Passing Ships

I suppose the moment of one’s birth isn’t exactly a small moment, but it is the one I shall write about now. I was born on Friday, November 25th, 1983 at 8:52am at Pontiac General Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan. The same hospital where Dr. Jack Kevorkian was practicing. Perhaps you know him by the slanderous, “Dr. Death” as the slur goes.

At any rate. I liked to share this little trivia fact at parties…marvelous conversation starter, really. Who else could say, “I was born under the protective wing of The Angel of Death!” (A much more apt name for my good buddy, Jack.)

I really had no idea what it could imply, just that it sizzled off the tongue and landed with a zing. It tasted good in my mouth.

But, I have wondered throughout my life what sort of omen it could be.

Only now, as I approach 40 years on this Earth do I feel I’ve come to some understanding of my birth. But! To tell the whole story, we must begin with the smallest detail…as small as a tiny birthmark on my right palm.

If you are Pure Michigan, like me, you’ll know that the right hand raised forms a perfect map of the state. When you ask a Michigander, “Where ya from?” we’ll quickly raise our right hand and point out the spot for you.

On my right hand, just the tiniest bit Northwest of Detroit, is a little freckle. Pontiac - exactly. Proof of my birthplace and my birthright as a daughter of Michigan.

This has been an important reminder for me, you see, because I was whisked away from Michigan only weeks after my birth.

My father was a young resident physician at Pontiac General Hospital and to continue his pursuit of family practice medicine, he sought out a community that still had need for family practice. As rurual as he could find. None of this specialist shit! He wanted rugged, black bag, house calls in the middle of the night medicine. He believed so firmly in family practice, he even studied in Guadalajara, Mexico where he would fly into the Sierra Madre’s and take medicine to the most remote villages possible.

My mother, did not exactly share his wild heart and although she appreciated Mexican cuisine (to this day, we put cilantro in EVERYTHING) it remains a bit of a point of trauma for her that she gave birth to my older brother in a Mexican hospital without her family and friends there to be with her. Perhaps, the fear and loneliness she felt compelled her to work as a hospice RN. For almost 30 years, she sat with the dying and offered every comfort she could - including, crying with their loved ones and helping them learn to say goodbye.

So! The most salt of the Earth community my father could find here in the States, where his style of medicine was still valued and necessary turned out to be North Dakota…and, off I was, days old, on a plane to my new home where I was raised and to where I always return.

Thus, when asked, I will proudly tell you - I am a NoDak.

I realize I’m going on about geography but it *is* very important to always keep grasp of exactly where one is in time and space. That’s why I suppose I chose a world map for my first tattoo. Or rather, an outline of the continents. (I don’t care much for the imaginary “border lines” that mar up maps.) I was very young, about 25 I believe. I’d happened to make my way back to Michigan and was studying screenwriting at a small film school in Grand Rapids. I went to Love Tattoo and got my map.

I joked to everyone that if I got abducted by aliens, I just wanted to be able to tell them where to drop me back off…but, the secret in my heart was that, I’d started to have some inkling of an awakening to the idea that, we, as a species are all connected somehow. The term, “Global Citizen”, even now, earns a person a fair bit of flack. I wasn’t interested in taking anyone’s shit on the issue, so! “Map for aliens” satisfactorily explained my fresh ink.

I’ve added more tattoos since. Just a hamsa near my map and a little Maneki-neko kitty on my right wrist in honor of my friend Michael, who passed. (Better known as DJ Black Panther from Brooklyn.) But, as much as I love my chosen skin-iconography it’s that little freckle from The Universe on my right palm that has always held my wonder.

And, as it turns out, it is the tiny things that can be trusted to navigate by. Consider a sailor, on the blackest sea, dead of night. Is it not that infinitesimal pinprick of the North Star piercing the veil of night that guides him safely home?

My birthmark takes me back, again and again to Pontiac General Hospital. What suffering and weary soul was Jack keeping watch over at the moment of my birth? Did he observe their last breath as I drew mine? Did our spirits hesitate, greeting each other above the halo of the city - at that exact event horizon where stars meet city lights? Did we recognize one another and take a moment to twirl, unbound by bodies?

“Travel well, sweet friend!”

“And, you!”

Yes. I think it must be so. My spirit remembers if my mind does not.

If you’re minding the smallest details of my story, it won’t be lost on you that my father has spent 40 years now upholding his sacred oath to, “Do no harm.”

But, what about my dear friend, The Angel of Death? Did…he harm? Many call him a murderer. My father, a hero. Sinners or saints? Is the great paradox that both are entirely accurate?

I refuse to be drawn into a debate on our right to choose the moment of our departure from this Earth…if that’s the message you take from this tale, you mistake me entirely.

What I’m telling you, is that the quality of answers we find on this journey of life on Earth depends entirely on the quality of questions we wrestle with. I was fortunate to inherit big questions right out the gate.

So now, the reveal. What does it all mean, if anything? Well. Today, I recognize that the hand of my Higher Power has been with me since birth. Perhaps, even before that. Perhaps, we were one in the void before I entered this world. I can’t speak to that as I have no recollection of anything besides sweet nothing before I was born.

I do believe in reincarnation but a dear friend, Caleb, suggested to me once during one of our many dead-of-night conversations on a rooftop in downtown Los Angeles, that he thought that this was probably my first visit to Earth. He felt himself an old soul, but to him - he sensed I’d not been here before. My spirit tells me it must be so.

At any rate. In truth, I’ve always sensed my Higher Power beside me although I’ve struggled to, “Name and claim!” my Higher Power. I was raised in a faith tradition that I’ve since weighed and measured and found wanting. I’ve had heartbreaks and betrayals and joys and sorrows I’ve longed to bring to my Higher Power but was so hurt and angry, that I guarded my heart like some wounded animal. I tried to hide my heart away, safely protected by the oblivion that my alcohol addiction afforded me. I tried to out-think and deny and…perhaps it can be said, even accuse my Higher Power. Still. My Higher Power waited patiently.

To give you an idea of my mindset at one point - I often described our Universe like the ocean. At once, a tsunami and yet, every bit a calm tide pool. You can enter it, but it cares not the least if you surf or get swallowed by a whale. It’s not partial. It just is. Chaos and Order - nothing more.

I smile now, reading that. I was not entirely incorrect. The Universe is as brutal as it is beautiful. Just like the ocean.

But, I stand ready now to shout from the rooftops how wrong I was about it’s indifference.

This understanding is a gift from my Higher Power.

The gift of the Tao.

I’m but a baby practitioner myself, but the Tao has been calling me from the moment I was born.

“See…”

Observe the paradoxes. Embrace them. Light and Dark. Good and Evil. Yin and Yang.

“See.”

One of the first things I learned from the Tao Te Ching is that the Tao cannot be named. This is my favorite attribute of the Tao. Another thing I learned is that I was on to something with that global citizen thing. The Tao has taught me, we are not just connected but One. And not just our human family. ALL things in existence. We are each unique expressions of the Tao - experiencing Ourself as each other.

Or, as John Lennon put it, “I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together…”

Laugh if you will. They laughed at John, too…and, laugh still, at scientists trying to explain quantum physics. It’s human, I suppose to laugh when nervous.

But, good? Evil? Meh.

Who can afford to break their brain over such labels?

For me, the compass guiding me home is the Tao. When my heart breaks again, as it surly will. When I lose patience and become angry. When I falter out of fear…all I have to do is look to my palm and see my sweet Tao and remember the Wisdom it’s taught me - simply to try to see. To remember I’m not my thoughts or even my worst deeds. I’m a human girl, with all the great and terrible rights and responsibilities that implies. The Tao teaches me to observe only. Not react.

And to never forget, the Tao Observes as well.

“Where the Mystery is the deepest, there is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.” - Lao Tzu