Journey of a Thousand Cranes, Part 5

Photo by me. I really wish I’d taken pictures right after I put the cranes up.

When my count was at 900 cranes, I slowed down in the folding of them. 

I was anxious about the wish because I realized how much I wanted it to come true, even if I didn’t know what I was wishing for. 

But the folding, meditating, and focusing on love and my personal roadblocks to it was confusing.

I was reluctant to let go of my initial motivation to be a conquest diva. I wrote in my journal about it incessantly and I decided any one of three things had to happen to prove the wish had come true.

And then I was done. 

In several boxes were a thousand cranes that took me four months to fold, not including all the ones I gave away. 

I wasn’t in a hot new relationship by the time I finished, and my phone was not ringing off the hook with people yearning to take me out on splendid dates. 

I finished my semester in the outdoor studies program I was enrolled in, and rented a ladder and platform to complete the art project.

Heather, one of the friends who had taught me how to make the cranes, came over and helped me put up the white Christmas lights that I lined along the ceiling and down the 90° corners and across the bottom of the walls to illuminate the paper cranes in soft golden light. 

After that, I was on my own. Grabbing a box of cranes that had been folded in tie-dye patterns, I started with the narrow wall in the stairwell and pinned a bird to the top left corner and pinned two cranes below that one.

From there, the project just finished itself. 

It is impossible to describe how I felt in that process, but there was no “I” putting up the paper cranes flying in full circle from the kimono from which they came. 

I put the kimono Jeff had sent me up at the top of the staircase, with one arm spread out, one arm bent akimbo, and one half of the front opened, with cranes coming out of the neck, the shoulders, the arms and the bottom, in formation and ready to fly. 

With each turn in the wall, lined up according to species – solid color, tie-dye, manuscript, book, or magazine - the paper cranes flew in formation towards the stairwell, whipping to the left, and to the left again, over the banister to fly back to the Mother Kimono. 

Creatively, this was the most satisfying thing I had ever done and the end result was really something.

“This is absolutely stunning,” said my neighbor, Jacque, as she stood at the top of the staircase and gaped “It’s overwhelming.”

It was the middle of December. I threw a Christmas ‘n Cranes party to celebrate. All my core friends showed up and many people have visited since to see it. 

I had just finished the project late that afternoon, so I was pretty exhausted at my own party. 

But looking around, I saw that I had a very diverse group of colorful characters for friends, and I didn’t have to do for them to get them to like me. 

Something definitely changed as a result of this wishing meditation.

I didn’t get what I wished for, but what happened was probably what I needed. 

And it was definitely what I focused on the most. 

As I said before, I fumed and raged inside at my family while I was folding paper. And I’d been having problems with them for a couple of years. 

I could no longer stand to be in the shadows, watching, listening, and wringing my hands over their doings and dramas. 

As conflicts like this usually go, my parents and brothers were united in keeping the status quo alive and me in the same role I’d always played. 

I was expected in Florida for the holidays.

The night before my flight, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and agonized.

I knew I didn’t want to go, and I was exhausted from accommodating people who had always been so wrapped up in themselves they were oblivious, and possibly indifferent, to the pain they caused. 

I dreaded going back to the state I grew up in. 

At four in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep. So I got out of bed to make some tea. As I got to the staircase, I flipped the switch and immediately felt better.

Does not do them justice. But it’s all I have.

The cranes were flying in the golden light and the effect was incredibly peaceful. I sat in the middle of the stairs, leaned back, and stared at the paper birds I’d folded for four months and put up for two days.

“What is the point of doing all this work, if I keep doing the same thing?”

That question came from deep inside me as I stared at my work. I realized that nothing would ever change unless I did. 

I didn’t get on the plane.

It was one of the most exhilarating and frightening things I’d ever done, and I had no idea if I was doing the right thing. In fact, I wouldn’t receive the validation that I had made the best and healthiest decision a few months later.

I wish I could claim that my family had an epiphany as a result of this. I would have loved it if they became the loving parents and supportive siblings out of an orphan’s wet dream.

They didn’t.

But that was my first step towards empowerment. That step led to another, and another until I felt the satisfaction of being a stronger woman who treats herself like she’s worth something.

Some of them have come around to treating me with more respect.  Even if they are still wrapped up in themselves, they don’t expect me to be. 

The jury’s still out, but things are looking up.

As for my original wish, I’ll just say it’s always a mistake to insist the Universe prove itself. 

The following months after the Christmas n’ Cranes party were the last roar of the dinosaur just before it expired. 

I pursued every type of mistake I had ever made, in an aggressive campaign to make self-centered narcissists ache with desire for wonderful, lucky-in-love me. 

In response, the Universe whacked me upside the head until I came to my senses.

I can’t say that I’m bitter about that.  What was I thinking?

I’ve had some fun dates, but I don’t have a line of people pounding on my door to take me out on a Saturday night. 

Maybe there’s something bigger at work here that I don’t understand. 

Maybe it’s my destiny to fly solo in life. 

I feel more comfortable as I embrace the role of a woman unto herself and I no longer see myself as a failure for it. 

I think my relationship with love has become much healthier and if somebody special comes along, I think I’ll be ready to contribute to something real. 

In the meantime, I’m in love with my freedom.

Maybe folding cranes is a healing thing to do, after all.

And maybe I should have just asked for a good relationship.