We are so lucky...

"We are so lucky"

The four words I wrote down when I opened my eyes up in this dark gray December morning...

"we are so lucky"

I woke up in icy Cheltenham, England in Aileen's warm, immaculately clean house. I was surrounded by soft turquoise walls beneath a big white duvet in a big white fluffy bed. Out the antique style cottage window i listened to the sound of cars splashing down Horsefair street- the street my ex-husband Jamie grew up on.
I can't believe I'm here.
The cars vroomed by and for some reason the words that came to mind as an echo to their noise was "Yes little engines that vroom. Motion. Movement. This is an amazing world. An amazing interdependent and totally impermanent world."

It had been three years since I came back to England. Some things have changed drastically and others haven't that much.

I am a single 27 year old woman with a bindi on my forehead... The dot on my third eye almost demarcating the mind full of endless colorful stories from living in Asia beneath the skin of my head.
The last time i arrived in Cheltenham, i was a 24 year old Californian wife who had never even been to Asia.
Aileen, Jamie's mum, is still a total Goddess who looked like she hadn't aged a day, but somehow instantly I felt closer to her then I ever did when Jamie and I were together. Seeing her, I remembered why her son turned out to be so fabulous.
Aileen and her best friend Vicki picked me up at the train station.
I didn't know if I was going to cry or not when I saw them, but thankfully I didn't. I was just overjoyed.

Aileen & Vicki have often referred to themselves as witches when they emerge from a walk through the hills of Cranham Woods with their
Matching long black wispy hair and duster-length winter coats blowing open in the winter breeze... They walk through England seemingly removed from the drone of joyless sleepwalkers... wrapped in scarves and magical conversation, they keep each other awake and inspired. They are 100% my kind of women.

I climbed in Vicki's tiny car and we went to a cafe in Tivoli. I was high on life (as per the usual) and felt myself talking a million miles a minute about the last three years, but mostly the last year, as I ate cheesy chips and sipped tea, spiked with my masala tea spices I bought in Varanasi. Vicki and Aileen both seem to have been observing the global shifts in consciousness and were very tuned in to the magic swirling around us.
The cafe closed and kicked us out so we returned to Aileen's front room in Charlton Kings.

Nostalgia washed over me again and again as our car turned up Horsefair street, past the little church and cemetery, the working man's pub and eventually to the front door of a house I first came to as an 18 year old with a huge suitcase full of blow dryers, a pink silk Jackie O dress to wear to Dylan's wedding, and a slew of things that rightly stuck a label on me as the privileged, high maintenance LA chick I was in that time.

Today I walked up with my forest green backpack on. One side of the worn-in, loved, traveler rucksack has a patch from Sumatra, the other a Nepalese third eye. Inside is a Tibetan singing bowl and a few pairs of longcrotch silkie Indian clothes and some scarves I brought as gifts. I am such an entirely different woman and yet very much the same me I have always been.

I didn't even go upstairs for about 5 hours. I lay on the floor sideways, propped up by the green backpack, my back to the fireplace, my heart facing the two women, each elegantly sprawled across a couch, eyes present and awake, in the moment we were so blessed to be sharing.

We could have talked forever, I think.

Each hour that passed, I found myself wanting to stand up and hug them both. I can't believe how lucky I am to be in a situation where it's cool for me to stay friends with my ex-mother-in-law.

Vicki left and we ordered Indian take-away. It was almost ironic as I was just IN India the day before, but it's a staple here on Horsefair street and didn't taste a thing like India. It tasted like Horsefair street. It tasted like an 8 year relationship, countless trips out to this fairytale town as I meandered through my fairytale life... It tasted like memory and comfort.

We ate and I shared with Aileen "what happened."
I put that in quotes because nothing particularly happened to break her son and I apart. It was more a progression of growing apart and eventually recognizing it was time to part ways. Allowing our paths to fork and ultimately veer into opposite existences.

Aileen had the same sentiment as my parents... One that I never even thought to look until about a year after the split, when my father emotionally demanded that I explain to him why I took their son away from them.
It hadn't actually occurred to me that it could be painful for the parents. 
You always think of the children in a divorce, and since Jamie and I never had any, I felt like there was no collateral damage somehow.
This was selfish and narrow-minded... But I was going through a divorce, so I'll cut myself a little slack for being mindless of the impact on our parents.

I sat in the kitchen eating Veg biryiani and rehashed the breakup, doing my best to paint a fair, honest, complete image.
It was cathartic and healing for me, and I hope it gave some clarity to her.

We finished our food and walked down the street to Vicki's house where we sat by candlelight observing her latest oil paintings (in-eff-ing-cred-ible), listening to the Gayitri Mantra and Laura Marling (my new obsession) between talks of 432 vibration, and me singing and playing the guitar.

They have high standards of course, their sons both phenomenal musicians. Vicki called me the Yoko Ono of their band. It's probably a bit true. But her son Georgie has ended up getting a doctorate in fractal mathematics... Unbelievable that it was a whole doctorate's worth of time that Jamie and I spent together.
It's like sometimes when I measure things in 9 month chunks and go "whoa! It took a whole creation of a baby to do that"... Jamie and I had a doctorate of love and memories under our belts and vicki and Aileen are integral parts of our story.   

Anyways... A whole roast turkey's time in Vicki's front room and Aileen and I braced to go back out in the howling wind and stormy night and return to her house. I didn't want to let Aileen go as I was hugging her goodnight.

In the morning, we sat around the house together eating breakfast, drinking tea and chatting away all morning until suddenly it was lunchtime and Vicki came back over for some homemade lentil soup.

After lunch Russell Kennedy, one of jamie's childhood best friends came by. He had been hit on his bicycle in London and just had facial reconstruction. I played him my singing bowl and with that, began (once again) to restructure my intention for next year.

I still want to become a nurse and start clinics in poor, third world countries... but I can see myself using alternative healing methods- sound vibration, reiki, yoga, massage, music... All the things I have spent my life honing and learning about.
As Vicki said "be a nurse for people who are Experiencing spiritual emergence and needing shamanic guides."

We talked at length about mental illness and schizophrenia. About the change in paradigm- one that is shifting from believing that the brain creates consciousness to recognizing that the brain, rather, receives consciousness.
(a super heady, incredible Convo)

We headed over to jamie's brothers house - another meeting that was 3 years overdue.

I found myself with my nephew and godson Mitchel, who is now 7 and unbelievably intelligent and tuned into spiritual presence.
I took off my bindi and stuck it above his bed at his request.
He told me the elephant spirit who comes in his room and dances at night will live in my third eye.
He also said he wants to be a doctor so we can go around the world together and help children who are sick and poor.
"it's okay that the children in India don't have any toys auntie zani," he said quietly, "you give them something better then toys... You give them Love."

He blows my mind. 
We are starting a secret society pen pal-ship... My code name is "hawk" and his is "eagle"...
Our nemesis is "kingfisher" but our love is so powerful it can knock out all evil. We don't even have to use violence or weapons.

Like I said - blows my mind.

Just before I kissed him goodnight he mentioned Jamie and I... We are his godparents and Jamie warned me he would ask a lot of questions about us.

"mitchel..." I said gently "you know... Jamie and I still love each-other even though we've split up."

"no!" he protested righteously. "I asked uncle Jamie and he said he doesn't love you anymore."

Well, I thought. Good to know.

We laughed about it when I got back downstairs and reported about my precocious little nephew's bedtime routine.

We got back to Aileen's house and went straight to bed. My second night in this bed that felt like a princess should be sleeping in it.
Before I fell asleep I got an email from someone I love. A message from afar that made my heart tickle.
I downloaded Laura Marling's album "A Creature I Don't Know" and slept to a track Called "Night After Night"

Night after night, it seems, I sleep in a new place... A different country, a different world.
Only the dreamworld is familiar and comfortable to me.
Everything else is exciting and new.
I woke up totally disoriented in the middle of the night- convinced I was in Rhishikesh in my little Sudesh room. I could have sworn I was there... And then as though I fell through a pyramid of fractaling shapes and lines drawn by my own mind in the dark of night, I found myself in the turquoise room in England. Laura Marling was still playing on repeat.
I turned it off and fell back into my cozy dreamworld among faces and images I recognized and remembered.

In the morning I felt lucky and humbly recognized the interdependence and impermanence of the universe as we know it.

I would not be here if I hadn't gone there.
I would not be me today if there wasn't a you, or a me from yesterday that I am not.
(there cant be a "me" without a "not me")
I will never be the same because nothing ever is. We are in constant flux... Change... Transformation.

The door opened downstairs and I scurried quickly down the carpeted stairs and dove into the arms of jamie's dad, Davy.
His eyes teared up and mine nearly did too - but we lightened the mood by making bad jokes as we always have.

The three of us headed into town for some lunch and to exchange a sweater they bought me for Christmas. (Aileen and I are excellent speed-shoppers. I tried on about 30 dresses in 10 minutes settling on a beautiful blue sweater dress with a leather braided belt.)

We dropped Aileen at work which again was a moment of almost tears- but I trust we will see each-other again... Still, driving away from her was really heavy on my heart.
 Davy and I went for a long hot chocolate date and once again I got to rehash the demise of my marriage as best I could before heading to the train station and returning to London in the dark rainy night to meet Georgie- Vicki's son, Jamie's cousin and bandmate and my old friend. He too would need the long rehash catchup routine.

I think over the last year I have lived in the present moment perhaps a bit too well...
I have lost touch with reflection.
I have let some things happen without even thinking about them... Without taking the time to ask myself "what the hell happened here?"

This trip to Cheltenham has given me the opportunity to reflect on the last few years and figure out what exactly has gone down.
Articulating it to my estranged in-laws has given us all a bit of peace and comfort.

We are all truly so so blessed.

I wish for all families to share the kind of truly unconditional love, support & acceptance that both Jamie & my family share.

We wouldn't be us without one another.
I love you all for being in this story with me.

We are so lucky.