February 2007                            Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.


    I’m working on a new writing project about knowing the deeper meaning behind one’s life. I’m not sure I know how to write about that!  I need to get a grip on my own life story (again??) and try to remember how events have unfolded.  Suddenly I had the desire to go down to my basement and find those two sagging cardboard boxes of my old diaries and stories that I had been lugging around for years.  It seems to be time to take a look at the past.

Last night I was reading the diary starting April, 1978, the year I moved to a small Northern California town to begin a new life and go to graduate school.  I had been divorced since 1969, had a daughter fourteen, and a son twelve.  Puberty for them.  Starting over for me.
I had been married for eight years to a University professor in the sciences, and had struggled all those years to find my own identity—and to stay afloat during my confusing, but liberating, confrontation with the sixties in San Francisco.  I was a still a middle-class woman, but now turned rather hippie—but a practical hippie, more of a bohemian, I liked to think of myself.  At any rate, an Aquarius, perhaps is the ultimate description. 

When married, I had never developed a career of my own outside my fledgling interests as an artist (painting.)  In those days, I had suffered greatly with lack of confidence, fear of authorities, fear of being trapped in an ordinary life without artistic expression (as I always called my idea of the worst outcome!) I was still struggling with these issues when I divorced, flew like a bird to San Francisco, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Berkeley, California (second or third time) and then to Sonoma County, California—to focus on studying archetypal psychology. I had just developed my interest in numerology.

In my consulting work now, I have long conversations with my clients about their purpose in life, their careers, their aspirations, fears, confusion, and conflicts.  I wonder myself, how did I ever get out of those uncertain days, when I couldn’t see any real direction or purpose at work? 

When I came across the following segment of my diary in the summer of 1978, just as I was getting myself established and ready to start the master’s degree program, I was astonished that I had kept such a thorough record of my days.  Even now I feel I don’t have time to write or do everything I must, but then I was much, much busier, and yet I made time to write. 
For the last few years, I have heard myself saying (and believing it) that I fell into writing quite by accident.  Now I have another perspective.  I see that I actually started writing at the age of twelve, and kept at it through journal writing, never thinking I was good enough to be published.  And still I wrote about what I saw and heard, and what I felt. To be truly honest, I see that I did have a secret wish to be published.  My lack of confidence gave one story.  My diary gives another.

As a married woman, I had become a fairly accomplished cook (thank you Julia Child and The New York Times Cookbook!)  Cooking, then, became the bridge to my new life.  (I added housecleaning to increase my income while going to school.)  To me these “day jobs”-- jobs we do to keep body and soul together, to make a living while we decide what our purpose in life is—are often blessings in disguise.  I was happy on the one hand to have work.  Appalled, on the other hand, to be stuck in jobs below my creative aspirations.  Whenever I would accept a cooking job or an office job or an administrative assistant job, I had two thoughts.  First, “Thank you, God, for giving me an income.”  Secondly, “How will I ever get out of this job?”

My criteria for day jobs were:  1.  It’s something I don’t have to think about after work. 2.  There might be something new I could learn, and 3.  The work has something of value in it, and the people are good people.

Below, I have taken an excerpt from one of my first professional cooking jobs for a San Francisco society woman who lived part-time in Sonoma County.  What I notice are three things.  First, I sound fairly competent at what I am doing (cooking.) I don’t sound as angst-ridden about my life purpose and career, as  I was when I was married and a stay-at-home mom.  So I see I was beginning to grow up a little bit. 
Second, I notice that I had an ear for dialogue (some people have an ear for music, which I don’t have.  Music is a blank wall to me.  See, I can’t even describe it in hearing terms.) 
Third, I had enough focus and energy after work to be able to write down what happened.  Twenty-nine years later, my memory is poorer.  I am grateful for these written snapshots of what I was doing—and for being able now to see how my invisible life purpose was present even then…in the observing, listening, and writing—three skills I eventually turned into my true livelihood as an intuitive counselor and author.
July 1, 1978

“Well,” Irene says, “I got 8 rooms done today.  Can’t do too much.  Got pins in my leg.  Broke it in a flood.  This work is just too much for me, anymore.  That’s why I’m leaving.”
We are the three new maids, sitting at lunch—the leftovers from a cold chicken buffet that I prepared as my first meal for Mrs. D.

Irene, fifty, a widow, chunky in a white zip-front uniform is leaving after only a week. The new maid, Oriye, a beautiful young-looking Phillipina woman, has decided to take her place. She has driven out here to the country with Mrs. D.’s father, a prominent San Francisco man who kept making passes at her in the car.  He is 85.  “I’m just doing this for the summer until I make up my mind if I stay here.  I have my own garment business in the Philippines.”
Mrs. D. had asked me to have Oriye help me in the kitchen to see if we could get along together.  She helped me get the salad ready for lunch and, unfortunately, she rinsed the lettuce with hot water, and didn’t know to take out the stem bottom from the tomatoes.  She began immediately to tell me little stories about herself, so I switched her to washing the Cusinart while I did the lettuce.  When her hands were in the soap, I noticed that she had on a large diamond ring.

“I have two maids at home and a driver,” Oriye tells me. “We are building a new house, and I will have five, no, I think it is six, bedrooms.”  She is charming, beautiful, and laughs a lot.  When Irene guesses her age to be in the twenties, she lets out such a loud whoop and slaps me so hard on the arm that she scares me.  She is delighted to be thought so young.
“Oh, Carol,” she continues, “I have been married fifteen years, and I said to my husband, ‘I need a break.’  He agreed with me, so here I am.  I have never been in love.’ She said, looking at the kitchen ceiling.

Mrs. D pops into the kitchen—I know she is checking me out, and I smile and ask her where she keeps the garlic.  She is so proud of her kitchen and her equipment, and is not about to relinquish her many years of mastery in cooking to me.   She is short, stocky, with her hair pulled straight back a la Helena Rubenstein.  Her skin is the dark brown California pool-side type.  She told me the first day, “My only quirk is that I am very clean.’  I assured her that I am also considered something of a fanatic in my family, too, but already I can see that she has a much more devoted obsession to cleanliness than I do. 

Having to cook in a new kitchen—and having to keep it looking clean in case Mrs. D passes through-- is slowing me down, despite a fairly simple menu.  My rhythm gets interrupted by also having to pay attention to Irene, who clearly wants to talk about her life story (‘just checking to see if you have enough dish towels.’) And, of course, Oriye, who is supposed to be helping me, is leaning against the sink, right where I want to work, pondering her love life and marital decisions.

“I married very young.  I didn’t know what I was doing, and in the Philippines, the woman cannot leave her husband.”
 “Gee,” I say, closing the doors to the kitchen for the tenth time to keep our noise from the guests in the dining room. “I would think, then, that you would be real careful about getting married in the first place.” 

“I want to hear bells ring,” says Oriye.  “Have you heard bells ring?  She sighs, watching me take out utensils.  “I have never loved my husband.  Never.  But he is so good to me.  He plays around, but he loves me. If only he would leave me, then it would be alright.  People would feel sorry for me. But he doesn’t want to leave me. He loves me.  He’s a Scorpio, and that is the only sign than an Aquarius should never marry.”
It turns out that Irene, Oriye, and I are all Aquarians.

Irene starts to say something, but I’m feeling anxious about what’s going on with the guests in the dining room. “Listen, Irene, I think I’d better go out there and check to see if they’re finished.”

“Sure, sure.  I’ll help you in a minute.  I think you ought to finish your lunch first, though.”
Knowing Mrs. D. as I am beginning to, I cannot bear the thought that she and her guests are sitting around staring at the watermelon rinds on their plates, with the flies buzzing around, so I get up and go out.  Mr. D. smiles at me, so I knew I had done the right thing.  Her English houseguests are bemoaning the fact that they must leave today.  They want to live in San Francisco.  Forever.

I stack the plates, and return to my lunch.  Irene is telling Oriye that she is going to Sacramento, and I ask her if she likes it there.
    “Not really.  Sacramento is a very violent town.”
    “Really?”
    “Oh, yes, There have been 64 unsolved murders there since January.  And there were two more last night.”
    She has a way of saying things matter-of-factly that catches me off-guard.
    “Wow. Why do you think a place like Sacramento would be so violent?
    “Well, some would say it’s because of an inept Sheriff.  And the fact that they took Robert Hovell off homicide and put him in juvenile.”  She apparently knows a lot about the police department.
    “Oh.”
    She says, “Somebody from Hogan’s Heroes was killed last night.”
    “What do you mean killed?”  I don’t have time to read the paper very often.
    “Murdered.  In his bed.  No motive.”
    “Oh, Carol.  I think I will take this job because I want to get away from Mr. Castaneda.”  Oriye talks to me as if Irene is not in the room.  “He is the young man I have been going out with.  He is only twenty-seven, you know, but he seems older and he has a very good insurance job in Daly City.  I just found out that he is married.  Oh, Carol, I was so mad.”

    Irene is picking her teeth, and squints at Oriye.  To fill the silence, I remark that she, too, is married.  She doesn’t take up that point, but says, “I will take this job up here, and then he will not be able to find me.  I love to do housework.  I love the folding, the putting things in order,” She smiles and sighs at her decision.

    “I hope you love housework,” says Irene, shifting heavily in her chair. “It’s too much for me.  I used to manage a liquor store, and I ran so much I lost thirty-six pounds, but I was younger then.  I could do this job if I was ten years younger.”

    I get up to clean up the kitchen, so I can start cooking for dinner. Oriye goes outside to arrange a ride with the English couple.   I am bursting to write down some of their stories before I forget them.  I start to make an English cream, and stand at the stove with my notepad on the right, stirring the cream and scribbling some notes.  I have to move the pad, though, because I am afraid it might catch fire from the pilot light.  That would be hard to explain to Mrs. D.  I cram the notes in my pocket just as the cream starts to coagulate—I had let it go just a few seconds too long.  (I had Mrs. D. take a look at it later, and she very graciously said it would be okay.)”

    A few sentences later in this diary entry, I see the inevitable emergence of the part of me that can’t help giving advice:

    I say to Oriye, “Why don’t you imagine your husband falling in love with someone else, and coming to you to ask for a divorce?  That way he will be happy and you will get your freedom? I believe that you can use your mind to manifest things in your life.”
    “Oh, yes, I believe that, too,” she says.  Like Science of Mind.  SOM.  But, he is already in love with someone he met five years ago when she was eighteen. But still he won’t leave me and the children.  I don’t know what to do.  I live like a queen in the Philippines.”
    “Gee, maybe you should go back, then.  It sounds great.  Couldn’t you take a lover yourself?”
    She screams with laughter and gives me two savage pinches on the arm for my joke.  I am going to have to remember to keep away from her when we talk.
    “Oh, Carol.  Do you think I could use Mind Control to fall in love with my husband?”
    I hadn’t thought of that.

Finally, she hugs me goodbye and goes off with the English couple.  I finish up a marinade and get all the vegetables ready for the shish-ka-bob.
About five o’clock I take a break on the front lawn, sitting in a white chair overlooking the beautiful hills of Sonoma.  I am writing in my journal when Mrs. D. pops up behind me, and startles me into closing my book rather quickly.  I know she is dying with curiosity.
“What do you think?  Do you think you can work with her?”

I say that I don’t  think Oriye has ever done housework before (in her life, I wanted to add,) but that I like her and I am sure that we could get along together.
“Oh, that’s alright then.  I can train her,” she says.
   
Happy Valentine’s Day in this beautiful month of February!

Carol Adrienne