By Any Chance, Are Your Relatives From Minnesota?

Though my new apartment is a truly happy and sunny place, and though I really like it a whole bunch, it does not have an on-site washer and dryer. So, I'm back to the laundromat.

Yesterday I stepped foot in one that's a few blocks from home. Shortly after I arrived, a man approached me. "By any chance, are your relatives from Minnesota?" he asked. I smiled widely and replied, "Well, as a matter of fact, they are."

My mother was born on a farm in southern Minnesota, and most of my cousins and their kids are still living in the state.

This man, who was named Ray, thought I looked Swedish, and as a Swedish woman he'd met years ago--maybe decades ago--had been from Minnesota, he figured I might be too.

Ray wondered if I were familiar with Rush, Illinois, a town about two and a half hours from Chicago. I believe he had kept Rush in his consciousness for decades because of another gal who had hailed from there. Sad to say, I had never heard of Rush.

Ray was quite a character. Probably 85 if he was a day, wearing a sea captain's hat and pants that were way too big for him.

Turns out, Ray wss into maps. When I told my son this, he quipped, "Oh, good, so now that makes two of you."

At first Ray and I drew maps in the air for each other. I was sure that Iowa is west of the Mississippi, but Ray needed some convincing. He also needed a little help with the positions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Finally, he came around.

He said if I liked maps, he had something to show me. He pulled a Lyndon LaRouche magazine from the rack on the wall, then paused before opening it. "This publication is so right wing," he said, "I thought I might be going insane reading it." That's always been my experience of LaRouche materials and his fanatical followers.

Amidst all the political hoopla and prophesies of doom was an article on the the great train adventures of the world. Ray pointed to a map of Europe and confessed that he would like to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad some day. Wow, good for him to keep the dreams coming!

The conversation drifted to my former home of Point Arena in Mendocino County. Ray had lived in Los Angeles for 33 years, but he often went on road trips on the weekends and during his vacations. He was very familiar with Hwy 1 north of San Francisco. He nodded and took in a deep breath, remembering the beauty he had apprehended there.

All about us, solitary people went about their business, loading washers and dryers with coins and folding clothes, while Ray and I swapped stories and had a few laughs. So interesting how often this happens to me at laundramats, something I had forgotten until yesterday. So often over the years people have approached me in laundromats and told me their stories, like the woman who related the very complicated case of her run-in with city authorities or the young traveling salesman who had lived in 26 states as an adult and as many foster homes as a child.

This is why, once again, I am reminded of the truth: "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Many would say it's too bad that I don't have use of a washer and dryer in the building where I live or that I don't own a washer and dryer in my own home. But these are probably the same people who wouldn't have given Ray the time of day. Look how much I have gained from what many would label a loss.

Affirmation of Blessed Relationship

When I was going through some papers, I happened upon a folder I had opened March 26, 1998. I remember the day very clearly. I was hanging out at a McDonald's, reading and writing the day away as I waited for my van to be fixed. I had called my boyfriend Mike in Northern California, and he had said something cruel.

This is how Mike often operated: He and I would have a beautiful, intimate time together, a time in which you wouldn't think two people could possibly be any closer, and he would follow up by saying something dismissive, insensitive, and cruel. Years later this behavior was explained to me: Mike had low self-worth and was intimidated by me. In one sense, he wanted very much to be with me, and in another sense, it terrified him. Plus, he was an alcoholic, though he only drank twice in the four years I was with him. He nonetheless exhibited alcoholic behavior, i.e. destroying everything good in his life and fluctuating between delusions of grandeur and self-deprecation. Mike wanted the emotional and physical intimacy I offered, but he felt unworthy of it, so he made himself unworthy.

I can't remember what he said, only that it hurt me very deeply. I decided to sit right down at McDonald's and write down exactly what I wanted in a relationship. I wrote several versions that day, revising criteria, adding and modifying and recasting, until I finally hit upon a final draft. Then for more than two years, until April 13, 2000, I rewrote the affirmation, each time reaffirming what I wanted. In the folder were more than 100 handwritten and typed copies of the affirmation.

Looking at it almost a decade later, I would say that this is still what I want. Here goes, one last time, then I'm tossing the foler, releasing it completely to God's hands:


Affirmation of Blessed Relationship

Formulated 3/26/98

I am richly deserving of holy relationship with a God/dess-centered, honest, moral, loving, generous, sensitive, passionate, romantic, tantric-adept, supportive, understanding, responsible, mature, financially secure, unpretentious, emotionally healthy, physically independent, life-affirming, optimistic, fun-loving, playful, adventuresome, attractive, intelligent, humorous,. compassionate, faithful, “present,” heterosexual, “available” man of compatible age, education, income, interests, outlook and locale.

Holding to the truth that God/dess deeply loves me, wants me to be happy and fulfilled, and gently guides my path, I will attract this man into my life. I will immediately recognize him as the treasure I have already joined with in my soul. He will immediately recognize me as the treasure who has come into his life through prayer, since he has been awaiting my arrival too. He will know me, since I will embody those traits I seek in him, my soulmate, my beloved—traits he has been seeking in his soulmate, his beloved, the woman he will come to know as Heidi, the outer manifestation of his inner quest.

We will enter into lifelong commitment, bonds of strange and sacred intimacy, a shared vision of holy purpose, with joyfulness, courage and whole-hearted openness, celebrating each night and day the great and blessed gift God/dess has granted us through and with this love.

All this will come to pass, beautifully, magically, effortlessly, and very soon.

Amen!