SERENITY AND GRATITUDE

January 16 2014On This day, 25 years ago, I took my shaking body and scrambled mind to the basement of a Methodist church Upstate New York and walked into the rooms of AA. For the next 3 years, every day, sometimes 3 times a day, I walked into sober rooms there, on Cape Cod, and New York City. In the second year of my sobriety, when I broke my neck, the meetings came to me; first in the ICU and then to my home. I worked the 12 steps, several times, I read the Big Book, several times, and I learned to surrender and I learned the true meaning of acceptance and started on the most amazing chapter of my life, untethered from the bottle.As I write this, I’m sitting in a small café on a street where Joel and I lived for 5 years and tears of gratitude and relief are welling up. I say, let ‘em fall; on the page, on these words which do not, and probably never will, adequately articulate all that I am feeling in this moment, on this day of my 25^th Anniversary.And here’s sobriety for you: this morning I awoke with a headache radiating from a severely inflamed gum around an implant, so tender I could barely eat my breakfast. 25 years ago I’d probably have popped some pills and hoped for the best, waiting until hope ran out and the implant fell out. Instead, I called my dentist and, not wanting to have any “substances” injected into my body on this of all days, I surrendered to the scalpel and a version of Lamaze breathing that sounded more like a scene from When Harry Met Sally.In an hour, I’ll meet my beautiful daughter for lunch before we catch a matinee of Philomena, followed perhaps, by a walk in the park before we attend an introductory lecture on TM.Joel and I, after exactly 1 year, 1 week, and 1 day of living in rural Europe, have now been back in NYC for 12 days; an experience almost as impossible to articulate as is the journey of sobriety. What strikes me most is the astounding, non-stop ambush of noise. I’ve been out in the city every day and most nights and have yet to enter any public space that is not playing mind-numbing music, which, along with the lack of the high level of nutritious food we became accustomed to in Provence and Tuscany, could be interpreted as part of a Corporate conspiracy to render humans catatonic. And that’s just the “music!” The traffic, horns, doorman’s whistles, rattling delivery carts, garbage trucks, fire engines, ambulances, police sirens, cell phone rage and on and on; I’m sure I look like “The Scream”.So, there’s that, and there is the excitement of it all, the sheer, ambitious, driving energy which, for limited visits, is stimulating if a little shattering. But mainly there is the deep joy of being reunited with family and friends; the landscape of love being the eternal beauty we all long for, no matter where we live.My dear Joel and I cling to each other like babies whenever we find a spare moment in our schedules, moments when we remind ourselves of the positive reason for being here: working toward a way of spending time here that enables us to enjoy the energy instead of being drained by it. And yes everyday we feel our spirits reach back across the ocean to the serenity of nature, the relaxed rhythm of life, the open space, the call of a mourning dove. The cows are mooing in the Tuscan fields, where winter wind converses with Cypress trees and the morning frost encases every leaf and twig for one brilliant moment before the sun penetrates the mist and melts the crystals. We see it, we feel it, deep in our melting hearts, as we travel on...Serenity PrayerGrant me the serenityto accept the things I cannot change;courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference.