Permission To ...

I think Riva Danzig changed my life.

We were all sitting around the dining room table in Philadelphia, that sweet night after the reading at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, Elenna, Riva, Jean and I, along with Maria and Terry at their house, all of us still unwilling to relinquish each other. But finally I was listing to the side, tired, so tired after our long, luscious week. My clothes and things were spread across the room upstairs, and there was a train to Union Station in Washington, D.C. to catch in the morning. I felt that need that is so important when I travel, just to sit with my stuff–you know, go through my suitcase, figure out where everything is, re-arrange, find again, touch, smooth and organize. This process can often involve sweet moments of reverie, looking at some earring and remembering suddenly who gave it to me, staring at a poem in a book before I pack it into the bag. Who knows how much times passes? It is lovely to not have to think about it. A second or two or fifteen minutes? Time stretches, I fold my clothes, I figure out where everything is, I gather myself together.

Jean had come home that night and in her focused way, before we had even sat down at the dining room table, rolled up her clothes in her suitcase and laid her coat over the handle. It had taken her about ten minutes. It is a particular gift she has, and I envy it, but I will never have it. So later that night as we all sat around the table, I turned to her and said that I needed to go upstairs and futz with my stuff. You know how I am, I said, and I was concerned that I'd keep her up, and maybe she'd rather sleep in the other room so that I wouldn't disturb her. Jean said No, it was okay, she was awake, no problem. Good, good, I said and my thoughts turned to something else and the quiet ebb and flow of the conversation seemed to continue on... Until a moment later when Riva returned to the table, jotted something down on a pad, pulled off the cover sheet and handed it to me. It was a PERMISSION SLIP. My named was dashed in her handwriting across the top. Below my name the form continued: "has permission to..." with enticing options to check off: "sleep in", "watch a movie", "say no", "say yes"... But I didn't read these at first, for Riva had checked at the bottom: "other." And in the blank line next to it she had written: "to futz".

The note was signed briskly, as if by an M.D. diagnosing a cure.

Permission to futz! I looked up in that small moment and time shifted suddenly. The universe had shined down upon me a small but very important new light. This Riva Danzig was full of lovely moments of brilliance, and how could someone not be in admiration? Not only did she have these terrific permission slips, but she'd diagnosed a yearning in me that was small yet profound, something that I always feel just a little bit guilty about. And she handed it to me as my own distinct birthright, even healthy and laudable, and something that lives deep in my bones. Until then I had not really named that slight voice underneath, rattling sometimes like a whispering mean river, saying I am running late, wasting time, not accomplishing much at all, keeping people waiting. Riva said she'd found my interaction with Jean charming and considerate, but that underneath she had noticed that little edge.

So she gave me permission to futz.

I write this morning in Frederick, Maryland, about to attend my nephew Brian's wedding to his beloved Lily. Last night we were at a lovely family rehearsal dinner, and our last few days here on the east coast will flow with my large and rather amazing family. Our Fredericksburg Sisters Singing reading was an unexpected, gorgeous blessing, and that evening is ruminating in me to write about soon. But today, my Permission Slip is with me. In the several days since I received it, I have noticed something changed in me. I've been given permission... to be myself, to be slow, to be mindful, to be in reverie, to be out of time, under the radar of the clock and the next appointment. Like a shaman dancing the spirits to a new place within a person's life, it is as if Riva returned to me a small part of my soul.

We sat around the table that night delightedly writing out permission slips for each other. We were thrilled with Riva's offering -- she and some friends had designed the forms themselves and had them printed. I've got my Permission Slip here now. I'll keep it close. I'll open it back up, when I have to remember. Not so much that I get to futz (though that too), but that I can name all the ways I am me, stretch time into my own river, that I can be all of my various selves. Even those that our fractured world does not know how to make room for. Permission to... Yes.