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.