Pendle Hill

This is the last day of my 5-day sojourn at Pendle Hill, a Quaker community outside Philadelphia. It's been just right. I have spent most of it writing in my closed room, a simple space in the brick "Main House." I go down for meals or the daily Meeting for Worship, or to raid the granola stash. I've had some good walks around the property, including several rounds through the bamboo labyrinth.

The people who live here are kind and welcoming, as you might imagine. They've chosen to be part of a very deliberate community, and everyone helps out with dishes, furniture repair, folding laundry. There are several students here -- most at least 40 years old -- who have come for spiritual guidance, Quaker study, and Pendle Hill's courses on art and spirituality. The students come from all over the world and stay for a couple of months or longer.

I'm comfortable here, in a Quaker setting. If my life circumstances were different, I could actually see myself living at Pendle Hill for an extended period of time. But if I lived here, I'd want to shake things up just a bit.

There's not a lot of humor, self-deprecating or otherwise, and I feel myself keeping my own sense of humor on a leash. A number of people sojourn here under spiritual duress: some have lost their way spiritually, some are just pretty serious folk. By definition, they're comfortable with silence, and sometimes that energy feels a little heavy. You don't hear a lot of guffawing.

Yesterday I made the smallest joke and my lunch table cracked up with surprise. Funny seems to be a surprise in a spiritual community, and that is something I'd want to be otherwise.

But I'm grateful to this community for taking me in for this sojourn. I am leaving a donation for the student from Benin who arrived a week ago and is as skinny as a broom. He has been cold ever since his plane touched down. I want to buy him some long underwear for the winter.

I'm also going to refresh the "Bacon Endowment" for the kitchen. Ten years ago a sojourner left a $75 contribution to buy a few bacon breakfasts for the community. They ate their way through that in short order, but became attached to having bacon now and then. Now it's a treat every couple of weeks. Everyone came for bacon breakfast a few days ago. We ate strips of a local, organically raised pig, which made us feel better about the indulgence. But I think we would have eaten bacon imported by fossil fuel from Argentina and carried the long way around the globe, it smelled so good.

Because other than that, the food is mostly vegan, and local produce. In December, the pickings are slimmer than other times of year, and the emphasis is on...let's say the durability of the cellulose. Last night was the weekly silent dinner, and we ate raw cabbage and onion, cooked kale, and a lentil salad. Since there was no conversation, the crunch, crunch, crunch throughout the dining hall was pretty funny. Thank goodness I wasn't allowed to say anything. I was so tempted to moo.

sojourn

For more than two months, I sat on the waiting list for a week-long meditation retreat that begins tomorrow. One hundred people will spend a week in silence together, alternating sitting meditations and walking meditations. I've been looking forward to it. But I haven't been able to get excited about it because of the waiting list thing.

After you pay the retreat fee, you wait to see if others bail. I start off somewhere around number 30 when I sign up, and soon am number 26. By late October I'm 13th in line. Then I don't hear anything ever again. I begin to wonder if this is a test. You clear your week, and wait to see if you are called. It's a game of Zen chicken.

I'm doing pretty well with it, I think, though the suspense is driving Laura nuts. Last night she reaches the end of her rope.

"You haven't heard from them??!! I'm going to call them and pretend I am you."

"No, La," I tell her. "We're supposed to wait. I'm on the waiting list."

"But this is ridiculous! You've cleared a whole week and you have no idea if you're going to be able to go."

"But it's kind of interesting," I try. "It's like those trips where people aren't told where they're going until they get there."

"This is ridiculous," she mutters.

I start to itch, like you do when you see someone else scratching. I kind of would like to know where I'm pitching my tent next week. I'm up for the retreat, but I'd also like a week of writing. I've been imagining both with equal interest and anticipation. Which will it be? And what if I could choose? So often I don't choose.

So last night I write to the retreat center. "Uncle!" I say. "Please take my name off the waiting list for the retreat which begins any second now. I fold. I am not Zen enough to wait any longer."

Actually, no. I don't say that. I do say Uncle, though, and then after I send the email I worry that they won't understand that. I'm afraid they'll think I'm addressing them using the Chinese term of filial piety. (This reminds me of how my beloved brother Lee once advised us younger siblings as we entered a large party of mostly Chinese adults: "Don't worry. Just call the men 'uncle' and the women 'auntie' and you'll be okay.")

So I lost the game of chicken. And now the world is my oyster!

I hate oysters.

Laura and I begin to scramble to find the right thing to Occupy me next week.

I don't want to stay at home, as much as I love home. Give me a totally unscheduled week at 15 Main Street and I will spend it oiling squeaky doors, taking out the recycling one yogurt container at a time, checking out The Messiah flash mobs on YouTube, and cooking for the masses.

"Don't stay here," says Laura wisely. "You'll end up buying a dishwasher."

I start looking at B&Bs within walking distance of grocery stores. Laura is looking at yoga retreat centers in Puerto Rico, beach rentals in Florida, a small island off the coast of Brazil. When I look up from my computer, pondering a B&B run by Fred and Ethel and their three dogs, Laura is on her computer looking at Club Meds. Club Meds, she's looking at!

"It doesn't cost anything to look," she says without batting an eye.

"La," I tell her firmly. "I am not going to tell my clients that instead of the meditation retreat I went to a Club Med. I won't be able to face them."

Here my mind gets stuck on how it is that Laura loves me better than I love her. Not more; just better. If I break something, if I leave the oven on, if I screw up somehow, we all agree that it's a good thing it was me and not Laura. We laugh about it, but deep inside I hate how true that is.

If Laura had a week to play with, I would try to make it seem like a fabulous idea to do it on the cheap. Hey! How about you go stay with your mom? It's so comfy there. Or: how about you curl up near this cute, little, shedding Christmas tree we picked up at Lowe's? You could sit right in front of a warm fire. I would dig up lots of reasons not to go whole oyster, while hoping it sounds like her happiness is my top priority.

I have so much to learn about being a good person.

I am leaving Sunday morning and will write more from the retreat I have chosen.

november 30 2009

A year ago yesterday my breasts were sliced off and carried to a lab without me. I still miss them, miss the nerve endings that enveloped them. Not so much for the fun reasons you might be thinking of, though those fun reasons would be frosting on the (cup)cake(s). I just miss being able to feel anything at all in my chest. I miss having breasts as a visible identifier of membership in the female gang.

Last night Laura told me stories about the hours around the surgery -- she reminded me of the huge inflatable warmer they cover you with before surgery. Warm air is pumped through this body-shaped balloon and in the last moments before going under you look down the length of your body to see Dolly Parton's buxom outline. The balloon blanket warmed me up, but my mind made the shape meaningful in ways that weren't comforting.

In the recovery room, I apparently was pretty upset. I didn't know this part. I was crying a lot, saying over and over again that I was scared. Laura says I alternated between wailing and saying hello to my family as chipperly as I could: "How's everyone doing?" then "Waah! I'm so scared!"

The nurse was nodding slowly as she mouthed to Laura "NORMAL. This is perfectly normal."

A volunteer was doing Reiki over my bandaged chest. Laura thought she seemed to be faking it.

I've got a client whose mom is about to have her third surgery to finalize the shape of her prosthetic breasts. Her incisions got infected after her mastectomies, and then she got another infection when they put in the tissue expanders, inserted to stretch out her skin to make room for the silicone implants. It is hard for me to absorb needing the illusion of breasts so much that you'd put your body through all that, especially after it has dealt with cancer. It seems like whipping a horse after a long race.

And yet I do miss having breasts. I don't want to want fake ones, but I envy those who get them without this likely-to-be-chronic ambivalence I carry.

For me, hearing about other people and their prosthetic breasts is like watching people heading out to a very fancy dress ball. I feel left out and somehow less than, but I also know I wouldn't feel comfortable if I tagged along, no matter how fancy my get-up.

The past year has been packed with tired horses, hungry wolves, existential sudoku, footy pajamas under a fancy skirt, and nothing, ever again, beneath my shirt. It's also been full of baby giraffes, snowy owls, noble gladiators, and the miracle of a body healing as much as it can.

I think it's been a good year.

lingering effects

I'm embarrassed to say that I am having a bit of an existential crisis. It's just so trite, so predictable. Cancer focuses the mind, burns off the fluff of one's life, clarifies your sense of purpose. Blah blah blah. It's a tiny but annoying papercut of a narcissistic wound to see how true that has been for me. I grimace here: I am a bit disoriented at this point of the journey.

I am left with some post-traumatic thought-quirks. I carry an acute sense of time running out. That time is running out is no more true and no less true now than it was before I had cancer -- but I think about it constantly.

As I work on my book, a process I want simply to enjoy regardless of outcome, I flick myself with the crop of time. If I don't finish it soon, what? People won't be reading books? People of the future will no longer wonder about the same things we wonder about now?

Both mind and body are still wound up from the trauma of cancer, of chemo, of losing my breasts, of I don't even know what. What was that? What is this? What is this new normal, this back-to-life-as-usual that looks like it always looked but feels like maybe there's a missing step in the staircase, this chair's legs are maybe a half an inch shorter than they used to be, the door knob just a bit to the left. There's no way it could have changed, but it feels like something is different.

The key pieces to my life have not been altered, but the puzzle's picture is different. I am startled whenever I look at it. Is that my life I'm looking at? It's a wonderful life -- one I am not even sure I feel worthy of having -- but I am having such a hard time resting in it. I'm like a dog that walks in a tight circle, over and over again, trying to get ready to lie down just so.

I'm meditating most days. That's good. My private practice is going well, but my emotional center is in writing. Or, often, not writing. When I'm not writing, I'm ruminating about how I'm not writing.

I'm still not sure how I want the book to take shape. I feel like I've bought a barn sold by IKEA. It comes with a 200-page manual of diagrams without words. There is a truckload of wood, bolts, screws, window panes. It's all spread out in the backyard and I walk around and pick up this 2 x 4, that wingnut, this piece of fabric -- could these go together?

Last week I had three CT scans, a procedure that will be repeated annually for a few years. The scans were clear. The doctor left a message saying how clear they were, and had to spell it out: "You are fine. F.I.N.E." I appreciated the spelling. It reminded me of when as a kid you'd hear adults spell out "N.O." They really seemed to mean it then.

But the accompanying blood work shows that my white blood cell count is very low. It's lower than it was during most of chemo. I feel more vulnerable than I would like to admit. I want to feel F.I.N.E., but this adds an I, an S, and an H. The only good thing is that I have been able to extend my agreement with Laura that she will handle the kitty litter, because of cooties. Score.

Until about a week ago, I was running nearly daily, and greatly valuing that piece of my puzzle. It was annoying, though, to find that I was getting weaker and weaker, bruising in weird places, and feeling increasingly tired. Running was depleting my body, pounding my hips and knees (among the many joints still aching from chemo) and not doing doodoo for anything but my mood and my heart.

Learning that running weakens you is like finding out that prayer gets on God's nerves. I thought I was doing the right thing for my little body, but I was hurting it. I've hired a trainer to help with strength training, and have cut running down to once a week. Strength training is B.O.R.I.N.G., but I am committed. Notice that I don't spell that out.

The collateral damage cancer exacts on your body and mind linger long after the surgery, the infusions, the reappearance of health. People ask, kindly, "How you doing? All better?" and you are supposed to say, "Yep! Feeling great." But this is not the whole truth. The whole truth is "Feeling pretty good except I don't know how to answer questions like that anymore."

 

We are very happy with Boone, but are having the dangedest time getting him to stay in the Snugli.

Boone

Walp, one year has passed since the diagnosis. My dear friend Janet, remembers and asks me about it.

"How are you going to mark the occasion?"

"Gosh, I don't know," I say.

It's not like you want to celebrate the anniversary. But you notice it, and the mind works on its meaning.

Janet, whose mind is like a cricket you are trying to catch in one hand, suggests, "Give some money to some non-cancer-related organization. Find a group that is doing something happy."

"That's a great idea," I say, and mean it. I begin to think about happy organizations, looking for something kind of out in left field, where the crickets are.

I turn back to the task at hand. Janet and I are working by phone on the annual brochure for an institute we both teach at. As we are editing together, Janet asks -- from deep in left field, of course -- what my favorite animal is.

"My favorite animal?" I ask. "Gosh, that really depends. Is it going to live in my house? Or is it out there in the world?"

I think for a moment.

Giraffes amble into my mind. I dream of giraffes. Does everyone? For days after a giraffe dream, I feel lighter in my step, or maybe just taller. Either way, I've been visited, touched by Something.

"Giraffes," I say, hoping Bear and Juniper are not within earshot. "When I dream of giraffes, it is as magical as a flying dream."

"Give to the Giraffe Mommy Preservation Society," says Janet.

We go back to the brochure and tinker together. She needs a new example of adolescent emotional pain; last year's is so last year. We need a new name. "Lisa" is too last year, too. Lisa becomes "Madison." Madison is upset because someone tweeted to 300 people that she was a lousy hookup.

I am only half-thinking about Madison. I want to get off the phone and find the Giraffe Mommy Preservation Society. When we hang up, I google "giraffe rescue" and make my way to the African Conservation Foundation. They rescue giraffes, elephants, gorillas, rhinos. You name the fauna, they are trying to save it.

I make a donation and email Janet about it. She makes a donation, too. It is a nice moment for me, for Janet, and for the ACF. But I don't feel finished. I think maybe I skimped on my donation, that there is another one yet in me to make.

I look again this morning and come upon SanWild, a rescue organization in South Africa. Boone, the six-month-old baby giraffe, needs a sponsor. Here he is:

I haven't told Laura about the new addition to the family yet.

Saving a baby giraffe is a great way to mark a year past a cancer diagnosis. So obvious, and I can't imagine why I hadn't thought of it myself. I'll let you know how our little 200-pound bundle of lanky joy is doing as time goes by.

In the meantime, I am hoping Boone visits in a dream.

Hi, beloved blog followers. The following entry is an example of the kind of thing I am including in the book I'm working on. The book is framed around blog material, the cancer, etc., but I am weaving in some (mostly composite) client stories. I am having fun. Tell me what you think, either here or via email. Thanks very much -- p

I get a call from a concerned daughter. Her mom, Anne, appears to be a hoarder. The daughter came home to visit recently and was blown away by how bad it’s gotten. Anne buys things – dresses, shoes, vases, knick knacks, coats, lamps, throws, mugs -- pretty compulsively, and all the kids are all worried about mom. They are worried about losing her in the stacks of boxes in the house, and worried about being left with the stuff when she is gone.

Anne has more than a dozen full-sized Christmas trees in the basement, dismantled and packed in red and green boxes. Each has its own set of decorations, of course. When they’re all set up, the house is fantastic – a childhood dream of a winter wonderland, tiny lights in every corner. But getting to anything in the basement involves the kind of operation they undertook when those Chilean miners were trapped. It is driving her husband and kids a little nuts.

The Easter items are in stacks of pink and green boxes, and Anne could open a wholesale business selling plastic bunnies, eggs, and chicks. She leases 6 storage spaces for the overage that doesn’t fit in her house.

When Anne comes in for her first session, she is cheery, cranked up to a tightness that I can’t seem to help her loosen. Supposedly this is “resistance,” a way of distancing from her feelings and locking her knees against growth and change. I find myself liking her very much, and befriending the resistant, resilient person with her heart of gold, silver, tin, rattan, crystal, beach stone, Plexiglas, pewter, wood, and fur.

She wants me to know she is okay, that she just loves having stuff around her. She loves that if someone is looking for a Halloween costume, she has exactly what you are looking for. She keeps it all in order, and she loves that she can get her hands on a pair of fangs and have them ready for you by tonight’s party.

Anne’s very fondest childhood memories are of going to the dump with her dad. He would find treasure among the trash and bring it home, his eyes sparkling with delight in the fabulous find. Her dad got caught in his own eddy over time, to the point where home health aides could not get to the back bedroom when he needed help near the end. Still, I find it difficult to pathologize his daughter’s behavior. She needs help with her compulsive behavior and the anxiety that drives it, but geez, so do I.

Anne sees that there is a problem. She sees that she sometimes has more of a relationship with things than with the people she wants to be close to. As we work together, she begins to find another way of dealing with her belongings. She starts giving away huge amounts of it – to strengthen her connection to the people she loves. The dresses, gowns, and boas go to a friend and his collective of drag queens. These guys think they have simply died and gone to heaven when the boxes of booty arrive. It turns out Anne is not exactly a hoarder; she is a giver who has a desperate need to have things on hand that she can pass to others.

I am not sure how long the giveaway will last, and when she might feel the need to replenish her supplies. Plus we haven’t gotten to the storage spaces. Still, the house is getting cleared of large numbers of brightly colored boxes. It is bittersweet for her, and she doesn’t part with everything, of course – of her Easter things she keeps the sheepish wolf in bunny clothing, which seems so apt I can hardly stand it.

I am about to ask, “Is it a relief to get rid of all this crap?” And then I remember that it’s not crap to Anne, so I say, “How is it to be letting go of all these things you’ve gathered over the years?” She tears up, and I realize I’ve made the right choice.

“Crap” was my own stuff about sometimes feeling weighted down by my belongings. I remember being able to fit everything I owned into a VW bus. There is a small but real part of me that misses that. I get that Masahide poem: “Barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”

All I do is encourage Anne to focus on her feelings before she feels the need to buy something, and to try to figure out if there is another way to address that feeling. She takes the ball (football, baseball, volleyball, soccer, super, croquet, bocce) and runs. She just wants to recreate the sort of moments she had with her dad.

I feel a bit like a fraud working with Anne. She is more proper than I am, for one thing, and has lots of ideas about how people should behave. I feel a little busted as she talks.

She tells me an in-depth story about how she used to be a 5^th grade teacher and taught children about the word shit. She explained to them in great detail why it is ignorant and uneducated to say the word shit. She drew a pile of shit on the board, and described it. That’s a gutsy thing for a teacher to do. Is this what you mean to say? she asked them. Is this what you would like to be talking about? This stuff that comes out of your body? The stuff that smells like this? That has this texture? Can you think of others words to say what you mean?

My mom felt the same way. She once told me that she pictured actual rats whenever she heard the word. Once as we drove along in the VW bus, she cried, “Ding dong dang it!” and I thought something really, really bad must have happened. Like we were in deep b.m., for sure. It turns out she had forgotten her purse. It must have hit her at a weak moment.

My mom and Anne both had strong feelings about expletives being, more than anything, uncreative.

When Anne leaves the office, I feel a wave of relief. Shit, I think. That was a close call.

you gonna pump those up with something?

I pull into the Lowe’s parking lot at the same time as the car in the space next to mine. The driver is in his 80s, I’d say, and there is more of his dog, some kind of thingapoo, draped outside the car than in. The man pulls in gingerly so the dog doesn’t fall out.

“Come say hello to this guy,” he urges me, window to window. His eyes sparkle with extroverted warmth. He makes no apologies for how he moves through the world.

I walk to his car and give the dog a good scratch. “Hi, buddy,” I say to the dog, whose friendliness matches his owner’s.

“I like your hair,” says the man.

“Oh! Oh, well. It’s just coming back from chemo. It’s not really on purpose.”

“Well, it looks great on you. It’s a good look. You should keep it like that.”

“Well. Thank you.” I rumple what there is of my hair self-consciously.

“What kind of cancer?”

Am I really having this conversation in the Lowe’s parking lot with a guy I’ve never seen before? “Breast.”

He looks angry, on my behalf. “Oh, shit. My first wife had breast cancer. They found this thing in there and it just burned through her like wildfire. She died an awful death. Just awful.” He winces with the memory.

Gee.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. That must have been so hard,“ I remember to say, amidst gruesome, imagined pictures of my own demise.

“Yeah, well. But you doing good?”

“Yep,” I say, suddenly very grateful to have the dog there to focus on. I scratch his head like I mean business.

“Well, good, good.” There is a pause. He looks at my chest.

He gestures toward it with his chin and lips. “You gonna pump those up with something?”

“Nah,” I hear myself say. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, okay.” He is nodding thoughtfully. “That’s good. Don’t want to put any more foreign material in there, right?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Scratch, scratch.

He is still studying my chest, like a neighbor examines a friend’s weedy back yard. Is it worth reseeding, or do we let it go?

“Well, I think you’re doing the right thing.” He nods. There is only friendly concern, but he expresses it with authority. A farmer assessing a bit of weevil damage. An electrician letting me know it’s okay to leave some old wiring in place. A builder assuring me that I can leave the old shed be.

Suddenly it seems suitable that I am in a hardware parking lot.

“Thanks,” I say. I can’t think of how else to respond.

When I come back out from the store, I am both relieved and disappointed that his car is gone. I have an allergic reaction to the dog for the next hour.

now we're talking

I went to see another craniosacral therapist today, and had a totally different experience this go-round. The main difference was that I cried for an hour and a half. I haven't done that in a very, very long time. And even when she seemed to be "getting" things that weren't accurate, or that didn't resonate with me, I could forgive this person. I believed that she was listening more to my body than to her own mind.

So when she thought that maybe my dad was the quiet one and my mom was rambunctious and high-spirited, well, I just corrected her. And when she said there was something about someone named Katharine, well, I thought maybe someday there will be. A Japanese town? No, not really.

It was enough to have found my sorrow, hidden in my body.

All my life, whenever I am asked in this or that workshop to go to my "safe place," I try out various serene spots on my mind's globe. Acadia, maybe, with its crashing waves and windblown pines. Something creepy always happens, and I have to move to another place in my mind. Maybe some dunes, but then the sand gets blown about in a threatening way. Let's try a lake. That I can hold for awhile, but I keep moving to various lakes in my memory, and have just settled myself on the right rock when the guided visualization is over.

This time I knew immediately that the true safe place was at the big, round dining room table of my childhood, a refuge that predates clear memories. I was surrounded by family -- the one of origin and that which I parent. The therapist's hands were under my back or head and she felt when I was at the table and when I wandered away.

I also found myself sitting in the maple tree that El and I climbed nearly daily as kids -- she and I had our own branches, rooms in an imaginary house. I sat there and felt whole and safe. I had my red Keds on. I could see the flat laces, the tips worn off, brownish gray with dirt. I could hoist myself onto a branch with little effort. My strength matched the weight of my body, something I'm afraid is no longer true.
And I found myself in the alfalfa field near our house. I pressed down a large enough patch to give me a clear glimpse of the blue sky, but I was hidden from view unless you stood directly over where I lay. I had a stalk of alfalfa or maybe timothy in my mouth. By this point my ears had filled up with tears, and the overage was pouring onto the table.

She said my parents had some journals that they wanted me to safeguard. Lee and El are actually moving my parents' journals and sketchbooks this weekend. She said my mom wanted her to touch my face, so she did, very gently. All of this I could write about in a very funny entry if it hadn't made me so sad.

She could feel that the chemo has jammed my nervous system into overdrive, and wondered if sleep was hard to come by. Now this could be said of any menopausal woman in her mid-50s, I imagine. But as I lay there, I had such an overwhelming awareness of the toll that the past two years has taken on my body. I felt more compassion for myself than frustration with my limitations. This was new.

The sadness isn't cleared, I know. But I found it, and now my peaceful self can comfort my sad self around the dining room table, on the lowest right branch of the maple tree, or lying on my back hidden by the tall alfalfa. Now we can fix this together.

Vinny

True confession: there are times when I see someone - especially a woman - with limited hair resources, and I think, "She can do better than that." Or, "Gosh, does she think that works?"

No, she can't, even if it doesn't. I see that now. I have made great strides in being hair-compassionate.

These days, Laura calls me Vinny, for my short, dark curls. "Yo, Vin-ny," she says with a slow nod that lasts long after the appellation. This is fair, actually -- payback for teasing her about outfits she puts together before work. I'll shout enthusiastically "Let's give it up for the techies!" when she comes around the corner wearing black. Or I'll blow an imaginary ref's whistle and raise my arms to mark a touchdown when she is in a shirt with wide stripes. The other day I cornered her into a quick do-si-do when she put on that new checkered shirt.

Ward Cleaver (never June) is actually a good look on Laura, though she will immediately change out of whatever evokes: "Ward, dear, could you please speak with Wally?" I can get her to change three times without addressing her directly, poor thing.

So, Vinny, yeh. I had this comin'.

bright but not brilliant

At the end of my doctoral program, my advisor was done, forever, with my file. "Here," he said casually. "Take this down to the office." I began to walk down the three flights, holding my file with its recommendations, its confidential information, its juice about me. A nobler soul might not have peeked at the contents. I'm not exactly sure why she wouldn't have; I just know it would have been noble somehow. I couldn't think of any reasons not to peek that outweighed my curiosity at the time. Grad school was being shelved anyway; might as well paw through the archives.

I continued clomping down the stairs so as to force a limit on my peeking time. The very first piece of paper in the file was the recommendation from my college advisor, Dan Meerson. This would be juice, all right. Fun! I had aced all of Dan's courses, and hadn't hesitated to ask him for a rec. I read in search of a little ego bounce.

Dan's recommendation opened with: "Paula Chu is bright but not brilliant." I don't remember reading beyond that line. A brilliant person might have been able to take in more, but in that moment those seven words occupied all the space in my brain.

So there it was. He called it. I was disappointed to feel how deeply it resonated, how right Dan was. It stings when you realize that your brain has only so many neural networks, that many of them are not terribly efficient or well-maintained. They are instead pretty ordinary little electrical connections, all ball and socket wiring. They are labeled: "Do not exceed 60 watts." It's light enough to read by, but you feel the strain.

Eventually, though, Dan's comment came to be a very freeing thing. I have bright-but-not-brilliant moments all the time, and now there's a (crowded) place to put them in my mind. Ah, there it is again, I think to myself whenever I trip over the verity of Dan's observation.

"Bright but not brilliant!" I will shout out when I am adjusting the sprinkler and am soaked by the end of the process. "Bright but not brilliant" I muttered to myself when I assembled Yani's shoe rack in her dorm room the other day. Spot the error.

Screwing up this simple task was a low blow, a narcissistic wound, as such assembly is generally one thing I can do, because it is less a matter of smarts than of persistence. It turns out that I just can't be thinking about anything else while I do it. Tant pis; Dan was so right.

You want to see smoke coming out of a brain that's carrying too heavy a voltaic load? I am trying to figure out how to write a book. I can hardly see for the smoke! Just mentioning it here sets off the alarm two floors up.

Figuring out what that book should be about is harder than Sudoku, a game invented to make the aging brain go gently into the darkness dragging a sack of fresh humble pie. I am always so disappointed when I have to peek at the back of the book, but I can tell that if I don't, the snarl is going to get worse and worse. Sudoku makes me feel very limited, wattage-wise. Or is it volts? Oh, Dan, Dan.

Raising the writing idea here is my way of peeking at the back in the middle of a Sudoku. Can anyone give me a hint? Email me. I know in the center there is a 1, and there's a 4 and a 6 I've had since the beginning. Happily there is a 5 --and a 2 -- I'm very sure about, too, but that's all I've got.

craniosacral therapy

Ever done it? I went for my first session today, for help with sleep and neuropathy. It is an extremely subtle physical therapy. Can I tell you how much I want it to work? So much.

Most of the time she held my right hand, and every now and then she moved it a bit, very slowly. Just a bit. She touched my abdomen and neck, lightly, and said that the right side of my ribcage was refusing to open, that it was "behaving with the energy of an angry 5-year-old girl who is folding her arms and saying 'Oh, no, I won't.'" Really? I don't remember being an angry 5-year-old folding my arms. I do remember studying adults to see how you fold your arms. Do you grip the opposite arm, or tuck the hands in? It took practice.

But I am still open, still open. I am willing to look at the possibility that the right side of my ribcage is an angry little girl. It's possible.

The craniosacral therapist said the right side of my jaw had "an unvocalized fear, and a bit of anger." I can buy that. I told her I would work on vocalizing my fears. I'm afraid I won't be able to think of fears I haven't already vocalized at considerable length. That's my current fear, and I've just vocalized that. Now what?

At one point while was she was touching my side, she said, "I'm getting horseback riding. Do you ride horses?" Ach, I wish I could have said yes. But whenever I ride, all I do is laugh. Or sneeze. Though it's always an adventure to be atop a horse, my overriding feeling is amusement and fraud. I can tell that the horse is thinking, "Ah, jeez. Not this clown."

She lost me a bit with the vision of me on a horse, riding free and strong, legs gripping the flanks of my trusty steed. I think maybe she was catching a whiff of a memory of me riding those great mechanical horses you could ride for a minute for 25 cents. Remember? Out in front of Sears or Kresge's. Once in a blue moon, mom would spring for a ride. Yippee ki-yo-ki-yay! Man, what a rush. Seriously.

Where did all those machines go? I want one. I could stick it in my waiting room, and I'll bet you it would be help cure whatever ails my clients. They'd come to see the therapist with the mechanical horse in the waiting room. Who wouldn't? I'd disable the coin doojigger and you could ride while you wait.

But back to craniosacral work. She only worked on my right side, the side with the cancer. I find myself wondering what would have happened if I hadn't told her where the cancer was before we started. Too, I confessed early on that I tend to live in my head, that it's not always easy for me to tune in to my body when my mind is chattering. When she told me at the end that I have a blockage between my head and my body, and that my right ribcage or the right side of my jaw is acting out, it was less impressive than if I hadn't kind of handed her the map ahead of time, with cancer an X marking the spot.

Anyway, she says I need to meditate more. This is the same conclusion that Stan the acupuncturist came to. Meditate more.

I believe them, but meditation is costing me a fortune. I go back next week for another craniosacral session, after meditating daily. In the meantime, Hi ho, Silver, away.

ancestral visits

Inviting one's ancestors to visit during the full moon worked fairly well, I admit, but here on in I am going to be more specific about the quality time I am asking for. My dad showed up in last night's dream, but all that happened was that he was driving somewhere and I couldn't persuade him to go forward instead of backing up everywhere he drove. When I woke, I suppose I was glad for the visit, but in the dream it was just annoying. "Pop, it's so much easier if you drive the car forward," my dream self said with a frustrated sigh. I don't seem to recall that our destination was Paradise.

I've been able, then, to dream about my folks fairly regularly. I feel lucky that that is so. I think they understand that there is a standing invitation and that they need not stand on ceremony or moon to stop by to worry, annoy, or delight me.

Truth be told, the grand prize of the full moon rendezvous with ancestors would have been a visit with someone from waaaay back, someone bent over a fire in ancient China, some great-great-great-and-so-on grandmother, maybe late in her years at 30. She has teeny but functional breasts; has never had to give them much thought. Someone is humming an old tune, and she smiles to herself. It is the same tune that my dad will whistle while making dumplings in a few hundred years.

This ancestor has a long braid, as does everyone. She's had a couple of kids survive the hazards of infected stubbed toe and wildfire disease, and one of those kids is watching her cook up some greens, wild mushrooms, and fragments of a scrawny bird that came too close to a clever trap. The other kid is off smashing and smelling rocks while doing the errand of finding some more anything for the soup. I'm not sure which is going to be my great-great-great-minus-one ancestor -- the explorer or the observer. But the woman at the fire, the one with both traits in equal measure, I know. She is curious about things, and watches the fire while deep in thought, foretelling a great-great-great-and-so-on granddaughter who would spend long hours as a teenager playing with candle wax while listening to James Taylor. The ancestral teeth are a bit buckish, and these would get passed down to support the genetic survival of orthodontists of the distant future.

Harder for me to connect to is the other side of the family. Maybe it's that there are too many movies about them. I see a white ancestor with scraggly hair and a kvetching Billy Crystal (as in "Princess Bride") partner. She's a good person, but beleaguered, works too hard, struggles to enjoy the moment. Totally unfairly, this good, white ancestor represents my shadow side, the stressed inner and outer critic.

Truth is that mom was way more deep-in-peaceful-thought-fire-stirrer than Pop. Pop was himself sometimes the kvetching Billy Crystal partner to her soft-hearted self, though with his thick Chinese bounce of speech instead of the shrug of Yiddish. But still I am more forgiving of his ancestral line. It's hard to forget that my maternal grandparents cut off communication with my mom for many years when she chose to marry the descendant of that Chinese ancestor by the fire. I worked on this in my young mind a lot, sitting barefoot on the ground, breaking open hickory nuts with a rock. I wondered why our white grandparents didn't want to meet or know us. It hurt, and I coped in part by circling the wagons around my Chinese ancestors. How's that for a bi-cultural metaphor?

After my parents died and I went through the mountain of letters from mom to pop, from pop to mom, from my grandparents to my mom, I understood things differently. These were parents who adored their daughter, who feared for her -- the way we would worry if a child were to marry something sub-human, someone who would permanently infect and debilitate your little contribution to the human (well, white) family. They envisioned grandchildren who would be ridiculed, rejected and isolated, spit upon by our peers. They worried for us, and I guess this was how, for many years, they loved us without choosing to know us, to love my mother while not accepting her choice in life partner and mate. It took a long time to understand. But my grandfather's letters to my mom say things like: "Hello, baby. Your daddy misses his baby. Please don't do this, baby," and my grandmother's letters say "I cried all night and woke screaming in a terrified sweat, so afraid for you." It's harder to judge them without feeling for them, too.

When my dad scolded me for being with Edmer, the dark-skinned man I once upon a time brought home from Guatemala (surprise!), the irony was hard to miss. Pop's desperate, heavily accented plea: "Don't marry foreigner!" made one tilt one's head and squint.

Gee. Maybe that's some of the unfinished business that my dream was helping me with. It is so much easier if you drive forward, you know.

Here follow a few notes of a very old tune, hummed or whistled.

Up close and personal

Visual hair report especially for the scientists out there: Laura buzzed mine, which was getting to the point where it looked post-chemo-scraggly in a way we don't really have an adjective for. Imagine my delight to snap a picture of what I could see through my little hobby microscope (every home should have one) by putting my puny camera right up against the lens. Dig this ca-razy shot of the different thicknesses of the hairs -- that really skinnyminny one is a hair as it first appeared after chemo. Told you it was soft! The thick stalks are where the dog hair clippers buzzed off the ends. Note that white hairs really are transparent.

I'm leaving the microscope around the house for a bit. Every now and then I go through a period of examining everything that buzzes or crawls by or can be squished between two glass slides.

I snagged this earwig, below left, off a blueberry bush and pressed him between two glass slides. Sorry, sorry, sorry! I kept saying as I pressed the glass together. Bleccch.

This year we have had a spate of earwigs on the blueberry bushes. How about this for the continuum of ick to yum? First, this morning's harvested yum, to the right.  Now, below left, accompanying ick -- a few of said earwig's limbs.

I realize that these little earwig legs might not look all that ick in this photo. You had to be there, with your eye pressed to the microscope. I jumped more than a few times while looking at his still twitching body, now seeming waaaaay larger than life. I let out a little scream once after the pinchers twitched long after separating from the rest of the body. "JEEZUS CRIMINY!" I squealed. This is going to cost me, bad, in terms of karma. I should have found a way to give it some ether, send it off to dream of its icky insect ancestors while I made my little point about ick and yum.

But here's the thing: how come you have to have ick to want to write about yum? I've been wondering this a lot lately. Earwigs on blueberry bushes aside, I am less compelled to write about delightful stuff when I am going through less difficult stuff. That sucks. I feel like a cliché, like the heavy-lidded poet who - phooooooooooo -- blows weary smoke while writing a sublime poem about beauty.

Or does it suck? Is it simply an exceeding kindness that the Universe helps us appreciate yum when we are stuck in ick? Is it that writing about ick helps me feel yum? Does thinking-that-it-sucks-to-have-bad-stuff-make-you-appreciate-the-good just existential whining? Phooooooooooooo.

NEWSFLASH, a few hours later. I just took a final peek at the gradually dessicating earwig before rinsing it off the microscope slide. OMG, It had ick of its own, the poor thing. Here is a shot of a, well, microscopic mite that, despite its dead host, seems as happy as a clam.

Except clams, of all people, apparently deal with a lot of crud in order to be so happy. I mean, jeez, they EAT crud.

Quod erat demonstratum.

August full moon

Tonight is the August full moon. Ting Wu, a childhood friend turned geneticist, reminds me that it is this particular full moon during which those who have gone before us are invited to visit us, and we have the chance to greet their souls.

Arriving with the moon, my mom has visited my dreams the past two nights. In one dream, she was rushing somewhere (mom did not tend to rush). I looked her in the eyes and said firmly, "Mom. Slow down. You have all the time in the world." Then I turned to the person I was with, shrugged and said, "Yeesh. Even when they're dead, you worry about them."

Ting and her brothers Ming, Ping, and Ying were among our closest friends when we were kids. Our dads taught together at Yale. I always loved going to visit the Wus in their magical house. They had a stream that went right through their living room; it ran into and through a shallow pool of granite rocks, just as you might see on a hike through the woods. Two rooms were adjoined by a window; you had to climb up and through to move through the house. Everything was designed to slow things down, to invite you to notice beauty.

At the Wus, something lovely was always happening. Their dad, Nelson, was carving a Chinese poem into the face of a stone. Our dads were singing or painting. Our moms were enjoying each other's easy, gentle companionship. At the August full moon, we sent lighted candles onto the pond to greet the souls of people who had gone before us. We watched koi shimmer in the water and ran in circles in long grass around the pond.

It is no surprise that Ting's daughter, Marie, has been visited often and regularly by her grandfather, Nelson, who died in 2002.

Once, at a lecture given in honor of Nelson's memory, Marie, then 11 years old, stood to ask the lecturer a question. Her voice was deep and strong, not at all characteristic of her. Her intonation was Nelson's, and everyone who had known him could hear his voice coming through a young girl's body. She asked in Nelson's strong and gentle voice: "In that painting of the grotto with two friends having tea, you spoke of Paradise." Then: "Is Paradise the place on which they gaze? Is Paradise the place in which they sit? Or is Paradise the place two friends feel when they share a cup of tea?"

The room was silent while everyone took in Marie, took in this young girl's very big question. What a wonderful visit they had all just had with Nelson!

Mom, Pop. Come visit tonight, if you can. I will meet you in Paradise. Together we can gaze upon Paradise. And in your company, I will feel the place called Paradise.

a canvas tent in the rain

Ever sleep in a canvas tent in the rain? It holds up and stays perfectly dry -- until you touch it from the inside. If you put your fingertip against the canvas, the rain wicks its way toward your finger and then drips incessantly until the rain stops. As a kid, I thought this was pretty cool, and couldn't resist testing it on several occasions. Huh, it works over here above Ellen's sleeping bag, too! Cool.

In one of those quirky karmic twists, I am a canvas tent in the rain these days. I seem fine, feel fine, keeping out the rain almost perfectly. But on two recent occasions, someone put their finger to the fabric of my being and, to my alarm and fascination, I began to cry. Both of these episodes happened out in Colorado, where I teach each August at a week-long counseling institute. The first time it happened, I was in the middle of a sentence at the lunch table, and a participant said, "paula, you are so beautiful." I stopped mid-consonant and felt my face scrunch, my lips quiver, and my eye gutters pool. I still don't know what I was feeling. Fragility comes to mind, so that even the kindest touch inadvertently bruised.

The next time was a night or two later, our night out on the town. Woohoo! I was with the four other institute faculty, whom I have come to love very much. I had ordered trout. I have begun to order trout, tuna, and, sometimes, with a stoic sigh, salmon. The omega-3s, of course. Janet asked me how my dinner was. "It's good," I say, with mouth full. Then a pause before, "I am trying to learn to like fish more." Janet, who seems to have mastered the "let's do it because it sounds like fun" type of Zen existence, said, "Why the heck would you do that? Why don't you just get what you like?" Scrunch, quiver, pool. "I'm just trying to take care of myself," I said feebly.

So there it is. I seem to have my own micro-post-traumatic-stress-weirdness going on.
I pulled myself together as quickly as I could on both occasions, which I don't really approve of or like doing. But both times I feared that I would sob (WAAAH is what came to mind), and I didn't want to be the center of worried attention. I am deeply glad to be held in the light by people who care about me, but I don't want that light on me at the dinner table as I show evidence of my PTSW.

I come from a long line of criers, and like it that way. My mom called tears-when-feeling-moved "recognition tears;" those that come when one recognizes the beauty or intensity of a true moment. Crying at graduations, crying at the Big Dipper, crying at music, crying at being told one is beautiful. The intensity fills you up and it bloats you unless you let it out. Both my folks cried easily when moved in this way, and now my children do as well. "Curse you, mom!" they've each called out between wet sniffs at some point in their emotive lives.

I'll be blogging more in the next few weeks. I am trying to figure out a lot. Why so fragile? How do I balance the directive (from a variety of trusted sources) to follow my bliss with the equally convincing directive to eat trout? And do I rest today or do I run? Can I surrender under controlled conditions? These are big questions for me now, and I am having a hard time trusting the answers that come to me.

On a brighter note, the trip to Colorado gave me the chance to wear compression garments, chic sleeves that I have to wear when I fly for the rest of my life (let it be long, this thing called life, and I will agree to wear one over my entire body) to prevent lymphedema. The prescription came from the surgeon, so I figured (as with the delusions I had about the prosthetic bra that turned out to cost $660), that such sleeves would be Reasonably Priced. I went to get a fitting at a medical supply store, one of those places where you look at all the merchandise with your head cocked and think, "what's that for?" while giving thanks that these items are, simply by Grace, unfamiliar to you.

Boy, was I excited when the order arrived. I mean, look at the woman on this box! She is really, really happy to be wearing compression sleeves. Anyway, you too may pick up such sleeves for a mere $170, and be as tickled as she and I are.

Just don't touch the tent.

wax on, wax off

I did it. I got the sideburns waxed yesterday. I am submitting for your consideration the evidence of said sideburns -- those same that were denied by family and friends.

I want you to know that my reports are honest. I feel completely vindicated by the photo to the left. Also, by now it should be plain to all that I score fairly low on the vanity scale, and that I do not apply wax to body except in case of emergency. These were monster sideburns, and they weren't going to stop.

But they put up a fight, I'll give them that much. Yowza! That smarts.

taking refuge

I am writing from Silver Lake, New Hampshire, a place that is so lovely it almost hurts. In this aquatic setting I am liking my new streamline look and feel. I ought to be able to cut through water like Flipper now. I don't, but I feel like I do. It's like when I got a pair of PF Flyers as a kid, and really felt as though I could jump higher, by golly.

I can't find a good reason to put on a bathing suit top, given that there are no nipples, no boobs, no nothing to cover up. So I don't.

When the water is cold, I do find myself thinking, "Brrr! If I had nipples, they'd be erect fo' sho'!" The good thing, though, is that it's okay. As long as I stay healthy, right now I am okay without breasts. I do not miss bras, and I absolutely do not miss bathing suit tops.

To those passing in canoes and kayaks, I am hoping I look like a boy, a gray-haired boy with a buzz cut, reading psychotherapy texts on the dock. To add to the ambiguity, as soon as I move, I am more like an old Chinese man -- Pop, in fact. The similarities between my dad and me -- the stiff but animated gait, the gestures, the facial expressions -- are both sweet and creepy, and all are highlighted by the thin hair and neuropathy. Laura and I alternate between being charmed and spooked by it. I would like to channel Pop's charm, his vivacity -- his late-life rickety self, not so much.

A friend and blog follower recently pointed me toward a website that focuses on all the blogging done by breast cancer copers. Breast cancer blogs, it seems, are a dime a dozen. No -- less! They're free, and they're everywhere. My little musings feel quite ordinary, honestly, which is probably a good and important thing. I had truly begun to think about birthing a book, but now I doubt that a viable book could come out of this. I'm going to play with it seriously, but not solemnly, and with few illusions.

I'm even of two minds about the cancer experience as an extraordinary thing. People have told me, "Now you just need to live your life. We're all going to die, and who knows? I might get hit by a car tomorrow."

Okay, that's true, I think. I then decide just to chew on and gracefully digest my personal serving of existential comeuppance. I can sustain that perspective for awhile, and then it dawns on me that for people who've gotten cancer, the feeling is actually more like "Heads up. Cars are a little bit drawn to you." Then it is harder to digest.

I do like those moments when I have a more Zen approach to the whole thing, when I think, "I'm here now, and that is all that matters." Shit happens, but it plops into an immense container of Good. That's kind of Zen, right?

I am an odd zen/neurotic hybrid, as most of us are. This morning while meditating on the dock (the underwear on my head, dunked in the lake, kept me cool), I thought of a title for a book I'd like to write, if I ever do find the wit and the wherewithal. Titles come and go in my little mind, but this one speaks to me: "I Take Refuge in Buddha, but Buddha has a Heck of a Time Finding a Way to Take Refuge in Me."

Where is the rest?

A 60-year-old client came in a couple of days ago, scratching at an idea shared with her by a friend. "So maybe we're all just tiny fragments of a larger Something," she said, floating the idea aloud. "We live out our little life, but that life is a mere drop in an endless Ocean." I thought I heard capital letters.

She had my full attention. I love conversations like this. What's it all about? What might this Ocean be? What would it mean for her to be "a mere drop"? I was ready to go wherever she needed to go in this conversation. I nestled into my chair.

 "So if I am just a drop bobbing along as part of a larger whole," she said, with some heaviness, "where's the rest?"

I ran with the ball, unaware that I had picked up the wrong one. For a minute or two, I waxed existential, wondering aloud about where we find the Rest of the Whole. Are there times when you feel connected to the Rest? I asked. Might there be some comfort in being a tiny fragment of a larger something? Can fragments be whole, too?

In my mind I am coming up with the best deep questions for this person: How do we figure out what we are meant to do with our piece of an infinite puzzle? When do you experience comfort in knowing that the rest exists, even though you can't see it?

She looked at me quizzically when I finally stopped talking and set the ball down, panting and bright-eyed, as I can get when sessions get existential. "No," she corrected me with a little pinch of her lips, the mouth's version of rolling its eyes. "I mean, where is the rest? When can I just rest?"

Oh. Rest. That's what I was hoping to offer you. Jeez, paula, I tell myself: Shut your larger something of a hole, and listen.

all follicles reporting for duty

Too bad. I wish I had a "before" shot of this cheek, when there were absolutely no hairs growing at all. I was completely streamline there for awhile -- if I hadn't felt like crap, it would have been a great time to be an elite swimmer.

Being totally hairless was strange, but actually felt weirdest on the face. The face looks smooth on most women, but is of course wrapped in its (generally) discreet fleece at all times. I hadn't realized how hairy we womenfolk actually are. At the present time, I am practically growing sideburns. Move your head around in front of your screen so you can get the full effect. The new hairs are plentiful and dark. I am reminding myself of the movie "The Incredibly Shrinking Woman," in which, just before disappearing altogether, Lily Tomlin succeeds in reversing the shrinking process -- only to grow and grow until we see that instead of just coming back to her normal self, she is now uncontrollably increasing in size.

At this rate I will end up as hairy as a possum -- with the same combo of gray and black from head to toe, it seems. A possum comes to mind only because we just caught one about an hour ago and took it for a scenic drive to an undisclosed location. I hope it doesn't find its way back (it was hell trying to get that little blindfold to stay on), because it was eating our life savings in the cat's food. Also, whenever the dog spotted the possum on the porch, he would completely flip out and begin barking in tongues.

Anyway, the possum was hairy, like my face.

The family wants me to say that this is not noticeable to them. This is a kind family. It's just that someone needs to disclose that these things happen after chemo. Someone needs to tell you that every single hair follicle on your body closed up shop and patted its plot of land with a trowel during chemotherapy, to the extent that when hairs began to sprout again, they were all in-grown, having to break through holes in the skin that had been sealed for so long. I am routinely scrubbing my arms and legs with loofah gloves to try to open up the hair holes and unfurl the hairs that are stuck just beneath the skin. I am part hairy, part bumpy -- moving toward, it seems, being just plain hairy.

I want you to know, too, that the sensation of having nose hairs still feels very new. That's strange, isn't it? I had nose hairs for 54 years, then 4 months without, and I am still aware of the "new" feel. Why would that be? Since each exhale brings a noticeable sensation of air-wafting-through-something, it keeps feeling like maybe I have a fleck of nosina (no-zee-na, a family term) in there and that maybe it is showing. It's not (har), but I keep checking anyway.

Want to see something gross? That's how I've opened with the kids. Then I stick the spear part of a nail clipper all the way down under the big toenails. They're hanging on by the sides (the nails, not the kids), but there's nothing under the nail itself. The spear-under-nail effect is eye-popping and gratifying. Like a kid who can bend some joint in a weird way and gross out her friends.

I have several drafts of posts that I can't seem to bring to fullness. They're stuck beneath the surface, like all those hairs, and just can't seem to break through. These posts are about things that matter -- things like the recent auction of my dad's art collection, friendship, paradise, my work, wholeness, grief, all that. I don't know why the posts about follicles, nose hairs, and neuropathy come so easily, why the need to document these small things.

The neuropathy? Don't get me started. But isn't it strange that it builds for so long after chemo is over? It's like those scenes in roadrunner cartoons, where Wile E. Coyote is burnt to a crisp but stands there for a long moment, blinking and confused, before crumbling away.

What have I done?

When I read Anne Melissa's comment on a recent post, I experimented aloud with several possible tones in her apt use of "WTF."  I had used WTF in the post, but I think our tones in this were subtly different, and I strained to zoom in on the distinction. Anne Melissa, feel free to leave a phone message consisting only of how you hear the two "WTF"s. I will reciprocate with a message to your machine with my own rendition.

These tonal variations remind me of a pastime that my beloved sister, Ellen, and I played as kids.
We would take a simple sentence that one of us had said or heard, and then try every possible emphasis-related iteration of that sentence. " I had to sit on the couch." "I had to sit on the couch." "I had to sit on the couch." "I had to sit on the couch." "I had to sit on the couch."

I confess that we could do that for many minutes. It's how I learned to play with changing meaning through word emphasis, and how I learned what simply thudded, such as emphasizing articles: "I had to sit on the couch." Unless you really stretch for kind of a sinister meaning, Thud. No wonder Chinese took a pass on articles.

Anyway. What have I done? Inevitably, as I caretake myself back toward health, I now have the energy to second-guess my drastic, irreversible decisions. All that has lingered from surgery and chemo are signs of damage. I have begun to wonder if I have damaged my body more than the tumor warranted.

Did I just take an uzi to get at a mouse in the wall? All this collateral damage, for a 2.2 cm tumor? Could I have willed it away somehow instead? Could I have gotten at it with Reiki?

Between the long, vertical Caesarean section scar ("Yani's door," the family has always called it), the mastectomy scars, and the still kvetching port scar, I look pretty cut up. If Laura were to leave me, who would love this body? It's not that I am counting on attracting anyone with my body anymore (insert small snort here), but people are generally more drawn to those who have all their bits, aren't they?

It's really disconcerting that the neuropathy is worsening as time goes by, marching onward, swinging scythe to nerves almost 3 months post-chemo. At its most gentle, it is a matter of nerve damage that is creeping up my arms like invisible, arm-length gloves, mildly numbing me up to the pits. And it now has reached mid-thigh on its way upwards from the feet. It has reached the left side of my torso, but not yet the right. I scratch slowly along the margins of the numbness, trying to detect where normal sensation remains.

The numbness is creepy, but the stiffness is truly annoying. My hands are too stiff to hold a pen and write comfortably. And when I get up in the middle of the night, I can barely walk for the stiffness in my feet. I do not embellish here: I walk like I am channeling Marcel Marceau, who is parodying a tottering old woman. It's got that layer of the absurd in there somehow.

After stretching out during the walk to the bathroom, I've loosened up a bit. The walk back to bed is easier, and I almost feel like I should do some 2:00 a.m.-type errands before my feet lock up again.

The first trip down the stairs in the morning is ridiculous. I double step on each stair. On the stairs it is no longer the mime and the tottering old woman. Having to plant both feet on each stair, I feel like I ought to be carrying a blankie and sucking my thumb, heading down for bwekfuss. I am in the course of each day acting out the whole life cycle.

It crosses my mind, though, that if chemo is still killing nerves, it must still be able to kill cancer cells. I try to comfort myself with this thought. But it troubles me that sometimes neuropathy remains forever, and that there is little to be done other than to wait and see if it does. Oh, I'm doing my best to invite healing - from acupuncture to B vitamins to getting good exercise, but it may be that those things can't cajole the nerves into regenerating, ever.

Alas, I haven't felt any positive effects from the acupuncture, except for the sweet catnap that I get when Stan leaves the room while he lets the needles do they thang. I had wanted to be sold on Chinese medicine, once and for all. I'm not there yet, and I am disappointed to have to acknowledge that.

I'm going through a little self-conscious something with my concave chest, too. I haven't felt a need to say anything about it up to this point, since the baldness was a clear signal that something was up. But as my hair grows back, and people aren't so sure, I feel more awkward. Is she ill, or does she just have extremely short, thinning hair? And I know some people will continually wonder, surreptitiously glancing to see -- wait a second, does she have boobs?

I anticipate wanting to work in an explanation as I encounter people, but it will never be appropriate. "Hi, I'm paula. I had to remove my breasts.""I had to remove my breasts." "I had to remove my breasts." "I had to remove my breasts." "I had to remove my breasts."

As I listen to the tones of all of those, the one that stings my eyes now is this one: "I had to remove my breasts."

watercolor

Yesterday T'ai explained to me why my new hair is so soft. It seems obvious now: its first growth comes out pointed. Hair grows like fresh asparagus spears. When we cut our hair, we create blunt ends that feel rougher. For now, though, I can actually see the freshly grown, tapered points. So soft.

My hair feels like a Chinese watercolor brush. I've probably damaged a few of those in my time, fondling the soft brushes that Pop had rinsed and set down to dry. I'd flick them along my cheek. So soft.

It's funny, this point along my cancer ride. I am noticing that I feel like I would deserve more attention if I were to have a recurrence of the cancer; that is, that I deserve less as I return to health. A recurrence would make for more interesting reading, wouldn't it? A couple of publishers are glancing at the blog, I hear tell. Who wants to read about nothing happening, just hair growing back, pointed and soft? Who wants to read a story with no clear ending?

I've actually noticed that I find great comfort in being among crowds of people now. Wandering among the masses, strolling along a street, I can see that most people don't have cancer. I like taking that in: Huh. Most people are pretty healthy. It feels good to be reminded in this way that my situation is unusual. For reasons I can't articulate, when you have cancer, you forget that, and start to wonder if illness is the norm, that it's gonna gitcha.

I still am on intimate terms with fatigue, though that is so much better than it was. The neuropathy in my hands and feet remains a drag, especially as it turns out that it peaks around 3-5 months after chemo ends. Well, bust my buttons -- no one told me that. I see the good people of the clinic waving goodbye to me, waving to each chemo patient as she finishes treatment. When the door closes, they tiptoe over to the window to watch me drive away. They sigh with relief when I am out of sight, having escaped having to tell me that the neuropathy would get worse for quite awhile. Nothing to be done, but it would have been nice to know, nice not to have to google "neuropathy: WTF."

Stan the acupuncturist

I went to see an acupuncturist yesterday. Stan. Stan the acupuncturist. Imagine that. 

I went to Stan for help with the neuropathy in my hands and feet, hoping to invite the nerves that may have died to choose rebirth. He put needles in here and there, felt my various pulses, checked my tongue, asked about what I eat -- all those good Chinese medicine things. All seemed copacetic with my chi at that point. I'm thinking he's going to be impressed by my chi, in fact. But he tsked and tutted once he probed pressure points around my shoulders and neck (ai ya! as they say in Chinese -- it hurt). Stan queried me about my activity levels, then informed me that I am getting too much aerobic exercise.

He looked at me kindly, but as he spoke I could tell that he thought he was stating the obvious: "You are supposed to be getting rest." He advised me to run 2 miles instead of 3, to do more yoga, to take more naps, to get back to my meditation practice.

Stan said that the whole idea of Chinese medicine is that below the dantien, the physical center of gravity, one's chi should be strong, grounded. Above the dantien, one's chi should be light, clear, flowing. He says my chi is too heavy above my dantien, and that I'm not helping things by how active I've been, how little I am resting. If energy gets clogged up in one's chest and head, sometimes tumors appear. Also, that heavy energy may be behind the damned nose warts! Sold! That's all I needed to hear.

Resting turns out to be pretty difficult, though, as does making the energy in my shoulders, neck, and head "light and clear." I still live by my to-do list -- I like my list. I am like a happy kid in a marching band, with the music propped in front of her. I'm having a good time, but I'm following the notes, and maybe I am marching more than is good for my upper chi.

It's not like my list is heavy, thoiugh. Today includes "weed garden, pick up petals, water houseplants, meditate, run, call electrician, fix front step, call Elizabeth, go to organic farm." Come on, this makes one's head chi heavy?

How can I be lighter, clearer in my upper chi? Probably not by thinking about it too much, but thinking is one of the melodic themes in the music dangling in front of me -- has been for as long as I can remember.

Anyway, I am working on lightening up my upper body chi. Back to Stan in a couple weeks. Stay tuned; stay light, stay clear. Send upper body chi pointers if you have them.

Full disclosure in closing: It's true that I've stopped meditating regularly since all these twenty-somethings have moved into the house. It's been fun to have them around, but it's harder for me to find quiet time. There's a lot of activity, tidying up, talking, directing traffic. Plus these people are like locusts, except they take longer showers.

first things first

This is the kind of thing one learns only by having chemo: nose hairs grow in more quickly than head hairs. Nose hairs grow to their full length as fast as a chia pet -- then they stop, praise Be. What a mess it would be otherwise.

Though not all my head-hair follicles are visibly at work yet, I now have my full quota of nose hairs. Clearly evolution has conveyed to the body that this is the first order of business: filter the air first -- worry about covering the scalp later.

When they fell, nose hairs stole away like thieves in the night. I never saw one hair on all the kleenices I blew into during chemo. And that's a lot of kleenex, since chemo removes the washer from the nasal faucet. If the hairs didn't come off upon nose-blowing, it leaves me wondering -- did I inhale them? Did they fall off during an air puff over a witticism while I was reading? Are they hither and thither on rugs around the house?

Well. The upshot is that my nose drips more slowly now by virtue of these new plantings on the nasal hill. It still drips, but I can usually catch it in time, if you know what I mean.

While we're surveying the upper acreage, here is a shot of my eyebrows coming in. These hairs are very short, but promising. With the eyebrows it went entirely down to the wire, literally. Until yesterday, there was just one (relatively) long, wiry hair still standing from the old eyebrows. While the new stuff has been growing in, that one hair has been like a grand old mature oak tree you see in a forest, surrounded by spindly maple saplings. Anyway, the old oak fell sometime last night. Now it's all saplings.

Lastly, here is the pate. It's not quite the romantic horizon shot I achieved in the previous post, but this way I can show that there are finally some dark hairs coming in. The new hair is as soft as a duckling, and once you touch it you can't stop. I'm telling you. I just spent five minutes rubbing it back and forth while deciding what to write. Now I feel all peaceful and sleepy. It's like rubbing your blankie when you were a kid.

Soon I'll be writing about our We Could Have but We Didn't Weekend, where we ducked out (more ducks!) of the American Cancer Society We Can Weekend and instead went to Gloucester. Oh! Just lost another few minutes rubbing my head.  Everyone in the house is touching my hair (head hair, not nose) all the time, oohing over its softness. I feel like I could make a pret-ty penny standing out on Main Street, charging people for the chance to rub my head for good luck and comfort.

Except for the cancer thing, I guess, which tends to creep people out.

homebody, incurable, part 2

The kids, Laura, and I were scheduled to take part in the upcoming "We Can Weekend" sponsored by the American Cancer Society. This was going to repair my group experience at Stowe Weekend of Hope, from which I returned feeling acutely aware of my sometimes too solitary nature. I felt kind of like a -- what are some solitary animals? Wikipedia says: leopards, jaguars, almost all spiders, most species of rhinoceros, polar bears (except for mating), the maned sloth. Not much to work with. Certainly nothing maned. At Stowe I felt like a rhino at an elephant party. No offense to the very kind elephants who were enjoying the group experience.

Anyway, the kids were willing to go with us on this weekend designed to support the cancer survivor and her family. It offered groups for, among others, young adult "children," where they could talk about the impact the cancer has had on their own lives. I thought maybe that would be good for the kids, good for me, good for Laura. But as the time approaches, we all feel like doing something unprogrammed as a family might be better. And we already talk about cancer a lot. So we backed out. Homebody, still and again.

One thing, though, would have sent us to the Hell Yes We Can Weekend, homebodiness or no. Laura had an ultrasound on both breasts early this morning; she got called back after her mammogram two weeks ago. We exhaled around 8:30, chests pumping from holding our breaths for ten days. All clear. Her breasts are pretty bulky, so we saw all kinds of things in the ultrasound -- cysts, fat globules, my favorite striped sock, and that missing earring I wrote about in December.

Needless to say, we are relieved, as we had been entertaining some weird fantasies about being the bald and breastless lesbians walking together down Main Street, Farmington. Aside from being scary, painful, and extremely inconvenient, it would have been creepy to have Laura hit with cancer, too.

Despite our relief, Laura confessed that there was a part of her that had been curious to know what I have gone through. There is no thought that is so weird I can't imagine having it cross my own mind, so I understood this. Surely we all hold an innate curiosity about experiences, particularly things that test our mettle. How would we each cope, we wonder, given any conceivable trial that others have faced?

Truth be told, I haven't felt great about my mettle. I had hoped I'd be more of a brick through chemo; less needy of attention and sympathy, less fascinated by symptoms, less anxious about the whole thing. Maybe even more of a rhino, in some ways. The elephant in me came through more than I wanted it to. I like the sociable pachyderm in me, but am not always as accepting of the elephant that is clinging anxiously to the tail in front of it.

Here's an almost pastoral shot of my cranial horizon, hair slowly rising. The furrows in the foreground show you I am smiling.

missing the blog, part 2

I am still missing the blog. It's supposed to be writing therapy for me -- tales of how I am dealing with the cancer, tales that in the telling would help to lighten the load. And it absolutely has done that for me. Now that I am working hard on moving past the cancer, I feel unsure of how to use the blog.

We have a full house for the summer, and perhaps for a whole year, beginning this weekend: beloved first-born, 25-year-old T'ai, is moving back home from Boston and looking for work. He's been accepted into UConn Law School, but can't manage the $54K (!) out-of-state tuition at this point. He's also not entirely sure that law is what he's meant to do. He recently went through the fascinating career testing at the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (www.jocrf.org), and he's off the charts in several aptitudes (99th percentile in analytical reasoning, English vocab, spatial reasoning and spatial relations, and more).

But what do you do when you were an English major 3 years ago and your aptitude testing says "you should be an artist" or "you should be an architect" or "you should be a doctor"? In terms of law school, the upshot of the report says something like "you'd love law school but might really hate law." Now what? It is painful for me to have him feeling so unsettled and stuck.

For T'ai, Laura, and me, there is a risk of frustrating each other this summer, list-followers that Laura and I are -- and absentminded-professor-in-the-rough that he is (in fact, professor came up for him over and over again, in areas in which he either hasn't studied or else has no interest). T'ai has an amazing mind, but agency and pathways are not his forte. "Find a job" is to him as "straighten out this Rubik's cube -- and no peeking" is to me.

I want to make sure T'ai feels more loved than exasperated with, to enjoy his good company and help him figure out where to from here. I want to guide him without shoving. It is easier aspired to than done. I've been invoking my mom's spirit a lot lately; she was very good at loving people exactly as they were.

Emily, my beloved brother's beloved oldest, has a year-long graduate internship nearby, and is also moving in this weekend! Emily, too, is really good company, but it will at times be a challenge for a 29-year-old to move into a different family culture, with her own routines (e.g., gluten-free) and ours (e.g., wash your dishes right away).

Beloved last-born Yani is home for the summer, working part-time at Nine West and part-time in the shower.

Hello, beloved middle child, Ting! Please visit often, but don't expect the washing machine to be available.

So we are going from an empty nest to a densely populated one, beginning tomorrow.

Grocery donations may be dropped off on the back porch.

And keep your ears open for jobs.

Part of me would like to blog about the adventures we are likely to have, this motley crew of adults in various stages of metamorphosis, but it has been easier to write just about myself because I can't step on my own toes. I'm already going to catch heck for the shower comment.

I'd love to write about my clients, about the practice of counseling itself, but I would have to so distort stories as to make the telling less useful for me. I would spend all my energy disguising identities. That's important, but might make the writing less fun, less rich for me.

And what do I do with the blog that was so alive from November to April, the blog that is buried in wires somewhere out there? Does it just corrode with time, and go down in my own little history as something I needed while I dealt with cancer? If the cancer recurs, do I resurrect the blog, call you all back to see if you want to listen in again?

I am open to ideas. Please send them to paula@paulachu.com

Okay, hair update in closing: peach fuzz on head, a bit in nose, two or three eyelashes. Yani and Laura tell me that I am not allowed to say "bare pud."