adventures in the flotation tank

     There are two kinds of people: those who, when they read about sensory deprivation in flotation tanks, think, "I've got to do that someday," and those that just underline sensory deprivation and study it for the test.
     Actually, no! That can't be right. Because I underline it and think "I've got to do that someday." So maybe there is only one type of person. Maybe everyone wants to be weightless and floating in complete darkness and silence in a tank. Maybe I've found the difference between humans and other species. It's not the ability to use tools: it's the desire to try a flotation tank.

     Lo and behold, in this fantabulous 21st century, flotation tanks have moved out of research labs and into spas. Psych labs have long used them to test the effects of sensory deprivation on stressed out people. It turns out that being weightless, in complete darkness and in total silence, is so relaxing you kind of lose touch with your body. It can help with addictions, with stress, pain, fatigue -- all the general effects of living in a world where sound, light, and gravity prevail.
     Oh, sure, some people report having hallucinations, and some are miffed that while floating their brains just seem not to want to do much of anything. While floating, they are too spaced out to think, and that bothers them. But having my brain lose its get-up-and-go for 60 minutes has always sounded pretty good to me, to tell you the truth. Being too relaxed to think, for me, I knew would be a very salubrious thing.

     So I book a float session. And for what feels like a long time I can hardly wait to stop hardly waiting for it or for anything else and just be floating in the silent darkness.
     David greets me at the desk. He says that no one has booked the tank after me, and asks if I would like to stay for 90 minutes. Yes, yes, yes, please! I am like the kid who is next in line for the elephant ride at the Bronx Zoo. That means excited, in case you are the second of the two kinds of people in the world: those who want to ride an elephant and those who have no desire whatsoever. David walks me to the tank room, and gives me a little orientation session.
     When he leaves, I shower off, then step into the tank and lie down in a body-temperature solution that contains 1000 pounds of epsom salts. I turn off the little blue light that helps you find your way into the water, lie back, and float in the darkness.
     How do I describe the feeling?
     Would blowtorch to the privates be too strong?
"A Bic® lighter to the loins" definitely understates the sensation. I lie there and wonder if I have perhaps accidentally gotten into one of those tubs that gradually eats away at the flesh. I have a flash of David, annoyed that I have overstayed my appointment time, finally coming to get me and finding that I've completely dissolved.
     Maybe I have died and have been sent to the Spa of Hell, I think, as I try to have that experience where your brain is too spaced out to think anything at all. I think of all the mistakes I've made, all the wrongs I've committed, and I'm just not sure the punishment fits my admittedly many crimes. This seems over the top.
 
I think it would be best to have this story take place in two blog entries. I'll leave you to float for a few days. Try to think about nothing at all.
   

   

how we know we are one

Hi, everyone. I know you're there, even though most of you never make a peep. I am feeling extra connected to the whole raggedy human family today, and I can see you and feel you.

It's not often that you walk down the street and know that most people are thinking the same thing you are thinking, but that's how it's been today. Even the cashier at Whole Foods, or the person who is backing out their car as you negotiate with your eyes which person will go first, or the person at the post office who takes your package -- everyone, in the spaces between other things, is thinking about what happened to those families yesterday.

We keep moving through our days, we the lucky ones who have days that are far enough from the tragedy not to be wholly paralyzed by it. But there is something within that you can feel in your belly, and now and then you think, "What is this I am feeling?" and then you remember. The feeling surges for a long moment, like a wail, and then you go back to putting away the groceries. You have a brief conversation with someone you love. It is mundane, soothing in its smallness. Did you give the dog his aspirin? You wrap the aspirin in some goat cheese and the dog snarfs it into his toothless mouth. As you rinse off your fingertips, there is a space again. You let the water run over your hands, and you picture those children, and the parents who loved them, the sisters and brothers and grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts and teachers and friends and neighbors and people driving by on Route 84 and people cooking supper for their families on the other side of the world. You come back to the unimaginable scene that you must imagine, and you think of the people who searched for their children afterwards and squeezed them so hard, sobbing with relief and grief, somehow both in one agonized, joyful, excruciating embrace. And then you imagine the unimaginable experience of the parents whose children were not in the crowd of living, breathing, crying children, and you can see those parents shatter into pieces, you can hear the howl of their pain and you realize you might not be able to bear what they are having to bear.

It all happens in that long moment standing by the sink. You turn off the water and don't know what else to do than to go back to what you were doing and wait for the next surge of sadness.

This is how we know that we are bits of one large thing; it is this feeling in my belly and in yours. I know you are there. I can see you and feel you.

Ayurvedic consultation

Like the rest of you, many times over the years I have tried to figure out my dosha. You know, my Ayurvedic archetype. There's vata, pitta, and kapha, and each represents a different combination of the elements, and shows up differently in each body. I've read a couple of books about Ayurvedic medicine, and taken all the available questionnaires to determine my dosha. But whenever I try to pinpoint my type, I'm left scratching my head (which, it turns out, is consistent with my body's dosha): I'm partly this, partly that. Apparently my mental dosha differs from my physical dosha, which explains something, but I will have to think about it for a long time before I understand what that something is, because that's just how my mental dosha works.

After hearing an interesting lecture on Ayurvedic medicine during my course at Kripalu, I decided to schedule a consultation with the Ayurvedic specialist on staff. I wanted to know how my furnace is doing. Essentially, we each are a furnace, and our fire is either burning efficiently (think steadily burning, warming fire), too quickly (think throwing dry paper onto that fire) or too damply (think wet leaves on the fire).

I filled out the six-page questionnaire that asked about everything from my sweat production to the rhythm of my "evacuation" to the speed of my speech. I'll spare you the details. Okay, okay: Scant to moderate; just fine, thank you; and erratic.

The specialist typed my dosha in short order by noting my general frame and assorted features, checking my Eastern medicine pulses, listening to my erratic speech. Vata, she says. Pola, you are very Vata, she says. Vata's elements are ether and air, and the energy is cold and dry. She gives me a little lecture about energy cycles of one's life, cycles of the year, cycles of each day. She and I are meeting in the cold and dry point of the day, the year, my life. It's hard to find balance in my energy when I carry my cold and dry Vata body through a cold and dry day in the cold and dry season of my life. My furnace is like that guy in the Jack London story who is trying to light a fire in the dead of winter; I can't get a good, steady flame going. I start to feel chilled just hearing about it, and zip up my vest.

She tells me I once basked in the warm fire of youth, which has more Kapha energy, but now I have entered my "wisdom years," which are all Vata.
"Wisdom years!" I chuckle. "I'll bet you learned to say that in this country."
"Yes," she confesses. "I once told a patient she was old, and she said that was offensive to Americans. So now I say 'wisdom years.'"
"Well, it's okay with me. You can say old."

So she does. She speaks frankly from that point onward: Your energy is cold and dry. Your body is drying up, pola. All right, already! Geez. You don't have to hit me over the head with it.

She gives me a long list of dos and don'ts. Among the many instructions for balancing Vata in a Vata time of life is not to eat so much cold food; she 'd like most of what I eat to be cooked. When my family has a salad for dinner, I should wilt mine, she says. Mmmmmmm, soggy salad. She's not wild about my kale chips, though, which are too dry and crisp, like me. I should eat smooth food, but not cold smoothies. She would prefer, too, that I warm up my gazpacho in the summertime. Yummmmm, warm cold soup. 

Laura is delighted with one of the Ayurvedic consultant's recommendations: that we turn up the heat in the house while I am in my wisdom years. I've conceded 4 whole degrees in the daytime, and we're now set at 66 degrees. The consultant thinks I should aim for 70-72, but she's not paying for the oil.

Speaking of which, among her strongest recommendations is that I give myself a warm (almond) oil massage twice a week. Not in the shower, where you might be able to stay warm and drip into the tub. No, you should do this some other time outside a tub -- dripping onto everything around you: your eyes, your clothing, keyboard, grocery lists, the dog--who is also in his wisdom years--as he wanders blindly by.

The instructions are as follows: Warm half a cup of almond oil in a pan. Pour half of it onto your head and massage it in. Rub the rest of the oil onto your body. Keep it on for an hour.

I feel like I am not deep enough into my wisdom years while I try this procedure. How one remains warm while covered with oil -- which is warm for all of a minute and then soon is body temperature, then soon after that is oh, about 66 degrees -- I cannot figure out.

But I am game, and I like that the Ayurvedic doctor promises me the oil will actually get absorbed by my skin and that some of the oil will nourish my brain. That I could use. I rub a quarter cup of warm almond oil into my scalp, tuck a towel into my collar, and try to continue my morning.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I confess that I do not massage the oil all over my body. I am not up for being naked, cold, and slippery for an hour. Plus I'm thinking that if someone came to the door, it'd be both embarrassing and dangerous:
How'd she die? 
Doorbell rang. She slid straight into the door. 
Poor thing. Right smack in the middle of her wisdom years. Tsk.

There is a long, thoughtful pause before someone asks what they are all thinking: What's with the grease?

balloons and burgers

Die-really-hard followers may remember that a couple of years ago I inflated a small, well-meaning helium balloon called The Letter Composer, and let it fly into space. I watched it float away, and then I think I actually saw it explode when it was just the tiniest dot against the sky. I had been hoping to write letters for people who were in knotty interpersonal situations. I'd listen to their story and then help them make their point -- respectfully stating their case, bringing them closer to repair or closure, helping them feel heard. It would combine the writer bits in me with the therapist bits in me. TLC would be offering TLC. It was a lovely experiment in how quickly something can get lost on the Internet if you don't tie a very sturdy string to it -- a string with tightly fastened colorful ribbons of marketing, GroupOns, and Google Ads.

That reminds me of how last year, when Laura was trying to figure out her next professional move, she toyed for awhile with the idea of international educational consulting. "GO FOR IT!" begged a well-connected friend in Hong Kong, who assured Laura of tremendous success and a full roster of clients in very short order. "Here are the shoes you'll need to wear in Hong Kong," that friend said in an email that followed their phone conversation. She included a link to a picture of a pair of snakeskin flats with bows on them. "You'll have to leave the clogs at home." She offered to take Laura shopping for the outfits that would go with the shoes, and also suggested that Laura maybe not make much reference to her personal marital situation. I saw Laura open her hand, releasing her balloon to fly noisily around the room. It landed in a wet heap, right on top of her clogs.

Neither of us wanted to do the "marketing"  of our balloons, and those two bright, inflated things went on their way. Mine, well, we know -- it popped silently against the blue sky. When Laura's international consulting balloon throoshed around, we laughed at the funny sound and tossed that thing in the trash.

As for me, I keep wanting to marry these different parts of me to each other but maybe they are just meant to be roommates. I don't know if the nutrition evangelist in me will be able to make a go of a health coaching practice. That field is filled with young women with long, lush hair and perky breasts. I'm serious. I don't think the writer in me can -- or will-- make a go of anything even remotely lucrative. I still have ideas and still move toward them, but I am balloon-shy now. You launch enough of them and watch enough of them pop, and you just get shy.

Now and then, though, it all comes together -- just for a moment. While at Kripalu, I wrote to the executive chef to get her recipe for mushroom nut burgers. It had to be done, just as a letter must be written to the editor when the paper has done something brave and good, or mean-spirited and bad. In that chef's brain was a recipe that could solve the problems of depression and obesity in one meal, and everyone at lunch that day knew it. Defying the signs in the dining hall that said recipes are not available except for those that are in our books and the chef's monthly blog (this is purple so that you click on it, El!), so please don't ask, I asked. For one delicious moment in time, I achieved the marriage of several important parts of me: the writer, the nutrition nut, the introvert who occasionally issues an implicit invitation to connect. 

Definitely eat more kale

I was excited about the five-day "nutrition intensive" at Kripalu beforehand, but I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. I wasn't sure about all the hubbub about Kripalu, and half hoped it would be just okay so I could avoid raving about the place like everyone else does. You know. It's like I feel about the Uggs I'm wearing in this chilly kitchen as I type; they're so popular you almost don't want them to be as warm and cozy as they are. You're a little sheepish when you end up loving them. I felt that way about Kripalu.

When the course began, we wrote down our "intentions" (you're not allowed to take a course or workshop any more without writing down your intentions), and, in addition to learning all I could about holistic nutrition, all I wanted to do was to be fully present and to feel more relaxed each day. And when you write down your intention, well. You might as well check it off your list, because that's what you get.

So I had a wonderful time, felt more relaxed each day, and learned a crazy amount about nutrition from some teachers who know so much that that in itself was amazing. Most of my fellow students were either doctors or nurses, and I hoped no one was noticing the wisps of smoke coming out of my ears during a couple of the lectures. My brain was working so hard. My little nutrition flashcards I mentioned in the last post are like kiddie cards: "5+3" on one side, and "8" on the other. The lecturers are talking about glucagon, glycinate, glycation, gliadin, glutamine, glucosamine, and glycolosis, which to me is just gratuitously complicated, like George Forman giving all of his sons the same name. I followed along as best as I could, but sometimes I felt like that Will & Grace episode where Will, faking that he knows what he's talking about with a guy he wants to impress, rubs his chin and says, "Mmm, Mombasa."

Mmm, zinc glycinate, chelated.

True confession: When I'm in classes that really grab me, taught by someone who is extremely knowledgable, there is a little part of me that splinters off and starts to think, "Gee, I wish I knew all the stuff this person knows." It's a silly, self-defeating tussle. If that part of me would shush I would actually be a step closer to knowing what I want to know, and I could simply enjoy being in the presence of someone with a wealth of knowledge.

But Kripalu was great, and I was fully present. I felt more and more comfortable each day. For the first time in my adult life, I wasn't counting down to when I could go home. Because no one was home, and I wouldn't see Laura until the weekend anyway. That made it possible for me to just be where I was. This was new, and I liked it.

More soon, likely after the (happy) Thanksgiving onslaught. In the meantime, remember: if you eat animal products, you are what they ate. Try to find milk from Jersey cows. It is cleaner and tends to come from smaller farms. Most tree nuts don't have to be organic, but peanuts do. And if you have any smoked animal product, have some Vitamin C afterwards. It neutralizes the, um, it neutralizes something.

I'm thinking maybe I should try some Vitamin C for the smoke coming out of my ears.

Anyway, definitely eat more kale.

cod liver oil

Erp. Pardon me. I've begun to take cod liver oil. This is how focused I've become on health and nutrition. When Yani opened the refrigerator the other day and saw the cod liver oil, she shut the door firmly, looked me in the eye, and said, "Ma. What. Are. You. Doing." She's been a trooper with my nutrition whatnot, but I lost her at the cod liver oil.

While Yani lived here in September and October, I got her to love butternut squash (research shows it takes 3 times to develop a taste for something you've been iffy about -- don't you just wish you could take part in that study? -- and you will recall that we have enough to supply Farmington with 3 servings of butternut squash per resident). She was open to cooking with coconut oil, she gave in to not having bread around, and we had kale as an appetizer most nights. When I made my first batch of almond milk, she congratulated me without even a hint of an eye roll. But the cod liver oil? I probably should have waited until she moved out before getting that.

After the cancer diagnosis, I started taking an increasing interest in the physical health of my counseling clients. Before that, when physical issues would come up in session, I would empathize like a good therapist does, and then begin looking for the emotional root of their ailment. Yes, yes, any emotional disturbance is somehow experienced in the body, but the point is that I felt like my job was to explore their emotional lives, not their refrigerator. After cancer, I started to feel less sure about that. Instead of focusing on the psychodynamic flora of someone's depression or anxiety, I wanted to hear about their intestinal flora. How they were sleeping. When they move away from blue light in the course of their day. How often they let the sun shine on their face. How much sugar they eat. How often they eat fish, or fish crammed into capsules. I found myself wanting not just to talk about their relationship with their mom, but their relationship with kale.

I can't learn enough about nutrition. It's asking a lot of a 57-year-old brain, to take all this in, but I am so hungry to learn all I can. I have a pile of flashcards: "Fat Soluble Vitamins" this one says on one side. "D, A, K, E," I say to myself before flipping over the card. On the fridge: little notes about soluble vs. insoluble fiber, insulin resistance, grams of sugar to a teaspoon. I'm taking a year-long course on holistic nutrition, and beyond that I take all the webinars and go to all the seminars I can find about nutrition, dietary theories, varsity-level smoothie making. I am workshopping my way to nutritional Nirvana. If there is such a place, it's overflowing with kale, I can tell you that much. People there sleep on beds of it.

I've added a branch of health coaching to my practice so that I can work with people who want to make dietary and lifestyle changes but don't know how. I'm looking for clients who are recalibrating after a cancer diagnosis, or recovering from chemotherapy. Or people who may finally be concerned about gradually creeping up toward “diabesity.” They may just know they're off track. I'm finding that I feel pretty passionately about this new mission -- I feel like I need to do my part to keep us all from going to hell in a bread basket. In terms of our collective health, the sky really is falling, like in that book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." 

Along with the new branch of my practice, I've made remaining healthy (and happy) the organizing principle in my life. Followers who have been with this blog from the start will recall that mid-chemo I wondered if I was supposed to be making a sea change in my life. I didn't want to. I liked where my little boat was going. I don't know if I am embracing holistic nutrition as a way of staving off early death, or as a way of living a long, energized life. Sometimes I can't tease those apart. 

This is a sea change for me. It's not the answer to everything, but I now have a set of (erp) oars.

free-falling, mouth open

I did not want to be that person who thinks that getting cancer made colors seem brighter, that life is now more precious and fleeting and all that. I dunno; I guess I like to think that colors have always seemed pretty bright to me. I feel like I've done a durn good job of savoring life, feeling grateful, crying and laughing easily and genuinely at hellos, goodbyes, and here-we-are-all-together moments. I've been really, really good at that, so much more often than not, and I want to give my earlier self props for being so good and grateful. I secretly would like an existential badge, if they give those out.

I especially don't want to give "cancer" credit for making me enjoy life more. I feel stubborn about that. It's like when you lose a great tree from a tremendous windstorm that tears through your yard, and then afterwards you hate to admit that the extra light on the garden is kind of nice. You want to be upset about the tree.

No, that's not quite right.

It's more like getting cancer peels off a layer of something -- maybe it metaphorically takes your clothes off. I think that's it. So hot feels hotter (think metal bench in August) and cold feels colder, and everything is more pointedly itself. Maybe this is what people at nudist colonies are after -- that sense of "I'm awake now!" you must get when you walk naked into a room full of people.

Whatever it is like, I have ended up acutely, intensely, naked-on-a-hot-bench aware of the passing of time. Time seems absurdly fast and life almost comically short. I feel like that guy at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where he is just getting more and more wide-eyed as he careens through space and time, wrinkling before our eyes. Whether I die at 60 or at 90, I cannot imagine thinking this was any other than a ridiculously fast free-fall -- like that other guy, the one who stepped away from his balloon, 24 miles up, and fell toward Earth at 800 miles an hour. Except in emotional time you don't have a spacesuit, and your cheeks are flapping against the air and you are leaving a trail of saliva as you fall.

Which actually happened to me once on the Hellevator ride at Six Flags, where they lift you straight up and then drop you down suddenly. I came off that thing with a line of saliva UP the entire length of my face, and all I had done was open my mouth as we dropped three stories.

Anyway. I am having more free fall, saliva-up-the-face moments as time goes by. It's good and it's hot and it's sometimes freezing cold. It's all over the place, like this post. I am not complaining; just trying to report out.

An example of this merging of the sublime and the ridiculous I am experiencing: Laura bought me a new pair of knee socks when she was out the other day. I hadn't known I'd needed knee socks, but it turns out they were JUST the thing.

Note that I still can't resist the temptation to pick up a little piece of schmootz on the floor in the midst of dancing. Dang! I am so far from enlightenment, and there is so little time.

might as well let it all hang out

In a few weeks, I'll be "3 years out" from my diagnosis. I guess that's good. People seem to think it's good.

It doesn't feel like I've gotten nearly far enough. It's like you're on a swampy hike you didn't want to go on, didn't pack right for, and are kind of tired and want to go home from. Supposedly, five years beyond your diagnosis, you make your way out of the swamp, you're in the clear, and there is a....here I must pause. Most people might be able to end that sentence with "there is a big party awaiting you" or "they give you a nice, cold beer." Neither of those sounds like my style of celebrating, but it kind of deflates the sentence to say "you make your way out of the swamp and...you have a nice supper with your family."

In one way or another, the possibility of my cancer recurring is on my mind just about all the time. It's like it's tucked in one of those ridiculously shallow pockets they put on women's pants, and it falls out when I'm just walking around. I bend over -- over and over again -- to pick it back up.

It pains me that this is true, and it makes me wince to admit it here. But if I'm in the business of telling my truth, which would seem key to the promise-to-self in "writing therapy," I feel like I should come clean about the impact cancer has had on me.

It is for me what we call in the therapy biz a "narcissistic wound" to have been so changed by cancer (a narcissistic wound means "a blow to my ego," but the clinical term somehow sounds both more self-deprecating and self-inflating at the same time, which is a neat trick -- rarely, I will note, used by therapists when speaking of themselves). I didn't want to be one of those people who thought about their cancer so much. I guess there must be a part of me that thinks it is...narcissistic to do so. Gee, I'm practically talking myself into getting some therapy.

I was "compartmentalizing" (it's just going to be one of those posts, it seems) pretty well until the BRCA2 gene showed up this spring. I was going along assuming that I had had double my statistical share of lightning strikes to the noggin: the cancer in the first place, and then the more unusual, more aggressive "triple negative" nature of my tumor. My karmic dues were kind of paid up, is what I was thinking.

But then in March, when genetic testing showed a little broken bit, a tiny flaw in my otherwise pretty well-woven genetic vest, things changed. You wear clothes, right? All it takes is one broken thread and you've got a problem. Somewhere along the line, genetic stitch number 6141 hit a snag, "resulting in premature truncation of the BRCA2 protein at amino acid position 2003." About 5% of breast cancer patients have this broken thread in their genetic fabric. 

So I've become a little spooked; like that guy in South Carolina who's been hit by lightning a few times. You start to wonder if Zeus is taking aim at you with a thunderbolt when you're out and about in the weather of life. Maybe that's narcissistic, too, but there it is. Clearly I've got too much stuff in that damned pocket.

I'm okay. I'm changed. I just fell into a ditch on the hike, type of thing. Remember the hike? When I crawled out of the ditch, something about my path had been altered.

I have too much to say about all of this to cram it into one post. But I might as well tell you where I'm really at, since the funky gene means I'm on this hike for good.

pep rallies and other signs of fall

Back in the day, you could tell that autumn had arrived for real when the canada geese flew due south  in a honking V formation. They're all discombobulated now, of course. Though there are some traditionalist geese who still buy into the migration, a lot of them insist that the ritual is negotiable. It seems to take them a long time to get their goose act together. You can see raggedy formations flying in wide circles, landing often to check their glitchy GPS, or looping back because someone thinks they might have left the teakettle on. You can hear the traditionalist geese arguing with the golfcourse-potato geese -- who just don't wanna. I feel bad for the whole disoriented canada geese family, but you just can't count on them anymore to tell you when it's fall, and that's the bottom line.

Instead I focus on more reliable signs of fall: apples, pears, maple leaves in the cat food. There's a gradual shift toward stocking up on food in general when fall arrives in earnest -- some mammalian instinct that leads me to make large batches of applesauce, pesto, granola.

And there's butternut squash in the fall, of course. Here's today's pick of our massive butternut squash litter. I have half a mind to give this one a name, like I did for Sam the Carrot, a gigantic garden carrot I carried to school for a couple of weeks in second grade, until mom sat me down and told me it was time to add Sam -- by then all floppy and aggrieved looking -- to some soup.

(You see the problems that can arise when I get attached. I wish I could say I've worked all that through. I mean, I'm over Sam. But I can get mightily attached to things that are crazy evidence of the crazy beauty of this crazy life.)

If you've ever worked in a school, you know that Reunion or Homecoming is a sign of fall, too. The rituals around Homecoming are at least as reliable, and a heck of a lot louder and honking as the geese. It's happening at Porter's this weekend, just down the street from me, and it's happening at Fieldston, Laura's school in the Big City.
This morning she sent me a video clip of her fall ritual, and I sent her a clip of mine. We are having different kinds of pep rallies, as you can see, but we're both enjoying the crazy beauty of this crazy life.

exactly what I need

This is exactly what I need to have happen right now. That's what this psychologist tells himself when something in his life goes awry. In his own example, it was the waiting room toilet overflowing with bad stuff, seeping beyond the tiny bathroom into where a family was waiting for their therapy session.

Okay, it was only an individual therapy session. I added the family bit. Because that's an even more interesting picture, isn't it? What a mess that would be, with the whole, already kind of stressed out family not sure what to do, while the therapist tries to maintain unconditional positive regard for everyone, including the schmuck that clogged his toilet. I wonder which families "make progress" after that adventure, and which families are moved that much closer to throwing in the towel. It'd be a good sign, wouldn't it? To be in a family that drove home kind of happy about being grossed out together.

Anyway: "This is exactly what I need to have happen right now." Telling yourself that shifts the mind from resistant mode into accepting mode, is the idea.

I've tried it several times, and it actually has helped a bit, especially for things like butternut squash soup spilling in the fridge. With larger things -- like feeling at sea in my life, which I sort of have for the past few weeks -- it's a little trickier. The very nature of feeling "at sea" involves forgetting big truths like you are always exactly where you are in order to learn exactly what you are supposed to learn.

This sea's waters are not rough or threatening. Hardly. I'm just bobbing along thinking a paddle would be really, really handy. But even if I had a paddle, I'm not quite sure which way to shore, it's so foggy.

There are long moments when I can hang onto the idea that bobbing along in the fog is exactly what I need to do right now. This bobbing is precisely what I need to help me tune in to my heart, my intuition, my...truth.

And then there are much longer moments when I have just been feeling fogged in. I'm not sure where I want to move in my work, in my writing, in my use of this evaporative thing called time.

My questions are gigantic, and they're magnified by the fog.

What am I meant to want, and what do I think I'm supposed to want? And then what do I actually want?

See that? Where you had to read those questions a second time? That's the fog I'm talking about. And I'm not done! There is no done to this.

When do I feel most alive? If I figure that out, am I supposed to move towards it? How?
Why do I need to move at all? Why can't I just enjoy bobbing? 
Where is the knot that fastens the leash on my peace of mind, and how did it get there? How do I untie it?
How am I meant to live?

When I try to listen to my intuition as closely as I can, it stops talking. Intuition might be like the blind spot right in the center of the eye, where there aren't any rods or cones, and the optic nerve goes toward the brain. If you look straight at something and don't move your eyes, it disappears. I know it doesn't seem like that, but it's true and I don't have time to go into the science of it, people!

Maybe intuition works like the blind spot. When you are at sea, you have to sit side by side with your intuition, not directly in front of it, in order to hear its whispered directions toward shore.

true love exists and we can be good

Y has a thing about needles. She always has. Over the course of 22 years, she's moved beyond visible freak out in the doctor's office to simply cutting off the circulation in a companion's hand, but still, her needle issue remains. So when she decided to get a tattoo, I knew she had been doing some serious thinking. It turns out that she had -- for a couple of years. She knew the design: one of my dad's painting seals, the vermillion-colored signatures that appear on every traditional Chinese painting. She knew the placement: the inside of her right wrist.

She called early this summer to ask if I would be willing to hold her left hand while she got the tattoo, because she imagined it would smart to get all that needling done.

I heard myself say into the phone, "Maybe I'll get one with you." "Really?" she asked. "Mom's going to get one, too," I heard her tell her sister. "Okay," said T. "I will, too."

It took a lot of planning, working with the seals, photoshopping them into the tidy, tattooable form you see here. We talked and talked, because that's what we do, about which of his many seals to get. Also, Y was worried that T and I hadn't taken years to agonize about it, since she had, so we needed to talk about that.

Because for Y, the tattoo was filled with meaning. For her, she said, the tattoo would be a reminder that true love exists, and that such love was embodied by my parents. Also, she says, the seal is a visible reminder that we are capable of being as good as they were.

For me, it meant a road trip with my daughters and an investment in a fun memory. My tattoo would be a visible reminder that we are capable of fun road trips.

My friend Phuc Tran is a tattoo artist up in Portland, Maine. He is the one who so kindly offered to tattoo nipples for me when mine were lost in the collision with breast cancer. Phuc was the only one we wanted to shepherd us through this experience.

Y was anxious -- had probably been anxious about this for two years, because that's what she does when there is a needle on the horizon, however distant. T volunteered to go first so that Y could see the process from start to finish. Here you can see T lying on the table, having a grand old time getting a tattoo on her ankle.

Seemed like a piece of cake. Y went next, as Phuc suggested it would be good to get hers over with.

The next time I support Y through a painful experience like that, I expect there to be a baby at the end of it. She had a very hard time, with terrible pain.

Poor kid, I thought. Can't take pain. I took another sip of my chai.

Then it was my turn. I hopped cheerfully onto the table and let Phuc shave my hairless ankle.

Well. Hats off to all those people who get more than one tattoo; that's all I can say. It's like, "Tattoo me once, shame on...me. Tattoo me twice, and...you can't tattoo me twice." Isn't that how George Bush put it? First thing he and I agree upon.

But T! What a hero! What a faker! Only when I was getting tattooed did T let on that it had hurt her something fierce. "Really hurts, doesn't it, mom?!" she asked as my eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw unhinged in silent alarm.

T hadn't wanted Y to be any more scared than she already was. She protected her sister by being as calm as possible.

T showed us both that true love exists; that we can be good. And now we have the tattoos to remind us whenever we forget.

it's probably not about the cat

Laura has not been home for two weeks and yesterday I almost got a kitten. Coincidence? My beloved sister Ellen thinks not.

In order to get anything done in life, we've all learned to compartmentalize kittens. It's easy, in general. But if you see one, if it's looking right at you, you have to actively resist the impulse to take it home. Kittens hypnotize you -- you can see them trying. For the vulnerable human, it's like that resisting the impulse to scream thing I wrote about, but more intense.

So when I got an email from someone searching for a home for these abandoned kittens, an impulse began, like a little itchy rash. Which is actually one of the many symptoms I get when I am around cats. But that's beside the point.

The one I'm not going to get, not going to get, Not Going to Get is the one with the white forehead. Yani is thinking of the name Luna, for the moon on her forehead. We would call her Lulu.

Our current Zen Master cat, Juni, could train this new kitten, I'm thinking. Juni would be so happy to have a kitten to take care of! She would take Lulu around the yard, model caution around cars, show her that trees make so much better scratching posts than furniture. Lulu would nestle in the curl of Juni's warm body at night. She would only kill birds under extreme duress. She would be just like Juni, only 14 years younger.

These are the fantasies of the kitten trance I am was in. I did not at any moment in time think it was, in fact, a good idea to get a kitten. But I sent an email saying we were interested in the one that so obviously wants to be our cat. And Yani and I drove off in the general direction of New Britain, where the kitten Sirens were singing.

I said to Yani, "If I could figure out a way of getting the feeling I am looking for, I could resist this kitten impulse." She said, What about a bird? Well, the pet store is right next to the hardware store we were standing in. Let's go see if I have a feeling when I check out the birds. Maybe I am just looking for a feeling.

It was more of a gruesome fantasy than a feeling that came over me as I watched the birds flitter about in their cages: Juni may be a Zen Master, but she can't resist finch tartare. Plus the birds actually seemed to be saying, please don't take me home. Just get me outta here.

We looked at rats, hamsters, mice, gerbils: No way; what's with the tail; hi there, but no; and no thanks, respectively. Yani suggested I might like the hermit crab and tapped on the glass to get its "attention." Har har.

Laura gets home tonight and I'm hoping she can talk me off the Lulu ledge, though in truth talking people into things is more of Laura's thing. She is, after all, the one who followed the sign to "free kittens" and surprised the family with Juni so many years ago.

This morning the kittens' foster dad is down to one kitten: It's Lulu. Could I decide by the end of the day, he asks.

Getting a pet is never just about the pet. I know that. So I'm trying to figure out what it is about, right here, right now. By the end of the day.

Could someone please tie me to the mast?

there's a sweet spot to anonymity, too

As we had long been preparing for, Laura has been staying in New York on weekdays for the past two months or so. We've been doing well with this, all in all. I am holding down the homestead and raising my butternut squash crop. She is out there running a huge school. I am making motor sounds while playing with a balsa wood airplane, and she is running the control tower at JFK. We each have our gifts.

Grocery shopping has been one of the biggest structural changes: I shop for one during the week and for two on the weekends. It takes concentration -- like going from base 10 to the binary system and then back again in arithmetic. Not my strong point. I will say that there has been some overage of romaine and a few emergency banana smoothies.

There are other adjustments: I've taken over the household jobs that once were Laura's, of course. Actually, in some cases I'm foregoing the task altogether. I'm not drinking coffee during the week anymore, since Laura is the one who makes it. When I do have coffee on the weekends (because suddenly there is some), it is like a shot of adrenaline straight up. Coffee is fabulous, wondrous stuff on Saturdays and Sundays.

What is the dog's problem? I wondered early on, before realizing that someone with opposable thumbs maybe should feed him. And I am still trying to figure out if there is a solution to the problem of my side of the sheets being ready for washing when her side is still plenty crisp. I'm not happy with either the over- or the under-laundering solution.

I'm sorry to see Laura drive off on Sunday, but I can get on a chair and stand on my tiptoes and see Friday coming over the horizon, so it's okay. When school started, though, a new feeling took me by surprise. I began to feel like I am missing out on the fun. Cool things happen at school.

One of Laura's advisees, 14-year-old Max, for example, wrote a short piece of music in his music composition course last spring. The teacher asked the Manhattan String Quartet to perform all the students' compositions, and you can hear them by putting sq2012ecfs into your browser. This kind of thing, you've gotta admit, is extremely cool. This is run-of-the-mill cool at Fieldston.

But it's not just happenings and the creative vibe of a school that I am missing. When Laura was at Porter's, my identity was enhanced by being connected to her. Students and faculty would wave to me and greet me because I was the missus of someone well loved in that community. As her tenure there recedes below the opposite horizon of time, I am increasingly anonymous -- just another middle-aged walker passing campus, dragging her starving dog. Students used to greet me with friendly recognition, and now they generally don't see me at all. It's a little bit sad that students no longer care if I see them go behind the AT&T building to smoke. It used to make them nervous, and that was kind of fun.

And since I'm not around Fieldston's campus, I'm anonymous there, too. I don't get the radiant heat that comes with being the principal's spouse. I miss basking in that warmth.

Also there is this: in my profession you make an explicit agreement to keep relationships with clients private. When I run into clients outside the office, I give them a wide berth so they don't need to decide whether to acknowledge me or not. It adds another layer of anonymity.

It's not a problem yet, but I'm tracking this new feeling within me. I think even the hermit up there in the cave kind of liked being known as a hermit. Even the hermit -- who cherished all that alone time -- didn't want to be completely anonymous.

I don't get to be brave very often

That's the thought that entered my mind when I prodded myself to do the tiniest brave thing recently. It took this cognitive nudge to dive into a cold lake after a cold rain: Come on, p. You don't get to be brave very often. 

There are actually lots of opportunities to be brave. More correctly, then: I don't seem to be able to choose to be brave very often. My lack of courage has always troubled me, and I fear that if push were to come to shove, I would freeze when Life most needed me to take courageous action.

I have curiosity in generous amounts, and I possess a fair share of persistence and can-do. These are good qualities to have. I'm not even sure I would trade those two things, if that were the necessary deal, to gain the quality of courage. But I know my flaws, and they haunt me. You want what you lack, and I have always wanted -- above other lacks such as talent and brilliance -- more courage.

While driving in Hartford years ago, I came upon an accident. Someone had apparently just been hit by a car that was perhaps two or three cars ahead of me. I could only see the pedestrian's legs as he lay motionless on the asphalt, and I could see his friend wailing in despair and helplessness. Other pedestrians were gathering. I turned my car around with the reflexes of a pursued animal, reacting only to the need to get away, get away. I wish I had been one of the people who had it in them to rush to cradle either the wounded or the frightened, but that wish was overridden by my flight reflex.

I can think of other frightening occasions where my courage has blown out altogether in the same way. Like when 4-year-old T'ai fell off a very high top bunk in a cabin in the woods. I wailed like a wounded animal as I ran to him in the darkness, likely frightening him more than the fall had. Or that time my dad had a night terror (truly, an aptly named phenomenon) and, deep asleep, thrashed and screamed as if he were being stabbed with a knife. I lay upstairs, all of 30 years old, heart pounding as I listened to his unconscious terror made manifest. But I was frozen to my mattress on the attic floor, and left my poor mom both to comfort him and to peel herself off the ceiling. I have always felt bad about not having the courage to go downstairs to see if she needed help.

Last night we went to see the documentary about the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. It's an amazing story of courage in the face of constant fear. I felt like a fraud as I made a donation to Amnesty International the moment we got home. Though such things matter, I know what I know about myself, and my tiny gesture is a poor disguise for a lack of courage to do so much more.

sometimes its a problem

Ting's partner Dave finds 4-leaf clovers all the time. It's ridiculous. They stick out, he says. They look different, he says. He sees them, without looking for them, while we are walking anywhere.

Recently we were telling some friends about Dave's quirk/talent as we all drove to one of those fabulous farm dinners Connecticut has in late summer. We pulled the car into the makeshift parking lot -- a clover field adjacent to a hill of clover, overlooking another rolling field of clover. Dave hopped out of the minivan and said, "here's one," and plucked a four-leaf clover out of the clovery ground. He can't help it.

I'm like that with typos. They stick out. I can be reading a wonderful book written by a wonderful and knowledgeable nutritionist, say, and then...and then, he or she says "if the body has inadequate nutrients, it will produce odd carvings..." and suddenly everything is in doubt. Oh, I know what they meant. Of course! Of course. But it's like finding a gnat in your soup. You know there's no harm done, but all you can think about is the gnat, and you begin to doubt the whole enterprise of your lunch.

Maybe we all have something like this. For Dave, it's 4-leaf clovers. For Laura, it's the tiniest editing glitch in a movie, like the door was open at a different angle just a moment ago. We have spent many hours rewinding and replaying videos so she can show us that the mug was in fact full a second ago and now it's empty.

For me (and for Ting -- likely a matter of both nature and nurture), it's typos. Seeing them while not looking for them is distracting, and sometimes I wish I didn't notice them. I see gnats.

Tonight I'm trying to find a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, where my mother-in-law might take her friends that are driving through. She's not one to google things herself, but has learned that it is possible. Asking me to google something is like asking a bloodhound to follow the scent on the old shirt. Go find her, girl. Go find Emmy Lou. Awooooo! I'm off.

But it's a tough call. Do I really want to send my mother-in-law to the place with the "chick atmosphere"? Or how about the one that says patrons can "Thrill to memorizing music all night long." That sounds absolutely exhausting to me, no matter how good the music might actually be.

In our town there is a dog grooming place called "Bow's and Bandana's," and I still wince as I drive by. We take 16-year-old Bear there every so often so someone else can shave around his bumpy little body. I knew it might not be the right thing to do to say anything, but when you have an Issue with correctness in language, you think people might want to know, because you would. When I've made a typo in this blog, Ting catches it immediately and I'm always immensely grateful. I would like to know when there is toilet paper stuck to my blog's shoe. But the people at Bow's and Bandana's? Really not an issue for them.

I am torn between admiring that quality and thinking that the sky is falling. Do you know how painful it is for me to leave the title of this post as it is?

actually....

There have been times in the life of this humble blog-ini that I've felt I should take something back. But it's out there, and to make a fuss over something makes it bigger; makes it oni instead of ini.

For example, my first posted version of the last entry ended with "like tossing a salad. A corn salad." Well, I had to get up and out of bed to go change that one. Hair is not like corn salad, however tempting it was to revisit the cornfield at that point. Hair that is like corn salad has worse problems than crop circles.

See, now I've made a fuss.

I try to be impeccable with my word, though, except for the froth of metaphors that my brain generates. (I am picturing a thought brewery, with large metal containers of thought; metaphors form as a frothy by-product of the thoughts and need to be skimmed off every now and then.) (I cannot help it. These pictures form.)

Anyway, when I've apparently been unclear, or if I leave a misconception out there, I feel a need to clear it up. I got several replies and emails, for example, from people who assured me that they haven't seen crop circles on my head. I know that. And now I feel like I was speaking metaphorically, but everyone thought the metaphor was the liquid, when it was actually just froth. I don't actually have crop circles on my head. There are no bald spots; just really thin hair. I am susceptible to hat head, let's say, whether or not I wear a hat. That's all.

So that's cleared up.

Then, too, there is the garden issue. This is less a matter of being unclear as a matter of being flat-out wrong and leading you to believe our mistake.

We were so excited to see the bounty that had sprung forth after the poisoning incident, and it looked like there would be a great variety. Though we were heavy on the large-leafed vines, we were expecting at least cucumber, at least cantaloupe, of course zucchini. I blogged about the wonder of it all.

As it turns out, they are all butternut squash plants. Sure, there are some tomatoes in there, which we are happy for, but the marvel of a volunteer tomato plant doesn't count. Tomatoes are unflagging volunteers; they're like the kid who raises her hand whenever the teacher asks anything.

But a dozen butternut squash plants? Having a dozen butternut squash plants is like owning a dozen ironing boards. It's just...silly.

Come and get one, or two, or three (butternut squash - we only have one ironing board) in a few weeks. Or maybe months. There a lots and lots of them, but they turn out to be the slowest things in the world to mature. They're like humans, for god's sake.

grooming lessons

Most of my life I had crazy thick hair. These two shots, taken over 30 years apart, I submit as evidence.

I would brush out enough to stuff a pillow every other day, and the loss was never visible. But during chemo, all my follicles closed up shop, as you may recall, and I got an answer to that question that comes up when you are brushing your teeth and checking yourself out in the mirror, about what your scalp looks like under that lush mane. Might you have a birthmark up there, maybe in the shape of a heart? Or Block Island. Or, god forbid, Florida.

Turns out there's nothing at all up there, except that little scar from the tin can Kevie threw at me by accident. The suspense about the scalp unveiling was over very quickly, and I was eager for a 6-month shadow to appear.

Some hair came back, staggering across the smoky battleground waving a tattered flag; white of course. But lots of follicles just couldn't handle all that poison, and they up and died on that battleground. My hair is so thin now.

Yesterday Laura and I got caught in the rain while walking our loop. I felt the cool rain on my head, felt it slide down my forehead, then into my eyes. I said, "Close your eyes, La, and just feel the sensation of the rain hitting your scalp." I expected her to be feeling the same kind of gratitude for the heaven-sent coolness on an insanely hot day. But she said, "Um, it hasn't gotten through to my scalp yet, hon." Suddenly the sensation wasn't as soothing.

Ever since chemo, Laura has been my groomer, just like these guys. If she doesn't do a little fluff here and there every few hours, little crop circles have formed and there are vast swaths of corn plowed under. You could for sure see that Florida birthmark if it were there. There just isn't enough hair to cover the whole scalp. It's like twin sheets on a queen-sized bed. What those sheets are doing out in the cornfield, I just can't explain. I guess that's part of the mystery of crop circles.

There is an old saying: "Give a man an ear of corn and he eats for a day. Teach him how to plow a field, and he can eat for life."* Actually, I think it's something about teaching someone how to fish, but I simply cannot and will not bring fish into the queen-sized bed out in the cornfield. Regardless, now that Laura is away so much of the time, she is worried that I am showing up in counseling sessions with crop circles on my head. She has decided I need to learn to cover my baldish spots on my own, and has been teaching me how my hands should move along the back of my scalp in order to hide the thinner spots. Fluff, fluff. I can't see it, but she points out where the crop circles tend to appear. Fluff, fluff. It's a lot like tossing a salad. On the back of my head.

*AND make crop circles

sweet spot of life

I think I've reached a certain sweet spot in life. I've got the hang of a lot of things by now. I hardly ever cut myself when slicing vegetables or fruit, and may be at my top speed. I've practiced things like that a lot -- over 50 years, I suppose. And I'm not yet wobbly in a dangerous way. That's not so far off, I know. There will come a time, should I be lucky enough to live that long, when I am as unsure with a knife as when I was four.

Right now, though, this is a great place to be.

It's small things. I rarely misbutton my shirts, something that used to happen pretty often in the early days, when you think about it. You get to the bottom of the shirt, and ah geez, you're off by one button. Not in your 50s, my friend. We are Competent. Also, you learn to gloss over the times when these things do happen. They just blend in with the many more times when you have buttoned successfully over the years, and at long last the ratio has become overwhelmingly in favor of a positive buttoning experience.

I'm savoring this era. You know stuff. Like how to pull the hose around a corner without hurting the hosta. How to install shades. How to flick gunk off a pan, right into the sink. How to repair a broken cup, or to recognize when it's truly a goner. Come to think of it, a lot of the competency of this life phase has to do with knowing when something is a goner and when it might be saved once more. The cup, the gizmo, the roof, the favorite shirt. I know exactly when to give up on a strand of floss and take another.

How often do you get to sit at a sweet spot? For me, hardly ever. I generally tip one way or another. Watching the Olympics last night I noticed I couldn't make my way to that particular sweet spot where you care enough about the competition to make it exciting to watch but don't care so much that you feel anxious. I just tipped straight into anxiety. For all of the athletes. And their parents! Oh my god. There were some shots of parents watching their kids do gymnastics, and it was agonizing to watch their agony. That one mom looked like she was going to birth an alien right there in the bleachers.

No thanks to that kind of excitement. But today we were watching some other competition, when suddenly the crowd, and Laura, cheered wildly. "What happened?" I asked Laura. "That guy just scored!" I had moved so far from the sweet spot that I had forgotten to care what was happening. It became as sports events generally are for me -- like watching a fish tank. It's kind of relaxing, but you forget to notice when someone scores, or wins. If you start to really pay attention, you worry about everyone and how badly they want to win, how hard they are trying. There is no sweet spot for me in the wide world of sports.

So I have to focus on my own fleeting experience of an existential sweet spot. I know how to do most of what I need to know how to do, and I either don't screw it up or the screw up gets absorbed into the much larger database of "I've got this" experiences. It's not forever, but it's here now. How sweet is that?

forgiveness lesson

It's high time I let Laura out of the public stocks o' shame I put her in when she poisoned the garden. You remember.

We decided to let the soil Rest In Peace, back in the immediate aftermath of the accident. We pulled out and tossed the poisoned plants and stirred lots of compost into the soil, since compost breaks down the poison, we were told. We bought some hay and covered the beds. We all but played "Taps" and kept a flag at half-mast. The garden looked pathetic all empty and covered, and somehow that felt right.

That lasted a few days, and the empty beds just looked so grim out there. We decided to keep the somber look for most of the beds, but planted colorful flowers in the beds closest to the house. We waited to see if these non-edible plants would tolerate the poisoned soil. They did.

And then, well, you know what's in our compost? Tomato seeds, cucumber seeds, zucchini seeds, cantaloupe seeds. For awhile we just pulled out the little volunteers that kept sprouting through the hay, in an attempt to put them and us out of our misery. We assumed we couldn't eat them even if they did manage to squeeze out a poisoned fruit or two.

But life wants life, you know. It loves itself and just can't help it. The plants just kept coming.

I called a master gardener and explained our situation. She, it turns out, once had sprayed much of her own garden with the same poison the week before it was featured on her town's garden tour. Sure, she hadn't poisoned edible plants, but she empathized, deeply. She said not to feel too badly about it; that these things happen to everyone. My scrawny heart shrank a bit not to have her snort with me over Laura's mistake. I felt very small, very scrawny about that.

She also said the volunteer plants are perfectly safe to eat. The poison was gone after we had pulled the original plants and had had a good rain.

We aren't even entirely sure about some of the plants that are coming, but they're coming. Will this one be a cantaloupe or a cuke? Here is a shot of a bit of the impending bounty, randomly spaced in the hay, and groping its way toward more and more life.

And here is the larger spiritual message I am taking away from all this:

my inner cutie

I write myself notes all the time in the bright light of an insight, a decision, a moment's clarity. I stick those notes some place clever: in the front of my calendar, under my ink blotter (whoa, I wonder if they've come up with a new name for that), between pages 135 and 136 of a book I may not finish, in the front pocket of the shorts I just washed. It's an imperfect system.

Today I came upon a piece of scrap paper with a wide range of notes to self. "Important," I wrote at some undetermined, unremembered point in the past. "Know that your internal experience is changeable." On the same scrap, near that great message - the essence of which I forget about a hundred times a day - is this: "When you have an unpleasant or fearful thought, think of a barking dog tied to a tree. Walk past it and say to the dog, 'thanks for sharing!'"

I have never once done this, but still think it's a great idea. I am going to begin by saying it to actual barking dogs, of which there are several along my daily walking loop.

The best thing about finding the scrap of paper, though, is this little scrawl, below. I imagine that when I wrote it, I meant to remind myself to "evaluate the value of my inner critic," meaning, I suppose, to question its assumed authority.

But today as I read my scrawl, I thought it said, "have you ever evaluated the value of your inner cutie?"

What? I thought. What does that mean?

Before I figured out what I really had written, I had time enough to think: why no! No, I haven't given enough time to evaluating the value of my inner cutie. But when I do, I can see that it's a much more useful part of me than my inner critic.

But hey, inner critic -- thanks for sharing!

viva la revolucion

       Laura has been the Principal at Fieldston Upper for almost two weeks now. She is glad to be there, but feels a bit like Hudson River flotsam. Her office isn't ready, so she's planted herself in the reception area, between the African violet and the copy machine. Our little co-op isn't ready either, so last week she rented the spare room of a nice retired couple in Yonkers. That had its own strains, you know? It wasn't cheap, for one thing. But also, the host was so warm and welcoming that Laura couldn't just flop down after work. The host wanted to hear about Laura's day, to see what she was wearing to dinner with her new colleagues, have her twirl around, all that. That's my job.
       This week (and next) the School has kindly sprung for a hotel. Laura is living on food from the Applebee's that is adjacent to the Hampton Inn. She's bringing home her pile of plastic takeout containers so we can give them to the guy who uses them at his booth at Sunday's Farmer's Market. It seems the least we can do in a generally unecological situation.
       I'm worrying more and more about our gigantic, collective ecological shoes. During the week I am bouncing around, quite literally, by myself in a house that was built for a family. We love this house, and keep thinking that it will someday be such a great place for our hypothetical grandchildren to visit. And on Thanksgiving when there are 17 or 18 warm bodies sprawled all over the house, Laura and I feel like we live in heaven. It's a little louder than heaven is usually depicted, and there's a lot of cooking and more dishes than you can shake a stick at (which really doesn't work at all), but still.
       But I am not sure Thanksgiving is good enough justification to have so much space. I feel like maybe this lovely old home should be one of those places that a gang of revolutionaries take over, use as a center for their revolutionary activities. They storm in, shouting that it's too big for one person -- and they're right. But they toss around our books and break those clay figures the kids made when they were little. They neglect the plants, leave dishes everywhere, and replace my dad's paintings with graffiti. I just hate that. I wonder if they will let me keep my home office, or if they maybe think counseling is a sign of pre-revolutionary alienation and brainwashing.

       I wish I would welcome the revolutionaries, but I'm so attached to my life as it is. Just terrible. I am trying to live in a way that makes me worthy of all my blessings, but I want my green smoothie and eat it, too. I am trying to use the car as little as possible. Last week I mapped out a 6-mile walk to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where I needed to return a small rug for the bathroom I painted the moment Laura drove away. Finally I realized it would take me all day to walk to the store and back, and decided that perhaps the earth would forgive me if I drove there as long as I felt kind of bad about it. So I drove to return the mass-manufactured rug, and came home to search on Etsy to find a homemade, cotton rug. ¡Viva la revolucion! Viva la humble, ambivalent, imperfect revolution within me.

what happens when the mind is back in charge

Laura is getting her first acupuncture treatment, using a Groupon I bought her. She'll be home in about an hour, and I'm making summer leftover lunch for us. A dollop of homemade kidney bean hummus, some tomato and basil salad. The tomatoes look a little sad, but still edible.
I'm cutting up last night's grilled chicken.
Mm, that looks good. Maybe I'll take a little bite of one of the chunks I just made.
Nah. Resist the impulse.
That is all you have to do. Just resist the impulse.
Gee, every second, that's what we're doing, it seems like.
Maybe it's all about resisting impulse.
Resist the impulse.
Like we direct our own behavior, but doing that means working against so many impulses.
(I keep cutting up last night's chicken.)
"Resist the impulse to scream."
That's a phrase, right? Where did that come from?
Huh.
Resist the impulse to scream.
Interesting! The more you focus on that, the harder it is to do.
If you really focused on it, like really hard, eventually you'd almost have to scream.
I wonder if I could have a "resist the impulse to scream" bumper sticker made. Get everyone behind my car thinking about it.
Maybe someone would scream then, right there in their car.
Or maybe they'd think it's a political statement. Or sort of social commentary. Or just a goof.
Maybe people would talk about it. At a red light. There's a long silence while they wait for the light, and then the passenger says to the driver: "What do you think that bumpersticker means? 'Resist the Impulse to Scream.'" The driver says, "Huh. No idea. Maybe it's like...a thing."
I wonder if there is a "resist the impulse to scream" t-shirt.
Maybe I should make one for myself.
But then someone would steal the idea!
(Still cutting the chicken.)
Eh, but it's a great idea, so I should just put it out there. It's not good to be selfish with ideas.
But what about that for a book title? Resist the Impulse to Scream: short essays.
That sounds like all the essays will be desperate, shrill, dark. Or like a manifesto of some kind, where the author knows names and controversies and can sound culturally literate and informed. I can't muster a whole book of that.
What does Google say? "Resist the impulse to scream." Put it in quotes. Oh, that's interesting. You get lots and lots of these.
I wonder if i should TradeMark it. "Resist the Impulse to Scream"™.
Maybe I should save the domain name. Is it available?
ResistTheImpulseToScream.com Yes! Available. Only $12.99 a year.
Oh, that's funny. ResisttheImpulse2Scream.com is available, too.
Snort. Who would use that?

the body writes back

p,

     Sorry it's taken so long to respond. It generally takes me some time to digest things. But you know that. Plus I can't hold a pen, no thanks to you. But I hear you. I feel you. You're grateful to me.
     I think you expect me to say nice things back, to embrace you for taking care of me. The truth is that you're often in my way. You never stop talking, for one thing, and it's annoying. Throughout our relationship I've told you when it's time to sleep, but you are not paying attention. The next morning, when I drag us both out of bed, you promise to listen next time. And then that evening, you force me to stay up late again, reading ever blurrier books.
     Or you promise to give me more oxygen, take slower, deeper breaths. That's all well and good for a couple of minutes, and then you're off onto something else and have totally forgotten me.
     As for all the surgery and chemo and whatnot you've done to me in the past couple of years,  I've tried to take it on the chin. Do what you think you need to do, but please have a little faith in me. Your ruminating doesn't help things.
     I sense that you blame me for the genes in my cells, and that I just can't swallow. I am doing my best here. I've healed over and over again, many more times than you imagine or remember. The cut on my shin? That's nothing. Being a body is like living with thousands of hyperactive children under one small and leaky roof. During the rainy season. I've got buckets everywhere, and also have to constantly pick things up and put them where they belong. This is not a complaint; I'm just saying. I did not pick my genes, and even if I had, almost all of them are fabulous. Really, p, sometimes you just focus on the bad. It's not a good habit.
     I'm loving the walks and the good food. Thanks for finding good smells, nice things to look at. We're both so lucky, right?
     Meditation? I guess that's good for both of us, although sometimes it reminds me of when you tried to teach me to pat my head and rub my belly at the same time. But I'll keep practicing if you will.
     The bouncing thing is pure pleasure for me, so thanks. Sorry about the leg cramps afterwards if you overdo it. Sometimes I don't know how else to get your attention. Just goes to show that we can really wake up fast if we have to, huh?
     Also, please pardon the furnace problems. I have my people on it, but it's a pretty old furnace, and eventually these things do break down. That sleeping naked on top of the sheets idea? Works for me.
     And you're right -- I don't care about the scarring and all that. Those are my artwork! Believe me, you want me to scar. It's one of my best tricks.
     Not as chatty as you are. Some of us have jobs to do. I'm only half kidding. Lunch?

one thing at a time

I am humbled to learn that I cannot bounce and laugh at the same time. 

correspondence with my bod

I've begun a little correspondence with my body. We're pen pals, like. I'm always so pleased to hear back from it, though it turns out to be snarkier than I am, which came as a total surprise, given that it "has its own wisdom" and all that. Here is how I began the conversation:

Dearest, most precious body:

     How I have loved these first 56 years we’ve had together. Most of it has been so easy, so miraculous and fun. I know you don’t have as much energy as you once did, and I am going to make you some promises about that in this letter. But by and large, you have taken such wonderful care of me.

     We had a great childhood together, didn't we? I cannot remember when you ever let me down. You were so perfect and so strong! Thanks for pulling me into all those trees, so easily. Thanks for all the freedom you gave me, and for the ego boost when I could armwrestle people like Jim Neilan. That was fabulous. 

     We’ve been through a lot together, especially in the past few years, and I wonder if it feels to you as though I have taken worse care of you than you have of me. I guess I have been exercising tough love with some of the decisions I’ve made recently, and I appreciate that you have met me with resilience and aplomb through these challenges. Though it is not over, I do hope we can move through this era soon and get on to the business of aging slowly and gracefully.

     How do you really feel about general anesthesia? You and I have been chemically separated for long moments several times now. I am not afraid of it, as I trust that you will come back to me and I will come back to you. I hope it is not difficult for you in ways that are real and undetectable to me. The anesthesia is meant to shield you, but I know you are more complex and wise than I can ever understand, and this being trumped by anesthesia must cost you in ways that also are beyond understanding – unless your wisdom even exceeds my imagination and you surrender willingly, easily, as the medicine courses through your veins. I want you to know that if it had felt possible to forego anesthesia and still protect you, I would have done that.

     You are in fact unbelievably cooperative. You respond to what I eat, taking it in and using it as well as you can, sending nutrients wherever they are needed. You heal quickly, still. I so appreciate that about you. You amaze me. I would like to learn how to let go and heal as quickly as you do.

     I have to tell you that you took me by surprise with the genetic mutation, even more so than the cancer. I know I’ve eaten things I shouldn’t have, and I know I should have gotten more exercise, especially when the kids were younger. I don’t know if that made it impossible for you to avoid the cancer, given the mutation with its crazy odds. I’m sorry if things like too much sugar or dairy or other white things made it hard to fight those odds.

     It cracked me up that the first thing that tasted good to you after chemotherapy was sushi. Touché! And so smart of you. I need the nutrients in fish. You are learning to like things that will help us stay together for a long time, and I am deeply grateful that some things that we need have begun to taste okay to you. Let’s work together on this.

     I hope operating on our thumbs is the right thing to do. I apologize for the related hassle. I know that arthritis came from our genes, too, and that neither of us could help it. I just got really tired of the pain. Soon we will be working on getting some strength back. Please do your healing thing and get stronger in these challenged places. I’ll try to stay focused on it, too.

     Heads up: our right thumb is in for the same brouhaha in a few months. I know it will not be expecting this, but I thought I'd let you know anyway.

     I know you miss our breasts. I do, too. Nothing fits you quite right, and I am sorry about that. I don't want to put you through more operations to give us phony breasts; it seems like that would be asking a lot of you. I guess maybe the breastless thing is my issue anyway, not yours. Please let me know if there are things you want me to do given the loss of nerves, of tissue, of bulk. Do you want me to be rubbing oil on that space? I am never sure. 

    I have to palpate around your pits and chest all the time, and I know that irritates you. But I need to keep checking up on you because of that genetic snafu. I want to trust you, but I can't. I just can't. I'm so sorry.

     Some other apologies here: so sorry about cutting your shin that first time I tried to shave. That was totally my fault.  Thanks for healing up, and for hurting enough to make me really cautious when I shave in that spot ever since.

     Sorry about all the chips, cheese, and other things that probably demanded more resources than I should have asked from you. I meant them as a treat for you, but it probably only felt that way for your tongue. Maybe I should write to your tongue, too. Anyway, thanks for the great metabolism despite my indulgences.

     You don’t want to try getting drunk, do you? I don’t. Let’s avoid that forever. I appreciate your being a lightweight.

     Sometimes it feels like you clutch, like it takes you longer than I would like it to for you to relax and quiet down. Examples, if you need them, are our lips and our brow, which keep going back to a smidgen of tightness when it is time to meditate or to sleep. Could you please let go of that, too?

     I am trying very, very hard to take good care of you. You’ve given up a lot, and you’ve been a brick about it.

     I know you saw that big package that came today. It's for you! It's a little trampoline, and you can bounce on it. You love to bounce, right? Enjoy it! And please get stronger.

     I would like to live with you for a long time, and I want you to be excited about that. I am thinking mid-90s would be great, unless our brain gives out. I hear you about the genetic challenge, and I hope you hear me about how willing I am to fight for you.

     I promise to make our health a top priority. This means I will attend to feeding you well, to continue to exercise regularly, to work in some strengthening exercise, to laugh often, to meditate, to work on the tasks that are mine to learn. I promise to be deliberate about giving you beautiful and health-promoting things to look at, to listen to, and to taste, feel, and smell.

     When we do part, know that I have loved you and appreciated you more than I know how to express. I will work hard at making my gratitude apparent to you through how I live and how I take care of you. Let’s laugh often. It’s so good for both of us.

Love and a scratch, wherever you need it,*

p

*Really sorry to put a caveat on this, but you've been kind of tight around the arms ever since the surgery on the chest. If you could loosen up a bit, I could do a much better job of scratching you. Maybe this is the original meaning of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine." What do you say?

P.S. Let me hear back from you! No rush; I know you can't write easily until the cast comes off. I'm not going anywhere. 

P.P.S. I did notice that you are still willing to build neurons for me, and that writing with our right hand has actually become legible sometimes. You absolutely ROCK for still allowing me to learn.
P.P.P.S. How could I forget? The beautiful babies you nourished, first inside you and then with milk? No matter what happens to us or when, you are perfect because of them.