Winter Weary, Whither Spring?

It's been a long winter, hasn't it? Even today, on this first day of April, the sun burst onto the scene to shine strong and bright, only to dip and fade behind thickening clouds. And as I walked along roads still littered with winter's mess, geese flew overhead, birds gathered on tree tops to sing into the darkening skies, and I cursed the last of the snow stubbornly clinging to its hideous, gravel-soaked shape. Spring, with all its colors and life and promise, can't come soon enough. And these days, it's all too easy to be duped by the expansive sun. Here in New England, it's simply not to be trusted. Wander into the thickets of trees, past streams roaring with snow melt, and the pockets of cold will find you again. Even so, I am swept along, my heart astir with the changes underfoot. Forward motion.

On this day, the kind stuffed with chores and errands to cross off the endless list (and shout yay me! for remembering to return the Redbox movies before a small fortune was due), I was glad for the chance to slow it down, take a walk, write, eat, drink in the sun. My usual rhythms and routes of travel are well-worn and threadbare; lately, I have felt a deep urge to go off-road, leave behind the familiar, comfortable, if unremarkable banalities of standard-issue daily rhythms, head in a different direction, and seek the sublime in not knowing what comes next.

But there's stuff we just have to do, and after a morning visit to my awesome chiropractor/friend to keep my crooked neck from rusting and my hip from howling, I found myself in the endocrinologist's office for a biopsy on my thyroid, which had sprouted nodules--now overgrown--soon after my breast cancer diagnosis in 2008. There was something all too familiar about this road--the unhappy discovery during my annual exam, the failed, follow up ultrasound to try to "make it go away," the slightly bizarre needle biopsy--and as the procedure progressed, it was all I could do to not go there, to not jump ahead to the surgical biopsy, and those searing three small words, You have cancer. 

This time, it must be different. I've done this before. Even the thyroid biopsy part. I'm fine. 

The young doctor was on time, this time, and I was happy to bypass a long wait in the cigarette-smokey room that quickly filled with the unwell and took on a depressive, weighty energy that made me think the Dementors were close by. Once in the small pea-green room, I hopped onto the table, too short, as usual, for my long legs, and tried to get comfortable--no johnnie gown, even, just my boots up on the table under me, and the collar of my shirt wrapped in little towels to protect it from the ultrasound goop, the blood, the brush of the doctor's gloved hand. The doctor smiled a lot, called me "my friend" a few too many times, and reminded me of one of my older son's friends. Things started off with a literal bang, with the young doctor knocking the ultrasound monitor smack into the back of my head. Shit, really? I almost asked him, Have you done this before? But I figured he was just nervous, like me, and told him, instead, Hey, no worries. But soon after a pinchy dose of local anesthesia, I felt the unexpected sharp sting and deep ache two or three needles in, and found myself having to fight back tears. Really, Liz? Pathetic. This should be cake for you, sister. But for a half a minute or more I was unraveling, all the sting and ache of the past year surfacing, screaming, and it was all I could do to keep it down. I tried to concentrate on the lame-o tropical fish print tacked on the ceiling above me, got lost in how ridiculously askew it was, and then, in feeling as if I might slide off the table altogether, legs out from under me, drop into the sea. Drowning. A second dose of...what was it? Narcan? No, that couldn't have been it, that's the wonder drug that brings Heroin overdosers back to life. Whatever it was, it didn't help. I closed my eyes, just breathed. Four, five, six needles, and finally, up for air, my throat feeling strangely locked up, bruised, sore. You're good to go, my friend.

I suppose I could have surrendered to that sense of overwhelm and panic and sadness as I could have countless times over and over again, could have canceled my day and went home to do what? Wallow? Call my mother? Cry? What would the point be? I was fine. Stitched together right. Stuffing re-stuffed. Shiny and new. A work in progress, always. Instead, I gathered up the loose ends, tucking a few stray threads here and there, and set out to have my day. There was still time, after all, and I had things to do. Drink too much coffee, for one. Meet with my students. Clean the car out. Bank. Redbox.

Once home, the cat invited me to the deck for a late lunch, so I obliged, and was amazed, as I always am, at how good food can make me feel (or maybe it was the coffee, still). Whatever. Refueled, I put the sleds away, the shovels, cross-country skis, buckets of sand. Swept out the debris left by countless armloads of wood dumped on our deck just outside our wood box. Winter, be gone! Trash, recycling, compost: all emptied, sorted, turned, scrubbed cleaned. Crumbled a half eaten loaf of stale bread onto our decaying picnic table, while the cat rolled in the sun, belly up, and the birds found the bread. Such good distractions, and yet, there it was, still, the heavy thump in my chest, the sick, sticky, weight in my belly.

I needed to walk. Walk it all off--the jittery jumps from too much coffee so many hours ago, the cobwebs that had settled in my head, and especially, the sense of dread that had been welling up throughout the day. Pincers around my head. Heavy boots. And then, four miles later, gone.

Now, light fading again, night has settled in and the cold has returned to snap the spell cast by the day's warmth. And I am reminded of this poem, below, that I've been reworking since last year, and honestly, I can't tell if it's lousy or okay, but it's time to let it go. Keep it in for too long, and it'll rot inside and reek when it comes out, because it will come out, one way or the other. Nodules on your thyroids, perhaps, or tumors in your breasts. Quiet, until they scream. Life requires that we constantly let go to make room for something new, something brave. Especially now, during this season of extended, noxious decay of winter and the gradual return to life, we are reminded of how beautiful it can be, if we take the time to notice and invite the small, unheralded moments of our days to fill the space between shadows and light, and become our stories.

The light hits in a certain way, and everything stops. 

We are filled with a hushed, simple joy, the best Life can offer, really. Those shadows run deep, and will wait for you. Tell your stories, and you tend to your shadows. Scar tissue. And the waiting? The uncertainty? Whatever the outcome might be, we climb those hills, head down, so we can greet the sun at the top, just the same. And sometimes it's not there for us, not then, not when we want it to be. But it's all we can do, however fleeting. Into the light, we stay as long as we can.

Winter Weary

The sun climbs high then goes,

Vanishing shadows dance with light

Hungrily awakening

To shed winter’s cold bite.

A gradual thaw, rebirth:

Circles of warmth around trunks grow

As snow melts in a slow ache.

Above, the raucous crow

Spills his sharp discontent

Into pallid skies torn apart,

Singing the deepest stirrings

That echo in my heart.

Spirit cleaved, I walk,

Down woodland trails and dusty roads,

To mend the jagged splits and

Release these weighty loads.

With each step, a prayer,

Tethered to the place I’d call home

If it weren’t so adrift--

To let it go, alone,

I shake my best self free.

The trees speak of death in these woods,

Bend to whisper secrets lost,

Of love and solitude,

That hide in my shadows.

I carry mine close to my chest,

Buried deep, snowbound, and still,

Until the final crest,

When a bright sun explodes

Shattering the frozen landscape.

Mockery, or just reward:

Feet under me, heart agape,

I start to unravel,

Then smash! Beautiful broken glass

Reflecting the blinding light

Fading hard and fast.

"And now, we walk."

"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth." ~ Rumi

Life hits hard sometimes, doesn't it? Life will always be a magical, horrible blend of tragedy, beauty, and happenstance--your dog dies, your wife leaves you, your father has a heart-attack, your friend overdoses on heroin--but still you somehow stumble into perfect moments of joy, again and again, and with open heart, take it all in, and you laugh, again and again, even when, especially when, life insists on tears. An ongoing, constant unraveling, and then a tidying up. Expansion and contraction. It can be so difficult to trust the rhythm, and all to easy to feel overwhelmed by it, as if things are totally beyond your control. And maybe they are, right? What do we know, anyway? What's there to trust, after all?

If there's one thing we can expect out of life, it's the unexpected. Cancer? Yeah, that happens. A lot. Do I need to remind you of the statistics? I don't think so. What good will that do? Does it matter? It just happens. 

And when it happens, when you’re hit with an unexpected cancer diagnosis (is there any other kind?), of course you imagine the worst: stage four, metastatic, and only months, if that, to live, precipitating desperate last-ditch efforts to salvage hope, through chemo and radiation that burn and tear into any remaining healthy cells and tissue. Hooked up to an IV drip, drip, drip, you’ll eventually lose your hair, clumps at a time, fight back nausea, beg for mercy. People will give you the death-scan, the once-over, top to bottom, to see if you look like you're dying. Does she look a little grey to you? You shave your head in an act of defiance, and summon your warrior girl spirit. Your friends will give you scarf after scarf, but you are bared, now, down to your raw elements, the wretched caverns that once existed to hide the tremulous shifting shards of doubt and dread, flooded out, then emptied of secrets, all sun-bleached now, so no, but thank you. They bring you food, which you can’t keep down. Tell you that you're beautiful, still. And throughout it all, you’ll tell jokes, smile, find your grace, try to inhabit the light: this is your fight, and you’ll blaze in that darkness, a real star, before fading into nothing.

Slowly, but surely, you begin to imagine a different scenario, and line-by-line, page-by-page, you begin to write your own story.

There’s another cancer, after all; there always is. And it belongs to you.

You’ve imagined everything you will miss, everything you won’t be able to do. You look at your children, and you wonder if you will be there to see them graduate from college, get married, or not, discover, do what they love, in no particular order. The emptiness in your arms, the pull and ache where you once held them close, feels lonelier still as you imagine not being around to hold your grandchildren, and watch your children come back to you. The uncertainty of what the next day will bring weighs heavily, a constant disturbance in your peripheral vision, oh yeah, that, to render you speechless and immobile throughout the day, and blanket you with a thick, depressive darkness at night.  So when you gradually realize that it will be better that you first imagined, that the story isn’t written yet, and not so airtight, that it won’t be as bad, those small cracks start to let in some light, and it seeps into your deepest corners and awakens your warrior girl spirit, and you find a strength in you that you didn’t know existed, and it pushes you out the door, takes you by the hand, and says, “And now, we walk.”

It's all we can do, after all.  Somewhere, we come to realize that with every step, we write our own stories, even when another hand has been at work, meddling with how we thought things would go. Is there any other way for it to unfold? Those unexpected potholes, delays, disruptions, and worse, there's always something worse: this we can count on. What matters is how we navigate, respond, and reclaim authorship over our own stories, ownership of our lives, especially when they've been hijacked, when things feel out of control. The wind blows hard at times, pushing us off course. And thank god for that. After all, what would we do if not for the occasional nudge off course? How else would we grow? What would we do without those often unexpected, slightly obscured opportunities to explore unchartered territory, that rise up out of the destruction, or suddenly appear in the glinting, illuminated edges, to pull us out of our pain? To keep the lamp lit, help us climb down into those dark, dusty, deeper corners of ourselves, bring them to the surface, to breathe in fresh air? I say, don't be afraid of the unknown: grab the damn rudder, reset your sails, and let the wind carry you where you want to go.  When there's nothing else to rely on, count on that.

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter 'till they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Listening

Today is World Cancer Day. Glad to be here.

Glad to be wrestling with so much change and transition, the push and pull of Life as it continues to flip things on end and inside out, reminding me to return, always, to my heart. Glad to be in that precarious spot, that in-between, with forward motion temporarily arrested, and a tangle of suspended, possible destinations ahead, just beyond the giant leap across the abyss. Glad to be readying this jump, even if I can't see what's next. I'm pretty good at walking around in the dark. What's difficult is the going alone. It's what I've always done, of course, but I'm tired of it, and wouldn't mind some company. But glad, still, to be strong enough to go it alone for as long as I need to.

I suppose, too, I am missing my dog, whom we had to put down just before Thanksgiving. But I can't even begin to write about her, or I'll come completely unhinged and cry and have to seek solace in my cat, who has no use for crybabies. Gah.

It's strange how everything feels different when your dog dies. The cat looks for her everywhere, her low, drawn-out, plaintive, pathetic yowls echoing from all over the house, which feels by turn achingly empty and painstakingly filled with her spirit. Outside, the squirrels have multiplied. And the birds have started calling to me, but I, with my blindside in full swing, have taken little notice, save for the ridiculous amounts of birdseed they seem to go through every week.

Today is different. Today, I listen.

Circling around the house and back again, bringing armloads of wood to the deck, to fill both the wood box and the pockets of anxious cold that have opened up just below my heart, I hear them, from branches high and bare, letting me know.

As I fill the feeders, a fat gray squirrel hops onto the top of the picnic table to grab and nibble a rice cake, just one stale snack of many I had left in a pile atop this altar of sorts this morning. Rotting, falling apart piece by piece to herald our decay, the table, much like a fallen tree, is slowly being reclaimed by the earth. A feast for decomposers, its green, mossy, scarred veneer peels off in layers to reveal the raw materials at its core, a veritable city of industriousness ensuring the inevitability of constant change.  Everyday, a tiny little change, or a big one: an entire board peels off, the edges soften, the table sinks ever so slowly into the earth below. We're coming for you.

Tracks scurry and scatter across snow to our winter compost pile, a mix of Christmas greens, egg shells, and citrus peels and skins. I dump a bucket of ash from the woodstove atop bounding rabbit tracks, and the delicate, careful steps of our cat, which belie her copious fluff and fat.

The birds have discovered the fresh seed, and slowly return to the feeders. Male cardinals pop red against backdrops of pine and snow, while their mates, made ever more beautiful by the understated humility of their display, beg a little more effort from the watcher: harder to see, but so much more rewarding once they're found. Glad for the chance to watch them hide, then reveal themselves--nothing to prove. The chickadees fear not; unassuming, bold, friendly, they regard me with a tilt to the head as I lug past with the empty bucket.

Even after last night's frosting, the trees reach out, limbs bared, ready to catch tonight's snow. More, more. Skies gray and muted, a quiet hush has descended over the awakening trees, the fields of stubby cornstalks, even the birds, who know, as they always know, to move deliberately, and above all else, when things get squirrelly, to listen.

Five Years

March 24. It's been five years to the day since the good doctors cut out my cancer, put my left girl into an early grave, and started to grow a new girl in her place. As a cancer survivor, you hear a lot about the "5-year mark," the supposed milestone that everyone wants to reach: the rate of recurrence drops significantly, you can rest easy, you're golden. Yeah, well, I don't believe it.

Just like I don't really believe spring is ever going to come. But it will.

The vernal equinox came and went four days ago, ushering in a snow storm, colder temperatures and a wind that cut its teeth back in January. I've been waiting for the red-winged blackbird to return, the crocuses to burst through the soft snow, the snow to melt in circles around the bases of the trees, fill the streams with a throaty roar, and then, just go. But, no. Not yet anyway. Winter is hanging on. Sometimes, it just happens that way.

For now, the sap is flowing, and that will have to be enough. Isn't that how it works, after all?

Statistically, it seems good news abounds about breast cancer, its treatment and rates of recovery and survival. And yet, we all have friends and loved ones whose stories run against the tide and say otherwise: cancer is a tricky, sneaky little devil of a disease, after all, and why we'd like to claim full understanding of how it works its black magic, we can't possibly make sense of why more and more young women are being diagnosed, why metastatically, it remains insidious and powerfully destructive, and why the rate of occurrence is so staggeringly high across the board. Cancer kills, and it does so indiscriminately. There is little rhyme or reason to it. Kind of like our weather these days.

NED, or No Evidence of Disease, is what the folks in the medical-lingo-know call this state of being "cancer-free." Given all the different types of breast cancer there are, NED and all its possible rates of recurrence after the five year mark, are achingly complicated.

Since my surgeries back in 2008, I've seen my breast surgeon and oncologist on an alternating six-month schedule. They've been upbeat, brisk, even, suggesting that they have patients who need their time and attention much more than I do. While my time with my oncologist typically feels unrushed, sequestered, even, my visits with my breast surgeon have often felt more like a speed-screening session, five minutes of catching up over a quick breast exam, any changes?, an exchange of smiles, everything is great, a send-off with some sense of security in this mad world. The mammogram--digital now, thanks to advances made at Mass General with the 3D imaging called breast tomosynthesis--takes another five minutes. A few quick squeezes of my left girl in the pancake-machine, hold your breath, the inevitable kink in my neck, the bruised rib that mistakenly gets claimed as breast tissue, thin, flat-breasted women are indeed a special challenge, and you're so tall!, and it's done. The visits, however quick, seem to swell into long, drawn-out days. The anxiety that maybe this time they'll find something starts to creep in days, sometimes weeks, before, and there's the long drive into Boston, the red line to Charles/MGH, the precipitous wait in my johnny gown, to fill out, again, the electronic questionnaire (the question about smoking still stumps me: what if I never bought my own pack of cigarettes? does that count?), simmer in my worry, fashion magazines on my lap, and then, the pancake-session, and then, again, another wait, for the results, that all-too-familiar dread rising to fill my hollows with its stink. 

I have sought reassurance from my docs, but clearly, they have patients who need it more than I do. After all, I've been healthy, I'm walking, I'm strong, a model of survivorhood on the outside, right? Eh. My reassurance has come mostly in the form of having screenings done--first every six months, now once a year--and receiving good test results (read: your mammogram showed nothing new that looks alarming, abnormal, or cancerish. your right breast is still dense and cystic and a little wonky, but it's not necessarily wonkier than it was the last time, so all's good). When I graduated to annual screenings, it freaked me out a bit. I had come to depend on getting that reassurance every six months that I did not have cancer. The cancer is still gone. It has not come back. Your right girl is healthy, cancer-free. It gave me a new lease on life, every time. To go a full year in between screenings felt like torture, the dread and fear rising and swelling and stinking up my better sense, but because it had been presented as something to be proud of, I felt as if I was obligated to make the most of it: suck it up, cupcake. this is how it is. 

What, exactly, happens at the five-year-mark? What, exactly, was I expecting? I see my oncologist sometime this spring. I don't remember when. I am still taking my Tamoxifen. I don't intend to re-fill the bottle that I have but rather, let it run out. Good riddance, right? Five years of Tamoxifen has been enough. Or has it?

As much as I am looking forward to letting my body recover from some of the side effects that the Tamoxifen has wrought--hot flashes, especially early on; severe leg cramps; erratic, unreliable periods; brain fog; yadda yadda--I wonder (ok, I worry) about how else my body might "recover" after I stop taking Tamoxifen. I know it is protective. I know it is an amazing drug. Will the five years offer enough protection as I head into the six year mark? The ten? The twenty? What happens now?

I took a walk today. It is good tonic for me in every way, to get out in the fresh air and sunshine, take in a changing landscape (though, I would argue that it is not quite changing quickly enough), take notice of the natural world that seems, at times, so distant, given how freakin' busy I've become, fill my lungs, get the heart going, swing my arms, relax my addled tech-neck, let my faraway eyes land on something other than a screen for awhile, clear my musty head, and hope that my dog's unabashed joy for such serendipitous walks is contagious, even if it just a bit.

Whatever happens, I suppose, I'll walk on. After all, it has become my religion, my good tonic, my reassurance. Reassurance comes from living my life the way I see fit, from taking care of myself, for making time for those regular cathartic walks in nature, leaving behind the overload of responsibilities every now and again, taking some chances on something, anything, and write, write it all down, here I am. This has been much, much harder to do than I expected, more difficult to sustain. It takes time and love and acceptance and a field of fucking daisies, and sometimes, it's just not there. It's been a battle, most days, to take care of myself, to believe that I am worthy of such care, of a love that comes from the ground up, that seeps into every fiber of my being, a sinewy strength to carry me every step of the way. The shadows are with me, always. But that's not where I want to live. 

After all, I should never have gotten cancer in the first place. There is no reassurance in statistics for me. I don't feel reassured by having hit my 5-year mark. Happy, yes, but reassured that it's all smooth sailing from here? No.

"My oncologist tells me that the longest he has personally seen a woman go before a breast cancer recurrence is 21 years.  Using five years to measure success in the fight against a slow growing cancer may be giving us a false picture of progress." ~ Phyllis Johnson, Health Central.  

My cancer was Estrogen Receptor +, or ER+. There's a lot we don't know about this particular kind of cancer, but I suspect it is in cahoots with all the endocrine disruptors in our environment, working as a tag team of sorts to bring the house down. Can we truly get away from it --the BPA in our plastic, the pesticides in our food, the hidden chemicals in our day to day? And what of the sedentary-electronic disease that has gradually taken hold of so many of us? What will become of our collective nature-deprived spirit, overloaded by information, overwhelmed by social media, desperate for a real connection? How does it all factor in? I believe all the toxicity in our environment plays a giant role, interacting with our particular brand of genetic and emotional vulnerabilities to work that black magic, a wretched malady, a special kind of malaise. Just exactly what is the disease? And what is the cure? 

There are no formulas, despite our desire to find reassurance in them. Shit happens. It just does. You can get cancer even though you were in a "low-risk" group. You can get hit by a car and find yourself in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Or you might die. I won't even go into all the freak things that can happen. We could all get hit by a meteor, or the Big One. The cancer could come back. Or a new cancer could appear. Or MS. Early Parkinson's. The Plague. Whatever. Anything is possible. The good and the bad and everything in between. We all know that.

ER+ breast cancers are no exception. I remember when I got my pathology report that having ER+ breast cancer was considered the "good kind" of breast cancer to get. Oh, the irony. The thing about ER+ breast cancer, is that it can recur at any time after five years. And I wonder: what happens when we go off the protective Tamoxifen? Does it have a lasting effect? Is it enough? Is there something else (flax seed?) that does what it does without the side effects, and that can be taken indefinitely? What are those cancer cells doing now? Lying in wait? And what will they be doing once the estrogen blockade wears off? Revert to out-of-control party mode? Hoping they've learned their lesson. Don't mess with me. I'll kick your ass if you come back. And I mean it.

 I counted on not getting cancer, but I got it. The only thing I can count on is the unpredictability of life, and because of that, I have to live each day as if it were a milestone. To open myself to the gratitude that springs eternal in each and every step, that warms these cold, early spring days, and that offers reassurance that whatever happens, I will have lived each of my days... 

"So, not to be philosophical or anything, but I think every year is a milestone. Two years, 4 years, 5 years, 7 years...if we have invasive ER+ breast cancer, we can't ever really be considered "cured," But every year is, well, ...one more year." ~ Otter 

Five years = five years. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. A handful. I'll take each and every one of them. And many more, too, please, if I may. Spring will come, but for now, I'll walk through the last remnants of winter's last gasp and enjoy the expansive light and growing warmth, the treble and touch of every step a prayer for many more years to come. I'll celebrate these five years and continue to try to find the nuggets of joy in each and every day. 

"There are different goalposts of certainty. We could be killed by a meteor, but we don't count on that. Some us (specifically me) need more help with dealing with uncertainty than others. But we can only take care of ourselves the best we can, and try to live our lives the best we can." ~ Leaf

Amen to that.

Intellectual Disabilities

Found this old, unpublished post languishing in the dusty drawers of my blog today and thought I'd share it, uh, anyway.  This was written four (four!) years ago, when we were all trying to get our heads around the fact that McCain had chosen Palin as his running mate.  I had written a longer, more politicized version that gathered several scathing nasty comments from fans, not of the Flip Side, but of Palin, and I chose to scrap it, wanting to keep the focus on generating positive vibes and juju, and not feeling armored enough to deflect so much negativity.

It's fun to laugh about it now, thinking about that insidious, strangely sublime pairing (after all, the brilliant Tina Fey would not have been able to trot out her own brilliant "you betcha" version of Sarah Palin had she not been catapulted into the spotlight), and how much fun it was to make fun of her despite our absolute terror that she just might get elected.  And it's a little wild to remember how we thought that it couldn't get much crazier than this.

And now, four years later, we learn that it can get crazier.  It can always get crazier.  And thank god for the funny people out there who offer up some much-needed comic relief during election season.

I'm a tad bit worried that I might have inadvertently contributed to the McCain/Palin campaign yesterday.

Dominick and I were walking into our local Stop and Shop yesterday afternoon. There was an older man standing outside, wearing a bright yellow vest emblazoned with "Helping God's Special Children." He held a canister in one hand for donations, and a bag of tootsie rolls slunk on the ground next to him. As we passed him, he shouted out to Dominick, who was wearing his Red Sox hat, "Do you play ball?" Dominick looked at me, as if to ask, "Mom, what kind of a question is that?" I raised my eyebrows. "Ah, yeah," Dom said, still unsure as to why this total stranger was asking him such a seemingly obvious question. The guy tossed Dominick a tootsie roll, his reward, apparently, for answering correctly. "Thank you!"

On our way out, I gave Dominick a dollar to put in the man's handy canister. And of course, after he did so, he was awarded with yet another tootsie roll, and as we crossed the street to our car, the man called him back and asked him if he had any brothers or sisters. Dominick did not miss a beat this time. "Yes, I have fourteen of them." (Actually, he wouldn't have thought of lying; he dutifully answered with a simple yes, and a thank you, when handed a third tootsie roll.) Score!

When we got to the car, I inspected the tootsie rolls, which I quickly noticed were covered in customized "The Knights of Columbus Thanks you for your Support" wrappers. But it was when I read the other side of the wrapper that I thought that perhaps I had just given a dollar to the McCain/Palin campaign:

"Helping People with Intellectual Disabilities."

Oh well. I'll double my usual donation to Obama, and maybe I'll get a box of junior mints.  ;)

Heavy Boots

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ~ Mark Twain

Strange energy afloat the last few days, leaving me unable to sleep, melancholic, restless.  Sails luffing.  Must be getting ready to come about.  Hard-a-lee!

Night arrives earlier and earlier each day as fall continues to pull the curtain on summer's light show, and with each pressing, lovely shade of darkness, it's all I can do to stop myself from climbing out of my own skin, head outside for some night-swimming, leave it all behind. But there's no lake here, just endless fields of corn and barley, and I walk the long roads looking for something to lighten these boots, fill these sails...

Or perhaps, it's the opposite: the need to climb back into my skin, trust in my body again, spend a little less time in my head, and more time surrendering to the sentience of living aflush, here, and now, nerve-endings awake and alive and electric with connection, a little passion, flow.  Please?  I don't think I can wait another day, another night.

I walk until I find some moonlight, and fill my hollows with the stillness and the shimmer of the stars above.  And yet, it is not ever enough.

Sleep seems intangible, something of an other world, something that no longer belongs to me.  As if my days cannot end, as if those missing pieces are indeed starting to talk to me, demanding that they be dealt with, polished and examined, loved, again.  Don't you forget about me.  

What will it take?  Why is it so hard to make a change?  To trust that it will be okay?  Why can't I break free, gather the winds from the skies above to power my own sails and passage through stormy seas?  This is, after all, no longer a safe harbor.  It's time to throw off the bowlines.  Have an adventure.

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship."  ~ Louisa May Alcott

Sometimes I think I want the big storm to roll in, as if I will respond only to the catastrophic with a force equal in thunder and verve, to take action, my fight or flight instinct taking over, and harvest the glad tidings and joy that wash in with the tide.  But things remain puddle-stuck, unchanging, stat-quo, blue gloom, in this little spit-spot, and I don't intend to languish here for too much longer.  That there are still things and people here that get me through, that feed me, that I love, is not lost on me, and I am grateful: just this morning, walking through this wind-swept day, noticing that change is all around me, in the burnished tops of grass and corn stalks catching the light, the periodic dance of flocking birds, the sudden shifts in light and air and even the way the earth-smell has deepened with a richness of a slowly rotting, forever cycling world, I was reminded that change is what makes us, keeps us, alive, echoing the force, the beauty, the necessity of unbridled, seasonal tack that lies deep within us, and without.

And this, too: walking through a shiver of Saturday morning comings and goings, happy for a few serendipitous face-to-face connections and real conversations with friends, and starkly aware of the absence of others, I am, by turns, encouraged and disheartened, the ache deep and palpable, the swell and tilt of emotion rising to the surface to find release in this gently blustery day.  I hear you.  I know you're there.  There is a sharpness to the emptiness, an expansiveness to the loneliness that fills the space, and I don't trust it fully; my breath restarts again, and I am transported back to the slow burn of fear and dread, where my mind takes me to all the worst possible conclusions, and then back again, to the searing, soaring hope, above all else, for something better.

Something better.  I've imagined it, letting the possibility roll on my tongue, the kernel of promise split into an anticipation huge and luminous and a-shimmer with the dance of heartache.

Heavy boots.  Pulling in the sails.  Just going to luff it out for awhile, sit with the tears spilling salt on my cheeks, listen to the wind moving through the trees, whispers of my heart, my hollows.

We fill those hollows as best we can, with star dust and sunflowers and sweet, unexpected kindnesses that smooth out the rough edges, and it's all we can do, over and over again.   Fill it up again, restock the shelves, prepare for stormy seas, and then, when we're ready, when we can't stand it another day, trust that our strength and light will see us through, and go.  Go.

Katie Daisy original

Humpty Dumpty: Picking up the Pen to Pick up the Pieces

Hello out there!

I have missed you.

Life has swallowed me up, and I've been unable to spend any time here for a long while.  I find myself this  morning with a lovely little stretch of time while I wait for my mother to have a bronchoscopy at Mass General Hospital in Boston, and well, without the usual distractions, I am tempted to do a little writing.  I'm not sure if just being here in this gargantuan bee hive of workers and drones and Queen bees at MGH has reminded me of the times when I myself have been the patient and needed to process, dismantle, defuse the building, encroaching shadows, or if just simply watching my mother navigate the increasing menacing terrain of aging has triggered this sudden need to examine where I am with it all, but whatever the reason, here I am, eager to fill the blank space with a few words.  Not for work--where I write the same kind of email, have the same kind of  conversations on the phone, over and over again, the repetition bordering on the inane dripping from fingers, paralyzing tongue.  Not on Facebook--where I slice and dice snippets of my overlapping worlds and force them into tiny little boxes of intrigue and wit--the status update.  Sigh.  No, this kind of writing is just for me, perhaps, and for you.  A bit of sublime, self-directed, creative play with words.  An expression of this moment.  A look back, a new perspective.  A romp through my sleep-deprived brain.  Do bare with me. (yes, pun intended)

I was up early, after all.  5 am.  Thanks to a wake-up call full of sweetness and unexpected humor from a friend and neighbor (a farmer who is up even earlier than that most mornings), I was able to ease into the dark morning with a smile ("Front desk," he deadpanned on the other end), offer my mother some reassurance with my own wakefulness, and look forward to the day.

Long drive into Boston aside, I often think that early morning time is the best part of the day, if you can get it.  The kids are still asleep, the dog and cat are full of sweet, sleepy love, and the world is quiet, save for the morning doves cooing in the thick fog.  Of course, I can't get it all that often, given how late my teenagers keep me up (and recently, all those fiery, get-up-and-do-something speeches from the DNC), how sleep has become such a necessity, how exhausted I usually am at the end of a full day.  But wouldn't it be nice, to wake up long before the fog starts to climb the distant mountains, catch the ripeness of the moon setting every now and then, sit with a cup of tea and write those morning pages.

Strange to think that nearly every day for many, many months I shared, here, so much of what was going on with me, my internal landscape laid bare and brazen for the picking.  At the time, it was all I could do: share my story, process all the muck before it destroyed me, and let it go.  Faced with an unexpected breast cancer diagnosis, blogging became a matter of survival.  Without it, the sheer weight of the uncertainty and ludicrousness of the initial diagnosis--that blasted, spitfire bitch--would have toppled me.  Without it, the insidiousness of the fear and dread would have hooked its barbed teeth into me, eaten me alive, spit out my bones.  Without it, I never would have realized that the 'bitch, as with most difficult, life-altering experiences, offered unexpected opportunities and lessons in wisdom, clarity, gratitude.  Without it, I never would have experienced my own sense of rebirth--back into a light and love through reaching out and connecting with all the shimmering juju that is ours for the taking, if only we ask.  The best thing that came out of all my earlier blogging was hearing from so many women who were going through similar struggles with breast cancer, who were re-experiencing the world with fresh eyes, and rediscovering what really mattered to them.

(as an aside, I just went to the bathroom down the hall; it seems my 5 am wake up time has left me with dark circles reminiscent earlier days of nursing my babies through the night, and still earlier, staying up several days in a row, for marathon study sessions, or, more likely, rugby-banquet-inspired 3-day drinking-round-the-bonfire binges)

We make our choices: we can swim in the dark, brave our murkiest depths to shine the light on our two-headed, cross-eyed monsters, and bring them to the surface for refashioning; we can stay in the light, and never venture below, staying close to the surface and denying ourselves rich opportunities for getting to know our truest selves, the unplumbed dreams, hopes and fears that make us who we are.  The sun rises for us each and every day; cancer taught me that we must never lose sight of that chance for renewal, growth, change, even when, especially when the darkness threatens to overwhelm.

There's a great Aimee Mann song (there are many), Humpty Dumpty, about the push and pull of depression, and particularly, being in that stasis state when nothing, it seems, is working to "bring you back to zero":

"Say you were split, you were split in fragments
and none of the pieces would talk to you
wouldn't you want to be who you had been
well, baby I want that, too..."

Life does that--over and over again, shattering your world into bits and pieces that suddenly make no sense to you, or to one another.  Parents suddenly announce their impending divorce.  A cancer diagnosis comes out of nowhere, and four years later, an over-sized pick-up truck does the same, slamming into you with the same kind of force that leaves you grappling for meaning and purpose amid the wreckage and gasping for the breathy lightness of gratitude.  Another blip, another reminder: it is good to be alive, after all.

And there are times when we are the masters of our own destruction, for good and for bad.  We end a long time relationship with someone who used to mean everything to us.  We switch jobs.  We take a hiatus from the rush 'n go and hibernate, a forced sabbatical to deliberately re-set our balance, reclaim what matters most.

Our task, after all, is to constantly engage in that ongoing rich, creative process of dismantling and re-assembling the pieces that make up our lives, to intentionally deconstruct, take apart, surrender to the natural falling away; accept the sudden, unexpected decimations; consider the pieces, through close, careful examination, and decide which are worth saving, and which must go.  Our task is to listen.   It all comes back to the central question:

Katie Daisy print:  http://katiedaisy.com/

Starting at a young age, we develop tools that provide critical support for getting us through.  I started writing at an early, early age, and there was great power in that: to recast something unsettling in a more manageable light, to edit and revise my life in a way that allowed me to listen, reflect, let go, move forward, forgive.  It was a way to stake my claim in a life that sometimes seemed beyond my control, to reassert my own presence in directing its course, to make sense of it all.  And when everything was blasted to bits, and I had to gather up the pieces and get on with it, writing often proved to be the best way to get those wayward bits and shards and pieces to talk to me, to make peace with their dark beginnings, put myself back together.

If you've read any of my other Flip Side of Forty posts, you know that Walking, and all its wonderful charms, has always proven to be just as therapeutic, and healing for me as Writing.  I walk so I can stay grounded; I am instantly transported back to what gave me strength, heart and hope as a child: our undeniable inter-connectivity to nature, and to each other.  Walking fine tunes my sense of all that I love about the world, hooks me into the rhythms of the natural world, and forces me to be here now, take notice, listen and learn.  And the combination of Writing and Walking has been especially powerful: a delicious, cathartic tonic to whatever ails me.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/72526245/plaque-john-muir-quote-made-to-order 

So, I encourage you: Go find what it is that works for you, and whatever it is--that allows you to connect to your best self, discover and get to know all the fragments that make up your mosaic self, change your course, decide your next step, and inhabit your "one wild and precious life"-- that's where your time and energy has to go.  Be disciplined, be dedicated, be relentless in your pursuit of what keeps you well.  Set those boundaries and prepare to fight for what you need.  It's your right--don't let anyone ever tell you differently.

I'm trying desperately to do the same, to get back to my Writing, make more time for my Walking, count on more quiet and stillness in my day, surround myself with the good vibrations of intentional practice and let myself, my life, breathe.

(funny, all this talk about breathing while Mom comes out of her bronchoscopy)

I don't want Life to swallow me up.  I'd rather air out legs, head, and heart on the lovely back-country roads that surround me, spread my wings on the pages of my writing, and fly...

I wish you well.