Eve's Houseboat

Eve’s Question

About half way through what I was calling My Year of Living Dangerously, the year I thought might last forever with me languishing gloriously on the sofa watching the wind shake through the poplars across the street, the matter of Growing Old came knocking on my door.  It wasn’t what you might expect—some bad news thing about a fall or the death of a dear friend or suddenly discovering that overnight I had developed jowls.  It was a call, a wake up and show up and pay attention call that I had not anticipated at all.

It happened on a Sunday morning last August as I was rolling up my sweaty yoga mat at the end of class. A tall, blond woman I knew slightly asked if we could talk for a few minutes. We huddled in the corner as the next class of eager yoginis rushed past us to stake out their territory. “I’m turning 50 at the end of this year,” the woman said. “I heard from some friends that you took them on a  trip on the Colorado River in April. They told me you did a powerful ritual about becoming elders. I need that.”

Wow, pretty direct, this beautiful woman, I thought.  She knows what she wants. We walked outside and I gave her a couple of ideas for creating an elders circle for her birthday. “Call me if  you want any help,” I told her.

A couple of weeks later the woman, I’ll call her Eve, sent me an email.  It was a little stiff, the way emails are between virtual strangers. “You inspired me with your suggestion of how I might mark my 50th year and prepare for my entry into ‘Crone-hood’. I would love to continue the conversation. To be honest, I would welcome the opportunity to talk with you, if you were open to it – this last month has thrown me into some really interesting explorations of how to be in partnership, and yet not lose myself (that age old thing!).”

She invited me to tea, saying that she had an English Garden attached to the back of her little houseboat in San Francisco Bay. She included a photo of a small deck covered with pots of red geraniums and white begonias and a profusion of summer flowers I couldn’t identify.[i] Beyond the floating garden was the dark green-blue of the bay and the washed out blue of the summer sky. I was enchanted. What an old fashioned thing to do– sit in a garden drinking tea and, as Eve put it, continue the conversation.