Heidi Beth

Simon and Garfunkel
-Greatest Hits
-Wednesday Morning 3am
-Scarborough Fair
-Sounds of Silence
-The Concert in Central Park
-Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
-Bridge Over Troubled Water
I first heard Simon and Garfunkel at Rose Records in 8th grade. Mrs.Robinson was playing. I had my own Money. Their Greatest Hits was my first Album ever. At one time I had every single song memorized. Their poetry is mesmerizing. Ironically, since not long after that purchase and from then on, Mrs.Robinson has been my least favorite of all thier songs. For a couple years I collected all their albums and none else.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – Deja vu
When, after months and years of continual Simon and Garfunkel, I became aware of other magical harmony in the world, I bought Deja vu. It doesn’t hold the same magic for me but I am completely transported when it plays.
Red Grammer
– Teaching Peace
-Soul Man in a Techno World
Red Grammer started out as a children’s musician. I found him at 19 and quickly memorized all of Teaching Peace. 9 years later when I got married and now had a child of my own, we bought everything else we could find of his. Soul Man in a Techno World was one of his first adult cd’s. I listened to it a few times before it’s powers transformed me.
Michael Hedges – Aerial Boundaries
This is the second Michael Hedges cd I owned. The first, Taproot, saved my sanity when I was working for a door to door, business to business, walk the pavement “opportunity” situation that found me “working” insanely long hours Monday thru Friday. On the weekends I could be found many an hour sitting quietly on my couch, staring at earings and necklaces I’d put up decoratively on the opposite wall in a burst of creativity. Too tired to cook or clean, too mentally and emotionally zapped to think, I listened, over and over. A few years later I bought Aerial Boundaries. From the first note I flew, seeming to be made aware of a beautiful future full of love and light. More years passed. I believe I’m living that gorgeous future now.
Arrested Development – 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of….
Pure genius musically and lyrically. Ideas that must be explored, considered, meditated on. This one I memorized at 2o while saving $ for my 2nd semester of college. I still hadn’t figured out that adult society was confused so I was still making an effort to do things “right.” This album gave me permission to continue asking questions, seeking truth for myself.
Sweet Honey in the Rock – All For Freedom
I heard this when I picked it up from the library. I was 4-6 weeks pregnant with our first child. We lived in a boarding house of sro’s with a shared kitchenette on the second floor. There I sat on the floor, eating who knows what that actually appealed to me, feet under a board stretched accross crates that was our table. I cried and cried so enchanting and sweet was their sound, so powerful and necessary their message. Our landlord happened to have a copy and made me a tape.
Carlos Nakai – Earth Spirit
This is all I wanted to listen to in labor with our first child. I don’t remember how this cd came to me. I remember only the hours of peace as I listened to it.
George Winston – Winter into Spring
I listened to a lot of George Winston the fall, winter and spring before I got married. My favorite spot was sitting up in my bed with pen and paper, usually writing a 20+ page letter to some lucky soul, pausing often to stare longingly out the attic window, grateful to be at such a momentous stage in life, grieving the child I was (now healing from deep wounds), celebrating in my heart the wonders sure to come when one becomes two.

If I were eating smoked salmon and goat cheese at home, I would taste a jubilant wild song, unedited conversation, a wide open room with flowers and lots of bright noises just beyond the edge.
If I ate them at the beach I would taste a breath of vastness, blue as far as blue can be, a bit of earth mixed with yellow. I’d turn my head often, brush hair away from my face, searching out the source of each immense sound.
If I ate such delights on my door step, home alone on a hot summer afternoon I would taste richness almost too big, even heavy, like quiet knowing, slow speaking, nearly missing the turn to Jenny’s house on a long windy road.
In this cafe right now, they taste like gentleness, a peaceful mind, a smile, sweet echos of happiness, gratitude, walking among fragrant purple blooms, stooping to observe their gifts.

After midnight, I sat at the foot of my bed. The room was simple, no decorations. I was being helped by a friend of a friend who lived in a trailer in a small town surrounded by cornfields in Illinois. They had a spare room which I called home for a couple months. I was a 3rd shift waitress, serving biscuits and gravy, coke and gallons of coffee to the regulars, the local farmers and mechanics, factory workers and my fellow lost 20 somethings.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing with my life, other than writing, making money and hanging out with friends…but it wasn’t enough. This early morning, in the quiet, the empty flat quiet of the edge of nowhere, I was trying to write a beautiful anything. My letters were big and chunky, sloppily scrawled. The paper was recycled so had an off white tint and it was wide lined. I remember the big spaces available for each word made me feel childlike and inept, as if my life at that moment was hopelessly stuck.
Sitting alone in this emptiness I temporarily called home, cross legged on my blankets, I listened to a hard rain dance on the roof, splash on cement, slosh onto muddy patches of earth outside my window. I would write for 10 minutes then sit stone still, listening. I’d sit and only sadness sat with me, a determined alert sadness that cannot sleep, that only hears the rain, the scratch of a pen and racing thoughts. Then I would write for 10 more, over and over in this way, all the while under this natural symphony, until dawn.
I loved the tap, slop, swish of a downpour, the tink thunk of water patting window pane, even when I was stuck with what I perceived as my pitiful lost self.

For a few hours I was cool.
I was at the raised round booth with a solid wood table at the south west wall of Yesterdays, a local and better quality TGIF type place. I was there with friends from our short lived improv troupe. Usually we met in someones apt, the kind that’s payed for by magic, with very little furniture, including a few turned over card board boxes with fancy cloth on them as well as an old cold cup of coffee and a full ash tray. If you were to look up from your perch while sitting near such a table, you’d see sitting on the window ledge a wooden incense burner with 1/4 of a stick left and the wormy crumpled ashes below. Maybe that was just an image of 20 somethings in the 90’s around my neighborhood, but it was common.
But tonight we were celebrating after a great show, feeling close and happy. The audience had been large and appreciative, offering compliments at show’s end. We thought this was the beginning of something big (it actually lasted only a few more weeks due to major disunity and hurt feelings). We had a few dollars and little sense (I’m 37 now, and think about reality in terms of budgets and sustainable situations).
I almost got away from the point I was heading for. There we were, hunched over incredible nachos, melted cheese, tomatoes, guacamole…, enormous juicy cheese burgers covered in dripping amounts of ketchup, mustard, and mayo, thick with pickles and onions on a fat white bread bun, chunky, perfectly browned french fries on the side. We sipped our sugary sodas between bites, between jokes, between happy glances whenever our eyes met. I remember Meghan, Jason, Sam and the slightly older balding guy who seemed to have more experience and better ideas than the rest of us (can’t remember his name any more).
I felt like I was in a commercial

I wasn’t very old, still too young to be completely in my body. I was at a point where I walked around hollow, listening to my heart beat, listening to the empty space where I could not bear to think about what was most painful (healing would come later, in waves and moments, through prayer and courage). Adulthood loomed and I felt utterly without guidance. I had dropped out of high school and started waiting tables at Pizza Hut on Dodge, then the IHOP in Wilmette. Many people didn’t understand. “You have so much potential” they said. “That’s nice” was my inner reply. I don’t know what I said out loud. Maybe I smiled and enthusiastically explained all the reasons I’d left or maybe I just assured them it would be OK, knowing they weren’t convinced, but I had made up my mind firmly.
When I was off work I was writing in that cafe on the corner by the Dempster el stop, the one with brick inner walls they eventually painted white, the one that I saw closed recently as I rounded the corner onto Sherman Ave or I wrote at Steep & Brew in the back, the smoking area. I spent time in Northwestern’s music rooms with a few friends when they were out of school for the afternoon. I read Richard Bach and hoped life could be as beautiful as he hoped it could be, as he claimed to experience.
Around this time, my grandma Katz was getting old and sick. The kind of sick that comes from worry. She lost weight, seemed to unlearn how to talk, needed to sleep a lot, be fed with a spoon by another. I watched in observation mode as I couldn’t hold on to an image of her for long and certainly no thoughts about her condition. It was what it was and I was her kin, so I sat with her in the kitchen, listening as she struggled to be understood, when she may have only wanted to have a sip of water but the effort to communicate that simple request was exhausting.
In February 1990, she went in to the hospital for several days. It was serious, so we were called to her bed side in St. Louis, several floors up in a quiet hospital wing. It’s the nicest hospital I’ve ever been in, distinctly missing the common bustling, dinging pace under the surface of relative calm. I remember enormous windows, good natural light, serenity and quiet. There was a large room full of couches and tables near her room. This is where I spent most of my time. I had a pair of head phones and several tapes of Simon and Garfunkel. I had an 8 1/2 x 11 cardboard bound spiral with a bright yellow cover. I’d wander into my grandma’s room, see my aunt Marsha, Agnes or my mom by her side, holding her hand. They were often silent. I might linger in the doorway a moment but since I had nothing to offer, I’d slip out again, head for that large comfortable lounge, turn on my music, open my notebook and write what I saw. I wrote about the sun coming in the window just so, about grandma laying there so small and helpless, about the quiet. I also wrote poems about flying, painted word pictures of gorgeous sunsets and shared my hopes for the adult I would one day become.
We were there for 3 days. I went to another universe during that time. The universe of slow sadness, of beautiful wondering. Hours and hours each day, from morning til night, I wandered back and forth between the lounge where I was cocooned by my art to grandma’s room. Sometimes I’d go to her side, talk to her, but it was awkward. It didn’t seem to be my place. As I write this I can still feel the air brush past my face, the still air of a hospital corridor as I wandered about knowing I couldn’t feel impatient. I nearly filled that yellow spiral. I would leave the overhead lights off in the lounge until the last bits of light faded each evening. I was always alone in there.
Grandma didn’t die in February. She held on until December. December 1990 in her house is less clear to my memory than the hospital. I know the house well, but no details of the mundane aspects of the trip have lasted. I only remember that my grandma was in her corner bedroom, in her bed, small, so so small. I was always aware of the antique mirror on the inner wall, huge, reflecting bottles of perfume and a hair brush she kept on her dresser. Her legs moved of their own accord beneath the green covers almost constantly. It was her breathing though, her labored, raspy breathing that I could hear clearly no matter what room of the house I was in that penetrates every thought of that good bye.
At that time in my life I was a heavy sleeper, often hard to wake, even aggressive toward anyone who disturbed me. But not that night. I fell asleep after midnight to the hollow rattle of her sighs. I was on the couch in the front living room, the one with the prettiest furniture, the fireplace and ornaments collected over a lifetime. I slept on the couch where I sat with my grandma 10 years earlier explaining the Baha’i Faith. It was the only time I remember having her full attention. My legs stuck straight out over the edge of the cushion, grandma and I angled toward each other in deep conversation. I patiently explained progressive revelation over and over. She wanted to understand but only asked the same questions over in over in the most earnest tones.
I remember that in normal life my grandma was always busy cooking and cleaning, usually afraid, often uncomfortable, so to have her sitting there with me, just us on that big couch, together in the middle, her listening to me respectfully, having a regular kind of conversation was Gold. Tears spring to my eyes as I write this, as I recall us sitting there, side by side. You’d have to have known grandma Katz to know how wonderful this was. This was the couch I slept on, the one I woke on a bit before 8am December 19th when something unseen drew me up out of bed to the doorway of her room. My mom woke at the same time and we met there, looking at Molly Katz, unexplainably aware that we were witnessing her last breaths, both aware that this was a time for her to be alone, like an invisible shield kept us respectfully on the other side of the open doorway.
Right now Carlos Nakai Earth Spirit is playing on Pandora. This is the one I listened to in the delivery room the miracle morning Devyn was born. Now I listen to it as I re-experience the moment my much loved grandma was born into the Abha Kingdom. Oh God, I didn’t know I had any sadness left for her parting, anything I’d miss. But then I saw us in the pretty living room, grandma with her only grand daughter, talking the way I wish we could have done more often while she was alive in body.
I have talked with her many times since that December morning we said good bye. She has hugged me and comforted me through countless painful times in my young adult life from her new home. Sometimes she jokes around and cracks me up. I’m willing to accept this may be wishful thinking but I believe it is more real than the floor I stand on when I wake each day.

We were newlyweds. I was in our 2nd apartment, down the hall from our first apartment (that we left after only a couple weeks when the prettier bigger place opened up) in a small economically depressed down town between two cornfields, on the same street as 5 bars that let out screaming drunks at 1am, all geared up to have a good fight under my window…at 1am, when I’d wake from horrid nightmares to their vicious slurring anger at volumes passing sirens reach. High ceilings and radiator heat don’t have enough appeal to stick around that nonsense for long.
But…in the two months we did live there, while David was at work one afternoon, I tried to cook cat fish.
Pan on the burner, fish in the pan, heat beneath, a bit of oil, all set. Domestic in the kitchen I was not at all, or even properly knowledgeable.
Here’s how it went. The pan started smoking and in a flash flames had engulfed the fish and spread through out the pan. I did not know about grease fires. I did not know to cover it instead of douse it. I was a DORK! I doused it. The flames grew. I panicked, rushed the pan to the bathtub where it would have more room to be a fire while I continued to panic. In the tub, the flames licked up higher. What happened next was a blur, but a little voice deep inside, the one that heard Mr. Fireman when he came to my elementary school 15 years earlier, suggested that covering the pan was my only hope. I don’t know what I covered it with. I only know the fire went out, my heart was pounding fast and I was in a cold sweat.
I felt like an idiot, sure I would not be using stainless steel frying pans for a long time if I ever would again. This moment is so embarrassing I have only told a few people, maybe only David. Now I’m telling you.
Later, when we moved to a little bit larger town in the corn fields I asked a friend, an older woman we liked to visit, how to cook fish. She didn’t even know how to answer my question, the answer was so obvious. Pan, heat, oil or water, wait til it’s done all the way through, put on plate. Yeah, now I know and cook fish all the time. Regardless, I didn’t use a stainless steel pan for another 9 years.
Lessons? Too many to count.
You know what else I remember from that afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day and I liked how the light settled on everything in the living room, which contrasted with the dark scary bathroom scene. Ugh.

Allison and I used to walk through clothing aisles for fun. We’d search for the ugliest article, hold it up for the other to see across the way, make a sound like only a 13 year old can and laugh like crazy. Really it was a sport for us, at least once a week for many months. I thought not once about who we might be annoying or not impressing. We certainly were not impressed and everybody should know right? Gblaahch!
We rode our bikes between our homes, through the middle of Evanston, mostly down Wesley. Lots of yellow houses on that route. We cleaned her house once a week because she had chores to do but we wanted to be together. I avoided her cat. Beautiful but unfriendly. We sometimes spent an afternoon in her parent’s bedroom den where the typewriter sat and wrote stories and poems. We danced all over the living room, we cried (a lot) at all the trouble life was becoming as we got older, we sang loud to Duran Duran and Simon and Garfunkel as it played on the turntable that sat in the corner of the dining room I don’t remember ever seeing anyone eat in since there was a more convenient dining table in the kitchen.
We watched Alex, The Life of a Child more than once and cried every time, especially in the last scene when Alex raises up, radiant, looking into a beyond her parents must wait for to be with her again. Fybromialga was real and now we knew what it was. I can’t even write that with out starting to cry.
We played badminton in her yard most warm afternoons, our only objective to see how long we could keep the birdie in the air. When I looked toward the house from my side of the net I saw a gallon of tea basking in the sun on a yard table. I always wanted some but we were never allowed. That tea never made it to the fridge, or my mouth as far as I can remember.
We often walked to the beach, walked aimlessly around downtown Evanston, waked because we had to move. One summer she helped me watch a couple brothers who were 10 and 12. By then we were 14 and 15, not mature but making an attempt.
Time went by.
I went to college for a semester and discovered Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones. I was 21. Most of what I can remember from then on is sitting across from each other at a small cafe table, cigarettes burning in the ashtray, 2 cups of coffee in white ceramic mugs, our heads bowed over spirals, each writing rapidly, aiming for first thoughts for 10 minutes, no editing. When time was up we’d raise our heads and look at each other, eyes dazed, bodies resettling into the moment, breathe deep and smile. Then we’d each read aloud what we’d written. Her pieces were these intense journeys into the heart. Her imagery was rich, a journey into magic in the form of a land we both wanted to go to where colors speak and music has gentle caressing hands. I don’t know what I wrote. I have all or most of it in a box in my bedroom. We’d immediately choose another first line or topic then bow again to the rush of creativity.
I wrote with many friends over the years in this way. I’ve been there when people who never thought they could write looked up after reading what they’d written (or listened as I read aloud with their permission since they felt embarrassed) either with a full smile or holding in a smile of pride, delighted at their work, aware for the first time that they could write, really write!
But it was the hours with Allison that are the foundation. At one point we lived in the same building, sharing morning coffee with our legs stretched out before us, a crate for an end table, keeping a close on eye on her most recent cat Cassidy who was aggressively playful and more than a little scary. I have memories and pictures of Cassidy flying theough the air, all 4 legs stretched out ready to land claws emerged onto her prey which was sometims a human body part. We’d talk shop in the evening after our shifts of waiting on the public, helping them eat. Eventually I moved away into the cornfields and she moved away to another state.
Time passes but we remain aware of childhood through the harder tests/gifts of becoming an adult, a spouce, a parent, as well as the inevitable challenges of an expectation of maturity and what that looks like outwardly.
A few months back I saw a friends teenage daughter and her friend at Target. They didn’t see me. One of them held out a fascinating shirt from the round rack for the other to appreciate, crinkled her nose, made a unique noise as only a teenager can and they burst out laughing.
At first I thought about immaturity, ready to judge, wondering how long until they’d grow out of such inconsiderate behavior.
Then I thought about friendship.

From the day after I turned 17 I waited tables, up until Devyn joined our family. I tried a few other things, but always went back to the fun of visiting a few minutes here and there with regulars, cheap meals, decent money and exercise, serving people plates of food, bowls of soup and whatever they chose to drink.
Among the few other things I did was door to door sales from business to business. Believe it or not, I made enough money this way, but the schedule and morning office pep talks finally wore me out. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week in 5 days. And the morning pep talks seemed to me about disrespecting the customer sweetly to make a sale. Not that they asked us to go against anyone’s wishes, just an attitude I sensed.
I enjoyed the job when I was out there, walking around, visiting with people. I had high sales for our office. After a month or two I could do a days work in half the day, so I spent much time visiting with customers, sharing life stories or hanging out with my mom or dad by going to their towns to sell. At the time my dad lived 3 hours in one direction and my mom lived 2 1/2 hours another way. One time my mom came with to see exactly what I did. I enjoyed having her with me.
What exactly I did was carry a big black duffel bag full of items, like calculators, games, planners etc. We were able to sell them much less than the stores because we were the stores…a pretty cheap work force at 100% commission. I wasn’t too proud to be seen at my work, but none too sure of it’s value either. Basically I’d walk into a business, look the nearest worker in the eye, tell them I had stuff to sell at a good price in my bag, and ask if I could show the employees. A surprising number of places allowed me in. I later found out this was because I didn’t have a pitch, just a “Hi there.”
One of my favorite aspects of that time were the sunsets I witnessed over corn fields. That was always a moment I was completely detached from my life situation, from my uncertainty about the future. Another favorite was the long drives that offereded meditative consideration of all that had come before in my life and all that I hoped to do, have, be and give.
Over the final weeks with that job I spent most days either at my moms or dads place, letting them offer what guidance they could to their obviously floundering offspring. A small amount of each day during that time was spent “in the field”, but I don’t remember my sales dropping, just my will to walk into another business.
In order to work so many hours I had to wake before the sun, shower, dress and feed my cats in the dark. I drove before the sun, south to the office. On the way I often stopped at a Mobil station for cigarettes and to fill my tank. Because I smoked, I cracked the window several times a day. After a while, it got off track just a bit, so I was in the habit of quickly and gently adjusting it as I rolled it up completely.
One morning, when the car door was open (fortunately), I did the usual adjust as I rolled it up and BOOM! the window blew out onto the cement lot, hundreds of little safety shaped pieces of auto glass. Could moving the window 1/2 an inch cause such a freaky display?!? I had no idea. The sun was still behind a curve of earth. I was awed, dumbfounded. I don’t even remember what I did between the window shattering and arriving at work with an amazing but true tale.
Someone helped me duct tape plastic bags to the frame, but it was March, cold and wet, so this was of little help against the elements. Over the following days, maybe even two weeks, I went to my dads mostly. I was truly at a loss. I would sit in his living room, limp in the soft chair, aware that tears would be appropriate, even desirable, but I was numb. He offered comfort, empathy, food and coffee. The worst were days of cold wind and rain, the plastic flapping wildly with every passing truck, letting in a burst of insulting cold air.
One afternoon, in a small town between my place and dads I found an auto glass shop. I found it on my own. I spent the good portion of a day there walking around town, chatting with the staff, watching the process by which a window is installed in a car door. And then I paid for it in cash. For me then this was a HUGE triumph, accepting responsibility hen I wanted to give up, paying for a solution with my own money. I was no longer defeated but empowered. I felt some of my doubt about my ability to be a grown up slip away, replaced by an inner light that matched the brilliant, clean afternoon sun as I drove away from that little shop onto the highway, able to look clearly out the window on my left for the first time in seemingly ever!

In November 1998 I had two pieces published in a small book put out by a writers group I was a part of. One has the same name as this post. Since joining OS exactly a week ago, I have been thinking in possible posts, leaving myself email messages with ideas. Today I knew it was time to meditate again on who I am in the same manner I did 12 years ago. I have just spent the last hour doing this. What I’m posting here is first the piece I wrote in 98, followed by the one I wrote this evening. Therefore it is very long but hopefully worth a few minutes time.
1998
“My name is Heidi Beth. My favorite color is purple and I like green too. I like to sing ’cause it stirs my soul and it’s fun. I like to draw flowers and gentle designs with the thin felt tip pens my dad gave me four years ago. My hair is brown and curly. My eyes are green and I’m pretty short. This was all given to me. But I like to draw with colors and I try to be kind.
I learned how to waitress the day after I turned seventeen and I still do it. I wrote a story about a monster named

This is from my yahoo inbox from a daily email to the group. I agree so much I had to share.
“According to the head of psychiatry at Stanford one of the best things that a man can do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she can do for her health is to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.
Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality