It’s Sunday morning and I decide to start reading “Grain Brain” by Dr. Perlmutter. I love days like this, days where sitting on the couch is accompanied by the sound of dogs breathing next to me. A couple chapters in I realize that my 71 year old Uncle needs to read this book. Now the funny thing about this thought is that I’m not that close to him, but I pick up the phone and call. After the first attempt failed due to bad cell phone service, he finally understands that it is me on the other end. I hear the joy and surprise in his voice.
I begin my schmell about the book. He is excited and tells me that he is going to try to get it before he leaves for Hawaii tomorrow. My Aunt and Uncle are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. My family is pretty diverse. My uncle is 1/2 Persian and 1/2 French and my Auntie is Chinese Hawaiian. Yup, we were the all American melting pot during holiday celebrations given that my Mom is all the white things (English, Irish, Scottish and Dutch).
He asks me “how I am?” I give him a quick uptake on the past couple months. How I have been working in corporate America and doing my “shaman” thing. How I just taught my first class last week. I tell him that I just got back from Mt. Shasta on a journey to heal our Persian family line. I talk about an ancient Persian artifact that held a lot of sadness and had been passed down to me from my Grandmother. I describe in brief edited words about the unnerving and sometimes scary events that unfolded over the past two years. He listens and then tells me that I’m pretty out there. The true beauty in this conversation is that the thing he said next was amazing. “So this all makes you happy right?” To which I responded, “yes.”
In that moment I knew that his soul understood the work I have been doing. Granted his right brain might not compute it, but his heart heard it and in my world that is all that matters.