I once folded a thousand cranes because I wanted to be lucky in love.
Having had more runs of datelessness than I needed for inner strength, along with an unpleasant run-in with my last mistake at the wedding of mutual friends, I determined that when it came to love, I was cursed.
At the time, I was convinced that the Universe owed me the exciting love life that was long overdue. So, ignoring my usual frustration with things that require patience and precision, I started folding paper.
It took several lessons by two different teachers, but I was finally able to fold the origami crane.
Years before, a friend whose mother had died from cancer told me about a project when he and his sister worked together to fold a thousand cranes during the illness. They had hid them all over the house and presented their mother with a scroll explaining the cranes they had folded for her healing.
Of course, she was touched to the point of tears - and who wouldn’t be? For months, she’d find a crane in a coffee cup or in the cabinet when she reached for laundry detergent, which reminded her of the gift from her kids.
I was intrigued by the story and asked Jeff to show me how to make a crane. We were out, having drinks in New Orleans. He tried to fold his cocktail napkin into a bird.
But he couldn’t get the hang of it - either because the paper was too flimsy, or his brain was from the alcohol, so my first lesson never got off the ground.
They say that when the student is ready the teacher will come.
Years later, I was in Chicago, “breaking rice” with a friend and one of her oldest friends, George, who was Japanese. Somehow the subject came up about folding cranes, and I vaguely remembered it as a “healing” thing to do.
“Folding a thousand cranes makes wishes come true,” said George as we finished our sushi.
The light bulb flashed on in my mind. Everybody has something they’ve always wanted, and I was no exception.
This was in the summer of 2003.
At that time, my life was full.
Between summer work as a hiking guide, winter work with the disabled, and going back to school for an outdoor studies program, I had a lot going on.
But, like many single people who were not in a relationship, I wanted to be. I was loath to admit this, but I was also more than a little anxious at my relative powerlessness to change that.
There was a part of me that believed I had failed as a woman by not being married or in a domestic partnership.
“Get on the Internet,” people said. “There are tons of people out there.”
Sound advice, I had to admit. Yet for various reasons, I was reluctant to go there. One of them being I lived in SE Alaska, and the internet was still viewed with suspicion by many.
So I figured I’d fold a thousand cranes and my problem would be solved.
As soon as I was back in Juneau, I sought out a friend who was an art teacher and who had lived in Japan for a year.
My instincts were right. Heather knew how to fold the crane and she gave me my first two lessons.
A couple of days later, I got lost around the tenth fold and my crane had floppy wings.
That was when I crossed paths with a yoga teacher active in the peace-love-anti-war movement.
Of course, she knew how to make the crane, and I received my third and final lesson. I think it helped that she also showed me a breathing technique to calm me down when I got frustrated.
That was when I got it. I had finally mastered the crane and was good to go.
But what do I wish for?
I knew I wanted to be in a relationship, but I also knew that I was feeling… ambivalent.
And ambivalent feelings like mine tend to put the kabash on relationships working out.
I figured that if I was going to go to the trouble of folding a thousand pieces of paper into cranes, I should ask for something that had long-term value and to keep the request simple.
As a meditation, I knew from experience this would likely result in more than I asked for. I thought of those people who always have a relationship or options to get into one. I knew I wanted to be one of them.
So I wished to be lucky in love and started folding paper with gusto.
I was obsessed.
This project consumed me. I folded a minimum of 10 cranes a day.
By the time I’d folded around 100 cranes, it looked as if my wishing meditation was getting results.
I met somebody attractive, nice…and single on one of my tours.
We clicked and made a date after the tour, which ended with a walk on the only sandy beach in the city and borough of Juneau on Douglas Island.
Rather a peculiar spot for romance, given that the “sand” was from mining tailings, and the glory hole where we hung out on a petrified log, was born from the flooding and caving in of the Treadwell Mine in 1917.
Between the shut-down of the largest gold mine in the world at that time, and the dumping into the glory hole thereafter, that area is one of the most toxic spots in the country.
But you would never know it to be there, even if you had to be careful where you stepped because there were rusted out mining tools, broken dishes, and other parts on the beach.
The history of the area was the last thing on my mind, however…
Sandy Beach was conveniently near my home, which was part of my master plan. We ended our date making out in my living room until it was time for the ship to sail.
After an exchange of email addresses, we parted, and I was sure that was only the beginning.
Initially, I bought the brightly colored origami paper at a few dollars a pop, in all kinds of patterns.
I folded cranes in cafés, at the bowling alley with one of my clients, in class when I was bored, outside in my yard on those rare sunny days in Southeast Alaska where it’s a cardinal sin to be inside when you don’t have to be.
It was on one of those days when my neighbor Jacque asked me about them as I was folding away.
I had a tattered wicker table with an underbelly and was sticking the cranes by the tail in the holes between the webbing as I finished. The faded occasional table was rendered festive with the bright birds sticking out of it.
“Your cranes are beautiful,” she said. “What are you going to do with them?”
