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“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take. Life is measured by the moments that take our breath away.”
— Hilary Cooper

Indeed. Yesterday, at Whole Foods in Metairie, I was picking up a few items while Tin was in Sunday school. At the check out line, a man came up behind me and picked up a Valentine’s card that was on the floor and handed it to me. It said, “We Otter Hold Hands” and had two otters floating bellies up holding hands. I said, “It’s not my type of card,” as we both read it together and searched for the rack it fell from.

Not my type of card, but he was my type of man, a tall drink of water, crazy locks, and soft eyes and a gentle demeanor.

I paid for my groceries and was balancing a cup of coffee as I put the bags in the cart, he picked up the heaviest bag and put it in the lower basket for me. Again, those eyes. Thank you, honey, I said.

When I walked outside, I couldn’t find my truck and was a little dazed from the encounter and walked in the wrong direction, only to spot it across the way and come back to find the man parked directly next to me. He was finishing up and about to pull out when I turned to return my cart and was face to face with him. He put on the brakes, looked at me, his windows down on this beautiful day, and I said, “Happy Valentine’s Day” – he smiled and drove off.

I got into the truck and realized my hand was shaking and my heart was racing. Wow, what?

The day went by and I couldn’t shake our encounter. Should I have? Why didn’t he? And so I did the unfathomable, me who loathes the concept of online dating, I posted on Missed Connections on Craig’s List. So far I’ve had three responses from men who would like to fill in for that tall drink of water, but he is the one I want to connect with.

What was that all about? Seems like he and I had some powerful history between us because how many times does someone make your hand shake and your heart bang against your chest who you’ve just met in the check-out line? Not often, I’m here to tell you. Will I see him again? Does it matter?

The importance of these encounters I pondered at 2 AM: I’m still feeling it I say about Sty, I say about my Whole Foods Valentine – and even if they be crumbs towards the feast, they are all helping to pry open this big RED heart and so I welcome them with an outstretched hand.

I just got a call and the woman said, “Is this Divine Inspiration?”

I said, “Sorry?”

“Is this Divine Inspiration?”

No, I said, this is Rachel.

I should have said, Yes!

Yesterday, Tin put a sticker on my index card box – it was a Lego version of Wonder Woman with her Lasso of Truth. He said that she was for me. Indeed, I said, she is my hero and that Lasso of Truth is rocking.

During one of my shedding periods, I contemplated changing in my hero for another. I couldn’t summon the fire in my belly to continue with Wonder Woman as my alter ego. I wanted someone more laid back.

Slowly and surely, I came back to WW though because after all, who doesn’t love a super hero who is one of the physically strongest heroes in the DC Universe and the strongest female heroine of all in the DC Universe? True to my spirit, Wonder Woman has the ability to feel compassion and give love without discrimination.

So often when I ask myself What Would Wonder Woman Do? I have to remember that I’m really asking What Would Rachel Do? Because through the years, we have merged into one. Her powers and my powers coalesce under necessity and whimsy. Wonder Woman was able to further increase her strength, in times of great need, by removing her bracelets, which would temporarily augment her power tenfold, but cause her to go insane in the process.

Been there, done that.

Now about that Divine Inspiration, let me give you some of it for your daily bread:

If you drop “I expect this” from your mental process, and replace it with, “Wow, I’m lucky …” you will change your life.

See how it is that you can have days, even weeks to grieve loss, to feel uninspired, to be depressed and you can pull it all back together because you are resilient, and you can wake one fine morning and it doesn’t seem too cold to get out of bed, too much like ground hog’s day to anticipate the routine, too negative cause you think that nothing awaits that is better than what you already know. It’s like POW BAM SLAM.

You wake up and Wonder Woman has taken over and is in the driver’s seat and she has a cool invisible plane.

A friend posted about the meaning and value of things and people, and I began to think about all of it because of what she wrote. Mainly, because in an email exchange with my brother, he was pondering why I gave Sty the significance of grieving him as a loss. And coincidentally, I was thinking of New Orleans as we are in the 10th anniversary of the 2005 Federal Flood.

The meaning of New Orleans now, of almost not having New Orleans at all, and what it meant to me, having returned after 16 years in California to my beloved city only to find it underwater three months later – that’s a lot.

The meaning of a house that was designed for me by my husband who never lived there nor completed the dream of us – me, him and a child – to be a family – living in our home in New Orleans. Another whoa, wow, a lot.

The meaning of Sty, the first man to pursue and tell me he loved me in ten years. What?

We imbue the meaning, right? We fill these vessels up with all that crunchy goodness. Or do we? Do they come to us with their own context and narrative and blend into ours?

The house – the LaLa – was my dream to come back here to New Orleans – my home – a dream of belonging. A place to be haunted by, a place to miss, a place to be. And in it, a home to seek refuge.

The husband, the man who could be the Antony to my Cleopatra, who could meet me head on. The child to make us a family and give us a grounding in future tense.

Have I over estimated who Sty is? In 2007, a neighbor of a friend I was staying with in Istanbul read my coffee grinds and told me my heart was sealed up after my divorce, no inroads and no out roads, just a big, black, solid mass.

I would say Sty holds plenty of meaning and I will also admit that the imagining of Sty is more than the actuality of Sty.

To love again is the goal. To try again is the heart of the matter.

All we can do is be grateful and take or leave the meaning to move on.

Thanks for cracking the man code, Sty.

This morning when I went to wake up Tin by kissing him, he said, “Stop it, I already got my kisses from my girlfriend.” His girlfriend calls him Rainbow Dash and is the reason why he started watching My Little Pony. I thought Rainbow Dash was a boy, but turns out he’s a girl. What do I know?

Today, Tin brought Rainbow Dash to me while I read him a story [a friend sent me her manuscript to read]. He said that Rainbow Dash flies through the air and moves all the clouds away – whoosh whoosh whoosh. Interesting, I said, because there are lots of clouds out there today.

He showed me Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark and said that maybe he has that cutie mark because of his special ability to move clouds. Seems like it, I said.

I was going to get a cutie mark (aka tattoo) when I turned 50, but I couldn’t decide where or what exactly, and at that time I wasn’t aware of what my special powers were because I was going through so much change – losing my mother, adopting my son, on my way out of a company that I had helped build, and about to start giving up the dream house that I built.

If I had to get a cutie mark now, it would most likely be a symbol of resilience like my friend who got the lotus blossom after the 2005 Federal Flood or others who inked the Phoenix onto their skin. I remember sitting in a restaurant with my brother and a friend, and my friend said, “Kids are so resilient.” I was 20 something and didn’t know what that word meant. Resilience. Try again.

It’s a human thing.

I have learned resilience means being able to move clouds and experiencing moments where in the blink of an eye you catch the sun, you catch the moon, you catch a star, you catch the sea pale vast blueness and its brilliance, you catch your breath, you catch your blessing, you catch your heart, you catch your dream, you set free your spirit and all its glory.

It’s still cloudy outside right now, but I know a lot about resilience and so I’m cool, I also learned how to wait.

I was emailing with a friend from San Francisco who I haven’t spoken with in a while. In describing our lives, she made the comment, “Isn’t life funny, when you say you can’t handle something, sure enough that is what life gives you.”

To prove you wrong.

We were speaking about being a single parent, but this goes for just about everything. Yesterday, I was speaking to someone about my finances and the person said, “I need to know I have money in the bank to pay my bills before I can relax.”

I’ve learned to do the faith walk on finances among other things.

Is life funny? I guess it can be, and is, a lot of times, but sometimes I am not looking at the humorous side of events. Sometimes, I am just thinking my cup is half empty – hey, it happens even to Pollyannas like myself. Sometimes I’m wondering what’s it all about and why do I feel like I’m circling the drain.

I do, though, want to believe, that when the giant flush happens I go down on my back saying WHEEEE. But sometimes, it’s okay to be mired in gloomy, because it makes those rays of light so much more profound when you see them.

I went to a poetry reading the other night in the Quarter, in Crescent City Bookstore, an old musty store, with floor to ceiling windows and a rickety wooden stairway and floor to ceiling shelves of books – my kind of place. I wish I could say that all that intelligentsia made Sty seem obsolete but honestly I missed his birdbrain after we were done. But there was a take away – as there always is – and that was this one line spoken from I can’t remember which poet:

Illusion is always the first pleasure.

Last night, I was reminded once again of why I stay in this city. It was the beginning of Mardi Gras for real with Krewe de Vieux rolling in the Marigny and Quarter, but here we were at the Spirit House, entertaining a friend I met on Facebook. There were micro greens on the table from my friend’s farm in the Treme, there was kale from my garden, and there was a bottle of wine from my favorite winery in Napa – St. Clement, there was music, there was laughter, and there was love.

“I love your house!” is what my friend said when she walked in the door because frankly where else in the world could you live in a 100-year-old house with 12 foot ceilings and hardwood floors that are worn from a century of living? “I love this house more than the one of the bayou!” said my friend who does hair for the movie stars, the thriving film industry that has taken root in New Orleans over the last decades. We spent midday catching up on the time we haven’t seen each other as she has been moving from one film to the next.

My friends who knew the LaLa love the Spirit House more – this house with the sign at the threshold that says BE LOVE OR LEAVE. “I knew this was your house when we turned onto the street,” said my friend from Chicago. While the house I left on the bayou was my dream house, this is the house for who I’ve become.

And we are always becoming …

I didn’t let Sty come to my house. I had a hunch or a hinch as Tin is want to say that more would be revealed, and I found out. This is a place for healing, a place for love, a place for laughter. It is not a place to be messing with me. It’s a place to be celebrating me.

And so we’ll stay here in the Spirit House, in New Orleans, for a while, until we can’t, or won’t, or don’t. And while we’re here, we’ll listen to music, eat yummy food, drink wine and spirits, and have loved ones come to dance and laugh and love with till we can’t anymore.