Wobbly, September 2008
Geoff and Sassa came out from Los Angeles and San Diego for this year's Wobbly weekend, which surprised us, especially as they brought Jack and Gerry and all the kiddies. Geoff had at first thought to stay in one of the cabins rather than camping, but Sassa talked him out of it.
'Ma, he was like, "Sas, Ger and I can't have a year-old baby and a three year old out in the woods for three days, eating leaves and getting poison oak. And how are we supposed to change diapers?" So I told him, they'd have to change them anyway, even if they were in a cabin, and there are bins. And besides, you guys had us out here when we were babies and we lived.'
I smiled, turning off the faucet as we stood in the kitchen. 'But you knew not to eat leaves, except from the garden. And apart from the park, I don't think that Rachel and Dylan have been outside since they were born... Don't tell Gerry I said that.'
She laughed. 'Ma, you rock!' She picked up her keys from the counter. 'I'm going over to Joe and Maggie's to rescue them from the kids. We'll see you at dinner. Love you Mommy!'
She walked through the house and I heard her calling to George in the workshop were he was sorting our camping gear, 'See ya, Daddy!'
We loaded our instruments into the truck, then went back to water the garden one last time and get the dog. Boz was straining at the lead as we glissaded down the hill.
'He hasn't shown this much life in a while,' Geordie said.
'He knows there's a barbecue.'
'Mm, broiled tempeh!'
I laughed. 'Oh James'll have steaks, he always does.'
We got to our communal camp in Buckhorn and set up our lean-to, rolling out the sleeping bags to make a nice sitting space, and Boz's zabuton. Betsey called out across the clearing, 'Still using any excuse to break out the climbing gear!' Our handmade Whelen lean-to had been the subject of many jokes, mostly revolving around duct tape, but it worked. The first time Geoff saw it, he said, 'Hey I saw one of those at REI for three-hundred bucks.'
'I think this cost about ten,' George said.
'You and Bear Grylls, Dad,' Geoff shook his head.
George asked me who that was, and I shrugged. We asked James and he laughed,
'Some guy on television who shows you how to be a survivalist – is dropped into extreme conditions with a knife and not much else. He's climbed Everest a couple of times; once with a paraglider.'
'Sounds like a compliment to me,' George said.
Jack and Sassa arrived and set up their four-man tent next to us. I don't know if she shooed Eldon and Marya in our direction, but they came running over and plopped themselves down on our sleeping bags.
'Hello, Nana!' Marya said. She reached out and hugged my leg.
'Hello baby! Did you have a nice time at grandma's house?'
'Yup,' she said. ' We pwayed in the spwinkler.'
'Ooh!' I said, 'what a nice day for it.... Eldon, what have you got there?'
He had a bilbo-catcher, which he was studiously trying to win at. He held it out. 'It's a bilboquet,' he said earnestly. 'They were made during the Civil War. Mommy got it for me when she was working on Cold Mountain.' He was a very bright, but very serious child, with language far beyond his age. He wasn't very good with people, he didn't pick up their clues, and sometimes I wondered if he wasn't an Aspie. But maybe he just spent too much time around adults.
George came back from helping light the grills.
'Well hello, sonny boy! ' He said to Eldon, leaning down with his hands on his knees. ' I haven't seen one of these in ages.... Hello Mari!' He kissed the top of her head.
'Pappa!'
Eldon explained again what the bilbo-catcher was, and how the soldiers in the war used to carve them in camp. George listened carefully, and when the boy got to this part, he said, 'Oh, wait a moment.' He dug in his rucksack and pulled out a suede bag.' These are for you.' Inside the bag were hand-carved dominoes from white birch, beautifully made, and the dots painted in different colours of enamel. Eldon examined them, each one in turn, and said, 'These are very historically accurate, Pappa. Thank you.'
Geoff and Gerry arrived then, Geoff wearing an expedition rucksack and the baby, while Gerry had a couple of daypacks and Rachel by the hand.
'Hi Ma,' he said. 'We made it!'
'I see. Hi Gerry. Geoff, you look like Nanook of the North!'
'Hi Geoff,' George said. He peered round the baby. 'So did you get that Nighthaven?' Geoff had been looking at an expedition shelter in a catalogue.
He grinned. 'Nope. I made a tarp tent from ripstop.'
Gerry cocked her head. 'Who?'
'Okay we... Okay, Gerry did all the sewing, but I put in the grommets and designed it.'
George rubbed his hands, smiling, 'So let's see it!'
I shook my head. 'Boys and their toys!' I said to Gerry. 'Geoffy, give me that baby so he doesn't end up in your rucksack.'
Geoff unsnapped the baby and handed him over like an offering. ' Thanks, Ma.' George took Gerry's packs and the two of them went off to set up their camp.
In camp that night we all sat around the lanterns singing. It was too hot for a campfire, and they hadn't allowed them for several years in any case, but it was pitch black out at Buckhorn at night, too dark to see to play, so lanterns it was. It was great fun, but I had a teary moment when I realised that, ranged about us, was our family, in more than merely the old close friends and community sense. We were deeply interwoven in each other's lives now, by blood and bonds of love.
' I was singing with my sisters
I was singing with my friends
And we all can sing together
‘Cause the circle never ends'
Oh, this was going to be one heck of a weekend!
In the morning, we walked up to the meditation with Joe and Maggie and Sassa and Jack and the kids. A dew had fallen in the night and the temperature was fairly tolerable. When we got to our place, Geordie took off his tevas and stretched in the sun salutation before sitting down in Padmasana. 'The ground is harder than it used to be, for sleeping on,' he murmured.
I smiled,' But you can still fold yourself up like a pretzel, Pappa.' I put an arm about him as he sat next to me. Sassa on the other side of him was doing the same thing, cracking her neck when she finished. Lithe and limber, it was her everyday routine. I felt a rush of air behind me and looked up. There was a baby face.
'Hello, Dylan!' I reached up. 'Good morning Geoffy. Nice to see you!' I took the baby from him and he gave me a kiss.
'Good morning, Mommy.'
'We didn't expect you up this early.'
'Yeah well... Forum time!' He grinned. He sat down behind us. 'Hi Dad.'
'Hey Geoff, what it is.'
I didn't ask where Gerry was, but she came up too later, with Rachel clinging to her like a monkey. 'Sorry,' she said. 'We had a potty emergency.'
We all settled down into the meditation, chanting Om Nama Shivya, and I found myself swaying with the baby as I held him firmly by the leg. He was just starting to walk, and I didn't want him to go scooting off, but he didn't. He was as blissed out and entranced as my own kids had been by our meditation. Geoff behind me was rumbling like a Tibetan monk, and I found it very sweet. He had liked to do that when he was a kid. Was he dropping his high-energy, worldly persona here, and settling back into deep-ingrained habits? Again, I felt a rush as I had last night, time and Life moving me. The meditation settled into silence, and we all breathed together, three hundred and fifty people of one heartbeat, one breath, one mind.
I went off to give my weed walk through the woods, and Geordie went to Sas's yoga class. They were lined up under a marquee at the edge of the woods where it was cool. The ground had been laid with moving blankets from the set-up vans. Sassa stood up at the front, all long arms and legs, her blonde curls bound with a scarf.
'Namaste!' she said, smiling and bowed to them all, beaming loving-kindness. The greeting was returned.
'Before we begin, I have a little story I'd like to share with you: I've done a lot of different kinds of yoga: bikram, ashangta, kripalu, kundalini, iyengar, sivananda. But my basis was in hatha yoga, and everything I know about that, I learned from my Dad. And I'm telling you that because he's standing back there –' She smiled and peered round one of the front students, and people turned around to look as well, with smiles and greetings.
'Now, I have what you might call a very exciting or a very stressful job, depending on your point of view, so yoga and mediation are the basis of my life. They are the point from which everything else flows... When I was little, my Dad explained to me that the point of yoga was to open up the body to be able to sit, to meditate, so the basis of yoga is spiritual enlightenment, to live in consciousness and oneness with All That Is. It is a lifeway, not just a form of exercise...'
She moved into the mountain pose, and her group of students with her. For an hour they went through a sequence, then moved into challenging poses, with Sas moving among them gently correcting their various parts to be in balance. Late in the hour, those who were willing were struggling with Vrischika-asana – a very gymnastic pose, balancing on the forearms, with the legs over the head, backwards. But George was not struggling. For all he might complain about the hard ground, he was still quite strong and limber. He was shaking a little in holding the pose, and breathing deeply, but he was in perfect control and concentration.
Sas smiled as she came up behind him.
'No fair, Daddy,' she whispered, laying her hand between his shoulder blades. 'Home field advantage.'
He smiled, and then a bubble of laughter escaped.' Sh!' He breathed shortly.
'Steady on,' she smiled, and left him to it.
**
On Saturday our whole family went to Geoff’s workshop on human potential, and took up the entire front row. It was very cool to see him in action as a trainer, for he really was giving them a mini-course in Forum/est –speak. Since we got the house, we had a plaque hanging in the kitchen that, without jargon, was the essence of est:
‘ Have integrity: Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it, If you cannot, communicate as soon as possible and repair.
‘Give up being right, even when you know you are
‘Be straight in your communication, and take what you get
‘Acknowledge your fears, then act as necessary
‘Give up the interpretation that there’s something wrong
‘Give up trying to “get somewhere”. Be entirely present in the present moment.
‘Share your experiences in a way that others are touched, moved and inspired.’
‘Give up being right, even when you know you are’ always got a laugh from people visiting us, mostly at the spouse’s expense. It would be interesting to see how Geoff presented the philosophy he had been raised with, distilled through his own experience.
‘We’ll make him nervous,’ Geordie murmured.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘He talks in front of hundreds of people, at LMF and at work.’ Geoff worked in development at Microsoft.
‘Not those who know how he brushes his teeth,’ he returned. He looked back over his shoulder as Geoff came up to the front.
‘Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Geoff,’ he looked over at us, with a smile, ‘and I am a jerk. Now, you might be asking yourself what the use is of taking a workshop from a jerk, and ordinarily, I would agree with you. If this were a course in sustainable energy, that could be dangerous.’ There were laughs. ‘But in this case, of human potential, consider me the Fool, who has made all of your mistakes for you and is here to tell you about them. A wise man can learn from a fool, right?’
I sighed and George held my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. A kinder gentler est indeed… and so like another day, in this very spot. I was in tears again.
‘Now, before I begin I want to tell you a little story,’ he looked at us, and Gerry, ‘ and I hope it’s not the kind of story that most of us have – our story of all the rotten things that have happened to us and how unappreciated and abused we have been. I want to tell you how I discovered this information that I am going to share with you, to show you that I’m not just being modest in saying I’m a jerk.’ He looked out over the group.
‘I was something of a problem child,’ there were laughs at this, from the back, laughs of sympathy and camaraderie. ‘And when I was fifteen I got into some really heavy drugs,' there were murmurs. ‘Yeah, you know it… Well, my parents and my sponsor Dave-' he looked up, at the back, 'Hi Dave!… had an idea for me, and thank God, I had just enough brains to agree to it, because it changed my life. They suggested that I do a teen programme in Palm Springs, a really intense weekend course – and it got me in touch with parts of myself that I had covered up.’ His voice broke and his eyes filled with tears. He did not apologise, as people out in the world would.
‘Now, I tell this story a lot as a motivational speaker, and it always gets to me at this part, but it’s especially moving today, because my parents are sitting over there, and they know it all.’ He looked at us with a teary smile.
‘In the middle of the weekend,’ he paused, ‘I realised that I had come into this life with a lot of anger at the world. You can say it was my karma if you like. But I focused it on my parents, especially my father, when it was my stuff and really didn’t have anything to do with them.’ He paused again, and tears slipped down his face. ‘What is more, in the sessions, because of what was said, I realised that my parents lived this information, and that they had been giving it to me my whole life,’ he paused. ‘With love… in freedom… and that all the stuff I was carrying around inside of me just didn’t matter. I didn’t have to carry it around… I could let it go… and be free.’ He drew a long breath. ‘And that is what they wanted for me, that is what they always wanted for me.’ He looked at Geordie for a long moment before continuing. The love and presence between them was palpable.
‘Now, my family know all of this, as I say, because they were there. But I want to tell you people that just because you give up being a jerk doesn’t mean you still don’t need to grow…’ He looked over at us, and Gerry again. ‘I would like to share with you that I realised something this weekend -' his voice caught. ‘That I was full of excuses about why I hadn’t come here much lately, even though it’s only two hours away… I grew up here. I learned to walk on these very paths… and I realised that I was keeping part of myself apart, a part of my life apart from my wife-' Gerry was nodding her head vigorously, tears running down her face- ‘even though I married her because she’s from here too and understands how I grew up.’
He drew a breath, ‘I realised that I was keeping her and our kids apart from the Whole Being because I wanted to hold onto my sense of being different… of being special.’ He smiled at George. ‘The one thing I fought with my Dad about when I was a teenager was how we were different than other people…. Well, I am a jerk, and I like to think I’m special, and I shut myself off from and kept my wife and kids out of a part of my life that is the core of who I am, so I could maintain my separateness, my uniqueness. But I tell you, that’s not the way to do it.’ He looked out at the group. ‘So, learn from this fool….’ He drew a long breath. ‘ We’ll talk about how in a little while. But right now, I’d like you to break up into groups of four or five,’ he glanced at us, ‘ if you can, and share what has come to you, what your story might be, and what you’d like to let go of, to be free.’
The crowd, who were wide open now, turned to each other, and there was the great babble of people sharing. Geoff came over and put his arms around Gerry and they were both crying.
‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he said. The rest of us waited until they were ready to join us then had a tremendous group hug.
‘I’m so proud of you, Geoffy,’ Geordie said, clapping him firmly in an embrace.
‘I love you, Dad. I never told you that you gave me my way of life, though I tell other people all the time.’
‘Just live it, just live it. It’s all I want for you.’
Geoff moved on to Sassa. ‘Sas, you got it sis,’ he said smiling. ‘ You’ve always had it and never lost it. I love you.’
‘There’s always room for a breakthrough, bro,’ She smiled.
'Jack,' Geoff said, '...man you are a rock. I just wish I could be like you.' Jack smiled, his angel's smile, lighting up his fair face. 'You are, brother, you are,' he said. 'Deep down inside. I see it.'
He came to me. ‘Mommy.’ He was teary again. ‘Mommy, you never criticised me, even when I hurt you and was an ass. You always saw the possibility in me.’
‘Oh Geoffy!’ that old estie word was undoing.
But he had to get the group back in order. There was work to do. He clapped his hands twice and went back up to the front.
‘Thanks for sharing, people, ‘cause that’s what it’s all about.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘So, how do we do this? How do we be free and keep from being jerks, now that we’ve identified the ways in which we are? There are a couple of ways, and I’ll share them with you.’ He glanced at us. ‘But in the interest of transparency, I have to tell you that I grew up with these ideas on our kitchen wall, so maybe that’s cheating… If they seem a little hard to understand, we’ll talk about them.
‘The first is to have integrity. Now, what is that? There are a couple of definitions and I want to be clear about what I mean. It can mean being a moral person, which I kind of mean. It can mean having your outside activity and your interior mindset match – and I kind of mean that, but that’s a slippery slope. Taken at face value like that, it would mean that Hitler had integrity.’ There were laughs. ‘So what do I mean about integrity? It’s very simple: Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. If you cannot, communicate as soon as possible and repair. That means, don’t be a Yes man and say you’re going to do something when you know you won’t. And if something comes up- something really important – not that you just don’t feel like it – and you can’t do whatever you said you would – let people know as soon as you can, don’t just be a jerk and blow it off.’ There were laughs again.
‘Now, let me tell you, there are lots of ways to work excuses with this one, and believe me, I know them all, starting from when I wanted to hang out in town as a kid after school. You see, we didn’t have a phone at our house,’ he smiled at the gasps, because everyone had cell phones,
‘And my parents still don’t, so it was easy to say “yeah but…”. But the truth is there are ways of getting in touch with people, even if it means walking.’ He looked at me, and Jack. ‘My mother made it to my brother in law’s birth, when they had no phone- they still have no phone! - And there was three feet of snow on the ground and we lived three miles out of town on an unimproved road.’ More gasps and laughter. ‘Yeah, it’s kinda like that around here. What I mean is, if you want to do something, you will, and if you don’t, or really can’t, say so up front.
‘That brings up another way to be free: Be straight in your communication, and take what you get. That doesn’t mean to be ratty to people and not care if you hurt them. There are ways of telling the truth that are not scathing. It means, don’t lie, and don’t just tell people what you think they want to hear, or say one thing when you really mean another. It spares a lot of trouble if you do that. Now, I’d say that most of the problems of relationships come because people don’t do that.' Lots of people were nodding. ‘The other part of that is to realise that your feelings about things belong to you, nobody makes you feel them, so you can’t go around saying “so and so did this to me”, even though we do. Now, if you tell someone the truth, even in a good way, or share something about yourself or your life, it doesn’t mean that people are going to like it. They might feel scared or threatened, or think you’re full of beans.' He looked over at George. ‘ So if they give out to you, in whatever way, don’t argue with them or try to change their mind, just yet. Just listen to what they have to say, because it really pisses people off if they think you’re not hearing them. Mostly people just want to feel heard.’ Women in the group were nodding, and there were a lot of ‘yeah, that’s right,’ comments.
‘This is hard to do,’ Geoff acknowledged, 'because so often we have a game on, an agenda. But if you want to be free, you’ve got to give up being right, even when you know you are, and give up the interpretation that there’s something wrong.' There were a lot of rueful laughs at that. 'I admit that I'm not very good at this part. Oh I do so want to be right! And because I have a specialised knowledge in my field, it's really easy to be critical and see where things are wrong – and take that into the rest of your life. But it is what it is, plain and simple, and if we give up on being right, then we open up a space where communication can happen, and gee, maybe we might learn something! Maybe we might connect with people.' People were laughing.
'But for me, the hardest part has always been the next bit, that is to give up trying to “get somewhere”. Be entirely present in the present moment. I always had dreams that I was spinning out of the future and what could be, and was rarely present when I was a kid.' He glanced at George, 'It caused a lot of accidents and misfortune.... I think, for my own life, I can see the wisdom of my parents' way of life – it's much easier to be present when you are not distracted by what's on your blackberry, the television and your iPod, all at once. I mean, there comes a point when there's too much input, too much information.' He ducked, mugging, as if he were looking for God to strike him dead. 'I work in IT,' he said conspiratorially. 'Them's fightin words, heresy.' There were roars of laughter. 'That's just so you know, Mom and Dad: I finally got it.' Geoff was smiling. Like a new-born babe.
He paused. 'So you see how with simply sharing how it really is, you can move people, so that they are touched and inspired.' He looked over at George and his voice broke and tears filled his eyes. 'And you can change people's lives...' He looked out over the group then. 'Maybe even your own... Thank you so much for being here, all of you.' People cheered and stomped for a while. 'Now,' Geoff went on, 'I am sure you all have identified your very own sticking points. If you'd like to break up into your small groups again and share, that would be great. I'll be around to answer questions. '
And so he was, with grace and gentleness and mastery. When he got to the back of the room, he and Dave Morrisey exchanged a long long hug. Our Geoff had made it. He had become the person he came to this world to be, at this weekend. It was so beautiful. I knew that would see a lot more of him now.
**
On Sunday afternoon, between the lunch and dinner crowd, I went to Sassa's workshop on becoming vegan, in part to support her, but also to see what she said, because that journey had been so much a part of our lives. She had got permission from the kitchen and the festival to hold it there, and there were about a dozen or so of us who ranged around the big table in the centre, where I had so often mixed fillings for piroges, or made biryani, or chopped vegetables.
'Oh Ma!' Sassa cried, and hugged me. 'Okay everybody,' she said to the group 'I have to confess, I am a poser here: This is my mom, and she knows more about how to transit to veganism than I could ever learn. Sit down, and I'll tell you a little story.' She waved them to the stools that had been set up.
'I became a vegan when I was four, because that's what my Daddy was, and I wanted to be just like him...' She smiled. 'My mom had challenge enough just living, 'cause we made all our own butter and cheese and yoghurt – with no electricity and no magic packets of starter from the health food store – from our own goat's milk, whom she raised from a kid.
'I never realised what work it was to make seitan – wheat gluten – and tempeh, until I tried it myself in my kitchen in Century City. I thought, Heck, my ma makes this all the time, it can't be hard! Well, it was a mess let me tell you, so I gained a profound respect for the kind of patience and attention it takes to make protein alternatives. It was a really Satori experience.' The group, who included three men, laughed.
'I don't want to put you off, because patience and attention is really all it takes. The rest, fermentation and food combining, is really quite simple if you follow a few basic rules –' She launched into teaching them about tempeh and gluten-making, and which milk substitutes were most palatable and so on. As I listened, and as we worked on a basic seiten, I was very impressed with her knowledge and the experimentation that she had done, She talked about raising kids as vegans and how much arable land it actually took to raise a child that way rather than as a vegetarian, and gave out the nutritional scores for everything. My artistic child was speaking pure science, showing a giftedness she rarely expressed.
'You should write a book, Sas,' I told her, as we walked over to the meadow to meet the guys for the earth ball game. 'On veganism with kids. It would be very helpful for people.' She squinted at me over her sunglasses. 'Oh my gawd, Ma! I was just talking with Jack about that this morning! Hello, universe! ' She hugged my arm. 'You are so in tune, Mommy!'
I smiled.
'You're a lot braver than I was, you know,' I said. 'I was scared to death I would kill you both if you didn't have eggs and dairy. I believed all that about B12 and kwashiorkor.'
She laughed. 'And you let me become a vegan when I couldn't say my S'es!'
'Blame your dad,' I said. 'He said it wouldn't hurt to try.'
'And you just went right along with him because he said.' She laughed again.
'Well, I figured he knew what he was talking about. Geordie knows everything.'
She stopped cold, and stared at me with tears in her eyes.
'What?'
'You still say that, after all this time... Wow, that is so beautiful.'
'You will too, Sas,' I smiled. 'Jack is a jewel.'
She breathed deeply, looking out to the trees before us. 'I know. I know.'
That night at our camp singsong, Geoff, who had been sitting next to Gerry in the jam, when over to Sassa and sat down next to her. It was musical chairs for a moment while everyone rearranged themselves. Then, smiling round the circle, on five-string guitar and banjo, they began in a beautiful harmony,
‘You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.
’Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.
’Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
’And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
’Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.
’Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.’
Even Joe was crying at the end of that. We were all in such a state of love and gratitude that we broke up the jam and the group became a mass, as we wandered around hugging everyone. At one point, Anne and Maggie and I put our heads together like the weird sisters we were in an embrace. The grannies.
‘Who’d have thought it, all those years ago,’ Maggie said, laughing and sniffling, ‘that we’d be here, the crones together. It’s been such an awesome trip.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Oh I love you guys so much!’
Finally, our own little family came together, Geordie and me, and Geoff and Sass, and Jack and Gerry and all the kids. We surrounded the children and swayed together, and a hum arose. Everyone was crying. And it was beautiful. Then, there, in the middle of the night, we cleared out the chairs and cushions and did the Whitsun Morris dance, the whole lot of us.
