My mother was away, leaving my younger sister and me with our retired baby sitter, Mrs. Mills. When she returned, she complimented Mrs. Mills on her hairdo then asked how I liked it. I didn’t and said so—promptly told that was not nice to say. Embarrassed, I didn’t understand.
After a three-week residency in a hospital psychiatric ward in 1989, I joined a weekly recovery group that met in the mental health building of a collegiate town where previously I’d gone out for lunches, and one time, tap danced with my studio at its Academy of Music. I could feel embarrassed or not; I chose not to.
Two years later, being treated by my chiropractor, she told me she could smell cherry tobacco, and instantly I was a child smelling my dad’s pipe. I let her know. The next visit when she said “push up” bra, I remained silent. Recently I’d tried on a black, sexy bra hoping no one I knew had seen me going to the fitting room.
Years later, at the prayer building of Meherabad* where my duty was to hand out prasad*, as my grip on the tin of chickpeas (for adults who can’t eat sweets) slipped, they spilled over the wooden bench, bouncing on the floor. Dolly, waiting to receive hers, immediately bent and began sweeping them, until with another two of us, they were in a plastic bag. She had lived with Meher Baba, and in her eighties still led morning prayers. Smiling and saying to her that this was an opportunity to forgive myself, she suggested that I give them to the villager children as a treat.
My realization is, “When we make a mistake, someone may be there who wisely offers us a solution not yet apparent to us.”
* Meher Baba’s home in India
* Treats given pilgrims after bowing down at the shrine
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