We were making pancakes in the kitchen. The syrup was almost made. The pancakes were sizzling in bacon grease. I was jumping up and down, eager anticipation rippling up my spine. At four and a half, pancake breakfasts required an extraordinary amount of patience.

Age ten brought a different story. We were gathered around the kitchen table drawing pictures. I needed a certain color of crayon. One of my siblings was using it. I waited awhile and they were still using it. Awhile longer, still using that color. I snapped something awful at them. Mom snapped back at me: “You are so impatient! You need to learn to be more patient.” I was humiliated, furious, then humiliated some more because she was right. I did need to learn patience. I hated it when Mom was right.

What is a soul gift? Soul gifts hide in the tangled web of life. My soul gift took the form of prayer. I prayed for help. I prayed for guidance. I prayed to get through exams and mountains of homework. I prayed to be a good person, to become a better one. These were my prayers in my teen years.

I prayed in my later years as an adult, too. I prayed for help to know who I was to be or what I was supposed to make of myself, for my path. I prayed to understand myself. I prayed for help with the problems I found there. I prayed to be a better person, the person I always meant to be.

Where do you go for silence?

The forest was quiet. You could hear a pin drop. Yosemite Valley was blanketed in a heavy layer of freshly fallen snow. A sound buffer had fallen on the valley, and we were the only human beings to venture forth that morning – such a rarity in Yosemite where the voices of fellow travelers mingle with the wind, with thundering falls, with birdsong. But this day was different.

I once lived in a cobbled state of being. I worked 11 hours a day, then worked some after that when life so required. My weekends were a structured affair: gardening on Saturday, laundry on Sunday. I spent some time with my family on the weekends, never quite sure that I had the time to be doing so, but feeling that it was important.

I came to see that this did not work out so well . . . this cobbled way of living . . .

The Sugar Pine Café, 2011, was just a block from our hotel.  I had been up in the early hours of the morning meditating.  I was learning about the energy system, learning how to find my own.  I learned something that morning, and I was eager to tell my husband.  The air was cool as we walked to the Sugar Pine Café.  Why do I remember this moment some fourteen years later?