My friend Debbie called last Thursday to see if I would accompany her to Story Club.  It meets the first Thursday of every month at a bar called the Holiday Club.

Debbie is newly sober.  She knows that I don’t drink and wanted a little moral support.

I’d never been to the Holiday Club.  I had driven past it several times and liked the way it looked – kind of 1950s and kitschy, at least from the outside.  Inside, it’s like any other bar.  Pool tables.  Bad lighting.  The stench of beer oozing out of upholstered booths.

There’s a back room, too – where Story Club meets.  It was packed.

We found seats at a table with three other women.  Introduced ourselves.  And not another word was spoken between us for the next 90 minutes.

So while technically NOT an Artist’s Date, as I did not go alone – I’m counting it anyway.  I traveled outside of my sphere.  I opened my ears, my eyes and my heart to new input.  It was fun.  And it left me thinking, “Maybe…just maybe…”

Here’s the set up:

Perky blonde hostess with knee-high boots, a filthy mouth and a good dose of chutzpah – the creator of Story Club and Debbie’s writing instructor — brings four writers to the stage to read and/or perform their writings.  In between the featured performers, three audience members are invited up for Open Mic.  Their names are drawn from a clear, plastic pitcher and once chosen, they have eight minutes to try out what they’ve been working on.  Between performers perky hostess engages in improv storytelling.  “That reminds me of…”

The stories were small.  All of them.  Like the stories I tell.  Breathing life into the seemingly mundane.  Honoring the miracles, the sacred, around us at every moment.  But with attitude.  And swearing.

Amy, a self-described “tall drink of water” read her piece standing practically spread eagle.  She couldn’t raise the microphone. 

She told a story about her grandparents and the Baskin Robbins ice-cream shop they owned.   About the day she tripped on her words and asked her grandfather for a penis-butter sundae, to which he replied, “That will be right up.” 

I didn’t get the joke until much later, when Debbie pointed out the opportunity for a pause in the storytelling – to let the audience digest, laugh at the joke.  Penis-butter…That will be right up.  Good one.

She spoke of her grandfather’s passing and how it felt like he was “just away” – for a really long time.  Perhaps tinkering with tools in the basement.  About her grandmother claiming her brain was leaking into her ears and that that was the reason she couldn’t hear.  The first part was true.  But even after surgery to “stop the leaking,” she never regained her hearing.

There was a story was about a couple of summers spent selling educational guides door to door.  One about a theatre major’s dashed dreams, made worse by her high-school boyfriend dumping her for God after a summer at Bible camp. 

And a drunk-a-logue.  A story nearly each of us can tell.  Too much alcohol.  Bad behavior.  Different from my own stories only by the addition of poop – her shitting the bed, which she recounted in rich detail.  I thanked God I don’t drink anymore.

Open Mic was made up of stories about fraternity life, applying for a job as a pimply, high-school student, and one by Joe.  Older than most of the audience, Joe wore washed-out blue jeans and a belt cinched under his belly.  He had a large head and a lumbering walk.   

He stepped on stage, opened his mouth, and was transformed.  Immediately.  He was a presence.  A natural born storyteller.  He didn’t read from a piece of paper like the others.  This was his story and he knew it by heart.  He took us to varsity water-polo practice circa 1979.  To the state championships.  And he introduced us to the coach, and to his 16-year-old self.

He looked different when he stepped off stage, less schleppy.  He returned to the table across from ours, and we looked at one another, nodded and smiled.  Like the time I literally ran into Richie Havens after a concert.  I was leaving through one door while he was being ushered out through another.  We stopped in front of each other.  Put our hands in prayer before our eyes, greeting Namaste –I see the God in you, said “thank you” and continued to walk.

It was kind of like that with Joe.  That shared sense of “I see you.”

The show ended with three of the four storytellers performing as a Beastie Boys cover band, She’s Crafty – inspiring a couple of men to rise from their barstools and dance.  I wanted to dance too, but didn’t.  Not until I was walking back to the car.  I felt it in my body…a sense of joy.  And of possibility.

On the ride home, Debbie and I talked about what she is learning in writing class.

She told me about convention.  How we think in groupings of three. That three is pleasing to the eye and to the ear.  We talked about timing –making room for laughter and reaction.  And about balance –finding the right ratio of levity to heaviness.  We agreed it is easy to lean on profanity.  And poop.  To lean on style rather than story.

I thought about my old roommate Mona.  She used to tell me I should sit on a stage cross-legged, smoke cigarettes and tell stories.  I wasn’t so sure then, but after Thursday night I am considering it.  Sans cigarette.  And in a different position, as sitting cross-legged for an extended period of time hurts my hips – although it probably didn’t when she first made the suggestion 20 years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I was working at Weight Watchers.  A member of my team asked me a simple question.  I responded with a story.  She laughed and said, “Of course there’s a story.  There’s always a story.”  I nodded in agreement.  “Yes, Nancy, there’s always a story.”

Post Script:  I’ve come to enjoy the one-ness of my Artist’s Dates.  I missed it on Thursday.  I missed being alone with myself.  So Saturday afternoon I took that time.  Riding my bike, inviting the universe around me to fill my senses. 

I picked up pickled ginger and fish sauce at the Asian Market I discovered on a previous Artist Date.  I rode along the lake and marveled at the blue of Belmont Harbor.  Turquoise, really.  That it doesn’t look quite real.  I marveled at how slowly my cruiser bike takes me when riding into the wind.

I stopped for a gelato at Paciugo.  A piccolo cone with three flavors – sea salt caramel, black pepper olive oil and toasted coconut.  I greeted a pit bull and rode along side streets, admiring the homes on Hermitage, thinking “I’d like to live in one of these.”  I watched the wind create mini tornadoes of trash, swirling cyclones of winter’s residue.

And I heard the same words over and over in my head.  My own voice saying, “Let me take care of you.  Let ME take care of you.”  I said ok.

A story in everything.  I just have to look for it.

There used to be these great print ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes.  Each featured a small black and white photo of a woman toiling, sweaty and somehow compromised.  Next to it was a larger, color image of a fiercely-dressed, fiercely-headstrong “modern” woman.  It read, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

No wonder I smoked.

Newport Lights, a pack a day.  I don’t anymore; haven’t for a long time.  I forget that sometimes.

I forget about a lot of the things I used to do.  As a rule, this is a blessing.  But it also makes it hard to see when I have in fact, “come a long way…”

This week I was reminded as I was preparing for my Weight Watchers meetings.  The topic: Why We Do What We Do.

Each week, I receive a topic for discussion, a guide to help bring it to life, and some slides for use in the meeting room.  One of the slides this week presented three characters, three scenarios.

Joe, who eats a healthy breakfast…then scarfs two doughnuts at work.  Pat, who is “on program” all week, but can’t seem to do the same at Sunday night dinner.  Carla, who just moved to a new city, goes home each night and makes nachos “like her mother used to make.”

I am Carla.  Except it isn’t nachos.  And it isn’t like that anymore.  I had forgotten…until now.

I was 24 when I moved to San Francisco.  I lived in a second-story Victorian apartment in Haight-Ashbury with my roommate Tim.

We painted my bedroom walls pink and hung up three black and white photographs of me – taken by my friend Blake the day before I left.  I slept on a futon that I bought from a friend of a friend.  If I cranked my head just the right way, I had a partial view of the Golden Gate Bridge from my fire escape.

Getting to work and back without getting lost was a victory.  For six months, I walked to the train and thought I was a day closer to moving back to Detroit.  I told no one.  How could I?  How could I tell my friends I was homesick when I lived in arguably the most beautiful city in North America.

I turned to food.  Not eating.  Bingeing.  That wildly secret out-of-control consumption that feels both numbing and compulsive.  That once started, is hard to stop.  That usually resulted in me feeling physically pained and emotionally shamed.  A bigger secret than the one I was trying to cover up.

I’d had a few experiences of bingeing when I lived in Detroit.

Housesitting for my friend Carlos.  Sitting on the kitchen floor with a bag of peanut M&M’s and a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies.  He returned moments after leaving, having forgotten something.  I looked up at him from the floor, panicked.  I do not remember what was said.  I must have blocked it out.  We never spoke of the incident.  After he left, I continued.

That night I lied in his bed, bloated.  Sick.  I tried to throw up but couldn’t.

Passover. Perhaps the last year my parents were married, living in the country in their dream home.  Each time I passed through the kitchen I picked up a kosher-for-Passover apricot square, never putting it on a plate, never sitting at the table.  A perfect example of what I like to call a Weight Watchers’ Zen Koan.  If a Weight Watcher eats and no one sees it, did it really happen?

When I had no room left in my gut, I left dinner.  I went upstairs and lied on my side on the cool bathroom floor.  My mother came to check on me.  I was afraid.  Of her.  Of how I felt.  I was in pain.  I didn’t know how to get the food out of me.

She asked if I needed to go to the hospital.  I told her I didn’t think so.  I was too ashamed.  What would they do anyway?  I went back downstairs and waited it out.

Experiences like these became more frequent after moving to San Francisco.

Every night after dinner I’d go foraging.  I’d go to one corner market for yogurt-covered raisins.  A second for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.  And a third for cookies – Pepperidge Farm, soft-baked, chocolate and macadamia nut.

I don’t know why I couldn’t buy it all at one store.  Looking back, I don’t think I could even admit it to myself what I was doing.

The binges were never planned.  I’d go to one store.  Get the goods.  Eat.  Then repeat.  It was exhausting.

If it was too late to go to the market, or if I was too tired or too ashamed, I would make a concoction at home – usually consisting of sugar, butter, flour and an egg, microwaved until it puffed.  (I didn’t keep sweets in the house.)  Unable to wait, I’d dig in immediately, burning the skin on the roof of my mouth.

I remember having dinner with my new friend Tom and his partner after one of these binges.  We went for Thai food on Noe Street.  I ordered soup that I could barely choke down.  I told them I was sick.  Little did any of us know how true that was.  All I wanted to do was go home, take my pants off and sit in my shame, alone.

Strangely, all of these binges occurred when I was a normal weight.  Even thin.

I shared a truncated version of my story – the going from store to store and not being able to eat at dinner with Tom – with one of my Weight Watchers groups.  I hadn’t planned to.  It just sort of happened.  The room was silent.  Then finally, one of the women asked quietly, “How did you stop?”  Nearly a dozen heads nodded in unison.

I had no idea.  I’m still not entirely sure.

This is what I told them.  This is what I know:

I found a Weight Watchers leader I could trust and got honest with him about what I was doing.  I read Geneen Roth’s When Food is Love and sobbed my eyes out – because I related.

I quit and rejoined Weight Watchers more times than I can count, eventually deciding to stay – no matter what.  Regardless of what I did or didn’t do.  Of what did or did not happen on the scale.  I decided with them, I at least had a fighting chance.

As I write, it occurs to me that there is more.  I don’t remember my last binge.  It was probably 10 or more years ago.  Somewhere around the time I met my ex-husband.  Around the time I started drinking alcohol again.

Perhaps I merely made a trade, exchanging one fix for another as I tried to fill that insatiable hole.  And yet, when I quit drinking a little more than five years ago, the bingeing did not return.  Nor did it return when my husband called it quits a little more than a year ago.  Neither did the drinking.

Things change.  I change.  So much so I sometimes forget how it used to be.  How I used to be.

I’m not fixed.  I still engage in behaviors that make me cringe, make me want to lie naked on the cool bathroom floor, ashamed and alone.  And yet I’m fairly certain if I keep on the path I am on, one day they too will be vague memories.  Shadows emerging seemingly out of nowhere, tugging for my attention, saying, “Remember when?  You’ve come a long way, baby.”

I’m fingering through a book of paper dolls.

One is wearing a wired, strapless bra, waist cincher, and stretch nylon lace girdle.  Another, a corset clipped to thigh-high stockings.  There are six of them in total, waiting to be dressed in couture.  Coco Chanel, Jean Patou, Givenchy, Yves St. Laurent.  Christian Dior, Bill Blass, Mary Quant.

I picked up the books – Great Fashion Designs of the Twenties, of the Fifties and of The Sixties – at the Chicago History Museum.  They were on a rack with other tools for the budding fashionista.  How-to books for drawing bodies and forms.  Stencils for creating ensembles.    

I think about my friend Slade.  As a child he wanted to draw Batman.  Today he is a working artist.  I wonder if he had books like these.

I think about my stunted trajectory.  How I always imagined I’d work in fashion – as a designer or a photographer.

I had forgotten about that until a couple of months ago.  I was talking with my friend Kristen about all the things I might do now that I was beholden to no one.  I mused about picking up the camera again.  I told her about photographing my friend Michelle, sitting on a roll of white paper in the art corridor at West Bloomfield High School.  That I knew then that I was good – that I had an eye.

I had forgotten about that conversation until last Thursday.  Artist Date 15.  “Ebony: 50 Years of Fashion Fair” at the Chicago History Museum.

I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Detroit.  But we were not wealthy ourselves.  Rather than trying to keep up with the girls around me, I turned to thrifting– picking up one-of-a-kind gems and throwaways.  And I began using clothing as an outward expression of my internal landscape.

I vividly remember my first vintage piece – a Pendleton car coat in orange, green and blue plaid with faux mother-of-pearl buttons.  It held the smell of age and experience, a little bit of perfume, some cigarette smoke and moth balls.  A smell I would grow to know, to accommodate, but never love.  And that dry cleaning would never completely eradicate.

I matched the car coat with an orange wool skirt and a veiled pillbox hat.  My mother said it took guts to go to school looking the way that I did.  She feared I’d get my ass kicked.  I feared blending in.  Not being noticed.

My closet filled with a rag-tag collection of styles from different eras.  A pleated skirt from the 1950s, printed with black ovals and circles.  Brocade capri pants.  White go-go boots two sizes too big for my feet.  A plaid Catholic school-girl skirt I snagged for 89 cents in Toronto.  A short-sleeved paisley, button-down. 

At my 20-year reunion, more than one classmate reflected that I was “cool.”  A “trendsetter.”  It would have been helpful to know that then, because I didn’t feel cool.  Most of the time I felt jangly and awkward.  And yet, the look I cultivated, more Cyndi Lauper than punk rocker, seemed to belie my 16-year-old insecurity.

I learned to sew, and wore my one finished creation.  I took photography classes and bought a new camera.  But ultimately I did not pursue fashion.  My parents nudged me toward writing.  And the designers I knew dissuaded me with horror stories of the shmata trade. 

And yet, as I walked into the exhibit, it all rushed back to me.  Mr. McClew, the math teacher who moonlighted as a photographer, loaning me European fashion magazines.  Sketching ensembles and passing them them over to Rachel Plecas in sixth-hour Humanities class.

There were dresses from Bob Mackie, Halston and Bill Blass.  Paco Rabanne.  Givenchy.  Yves Saint-Laurent.  A waterfall of crystals cascading down the back of an evening gown.  Modest, high-necked floral brocade giving way to ass cleavage.  A handful of custom-ordered plus-size pieces.  A purple dyed rabbit jacket.  A spangled plaid suit.  A perfectly-cut grey car coat.

I knew the magazine, Ebony, but not Fashion Fair: The World’s Largest Traveling Fashion Show.  For 50 years it crisscrossed America, raising money for local charities, was the “it” place in the African American community to see and be seen, to see haute couture. 

Its founder, Eunice Johnson, set out to bring glamour, worldliness, and a sense of possibility to her community – inviting African American women to imagine who they might be, and bringing images of African American women as beauty ideals to the fore.

I sat on a red velvet couch that looked like a wave and watched a video loop of designers, models and patrons sharing their memories of the 50 years.  Fashion Fair being the first group of blacks to stay at the Peabody Hotel.  Its maids bursting with pride.  An audience member peering backstage, marveling to see that everyone –EVERYONE – working the show was black.

Grown women waxing nostalgic about “dressing” for the show when they were young girls, an annual date with their mothers.  One noting that while fashion may be fairly trivial, “but being comfortable in your skin, isn’t.”  That Fashion Fair offered her that possibility.

I was envious.  Like in sixth grade when my friends’ parents took them to the Fisher Theatre to see Annie.   Like when those same friends went to New York with their mothers on shopping trips.  I felt like I missed something special. 

I imagined my 10-year-old self seeing a Halston purple jumpsuit – designed for discoing all night and sharing breakfast in the morning – come down the catwalk.  Too young to understand the innuendo.  My 16-year-old self making mental notes of the fabric and construction of an Issey Miyaki outer-space inspired jumpsuit.

I can’t change my past.  I can’t take my “child artist” to Fashion Fair now.  The last show was in 2009.   

But I can take her to this museum show again.  I can buy her paper dolls, a tangible reminder of the show she did see.

I can express myself in wool, leather and cotton, perhaps a little more comfortably than I did when I was 16.

I’ve noticed that my closet has morphed into two discreet sides –Pre and post-divorce.

Pre-divorce holds a collection of mostly Calvin Klein dresses.  I lost weight during the divorce and they don’t fit me anymore.  Not just in size.

Post-divorce is filled with return-to-thrifting finds.  A Diane Van Fustenberg knock-off wrap dress.  A tangerine cashmere sweater from Barney’s.   A burgundy, leather trench coat that I like to wear when I ride my bike in cool weather, its seams splitting at the shoulder.  A cropped pink, plaid wool blazer I picked up in Milwaukee, along with a robin’s-egg blue Samsonite carry-on bag.  A long cotton dress – tan, gold and purple – that feels like India.  I grabbed it off the rack at Village Thrift while I was waiting in line to pay for something else.

They are classics, standing the test of time, both in make and design.  My marriage didn’t.  Perhaps without even knowing it, I wanted to wrap myself in things that do. 

And the embroidered, powder-blue polyester cowboy shirt I had to have…a reminder that there is always room for whimsy.  Always room for mistakes.  In fashion, and in all things.   

I had a really great Artist Date planned last week.  Kind of high-brow.  Literary.

It was penciled into my book: Friday night.  Chicago Cultural Center.  Chicago Writers Reading Chicago Writers.  The closing event for the Festival of Writers, Story Week at Columbia College.

But come Friday I had a bad case of the lonely-s.  I’d been fighting them for days.  Ever since I had my taxes done earlier in the week.  Ever since Patricia, my tax preparer, clicked “single” on the filing status box, where it used to read “married, filing jointly.”

I felt like I got side swiped.  A rush of swirling emotions slammed into my chest, like a car going 80 mph and screeching to a sudden halt.  Like my bed being thrust into the wall with one, quick, tidy thud – my first experience of an earthquake in San Francisco.

I wanted to call my ex.  I wanted to ask him if he had the same experience.  I wanted to tell him that I owed a lot too.  Instead, I sat with it.

I’ve always been pretty good at spending time alone.

As a child, I played by myself for hours in the basement.  I’d swing to Louis Armstrong singing “Hello, Dolly,” stopping only to nap on the red shag rug beneath the swing my father had screwed into the ceiling.  Year later, I’d roller skate to the soundtrack from Grease, belting out the lyrics to “There are worse things I could do…” and “You’re The One that I Want.”

But sitting alone through discomfort is still somewhat new.  And the thought of heading downtown by myself felt awful.  Like quarantine when the prescription is clearly community.

I needed to be with my people.  I knew where they’d be.  The same place they are every Friday night – in a church basement and then out to dinner.

So I bailed on myself.  And true to form, over-explained my decision to myself.

But first, I pulled on my boots and went walking.  It’s become one of the “go tos” in my life when I’m stymied about what to do next.  It clears my mind and allows for flow.

On the way, I saw the store that is never open – open.

There is a sign on the door noting the lack of regular hours, essentially stating “we’re open when we’re open.”  A phone number is listed to call “in case of an antique emergency.”

I’d peeked in the windows more than once, admiring a set of tall, thin water glasses from the 1950’s.  Each with a pattern of circus animals on it.

Inside, I discovered they didn’t have a price.  Nothing did – which meant they were dependent upon the owner’s mood at the moment.

Twenty dollars for the 5 glasses, she offered.  I kept walking, tripping over a hodgepodge of tables, some set up with little vignettes.  Others sitting alone, like I felt.

I saw a piano bench and remembered my friend Dina telling me to be on the lookout for one.  She had given me a list of things to “be open to” in decorating my home.  A mirror.  A rug “that I loved.”  A thin, high table.  And a bench.

I didn’t want the piano bench.  I didn’t want the glasses either.  I imagined carrying them home, clinking and cracking.

On the way out I spied a low table covered with a piece of batik, a mirror and an assortment of small gems that hadn’t yet found a home.  I lifted the fabric off and exposed a turquoise vinyl bench embossed with a swirly design.  It was mine.  And I knew it.

Sixty dollars.  I told her I’d think about it.  As I walked out, she said she was open on weekends – usually.

I walked home feeling a little bit better.  And later, after being surrounded by friends, even better.  But I felt a twinge of guilt too.  Like I had let myself down.

In the morning I picked up the bench.  Only after calling the still-closed store in a fit of “antique emergency.”  Once home, I placed the bench right where I imagined it.  As if it had always been there.

I wondered if perhaps this had been an Artist’s Date after all.  I was alone.  I visited someplace new.  I took in external stimuli.  Or was it just a walk and shopping serendipity.  I feared it was the latter.  I had made an unspoken commitment to a year of Artist Dates, and a year of chronicling them.  I wasn’t sure this “counted.”

I sat down at the computer and began perusing Time Out Chicago, looking to “rescue” my commmitment.  Fifty Years of Fashion Fair at the Chicago History Museum.  Food: The Nature of Eating at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.  A small theater production called “Your Problem with Men.”

It all looked juicy.  Date worthy.  And none of it fit into my schedule with the commitments I had already made for the weekend.  I considered trying to cram one in anyway.  So that I was, “doing it right.”  As if there were Artist Date police.  Or readers were keeping track.

I watched myself, an observer watching a slightly crazy person.  I recalled that in fourth grade my mother did not enroll me in the magnet program I had been invited into.  She said I already put too much pressure on myself.  She feared giving me cause to be even harder on myself.  I had a glimpse of what she must have seen in that overly sensitive 8-year-old with a Dorothy Hamill haircut.  It was frightening.

I closed the computer.  Put on lipstick and went to a party.  I didn’t think about the date again.  Until now.

I remember going on dates in my 20s and not wanting to be there.  Not knowing I could change my mind.  Not knowing I had a right to say no.  I behaved badly – cold, defensive and often mean.

Now 43, I am learning that I get to say no.  That I get to change my mind.  That sometimes a date, even with myself, isn’t in order.  But that fresh air, friendship and something a little bit shiny is.  That no one is keeping track, except for me.  That I’ve got 38 more opportunities to “get it right.”  And that’s just this year.

I’ve got no business writing.  Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink.  The hand washables haven’t been washed.  Finances need tending to.  Bank transfers.  Checks written to Weight Watchers, the IRS, and the state of Illinois.

I knew this when I got home, but I didn’t care.  I dropped my bags on the floor, traded a vintage tweed blazer for jeans and boots, and headed back out the door.  To walk.  First to the produce market.  Then on to the bank to deposit checks – dropping my groceries in the car – so I wouldn’t have to stop.

Neither of these errands was particularly necessary.  I really need to go to Costco and Trader Joes.  But I was “called” to walk instead.  It’s been happening a lot lately.

Just like when my ex first asked for a divorce.  I’ve written about this before.  I walked constantly, talking on the phone to one of my girlfriends – Sarah, Angela or Kate.  Kristen, Lisa or Pam – and more often, to my divorce buddy, Michael.

Lately I don’t talk.  I listen instead.  To the Talking Heads, over and over – Stop Making Sense.  I wasn’t aware that I was…

I remember telling Michael, and others I was “ahead” of on the divorce trajectory, that walking is the only thing that makes sense.

Still is.

I’m just surprised to be here again.  The frenzied rush to move, pushing aside all other responsibilities.  To feel the crisp, cold air cutting through my jeans.  My hands and cheeks flushed with blood.  My size 6 ½ feet rising and falling on concrete.

It’s not just any movement.  It’s the specific action of walking.  It feels so familiar in my body.  Fluid.  All four quadrants engaged at once.

And it has to be outside – no matter the temperature or conditions.  Outside of my home.  Outside of myself.

Which begs the question, what’s going on inside?

Quite simply, I’m lonely.

Not all the time.  Mostly when my days wind down.  When things go quiet.

My waking hours are busy, often joyous.  Filled with work and play.  Service.  Friends.  But when I come home, it is me, alone.  It still feels new.  Uncomfortable.

I grew used to another presence in the house.  Another someone at the dinner table.  Reading in the bedroom or tinkering in the garage.

In these moments I want to call my ex.  I want to call my old divorce buddy.  I want to call the cute boy down South who I knew for two days.

Naming them in quick succession, I am aware they are all one.  Each with the potential to take me out of me.  Or more specifically, out of my feelings of lonely.  Because each of them did – for a time, once upon a time.

In my twenties I used to smile and dial down a list of men I’d been with, looking for one to “make it ok.”   To tell me I was ok.  Today I know better.  That it’s nobody’s job.   And that the asking puts me in a weakened state – vulnerable, powerless and dependent.

But my brain is like a rubber band.  It snaps back to that old idea that somehow the answer to loneliness might be outside of me.

So why the walking?

In her book, Finding Water – the second in The Artist’s Way trilogy – Julia Cameron includes walking as one of the core practices, right along with Artist Dates and Morning Pages.  She notes that “spiritual seekers have always walked.”  And “We do not come home the same as we set out…

“When we walk by ourselves, we find ourselves companioned.  We set out alone but soon sense that the Divine is close at hand.  It comes as intuition, as insight, as sudden conclusion…Without shame or scolding, walking puts a gentle end to self-involvement.”

Perhaps that’s it.  Maybe I do feel a little less alone.  A little more “with” myself when I walk.

And when I’m done, the dishes will be waiting.  The “to-do” list.  Even the loneliness.  But somehow, I’m just a little more equipped to handle it all.

I do not have a green thumb.  I’ve pretty much killed everything left under my watch.

My roommate Mona’s house plants which I couldn’t seem to remember to water while she was in Paris for two weeks.  The organic vegetable garden perched behind the house my ex-husband and I rented in Seattle that turned to seed.  A housewarming gift from my friend Tori, a fern, which she assured me, was very easy to care for.

So it was a bit of a surprise walking home Friday with a $30 jade plant in my hand.  It’s shiny, red-tinged leaves sprouting out of a rustic, terra-cotta planter, and safely nestled in a mesh wire basket with a loop on top for hanging.

And yet, it wasn’t.

Meditating that morning, my thoughts drifted to the suggested year off from dating and my jumble of emotions swirling around it.  I noticed each thought, watched it, and returned to the mantra – just as I was taught to do. 

A new thought emerged.  A recollection of prescriptions for planting crops in the Torah.  That every couple of years, there is a single year when nothing is planted.  The soil is allowed to be fallow.  To rest. Regenerate.  In preparation for new planting.

I knew this year off from dating was my soil resting.  Going fallow.

It was a comforting thought.  Followed by another, “Buy a plant.”

I thought it might be useful to tend to something besides myself.  To water and pull leaves and put in sun if so required.  To watch another living entity cycle through a year of seasons.  That perhaps we might grow together.  It seemed poetic.  All except the part where I’m bad with plants.

I met with my rabbi later that morning and shared my meditation with him.  He smiled and pulled out a copy of the Five Books of Moses.  Leviticus 25.  The Sabbath year.  Specific instructions that every seventh year nothing should be planted.

He also mentioned a Jubilee year.  Seven Sabbath years.  A return to one’s property and one’s clan.  I liked the sound of it.

It occurred to me that my year of Torah study in Seattle was not for naught.  And it wasn’t lost on either of us that this seemed an internal, gentle nudging back in the direction of my faith.  Something I seemed to all but abandon since returning to Chicago – with the exception of monthly meetings with my rabbi. 

We rarely talk about Torah.  But this time we did.  We talked about prayer too.  How I pray.  How I meditate.  How I listen for guidance.  And how I hear it.

Later I went walking.  To lunch with a friend.  To the Chinese grocery store whose smell I could not quite place.  A little bit rotting – but not in an altogether unpleasant way.  All the aisle signs were written in Chinese characters, making it challenging to locate the green curry paste. 

In my search I came across packages of Hello Kitty Mango Marshmallows and cookies with a panda bear on the front.  In the last aisle I found the paste in a plastic vat too large to carry home.  Then a second smaller one.  More than I will use in this lifetime to be certain but it was all they had.  I paid for it and continued on.

On the way home I found myself at the threshold of Alapash – a store I’ve passed many times but never stepped into.  I have a beautiful terrarium from here, a gift from my friend Clover.  It is filled with black sand, stones and tiny cacti.  A small gold deity poking through the terrain.  Something I ostensibly could not do damage to.

I walked in and immediately had the sensation that I never wanted to leave.  It was warm, both in temperature and environment.  A perfect respite from the cold, damp outside.  I was surrounded by air plants, cacti and succulents, salvaged wood and metal.  The smell of fig and ginger hung in the air.  Earthy and sweet.

I told the owner, Marco, about my lack of green thumb, and my desire to grow something.  He brought a jade to me.  He said it was easy to care for, didn’t require much light – just a half a cup of water, once a month.  He added that the jade will tell me what it needs if I pay attention to it.  I was sold.

I admired his gold Ganesh on the counter.  Marco said Ganesh had been good to him.  That he had to be careful what he prayed for because Ganesh brought him all of it.  “Too generous.  Too much.”

Something about Marco’s Ganesh, his passionate belief in it, his openness in telling me his story, allowed me to tell him mine.  I told him about my divorce.  About the suggestion I don’t date for a year.  About meditating in front of my Ganesh and hearing that I am the soil and this is my year for not planting.  For resting.  And the guidance to buy a plant.  To tend to its soil as I tend to mine.

I felt a little silly, vulnerable – fearing I was like the drunk on the barstool holding the bartender hostage with his woes and pet theories.  Marco must have sensed this.  He said that once a day, nearly every day, someone walks in and tells him their story.  That he is always honored to hear it.

I stuck my finger in the soil.  It felt dry.  I asked if I should water it.  He said no, not yet.  That its soil should be mostly dry.  He reminded me that succulents grow in the desert.  That they take their nutrients slowly, from what seems like nothing.

I asked if the jade would outgrow its pot.  He said that the jade prefers small, compact spaces and that the pot was large enough for five years.  I thought of my one-bedroom apartment, which most of the time seems plenty big for me – and me alone – but would certainly never be considered spacious.

He showed me how to cut off leaves and shoots.  Told me to set them on the counter until they sprout, and then pot them – growing more jades.  Marco added that jade was lucky.  That it brings money.

I paid for the plant.  Much more than I would have elsewhere, I am certain.  But I trusted that I was supposed to be hear.  Be here.  (My fingers slipped while typing.  I felt compelled to leave the homonym – the wrong kind of here.   For it really was the right kind too.)

Last night, a few of the leaves looked wrinkly.  Was it the cold, wet transport home?  Or was the soil dry?  I watered it just a little.  And then I waited.

The leaves are still wrinkly.  Imperfect.  I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong.  That I’m already killing it.  I thought about calling Marco.  About researching jade care online.  Instead I stood by it. 

I looked at it lovingly, bent down and whispered, “I don’t know how to care for you.  So you are going to have to tell me what you need.  OK?  And I will do my best to care for you.”

The words as much for me as for the jade.

It has been suggested I do not date for one year.

This should seem like a non-issue, considering just a few weeks ago I proclaimed I was not dating at all.  I said I needed some time and some tools before I ventured back out there.  That I have blogs to write and stories to pitch.  Travel, cooking, dance classes and girlfriends to fill my days and nights. 

That I never wanted to again find myself in the position I am in today – not fully self-supporting, and uncertain as to how I’d like to do that again.  Unclear about my dreams, my desires, my trajectory.  For so long I put all of that aside, under the guise of “I’m supporting my (now ex) husband’s dreams.  My turn is next.”

So this time alone…this was “my turn.”

And yet, it feels entirely different having someone tell me, or at the very least, strongly suggest, I do not date.  Even though this person has stood in my shoes.  Even though I asked for her help.

Suddenly, I’m defiant.  And I’m sad.

A part of me wants to say, “Thanks but no thanks.” 

Or better yet, “Maybe it wasn’t so bad.  Maybe I’m making too much out of this.” 

Or maybe, “This sounds too painful.  I’ll stick to feasting on crumbs.  I’m ok with that, really.”

But I’m not. 

And I haven’t been making too much out of it either. 

Just ask my girlfriends – the ones who walked with me through my long, troubled marriage and my record-speed divorce.  The ones who witnessed my brief, sweet, fairly innocent romances in the days that followed.  And the on-my-knees fallout when they were over.  None of them have hesitated in offering their support for this one-year dating hiatus.

It all feels strangely similar to my relationship with alcohol.  For years I knew something wasn’t right.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew my experiences were different than those of my friends.

I’d start the day saying I wasn’t going to drink, but by 4 p.m. I had “changed my mind.”  By 5:30 I was at happy hour. 

I would “take a break” from drinking for a number of months, then decide I was fine – that I was “making too much out of it.”  I wasn’t.

And God help anyone who suggested I had a problem.  Even though I queried those closest to me on a regular basis, asking if they thought I should call it quits and put down the bottle.

A little over five years ago I did just that.  One cold November morning, the person closest to me said, “I think you should quit drinking.”  I’d been waiting years for him to say those words.  I wasn’t angry.  Just terrified.  Because when he asked if I could stop, the only honest answer I could give was, “I don’t know.”

A friend suggested I seek help from some people who knew how to happily live without drinking, a day at a time.  So I did.

I have sparse, somewhat cloudy memories of those first days without alcohol.  I remember wanting to jump out of my skin.  I felt like I was vibrating all of the time – not in a good way.  I had drinking dreams that felt so real I had to ask my husband if I had drank.  He would assure me I hadn’t and I’d ask, somewhat panicky, “Are you certain?”

And I couldn’t imagine going to Paris without drinking.  Actually I couldn’t imagine going to dinner without drinking, but I was fixated on Paris.  Thankfully, it was gently suggested I cross that bridge when I come to it.  And since I didn’t have a plane ticket in hand, I didn’t need to concern myself at the moment.

I still haven’t been back to Paris.  But I’ve been to Brussels.  To Rwanda.  And all over the United States.  I didn’t drink.  I didn’t even consider it.

I asked for help in relationships because I knew something wasn’t quite right.  That I gave over my heart and my power too quickly, too easily.  That I I held on to what had long ago ended – wondering what I had done wrong, rather than considering it may have simply run its course.  That I accept unacceptable behavior.

Instead of drinking dreams, I have sex dreams.  I fear I won’t have it again.  Be touched again.  Or that it will be a really, really long time waiting.  I have difficulty believing the pain of being alone will be rewarded – that my relationships will be different because I am different.

So I bristle against this idea of not dating for a year.  Even though no one is asking me out.  Even though I’m not crushing on anyone.  It still feels like possibility is being cut off at the knees.

I told this to my friend – the one who made the suggestion.  She laughed, and ever so gently replied, “Lesley, if Paris comes calling, we can talk about it then.”

By then, maybe it won’t be Paris.  Perhaps it will be Venice.  Or Rome.

It all started innocently enough a few weeks ago.  A sunny Chicago winter’s day.  A piece of opera torte and a cup of coffee served on a silver tray.  A descent into love.  Or an ascent.

Love with myself, that is.

All my life I’ve heard I have to love myself before anyone else can love me.  Bull.  It’s simply not true. 

I have been loved.  By parents.  Relatives.  By friends.  Lovers.  A husband.  And I have not loved myself – abusing my body and my spirit with alcohol.  With food.  Drugs.  With nicotine.  With people.  I’m not sure I ever loved myself – perhaps until now.

As the Talking Heads’ David Byrne so aptly asked, “Well, how did I get here?”

Quite simply, Artist’s Dates.

Those two-plus hours alone, just for me.  To fill my senses.  To gather new input for my sticky-with-old-ideas mind.  A prescription.  A non-negotiable weekly practice in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

In the beginning I planned and scheduled the Dates, penciling them in my yellow hardbound calendar.  I had to, or else I would have found something “more important” that required my attention. 

And yet, somewhere along the way, about Week 10 of the 12-week “course,” the Artist’s Date became a creative habit.  Something I just “did.”  Like brushing my teeth.

The first time I noticed was that sunny day with the opera torte.

I have about a hundred things I can be doing.  Should be doing.  Of course, I cannot remember a single one of them now.  But the sun is shining.  (Which was once reason enough to drink.)  I say, “Fuck it!” and start walking. 

Past the antique store with the really cool 50s glassware, the one that is never open.  Past the Buddhist Temple I’ve been too afraid to go into. 

It feels so lovely, so novel, to be nice to myself.  It is something I have unconsciously looked to other people to do for me.  I’ve fallen head over heels for men who were nothing more than kind to me.  Because I couldn’t, didn’t know how, to do it myself.

I want ice cream, and this kind voice says, “Yes.”  I am thinking of gelato.  A single with three flavors, but always sea salt caramel.  And then I see Julius Meinl, the Viennese coffee shop with fancy pastries, and the voice says, “Go.  Sit.  Relax.  Enjoy.”

I grab a Chicago Reader from the free box, tuck it under my arm and head in.  I peer into the case of desserts.  I almost always get the Ezerhazy – a layered hazelnut torte.  The layers are reminiscent of seven-layer cake from the Jewish bakeries in Detroit.  But it is better.  Much, much better.

It reminds me of sitting on Ron Elkus’ kitchen counter the first time we met.  I was interviewing him for a newspaper story and we ate frozen seven-layer cake as we talked.  I knew right then we would be friends.  It reminds me of my girlfriend’s mother Carole who used to eat it over the sink, layer at a time.

But I know what Ezerhazy is.  I want to know something different.  As I am doing something different. 

I consider the banana cake.  The opera torte.  They both are layered.  But the opera torte is covered in chocolate.  It is not something I would ordinarily order.  So I do.

I sit at a marble café table, where the sun is hitting just right.  I don’t have a notebook to journal in.  A book to read.  I peruse the Reader.  I look at other people.  Most of them are also alone, doing exactly what I’m doing.  Eating dessert.  Drinking coffee.  Simply being.

My coffee arrives on a silver tray along with a glass of water, a biscuit and a tiny spoon.  A tiny fork is on the plate with my torte.

In the words of my friend Stan, I am having a relationship with my torte.  I am present with it.  Savoring every bite.  Dragging my finger along the plate so I don’t leave behind any chocolate.  And in true Weight Watchers fashion, I box up half to take home. 

It’s the kind of date I adore.  Simple. Breezy.  Cheap.  Like one of my early dates with my now ex-husband.  We wandered through North Beach in San Francisco, stopping at an outdoor café for an espresso and a lemon bar.  Waves of physical rushing sensation course through my body.  I call them “big love surges.”  I tell him about them.  He doesn’t seem afraid.

I am having big love surges this day too.  I am in love with this person who has been so kind to me.  Who lifted me out of the house, took me for a walk and treated me to a $6 piece of cake in the middle of the day for no good reason other than the sun is shining.

I don’t count it as an Artist’s Date in the moment.  Only later do I recognize it.  I’ve had a string of serendipitous Artist’s Dates since.

Week 11.  I am swimming at Welles Pool.  It is my first time in the water in more than five years.  I am sharing the slow lane with a group of ladies in their 60s, perhaps older.  They are wearing suits with skirts, goggles and bathing caps.  Underwater, their bodies belie their age.  Their skin is pearly, luminous white.  Their torsos strong, twisting side to side. 

I swim side stroke.  Not a “real” stroke.  I remember training for my triathalon in the Napa Valley.   Swimming laps in Las Vegas at the Flamingo Hotel while everyone around me is drinking.  “Come On Eileen” is playing through the speakers.  There is snow on the ground outside.  The water humbles me.

Week 12.   I stop at the Mt. Sinai Hospital Resale Shop on Diversey Parkway.  The ladies who run it are getting to know me.  I snag an $18 cashmere sweater from the designer room.  It is pinky-purply-grey.  A color I would never ordinarily choose, but it looks surprisingly good on me. 

I pick up a $40 tablecloth.  Or is it a bed spread?  I’m not certain.  It is intricately embroidered.  Well loved.  A few torn seams.  A faded silk panel.  Imperfect.  It is purple and gold on one side.  A granny-flower print on the other.  Hip-looking flowers are embroidered over the print in red and flesh tones.  And there is a single red patch in the corner.  A repair.  I’m not sure what to do with it.  But I know that it is mine.

I show up for my first of eight Latin dance classes.  Eight guaranteed Artist’s Dates.  I am anxious in my orange suede booties.

The instructor walks in.  He says hello with a voice like Barry White’s.  It feels like gravel.  Resonant.  But with a little lisp.  His head is shaved and he is wearing chunky glasses, a black turtleneck and spectator shoes. 

He has been dancing professionally since the early 1950s.  I try to do the math in my head and calculate his age.  Seventy-something, I think.

I am immediately glad I am here. 

He lines us up.  Five women and one man.  He is from France.  In his 20s.  He is here for six months on and internship and only now, here, away from home has the time to learn to dance.  He blushes when Saladeen, our instructor, tells him he will be turning all of us around.

He tells us to what kind of shoes to wear.  That we are going to learn to listen to the music.  Musicology.  I just want to dance.  And soon enough we are.  The mambo.

First step is on the second beat.  A response dance.  Left is in the front.  Right is in the back.  “Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Onetwothreefour,” he calls out as we watch ourselves in the mirror, repeating again and again what seems like it should be easy.

He stands in front of me, takes my hands in his and walks me through a turn.  I am blushing.  This is better than sex, I think.  It has been a long time since I’ve had sex….And yet, this is exactly what I need.  It is the reason I signed up for this class.  To feel that physical contact.  In a way that feels safe and fun.  That doesn’t leave my heart wide open, vulnerable.

“We’re going to have a good time,” he says and winks at me.  I smile and nod.

And we do.  I leave the studio.  I am aware of my hips.  The sides of my thighs. 

I stop for frozen yogurt on the way home.  The shop has just re-opened and it is buzzing inside.  The last time I had frozen yogurt was in Charleston, South Carolina.  My birthmother was dying and I met a boy who was kind to me.  I want to text him and tell him what I’m doing, but I don’t. 

Instead, I treat myself to dessert.  Just like he did.  And I walk home under a clear winter sky, falling ridiculously in love with myself.  It’s impossible not to.  How else could I feel about a person I am so lovingly “spoiling,” tending to?

The Artist’s Way was my companion during the early days of my divorce.  And again, a second time, in its fall out – when I found the prospect of partnering again too frightening.  Too painful.  When I learned how to be my own companion – because I was teachable, and the book showed me how.

In Week 12, “Recovering a Sense of Faith,” Julia Cameron writes, “We are what’s important…dead plants go; mismatched socks bite the dust.  We are stung by loss, bitten by hope…You buy a first edition, splurge on new sheets…you take your first vacation in years.

“The clock is ticking and you’re hearing the beat.  You stop by a museum shop, sign your name on a scuba diving sheet, and commit yourself to Saturday mornings in the deep end.

“You’re either losing your mind – or gaining your soul.  Life is meant to be an artist date.  That’s why we were created.” 

Amen.

I’ve been dreaming of the Hindu god Ganesh.  Boy with an elephant head.  Remover of obstacles. 

Ever since my pilgrimage to Devon Avenue with Nithin.  We went for bindis and burfee – sparkly jewels I wear on my third eye, and Indian sweets made of nuts, ghee, sugar and spices.

Ever since my friend Dina created – or perhaps, more accurately, uncovered (think David, already in the marble) – a prayer and meditation space in my bedroom.

Applying feng shui principles, she moved the position and location of my bed – leaving birch tree stickers on the wall as an off-center headboard.  Shifted a bookcase.  And a patch of hard-wood real estate emerged.

She laid down a piece of fabric I bought at the market in Rwanda and placed my sacred items on top of it.  Tibetan prayer chimes.  A swath of white cloth from my meditation initiation ceremony.  A piece of quartz, a gift from my friend Tori.

She added a round terrarium from Clover.  A sculpture of Durga – the Hindu goddess for and within me, according to my college religious-studies professor.  A carved wooden box – a wedding gift from my friends Patsy and John. 

They filled it with blank cards, inviting our guests to share their prayers for us that day.  I turned it into a God box, filling it with scraps of paper scrawled with situations I can no longer pretend to handle.  Names of boys.  Friends.  Relatives.  And also, orders to the universe.  Written as sales receipts for homes.  Offices.  Partners.  Some fulfilled.  Some I’m still waiting on.

I added some books.  A prayer I wrote to myself.  And a towel to cushion my ankles when I sit cross-legged.

I looked up from the floor.  The wall space above, noticeably naked.

Friday I went back to Devon Avenue, to Resham’s, to find Ganesh.  To fill the space.  Artist’s Date 11.

Walking in, I am overcome with the smell of sandalwood.  The smell of my meditation teacher, Paul Brown.  He doesn’t wear sandalwood.  He wears Norma Kamali.

I ask Huma, wife and half-owner, if she has a wall hanging of Ganesh.  She isn’t sure.  I ask about Durga.  She is certain she does not.

She unfolds a stack of batiks, smoothing each with her hands, stopping at an oversized piece of a goddess and forest animals.  She begins to tell me its folklore, but never quite finishes a sentence. Instead, she trails off saying, “And the story just goes on and on.” 

I get the feeling the story changes a little bit each time it is told.  Changes a little bit by each teller.  But I do not know this for certain.

She continues talking.  Unfolding.  And Ganesh emerges.  She seems surprised to see him.  I am too.  He is exactly as I imagined, even though I have never seen this batik before.  He appears to be dancing, one of his four hands in a classic mudra (Hindu gesture).  His mouse at his side, holding cymbals. 

It is mine.

I finger a rack of wool pashminas and I think of Sue, my roommate in Rwanda.  She wore one in the still cool mornings, eating fruit and some variation of potatoes.  Looking out to the land of 10,000 hills. 

I wrap one around me.  Rose on one side, turquoise on the other.  Gold threads running through it.  Fringe on the edges.  I feel her presence.  A body memory.  We are sitting in the Kigali airport.  I am weeping.  I am not ready to return to the States.  To my divorce.  To my life.  Sue’s arms are around me.  She kisses my shaved head.  I am comforted.  I feel like a child. 

I tell Huma about Sue’s scarf.  How I had wanted one of my own.  And now I do. 

We talk about travel.  About India.  About Africa.  How we feel bad ass using local toilets – holes in the ground.

I show her photographs saved on my phone, a mini album.  Little girls with shaved heads.  I tell her they are fascinated with mine.

I explain that I traveled to Africa with my synagogue.  She remembers when this neighborhood was Jewish.  Which restaurant had the best hot dogs.  I cannot imagine Huma eating hot dogs.

I mention my divorce.

She asks how long we were together.  Fifteen years.  “Yes,” she nods.  She is not surprised. 

Fourteen years is a common time for couples to part, she explains, launching into another Indian folktale.  This one of a god and goddess who lived in the forest for 14 years – lost.  When they emerge, are “found,” they leave one another.

Sound like my parents.  Like my ex-husband and I.  Iron clad in adversity.  But finding little else binding us together when that is gone. 

Huma writes up my bill – by hand.  She hesitates. 

A sign on the wall states this is a fixed-price store.  I wonder.  I have watched Nithin bargain in other stores, but not here.  Is she waiting for me to make an offer?  I don’t.  I feel uncertain.  A little foolish.  A lot gringo.  But I don’t really care.  I found what I was looking for.    

I cross the street to Sukhadia Sweets.  I order rosewater soaked “cutlets” and specialty burfee – made just during the winter.  The heat and spice linger at the back of my throat.  I am half-watching Indian soap operas. 

I text Nithin to tell him where I am.  To see if he wants burfee.  I leave out the part about paying retail.

I’ve written before about my terribly romantic life.  By that I don’t mean sexual-hearts-and-flowers romance.  Although I have occasionally experienced that too.  I mean more the serendipity which I call God.  The master quilter stitching together disparate pieces in a pattern I couldn’t even imagine. 

Sometimes it is big and gorgeous and sexy.  Like meeting a man who sweeps me off my feet and takes care of me at the exact moment when I’ve got nothing left.  Who just happens to know my friends here but lives far away.  Who just happens to be at the same place, at the same time, as me.

More often it is subtle.  But no less big and gorgeous and sexy when I pay attention to it.

I am working through Chapter 11 of The Artist’s Way.  Among the suggestions for the week, titled “Recovering a Sense of Autonomy” – walk 20 minutes every day.

“The goal is to connect to a world outside of us, to lose the obsessive self-focus of self-exploration and, simply, explore.  One quickly notes that when the mind is focused on other, the self often comes into more accurate focus.”

I love to walk.  It is one of the only things that made sense to me during my divorce – long, meandering strolls to nowhere in particular.  Just to move.  To feel movement.

I haven’t been walking as much since moving back to Chicago.  Not on a daily basis, at least.  I walk mostly for pleasure, when the sky is azure and the sun is smiling.

The temperature gauge in my car went into the red Friday night – quickly, without warning.  I had the car towed to my mechanic and have been dependent on my feet, the Chicago Transit Authority, and the kindness of not-at-all strangers ever since.

I’m kind of loving it.  Which is odd for a girl from Detroit who said the only thing she wanted in the divorce was the 12-year-old Honda Civic.

It reminds me of my first few years in San Francisco.  I sold my red Chevrolet Beretta and boarded a non-stop flight to SFO,  where my friend Brian was waiting to pick me up – literally scooping me off the ground — when I arrived. 

It was a simple time.  And a scary time.  A major victory was getting from point A to point B without getting lost.  I learned to purchase only the groceries I could carry home myself.  And I took the bus everywhere. 

To the Stud on Wednesday nights for 70s disco, spun by Andy T.  To my friend Teresa’s apartment in Potrero Hill, an hour-long trek plus a transfer from my apartment in Haight-Ashbury.  To a blind date with a man 17 years my senior. 

After dinner he offered to walk me to my car.  When I told him I didn’t have one, he asked how I got to the restaurant.  “Bus,” I replied.  He felt badly.  Said he would have picked me up if he had known.  It didn’t occur to me to mention it.

Everything took longer.  But I don’t recall being in as much of a hurry.  And when the bus couldn’t take me where I wanted to go, I called a cab.  Or a friend.  Getting a ride felt like winning the lottery, leaving me with an immense sense of gratitude.

It’s a lot the same now – being without a car.  I’ve received rides from Pam and Michelle.  From Kevin and from Sheila.  Last night Sheila and I sat outside my house talking in her car while the engine idled.  We talked about love and vulnerability.  About mind reading.  A conversation I’m certain we wouldn’t have had if we each drove away in our separate cars, going in our separate directions.

I’ve ridden the 49 down Western Avenue at rush hour, pressed up against students just leaving Lane Tech High School.  Today I took the Brown Line to my Weight Watchers meeting in Lincoln Park.  On the way to, I passed a consignment store I’d never noticed.  Peeking in the window, I admired a Buddha head and a lamp with a leopard shade. 

Coming home, I locked eyes with a white and ginger puss sitting on a green Adirondack chair in the window at PAWS (Pets Are Worth Saving).  I walked past.  Turned around.  And walked in, asking for information about volunteering.  (I’m not sure I want a pet again.)  Then I went to the window to read his vitals. 

His name is James.  He’s 6, or 3, I cannot remember.  And does best in an adult-only house.  Hmm…..James.  I tried it on.  “Yes, I have a new love in my life.  His name is James….. “

I left before I could get into trouble.  I couldn’t take him home today anyway.  I was on foot, and the rain-snow mix was pelting my face, soaking my down coat with the furry hood.  But I didn’t really mind.

I talked with a Greenpeace volunteer who grabbed my attention, just as James had.  I told him he was good.  “Not that good,” he said.  “Because you are walking away.” I laughed.  And then I walked away from a Ganesh pillow and a silk meditation cushion I eyed in a shop window but couldn’t afford.   

When I stepped off the train the streets were white.  Snow blowing sideways.  Car wheels beginning to lock up on the icy-slush. 

I made some eggs.  Looked at a cookbook and wrote a shopping list.  I pulled on my wool long underwear and walked to Harvest Time Foods, stocking up with only as much as I could carry.  Later, I’ll make curried rice and beans with butternut squash.

Standing with my bags at the corner of Western and Lawrence, I felt terribly urban.  And lucky.  In awe of being able to live my life as it is – mostly – without a car.  I had forgotten. 

Right there I made a vow: that I will always live in a place where I can walk – to a grocery store.  A coffee shop.  A Walgreens.  At the very least.

I’ve lived like that for more than 20 years.  In Chicago.  In San Francisco.  In Oakland.  Seattle.  Even Detroit.  But more often than not, I don’t walk.  I drive.  I love having a car.  I love its convenience.  The speed with which I’m able to move through the world.

And yet, this time without it is a gift.  An invitation to move more slowly.  To consider a cat or a Buddha head.  To have a conversation I wouldn’t otherwise.

It is typically Libran to look for the beauty in everything.  And I do, in my saner, more sober, moments.  This terribly romantic life of mine … I think it’s all in how I tell my story.  Ridiculously optimistic and hopeful, heart wide open – looking for the good, for the God, in everything. 

My phone rang as I hit the seemingly final stroke of this piece.  My car is ready. 

It is Go(o)d.