Roots and Branches
05.18.2011 
It is fascinating to see how, in moving to another continent, the web of relationships and rituals in my life continues in certain respects, and in others is broken. I could never have predicted how my most treasured relationships would grow deeper, the thread between us stronger, in spite of the distance between us.
Yet in another sense, what I assumed would continue unbroken--certain rituals of daily activity, created over the years and made effortless by repetition--must be recreated here in Paris as if they’d never existed.
The web of relationships continues in Paris. Here I see an acupuncturist, Helen Divov, who was recommended by Dr. Maoshing Ni, my acupuncturist in Los Angeles. Dr. Mao and Helen were trained together some years ago in Los Angeles. After practicing there, Helen fell in love with a Frenchman and moved to Paris.
In our last session, I told her how hard I’m finding it to recreate certain habits here that were second nature a few months ago in the U.S. For instance, stretching in the morning. Lifting weights. Avoiding certain foods that I’ve found are best for me to avoid. Fitting in errands. Getting enough sleep.
It was the same way for her, she said, during her first year in Paris. Her eating habits changed, and her exercise rituals were no longer in place.
Helen sees patients in a small, lovely courtyard apartment in Paris, then spends the weekends at her home in the country. She’s a devoted gardener, and told me a story of how, gardening one day, she noticed that a tree she'd replanted a year earlier had not put out leaves or flowers.
Then, suddenly, during the second year, it was full of green and flowers too.
She realized that the first year a tree is giving all of its energy into putting down roots. Then it can reach out and up with its branches and leaves. And she saw that it was the same with human beings. In our first year in a new place, most of our energy is invisibly putting down new roots; then we can return to all the ways we’ve found to support our own blossoming.
