Dei ritiro bagagli italiano

The blue chair took that tone with me,  as pointed out in group,  "the one where she calls you on your shit?"   yup.   The blue chair has her limits,  she told me to step aside and get out of my own way.   I told her to shut up.  In that loving way I sometimes do.  Just so she knows I got it.   Somehow saying, "point taken"  just doesn't fit my style.

In group, a beautiful soul with a tray conveys how she is learning to keep balance in her life.
It was so perfect.   Just like ABS, we all walk around with so much on our tray.   We work hard at balancing the stuff until it is perfect.  Until we got it.  We go about our way.   We always, daily, hourly sometimes, come across stuff.   Other people's stuff.   They want us to pick it up and carry it for them because, well it is easier... for them... anyway.   But we have worked so hard to be balanced.  If we are expected to carry more,  especially if it is not authentically "ours" is going to throw off our balance and take time for us to rearrange the rest of the stuff so we can manage.    And then we have to decide if carrying someone else's stuff is really worth our time and effort.   Where the hell is their tray anyway?  I will always remember that story because it came right when I needed it.  Just like the blue chair and "the tone".

I fell asleep that night without any provocation from benedryl which doesn't happen.  But I was suddenly so tired.  Without regard to the high 100 degree weather lingering in my bedroom I laid down and closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew, there were footsteps in my house.  But I looked around and it is not my real house.  Not a house that I had ever even lived in.  Nothing recognizable.  But it was a comfortable place.  Old, rickety but not in disrepair.   All the nooks and crannies that old houses from that period had.  I immediately loved that house.   As I looked around, it was full of things.  All of my things.  But it wasn't as if I had arranged them for living.   They were just around.

The footsteps were all around me and it was then I became cognizant that there were people taking things out of the house.  My things.   At first I panicked.   Stop, no!  I didn't ask you to do this!  They smiled at me and I was instantly soothed.   Like a child being softly smiled  at by a loving mother who has stepped aside to let the nurses give the inoculations needed to protect and guarantee a healthy life for her child.  It was still uncomfortable and confusing but mother was smiling, steady and confident  and the child knows it will be okay.

They were all men.   They were all dressed in white.  They were all Italian.   It was as if the entire male side of the family of Carlo's Bakery had come to move my stuff.   They were so gentle with everything.  Constantly making eye contact with me as I watched them go in and out of the house.  They were everywhere.  I went sneaking about the house trying to hide things.... weird things that I do not, nor have I ever owned. Sparkly things,  bright polished things.  Old things that had dust but still displayed or tucked away somewhere that even I didn't know they were there.   They would always find the things I hid and I knew they would but I kept trying.

They cradled everything as if it were the lost treasures of antiquity.   They would pass by something on their way to somewhere else in the house and they would stop dead in their tracks.   They would gently touch whatever it was as if the item was as precious to them as it was me.  I could hear them say,  "Oh look!  It's this blah blah blah..." And they would recount its specific memory and who it belonged to and why it was so important.  They would both agree... and would linger... lovingly nodding their heads.   Then as if they were already on a mission to retrieve something else, they would put it down and head off to somewhere else.   I would breath a sigh of relief that the item was still there but I knew it was leaving, I just knew that there was something else that needed to go first.

I didn't continue inside the panic.   I was surrounded by all these loving people who loved and appreciated the history and the meaning behind all my things.  I knew they loved me.   They moved slowly and precisely.  They didn't bump or struggle with anything.  Not once did anything bump into a wall marring either the wall or the item.   When it left the house I could hear the screen door swing shut.  Not annoyingly.  Not like we did to our mothers as we ran out of our childhood home.  Crank the handle, push hard and clear the steps before you would hear  "DO NOT SLAM the d....."   SLAM.    It was as if the screen door was lifted slowly by a breeze that then invisibly closed it just enough so you could hear wood on wood as it closed.

I don't know where "out" was.  I never saw where all these treasures went.  I left before they did or perhaps we all left at the same time.  It is possible I woke up in my bed before they were finished.   Perhaps because of the immense empathy and respect I was surrounded by, I was sent home before it was completely done because they knew I wouldn't wake with desperation.   If so,  I know they stayed until it was finished.  I know that they remained as respectful of what was left.  But I woke up.  With a headache that felt as if I had been busy all night instead of asleep.  My body was being pulled by gravity more than usual as if I had been up all night walking around instead of laying peacefully in my bed.   I was physically and emotionally spent and it was 6:00am.   I laid there.   I felt odd.   I could recall all the empathy.   I could recall all the things I saw and held and hid.     I smiled as I saw huge Italian men cradling trinkets and memories as if they were newborn babies.  But mostly I could feel the presence of those spirits just helping me get out of my own way.