now we're talking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vinny

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

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

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

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

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

bright but not brilliant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

craniosacral therapy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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