Surprise Me With a Cookie Every Now and Then, PLEASE!

I feel like Parker Schnabel on Gold Rush digging my way through a bunch of worthless crap trying to reach the treasure I believe is under it all.  According to my calculations it ought to be ‘right here’.  The problem is the longer and harder I dig, the lower my confidence sinks.

I’m starving to death for a win!  Somebody take away this stinking plate of slop and moldy bread and give the old lady a cookie.  Please.

Putting gears in reverse, let’s back up a bit in order to see the big picture.  Last June my heart went haywire and I ended up in the hospital.  Eventually cardiologists diagnosed me with an abnormal heart rhythm; they also discovered a coronary artery was plastered nearly shut with cholesterol.  I ended up with a stent and a few medications.  A few weeks later I felt absolutely great and had the energy of a hyperactive child!  It was truly amazing!

Life goes on; in November I had a tooth extracted, and that went well until I reacted to an antibiotic the dentist prescribed.  By mid-November, I felt pretty darned crummy so I went to our family doctor who treated me with two new drugs: one, I later learned, counter-acted my cardiac medicine, and the second drug came with a whole new set of problems of its own.

A week later in spite of multiple phone conversations with the doctor who tells me all of this “is to be expected”; I’m sinking like a stone.  Rich loads my lethargic carcass into the car and takes me to the doctor who is appropriately “shocked” by my condition.  He admits me to the hospital and puts me on an IV antibiotic, saying whatever allergic reaction I had is long gone, but I’m suffering from some sort of non-specific infection based on hospital blood studies.  Long story short, the new IV drug did its best to kill me.

Enter a new doctor.  I am treated for severe allergic reactions, taken off the drug that has neutralized my heart medicine, stabilized and sent home with a minor UTI that no one wants to attempt to treat until my body “rebounds” a bit.

Time passes; I simply do not regain my strength.  Thanksgiving comes and goes.  Christmas comes and goes.  The new year, my birthday, all are miserable.  I’m nearly afraid to go to any doctor, but when I do it’s around the first of February.  He prescribes a 7 day round of a gentler, friendlier antibiotic for the miserable, relentless, merciless urinary tract infection.  I finish the prescription with no problem!  I actually feel pretty good again, not great, but good.

February 8^th, I take Rich to Little Rock to a neurologist.  Over a period of 6 weeks the muscles in his left hand have begun to shrink in obvious muscle wasting and we want to know why he is dropping forks and having such a hard time writing.  It takes 6 LONG weeks of referrals and scheduling to see a neurologist.  All along, I can’t think of anything except the shocking changes in my husband’s hand.

On the way up the stairs to his appointment, I have to keep stopping to rest; my chest hurts, and it’s hard to breathe.  Rich panics, I minimalize.  The truth is I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and absolutely determined to get help for Rich.  It has taken us such a long time to reach these stairs; I damn well am going to climb them.

Over his protests, I push on.

Once inside, we are assured “most likely” Rich’s muscle wasting is the manifestation of significant peripheral neuropathies related to his 25 year battle with diabetes. To know the depth of what we are up against, and to set a proper plan of care, further tests are set for February 19^th.

Riding back home to Hot Springs, I begin to relax.  While peripheral neuropathy is a very serious and progressive condition, I am relieved the doctor hadn’t taken one look at my husband’s hand and said something like, “I think this might be ALS.”

While my chest pain has subsided, I feel heavy and weak. When Rich asks how I feel, I smile and say, “Better.” We stop at Subway for takeout then go to bed early.  The next morning I call the cardiologist.  He says my experience with the stair case is pretty much like failing a stress test and fears my stent may be clogged.

Check it out.

Another heart cath.

Routine.

Only not.

This time the catheter tip tears a hole in a coronary artery.  With each beat of my heart, I feel life spilling out.  I see Rich’s face, hear Father’s voice; I have missed him so much since he died 2 years ago.

I try to tell the doctors I don’t feel right, but instead say “Daddy”.

I wake in ICU.  Good news, bad.  I didn’t die.  I didn’t need emergency by-pass, but my arteries are seriously diseased.  And I’ve bled into my chest cavity and it will take a little while for the blood to be reabsorbed.

Stabilize.  Rest.  But not for long.  The next day, back to surgery for placement of a 3^rd stent, without which, disaster is sure to follow.

What follows in life, what leads?  How can you tell anyway, and does it matter, does anything really matter in the end or the beginning, or all the beautiful and flawed pieces in between?

Where the hell is the pony under all of the crap? Where’s a cookie for a woman starving?  An ice cream cone for the man she loves?

My husband nearly gray with fear, his hand like a soft claw touching my steel face, his eyes semi-liquid changing like the sky, hazel, blue, gray, hazel again.  The muscles in his face too smooth, (his glucose is low), idly hang like sheets or sails waiting for the wind.  But wind doesn’t come.  Or perhaps it does.  Except this time, when it does, it’s the worst storm of our lives.

Neurological test results are back.

I’m sitting in a wheelchair on a keg of 1,000 new drugs, my heart, a waiting fuse, the doctor’s words, a reluctant yet persistent match.     Then it all explodes.  The neurologist’s eyes locked into mine.  Suddenly she is a mime full of woe; but if mimes can’t talk, why is she using words?     ‘Serious.     Urgent.     Significant Underlying neuromuscular disease.       Invasive.      Tests.   Watch for twitching.   She looks at me as if I am a widow.    itty?  itty?  Can you hear me?’

The world disappears inside a microscopic black hole.  Rich and I hold hands, swirl through choking, cruel air until at last he is pushing my wheelchair back to the car that doesn’t matter anymore, to drive back to the house that isn’t home.  Home is a perfect crystal, it is the fiber of the irrefutable love that binds us together with steel and silken threads we’ve earned and created along the way.

Rich  asked me to share with readers that our lives have been challenging for a long time, but it wasn’t until the past four years, that those challenges have focused on health.  We moved to Arkansas full of hope and energy.  Three weeks after arriving, Rich had a heart attack.  One thing led to another,and in the span of four short years, we’ve both been hospitalized five times.  We don’t blame Arkansas, well, maybe a little; the reality is timing.  We are stoic people who avoid drama like the  plague.  We are quiet old folks who have a lot of fun together.  We retired to Arkansas because it is one of the most beautiful states we’ve ever seen. We assumed our health would stay strong and consistent; we believed we’d face each new challenge life threw at us the way we always have.

We’ll keep fighting, but if we have our way, it will be closer to our family.  Neither of us is a  Parker Schnabel; we’re not 19 any more with the bright shiny world beckoning.  But we know our places in it.  And we know ours hearts, as battered and bullied as they are, and we know our love is a universe of defiance and intensity, as well as a gentle cradle for holding all that is precious, and an indestructible bastion of never letting go – even past the last days of this long walk we make together.  And we take great comfort in knowing we will always walk together, never alone, through long, twisting hallways and sunny great rooms inside fortress grounds and gardens we build every day out of love.

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Finding Hello in Good-bye

In early November, an unexpected storm disrupted my life.  Perhaps I should have seen it coming, but I did not, in spite of a nagging feeling inside that something was amiss.  I pride myself on listening to myself, following innate instincts, and falling back on lessons learned from past experiences.  This time the message never made it to my brain, but churned restlessly in my gut as I struggled to connect dots.

My belief was that if I could identify the source of imbalance I felt inside, I would either be able to stay, or right, whatever fate waited for me on the steps of life’s door, or meet it head on, confidence in tact, and resolve, in a sensible way, any body blow it might deliver.

That philosophy proved both naïve and arrogant in lieu of the vulnerabilities of the human condition that evolve in dichotomy, the mind filling with wisdom as the body simultaneously empties with age.  So, when the thug-illness burst through the front door, like any unsuspecting soul, I absorbed its rage, and was swept away in the insane bureaucracy of doctors and hospitals and voodoo poisons conversely intended to heal.

Once home, huddled safely inside my upholstered cave, I began the process of understanding why I could never, try as I may, have anticipated the events that brought me to this uncomfortable introspective space.  But when the light bulb lit, and a band somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind began playing boisterous choruses of Halleluiah, I began to see the impotence and futility of trying to see into the future in order to avoid or manipulate its impact on the present.

As this new truth emerged, setting me free, so to speak, a new reality appeared, once again taking the wind from my sails as my sweet husband, Rich, the rock on which I have built my life, fell prey himself to an illness uniquely his own.  Thus the feeble bird tended the injured bird as, together, we tried to discern forests from trees.

The double whammy of fate proved itself a game changer as we struggled to meld growing physical limitations with solid but stubborn mental competence hell-bent on experiencing the Golden Years as portrayed by cell phone and miracle drug commercials on TV.

The irony of marketed possibilities in old age juxtaposed the actuality of incoming mail filled with term life insurance, funeral and burial policies clashed, rising to a crescendo until nothing would do but to address the 800 pound gorilla in our living room.  Thus began the shift in the landscape of our lives.  And I must say, neither took it very well, the idea of exchanging high adventure for a more sensible plan was like sucking lemons, but we pushed on, readying ourselves for the respite and sheer joy of a Christmas visit from a daughter, her husband and their son.

Two hours before their arrival, the power went out.  But it wasn’t as hard to adjust to the unexpected as it might have been the month before, because surviving last month’s challenge had empowered Rich and me to rise like phoenixes, rendering this latest variance in foreseen reality a virtual bleep on the radar screen.

Nothing, absolutely nothing was going to dampen our enthusiasm for spending time with family.  Two hours into the visit, over dinner lit by emergency stash fluorescent lanterns, the power came on, and each of us jumped from our seats to embrace in full light.

Christmas was perfection, the best Rich and I have experienced since leaving Texas on our excellent adventure, causing us to ponder the desires and circumstances that led us far from the herd in the first place.  To be honest, the herd had fully dispersed before we broke from the land that held us and served as a constant reminder that even the best laid plans can go horribly awry.

During long, sweet conversations at Christmas, the subject of the recent illnesses that passed like a plague over our house arose, opening a door we never dreamed we might need to enter.  It seems the helplessness of crossing long miles on small budgets while meeting the needs of minor children and demanding work schedules had torn at the heart strings of our daughter and her husband as they were forced to watch from afar as Rich and I struggled to deal with devastating circumstances alone.

Last night Rich told me he and his brother never know how to say Good-bye when they talk on the phone.  I know how that feels. Endings are hard for me; beginnings, not so much.  So the only way I know how to approach change is to find a way to transform it into something I’ll want to embrace rather than ignore.

I’m quite ambivalent about getting old, part of me is so ready, and part is not.  The fact that we need help from others to manage the sharp edges of life is a bomb dropping for anyone, but for those unaccustomed to asking or accepting help, it is a concept nearly impossible to accede.

I have to remind myself that sometimes Plan B exceeds the expectation and reward of Plan A.  When our granddaughter, Morgan, graduates in another year and moves to Austin to get her Masters in Physics, more than likely Rich and I will be packing once again for Texas.

The natural beauty of Arkansas will be hard to leave in spite of having made very few friends while being here.  In two weeks I turn 65; it would be nice to enjoy the Golden Years in the presence of family, making the most of each good day, and knowing we are not alone on less impressive days.

And so this nest that felt so right only months ago, suddenly feels a little tight around the hips, and we find ourselves contemplating unexpected plans to return, perhaps, for the last time, home.  Perchance this is how it always is, the evolution of parental roles, one generation passing the torch to the next in an act as necessary and natural as the changing of seasons.  But because we have an option, because we have a say in the matter, because both of our children have offered their homes to us, Rich and I count ourselves as two of the very lucky ones.

Anticipating Change

It’s dark and damp outside, the product of three drizzling days of lazy rain.  No thunder or drama, just the persistent mist of late autumn on the mountain, the last vestiges of a once brilliant floral floor falling in decay, while the canopy above explodes in blasts of impulsive color.  Crisp air carries the musky scent of wet soil as the temperature plunges, leaving the forest vulnerable to the stark nakedness that will soon follow.

All summer the woods expanded, reaching closer to my door, but now they are shrinking in a slow retreat that will widen the spaces between each magnificent tree and end, eventually, in the white silence of fallen snow.

These are the busy days; the squirrels are fat, darting in and out of hollows and thatched crevices with their jaws stretched to capacity with nuts and fallen fruit.  Foxes move deeper into their dens, and the light twilled sounds of songbirds are overcome by strong, scratchy notes coughed from the throats of crows and ravens.

The steady circadian hum that marked the onset of slow summer nights has been replaced with pure silence, broken occasionally by the howl of coyote in the distance, or the harsh, splitting assault of a poacher’s kill shot.

Black canvas skies feel deeper.  Stars, lit like votive candles, punctuate vast dark fields. And the intensity of light traveling for thousands and thousands of years emphasizes the emptiness above, accentuating constellations described by an array of mythical stories intended to remind us of our vulnerabilities to the wills and powers of the unknown.

Between night and rain, the most amazing clear days lend themselves to preparations for winter as I harvest and dry herbs from my gardens,collect seeds, trim baring bushes and fruit trees, cover thinning flower beds with fallen leaves, and thoughtfully redefine the perimeters of our home in anticipation of the uncertainties of the coming winter season.

Inside, I’m refinishing old furniture I’ve drug around for a lifetime and adding fresh paint to faded walls.  I’ve finished quilting my holiday quilt and look forward to hanging it on the walnut quilt holder Rich built for my displays several years ago.  I’m thumbing through old fall and winter cook books in search of comfort food recipes I can revamp and up-cycle into healthier versions of themselves in order to provide my family with sound nutrition that keeps the coziness and reassurance of traditional flavors.

I’m nearly manic in a nesting mode, yet more peaceful and happier than I can recall being for a very long time.  I’m paying attention to every detail in every moment and learning from mistakes I make along the way, but being kind to myself at the same time.

I’m feeling appreciative to this old body that has carried me through all the years of my life in spite of how badly or irresponsibly I treated it in younger times.  I would never dream of altering it, lifting, tucking, cutting off and throwing any part of it away in order to retain some silly semblance of youth.  For me, that would be an exercise in futility, and an insult to the organic process of being born, blossoming,  progressing, then fading and dying in a natural way.  I’ve tended the bedsides of too many hospice patients to waste my time holding on to surface matter, learning from their experiences that joy and satisfaction comes from living life well in the present moment, no matter its length or challenging circumstance.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa because Rich is retiring, for good this time, at the end of December.  January 1^st is kick-off day for our journey together through the Golden Years, no matter what they bring or impose.

Crones in Fuchsia

The bathroom at the end of the hall has no windows.  When I close the door behind me, it can either feel like a moss green and latte cell, or a safe house; whichever depends on how I’m feeling at the time.

This morning, it was sanctuary.

I knew the day wasn’t going to be easy no matter what kind of spin I put on it, because yesterday I received a letter beginning with the words: Welcome to Medicare.  My plan was to keep today light to stave off age related issues of insecurity, but if I’d really wanted a retreat day, I would have skipped checking in with my Facebook page, wouldn’t I?

A friend had posted an article relating to internet security that was thoughtful, and while not alarming, I confess, it fed my paranoid side that is suspicious of rapid change.  Like any animal with a head larger than mine, I don’t completely trust it without a proper courting phase allowing me time to ease into the unfamiliar, rather than busting through its doors.

This morning a Facebook entry hit a raw nerve, sending me into the shadow that Medicare began the day before, and I found myself heading to the room without windows at the end of the hall.

Small windowless rooms, most notably closets, have long been my sanctuary when the big, bad wolves of the world close in.  As a child, I believed I was invisible cowering inside, safe from sharp teeth.  As an adolescent, I could feel myself blending into walls, crouching behind an assortment of clothes that played to the particular role I assigned myself for the day.  As a young wife, closets offered refuge from the raging bull in the other room.  In middle age, I became my own closet, moving in, putting the pieces back together again.  At this stage in life, closets are just another chore needing attention.

But this morning, thanks to Medicare and Facebook, the small, windowless room whisked me back in time, and for a moment I crouched in deference to the past that made me the woman I am today. And I covered the crone’s lips in bright fuchsia lipstick before opening another door and entering.

 

 

 

Ambivalence: Dealing With It, Understanding it is Fear’s First Cousin

I always experience a blend of excitement and sadness this time of year. It feels like each day is suspended on a great curve or a massive arch, and having passed the midway point in yet another season, summer achingly descends toward its inevitable end while fall waits around the corner, giddy with anticipation. For summer, each ever-shortening minute seems to mourn the loss of delicate carefree days, but fall is like a child anticipating the first day of school, bursting with energy and full of endless possibilities. 

I hate to see the flowers go, but I love the spectrum of autumn colors, and savor the thought of shorter days and lengthening nights; its nature’s way of slowing us down, bringing a little work/rest balance to our lives.  When the forest erupts in nearly indescribable color, there’s pep in my step that is missing in the heat of deep summer.  I love the bounce and the crisp air that carries with it a hint of wood burning in distant fire pits and fireplaces.  Still, I miss the elegance of blossoming flowers, the sound of bees congregating over the oregano and thyme, the fragrance of sage and rosemary, lavender, Thai basil and lemon eucalyptus.

Each year the changing of seasons is a bit different from the last.  If it’s been a particularly wet summer, the landscape captures the story of persistent rain beating the ground, distending the earths belly with forced feedings that erode fragile ecosystems, destroy newly fallen seeds, and drown insects and other small creatures.  The bodies of summer are carried by rushing streams of rainwater until snagged by mounds of debris that have collected in nooks and crannies across uneven ground.  These makeshift cemeteries will be their last resting place as they ferment and dissolve back into the earth that bore them.  The initial fragrance of rain intersecting dry earth deepens to a musky scent before succumbing to the eventual stench of decay. 

Even the trees seemingly weep, their branches weary, and bark swollen.  While I celebrate the bounty of water, simultaneously I mourn the loss of my precious flowers as they lay their heads to the ground in absolute surrender.  Manically, I’m up again watching the birds feed on fat worms plucked from sodden grasses, easily satisfying their appetites in a ritual of sustainability and regeneration.  If summer has been cruel, if skies have refused to provide water to the dry pleading soil below, the landscape withers in brittle tales of want and desire.  And the earth splits in spidering cracks and crevices, creating safe havens for insects, invertebrates and small mammals. 

The trees on the horizon shrink in rising dust, their parched leaves defeated, and dropping by the handfuls with even a hint of a breeze. And as far as the eye can see, there is a backdrop of scarcity and woe.  Soon we move indoors in search of something more, leaving the earth to endure the scalding heat alone.

Evenings are one of the few rewards we find for having suffered the dog days of summer.  Late afternoon often marks the arrival of migratory birds in search of something to eat or drink,  Their musical voices are soothing and reminiscent of old women haggling in a market place.  By dusk, when fireflies begin to light the hem of the woods, we return to the thick, warm air, languishing in lawn chairs, shooing flies and gnats from the corners of our mouths as we talk about the weather, or dream aloud of cooler days to come.

I match each season to the cadence of my own life.  On the cusp of fall, I find myself finishing projects I began in the spring and nurtured all summer long, and compiling list after list of things that must be done in preparation for the cold, dark void of winter that is building just around the corner. 

I’m plucking the dry heads off daisies, sunflowers and Echinacea and scattering their seeds throughout my gardens.  I’m preparing a list of bushes and tree limbs to prune in late October.  I’m harvesting and drying herbs to use in the cold months when their roots are resting beneath ice or snow.  I’m starting construction on small Halloween gifts for the children on my street who delight me year after year with their eager faces squealing “Trick or Treat!”

I’m a little early with what I call my Annual Fall Clean-Out, the time set aside to sort through everything I’ve collected or saved since early spring. I’m editing the clutter.  If I don’t, everything I own suddenly owns me, and I become a slave to their upkeep.  I’m getting too old for heavy cleaning and shuffling stuff from place to place anymore, so I’m downsizing in my own way.  I admit to the absurdity and obvious conflict of being both a serial cleaner and one tittering on the abysmal brink of hoarding, and confess that I run myself wild saving for what may or may not ever happen, while throwing away what isn’t actually needed.  I understand that I am my own particular disease just as much as I am its own particular cure.

Today is September 2^nd.  Outside, if feels as if summer is still with us, but our calendar is filling with autumn activities.  Soon the leaves will turn and begin to fall, and I will pile them on top of all my flower beds to insulate against the bitter cold that lies ahead.  Summer was slow starting for us this year, and already the night temperatures are dipping into the 60’s.  I remember standing on our deck on the fourth of July and telling my husband that winter would arrive soon.

“Sooner than we’ll be ready for it, I fear,” he said.

Time passes so quickly these days.  It seems we are always looking over our shoulders toward yesterday, yesterday when the babies were born and life was joyfully packed with activity and pseudo-drama.  Yesterday, when everyone we loved was still alive, still laughing or causing grief.  Yesterday, when tomorrow seemed a million years away.  But I’ve no time for ambivalent thoughts today.  My sister telephoned; she and her husband and my brother and Mom are coming for a visit at the end of the month.  I have so much to do before they arrive…and there is so much to look forward to, so many busy pleasures and rich experiences for Rich and I to explore before the bone cold winter hand knocks at our front door and whispers our names.

  

 

 

The power of a strong inner life…

It’s easy to imagine because I’ve seen it a thousand times in my head, a bit here, a fragment there; pieces of a grand puzzle coming together like a rainbow after a long storm, one color fitting snugly against the next, complementing the whole, yet amazing on its own. That’s how it is, this forest inside my head, the enchantment of the soul visualized by the mind’s eye, making it real.

I’ve been to the forest many times, beginning early in childhood when monsters came out from under the bed, their terrible teeth threatening to eat me alive.  I visited again during adolescence, those years of longing and drama.  The stillness I found amongst towering branches and the scent of deep pine wafting through tangled jasmine was the white knight whisking me away from turmoil, transporting me to a happier, more welcoming place.

Had it not been for the forest, I may not have survived the first twenty years of my first marriage with its intoxicating balance of delight and cruelty, and co-dependence so cavernous it erased every good thing that crossed its path.  But when I was 49, my body made the decision my mind had refused to make, as I stumbled into the kind of illness that consumes every ounce of strength and deliberate thought possible.  Suddenly my body was the tomb I was buried in. 

After the anger and grief, temperance set in, and I found in the midst of rubble, the most peaceful cave.  This silent, empty space was perfectly accommodating, seemingly knowing my needs before I’d consciously recognized and acknowledged them.  I dwelt in that space for three years, until one morning I heard the most delightful sound of a red bird singing on the window sill beside my bed, and his vibrant energy and contagious joy became the crutch I used to move from the cave into the forest of the outer realms of the world.

Pushing my weak body and placid mind, I moved forward, one step at a time.  But the cave of introspection and intuition had become part of me, so I brought it along ever conscious of its presence, and I used it like a self-help manual, or a book of new rules, rules written for and benefitting no one but me, and I called this newness of thought The Self Is and its code and content, The Requirements of Self-Is-Ness.

With renewed clarity of mind, I coaxed my body to do its part to save Self so that I might tell my children about this most amazing revelation I’d discovered within, the absolute fact that we can rid ourselves of the poisons that cripple us, that we can grow whole and find happiness within the boundaries of our own bodies simply by understanding the power we hold. 

I wanted to tell my daughters there are safe places that provide shelter when we become our own worst enemies, or when we allow the world to infect us with unhealthy ideas and role assignments, and how it is necessary first to go in in order to work ourselves out.  I wanted to tell them that the results of caring most tenderly for ourselves with absolute honesty and the tenderness we would afford a child, will carry us past any solution we may have previously imagined, because time spent in the cave is time spent unlearning, converting old assumptions and presumptions of implied fact into authentic personal truth. 

During the day, I worked to regain strength and balance.  When the time came I sought help from a neurological therapist who taught me how to create and integrate new tools for thinking into automatic responses.  We did this to improve my short term memory and to help me adjust to the loss of many memories of the past.  At home, I took on new tasks, trying confidence on as if it was an exotic new dress, and I embraced critical thinking in ways I’d never imagined before. 

I deliberately broke many status quo rules, as difficult as that was for me.  Friends and family either moved away from me, as if to avoid catching whatever madness had settled upon me, or gathered closer as a show of support for something fragile and young that was determined to live.

It was a difficult but satisfying process. At night I began building a house in my mind, deciding to return to the protective forest of my youth, using this technique like a new tool.  Building this house was a deliberate exercise, lasting an entire year. I began by mentally leaving home and then I imagined a beautiful green valley, lush and inviting.  Arriving in a car packed with sentimental belongings, none of which were particularly well suited for survival in the wild, yet each priceless thing, emotionally necessary, I began unpacking, moving each article into a back corner of an abandoned, leaking shack that I would soon transform into a comfortable home.

I can still see every item I’d packed for the journey, a foot pedal sewing machine, wooden bowls, blue glass, quilts and scraps for making more, good books, pen and paper, string and basic tools, and a seemingly endless supply of candles. 

This mental exercise strengthened my resolve as I built a home from scraps I imagined had been abandoned by another woman who had moved through her own personal forest, discarding possessions she no longer needed as she traveled forward.  In the end, what illness had taken away, newfound physical and mental health and deepening spirituality returned one hundred-fold.

Today I visit my cabin often; I sit on the porch under the stars, or drink coffee beneath the warmth of a quilt, and watch in perfect peace as storms pass outside.  Every day each of us is healing and growing at the same time; that’s what we do on this journey.  As for what comes next, I simply cannot say, but today is good, and that’s enough for me. 

There are so many paths leading home.  The lesson for me is learning to respect myself by caring for that timeless child within, and to listen to myself.  When I do these things, the daily practices of the Requirements of Self-Is-ness are easier to follow in spite of the clamor and chatter of those who confuse self-care with selfishness.

I believe personal forests are essential; without a quiet place to contemplate the pace of the world and it’s sharp, narrowing judgments, too much time is wasted feeling constricted or sad by our personal limitations.  I choose to live an active inner life, working to make my home in the physical world a better reflection of the healing forest in my mind, anchoring myself, providing safe passage for the infinite child who lives inside.  

 

When your heart takes over the show…

The signs were there.  But my bossy brain, as disciplined and intent as a Sumo wrestler assigned them to the wrong room, unwilling to admit she may have made a mistake.  When the body revolted causing a scene, the doctor was called, and well-intentioned-rationalizing-I-Can-Do-It-Myself-Sumo-Me was sent to detention hall where I’m trying hard to blend.

It is not asthma, the drain of wind from great sails; it is not the gut gone tight and bubbly in the gladiator coliseum of social and political riot.  No, it is the sweet, red pump that drives everything.

As often is the case in this world of doublespeak, the tests that had moments before been reported positive, coiled, rose and struck like a snake interrupting my happy dance; and the interpreter of medical lingo on the other end of the telephone, (her voice as calm and cool as a summer melon cut in half), explained that was bad news.

So now the road forks, one sign pointing toward doom, another toward freedom; but the third trail marked by the largest sign of all, its path rutted by the passage of thousands of determined feet.  This is the direction I have chosen, the sign marked Onward, with Hope and Determination.

On June 26^th, at 10:30 in the morning, my body will join the long line of silver headed warriors lying on gurneys in front of the alter of stainless steel doors that are as cold as a gnat’s teat, watching through a veil of numbing drugs, as the doors swing open then close like jaws around the lives of the hopeful.  Just like a busy ice cream shop, or a government office, I’ve been assigned a number and will wait my turn for the Great Oz while my best friend/lover/husband grinds his teeth in another room the same way I’ve ground my own for him each time he has taken this trip.

 My heart is huge.  My heart is durable. My heart is not close to giving up.  I’ll be back soon.  You’ll see.

And PS, I love you all.

 

 

Day one, June first: be kind dear month, merciful, dear season. Refrain from shaking too hard these ticks from your magnificent body.

Sitting in my storm shelter, I wonder if we’ve lost sight that we are part of nature or if self-importance has only inflated our sense of superiority.  The fact that anyone these days, take me, for example, can sit in front of an innocuous computer, and between sips of coffee, (or from a storm shelter), espouse a litany of personal beliefs, emphasizes the dilemma of having more venues to share than actual facts to present. 

Now, enter: personal experience and bias, we all have it to one degree or another.  Next, enter, (take cover), politics and religion, two devilish,( pardon the pun), components in an emerging super storm.

I wish I would, (not could), walk the explicit way of my own words, and see myself as an equal to ants and spiders.  But I am an animal that steps on those I categorize as creepy bugs when they invade my space, apologizing even as their guts squirt around my shoe.   I say I wish I would, not I wish I could, because certainly I could if I’d a mind to.  But I don’t; my bias, my perspective, my pick and choose variety of practical wisdom leaves its imprint across every hour of every day in my little world.  And while I may shake in horror as I do the things I do, I continue to opt to do them.

Today is June first.  2013.  Dawn of the new age.  (Cough, gag, choke.)  In fact, today is the first day after yesterday and the day before tomorrow.   I don’t know about you, but not too much changed overnight at my house.  The weather outside is still raging.  It’s the great mirror to what’s going on with people all over the planet.  It’s the duck legs below the waterline struggling while the swan only appears to glide. 

The earth is a seed perpetuating new seeds, or maybe it’s only a dog. 

We, on the other hand, retro-evolving parasitic life-forms, seem to be moving backward in thought, rather than fast-forward; hence the emergence of a super race of resource exploiters bashing our way across mother/planet/seed/dog earth. 

Yes, of course, we have our holy women and wild men roaming the forest primeval prophesizing and recording, but mostly their numbers are dwarfed by frightening numbers of consumer/ticks sucking the blood directly from the foundation they’ve built their homes on.

Dumb?  Yeah, I think so; short-sighted, for sure.  But are we, or let me make this more personal, am I save-able?  While the jury is still out on that one, the signs are imminently clear.  We’ve reached the limit on ignorant bliss…it is time to wake up, to come to the storm shelter and sit peacefully in the company of ants and spiders. To ask ourselves the question: are we living a sustainable lifestyle: emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically and of course, environmentally.  And most certainly, it is time to take notice of what nature is saying, time to listen up as she does her best impression of a dog driven to the cusp of madness by colonies of ticks, and to take action, positive action, to help ensure we survive on the back of this great dog that has begun the process of shaking her problems loose.