Westphalia Waltz - by Charise Diamond

The sun and I, looking down on soft fog blanket

Sun makes it glow with white light

I make it glow with my seeing

I went inside.

Something happened

In my eyes

That made them light on a ladybug

A ladybug in the house

Sleeping on the upper rim

Of a lampshade (she likes the light).

I carried her outside while she was still sleepy.

Good morning!

Would you like to step upon a pale green leaf

That is under tiny white flowers

While you wake up and watch

The soft white light blanket

In the valley?

My first few weeks here, as caregiver at my sister's house, call it "Round One," were spent in fear and despair, feeling myself sinking into the same dark valley of suffering as the one I was caring for. All of me went into the soup of sorrow, into murk. I allowed that influence to suffuse into my aura, becoming entrained with what had taken her two and a half years to build by way of pain, primitive procedures and poison medicines. It hit me like a huge exercise ball filled with sand instead of air. I was left in that environment until the last minute before I would have collapsed. Then I was whisked away for four days of smiles and stories and deeply caring friends - the local storytelling festival and surrounding events. My heart was massaged over and over with stories that had meaning for me, with small sentences and miniature vignettes that had invisible Velcro matching the spots inside me that needed them. Down in the garden, seeds were planted and found fertile ground, light, and the moisture of tears. Every storyteller who was there had something for me, some more than others, but it was the whole event that washed over me like a warm wave, making profound change irresistible.

Perhaps one of the most meaningful tiny stories came from Syd Lieberman as he responded to someone's anecdote in the Saturday morning workshop. A man had just finished telling about white water rafting and how he had challenged himself to move through a category five rapid and how relieved he was when it became smooth again. Syd spontaneously shared a story about being at a party; hiding in a corner nursing a beer (he didn't like parties) when a man he didn't know came up to him and started talking about an experience canoeing on a river. They had always been on lakes, never a river. Suddenly the water started rushing and they were pulled into a rapid. There were rocks sticking out of the water and they had to paddle hard to stay upright and not smash their canoe. There was nowhere to beach the canoe, just steep cliffs on both sides. Terror reigned. And then the river rounded a bend and everything was smooth again. They beached the canoe and took a break. Climbing up to a hill overlooking the river, he could look back at the rapids they had just been through. Looking at it from above, on dry land, it was not all that rough and terrible; it was just a bend in the river.

As I left the parking lot where the festival had been held and said good-bye to a dear friend, tears in my eyes at the thought of what I was returning to, I made a silent prayer; "Dear God, I know you are always with me and right now I need you to let me feel it; let me know you are there as I go through this." The next stop was a gas station and as I filled my VW Westphalia, the owner of a huge motor home at the gas pump opposite me asked if I got good mileage and did I like my Westphalia. I answered yes to both questions and then, as if that was enough of an introduction to give him permission to be himself, he began to tell me that the word Westphalia in German means waltz. He said he has a group of musician friends who get together every week and play Westphalia waltzes. He then took a pose, as if holding an invisible lady dance partner, and began to waltz around the gas station in time with his own humming. This time when the tears came to my eyes it was in gratitude for an answered prayer and in joy that God had chosen to make his presence known in the form of this silly stranger humming and waltzing around the gas station.

Coming back to this care-giving place after four days in - what shall I call it - a place of inner power - is hard to describe. It is the same house with the same person in it but I have changed. It says in the Bible that you must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. One of the ways to become a child again is to look at everything with fresh eyes while being in the moment. Finding a ladybug on the lampshade was done with present, open eyes. The child in me was reborn after four days of just listening to stories, being with happy people, soaking it in and letting it flow to all the places of drought that were begging for rain.

Charise Diamond

October, 2007