In My Polka-Dot Dress
It has been hot and windy, and I went for a walk in the polka-dot dress I found a couple of years ago in a charity shop in England. Navy blue with white dots, it’s tiny but stretchy, a jersey material that feels like silk, and it clings to my hips, so the wind doesn’t lift it, and it feels a little eccentric and defiant to be strolling around in a snug little polka dot dress with my hiking boots and walking stick, but I’ve earned the right to be eccentric.
My overall appearance is not enhanced by the newly acquired hobble in my gait, sort of like Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies, an adaptation to a chronic ache in my right hip and lower back. I think of it as a discomfort, not actual pain, and I coexist with it and hope it doesn’t get worse. I never did learn to swim, but a friend of mine who is a physical therapist suggested that I go to a pool and just walk through a lane, back and forth, waist-deep. The water would provide its own gentle resistance, she explained, and it would do wonders for me. But I'm very undisciplined about these things, and I don’t have easy access to a pool, and to be honest, it sounds boring. So I probably deserve the ache.
Frankly, I am amazed that I feel as well as I do. A mere six or seven years ago, I struggled to recover from brain surgery to remove an acoustic neuroma, just a tiny little tumor, you’d hardly think it mattered. The physical aftermath has included one-sided deafness and balance issues, but what bothered me most in the early stages of my healing were panic attacks, insomnia, and depression. The depth of my misery is hard to fathom now, but when I finally burst through that dark tunnel, I felt a surge of gratitude and vitality that has not abated since. As my daughter once said, “They left an enlightenment chip in your brain.”
This may well be true, assuming that gratitude is tantamount to enlightenment, and I think it is. I have an advantage, of course, having landed in a beautiful place and a comfortable life that inspires thanks with every breath. I recognize the inequity of things and I know I have been lucky, but I also believe one must never take that luck for granted. My roots were planted in sorrow and struggle. That awareness has shaped all of my branches, and it guides the way I grow.
Yes, I am growing and learning and becoming more fully who I am even as I age and begin to disappear, vanishing into the universe that will absorb me. You might see a woman in her 70s now with a mass of silver hair and a lopsided walk in sturdy hiking shoes and a polka-dot dress, but I am still the little girl I once was, blinking wide-eyed into the light, and the young inexpert mother, and the teacher and the friend, and the striver and the slacker, the one who keeps walking with no sense of direction, but who never forgets the thread.
Not-forgetting is essential to empathy and decency, and for honoring the love that went into me. These have become my guidelines: not-forgetting, being grateful, and also, having the guts to be happy. That last one is tricky. I used to think that being happy implied selfishness. Now I’ve come around to understanding that happiness spills over, and others too might benefit. Joy is a shareable gift, and even if short-lived, it can fuel good action. In any case, I’ve learned that it is wise to give oneself permission to experience happiness if it is offered, and to let it shine––accompanied by gratitude, of course.
The other day we had a meeting with a realtor about selling our home, and as we were wrapping things up, there was a rocket launch, and coyotes howled, and the wind shook feathery blossoms from a buckeye tree, and, in the distance beyond the familiar hills, the sea was very blue, and the island shimmered. This is a strange and wondrous place to have lived, a hard place to leave. I’m still exploring my relationship with it, wondering how we will break up, and knowing we never really will. And perhaps it is the sense of impending upheaval that has prompted all this reflection about my own identity and relation to the world, but this is how we wordy people are. We try to talk and work it out in a written form.
Another friend sent me an article by Nina Schuyler on "giving nature a voice through story" which he probably thought would help me in my efforts to write about this place. But oddly, of all the things the author said, what intrigued me most was this reference to the writing of the philosopher Martin Buber, who talked about “I and Thou” as the two modes of existence:
There’s the I-It relationship and the I-Thou. I’d say we’re primarily in an I-It relationship with the other-than-humans and with many humans. We look at the color or details of the tree, for instance--or its movement, or we categorize it by type. The tree is an “It,” an object that is separate from you, and the resulting relationship is a thin thread of utilitarianism. It’s anemic. Everything and everyone is turned into a resource.
It's funny how one phrase or concept can prompt a shift in perspective. I keep thinking about this "I-Thou" dichotomy and how switching to "thou" implies a kind of reverence, a recognition of the autonomy and dignity in otherness, which in a way changes everything. So I have been trying to practice this, approaching the world differently. I always knew that rivers and mountains and turtles and trees were far more than resources, and worthy of respect. Now I want to broaden this view to other entities as well, deliberately looking at alien things with renewed wonder and humility, and a sense of spirituality. The world seems holy to me; I am surrendering to the mystery.
It reminds me of a day I spent with a Chumash teacher, a man named Art Cisneros, when I was 65, a hike to mark the passage to becoming an elder.
"Getting older slows us down," he said, "but when we slow down, we notice things. That's one of the gifts of being an elder...we are allowed to slow down and notice. And when we notice, we acknowledge the spirits. We say thank you. We approach with the right attitude: humble, appreciative, and mindful."
It fits in well, this feeling of reverence. It seems like a logical outgrowth of being awestruck, and I am awestruck daily.
The biggest obstacle I have had to seeing others as “thou” is when I encounter ignorance and malice in my fellow humans. I had a brief conversation with one such individual recently, and my heart sank when I began to see what she held so stubbornly as truth, and with no justification other than having heard it from sources she has apparently been listening to unquestioningly for a very long time. I asked her why she thought a particular statement made sense, and it was as if a blinder dropped across her gaze, and her peculiar conviction simply calcified. I recognized quickly that she was not open or responsive to reason, and I let it go, but my respect and affection for her dwindled. She had not earned a “thou”––nor would she have cared anyway. And it occurs to me that although I believe that much of the propaganda being peddled and swallowed is dangerous and harmful to the workings of society and the well-being of others, it is not my role to judge those who have ingested it. Ah, the complexity of it all! Who can say what trauma, deprivation, influences, or circumstances converged to shape these views?
It troubled me, though, because this was not an abstract example but a tangible interaction with someone under my own roof. I did, however, talk to my dear mentor Dan about it, who pointed out that Buddhism has fostered “thou” thinking for at least 2,500 years. He suggested that when meeting recalcitrant ignorance, I should consider how much worse it would be to be the person who lives with that world view. I guess that’s a roundabout way of fostering a bit of compassion. He reminded me that his daily meditation is a recognition that the more the wish to injure vanishes, the more all pain will cease, and it isn’t always easy, but he tries. He also quoted some lines, as of course he would, from Wordsworth’s Tintern Abby:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
I don’t think I ever before understood those lines as clearly as I did just then. Here I am, in my ridiculous polka dot dress, strolling through the universe, lover of all I behold from this mighty world, guided by a motion and spirit that has never abandoned me.
"We must recognize the immensity of our being," the Chumash teacher had said. The immensity of it. I become my truest self as the border of me dissolves.