Sunday, February 22, 2009

Glowing Breadcrums on the forest floor

I don't really believe in coincidences . I know life is always trying to get my attention and tell me something important. What it might be often eludes me. For example last month one of my students, in a business case study class, wrote a long and touching essay about caring for his grandmother as she died. Complications of her illness led to the amputation of first one leg and then the other. At the same time a classmate in a writing class wrote about another true story of a relative who lost his legs. And then I had to read "No-No Boy" - in which a main character not only loses a leg in WW2, but has to suffer through a series of follow-up surgeries, as the rot creeps up his leg inch by inch and eventually kills him. Okay, so there is a theme here, I am seeing it, sort of , and it is yucky. Then my feet turned blue. Not slightly blue, but really truly purple-blue, like already dead, and probably got that way by freezing and then rotting in a peet bog for a few thousand years. No biggie, nothing my acupuncturist can't easilly fix, right? Not so fast- like I could run easilly on these sore blue stumpy feet.
My accupuncturist explains to me solemnly that blue feet are a sign that my circulation is not working right. Yes, my western medicine doctor would clearly nod in agreement. But why? I have been staying inside the nice warm house and wearing double sox and stretching and walking and all that good stuff. Well, my kidneys are tired and you know what that means! Fear, and lots of it. Fear? Why so? Its not like there is anything wrong with the ecomomy on the macro scale or my bank balance on the micro scale? Well, of course that is, but that isn't news. But my acupuncturist tends to be strangely prescient so I ask him what to do.
"Get out of here! Go somewhere else. Try something new. " Okay then. Now we have that settled. I will just up and go because its not like I am in the middle of graduate school, or employed, or owning real estate , or a parent, or dog owner, or anything. So, where to?
My daughter calls from India- she has been there over a year and she has no plans to ever return. Unless, that is, I come get her. And just showing up and shoving her on the plane is not going to do it. She wants me to come to India, live there a while, and then slowly gradually she will transition first from hanging out with mom, to flying on a plane with mom, to maybe staying on the same continent as mom. Sure, I tell her, just as sooon as you find me a way to live in India without having to drop out of graduate school. And then suddenly a woman in India wants me to work for her, and she has a line on a housesitting situation, and it could be an internship, and when can I start. Oh. My feel are already feeling a little less blue.