Muffin of Change (part 1)

       Last Saturday, at the Super Stop and Shop in Falmouth Massachusetts, the Gods of Growth hit me with a bolt of lightning. Whilst I was eating a muffin. My first muffin, in fact, all summer.
       During the ten years I lived in North Falmouth, between 2001 and 2011, I partook in a ritual that made Saturday my favorite day of the week. I would grab a cup of joe and attend an early twelve step meeting at the Super Stop and Shop at nine in the morning. Then I would eat a muffin, the one muffin I allowed myself each week, while food shopping.
       I love food shopping. So I don't rush it. And becauseI I always have a well stocked fridge and pantry, I would buy a lot of food. During my shopping, I would run into people from the meeting in the aisles, and we would talk and have mini meetings all over the store. It was glorious.
       This meant that I would usually get home around noon. After eating and unpacking my food, I would run to Old Silver Beach, about three miles away, and spend  a few hours there before walking or biking home (I would often drop my bike off at the beach on my way to my nine o’clock meeting).
       This ritual nourished me from the inside out. Spiritually and Emotionally, my morning meeting and the mini meetings in the aisles of the store fed my heart and soul. Buying lots of good food and then running to the beach made my body feel alive and cared for. And the cheat muffin tasted like heaven.
       I haven’t done that Saturday ritual in about a year, since I moved back to Boston. But I was on the cape Friday night and went to the Super Stop and Shop on Saturday morning to attend my favorite meeting. I didn’t have to food shop, so I grabbed my muffin and decided to munch it down before I "got my ass in the chair", as we like to say.
       So I’m standing in the store, happily chowing my cinnamon chip muffin, when from around the corner walks my older brother. Whom I haven’t seen since my mom died in May. Whom I haven’t had a relationship with in ten years. Whom I made a conscious decision to exclude from my life. And there he is. Serendipitously right in front of me, as I’m eating my yummy muffin, waiting for my meeting and hence my spiritual and emotional nourishment.
       He smiled when he saw me. We gave each other a hug and a kiss. There were some tears, mostly from him. We talked. He asked me if I wanted to stay at his house for the weekend. I accepted. I went to my meeting. It so happens that the chairperson didn’t show up, and I got to chair the meeting. Chairing gives me the opportunity to talk for about fifteen minutes, and I love to talk, so I was thrilled. I spent two nights at his house.
       There exists a mountain of shit between my older brother and I so big that I can’t see over, around, or through it. The house he has on the cape is the same house I spent my summers in. There is a ton of stink on that house. So much so that, although I played in a band in college called The Albino Skunks, and we all lived together in what was known as “The Skunk House”, that moniker would be just as appropriate for this place. And the house that I used to live in, but moved out of, because I was sued by my twin brother and sister, is right up the street.
       Bottom line, there is enough bad energy in that collective physical and metaphysical space that I felt suffocated by it. The oppressively bad vibes choked me out of being back there, for any length of time, for almost a year.
       And all that shit evaporated with a simple “Yes”. Whilst eating a muffin.

©2012 Clint Piatelli. All Rights Reserved.