balloons and burgers

Die-really-hard followers may remember that a couple of years ago I inflated a small, well-meaning helium balloon called The Letter Composer, and let it fly into space. I watched it float away, and then I think I actually saw it explode when it was just the tiniest dot against the sky. I had been hoping to write letters for people who were in knotty interpersonal situations. I'd listen to their story and then help them make their point -- respectfully stating their case, bringing them closer to repair or closure, helping them feel heard. It would combine the writer bits in me with the therapist bits in me. TLC would be offering TLC. It was a lovely experiment in how quickly something can get lost on the Internet if you don't tie a very sturdy string to it -- a string with tightly fastened colorful ribbons of marketing, GroupOns, and Google Ads.

That reminds me of how last year, when Laura was trying to figure out her next professional move, she toyed for awhile with the idea of international educational consulting. "GO FOR IT!" begged a well-connected friend in Hong Kong, who assured Laura of tremendous success and a full roster of clients in very short order. "Here are the shoes you'll need to wear in Hong Kong," that friend said in an email that followed their phone conversation. She included a link to a picture of a pair of snakeskin flats with bows on them. "You'll have to leave the clogs at home." She offered to take Laura shopping for the outfits that would go with the shoes, and also suggested that Laura maybe not make much reference to her personal marital situation. I saw Laura open her hand, releasing her balloon to fly noisily around the room. It landed in a wet heap, right on top of her clogs.

Neither of us wanted to do the "marketing"  of our balloons, and those two bright, inflated things went on their way. Mine, well, we know -- it popped silently against the blue sky. When Laura's international consulting balloon throoshed around, we laughed at the funny sound and tossed that thing in the trash.

As for me, I keep wanting to marry these different parts of me to each other but maybe they are just meant to be roommates. I don't know if the nutrition evangelist in me will be able to make a go of a health coaching practice. That field is filled with young women with long, lush hair and perky breasts. I'm serious. I don't think the writer in me can -- or will-- make a go of anything even remotely lucrative. I still have ideas and still move toward them, but I am balloon-shy now. You launch enough of them and watch enough of them pop, and you just get shy.

Now and then, though, it all comes together -- just for a moment. While at Kripalu, I wrote to the executive chef to get her recipe for mushroom nut burgers. It had to be done, just as a letter must be written to the editor when the paper has done something brave and good, or mean-spirited and bad. In that chef's brain was a recipe that could solve the problems of depression and obesity in one meal, and everyone at lunch that day knew it. Defying the signs in the dining hall that said recipes are not available except for those that are in our books and the chef's monthly blog (this is purple so that you click on it, El!), so please don't ask, I asked. For one delicious moment in time, I achieved the marriage of several important parts of me: the writer, the nutrition nut, the introvert who occasionally issues an implicit invitation to connect.