She steps ahead into the chill of early morning and down the driveway

to the street, leaving tracks in the powder that fell during the night.

We turn east at the corner, squinting in the sun before

heading north on a shaded white sidewalk.

Three days ago she laid on her bed and watched as I packed the bag,

head between her paws, eyes at half-mast, tail still as steel.

In the days before departure, a separateness has entered my being,

infusing the excitement with a sense of wonder tinged with loneliness

for I go without her—without any of them —

unencumbered, anticipating presence in a new place.

If she objects to the journey, she says nothing.

Even rolling over and playing dead could not stop this train—

that’s how smart she is—

to know she cannot weaken the quiet strength

of a woman who has said yes to soul

and claimed her life.

A big-hearted thank-you to all who are supporting my second journey to Nepal, this time to work in the Mary Ward schools in Kathmandu and to discuss more water projects with IDE. I go in your honor, buoyed by your spirit and well wishes and the promise of adventure. Stories and photos to follow. Namaste.

Thursday morning. Molly and I have taken our walk, circling the campus twice, looking for squirrels. We see not one. It’s a cold morning. “They’re in their nests, girl. Let’s go home.”

Molly is napping now in the backseat of the Subaru, parked in front of the coffee shop. I’ve returned to my writing haunt, showing up on the page in a room filled with familiar smells, not-too-loud music and not-too-loud chatter, alone in the company of others. A raspberry scone drizzled in white chocolate—a rare indulgence—waits on a plate alongside a hot, foamy chai. Five men have gathered at a round table on the patio, their red and black coffee cups resting on the wrought iron. A large, mangy dog sleeps at the feet of the middle-aged man with a high forehead and shoulder-length hair. Collapsed, folded umbrellas hold memories of hot summer days, the trees above completely naked, creating long stick-figure shadows on the sun-drenched concrete. I’ve tried writing these last months but can’t sit still long enough to finish a sentence. May today be different.

Four months ago. I carry two cardboard boxes into Ali’s bathroom, open the top drawer of her dresser and begin to pack. Socks, pajamas, camisoles. In the far corner I uncover a baby t-shirt with a yellow rubber ducky painted on the front, a red ribbon tied in a bow around its neck. I’m in a movie. The heartbeat quickens, the breath grows shallow. I start to cry. What kind of mother moves her special needs daughter into a home she and her husband do not occupy.

We close on the ranch across the street the day after Thanksgiving, one year ago. Contractor and architect are on board before Christmas, a remarkably competent team who not only grasp the logistics and accommodations of wheelchair living but embrace the significance of this particular young woman leaving home, moving out, living on her own. They recognize the potential for a shot at an authentic life, on her terms. They listen, give us ideas, advocate, modify and fine tune. By February, we have a plan.

On weekends Tony and our friend Johnny demolish the main floor and the basement, ripping out 60-year-old lath plaster, tile and plumbing fixtures. They sling sledgehammers skyward and smash the ceiling, their faces covered in masks with elongated snouts and buggy eye shields to shut out the insulation that falls more than a foot deep onto the floor. Friends help. We fill bucket after bucket with dusty, crumbled debris and haul them to the dumpster in the front yard. Between February and July, a semi-truck as out of place in the neighborhood as the porta-potty in the front yard, will come and go six times with an industrial-size dumpster on its flatbed trailer. Three silver maples, a blue spruce, a handful of shrubs, a metal carport, a rotting planter and the concrete sidewalk—all are destroyed in the name of renovation. In their place go new walls and flooring, upstairs and down, a new heating system, wiring and plumbing, a new staircase to the basement, a new roof, a different entrance, sidewalk and carport. The place is slowly transformed.

During the night of June 3^rd—the home nearly completed and ready for paint—a copper thief armed with a pair of wire cutters breaks into the back door. The electrician arrives early that morning, hears a sound he doesn’t recognize and follows it down the basement steps. Water is spewing from the water-supply pipe for the toilet, not yet installed. Water has been gushing through the night, splashing the drywall, soaking the shower tile and the new vanity, staining the solid fir door and flooding the entire basement, destroying the baseboards that were trimmed and nailed into place less than a week earlier. The electrician calls the contractor. My phone rings at 7:15.

“Rebecca, it’s John,” his voice serious, calm, deeper than usual. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this but… we have a situation.”

Appliance and equipment cords, copper wires and tubing have been severed at their base. Cables, ladders and extension cords are gone. We surmise that the thief noticed the water-supply pipe in his search for the mechanical room. He meant to snap the pipe completely but instead cracked it. The geyser sent him running. I imagine him cussing, imagine him scrambling up the steps and out the back door, kicking down the gate on his way to the street, to the car, to the recycle for cash, to the meth lab.

“He’ll be lucky to get thirty dollars for that wire,” the cop tells us, shaking his head. He takes notes. I call the insurance agent and take photos. Water mitigators show up at noon, the adjuster two hours later. A detective calls. More questions, more reporting. No one tells me the one thing I want to hear: your daughter will be safe.

I’m standing in Ali’s bedroom, a few days after the move. The iris bliss walls I painted in July are bare.

“How about we bring over some of Katy’s photographs for these walls,” I say. Her head jerks to the right. No. Her fingers start typing.

“This is a new time in my life. I don’t want any art from my old room.”

She looks at me, a tinge of fear rising in her cheeks. She’s standing up to the most powerful person in any child’s life: her parent.

“No? Really?” I’m disappointed, a little surprised. “But wouldn’t the photos make this feel more like home?”

She shakes her head. “Over time,” she types. “I’ll find art over time.” I try again a few months later but she doesn’t budge. “Leave it alone,” she tells me, tenaciously holding her ground. The playing field has shifted. We’re on her turf.

A few weeks pass. Not one request to spend the night in her old room. No showing up for dinner at the last minute or asking me to run an errand for her. My phone beeps one afternoon in mid-August. It’s a text from Ali.

Can I come over? I need a hug and $20.

She knows I’m putty in her one good hand.

I look up from the laptop and out to the patio, roll a stiff neck from side to side. The men at the round table have left. I sip my cold chai and watch a young man in a motorized wheelchair drive past the coffee shop. A cushion supports his head, a backpack hangs behind the chair. He crosses the street at the corner, a male attendant walking behind him. On their way to Cheesman Park, I think, or maybe to the Greek place for lunch. Ali is on campus at this moment. She’ll meet Sarah, her roommate, at a pre-arranged spot after class, or they will have texted with a new plan. I know neither the time nor the meeting place. I don’t know if Ali leaves the classroom alone or with a friend, or if someone helps her with the poncho. This hyper-vigilant mother mind—trained and conditioned over more than two decades—wonders if the need to know would exist if my daughter were a walking, talking twenty-something college co-ed. I remind myself to trust. This is about independence. Hers and mine.

Sunday afternoon. I haven’t seen or heard from Ali in three days. Before she moved out, I promised I wouldn’t peak in the front window, grill her about eating vegetables or show up without texting or calling first. I need a fix. I send a text.

Can I come say hi for a minute?

No, showering and goin out tonight

Good for you. Where you goin?

Movie

No more lessons required. Ali Cat has learned to fly.

Hours later, restless in bed, I roll onto my side and feel the immensity of her childhood in my entire being. Joy and heartache woven around each other in thread strong as rope, impenetrable to wire cutters and hacksaws, braided with diligence, will power, support from others, selflessness and love, always the love—sometimes the only tree left standing after stamina and determination have been felled. To allow independence to a young woman whose life knows so much dependence requires saying yes when saying no would be so much easier: yes to a renovation that has wiped out my savings, yes to the caring people who continue to step forward, yes to believing that Independent Living for the Disabled is even possible, and then letting go and allowing life to unfold—what she hangs on her walls, what she eats, when she goes to bed, who she spends time with—all of it, as she chooses.

In the car, 5 pm. A call from Ali. She’s put the phone on speaker so her hand is free to type.

“Sarah is sick and I don’t want to get it.”

“Come for dinner and hang at our house,” I suggest. “I’d love that.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

We’re on the same page. How easy this is.

It’s old times again, she keeping me company while I cook, her telling stories and sampling the food. Four of us share crab cakes that evening, Ali in her old spot at the head of the table, Molly sprawled next to her in front of the fireplace.

Around nine, Ali and I head back to her house. Dried leaves collected in the street’s gutter crunch under the tires of the wheelchair. I help with her bedtime routine—washing face, brushing teeth, changing into pajamas, charging the equipment and getting into bed. The television remote, iPhone and a book are within reach. She shows me she can operate the roller switch on the wall behind her when she’s ready for lights out.

I sit on the bed, slide my hand under the purple comforter and rub her bottom in the slow, circular motion she has known since the night I first held her, 24 years ago this month, in the international terminal at O’Hare. The tightness in her body begins to relax. I adjust the pillow and move her head to the middle, brushing the loose strands of hair away from her face. Do the caretakers do these things, I wonder? Do they matter to anyone but me?

Kisses, a hug, one last snuggle at her neck and I say goodbye. I step outside, lock the door, walk down the sloping sidewalk and across the street to home. At the front door I turn and look one last time in her direction. The prayer flags hang quietly on this still night, the moon hangs low in the November sky. I catch her scent on the collar of my jacket and step inside, beaming.

On the plane, middle seat. Mt. Everest appears on the screen that tracks our route. We begin the descent into Kathmandu. It’s ten o’clock at night. We fly in darkness. In the morning, in the light, we are too close, too low to see beyond the hills to the world’s tallest mountain. Halfway around the globe and not so much as a glimpse. Reason enough to return.

We board Buddha Air for the short flight to Pokhara. Out the right side, the Annapurna Range of the Himalaya. I’m seated on the left. I hand John my camera. On land we ride on winding hilly roads, through village after village, horns honking at every turn. Primitive mud-brick dwellings. All ages of people sitting, standing in groups, talking, tending to babies. Children playing and chasing. Toothless old ones squatting and smoking. We pass plots of tomato, potato, squash and lettuce. Two hours of riding and we climb out of the van, start the walk to Majha Badahare. First on the dusty road and then on the trail, switchback after switchback, up the rocky path to the village where we are anointed with the sacred red dot, a marigold mala, a bow. Namaste.

I love looking into their faces. The eyes dark, clear, luminous, men, women and children. Nepalis see with their heart. Humble, present, fearless. I try not to be the first to look away.

From sunup to sundown, villagers stand on the ridge and watch the Americans. They smile, talk among themselves, laugh, stare. The first westerners to visit, to sleep on their ground, to help to dig the trench that will deliver the water that changes their lives, forever.

The Nepali woman and I face each other, our legs straddling the trench. We break up the rocky soil with a lang-handled scoop, then push the dirt onto a flattened cement bag. When the mound covers the bag, each of us grabs two corners. Together we lift the pile to the top of the trench, dump the soil, and start again. Young men swing pic-axes high above their heads, driving the point into the hard soil. The leader has black hair that falls below his shoulder blades. A bandanna covers his head. The young men are lean and strong, dark-complected, focused, white teeth, gorgeous.

The women work in traditional kurtas, their heads wrapped in cloth or a towel, bare-footed or in flip-flops, their feet callused and stable as an animal’s paw. In my Vasque boots and True Value work gloves, I feel protected, privileged, set apart, oddly extravagant.

Do I love myself?

I could do better.

Do I forgive myself?

Not enough, not deeply.

Do I care what others think?

More than I want to.

Do I wish I could start over?

Sometimes.

I believe I am homesick.

A man and his granddaughter climb the steep grassy slope and step onto the terrace where we camp. He sees me writing in the dining tent and approaches, holding the child’s hand. The smile does not leave his face as he starts talking. He raises his eyebrows and waits for my answer. I tell him I would give anything to know what he is saying but I’m sorry, I don’t understand. He says something more, waits again. We both laugh, holding the silence like a prize we can’t quite reach, and then they turn to walk away.

Am I happy to be here?

Without question.

Out of my comfort zone?

Yes, and no.

Am I handling it well?

Mostly.

Talking, talking, nonstop talking. Working, waiting, cooking, eating, they talk. How is it they have so much to say?! They make jokes and laugh easily. Apparently they find life very funny. It seems a good way to live.

I think it’s Christmas Eve day, what would have been Mom’s 82nd birthday. The sherpas are chattering and making breakfast. Soon tea will be coming. Krishna Sherpa has come to the dining tent where I am writing morning pages. He sweeps last night’s crumbs from the cloth, then arranges the condiments down the center of the table—sugar, honey, peanut butter, salt and pepper, a tub of hot cocoa, a small jar of Nescafe, green chile sauce, goat butter, a container of ketchup, a box of peach tea bags and one of black. He carefully sets the table with flatware and stainless plates. I stay at one end, watching and writing, out of his way. Sangay pours the milk for tea and offers me a cup. The stainless mug warms my cold hands. What was the line in The New Yorker a few months ago? “No longer encumbered by the pressure to satisfy the needs of a husband and children, she was free to discover who she was.”

We visit the school made of stones at the bottom of the hill. Three classrooms—youngest, middle, oldest, up to fifth grade. Toddlers spend the day wandering after an older brother or sister. Some cry when the sibling is out of sight; others suck their thumb and kick up dust, stopping to watch the strangers unload the duffels filled with things they do not own: toothbrushes, pencils, colored paper, paints, glue sticks. We talked about the Santa Claus effect before the trip… how to share our bounty and not diminish the beauty that is their life. May they accept these gifts in the spirit with which they are given: we are sharing, not judging.

Bags of concrete and piles of stones fill the corners of the dirt-floored classrooms. The children sit on crude benches and work at crude tables. Wire bars fill the opening that allows light to enter the room. A chalkboard hangs on the front wall. There is nothing more.

Black tea or milk tea? Sugar? Washing water? Sangay and Dawa making rounds at daybreak. Morning mist hangs in the air. Birds call from the bamboo forest, a baby wails in the home just below us. We are perched on a terrace, like the tomato, onion and radish. We live among the villagers, like the goats, the water buffalo and the cat who hides in the thatched roof.

We have a new relationship with dirt. Rather than something to wash away, dirt is something to live with, to play in. Getting rid of it is impossible. Wearing the same clothes day and night and day again. A new kind of freedom. It makes me happy to care so little.

Moving from campsite to the school to the dance to Arapita to the collective to the worksite—we recognize faces! At every encounter, we press our palms together, bring them to our foreheads and bow. Namaste. How to bring the sentiment home…

Steady on. No slowing down as the workday nears an end; no rushing to finish before sundown. Steady down the hills and up. Steady cooking on the veranda. Steady digging trenches and mixing the cement. We are on their turf. We do as they do.

The men build the new “plastic house” with a machete, shovels, an oversized sheet of plastic, and wire. No hammer, no nails, no screwdriver. No power tools. No wheelbarrow. The handle falls off the scoop Pierce is using to work the soil in the greenhouse. No run to Home Depot. A Nepali man takes the tool, whittles two pieces of bamboo and carefully wedges them into the metal fitting. Ten minutes later, Pierce is back at work.

Resolutions:

Ramp up the exercise; return to trek.

More walking, biking and scootering; less driving.

Grow vegetables in Ali’s new backyard in honor of the villagers and their way of life.

Simplify where possible.

Groundlessness. Nothing familiar. Isn’t that what I wanted? For heart and mind to be blown open? Yes, and yes. Thank you. No one asks about my work, my husband’s work, where I live, what car I drive, how much money I have. This moment, this exchange, is what matters.

After breakfast we visit the Nutrition Rehabilitation House started by Olga Murray, an 85-year-old retired lawyer from Sausalito, not five feet tall. She trekked in Nepal when she was 60, broke her foot and recommitted her life to one of the poorest countries on the planet. The bus parks among the puddles on the side of a street. We walk up an alley to the three-story House. A vegetable garden sits behind a blue gate at the back of the lot. Marigolds line the walkway. A Nepali woman steps out the back door to greet us. We follow her through the house, poking heads into bedrooms, and onto the roof where children and their mothers rest in the sunlight. The kids are here because they are malnourished. A closely monitored diet restores the majority of them to health in less than a month. The mothers are here to learn how to prepare nutritious food for their families. A boy lies on a blanket in the sunlight. He’s wearing a blue sweater. I recognize the head rolling from side to side, the spastic arms and legs. He smiles when we say namaste. We learn from the supervisor that he is six, that he is here because his family does not have the resources to care for him. I step back from the group, grateful for sunglasses to hide my wet eyes.

At his age, Ali presented like he does when she was on her back, on the floor. The same flailing arms, the tight limbs and weak torso, the rolling head. At six she was also going to school, receiving physical and language therapy, eating healthy food, taking Feldenkreis lessons, driving a power wheelchair, communicating on a talker and living with her family. What if she had not made the journey from Korea? What if I had

not committed to the journey of motherhood? I walk down the steps and into the backyard, find a quiet place in the shade and watch two women wash the breakfast dishes at the outdoor pump. I feel my heart beating beneath my worn red vest, and cry in silence for what might have been, in gratitude for what is.

Morning, around eight. At a table near the space heater in the New Orleans Cafe in Kathmandu. I’m the only patron, their first of the day. Drinking piping hot Nepali chai, neither as spicy nor as sweet as the chai served in the US. Candles light a few tables. The sun hasn’t yet hit this pocket of the city. I sit on a cushioned bench along a brick wall and reflect on the pandemonium that is Kathmandu. Burning incense and burning garbage. Cows alongside cabs; emaciated dogs and playful children. Piles of raw, red meat. Skinned chickens stacked on tables in the open air. Men squatting around small fires. Beautiful women in red beaded kurtas, bangles at their wrists, slippers on their feet. Horns honking, always the honking. Pedestrians both faster and slower than I. “Come in, see more, see more,” coax the shopkeepers. The bag on the handlebar of a scooter brushes my thigh on our walk to the bead stalls. I hear the flap of a pigeon’s wing over my right shoulder at the Monkey Temple. Cows and dogs pick through garbage in the shallow river flooded with debris. Bodies burn in cremation ceremonies along the riverbank. To find calm in this chaos is to find it anywhere.

You have to find the path that has heart and walk it impeccably. Again and again you encounter your own uptightness, your own headaches. In this chaos I feel my uptightness, watch it in my mind. Being in this city humbles me. Being in the village humbled me. The heart opens another millimeter in the quest to be more loving, accepting and kind, to let go.

It’s weird to call home, or to write a message on facebook. I love you. Where else to begin? We have traveled so far, seen and felt so much. And soon we must leave. Am I ready for the hardest part of the journey? Am I ready to be home?

Kathmandu or Majha Badahare? I would choose village life. Closer to nature. Quieter, more peaceful. Hands in the soil, feet touching the earth. Life’s rhythm as natural as the rise and fall of the sun. Equanimity seems to come easier in the village and yet I have spent the last 37 years in two of America’s largest cities. I’ll say this much: Chicago and Denver are no Kathmandu.

Noise, always noise. My mind goes to a more peaceful time just two days ago. How are the villagers? Are they still talking about us as we are about them—and will be next month, in five years, forever?

Happy New Year from the corner table in the front window of the Roadhouse Cafe. It’s tea time, a few hours before beginning the long trip home. On the other side of the glass, motorcycles, backpacks, a man in a manual wheelchair pushing through the crowd. A couple in their twenties, blond and blue-eyed, strolls past the window. What if I had made this trip at their age, or not said no to the Peace Corps in the late ’70s, a few weeks before departing? Some things we cannot know. The barista rings the bell. Another milk tea waits to be served.

These days I relate to the pig.

How convenient it would be to step back into the luxuries of modern American life after an arduous journey and simply be grateful to be home, among family and friends, happy to return to civilization and the familiar routines of daily life.

The truth? I slept better in the tent than I have in my own bed this past week. The spiritual practices I’ve nurtured for decades are inaccessible. I feel raw and open, untethered, homeless. A friend who traveled to Thailand some years ago shares in an email that she left that fall as an American and came home a foreigner. I spend my days in the in-between place called bardo: I’ve left one shore but haven’t fully arrived at the next. The space is inconvenient, uncomfortable, unsettling. I hold back, afraid that embracing what is here means losing what was there. Ask me what I loved and I will tell you…

The transport drops us off in a busy village and we walk the last two hours, first on a winding dirt road and then up a narrow trail through the hills of central Nepal to the remote village of Majha Badahare. We climb steadily over rock and packed earth. With the last step, we’re met by a group of smiling young women wearing beaded red kurtas, their black hair wrapped in cloth, shiny bangles at their wrists. The first places a strand of marigold blossoms, the mala, around our neck. Another dips her finger into the basin of red powder and marks our forehead with the sacred bindi. One by one they anoint us, place their palms together and bow. “Namaste.”

Two days later, the traveling finally behind us, our journey begins.

We camp on a terrace situated just below the homes of two village families—mud brick houses with thatched roofs, shared by water buffalos and goats. The other sixteen households are staggered on the terraces below. The sherpas have pitched tents for sleeping, cooking, dining and bathrooming. Pads and sleeping bags have been unrolled, the hole dug in the tent closest to the bamboo forest. For eight days this is home. Five sherpas tend to our needs. We eat better than I would have dreamed possible—French fries, pizza, pancakes, lots of vegetables, roasted chicken, even a gorgeous cake for Christmas dinner.

Every morning at seven, Sangay and Krishna come by the tent with steaming milk tea and thirty minutes later, a shallow basin of hot washing water. Breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, tea at four, dinner at six. Midweek they collect our laundry, wash it by hand and hang it on rope strung between the tents. I consider bargaining to bring one of them home.

We rise before dawn one morning to hike with headlamps through the mist to witness the sun rise on the Annapurnas. We share tea with the villagers who live at the top of the mountain while we wait for daybreak. Through an open door I watch an old woman stand at her shrine and light the first candles of the day, burn the morning incense and bow.

We walk to the overlook, stand among Hindu shrines and grave markers and watch in silence as the sun turns the dark masses of the Himalaya lavender, then pink and finally bright white.

Dancing in the shadows of the bonfire, I move my hips to mirror the Nepali men and women and wave my arms high into the air, turning my hands as if they have a language of their own, mindful of the roots sticking up from the bumpy field that is our campground. An old Gurung woman stands near the fire and watches the dancing. Most of her teeth are gone. Bangles circle her wrist. Her skin is wrinkled like an elephant’s back, her eyes bright. The top of her head just reaches my shoulder. Her feet are bare, her head, limbs and torso wrapped in worn fabric. I put my arm around her, feel her tiny body easily find its way into the curves and angles of a stranger. She looks up and smiles. I wonder if letting go is something she has always known or if she, like me, has had to learn it, slowly, painstakingly, over and over.

This past Saturday I spend eleven hours volunteering on audition day at Denver School of the Arts where Tess is a sophomore.

“A week ago I was watching bodies being cremated on pyres of wood alongside the river at Pashupatinath,” I say to Glenna. “Earlier that day I spun prayer wheels as I circumambulated the temple at Bodhnath, the largest stupa in the world. I don’t know how to be here.” My eyes scan the crowded lobby, dazed.

We bring duffels of pencils, scissors, paints, paper and glue to the three-room school. Ruth, the ten-year-old in our group, shows the kids how to make snowflakes and Jennifer, her mother, shows them how to weave and glue strips of paper into chains. Pierce teaches a lesson on picking up litter. Elaine orchestrates stringing a cord through the cloth bags she brought from Denver and filling them with toothbrushes, bars of soap and nail clippers.

Lynn pulls out the paints and t-shirts. We all pitch in—Harrison, John Charles, John, Lynn, Steve and I—helping cut, tape, glue, paint, teach, interact. Sangay is there to translate. We notice the absence of fine motor skills juxtaposed with the exquisite ability of even the youngest child to navigate the bumpy, rocky paths. Toddlers follow older siblings around the schoolyard while old men in topis stand to the side and watch, curious about the westerners who have come to their village, a first.

Back home, I pull dirty work boots and a pair of all-terrain sandals from their stuff sacks in the filthy duffel, step outside and pound the soles against one another. Nepali dust fills the air—dust from the village, discoloring our shoes and socks, mixing with sweat and settling between our toes as we dig trenches alongside the barefooted men and women of Majha Badahare. We share six primitive tools among us—two pick axes, three scooper shovels, a large spade. The front man breaks up the ground with the pick axe; the second chops and loosens the dirt, pulling it to the side; another deepens the trench with the shovel. More scooping and digging follow until the furrow is deep enough to weather the monsoons that come in the spring. The hose is laid at the bottom of the trench and with the shovel and scooper, we bury the precious black tube with dirt and rock.

The young men of the village are strong and motivated but it is the women who work until dusk. Of course. They are the ones who will no longer be hauling water in canisters up and down the hills. They have much to gain. The men, too. The average villager farms 500 square feet of terraced land on a hillside—a plot not much larger than a two-car garage in an American suburb—where they grow tomato, potato, cucumber, cauliflower and turnips on raised beds, beautifully tended. At an elevation of 3,800 feet, situated at the latitude of Florida, the Middle Hills—provided the land is irrigated during the dry season—yield abundant crops that farmers sell to the local collection center. From there the produce travels to markets in Pokhara, sometimes as far away as Kathmandu. Thanks to the irrigation system, village men and women can now farm throughout the year and generate an income that takes them out of subsistence farming into Nepal’s cash economy. Pride shows on their faces. They have work, and purpose, money to send their children to school. They are humble and grateful human beings. We find them remarkable.

A ceremony on December 27, 2010, makes it official: the village of Majha Badahare has water! The plaque commemorating the MUS (multiple use system) is read, water taps throughout the village are turned on and the crowd erupts in cheers and clapping. Our visit is timed to coincide with the final stage of the project so that we can leave knowing the work was completed and the water running. Speeches are made by community and political leaders. The head of IDE Nepal (International Development Enterprises) addresses the group. Some of us are asked to speak.

“In America we have many advantages, many blessings,” I tell them, “but living and working alongside you has been one of the most special experiences of my life.” The people slaughter and roast a goat for the occasion. The village enjoys a feast and later that night, a bonfire and dancing. At the close of the ceremony, five Nepali women wrap us in the traditional garb of the Gurung to celebrate the arrival of water in their village and to honor our contribution in making that possible. The fabrics are held in place not with buttons, zippers and hooks but with folds and tucks, secured at the hip with a bright yellow sash. A cord with a machete’s sling over the rear is tied around the sash, a necklace of neon-green glass beads and a mala of hand-rolled poinsettia leaves, picked that morning, placed around our necks. A white embroidered shawl covers our shoulders. We smile at the camera, secretly knowing how rare this is, how good it feels to step out of ourselves into a world unlike the one we know.

On the third day home I replace the covers of the large pillows on the bench with the embroidered covers I purchased our last afternoon in Kathmandu. I drape katas at the corners of three framed photographs in my study. I set the prayer wheel made of silver and yak bone that Pierce brought home for his dad on the mantel. An embroidered piece I bought from an insistent Nepali man early one morning in Pokhara hangs over the piano. The zhe bead I purchased from a woman named Karma does not leave my neck, and I return to work wearing a pashmina kurta. Pierce and I hang the prayer flags across the front of the house. I hang miniature flags above the meditation cushion in my study, and set the buddha from Bodhnath next to the candle.

Was the trip life-changing? I figure some time needs to pass before I can answer that question. I do know how lucky I was to be able to go, to travel safely to the other side of the planet and back again. I lived without a shower for 10 days and didn’t miss it. I developed a fondness for milk tea with sugar, acquired a very special “Nepal” family—the people in our group—and adopted a new benchmark for chaos: the streets of Kathmandu on New Year’s Eve. Snow has fallen in Denver this week. The scene outside my window is as white as the peaks in Nepal. The Tibetan chant that plays at Bodhnath—Om Mani Padme Hum—plays while I write, and I remember thousands of prayer flags waving in the wind. May I one day return.

In a few hours, we go…. First to Los Angeles, then on to Hong Kong, Kathmandu and finally Pokhara where we’ll transfer to 4-wheel drive vehicles for a ride to the foot of a trail leading up 1,000 feet to the village of Mahja Badahare, perched on the side of a mountain, the place we’ll call home for 8 days. No electricity, no heat, but hopefully a cistern filled with water at the end of our stay. I ask that you hold us in your hearts. You will be in mine. Namaste.

The leaves of the cottonwoods shimmer in mid-afternoon light. It’s early October in Santa Fe. Faded green, yellow and gold overhead, a soft, dry crackle underfoot. This morning three of us walk up a trail to a white cross on a hill and overlook the city of faith. We wind our way through narrow streets and along a dry creek bed, past the galleries on Canyon Road to the coffee shop for peach ginger iced teas. This is my last trip before the big trip. Already I’m imagining what trip will follow the one to Nepal. Am I really that restless, or is this what comes with turning sixty and hearing stories of heart attacks, brain aneurisms and cancer in people younger than I. The only way to deal with insecurity, fear and suffering, writes Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen monk, is to live the present moment in a profound way. To fully align mind with body. To give each movement, each act, one-hundred percent of our attention. I have enough moments of full concentration to know he is right. I have many more that tell me I have much to learn.

Ali is ready to move out. Fly the coop, leave the nest, live with roommates instead of family members. For years I wondered if she would ever want to leave my side, ever be able to. I wondered if I could bear the separation if she were to go, if I could trust that she would be okay without me and, with a force just as potent, I struggled with how to last, how to endure the long haul and not be buried in the rubble. We’re considering purchasing a house for her that I can see from our front window. Before walking up the stairs at night, I could look out and know the roof was not engulfed in flames, see that the van was home and a light was on. My head says she has the skills, the judgment and the support to live anywhere in the city. My heart wants her across the street.

I awaken early, before dawn, and fall back to sleep to dream of a doctor, in tears, giving me a diagnosis. I had no idea anything was wrong. She has covered me in a cape and pulled a tight cap down over my ears. I strain to hear her. The words are garbled, like she’s talking under water. “I can’t hear you!” I scream. “I need to hear you!” She shouts that my eyes are filled with yellow spots, and I won’t recover. Her eyes are filled with terror. “It’s a disease that originated in Peru,” she shouts. I flash to the trek last summer—the last time I traveled far away—and wake up.

No running water or electricity in Nepali villages. No showers, no hair dryers, no mirrors. We will all look and smell bad together…except the young ones. I saw a picture of myself at 19, maybe 20, the other day. I had no idea I was ever that beautiful.

Long skirt ordered online. $4.99 khaki work pants from Goodwill. Low-cut work boots purchased with REI member refund. Sleeping pad from backpacking trips. Sherpas to supply tents, sleeping bags and liners. Homeopathic immune boosters and remedies for gut and respiratory issues. Cipro if things get serious. A new bottle of Ambien. On the to-do list goes a remedy for jet lag, flu shots, Pierce’s second Hep A shot and next week’s call to the Travel Clinic for their updated advisory. We have money belts and passports, duffels, stuff sacks and backpacks, 50 toothbrushes from Dr. Robbins and 10 official frisbees individually wrapped in plastic, including two that glow in the dark. Still to purchase: a new journal, Arnica gel, two gifts for Christmas sharing and books to read with children in the village. We need to take photos for our visas and create back-ups of passports, credit cards and airline tickets. Have I crossed from conscientious into compulsive? Will I really be able to let go?

Depending on my purpose for travel, where I’m going and how attached I feel to things, I can pack an overnight bag and be gone for a week or bring three bags for four days. On this trip I’ll be the one with more homeopathic remedies than t-shirts, more lotions than pairs of socks. Travel light. There’s pashmina and silver in Katmandu.

Lately, at night, curled against the backside of a warm husband in a familiar bed, I think about lying on a pad in a tent on a patch of ground halfway around the world. An ambulance blasts down Monaco. No sirens in the village. Roosters at dawn probably, but no wailing fire engines or speeding police cars. Westerners are an anomaly to the Nepali people, the source of endless curiosity. Every book I read talks about there being no privacy. We’ll see stars we never see in a sky vast as an ocean brushing up against the tallest mountains on the planet. Some nights, before falling asleep, I imagine this new place and feel fear crawl out from under the blanket to look me in the eye, followed by a glance from her sister, the thrill of adventure.

Away from home, the choice to be flexible or frustrated, fluid or stuck, open or closed, appears at every turn, sometimes moment by moment. It is the same at home, but here we fall into routines and ruts. We sleepwalk, sometimes for years. In places far away from what we know, we choose how to be with what presents: no bathroom, no bed with flannel sheets and a favorite pillow, no room of my own. A son to protect. No husband to turn to. Traveling companions I’ve known for less than a year. The self, exposed.

Canopies of yellow, gold, brown and red drape the streets in our neighborhood. Leaves have begun to fall. We woke up to rain the other morning, with a dusting of snow in the mountains. The first frost of the season arrived last night. The wedding quilt from Phoebe has gone back on our bed. Molly and I are walking later, after the sun is up. We’ve moved through winter, spring and summer since I first felt the calling to make the trip. If fall is here, Nepal can’t be far behind. We leave in 65 days.

I’ve started the countdown and if you choose to keep up with this blog, you’re along for the ride. In three months our passports will be stamped for entry into a country I’ve dreamed of visiting for twenty years. That this dream is coming true because others have made it possible is even more astonishing. The entire seven thousand dollars the two of us need for the trip is in an account at Montview, with a few hundred to spare for project disbursement in Nepal. I’ve sent thank-you notes to all who donated, but I can’t say it enough. I feel the gratitude deeply. Thank you. What a gift you have given us and the villagers of Mahja Badahare. By the end of the year, they’ll be dispensing water in the village from a tap designated for their family, and Pierce and I will be returning from an adventure unlike any before it…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Tony and I are at the table of friends last November. I’ve been talking about Peru.

“Where do you want to go next?” asks Jeff.

“Nepal,” I answer, without hesitation.

He smiles. “Great choice. I was there in 2000. Magical place. Changed me forever.”

Jeff was on the first work trip put together by Montview. “I’ve heard there’s talk of another one in 2010. If you’re interested I’ll email you the name of someone to contact.”

A week later Tony and I attend a potluck to learn more. He leaves intrigued (his word). I’m ready to sign up. At dinner the next night we tell the kids about it. Two weeks later, Tony announces that the trip isn’t for him.

I spend the month of December separating myself from the idea. I trekked in the Andes last summer without Tony. I promised that next time, we both go. Nepal isn’t likely to disappear. Get these kids raised and out of the house. Get Ali settled in her own place. You can’t leave Tony during the holidays, his busiest season, with three kids at home and out of school. Get over it.

Callings present, tease and grow silent, only to peek around the corner and whisper seductively when they see an opening. Images appear. You hear yourself say something and wonder where the thought came from. The deeper the call, the more relentlessly it persists, like falling in love before you really know the guy. You can’t stop thinking about him despite poor timing, no job and a million other reasons to run in the opposite direction. But you don’t.

I call a friend who went to Nepal with Montview in 2007. She’s going again this year. I’m looking for a comrade, someone who will encourage adventure and ignore rationality. Someone who will tell me to go.

“You know, Rebecca, Nepal isn’t going anywhere. Your kids are still at home. These are years you can’t recapture. They’ll be out of the house before you know it. I’d think twice about going right now. There’ll be another time.”

I stop talking to people about the idea. I have trouble sleeping. I’m irritable. I want out, away from the responsibilities, away from the holiday rituals I haven’t loved since it fell in my lap to make Christmas special for everyone else.

I go upstairs after dinner and lie on the bed with a book. Except for the reading lamp, the room is quiet and dark. I’m distracted, reading the same sentence two and three times. The book falls to my belly. I close my eyes, and it comes. From the gut, through the heart and into the head.

Take Pierce.

My eyes flash open as if someone had turned on the lights. I stop breathing. I listen. Once more for certainty.

Take him.

Deep knowing is a wonderful thing. In the moments before the mind engages, before fear and mental formations set in, there is clarity of purpose. The soul smiles; the body waits for instruction. I listen for something more but nothing comes. I breathe. Nothing more is needed. Marching orders have been given. I know what I need to do.

“Sit,” I tell Tony. It’s the next day. We’re in the office at Tonto. He has fifteen minutes to grab lunch. “I need to tell you something.”

“What? What are you up to?” He smirks. I can’t stop smiling. “What’s going ON?”

Again I ask him to sit. I take the other stool, turn to face him.

“I want to go on the work trip to Nepal and I want Pierce to come with me.”

He takes a bite. “He’ll drive you crazy.”

“No, he won’t.” I’ve thought about this. “Without Tess, the two of them can’t escape to their own little world. We’ll be outside and working. No video games or cell phones. In nature. For two weeks.”

Silence. “It’s great,” he finally says, and offers a smile. “I think the two of you should go.”

Tony admitted later that he had no choice that day than to offer his blessing. From the moment I walked into the office, he knew something was up. An energy was in motion and no one was stopping it. Who would want to. The call had come.

And with it, a clarity that manifests so rarely in life that when it does, one has no choice but to respond. To ignore it is to ask for illness, depression, an accident. Fear falls away. Practicality and reason melt. A luminosity surrounds the idea, protecting it as sacred space. Details are worked out later. When the call comes, there is only stepping up and saying Yes.

Thanks to all of you—family, friends and clients—Pierce and I are leaving in 90 days for the adventure of our lives—together. That’s the best part. Stay tuned as we prepare for the journey. I promise to keep you posted.

The object of pilgrimage is not rest and relaxation… To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life. Nothing matters now but this adventure.

— Huston Smith

A friend said to me a few weeks ago, “Imagine if every person in the world had access to fresh water, even just one gallon a day. What a difference that would make.”

She’s right… what a difference.

In the spirit of hoping to make a difference, Pierce and I are headed to Asia in December to help install what’s referred to in developing countries as a MUS—multiple use (water) system. Our destination is the remote village of Majuwa Badahare in the Pokhara region of central Nepal. We’re traveling with a group from Denver, organized by the folks from Montview Presbyterian Church, who have been sending volunteers to Nepal since 2000. Eleven of us will be working under the direction of a team from International Development Enterprises (www.ideorg.org). They’re providing the expertise, we the physical labor. We’ll be digging trenches, mixing concrete and building cisterns. I’ll be leaning heavily on my Lake Wobegon where-the-women-are-strong childhood, and swallowing ibuprofen by the handfuls.

According to National Geographic (April 2010), women in developing countries walk an average of 3.7 miles for water. Nepal is no exception. The people in Majuwa Badahare walk miles for water or use what collects in puddles, jeopardizing their health and the health of their families. The MUS will draw from a natural spring and send water by hose or pipe to the village for cooking, drinking and cleaning… carried of course, but for yards instead of miles. The run-off will be used to water the crops of small-plot farmers in the village, potentially moving them out of subsistence farming into the cash economy. We’ll be working alongside Nepalese people, camping in the village, eating local food and using local facilities, if you get my drift.

This is a service trip. Pierce and I are fundraising our expenses. We just passed the $5,000 mark on our way toward the $7,000 required to cover our airfare plus in-country food, transport, and mandatory evacuation insurance. Many thanks to all of you who have sent donations! If you haven’t yet received a personal note, you will. Your generosity is remarkable. I’m deeply touched… awed is more like it.

I’m making the trip because I feel called to go, although I tried for a month this last winter to talk myself out of it. I’d be away over the holidays, leaving Tony with the family during his busiest season. Asia is a long haul. I have a hard time sitting still — how could I possibly do 21 hours on a plane. There’ll be other opportunities, I told myself. I’m healthy. But my sixtieth birthday loomed, with more years behind me than ahead. I couldn’t get comfortable saying no to a voice that never wavered. Two months go by. The deadline for applications passes. I call the group leader on a Wednesday in January.

“What’s the drop-dead sign-up date for Nepal?”

“The committee is meeting at six o-clock to review the applications. There’s more interest than we anticipated. Anyone who comes in after tonight goes on a waiting list.”

I pick up Pierce after school, invite him to come with me to Nepal on the ride home, complete the forms in an hour and hand deliver the packet at ten minutes to six.

So the two of us are busy preparing to share an adventure on the other side of the globe in a culture that will forever change how we see the world and our place in it. No dad or sister with him, just the mom he acquired at the start of fifth grade, one year before Adolescence grabbed him by the collar and hung on tight for a good, long run. He’s come out on the other side, his sweet, kind nature intact, re-connecting with parts of his self that went into hiding at the first sign of facial hair. Granted, the grades aren’t recoverable but hey, friends who have walked this road tell us there’s a college for everyone. “A journey without challenge,” writes Phil Cousineau in The Art of Pilgrimage, “is a journey without meaning; one without purpose has no soul.” I suspect Nepal will give Pierce meaningful and soulful gifts he cannot name — not at eighteen, perhaps not for many years, but no matter. The groundwork will be laid, the seeds planted.

Our culture of excess will be brought into sharp relief (and disbelief) against the ways and habits of a country ranked the 12^th poorest in the world. I started to write that I’m prepared for the experience, but who am I kidding. Clueless is closer to the truth, for how does one prepare to be laid open, and left raw and unsettled. A friend that has traveled the world, including a dozen trips to Nepal, has shared with me how groundless she feels in that country.

“So why do you keep returning?” I wanted to know. We were parked at a stoplight in Boulder, on our way to a Nepalese restaurant.

“I’m my best self in Nepal, the person I’d like to be all the time. Something happens back here… things get in the way.” Her husband smiled. The light turned green. She’s going back this fall—both of them are—to uncover that best self yet again, and bring her home for another try.

If you feel called to support the work of bringing clean water to the families in Majuwa Badahare, we would so appreciate your support. Your donation is tax deductible. Every dollar brings us that much closer. All funding goes directly to Montview Presbyterian Church, where they’re keeping an account in our names. You can donate online (www.montview.org/montivew-in-the-world/global-mission/nepal-worktrip-2010) or by check, made payable to Montview Church, and sent to:

Montview Presbyterian Church

1980 Dahlia Street

Denver, CO 80220

Be sure to enclose a note, identifying the travelers your sponsorship supports (Pierce Westenhaver and Rebecca Lee). For tax purposes, do not write our names on the check. Any money raised beyond the $7,000 will go into a Hand-Up fund for disbursement to specific projects once we’re in Nepal.

I’ve been reading Rumi on the front porch this summer, showered in early morning light, a cup of hot tea on the flat arm of the Adirondack chair. Rumi is a sufi poet, a spiritual master for whom “everything has to do with loving and not loving.” He writes of the inner life, but with words and stories rooted in the physical world. The lines I read this morning brought Nepal to mind, and the journey that awaits us this December.

Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread

to a small place that fits like a nest around him,

someone who wants no more, who’s not himself

longed for by anyone else,

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.

It says, LIVE.

Thanks for your support, prayers and blessings. We depart on December 18th, returning with stories to tell on the second of January. Until then, I’ll be torturing myself with P90X, building biceps suitable for digging trenches.

Ali hates that she has disability. She wants to meet someone who makes her feel special, wanted, loved. We can give our kids a lot of things but sometimes, where it counts the most, we’re as helpless as newborns. “I’ve walked and talked for 60 years,” I tell Ali a month ago. “If I could, I’d give you my legs and my voice, and I’d use the wheelchair and the talker for the time I have left.” Her face opens to the possibility. The next afternoon she calls from campus. “Remember what you said yesterday?” she types, cooing into the phone. “I want to trade places.” I stare out the window. The neighbor boys are kicking a ball in the backyard. The younger one trips and stumbles. If trading places were really possible, would I be so magnanimous?

The contract was my yoga teacher’s idea. “I write a new one every 28 days,” she tells me, “on the new moon.” I stop at Meininger’s on the way home and buy a notebook with a smooth red cover and narrow-lined pages. I buy a sand-colored rock the size of my fist, stamped with the word Courage. The rock and the notebook sit on my desk, untouched, for a week. The notebook goes in the bag to Cabo. On the sixth morning, while Tony is in the gym, I sit with a cup of tea on our third floor balcony, stare at the Sea of Cortez, and write a contract with myself. I will give our children—all three of them—the space to have their own lives and take the space required to have mine. Instead of worrying that I might be disappointing others, I will ask if I am disappointing myself. Before saying yes to any request, from anyone, I will check in with myself: is this something I want to do. I fill three pages.

After dinner Tess offers to play the song she’s singing at the school Cabaret. She sits in the brown leather chair, wearing gym shorts and an Under Armour top, one bare leg tucked under the other. Her shoulder length hair is pulled into a pony tail. Loose strands frame her face. She sings like a bird. “We are so fragile. Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.” Her voice blends with the strum of the ukulele as she watches her fingers find their way across the strings. We do more than listen. We bear witness.

I open the envelope from my brother and read the Satchel Paige quote on the front of the card. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? I pull out the letter. Dear Becky, Don’t even think about it. Happy birthday. Time passes, we get wiser, life is good, it is what it is. Equanimity is a goal we should strive for, although with a teenager in the house, equanimity is difficult to understand, much less achieve.

I cleaned winter’s debris from the gardens in late March. I’ve loved watching the tulips come into bloom, the tiny white flowers of the sweet woodruff appear, the first blossom on the purple cranesbill pop along the front walk. For thirty years I’ve pictured myself gardening well into old age, nurturing, pruning, weeding, tending. Until now. If the gardens are calling, I do not hear them. I trekked the trails of the Andes last summer, and discovered that light-spirited, funny, freedom-loving soul I thought I’d lost. Turns out she was right where I’d left her, buried beneath an over-functioning personality who’s been stepping up, saying yes, and tending to for decades.

Next December Pierce and I are traveling to the Pokhara region of Nepal. We’re helping to install a water system in a remote village that has no access to fresh water. Locals walk for miles to fetch water, or drink polluted surface water. “I want to go,” I tell Pierce one day last January, “and I want you to come with me.” We’re in the car. He turns to look at me, then breaks into a smile. OK is all he says, but that smile tells me everything.

“People think yoga is this magical, meditative state of oneness, but it’s not. Yoga is dirty and gritty and messy—like life.” The lesson has started. “Yoga teaches us where we’re holding on, where we’re stuck. If we let it, the practice informs us.” I plant my hands at the top of the mat, spread wide the fingers and toes, raise my hips to the sky and press down on my heels. I inhale and lift the hips higher, drop the heels another inch, lower the heart, allow the shoulder blades to roll onto the back. I slowly uncurl into plank, lower to the floor, rise into cobra and back to downward-facing dog, taking the body into crescent lunge with the next in-breath. “Lower your ribs,” she says, and pulls them into my chest, pushes them down. “These are the tell-tale sign of a woman who gives too much.” I will myself not to cry.

“There could be some retardation, possibly developmental problems. It’s too early to tell. We’ll know more in six months.” Doc Kinkade and my dad stare at the fat, bruised baby in the incubator. “Don’t tell Alice. She’d only worry.” Maybe that was why my father was always so proud of me, told me I was beautiful and smart every chance he had. For months he’d waited in silence to see if his firstborn would sit, crawl, walk, talk. I didn’t take a step until I was 14 months old, then walked across the room. Dad came home in the middle of the day to see for himself. I know how it feels to wonder if anything will be different in six months, in six years. My father was spared. I was not.

“Maybe this is about forgiving yourself,” the yoga teacher says. Almost as an afterthought, she tells me she was diagnosed with lupus last week. “My body is attacking itself. How bizarre is that?” In an instant, I love her. This woman who can do postures I’ll never do, who possesses the physical strength of an ox and a body suitable for the cover of Yoga Journal, is human after all. In each human being there is a meeting with the divine. That intersection is the heart. So says Coleman Barks. I also love him.

My husband takes the two of us to Cabo in celebration of me turning sixty. On the morning of my birthday, back in Denver, we eat omelets in a favorite neighborhood cafe. He prepares a gorgeous fillet of salmon for dinner, with crab and spinach-stuffed mushrooms, a medley of grilled peppers and zucchini, a salad dressed in Dijon vinaigrette, a wedge of carrot cake. A vase of lilies and alstroemeria sits on the piano. For the first time in seven years, he does not give me a card. I am mystified.

The house lights go down as sixteen women walk onto the stage and stand below a panoramic masterpiece of the Grand Canyon. One by one, a harp, Native American flute and deep drum fill the silence. An African-American woman dances slowly onto the stage, moving to the beat of the a cappella chanting. My friend and I take our place among the living, counting ourselves lucky to be here…on this day, at this moment.

On my sixtieth birthday I am grateful for a strong body, good health, a loving husband and family, great friends, children who are finding their way, a family business that pays the bills, a return to writing. My youngest nephew calls to wish me happy birthday. I do most of the talking. After we’ve covered baseball and the afternoon’s game, I offer an admission: your Aunt Becky is kinda old. From this quiet-mannered, tall, lean, athletic 14-year-old comes exactly what I need to hear. “It’s OK.”

We’re in a family meeting, called by Tony on a Saturday night.

“When we opened three years ago, I saw Tonto as a family business, but it really isn’t. It’s me, I’m doing it all. I feel good about providing a place for people to earn a living. The salon is beautiful and it’s doing really well but the business is not sustainable, not the way it is.

“I need your help.”

Tony’s mother claims her fourth child came out of the womb self-sufficient. If the last six years are any indication, I’d have to agree. It’s probably one reason this marriage is working. If the man had arrived needy AND with kids in tow, I’d have been hauled away by the men in white coats before our first anniversary.

So I’m paying attention. I study the husband sitting across from me, hardly a stranger but revealing a new side, one I wasn’t sure existed. His eyelids droop. He’s pale from no exercise and too little rest. He stares at his hands, folded on the table, fingers moving while he talks. He allows the back of the chair to support his weight. I notice his left shoulder rises higher than the right.

Sometimes life can’t be more clear.

“The kids and I will hatch a plan,” I hear myself say. He looks up now, those blue-green eyes wanting something he has no words to describe, other than to say things need to change.

He stands, pushes in his chair and starts to leave the table.

“I’ll take Pierce to Adam’s,” I offer. “He’s spending the night.”

In the car, I’m the one to bring it up.

“What about what your dad said?”

“I dunno. I guess he needs our help. I’m already cleaning on Sundays.”

“How about you add Wednesdays. There’s no Ultimate practice. You could put in a few hours after school. What do you say?”

“What’s Tess going to do?”

Ah yes, the concern about what will be asked of the sibling, this relentless desire on both their parts to ensure that things are even, that life is fair, that one doesn’t do more, get more, be loved more than the other. There was a time the competition drove me crazy. Now, not so much.

“I’m thinking she goes in on Saturdays. So what do you say…can we make Wednesdays work?”

“Sure.”

I find Tess sprawled on her bed, watching an episode of Lost on her laptop.

“How about spending part of your Saturday at Tonto.”

“What if I have homework? Or play practice?”

“You’re right. School comes first, but you have Sundays for homework and hardly ever rehearse on a weekend. I’m thinking 4 or 5 hours?”

“OK. Dad looks really tired.”

At dinner the following night, we lay out the family plan. Pierce on Wednesdays and Sundays, Tess on Saturdays. Ali agrees to go with the flow and not give me a hard time about being less available. “As for me,” I say, “I’ll come in 3 or 4 days a week to help at the front desk. I don’t really know what else I’ll do but we’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work.”

He doesn’t cry but looks like he could. I clear the table and wonder what I’ve just agreed to.

For the last decade I’ve sought quiet places to write. On the contrary, a busy salon is like a popular bar without the drinks. I’m on my feet most of the day, and I’m talking…a lot. Some of the people I know. Others I’ve met once or twice. Some are complete strangers but I’ve heard their story. So I stand there, saying hello, trying to remember if this is the woman whose hair caught on fire the night she intended to give her husband an anniversary gift he wouldn’t soon forget but instead relaxes into the flame of a candle sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Her husband enters the steamy room, lets out a screech to wake the dead and shoves her under water. So much for romance.

Keeping the stories straight isn’t the only challenge. The phones are techy and I’m no geek. The retail software runs on a PC—I’m an Apple gal—and the amount of time each hairdresser allots for particular services varies. The acronyms are consistent—HCT, PC, FS, BT, BD, TU—but not everyone works every day, or charges the same prices. Thankfully, they’re all patient and kind and grateful for whatever help I can give.

It’s fair to say my first week belonged to the ego. I felt under utilized. What was I doing, answering the phone and hanging up coats and folding small towels into tidy rolls? I hold three college degrees for god’s sake. I’ve written books and given presentations in large auditoriums and run my own business. Once upon a time, I worked for six figures at a fancy magazine on Michigan Avenue. And another thing, what I’m doing here feels a lot like home… I’m taking care of people. Again. Still.

I give myself pep talks: Change takes time. You’ll find your way—you always do. Already Tony is lighter in spirit, happier, not so tired. And you, the independent one, is behaving like a partner; this is good for you. Week One turns into Two and Three. I hang on to my anchors—morning pages, yoga, sitting practice—as if my well-being depended upon them because of course it does. I play around with schedules. I develop a feel for what works. A client asks Tony what I’m doing there. “She’s our new manager,” he says, and shoots me a smile.

The other afternoon 80-year-old Joann leans over the desk and confesses from a mouth outlined in cherry red, “I never had children.” Her voice is low and raspy, testimony to decades of smoking. “Tony’s like a son to me. I’ve known him since before the kids came, before he was even married to that crazy Holly.”

I hear a lot of this. Genuine affection for a man his clients have known for ten, fifteen, twenty years. He’s a fixture in their lives, the keeper of their secrets. No one makes them laugh like Tony, they tell me. “He’s a good man, a really special human being,” they say.

Yes, he is.

He also does this weird puffy thing with his mouth as he’s falling asleep that makes my falling asleep impossible. He has the memory of a gnat, and wrestles the lifeblood out of a decision before landing on one side or the other. Next time a client pulls me aside to wax eloquently about the man I married, I’m tempted to ask if she’d like to take him for the weekend and try her luck at keeping him awake past nine.

On Saturday afternoon, after the receptionist leaves, I park at the front desk, feeling the fullness of the day relax into quiet. A peacefulness settles over the place as the light shifts to make room for dusk. I unwrap the new issues of Vogue and Self—magazines I worked for in the 80’s—book a few appointments, sell a bottle of Moroccan oil to a man named Tim, and think about Elizabeth.

She’s old now but has been coming to one of our hairdressers for years. I didn’t know Elizabeth in her prime, but I imagine beautiful and petite, with bright blue eyes, a woman of class and sophistication. No longer able to stand fully upright, Elizabeth walks with a cane and wears sensible shoes to stabilize her tired, old bones. She can’t weigh more than 90 pounds. She doesn’t hear well, and speaks in a whisper. Putting herself into a chair resembles a fall more than an intention to sit. Getting out requires her to rock repeatedly until she gains the momentum to shift her weight onto the cane and slowly rise as if for the first time.

Elizabeth approaches the desk with newly permed and coiffed white hair. I take her coat from the closet and guide the stiff, frail arm into the lined sleeve. She says something. “Pardon me?” I ask, and bend down to align my ear with her mouth.

“Could you call a cab please? I don’t drive anymore. 777-7777.”

Standing slightly taller than the desk, Elizabeth hands me her credit card, tells me her address. I watch her lips move yet hear nothing. I step around the desk, hold my ear to her face, and repeat back to her the street address she has now told me three times. We both smile.

Satisfied that a car is on its way, Elizabeth inches her way to the chair closest to the front door, drops her tiny self onto the leather, and waits. Ten minutes go by. She turns to get my attention.

“Does it usually take this long?” I ask. Her lips move. I walk to her.

“He’s driving around the parking lot,” she whispers, and points to the door.

I catch sight of the back end of the yellow cab and step outside to flag him down, something I haven’t done since my days on Michigan Avenue. I take Elizabeth’s elbow and together we walk baby steps to the taxi. I confirm the address with the driver and guide his passenger into the back seat, tucking the coat against her child-size body. I touch her bony shoulder, think of my dad, and say goodbye. She smiles.

Inside I pick up the wrappers thrown on the floor by the four-year-old who helped himself to the the candy bowl a few hundred times while his mother had her hair cut. Earlier that morning, a wedding party was here for up-do’s before the two o’clock ceremony. The mother of the bride has been Tony’s client since before her daughter was born. A businessman and a psychiatrist came in for haircuts. A proud dad ran the video camera while his teenager’s hair was cut and gathered for Locks of Love. A lawyer, mother of two, relaxed in the shampoo chair as a pair of strong hands slowly massaged her workweek into oblivion. And Elizabeth had a perm and a blow dry she won’t touch for a week.

We’re not saving people’s lives or investing their money or educating their children. No breakthrough discoveries happen in our midst. Perhaps life-changing insights occasionally occur in our chairs, but we can’t be certain. We perform services and nurture people in small ways throughout the day. We laugh, listen, connect. We hear their stories and share our own. Our clients leave with great-looking hair, softer hands, painted nails and radiant complexions, feeling prettier, younger, cared for. I like to think we help to keep them grounded—a claim I could never make about that job on Michigan Avenue.