Author Archives: Patricia Wild

February 18, 2011: Let Go, Let God?

Okay. True confession:

I’ve been reading The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson. Like Wilkerson, herself, and countless readers of that amazing book, I have completely fallen in love with Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, one of the three people featured in the book.

BUT: Having read of Ida Mae’s hard life from small child in Jim Crow Mississippi to great-grandmother in cold, racist Chicago, I know that much of the hardships she’s had to endure have to do with the color of her and her family’s skin. Yet when something terrible happens, Ida Mae always says, “God don’t make no mistakes.”

I am just having such a hard time accepting that.

February 17, 2011: Let Go, Let Nod

Today, after an embarrassingly easy Mohs procedure, I took a walk to Porter Square to get surgical dressing stuff for the incision and, why not, flowers. A beautiful, warm, sunny day, the florist had the door to her shop open it was so warm and the two of us oohed and aahed about the balmy weather.

“You’re going to get some customers,” I promised. “Because I’m walking home and I’ll be carrying these flowers and I’ll have a big ol’ smile on my face.”

A couple of doors away from the florist shop, bearing my cobalt-blue flowers—sorry, don’t recall their name—I walked past two young men in tee shirts who were sitting on their front porch, drinking beer.  Catching one guy’s eye, I grinned; he returned my grin with an all-incompassing nod.

You’re an old lady with a big bandage on your cheek and carrying flowers, that nod said. And I’m a young hipster. But, hey, isn’t this fantastic? We’re both so grateful for this day. And, hey, isn’t this fantastic? Neither of us have to say a word!

Let Go, Eat Chocolate

My most honest thinking often happens when I vacuum. So today, after a complicated and expensive and seemingly 4-eva session at my dentist’s to get a new crown over a broken tooth, in anticipation for some minor surgery tomorrow and therefore being out of commission for a couple of days, and knowing my beloved daughter and her husband arrive Friday, I cleaned.

Hey, I realized, vacuuming. I am in a really foul mood. And maybe need to just take care of myself before tomorrow’s Mohs procedure?

So tonight, instead of going to the prison circle/trying to be sociable but feeling ornery, after I finally could feel my upper lip (it had been completely numb for over 4 hours), I ate leftovers. Including Ben & Jerry’s chocolate brownie ice cream.

I believe I did everyone a favor by doing so.

February 15, 2011: Let Go, Let Democracy

Last night I watched “Return to Kandahar” and  today read of projected deep cuts to anti-poverty agencies here in good ol’ USA and wonder why we spend billions fighting in Afghanistan when the concepts of democracy and equal rights for women are free?! Do we really have so little regard for the preciousness of what we espouse that we must bludgeon, bomb, bribe the people of Afghanistan? Why can we not see what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia and Iran as expressions of the same Spirit, the same mighty “wind of change”* that has blown from sea to shining sea? (And still blows in good ol’ USA; I believe that.) Yes, the Afghani people have suffered greatly—but I believe that despite years of war, that Spirit bravely and courageously endures in that raped, mined, devastated country.


*[“The wind of change is blowing all over the world today. It is sweeping away an old order and bringing into being a new order,” declared Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963.]

February 12, 2011: Let Go, let Rumi

[from A Year With Rumi: Daily Readings—here’s an excerpt from the February 12th poem]

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream.

It will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

February 11, 2011: Let Go, Let the Years

If you might be tempted to ask, “Did you like the Beatles?” of someone you’d just met, as one character does in “Another Year,” then you just might love Mike Leigh’s new film.

I do and did. And found how the film’s four middle-aged characters—two aging pretty gracefully, two not so much—enormously touching.

february 10, 2011: Let Go, Let Gravity

Yesterday I discovered that a different route to where I needed to go—Davis Square and Porter Square—was 98% smooth sailing; sidewalks were mostly cleared, mostly easy to walk on. Yet this morning, about to walk to Porter Square again, hesitated to take off my YakTrax.

Whoa, I realized. I am really, really scared to fall. Even when I know my journey will involve, tops, a couple of yards of ice.

Time to reconnect with Learning to Fall, I advised myself, striding along.

May I suggest you do, too?

February 9, 2011: Let Go, Let Truck

Readers to this blog know that this month is all about spiritual exercises: letting go, letting  . . . Something. For readers not living in Red Sox Nation, today’s posting may seem, well, weird. But for those of us who know the answer to the question: “What is a directional turn signal?” (Answer: “A sign of weakness.”),* you’ll completely get it.

Yesterday was Truck Day**. So all over New England, there was a collective sigh: Together we let go of our fears that winter will never end. Although sometimes a stern, Puritanical bunch, at about noon yesterday we allowed ourselves to imagine a hot summer day at Fenway Park, cold (incredibly overpriced) drink in hand and, maybe, Jacoby just stole a base. Or something equally thrilling.

Aaaahh.

*[I think this comes from  a Dunkin’ Donuts ad. Not sure, though.]

**[Truck Day is when a green moving truck carrying Red Sox equipment leaves Yawkey Way for Fort Myers, Florida, the first visible sign in Boston that spring training has begun.]

February 8, 2011: Let Go, “Call 311”

Today walking up sleety, icy College Avenue, I saw an older woman coming in the opposite direction slip and fall maybe 20 feet from me.

“Are you okay?” I asked as we walked closer together.

She brushed off her pants. “Some of these people,” she said, her voice trailing off. She looked behind her to the spot where she’d fallen—right in front of a church.

I nodded in sympathy, then showed off my YakTrax. Still smarting, still angry, she was not impressed. That she could buy something that would allow her NOT to be victimized by poorly maintained sidewalks wasn’t appealing; she wanted some one to pay!

Mentally acknowledging her anger—heh, such homeowner neglect makes me furious, too—I shifted gears: “Do you live in this neighborhood?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Then why don’t you call 311 and complain? You can tell the operator what happened to you. And give the exact address.”

She smiled.

I have a feeling she’ll call.

February 7, 2011: Let Go, Let Nudge

Yesterday, during silent worship, I let go of my plan to revise a two-act Armenian-themed play I’d written a few years ago—mostly because in many ways, the book I finished last summer and am now marketing tells the same story. (In both the play and the book, the relationship between an old guy in a wheelchair and a young, feisty home health aide is central to the plot.)

Instead, I am intrigued/nudged by another Armenian-based concept and have begun initial research (I love research!).

Is this nudge about another play? Is it a book and if so, fiction or non-fiction? (I’ve become intrigued by Alice Stone Blackwell, a suffragette and daughter of Lucy Stone—she of Keep Your Own Name fame. Aided by “Armenian friends,” the bluestocking Lucy translated Armenian poetry into English in the early 1900s. Hmm.)

Yes, it was hard to let go of the play; it’s got some good stuff. But this decision feels like a vote of confidence for my book and as if, maybe, I’ve finally finished with the old guy in a wheelchair theme. (For the record, my grandfather, Paul Revere Wild, was “a cripple” from birth and, yes, used a wheelchair for much of his life.)

But on this sunny day, when there was just the slightest hint that Spring might come someday, to begin something new, emerging, challenging, is very exciting.