Today is day 4 of my cleanse, and it was the easiest day yet. Aside from the torture of our weekly office out-to-lunch meeting, during which I had to sit in a yummy pizza restaurant while everyone else ordered and I green-juiced, it was smooth-sailing. The yucky day 2 symptoms seem to have evaporated like my food cravings, my energy level is high, and I’m not even missing my evening wine anymore. In fact, it’s kind of nice to feel clear-headed when I crawl into bed after a healthy day to listen to my nighttime Belleruth Naparstek sleep imagery CD. As Belleruth’s gentle voice guides me to conjure up my favorite place, I see myself hiking the trail to Pirate’s Cove here in Muir Beach, a trail I hiked for the first time yesterday and then again today. After a brief but very steep climb up the side of an oceanfront hillside, you peak over the saddle of the mountain and are rewarded with a long, gentle ridge trail of nothing but coastal cliffs. Expansive blue ocean disappears into the distance, and vibrant green, rain-soaked hills and craggy rocks jut up from the sea. My mind takes me back to this place as I settle in for sleep, but even though I am imagining a past memory, I’m noticing that I feel much more present than usual. So often, as I try to fall asleep, I’m obsessing about the future, planning and stressing, or I’m caught up in the past, remembering, regretting.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the What If’s. Mom and I are cleansing together, and today, after reading more about the health benefits and cancer-fighting properties of the alkaline cleansing we’re doing, Mom burst out with something I had already thought of. “What if Dad could have done this?” And the tears followed.

I said, “Dad would never have done this, Mom. He’d have never given up his spicy chicken wings.”

Mom cried, “He would have done it for me.”

But that was then, and this is now, and we are here today, doing this cleanse, purging the old stuff, making room for the new stuff, and I am grateful. It makes me wonder where I will go from here. (There I go again, planning, planning. So much for living in the present). At this particular moment, it’s hard to imagine going back to the diet and lifestyle I was living two weeks ago. Will I buy the fancy Green Star juicer and incorporate this into my life? Will I become a raw foods vegan? Will I give up wine forever?

In this particular moment, those things feel possible, but then, when I think about going to Sonoma County and eating dinner at Cyrus, it’s hard to imagine ordering only the arugula salad and skipping the braised short ribs, the yellowtail sashimi in ponzu sauce, and the local Pinot. But that’s tomorrow, and today is today. Today I am happy to be right here in Muir Beach, right now on Thursday, in the presence of my husband and daughter and mother, taking care of myself, nourishing my body, being present in this very moment.