DMV Part 10: a Rolling Stones moment

Last summer, June 3, our friend called us to see if we wanted Rolling Stones tickets for that very night. I have waited months to write about this because a part of me has stopped needing to post every little message we get from Barrett, a part of me—and indeed a part of Lily as well—is maybe thinking, “Shouldn’t we be over this? And don’t other people wish we would be over it?” Meanwhile over the last few months in which I haven’t reported every little communication from our dearly departed, he has indeed sent us little messages regularly.

There was the time in Sai Café, the place Barrett, Lily, and I would go to dinner together—indeed the only place we really did frequent together in the last ten years (it took me about 8 of those years to finally relent and have dinner with them). It’s a sushi bar, and the sushi chefs knew Barrett and Lily because they’d sit at the bar and Lily would eat things that no child (and few adults) would consent to eat, such as baby octopus heads. Anyway, Lily and I have been there twice since he died, both times bittersweet. We don’t go near the bar because Lily has a justified fear that at some point in her life a random person (this applies to the taco bar at Whole Foods as well) is going to ask her how her dad is and she is going to say, “DEAD,” and burst into tears. Or, “Fine,” and burst into tears. So we sat at a table, far from the sushi bar.

We can’t help but think of him when we sit down there. “We should invite in your dad, just to see what will happen,” I suggested. Lily is generally iffy about this proposition, but she is also game.

“Barrett Fiske,” we said quietly in unison, the way we do, and then I changed the subject.

“What do you want to do for your birthday this year?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” she answered. Pause.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!” yelled out the sushi chefs joyfully at that moment, to someone else in the room.

Lily and I looked at each other knowingly. The timing. It’s stuff like that. It happens. We think he comes when we say his name. We have never NOT had a sign seconds later. Every single time I drove her to Piven last season we had a 55 or a 555 or a 5555. I stopped writing about them. They seemed like such tiny signs, just for us. But this Rolling Stones concert…keeps tapping me on the shoulder.

Our dear friend Julie told me after she saw the Stones: “I kept thinking of Barrett during the concert. I think he wants Lily to see the Stones.” Although Julie has had at least three deeply fulfilling posthumous Barrett experiences (even though they were not friends in real life), I found that doubtful. It made little sense; Lily doesn’t really even like the Stones. I do. But the tickets were pricey and my motivation was low.

Three days after Julie’s intuition, my friend from high school—we both had loved the Stones back then—called at 8am to see if we could MAYBE go see the Stones that night.  I hadn’t talked to this friend in months. What on earth would have kept me from saying yes to that? He had pit tickets: standing only, in front of the stage, $1500 each. I could afford maybe 15 minutes of that pricey ticket…but it would a gift. His friend had last-minute cancelled. We were SO in.

I called Julie to tell her that we MIGHT go see the concert that night. “Oh, honey, I know the tickets will come through. Barrett really wants Lily to be there.” I remained unconvinced, though it was a nice thing for her to say.

At 4pm it was a go and I whisked Lily out of her school’s basketball game, we met our fab friend’s, and got in the line for people with the staggeringly expensive pit tickets, who were allowed to enter two hours before the doors officially opened to stake their claim.

Seasoned concert-goer Lily Fiske said that standing in front of the stage was not optimal; her preference was to be back along the tongue-shaped catwalk, which actually would be closer to Mick, when he walked out. She also mentioned that if we stood along the catwalk, people would be pressing forward, away from us, and that no one would be directly in front of us, so although we would be 50 feet farther from the stage than our 6’7” and 6’4” guy friends, we would have a more unobstructed and comfortable view. It seemed like a good compromise

Lily was sure—and circumstances hinted—that Barrett had had a hand in her chance meeting with her favorite pop star Harry Styles last May. When Lily told me about her meeting him the summer before, I had said, “Wow, that is like me running into Mick Jagger, when I was your age.” That meant very little to her, though Harry Styles could easily play the young Mick in a movie. (Check it out! He looks just like him!) She was all about Harry that May, and I was all about Mick, at her age. (It’s her story, but this will suffice: last summer she ran into Harry Styles poolside in Las Vegas, summer while on a trip with aforementioned friend Julie, and was disappointed that she didn’t get a photo. She went back up to her room and changed for dinner. “Daddy, please, I want to see Harry Styles again!” she petitioned. She descended to the first floor in the elevator, the door opened, and there was Harry. Photo op. Julie was convinced Lily’s daddy had a hand in the incredible timing.)

You can read reviews of the Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary concerts in Chicago. I won’t review it--I saw the Stones in Kansas City in 1981 from the back row—rafters!-- and it was a peak life experience. This was front row. What can I even say.

Mick danced out onto the catwalk a few times, and I thought, “I can’t believe I’m so close to Mick JAGGER!” I was lucky, and blessed, and I KNEW it. I had come a long way—rows and rows and rows—since 1981.

After one of Mick’s jaunts right before our eyes, Lily said, or actually yelled, “Mommy! Did you see him catch my KISS?”

What?

She loudly explained she had been blowing him kisses and he had gracefully caught one behind his back as he turned away from us.  I had missed their subtle interaction. What a MOMENT! This daughter of mine: so blessed. Mick had caught her kiss…she had posed with Harry Styles…

What could top THAT?

A few songs later, during Brown Sugar, Mick danced back out onto the catwalk. As he danced right in front of us and we were bathed in his spotlight. I was jumping up and down in gleeful ecstasy and Lily and the three 20-somethings beside her were reaching toward Mick, Lily in her “I LOVE BRITISH BOYS” t-shirt.

Awash in heat and lights and sound was my ephiphany: Mick was totally going to touch someone! Something in me could feel him decide.

“I bet your mother was a tent-show queen…”

A new-age mom, I don’t push, but I was compelled. “Go for it!” I shouted, and slapped Lily on the back in a way that, in real life, she would have glared at me for; but she reacted to the encouragement, and reached her 5’9”-ness a little bit further…

“…and all the boys were sweet sixteen!”

 and…a slow five…as opposed to a high-five or a low-five…a really luxurious touch—I saw it--a deliberate TOUCH! from Mick Jagger. Hot. Amazing timing during those lyrics, which I only realized when I watched a YouTube a week later.

We both screamed our loudest concert scream and looked at each other in a NO WAY sort of way. Did he really DO that? He touched no one else that night. He touched no one else on night one, either, according to Julie. I’ve heard he generally doesn’t touch.

After the concert we greeted our friends with glee: “Mick touched Lily!”

“We saw!” they said, “on the monitor!” Apparently it was larger than life…oh to have that video footage.

What does any of this have to do with Barrett, aside from Julie’s intuition? Well, this:

We were let in early, before seat-holders, so that we could spend a couple hours in the pit jostling for space (though because the only people who could afford $1500 pit spaces were (very) grown up, there was no jostling.

I took a picture of Lily claiming our space in her cute concert attire and glanced at my phone. The battery was suspiciously at 55%. I wasn’t buying it. But after the concert, after the Mick-touch, I told Lily. About Barrett’s number.

“But mom! Also! When we walked in! I forgot to tell you. It was 5:55!”

“It was 5:55 while my battery was at 55%?” I asked, unnecessarily.

Indeed. But that’s not all.

After that double 55, as we chilled in the cavernous auditorium waiting for the concert, I saw (couldn’t hear) my phone ringing: Margaret McCabe. It was Barrett’s much-loved friend, Maggie McCabe, a 90-year-old “spiritual friend” from his childhood who had never before called me. In case I had been wondering—and I HAD, ever since Julie mentioned it—whether or not Barrett had a hand in this fortunate invitation…this triple clinched it.


When I called Maggie back the following day it was the third time I’d ever spoken to her, the first being when I called her to report Barrett’s death. Being 90, she said she had no idea that she’d even called me the night before. 

Spirit moves in mysterious ways—in case I was wondering.


postscript: Lily's photo was on the Rolling Stones website! 

Alive at the DMV Part 9

December 15, 2012: our fourth and final time at the Jeep dealership. We take possession of our new car. We drive it off the lot. We look at my phone. 5:55. All four times, people!

PART 10

"Alive at the DMV Part 8"

A quickie: went back to the Jeep dealership yesterday, did our business, got back into our car, and the time was.......5:55. And the last three numbers on the odometer were........555. Someone tell me this veil between the worlds is not getting thinner and thinner and thinner!

My number at Native Foods was not, however, 55 this time. It was 69...not a number to turn my back on either, thank you very much.

<See Part 9>

DMV Part 7!

"December 4, 2012"

Of course this is going to be about cars. If you have been following this DMV thread all along, you’ll understand: after our Jeep test-drive last week, Lily and I returned to our favorite Jetta, where Lily pointed out that it was 5:55; then we saw that the license plate in front of us had five fives, after which celestial communication Lily announced, “My dad wants us to get a Jeep but he wants us to get it from a different dealership. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”

He’s still around. More evidence? I wrote this entire blog and headed to Native Foods for lunch, and was handed my order number, which was 55. Before I explain to newcomers (or you can just go back and begin at DMV Part 1 for some remarkable heavenly stories) I just have to pause to honor that the veil between the worlds is delightfully thin; I still don’t understand where “dead” people are, how they can be here, how they can send signs and summons, and I don’t have to understand.

The night months ago when I first posted about the 55s, I pressed “publish,” left the house, started the Jetta, and was delighted to see that the time on its always-expressive dashboard was 5:55.  Satisfying  punctuation after my 55-heavy blog post.

Imagine how guilty (or at least ambivalent) I must feel about selling that car.

But its lowered suspension and low-profile wheels make us cringe over bumps; it feels like we’re breaking the car in half. On the other hand, I regularly do 100mph on Lake Shore Drive—80, actually, before I’m even off the entrance ramp—and as the g-forces press into me, through the euphoria I realize not only should I not be doing this, I should not be giving my 16-year old a car that is capable of doing this. (God, I like to go fast. Maybe I won’t sell it.)

I’ve grown to love the Jetta. Yes. Strong words for a car that I initially found irritating. Lily and recently I decided that the only vehicle that could possibly tempt and un-guilt us would be the opposite car: a Jeep. A red Jeep. A slow (ie safe), visible red Jeep that will munch potholes and get us through the 2012 Apocalypse in one piece.

Five seconds into our first Jeep test drive, we glanced at each other with a look that acknowledged, “We are bad-ass!” Sitting so high up we could drive right over the Jetta—if it didn’t drive under us first. In red, it was unmilitaristic and frankly kind of hot…with us in it.  Back into this red Jeep when you’re parallel parking in front of us and it will SEVER your bumper.

Based on Lily’s intuition I made an appointment with a different dealership, one that felt more Barrett-approved. For some reason I got a slew of 4:44s, all day long, weird because they don't have meaning to me other than the inherent beauty of the repeating numbers.  Fours: whatever.

More fours later though.

The guy on the phone for the car dealership has a great voice. So savory. That morning I had asked Barrett for some car-buying assistance; it’s his specialty. I once told him he should start a business helping women buy cars, and just be their advocate. I can't tell from Kevin’s sexy voice how old he is or even what race, which is intriguing. We arrive at the dealership and there are greeters, like bouncers, outside, hanging, waiting for vulnerable buyers, and a big round black guy—a bluesy sort of guy—approaches and introduces himself to us and I say we're here to see Kevin, and he says I'll take you to Kevin, and we have to sit in plastic dealership chairs while we wait for Kevin and Kevin arrives and I am—hang on, I have to  break in to say this: Barrett and I had a tiny wedding with dinner for 20 at a favorite restaurant. When our waiter came to the table he was so hot-African. Protected by my hours-old wedding ring, I could not help say, "Are you my wedding present?" (That’s me, after zero cocktails.)

So Kevin is introduced, and maybe it was the insouciant way his shirttails poked out from his v-neck, but I feel a completely inappropriate remark welling up--just like at my wedding dinner...where Barrett was, of course, also present. I am saying to myself, "Don't say it, it's totally inappropriate," --but I don't even know what I'm about to say. I just know, in that manic moment, I shouldn't. When Kevin announces that the bluesman is going to take care of us, he departs and I backhand Lily on the thigh to see if she was having as good a time as I was and she looks at me and says, "MOM. Pull yourself together.”

But my point is, we were at the right dealership and this was going to be a treat: in addition to Kevin reminding me of the manic moment when I saw our wedding-waiter, the bluesman reminded me so much of the salesman who sold Barrett my current Honda CRV, the car guy who was so so good at being a car guy that Barrett looked him up years later to buy another car from him. The car guy who was so so good that in a world where I don’t remember names AT ALL (please don’t test me at a party!) I remember Tony's. Tony was an experience—a car experience—that Barrett and I had shared in a major way. Tony is now a Baptist minister so he can’t sell cars; Barrett is now “dead” so he can’t buy cars, but I sure did feel them both there, orchestrating an experience that I otherwise didn’t want any part of.  Hi, guys! I was overjoyed.

To be honest, it was not easy to stay in mirth at a goddamn car dealership, but our guy met me at my level, totally got how I operate, and the only time he got a bit sales-y I said, “I want you to know that we have two cars that we really like and I have no car payments and I'm happy to keep it that way, and we don't actually NEED a car. In fact I’m happy not to buy a car at all. And the more you push me, the more I want to keep my old car.” I saw Lily, out of the corner of my eye, frantically disagreeing, which was not helpful to my buying process, but I ignored it. Later in the conversation, the bluesman said, "Now normally I would talk for ten minutes about why you needed to buy the car tonight..." and I interrupted, with a smile, "But you know if you do that I won't return your calls or EVER talk to you again." I am learning how liberating it is to just say the thing instead of thinking it needs to be said in some special way.

When the bluesman walked away to consult with his people for the seventh time, an hour into negotiating, I told Lily I had no recollection of what his name even was. How embarrassing, now that we had even seen pictures of his kids. She didn’t remember either—odd for her, normal for me. She volunteered, for a mere $10, to ask his name.

David. Barrett’s brother’s name.

When we were leaving David told us that daughters’ names both started with L. Lily wanted to guess his son’s name.

“Is it also an L? Leon,” I said before she could guess, because it had to be Leon; it was the boy-baby name that Barrett and I had completely disagreed on—me being pro-Leon of course—a big issue between us. But no.

“Hint: it’s the same as my dad’s,” David said, and I said, “David!”

Indeed.

“David, David, David,” said David, “All Davids, my dad, his dad, David David David,” and I almost said, “OK BARRETT, STOP!” No need to hammer it home like that. We got it. Buy the Jeep.

And then David said one more thing. To Lily.

“Family,” said David. “Family is the most important thing. Remember that. Remember your family. Family,” said David.

Yes, I shed a tear. At the car dealership. Barrett’s presence was palpable.

 So I took a walk when we got home, car half-bought. It was a balmy night in December.

On the walk I realized I was not entirely relaxed about taking on a car payment and mind you it's a tiny car payment but that's not the point. The discomfort is the point and as a yoga teacher I know what to do about discomfort. It was rather an arresting thought so I just stopped and arrested myself: listened to the wind in the trees, felt the balmy breeze, and was grateful I could even be outside and warm at the same time, while minutes passed. At some point I thought, “I wonder if I look insane,” and then I made myself relax through that discomfort until I felt a level of prosperity: “buying a new car makes me feel prosperous!” and I was good to go.

So I walked a few steps further, and there on the sidewalk was a dollar bill, moist with dew and sticking there so it couldn’t possibly blow away, and its timing after that prosperity meditation was so uncanny that I had to stop and pick up the penny from heaven (inflation!) and it was also sort of ego-busting in itself to stoop to pick up a dollar when someone else might need it more, when someone else must have dropped it, yet at the same time, the night had been all about money and here some is! So I peel it of the sidewalk and glance at it, and it has four fours on it. Another 4444!

And maybe all dollar bills have four fours; how would I even know? I have never stared one down. Whether or not they do, this one did. I don't need to analyze or know why or know what anything means...the Universe has ways of communicating, the Universe IS communicating, and how cool that we are in a dialogue—I’m honored, standing there, on December 4.

Still in the magic, still in the prosperity, knowing Lily’s daddy is so not dead, savoring the dollar bill with the four fours on it, I walk a few more steps and a happy guy rides past on his bike singing a Christmas carol and I catch the words, "a jolly happy soul!" It’s euphoric; it’s over the top, why those precise words, in this moment of soul-connection?

It must be heaven on earth.

To ground myself, to bring it back to reality, I look at my phone, open facebook, and the first post on my newsfeed is from my friend Chrissy, saying, “Can you feel it?! Can you feel the SHIFT?!!!!”

“Yes,” I comment. Yes.

Having written all of the above the following day, I headed to Native Foods, where my order number 55 was presented to me, as perfect punctuation bestowed upon me by a generous Universe that loves us all far more than we can fathom.

When Yoga Meets Politics

No matter who wins the election, 50% of us will be dissatisfied. Rather than thinking we know which individual political candidate will create the change we want, what if we hold some other common vision? Rather than needing to know exactly how you want that vision to LOOK, or who’s going to pay for it, imagine that there is a bigger and better version of the world than you’d ever dreamed…and FEEL it. What if we all did that? Why not walk around with a vision of the world you'd like to live in, and meet your opponents in the middle?

I Can See Clearly Now (DMV Part 6)

In May we were driving to the eye doctor. Lily needed new glasses. I’d been putting it off. I could no longer delegate this to the other parent. We took Barrett’s road-worthy car and were driving on the Edens, the route he and Lily always took, to his house as well as to the eye doctor, which was in a northern suburb. He was always delighted to take her, due to his love for both driving and Lily. So a couple months after he died, I am driving their familiar route on the Edens Expressway when my passenger says, “I feel my dad.”

“You do?” I say, to stall, to check in and see if I too feel him. I don’t.

“How do you know?” I ask, not because I don’t believe her, but because I wonder how she will articulate it. “I just know,” she answers.

I totally understand. We drive on. It’s not surprising that she would feel him in his car, on that expressway, going to the eye doctor to which he had always driven her. And yes, it could have been…memories. Especially since I didn’t feel him. But.

But.

We get to the eye doctor and are asked to sign in. Out of habit I take the pen but Lily says, “Mom. I can sign myself in.” I hand her the pen and she writes her name and then pauses.

(Hold on. I am going to pause too, right now, just to ask: how many Barretts do you know? Really. Stop a moment and ask yourself.)

Lily gestures with the pen, and I look at the sign-in pad and the name above hers: Barrett Adams.

Barrett. Somehow he arrived before us.

What if “coincidence” is an amazing alignment of the Universe in which a cosmic wink is provided? Do we believe enough in the goodness of the powers that be to allow for the possibility of that level of synchronicity?

Really—how many Barretts do you know?

Postscript: for those of you who have any interest in the guru/spiritual growth aspects of these stories, I want to add that yes, I was interested in seeing just who this Barrett at the eye doctor was. And I had nothing to do but wait. At some point I heard a mom say, “Barrett! Sit down!” and I looked up and he was about five or six, performing some antics (a.k.a. experiencing the joy of being alive) in the reception area, and the message of that moment for me, upon seeing his joyful being, was: rather than imagining our Barrett as the always-wrong, disappointing ex-husband, when I connect with him from now on, I am to imagine him as the full-of-potential, energetic little Barrett that he no doubt once was…before I was even born.

<See Parts 7-9>

This One's a Jem (DMV Part 5)

The efficiency with which Lily disposed of her dad’s possessions was admirable. Yet at the same time, she absolutely knew what to keep; she was efficient but not indiscriminate. In addition to his car, and lots of memorabilia, she kept all of his t-shirts, the smell of which will move her to tears. 

His very well chosen, somewhat highbrow cds got a good price at the used cd store. The day after selling a big box of them, we found yet more, and Lily wanted to sell that second box immediately.  There is not a huge commonality of musical taste among the three of us; it was easier to find a movie we could all enjoy than a cd we could all listen to. Nevertheless, Barrett would offer me music; I’d accept his cd and give it back a month later saying I’d never had a chance to listen to it. I try not to believe that this kind of stuff, stuff I did and said, and the way I steadfastly refused to like his ideas, contributed to his death. Though it certainly didn’t contribute to his life.

JEM was a cd of Barrett’s that I kind of liked--I mean there was a cd by someone named Jem, and I liked one track, “They,” a very minimalist and ironic song. I never actually told him that I liked it; I only heard it because it was on Lily’s iPod, not because I had listened to Barrett’s cd, which I had returned to him without opening. Only later, hearing the Jem song on Lily’s iPod, did I find it compelling. I could see why he thought I'd like it. Lily says it was only on there because her dad had insisted she put a few songs on her iPod that he liked. (Good thing we never took driving vacations.)

So anyway, we sell all Barrett’s cds, including JEM, find another whole box the next day, and Lily asks if, that very second, we can head back to the cd store and sell this newly found box. I don't want to, even though I envy her lack of procrastination. It’s out of the way and inconvenient--the used CD store in Evanston that she and her dad frequented. And this is something I’d normally say no to, but just days into having a child without a dad, I was willing to do a few inconvenient things if they would make her feel somehow better, or more empowered. Sigh.

So we go. We park. And we hoist the box of sellable CDs out of the trunk. I open the door for her while she carries them into the used CD store.

We look at each other and say a silent NO WAY.

Because yes. They are playing our song. The one song. The only song Barrett had ever introduced me to that I LIKED. Of all the cds they could choose. Of all the songs that could be playing from that cd when we walk in. From the box we sold them the night before. The synchronicity was staggering.

“I’m sorry, so sorry

I’m sorry it’s like this…

I’m sorry, so sorry

I’m sorry we do this”

 ~Jem, “They”

GO TO PART 6