How to Plan Your 60th Birthday Celebration

by Claudia Gold, copyright 2013 www.shameintojoy.com

First you wonder what the heck you are going to do to celebrate, ‘cause you know some of the other years have felt a bit lonely without celebrating, and this is a big one. You are kind of the different one in the family, you are more Santa Cruz, and they more Los Angeles, so the immediate family isn’t rushing to hold a celebration. It’s the year to finally be proactive and celebrate this being who is you – at 60. Who are you? A good question to ask between now and your birthday this Saturday.

Next your consistent, practical friend Jackie who you have Chinese food every Friday night invites you to go to a restaurant for birthday dinner and to invite others.

You agonize over which restaurant, worry about the cost, and though friend says her and hubby will treat me and everyone can pay for themselves, it seems cheap to have people pay themselves.

Next you call one of your favorite friends and chat with her. She invites you to come the afternoon before your birthday, Friday afternoon, for a visit to Ross to buy a birthday outfit for you, for dinner and a sleep-over that night, possibly to go to a salsa class that night or maybe a movie at home, birthday breakfast in the morning, and a time for creative writing afterwards – with delight in her voice that has the cute British accent. This is better than expected!!

You tell her about the planned dinner with Jackie et al. on Saturday night, and that you realize you don’t actually like dinners in restaurants with a bunch of people. You prefer one on one and small gatherings where you can do something meaningful. While brainstorming an idea arises.

You: ask a friend if he is willing to have the evening gathering for friends/family at his house, a cozy condo with streams running through the area and scents of the pine trees throughout. He says yes!

You remember as you're falling asleep that your friend Jackie who had the idea of this gathering is allergic to cats, and that host Jim sometimes stays home to baby-his cat and make sure he's OK at night.

Ask Jim if Romeo can stay outside, he says yes until 9 because the weather is good.   

Call Jackie who says she will take antihistamine.

Call loving step-mother to see if she can come. She probably can’t but tells you loving, valuing things! Yum.You’ll get together another time. This means you can invite the other side of the family.

Drive to Trader Joe’s and while shopping meet woman who cooks and discuss casseroles for potluck.  She suggests chile relleno casserole, recipe from Food Channel. You vascillate between that and childhood food “Cheese Belinzes.”  You think of buying chili rellenos at the little dive on Bandini in a pinch. Chile relleno casserole wins.  Shopper says she wouldn’t bring anything if it was her birthday.

Sit at your desk, Taz Chihuahua behind you, and make little invitations with a poem:

You are invited,

though not much time to prepare,

to an event at which candles will be lighted

to launch the 60th birthday year.

I hear these are the best years

and one wouldn't want to go back,

so I won't be stopped by fears,

and won't give God any flack.

Stress about who to invite.

Invite people to bring poems, songs, recordings relating to the word 60, living life fully, letting go gracefully, and women getting better with age.

Hope only half or less of the people will come, because you really like one on one, small gatherings.

Tomorrow:start planning for sleep-over with delightful girlfriend, including possible salsa dress and shoes, pajamas, toothbrush. 

My Green Jewish Client

                  My Green Jewish Client

by Claudia Gold copyright 2013 shameintojoy.com

I’ve got a feelin’, a feelin’ in side, that my green Jewish client is my ultimate find, so what is a green Jew(ish woman), yes talk to me, she’s from Booklyn or L.A. or new to Berkeley. Ha-ha and I’ve got a feelin’, a feelin’ inside, that my Jewish client is as frank as she is kind.  With an MFT, or Ph.D, she studied the mind, to stand up to a valiant mother who was emotionally wild - Oh!

And I’ve got a feelin’, a feelin inside, that my ideal client has a green Jewish Inner Child. And frankly, I’ll tell you what the rabbi said to me, that his congregation doesn’t need to be shame free. But I’ve got a feelin’ right here in my chest that a lot of inner chachkas are just dying to be blessed.

I find her at the mic standing for women’s rights, banning rifles and GMO’s, or at the Sassoon beauty school for a touch up of color: hair, hands or toes. At her son’s orthodontist Dr. Toothstein or a Mindfulness meditation, this strong, spiritual Jew only needs an invitation and…

I’ve got a feelin’, a feelin’ inside, that my green Jewish client is unbelievably kind. Only organic strawberries and kosher turkey for her family, she is funny, and helpful, irreverent and silly. Perhaps I can find her at the sales rack at Whole Foods, checking prices on homeopathics for her OCD or ADD or moods.

 

She’s had her share of tsouras, she’s a survivor as well, when she’s not throwing bagels she gives hugs as she kvells. And I’ve got a feeling, she’s cutting through the kvetch, karma and maya, to her friends and her clients, she’s becoming a Mechaya,.

You see a friend told me your client is like you, and lately in the mirror I can see a Baha’i-Jew, so I better get going to the dance class or the synagogue, because the last thing I’m doing is publishing this blog – Oh!

Shower as Temple

 BooBoooBoooBoooShower Writing Presents:

                                                     Shower as Temple

              by Claudia Gold, copyright shameintojoy.com 2013

Where do you fall into when you turn to the Sun of Hearts, the God, or whatever you call it?  What happens to you? In this place mysterious.

What is this? What magenta dish comes to your inner love and says, “Waken.” (Or is the dish black, purple, yellow, and, if not, what?) What deeeeeeeeep plate does your energetic love come to your

growing-flourishing-aliveness on?

I have this morning a dish on which is a green book, pages opened, and when in there I find some delicacy, it opens deep airway, listening in there the deep and large spaciousness trumpets in lilies and tiny flower chords that all is well. A magnifying deep trumpet of my being calls and like in the movie Close Encounters, beams me to a “space-ship” of another gigantic and generous, dynamic, comforting ESSENCE. I am here.

From this deep completion in a moment, calling me to more, to my lovingest self/Source, can I write about ADD? Or my doggie Taz in the morning, who is pawing on me and licking me from under my desk? Or styles of writing, like the deep inner one I tried this morning, in a place I wonder if saints and mystics of many times have eagerly entered in the morning as temples – the shower?

In THE SHOWER THERE IS NOONE TO TRY TO BE. Nothing to do. What a free space. What a retreat.  This vastness dimension knows where to find us - - in the shower. If our soul wishes to relate? If our heart wishes to create, If our mind wishes to negotiate, it can here. Add in to this aromatherapy, the scents of soap, the bubbles and massages, relaxing God knows what brain indexes, no computers in there, no facebook, or Pinterest or blogging or clients or being sold to, or obligations or friends.  NO  shame in here. Or if some surfaces it recedes in warm beatings of shower, moist massages of soap, and the non-linear rhythms of watering, and perhaps a word or two or reassuring self talk.

If I was to write about ADD I’d say that it was here, in the shower, I got the idea to make a movement to mimic my creative ADD (or as my feng shui friend calls it, my prolificness)   My movement, made on the turquoise shower rug when I departed showering, has my hands making a vibrating motion towards each other by my head, it is frenetic, it is narrow focused, it is writing and reading for seven hours yesterday at the computer, it is not doing this today.

I am narrow focused. I need a maid and a butler, and maybe a Kickstarter, an accountant, a handyman and a secretary to handle my “To Do” piles. Oh, yeah, and a gardener.  I need more income to hire these people. And to get such income in the past I have had to draw on the biggest spaciousness. That Sun of Heart deeply in the mornings, to walk into hospitals and see sick people, many brave sick people, faithful sick people, and feel so many colors of feelings to calmly and lovingly do my job, quickly moving on to the next client. Give me a shower, and a green book on a glass plate, because there is a freedom there, and even though I do probably need to return to the 9 -5, at least for a while, no one can take my deep retreat place, the shower, from me, that I can return to at 7:00 in the morning, the burgundy towel still wrapped around me as I create, just a little on this keyboard.