Beth Bornstein Dunnington
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A Circle Of Women

February 2, 2018

Something extraordinary at LAX today… (writing this on the plane). I was at the gate, waiting to get on my plane to Portland. Flights to two different cities were boarding on either side of the Portland fight. A toddler who looked to be eighteen or so months old was having a total meltdown, running between the seats, kicking and screaming, then lying on the ground, refusing to board the plane (which was not going to Portland). His young mom, who was clearly pregnant and traveling alone with her son, became completely overwhelmed… she couldn’t pick him up because he was so upset, he kept running away from her, then lying down on the ground, kicking and screaming again. The mother finally sat down on the floor and put her head in her hands, with her kid next to her still having a meltdown, and started crying.

Then, this gorgeous thing (I’m crying just writing this)… the women in the terminal, there must have been six or seven of us, not women who knew each other, approached and surrounded her and the little boy and we knelt down and formed a circle around them. I sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to the little boy… one woman had an orange that she peeled, one woman had a little toy in her bag that she let the toddler play with, another woman gave the mom a bottle of water. Someone else helped the mom get the kid’s sippy cup out of her bag and give it to him. It was so gorgeous, there was no discussion and no one knew anyone else, but we were able to calm them both down, and she got her child on the plane.

Only women approached. After they went through the door we all went back to our separate seats and didn’t talk about it… we were strangers, gathering to solve something. It occurred to me that a circle of women, with a mission, can save the world.

I will never forget that moment.

The Meaning of Flowers

4/6/2020

 
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​Today I woke up with the clearest sense of the other side of all this. What's coming back in abundance is joy. That's both the irony and the gift of a pandemic. When you survive it you learn something significant, and you'll never go back to who you were before.

The art to come out of this... the writing, the music... the paintings people have shared, it's stunning. Yes, there's the disaster of everything we know is disastrous, all of that is obvious - first and foremost the lives lost - but underneath the story of the economy and the wild mismanagement of our federal government and the fact the theaters are closed and festivals have been cancelled and everything else we all know is about loss, is that we're connecting and creating in ways that would not have been possible if everything in our lives hadn't come to a crashing halt.

I've heard the words "I love you" spoken from more people and more often than I have in my life. I'm guessing the same may be true for you. I've learned that I'm capable of leading a six or seven-hour writers' workshop, and writing myself, every single day. A marathon for me, and something I didn't know I could do, but I can. The coral reefs in Hawaii are thriving without all the dangerous sunscreen that harms them, the earth is greener, the air is more breathable, the canals in Venice, with clean water, are said to have dolphins in them (and even if that's not really true it's gorgeous to envision that), the children are singing in zoom rooms, the writers are writing the story of these days in online workshops (led by many different facilitators) and reading their work in pop-up salons.

Yes, the theaters are dark, including our beloved Kahilu Theatre in Hawaii, and the schools are closed, but students are learning online, and people are making face masks for other people and gardens are being planted and we're sharing recipes, and artists are singing online (Rufus Wainwright in a bathrobe and Martin Sexton from the road), and actors are reading bedtime stories on apps that will help you sleep.

How is this not an opportunity?

If we focus on what we've lost and not what we've found, we may as well stay in bed until we come out the other end of this. But we ARE coming out. The death rate in NYC is going down. The curve is flattening. And way more people are surviving than dying. And we're learning that the people who have survived are most likely immune to the virus.

So the survivors of this become a gift to the rest of us.

Surviving cancer changed me. Everything meant more after I didn't die... all the colors were brighter. Now I'm always looking for that light, the light you see in survivors, except now I'm seeing it everywhere.

It's hard to see joy while we're still inside this pandemic, but having survived a personal plague, I see it... the color burst at the end of the tunnel.

So here's to the many gifts to come out of this, because when we go back into the world, which we will, we'll remember them. We'll remember what was impossible, but we'll also remember the meals cooked, the slowing down, the books read, the art created, the cleaner planet, the I love you's, the ways we held each other up... the way we walked each other home. Everything we didn't have time to do before, and we'll feel gratitude.

After fissure 8 opened in Hawai'i in 2018, and all those homes were destroyed by lava, the volcano stopped erupting for the first time in since 1983. The island was suddenly clean... no vog. You could see Maui from the Big Island. Everything was more alive, more vivid. But it came with sacrifice.
 
The photo is a lava field, and even in lava flowers grow. But the meaning of flowers will have changed because it all means so much more, and you feel it in a place where you never before felt the meaning of flowers.
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I already feel it.

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  • Home
  • Big Island Writers' Workshops/Galleries
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  • Waking Up In Hawai'i Blog
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