on having dreams and being your own damn hero

I believe in magical moments.

Those quiet interactions we have with enlightenment that happen during an ordinary day. Because you have them, and so do I, more regularly then we realize.

And only later, when you look back you’ll see how a string of little circumstances aligned, like stars in the sky, to bring you in contact with someone who might not be a regular in your daily life. A passing brush with an acquaintance that lasts only long enough for something vital to be passed along to you, and it will feel like an answer to a personal question you had not yet formed in your mind.

But you sense it, this wisp of truth or wisdom left dangling behind, ready for your taking.

"Wow," you’ll say later. "That person or place came along at such a perfect time."

Linda was one of these.

And someday I hope you’re like me. I hope you're lucky enough to find yourself standing in a cramped kitchen while a tiny white dog sniffs at your shoes and a yellow-tailed cockatoo screeches from its corner cage and sends creamy colored feathers fluttering in your direction.

I hope that you’ll have your own version of a platinum blonde woman sitting across from you at a messy table stacked with yellow-lined note pads, monthly bills and rows of medications, who will surprise you with engrossing stories of historical US battles and obscure facts about Navy Frogmen in World War 2.

“Hmm… do you know what kind of suit the Navy divers wore back in the 40s?” this woman asks me as I stand in her kitchen.

Earlier she had told me she was writing a book about her courageous uncle—an original Navy Seal--and in the middle of talking about one of his life-and-death missions she realizes she needs more research on the fabric used for the early frogmen suits. Before I can answer she makes a quick note on her yellow pad and keeps talking.

In the next room Linda’s mother is dying.

This is how we met.  I talk to Linda each week when I read to her mother from her favorite book, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Ironic, considering how long I had avoided reading this best-seller, mostly because of the graphic POW details I find so troubling, but here I am each week, catapulted into a world of unfathomable courage, harrowing battles, and a fight for survival.

Linda’s mother is my co-voyager during these literary time-travels and on good days she stays awake most of the time, on bad days she sleeps throughout. Some days I admit that the parallels between the stark life-and-death tone of this WW2 book and the atmosphere of this house leaves me with a vague sense of the surreal. One minute I am reading about a fragile Louis Zamperini clinging to life by a thread, and the next moment I am looking at a woman who is laying in front of me clinging to life by a thread.

For me, the lives of Linda’s mother and Louis Zamperini have become intricately connected.

On my way out, I always check in with Linda, since she has become her mother’s voice and energy and her devoted nurse. On this afternoon, she is telling me about the books she is currently writing.

And of course, as a wanna-be-author, I am intrigued and a tad jealous. Oh how I would love to be writing a book. From her seat in the kitchen Linda is beaming while she talks.

“My grandmother was a blood-sucking alien. That’s the title of my other book I’m working on,” she laughs, “I just love science-fiction, don’t you? My husband keeps kidding me about finishing the book so we can sell the movie rights and he can retire.”

And I chuckle too, not only because I’m madly love with the boldness of this title, but because it’s becoming clear to me after she mentions the screenplay, that Linda is unabashed about dreaming big.

And god I admire people with bold, ballsy dreams. People who walk around with enough sparkling Hope spilling from their orbit that it effects those standing in their presence.

In fact, listening to Linda describe her love of painting and her current writing projects suddenly makes me feel like the melting version of the cackling green witch in The Wizard of Oz, a weak, diluted form of this solid, resilient woman.

You see.

Linda has liver cancer.

She also has severe arthritis in her knees which makes it difficult to walk and physically tend to her mother, who happens to be dying of leukemia. Because Linda is the only daughter and her closest child—and dealing with her own personal battle with cancer-- I can only imagine how emotionally tough these days must be for her.

Once on a sunny afternoon, I asked her if she had been able to get outside to her garden and she answered by telling me the life lessons she was teaching her teenage nephews who came to do her weeding.

“I’m showing them how to plant from cuttings, she said, “making something from nothing, it’s wonderful.”  Those were her words.

I never finished reading Unbroken to Linda’s mother. She died before we got to the end of Zamperini’s riveting story and for some reason, I haven’t been able to finish it without her.

But if you asked me to sum up my experience in this house I would say it’s the exact opposite of sadness.

Instead, Linda--her surviving daughter --left me with a profound impression. She reminded me by her own resiliency to have the courage and chutzpah to keep dreaming. That no matter what’s happening in our life, our dreams are powerful intentions that keep us moving forward physically and spiritually. They infuse our life with exhilarating hope and, life-affirming possibilities that might not otherwise be there. And no matter what our age, we should never be afraid to use the word “dream” when we talk about our future.

Everyone deserves to have dreams. Period. But especially those nurturers out there, those women who find it much easier to dream and hope on the behalf of others, and who might not take enough time to examine their deepest desires.

 Maybe as  you're reading this, you’re not quite sure what dreams you have anymore.
And that's ok.

As my platinum blonde friend might say, pick a dream that helps you answer this question:

“What would my life look like if it were organized around my deepest values?”

This is how you begin.

This is the direction to your joy.



xo
Leslie

friends I'm sharing this with:
Feathered Nest Friday
Lakeshore Drive #265
The Scoop
Inspire Me Tuesday
Inspire me Monday