The Profundity of the Firsts

Firsts are profound. A first kiss or a first love as horrendous or blissful as the breeze on a Spring day that lifts your skirt to the crowd or gently caresses your face.  The momentum that a first brings if we are paying attention could be the difference between something taking a year, a month, or a minute to experience. The difference between deciding that's not it, let's try again, or knowing what you want so clearly that there is nothing that could prevent its happening. That's the power of the firsts. 

Asha and Sael at the Eats Festival in Oakland

Since being in California, there have been a lot of firsts for me. I've been trying for the purposes of this blog to recall them all. I have been blessed with so many. We all are, everyday. And, if we really take stock, so many could be categorized as great!! Boston's first city bus ride (that he can remember) and father-led driving lesson, my first dip in the cold Pacific Ocean, my nieces Sael and Asha meeting for the first time, when my husband and I used the freshest local squid to prepare a beautiful, tasty lunch of sauteed calamari over a bed of spinach and seeds, and the day my husband told me that Tim, his friend from the gym, needed help picking grapes, I was excited beyond measure. 

The next day in the dark of morning, I woke to follow this first to fruition. I picked Alicanti Bouschet grapes, cutting them off of the vine with ease as if I'd done it before. I could have been out there for hours or minutes, but when we were ready to leave to process the grapes, I was proud and grateful. The firsts within this one experience happily continuing. I was to help process them: squishing and squeezing my hands down the length of the sensuous stem, juicy grapes squirting into a tub, staining my hands and nails red for days. 


During those red-handed days, I went back to the winery to press the grapes too, caring for them like fruit babies, letting them gurgle in their yeast, and silencing them into the bed of their own juices. The process recreating a newborn glimmer of "I-can-do-anything. God-does-listen-to-my-prayers. I-am-never-alone" momentum. When I moved to California and saw all the vineyards, I knew I did not just want to drink good wine here. It was my hope to have an experience such as I had. I wanted to be in the field with those grapes, and it didn't take long before I was. I am amazed to have met people native to this wine country who have never picked grapes, some of who would actually want to. Why haven't they then? The vineyards are everywhere here.

Last week, I offered my first Thai yoga massage here in Santa Rosa, and this week, my first yoga class at an awesome little studio, Yoga Haus. The idea of doing the things I love and being able to serve, only a little over a month after moving here, adding to my firsts' momentous charge. But I have to admit, I've been to several yoga classes and studios over the month and not every studio asked me to come back and teach. Not every person I meet asks for a Thai yoga massage, nor would I want them to.  But I keep going towards the call because I know how to be called on. We've got to raise our hands while we are in the appropriate setting, when the question is asked or when we create the space. We've got to go confidently where the possibility for the first exists, and pay attention and respond when it comes along. 

What do you want to create for your precious life? Is there an idea that you have been carrying around with you? Has it been with you a year, a month, or a minute? 

We must start with firsts, and keep in mind, they won't always be great. However, when the opportunity comes along, bridled and stirruped,  headed in the direction of the experience we have been longing for, we must jump on its back.  We must be present enough to steer the ride forward with gratitude for where we are, not obsessing about where we could have been had we just taken a plane. And we must be conscious enough to know that if it does not feel like a winning horse, or first, it probably isn't. If it is not a resounding YES, then it should be a definitive NO. 

One of the things that makes firsts so profound is that at this beginning, there is no history, or very little, to keep us bound. Firsts have the potential to teach us what we do not want so that we can see what we really do want, and they give us the clarity to appreciate where we are so that we can be certain we are choosing the next best first when it comes along.