Follow the White Rabbit…

I do a lot of strange things.

Sometimes, as I’m heading into another one of my adventures, I’ll start questioning myself as the reality of what I am about to do sinks in. This is usually about the time that my mom or sister will get a slightly shaky voiced phone call letting them know that I’m bout to go dark. No cell phones allowed for the next couple days. Such are the rules at these types of things…

“What kind of things?” you’re probably wondering at this point(or you’re not, cause you could care less and are probably heading back to Twitter or FB now). Well,  I’m not talking about anything strange or extreme like skydiving, or cliff jumping, or cave diving or swimming with sharks… (FYI, I am terrified of flying AND sharks and my worst fear is that I will be on a plane that crashes into the ocean and SURVIVE!!!… only to be eaten by sharks. But I digress) No. I’m not talking about adrenaline-junky outdoorsy stuff.  In fact, the complete opposite. I’m talkin bout following a seemingly innocent, fluffy white bunny down a mother truckin rabbit hole.

AKA the journey into the inner workings of this crazy ass mofo that I sometimes refer to as “myself”.

My free falls down the rabbit hole have included any number of things that most people would categorize under the title of NEW AGE SHIT. I prefer to call it OLD AGE as most of it has been around since before you were a twinkle in the twinkle of the eye twinkle that started all twinkles. However, I get it. It’s all kinda weird. And my guilty admission is that I LOVE IT ALL. And the more I involve myself in it, the weirder it gets and the more it helps me understand all the shizz that I don’t.

NOW.  I do think I’m pretty normal when it comes to most things. I have healthy doses of confidence and insecurities. I try to practice moderation but find it difficult in matters concerning A) food B) love C) animals(hence my four dogs) and D) did I say food? However, there is one way in which I wish everyone would let themselves embrace a little more of the crazy… and that is in whatever way you find best allows you to get to the heart of your authentic truth. In other words:

WHO ARE YOU WHEN ALL ELSE FADES AWAY?

Very few of us can answer this question at first blush.  If you can… kudos to you, and I hope you will share a little of your journey with the world in some capacity, we need more of these stories.  And if you can’t even think of where to begin to answer this question, kudos to you too! This moment of honesty will serve as the first step towards a very big and rewarding adventure. Mine begin almost exactly 15 years ago(click to read because that’s a whole nother story). What started with meditation classes evolved into retreats; some involving other people, some that involved just me, on my own. Ayurveda soon followed; it is the world’s oldest medicinal practice and means “the science of life” It has brought such balance and peace into my world. Newer interests include Tantra and Tarot, and specific energy and body work.  I have sat with perfect strangers in solidarity as we opened ourselves to our greater truths in front of one another… I have sat alone with myself and bawled like a big ol baby as I came to terms with my imperfections and the ways in which I still have so much to learn. I have grown to love my flaws as much as my strengths. I have grown to forgive, and let go, and to try to find compassion for all… even those that our world would have us believe do not deserve it.  I am striving, living, dying every day to keep my heart open open open. That is the only truth my friends, that is the only choice that leads us into the arms of love.

Follow your white rabbit. It doesn’t have to be meditation or retreats. It doesn’t have to be New Age or Old Age or involve anything that you don’t like or makes you uncomfortable. Well, it should make you a little uncomfortable… enough so that you are pushed beyond the boundaries that prevent you from being honest with yourself. But mostly…

It just has to open your heart.

It just needs to teach you about you. It needs to show you the way to be patient and kind. It could be working on something that focuses your mind and brings you peace.  It might be learning a new language. Doing charity work. Maybe it’s simply waking up each day and being honest about what scares you. Or just admitting to yourself that you are a work in progress and lovable YES LOVABLE every step of the way.

Open your eyes. Trust your heart. Let your white rabbit show you the way.

xxb

Happy Sunday.

That perfect tranquilty of life, which can only be found in retreat,
a faithful friend, and a good library.
~Aphra Behn

Sunday naps…

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REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE ALIVE.

I BELIEVE I CAN FLY

The Rules

Many of you who visit this blog most likely found it because you are fans of my tv sitcom Rules Of Engagement. If so, you probably know by now that we had our season order reduced to 13 episodes this year, and last night marked the final taping of season 6. Whether there will be a season 7 remains to be seen. We will find out in May when the networks make their picks for the fall season.  I am optimistic, as I always try to be… but I know only all too well that this is a business and at the end of the day, it is out of our hands. Last night could have very well been our final farewell. Such is life in this industry.  If it indeed was, I doubt there could have been a more suitable goodbye for the cast and crew of Rules. At a bar down the street from our beloved stage 28 at Sony studios, we karaoke’d well into the night.  It’s a tiny place we hit up after most tape nights… affectionally referred to as “Sticky Bar”; for reasons that I will leave up to your own imaginations…

Below is the last song of the night; everyone together, sweaty and hoarse, in only my new most favorite group sing-along of all time…and there have been some sing-alongs in this life o’ mine…

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This show has been my home for the last 6 years. A home that held me through some pretty intense life moments… the crumbling of my marriage, the death of my father, the swirling whirlwind of loss and change, the space in between where all was surrendered and the old skin shed… the hike back up the mountain resumed.

I could not have done it without this cast and crew.

I want you all to know, that the people who have kept you laughing on Monday nights at 9:30, and then Mondays at 8:30 and then Thursdays at 8:30 and then Saturdays, wait no back to Thursdays at 8:30 (let us not forget midseason, full season/WHOOPS writers strike!!! then midseason again, and another midseason, OH HEY FULL SEASON, and back to half season…) are incredible, funny, GOOD, caring, and genuine people who I love so very very much. Our crew works their asses off and comes back year after year even when they haven’t been guaranteed an entire season of work. I have never, not one day in 6 years, not wanted to come to work. (well maybe just once or twice, when lingerie was involved, and I hadn’t laid off the cake and cookies :p). I am so very honored to have worked with everyone on our set, from the camera operators, Grip & Electric, to Rhonda in Craft Services. Shelley, Bri, MAD PROPS Prop Masters!! Our awesome stand-ins, the incredible Ron who keeps our audiences laughing in between takes, The incomparable Ted Wass… OUR A.D. TEAM!!! To my besties in Wardrobe, daily therapy in hair & makeup, and the entire production team, writing staff and producers… THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

I don’t think that until last night, I really understood, nor appropriately appreciated, what Rules has meant to me.  It really is so hard to see what a gift something is, especially when we are so focused on what comes next.  In a world where the emphasis is put on moving up the ladder, it’s easy to treat wherever you’re at like a waiting room.  Never investing much time or thought into the happenings within… only worrying about what’s on the other side of the door you plan to walk through.

It’s good to have dreams, great to set goals, exciting to think about hitting new heights… but let’s not forget about the lessons we learn along way. The freeway sure does feel fast and furious, adrenaline pumping.. but how awful would it have been if that’s where we learned to drive? YOU ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU NEED TO BE TO LEARN WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. TRUST THIS. I know that there are still many amazing memories to be made in this career of mine. I hope I get to travel to distant places and make many new amazing friends. But I can’t imagine a world in which I won’t smile gratefully at the memory of the world’s best cast & crew; celebrating and singing their bloody hearts out, in a small, dark, and awesomely sticky bar.

I love you guys.

xxb

What the what?!!

I’m back. It’s time. I’ve been very selfish and gone off and experienced some pretty awesome things (and some equally terrible ones) and not shared one detail with any of you. I’m ready. Ready for what?? God, who knows. But it’s been a long time and I miss writing and sharing, and if you like to come visit and read what I have to say, then yay! If not, no worries… I won’t even know to miss ya. :p

So what happens here? Look around a little. Read some old posts. Or just wait for what comes next. If you’ve been a follower since I started this almost 2 years ago, you kinda know what to expect… If you’ve just joined the clan, hopefully we can share some things that will allow us to make a little more sense of this crazy carousel ride we’re all on. TOGETHER. Lately I am constantly reminding myself that we are all truly in this together… whether we like it or not. More on that later.

So welcome! Or welcome back! I love to hear from you guys & gals, so feel free to leave me a comment. Hope I can at the very least entertain and give ya some fat to chew on.

Onward!

Mad love. xxB

 

 

All is full of Love.

Tonight I’m just gonna be honest.

Ha.

As if I can be anything but.

Lately I have  many thoughts swimming through this brain, like separate schools of fish that mingle and kiss as they pause to change direction. For some reason everything seems brighter, sharper, more tangible.  When I walk the dogs I’ve stopped listening to music or talking on the phone because I can’t stop swallowing whole gulps of the world around me.  I can. not. stop. reading.  I, no joke, have about 10 books scattered around my bed and dinner table. I feel like I am eating the most substantially delectable home cooked meal, made up of all that my mind and body have ever needed or desired.  Do I sound crazy? I don’t care. For the first time, in a long time, I am content.

One of my teachers recently told me that when she first set out on the journey within herself, she was told by her teacher that it was the beginning of the end of loneliness.

Here is where the real honesty comes in:  I have been lonely all of my life.

Not for lack of friends. Obviously ABSOLUTELY not from lack of family. Never because I didn’t have enough to do or  to be.  I just always felt that something was missing.  That for whatever reason I wasn’t accessing something that I knew could open me up to an entirely different way of life and feeling, and healing, and loving. I remember as a child, sitting and watching my father while he read at the kitchen table.  His forehead creased, deep in thought. At that young age, I sensed a deep sadness within him.  Years later, after I dropped out of college and was trying to desperately find myself… I came across my first Rilke poem.  It rocked me. I was blown away that this person from another time and place was able to encapsulate the very essence of what, at that time, was absolutely breaking my heart. I will never forget sitting on the floor of the local library, buried under a pile of books, and reading:

“I beg you, be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I came home, locked myself in my room, and read every piece of Rilke I could get my hands on.  Later that night I joined my father in the kitchen and noticing my puffy eyes he asked, “what is it that has you so afraid?”.  I told him that I was sure that no one would ever truly understand me.  I will never forget the gentleness and love in his voice as he put his arms around me and murmured, “But sweetie, don’t you know that is the best part?”

I often think about that moment as one of the very pivotal points in my young life.  It made it okay to delve in deeper, to look at my time spent in solace as a gift. To realize that it didn’t matter if no one understood me, as long as I understood myself. It’s what drives me to come here and post. I suppose because as my search within deepens I have found a truth that I want to share with all of you.  Something that is so utterly simplistic and basic, and yet so many of us travel great lengths in the wrong ass direction to find it.  If only we could wrap our minds, NO, if only we could wrap our HEARTS around the idea that the greatest lesson we need to learn, must be taught to us by OURSELVES.

As I sat next to my father’s hospital bed, the night before he died, I racked my brain for what I wanted to say to him.  He was unconscious, but I knew that no matter the state of his brain, he could hear me in his heart. I thought about how in life, we often think about this day… what will you say to the one you love when it’s time to say goodbye for now?  I always thought there would be a laundry list of items. So many things to say.

In that moment there was only one.

I just wanted him to know how much I loved him.

In the most awful, terrible moment of my life… I was so acutely aware of the love. In fact, it prevailed over any other emotion.

All is love. All is full of love.

You are love. I am love.

This is the lesson that you must teach yourself.  NOPE, It’s not enough to nod your head and say yeah yeah yeah. You have to FEEL it people.  I want you to KNOW it. I want you to feel it pull at you from your insides in such a way that if I were to turn you inside out I would be smacked in the face, blinded and burned, blown away by the fucking cacophony of love bliss pouring out your veins and arteries and organs and bones.  How do you know if your own assuredness of love is in question? Have you felt lonely in this lifetime? Do you search for contentment through money and toys and houses and success and AND AND AND OTHER PEOPLE…. LOVERS, FRIENDS,RELATIONSHIPS???

BE FUCKING HONEST!

DO YOU LOVE YOURSELF? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE LOVE???

And the fact that some of you are rolling your eyes and calling this new age bullshit (I mean I’m shocked if those same people have even continued reading this far) is ABSOLUTE PROOF that this subject matter makes us so uncomfortable that we believe the only people who think or feel this way tote around yoga mats and go barefoot and naked, singing kumbaya in the rain.

If there is a part of you that longs for something more. That wonders why life feels so difficult at times. If you feel like you can’t catch a break, or that it seems that everywhere you look there’s heartbreak, and sorrow, and fear. Stop what you are doing. Stop right now. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Now turn within. See inside yourself; if it’s dark as hell, that’s okay. Darkness is just the absence of light, so we’re gonna bring a little in… imagine a small speck of glitter, a tiny particle of light…. it twinkles at first, and now it’s starting to grow. It doesn’t have to get too big, there’s plenty of time for that.  Just let it be.  You’ve just planted your first seed. It’ll be there whenever you need to check back in. Try to allow yourself to understand how deliciously perfect you are in this moment. and the next. and the next. And the more that you accept that the fact that no one else is like you is UH-maaaaaaaazing, the more that little glitter seed will blossom. I’m talking the biggest baddest 1970′s dance floor where you take the main stage and everyone’s bathed in the luscious light of your multi-faceted disco ball o’ LOVE.

All is love. All is full of love. You are love.

Doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, you are.  I hope one day you will see. The beauty is, once you see it in yourself, you will recognize it in everyone else. And that will be the end of loneliness as you know it.

I slip in and out of the Sea at night with this
Amazed soul I have.

I am like a magnificent, magic ocean turtle
Who sets aside his vast wings of
Blue effulgence

When I crawl upon your shores
To leave my divine seed of verse.

Let me remain cryptic tonight
All the way till dawn
As I orbit God
In this holy, ecstatic mood.

Grab hold of the corners
Of my luminous, tender shell
And I will whirl for you,

For I am covered with eminent crystals
That I have gathered from the infinite depths
Of love.

Follow my tracks in the sand that lead
Beyond thought and space,

For I can see deep down
That you are really a golden bird
That needs to
Dance

~Hafiz

xxB

My Birthday Wish

This coming Saturday, March 26th, I officially leave behind the year of mastery. The big 33.  I’m not sure exactly where this year of mastery stems from, or how so many people seemed to know about it. I know jesus was 33 when he died, he preformed 33 miracles, 33 is the numerical representation of the star of David AND the numerical equivalent of Amen.  However, none of this really proves why 33 did end up being a year in which all hell broke loose in my life, indeed seeming to require a certain mastery of skills to survive.  But so it goes, as we must say sometimes in life: “eh, details”.

I decided that this year, I wanted to do something different for my birthday… something for somebody other than myself.  I feel as if there has been a lot about me lately, and to be honest, I’m kinda over it.  In fact, even better than somebody, let’s make it about a LOT of bodies.  And lets make it about about LIFE. And lets make it about LOVE.  AND AND AND let’s make it about young people who deserve to have their LIVES filled to the brim with LOVE.

Last summer, my brother and I attended the Paddy Rossbach Youth Amputee Camp as camp counselors.  For those of you who don’t know, my incredible younger brother is a bilateral, above the knee amputee.  If you aren’t familiar with his story you can read more about it here. To be honest, I can’t remember exactly how we first made contact with the Amputee Coalition(they put on the camp), but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with my mom…. as pretty much everything always does. I believe there were a couple years of back and forth, but after much scheduling and patience on the part of the amazing people at the Youth Camp… Yours truly and her younger amputee bro became the “COUNSELORS KAJLICH”.

I don’t think either of us knew what to expect.  We certainly were excited and eager to help out, but nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to experience.  Two days of counselor training later and we were at the airport waiting to greet the campers as they arrived for camp.  I remember feeling a bit like my first day of high school freshman year.  What if they didn’t like me?  Kids have a funny way of reading you straight out the gate… if it’s fake, they’ll smell it on you.  Not that I have a problem relating to the younger set… I mean c’mon, I’m basically still 5 in this heart o’mine.  But, somehow this whole scenario was different.  It was important to me that they got that I wasn’t there to pretend like I understood what they might be going through.  I mean lord, the teenage years are hard enough without having to deal with the fact that parts of your body are missing.  My only experience is through that of my brother, and I have never assumed that to be the sister of an amputee is to understand what it’s like to actually be one.  Turns out, I was completely over thinking this entire thing.

From the minute those kids filed into the waiting area at the airport, to the moment that I left Camp Joy with tears streaming, I was blown away by the smiles, laughter, courage, strength, positivity, humor, lack of judgment, selflessness, and LOVE.  These kids taught me more about myself in 4 days than I have been able to wrap my head and heart around in years.  This is the first time that many of these kids have been in the company of other amputees. Some of them are dealing with horrific, life threatening illnesses that have resulted in amputations.  Many of them have survived terrible accidents and injuries that have left them scarred and forever changed.  And yet after a day or so… I didn’t even SEE their disabilities any more.  I saw KIDS. I saw incredible, loving, open hearted kids.  I write so much here about keeping your heart open when everything else is telling you to shut it down… and this, THIS is the true life example.  Some of them told me awful stories about kids back home taunting and bullying them.  One girl with an amputated leg told me how kids in her class would steal her prosthetic leg and hide it from her. That broke my heart.  And yet these beautiful, open hearted souls come to camp and sing and dance and play and talk about their experiences so honestly and without pitying themselves. I feel like I can do anything because they can and do. I feel like I waste so much time and energy worrying about silly little stupid things and here are these kids who have every right to complain and moan and they don’t. They’re too busy living life and planning their next big adventure….

In honor of these incredible dear hearts, I am asking all of you to help give them the gift of a week at camp.  You may be helping a young amputee return to a place that helps them garner strength for the times when they aren’t surrounded by others just like them.  You could be sending a child who has just lost a limb into an experience where they get to see others who are doing, and being, and thriving. Instilling within them the belief that this isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a whole new universe.  You are without a doubt supporting someone who will go on to inspire others to believe that they too, can do anything.  They have already inspired me.

It’s my 34th birthday.  I am asking you to help me raise $34,000 in just 6 days.  We can do this.  Donate whatever you can… even $5 helps.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

To donate click here

To read more about the camp click here

To visit my brother’s site click here

Thank you for supporting me, and for supporting a cause that I can personally say from experience is beyond deserving of our attention.

Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does Anything weird,
But the God who knows only 4 words.
And keeps repeating them, saying “Come Dance with Me ,

Come Dance.”

~Hafiz~

xxb

 

 

The Space In Between

yeah, so….  I have changed the name of my blog.  I initially started here by way of a pact that my sister, mother and myself made to run, walk, and sit, respectively, for a year and write about it. Never mind that my mom was the only one who actually made it the full 365 walks and write-about-its.  I’ve never really been one to stick to an agenda, so why start now. Hence, the change.  365 days have long come and gone.  I sat my big ol ass down for the majority of those days.  Some days I did. Some  I didn’t.  Sometimes I faked it and played with my phone with one eye open. I’m guessing those sits probably didn’t count (ya think?).  What I do know is that in the last year and a half my world has flipped upside down, inside out, under, over, on itself, in itself, from the top to the bottom, bottom to the top, start breathing, stop breathing, help me help me, out of air, too much air, panic, depression, shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

SILENCE.

THE SPACE IN BETWEEN.  The eye of the storm. The place after the start but before the finish.  The great pause between the inhale and the exhale.  The folds within the cosmos from which my father sends his love.  The part of the vortex where everything I was before disappears and my raw amoebic underbelly emerges alone, ready, willing to become whatever it must be to encapsulate my authentic truth.

So what is it? What truth do I need to know more than anything right now? Every day it shifts. Every minute, every hour as the cells divide, multiply, live and die, the idea of what I need to know changes landscapes. Some mornings when I wake up it is already upon me, pressing at the base of my skull, making me nervous and fidgety. Sometimes it’s a wisp of a ghost, largely undetected save for the occasional draft that raises my skin. Other days it trots behind me, like an obedient  dog on a leash. I fall prey to the illusion that I am in control, that the thin line connecting us means I have mastered the beast.

And then there are the nights.  The space in between being awake and asleep.  That very  last breath of consciousness before I drift into the inner mesh of my minds eye.  That moment where I have so many times before heard a very distinct whisper… “YOU ALREADY KNOW”.

 

No longer shall you need.
You always wanted to believe,
Just ask and you’ll receive,
Beyond your wildest dreams.

I know. I already know. I already know how this will end.  Everything we could possibly want to know exists within us already. It always has. It always will.  It’s truly just up to us whether or not we want to listen.  And it takes work. My god it takes back breaking, tear gushing, rip yer heart out while it’s still pumpin the blood through your damn body work.  There are days when I want to freaking tear my clothes off, jump in the ocean, swim and swim and never look back.  There are days when I want to curl up in a ball, under my covers, and never answer another phone call or email ever again.

AND AND AND there are days when I am MAGIC. When everything glows and I feel like a vibrant pulsating spectacular mammal of a woman.  I want to grab strangers by their faces and kiss them kiss them kiss them…. Days that I am truly aware of the power that burns from my loins to the tips of my fingers and toes, a force that DARES anyone to even so much as point a pinky in the direction they think I should be going….

and this is my authentic truth.  The truth that I need to know more than anything right now.  It’s all here. It’s all within. It’s all ok.  I am already everything I want to be… And so are you.

As long as I breathe into the space in between, I already know.

xxb

After the storm…

hi. here I am.  Today was 6 months to the day that we said goodbye for now.  I haven’t written here because I felt like the only thing I’d keep writing about would be my grief about my papa… and to be fair even he would have hated that.  So I waited until I arrived here…

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

I have played this song by Mumford and Sons a traflapazillion times in the last few months.  I know that’s not a real number, but the real ones didn’t sound like enough times.  And if you still haven’t caught my drift, you’re an idiot and I played it a LOT.  I played it by myself, I played it with my family, I played it with passengers in my car, I played it with my pooches…and even they cried.  It just was the right song at the right time.  I’d like to thank those Mumford boys, and also maybe just submit a small inquiry as to how Marcus Mumford happens to have 3 children that look remarkably close to his own age….

bad jokes aside…

Rilke wrote:

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

In the same poem(which is called “The Man Watching” read the full poem here ) my favorite line comes at the end…

“winning does not tempt that man. He grows by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.”

wow. just wow.  Grief is one of the big guns, and in a way… you just have to let it defeat you.  Doesn’t mean you don’t put up a big fight.  But it’s not about winning. It’s about letting it break you down, tear you open; ripping out all that you have left within and poking its fingers inside your most delicate, fleshy parts.  It’s about keeping your humor intact and your heart OH YOUR HEART open open open while everything inside you is screaming to shut it the fuck down.  It’s about the realization that what you were before will never ever exist again. It is knowing that you must. go. through. this. because life lives and breathes on the other side. It is acceptance at it’s most brutally raw core.

After the storm, I’m still picking up the pieces.  Have a feeling I will be for some time. But as my sister says, “May we never be defeated by anything or anyone less than the greatest”.  And my dad was just that.  From here on out, my goal is to get back to the original spirit of this blog.  Or as my dad would have said, “Sheet got-dammit! Vat eez dis sheet?!”

…. with grace in my heart, and flowers in my hair. xxb

 

Give a little Whistle…

My family has this thing that we do when we are out somewhere in public and can’t find each other.  We whistle.  Not just any whistle, it’s distinctly  the “kajlich” whistle.  It’s pretty rad.  It originated back in Piestany, the small town in Slovakia where my father grew up.  He and his swim team friends used it to alert each other from outside their windows when they were ready to go swimming.  Ahhhh the days without cell phones.  My dad’s family had an African Grey parrot name Koki who heard the whistle so often that he began to whistle it back. It all came full circle when my family adopted our own African Grey named Baby, and he too picked up the family tune(as well as a dozen other things that house guests would stand by his cage and murmur repeatedly.. and we’re not talking common pleasantries here.).

I distinctly remember being lost as a child in a rather large department store and looking frantically for my mother, who probably assumed I was contentedly hiding in the middle of the racks.  I loved hiding in racks.  I would make up a magical mythical world in the dark crevice surrounded by a perfect circle of winter coats.  I loved when a shopper would come and peruse the clothes, completely oblivious to the silent child watching from within, making up stories about who they might be and what they were looking for… Once or twice I actually vaulted myself out at someone, scaring the bejesus out of them.  I guess I deserved to get lost, feel a little fear.  I recall the growing sense of dread as I looked this way and that, down every aisle, around every corner… where in the hell was my mom??  And then I pursed my lips together best I could, and squeaked out those three familiar notes.  Wait for it, wait for it… ears cocked, straining to hear… please, please…and relief at last!!! The mirroring of the kajlich family whistle sounding from across the store! After which it closely resembled a game of “marco polo”.  Whistling back and forth until the precise location of the other could be targeted and I was once again within my mother’s safe clutches.  The whistle was so popular that friends began to use it as well, although never really to the complete satisfaction of any one Kajlich; more likely to be met with a “get yer own” than an actual pinpointing of our location.

One definition of the word whistle when used as a verb is: to summon, signal or command.  When I think of whistling, I of course think of the response.  For me, it has always been a means in which to find where a loved one may be.  I whistle a lot lately.  In the middle of the night, when I wake up with my heart pounding and missing my father so much that I can’t believe such a missing exists. I inhale and purse my lips, blow out those three lovely notes and pray that somewhere, somehow, maybe in my sleep, they will return to me as only my father could reply.  His was the most beautiful whistle.

Much like my younger self, wandering lost within that store, I am truly out of sorts without my father.  I always wondered what grief was like; probably a little too much to be considered normal. I can now say it is nothing I could have ever imagined.  I found this quote by William Hazlitt, which is why I started thinking of our whistle in the first place. To me, these words express much of where I find myself to be in moments of longing and sorrow.

“If from the top of a long cold barren hill I hear the distant whistle of a thrush which seems to come up from some warm woody shelter beyond the edge of the hill, this sound coming faint over the rocks with a feeling of strangeness and joy, the idea of the place about me, and the imaginary one beyond will all be combined together in such a manner in my mind as to be inseparable.”

There is beauty in the grief. There is so much love to be found in the pain.  When I observe the constant flow of emotion around me I am awestruck by it’s connective tissue, by it’s ability to be all but one, and yet be one through all.  I am grounded and rooted by the belief that our life is still the most magnificent of stories, and unique in it’s ability to be what we choose it to be. Every day is a new opportunity to learn and to love. Every hour. Every second.  And if the going gets too tough…. you have permission from the Kajlichs to give a little whistle.

My love to you all. xxb