"Look Mom, No Hands!"

“There is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go." – Julian of Norwich

I'm a young boy curled into a ball on the top stair. My parents have been fighting again, and my dad has left the house for Kmet’s Bar. My brothers and sisters have scattered to places unknown to escape the tension. For some reason I am alone at home with my mother. I am incredibly lonely, afraid, and just want to be comforted.

My plan is to roll down the stairs and that the noise will cause my mother to come running to see what happened. I wait, fearing that I might get hurt, but I am willing to trade pain for attention. It is a pattern that will haunt me most of my life. After moments of deliberation, I point my head downstairs and push off.

Bumpety-bump, down I go, headfirst, feet tangled. The last step hits harder than I expected, and then — silence. I yell out; “Help! I fell down the stairs!” and let out a fake groan. Nobody comes. I yell again; nobody comes. I lay there for minutes and finally get up, unhurt, to find my mom. She is outside hanging the wash. She didn’t hear anything.

I tell her that I fell down the stairs and, not letting go of the sheet she is about to hang, she says:

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” I say. “But it hurts a little.”

She responds, “Go over to Johnny’s house and see if he can play.”

I go back inside, up to my room and lie on the bed. I want to be alone. I no longer look to be comforted. I no longer hope to be comforted. I no longer “need” to be comforted. I am okay by myself. Another pattern laid down on the tracks of my life. At that moment and oftentimes since, whenever I long for comfort, attention, or for a happiness of which I have no idea, I repeat the lie that I am okay.

I am — sadly, or perhaps fortunately — a slave to my own fictions. In attempting to satisfy this need for connection, I create stories and then try to live them. It may not be the best way to live, and although it wasn’t the quickest route to happiness for me, it was the surest. After a long, beautiful, and torturous journey, I found my authentic self beneath layers of role playing. Although I still hide my authentic self behind roles and social constraints as it makes life easier, finally knowing who I am and where I am spelled the end of much of my neurosis. Well, almost the end. There is always mopping up to do. Nevertheless, I now more accurately see myself as a painting I have been studying for a long time.

I also know quite well how difficult, and necessary, it is to escape from the constraints of habit and routine to break the spell of covenants and restrictions that govern my life. Well-worn patterns of thought and feeling don’t easily give way to new ways of being. A body at rest tends to stay at rest and I need an occasional push to start the process, something to roll me down the stairs, bumping and bruising my way forward.

That is precisely how I ended up in La Combs, Italy for two weeks in June of 2022, wandering the Alps. The mountain air was crisp, the Alps a silent audience for my thoughts and meanderings. Evenings were spent reading in an apartment that was once a grain barn. It was an idle thought, late at night while surfing the net, which led me to choose La Combs, and I made the reservation. I hadn’t a clue about the adventure awaiting but making the reservation pushed me to go.

More recently, it was Manhattan in October 2024. I had told so many people about my “Manhattan Experiment” that I felt compelled to follow through, although deep down, I wanted to. Now, I find myself hunched over the same Acer laptop in a comfortable third floor Airbnb on Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, in Paris’s 1st arrondissement.

There is no singular purpose to these excursions — and that’s the point. Thinking I can predict what I will learn is foolishness. The point is to live into the answers, doing what’s indicated while not worrying about results. It’s not a blind leap into the dark, it’s a commitment based on personal experiences, and the evidence of others, that the universe will support me. My “I’m okay” was never a lie, just a forgetting. A failure to remember the force of love that always holds us fast and will never let us go. This force is more powerful than me, and wiser as well.

The most effective way to find out what is going to happen is to live through the event. When I move in the direction of my “inspiration”, for lack of a better word, even though at first nothing seems to happen, I find eventually that the universe has aligned the stars, buttered my bread, connected the dots, moved some mountains, and has someone waiting to dance with me. All my peering into a veiled future only blinds me to what’s here, now.

And this moment finds me heir to another beautiful April day in Paris. For me, it’s easy to be fatigued with all the tourist attractions, monuments, museums, and gardens, everything except restaurants! But with this beautiful weather, half the population of Paris is on bicycles: old men smoking Gauloises, chic women in pearls and heels, and people who fill the market basket on the back and then balance their poodle on the handlebars.

The Vélib municipal bike-share station is only two blocks from my apartment. I unlock the bike, place my phone securely in the basket and navigate through the heavy Paris traffic for a ride to the outskirts on the East of the city. The dedicated bike lanes make it easier, and I can get to the Bois de Vincennes (Vincennes Forest) in about thirty minutes. The woods are a remnant of the forest that covered the area around Paris in ancient times and it is the largest green space in Paris.

As I ease out of the general city traffic onto the open road towards the woods, I feel like a young boy once again. The air is blowing through my hair, and I am filled with boyhood memories of freedom on my bike. As I coast along, I test my balance and let go of the handlebars. I am sailing, arms at my side and a youthful smile on my face!

I yell out, “Look mom, no hands.” She may be hanging the wash somewhere in the great beyond, but I believe she sees me — and smiles.

And even if she doesn’t see or hear me and even if there’s no such thing as the “great beyond” and if nobody ever read this story about an old man letting go, it wouldn’t matter one bit.

I know who I am.

I know I am loved.

And I am free.

This is Paris.

It feels like heaven.