Signs

I hope I'm getting closer to the answer. I've had days of signs and more pieces to add to this ever-expanding puzzle. I know I might be conjuring something out of thin air but I do sort of believe this story I'm telling myself. I just hope it starts to make sense soon.

The first sign I noticed was a couple of weeks ago when I heard my driver, Mark, whistling a tune in the cooler. It was making me bananas, trying to figure out what song it was - a tune I hadn't heard in years but knew that I knew. He is an unconscious whistler so it took him a minute to even start it up again when I asked him about it. When he did he said it was a song his grandpa used to sing and that he had no idea what it even was. Jen and I made him whistle it again and again until, finally, she picked up on it. "Everything is B'youuuuuu - t'fullllll in it's own wayyyyyyy" We sang together like we do sometimes when we're getting goofy. I knew the song from the hippie church services my mom used to drag us to at the double screen Palms-to-Pines movie theater in Palm Desert. It felt good to sing that song and think about that time. Those memories are old and largely untroubled. I remembered that we also sang "Let There Be Peace On Earth" with the whole congregation holding hands and swaying, like the Whos at the end of The Grinch. I love that song. When I went through a spiritual re-purposing at 12 I would change the lyrics to either "with God as our mother....." or "with dog as our father...." Yeah, I thought I was hilarious.

The next day - the very next day - Devin and I drove out to Buckman Springs for a hike and, while listening to Car Talk, I suddenly hear Ray (or was it Tom? The one I picture heavier and less serious). Anyway, Ray or Tom starts singing "Everything is Beautiful" in response to a caller. !!??!  ?@$%&*?!  (That's not swearing. That's befuddlement with a Really?! on the end. I'm currently obsessed with people saying "Really?!"  with an incredulous, sarcastic head tilt. Nelwyn does it perfectly.) It wasn't commented on. It wasn't elaborated upon. It wasn't even related to the call. It just happened. It was just sung for a minute in the background and it felt as though it happened for me alone. I hadn't thought of that song in years and years. Why was it suddenly coming up two days in a row in unrelated contexts? Was there like a Wendy's commercial that I didn't know about using that song? I thought there must be some current cultural reference out there. That made sense to me at the time but I decided that if I wanted to use it as some kind of sign that was fine. The lyrics are positive and I could stand some of that right now. I left the song in my head but let the coincidence go.

That was Sunday.

On Monday I had a long delayed appointment at the orthodontist that I had been simultaneously needing, dreading and avoiding. Mason and I had braces at the same time so we had all of our appointments together. The staff knew us equally well and they just loved Mason. They knew him all through high school - Super Star Mason - and were so excited when he got accepted to Santa Cruz. About a year after his breakdown, during my aggressive, confrontational, confessional, gut-spilly stage, I got a call from the receptionist hoping to schedule a retainer-check appointment for him. I said something really sensitive like "He just got out of the mental hospital and he's kind of psychotic right now so No, I don't think he'll be able to get his retainer checked." Even with that inappropriate reply I was still surprised that she didn't press me for details. See how I mean aggressive? I spent the next year and a half fuming, when I thought about it, that no one from the office called to see how we were doing. I took it personally and I was hurt and defensive in my thinking the worst about why they never contacted me. By the time I finally decided to get over it and go in for my appointment I was in what I thought was a very zen state about the whole thing. I prepared the various facial expressions I thought I might need - serious, receptive to sympathy, internally destroyed but externally accepting of a situation beyond my control (I'm a pro at that one). Above all I wanted to 1) look like someone who has tried everything within her power to effect a positive outcome (guiltless) and 2) act like someone who hadn't given a second thought to the fact that no one from this office reached out to us in our 2 and 1/2 years of hell. I might have been over thinking this.

After signing in to zero fanfare I sat in the waiting area and practiced my yogic breathing. I was peaceful. I was calm. I began to wonder if I blew this whole thing out of proportion. They weren't ignoring us. They were just giving us space. They weren't uncaring. They just didn't know what to say. I could understand that. I started to relax and chided myself for being such a spazz. I thought that once I got in to see the doctor she would make some small allusion to IT and then we would just move on. Phew. No big deal.


A few minutes later I was called and got settled into my chair. The doctor came straight in, sat right beside me and said "How is our sweet, wonderful boy? Didn't he go off to college?" I stared at her face, just inches from mine, and processed multiple lines of thought. I realized that, after all my obsessing, I was completely unprepared for this moment. It hadn't occurred to me that maybe they didn't call because they didn't know. It had been so long since anyone didn't know, so long since the time when I could pull up a quick little synopsis soundbite, that I was actually at a loss for words. I also felt myself wanting to hold on to this moment for as long as possible; to stay in this time and place with this person who adored Mason and also still saw him the way he once was. I fixed this idea in my mind and imagined myself saying "Yes. He did. He's doing great." I was frozen in thought, wanting to both stay in this parallel universe and also trying to think what to say when I realized that Adele's "Make You Feel My Love" was playing on the office radio. This beautiful, Bob Dylan cover was like an anthem for me during Mason's second big breakdown. I sent out a link with lyrics to my closest friends and wrote about how well this song expressed my deepest, deepest. This song is so intensely emotional for me that, as soon as I became aware that it was on in the background, I lost it. I absolutely couldn't speak. I tried. I was crying, stuttering. It was pitiful. I told her I was sorry. I tried to pull it together. I blurted out a few bullet points and apologized for getting so emotional. I blamed the song. (It was embarrassing but we got through it enough for her to try to sell me another $6,500 orthodontic package all in the space of like thirteen minutes from "sign in" to "sign on the dotted line." Pass. Jeez, I just wanted my retainer tightened up a little.) I left drained, deflated.

I couldn't stop thinking about that song popping up at that time. Why that song? Why then? A coincidence? I guess. It's popular and it is one of a small number of songs that could have played in that moment that would have had similar - not the same, though! - Mason/Sarah significance. Still. There aren't that many songs connected to The Horrible Thing That Happened. Of all the songs in the world that could have played just then ... It didn't feel coincidental at the time but I guess that's how it always is when we attach meaning to moments. We see what we want to see, right? While by now I had only noticed two 'signs' I connected them and wondered if there had been others that I had missed. This is when I really started paying attention. 


The following Sunday I went to my morning yoga class and my teacher put us into a cool pose I've never done or heard of before. All these years of doing yoga and not only had I not been in this pose in just this way but I had never heard anyone use this term in yoga, either. I can't remember the pose now but it was something like a half bow. She had us in some belly floor position and then we reached back and held one leg and she said "making a teardrop shape." I noticed it specifically because I hadn't done it or heard of it before. That same afternoon I had Nelwyn's son, Lucca, over to get all crafty with me. We collected wildflowers in the canyon and then made waxed-paper flower window art. After we ironed out our creations we were cutting off the edges and my husband said "You should cut them into cool shapes, like teardrops." ?! What the fuck?! Honestly, I don't think my husband has ever even said the word teardrop. What was going on??!!?!  I quietly freaked out so as not to freak out Lucca.

By now I really started thinking that a message was trying to reach me. What was it though? What was I supposed to get from this? I understand the concept of priming, that once we are conditioned to look for something we start seeing it everywhere, but what if there was something bigger happening? If priming or coincidence or cultural reference are all possible explanations can't something more metaphysical be an equal option as well? Even if it was all in my head, then what message was my own subconscious trying to send me? I did not want to mess this up.


The following Saturday we went to dinner with our good friends Steven and Nicole. We sat outside on Gingham's lovely little patio and ate and drank and talked like we do. We were having fun but, the Mason question has a place and a time and it comes, inevitably and always. It has to. I think we were talking about crazy crap we did as teenagers when Steven turned to me and asked "So, how is Mason doing?" I paused to think, "How do I want to answer? We're having such a nice time." I remember I looked down at my feet for some reason, gathering my thoughts. When I turned my head back I just had to laugh. It was ridiculous. I thought "This cannot, simply CAN NOT, be a coincidence. Something is trying to reach me." The song in the background, from a speaker somewhere behind Steve's right shoulder, was "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. This song has one and only one reference for me. I know where it's from. I think I know what it's supposed to be about. But to me it's connected to one thing and it stamps in place a time so far away it might as well have happened in a dream. Years ago when Mason was into speed cubing one of his friends videotaped him at a Rubik's competition and put the video on YouTube. He added some music and "Paper Planes" was the song he put at the end. I still watch it sometimes. The video, the song - to me it's all so happy and young and hopeful. It was a time before all the sorrow and it seems like Mason is on top of the world. I miss that version of our world.


So, is it about music, grief, nostalgia, connecting the dots? Is it about believing in the beauty in this world, just as it is, in spite of everything, and loving the weirdness of it all? I don't know. It's been over a week. Are the signs done for now?  Maybe, in the trying to figure it out, it's simply a message to get off my butt and start writing on this blog again. Maybe. That's a good one. The final sign could be related to this bizarre google +1 thing that happened to one of my previous posts. I'm sure it's a fluke or a bug or a mistake or something but for one tiny second - ok for a few days - I started thinking "What if? What if thousands and thousands of people - strangers - really liked something I wrote?" That would be incredible. Could I have that? Could that happen to me?

Maya Angelo said "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." Anyway, my day planner with inspirational, bird-related quotes said she said that. Reading that quote today felt like yet another piece toward the answer. An answer to what? I'm not sure but maybe if I keep writing something will be revealed.