Chapter 2, The East Coast Mother-Son Odyssey

Eli and I leave on the first leg of our journey this morning. Six days with the Kirby Chamber Choir in Manhattan and then 10 days of touring colleges. It struck me yesterday that the 10 days of traveling, just Eli and I, will likely be the longest span of time we’ll spend alone together for the rest of our lives. What are the odds that he and I will ever take another long road trip together? Or a solo mother-son vacation? Not very likely.

I do wish Eli were a little older, that we were a little less locked into the roles of reluctant teenage son and boring, nagging mother. Right now, my conversation with Eli consists mostly of things like, “Eli, did you email Souvey so we can visit him at Northeastern?” “Did you take your vitamin C?” “What time am I picking you up?” and  “It’s your turn to empty the dishwasher.” Eli’s comments to me are generally monosyllabic when they occur at all, or they consist of things like. “I know, Mom!” a lot of eye-rolling, and proclamations like, “I said I wanted the Old Spice Fresh deodorant. Can you remember next time?” Or, “I need $25.00 for CCS.” Or, “We’re out of orange juice.”

These exchanges hardly count as conversation. Which leave me wondering, What will talk about all those long hours driving through unfamiliar places in New England? Will we even talk at all? Or will our whole trip be nothing more than a Zits cartoon cliché?

Another Turn in the Wheel of Life

Years ago, I had my chart done by a wonderful astrologer named Tom Brady from Santa Fe. I’ve never met Tom in person, but have had several readings with him over the phone. He records these calls and sends me a CD so I can listen to them over nad over again. Each of Tom’s readings has contained pearls of wisdom and insight that I’ve chewed on for years.

In the first one he did for me, Tom told me that my whole chart reinforced, over and over again, the message that my life path was to “shine out into the world.” He said I would be an “agent of change” in the arena of communication. This is something I have done consistently throughout my life-as a radio producer, a talk show host, an inspirational speaker, an author, a blogger, a columnist, and now, as a writing teacher and group leader. Inspiring others toward healing, through my gifts with language, has been a thread I have followed my whole life.

Tom also told me that these cycles of shining out into the world would always be followed by periods of retreat and holing up. And this, too, has been true.

The five years I was on the road speaking and leading workshops on healing from sexual abuse, starting in 1988, when The Courage to Heal was published, were very public years. I was a guest on Oprah. I appeared on hundreds of radio shows, dozens of TV programs. I filled bookstores and auditoriums. I spoke in theaters with my name up on the marquis, standing alone on a stage with no props, just a water glass and a spot following me, speaking heart-to-heart to 900 people at a time. I had a taste of fame in my own little niche. It was a powerful, humbling and challenging to be constantly in the public eye. To some of my fans, I was God; to my detractors, the anti-Christ. Those first years after Courage was published was very much a roller coaster ride. And for me, it was especially hard to be up on a pedestal because I had “gracefully survived” trauma and lived to tell about it.

Chapter 1,The East Coast Mother-Son Odyssey

Blogging about your family can prove challenging, at least as your kids get older. When Eli and Lizzy were babies and toddlers, I had carte blanche; they were too young to voice an opinion or to object to the columns I wrote about my adventures parenting them in Growing Up In Santa Cruz. And when Eli was old enough to object (at the tender age of five) to the fact that strangers kept coming up to him in the park, talking to him as if they knew him, he was easily assuaged by being given a pseudonym, Justin, a name that he chose. Years later, he decided to stop being “Justin” and to go back to being “Eli.”

Later, when they were in elementary school, he and Lizzy would read my columns and edit them for accuracy. “Mom, that’s not what I said.” Or “But you forgot to write about the time you took my door off its hinges.” We wrote the columns as a team and in the process, I got to teach them about the narrative arc of a story, telescoping events, and the permissible use of literary license.

The Zero Hour on Health Care

I'm holed up in my room at the Land of Medicine Buddha. It's the long afternoon break between the morning session of the Memory to Memoir retreat and dinner time. There are a fabulous group of women here with me, ready and willing to dig deep for the truth in their writing. I'm moved by their stories, but vastly distracted. I spent much of the afternoon, not getting a massage, not hiking, not writing personal stories, but watching the C-SPAN coverage of the health insurance debate.

Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow is the vote. And for me this vote isn't about someone else's health coverage. It's about mine.