Bends in the Road

The morning of July 10, 1983 I woke up to bright sunshine and the Sunday comics on the side of the bed. My new husband, Stephen, had left them as a sweet gift before he headed out to Gloucester to meet friends for a day of scuba diving. A few hours later, I received a phone call from friends that a former co-worker had been in a roll-over the night before on her way from Boston back to Yale. I called the wife of Stephen's diving partner asking her to let him know that I would be with Susan and Peter waiting on more news about our friend, Mia. An hour or so later, the phone rang and Peter went to answer it. He walked back into the living room, pale. We thought that Mia had died. But no. It was Stephen. Drowned in the waters of Gloucester Harbor. Two days later I was back at the synagogue for the funeral. It was four months, to the day, of our wedding.

A few years later I received a letter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with the court date for the divorce from my second husband. The date: July 11th. I called him to laugh about it, "I guess the timing means this is really over". We drove to our divorce together, used the same lawyer. It was as amicable as could be.

July 10, 11, and 12 are significant anniversaries in my life. Each year they also mark an opportunity for me to pause and reflect on how I have changed ... through imposition from the 'outside' as with Stephen's death or as a result of choice from the 'inside' as with the divorce. Change comes from the same root as barter (exchange) and also bend.

I like those two ways of seeing change in our life. We exchange on set of experiences for another, we exchange one set of beliefs for another, we give away something of the past in return for something new into the future. Change is a bend in the road, sometimes a gentle turn on a slow country road where whatever is around the bend may be unknown, but can be anticipated:

Other changes can be more dramatic, like these sharp turns in a trail at Carlsbad Canyon that lead into the darkness:

In the early and mid-90s, I studied with a tarot master. She was a remarkable woman, an intelligent, intense, scholar with a deeply dramatic flair. On the surface she and I could not be more different. She expanded my understanding of the world and I am so grateful for the years that we spent together - we studied history, symbolism, feminism, herbalism, esoterica, communication, theater, religion and spirituality, and our selves. She challenged my beliefs and limitations and gave me an opportunity to learn how to be both immersed in an experience and at the same time able to stand outside the experience and observe.

The tarot is a picture book with images that are like doorways into rooms where you can contemplate the commonalities of human experience. It is tempting to many to use it as a tool of prediction ... there are so many people who would like to believe in the words of others rather than in their own self-knowledge. People who would like to believe that we can know the future rather than accept that each moment, each choice, each experience changes our possible future.

I prefer to use the tarot as a means for insight into the present moment. And I know that there are many, many tools for that kind of insight.The tarot offers four cards to indicate the various kinds of change that we experience.

The Wheel of Fortune symbolizes those changes that feel out of your control - Fate turns the wheel and your fortunes rise and fall without any rhyme or reason - you are at the mercy of other powers: parents, mate, children, boss, the economy. Whatever it may be, you are powerless.

Then there are those moments where change comes sudden and out of the blue. This is The Tower. There are no storm clouds on the horizon and yet the lightening strikes and you and your world tumbles down. There are choices here - live amid the ruins, live in the past, never move on; rebuild the same structure and hope that it was a fluke (usually, its not); take what's useful and re-build something new; or walk away.

Some changes are like the 6 of Swords: a long, slow and weary change. You know why you're leaving the situation, you know where you're headed and its just a matter of taking it one step at a time until the change is complete.

The jongleur in the 2 of Disks is the last of the symbol for change in the Tarot deck. These are the cyclic changes that we can expect in life - the gentle rise and fall of good days and bad ones, the highs and lows of moving from birth to death, the ones we consider natural and normal.

Of course, each day of the year has some kind of resonance of joy or loss - especially as we travel along the years of life. The changes that I contemplate each year were made possible because of those losses and those joys.

The Wheel is from a Swiss tarot deck from the 1800s

The Tower is from an Italian deck from the 1800s

The 6 of Swords and 2 of Disks are variations of the Rider-Waite deck

An amazing variety of tarot images can be found at www.trionfi.com.