The Beginning

So here's how it started.  Our living arrangement.  I know you're curious -- don't deny it.

I was driving down B Street early one spring morning and saw the magic sign: FOR RENT.  I pulled over and phoned Nancy.  "There's a house for rent on the corner of First and B -- wanna see it?"  Neither Nancy nor I were looking for a house to rent.  I had an adorable bungalow at the top of Wimer and she had my former cottage on Coolidge.  We just liked looking.

At 4 o'clock that afternoon we, and half the town, arrived for the only showing. 

"Ohmygod," Nancy said, "it's so cute!"

"Ohmygod," I said, "I know!"

"Have you seen the cottage in back?" a lovely person asked.  "It comes with the house."

"Ohmygod!" we said in unison.  I had always wanted a peace chapel in my backyard.  Or a writer's retreat. We grabbed an application and hightailed it to Liquid Assets, the local wine bar where, on Wednesday evenings, a bunch of artists and writers and filmmakers gathered to commiserate.

"We just saw the cutest house for rent on the corner of First and B," Nancy said to Tom Doty, a writer and storyteller whose aunt Agnes is one of the 13 indiginous grandmothers and the oldest living member of the Takelma tribe that used to inhabit the land that is now Ashland.

"I know that house," Tom said.  "It's built over sacred healing waters."

"SACRED HEALING WATERS!" we shreiked and dashed for the door.

For, you see, in addition to always wanting a peace chapel in my backyard, I am a Healing Touch practitioner and a Reiki Master.  I had helped train 40 practitioners since coming to Ashland, and we were looking for a place where we could offer free treatments to people in the community. Where better than a cottage built over sacred healing waters!

Only one little problem.  Neither Nancy nor I, nor Nancy and I together could afford the place.  "We need a third person," I said.  "We need Judy."

Judy had moved to Ashland five months earlier with her very large, very old, very deaf and often very shedding Samoyed dog, and the two of them were sleeping in my dining room. It was VERY not ideal. Judy worked 12-hour shifts at the hospital.  She was already asleep when I got home.  "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" I shook her shoulders.  "Nancy and I found a three-bedroom house in town with a cottage for Healing Touch treatments and we need a third person.  Are you in?"

"Okay," she mumbled, her eyes still closed.  And that was that. Two weeks later we moved. 

Oh, and Tom Doty's aunt, Agnes Baker Pilgrim, blessed our house with sage and an eagle feather and sprinkled water collected from rivers on all the continents. She blessed the land and the peace chapel and the healing touch treatment room and the work we would do. She blessed the friends who had gathered for the ceremony. And then she blessed us. Amen.