Read A Lotus Grows in the Mud Online
Authors: Goldie Hawn
“Seriously, honey,” she adds, “I can’t thank you enough for coming. I really needed you here today.”
“You know what, Jean? I really needed to be here.”
We hug, each one unwilling to let the other go.
Joey peeks his head round the doorway into the room, his eyes mischievous. “Good night, then, Go-All-Day!”
Pulling apart, we dissolve into laughter, and then Jean Lynn gets up to go to her own room. “I love you so much, Goldie,” she tells me, turning to look back at me from the doorway.
“I know. And I love you too, Jean Lynn.”
She switches off the light and closes the door behind her. So happy to be home, I drift into the blessed sleep of a child.
A
s we grow up, our lives become so cluttered. We become shackled with responsibility, and bogged down with work and kids and the daily rituals and problems of our everyday lives. We forget how to play.
When we were children, we lived entirely in the moment. We knew no greater pleasure than to jump in a pile of leaves, ride bikes through muddy puddles or make crazy faces at each other with mouths full of ice cream. And tomorrow was only tomorrow.
Somewhere along the way, we grow up and suddenly feel self-conscious doing these things, perhaps because the adults around us start to tell us, “Act your age!” But what does age have to do with play? How can we relate a number to a full-on expression of abandonment and joy?
I remember one day, not so long ago, when I pulled my car up to a stoplight in Los Angeles, on Wilshire and Twenty-sixth Street, right near where I lived. I was by myself and an Elton John song I love, “I’m Still Standing,” came on the radio. I began to move my body to the music, bouncing up and down on my seat, singing at the top of my voice. But this wasn’t enough.
“The hell with it!” I cried, and, opening my car door, I jumped out, stood in the street and really let myself go. I started to really dance with abandon. I didn’t care what I looked like. I was feeling the rhythm, feeling the joy, and I went with it. The man in the car behind me started to laugh. Before I knew it, he jumped out of his car and he started dancing too. The two of us strutted our stuff and shook and wriggled and danced until the stoplight suddenly changed. Then we dashed back into our cars, laughing, and went our separate ways.
All you have to do is unleash the child in you, and watch how it unleashes the child in those around you. As Einstein said, a person starts to live only when he can live outside himself.
So dance that dance. Sing that song. Go to the park and ride the merry-go-round. Remember back and try to rediscover that place deep within you that is pure play. It is still there. And when you find it and open up to it, you’ll discover that others around you will do the same. It will give them the permission they seek to be a child again too. Life is too short. Go for it!
postcard
T
he whistle blasts from the kettle just as the doorbell chimes. Celia and I are in my kitchen, all atwitter. We are expecting a very important guest. Master Lu, a renowned Chinese healer, is coming to help my ailing mother.
“Oh, they’re early!” I say, putting down my red teapot on the kitchen table.
“Go! Go!” Celia says. “I’ll bring the tea.” Laughing, she raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure your mother’s up for this?”
“Yes. She’s up for it. Anyway, she knows I’m crazy,” I add over my shoulder as I run for the door.
Standing in the doorway is Master Lu and his beautiful Chinese wife, Alice. I have used him many times before and have always benefited from his energy healing. We hug before I lead them into the living room, tiptoeing past the library, where my mother is napping.
“How is your mother feeling today?” Alice asks.
“Not very well. Her heart’s getting weaker and weaker.”
Celia arrives with the tray. Master Lu, a sturdy man with a large face as round as the moon, smiles broadly at me all the time. He speaks to me in Chinese, and I listen as if I understand every word. Alice interprets. “Master Lu is going to bring your mother energy.”
“Good, thank you. Follow me.”
I lead them into the library, where my mother is lying fast asleep on her side, her mouth wide open. She must have heard them come in. Something tells me she’s faking it.
As Master Lu and his wife stand like Eastern monoliths in the doorway, I bend down close to her face. “Mom, Mom? Master Lu is here to see you. Mom?”
My mother stirs a little under her bedclothes, but she
doesn’t open her eyes. Instead, she slides even deeper. Oh, this is great, I think.
Master Lu stands patiently in the doorway, while I sit on the edge of my mother’s bed and shake her gently. “Mom? It’s Master Lu. Remember? I told you he was coming?”
My mother’s eyes pop open. The bedclothes flip down, and she stares up at me. The look is undeniable. It says, Oh no, Goldie, not now. Spare me from all your crazy stuff!
“Come on, Mom, let me help you up.”
Reaching around behind my mother, I lift her into a sitting position. Her hair is disheveled, her face screwed tight. Alice comes and sits down next to her, and, smilingly, takes her hand.
“Master Lu is going to make you feel better,” she tells Mom. “Now please to stick out your tongue.”
“Stick out my what?” Mom growls.
“Your tongue, Mom, stick out your tongue.”
My mother sticks out her tongue in such a way that I hope Master Lu doesn’t consider rude. Taking no notice, he bends down and examines it carefully, checking its color and coating. He mutters some words to Alice in Chinese, which, of course, is all Chinese to us.
“Now, Mrs. Hawn,” Alice says, “lift your arms, please.”
“What the hell for?”
“Mom, shhh, please. Just do it!”
I can see this isn’t going to be easy. Mom eventually does what she’s told, glaring at me all the while. Master Lu runs his hands along the sides of her arms, over and over, never once touching her.
“What’s he doing to me?” She scowls.
“I don’t know. I guess he’s getting rid of negative energy.”
Master Lu takes my mother gently by the hand as Alice says, “Now please, Mrs. Hawn, let’s get up.”
Kicking out her legs with energy I didn’t think she still had, Mom stands up, her big toe pointing straight to heaven.
As Master Lu begins to lead my mother across the room, Alice instructs, “Please come over to this chair and sit down.” Turning to me, she says, “Would you please fetch a bowl of water?”
“Oh yes!” I cry happily. “Right away.” Running out of the library, I call, “Celia! Celia! We need a bowl of warm water.”
Celia comes running. This is a big event. She pulls out a plastic bowl from under the sink, and I fill it with water, checking the temperature. I hurry back as quickly as I can without spilling a drop.
The scene that greets me is like something from a pantomime. Mom is sitting in the chair in her nightgown staring at me, an eyebrow arched, as Master Lu conducts an elaborate ritual before her, working the energy fields. Waving his arms around dramatically, he is pulling the energy one way and then the other and drawing the energy from the top of her head. He looks as if he is conducting the
1812 Overture.
Mom is now enjoying the attention, I can tell. Her spirit seems lighter, and there is a playful expression in her eyes.
Alice places my mother’s feet in the bowl of water. “Mrs. Hawn, Master Lu will bring you energy now.”
My mother sparks up and looks at me with those big brown eyes.
“Mom, are you feeling good yet?” I ask.
She forms a perfect circle with her mouth and says, “Oooooh!”
I eye her suspiciously. I can’t tell if she’s serious, or if she’s just having fun with us.
Alice, all excited, rushes out. “I get washcloth!”
She runs to the guest bathroom and fetches one. Master Lu takes it from her and plunges it into the bowl of water with my mother’s pointy little feet. Lifting it out, wringing it almost dry, he places it, with great ceremony, right on top of my mother’s head.
She looks up again and chortles another “Oooooh!”
I stare at her agog. She looks like Ishkabibble.
“Mom?” I ask, trying to hold it together. “Are you feeling the energy?”
“Oooooh,” she repeats. “Hmm.” She lifts the edge of the washcloth and peers up at me. I half expect her to give me the fist.
Master Lu and Alice exchange some more words in Chinese, and Alice takes Mom’s elbow. “Please now, Mrs. Hawn, get up. Get up! You have energy!”
My mother stands, her feet still planted firmly in the bowl of water. I hover close by, afraid she might topple over, but she stays steady.
“Wow, Mom! Look at you!”
“Now step out of the water,” Alice instructs.
Still nervous, I watch as Mom does as she’s told, stepping out of the bowl without so much as a wobble. “I swear to God, this is a miracle!” I cry.
My mother stands ramrod straight, her wet feet flat on the rug, that crazy washrag still on her head. A single eye peers out at me, and I can tell she’s in her own world now. She is having a ball.
“Master Lu says to please walk around the room,” Alice says, taking Mom’s hand. “In a circle.”
Mom stares at me from under the wet facecloth, her hair flattened to her head, and smiles sweetly. Uh-oh. Now what does she have up her sleeve? But she walks the most perfect circle around the room in her nightgown, arms out, hands turned to the ceiling, looking like Loretta Young. I feel sure that some miraculous healing has happened.
“Mom, Mom, how do you feel now?”
She rolls her eyes, makes one more perfect circle and gives us another “Oooooh!” Her skinny little ankles peeking out beneath her nightgown, she stops, puts her hands together and stares at us. I’m laughing, Master Lu is laughing and
Alice is laughing. I feel like I’ve gotten a little piece of my mother back.
“Mrs. Hawn!” Alice cries. “You got the energy!”
“Hmm.” Mom nods and smiles. “Very nice.”
“Mom, this is great, this is so great.” I run over to Master Lu and give him a big hug. “Thank you so much.”
Master Lu gives me a ceremonial bow, to tell me that his work here is done.
“Mom, stay right there!” I tell her. “I’m just going to see Master Lu and Alice out. I’ll be right back.”
As I show them from the room, I turn and see Mom standing there in the middle of the rug, looking like a princess.
Celia meets me in the hallway on my way back. “How did it go?” she asks.
“Great! Oh, Celia, really great! Mom’s walking around the room. It’s amazing! Let’s go see her.”
We rush back to the library. But Mom is back in bed, on her side, the covers right up to her neck again, her mouth open, sound asleep.
“I can’t believe it!” I tell Celia. “She was up! She was standing right in the middle of the room! There was life back in her!”
A rumbling snore from under the bedclothes interrupts me. Stooping down, my face next to hers, I shake her shoulder gently.
“Mom? Mom?”
Her left eye opens and glares up at me.
“Mom, what about the energy?”
In her deep gravelly voice, she replies, “He took it with him.”
Death is not the end.
It is merely a transformation.
I
run my hand over my mother’s lifeless feet. She did it. She did the impossible. She died.
I caress her little turned-up toes, still pointing up to heaven. I can’t believe it. I never thought she could die.
“Mom,” I wail, “I tried to get here. I didn’t make it. I’m so sorry, I wanted to be with you.”
I look down at her face; the lines on her face that showed struggle and pain and sadness had all but disappeared. She looked so young, so peaceful.
“Where are you, Mom? Where did you go? Can you still hear me?” Looking up at the ceiling of her hospital room, I ask, “Are you still here somewhere? Can you see me?”
It’s November 27, 1993, Laura Hawn’s eightieth birthday, and, as destiny would have it, also her death day. Mom and I always shared our birthdays. They were just one week apart. Her presents are still sitting on the floor of my living room, waiting for her to come home again, but she never will.
“She went very peacefully,” the nurse tells me. “When we were washing her this morning, we said, ‘Happy birthday, Laura.’ Her eyes looked up at us and twinkled. But then, Goldie, she closed her eyes softly and her body shut down. I think she was waiting for her birthday to finally let go.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her body. I whisper, “Mom, you did it! You died.” A strange sensation fills me. Up until now, I’ve been
afraid of death and dying. When I was younger, I would have nightmares that my mom would die and I would get into bed with her. I decide to lie next to my mother for the last time. I stroke her hair, and tell her, “Mom, if you can do this, if you can die, then so can I.”
Patti comes running in breathlessly, looking more like a child than I have ever seen her. She probably ran as many red lights getting to the hospital as I did. There we stand, two little girls at the foot of our mother’s bed, clinging to all that we have left: each other.
At Mom’s funeral, the rabbi tells us that when a person dies on their birthday it’s very auspicious because a cycle has been completed. This brings me calm and makes me happy, knowing that Moses died on his birthday, so there we are. So did Laura Hawn.
It has been said that it takes a year to fully recover from the death of a loved one. I know this will be the longest year of my life and I am right. For a full year, I can feel only intense sadness. Whatever I do, I’m unable to fix it. Even my children sense that I’m not the same. I question what I’m doing. I ask myself who I’m now performing for. Pleasing my mother was my dance in this life, and, with Mom gone, I have to reevaluate everything that I am. I know that no one will ever love me the way my mother did.
I spend hours in my meditation room, reading books about death, about the mysteries of life. It brings me solace, because I’m having difficulty understanding where the vibrant spirit that was my mother has gone. I read about Buddhism; I read about the Kabala. I read essays by great mystics, as well as pop culture books about talking to heaven. I even dabble in quantum physics, trying to understand the true nature of life. This is the real beginning of my mystical journey. Feeling my wanderlust rising, I need some time to travel to the most mystical land I know. And to the one city that brings me the most peace.
N
ow I’m in the back of a wobbly old rickshaw on the streets of one of the oldest cities in the world, Varanasi, the “City of Light”—also known as the “City of Death.” An orphan for the first time, I’ve come to this place to heal.
I’m headed for the holy ghats, the great riverbank steps where pilgrims come to purify themselves in the sacred water of the Ganges. It is also where they come to burn their dead on funeral pyres. The nearer I get, the more the air around me is filled with the scents of sandalwood and incense, hot ash and candle wax. Fire and water play such an important part in the life of the Hindu.
Trundling through labyrinthine alleys where I can hardly tell night from day, I pass scores of old people sitting in doorways, happily waiting to die. Devout Hindus, they believe that if they die in Varanasi they will attain instant
moksha,
or enlightenment; they will be free of the continuous cycle of life and death. And so they come, in their hundreds, to live out their final days.
A little farther on, I come across two families carrying their dead wrapped in shrouds, singing mournfully all the while. Their loved ones will be burned on the ghats, and their ashes scattered on the river by a Brahmin priest.
Still farther, I’m suddenly caught up in the middle of a wedding ceremony spilling out onto the street. The laughing bride and groom wear candles on their heads and garlands of flowers around their necks. Musicians play as they parade through the streets. Those around them skip and reel, dance and cry out their joy.
Reaching my destination, I walk down to the river’s edge where people are praying, while others bathe. Women wade in fully clothed, their saris floating out all around them like the overlapping petals of an exotic flower. There are bodies waiting to be burned, as tourists look on. A group of young children are lighting devotional candles and launching them out onto the water on green lotus leaves.
I sit on the banks of the river watching the life of this city unfolding before me, just as it has unfolded for centuries. It is early evening now, and the sun is setting behind me so that everything is bathed in an ethereal light. Across the water, the gilded turrets on the pavilions and temples, palaces and terraces glint back at me. Golden. This truly is a City of Light.
Returning to my hotel as darkness falls, I make an appointment for the next day with the astrologer with the piercing dark eyes who still sits
in his little room just beyond the elevators. I first met him in 1980, when I came here to heal after the breakup of my second marriage.
“Your career is going to go up, and up and up,” the astrologer predicted in 1980. “You’ll meet a man, you’ll fall in love, and you’ll have a boy child.” I received this information hungrily, gladly. He gave me hope for yet another chance of creating my perfect home with the white picket fence, and a loving father for my children.
The astrologer was introduced to me by Papu, an adorable little street urchin I’d adopted as my guide. “Where now, Mrs. Goldie?” Papu asked me back then, grabbing my hand. “You want see other astrologer?”
“No, Papu.” I laughed. “Thank you. This one was just fine.”
Papu was my guardian angel on that early journey to heal. Indefinable in age, but probably not much older than thirteen, he was someone I first met when I was lost, in the midst of the madness of Varanasi. He came running up to me out of nowhere and tugged at my hand. Pulling on my skirt, he pestered me with “Mrs., Mrs., Mrs.!” I looked down at this beautiful Indian child, staring back up at me with his big black eyes and dirty face, and my heart melted. He was wearing long raggedy pants and a frayed orange T-shirt smeared with dust. There were no shoes on his grubby feet. He was holding a palette of holy colors that he wanted to sell.
“Please, please, Mrs., you buy?”
I shook my head.
“What do you want, then? You want buy rugs?”
“No, no thank you.”
“You want buy silks?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Then you want guide? I will be your guide.”
As I tried to cross the street, he ran ahead of me holding the cars back with his hand and shouting, “Stop! Stop!” He was clearing the way, protecting me fiercely. Papu was so tenacious, he wouldn’t let me go, so I surrendered, and I fell in love. Before I knew it, I was sitting in his uncle’s silk shop, buying silks. Then I was somewhere else, looking at rugs. He pushed cows out of our way as he led me into temples; he haggled with the rickshaw drivers on my behalf. He took me to his astrologer.
After another long day together exploring the city, I asked him, “When was the last time you ate a hot meal, Papu?”
He shook his head. I could see his ribs sticking through his T-shirt. I wondered where he slept, if he had family, how he lived.
“Come with me,” I told him, stepping toward the hotel.
“Not in there, Mrs. Goldie. Not allowed.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer. I suppose it was the caste system at work.
“We’ll see about that, Papu,” I said, grabbing his hand.
I led him into the hotel until a senior member of the staff barred our way.
“Madam, you cannot bring him in here!”
“He’s my friend,” I replied coldly. “We’ll be dining together tonight.”
Without another word, I showed Papu into the restaurant and watched him devour probably the biggest meal he had ever eaten.
Ah, dear Papu. I wonder where he is now. We kept in touch for a while, but we lost contact over the years.
Feeling nostalgic, I pick up the telephone and call home to make sure my children are all right. It is good to hear their voices and to know that they are happily carrying on their lives without me for a while. I go to bed feeling more peaceful than I have felt in months.
T
he following morning, I hail a rickshaw and take a journey to see another old friend, whose company I feel the need for. The rickshaw driver knows the way. He pedals me through the tight grid of alleys in the Old City, wherein beats the real heart of Varanasi. Life is so robust here. People live their lives on the street. Parents and grandparents take care of their grandchildren. Women wash their clothes and their babies side by side. Everything is out in the open. Everybody shares. People and animals jostle together for space and air. Cows literally parade before us aimlessly while we wait for them to pass or squeeze past them apologetically.
I’m embraced once more by this wave of sensuality, of color, smells,
images, religion and cultures. Admittedly, some of the smells are putrid, but mostly it’s frangipani and jasmine. It is those scents I choose to remember. I smile at the children; I wave at the mothers and grandmothers we pass. They wave back and smile, their faces open and loving. I so love being lost here, just another anonymous face in the crowd.
I’m on my way to my friend Brij Gupta’s guesthouse he runs with his mother, father and brother Sanjay. Our rickshaw weaves through the streets, a mass of humanity going in various directions. We dodge cows, and policeman standing in the middle of the street directing what looks like total chaos. I feel like Alice in Wonderland.
At last I reach my destination, climb down from my rickshaw and walk up to the door of the Sun Hotel guesthouse, feeling very exhilarated to see Brij after all these years. The door opens. There, Brij sits in his wheelchair, backlit by the sun flooding through the window behind him.
“Goldie!” he cries, his face lighting up. “I don’t believe it! I had no idea you were in town.”
He pats the seat beside him in the cramped room he shares with his family, and I take it eagerly, so happy to see him again. His mother appears in a beautiful pink sari as if by magic, kissing me warmly on both cheeks. She makes us tea and crackers, and we sit together in this room full of sunlight and love.
“So, dear Brij, how are you?” I ask, trying to ignore how brittle he looks. His unusual angle in his wheelchair suggests that his spine has grown even more crooked since I last saw him. Dark-haired and extremely handsome, he still cuts a dashing figure in his crisp white shirt and slacks.
“I’m well, dear Goldie, very well,” he lies. He draws on his ubiquitous cigarette, elegantly held in an ivory holder. “Did you receive the poetry I sent you?”
“Yes, Brij, I did. It was so beautiful. Thank you. Are you doing much other writing?”
“Not so much,” he says, his eyes flickering with momentary sadness.
I think back to the first time I met Brij. A woman at my hotel told me about him. “Brij Gupta is extremely intelligent, fluent in many languages and a foreign correspondent for
Der Spiegel,
” she said. “But one
day he dove into two feet of water, thinking it was deeper, and is now a paraplegic and unable to work. He loves visitors. It would really cheer him up. It would be so wonderful.”
I remember being struck immediately by how beautiful Brij was, and what an amazing spirit he had. I sat with him for hours, talking and sharing our lives. He writes such beautiful poetry about the light in Varanasi and the spirituality of this ancient city. His poetry is so optimistic; it comes from deep within the heart of a man who has lost everything, yet who has so much. I treasure every word.
Now I have come to see him again in the hope of restoring some of my own natural optimism, which I have lost recently.
“So how are your dear children, Goldie? How is your family?” he asks.
“Kurt and the kids are great, Brij, but I’m not doing so well. I just lost my mother.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Goldie.”
“I know. I just feel like there’s this huge void now.”
He nods and listens patiently.
“I’ve been trying to make sense of what I’m feeling. Part of me feels like it has died too.”
“It has,” Brij offers simply. “You’ve lost the last person who validated you—the one person who you could really please and make proud. You have to validate yourself now, Goldie. It’s up to you.”