March Madness and A Walk on the Mild Side

Tags

Adaptability, adoptee, Covid, Covid-19, labyrinth walking, Naw Ruz, Tehran, Tibet

March seems to be a month of “Anything Goes.” During this end of winter/beginning of spring, a lot happens: Change to Daylight Saving, Tax preparation, collecting seeds for spring gardening, St. Patrick’s Day, Oscar’s Night, the Ides of March. Here is Santa Fe, as we begin Spring, the weather is wildly unpredictable. One day it’s warm and sunny, the next may bring several inches of snow.

View from the Winsor Trail, Santa Fe National Forest.

In Tehran, where I lived in the 1960s, March signaled the beginning of a new Year. Naw Ruz (pronounced “No Ruse”), was, and still is, a time for festivities and exchanging gifts. It is a day recognized around the world. Occurring at the Spring Equinox, it has been celebrated for over 3,000 years. The celebration dates back to the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism.

My older son was born in Tehran right before Naw Ruz. Iranian friends and American friends who were also living in Tehran — brought flowers and presents to the house. For my first Naw Ruz, I was immersed in mothering, somewhat oblivious to everything else. Later, I would learn of the custom of the laying out of symbolic greens and leaping over a fire.

The “haft seen” table  includes seven symbolic items all starting the with an “s” sound: sabzeh, senjed, sib, seer, samanu, serkeh, and sumac. •Sabzeh (sprouted wheat grass) symbolizes rebirth and renewal; Samanu (sweet pudding) stands for affluence and fertility;  Senjed (sweet, dried lotus tree fruit) represents love. Leaping over a fire the last Wednesday before Naw Ruz allegedly brought good luck. I was too busy nursing my brand new son to set a proper haft seen table or leap over a fire, but I was fascinated to learn of these customs.

In addition to remembering Naw Ruz, I’ve recently had the unwelcome experience of coming down with Covid. Fortunately, a light case. Walking my way back to health, I was strolling about Santa Fe Plaza last week — definitely a “walk on the mild side” — when I encountered peaceful protesters walking to save Tibet. The day was beautiful, and though spectators were few in number, I felt confident that awareness was being raised. The Tibet supporters seemed a fitting welcome to the change of seasons.

Meanwhile, come rain or shine, the neighbor’s brass Samuri stands guard over my part of town.

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on the writing, hiking and the outdoors, Santa Fe life, and the world as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Check out her newest novel The Hand of Ganesh. Follow adoptees Clara Jordan and Dottie Benet in their  quest to find Dottie’s birthparents. Order today from Amazon or www.pocolpress.com. And thanks for reading! 

Advertisement

An Elephant never Forgets

Tags

adoptee, empower, healing, labyrinth walking, Memory, my story, struggles

We are not elephants! The beauty of being human is that we, unlike animals, have the marvelous

“Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant.”-John Donne

ability to transcend memories. We are capable of “rising above.” We can and do remember negative events in our lives, realize that they are what happened in the past, and revitalize ourselves. Through conscious efforts, we accomplish this in spite of what happened when we were five or ten, seventeen, twenty-five or thirty. For those of us shaped by adoption, I believe this is especially true.

Theologian Eugene H. Peterson, in his book Answering God, says “Memory is not an orientation to the past; it is vigorously present tense, selecting out of the storehouse of the past, retrieving and arranging images and insights, and then hammering them together for use in the present moment.”
The operative word in Peterson’s definition is “selecting.” We are neither elephants nor robots. No one is making us think our thoughts, and once we decide to take control of the “monkey mind,” it is possible to switch internal channels. Going for a walk, being in nature, talking with a friend or confidante are ways to reset the emotions.
Building a labyrinth in my back yard, a spiral walking path, was my key to healing. Available 24/7, the labyrinth provides an opportunity to gain insight, to calm the mind and find answers. It empowers me, as an adult adoptee, to reflect, take responsibility,

The Labyrinth dates back 6,000 years.

and to become accountable.

As a human, albeit a human shaped by adoption, I can both remember and select.

Memories: My plan is to “keep the best and ditch the rest.”

“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all the expectations, all the beliefs—and becoming who you are.”
-Rachel Naomi Remen