“Shit happens.” Most of us have if not heard that expression, have experienced it. Even when bad things take a long time to happen, they can hit us like a train wreck. Cancer was like that for me.
Healing can take an awfully long time.
But it can happen.
We all know people who are hard to contact. They don’t return phone calls, emails, or texts on a consistent basis. My husband is one of those people. It’s kind of a joke in our extended network of family and friends. He’s not mean or thoughtless. He just gets wrapped up in what he is doing at the time and has trouble shifting gears. To be fair, he has gotten much more reliable about returning text messages, though it is not unusual for him to text me a question, my immediately answer it, and then my not hear from him again for quite some time.
Consequently, I don’t communicate with him as much as I’d like to when he’s not home. It’s not particularly effective or satisfying. But I do know that if I REALLY need to contact him at work, if the situation is urgent, I can do it. We have a system. I text him, call his cell phone, and call his office desk phone, one right after the other. Then he knows that he needs to drop what he is doing and to contact me. I don’t do this often, in fact, it’s been years and I don’t even remember the reason I last engaged the Bat phone/text/land line sequence.
John is in southern Utah with his step-dad, camping and backpacking. They’ve been planning the trip for a long time. It is a 10 day long trip, which is slightly longer than our family vacations. They on Saturday of last week. They will return on Tuesday of next week. They are seeing incredible country. John is texting photos to me every day as well as “I miss you” and “I love you” texts. I’ve spoken to him twice by phone. It’s not as if we are not communicating and in fact, this is much more frequent technology-supported communication than we typically exchange. But I can’t rely on being able to contact him at any time. Phone reception is spotty.
I don’t know exactly why but since the day he has left, our daughter has been having a very hard time, and shall we say, she is not suffering in silence. I feel like I am alone in some kind of parenting Hell. We did have a brief texting conversation this morning. He’d spoken to her yesterday and was worried about her, based on the conversation they’d had. I’ve been in a tricky position of wanting him to enjoy his trip but at the same time, I need support and he is my husband. I tried to need less than I did and as usually is the case, this strategy does not work well and I end up getting needier than I was in the first place. This morning, in a texting conversation I told him that I would not agree to him being way and unreachable for so long again. It was not my plan to tell him this. That’s just going to make him worry and detract from his trip. People, I am a work in progress. I will keep trying.
Sometimes being alone is a beautiful and peaceful place. Sometimes it’s just lonely.
Photo of John by Don Girvin, 5/2/15
When I was a little girl, we made May baskets at school, which were usually a cone made out of construction paper with a paper strip looped on the back as a hanger. Each year, I took them home, filled them with flowers from the yard, and carefully walked to the neighbor’s house. As I recall, I mostly walked to the same neighbor’s house, Myrtle Anderson’s, hung the basket on her door knob, knocked, and then ran away. They were not so random acts of kindness.
I have long enjoyed giving gifts to people. I notice the things that people like over the course of the year and file it away in my mind for future gift reference. Sometimes I give people gifts “just because”. When I was in college, I had a boyfriend who was often awkward about accepting gifts from me. They were small things, really. I knew that he liked to play cards so when I took a ceramics class and made him a mug decorated with a heart, a club, a spade, and a diamond. It was just one of the things that I made. The rest I kept for myself. When I asked him when his birthday was, he wouldn’t tell me. It was one of many arguments that he and I had over seemingly really silly things. He actually told me that I didn’t argue enough. Anyone who knew me when I was in my early adulthood would appreciate the uniqueness of this characterization. He was not comfortable with affection or gifts. When he told me that he thought we should break up, I didn’t argue. I agreed.
The following fall, I met the man who would become my husband. As I’ve written in the past, John was dating someone else at the time and in the process of a somewhat messy break up due to the fact that his girlfriend was out of the country for two years, on a religious mission. They communicated by letter. Their relationship had been in poor shape when she left.
John and I started dating the following spring. Our first kiss was on April 25th, 1988. I decided to make a May Day basket for him. I went to the University Bookstore and bought two colors of paper. (Hubby tells me now that he thought I used blue and green. I don’t remember.) I carefully measured and drew lines on the paper as a guide for cutting. I wove the strips into a basket; I remember it being surprisingly large. I made a handle for it and filled it with tulips.
I was excited when I made the gift as I often am when I am making something for someone I love. There is an enthusiasm full of hope and energy. But I was also nervous that he wouldn’t like the gift or would feel that it was “too much”, that I was “too much”.
I walked into his apartment with it. I greeted him with, “Happy May Day!” He smiled, “Thank you, those are beautiful.” Then he gave me a kiss. In short, he acted as if I had given him a somewhat random act of kindness that he very much appreciated. He acted like giving a gift to your boyfriend was a normal and healthy thing to do. This is when I learned that he could accept my love. I hoped that it would last for a long long time.
John is leaving tomorrow for an eagerly awaited ten day trip to the canyon lands of Utah. He is traveling with his stepfather, Don. They will have a marvelous time and I am very happy for him. They have not taken a trip, just the two of them, since 1993 when they went to Tanzania together.
I woke up this morning, missing him even though he hasn’t yet left. When I noticed that it is May 1st, I thought back to the basket and the flowers. So as part of my walk, I stopped at the Thriftway and picked up six bunches of locally grown tulips. When I gave them to him, he thanked me and remembered our first May Day together.
May 1st means a lot of things. To some it is just the first day of May. To others, it marks the day of a birth or a death. To others, it is a time to advocate for workers. All of these things are true. To me, it marks the newness of spring and the joyful discovery of love given freely and freely returned.
I love flowers. I love smelling them. I love looking at them. I love taking photos of them.
People occasionally make comments about my flower photos that are sexual in nature, though using big vocabulary words. Sometimes a flower is just a flower, People! As I mentioned previously, April is “Poetry Month” at Bloedel Reserve. There are poems written on signs throughout the reserve.Here is the last poem I want to share with you from my visit there.
And the day came when
the risk to remain tight
in a bud was more
painful than the risk
it took to blossom.
-Anais Nin
Well, I’m sure that to Anais Nin, a flower is just a flower. Let’s think about Anais Nin and what she liked to write about. Hmm. Maybe not. Now I’m not saying that this poem is NOT about flowers or ONLY about sex. Let’s just say that I think that sex is a part of it.
Sex is a part of flowers. Their sex parts are on full display. Stop snickering. Be adults. This is basic birds and bees stuff. Creation is beautiful. For flowers, it is okay for them to be out in the open about it, too. Flowers are simple beings who despite depending on a whole different kingdom of creation to reproduce, do not have baggage or require privacy.The other day, I came upon a pink dogwood tree. It was in magnificent bloom on the left side and had just a smattering of blooms on the right side. It was a beautiful tree but it definitely looked more alive on one side than on the other. I immediately thought, “My body is like that tree.”
Due to my right-side mastectomy and TRAM reconstruction, I have very little sensation on the right side of my torso. I would say that my right breast has no sensation but I did start feeling itch a year or so ago. Today, as I write this, I notice that I can feel pain if I pinch myself. This is new. My abdomen has been healing over the last two years since it was harvested for tissue to make a new breast and it is waking back up, gradually, from the outside in.
Although we may not always be cognizant of this fact, a flower is a sexual creature, as are all living things. A woman’s body is not just a body. Sensation matters. While I am happy with the choices that I made in the treatment of my breast cancer as well as the choices I made with reconstruction, the loss of sensation from a sexual health standpoint is not something that was raised by my surgeons. I raised it myself based on reading that I had done and my husband’s question to my breast surgeon about whether a bilateral mastectomy was indicated.
Women are not just women. We are sexual beings, even when we are done having children. We don’t want to shorten our lives we have but we also want to enjoy our loved ones as much as we can.
This is another poem I read in the woods while visiting Bloedel Reserve earlier this month. It is a good reflection for me today.
The Art of Being
The fern in the rain breathes the silver message.
Stay, lie low. Play your dark reeds
and relearn the beauty of absorption.
There is nothing beyond the rotten log
covered with leaves and needles.
Forget the light emerging with its golden wick.
Raise your face to the water-laden frond.
A thousand blossoms will fall into your arms.
-Ann Coray (2011)
Yesterday was a gloriously sunny spring day. Actually, it was like a summer day. It was 77 degrees (25 degrees C). I was taking my daily walk in a different neighborhood than usual. A light breeze carried the scent of lilac, bearded iris, and wisteria. At times, I could see the mountains and the sea. At one point, I passed a man working in his yard. I greeted him, “Beautiful day.” He looked at me, smiled broadly, raised his palms toward the Heavens and exclaimed, “This. Is. Seattle.” I replied, “Yes, the city at its very best.”
It is gray today and considerably cooler. I am wearing long sleeves and walked from my car wearing my waterproof and hooded trench coat.
This. Is. Seattle.
The statement is as true today as it was yesterday. And yes, I am using the weather as a metaphor.
And yes, you are no doubt familiar with this metaphor.
My daughter is a very bright and sensitive teen. She is as cynical as Hell with liberal doses of wit. Just yesterday, she responded to friend of mine’s sincere compliment, “Aren’t teenagers GREAT!?!, ” with “No. All we do is complain about you guys ruining the economy and being close-minded.”
To her, the negative aspects of life are more real, at least from an intellectual standpoint. I was the same way at her age; it is part of growing up, realizing that the world is complex and largely uncontrollable. That part of reality sucks.
But it is part, not the whole. I come back to this metaphor time and time again as well as to just the thought that almost no situation is all good or all bad. A lot of my blog posts are about this very topic, staying positive, but realistic. Staying in balance.
I almost didn’t write this post because I thought that the theme was too much of a cliche. Then I realized that there are things that never get old like saying, “I love you” or giving someone appreciation, or even TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER. Those are actions that tie us to our loved ones and to our communities as a whole.
I repeat these thoughts, the importance of seeing both the positive and negative, the good and the bad, the painful and the joyful, because they tie me to my own mental health. My life is not going to be about pink ribbons. But it’s also not going to be a black out of light. If there’s a flower to to look at, I am going to do my best to see it. If there a need for compassion, I will do my best to give it. If there’s a loss, I will do my best to grieve it.
This.
Is.
Life.
Geum.
Nemophila.
The roses will be at their peak in about a month.
The bees have been back for awhile and the lavender has just begun to blossom.
In my psychology practice, I am often asked by parents, “What is the best school for my child?”
The children with whom I work, by and large, are not well suited to your typical school. I could tell the parents what qualities that I think would be best for their children, but the truth is, for most families, the ideal doesn’t exist. Consequently, I respond by asking about constraints.
“What is your neighborhood school?”
(Schools should be comparable across the area, but unfortunately, that is far from the case. And I’m not just talking about limited availability of good public schools in low income areas. I’m talking about limited availability of good public schools in ANY area of my city. But there are some.)
“Is private school an option?”
“How do you feel about religious schools?”
(There are a number of religious schools in the area that do a good job of providing a nurturing but structured environment. Also, of private schools, the religious one charge less money than the secular schools.)
“How far are you willing to drive your child to school?”
In other words, before I say, “Your child’s ideal school environment would include x, y, and z”, I narrow things down to the most attainable options.
I do this for two reasons. First, it is a very practical approach. Secondly, it is far less discouraging. We could go on endlessly about the characteristics of a “perfect” school only to discover that it simply does not exist.
No one likes a “dead end”. We like the idea of endless possibility. However, knowing the dead ends, the improbabilities, and the impracticalities, can stop us from spinning in a life of too many options, many of which are false ones.
There are dead ends in my own life. There is no longer the option of “I will live my life as if there is an unlikely chance that something REALLY bad might happen.”
REALLY bad things have already happened. Scary, awful things.
Knowing that this way of thinking is a dead end in my life is sad but it is also liberating. Knowing what I can’t do makes some of the choices simpler, in a way.
Today, I choose to live the best life that I can within the constraints that define me as an imperfect human being.
Today, my life is pretty darned good.
I am not pithy. You may have noticed. I used to write poetry. It was pithy. But the truth was and still is that I have to think A LOT to write a little. Not to mention the rewriting process.
Okay, I’ve already written more than I intended. This is supposed to be an introduction to a poem I saw in the woods at the Bloedel Reserve. April is poetry month.
I like this more than a pithy amount. Maybe you will, too.
Song of the Thunders
Sometimes
I go about pitying myself
while I am carried by the wind
across the sky.-Songs of the Chippewa
-Translated by Francis Densmore
It’s spring.
I have wonderful family and friends.
I am thankful.
Salmonberry blossom at Fauntleroy Creek, Seattle.
Peony. Seattle Chinese Garden.
Dogwood from the neighborhood.
Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, WA
Skunk cabbage looking glamorous.
Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, WA
Neighborhood cherry blossoms.
Pileated woodpecker at the Bloedel Reserve.
She flew from this tree to her nest, located in a hollow in a nearby tree.
It is National Siblings Day so I am reposting this one from November 2012 about my younger brother and me.
I have mentioned perhaps one or six hundred times that I have five brothers. One of my older brothers’ favorite “games” was pig pile. This involved announcing a victim and then having five siblings tackle and pile atop this person. For example the exclamation, “Pig pile on Liz!” was followed by my being tackled and piled on by five brothers, the oldest of whom was nearly 10 years my senior.
Pig piles seemed to be exclaimed on a very frequent basis and as the only girl of six children and the second to youngest it seemed that I was more often than not, the vortex to which the pile was attracted. A Bermuda Triangle of porcine piling, if you will. As the “baby” of the family, my brother James also spent a fair amount of time face planted on the living room floor beneath four sets of sprawling limbs shod in Converse low tops of various sizes.
Although our older brothers would admit to the pig piling, they would disagree with the metaphorical implications. They believed James and me to be spoiled. We avoided the horrors of ruler wielding nuns, whereas they all attended St. Anthony’s School, for example. Our family also had a little more money when I was growing up, not a lot more but just enough to fuel the “you’re spoiled” flames. I maintain that whatever advantages we may have had were more than offset by their mean older brother shenanigans.
James and I are only 18 months apart in age. Our next oldest sibling, John is 3 ½ years older than me and 3 ½ years younger than our next oldest brother, Mike. John was kind of caught between the “big boys” and the “little kids” of the family.
James and I spent a lot of time together. We played together a lot. We mostly got along very well though we could sometimes fight verbally and physically at which time my mom would yell, “I don’t care who started it. I’m finishing it. Go to your respective rooms!”
We played a combination of traditional boy and girl activities. We played with cars, trucks, and climbed trees. We designed obstacle courses in the yard and spent hours upon hours in the woods surrounding our house and neighborhood. We did not, however, play with Barbies or baby dolls. Remember, this was the late 60’s and early 70’s. My mom made us each two sets of Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls as well as a bunch of stuffed elephants. Due to her combination of genius and industry, we were able to play dramatic reenactments of family life with more socially acceptable dolls.
James was not really interested in formal music training, but he has an incredible ear and natural musical ability. He is also extremely funny. By the time I got to high school, I was pretty serious in my classical flute playing. He had a plastic slide whistle and would frequently copy whatever piece I was practicing in my room, complete with vibrato and when era appropriate, Baroque runs. When it wasn’t infuriating, it was hilarious.
These days my brother plays more music than me; he taught himself drums and plays with his 17 year-old son’s band. The only music we make together is the occasional game of Rock Band. The thread that carries over the years is that fact that my brother can always, I mean always, make me laugh.
He reminded me of this last Friday. James attended the requiem mass at St. James. I was kind of surprised to see him there since it was a pretty long drive for him and I think he hates to drive even more than I do. We got there an hour early to get a seat. During the time before the mass started, he was cracking me up and my laugh was echoing throughout the cathedral. When we were kids, due to different church rules, we were not allowed to talk before or obviously during mass. So with this as a back drop, his jokes have always been extra hilarious. I’d laugh, he’d say, “Now if any other family is coming tonight, they will be able to find us.” Then I laughed harder than before. Then he started singing family gossip in his version of Gregorian chant. I lost it again. Now here’s the thing about my brother. His antics are not particularly loud. He is actually a fairly introverted person whereas I am loud and gregarious. I believe he very much likes to set me up and watch the loud fireworks of my laughter, knowing that he is the one who lit the fuse.
James and I were successful for decades after our childhood in avoiding the bottom of the pig pile. Then I found out I had breast cancer and it wasn’t my older brothers that piled on top of me, it was the world in which I thought I had lived, that dissolved and crashed down on me. During the acute stage of my breast cancer treatment, there were many ongoing assessments and constant revisions of my treatment plan. When I was recuperating from surgery and bored, meaning prime time for worries to creep in, I called him, “James, I am bored. Tell me something funny.” And he did. And when I was anxious about waiting for the results of oncotype testing, which would determine whether my oncologist would recommend chemotherapy or not, I called my brother, “James, I have 20 minutes until I need to leave for my appointment. Can you tell me funny things and distract me?” And he did.
James does not show affection in traditional ways. I remember once, about ten years ago, his closing a telephone conversation by saying, “It was nice talking to you, Liz.” That was a major outpouring of verbal affection. But I know my brother loves me, thinks about me, and keeps the warmest wishes for my health. And he shows his love to me most consistently by making me laugh about today, laugh about cancer, and laugh about the things we did and experienced as kids.
For these things I will be ever grateful. James, you joined me at the bottom of the cancer pig pile. I can’t thank you enough for doing that. If you didn’t realize it before, please realize it now that you have helped me tremendously. Thank you for making me laugh at some of my lowest and scariest times. I love you a lot and I know you return that even when it may come in the guise of slide whistled Mozart.
James must have been about 1 1/2 years old to my three years. It looks like we were having much fun in a rare Seattle-area snow.
Join us this summer for our reunion in Renton, WA!
George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest book "The Neural Mind" is now available.
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