“By the Sea…”
August 12, 2009
Hi, it’s Linda here again… and this week’s story is a bit nostalgic… a sweet taste, savored long ago, that still lingers…. stirring up memories of love that once was….and, somewhere, still is…..
There is a time for everything in life…. a time when we fall in love, we get married, we have a child…
Sometimes that beautiful story continues. Often, there are bumps along the way and life takes a turn that we don’t expect. It can be challenging to leave behind what once was… and, yet, there is no future in life until we let go of the past, the beautiful times as well as the tough times….
Only when our space is “clean” can there be room for something new…
Here’s a story about letting go of one of those beautiful times… and how we can do that with love….
Years ago, just before I married my husband, Fred, we had the opportunity to rent – and then buy – a house on the beach in Westhampton, New York. One of Fred’s colleagues had just taken a job in Ohio and was not going to be able to use the house that he had rented — with an option to buy, no less. He called Fred and said, “Go out there and take a look at it… If you like it, I’ll turn over the lease to you…”
The next Saturday – a cold, clear day in February, 1976 – we traveled out to the Hamptons to take a look. The long drive ended with a desolate stretch along Dune Road, passing boarded up cottages and empty driveways — to arrive at a burgundy cottage, high up on pilings, boarded up like all the others, with a rickety staircase climbing up to the front door and a high dune on the ocean-side that prevented us from seeing what lay beyond…
Like kids, we jumped out of the car and ran up the stairs, trying to peek inside – to no avail. It was a worn house, small – but the air was crisp and the sky was blue – and we whispered about how good it would be to spend the summer at the beach…
And, if we liked it? Well, it was a very inexpensive house – as all of them were then… and we could afford it if we didn’t buy an apartment in the city…. we had such freedom to choose!
When we couldn’t see inside from the front door – or even crack the board on a window a bit… we decided that we’d go under the house and climb the dune and see what the ocean looked like from there…
We scrambled up the back of the high dune – it must have been 15 feet! – and pulled each other up to the top to see a back porch that was also old and weathered…. and then we turned around….
It was beautiful… breath-taking, really… the ocean stretched out before us in an endless expanse of sea and sky… the waves rolled in a rhythmic pattern from left to right, curling foam to crash upon the white sand.…
We looked at each other and we knew this was it…. this was our house…. we hugged and we kissed and we loved and we gave everything in our hearts to each other and to this house…..
When we got home, Fred called his friend – “Yes, we’ll take it….”
We got married in May and moved into our beach house for Memorial Day weekend…. It was old and worn inside, but we didn’t care… it was warm and it was cozy and it was ours….
It would be impossible in this little story for me to tell you everything that happened in that house… the wonderful times with friends, the beautiful sun-filled weekends, the runs along the beach with the sea breeze moving us along and lobster roasts in the sand…. How we spent every weekend there from May to October every year, loving every moment of it…. so that, even in the cold of winter, when we never went out there, it lived for us in the background of our minds — as the love nest that it truly was….
When we lost our first baby in May, 1978, that summer at the beach house was a time and a place of mourning that turned into a haven of healing and love for both of us…
When Josh was born the following year, we brought him home — after 8 weeks in the hospital and a scary time when it was all about transfusions and intensive care for him — and intensive care followed by my mother’s death for her – we headed out to the beach house, in the middle of October, even though the season was over and the road was quiet and the town was empty — and we slept in our room, with Joshua in his Moses-basket by our bed….
We were at peace there…
As I look back on it now, it strikes me as odd – and strangely synchronistic: how our lives together — and what happened to the beach house — seemed to mirror each other…
Fred and I drifted into a troubled and confusing time… and the beach house suffered from winter Northeasters that left it standing precariously on three less pilings… and listing dangerously to one side – not unlike how our marriage was standing…. scary to look at, dangerous to enter, and doomed to fall into the ocean if we couldn’t fix it….
Try as we did, both the house and the marriage collapsed…. a series of winter storms in 1993 finally took the house out to sea…. the same winter that Fred and I no longer had anything left to stand on either…
After the last storm, we went out to look at where the house once stood. The road – what there was of it — was blocked, the rest of the area was flooded so that the only way out to where the house used to be was by barge — a big one with wheels that rolled into — and then floated on — the ocean… I couldn’t look… it was too painful to see it all gone…
We left the beach that day and didn’t go back… There were community groups and lawsuits to work on rebuilding the beach – and the meetings and the legal trials, once again, were much like the discord that now existed between Fred and me…
It was hard to remember how we were together before… as it was hard to remember how beautiful it had been in our house at the beach….
Over several years… and little by little, the beach was restored – lawsuits won by the community, a new town created, Westhampton Dunes, and an agreement by the government to manage the beach over the next 30 years to keep it from drifting away again…
In those same years, Fred and I mended our own hearts and – even though we chose different lives – what emerged was the foundation of real love and affection that always lay under the surface of our problems – those problems that were really defenses — against what? We don’t remember now…
Years later, when the beach was beautiful again, I went out to look at our land…. it had sat barren and empty for a long time. The lawsuits won, the area was going through a building boom and there was our beach in the midst of framed-out houses and newly planted dunes…
Waiting for a new life….
Neither Fred nor I could let it go….
Shortly after that, a developer called and made a nice offer for the land. Fred and I had been separated for years – we knew that we would never build on that land again. AND… knowing that it was in the background… that it was there… spoke of something unfinished….
Something incomplete….
It was time to let go…
We took the offer…
The week before we closed, I went out to the beach by myself… I brought a notebook and a pen and a folding chair. I opened the chair and sat there all afternoon, writing in my book – anything that I could remember about everything that ever happened in that house.
One memory was emblazoned on my heart…
The spring after Joshua was born, we opened the house early and started bringing him out there every weekend. One night, I was holding him in my arms, rocking him to sleep in an antique rocker that we had in our bedroom….
Our house was a strange shape… the master bedroom jutted out onto the back deck, facing the ocean – and the main house was at a right angle to the bedroom doors that opened onto the deck…. Sitting in the rocking chair, holding my baby – I could see both the ocean – and — if I looked a little to the right – I could see across the deck, into the living room where Fred was sitting, reading his book.
It was a perfect moment.
I felt a love wash over me that I had never felt before…. there was nothing there BUT love… I looked down at Joshua, his little eyelashes fluttering on his soft, sweet cheeks and my heart filled up and overflowed… I lifted my head and saw Fred and was overwhelmed with love for him – I turned towards the ocean and watched those beautiful waves rolling in curls onto the sand and the moonlight glistening on the ocean…. and all I could think was, “This is it… This is bliss… Thank you, God… You have blessed me…. I have everything I could ever want in my life…. I am so grateful…..” and the tears rolled down my face – I was that happy…..
And… that was a long time ago…
As I sat in the folding chair and looked at my little plot of beach – that same beach that was the place of my fondest memory and my deepest love…. I knew that what I wanted for whomever would live there was exactly that….
Love.
I took a stick and made the Reiki symbol for “love” in the sand. I climbed up the dune, one last time. Standing there, facing the sea — with the sharp, salty breeze brushing against my face and blowing my hair back — I blessed the sky, I blessed the beach, I blessed the ocean…
I said good-bye…
I packed up my folding chair, my notebook, and my bag… I turned and left…
I have a new life now, a different life…. A life I love… and, I am blessed that I had that life… once, a long time ago….
As for Fred and me? Well, real love never dies…. it changes, it looks different… but it is always love… We are friends now and that is a gift….
Deliciously yours in the Beauty of it all, Linda
“A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven”
…”Turn, Turn, Turn”, The Bryds
This is me, on the front deck of our beach house on Dune Road in Westhampton, in the summer of 1983. It was a beautiful time — for Fred and Josh and for me, for our two other children from Fred’s first marriage, Brian and Cindy, for our house, for our friends who came to visit….. With love, always…. xoxo
© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and “Spritiual Chocolate” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
“There am I in the midst of them…”
March 26, 2009
I always think of myself as generous and giving AND — guess what? I have found that my generosity is often tempered by what I think I can “get away with” and still look good, while protecting myself every step of the way. Last week, I got to see what true generosity can — and does — provide… an experience of Grace and Love…
Early in the week, I received an email from a friend – let’s call her Maddy — not someone so close to me, but more than an acquaintance – someone who is in the spiritual and transformational conversation with me, but not someone I regularly call or email. She was reaching out to her transformation “community” in order to find support around creating an opportunity for a plane ticket to a course in San Francisco that we are both taking together – in fact, we were heading there for the weekend last week. She found herself without a plane ticket to go – and, unless she was able to generate that ticket one way or another, it was now too late to get an inexpensive ticket – and she would not be able to come.
I read the email and my first instinct was to delete the message. “Not my responsibility….,” I thought.
Something stopped me.
What hit me is that I have often been in that very same situation – waiting until the last minute or thinking that money that I expected to come through would actually come in on time – only to have everything fall through and there I am left with no resources, no recourse – and feeling bereft and alone. As I looked at the email, I was inspired by how courageous she was to step out into the unknown and ask for help.
Yet, here I was, in not much better circumstances myself. Oh, I was going for the weekend, but it hadn’t been easy to pull that together. I had a reservoir of frequent flyer miles from which I had pulled in order to create my own ticket – and had not much more in the “kitty” from which to draw. I was saving what remained for my own ticket to the last weekend of the course in May.
That was two months away.
I called Maddy and offered to “create” a miracle with her. I told her that I had miles that I could give her in return for her working with me to generate my own plane ticket for May. We talked about it for a while, and she reluctantly declined. She didn’t want to put me — or herself, for that matter — in an uncomfortable situation in which she would feel obligated to “pay me back” for the free miles given to her now. We agreed to “stand together” in the space that anything could happen and that a miracle would arrive for her. I hung up the phone.
I think of myself as someone who steps out on the power of the Word every day of my life – “God provides” is not simply an aphorism to me. I put my faith and trust in God and He treats me like a “lily of the field” – I have never known Him to fail me. So, you can imagine….. Miracles happen often in my life….
I couldn’t shake the feeling all day that I had something to give and if I really believed in my faith and trust in God, I could give what I had and really “put my money where my mouth is” and create my own miracle for the trip in May.
I called her back – and this time, I freely offered the miles. Believe me, my ego – that part of me that thinks there isn’t enough for everyone – was screaming inside me, “How could you do this? What will you do when you need to go in May?”
My ego was no match for what was there in the space for both of us: creating and loving and Being…
What was there was an amazing Presence – a sense that this was greater than either one of us. Maddy told me that a miracle had already happened – she had half the flight already and only needed the one-way ticket back… As we made plans for how we would work that out the next day, we both let our walls down to each other and allowed for that there would be a way to have this work. We surrendered to the love in the space and said, “This shall be.”
I went back and forth all night between ego – wanting to keep everything for myself – and Self, knowing that by being willing to surrender to whatever it was that was there for me to do would give me riches beyond what frequent flyer miles could provide.
“A Course in Miracles” speaks of giving this way: “To give and to receive are one in truth,” (Lesson 108). The fact is I would have felt that something was missing if Maddy could not be there – I was being generous for myself as well as for her — “All that I give is given to myself.” The next morning, Maddy called to say that she had both ways on the ticket and that she didn’t need my miles after all – but – and this is a big “but” – we both knew that those tickets showed up in the clearing that we were being for her to come.
We are all powerful beyond anything we can imagine AND we do not walk this way alone. There is One Who is with us always… and it is easier to experience that when we stand together in love…
And…. Love is the thought that God is…
Deliciously yours in the Miracle of it all, Linda
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20
© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and “Spritiual Chocolate” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
February 11, 2009
Hi, I’m Linda Ruocco and this is my blog, “Spiritual Chocolate: Living inside a Delicious Relationship with the Divine.”
So, what does that mean, you say? Why this blog
For me, I grew up Roman Catholic and everything religious or spiritual was very solemn, serious, and severe – lots of rules, lots of ritual, lots of SIN!! I almost couldn’t do anything without which it was a SIN and wrong — and God was scary and distant!
On my own path, I have found that the spiritual road is rich with delights, the smooth path rather than the rocky road I thought it was when I was small…. and full of sweet and soulful surprises that warm the heart and pour into my mind like the molten delicacies that they are…. and so I aim to bring those delicious morsels to you…. those found moments, those delectable treats that appear in the love that only spirit sees and feels and hears…. my Valentines to you…. Valentines from The Divine.
I was married to a wonderful man, with whom I am still friends. His name is Fred. We divorced a long time ago and I have not been in a real committed romantic relationship since then. We have an incredible son, whose name is Josh, and he is 29 and lives far away in Minneapolis and works for Target and, well, I miss him even though I know that he has his own life to live, his own path to follow.
I tell you this because it is Joshua who taught me everything I need to know about love – that it is unconditional, it is always there, it gives us our strength, our beauty, our lives… and once it is created, it is never destroyed – even when we think it is. Oh, it may look different, it may feel different sometimes – but, love is love and it just IS…. and, if we let ourselves, we can see it everywhere.
When Josh was born, I couldn’t believe how much I loved him! One minute, he wasn’t there – and, the next – he popped out, I looked at him, and there it was – this feeling that we long for all our lives, the feeling that is indescribable, that is deep and rich and Oh, so sweet! The feeling that we call LOVE.
And, it never went away! In fact, I loved him more and more (How is this possible?) every day!
So, here’s my first delicious morsel: When Josh was about three, I was putting him to bed one night. I had my arms curled around his little body, so soft, so sweet, his little blond curls brushing at my cheek as I sang him a song to sleep. I was overwhelmed with him and feeling so blessed. I whispered in his ear, “Josh, you are better than the treasure at the end of the rainbow, you are better than the most precious jewels in all the Universe, you are an angel, so perfect and so sweet. I am so lucky to have you for a son. Thank you for being my child.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered simply.
I was a little surprised. I felt like I wanted him to say, “Oh, Mommy, I feel that way about you, too. You are so wonderful. You are the best Mommy that any boy could ever want!”
After I left his room, I thought about that. And, I got it that it was my ego that wanted those strokes, that reassurance, that admiration.
Josh? Well, he was just love – and his answer was a response from the Divine – my son was my prayer and God answered.
Over the years, I have come to realize that that love that I feel for Josh is what love is – and I can give that same love to anyone and to everyone. The only thing ever standing in the way is the ego that wants strokes, reassurance, and admiration. Love simply is. It doesn’t need anything.
Oh, and, because it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m giving myself a new possibility – the possibility of being in a deep, rich relationship with all my heart!
And, that means, with you…
SpiritualChocolate 