May 3, 2023

I wrote this header back 5 years ago. I typed the words, hit publish and left it at that. No explanation, no clarification, no image, nothing. The funny thing is that now, in 2023, I have no idea what I meant when I posted this. No recollection of writing it. I even had to use google translate to make sure I knew what it meant.. Look at this? Look at me? What was I thinking? And why is my brain discarding memories as fast as I make trips to the goodwill. I fear my mind is on a Marie Kondo kick, clearing space, but for what?

Will Ginko Bilabo help? Do I want to remember? Can I decide what to remember and what to give away?

Most people in corporate life take a test by Gallup called Strength Finders. The idea is when you identify what people are good at and then build on those attributes vs working on weaknesses. My key strengths are Input, Achiever, Relator, Empathy and Connectedness. Which means I tend to work in roles where it’s important to build strong relationships. In fact, I once was offered a job because “I heard you can get along with hard to get along with people”. This may be true, but a note to recruiters: this is not a real strong selling point when one is trying to fill a role. This leads me to my point, I tend to work in relationship oriented roles, but I need to feed my “input” strength – the desire to keep new information coming in for a private learning agenda.

This weekend is a combo of the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo and MasterClass cooking shows. Yesterday I spent the day volunteering at and attending a day long conference listening to conservationists talk about their work. I learned that there are 13 species of penguins. The two that I’ve seen in the wild, the Galapagos and South African are both in the endangered species list. I got to swim with penguins in the Galapagos, along with cormorants, iguanas, turtles, sharks and fish. Didn’t know at the time they were threatened. I figured it would those on the Antarctic that would be threatened because of climate change. But it’s more about food source for the penguins in South America. That and poaching them for zoos, malls, yes, malls!,  there’s even a penguin bar in Japan. People make me sad. There are too many of us.

On the other extreme I watched Thomas Keller and Alice Waters talk about food prep. Keller’s refined food approach wastes too many resources for my taste. I mean I did just listen to Jane Goodall last week (again on MasterClass) talk about being rationed a quarter cup of water a week to wash with when she was in the field in Gombe. Still, I did learn how to properly poach an egg from Thomas and was inspired by Alice to find and steam some Tokyo turnips which were delicious. I’m trying to appreciate food in a different way, a more revered state and less of it. I’ve been a veggie for 40years and eat fairly healthy, but I want to start honoring it. Perhaps it’s my empathy gene at play, I’m thinking about the planet and how we need to take better care of it.

It’s time to figure out how to make my marketing skills help the planet.

I just finished Dr Jane Goodall’s MasterClass on conservation. What an inspirational life she leads, changing the world one positive act after another. And I’m thinkingz about my other Dr Jane. My childhood soulmate who is living the life of taking care of animals literally as a vet. I at one time wanted to be a vet, came close to leaving San Francisco to become a vet tech as a first step. But chose to stay for love. Dr Jane, the vet, is launching her Comfort Creature organization, placing chicken coops in assisted living homes to bring more life into dying. My Dr Janes, who chose to get on the road of helping others early in their lives. Me? I’m just coming back to that crossroad. The time to step it up is coming soon. My “mission” in life is to leave the planet a better place than when I got here. Mostly it’s been in small acts, hoping they add up to some greater impact. It might mean picking up stray dog poop, giving a stranger a compliment, being a “good” consumer or just generally being kind. Not life changing acts, not yet. Just small bricks leading me up to wanting to do greater good.

Time to map out the road ahead.

There are moments in my life that I’d love to go back to, in order to stop time and revisit. Not to change it, but to relive. One moment was just last year, on the ridge top of Antisana in the valley of the volcanoes outside of Quito. I was on a quest to see condors. Somewhat inspired by my BFF Jane a vet and life-long friend (someone who took one of my roads not taken to live a life caring for animals), and my other Jane. Jane Goodall. A woman who I am in awe of and have always wanted to follow in her footsteps. In fact, I tried studying animal behavior in college, but got off track with my own animal behavior, something to do with love or lust. But that’s a different story. Anyway I had seen Jane Goodall speak a few years back at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo. She was on stage and had this giant condor feather the length of her arm that she traveled with it as a dramatic prop to help help tell the story of a small conservationist team who successfully saved a species of bird from extinction. The flock had dropped down to 3 birds and lived on a remote island in the South Pacific. After much patience and dedication a team of conservationists helped the birds fight back and they are now a thriving flock. Jane was mesmerizing, I hung on every word, my heart snuck up into my throat. I was spell-bound. I bought one of her books that day and stood in line to have her sign it. When I made my way up to her took my hands and looked right into my eyes. Her eyes were so soft and kind, even to this day I can still feel those eyes locking with mine. Her gaze went right into my soul, it was such an intense moment that I had to divert my eyes like a submissive chimp. Yesterday was her 85th birthday, she was on the Ellen show and I was delighted that TiVo remembered how much I love her. She shared a story as to why Dr Leaky sent her out into the jungle with no formal education, nor much experience, and with her game mother no less ( you have to admire the steadfastness of the Brits), as he thought women made better behaviorists than men. “He sent women out for this research work, because he felt we are genetically wired to understand non-verbal creatures, we can better interpret the behaviors and inner dynamics of the families. We know when uncle Joe is cranky and when to keep the kids in the other room.” Jane was able to connect with those animals in such a way that they revealed so much more of themselves than any clinical study. Some in the field of ethology were aghast at her interactions. Animal behaviorists are “supposed to observe”, not influence. But her methods broke through scientific barriers. She was one of the first to document chimps using tools, what used to be considered a marker as to man’s superiority as a species. “Well Jane, now you’ve done it, we’ll have to redefine the difference between man and animals” Leaky told her. I’m sort of in a Jane binge and currently taking her Masterclass on conservation. It’s like listening to kindness, pure kindness. And being in the presence of one who truly sees, being in your real truth. So last year when I found myself on the other side of the world in the valley of the volcanoes of Ecuador in search of condors I realized I wasn’t just seeking out birds. I was seeking that magical connection when your inner truth and actual time meet. And you know what, it happened. The condors found us and they stopped time.

I went to my latest favorite restaurant last Saturday night to celebrate my girlfriend Carrie’s 60th birthday. Her actual birthday was 6 weeks ago, that’s how hard it is to get a reservation at Mr. Jui’s. It’s the perfect combo of incredible food, Michelin star inspired Chinese, and old/meets new ambiance. Hidden away on Waverly Place, an alley in Chinatown that is stuck in time. Where the lion dancers practice gravity defying acrobatics on the sidewalk and you catch glimpses of sweat shop sewing factories. My uncle used to tell me stories of the opium dens in the basements of the bars in those alleys, I like to think they’re still there.  It’s also just a few blocks away from the Top of the Mark, where my parents had their first date when they were stationed here during the war. My dad intended for them to have drinks and dinner there, but as the story goes after seeing the prices it was one drink and a then down to Chinatown.  Anyway, the restaurant is one of my happy spots where history meets today and I love sharing this special place with good friends.And Carrie and I are really tight friends. We know each other through raising our boys, we are declared members of the “M.O.B.”, mothers of boys. Even now, though the boys are all young men, the mom bond stays tight. The ‘takes a village’ idiom couldn’t be more true. You need help, lots of it, to juggle school pick-ups, host sleep overs, make 1,000s of lunches that all the kids will eat. We all cheer on the guys from the baseball bleachers and clap loudly during school plays. The mom tribe is basically an invincible force of mama bears. You’re also there for each other when cancer sneaks in, finances stumble or when marriages wobble or shatter. What I’m trying to say is we’re tight. Sisters by tribe if not blood.

So when she asked me ” do you regret not having a childhood?” over our pre dinner fancy cocktails, I don’t even blink or hesitant. Yes, sure it’s a deeply personal question, but that’s where we are, deep into each other’s personal lifes. “I mean you had to grow up so fast” she says and takes a sip of her drink named “Longevity”, something with mezcal and a floating pansy. I’m drinking “Wealth” a rye, scotch, and tea concoction with the restaurant’s name etched into a huge square ice cube. She’s asking because she knows my dad died when I was 8 years old. I have two older sisters, but we’re all about 7 years a part. Seven years is a long time in a child’s life, when we share stories we joke that it’s as if were raised by different parents. My sisters had childhoods with two parents, they think they got the best of it. But from my seat, I drew the lucky straw.  I was raised by just my mom and was secretly happy when my dad died from a heart attack at the age of 42.

It’s not that my dad was abusive or mean. He just had a big personality that sucked all the energy out of the room. He always had big plans to hit it rich and while some of them paid off, others didn’t. It made for some roller coaster times. My mom would tell me stories of him buying her $5,000 dollar dresses and years when there wasn’t money for new school shoes. At the time when he died we were living in Palos Verdes a very well off suburb on the beach south of Los Angeles. We had recently moved in on the promise of hitting it big, but the deal hadn’t closed yet. He was constantly on the phone, pacing the floors when he was home or traveling during week trying set up a fleet of franchises of bars called the Lucky Lady clubs. As a child I didn’t recognize the energy he brought home as stress, all I knew he was loud, he drank a lot, took up a lot of room and that my mom was different when he was home. When he was out of town, we ate butter sandwiches and oranges dipped in cinnamon sugar. We ate them while we played “store”  She’d pour all the contents from her purse out on the kitchen table hand me over loose change from the coin jar, then I’d “buy” the items like the lipstick tube, kleenex, keys, her wallet and we’d put them back the purse.  Obviously the purpose was to spend time with me and teach me how to count and make change, plus her purse got cleaned in the process too.  She was a smart woman.  But when dad was home, it all changed.  It was blood rare t-bone steaks and baked potatoes. My mom changed when he was home too, she had to adjust to all the energy too. And while we were more in the “no money for shoes” situation when he died, I think we were both relieved, but that’s something neither of us could ever say out loud.

So when Carrie asked me if I regret not having a childhood, I said “No, I drew the lucky straw” because I got the mom who thought butter sandwiches for dinner was just fine and that feeling secure and truly loved was more important than any fancy dress.

I’m working at kindling up a creative spark. Thinking about small moments that want to be explored and then out of the blue I had a flash of a moment from my 20s that was so clear and vivid I could have been sitting on the grass in in the quad at San Francisco State circa 1980 drinking coffee from a vending machine, because there was no money for cappuccinos. Those were the years that filled journals with poems and entries struggling with that universal question “am I loveable? am I worthy of love?” Pages fueled by passion and that unquenchable need to write it down. That need to explore those universal questions found me in a creative writing class that assigned a mimeographed excerpt from Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”. I think the intent was to inspire us or at least shape our writing, but there was a thread line in there about needing to live life before you can write about it and those words quieted my voice. For years. His real intent was something more to do with an inward journey and solitude, but at the time what I heard was “shut up there’s nothing of value you have to say until you’ve lived.” And I used it as a sign, an excuse to not write. I used it as a stop sign so I wouldn’t have to test myself.

As I sit here, once again in my life trying to fan that creative impulse it brought me back to sitting on the grass in that quad with those mimeographed papers and the wind of doubt I that allowed in. But instead of letting doubt sneak back, I decided to re-read Rilke. The girl in her 20s saw a stop sign, a well lived woman nearing 60 now knows it was just ] a detour. I’m not silencing myself any longer, I heard not just the permission, but the call to write. “You are so young, you have not even begun, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the anwer”. And he was right, I did live into the answer. And really no matter the question, the answer is always love, in all forms, always.

Boomers. The Silver Society. Elders. Crones. Seniors.  The language describing aging is so limiting.  I was okay with “middle age”, but really once you’re past 50 it doesn’t make sense. I need another way to describe this phase of life, because 50 is the middle of 100, and really, there’s not that big of a market for that many birthday candles.  I haven’t yet found the language of aging that fits me.

And if you’re like me, you’re at an amazing crossroad in your life, ready to explore what’s next. I am a fit, independent woman with parenting and bonded partnering behind me.  I have a grown son who has been my grounding wire for years, but is now solidly on his own path, a career that has served me well, but one I’m ready to transform.  I have a home in a city that I have loved for over 40 years, but I want more trees and space for my three dogs.  I’ve been blessed, but my thirst to grow has my roots reaching for new ground. I plan to use this blog to help explore the “what’s next.” I’m not sure all that’s on the path ahead.  But I plan to stretch my career, find more time for travel, make my dogs happy, meet new people, explore hidden gems, cook great meals, spend hours laughing with friends, craft up creations, experience the arts and be nutured more by nature. 

Join me on the journey.