I got home I was in a better headspace to resume the hunt. I prayed for direction and got it: Use a flashlight. Given that every apex predator in Australia lunches on these lizards, Beardies have evolved to be masters of camouflage. I got on my knees again, behind the piano, under the trundle bed, this time reaching deep into corners with focused light.  So far though, no tell-tale tail. I prayed for more direction and got it: Where is the most logical place he could be?

Then I remembered my eleven-year-old remarking that, after a good worm supper, Scamp liked to shimmy up under the china hutch and pass out. In my frantic, pre-meeting mode, I did give the china cabinet a cursory look. But now I went back with a slow pan of the searchlight. And wouldn’t you know that lil rascal had scooted himself right up into the corner, fast asleep, snug in a tangled nest of my  hair?

Hard to see much of anything when I forget the flashlight of universal love always available to me, and am caught, instead, in the floodlights of fear...

So once again, I was glad  I’d said “yes” instead of “no”. But honestly, if the lizard hadn’t turned up, if I’d returned home to tragedy, instead of this cute ending to a very long day, wouldn’t I still have been better fortified to deal with such a loss after having gone to a meeting?