My mother turned 88 years old this month. She lives in an independent living apartment in Annapolis, Maryland, clear on the opposite side of the country, an exact 180 degree trajectory from where I have my home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are, by some accounts, 180 degrees apart in our approach to life. But while partaking in a recent phone conversation with her, I noticed an thread of commonality that wholly connects us. Our conversations always start out the same:

“Hi Mom, how are you?”

“Oh Cathy! Hi sweetheart. I’m doing okay. It’s nice here today. The sun is out. A bit cool, but I think it’s supposed to warm up later today. I may go for a walk in a little bit.”

Or

“Hi Mom, how are you?”

“Cathy! Hi dear. Eh, I don’t know. I’m okay. It’s a little cloudy outside. Doesn’t look like there are too many people out and about.”

Or

“Hi Mom, how are you?”

“Hi Cathy. Oh, I don’t know. I’m tired today. I was up in the middle of the night last night and couldn’t get back to sleep. It’s dreary here; raining a bit. Cold and gray. I think they’re calling for more storms this evening. My knee is bothering me again.”

It’s clear that my mother gauges the quality of her day, the quality of her well-being, by the quality of the weather.

This rather mundane way of starting out nearly all of our conversations turns me sideways until I realize that I am very much like my mother in this way. Each day, when morning breaks, I peer out my bedroom window and my mood immediately rises to match the weather outside. Gray and foggy? So am I. Sunshine starting to peer over the horizon? It’s going to be a bold, bright day for me too. When the weather is in-between or switches too quickly between moods, I’m guaranteed to be a bit out of sorts.

My addiction to sunshine is an especially prevalent theme, particularly during the non-wintering months here in California. I’ve become dependent upon an almost constant high of bold sunshine and boundless blue skies to warm my cold-running bloodstream. The chilled, foggy spring and summer mornings of the Bay Area, while mystical and beloved by many long-time residents here, hold me captive in a mental and physical malaise. I brood and stew in discomfort. I eagerly wait for the fog to “burn off,” to find that exquisite opportunity to sit outside with my cup of coffee and warm my ever-cold extremities in the heat of the sun.

 

Lately, even when the weather is not so erratic around me, I’ve come to notice how fickle and changing my “inside weather” can be throughout the day. I awake with hope and optimism. Then a news headline or an unexpected email shifts me into melancholy. An afternoon walk in the sun can have me feeling elevated. And as evening draws and the daylight lowers, I become pensive and pondering.

Serendipity

This week, in the midst of one of my internalized barometric pressure swings, I noticed a lingering voicemail on my phone. The call was from someone in Maine. He introduced himself as Ken, a recruiter looking to fill a rather unique public relations and communications position in San Francisco. And while poking around online for potential Bay Area candidates in the field, he had come across my profile.

As he dug further and further into my various online presences and posts, something about my life trajectory resonated with him. On a whim, and with no particular purpose in mind, knowing that the position he was seeking to fill was likely not a match for me, he left me a thoughtful three-minute voice message with no expectation that I would, or necessarily should, call him back. But the next morning I did. And a warm conversation ensued, one that had us sharing about our life paths, our faith explorations, our respective travels to India, and how we found ourselves in our current careers at opposite ends of the country. It was a simple, delightful moment of human connection. Like pen pals through the phone line. My inside weather instantly improved.

Life seems particularly transitional these days, like passing clouds being carried by a high-level jet stream. Some days spin their own hours faster than a record DJ spins records. Dinnertime arrives and the day is drawing to a close when it seemed that, just a moment ago, I was just drinking my coffee out in the late morning sun.

My husband and I are in the midst of making a grand shift from one corner of the Bay Area to another, relocating our lives and our home in the midst of a housing market that is nothing short of insanity. We’ve sold our house through a most serendipitous off-market sale. Yet, short of identifying our California county of destination, there’s no telling where and when we’ll find our new home. It is an exercise in examining our priorities, our routines, what we believe, and what we want out of the next couple decades of our lives together. All while the world, the climate crisis, the economy, and global politics unfurl themselves ever madly all around us. I feel unmoored, like a recent college grad couch surfing while she awaits her next big Hollywood break. And yet, what a time to be alive, to see myself in relationship to others, to chart the next turn in life’s big adventure.

The beloved Tibetan Buddhist teacher and nun, Pema Chödrön, once remarked about the importance of remaining unattached to our emotions during states of meditation: “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

The great musical legend, Joni Mitchell, sings about the illusions of clouds and love and life with the passage of time. Her later rendition of Both Sides Now with its swerving orchestral strings has been my soundtrack lately.

And this week, my phone line pen pal from Maine, sends me a post-phone call text message that disconnects me from my inside weather and sets me on my way:

[Life] is indeed an adventure, Catherine, filled with occasional pain but peppered with bouts of joy along the way. It’s a smattering of serendipity, with dashes of Divine Intentionality, and laced with lashings of karmic come-uppance.

Find a comfy couch, college grad…and fasten your cosmic seatbelt.

Cosmic indeed. May I become the sky.

 

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