I rehearsed today in the converted garage studio with the bar-lined curtains. This one middle note just wouldn’t line up the way it was supposed to. Mucus, that Aunt from the suburbs, came to visit and wouldn’t leave. We sat and talked into the quiet boredom. Wicked theatrics bubbled over. My heart widened.

My beloved meditates in the next room. The spaghetti squash touches up against the rump of the ripe tomato. A vermilion mango looms above them in the purple bowl. Just below the rim of the bowl on the table, a jicama strikes a pose like a giant baked potato. In background, the translucent skin of the white onion promises juice. My daughter’s big smile at 2 ½ from a photo looks smeared on, conceals none of the light within. A few pink carnations, babies’ breath and alstroemeria, left from her graduation bouquet fill the green metal bucket. 8:50 a.m. and, other than the hair dye burning my scalp, all is well.

It’s my real color, this “natural ash blond,” to the point that my best friend since I was 12 said she didn’t even know I dye my hair. In just a few weeks, I’ll get married for the second and (Good God let’s hope) final time. Christopher is a great love of my life. I plan to have a relationship with him for all time. Our love shall transcend death, I know this, though I haven’t decided whether—like the Mormons—I’m ready to commit for all my lifetimes. We must save our world or this existence in bodies may not be possible anymore, at least not here on this sacred world. I’m committed to saving it, though half the time I’m not sure what to eat for breakfast, let alone how to do that.

One foot in front of the other. Stay humble. Pay attention to what’s before me, to what wants to happen next. In other words, live your life. It’s the only place you can influence anything anyway.

I’ve been healing some big beliefs lately: Last night, I healed a place that was afraid Christopher would leave me. I felt like I needed to control him to prevent that from happening.

Then, this morning, I healed a belief that I couldn’t be authentic and vulnerable again or I’d be hurt, maybe killed.

I healed these using the beholding meditation, and with the truth: I wasn’t hurt because I was being myself and too vulnerable; I was hurt because I wasn’t in my power and authority and I needed to learn how to stand up for myself. Also: There is no way to control for vulnerability. It’s the constant in this equation.

So, as I dye my hair, it is a newer, more whole version of me who gets a headache from the fumes. I turned 47 this week. Maybe it’s time to let my hair get all grey and brown. It’s darker than through my whole youth except at the temples, where its white. My beloved, at 63, looks old enough to be my father. So for me to go all aged around the edges might make us a more comfortable sight to others. Nah…I’m not ready. We claim our youth in full while it lasts, and this generation of hippies has shown us the way through: They keep hope and their peaceful protests alive, keep beauty and refuse to give it up. In their aging gypsy selves I see the young women of 20, wild and free. And in them, both old and young, I see me. I am of the middle generation. We’ve never even had a proper name. It’s perfect. We stepped into all the unknown after they broke all the rules. I walk through the paths they’ve forged and lay my own hard-earned offering down my the river. Platinum blond and shining in the sunlight or tired at sunset, it’s all the same, really. I give who I am.

Thank you for the opportunity to be and believe. I love you. Thank you.

Amen.