"You're with me and you're fine and you're loved"

- Suzanne Strempek Shea, Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore

Suzanne was my mentor for the last two semesters of my MFA, and she is one of the most loving, most creative, most positive people I have ever known or even heard of. Yes, she's really THAT incredible, and I knew it within about five and a half seconds of meeting her. That's just how awesome she is.

I quote that passage from Shelf Life all the time.

In the book, she quotes the end of Dermot Healy's poem, "The Ballyconnell Colours":

The unyielding stars,
And the white seal pup on the rocks
Thrown up here,
Like myself,

In a storm.

(The whole poem, by the way, is awesome and worth reading.)

Suzanne goes on to write this:

It's a pretty good bet that I'll continue to have something to do with the store even if I do hit the literary big time and move to an Irish beach dotted with storm-tossed seal pups looking around and asking, "Where the hell am I?" I'll know where they are, so I'll inform them. Because that's what you sometimes need when you find yourself in an unfamiliar beach, country, world. Somebody to say, "You're with me and you're fine and you're loved."

I'd always liked seals -- I even have very vague recollections of going to see The Golden Seal at the Maybrook Drive-in when I was a kid. (I loved that old drive-in, and the flea market. I'm so sad they're gone. Even sadder that there's a retirement community there instead now....) My mom had a seal decal on our fridge growing up -- something about how seals shouldn't be hunted and bludgeoned to death. (I always found it ironic that my mom had a decal like that on the fridge but had no problem wearing her hairy boots made from goat skin or eating lamb -- and that she was so surprised when I became a vegetarian at age 10.) The first Christmas after my sister moved out, she gave me this giant, hard cover picture book filled with photographs of seals. I love that book.

So, I'd always liked seals, but after reading that passage in Suzanne's book just days before my graduation residency, I became somewhat obsessed with them. Every time I see a seal now (whether it's a photograph in a book or a statue or a real-life one in a zoo or on a postcard), I think of that line: "You're with me and you're fine and you're loved." (What I wouldn't give to have someone whisper that in my ear every night before I went to bed....)

As a thank you gift for being an awesome mentor for two semesters, I gave Suzanne this tiny little seal carved out of stone. I kept one for myself. (Later, I would also give one to my high school journalism teacher, Jackie.) The one I kept for myself kept getting passed around during that last residency -- my friends and I would hold it or keep it on the podium during our readings. (Reading from your creative work for 20 minutes in front of a room full of people is kind of like being vivisected, or how I imagine it would be.) My seal was the "something borrowed" at my friend Shawna's wedding (which I officiated). And, I gave it to my friend Manny -- who has such a kind and gentle spirit and who has done a tremendous amount of good in this world -- when he had to pack up his life and move far away to care for his aging parents several months ago.

I have two seal statues on top of the tv in my living room -- one that I gave to my mom years ago, and another I bought shortly after her death. I have a stuffed seal on top of the giant bookcase on the opposite wall, next to the framed pictures of several pets that have died. These are not accidents.

(I suspect this is part of why I feel so deeply connected to my friend John, who I only know because he said he knew how to restrain a seal and I wanted to know more about that....)

When I was very little, my uncle had a girlfriend named Sam. How I wish he'd been smart enough to marry her instead of the woman who became my aunt when I was in first grade. (Intriguing, isn't it, that I'm still in contact with Sam, when I haven't seen or spoken to my uncle - my godfather - in almost two years?) Very close to my computer -- on the wall where the things that inspire me most are kept -- is a watercolor of a giraffe Sam painted for me before I was in elementary school. I still sleep with a blanket in the shape of a squirrel that she gave me, too.

She made this incredible watercolor of seals that she posted on her Facebook page several weeks ago. I sent her a message last night letting her know that I'd made her painting the desktop image on my computer and recounting the quotes from Suzanne's book and why I love seals so much. She wrote me back saying, "You're awesome, did you know that?"

I saw her reply just seconds after reading an email I received from Jackie, who'd just read the post about my trapeze lesson. It began, "As I have always known -- you are brave and incredible -- and you inspire me." She went on to write, "You are going to be ok -- keep leaping, keep trying, you'll know when to trust and when to let yourself fall. I have confidence in you and it sounds like you're getting your confidence in yourself (and the universe) back, bit by bit!"

And I just sit here, marveling how I have such amazing people in my life. Is everyone this lucky? I don't think so. How did I happen to collect such beautiful and kind people and convince them to be part of my crazy little world?

Maybe it's as simple as being willing to tell people, "You're with me and you're fine and you're loved." Maybe it's as simple as loving, and always working on it.