Turning Point

If you’re wondering why I’m beginning my story now, after what I’m going to write about has been going on for so long, the answer is that I thought I didn’t have time to write about it. But then I remembered how Srila Prabhupada quoted that old saying, “Drops of water wear away a stone.” And I also remembered how he said, “Two lines, four lines, write your realizations” and how he said that there is time for everything; one simply has to arrange for it. Besides these reasons, there is also an element of fire under my seat lit by other devotees who have urged me to write about our travels, so with all these motivators returning again and again to my mind, I decided to embark.

The turning point came on August 7, 2015. That’s the day we sold our house, the house my husband had built with his own hands.

The house my husband built

We had been talking about selling our house off and on over the last so many years. Now we had every reason to do so, because all our kids had moved out, our cows no longer needed our direct care, we were about to close our business, and we had a place to live elsewhere.

By the supreme arrangement of Yogesvara, the Master of All Mystics, Lord Sri Krsna, a buyer emerged. My husband and I were in India when she appeared from behind the curtain of prayer and with the help of our Godsister Mamata devi dasi. We flew home. Our buyer was coming to Prabhupada Village soon and we needed to get the house ready for her.

As soon as the plane landed, we hit the ground running. We knew we needed to trim down more than eighteen years of accumulation (read: “stri”) to a quantity that we could carry to India in two suitcases and four carry-ons. We cleaned, sold stuff, gave stuff away and made dozens of trips to the dump.

Two weeks later, our buyer arrived. The deal closed quickly. We moved out so she could move in, then we left Prabhupada Village for our very last and final business trip in New York. We were about to close our ten-year-old amber-and-silver jewelry business, and we looked forward to seeing and saying good-bye to our beloved New York clients. Armed with a load of Srila Prabhupada's books to distribute to our customers as farewell gifts, we headed up to Bouckville, New York, a tiny town near Syracuse.

The trip went smoothly and the sales went well. We gave out Srila Prabhupada's books as gifts to our customers who all wished us well in our newly opening life-chapter.

When we returned to North Carolina, we still had more cleaning to do at the house. Although we had just disembarked from the plane a few days before and our body-clocks were still off from jet-lag, we pushed through the sleepiness to finish the cleaning and clearing of stuff that had piled up over the years.

Almost as soon as we returned from New York, we took a break from our de-cluttering and headed up to the Petersburg, Virginia Federal Correctional Institution with Sarva-drik Prabhu and his wife Sudevi for a weekend of prison preaching and association with the devotees of Richmond, who hold regular Bhakti-vriksha programs there.

After a blissful time with the Petersburg and Richmond Bhaktas, we headed back down to Prabhupada Village for more cleaning. We had about one more week before we were scheduled to leave on a tour to see our kids and grandkids, so we were motivated to finish as quickly as possible. We were busy, busy, busy up until the very last minute. We were thankful that we had pretty much reached our de-cluttering goals, and felt satisfied that we had done our best. We began our journey to Georgia, Florida and Texas with happy, grateful hearts.

The trip went well. We had a long-cherished family reunion with our son Ben (aka "KD" or Krishna dasa), his lovely wife Stacie, and their four beautiful children in Savannah. Our younger son Nitai Pran came up from Gainesville to join us. We all laughed and talked for hours, catching up after a long time. As lunchtime rolled around and the youngest kids' tummies started growling, we all piled into cars and headed to the Sentient Bean, a popular vegetarian restaurant.

The Sentient Bean Vegetarian Restaurant, Savannah, Georgia

When I saw the name of the restaurant, I wondered if they had derived it from Srila Prabhupada's oft-used phrase "sentient being." The menu was full of delicious choices, and upon entering, we made our orders and then we were escorted to a big table, big enough for our entire group of nine, to enjoy our colorful vegetarian meal.

Afterwards, we took a walk in Forsyth Park, right across the street. The kids romped and climbed trees while we adults strolled and chatted, hoping that that would burn off a few of the calories we had just ingested. While we were there at the park, we saw a man fashioning woven "roses" out of palm leaves.  I love old arts and crafts like that.

Before hugging everyone and saying our final good-byes, we all paid a visit to the Coldstone Creamery, a unique ice cream parlor, where Prabhuji and I secretly offered the whole store to Krishna. We then proceeded to purchase almost the entire stock of ice cream and toppings for our family dessert binge. I was amazed to see how much ice cream we could all eat after such a satisfying meal at the Sentient Bean. As my friend Vrndavanesvari says, "There's always room for dessert."

The following morning, Pita and I traveled to Alachua to see our ox Abhay, who had relocated to warmer pastures (tormented by below-freezing temperatures, he had practically frozen during the winter in North Carolina—now he looks happy, peaceful and WARM in the Florida weather).

After petting Abhay, massaging his brisket and dewlap and feeding him all kinds of treats, we traveled over to New Talavana for a day and a half of blissful retreat with our friends Sri Raga Prabhu and Narada Priya Mataji, then on to Houston.

ISKCON Houston

For many years, my husband and I have had to engage in business during August and September, so we always found ourselves celebrating Janmastami and Vyasa-puja either in a motel or driving down the road to our next business engagement.  This year, for the first time in YEARS, we spent Janmastami and Vyasa-puja IN A TEMPLE instead of in a motel or on the road!!! It was so awesome to be in front of Sri Sri Radha-Nilamadhava...

Sri Sri Radha-Nilamadhava, Houston ISKCON

...drinking in Their gorgeous, benevolent darshan, as the midnight arati conchshell was blown and the kartals and mrdangas percussed to the nectarean kirtan. After having fasted all day and into the night past 1:00 am, we feasted to our hearts content, then crashed. (I'm not as strong as I used to be. When I was in my twenties, I could stay up all night on Janmastami night, go to mangala-arati on Srila Prabhupada's Vyasa-puja morning, and dance for the whole arati. Couldn't do it this time.)

Our daughter Kamalini was in the throes of not just morning sickness, but all-day, all-night sickness. She's going to have a very easy baby, according to some. My husband and I took over most of the cooking for the three weeks we were there with Bhakta Tracy, Kamalini and Bhadrasena.  We chauffeured Bhadrasena to school and back, and helped with cleaning and laundry.

During our time in Houston, we experienced a most phenomenal preaching program at the Huntsville, Texas Correctional Complex.

His Holiness Bhakti Vikasa Swami

 His Holiness Bhakti Vikasa Swami was in Houston at the same time, so we had quite a crowd of devotees at the prison for their annual Janmastami Festival. It was a stupendous success, and the cherry on top was a fantastic feast of Krishna prasadam prepared by the dedicated devotees of the Houston and Dallas Temples.

To be continued in the next post...